Year Through the Bible: How Asbury Church Is Building Scripture-Shaped Disciples

Show Notes

How do you lead a congregation into deeper engagement with Scripture—and sustain it together? Pastor Andrew Forrest joins Dan Ehrman on The Church Around the World to share how Asbury Church in Tulsa is guiding the entire church through The One Year Bible in 2026 with a “Year Through the Bible” initiative built around shared rhythms, joy-filled discipleship, and practical tools pastors can adapt in their own contexts. 

Andrew also reflects on the difficult leadership transition of leaving the church he planted and pastored for over a decade to serve Asbury following its disaffiliation from a denomination. Along the way, he offers wisdom for shepherding people through change, grounding ministry identity in faithfulness rather than outcomes, and leading with love in an anxious and divided age. The conversation includes insights from Andrew’s book, Love Goes First, and practical ideas for cultivating spiritual habits that shape a church’s life together.

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Episode Links:
 Asbury Church - Tulsa
Andrew Forrest 
Love Goes First: Reaching Others in an Age of Anxiety and Division 

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Creators and Guests

Host

Dan Ehrman

Director of Church Relations & Strategy - Tyndale House Publishers

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Host Dan Ehrman from Tyndale House Ministries invites you to join him for The Church Around the World podcast for important and impactful conversations with church and ministry leaders. They'll share stories about God at work, His people, and what's happening in faith and culture that's shaping the local and global church today. From your neighborhood to the ends of the earth, listen to these powerful and timely testimonies of blessings and challenges directly from the people that are helping build up the church around the world.

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From your doorstep to the ends of the earth.
Here is your host for the Church Around the World, Dan Ehrman.

Welcome to the Church Around the World. I'm Dan Ehrman, honored to be
joined today by Pastor Andrew Forrest with Asbury Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Andrew, thanks for connecting up here.
I'm honored to be here. Thanks for having me on.

I'm excited for folks to get to know you. You are a mover and a shaker —
you're going a mile a minute and doing great things.

At Asbury Church in Tulsa, we connected through an initiative
that your church is doing this year — going through the Bible in a year.

Talk about the impetus for making that a focus for Asbury Church this year.

So officially 2026 is the year through the Bible here at Asbury.
And for those in the know — why? YTTB. Get it, Dan? Year through the Bible.

And so what we're doing is we're using the Tyndale version of the One Year Bible,
which if anybody isn't familiar with it, it's really, really useful.

It is divided by 365 days — the entire text of Scripture.
And so the heading of each day is not like the top of the Bible book,

but it's like the date — April twelfth, July twenty-seventh, that kind of thing.
Each day there's an Old Testament, a New Testament reading, a Psalm, and a Proverb.

And if you read through 365 days, you've read through the entire Scripture.
So we're doing the year through the Bible.

We're using the One Year Bible — we've handed out thousands and thousands of them.
We handed them out on Christmas Eve and in November and December leading up to the year.

And the goal was for the congregation to read through the Bible in a year together
using this format.

Okay, so let me zoom back out a little bit. About fifteen years ago now, my wife got really ill
and she was homebound for months at a time — really in bed for months at a time.

And so she could only read the Bible on her phone, where you can fix the aspect
so it doesn't rotate with you. So she could read it like that.

And she used one of the Bible apps and used the One Year Bible plan
and kind of read through the Bible. And she said, "We've got to get our church reading through the Bible."

So up to this point — I'll be honest with you — I'm a seminary graduate, I'm a pastor.
I say I like the Bible, but maybe I didn't really love it.

And we said, okay, let's do this. I was part of a church in Dallas — we started a church there,
part of a team that did that. And so we used the One Year Bible from Tyndale at our church there.

And it was really fruitful for me personally, for us in the church, pastorally.
And then we did it again — another year through the Bible.

And since then I've kind of said, okay, I'm really reteaching the Bible.
I want people to read the Bible. I want them to get the whole thing together.

So I'll do series like a lot of pastors do — a whole book at a time or something like that.
And then I moved to Tulsa. I'm in my fourth year here and I've been saying we're a Bible-reading church.

We read the Bible and I write these devotional guides. We work through the Bible.
And then I was kind of tired of writing all these daily Scripture guides and thought, I could use a break.

I'd like to get the church to read through the Bible. So we said, six months ago,
let's make 2026 the year through the Bible. And that's how we ended up specifically here.

And I have nothing against topical sermon series — I have preached them, there are times you need them.
There are many different ways to shepherd God's people. I'm not better than anybody else,

but I have just found when you stick with the text and get people a sense of how it all fits together,
it really is a tool the Holy Spirit uses for folks.

And so what I like to say, Dan, is often Christians have like a fortune cookie understanding of the Bible —
where they know a verse here and a verse there. And there's nothing wrong with that.

It's good to have a life verse and have it on your license plate and on your dashboard
and in your mirror at home. All those things are great.

