Announcer : 0:01

Welcome to a Leading Conversations Classic Podcast. We've searched through our early episodes to find some of the best just for you. If you've been with us from the beginning, you may have heard some of these. If you haven't, enjoy this classic episode. Welcome to the Leading Conversations Podcast, sponsored by the Excel Leadership Network. On each episode, JD Pairing will have conversations with church planting pastors and leaders from around the country. You can learn more about how to connect with Excel at the end of this podcast. Let's join JD now and listen in on this leading conversation.

SPEAKER_04: 0:46

It is great to have the legend here, Ralph Moore, who's uh I believe started more churches in North America than anybody but uh Jesus. So it's great to have you. Ralph um is a friend. He is uh kind of retired, but working a ton as a retired person. Um his wife has told me, tell him to slow down. So um anyway, hey Ralph, I wanted to ask you a couple questions. Just real quickly, how did you get into church planting in the first place?

SPEAKER_03: 1:23

Uh to me, uh going way, way back when I was a kid, uh I was in a Bible college, and uh I had grown up in a in the largest church in our denomination, which is also the largest church in Oregon. This is before the era of of uh Rick Warren and Bill Highballs and all that, a huge church of 1,300 people. And so I go to this Bible college in California, and I find out that most of the churches in our denomination, a big church was 200. And so low expectations. And then I get all frustrated with the college. Uh, there was a professor who was just not teaching the Bible. I mean, it was he was teaching his Bible, not the Bible. And so I, you know, I think, you know, I know more than you, and he was bivocational, and I looked down on that at the time. So I started reading the book of Acts uh with an intent of proving them all wrong. And I was gonna go out and figure out how to do Acts two. And um it as I read it, I I my goal was to read it at least five times a week, the whole thing, my second year of college. I I saw immaturity in the beginning because new things are always immature, and maturity as it as it progressed. And that rattled my cage. I didn't know what to do with that, but I saw church multiplication. And I I felt like I'm fairly smart, but I'm not real talented. And everybody I knew could play guitar, you know, blow a trombone or sing or dance or something. And I just thought my best shot at making a mark in the world is to leverage whatever I have. And so I already was making disciples. I was working in a little church in the in the San Fernando Valley, and I had these four young boys I had started with, and uh two of those guys became pastors eventually. And I just kind of laid out a plan for my life that I'm gonna start five churches, maybe seven if I'm lucky. In each church, I'm gonna raise up somebody that can take my place. And uh, you know, the whole idea was I'll send them to seminary, whatever, and then I'll leave and I'll go start another one. And so as I began to really understand this, I read Jim Montgomery, and he had written a book called New Testament Fire in the Philippines about a church uh that had just turned explosive because they were training people through disciple making rather than through their Bible college. And disciples were training, disciples were training disciples, and many of them were becoming pastors who trained more pastors. And eventually I met the guy that that was all about, and um he he he he we were, you know, we were hot stuff. We we were about, you know, 125 people, 150 maybe, and we had started one church, and um so he he's a kind of a funny guy. He he puts his arm around me and he whispers in my ear before church started. I'd never met him before. And he goes, uh, so tell me what what how what are you gonna do? Are you gonna do great things for God? And I go, Yeah, he goes, What are you gonna do? I'm gonna go, I'm gonna build the biggest church I can build. And and he he he stepped away and he pulled my ear like this, and he goes, You didn't understand the question. And he asked the same question again. I gave him the same answer, and then he steps away further and kicked me in the shins hard enough that it bled into my sock. And he laughed at me and he goes, You don't get it at all. If you want to do great things for God, you what you're doing here is good, you just need to multiply it. And that was kind of where it all went from there on. Uh, we began to realize all the stuff that was fuzzy in the background became intentional, and um and and we started going from there. We were making disciples, we were you know very kind of navigator-oriented in those days, and the denomination had a lot of uh I mean first few churches that we started, not the first one, but after that, where whenever they'd have an empty building and nobody knew what to do with, they were gonna sell it, they'd call us up and go, Do you have anybody that could pastor? Well, we weren't training pastors, we're just making disciples who could make disciples, and we'd send them one of those guys and it worked. And so that kind of got us some traction. And and then again we became more intentional. Guys started going, God's calling me to Colorado, or God's calling me to to Washington State, and whatever. And so we went, we went that road, and and then when I left there, I was the 30th guy to leave the church I planted to go start a new one. And that was 12 years after we got going. Wow. Now that was in Hermosa Beach. Yeah, we started a little town called Manhattan Beach. Oh, Manhattan Beach. And then we moved to Hermosa um about five years in. We bought an old bowling alley for church.

