Judgement's Greatest Question: How My Church Rediscovered What Really Matters

By Dr. Steve Kern

Looking for a way to revitalize your church and truly make a difference in your community? Look no further than "Judgment's Greatest Question" by Dr. Steve Kern.

 

When Dr. Kern took over as pastor of a struggling inner-city church, he had no idea the transformative journey he was about to embark on. In this powerful and prophetic book, Dr. Kern shares the lessons he's learned about the true calling of the church in America today.

 

Now more than ever, it's crucial for churches to discover their purpose and get involved in community ministry work. "Judgment's Greatest Question" is a must-read for any pastor considering this path.

 

But this isn't just a "how to" book. Kern's focus is on the spirit of God's will, done in His way and in His place. His gripping stories of his experiences at Olivet Baptist Church in Oklahoma City will inspire and equip any church to discover its purpose and intentionally share Jesus Christ with their community.

 

If you're looking for direction on how to do ministry-based evangelism right where you are, "Judgment's Greatest Question" is the book for you. With Kern's theological perspective and practical advice, you'll gain insight, inspiration, and hope to fulfill the biblical mandate for the church to minister to others as never before.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A Frank Voice Publishing
• Release date: Jun 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223419075

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

MY STORY

There are times when God says no to our prayers because He wants to give us something better than what we are asking for. That was my experience when God called me to pastor Olivet Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She was an old, inner city church whose glory days of fast growth ended in the fifties. The community around her died quickly during forced busing of the sixties. The church had determined to stay in the inner city, but by 1996 she was running less than three hundred in attendance and dying fast, literally. I was forty-nine years old; I had been a pastor for fifteen years and had earned a Doctor of Ministries degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. I had pastured two turn around churches with some success and felt I was ready to move up to a big time church. But God said, " No." I’m glad He did. Let me tell you why.

My impression of myself for many years was like many others’. I felt like an outsider looking in. I never saw myself as a full-fledged, contributing member of the human race, let alone the church. I knew I had something to offer but seemed to impress few people when I offered it.

I guess that impression got started back when I was six months old. I was the youngest of five children. It was 1946, at the end of World War II. My biological father, Bill Thomas, decided he could not handle the pressure of raising five kids. He left. We never saw him again. My oldest sister was eight at the time.

Three years after that, my mother married George Kern. He was only nineteen years old and was seven years younger than her. Not long after they were married, Dad adopted all five of us kids and changed our name to Kern. Mom had been deserted, and he had been divorced.

By the grace of God, my new Dad had been raised in a godly home and dedicated himself to raise his new family in church. My parents became active in small churches. One of those churches was First Baptist Church of Scottsdale, Arizona where they were charter members. They served in these small churches as the volunteer music director and pianist and held many other positions. But through the years, there was always that stigma of his divorce. We were always active members but outsiders when it came to being a part of the so called inner circle.

There was one time in my life when I felt like I really was somebody. It was Labor Day 1957, and I was eleven years old. Dad was the music director of Southern Baptist Temple in Phoenix, Arizona. I was at the house of my youngest sister’s boyfriend. He had a twenty-two automatic pistol that had been malfunctioning when we took it out to shot in some gravel pits a few days earlier. I sat down on the back porch with him to watch him take the gun apart to fix. But, he failed to unload it first. The gun went off sending three bullets through my back and two through my arm. The bullets picked me up and threw me to the ground. All of a sudden, everybody knew who I was. The Baptist Men of Arizona were having a statewide conference that day with Dr. R.G. Lee preaching the featured message. They stopped the conference, and Dr. Lee led all those men in prayer for me. My story was in all the papers and on the television news. I was the miracle kid of the Valley of The Sun. I started attending a new school that year, and all the kids knew who I was before I got there. However, all the attention was short-lived.

I gave my heart to Jesus a year after that, but I had already fallen into the web that most adolescent boys fall into. Pornography, and all that goes along with it, began to erode my sense of self-worth. I wanted to be a sincere Christian, but my conscience nagged at my hypocrisy. My thinking was surely no one could be as bad as me. I went through a long struggle of learning to accept the security of my salvation and self-worth in Christ alone. I finally came to an understanding that I was safe in Jesus, but felt as if I would always be watching God use others in powerful and meaningful ways, but not me. I saw myself as one who could be in the kingdom but must stay outside the ranks of the chosen servants of God. It was as if I were free to ride as long as I stayed in the back of the bus like a second class citizen.

As a young person, my life was always average. We moved several times, so I never made my way into any in crowds. I never made more than average grades. I was never first team anything. I wanted to be in the high school senior play but talked myself out of it, not wanting to face possible rejection. I attended the play as an outsider looking in, justifying my cowardice by thinking I could have done as well as any of the ones in the play who took the risk to try.

A month after I finished high school Dad divorced my mother and married another woman. That threw my life into a time of confusion and soul searching after having been raised in church all my life. How could he have done such a thing? Was a question I had to grapple with. Fortunately I had a youth pastor at the time who helped me through the turmoil. My mother also helped me learn how to forgive and go on rather than hold on to bitterness.

After high school I tried college for a year and was flunking, so I joined the Marine Corps. It was 1965 during the Vietnam War. That was an unpopular war at the time. There were not many pats on the back for our service. I spent a month on the hospital ship Hope after a field burner in the mess hall caught my head on fire. I saw a lot of the ugliness of war during that time.

During my time in Vietnam I learned to play the guitar and wrote a lot of country western and gospel songs, but never did anything with them. No one who could have helped me succeed came alongside to help me make it. I had no connections. I’m thankful for that now. It was not God’s will for me.

I met my wife, Sally, not long after getting out of the military while taking another shot at college. She became one of those people, like the rest of my immediate family, who believed in me more than I believed in myself. In college I commuted to school and to work never becoming a part of the mainstream activities. Four years of military service left me feeling as if I were behind my peers and trying to catch up. Most of my peers had finished college, had jobs, or were working on masters’ degrees while I was just getting started. I was again an outsider looking in.

What finally got me on the road toward surrendering to become a pastor was God’s answer to a prayer Sally and I prayed on our wedding night. He did not say no to this prayer, but answered it abundantly. The prayer was,

Lord, as we look for a church home, lead us to one we can grow in faith and not just get busy in.

It was 1970, and we had moved to Irving, Texas. Irving was midway between Sally’s work and the college I was attending. We joined McArthur Boulevard Baptist Church where a young man named Ron Dunn was