Mike Kinchen: Saying Yes to God Around The World

Pastor Jason
Well, good morning, church family. Good morning. This morning looks a little different from a usual Sunday. We’re actually calling this “I Said Yes Testimony Sunday.” Ok, it’s the truth of the fact that you and I, the Bible says, and we’ve been walking through the book of Acts, right? That you and I are the living temple of God. And all through the morning, you’ve heard different testimonies of God using us as His agents, allowing us to participate in the Gospel and to shine the light of Jesus Christ in an incredible way. In different aspects, different facets of our lives, at work, in our family, serving here at the church. If we, in your mind, if you go all the way back to where we were in the spring, that is, coming out of Easter, we began a study on the Holy Spirit. Right? That the Holy Spirit indwells us as born-again believers. And then gives us spiritual giftings. So, pause and comprehend this, right? God indwells us, so we are now the new living temple, but then He empowers us for ministry. Each of us with uniqueness for ministry and for purpose.

And then this fall, we’ve been walking through the book of Acts. And you should know by now that the thesis, verse for the entire book of Acts, is Acts 1:8. Where Jesus promises the disciples, he says go back to Jerusalem because you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you shall be my witnesses. Guys, that’s our calling too. To be filled with the spirit, to have power that comes from Him so that we can be His witnesses.

Do you believe that God wants to work in you? Do you really believe that? Now often, church family, that begins with a simple yes. A simple yes, a willingness to say you know what, God, I’m going to pray, and I’m going to ask for you to show me my purpose. And I trust that you are going to open and close doors in my life. And as I step out, that I’m going to use reason. It’s good to think where am I gifted, even take something as practical as a spiritual gifts survey. I’m going to use reason, and I’m going to step out in faith. I’m going to make those first steps of faith in believing that you will steer me for your kingdom.

Hebrews 11:6 says this, “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” Do you believe that God is a rewarder of you when you seek Him? Therefore, we should step out with faith. Faith is believing; you know what? I’m going to take this step because I believe that God has a purpose for me. And that God will reward me. He will steer; he will open and close doors.

And then, secondly, this morning, are you willing to be steered as you step out in faith? Are you willing to be steered? A quick example of this in scripture. In 2 Samuel chapter 7, David had this magnificent idea that he was going to build for God a temple. Now long story short, God came back and told him, “You know what? That’s a great idea. I’m actually really pleased that you said that. But listen, you’re not going to be the one to do it. Your son, Solomon, is going to be the one who builds the temple.” Do you know what David spent a good portion of the rest of his life doing after that? First Chronicles 22 actually tells us that David stored up materials for Solomon to build the temple. Iron and timber and stone and bronze – a huge amount of money he stored up for Solomon to build the temple, his son. See? He had plans, but then he allowed the Lord to steer him. So that’s our question this morning.

Church family, let me introduce to you Mike Kinchen who is sitting down with us this morning and is going to give us a little bit of his testimony. Mike and his wife, Tracey, have been members here of First Baptist for 24 years. He’s been a deacon for 19 years. They’ve raised all four children here at First Baptist, serving on committees and all sorts of stuff. Mike also has a business background in the corporate world and has transitioned to operating and owning many of his own personal businesses. So, you guys, welcome Mike.

Now, Mike, it says here that you’d like to make a public statement that Coke is better than Pepsi. That’s an inside personal joke. If you know, a little bit back, Mike and I had the awesome privilege of going to Uganda this summer together. And there was a running joke about Coke and Pepsi. I, of course, like Coke best. And so, we won’t talk about that…we won’t talk about that.

Alright, so Mike, it was a joy and a privilege to get to really know you considerably more on our mission trip to Uganda this past summer. But that was actually your second trip to Uganda. And so, take me back to the beginning of that story.

Mike Kinchen
My say yes to the Lord was started four years ago when Tracey and I realized we were transitioning into soon becoming empty nesters. And so, you know, I started asking the Lord a couple of years early, saying, “Lord, where do you want me to serve? What do you want us to do in this next stage of our life? You know, we want to finish strong. We want to be in your will. And so, Lord, you just show us what it is.” No parameters on that. I just assumed it might be, you know, helping here in church some, local ministries that we have been involved in the past. But I was open to whatever.

We want to be in your will. And so, Lord, you just show us what it is.” No parameters on that. I just assumed it might be, you know, helping here in church some, local ministries that we have been involved in the past.

And so, several months of praying over that, asking the Lord, and looking at different options and being open, one day, just through wonderful circumstances, I was talking to Don Jones, sharing with him, and saying, “Man, you know, Don, I’m really praying about this. I really want to get this right.”

