Converge Collide Confabulate

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Social Media, Christian Politics, and Why He Unfollows People

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry, my name is Mike Abendroth. I think in real time, it�s April 1st. No code time, I don�t know. Look at Twitter, probably, I don�t know, I do the Hootsuite thing so I can preload posts, and I have whittled down, I�m going to actually pull this up here.

If you want to follow us at Twitter, it is at NOCORADIO, N-O-C-O-R-A-D-I-O, and bingo was his name-o. We have, I think I used to follow 500 people, and we are whittled down to about 337 today.

I think I got rid of most everybody that says they�re a Christian, and they�re a Christian leader. I don�t know if they say they�re a Christian, but they�re a Christian leader, and they like to be super political.

I think there was a couple exceptions I think I kept, but most of the time, if you�re always talking about politics, that�s why I subscribe to Reuters, Jerusalem Post, Washington Post, Huffington Post.

I think I do follow HuffPo religion because it�s a bunch of kookies, kooks and barnies. Anyway, so many people are on either for Trump or against Trump, and you can be whatever you want, frankly, but I get tired of saying basically all Christians need to do this, and if you�re not a Christian, you can�t do that.

What about what Ted Cruz believed about NAR? I don�t know. I just think Christians probably should be more gospel-centered, as some people have been posting these days on Twitter. I don�t like it, but I�m going to say it.

R. Scott Clark, if you�re listening, plug your ears. Gospelicious. There are some Gospel Coalition people posting that, and I think I�ve not only unfollowed Gospel Coalition people, except, I think, Kevin DeYoung.

I like Kevin DeYoung, but the political things, I�ve pretty much stopped following anyway. Maybe we can get back to sanity at another time. Who else do I follow? I don�t know, real men style, but here�s my point.

I expect the politicians and the pundits to pundify about politicians, but I�d like some quotes about the Bible or something related to it if you�re a Christian person. I just went outside to get the mail, and we�re no longer a Baptist General Conference church.

We haven�t been a Baptist General Conference church for one, five years, 15 years, a decade and a half, yet we still get their magazine. Now their magazine, back in the day, we left Baptist General Conference because I think three particular reasons.

But now that I think about it, four, but three at the time. One was they were following every church growth strategy under the sun, including Bill Hybels, and on the magazine, Bill Hybels was regularly found, so that�s strike one.

Strike two, they were very into psychological counseling, and I wouldn�t even say it was integration. They�re throwing a Bible verse here or there, but that�s not truly integration. All Islamists. And what was the third reason?

I don�t know, maybe easy-believism or something like that. I�m not sure. But I would leave the Baptist General Conference, and I think the only person you probably know about who�s a Baptist General Conference person is John Piper, although now that he�s retired, I don�t know if he�s a Baptist General Conference or not, I would imagine.

I think all the multi-campuses there, you show up and you have, I think, live bands at all the places, but then you only get the preacher. I think his name�s Jason now, at one particular place. If I lived in Minnesota, I�d want to know what the secret random calculator was like.

Will he be on campus one here, no, he�s going to drive over there, how does that all work? Maybe they�ve since changed it, but I don�t think so. I would have probably guessed that they would have had to close a campus after Piper retired.

They�d need to close at least one campus, but maybe not. Maybe things are going gangbusters here in Minnesota. I went to the Minnesota State Fair once. Talk about awesome onion rings. Talk about everything fried awesome.

Wow. Anyway, back to Baptist General Conference. The last reason we�re not Baptist General Conference. The most important reason, really. We�re not General Baptists. We are Particular Baptists. I don�t think it�s technical, but we�ll just make things up here on No Compromise Radio.

Hey, it�s my show, and the beatings will continue until the morale increases. We�re not General Baptists. We are Particular Baptists, and we don�t believe Jesus died generally. We believe he died particularly.

Why? Because it�s exegetically true, systematically true, biblical theologically true, biblically true in the theological fashion. So we believe he died for his bride. We believe he died for the sheep.

We believe he died for the church, and them alone. Because if Jesus dies for you, you�re going to heaven, friend. What sin is there for you to pay for? Oh, lack of faith? Well, no, he died for those sins as well.

