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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown
Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,
Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.
Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon
Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.
This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 15th day of June.
I'm sorry, this 8th day of June 2015. Yes, I was looking at the wrong date on the calendar.
This 8th day of June 2015 and I am very excited about today's program, both because I have a brand new guest that I've never interviewed before and I also, in the second hour, have one of my favorite guests returning to the program.
This first topic that we are going to be addressing for the next hour is a very controversial issue.
It's one that has very like -minded brethren in Christ who are theologically aligned, at times at odds with each other, about how one is to deal with the pastor who has been deposed.
But we're going to be talking about that, restoring deposed pastors, with Roy A.
Yankee, Executive Director of PIR Ministries. And then in the second hour we've got my friend
Dr. Don Kistler, founder of the Northampton Press, returning to our program.
Dr. Don Kistler is one of the most knowledgeable experts on the Puritans alive today, and he is going to be addressing the theme, debunking slanderous myths about the
Puritans. And we're going to have a special emphasis today on the Salem Witch Trials, since that seems to be something that titillates the imagination of a lot of people, inside and outside of the
Christian faith, and where a lot of the stereotypes and slanders flow from.
That whole account that took place in Salem, Massachusetts, is a breeding ground for stereotypes, caricatures, and slanders about the
Puritans. So we're going to be having that discussion, God willing, in the second hour.
But first of all, let me welcome for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Roy Yankee.
Hi Chris. Thanks for having me. Oh, thanks for being on. And I'd also like now to introduce to you on the air, my co -host,
Reverend Buzz Taylor. Good to talk with you, Roy. Nice talking to you too, Buzz. And this was a matter of God's providence that led me to interview
Roy today. I was in Harvey Cedar's Bible Conference on the
Jersey Shore, along with my co -host, Reverend Buzz Taylor. A couple of weeks ago, we were invited to represent
Iron Sharpens Iron at a conference, or a pastor's retreat, actually, that was being run by the
Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and PNR Publishing. And while there, in the lobby,
I bumped into Calvin Frett, who is the regional director of the ministry that Roy Yankee is the executive director over,
PIR Ministries. And Calvin immediately approached me when he realized that I was a radio talk host, and handed me
Roy's book and said that, I believe that this would be an excellent topic for discussion on your radio program.
And I agreed with him wholeheartedly. So I'm thankful for God's providence in that meeting taking place between Calvin and I, which led to the interview with Roy.
And the issue is near and dear to my heart, because I personally know a number of men who were pastors who were fired, or deposed, or exited, even some who were excommunicated, for a wide range of reasons.
Some where I think it is clear that the church was at fault. Some where the man in the pastoral position was clearly at fault, even very often to their own accounting of what happened.
Thankfully, some of these men that I know repented of their sins and were fully restored to membership in the church, while not being restored necessarily to the pastorates.
And so then you also have men who are just flagrantly unrepentant and lose their positions that way.
But it'll be interesting to hear the different varieties of scenarios that are involved with this ministry,
PIR. Now Roy, I understand that PIR stands for Pastor in Residence.
Explain that phrase please. Sure. That's the name under which the ministry was begun over 20 years ago.
And it represents the title, actually, that's given to someone who enters into the
Pastor in Residence process or program in a refuge church. They are given a calling as a
Pastor in Residence for a period of time, 6 -12 months typically, while they're undergoing a process of healing and restoration and rest, working with a support team in the refuge church.
And so it's a title that's given to them that allows them to retain some dignity in their ministry role.
But we typically encourage them to keep their role in that position to a minimum, because the bulk of the work that they're doing after they've been exited in that context is their own personal healing, the healing between the person and their spouse and their family.
So that represents the title that's given. It allows them to put that on their resume going forward, because they have served as a
Pastor in Residence during that time. So it can help make that transition into the next call a bit easier.
Now you've got to explain the phrase, refuge church. Sure, sure. Yeah, so refuge churches are churches that are grace -based churches.
They have it in their DNA as a church, and probably are already doing the kind of gracious healing and restorative work when they're introduced to the concept of the
Pastor in Residence program. So they are a church who raises their hand and says, we're willing to take on for a period of time this pastoral family that's in transition, and we're willing to come alongside them and provide the space for them and time where they can heal and allow them to process what took place and then, you know, see what the next chapter is that God has for them.
Why don't you explain how PIR functions in other ways? Give us a full description of PIR.
Yeah, so our mission is to partner with God in the local church to restore hope to at -risk and exited pastors.
So there's two sides to what we do. Our core process is the Pastor in Residence program, working with refuge churches for pastors who've been exited or in transition.
The other side of the equation is the preventive side, where we take what we've learned about what puts pastors at risk, and we talk about that.
We network with denominations, church groups, churches, talk about those issues, bring them to the light so that people can be more aware of how they can encourage their pastors, pray for them, watch for the signs of being at risk, talk to pastors groups, especially trying to bring them a better understanding of how to do self -care, soul care for themselves, so that they aren't in the statistics that we are so familiar with today.
So that's the two sides of what we do. The full scope of what we do is we have an assessment tool that's a part of the
Pastor in Residence program, but also available to pastors who are not in transition. It's a great assessment tool for role fit.
It helps them understand a little bit better, discern better the shape of their calling, and if they need to make some adjustments.
We have a coaching arm, so if pastors or ministry leaders are looking for some coaching help, we have five excellent coaches who can come alongside them to do that.
We also do seminars and workshops on relational wisdom, so we try to help churches and pastors be prevented in their addressing of conflict and issues that can create conflict in churches.
And then lastly, and a big piece of what we do, we're connected to a national consortium of ministries called
Caregivers Forum, and that's been around a number of years. If any of your listeners are familiar with Marble Retreat and Lewis McBurney, going back a number of years, they were a premier member of this group, along with hundreds of others, that we can resource to when a pastor needs simply a break to get away, when they need counseling, when they need to take a vacation.
We have all kinds of resources that we can tap into through that association.
Now, I'm sorry, I was just wondering what led to the founding or the creating of PIR to begin with?
Sure. Dr. Whitman, Chuck Whitman, was a pastor out in Southern California when the idea for Pastor and Resident Ministries was born.
He'd been pastoring out there for a number of years, and it's kind of an interesting incident.