SPEAKER_04: 6:19

You need to know how brilliant um Ralph is because where he has lived, um, Manhattan Hermosa Beach is just the nicest place in the uh LA area. And then he went to Hawaii and then he retired to San Diego. So um Ralph's just really smart. He he doesn't know what it's like to live in terrible places, but he's just really smart. Tell us about that first plan, the first one you did. Not yours, first guy you sent out.

SPEAKER_03: 6:51

Okay, but before I do that though, I gotta I gotta tell you that when we I I was in my I don't know, my second or third year of college working with my young boys. And I um I was driving down Manhattan Beach Boulevard, coveting that town, thinking, I wonder if our denomination has a church in this town. And right then, it was right up there. I mean, I just looked out of my car, there it was, and I started feeling guilty. I'm coveting this man's job because I like a beach town. And so I I I worked a lot with youth and I was in camps. I never met a kid from that church. So I started praying, God send young people to that church, God send revival at church. I I prayed for that church almost every day for years. And a friend who was like my older brother, a guy named Roy Hicks Jr., invited me to go to Eugene, Oregon and take over a little church called Faith Center along with him. And I really wanted to do that. And I got on my knees and I heard the Lord, I it's like I heard a voice right here, which I don't even believe in, but I heard it. And uh it said, What if Manhattan Beach opened up and you were there? So that's how I ended up at the beach at Hawaii, where we were there it just so you know, it rains 140 inches a year. Um and I and I I I lived there, I loved the people for 35 years. I hated where I lived, and I I just couldn't wait to get back to California. I just had to get that little bit in there.

SPEAKER_04: 8:20

Um the first church, uh kick us in the shin and make it bleed on how you did that first one.

