Todd Burgett Interview

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. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

My name is Mike Abendroth, Michael Lee Abendroth. Family fight. Used to be the Abendroths, and now we're the

Abendroths, so see how that works. Speaking of seeing how that works, I like Wednesdays, because I have guests on.

International guests, famous guests, infamous guests of world renown, and today is no different.

We have Pastor Todd Burgett here on the line. Todd, welcome to No Compromise Radio. Thank you,

Mike, it's great being here today. What is that thing at the end of your name there, a lot of letters, the ESQ?

What's that mean? Esquire? Yeah, I have no idea.

I'm not an Esquire, I have no extra initials. There you go. Well, Todd and I, we'll have full disclosure, are friends, and he pastors

Orchard Community Church, and if you want to go online and listen to some of Todd's sermons, it's orchardcommunity .org,

and it's just pretty close to my wife's home in Santa Cruz. Tell us about where you're ministering,

Todd, and how you got there. I think that'll be a good place to start. Yeah, that's great. It's Orchard Community Church, and we're in Campbell, California, which is a little suburb of San Jose, California, which is right in the heart of Silicon Valley.

We're literally a mile from eBay in one direction, and another mile from Netflix in another direction, so we're like right there in Silicon Valley.

I've just celebrated my seventh anniversary as the lead pastor here at Orchard Community Church.

I've served as a pastor in the San Jose area for 23 years. It's been my home.

It's where I've grown up, and I've had the privilege of serving here for over two and a half decades, or getting close to two and a half decades.

Todd, when I look at your bio online at orchardcommunity .org, grew up in San Jose, graduated from San Jose Christian College, graduated from San Jose State University, served as youth ministry intern at Los Gatos Christian Church, which is close by, and then you got your doctorate of theology at San Jose Seminary.

How'd that happen? San Jose Seminary? No, there's no such seminary here.

I have always been in probably taking my education from what's convenient.

San Jose Christian College was local. It's now Jessup University. San Jose State. I really sensed a call of ministry in high school from my youth pastor, kind of threw it at me, and I was really offended.

He said, what are you going to do after high school? And I said, I don't know. He said, I think you'd be a great youth pastor, and I thought he was crazy.

I was insulted, but I couldn't get away from it for about a week, and then

I just woke up one morning, and I said, yeah, I think I'm supposed to do that. And so I went to San Jose Christian College because it was a local

Christian college, but then I kind of wrestled with it, and I said, I'm not done. I think

I want to be a missionary to Hollywood. So I got a radio TV degree from San Jose State, and I was still confused after I finished that, and then

I didn't know what to do, and so I had some friends in a youth ministry that kind of combined both.

We did ImageMag and put on conferences, and yet it was a youth ministry. I did that for about two years and was miserable.

It was in Texas, and I missed being in California. So my former youth pastor, the one that had kind of put that bug in my ear, had become a senior pastor, and he said, hey,

I want you to be my youth pastor, and I want you to come back to San Jose. And so I couldn't wait, and I served there for ten and a half years in South San Jose as a youth pastor, and then

I moved on and was an associate pastor for about six and a half years and ended up as a lead pastor.

Todd, thank you for sharing that. All joking aside, tell our listeners a little bit about providence of God, because I think many people want to read providence.

They look at news and events and things happening in their life, and they're trying to discern what those things mean and how difficult that is and how that can get you in a lot of trouble.

But looking back in your life, isn't it a lot easier to see how God providentially moved you through all these things?

Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, absolutely. My favorite verse is, He who began a good work in you will carry it to completion, for the day of Christ Jesus, Philippians 1 .6.

And I've just seen God's hand every step of the way, you know, from the guys that He put me under when

I served at Las Gadas Christian Church as an intern in the youth ministry there for almost six years, and just the impact that those guys had on me, and just seeing

God's hand each step of the way as He guided me, you know, just trying to discern what

He wanted from my life, and knowing that He gives us freedom, that He's revealed His will to us, and He gives us great freedom.

So I started to pursue this other track, and it just wasn't where God had gifted me.

I missed the local church, and I wanted to serve there, and I prepared to serve there. And so I prayed.

As I said, I was miserable in Texas, and I prayed, Lord, I really want to go back and be a youth pastor. And so literally a week later, my former youth pastor called me, and I jumped right into it, and just really realized that was where, you know,

God wanted me to be. And then, you know, as I continued to study and grow, and I got my

Master's through an online ministry from that, and just seeing

God carefully take care of me each step of the way, even when I had to make some hard decisions in ministry,

He was there supporting me in ways I never could have imagined. When we had to make a hard decision and leave a ministry under some difficult circumstances, and watching

God bless our family in the midst of that, and lead me to West Hills Community Church, where I served as associate pastor for almost six years, and then having that pastor, having a kingdom mindset, said, hey, are you ready to go serve as a lead pastor?

