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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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

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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.�

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

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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

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Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. It�s, I think in real time, it�s

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April 1st. No co -time, it�s, I don�t know, I look at Twitter.

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Probably, I don�t know, I do the Hootsuite thing so I can preload posts.

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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.

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We have, I think I used to follow 500 people and we are whittled down to about 337 today.

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I think I got rid of most everybody that says they�re a Christian and they�re a

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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.

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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

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I subscribe to Reuters, Jerusalem Post, Washington Post, Huffington Post.

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I think I do follow HuffPo religion because it�s a bunch of kookies, kooks and barnies.

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But 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

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Christians need to do this and if you�re not a Christian, you can�t do that. What about what

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Ted Cruz believed about NAR and I don�t know, I just think

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Christians probably should be more gospel -centered as some people have been posting these days on Twitter.

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I don�t like it, but I�m going to say it. R. Scott Clarke, if you�re listening, plug your ears, gospel -licious.

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There are some Gospel Coalition people posting that and I think I�ve not only unfollowed all the

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Gospel Coalition people, except I think Kevin DeYoung, I like Kevin DeYoung, but the political things

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I�ve pretty much stopped following. Anyway, maybe we can get back to sanity at another time.

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Who else do I follow? I don�t know. Real men style, but here�s my point.

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I expect the politicians and the pundits to pundify about politicians, but I�d like some quotes about the

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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

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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.

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Now their magazine, back in the day we left Baptist General Conference because I think three particular reasons.

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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

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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.

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They�re throwing a Bible verse here or there, but that�s not truly integration. All ismists.

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And what was the third reason? I don�t know, maybe easy believism or something like that.

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I�m not sure. But I would leave the Baptist General Conference, I think the only person you probably know about who�s a

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Baptist General Conference person is John Piper. Although now that he�s retired,

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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,

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I think, live bands at all the places, but then you only get the preacher. I think his name is Jason now, at one particular place.

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If I lived in Minnesota, I�d want to know what the secret random calculator was like.

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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.

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I would have probably guessed that they would have had to close a campus after Piper retired. They needed to close at least one campus.

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But maybe not. Maybe things are going gangbusters here in Minnesota. I went to the

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Minnesota State Fair once. Talk about awesome onion rings. Talk about everything fried awesome.

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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

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Baptists. We are particular Baptists. I don�t think it�s technical, but we�ll just make things up here in No Compromise Radio.

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Hey, it�s my show, and the beatings will continue until the morale increases.

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We�re not general Baptists. We are particular Baptists, and we don�t believe

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Jesus died generally. We believe he died particularly. Why?

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Because it�s exegetically true, systematically true.

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Biblical, theologically true, biblically true in the theological fashion. So we believe he died for his bride.

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We believe he died for the sheep. We believe he died for the church, and them alone.

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Because if Jesus dies for you, you�re going to heaven, friend. What sin is there for you to pay for?

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Oh, lack of faith? Well, no, he died for those sins as well. So you need to read

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The Death of Death and the Death of Christ by John Owen for some help.

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But anyway, I just walked outside in between shows. I just kind of take a breather. I found some

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M &Ms in the little children�s room, so I had a few of those. No, they were just in the kitchen.

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I remember once when it was�we�ve got a little ramp here to go up and out of the parking lot.

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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.

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It�s too snowy, too icy, too slippery. And I was here. Somebody said they could pick me up at 5 p .m.,

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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.

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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.

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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

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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 ?�

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�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.�

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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.

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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.

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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,

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HP -61. I don�t know, it�s not an HP -61, but that�s the cartridge that it takes.

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Anyway, I�ve got this thing out there, Converge Point Spring 2016

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Baptist General Conference. Close the back door. Five states of church health preventing burnout, assimilating visitors.

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It says on the inside by Scott Riddout, president of Converge. See, Baptist General Conference, they�re into that too, �collision, collide, converge, confluence, congruence, conflagulation.�

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That�s a good name for a church. That�ll work if preaching the Bible verse by verse and for my

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Presbyterian friends and the proper administration of the sacraments and for my even more

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Presbyterian uber -reformed friends, proper church discipline. If that doesn�t work, then

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I don�t know, maybe it�s back door, front door, conflagulation, convergence, assimilation, malk.

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In a recent devotion time, I came across this verse, �Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, seeking the

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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.

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I find this difficult because ministry is very demanding, extremely complicated, and always messy. Messy Jesse.

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�Leading a church requires great knowledge, skill, character, and vision.� What if I�m short on the vision?

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�Building effective ministry teams require good strategies and effective implementation.�

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�Overcoming the obstacles that accompany our work require grit, tenacity, dependence, and determination, which cause many to give up.�

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In our winter edition of Point, we challenged our leaders to open the front door, converge, exist to help people meet, know, and follow

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Jesus by starting and strengthening churches together worldwide. We open the front door by sending church planters and missionaries while we all live evangelistic lifestyles.

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See, here�s my point on No Compromise Radio. You cannot run from this these days in evangelicalism.

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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.

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It doesn�t work. I want you to live a godly life. I want you to live a moral life,

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I mean like New Testament imperative moral life while we all live evangelistic lifestyles.

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Now, 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?

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But this is evangelical speak. I don�t think he really is thinking through the issue.

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I think we talk this way so much, this is the air we breathe. It doesn�t make any difference to us.

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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.

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No, no, it�s just, we�re just floating along, no problem, living evangelistic lifestyles.

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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.

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Evangelistic lifestyles have not saved one person in the history of the universe, in the history of time.

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No one has gotten saved by watching someone�s life. You could even watch

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Jesus�s life and still not get saved, right?