SPEAKER_03: 8:26

The first one was uh interesting deal. I I I was pastoring, I I had learned to make disciples in the in the as a youth pastor. I we I was frustrated it was fruitless for a long time, I other than my disciple making. And I could pop, you know, a little church of 150 people, I could pop 300 kids at a big event, but then nothing would happen. My youth group would be 20 something. And uh I felt pretty much a failure. And then the pastor got his goofy idea to do a Sunday school contest where you win prizes for bringing people to church. And that we kicked it off in the high school group with a giant pizza breakfast. And one young girl who was a part of um SDS, Students for our Democratic Society, which were kind of like um the groups that are rioting today, you know, the Antifa and all that. And um, she was so busy doing that, she accepted the Lord. We went to her house and led her to the Lord, but then she wouldn't come to church. So we started, you know, a deal of we go to the beach, but you got to bring your Bible and you got to tell what you got from the Bible during the week, and we snaked her into that. And that girl led 13 people to the Lord inside of a year, and and then she started coming to church, and and those people brought a bunch of people, yeah. And so then I went out and started the church, and I and very quickly, uh, a guy named Virgil, who was in the motorcycles, brought a navigator study into our church. A guy named Richard Agosino uh brought another navigator study into our church. In fact, one of his guys dragged him in, and then there was another guy who brought a baseball team, a softball team into our church. And so I'm the little tiny church, about 80 people, and I'm supposed to be the pastor, but actually there's four pastors, and I'm not happy about this. I'm I'm resentful, uh I'm I'm into positional leadership to some degree, and uh, and I got the title, and they don't, but everybody's following them and not me. And I'm winding into the Lord, and I felt like the Lord spoke to me and said, You know how to make disciples, you need to disciple those three men. And it worked very well with Virgil and and and Agosino. And in fact, um Agosino is like a first generation or second generation Italian, so he's still got the old world in him, and and he's a very dominant guy. And so it was kind of, you know, we're both Enneagram eights, and only he's tougher than me. And one night we're at this Bible study, and he announces that God told him that he and I were going to become best friends, we're gonna become David and Jonathan. And I'm thinking, who's David and who's Jonathan in all this? And uh he followed me out to my car and I had a little Triumph TR3. It didn't have roll-up windows, it had side curtains, and it was open. And he leans in my car and kissed me on the neck. A very Italian thing to do, but not a very American thing to do. And so um, but but his thing was we're gonna get up at 5:30 on Monday mornings and go walk around this golf course in Palos Verdes, California, which is right near where Dawson Trotman started the navigators. So we kind of both of us were young, we're in our like 26, 27. He was a year or two older than me. And we kind of felt like we're on holy ground, and we'd go up there and just walk and talk and pray. And then um, we had some people, there's no freeways in that part of the world, uh, along the coastal strip. We had some people who lived about eight miles from the church in in South Torrance, and uh they asked if Richard could come on Sunday nights and hold Sunday night church for him, because that was the days when you went to church three times a week. They had little kids and it's hard to get back and forth twice on Sunday. Well, so we did. We started in a house, it was a microchurch, because two months in they decided they want to be their own church. And so I told Richard, no way, because you in our denomination, you got to go to Bible college or a seminary. Uh, they they have a bylaw that they can only have one of their churches in in a town, and they had already two in Torrance, California, so we would add a third, that would be against the rules, and then he wanted to call it uh branch of hope, and I was freaking out that somebody thinks we're trying to start a hope chapel denomination, and so I just told him no. And then later on, my friend Roy told me it's easier to get forgiveness than permission. So we just went ahead and started it, and I went and told the denomination later, and they actually blessed it. So that was a cool thing, and that's how it got going. And um again, real strong emphasis on making disciples who made disciples. And so those guys within five years had planted four more churches and started a boys' ranch. They they moved from a house uh to there was a bar that had shut down and they rented the bar. And then the city of Torrance came and had a uh a weird, really weird argument because the bar was closed. But the argument was we have a we have a bylaw in the city that you can't build a bar near a church, so you can't have a church in a bar, and it and it kicked him out, and so then um they met illegally in a park, and then they finally got a permit to be in the park building, and then after that, they rented a church building, and that church is still going strong all these years later. That was uh 1973, and um uh Rich went on to there was a radio show, I got him Rich Bueller in Southern California on a station called K Bright in Orange County. Richard Agazino took Rich Bueller's place when Rich passed away, and and that got him out of being a pastor, and eventually, I think now he's a mortgage broker or something, but one of his first generation disciples is the pastor of that church all these years later. So that's a pretty, I think it's a really cool story.

SPEAKER_04: 14:28

That's cool. Cool. Hey, you mentioned starting in your 20s or in Bible college, and uh what are you 29 now? Um, yeah, but that was the 70s, and this is 2021. How have you stayed in for the long haul?

SPEAKER_03: 14:45

Um early on, I uh I mean I never wanted to be a pastor. I I wanted to be an architect, and I felt like I was drafted. And when you're drafted, you know, you march and you don't expect a whole lot. And so, you know, churches grew big, all that, but I I never could get off on all the accoutrements that go along with being a pastor. I just I'm just gonna keep marching. And and to me, marching meant making disciples and launching as many churches as we could, which isn't that many. I I think we were good for about a church and a half a year throughout my entire tenure. And um, but those guys, you know, and and a lot of them were one and done. They they whatever we taught them, they went out the door, planted one church, and that was the end of it. Uh there were there were always, you know, every so often one guy would go nuts, and that's what you want, is those fanatics, those wonderful, wonderful, godly fanatics. And so a lot of the growth, I think that you could attribute uh me and uh first, you know, second, first and second generation to about 350 churches, but then among them are those crazy guys, and and here and there you get somebody that there's 200 churches that grew up around this guy. One guy in in uh in um Peru who I had very little to do with him. I I discipled a guy named Mike, he discipled a guy named Rick. Rick sold drugs to this young boy uh named Robert. Uh Rick went to jail. Um Mike is praying all the time about the whole church praying for Rick. Rick comes out of jail, uh comes to church to beat up the pastor to get Mike off his back. And this old man reached out and put a bear hug on him and said, Jesus loves you, and so do I. And it absolutely broke this very hard person. And he decided that I led this 17-year-old kid into drugs. I got to go find him and bring him into Jesus. And so I discipled Mike. A lot of it had to do with surfing. And Mike discipled Rick, and Rick discipled Robert Barringer, and now Robert Barringer pastors 10,000 people in Lima, and they've started 350 churches. That when you hear there's 2,400 oak chapels, well, that's a big part of the story. That's that's really the way a movement works.