It was a gentleman that he was introduced to who had been a pastor and been exited, and who is now working a secular job, and as Chuck got to know this gentleman, his heart really burned for wanting to see this guy who was quite capable and should be back in ministry restored to that role.
So Chuck and his elders happened to be an EPC church. They did the first...
Is that an Evangelical Presbyterian church? Correct. They did the first PIR program with this gentleman and walked through a process that eventually ended up being what we do today, and praise the
Lord, that brother is still pastoring 20 plus years later quite successfully up in the state of Washington, and that's typically the story that we can tell when we talk about the success, if you will, and I don't always like to use that word, but the effectiveness,
I guess, of the Pastor and Resident Program. What are the backgrounds of the
PIR team members or staff members? Sure. Well, all of them have been pastors.
All of us have been pastors at one time or another. Length and pastoral ministry varies between the team members, but all of us have served as pastors.
I myself was a pastor for 17 years, and all of us have gone through an exit for a variety of reasons.
So we know what it's like to experience the dissonance and pain and struggle of those kinds of situations.
All of them have been restored. Some of them have actually gone through the
PIR program. Others didn't go through that process formally, but all have been either formally or informally restored to ministry and to the church, and so they get it.
They understand what it takes to go through that process. Explain some of these
PIR distinctions. You have a spiritual focus. You have double the impact.
You have local church focus, long -range focus, fundraising support, and a proven track record.
Go through the spiritual focus first, if you could. Sure. So when we talk about restoring and being involved in the restoration process of someone, we are absolutely and fundamentally committed to the principle of partnering with God.
We don't trust in the process or the program that we've created.
It is simply a tool, because what Christ does in the midst of people who care for one another and pray for one another is where the real work takes place.
So the emphasis in the program is always on prayer, on compassion and grace, and on the skills of listening and being present with others.
So it's very much allowing the Holy Spirit and Jesus to work His work in people's lives.
So we don't try to make this happen. We just try to give
God a way to make it happen. Okay, and double the impact. What do you mean by that? Yeah, that's a really cool piece of this, is that not only are the pastors and spouses that go through the program helped and healed, but there's a tremendous impact that it has on the church itself as a refuge church.
They get to see God work in somebody's life in a very tangible way to take them from people who are depressed and discouraged and alienated sometimes from the church, and see them blossom and flourish again so that then
God can take them back into a fruitful life in ministry. And it also has a tremendous impact for the pastor of that refuge church, because now he has people who truly understand what the inside guts of pastoral life looks like.
And so they're better able to encourage and pray for him or her, and be able to walk with them through times when they're in crisis or, you know, everything can go wrong.
And you have a local church focus. Absolutely. We are not a parachurch ministry.
We are a facilitator for the local church. We train the local church to do what it does best, and that is to be the hands and feet of Jesus.
It's in the context of the local church that this healing takes place. Now, when someone's exited from the local church, it's a double whammy.
They haven't only just lost their job and their financial peace, but all of their relationships and their support are removed as well.
If a doctor or an engineer loses a job, they can always fall back on the church when they're hurt and discouraged in needing help, but the pastor can't do that.
And so it's really important that the local church be the agent of healing again, so that that pastor and his family can believe again that not every church is a bad church, not every situation is a bad situation, and that they can reconnect with that fellowship.
And how about the long -range focus aspect? Yeah, so we're not just interested in helping them process what took place, and that's important, that's a big piece of it, but also looking at the long -range healing and health of the pastor.
So we want to talk about, and we do talk about, where are they now in your relationship with the
Lord, in your relationship with the church, in the basic spiritual disciplines that you need to have in your life?
And then, what is it that God has for you in the next chapter? And they are able to enter into that next piece of their life, that season, a lot healthier, understanding with more self -awareness of strengths and weaknesses, and what they can do to prevent what took place in the past, as much as it depends on them.
And the fundraising support that you offer, tell us about that. We are able, through some relationships that we have to offer, pastors who are in transition, some help in raising the money that's going to carry them through the 6 -12 months that we're in the
PIR program, because when we set this up with the Refuge Church, we do not ask the
Refuge Church to hire them as an associate. We don't ask them to pay a salary.
We want to make sure there are clean lines when someone enters the program, and when they leave the program, they're moving into what
God has called them to in the next chapter. We don't want there to be any assumptions about, well, now this person's here, so he's either going to be a free assistant, or he's going to just hang around and be the associate, from that point on.
Now, it has happened. You know, God is sovereign. He can do what he likes, and so there have been people who have stuck around and stayed on as staff of the church, but that's not what we want people to assume.
So, we assist in fundraising because many pastors, when they're in transition, are financially struggling, and so they come to this with either whatever severance they were given, or they need to work a part -time job to keep their family afloat, and the fundraising piece is a piece we can help with, because they could reach out to family and friends for a very specific period of time and say, will you walk with me and support me during this time when
I'm working through this? And we've seen God do some amazing things for the guys my family's gone through this, and providing for that.
And you have a proven track record, I understand. We do. You know, the metrics for effectiveness or success sometimes have to be a little different in this ministry than what you might expect, because we never guarantee or assume that someone is automatically going to go back into the same kind of ministry or any ministry at all.
What we're really concerned about is that they're restored at three different levels, that they are restored to God first in their relationship with Him, that they're restored to the church so that they can find their place as part of the body again, and then, if appropriate, vocational ministry.
And so when you think about it in those terms, our proven track record is that every pastor who's gone through the
Pastor in Residence program has been restored to one of those levels. Now I'm just going to say, we can say that we have probably about a 95 to 96 percent effectiveness rate in seeing them actually return to vocational ministry.
Now before Buzz asks this question, I just had something that's, I know, immediately in the minds of a lot of people out there.
As you know, Roy, 1 Timothy 3, 1 through 7, reads, It is a trustworthy statement if any man aspires to the office of an overseer.
It is a fine work he desires to do. An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money.
He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity.
But if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?
And not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil.
And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.
And there are many fine Christians, including myself, who believe that there are deposed ministers whose sins were so scandalous that they can never again be above reproach or have a good reputation with those outside the church.
There are also men, women, and children who have been the victims of these pastors' sins and abuse, who would be horrified to learn that these men had been restored to positions of authority in the church.
What do you say to these people who may look upon your work with great skepticism or even outrage?
