05/05/2026
“God’s divine plan for creation has always been to be living in community and unity with . His desire is for His church to be built up, doing the work of Christ. … But I think if we look at our context, look at the church in the United States, it’s a passive church.
“COVID was the time that saw many Christians have an opportunity to break up with the church. And listen, there’s a lot of reasons people leave the church, and some of them are very valid, I’ll be honest. I have friends who are very deeply wounded because of the way they’ve been hurt by other Christians, other churches. I know they still love Jesus, but sometimes we have to do better. And I’m not saying our church specifically, but there’s a lot of lost hope.
“In this denomination, 75,000 people call themselves members of the Free Methodist Church in the United States. But if you look across the world, 1.5 million people call themselves Free Methodists. That’s staggering. A majority of our denomination does not live in the U.S., because there’s been incredible work done outside of the United States. But I also think there’s just desperation for the spirit of God to move outside of the U.S.
“We have a desperation problem in the United States. We are not desperate enough to see the Spirit of God move. We aren’t desperate enough to know His word and to carry it out and to share the gospel. We live, unfortunately, in a passive culture.”
— MAFMC NextGen Pastor Shawn Delacourt
