David Reagan - Leadership Transition
At the beginning of this new year of 2020, we are celebrating 40 years of God’s faithfulness here at Lamb & Lion Ministries. Stay tuned.
Greetings in the name of Jesus, our Blessed Hope, and welcome to Christ in Prophecy! Well, as I said at the beginning of the program we are celebrating 40 years of ministry here at Lamb & Lion Ministries. Yes, folks it was 40 years ago on April the 1st that I stepped out in faith to establish this ministry.
At that time, I was the vice president of a university. I had 20 years of university career behind me as a professor of International Law and Politics, and college administration, but, God had put a fire in my heart to proclaim the soon return of Jesus. I didn’t know the date, nobody knows the date, but I knew we were living in the season of the Lord’s return because the signs of the times were shouting from the heavens that Jesus was about to return. And so, I went to the university president and I told him that I had decided to resign my job as vice president and decided to step out in faith and begin preaching. And he said, “What church?” And I said, “No church.” He said, “What are you going to do?” I said, “Well, I’m just going to form a ministry, and I’m going to go forth and preach Jesus is coming soon.” And he said, “Oh, no.” And he kind of looked at his desk, and he looked back up at me and he said, “When are you going to do that?” I said, “Well, I’m going to give you two weeks’ notice, I’m going to do it on April the 1st.” And he looked back down at his desk, and he looked back up at me and he said, “All I can say to you, is that you have picked a very appropriate date.” Which of course was April Fool’s Day. And he was saying that I was making a fool of myself. And many people said that when I resigned that very fine job to step out in faith.
Now, folks, I was raised in the church. I went to church as far back as I can remember. I knew the Bible. I’d always been a Bible teacher. I had been a Bible preacher. I had taught a lot about faith and preached a lot about faith. But I discovered very quickly there is a big difference in preaching about it, and teaching about it, and doing it. To step out in faith was very, very scary. Remember those were back in the days before the internet. Today a person starting a ministry it’s pretty easy to do if you have a message, and you know how to articulate it. Because you can get on the internet and suddenly you’ve got the world as your audience. I have a colleague named Billy Crone out in Las Vegas, Nevada, and he just came out of nowhere and established his ministry almost over night by putting tapes of his sermons and teachings on the internet.
But this was 1980, 15 years before the internet was available, and it was tough, folks. Nobody knew me. I wasn’t particularly associated with any particular denomination. And it was a tough time. I can think back, and I remember that for the first three years of the ministry I don’t think I spoke at a church that had more than 40 members; they were all just little rural churches. But God had a reason for that, He was using those three years to fine tune the message, and fine tune me to be a proclaimer of that message.
But by three years into it I began to get some invitations at larger churches. And what happened was that I began to hold a lot of meetings; it would start on Sunday morning, and go through Wednesday night, and I was holding like 40 a year, I was on the road all the time. And finally, what happened one day is one of the trustees came to me and said, “You know you are burning the candle at both ends, you need to take some time off.” I said, “Well, I agree with that but how can I take time off?” That is when the board of trustees decided that they wanted me to take a sabbatical. And so, in the year of 1987 I took a sabbatical, and I told them, I said, “How are we going to keep the ministry going?” It wasn’t a big ministry at that time, we had a radio program that was broadcast daily for 15 minutes called Christ in Prophecy. And we had I think two or three staff members at that time. But, I wanted to keep them on. I didn’t want to lose them. I wanted to pay them. And I said to the board, “How are we going to finance the ministry if I can’t go out and speak?” And they said, “We have no idea, but we know that it is God’s will for you to take a year off and do no traveling whatsoever. You can continue with the radio program, but you cannot travel, we want you to rest for a year. And God will supply.” I said, “Okay.”
Well, shortly after they made that decision which was in ’86 a man from Florida who had been supporting our ministry came to visit me. And I told him what they had decided, that the next year I was going to have to stay home for a year, and I didn’t know how we were going to finance the ministry. He said, “David, let me tell you, you need to start a program called a Prophecy Partner program, develop partners, and say to the partners, ‘You can become a partner of the ministry if you would supply $20 a month, or more, for a year, and pray for the ministry.'” And he said, “That’s why I every year give you $365, I give you a dollar for every day of the year.” And I said, “Well, I always wondered why you gave $365.” So, we prayed about that, and we started the Prophecy Partner program in 1987, and just immediately like 250-300 people signed up, and they supplied the funds that were necessary during that year when I stayed home. And it was one of the most productive years of this ministry.