SPEAKER_04: 17:14

Now, but you're still going strong in your 70s. I'm seeing a lot of guys, they want to retire and just um uh you know, kind of go out to pasture. How how are you doing that in the 70s? And what do you what are you doing?

SPEAKER_03: 17:27

Okay, I'm 75, and um I I in my I I pastored in Kanyeohe uh for 27 years, and I handed it off to young generation, and then we started in the movie theater, we started all over, and I was like, I don't know, 66 years old, 68 years old, something like that. And it was fun. And and in fact, actually, right now, I'm I'm helping the guy by by sending him bits and pieces, like a uh uh SD storage card and USB devices to upgrade a computer in Kenya. Of some of our lay people went to Kenya from Hopanolulu, and this guy now has planted there, he's discipled 60 church planters, and he was pastoring a church in an adobe brick building with a tin roof on it, and these guys taught him how to do home group, what we call mini church, and how to raise leaders from there. But uh when I retired, I moved here. I I don't play golf. Um, I I would like to, I just don't know anybody that's as bad as me to go out with. Uh, because if I go with good guys, I have no fun and I wreck their day. And so I and I don't surf. I uh a couple of friends of mine drowned by having minor heart attacks when they were in the water, you know, age 50 and up. And I thought I can't do that anymore. And so I um I was already doing a blog and then I discovered podcasting, and it's just it's it's exciting to me to work with all these young guys that I get to talk to. I I just edited a podcast for tomorrow, a kid named Casey Crimsons in uh North Carolina, and he's just doing an incredible job. He had he had responded to my blog. I'd done a blog about the the book, The Art of Neighboring, and what a horrible neighbor I am, and how I'm learning to be better at it. And and he he wrote a comment and it was it intrigued me, so I I contacted him, and so we did this podcast, and their whole city is Charlotte, North Carolina, 100 churches went through a study of the art of neighboring together. But he began to realize that if you neighbor, if you just minister your neighbors, they probably look like you. And he started looking at at demographics in the city and realizing there was redlining and that that mostly the white areas are where the money is. And uh, if you if you're Hispanic or African American, that's where the poverty is. And so they decided that neighboring doesn't just include eight houses up and down the street. We got to reach out of ourselves. And they're doing an incredible job. But I just, man, I I I'm revved from from from actually listening to the interview we did two weeks ago, uh, because I edited it today. So yeah, to me, it's just I I don't know how you let go of God or let go of a calling in your life. Um, I I I do put in uh I'll put in 25 to 35 hours a week doing you know stuff like this. I this is my third one of the week that I I did an interview with somebody else uh for their deal. And I just I don't know, I just energize the money, keep on moving.

unknown: 20:38

Cool.

SPEAKER_04: 20:38

Hey, let's do this. Luke, why don't you ask one question? Brian, you ask one question, and then I'll I'll just end and say after that, uh Ralph, whatever you want to say to us. But uh Luke, you got a question for Ralph?

SPEAKER_01: 20:54

Hmm. Uh yeah, you know, you I like the phrase you mentioned, uh when you're drafted, you just march. I like that a lot. How how did you uh convince your wife to continue the church planting deal? Um, you know, moving and starting another one, starting another one when you know.