And then encouraging me to pursue that, and finding Orchard Community Church the next day, and went through the process there.

And it's just, I keep going back to that verse, that God completes us in Christ Jesus, and that's a part of His process.

And a lot of it is looking back in hindsight at His hand, like you said, and guiding and kind of directing the course.

Todd, as you were talking, I was thinking about, I think it's Kevin DeYoung's book about just do something, when it comes to making a lot of these decisions, instead of waiting for doors to open or close, or hearing small voices and all these other things, just make some decisions in light of the counsel from the

Word of God, and wisdom from other people in that order, and then go make some decisions. And I'm thankful, and I know you'll bear witness to this as well, that even when we make mistakes, the

Lord can override and does override those things to make sure we're in the right place at the right time with the right people, and eventually,

Romans 8, getting us to glory. Exactly. That's a great book, and I've taken several young people through that book through the years, and I kind of found a different book that was very similar in tone, where we're trying to listen for this, what some call the still small voice of God, which is usually out of context, right?

That was actually a still small voice, and we've kind of turned that into some sort of mystical experience where we wait for the angels to come down and pack our bags and take us to the right place, when if we're obeying

God and His revealed will, then He gives us choices and the freedom to make choices.

And so, definitely seen that, and yeah, I love that book by Kevin DeYoung. It's a good one.

Reminds me of Genesis 37 -50 with the sovereign hand of God in Joseph's life, and I think

I heard it taught one time, Todd, that why is it so obvious to every reader of Scripture that God is sovereign over Joseph's life in 37 -50 in the book of Genesis?

And then that preacher said, because dear listener, dear hearer, lots of times in your life you're going to think to yourself, is

God really in charge of all this? And you look at everything through the lens of circumstances, and you need to be reminded that the

God of Joseph is your God as well. And while you can't see how He's working everything out for your good and His glory,

He's doing it. So trust in the Lord with all your heart. And I thought that was good advice. Yeah, that's fantastic, and such a truth that I've experienced, especially in...

I have not gotten through anything that Joseph went through or anything like that, and yet you're right, it's the same

God. And I remember remembering that, watching, you know, how God could move on Pharaoh's heart, and like you said, some of the difficult things in ministry, was out of ministry, and the pastor there had disqualified himself, but wouldn't acknowledge it, and so I chose to move on from that, not knowing, not having a job, trying every angle to find a job.

And, you know, Dad says, don't quit one job unless you have another one, and I was really trying to do that, but it got to that turning point where I really believed

God wanted huge trust to say, you know, you need to do the right thing, and to do the right thing, you know, like you said,

God took care of us, got us a better job among great people that really helped mentor me through that difficult time, and I look back, and as difficult as it was, learned more than any seminary could have taught me on church quality, on what it meant to be a leader of the church, shepherding

God's people, it was just a crash course, but what a blessing that was.

Peter - Talking to Pastor Todd today, Orchard Community Church, Todd Burgett, and Todd, I know you're preaching through the

Bible verse by verse with an eye toward exalting Christ now in the book of Romans.

I can honestly say that the highest compliment I give as a preaching professor to students, and maybe some of the folks don't know that you were my student at the

Master's Seminary doctoral classes, at least I'm one of the professors there, I could, and my wife and I drove over the hill, over Route 17,

Highway 17, and listened to you preach, and I thought, you know, and I told you, I could listen to that every week, and I think that's really the highest compliment.

Sometimes as pastors we have excellent sermons, sometimes, you know, they're not so good, but it is week in and week out, working through the passage, and so if you're in the

San Jose area, and you're looking for a Bible -teaching church, even if you're on the northern part of San Jose or someplace up closer to San Fran or Redwood City, I think you ought to go to Orchard Community Church and hear

Pastor Todd, and maybe we can have a little wager on the side and see if they too think, I could listen to that every week.

Oh, that's an incredible compliment, and I'm definitely humbled by that. Yeah, I've really enjoyed the mentorship that you've provided.

I'm in the DMIN program at Master's Seminary for the Expository Preaching degree, and that has been such a blessing, and part of the blessing is the guys that I've met in that, fellow guys, fellow students across the world, really, and then having the mentorship of guys like you and Clint Archer and the other guys that are in the program, and it's been an incredible blessing.

It's the first time I'm doing a degree that it's not out of convenience, but out of desire and the place that I want to be at when

I'm learning from it, and I'm in my second year, and it's really had a great effect on my heart, my relationship with the

Lord, and I'm hearing people in the congregation, wow, you're getting better, which I take that as a compliment, but it makes me wonder about what

I was before. Well, I like that you're actually going to school in a place that's not in San Jose, so see, it works out all right.