But you've got to see how the whole thing fits together, because the whole Bible tells a unified story —
I'm quoting the Bible Project guys here — that leads to Jesus.

And when you show people, "Oh my gosh, that's what's happening in Genesis" — and you see how that works —
it's really, really exciting.

So let me give you a quick little example. We're now at the part — when we're filming this —
we're still in Genesis in the One Year Bible plan.

And we're in the third section of Genesis, which is about Jacob and his sons.
So you're introduced to Joseph, he of the many-colored coat. He has the dreams,

and his brothers throw him in the pit and sell him into slavery.
And then the scene at the end of Genesis chapter thirty-seven fades to black.

If it were like a miniseries, episode one is over. Episode two begins — Genesis thirty-eight.
Where are you?

No mention of Jacob, no mention of Joseph, no mention of Egypt.
You're with Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. And that strange, upsetting, offensive story

with the sons and the daughter-in-law Tamar, the ritual prostitution and all of that.
Judah is humiliated and realizes he's been self-righteous and unkind, and his daughter-in-law shows it.

And he fathers children accidentally — from his point of view — through his daughter-in-law Tamar.
And then you go back to Joseph in Egypt.

So you're reading along in the Bible and you go, "What the heck? Why is that even there?"
And I like helping people see how the whole Bible is working together.

So the reason it's there is because the main question that Genesis thirty-seven through fifty is asking is,
"Who's going to lead the family to the next generation once Jacob is gone?"

Is it Reuben, the eldest? Is it Simeon? Is it Levi? Is it Joseph, the most brilliant one?
Well, it turns out — as it finally wraps up — it's actually Judah, the fourth son.

So the reason Genesis thirty-eight is there is it tells you something interesting about Judah's character formation.
I love it when you explain that to folks and the lights go off

and they go, "Oh my gosh, the Bible's all connected together."
So that's a long, discursive answer to your question. But this is the year through the Bible at Asbury

and we're excited to put the whole thing together. That's awesome that you guys are diving into this.
I think it's to be commended in the church when we get people engaged in the Bible —

not just in fortune cookies, but really in getting full meals through that.
Backing up a little bit — you talked about your story in answering that — but I want to back up: you grew up as a missionary kid.

I did, in Africa. What did your folks do? What was life like for you growing up?

So I was a little kid — learned to read in Africa. I was born in America, but we moved to Africa.
My parents were missionaries.

And my dad, who is now a retired pastor, was trained for pastoral ministry. He was an associate pastor at an African church,
but his main nine-to-five job was teaching at an African Bible College for African pastors.

My mom worked at a maternity clinic. And of course, in some ways it was an amazing childhood —
you're running around outside, you're climbing mango trees, there are snakes on the ground.

It's a different culture. Beautiful. I was in a country called Sierra Leone, which is on the west coast of Africa.
Unbelievable beaches.

And it was also difficult. It's hard. My parents were very poor when we were missionaries,
and we were also in many ways wealthier than the Africans, many of whom are impoverished.

So that's an interesting dynamic — to be wealthier than the people around you,
but to be actually pretty materially poor. We often didn't have electricity.

Every now and then we didn't have running water. Of course, we didn't have creature comforts
like air conditioning and washing machines and all that. We didn't have a television.

And as a kid, that kind of stuff is hard too. But it was a very formative experience
and I'm so grateful for it. It shaped me — it made me who I am.

How old were you when your family came back stateside?
I came back to go to middle school. Because I was at the stage where we'd have to go to boarding school,
and my parents didn't want to do that.

And for some people who may know the history of West Africa — at that exact same time,
a terrible civil war broke out in Liberia, next door to Sierra Leone, and then into Sierra Leone.

And so all the foreigners had to leave anyway — or I should say, were able to leave,
and it was not safe. But it was really the schooling thing that prompted things.

And so I went to middle school and high school in America.
So you grew up in missions, and then your dad shifts into a pastoral role — stateside, straight-up normal pastoral ministry?

Yep, in Virginia. I think that's an oxymoron — normal pastoral ministry.
But looking at being in ministry, growing up around it, you start to see it's not sunshine and rainbows — it's a difficult calling.

How did you navigate and discern that God wanted you to go into vocational ministry
and that you weren't just averse to it?

Well, so I'm a father now. This question is a personal one for me because I have my children
and I want them to end up a certain way. I don't know if my parents had this goal,

but I'll tell you my goal that came from my childhood growing up:
I want my kids to love church and to love being at church.

Church was always a blessing to me. Yes, at times things are hard —
my parents didn't bring the dirty laundry to the table, so to speak. But people can act ugly. Things are difficult. There are hard things.

But in general, I've seen the best of the church. Church was good for me growing up —
people were kind, and I liked it. I loved being at church. And that's a big goal for me as a pastor.

I want my kids to love being at church wherever God takes them — that's between them and the Lord,
and how he shifts, shapes, and gifts them. But I want them to love being at church.