So you need to read The Death of Death and the Death of Christ by John Owen for some help. But anyway, I just walked outside in between shows. I just kind of take a breather. I found some M &Ms in the little children�s room, so I had a few of those.

No, they were just in the kitchen. I remember once when it was�we�ve got a little ramp here to go up and out of the parking lot. There�s just one entrance, one exit. And I had a two-wheel drive truck from Los Angeles, long story, couldn�t get out of the parking lot.

It�s too snowy, too icy, too slippery. And I was here. Somebody said they could pick me up at 5 p .m., and you know, it�s 11 a .m. No lunch. I�m looking around in the nursery for goldfish crackers or soup crackers, oyster soup crackers.

What do they call it? Oyster crackers? Oyster soup crackers? I don�t know. I love raw oysters, but I�m just�oysters, but I�m afraid. I�m afraid to eat them, because I�m going to get sick. So that�s why I had the steak tartare today.

I don�t think I�ll ever make it back to India. But when I�m in India, I just go to the pharmacy and say, �Could I have some of those deworming pills �Oh, sure. How many do you want? How many do you think I need?

I�d take one of these two times a day for 10 days, you�ll get dewormed. See, if you like sushi, then� See, here�s my problem. You can identify, I�m sure. If you like sushi, but can�t really afford it, you�ve got to go for the cheaper sushi, you know, the grocery store kind.

And since I don�t like the California roll imitation crab kind of sushi, which isn�t sushi at all, then you�re taking chances. The bad news is you could get bugs. The good news is it�s so cheap there that the sushi chefs slice the fish so thinly that I could put it in my inkjet printer, HP -61.

I don�t know, it�s not an HP -61, but that�s the cartridge that it takes. Anyway, I�ve got this thing out there, Converge Point Spring 2016. Baptist General Conference. Close the back door. Five states of church health preventing burnout, assimilating visitors.

It says on the inside by Scott Ridout, president of Converge. See, Baptist General Conference, they�re into that too. Collision, collide, converge, confluence, congruence, conflagulation, that�s a good name for a church.

That�ll work if preaching the Bible verse by verse and for my Presbyterian friends and the proper administration of the sacraments and for my even more Presbyterian uber-reformed friends, proper church discipline.

If that doesn�t work, then I don�t know, maybe it�s back door, front door, conflagulation, convergence, assimilation, milk. In a recent devotion time, I came across this verse, �Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, seeking the Lord Romans 12 .11.

The apostle Paul challenges us to keep our focus on Christ and to let him be the fuel and focus of our service to God. I find this difficult because ministry is very demanding, extremely complicated, and always messy, Messy Jesse.

Leading a church requires great knowledge, skill, character, and vision, building effective ministry teams require good strategies and effective implementation, overcoming the obstacles that accompany our work require grit, tenacity, dependence, and determination, which cause many to give up.

In our winter edition of Point, we challenged our leaders to open the front door, converge, exist to help people meet, know, and follow Jesus by starting and strengthening churches together worldwide.

We open the front door by sending church planners and missionaries while we all live evangelistic lifestyles. You know, see, here�s my point on No Compromise Radio. You cannot run from this these days in evangelicalism.

You know, this whole lifestyle of evangelism, lifestyle, live like Jesus life, that has nothing to do with good news, zero, nil, none, empty set, no set, subsets, conflagration sets. It doesn�t work. I want you to live a godly life.

I want you to live a moral life. I mean, like New Testament imperative moral life. While we all live evangelistic lifestyles, and let�s just stop there for a second and let that sink in. Selah. Okay, if I were to tell you, go live an evangelistic lifestyle, what would you do?

But this is evangelical speak. I don�t think he really is thinking through the issue. I think we talk this way so much. This is the air we breathe. It doesn�t make any difference to us. You know, it�s not like we�re a fish that�s on the side of the ocean and it�s laying there up on the beach and we�re trying to breathe oxygen through the water, but now there�s no water so the gills are just opening and closing, desperately trying to get oxygen out of the air.

