Ministry on the Move

S3E21 Colton Dowdy Floyd Baptist - 99 Out of 100: Two Years in Japan and the Gospel That Doesn't Translate

In this episode, Chris sits down close to home — just north of Greenville, Texas — with Pastor Colton Dowdy of Floyd Baptist Church. At 31, Colton is one of the youngest pastors on the podcast, but he arrives with a story that covers more ground than most. Colton traces his call to ministry back to a seizure diagnosis at 16 — 17 seizures in 15 days — and the slow realization that his suffering had a purpose. He talks about reading missionary biographies as a teenager, laughing off his mother's prediction that he'd end up overseas, and then finding himself two years later standing outside a Buddhist temple in Tokyo feeling the weight of a spiritual darkness he couldn't quite put into words. The heart of this conversation is the missionary challenge Colton faced in Japan: how do you share the gospel with people who have no word for sin? The Japanese word sumi translates directly to crime — which means that telling someone "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" lands very differently on the streets of Tokyo than it does in a Texas church. Colton walks through how he learned to start with brokenness, work toward sin, and trust the gospel to do what the gospel does. He also talks about what two years in Japan did to his theology — how it stripped away presuppositions, softened his grip on dispensationalism, and taught him to come to Scripture asking what God says rather than confirming what he already believed. Also in this episode: the land of eight million gods, why 99 out of 100 Japanese people have never heard the gospel, climbing Mount Fuji, the Tokyo red light district as a witnessing opportunity, Chinese college students being more open to the gospel than Japanese ones, why Colton refuses to use self-checkout, and the Karate Kid song he listens to on every run.

S3E20 Justin Wideman Direct Baptist - p2 - The Moon and the Sun- Discipleship, Chaos, and Reflecting What You Follow

Part 2 with Pastor Justin Wideman picks up right where Part 1 left off — which is to say, deeper than either of them planned to go. Justin unpacks his four-level discipleship model using the most relatable illustration you'll hear all season: a kid with untied shoes. Level one, you don't even know your shoe is untied. Level four, you're tying it mid-sentence without breaking stride. The question Justin keeps pressing is why the church keeps putting level-two disciples in leadership positions — and then wonders why it's answering spiritual problems with worldly answers. From there, the conversation wanders — productively — into the image of God as a battle line, whether chaos was baked into creation, and what it means to be a receptacle for spirit. Justin's answer to an impossible theological question is one of the most grounding things you'll hear on this podcast: "When there is chaos, I've got somebody I can turn to." The speed round delivers on a dentist named Dr. Silver Tooth, Justin's carnivore diet, why he scored a one in mercy on his spiritual gifts analysis, and the revelation that he binged a documentary about a football team he doesn't even like. It closes the way the best conversations do — with Justin reminding us that we are the moon, and He is the sun.

S3E19 Justin Wideman Direct Baptist Devoted, Developing, Deployed- What a Disciple Actually Looks Like

In Part 1 of this conversation, Chris sits down with Pastor Justin Wideman of Direct Baptist Church in Direct, Texas — a rural congregation that is defying every church growth statistic in the book. Families aren't trickling in one or two at a time. They're showing up in groups of six, eight, and ten — and they're staying. Justin talks candidly about what's driving the growth — and gives most of the credit to his people. Direct Baptist has cultivated something rare: a church that doesn't expect you to act saved before you get there. Young families are finding a home, kids are running the hallways, and Sunday school classes are so full they need to split them just to breathe. But Justin isn't satisfied with full pews. The harder question he keeps asking is whether the church is actually producing disciples — devoted, developing, and deployed. He breaks down what Direct Baptist means by discipleship, why so many churches are fishing with the wrong bait, and what it looks like to teach a generation of new believers who speak an entirely different language than the one the church has been using for decades. Also in this episode: why Noah understood building committees, why there's no golf in the Bible, and what 100% of Christians actually believe about the virgin birth.

S3 E18 - Scott and Kimberly Jones FBC Rockport: Through the Valley: Faith, Sepsis, and the God Who Shows Up

In this deeply personal episode, Pastor Scott Jones and his wife Kimberly open up about one of the most frightening seasons of their lives together. What Kimberly assumed was the flu quickly became something far more serious — sepsis and double pneumonia that landed her in the hospital for over a week, with oxygen levels in the 70s and a very real possibility she might not come home. Scott shares what it looked like to keep showing up in the pulpit while his wife was critically ill — not because he didn't care, but because he'd learned to compartmentalize, trust God with what he couldn't control, and do what needed to be done. Kimberly reflects on what it meant to finally be forced to slow down — something her ADHD-driven mind had resisted for years. She opens up candidly about living with OCD, depression, and ADHD, and how this illness became an unexpected invitation to rest, release control, and let go of things she'd been holding far too tightly. Together, Scott and Kimberly wrestle honestly with faith — the kind forged not in a single crisis, but over years of unanswered prayers, mental health battles, and a God who doesn't always show up the way we scripted. They talk about the humility of admitting weakness, the arrogance of thinking we're in control, and what it really means to trust the Lord through the shadow — not just past it. Also featured: a "lightning" round with big feelings about hymns, Colin Hay, The Chosen, Eugene Peterson, the largest pipe organ in Texas, and the best way to waste an hour.

S3E17 - Scott Jones FBC Rockport: Music and Ministry

Last year, Pastor Scott Jones of First Baptist Rockport, Texas sat down with Chris McNeil and somehow broke the internet — or at least the Ministry on the Move podcast. That conversation became the most listened-to episode of the year for MotM. So when Chris drove back to Rockport, he decided to find out if lightning strikes twice. What starts as a conversation about music quickly becomes something much deeper. Scott and his wife Kimberly open up about the Christian music industry, critical thinking, and why a label doesn't always mean what we think it does. As Kimberly puts it, Christian music can sometimes be more dangerous than secular music — because we stop asking questions. From there, Scott and Chris wade into some genuinely surprising territory — the Christian's duty to culture, what it means to be present without being controlling, and why Scott believes the only way a Christian truly fails is to withdraw entirely. "If I withdraw," Scott says, "I'm not having any influence. But as long as I'm a part, I'm having at least some influence." The conversation takes one more unexpected turn when Chris raises a question that's been rattling around in his head — is everything that goes wrong in this world really the result of sin? Or did God bake something else into the original equation? Scott's answer might rearrange some theological furniture. Honest, wandering, and occasionally correcting Chris on his 80s rock trivia, this is exactly the kind of conversation Ministry on the Move was made for.