My dad never made me or my brothers feel like the church came first and we were second.
So I never resented the church. I never had anything like what people now call "church hurt." I loved being at church. It was great.

I love my folks. My dad and my parents are people of integrity.
My dad never preached a thing and then lived a different way. That's huge.

Okay, so I graduated from college and didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't want to work on Wall Street,
didn't want to go to law school or medical school.

And I fell into working at a local church with middle school and high school students.
And I went to hear a man speak named Bill Hybels.

Unfortunately, Bill Hybels has had some moral difficulties — probably most of your viewers are aware of those things.
But he was a very gifted leader and speaker.

And he talked about how the church is the most important thing going on in the world.
And honestly, at the time, I was kind of thinking, I could be in politics.

I can talk in front of people. And I thought, maybe I should do that.
And I heard Bill Hybels say, "The church is the hope of the world." And I thought — I was about twenty-five at the time —

"Actually, I'd like to do that. I want to be upstream. I want to be at the action point
of where things are actually changing and mattering and where God is actually working."

And I'm not denigrating any other form of work. Politics is important. Being a plumber is important.
Being a pilot is important. Being a parent is important.

But for me, it was like I want to be right there at the nerve center of things.
And I was dating a girl at the time who is now my wife. And if I had said I was going to be in politics,
I think she wouldn't have married me anyway.

She had had a conversion experience as a young lady and felt like, "I'm not really gifted to be up in front of people,
but I could be like a pastor's wife" — actually, somebody spoke that to her.

So she's kind of feeling like, "What does that mean?" And we're dating and I'm wrestling with what I want to do.
And ultimately I'm like, that's what I want to do — I want to be in the church world, lead in the church space.

And ultimately I did, and she married me — thanks be to God.
So that's kind of my route into pastoral ministry.

And although there are hard times, and of course there are days when you go, "What am I doing?" —
I have never regretted it. I can see that God gifted me for this particular role,

and I can look back and see how my education, living overseas, all these different things
have really affected me in a good way. It's like God gave me a whole toolbox I didn't know I had.

You mentioned Hybels being influential there. We're in the suburbs of Chicago —
I married into a Willow Creek family. And you mentioned him talking about the local church being the hope of the world.

His heir apparent, Steve Carter, after things kind of fell out, came back and said,
"That's really not true — it's Jesus. That's the hope of the world."

But I think Carter himself has been hurt in that. And there's something of an overstatement in it —
because I remember, fifteen years ago, seeing the dirty underbelly of church and thinking, "I never want to work with churches again."

But coming back around to it — not because church is perfect and safe and wonderful,
but because it's the cohabitation of God with his people.

So I'm really encouraged to hear your heart and how God has maintained a kind of purity of joy,
in fellowship with his people there.

You launched from youth ministry coming out of seminary — you launched a church plant.
And you did that for, what, a dozen years?

I did. So I was in seminary in Dallas and out of a very large church,
we took over a church that had closed in a historic part of the urban core of Dallas —

a hundred-year-old building. We renovated and started a new church in this old building
as part of a campus of a larger church.

So I was part of the team that started that. I was the pastor hired to kind of launch that, birth that.
And I was there for a dozen years.

And in so many things in God's timing, it was exactly the right place, right time.
America is changing. Urban cores are becoming more important. People are moving back into urban cores.

Our church was right at the mixing place of lots of different types of neighborhoods.
We literally had homeless people sleeping on the front porch and there were multi-million dollar homes a Frisbee throw away.

And it just kind of worked — God's timing — and I'm grateful for that.
So we were there a dozen years, and then ultimately I was in a particular denomination
and felt like, I don't think this is the future for me.

Some doors closed regarding that and where it would end up.
Meanwhile, some doors were opening — actually in a few different places around the country, including here in Oklahoma.

A headhunter called me and for years I would have said no, no, no.
And then finally I said, "Yeah, maybe." And the church I'm at — Asbury here in Tulsa — was getting out of that particular denomination. Disaffiliating, to use the technical term.

And they said, "We're looking for somebody." My predecessor here was retiring after twenty-nine years.
And so we had no connections to Oklahoma, knew nobody here.

We thought our lives were in Texas. We'd lived there. My heart was there.
My kids were born there, my church was there, my people were there.
And ultimately it was like, no — it's pretty clear it's time to move.

And I'm grateful for the clarity, because it's hard to leave and do hard things like that.
How did you discern that clarity? How did God bring that for you?

Well, first of all, my wife and I were on the same page about these things, which is very helpful.
So I talk about doing the math — and I don't mean literally number math,

but like, you write your little plan and here's the equation — what's the answer?
And you get an answer and then you do it again, and you do long walks and you keep coming to the same thing: I think it's time.

But very, very specifically, the place where I was serving was unable, for complicated legal reasons,
to get out from this denomination with its property.