Me too, yes, me too. It's great to get out. My wife loves your wife,

Lisa, and tell our listeners a little bit about your relationship, and maybe after that, can you tell us about how you, and I know you're weak and sinful like everybody else, but how do you cultivate that relationship with her in the stresses of ministry and life and children and everything else?

Are there any kind of things that you do that might lend themselves to telling us so we can glean from that?

Yeah, yeah. Lisa and I met in high school years ago. We were at a big church together. Her dad was one of the pastors on staff there, and so we had, you know, there were like 500 kids in the youth group there, and we had some similar friends, and so I distinctly remember meeting her one day, but then that church launched another church, and her dad went on that church plant, and it wasn't until about 10 years later that she had moved back in the area, and I was a youth pastor, and my youth group was growing.

I hadn't been there a year yet, and I needed some girl staff, and, you know, long story short, the church was supporting her father as a missionary at that point, and so she came back, and so we kind of connected then and got married, and it's been such a blessing, as you know, to have a wife that's supportive in ministry, and you really do have to guard that, though, as your follow -up question being, what do we do with that?

It really helps. She serves as the children's director of our church, and so we do ministry together, and we focus on how we can serve the

Lord together and to have someone. She teaches women's Bible studies. She heads up our children's ministry, and I know not every pastor's wife is gifted or has that ability to do that, but to have someone who understands.

She was a PK, and so she understands the demands of ministry, and she also keeps me grounded, too, and the fact that she was a pastor's kid and married a pastor says a lot about how her parents navigated that whole thing.

I know so many PKs who say, I would never want to marry a pastor.

We've involved our kids as much in ministry as we can, and praise God, they are loving it and doing that, and it means taking the time to set ministry aside and be together, whether it's dropping our kids off at youth group and having a little mini -date while they're off learning about the

Lord, the date nights, and yet it's more than just setting aside a date night.

It's having that ministry mindset of being unified together. We have never disagreed theologically.

That's a huge blessing, and believe me, she thinks on her own and has been under great teaching her whole life, and not me, others.

That wasn't a self -congratulating, boy, she's been at the best teaching, and so, no, she has and studies on her own, and I've learned so much from her, and you really do have to guard that, and yet there's been a lot of it that's been,

I hate to say easy is not the right word, but you know, when you marry someone that's like -minded, more than just checking off the boxes of she's a

Christian, she's a female, but someone who is on the same path and wanting the same thing in life, and what a blessing that really has been, and I can't imagine doing all of this without her.

Maybe, Todd, that's why your wife Lisa and my wife Kim are friends, two kind of theological and ministry -minded peas in a pod, and I remember one time someone came over to my house, and they said, oh, we didn't know you had your study here, and there are all these books that were open, and you know, five books open with different Greek words, and this, that, and the other.

I said, well, this is not my study, that's Kim's. Wow, that's awesome, yep. So maybe this summer,

Kim and Lisa can read the Jesus Calling book together, something like that. Oh, that'd be, yeah, she would love that.

Tell us about unique ministry challenges in San Jose. That is to say, we know the

Gospel is consistent, that people all across the world, of course, have Adam's sin imputed, and then they're consequently born sinful, but is there anything unique to San Jose, and then how do you navigate it?

And I'll tell you, Todd, why I'm asking the question. It seems to me that some people in New York City want to redeem the city, but the city ends up redeeming them.

Or if you're in Washington, D .C., and you've got to read everything through politics, then the politics influence the church.

What's unique about San Jose, and how do you make sure you don't let the city of San Jose drive you, and you try to influence people that are in the city instead?

Yeah, that's a terrific question, and it has been a unique challenge, and I say unique in that you're right, that everybody could probably say something similar with what

I'm about to say, but the uniqueness of the Bay Area, about a year and a half ago, through one of the polls that go on, we are now the most unchurched region in America, I guess surpassing the

Pacific Northwest, to dubious distinction, and yet you have the major cities,

San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose in the Bay Area, and they couldn't be more different than each other, and yet the thing that's in common with each and every one of those is just a diminished church connectedness.

I think in Silicon Valley, it would be safe to say that 2%, maybe 3%, but probably 2 % or even less, go to an evangelical,

Bible -believing, Gospel -preaching church, and that's an area of 1 .5

million just in the South Bay. And at Silicon Valley, it's one of the most expensive places, if not the most expensive places.

San Jose was designated as the first major city where a million dollars is the average home price, and that's a 1 ,200 -square -foot fixer -upper.