In 1987 I didn’t travel and preach, but what I did do is I wrote a book called, “Trusting God.” And that book has turned out over the years to be one of the most successful books I have ever written. And the subtitle was “Learning How to Walk by Faith.” I summarized in that book what I had learned in the last seven years about living by faith. And I did it through anecdotal stories. Also, in addition to that I produced a book called, “The Christ in Prophecy Study Guide,” which is still in print to this day. It is a detailed guide to all of the prophecies in the Bible, both the First Coming, and the Second Coming prophecies.
In addition to that I went to Israel, the only travel I did that year, and we shot a video called, “The Jews in Prophecy.” So, those three items began to finance the ministry in the years to follow. And after that year I decided that I was going to pull off the trial and not hold 40 meetings a year, but that I was going to spend more time studying, and more time writing books, and recording cassette tapes back then, and writing articles, and expanding our newsletter into a full magazine. And God really blessed that. We began to expand the magazine, and the magazine grew to 24 pages, 28 pages, and finally it was put out in full color. We began to put out more, and more cassette tapes. And finally, we began to think about television. And finally, oh, around the end of the 90’s the staff began to say, “David, we think you ought to give up the daily radio program and get into television.”
Well, I was dragging my feet about television. And I’ll tell you why, there were two reasons. The first reason is I had had a lot of experience with television, and I knew it was a bottomless pit of expenditures; always new equipment, always new formats, always something that you had to spend money on. And I didn’t want to go on television and beg for money, I didn’t want to do that at all. And so, I was reluctant to move to it, because I knew it was so expensive. But the most important reason I didn’t want to move to it is because when you are on the radio the focus is on the message, but when you move to TV the focus becomes the messenger, and the result is over bloated egos. And I didn’t want to get into all that stuff, so I just dragged my feet.
Meanwhile the board of trustees picked up on what the staff was telling me. The board of trustees began to say, “You’ve got to get into television. We’ve got to move from radio to TV.” And so, finally in the year of 2002, September of 2002, we dropped all our radio programs because we couldn’t afford to do both, and we moved to television, and God has greatly blessed that decision over the years. We have reached so many more people all over the world. Today we are on many national networks, many local stations all around the country. We have access to 110 million homes, and I praise God for the way He has multiplied the outreach. We are putting out video tapes like mad, we are focusing on publishing books. The internet is one of our major ways of outreach.
And also, during those years I went to Israel 45 times taking groups over there, pilgrimages, we don’t call them tours they are spiritual pilgrimages. But when my wife became very seriously ill several years ago, I had to back off that because she became my number one ministry. And so, for the last five years we have had a wonderful man by the name of Tim Moore who has been hosting our groups to Israel, and he has done a fantastic job. I trained him to begin with, and he has just taken off from there.
And so, today our outreach consists of a multiplicity of things, television, videos, trips to Israel, the internet, it goes on and on. And I just have been so blessed by it all. I could tell you about miracle, after miracle, after miracle that God has performed in the history of this ministry. I really learned how to walk by faith. And I learned that if I had a real need, all I had to do was pray about it, and God would supply that need in some way or another. I could never guess how He was going to, oh, I could guess but He would never do it that way. He would always do it in some unusual way in order to show me that He was the One doing it, and not any particular person who was doing it. That He was the one motivating that person to respond to that need.