And that's a fair question, although it is one that tends to take the wide screen a lot of times in our conversations with people.
And it's important to note that while moral or ethical failure for a pastor or a church leader is on the rise, certainly in our culture, it is still a small percentage of those who are exited from their ministries.
So we work with people who experience being let go because of conflict with the board or church members, pastors who've been burned out in compassion fatigue, church planters where the church planters fail to thrive, and so they're left hanging out and very discouraged and disappointed.
So there are a lot of different ways that pastors are exited or who find themselves in transition.
Yes, I even know situations where I believe that it is very vividly clear that the church was the one in sin for firing the pastor for reasons that were unbiblical.
So yes, I do know all kinds of reasons why men have been fired or deposed or exited.
But obviously there are, as I was saying, there are obviously, as you know, men who are child molesters or men who had adulterous relationships in the church, things that go far beyond even a private sin that could be repaired without public notification.
These are things that become scandalous in the community even with unbelievers and are the object of mockery and so on.
And so because of the fact that the pastoral job, if you will, or the calling, the pastoral duty is a privilege and an honor, it's not a right of anyone.
And of course, God doesn't need anyone. He can continue on just fine with his church without pastors who have been deposed.
But as you were saying, there are men who have been wrongly deposed or even deposed in such a manner that they can be rightly restored.
Are there men that you just will not work with? Well, we'll talk with anyone and find out their story and details and try to discern the best way to help them.
And not everyone goes through the pastoral residence program. Or would we necessarily say they should be restored to vocational ministry?
That's why we're very careful to make sure that people understand that restoration has those unique proponents to it for us.
We consider it a success at each level. If we can find someone who's alienated from God, then getting them back into a relationship with Christ is the key step, the first step.
And then to the church. And then, if appropriate, and we're very careful, a vocational ministry return could be in order.
And not everybody goes back into vocational ministry, nor should they. I was just going to say
Reverend Buzz had a question. You know, actually, there's a bunch of things that keep coming to my mind now. I'm hearing some of the language you're using, restoration and being hurt and, you know, restored to God, church or vocation.
But there are a number of situations where there perhaps was no hurt involved.
Or, I mean, leaving a church can hurt simply because you lose your, your parsonage and everything else. But what about situations where sometimes pastors are forced to leave simply because through their study of the word or whatever they come into differences of doctrine with their denomination, or a particular congregation, they simply vote him out because he believes a certain thing.
You're not exactly restoring a person like that, because he hasn't really technically fallen.
Right. Yeah. And so that would fall more into the category of renewal, or just encouragement.
And even there, the Pastor in Residence Program can be helpful because in any of those situations, and we've dealt with some brothers and sisters who've had to make the move or were forced to make the move from denominations that no longer supported a more biblical approach to certain issues.
And so there's always grief and loss and pain associated with that. And so, you know, maybe in some of those cases, the
PIR program wouldn't necessarily be a good fit. We're always ready to be an encouragement and provide those other resources to help them process to whatever level they need, so that they're in a healthier spot going forward.
Well, we have to go to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Roy Yankee about restoring deposed pastors, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the
USA. And obviously, with a subject like this, there are many people who may prefer to remain anonymous, and we will honor that request if that is your desire.
So, we would love to hear from you after these messages, so don't go away. and learn more about God's Word.
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So we would love to hear your feedback on that. We are speaking with Roy Yankee, the
Executive Director of PIR Ministries, which stands for Pastor in Residence Ministries, and we are discussing restoring deposed pastors.
We do have an anonymous listener in Wyoming who says, I was a youth pastor, a single man in the early 1990s who had a license but never ordained.
I was not converted at the time. I was living in sexual sin, not with anyone in the church, and because I was living a double life,
I chose to resign on my own without being confronted, etc. I also voluntarily surrendered my license.
I was eventually converted and have been living free of sexual sin for over four years.
I am permanently disqualified for pastoral ministry.
I have a passion for evangelism, and there is evidence of a call on my life apparent to others who do not know my past, etc.
I was not a senior pastor or ordained, but I want to be obedient to scripture, etc.
This was over 25 years ago. I was just curious. Well, it's interesting that if it was over 25 years ago,
I'm not sure why the listener said he's only been free of sexual sin for four years.
But the issue is that that is obviously a question that's going to get different answers, even from people in the same denomination and even in the same congregation, even if they have very conservative views of restoration.
But if you want to comment, Roy. Yeah, I'd like to know more of that story, because there are a lot of things, not least of which clarifying what you brought up,
Chris. So, at least on the surface, when someone's in that kind of a situation, and if the story holds or rings true, then you'd want to walk them through.
And we're a firm believer that every denomination or group should do due diligence in its process of verifying a call on somebody's life and any ordination process that they would have that would look into all of those situations.
So, we're very supportive of that. And in conjunction with that, we would often work with a denominational group coming alongside them in the restoration process and supporting what they have already put in place or what they decide a course of action should be.
So, we certainly would not impose our process, but we would want to work alongside of those denominations and support what they're doing.
And of course, I think I may have figured out the disparity of years here.
I think it may have been while he was a youth pastor, the sexual sin occurred 25 years ago, and perhaps he was just recently converted and free from sexual sin for over four years.
I think that perhaps is where we got the different numbers there. But yeah, and a lot of it obviously has to do with if sins were taking place before a person was even a born again believer and that kind of thing.
But one thing that wasn't quite answered earlier, and you just said the word again a few times, you keep saying denominational.
What is your denominational span? I mean, what kind of churches do you serve?
Well, the staff members, we all represent different groups. We represent
Peace Presbyterian Church in America. We are Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Converge, Southern Baptist, Nazarene, and even
Independent. So, we are cross denominational. We will work with any group that has a heart to see and wants to see their pastor's house.
And if you could provide us with some examples of men whom you have helped to restore, and if you need to keep them anonymous, that's fine as well.
Do you have any anecdotes that you could provide? Well, I mean, we do.
There's a story for every situation, and a couple of them that come to mind.
There's a young fellow who was a single staff member pastor out in the
West, who the church decided to plant a church in their community, and they asked him to take that position of the church planter, the lead pastor in it, and it didn't thrive.
It failed, and he was quite discouraged, and he didn't do anything wrong.
There was no sin involved or anything like that, and just didn't really know what to do. So, he reached out to us, and we were able to build a relationship with him.
