March 28, 2025
Asking the Right Questions
WBS Alumnus Andreas Kjernald has been led by the Spirit through curiosity
Andreas Kjernald has moved across the Atlantic five times. Originally from Sweden, he now serves as a Global Methodist Pastor at Piney Grove Methodist Church in Siler City, North Carolina. Along the way, God has worked in his life to give him an experience of transformational holiness that now drives him to seek better ways to communicate the message of Scriptural Holiness to the next generation.
Andreas’s grandfather was a UMC minister, and his family of origin was heavily involved in UMC Sweden, both on the local and national level. Methodists were a small church in Sweden until they merged with two other denominations in 2011, so he felt as if he knew most people in the denomination. “It’s difficult for Americans to understand the deep cultural impact of having an established State Church for a thousand years, like Sweden had with the Lutheran-based Church of Sweden until 2000,” Andreas explains. “Even other denominations are seen in terms of how they react or relate to Lutheranism. This has led to a Christianity that is more about doing certain religious (and political) things than a living relationship with a living Jesus.”
Today, Sweden is highly secular, with atheism the assumed norm and public expressions of faith simply unthinkable, Andreas says. Although he cautions against any stereotype of a whole nation, he acknowledges a general sense of pride in rationalism and critical “from below” thinking. While these traits may not seem like a great foundation for faith, they have helped push Andreas to be an inquisitive student and seeker of truth, dissatisfied with shallow and anemic expressions of the Church.
Coming into Harbor
As he grew up, Andreas left the church and the faith. “I lived outside the kingdom of God for years,” he says. It was during this time that his first move across “the pond” occurred. A series of events opened the door for him to become a student at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky, in 1996. He ended up staying for only one semester, but it proved to be a momentous time. “I got a D- in my Spiritual Formation class,” he recalls ironically, “but it was during that same time that God was drawing me to give my life to Christ. An avid sailor, he says the image he had in that moment was that his life was like a tiny boat adrift in a storm, that finally comes into a safe harbor.
One influence in that journey was a roommate who did not fit the “rational but dry” style Andreas was comfortable with. “He seemed like a Christian fanatic nut job,” Andreas says. “He had a big Christian flag and cross up in the dorm room, and he talked about seeing demons and praying them away.” Nevertheless, God used him and others like him to reach Andreas. Despite growing up in the church, he says, “It was the first time in my life I met actual Christians who were my age.” Andreas recalls that the actual moment he gave his life to Christ was in the car with the young woman who would end up becoming his wife. “My roommate was angry,” Andreas recalls with some humor; “he had endured all my questioning about faith, only to not be there when I accepted Christ!” In fact, his roommate ended up being the best man at his wedding.
Called and Sanctified
Andreas pursued a career as a firefighter, first in Kentucky and then after moving back to Sweden. However, when a job opportunity did not work out, he distinctly heard an internal voice from the Lord indicating that he was being called into ministry. “My wife and my firefighter friends were not surprised,” he notes; “the only person who might have been surprised was my childhood pastor, who later become my ministry mentor!”
During those years Andreas had had an experience of entire sanctification. While at the fire department in Kentucky, his old roommate came to see him and began talking about living in victory over sin. “I thought he was out of his mind again,” Andreas says. Nevertheless, he was curious and began a process of questioning and research. One Saturday near Easter time, he recalls borrowing the key to his local church in Wilmore and kneeling before a large cross that had been set up. He found himself able to truly give his whole life to Christ, not this time for forgiveness of sins, but for the full surrender of his identity and his will.
Andreas was not interested in an emotional high but in a real encounter with God’s Spirit. One “sign” of the genuineness of this experience was that severe and quite demonic nightmares he had suffered with much of his life stopped at that time. An even greater evidence was an outpouring of love. “Normally, we all feel an emotional love for those who love us back,” Andreas explains, “but I experience a genuine love for all people flowing through me that I knew was not my own love but the love of God in me. As an introverted, quiet, Swedish dude, this was radical for me.”
The Dream Team
As he pursued a call to ministry, Andreas found his way to Wesley Biblical Seminary (class of ’07). “I experienced the ‘Dream Team’ there,” he recalls, “Ury, Oswald, Cockerill, Steveline, Blakemore, and others.” Here, his rational and inquisitive side could find full reign to explore the depths of theology and philosophy within the guard rails of an environment founded on the inerrancy of Scripture. He saw that the foundations of faith connect back to the whole consensual, orthodox tradition of the Church. “If you don’t have the experience of that kind of education, you’re going to make crucial mistakes as a pastor,” he says. “Either you’ll be afraid to be inquisitive because you lack a firm foundation for faith, or you’ll believe anything just because it sounds good to you or it’s fashionable.”
However, it was not only the teaching his professors shared that impacted Andreas; it was also how they shared their lives. As an example, he recalls being invited to dinner at Dr. Bill Ury’s house. The whole family was there, and after the meal, a discussion arose with one of Bill’s children about using curse words. “He didn’t just tell them a rule,” Andreas says; “he used the opportunity to start a whole theological discussion, talking to the kids at their level about the reasons why swearing was wrong, and it worked!” Andreas says Dr. Ury’s example continues to shape the kind of person, theologian, and father he is today to his own children.
Equipped with a solid theological foundation and a living relationship with God’s Spirit, Andreas returned to Europe, serving as a pastor in the UMC of Sweden and Norway in 6 different churches for over 17 years. He and his wife have also run an orphanage in Nepal for several years. In Sweden, where liberal theology was dominant in the Methodist Church, Andreas faced great pressures and challenges. Some of the same people who had been his earliest experience of Christianity as a child now responded angrily to him when he expressed convictions about the truth of God’s Word. “I would not have been able to face that onslaught without the equipping I received at WBS,” he notes. As it was, he was able to be a faithful witness, striving to preach the true gospel of salvation and sanctification.
Preaching Holiness
God moved in Andreas’ life once again 10 months ago by opening up a door to come back to the United States. A friend from Denmark whose sister was a leader in the Global Methodist church mentioned that he might be a good fit for the emerging church. After conversations with denominational leaders, things moved quickly. He was matched with a. church that welcomed him, and he quickly was able to move. His wife Laurie and sons Samuel and David are still back in Norway, either selling a house and ending a career there (Laurie), going to high school (David), or starting his life as a youth leader in a church (Samuel). Laurie and David will join him later this summer. “The congregation has shown such radical kindness to me while I have been here by myself,” he says, “and an encouraging witness of and openness to the full gospel. I don’t think I could’ve left my family behind for so long if the Lord hadn’t so clearly led me to where I am and without the love of my new church.”
A burden for Andreas is finding new ways to communicate the message of sanctification to a new generation. “My generation does not have a clue what Scriptural holiness is,” he notes. I am so thankful to those who have gone before me and taught me this essential truth of the gospel. Now, it is my turn to pass it on to the next generation, difficult as it is. It seems, though, that Andreas’ intellectual rigor and willingness to ask the right questions have uniquely prepared him to take on that challenge.
“I once heard Diane Ury speak of her journey to holiness and how difficult and elusive it had been,” he says. “I thought to myself, if this amazing Christian who I look up to sought holiness for years and didn’t “get it”, how can anyone? It made me think of using that angle to approach the topic, the angle of holiness as ‘Elusive.’ This means holiness is not easy, nor is it obvious to modern ears. However, when we seek it, not as if it were a thing we can possess, but as the gift of God’s own self…that is always intriguing and attractive even in our day.” For Andreas, a life of learning to ask the right questions has led to the ultimate question for all of us: How we can continuously surrender ourselves to experience more of God. That is a question God loves to answer.