And I tried a couple of different ways, and there was no way that could happen.
It was not a thing that if I tried harder, it could happen. It was very clear that cannot happen.

At the exact same time that door closes, a few other doors open — including the one in Tulsa.
And a lot of the reasons why we felt like we need to move into this new space, we can't be a part of this denomination anymore — here at Asbury, those doors were all opening.

So you kind of compare closed doors and open doors. Now here's the really hard part —
and there are people that I think today maybe understand or accept it, but at the time were really troubled by it:
"Okay, Andrew, but why don't you just start a new church in Dallas? We'll follow you."

And all I can say, Dan, is that lane never opened up — which is a very weird answer.
But it was like, clearly it wasn't what God wanted.

Maybe he didn't want a new thing that would end up dividing a congregation. Maybe I needed a new start.
Maybe God needed me here. Maybe it's for my kids, I don't know. But it was like the place where we were, it was time to go.

There wasn't, for whatever reason, the lane to start a new thing — that never made sense to me.
And thirdly, in this case, I'm here in Tulsa. There's this wide-open door.

So there were two other families with us — folks that worked with us in Dallas — and they said,
"Hey, I think we're going to go to Oklahoma. You want to go?" And so three families, including mine, moved up here and stepped into the leadership role.

No connection with Oklahoma, no connection with Asbury. My predecessor had been here twenty-nine years.
His predecessor had been here twenty-nine years.

So the church was very unused to a new senior pastor change. And here we are.
And you're from Texas too, which is like a whole other identity on top of it.

Correct. Though I was a Texas immigrant, I really, really embraced that identity. I love Texas.
We had family there, my kids were born there. Dallas is just a very interesting place — an "anything is possible" kind of place.

There's some downsides — there's a lot of forms of idolatry that takes — but a lot of good things about being in a city and a state that believes, "We can do it. Anything is possible. Everybody's moving here." That was fun. But God brought us out and he brought us here, and I'm really grateful for it.

And I can honestly say — it took me a while to say this, Dan — I'm grateful that God moved us because I can see his goodness at work in it. It's like, "Alright, Lord, I resisted and kicked against the goads a little bit, but you were right. And I'm grateful for it."

There's a dynamic of God giving us good work that we can walk in. All of us have experienced kicking against what God is pushing us toward. And yet when we fall into it, it becomes — I heard one preacher talk about it — "My yoke is easy and my burden is light."

And the idea of an easy yoke being almost like bespoke — like a bespoke suit
where it's perfectly fitted for you. So bespoke yoke. And that's beautiful.

I think so often in America, in the undercurrent of what we do, work is viewed as a punishment.
And in fact, work is pretty full. It's part of our image-bearing of God, and there's a delight in a good day's work — that's a gift from God.

And that work itself isn't a curse — that into eternity, in a new heavens and new earth,
we'll have good things to be about. It won't be cupids in the sky, but it'll be embodied life into eternity.
And our local church can be like a little microcosm glimpse through a mirror to see God at work in that.

So your story brings you to Asbury on Sunday — you have three services. Tuesday you release a podcast about the Bible.
Wednesday you have a Bible study that you lead. Thursday you do another service.

We do. From Sunday on. So for you as a leader, those are like public-facing things you're doing
four or five days a week. Is that exhausting?

Well, it's a good question. It's the thing I'm wrestling with and have recently had some troubles with.

When I am grateful and delighting in the life that God has given me, it is not exhausting in the negative sense.
And the times when you haven't rested enough, that shows up.

But when I am feeling sorry for myself, being ungrateful, being complaining, then it becomes exhausting.
And those are things I really have to watch. I tell myself: "You get to do this. Be grateful for these things. This is a good thing."

So it can be exhausting. And our church is a pretty good size. American churches range in size —
in general, our church would be considered a large church.

And so we have a very helpful staff structure and people who do the things I don't have to do, which is really helpful.
But it can be exhausting, yes.

And for me, this kind of goes back to the Bible thing. When I'm just myself — delighting in the Bible,
having fun with it, gnawing on it and chewing on it, and preaching out of what I'm struggling with —

I like to say a preacher should preach out of his pain. And what I mean by that is not in the traumatic, therapeutic sense.
I mean, where's the pain? Where's the friction?

Where is it? "I don't know about that. That is confusing to me, or this is the thing I noticed in my own life."
That's when I preach out of those things — it's not exhausting.

It's when I get away from that that it becomes a problem. I don't know how other preachers do it.
I only know myself. I don't know how you preach anything but your own pain.

Where the record is skipping for you is where you need to preach. And that becomes fun.
So, but like — if any pastors are listening to this — there are times when you get tired

and are ungrateful, and therefore unkind or bitter or snappy with people. And I repent of those times and I'm ashamed of them.
And then God brings me back and I go, "Okay, alright. Let's get it right."