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How much less would you have an opportunity to get saved by watching somebody�s life who�s not sinless?

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In this issue, we focus on closing the backdoor. So many factors contribute to a backdoor fight of people leaving the church.

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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.

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The backdoor problem may be a result of leadership�s ill health, difficulty with adjustments to change, or some other factor.

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It is paramount for our leaders to be able to assess, address, and overcome these issues to stay on mission.

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The desire of our district, national, and international team is to see your ministry thrive. Healthy leaders living out a

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God -centered vision and promoting God -honoring action result in the breakthrough in church health and growth

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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.

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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?

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How about that? And then a real anchoring in the truth that if we do that, that is enough.

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And if we do that and we�re persecuted, killed, we don�t thrive, we don�t converge, we don�t collide, we shrink.

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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.

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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.

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We want Colossians 1, 28 and 29 and 30, the growth of the

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Christian, maturing, 1 Peter 2, 1 and 2. We want you to grow and mature, 2

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Peter 3, and grow in grace and the knowledge of the truth. We want that.

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We want you to grow. But in terms of church growth with new people, more people, nickels and noses, assets, buildings, and cash, the

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ABCs of church growth, pennies and�oh, what�s their other slogan?

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Ministry thriving. Boy, he�s got a thriving ministry. I don�t know who talks this way.

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If this is the leadership of Baptist General Conference, then I�m glad we said, �C�s la vie� 15 years ago.

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We should have said it 19 years ago, but I didn�t want to change things that fast. The other one

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I remember now is women in leadership positions in ministry, preaching, teaching, elders, that type of thing.

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That was the other reason we left the Baptist General Conference. I remember when

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I met with the district manager, whatever the position was, and I was young, 36.

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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.

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Just preach it away, and MacArthur as an example of just somebody who�s going to preach and whatever happens, happens.

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Then they did say to me, �You�re leaving the conference because MacArthur told you to, right ?� I said, �I never even asked

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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.

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But how long can you give money to the Baptist General Conference when this is the stuff you get from them?

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I can be taught. I regularly think, �Boy, I just need to be a better learner.� I could learn a lot from people.

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I like to read books, and I like to hear messages by men, and I just think, �How inadequate am

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I, yet God still uses me? I want to learn more. I want to live out what

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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.�

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I think that way all the time, but I don�t want to learn from people who are so man -centered and who so compromise.

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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.

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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.

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It�s over. I don�t want to listen anymore. I want to follow men who have a

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God -directed view of ministry.

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That is to say, �God, if you�re pleased, come hell or high water. I don�t care what happens, and if you�re not pleased, thriving ministries, converging ministries, colliding ministries, conflagration ministries, confluence ministries, contouring ministries, confabulation ministries.�

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And I�m trying to think of another good word that starts with �con.� �Con,

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I think, in Espanol is �with.� Yes? You see? Yes? What did poor

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Isaiah do? He saw how holy God was, therefore saw how sinful he was, asked

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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.

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That�s the word used in Isaiah 6. Did you know that? Kippur, to cover. Never say to somebody when you go buy a meal, �I�ve got it covered.�

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Similar to that. And then he responds, Isaiah does, to sovereignly initiated grace, �I�ll go wherever.�

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God said, �Okay, there�s going to be a stump, a little remnant, but basically you�re going to go harden people�s hearts.

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You�re going to go thrive. Go thrive, Jeremiah. Thrive away.

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Thrive, she said.� See, this kind of stuff makes me want to be an

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OPC person, but they have their problems too.

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Do I even go farther? Do I go farther? I don�t know.

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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.

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I would love a sabbatical. I haven�t picked one up in 10 years, now I know why. The back, it�s got

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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

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Minnesota campuses during the weekend of January 31 to February 1.�

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So we�ve got Eagle Brook Church�s Minnesota campuses, weekend between the 31st and the 1st.

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My guess is because they have what kind of services? Not just Sunday morning, but they�ve also got

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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.

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I want to think it�s called the Lord�s Day. So many baptisms we had.

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All right, �It�ll make or break your church.�

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�A church board can help or hinder your church�s pursuit of Christ�s mission.� Here�s how any board can become better.

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Church board. Well, let�s see. Maybe number one, church board.

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Elders are the church board. No, no, they don�t say that. I wonder why. I don�t know.

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Maybe it�s church in a box. Maybe we have leaders and trustees and tensions, board meetings.

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Board make decisions. It doesn�t tell me here. I�m looking for verses. United in spirit, intent on one purpose,

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Philippians 2. That�s good. I�d like to know who are these church boards. How are these church boards made?

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How do we make up a church board? Who�s on the church board? What are the qualifications for a church board?

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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.

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I don�t know about executive sounding boards. I don�t know about pulse takers.

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Do you have pulse takers at your church? Now that makes it an easy joke.

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What�s the pulse of the church, not are the people in the church alive or dead? Pulse takers, the old pulse taker trick.

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See, I never learned that, the pulse takers. We have the dance team ministry with the streamers to start off the show.

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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?

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We have the Mariachi Marrakesh.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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I�m on dividing line. I just sit here and play words with friends. Just James, I�m just kidding.

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I know Reformed Baptists have a hard time taking jokes. But here on the radio show,

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No Compromise Radio, here�s what we�re after. Now here�s the punchline. It�s a short punchline, but it�s needed.

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Friend, if you teach Sunday School, if you teach your children, if you have a small, quote -unquote, �ministry of church ,� all

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God requires of you is faithfulness. Not thriving, not contouring, not converging, not conforming.

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Just be faithful in the small things, that�s all God requires. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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.

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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.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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