Editor’s Note: Sometimes you know a friend
for a longtime and then you find out something
about them that surprises you and you say
to yourself, “All these years and I never
knew this?”
the youth pastor at Be
a total of eighteen year
it was one of those cra
the youth group, Bill cam
and I came on staff. Tha
My friend Bob Kilpatrick was a regular columnist
for us for over 15 years. He was one of the early
Jesus Movement singer-songwriters (he even
wrote the iconic “In My Life, Lord Be Glorified”
worship song that has landed in 27 Hymnals).
I knew that about Bob, but what I didn’t know
until recently was that Bob was the first worship
leader at Bethel Church back in the day when
it first started in Redding, CA. When we were
planning this interview with Banning to discuss
the 20 th Anniversary of Jesus Culture I thought
to myself, “Who better than Bob?” to lead this
discussion. Here you go…
[WM] How did you come to Bethel?
[Banning Liebscher] Interestingly enough, I
am one of the few people at Bethel that was
actually born and raised in Redding. So many
people have moved to attend, but I was born in
Redding and I started attending Bethel before
Bill Johnson was there. I started attending
Bethel when I was seventeen years old in the
youth group. Then I got really heavily involved,
gave myself fully to Jesus at seventeen at Bethel.
I went to college for a year in Costa Mesa,
California, and I came back to do an internship
at Bethel for my sophomore year. During that
internship Bill came on as senior pastor, and I
just got wrecked. I just encountered the Lord
in a whole new way and got a heart for revival
and the Holy Spirit. So they hired me. I was a
nineteen-year-old intern, and at twenty they
hired me as an associate youth pastor. Then
at twenty-one the youth pastor left, and they
came to me and said, “Bill would like you to be
the youth pastor” and I said, “No”. I told him I
don’t feel called to young people, and I don’t
feel called to the local church, I just want to
travel and preach! (laughs) There were a handful
of things that happened: I thought I was going
away to a ministry school, and that didn’t work
out, and so I ended up saying yes to being
[WM] So you were t
things started happenin
[Banning] Yeah, what
that we just had a real h
impacted. We were go
our city, doing a prayer
nights, all of this stuff.
would have been in 19
on a youth conference.
if we could help serve y
know what to call it. So
the Mount Shasta Mall,
store, and they carried
Counter Culture. I saw
Culture and I thought,
raising up a generation
But I didn’t want it to ju
wanted it to be a Jesus
the conference Jesus
didn’t name all of our c
did our summer confer
conference, and that n
we just started calling ev
(laughs) Every conferen
Culture, if we had any
Culture. The conference
we were finding was tha
part of this time with te
encountering these teen
home changed becaus
the presence of God. W
back from parents sayin
happened but my kid is d
was because of these w
knows Jesus Culture, it’
and Chris Quilala have
what we’ve done, they
known worship leaders.
us now, like the Torwa
were kind of the first, an
the youth group.
June 2020