This is a good week. Dan, you caught me in a good week.
Well, I like what you just said there — that where the record is skipping for you, that's where you've got to preach.

And how do you notice when the record skips? Do you have people in your life that are kind of speaking into that,
or is it the Holy Spirit? Or do you just like, "Oh my goodness, what did I do?"

It's more — it's not really people speaking into that. Usually it's more, "Where do I find my attention going?"
And I think that's the Holy Spirit bringing those things.

He's bringing those things to your attention — like, "What's gotten my heart right now and what am I interested in?"
So it's not necessarily always a negative thing. It could just be, where does my mind keep going back to?

So I'll give you an example. We're doing the year of the Bible and I'm generally preaching through the Bible,
generally trying to stay where our readings are roughly.

And this last week, we're at the part where Jesus tells the parable of the sower — which begins, if you remember, in Matthew chapter thirteen, verse three. The disciples go: he tells the parable of the sower, and then they go, "Well, why do you speak to them in parables?"

In other words, they're going, "What? Why do you make it hard? Just tell us what you want to know."
And then he gives that long discursive answer quoting Isaiah chapter six.

And then he explains the parable. And I just kept hearing people go, "The Bible is hard. It's weird.
Why does this happen?" And I kept thinking, the disciples wondered the same thing.

They wanted to know what Jesus said. And so that's kind of what I mean by the record skipping.
That's not a personal growth issue — that's more like where my thoughts are going.

There are other times where it's like, "This is what I've been struggling with this week — I've noticed I'm short with people, or I have anger or whatever." And it comes out of the text.

So I just trust that God brings it to my attention. And I'm learning the older I get —
follow where my interest or my heart is taking me, that's generally where God wants me to go.

I love that. And allowing it to be informed by Scripture. I think that's helpful especially for younger preachers —
to allow Scripture to guide them, but then be sensitive to the Holy Spirit in day-to-day life too.

And there is a tension here, Dan, where I want to teach the text and I want to talk about it
in a way that means something to me. So a sermon is not a lecture. For me, a sermon is not a Bible study.

A sermon is just like this living thing that's meant to punch and pierce and grab and inspire.
And so I have an idea of what I want to talk about. In this case, we're teaching through the Bible.

But I've also got to talk about the part I'm really fired up about — that's really grabbed my heart and attention.
And that's where the best preaching comes from.

So I think preachers need to be committed to an overall curriculum — whatever they're doing at that time —
and then find out why they care about that curriculum. I've heard some folks refer to it as not only exegeting the text, but exegeting the people and the culture as well.

I heard the word "fun" a lot in regard to Asbury Church.
Talk about those values and that element of helping others follow Jesus.

So I graduated from seminary and I realized: Jesus says the mission is to make disciples — it couldn't be any clearer.
"Make disciples of all nations." Okay, but I didn't know what exactly that meant. And usually what it means is like, church activity.

And so I'm very much interested in: what's the minimum effective dose? What is it at its core? What is the essential?
So I'm going to use a metaphor here, Dan. At the US Olympics — and I'm making this up — the shot putter has to do a certain thing that's different than the gymnast.

If you're creating a strength program for the shot putter, it's going to be dialed in one way.
For the gymnast it's dialed in another way. But if you were in charge of all Olympic strength and fitness training and had to have a minimum thing that all of them would have — what would it be?
They'd all have to be flexible and have a strong core and have cardiovascular health, right?
And then the shot putter has strong hands or whatever.

So the disciple, whatever a disciple is, has to be a thing that applies to everyone.
And what we almost always want to do is take the form that God has been discipling us through and apply that to everyone.

So a lot of people find that singing in a choir is a very formative thing — you're worshiping the Lord, you're with other people. I believe God can use that to shape you as his disciple.
But I don't believe it's normative or prescriptive for everyone.

Neither is going to Tanzania on a mission trip, nor is translating the Bible.
So for me, the minimum effective dose — you mentioned those three things — we say a disciple is someone who's reading and loving the Scripture,

someone who is praying in silence daily, and then someone who is connected with others.
I'll just say it here: I don't believe you are a disciple of Jesus unless you are doing those things.
Unless you're in the Bible, unless you have a meaningful prayer life with the Lord —

habitual, not just praying over the steering wheel, but praying in your own place — and then finally being in some kind of connection with other Christians.
You can use all the Christianese words — doing life together, accountability, small groups, whatever. It doesn't matter.

You have to have some kind of connection with other people. So: Bible, prayer, connection.
And then there are things that go on top of that. I think missionary work comes out of that.

But a ninety-five-year-old on his deathbed is not going to be doing missionary work.
He's not capable, but he's still a disciple. He can still be in the Word.

Maybe at this point it's the Word that's in his heart or in his mind. He still can pray.
And he still needs people to visit him in his care home and say, "I'm checking in with you, Uncle Bob. How are you?" Connection.