He eventually moved across the country back to an area where he had a support system and friends, and we set up a refuge church for him in that area.
He went through the pastor in residence program there. One of those unique cases where, at the end of that, the church decided to keep him on as a pastor on staff, although it is not a permanent role.
It was a temporary permanent role because he's looking to move into more of an administrative or a simulation kind of pastoral role.
So, here's a young guy basically on his own, and we were able to help him get back into a pastoral role when he was really discouraged and wasn't sure what the next chapter was for him.
There have been other situations where, in particular, a pastor who'd been on staff with a fairly high -powered and notable pastor who went through a very deep period of burnout and then moved back into a pastoral role, not really having processed everything that had taken place to him in that previous situation.
When he got into that church, that next church, he ran into some church folks who really felt like they knew better how to run the church, and so he had to be executive.
They actually let him go from that situation, and he was adrift and really not sure what to do.
He was very discouraged, and his family was very bitter towards the church. So, we came alongside of him and, again, set up a refuge church for him nearby, and he and his family went through that, and the church really loved them and cared for them, and at this point, both he and his wife are teachers in their
Christian school and now doing Bible teaching and other kinds of teaching and really flourishing and doing well.
So, the stories are pretty amazing of what
God actually does, even in terms of those who have experienced moral failure.
Recently, we had a situation where a pastor had fallen, and the church that he had pastored reached out to us.
He was still attending that church, and they were trying their best to work with him, restore him on their own, and they reached out to us, and we were able to set him up with a refuge church.
There was a lot of counseling and other things that went into that, but as a result of going through the process, he has not stepped back into a pastoral role, but he is doing some
Bible teaching at a Bible school, and the folks there know his story, so there wasn't any question of that.
But, again, somebody who was very gifted and really was truly repentant, and God was able to bring him back into an effective role in the body of Christ.
Do you know of, or have you, I should say, worked with situations where you believe that the church was at fault in deposing or firing or exiting their pastor, and where you were able to work with both parties and actually bring this pastor or minister back to his pastoral role at this church?
I would like to say yes. Unfortunately, I can't.
We have worked with pastors and churches where the church was clearly, their expectations were really out of line, and their treatment of the pastor was very unkind and ungracious.
And we tried to speak into that situation to bring some kind of a resolution, but eventually the pastor, it was just too difficult of a situation for him, so he really needed to step away.
So, I would like to say we've been able to work on both sides to bring the two parties back together, but in our experience, at least from what
I know, that's not happened. We have Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who wants to know how many, on the average, evangelical pastors wrongly lose their jobs every year, if you are aware of this statistic?
Well, the qualifier of wrongly gets a bit dicey to try to figure out.
We do know that roughly 1 ,500 to 1 ,800 pastors leave the ministry a month.
1 ,500 to 1 ,800 leave the ministry every month? Every month.
And is that spanning all denominations, even liberal mainline ones? Yeah, that's all churches in America, and that's for a variety of reasons.
So, it could be just someone decides they're not going to do it anymore, all the way up to more crisis situations.
So, to parse out whether it's wrongly exited or wrongly terminated is very difficult.
We do know by experience and the people that we deal with that there are a fair number of those situations that occur every year.
And when a church is at fault, obviously when you are working with the pastor or the minister who has been fired or deposed or exited, as you prefer to call it, you're obviously probably most often not going to have cooperation on both sides.
So, when you have as a main emphasis working with the local church, obviously that can't always be a factor with that specific local church,
I'm assuming, right? That's correct. Yeah, usually it's a different church. We would hope that eventually that church would move back into a more gracious stance toward their pastors.
But, you know, books have been written. There's the famous book, Clergy Killers, that's been out for a number of years.
It talks about toxic churches. We live in a broken world and it would be nice to assume that everybody who is a church member or attender or even a confessing believer is going to be nice and do things the right way, but we don't.
And so that's why our ministry exists. Yeah, and one of the sad tragedies is that I know some men who were fired from their pastoral positions who are enormously gifted men who committed no sin.
Obviously, we're all sinners, but I'm speaking of a sin worthy of being deposed. And it was only because church didn't grow fast enough.
There's a craze over church growth, rapid church growth, the seeker sensitive movement.
Everybody wants to be in a megachurch or lead a megachurch. And it seems that a lot of church boards are more interested in the numbers that come into the building than they are over being taught properly and shepherded properly.
And very often you have a church filled with goats because of that, not sheep. Yeah, the challenges are huge for pastors today in our culture.
Those kinds of situations are repeated. And so the expectations are huge on both sides.
And we would have to say many times we have to deal with pastors whose own expectations of their ministry are not appropriate, they're not healthy.
So the internal mechanisms need to have some realignment. But the culture in which you live in, we all know the numbers play a huge part of that.
And there are a lot of Christians, myself being one, who get sickened by the very prominent and prevalent and frequent stories we hear about televangelists who fall into scandalous sins.
And then they very quickly get restored to their positions.
And there is, I think, an unbiblical notion that basically teaches that all sin is exactly alike.
All sin is just like any other sin. Now, the only way that I agree with that is that all sin will lead us to hell without the covering of Christ's blood, no matter how trivial we think sin is, it will send us to hell.
But there is obviously a difference between a pastor pigging out at the church picnic and a pastor molesting a child.
Those are two very different things and call for two very different actions. But do you agree with my frustration, or do you share my frustration over some of these mega -churches where televangelists and others are very quickly restored back to their positions of authority?
Well, I think that the salient point for us as a ministry, and for me, is the idea of quick, because any process of restoration that involves certain kinds of sin that pastors may have committed require time.
And if there is a restoration to any kind of a vocational ministry, and we never assume that, we hope, but we never assume, we know that that's going to take a long time.
It's a long journey back. And there's a lot of upfront work that has to happen before we ever get to the place of doing a
PIR program, or anything similar to that, in restoring somebody to a vocational position.
So, yeah, I think there needs to be, and we would be very conscious of encouraging a long process where genuine repentance can be verified, where trustworthiness can be rebuilt, where there is a renewed sense of reputation and of being above reproach for someone.
So, it's a long haul. And unfortunately, there are instances where acts are taken too quickly, or assumptions are made, and it's not a good thing.