And he said, “You know, your timing couldn’t be any better.” He said, “There’s a ministry in Uganda that I’ve been involved with, and they’re doing tremendous work. And they need somebody to help them with your background, with a little bit of organization and planning and budgeting, and they’re growing so fast. And I think that would be a real asset for them for you to do that. Would you like to talk a minute?”

That was Fred Sekyewa with Celebrate Hope Ministry that was here, what, two weeks ago? And you might have met when he was introduced at the end of each service – he and his wife, Rebecca. So, he arranged a meeting for us. A couple of weeks later, Fred came in from Uganda, and we spent a lot of time together. And after that, I was really excited about his mission and his heart for his people in Rakai. If you recall, Rakai, Uganda, was the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic where it started – just devastated that region. Fred lived there, was raised in that, went to Kampala, went to seminary, and when he graduated from seminary, although getting into ministry with African Renewal Ministry, he ultimately felt a calling of God to go back to his people and help there. And that’s where his ministry has been for the past 12 years. So, he asked if I would serve on his board of directors for Celebrate Hope USA, and I agreed to do that. And three months later, we were – John, Marie Nipp, and my daughter Lexi and I – were headed to Uganda.

Pastor Jason
So Lexi went with you?

Mike Kinchen
Yeah; she was 16.

Pastor Jason
Why did you want Lexi to go with you?

Mike Kinchen
You know, I felt like it was an opportunity I’d never had before. I felt like it would take her out of her comfort zone. She has a passion for people and kids and serving anyway. I felt like there were so many opportunities for her to firsthand experience working with children. She was, we had set up, she was able to work with children in orphanages, in different schools while we were there that ten days. African Renewal Ministry, who we’ve been involved with for gosh, almost 20 years now, they have a ministry to babies, and you and I saw that there. Their babies have been abandoned. One was there that was three days old. And so, she was able to spend a day there caring for those babies and seeing how that ministry works. So, it really broadened her perspective. Since then, she’s went on the Yucatan Mission Trip with Linda and Ed and James and that team, and that was a wonderful experience for her. This past summer, she, through Texas A&M University and one of the ministries there, spent eight weeks in Florida just going out, sharing their faith during the evenings. And in taking the courage to do that, she would have never, never had that experience, I don’t believe, if we wouldn’t have taken that step in going to Uganda. So, it’s been a blessing for us and for her.

Pastor Jason
How did God really kind of change your heart, or take that next step on your first trip to Uganda?

Mike Kinchen
We went to see the ministry and to see firsthand what Fred had done. But I had asked the Lord, although we’re helping with the ministry, where do you want me to serve? Where do you want me to concentrate? Because he has so many, you know the children’s program, of course you’ve seen, and he has the coffee production, and he has this sustainability programs for the families there. And so, it was toward the end of this thing, and I kept saying, “Lord, I just want you to show me where you want me to focus my energies besides the overall direction/vision of the ministry and helping him with that.” And Fred asked John and I one day to…he said, “We’re going to take you to visit some of our pastors.”

And so, we went about 80 miles out into this remote area. And we came upon this little mud brick, little adobe-type building, and that was their local church in one of these villages. And there were eight pastors there that were part of his ministry that he had started. And they had walked, all of them from different villages, for miles just to spend some time with us.

And while we were there, we, of course, we fellowshipped with them and had a great time. But when I got ready to leave, I asked them, I said, “What do you need? What can we do for you?” And I, you know, I figured they need material or something. They said to a man, “We…we just need to know and more training. We just need to know how to be better pastors, how to share the gospel, how to pastor in our local villages. And we just need more training.”

Pastor Jason
Well, I mean, I just love thinking through the story. So here, here’s a member of our church, a deacon, a businessman who just begins to pray, “Lord, what? How do you want to use me? What’s this next season of ministry?” And then before we know it you’re on the other side of the world taking a mission trip with your daughter, you’re serving on the board there, and now you have an even clearer calling in terms of, you feel like God’s calling you to serve pastors in Uganda because they need resources. And they, so many of them, aren’t able even to read. And so, what did you find? Because I know after that you’re going to spend years kind of chasing this pursuit. And so, where did that kind of lead you?

Mike Kinchen
So that the Lord hit me over the head with that, “This is where I want you to concentrate.” So like Jason was saying, we came back, and we’ve spent the last couple of years putting together training programs, putting a pastor into place there in the ministry that would oversee quarterly training sessions, buying tents and traveling equipment, and things that they need for these pastor trainings. There are 260 of these pastors. Rakai is about the size of Kendall County. And Fred, in the first 12 years, has already started 260 of these local churches, little pastor community churches. It’s amazing! So, but like you said, in coming back, finding material, I realize the vast majority of these, they can’t, they all speak Ugandan but many of them can’t read. So, we bought them Bibles and we had training material, and all they could do is listen to the trainer, but they couldn’t read their Bibles.