Another thing that has been characteristic of our ministry over the years is the tremendous outreach all over the world by supporting other ministries. We have right now I think it is something like 15 ministries scattered around the world that we send monthly contributions to. We have about seven here in the United States, domestic ministries that we help. In fact during the history of this ministry we have helped establish some five other Bible prophecy ministries; helped them get established, help them with their finances, help them with their organization, and we continue to this day to support those ministries on a fundamental basis each month. We give away more than 10% of our income each year. In fact, last year we gave I think over $350,000 to domestic and foreign ministries. And that has been a great blessing. I praise God all the time for using us a channel of His blessings to motivate people to give us money that we can give to other people to help ministries all over the world to proclaim the soon return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
One of the things that I think has been a key to this ministry is that ever since it began every morning we begin the day with a devotional. This morning for example we began with a devotional that lasted about 45 minutes. We get together, we make up our prayer list, and we spend about 30 minutes praying for each other, and praying for the letters that have been sent in and praying for the ministry. And I think another key to our success over the years has been the fact that we have kept focused on what God called us to do. He called us to proclaim the soon return of Jesus, to preach the fundamentals of Bible prophecy, and we have kept focused on that particular goal. And one of the things we’ve tried to do while doing that is to not get involved in any sensationalism, any kind of speculation. We try to just simply focus on what does the Bible say about the end times. So, it has been a thrilling time these 40 years, and we are praising God for it.
We are going to take a brief break right now, and when we come back I’ve got a very, very special announcement to make to you. Probably one of the most important announcements we’ve ever made in the history of this ministry. So, stay tuned, and we’ll be back in just a moment.
Part 2
David Reagan: Welcome back to Christ in Prophecy. And as you can see I’ve been joined on the set by one of our staff members, he is my associate evangelist, Colonel Tim Moore. Now back in 1980 when I established this ministry I decided at the very beginning that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life building a ministry that would simply cease to exist the day I dropped dead, or if I decided to retire. And so, I didn’t call it the Dave Reagan Ministry, I called it he Lamb & Lion Ministry. And I called it that because those are the two great symbolic images that are used by the Old Testament prophets when referring to the Messiah; He comes the first time as a suffering lamb, He returns as the conquering lion.
I also never owned this ministry. The ministry was set up to be owned by the board of trustees, we have 22 trustees. And so, this ministry has always been in their hands, and they have always been the one that has been the overseers and setting the policies. About a year ago I went to them and I told them that I felt the time had come for me to hand off the ministry to a successor, and I told them that I believed God had raised up that successor in Tim. Tim had been serving this ministry for some six years at that time, in a part-time capacity, but he had more than proved himself. And the board of trustees voted unanimously to call him as my successor, something that will take place when I step aside in September of 2021, and he will take over the leadership of the ministry at that time. I will retire to my home, and I will be working part-time for the ministry writing books, but he will take over the leadership. Tim, how about telling folks about your background, and about how you got associated with this ministry.
Tim Moore: Okay, I would be glad to, Dave. Obviously I was born into a Christian home, blessed to have Christian parents, and raised to understand the faith. In other words, in the admonition of the Lord. And so, at an early age I accepted Christ as my Savior and determined to want to live for Him. I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but even from a young age my parents would tell you I aspired to be a preacher, a pilot, or a politician, I didn’t know which one. So, as the Lord directed I did pursue a career of service in the military. I served in the United States Airforce as a pilot, still fly to this day.
And then in 1993 you came to the place where I was stationed up in Indiana and shared a message about the prophetic Word of God, and sparked a fire in my heart, a passion for God’s prophetic Word, and anticipation of the Lord’s soon return. And of course, after then I was connected with Lamb & Lion Ministries as a Prophecy Partner trying to provide encouragement and support. I was able to go to Israel as you’ve mentioned, a couple of times. And over the long haul I had a yearning to serve in some capacity, but I didn’t know what the Lord would bring about in terms of an opportunity. So, He guided my path into a political role, and for a season I served in the Kentucky Legislature, but I always had a yearning back toward some kind of a ministry role. So, as you have already shared in 2013 I approached you, and you were quick to say, “Please Tim, come on board I have a role for you.” And I’ve been very blessed ever since.
David Reagan: You served as a volunteer evangelist.
Tim Moore: Yes.
David Reagan: Going out on the weekends and speaking at conferences in your spare time.
Tim Moore: In my spare time, yes, sir.
David Reagan: Well, where did you find any spare time?
Tim Moore: Well, I like to tell people I had a night job with my main job as a pilot. The military as well. And then the legislature was a part-time job, it was only 60-80 hours a week, so all my other time is free. And I was able to carve out even with those roles, a prioritization of being able to be serve for this ministry.
David Reagan: So, you retired from the military a year ago.