SPEAKER_03: 21:16

I have the most wonderful wife in the world. That's how her name is Ruby. She grew up very poor. Uh, she went to Bible college so she could learn some Bible. Uh, because you know, she wanted more, and and we met. And she was only gonna go for a year, and she stayed for a second year, and that's good because I came her second year. And um, she just willing to trust the Lord, and and so the the hard move wasn't to move to Hawaii or to San Diego. Those, you know, we both felt called and whatever. The hard move was going to Manhattan Beach because I had uh she had quit her job, 60% of our income when our son was born, and uh Um, just he's six months old when the when the door opened to go to Manhattan Beach. And I I walked in, it would mean leaving all salary behind. And we had enough money in the bank for a down payment on a house and uh like$25,000 house, and we could buy, you know, we had$2,200 or$2,300, something like that. And so we're gonna use that money to start the church because there was just no church planting money available. There was a free building, which was nice, a little tiny building holds 66 people. But um I I walked in and uh in and and I go, um, you know, Manhattan Beach opened up. Um what do you think? Because we'd already been praying about this. We've been praying for this pastor in this town, and uh and yet we felt called. And so she was ironing. The kid sitting there with carrots, you know, all over his face because he learned to eat with a spoon. And um and she she just put the iron down and said, Let's do it. And so it meant walking away from everybody we knew and loved, and uh going to a place where we knew nobody, that was very lonely. And it meant walking away from money. We actually bottomed out to a point where I thought we were gonna quit and go live in my dad's basement and sell used cars. And um, and but she just she's and she's like that today. Um, she she's she's downstairs right now doing stuff so so she won't disturb me while we're on this call. But um, you know, she's ready to rock and roll. And so I've taken her all around the world to some, you know, some pretty dark places that I go to train pastors, and she's just up for anything. So I don't know, other than she's just a wonderful woman.

SPEAKER_01: 23:45

Great.

SPEAKER_02: 23:47

Ralph, yeah, you sent a lot of people out, and you said some of them were one and done's and some of them really flourished. Was there a discernment process for you, something that you were looking for in these people, or specifically something you were equipping them with uh that that kind of helped you multiply in this way?