Okay, so those are the things — that's what we say here's what we're about, because we make a disciple. It's like our central idea.
And kind of one of the things — you mentioned the word "fun" — this is a big one for me. I think church ought to be fun.

And what I mean by that is not in the superficial or emotive or sensational sense — although those things are not necessarily bad —
but it's more the sense that there ought to be a joy underneath all things. We ought to always have a sense of a smile.

And so one of the things I want when people come literally to a church service —
I want it to be something where they go and it feels happy, it feels joyful. And so that's what I mean by fun.

It's a personal value for me that I try to bring to pastoral leadership.
I want it to be so that when people come to our church, it feels like there's life, there's joy here.

Even if they can't articulate why, I want them to experience that.
So let me give you an example — it's kind of dumb and silly.

Our church is a very unusual church in that we have a very large number of older members
as well as younger people. Most churches in America of any size are not multi-generational, and ours happens to be.

So for example, we do these Marriage Honors brunches for people who've been married fifty years or longer.
And last year at our Sunday morning Marriage Honors breakfast,

we had 263 couples who've been married for fifty years or more currently.
Oh, and that's not counting everyone who has been widowed or is a widower, or people married forty-five years.
These are people who are currently married to their spouse for that long.

Well, that's unusual, right? So if that's the top of the pyramid, it tells you how many other older people there are.
We have a lot of older people and I want them to have joy too, and be fired up and feel like God isn't finished with them yet.

And there's more to do. So after my first year here, on the Sunday immediately preceding Christmas —
the fourth Sunday of Advent — I said, "Hey, let's always make this Christmas Sweater Sunday."

Wear your ugliest or your favorite Christmas gear — the men with the light-up ties or whatever.
So now we've done it for four years and our people have fun with it.

And I know it's silly and I know it's dumb. I don't care whether you wear your light-up necktie or your Christmas shirt.
It's like in the movie Office Space where they have to wear flair in those restaurants — have you seen that?

It's not that. I don't think the dumb thing is cool. I think it's silly. And that's kind of the point.
It's like we don't take ourselves too seriously. So when we say church ought to be fun, that's what we mean.

I love how you're really using the word "fun" to point to our joy as well —
to do that collectively as a church. I think that gets to the heart of God.

It does. And you mentioned the times when I have been exhausted — this is what I confess, what I repent of.
How dare I ever end in a place of complaint or ingratitude or grumbling?

First of all, my life is very easy. There are Christians around the world who are really suffering.
But even if I were currently being persecuted, Christ is risen from the grave. God gave me today. He's working all things for good.

If I'm alive today, it's because he wants to use me as he's working all things to the glorious end.
So it's got to be joy. And I want our people to really feel that all the time.

Joy, joy, joy — the joy that comes on the other side of Good Friday.
Not a joy that denies Good Friday.

I'll never forget the interview Tim Keller gave toward the end of his life:
"If in fact Jesus Christ rose from the dead — in the end, everything's going to be alright."

And that is what joy looks like. That's what hope looks like.
Some of the things shaking up within a denomination — at the same time, I'm seeing an accord with churches

where we're forming new bonds of fellowship across old boundary lines.
I'm with you — totally in agreement, Dan. I think God is doing some new things and bringing people together in different ways.

Sociologically, you could say the reason for that is because those Reformation-era divisions —
that carried through for the next four or five centuries — are less important than being on the same page about certain other issues, including the Lordship of Christ.

And in American Christian culture, the denominational lines do not matter the way they once did.
It's not like in 1955 where people would go, "Well, I only go to this type of church." That is just not true anymore. People don't care about that.

So for us at Asbury, we think the major task of our time is to figure out:
how do we evangelize in twenty-first-century America? How are we going to do that?

And we do not have the answer to that — I have thoughts about it, but I'm not claiming to have the answer.
But what I am sure of is that there are other people who are also asking that question, and I want to be with them.

I want to be locked in with those people — the ones who realize it's not 1995 or 2005 or 2015 anymore.
We're in this new era. The times have changed.

The gospel doesn't change, but culture does change. And if I were trying to evangelize in Kabul, Afghanistan,
it's going to look different than if I were to do it in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

So first of all, Dan, I'm always looking for people who are asking the same questions I am —
like, how are we going to reach these people? They don't agree with us, they don't think like us, they don't vote like us. We've got to reach them.

And again — it's not that these Reformation-era discussions don't matter. They do matter.
But they are less important than the Lordship of Christ and what you might call the central small-c "catholic" beliefs — the foundational creeds, that kind of thing.

And so as long as I can give you the space to believe — even if I think you're wrong on this or that sub-point — that you and I are both belonging to the Lord,
and as long as you can give me that grace, I think we can work together.

I love it. I'm looking for unlikely partners, to be honest with you.
I'm looking for people that I wouldn't have partnered with in 1965.