And it's just remarkable, and so you have all these businesses paying big bucks, or at least a lot of them, but not everybody makes those big bucks, and so what we've seen in my lifetime, too, where there were a lot of bigger churches, medium -sized churches, smaller churches, that's just really not the case anymore, and you have a lot of people who the price just drives them out.

We've lost eight young couples in our family in the last two years. We had, on the other side, we had five empty -nesters who were able to come into the area and buy and get to that retirement time, and so we lost five empty -nesters last year cashing out and moving to cheaper places, and so we've kind of seen a revolving door.

I think in the seven years that I've been there, it's been really about 25 % have stayed and about 75 % have been completely replaced, kind of break -even people coming in, people moving out, and about 90 % of those who left haven't stayed in the area but have genuinely moved on, and so we're about at the same place, but it's like a completely different church after seven years, and so we kind of have taken on this mindset that we're a sending church, and I guess it's a positive spin, and we pray for those who move on, and we're sending them out as missionaries to other parts of the country, and it's not just some sort of a spin doctrine to it.

We do miss them, but yet to see it that way, and so that affects preaching. Like you said,

I'm preaching through the Book of Romans, and I've decided to take only about a year or so. It could easily take five to ten years to go through Romans, and guys have done that, and yet if I do take even two or three years, some people that might come to the church, that might be the only book that they hear, and that wouldn't be a bad thing, but so we've kind of taken that kind of mindset when it comes to preaching of the

Word, and really what we're seeing, I think, especially unique to the South Bay, is how hard it is for the rich to enter the

Kingdom of Heaven. The demands of these jobs, you know, 70, 80 hours a week.

They pay well, but these men and women are not with their families as much as they want to be, and so they spend their weekends doing fun things, and it's really the pull away from being connected to the local church and following the gospel and trusting

Christ, and so that's really, in a nutshell, a lot more could be said, but in a nutshell, that's the dynamic of Silicon Valley.

It's a post -Christian world, maybe with kind of the American version of what it's like trying to serve in Europe.

Yeah. Todd, very insightful. As you were talking, it made me think of a pastor that I met at a conference up in Montana, and he had been a pastor for 40 years, and I happened to be the speaker, and I thought, well, it probably should be the other way around.

At the time, I'd only been a pastor for maybe 18, and, you know, what could I teach this guy? And so I said, well, what's your advice to me?

This was, you know, been a private conversation. What's your advice to me? Because I'd like to finish well.

I'd like to weather the storms, and 40 years, I just think, you know, praise the Lord for that, and I want to be that kind of guy.

And I said, any advice? And he had his cowboy boots on and a cowboy hat, and he didn't even flinch, and he said, listen to Toto.

No, he didn't say that. Good advice. Excellent advice. He said, people come, and people go, and I stay.

Yeah. I thought that was brilliant, and I think that's the right attitude, that even people in the congregation, not just for your church, the church you pastor, but all the people that are listening, lots of families come and go because of jobs and other things.

It's not like they're, you know, mad at the church, and they move down, you know, go to a church down the street, but when they really move away,

I think too often we're thinking about our church, our friendships, our ministry, our children's friendships, versus this is the kingdom of God, and we started off the show,

Todd, talking about the providential hand of God, and these people need to be equipped and moved to the next city to influence, to evangelize.

We have no idea. They could move across the world, and the next -door neighbor is an unregenerate elect person that God has taken one of our dear people and moved them there to preach the gospel so that they might be saved.

I think that'd be worth it, don't you? Absolutely. That's the goal, and to send them out and try to, you know, even though we're trying to put a positive spin on those who leave and how sad it is to see them go, to put that positive spin on them.

We're sending them out. We're sending them to Texas and to Arizona and Southern California and the

Central Valley of California so that they can minister and get plugged into a good church and train them what it is and how to look for a church where the gospel is central to it and Christ is central to it.

That is so important, and to be faithful. Where we have trusting, like you said, the Lord has moved them on and replaced them with other folks who've come to faith or who've moved into the area and looking for a

Bible -believing church that come from another place, and so you see God's faithful hand knowing that He sends us who we are supposed to minister to and for the reasons that we may not see at that time, but it'll come back around.

We see it. Todd Burgett, thank you so much for being on No Compromise Radio. People can go to OrchardCommunity .com

to listen to your sermons. The latest one that's posted is The Kindness of God, Romans 2, delivered on March 31st.

Thanks for being on the show. God bless you and your wife and children, and then I will see you in person this summer.

Absolutely. I can't wait for it. Can't wait to hang out with you and Kim. Lisa's excited about that as well and look forward to coming over to Santa Cruz.

Any excuse for that is always a good one and thank you so much for having me on the show today.

What a blessing. Amen. 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 bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.