No, no, it�s just, we�re just floating along, no problem, living evangelistic lifestyles. I�ve said it before and I�ll say it right now. It�s a waste of time to say what I just said, but that�s just for emphasis.

Evangelistic lifestyles have not saved one person in the history of the universe, in the history of time. No one has gotten saved by watching someone�s life. You could even watch Jesus�s life and still not get saved, right?

How much less would you watch, how much less would you have an opportunity to get saved by watching somebody�s life who�s not sinless? In this issue we focus on closing the backdoor. So many factors contribute to a backdoor fight of people leaving the church, pastoral problems, congregational crises, poor systems, I didn�t learn much about systems in seminary, and lack of succession plans are just a few we experience in our churches.

The backdoor problem may be a result of leadership�s ill health, difficulty with adjustments to change, or some other factor. It is paramount for our leaders to be able to assess, address, and overcome these issues to stay on mission.

The desire of our district, national, and international team is to see your ministry thrive. Healthy leaders living out a God-centered vision and promoting God-honoring action result in the breakthrough in church health and growth God desires.

We pray this issue will give you the tools you need for a vibrant future. I have a question for the listeners and for this man as well, I forgot his name already and I can�t read it because I ripped the page up.

How about faithfulness to the gospel and its proclamation? How about that? And then a real anchoring in the truth that if we do that, that is enough. And if we do that and we�re persecuted, killed, we don�t thrive, we don�t converge, we don�t collide, we shrink.

Listen, I�m not one of these people that say, �Well, you know what? You�re not really a faithful church unless you�re tiny. Any big church, they compromise. It�s not that at all. God sovereignly and providentially can do whatever he�d like in terms of church size, but the focus isn�t on this kind of growth, front-door, back-door growth.

We want Colossians 1, 28 and 29 and 30, the growth of the Christian, maturing, 1 Peter 2, 1 and 2, we want you to grow and mature, 2 Peter 3, and grow in grace and the knowledge of the truth. We want that.

We want you to grow. But in terms of church growth with new people, more people, nickels and noses, assets, buildings and cash, the ABCs of church growth, pennies and�oh, what�s their other slogan? Ministry thriving.

Boy, he�s got a thriving ministry. I don�t know who talks this way. If this is the leadership of Baptist General Conference, then I�m glad we said, �C�s la vie� 15 years ago. We should have said it 19 years ago, but I didn�t want to change things that fast.

Oh, the other one I remember now is women in leadership positions in ministry, preaching, teaching, elders, that type of thing. That was the other reason we left the Baptist General Conference. I remember when I met with the district manager, whoever the�whatever the position was, and I was young, 36.

I probably shouldn�t have been a pastor, but I did know you preach the Bible verse by verse, and whatever happens, happens, beholden to no man type of attitude. Just preach it away, and MacArthur as an example of just somebody who�s going to preach and whatever happens, happens.

Then they did say to me, �You�re leaving the conference because MacArthur told you to, right I said, �I never even asked John. John would probably tell me to hang in there a little bit longer and don�t change within the first couple of years something that�s as big as leaving a denomination.

But how long can you give money to the Baptist General Conference when this is the stuff you get from them I can be taught. I regularly think, �Boy, I just need to be a better learner. I could learn a lot from people.

I like to read books, and I like to hear messages by men, and I just think, �How inadequate am I, yet God still uses me I want to learn more. I want to live out what I�ve learned more in terms of a response to who the Lord is and what He�s done, and I�d like to be faithful.

I think that way all the time, but I don�t want to learn from people who are so man-centered and who are so compromised. I don�t want to learn from them. I could learn from them. There�s something in their life about maybe humility, the way they raise their kids, the way they treat their wife.

I�m sure I could learn from them, but I don�t want to learn from them, because once you have a man-centered view of ministry, it is over for me. It�s over. I don�t want to listen anymore. I want to follow men who have a God-directed view of ministry.

That is to say, �God, if you�re pleased, come hell or high water. I don�t care what happens. If you�re not pleased, thriving ministries, converging ministries, colliding ministries, conflagration ministries, confluence ministries, contouring ministries, confabulation ministries�I�m trying to think of another good word that starts with �con.