Oh, that tees us up to your book that just came out — which is *Love Goes First*.
How does that love of Christ really spill out not only across our denominations,

but into Tulsa, Oklahoma, and to the ends of the earth?
Thank you for asking me about it. I'm really pleased with it. It's just been out for a few months.

The title is *Love Goes First: Reaching Others in an Age of Anxiety and Division*.
And I wrote this for my church and my church people, but it applies to the church and church people everywhere.

It's like, how are we going to do this in an age where we need to reach the people who don't think like us,
vote like us, look like us — maybe even the people that hate us? How do we reach them?

And if you're not asking that question, in some ways I don't think you're being serious.
Because in this country, there are millions of people who are the exact opposite of us.
And Jesus made it clear we have to reach them too. We can't write them off.

We can't just circle the wagons and stay with our people.
We have to reach the people who hate us. How are we going to do that?

And so it's based on an African story from my childhood. We lived in this small valley —
on the side of a small green mountain. And across the valley our neighbor lived, and he had a mango tree that was really good for climbing.

And my brothers and I liked to climb the mango tree. You could take the road — a red winding road —
or you could cut across the valley through the tall weeds and grasses on this little path.

But every now and then a cobra would rustle across the path in front of you.
These are spitting cobras — they rear up and spit venom in your eye. And I hated the snakes.
I still went there because I liked climbing the tree, but I complained to my mom: "I don't like snakes."

And she would say, "Boys, they're more scared of you than you are of them."
And even as a kid, when she talked about snakes, I remember thinking, "No, they're not."

But when you apply that phrase to people, it is exactly right. Every single person you have ever seen
is wanting to be loved by other people. It's just how it is.

So can I read a quotation to you? This is from the writer Andy Crouch in a talk he gave that I transcribed.
He says this: "Every one of us came into the world looking for one thing.

The moment we were born, we were looking for a face. We were born, and in the shock and surprise of birth,
we opened our eyes and we looked for a face. Because until we see a face — until another sees us — we do not know who we are."

"And we looked for someone who would look at us. And in the words of the psychiatrist Curt Thompson,
every human being is looking for someone who's looking for us."

"We're in this room because someone, some face, found our face and locked eyes with us, and we were given a name.
But at some point in every human life, the gaze shifts, the face disappears. No one is looking for us. That's loneliness."

I mean — whoa. Right? The idea that everyone is looking to be loved.
And so the basic premise of the book — it sounds real simple, but I don't see anybody doing this —

is that the only way to reach other people is to be the one who moves first toward them.
When you move first toward somebody, you upset the status quo and open up possibilities for the grace of God.

Many, many times it works in quotes. But even if it doesn't work so to speak,
the person who moves first has already changed reality — because this is what God's love is like.

Hence the title of the book, *Love Goes First*. 1 John 4:19 — "We love because God first loved us."
And so the book is very simple — seven chapters with a prologue and epilogue.

It's for ordinary church people: how are we going to move forward? What does it look like?
And in some ways it's a meditation on the love of God. I think it's the way forward for the church in the twenty-first century.

I think the only way we're going to reach the nations is by going first toward the nations —
which is not to say we're giving up our beliefs. We're not acculturating, we're not accommodating. But we are going to go toward them.

So there is — as we're recording this — lots of argument about what's happening in a particular Midwestern city
around issues of immigration. And there's videos, and you can watch the video and conclude one thing,
and somebody else watches and concludes the other thing. I'm not denying any of that.
But it seems so obvious to me that the only way to reach people who don't think like you or agree with you
is being the one who moves first toward them. There is no other way. And that's what the book is about.

And I'm excited about it — I want to get the message out.
You can get it anywhere books are sold, and it's a really easy read.

Well, recording an audio book is hard. That is not easy.
It was a weird experience — I had never done it.

I was at a studio. The publisher rented out a studio space — I felt like I was making a record.
I had a producer in my ear from New York who'd be like, "You need to read that again."

I knocked the whole thing out and felt good about it. So that's available on Audible and all those platforms.
*Love Goes First.*

I love audiobooks — that's probably seventy-five percent of my reading. And the people I know who are really into it say: when the author reads his own book, it tends to be better.

So whether that happens in this case or not, the publisher let me read it.
And so that's what you get if you buy the audiobook of *Love Goes First* — yours truly is the narrator.

Well, especially for somebody like you who's used to public speaking — that comes through in an audiobook.
We did an audiobook with a memoir from Beth Moore,

and she brings in her Southern accent and all the rest — she's incredible.

With Asbury Church, what are the ways that you're noticing God moving and at work?
What are some of those things going into your fourth year at Asbury — that you're seeing God move and work and that are giving you joy in your calling?

I'll give you a macro level and a more micro level. One of the phrases I use all the time —
and it's now on banners around the church, and people have adopted it — is:

"Every breath is proof God's not done yet." Every breath is proof. God is not done yet.
God has more. It could seem like a glib phrase at first, Dan, but it's actually a deep theological truth.