So, I started looking for answers for that, and I found a ministry in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They put things on these MP3 players, and they had taken 72 translated languages that missionaries needed, material, and put the entire Old and New Testament on them. And what a ministry it was, and exactly what we needed. So, we bought these for them. They were also able to download seven training messages from Fred, 80 Bible stories so that they could punch this in, set it there and listen at the village, and listen to Bible stories, more pastor training materials. So, we purchased these and were able to take them back when we went in July of this year.

Pastor Jason
Yeah, and so, this summer we got to go back on a mission trip. How many did you end up taking with us?

Mike Kinchen
We took 100.

Pastor Jason
We took 100. And now, we were actually able, it was a surprise, but we went to a blind village and just thought, you know what? We can probably spare, I think about five or ten of them for this blind village because they need to be able to hear the Bible, too. And so incredible – really God blessing part of that story. And so, Mike, I want you to share lastly with us just about the prison story because if you’ve even been on a mission trip, the number one rule is be flexible. Alright? And so, this is one of those moments that looked to be a great disappointment, but as it turns out, the Lord had an incredible plan in store for us.

Mike Kinchen
Yeah, you have to be real flexible with your schedule when you’re there. And we were scheduled this one particular day to go to several places. Then toward the end of the day, Jason and I were going to visit a prison there, and he was going to preach, and I was going to share a testimony. And when you go on these trips, you know, several months ahead of time. So, we had planned about six months and got…I felt like the Lord had given me something to share with these inmates – a personal story that I thought would relate to them. And I was really excited about it. And so, we get there, and they say, “We’re closing in 15 minutes. We close the prison off at 5:00.” We didn’t know that; so, we had to rush in there. And Jason just shared the gospel with these guys as quickly as possible. We had by then 10 minutes, and we were ushered out. So, the next morning, I…

Pastor Jason
You were pretty bummed.

Mike Kinchen
I was bummed. I woke up at 2:30 in the morning. I said, “You know, Lord, you seem like you’ve given me this. And I really was excited about sharing it, but you…you know, you know, it’s your call. But I was kind of discouraged about it.” I woke up at 2:30 the next morning, and I even read through my material again and my presentation for some reason.

But the next morning, about 7:30, I got up early to go outside. We had this beautiful area by the hotel, and it was, I had my quiet time. A few minutes later, Pastor comes out to do the same thing, and he said, “You know, I just…I feel bad about you not being able to share yesterday. And I know we’re going back by tomorrow, this afternoon, on our way to another place to drop off some these MP3 players to these inmates.” And he said, “Let’s pray right now that the Lord will open a door for you to get to share with these guys.” So, he prayed, and we prayed together that Lord would somehow open that door.

So we go back by the prison, and I went up there to give this guy the MP3 players. Of course, the guard’s standing there and he’s got his AK47. And Jason says to him, “He has something he wanted to share with the inmates yesterday. He didn’t get a chance to do it. Is there any chance he could do it this morning?”

And he said, “Well, let me check and see.” So, he comes back. He says, “Yeah, but only one of you can come in.”

So, I start, great! So, I go to walk in, and of course, Pastor comes right in behind me. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. He was coming in. So, we walk in, and God’s timing is everything. Because we walk in, and now there are four times as many inmates out there. They’re all just hanging around. Some of them are kicking soccer balls, and some of them are just visiting. And they ushered us out there, and they still had the microphone up, which you had used in this one area we were using, and the interpreter that we had was hanging around right there for some reason too (of course, God knows why), but we were allowed to grab him. And so, I was able to share my testimony with these guys. And it was just incredible. The Lord opened the door and seven of them raise their hand, came forward, and accept Christ.

Pastor Jason
Yeah, it really was one of those God moments where we could look back and because you had prepared well ahead of time in preparation. We had prayed through this and then that door is shut. And then, turns out the Lord wanted four times as many people to hear your testimony and to hear the good news of Jesus Christ.

And so, would you guys pray with me real quick as we contemplate how awesome it is that God uses us in ministry. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you; that you allow us to be your hands and feet. God, that is such good news that you allow us to participate, to share our stories, our testimonies about how you reached in and touched our hearts, God. And that connects with other men and women who have been made in your image in order to hear the good news of Jesus. God, thank you for that. May we never forget the awesome power and privilege that you use us, and you allow us to be your witnesses. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, amen, church. Our Father is good, isn’t he? We would say that; amen.