10 Questions with Mike McKinley

In the recent issue of Credo Magazine, “George Whitefield at 300,” pastor and author Mike McKinley answered 10 Questions on church planting in the city, assurance of salvation, technology, preaching through the book of Revelation, and much more.

Mike McKinley was raised in suburban Philadelphia. In 2004, he was brought onto the pastoral staff at Capitol Hill Baptist Church as a church planter. In 2005, he brought a small group of people from CHBC to Guilford Baptist Church in order to help revitalize the church’s ministry. He served as Guilford’s pastor until 2013, when Guilford merged with Sterling Park Baptist Church, where he now serves as Senior Pastor. Mike is the author of several books, including Church Planting Is for Wimps: How God Uses Messed-up People to Plant Ordinary Churches That Do Extraordinary Things, and Am I Really a Christian?

Here is the start of the interview:

Mike, you have written a book called, Church Planting Is for Wimps: How God Uses Messed-up People to Plant Ordinary Churches That Do Extraordinary Things. If you could give advice to our readers who might be interested in planting a church one day, what would it be?  

I think it would be this: Anything you can do in your own strength and by means of your own cleverness probably isn’t worth accomplishing, but anything done in the power of the Holy Spirit by means of the Word of God will last forever. Focus on prayerfully making God’s Word known.

What is the major difference between church planting in the city versus rural areas, and in what ways should church planters approach these two differently?  

I have to confess that I’m not an expert on rural or urban church planting, but ignorance has never stopped me from having a strong opinion! I think that people in those two contexts will have some very different priorities, different assumptions about what it means to be part of a community, different paces of life, and different experiences with Christianity. What gives a church planter hope is that people in both contexts are exactly the same in all the ways that matter: dead in their sins, condemned in Adam, in rebellion against God, and in desperate need of the gospel of Jesus Christ. A church planter’s job is to try to understand the particular idols of his community and then bring the good news to bear on them.

In your experience as a pastor, what is the most challenging aspect of pastoral ministry?

Without a doubt, it’s the bites from the sheep. You expect to be attacked by wolves from time to time; it’s not easy but it comes with the territory. But when people with whom and for whom you have shed blood, sweat, and tears turn on you… it’s ten times more painful. I haven’t had nearly as much of that kind of thing as other pastors whom I know. The Lord must not think I can handle very much suffering. But to my mind it’s the worst thing about pastoral ministry by far. . . .

Read the rest of this interview today!

To view the Magazine as a PDF

We live in a day when those in the church want to have their ears tickled. We do not want a sermon, but a “talk.” “Don’t get preachy, preacher!” is the mantra of many church goers today. What is preferred is a casual, comfortable, and laid back chat with a cup of coffee and a couple of Bible verses to throw into the mix to make sure things get spiritual. One wonders whether Timothy would have been fired as a pastor today for heeding Paul’s advice: “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Tim. 4:2). Paul gives such a command to Timothy because he knew what was to come. “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Tim. 4:3-4). Has that day come? Are churches filled with “itching ears,” demanding “teachers to suit their own passions”? Have we turned “away from listening to the truth”?

In a day when ears itch and truth is shown the back door, what could be more needed than men who actually preach the Word? George Whitefield (1714-1770) was one of those men. He was a preacher who preached in plain language, so that even the most common man could understand God’s Word. Yet, his sermons were incredibly powerful, often leading men and women to tears as the Holy Spirit convicted their souls. Whitefield not only preached the truth, but he pleaded with his listeners to submit themselves body and soul to the truth. He preached God’s Word with passion because he understood that his listener stood between Heaven and Hell. His robust Calvinism, in other words, led to a zealous evangelism.

This year, 2014, marks the 300^th anniversary of Whitefield’s birth. These articles are meant to drive us back to Whitefield’s day, that we might eat up his theology, and drink deeply his passion for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Contributors include: Thomas Kidd, Lee Gatiss, Michael A.G. Haykin, Thomas Nettles, Ian Hugh Clary, Mike McKinley, Mark Noll, Doug Sweeney, and many others.