The very fact that I'm breathing today means God has kept me alive, which means he's not finished.
There's more. Not more to accomplish — it's not a task list. It's more of him. More peace, more joy.

So again, I could be ninety-five years old on my deathbed and God still has more for me today.
More of his peace in my heart. Okay, so I use that phrase. Go ahead.

Sorry to jump in, but I think it was the Bible Project you brought up earlier —
I remember their podcast, they talked about how some people surmise that the very name for God in Hebrew, Yahweh, is onomatopoeia for taking a breath.

And I really believe that. When you meditate on it, it's a really profound thought.
So I talk about it all the time. I talked about it from the very beginning when I came here.

And a lot of our older members have really embraced that. So sometimes somebody will get out of the hospital
and they'll be like, "Hey, obviously God's not finished. He has more."

And I love seeing that — older people in their eighties and nineties who are like, "I'm a widower now.
My eyesight is deteriorating. But God's not done." So I hear that.

And that's been really joyful for me because as a pastor, I'm like a coach.
My job is to get people fit for ministry. And you ought to be fitter for ministry at ninety-five than at sixty-five, right? In the kingdom, you're growing.

Okay, so that's the macro level. Here's the micro thing — this is real cool.
Somebody shared this at a staff meeting this week. We had an older member who, over Christmas, was really feeling:

"We spent a whole fall about reaching people and *love goes first*. What does it look like? I've got to talk to my family."
And this older person talked to her family about Christ and what Christmas is really about.

These people had not been interested in a while. Well, later on, a nephew circled back and said,
"Can you tell me more about Jesus?" And she did. And then she gave him a One Year Bible and invited him to church last Sunday.

So at a micro level — to see older people saying, "I am going to be used by God. He's not finished with me. I want to share this."
That is so exciting as a pastor to hear that kind of thing.

Your team put together the coolest water bottle I've ever seen. What was the impetus for it?
Who had that idea? Who was the graphic designer?

Here's what's easy, Dan, in the year of the Bible, in the One Year Bible — January first is easy, right?
It's like the gym. Everybody's ready to go. "Sure, I'll read the Bible."

When this is going to be hard is in March and August, in the middle of Job — correct?
Yes, exactly.

Which — let me pump up the Tyndale product. This is why as a pastor I like the One Year Bible format.
There are trade-offs.

Life always has trade-offs, so there's no perfect Bible reading plan. There are pluses and minuses.
What I like about the One Year Bible — because it has Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs every day —

is that when you are in the middle of Job, it gives you a different kind of palate cleanser
when you go to the New Testament or to the Psalms, so you can find something to kind of hold on to.
Whereas a chronological read-through — which has pluses too — there are times when you're just for months reading more Kings.

But what we realized early on when we were planning all this — and I've done this pastorally before —
the challenge is not going to be January. The challenge is June and November. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

That's why along the marathon route, you have the bands and the guy dressed up in the gorilla suit holding the signs and all that, right? So we're trying to think, what can we do to get people excited?

And I'll give my colleague Rodney credit — I think it was his idea.
But Rodney thought, well, why don't we do this thing? For people who are not familiar — it's like one of those national park bottles or posters where there's a graphic design and you get a sticker to cover up the image.

So you show where you've been. We called Simple Modern and said, "Hey, we want to do this
for the sixty-six books of the Bible." We want to design it so that the designs are etched into the water bottle,

and you get a pack of stickers — and when you complete a book, you take your sticker and put it over that book.
The stickers, by the way, were harder than the bottle itself because they have to be waterproof and all that.

And the idea is: you take your water bottle, and when you complete a book, you put the sticker on.
So our first Sticker Sunday is this coming Sunday. We finished the book of Genesis and we're going to put our sticker on there. And it's been really fun.

So Rodney has the credit — my colleague, our executive director, Rodney Adams —
and other people on our graphics team, Marty Taylor and Melissa Ybarra, Katie Selvage — they all worked on that. And then Simple Modern — a super great company — they worked with us.

Our team looked at this and we were like, "This is so cool. What a great idea."
And so we want to champion that and we want to see that role spread.

If you go to YearThroughTheBible.com — sorry to interrupt. Yeah, you can go to our church's website,
but YearThroughTheBible.com is easy. That's our website. We created it, and you can get a water bottle there and find out what we're doing.

YearThroughTheBible.com. I have been renewed in my joy hearing you talk about the work
that God's given you to do there at Asbury Church. We're excited for you and excited for how God is going to move and work and open doors.

Amen. Thank you. God's not done yet. Here's to a great year.
And Dan, come visit — we'd love to have you.

We'll make that happen. You've been hearing from Senior Pastor Andrew Forrest at Asbury Church
in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Andrew, honored to have you join me today here on the Church Around the World.

I'm Dan Ehrman — blessings to you.

You've been listening to the Church Around the World with Dan Ehrman,
discovering how God is working in and through the church.

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