Tim Moore: Yes, sir.
David Reagan: You have just resigned from the Kentucky State Legislature, after 13 wonderful years of service there. And then you are still serving as a pilot, and pilot instructor.
Tim Moore: For the time being, yes, sir.
David Reagan: But you will retire from that in the summer of 2021?
Tim Moore: Well, I will move to this role primarily as my full-time job. And really already my commitment is here. And my wife would tell you, even though I am as you call a part-time volunteer evangelist, I dedicate well over 40 hours a week to serving in this role already.
David Reagan: Well, alright, you know you are appearing on our television programs. You are writing more articles for our magazine. You’re speaking at more conferences and churches. You’ve got a lot of experience.
Tim Moore: Well, I’ve been very blessed. And you know it is interesting to me you mentioned how the Lord had put a fire in your heart. I think He sparked that in my heart in 1993. And just like the prophet Jeremiah I feel that if I didn’t share that it would just burn up inside me. And I also take great assurance from something that A.W. Tozer once wrote, he said, “To the child of God there is no such thing as an accident. He travels an appointed way.” And so, even through all those meanderings the Lord was preparing me for this ministry, and even for this role.
David Reagan: In my book, “Trusting God” I emphasize the fact that in a believer’s life who is really walking by faith, there is no such thing as coincidence.
Tim Moore: No.
David Reagan: There is only God-incidence.
Tim Moore: It’s certainly true.
David Reagan: But, there is another thing you’ve done for this ministry, and that is to host pilgrimages to Israel. Tell us about that.
Tim Moore: Well, that has been a tremendous blessing because it utilizes all the skills that I’ve gained over the years. I would take groups of people on an airplane as part of my military duty. That is what I do with this ministry. I would share teachings through Sunday school and other settings, that’s what I do while in Israel. So, really all of the different elements of my careers over the years have blended together into that role. And of course, with your training I am just blessed, and feel very adequate for leading people, and its been a tremendous blessing to a number of folks.
David Reagan: Well, we announced to the public that this transition was going to take place back in July when we issued our magazine with your picture, and my picture on the front. I hope that didn’t scare people to death. So, that was the announcement to the public. And also, we had already made an announcement to our Prophecy Partners.
Tim Moore: Yes.
David Reagan: But in recent weeks we have referred to you on television as not only our associate evangelist, but as my designated successor, we’ve been getting letters saying, “What in the world does that mean?” So, we thought, well, we’ll go ahead and get on TV and explain what it means. We are in a slow-motion transition.
Tim Moore: Yes, sir.
David Reagan: Tell the folks about that.
Tim Moore: Well, I think I would assure our listeners that we intentionally set about a slow-motion transition. As a matter of fact, when Dave, you first brought this suggestion that I would be your successor to the board, they were enthusiastic, but we said, “I want you to wait.” Matter of fact I told them, “Wait four months until our next meeting because I wanted them to prayerfully weigh and come before the Lord to ask is this intention and will.” After four months of seeking His will, they affirmed unanimously.
David Reagan: Set up a transition committee.
Tim Moore: And set up a transition committee. And we determined this would not be an instantaneous transition, but it would be a slow motion. You all may not realize even as you watch this program how much Dave Reagan does, so not only is there a television program that we air weekly, there is a lot of time in preparation. A lot of behind the scene work that goes in to producing everyone of these programs. But whether it is developing and editing our magazine, whether it is writing books and articles, whether it is overseeing the ministry. We had now of course DVD’s, books, magazines, our web-based ministry with Nathan Jones. All of these different roles that David Reagan fulfills, and so to take all of that on at one lump sum would be a very difficult task. But we have wisely, and I would say you have wisely laid out a transition schedule, and we are right on track over that schedule.
David Reagan: Yeah, we have a transition committee that meets every month by phone, and we go over the transition schedule. Is there anything that needs to adjusted or changed? So, it is moving along smoothly at this point. As you look to the future do you see any major changes in the outreach of the ministry or the theme of the ministry, or the staff of the ministry?
