By Eric Ludy

A few months back, I received a very polite invitation to speak from a man named Pastor Keroff.  I decided last autumn that, yes, by golly, I was going to make myself available to speak again (at least a few times a year).  For the first eight years of our ministry, Leslie and I traveled the world speaking.  To be honest, I wondered if I would ever willfully get on a plane again after that stretch of our lives was complete. To many people, traveling the world sounds rather romantic, but to be quite frank, it’s hard work living out of a suitcase. 

Pastor Keroff offered an enticing package.  He didn’t have the money to pay my typical honorarium and he had a church that was (cough) less than a hundred people in size.  Now, typically, the answer from our booking agents of yesteryear would have been, “Uh, do you think you could attempt to coordinate with five or six other churches in order to put on a city-wide gathering?”

But something about this situation was different.  Pastor Keroff wasn’t looking for a bone to throw his bored congregation, you know, something to add some spice to their otherwise dull spiritual agenda.  His interest wasn’t pastorally passive.  This man was hungry for something.  Something, that I must admit, I’m hungry for too.  He told me that he wants real Christianity, manly Christianity in Centerville, Iowa.  He wants to get outside the American Christian way of doing things, and get back to the historic fire, the stuff of old, the blazing holiness of Almighty God come to visit His people. 

“I want a solemn assembly, Eric,” he said simply.  “I want to understand brokenness before the Throne of God.  I want to be laid in the dust.  I want whatever is necessary, no matter how painful it might be, in order to see our God gain His place again in His Church.”  

I decided to accept the invite for one reason and one reason alone - Pastor Keroff.  Just as he is hungry for Truth, for Biblically-governed revival, and the Spirit of God to place a harness about the neck of the modern church – I’m hungry to be around men of such steel and resolve. 

I believe the trajectory of the modern evangelical church system is aimed straight into the dirt.  Christianity has a serious limp.  It’s burdened with a thousand trifling issues that make it nearly impossible for an eager student of the Gospel to get the pure stuff of Scripture without it being first strained through the fine filter of cultural sensitivity, worldliness, off-kilter renderings of Scripture, and post-modern relativism.  We’re not spitting out Hudson Taylors, A.W. Tozers,  Amy Carmichaels, Charles Spurgeons, Leonard Ravenhills, and George Mullers from our Bible schools anymore.  Rather, we have the “Emergent” elite that have taken over the pulpits of our country.  For every Pastor Keroff with a hundred hungry souls under his care, we have a Rob Bell delivering his pabulum to tens of thousands who are unwittingly drinking his poison without guard or concern. 

The best selling books in Christendom today are “Emergent” books.  They have taken the entire system by storm, selling millions upon millions of copies.  Barnes and Noble loves them.  After all, they sell, but more than that, they sell a rendition of Christianity that actually can fit right into the world without any tension, without all this “Jesus is the only way” stuff standing in the way.  Men like Brian McLaren, Doug Padgett, Donald Miller, Tony Jones, and Leonard Sweet have crafted a religion, wholly other than the Christian one they profess, and, like snake oil peddlers, they have sold it to the parched masses of our day. 

So, is Pastor Keroff of Centerville, Iowa, the only one of his kind?  Is there only one man out there who is longing for the real stuff once again?  Is there only one man standing to stem this tide?

Pastor Keroff is a Pentecostal.  Yep, that’s right, Eric Ludy went and spoke at a Pentecostal church.  And I’d do it again, if there is a Pastor Keroff leading it.  I believe that the stuff of Pentecost is the precise stuff we need again in the Church.  I just happen to despise as heresy most of what parades under that reckless banner in our modern day.  Just as much as there is an Emergent mess, we also have a “Holy Spirit” mess.  A mess so deep, mind you, that it’s leaders can’t keep their pants on, their mouths shut, or their doctrine even remotely close to that of the Bible. 

I, for one, am tired of this circus act known as the Church.  There are honest-to-goodness believers in these messed up churches who are hanging on for dear life on this roller coaster of spiritual craziness.  There are countless believers out there that are concerned about what is taking place around them, but they feel like the problem lies with them.  In fact, whenever they have voiced their concern, that is precisely what they have been told.  “The problem lies with you, Mrs. Fields.  The rest of us on the steering committee feel that having a Starbucks franchise in our lobby is precisely what God meant when he said, ‘pick up your cross and follow me!’”

I believe that men, like Pastor Keroff, are rare, yes.  But I believe there are more of them out there than any one of us might believe.  There might very well be a hundred Pastor Keroffs out there – a thousand, seven thousand – who knows?  But each of them feels too small to make a difference.  They have all been sold on the notion that their voice only really counts when they get a congregation well over a thousand.  But this is simply not true.  

Now is the time for all the Pastor Keroffs to arise and let their passion be felt, their voices be heard.  I believe that if this mess is going to be cleaned up, we can’t wait for the mega-church pastors to do it.  We need the small guys.  The guys that don’t yet have so much that they aren’t willing to lose it all for the sake of Christ’s Glory and Fame. 

“Paging Pastor Keroff!” 

I think that’s a good by-line for this website.  We need the small guys to stand up.  And that means you.  You don’t have to be a pastor to let your passion be felt and your voice be heard.  You just need to be willing to be the first one to die.  You can’t expect to be patted on the back, but rather, you must expect to be rejected of men, hated, and despised. 

You see, this is the reason the church is dying today.  We somehow lost the grand notion that following Christ means to join the ranks of the hated and despised.  And to get the triumphant church back, we must return to that ancient reality, that gritty thinking, that heavenly-minded living that has always governed the true Church. 

I just returned from Centerville, Iowa, where I spent three days with the real-life Pastor Keroff and his hundred sheep.  It was a taste of heaven on earth.  The town of Centerville is economically oppressed, and the church barely squeaks by financially.  But there was such warmth and life there.  They didn’t have many of the bells and whistles of the typical churches of our day, but they had a depth of love and conviction of spirit that is hardly ever seen, anywhere.  And I would say, that in contrast with the hundreds of mega-churches that I’ve spoken in over the years, this little church has more of the real thing (though they be in Podunk, Iowa) than all the others.  And it wouldn’t surprise me, if God picked a man like Pastor Keroff to lead a true revival in this land. 

Do we actually think God is going to use a big name superstar that itches for the glory?  Do we actually think that God is going to recruit the aid of men that consider congregational dollars over biblical sense?  Do we think God searches high and low for magnetic speakers, eloquent writers, and crafty theologians? 

God is looking for humble men.  Men that do not consider 100 sheep to small for them.  Men that think about God’s reputation above their own.  Men that aren’t just interested in spiritual power, signs and wonders, and fireworks displays in the sanctuary, but are harnessed by the Spirit to do only that which the Father is doing.  Men that pray.  Men of purity.  Men of holiness.  Men that actually believe that God’s Word is, in truth, the Word of God.

God is looking for men that won’t get in the way of what He is needing to do. 

Paging Pastor Keroff! 

If you are a Pastor Keroff, I want to meet you.  If you know a Pastor Keroff then please introduce us.  It is my desire that this website be used to connect all those seemingly inconsequential little voices out there into one gigantic roar.  I firmly believe that there is an army of us out there.  We want the real thing and we simply refuse to accept this modern rendition as the New Testament pattern.  The glory of our God is at stake, so let’s stand shoulder to shoulder and fight!

Visit Eric’s personal blog and podcast at ericludy.com