Now, wouldn't you say that there are perhaps many occasions where restoration of a fallen pastor doesn't necessarily mean restoration to the pastorate?
It could mean restoration to membership in a church, restoration to a right relationship with God, and on and on there.
Oh, absolutely. And even if there is the chance for vocational ministry, it certainly may not look the same as it did in the past.
The shape of the calling may be entirely different, and may be more appropriate for the situation and for the person.
In my own story, returning to the pastorate was not going to be a healthy place for me, or for anyone else.
And so, when the Lord opened the door for me to become a part of the Pastoring Residence ministry, the shape of the calling that God had on my life, for as long as it was there, needed to look different than it did before.
Well, you are actually living proof that when a man who goes through the humiliating experience of being deposed, might even be initially excommunicated, depending upon the severity of what has occurred, that when he is in the process of being drawn back to repentance and so on, he need not think this is the end of his life or the end of his usefulness.
There are other roles in the church and in life that he can use his gifts other than standing behind a pulpit and preaching and shepherding a flock, correct?
Absolutely. And that's the thing that brings me great joy, is to be able to sit across the table from somebody who's just absolutely crushed and burned, and be able to tell them with confidence,
God is not done with you yet. That His path is going to be a different path, but He is not abandoning you, and His grace is sufficient to see you through this, and you will be amazed at what
He can do on the other side. So, absolutely. And what obviously compounds with the tragedy of this is when you have a pastor who has a wife and children that he needs to support.
Obviously there must be some kind of godly counsel given to the spouses very often.
I'm assuming that very often there are marriages between a former pastor and his wife that head towards a divorce court.
And so I'm assuming that you have counseling that goes beyond the man himself who has been deposed or exited.
Yes, we have those resources available, and often the spouse of the pastor is even more wounded than the pastor himself.
We find that not only have they lost their pastor, but now they're in the position of having to defend their husband or spouse, and there's often a great bitterness that grows up about the
Church in the life of a pastoral spouse. And so, yeah, there are resources available, and we take special care to make sure that the spouse is included in this program.
When they meet with the support team, it is the couple that meets with them. So she or he has the opportunity to work through their own stuff.
Well, I'd like you to take the final minute of the program to basically unburden your heart and leave our listeners with what you most want etched on their hearts and minds.
Sure. I think the statement that Chuck made when he started this ministry is that a pastor who should be in ministry is a terrible thing to wait for.
And so we want to provide a way for those who should be in ministry to be restored and healed and brought back into that place.
The other thing is that this is a tremendous ministry and opportunity to change the reputation.
The Church sometimes has the reputation of shooting its wounded. This is an opportunity for us to tell the world that, no, we don't do that, and in fact, there's hope for you.
If you have things that have gone on in your life in pain, the Church is the place where you actually can come, and people will care and help you heal.
Well, I know that your website is pirministries .org.
That's P -I -R for pastor -in -residence, ministries .org. Do you have any other contact information that you care to share?
They can email us at info at pirministries .org, and that will get to us.
We would be delighted to hear from folks. And if you know of somebody out there who is in that situation, please refer them to us.
That's the biggest way that you can stop asking for help. That's info, I -N -F -O, at P -I -R, ministries .org.
That's P -I -R, standing for pastor -in -residence, ministries .org.
It's been an honor and privilege and a joy to have you on the program, brother, and I look forward to having you back on Iron, Shrub, and Zion in the future.
Thanks, Chris, and thanks, Buzz. It's been great. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you. God bless you. And don't go away, brothers and sisters, ladies and gentlemen, because we are going to be joined any moment now by Don Kistler, one of the foremost living experts on the
Puritans, who is returning to the Iron, Sharp, and Zion program. And we look forward to receiving your emails with questions for Dr.
Don Kistler on the Puritans at chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.
Don't go away. We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Chris Arnzen, host of Iron, Sharp, and Zion Radio, here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a
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forward slash iron sharpens today. Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, give yourself unto reading.
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This is Chris Arnsen, and I am delighted to welcome as a returning guest to Iron Sharpens Iron Dr.
Don Kistler, founder of the Northampton Press. I consider him to be one of the foremost experts on the
Puritans alive today, and we are discussing debunking slanderous myths about the
Puritans, and we're going to have a special focus on the Salem witch trials. But it's my great pleasure to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Dr.
Don Kistler. Thank you, Chris. I hope our visit this time lasts longer than the last one.
Yes, for those of our listeners who don't know what Dr. Kistler is referring to, we had technical problems the last time that he was on, and our interview lasted probably 30 seconds.
But due to our new internet provider, we've been having nothing but smooth sailing regarding our broadcasts ever since.
So we are very happy about that and thankful to God for keeping us afloat here on the air.
And let me also very quickly introduce you, Dr. Kistler, to my co -host, Reverend Buzz Taylor. Well, hello.
Hello. And let's hear... I'm glad you said that, Chris, because I was afraid it was something
I had said. Well, I am not afraid of controversy on Iron Sharpens Iron, so I doubt that I would have cut an interview short because of that.
Before we go into the subject at hand, let's hear about the Northampton Press. The Northampton Press, Northampton in Massachusetts, was the town where Jonathan Edwards ministered for so many years back in the 1700s.
And the logo that we use is an artist's drawing of the church that he would have pastored there.
And so we are committed to bringing back treasures from the past and in new editions, not
Reader's Digest editions, but in readable editions for today's reader.
And what we're trying to do with my editing is eliminate any objection to reading the
Puritans other than this one. I don't want to read it. Leave me alone. That one
I can't fix. And the website, just so our listeners know, and I will hopefully be repeating this a few times, is
NorthamptonPress .org. North... Just one H. Yes, Northampton Press, Northampton with one
H, dot org, just as the
Southampton on Long Island has only one H. Northampton Press only has one
H. And even before we go into our discussion, which is going to primarily focus on debunking slanderous lies and myths and accusations and caricatures about the
Puritans, I'd like to have you describe for our listeners, there are some of our listeners who really don't know much about who they were.
They just know that they've seen on TV and some movies, people with strange looking tall hats with big buckles on them and usually acting in a very mean -spirited, unforgiving, graceless way, tyrannical way, pharisaical way, or what have you.
Tell us who these Puritans were. Well, the Puritans were largely from England, more so than America, and they were nicknamed
Puritans by their detractors because they wanted a pure church, not a perfect church, but a pure church.