Con, I think, in Espanol is �with. Yes? You see? Yes? What did poor Isaiah do? Saw how holy God was, therefore saw how sinful he was. Asked God to judge him. The judging angel came, but instead of judging him, gave him a cleansing�sovereignly initiated cleansing�of course, based on the future work of Christ, the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate propitiatory sacrifice.

That�s the word used in Isaiah 6. Did you know that? Kippur, to cover. You ever say to somebody when you go buy a meal, �I�ve got it covered. Similar to that. And then he responds, Isaiah does, to sovereignly initiated grace, �I�ll go wherever.

God said, �Okay, there�s going to be a stump, a little remnant, but basically you�re going to go harden people�s hearts. You�re going to go thrive. Go thrive, Jeremiah. Thrive away. Thrive, she said.

See, this kind of stuff makes me want to be an OPC person. But they have their problems, too. Do I even go farther? Do I go farther? I don�t know. I�m kind of afraid, in the back it says, �Ready for a sabbatical.

Yes, I am ready for a sabbatical from man-centered magazines like Converge. I would love a sabbatical. I haven�t picked one up in 10 years, now I know why. The back, it�s got Converge Connection, Numbers, 990, shows a woman kind of two hands up in the air, water, name tag, black gown deal, and it says, �Number of baptisms on Eagle Brook Church�s 6th Minnesota campuses during the weekend of January 31 to February 1.

So we�ve got Eagle Brook Church�s Minnesota campuses, weekend between the 31st and the 1st. My guess is because they have what kind of services? Not just Sunday morning, but they�ve also got Saturday night.

Side note, if you want to have a Saturday night service, you could have a service every night of the week, but not at the expense of Sunday. I want to think it�s called the Lord�s Day. So many baptisms we had.

Hoorah. All right. It�ll make or break your church. �A church board can help or hinder your church�s pursuit of Christ�s mission. Here�s how any board can become better. Church board. Well, let�s see, maybe number one, church board.

Elders are the church board. No, no. They don�t say that. I wonder why. I don�t know. Maybe it�s church in a box. Maybe we have leaders and trustees and tensions, board meetings. Board make decisions.

It doesn�t tell me here. I�m looking for verses. United in spirit, intent on one purpose, Philippians 2. That�s good. I�d like to know who are these church boards. How are these church boards made? How would we make up a church board?

Who�s on the church board? What are the qualifications for a church board? That�s what I would like to know. I don�t need to know about church-wide crisis management. I don�t know for implementing vision stuff.

I don�t know about executive sounding boards. I don�t know about pulse takers. Do you have pulse takers at your church? Now that makes it an easy joke. What�s the pulse of the church, not are the people in the church alive or dead?

Pulse takers. The old pulse taker trick. See, I never learned that, the pulse takers. Excuse me. We have the dance team ministry with the streamers to start off the show. That�s the call to start off the show.

I almost said that would have been true. Start the show. And then we have, what else do we have? We have the Mariachi Marrakesh. See, this is the problem. If you�re going to look at Twitter while you�re talking on the radio, you probably shouldn�t do it anymore because sometimes I�ll talk to Twitter.

I mean, I�ll look at Twitter when Steve�s talking because I just, you know, I can do two things at once. If I interview James White or somebody, they just kind of go on and on and on because James is dividing the line wherever he goes.

I don�t have to say anything except, �Hi, James. What�s going on with you And then for 24 and a half minutes, he talks and I think I�m on dividing line. I just sit here and play words with friends.

Just James. I�m just kidding. I know Reformed Baptists have a hard time taking jokes, but here on the radio show, No Compromise Radio, here�s what we�re after. Now, here�s the punchline. It�s a short punchline, but it�s needed.

Friend, if you teach Sunday school, if you teach your children, if you have a small, quote-unquote, �ministry of church all God requires of you is faithfulness. Not thriving, not contouring, not converging, not conflagration.

Faithfulness. Just be faithful in the small things. That�s all God requires.

Ministry Faithfulness Over Church Growth Metrics

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God�s Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We�re right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.