Tim Moore: I don’t see any dramatic changes. As a matter of fact I think that we will stay, I know that we will stay true to the vision the Lord placed on your heart, and that now has again made a fire in my own heart, and that is to proclaim the soon return of Jesus Christ. My prayer is that the Lord returns before this transition is complete. We don’t know the timing. But if He does that would be a glorious coming together of all of Bible prophecy. But if He does not, we will be faithful to continue to declare that message.
David Reagan: Well, our viewers are very familiar with Nathan Jones, our Internet Evangelist because he serves as a co-host of this program. What will be his role in the future?
Tim Moore: we see in the future that becoming a growing portion of this ministry. More and more young people stream most of the television that they watch, and so we understand that the method of communicating with the world will change. Of course, when you started it was through cassette tapes, and then it was through just a mimeograph newsletter.
David Reagan: That’s right.
Tim Moore: Now, we have come a far piece from that with all of the other media outlets that we utilize right now, and that will only grow. So, Nathan, and the rest of our ministry team I can assure will have an important role to play.
David Reagan: Yeah, I tell people that our newsletter for many years was mimeographed, and most people I tell that to don’t even know what a mimeograph machine is.
Tim Moore: Well, I do. I do.
David Reagan: And my wife and I hand addressed hundreds of these things until finally we got our first computer. Oh, boy was that wonderful!
Tim Moore: Yes, sir. Well, I tell you what we, I know are going to continue to serve the Lord in a mighty way. And one of the things that I think is instructive is within our transition committee every time that we gather together, and sometimes it is by conference call, we have a key verse that we cite, and that is Proverbs 16:9. So, we have been very intentional about laying out a plan and a transition schedule. But here’s the verse, “The mind of man plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps.” And we have prayed, “Lord, we have a plan, but we want you to direct our step every day, every month, until this transition is complete, and ongoingly because certainly He has guided and directed our steps, and yours for the last 40 years.”
David Reagan: Yes, and I wanted to point out that in this particular special edition of our magazine about the transition, this was in July/August of 2019 we had endorsements, written endorsements by the chairman of our board, by my daughter who serves as the chief operating officer of this ministry, by Nathan Jones, by Bob Russell who is a former pastor of one of the largest churches in America and a good friend of yours.
Tim Moore: Yes.
David Reagan: By Joe Wright another former pastor of a megachurch, and by Albert Mohler who is the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
Tim Moore: Yes, sir.
David Reagan: I mean what more could you ask for?
Tim Moore: Well, we could ask for the continued blessing of the Lord, and that He has poured that out. We actually, I’ve utilized the transition plan book of Bob Russell, and you wisely had advised that. And Bob has continued to mentor through this. There is an old Jewish proverb that says, “If you think the world is going to end tomorrow, plant a tree today.” And really that summarizes, we believe that Jesus Christ is coming soon, and very soon. But we are still going to invest to the future, to make sure that this message continues to be proclaimed until He does arrive.
David Reagan: Absolutely, we believe that Jesus could come any moment, that there is not one prophecy that has to be fulfilled. But at the same time, we don’t when that is going to be.
Tim Moore: Exactly.
David Reagan: And so, we plan like it’s going to be a thousand years from now in terms of planning for the development of the ministry, the outreach of the ministry, and the increase in our Prophecy Partner Program, which is very important for the continuance of this ministry.
Tim Moore: Yes, sir, it is. And so, I would just say this, whether you are a Prophecy Partner, or whether you are just a viewer that is connected and affiliated with this ministry, we would welcome your ongoing prayers. We would covet your support, and I’m not talking just financially, but that is very important, but we would ask that you continue to raise up the entire ministry team here. Raise up this transition itself to make sure we stay true to the vision that the Lord laid on Dave’s heart to proclaim the soon return of Jesus Christ. And until He comes that will be our intention.
David Reagan: And all I can say to that is, amen, brother, and amen.
Tim Moore: Amen, and amen.
Closing
David Reagan: As we bring this program to a close, I’d like to ask you to put Tim and me on your prayer list and pray earnestly that the Lord will bless this slow motion transition over the next 19 months.
Well, folks, that’s our program for this week. I hope it’s been a blessing to you, and I hope, the Lord willing, you’ll be back with us next week. Until then, this is Dave Reagan speaking for Lamb & Lion Ministries saying, “Look up, be watchful, for our Redemption is drawing near!”