For example, are you ready for this one? They thought that ministers ought to be Christian. Radical.
Outrageous. In England, you could buy a ministerial position.
If you had enough money, and that was an honorable thing to do, you could just go to the local person who was in charge of the region and give him enough money and he'd say, all right, you're the new bishop.
The Puritans decried men, for example, and this is not an extreme example, it was unfortunately a common example.
There were ministers who were having children by their sisters. You're kidding me.
No. Wow. I mean, the Puritans in England sent petitions to Parliament.
Mr. So -and -so has had a child by his sister. Wow. Or a child by his maid.
Or here's one, he says, so -and -so cannot give an account of his alleged conversion in English or Latin.
Three times arrested for drunkenness. And they said, since the person in the pew will never rise higher than the person in the pulpit, could we at least have saved people in the pulpit?
And so they were nicknamed Puritans, because they really believed that God wanted his people to be pure.
Did they ever embrace that term for themselves? Well, they took it as a badge of honor.
If you'll remember back in the 60s and 70s in Los Angeles during the riots, the police were called pigs by their detractors, and they turned it into an acrostic, pride, integrity, guts, and service.
And the Puritans did the same thing with the term Puritan. You know, today people give
Christians all kinds of nicknames, and some of them we ought to be proud of. And so the
Puritans embraced that, yeah. And some have even said, I don't know if you can confirm this, but some have even said that when the disciples were first called
Christians in Antioch, that that was a disparaging term. But I don't know if that's the case or not.
I don't know if it is or not either. I mean, all it had meant was little Christ. And I don't know what's wrong with that.
I certainly like to be called that. You're too much like Jesus. Well, thank you.
Every now and then somebody will say to me, not meaning a compliment, you're just like your father.
Well, thank you. I think that's quite a compliment. Yes. And let me give our email address for those of you who'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own about the
Puritans. It's chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.
And please include your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old
USA. And we look forward to hearing from you. And I would like you to, before we run out of time and do not mention this new book that you have published, it's not a new work, but it is newly in print after having been out of print for many, many years.
You have a book, hot off the press, None But Christ by John Wall, pastor of St.
Michael's in Corn Hill, London from 1646 to 1652.
Tell us about this book and why you believed it was so important that you had to bring it back into print.
Well, the title grabbed me and it turns out that this book is about 300 pages on one verse in the
Bible where Paul says, I determined to know nothing among you except Christ and him crucified.
I call Paul the know -nothing apostle because he said I determined to know nothing except Christ and him crucified.
And I've been publishing for nearly 30 years now and have done almost 300 books.
And this is one of the two or three best books I have ever published. It is just so full of reverence for Christ.
When I first started trying to publish, I offered the first manuscript
I did to several well -known Christian publishers and their response was the same, this book is too
God -centered. And I said, yes, well, we couldn't sell it.
People won't buy books like that. They want books about them, not about God. At least they're honest.
I mean, all you have to do to sell a book today is say, here's what's in it for you or here's what you'll get out of it.
But a book simply about Christ, who's going to buy that? But we do have a listener on Long Island who is a
Mastic Beach, Long Island, Tyler. He says, why do you think many modern evangelicals give an unfair bias that the
Puritans were legalists, yet many writings such as Thomas Brooks and the
Reformed pastor, actually that was Richard Baxter, not Thomas Brooks, but are still read by Christians to this day, if you could.
Well, the term legalism is really an interesting term. That's usually what we get called when we tell somebody to stop sinning.
I had this happen one time. I went to a man in a church I was pastoring who
I knew was being unfaithful to his wife. And I simply went to him and I said, you've got to stop this.
And he said to me, I'm not interested in your legalism. Wow. My legalism, the
Bible says, don't cheat on your wife. You're cheating on your wife. Cut it out. And he says, you're just a legalist.
Now, legalism strictly defined is the idea that I can gain
God's favor or merit God's favor by something I do or don't do. That old little poem, we don't drink and we don't chew and we don't date the girls that do.
As if that somehow gets me closer to God than you get because I do this and you don't or because I don't do this and you do.
That's legalism. Legalism is not being obedient to Christ.
Jesus said it's an act of love, not an act of legalism. If you love me, keep my commandments.
So I'm not surprised because the Puritans did strive for universal obedience, knowing they'd never attain it.
But still, when Vince Lombardi took over the Green Bay Packers, he said, men, we are going to relentlessly strive for perfection.
Now, that's what a Christian should do. He should relentlessly strive for universal obedience, knowing he's going to fall miserably short.
But he should still strive for it. That's what Jesus said, strive to enter in at the narrow gate.
And before we actually target stereotypes and slanderous accusations and caricatures of the
Puritans, weren't there things that some of them did? Obviously, you can't broad brush a whole movement that lasted centuries, but there were abuses, weren't there, done by the
Puritans just like there are today with even theologically reformed churches that share our doctrinal statements and so on.
I am outnumbered today. My co -host is a Presbyterian and so is my guest, and I am a
Reformed Baptist. And I have heard that there were some pretty horrible things that some
Puritans had done to the Baptists, even drowning and so on. If you could comment on that.
And I think, Chris, you ought to be extremely grateful that you no longer live in those times. Yes, I am.
Your life could be in danger if we were still good Presbyterians. Well, those times were still tempted to drown you,
Chris. Yeah, there were abuses. This is what happens when you turn things over to sinners.
Alistair Begg says this, the best of men are men at best. And yes, there are always going to be abuses.
This is one of the things, you mentioned Thomas Brooks, while he didn't write the Reformed Pastor, he did write a magnificent book published by the
Banner of Truth called Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices. Excellent, excellent. One of the best books a could read.
And one of the things he says that Satan will do is he'll use our strengths against us. So, for example,
Chris, if you're zealous for obedience, that's fine. God can, I mean, the world can always use one more legalist.
Or if you're big on grace, that's just fine. We can always use one more antinomian.
And so Satan will get us to use our strengths against us so that they become weaknesses.
I can understand people's zeal, but zeal misplaced becomes sin.
Were the Puritan sinners? Absolutely. In New England, you had a situation where the
Mathers were a prominent family in Boston area. And because so much of church history, as you know, is an overreaction to a previous abuse.