SPEAKER_03: 24:06

Yeah, I I I I uh let me come at that from two angles. Um one is I I believe that we should disciple our staff first. And so the way it worked was um, you know, we would build our small groups, what we call mini church, off the sermon. We always ask three questions because we want people to integrate what they learned in the Bible to their lives. What did God say to you while the pastor was talking? Because it might be different than the sermon. What are you gonna do about it? Because now people are gonna hold themselves accountable. They told their friends, and how can we help you? Spiritual gifts kind of emerge. We took that same model and we turned it into a training module for the leaders of those mini churches. And you couldn't come to our training if you weren't leading the mini church, and you could only get to be leading a mini church if the guy leading it discipled you to take his place and he went and started a new one. So it was always past the baton, past the baton, or always replicating and multiplying. And um, so what what at the at the bottom of this thing, what we're looking for is do you have followers? You're not a leader no matter how much schooling you have, if you don't have a follower, and that defines leadership. So, in the mini church, if if you're one of the people that people are following, then whoever's leading the mini church is going to want to disciple you, and that's how you get into this thing. And so that led toward a bunch of good pastors. We did the best job we could of brainwashing people by the books that we'd read, because we took that same little model in our leadership deals. I would disciple the staff, each staff member had five to eight mini church pastors, and it just radiated out from there. But we'd read books together. Some were business books, some are church multiplication books, sometimes it's Romans or first and second Timothy. But um, what we're dealing with is is up here, it's intellectual. We're putting knowledge in your head. And the thing that we noticed is that the fanatics among us had been in our staff. They'd they come up through the mini church, then they'd been on staff. And we just thought until this book I just picked up this week, we we always thought, well, staff's just a better training ground. And honestly, well, they get direct access to Ralph, so maybe that makes it better. And but I I just read this book called The Other Side of Church, and I would recommend it to anybody. There's some guy that's a neurologist who's also a Christian leader, I think he teaches in a seminary or something, and this engineer who had become a uh a discipling pastor in a mega church who left it because he was frustrated because people weren't growing in character, and there there was so so much narcissist narcissism in the church and and unhealthiness, and and he's wondering why. And he bumps into this guy who calls himself a neurotheologian, and um, but he's a neurologist, and he explains right brain, left brain, and you know, right brain is artistic and all that, and left brain is logical, but right brain is where we experience joy and love and and and where community is meaningful to us. And I'm only in the second chapter, but he's converted me. What I realize is that the people who excelled were the people who were brought into a certain kind of community where they were welcomed and and they were loved and they knew that they were loved. Because it's it's what the the the whole focus of this book or the premise of the book is that if you get into a community where you have you feel belongingness and love, then you're gonna adapt to those people, and it's gonna change your character more than filling you with head knowledge will change your character. And I mean, there's got to be knowledge involved, the word has to be central to it, but the but the context. And as I'm reading the book, this is just yesterday. I I'm thinking back to when I left California, when I left uh Hermosa Redondo Beach to move to Hawaii, I was so lonely for that place. I mean, I'm in Hawaii. I I didn't I didn't for a while I lived where there's 140 inches of rain a year, and then I moved to where there's only 40. And then and there was beaches and all that, but I just I missed California so much for about three years. And now looking back at this book, I realized what it was is like on my way home from work, I could I there's a place called Torrance Beach, and there's cliffs, and you can always see over the ocean. No matter what time of night I was driving home from work or riding my bicycle because I was about a five-mile ride, I would always stop at Torrance Cliffs, and there's always three or four or five people that I knew from the church or from surfing who are standing up there complaining about the waves aren't good enough. But they're always there and they always welcome me. And I I belonged to that community outside the church, even I belong to that community. And when I moved to Hawaii, it took three years to belong. And so now back to Brian's question what the better job we did of inculcating future church planters into a community, the better they absorbed what we were all about. And I really believe that there is something to this, and I and it it makes me realize that the successes we had, because we hardly lost any pastors to immorality or heresy or anything like that. And the successes that we that we had in the mini church, we thought the mini church was so cool because it was they were learning stuff because they learned from somebody preaching on the weekend and now they ingrained it in their brain. But I'm I'm of the belief now, I got converted yesterday, that that but they were taking that Bible knowledge in this context of community. And when he talks about the other side of church, I don't even know what the heck he's gonna say other than right brain, left brain. Here's what I say Acts chapter 2, 41 to 47. There's two sides of church. One is in community and one is in the temple courts. And you can't have community in the temple courts, but you can have community in a bunch of houses where they're eating food together and doing all that. And so I, you know, I I think that I I would probably be able to, and I'm not gonna do this, but I'd probably be able to do a study of who thrived and who didn't or who multiplied and who didn't multiply, and it would relate back to you know how how much of what they absorbed, they absorbed in a in a fellowship of love.

SPEAKER_04: 30:55

Wow, wow. Hey, um, we're just about out of time. Uh one minute, Ralph. What else do you want to say to us? What's the last word?

SPEAKER_03: 31:02

We the church have forgotten about evangelism. We learned how to build mega churches, super churches, come listen to my pastor. And inviting unchurched Harry and Mary to church is not the same as evangelism. Uh, getting out of yourself, hanging out with people, uh, having coffee with people that you don't barely know. Um, me hanging out with my neighbor this morning for an hour when I was really busy trying to get ready for the stuff I had to do. Uh that's crucial. And if we can get back to that, we can get to the point of, and I think this is really important, making disciples before they believe in Christ. Follow me as I follow Christ, is what Paul said. And uh again, relationship, very important.

SPEAKER_04: 31:47

Wow, thank you so much, uh Ralph. Thanks for that. Uh just great to hear uh different parts of your story. Thank for thank you for what you've done. For um, I think you kicked us all in the shin a little bit today. I'm not sure there's any blood. Um I don't think you kissed us on the neck, but you did kick us in the shin. So thank you. Thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_03: 32:08

Okay, thank you.

Announcer : 32:11

Thanks for joining the Leading Conversations Podcast. We hope that you found it both helpful and encouraging. At Excel Leadership Network, our focus is on the church planter rather than the church. If you'd like to find out more about us, visit our webpage at Excelnetwork.org. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any future episodes. See you next time with another leading conversation.