Okay. And so the Church of England had allowed all kinds of abuses regarding membership.
And so overreacting to that, some of the New England pastors made it nigh unto impossible for anyone to become a member.
For example, they said that you have to be able to bring in witnesses who can testify to your changed behavior, and that you had to be able to state the date and time of your conversion.
And Jonathan Edwards' grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, said, who can do that? He said, all you can ask for is a credible profession of faith.
Of course, then he got into trouble because people thought he made church membership too easy. And so no matter what you do, somebody's going to try to knock your head off.
But yeah, there will always be abuses because that's what happens when you have sinners. And before Buzz asks his question, what centuries are we talking about?
I've heard that Jonathan Edwards is often referred to as the last Puritan. If you could comment on when they actually began and when they basically disappeared from the scene.
Well, basically you're talking about a hundred year period from the late 1500s to the late 1600s.
And a Puritan, by definition, would have had to been a member of the Church of England because that's the church they wanted to purify.
So John Bunyan, for example, is not a Puritan because he was never a member of the Church of England, but his theology was
Puritan theology. Yes. He's often referred to as a Puritan. Yes. And they accepted him as a welcome member of the club.
John Owen had him preach in his pulpit. Yes. In fact, John Owen said,
I'd give up all my academic training if I could preach like that tinker. Tinker for those who don't know what that means.
It was a mender of pots and pans. Chris, the way you described the
Puritans in the introduction, one question that may come up in our listeners' minds is, well, aren't you talking about pilgrims?
There is a difference. Could you please, Don, address who the pilgrims were as opposed to the
Puritans, both in Europe and in America? Well, the Puritans were largely kicked out of England by legislation.
Parliament forbade them from preaching and teaching and things like that, and so they went to South America, they went to Africa, they went to the continent, and a lot of them came here to America.
But Parliament, for example, would not allow John Owen to leave. He was a national treasure. The pilgrims were a whole different thing.
Now, all the Puritans that one time were pilgrims, but not all the pilgrims were Puritans.
Pilgrims were those who left their country coming here for economic advantage or to start a new life.
The Puritans had to leave because they were outlawed. They largely went up to Massachusetts, and the
Catholics went to Maryland, and that's why it was named so, because that's where they were allowed to worship
Mary and things like that. But they're not the same.
They're not synonymous. Well, I think that we should get to the
Salem Witch Trials that are probably the breeding ground for many, if not most, of the slanderous accusations and stereotypes and caricatures about the
Puritans. If you could tell us the background of the Salem Witch Trials. Sure, and I'll often have people come to me and say,
I can't believe that you would publish books by those hateful, bigoted, and unloving, intolerant
Puritans. And I ask one question, which one of their books did you read that gave you that impression?
Well, I've never read anything. Well, then that's really kind of an ignorant statement, wouldn't you say?
And they'll say, well, everybody knows it. Well, I don't know it. And I've read as much as anybody by these people, but this is what people have said.
Now, in the late 1600s, there was a series of trials for people who were accused of being witches.
Eleven people were convicted by juries of their peers and sentenced to die because the government at the time was a theocracy.
It was not a pluralistic democracy. And the Bible says you do not allow a witch to live.
Now, these people, again, were convicted by a jury of their own peers. It wasn't like they loaded up the jury with 11
Puritans. These were townspeople. What people also fail to understand is that for 100 years in England, before the
Salem Witch Trials, 1 ,100 witches were put to death for the same reason.
Yeah, you never hear about that for some reason. Never hear about that. It's always in Salem, Massachusetts.
And it was Cotton Mather who put an end to it. He says this is in danger of becoming excess and abusive.
We need to stop it right now. Now, a few years back when my daughter was much younger,
I used to take her on vacations, just her and me, because she didn't like splitting time with mom, time or attention.
The thing she didn't like is that the week vacations always turned into historical excursions.
And so one summer we went to, we lived in Pittsburgh at the time, we went to New England.
And we went to Concord in Lexington and visited the Buckman Tavern and walked the
Freedom Trail in Boston. And then we went to Salem. And when I go somewhere, rather than buy 20 tourist books,
I just like to pay the guide and he's already read them all and I'll get it from him. So we got on one of the local excursion buses.
And as we're driving along, the bus pulls over to the side of the road. And he opens the door and he says,
Hey, everybody, here is Wanda. She's the official witch of Salem. Everybody waved to Wanda.
And my daughter, I think was about eight at the time, looked at me and she said, Are you going to embarrass me?
And I said, Well, I'm not gonna let some of this stuff go. And she said, Well, at least wait till I moved to the other side of the bus.
She moved to the other side of the bus. And as we pulled away, the bus driver said, quote,
I'm so glad we no longer live in the day of those hateful Puritans who murdered 16 innocent people.
And I said, Which one was the innocent one? And you heard the brakes screech, and the bus pulled to a stop and he got up and turned around and said,
Who said that? And I raised my hand. I said, I did. What did you mean? Well, history only records 11 people being put to death.
You've added five to the list. Every one of them was found guilty by a jury of their peers.
And you just accused them of murder. I says, On what authority have you rewritten history?
And he said, Sir, would you please get off the bus? Now, here's the kicker.
My daughter waited till the next stop before she got off. She didn't want to be seen with me.
But the week we were there, there was a group of students from Gordon College who were putting on reenactments of the witch trials.
And they were using the actual transcripts. They weren't making anything up.
And they only reenacted one person's trial. And then people would watch.
And at the end, they would take a vote. Did you think she was guilty or not guilty? And of course, these secular people are not going to convict anybody of anything.
You'd be guilty of murder, and you're still going to get off. And so afterwards,
I went up to one of the young men, and I told him who I was and what I did. And I said, What's your take on all this?
He says, They were as guilty as sin. Every one of them deserved to die.
Now, when you can get a college kid to say something like that, you really got something.
That doesn't prove or disprove anything. But just reading the actual transcripts, there was actually a book
Cotton Mather wrote that you can still get called The Wonders of the
Invisible World, which was his take on the Salem witch trial. But again, these people got a trial.
They were found guilty by a jury of their peers. And they were convicted and sentenced according to the law at that time, which was the
Bible. It is quite unfair for us 350 years later to say they were wrong for not doing it the way we would do it today.
Now, nearly every movie that I can recall seeing that involved the
Salem witch trials, and no shock that Hollywood would distort facts, but it seemed that the trials came about due to mass hysteria over gossip.
Now, is this disproven by the facts of history that there weren't people who were being slandered and falsely accused of participation in the occult and so on?
That's probably very likely, because again, you have sinners involved. And you have young people making accusations.
But again, they were tried and convicted. Were any of them wrongly convicted?
Quite possibly. But they did get a trial. And is it possible there was abuse?
Well, there evidently was, because Cotton Mather said, this is enough. Stop it now. So that's probably true.
That's not the tenor of the entire situation. But anybody who is in that area, it's very interesting to go to Salem and to visit the museums and such things as that.
I found it very interesting. There's a tour that we took, and it went to the home of one of the judges in that trial.
And they showed us the table in the front room that had two sides.
One was a rough side that you did your sawing and nail pounding on, and the other one was a smooth side that you ate on.
And they had a family member that around mealtime kept a watch out for anybody showing up thinking they were going to get a free meal, and they'd flip the table over to the work side, not the meal side.
And that's where we got the phrase, turning the tables. Oh, wow. I didn't know that. Isn't that something?
Yes. And we're going to continue this discussion when we come back from our station break. This is our final station break.
And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.
If you have a question for Don Kistler on the Puritans, we're going to be hearing now from our friends in Massachusetts who promise they will not burn anybody if you visit their church.
But it's one of our sponsors, Providence Baptist Church in Norfolk, Massachusetts. And we'll be right back after these messages, so don't go away.
Paul wrote to the church at Galatia. For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am
I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.
We are a reformed Baptist church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689.
We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how
God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things. That's not the best recipe for popularity.
But since that wasn't the apostles priority, it must not be ours either. We believe by God's grace that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.
If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts, or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.
You can call us at 508 -528 -5750. That's 508 -528 -5750.
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That's linbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back. This is Chris Arns and if you just tuned us in for the last half hour, we have been interviewing as our second guest today,
Dr. Don Kistler, who is founder of the Northampton Press and the website for that publishing ministry is the northamptonpress .org.
That's the northamptonpress .org and keep in mind that there is only one h in the
Northampton Press. I'm sorry, it's just northamptonpress .org. You take the the off of it.
I'm sorry. northamptonpress .org, northamptonpress .org and only one h.
We are discussing debunking the slanderous accusations and caricatures and stereotypes against the
Puritans and we were just discussing the Salem witch trials before the break and the
Reverend Buzz Taylor, my co -host, wanted you to repeat the title of Cotton Mather's book that you mentioned,
The Wonders of the Something. The Wonders of the Invisible World. Okay, The Wonders of the
Invisible World. It's out of print, I believe, but you can still get copies, amazon .com,
bookfinder .com, things like that. Okay, we do have Christopher in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who asks, were the non -conformists the same thing as the
Puritans? Not in every case, but in most cases, yes. These men would not conform to the dictates of Parliament in England that they had set up for the church.
And these things were set up to get rid of the Puritans. That was what they had in mind in Parliament.
For example, they said that every time you say the king's name in a worship service, you must cross yourself.
They said that every grave in the churchyard should be facing
London because that's where the king resided. They said you must give the same credence to the 39 articles of the
Church of England that you do the Bible. Wow. I'm sure Thomas Cranmer didn't even believe that and he wrote the 39 articles.
Yeah, and the Puritans said absolutely not. And so Parliament came up with these rules and they said if you will not adhere to this, you cannot be a minister in the
Church of England. And so in 1662, you had the
Great Ejection where 2 ,000 Puritans were kicked out of their pulpits for their non -conformity.
In fact, if you go to London, there is a graveyard called the Non -Conformist Graveyard. John Bunyan is there,
Isaac Watts is there, a whole bunch of the Puritans are there. And Parliament said you can't be a minister in the
Church of England if you're not going to do this. And Matthew Henry's father,
Philip Henry, for example, would not conform. And so one day in the middle of a sermon, the military walked in, walked up to the pulpit while he was preaching, pulled a pistol and pointed it at his temple and said, keep preaching and I'll pull the trigger.
Wow. By order of the king. That has actually happened to my co -host,
Reverend Buzz Taylor, on several occasions. It was probably a
Reformed Baptist. So Philip Henry said,
I will die for my king, but I will not be damned for my king.
God has called me to preach. The king may not tell me not to. Anyway, they passed this law that said, if you think the
Puritans didn't have a sense of humor, um, in fact, there was a joke going around at the time.
Why do the Puritans preach so long? And the answer was because they want to still be there when the congregation wakes up again.
So anyway, Parliament said, you may not preach in front of your congregation. And so the next
Sunday, the Puritan pastor turned around and he was preaching to the people behind him, not the people in front of him.
And then they passed another law that said, you may not preach in the pulpit. So he walked down in front and stood in front of the pulpit.
And the next week they said, you may not be even be in the church. So he went outside and preached through the window to the people.
And then they passed a law called the five mile act. You may not preach within five miles of a church.
And, uh, so that it's, it's very interesting to me that of the 97 members of the
Westminster confession, uh, Westminster assembly, 92 of them were excommunicated by the church of England because of their nonconformity.
So yes, in most cases, nonconformist and Puritans were the same.
Uh, William Greenhill did conform. He wrote a commentary on Ezekiel and then the
Christian and complete armor, I think. And that was William Gernal. I'm sorry, William Greenhill was something else.
Uh, but there were, there were a couple of people who did conform and, uh, that was tough. I think William Greenhill wrote a very good commentary on Job.
Didn't he? Isn't that, uh, that's Joseph Carroll. Okay. But I think I am is known for his commentary on Ezekiel.
Okay. Um, we do have another listener, uh, in Arnie and Perry County, Pennsylvania, who said you mentioned the
Anglican connection with Puritans, but were there not also Presbyterian and congregationalist
Puritans? Yes. Uh, which is an interesting thing. All of this within the church of England.
Now, how you could be a Presbyterian or a Congregationalist within the church of England, I'm not sure, but that's where they got their ordination.
Uh, even the Westminster assembly had Presbyterians and Congregationalists in it.
Uh, many of those Congregationalists came to America. John Owen was a Congregationalist, Jeremiah Burroughs was a
Congregationalist, and yet they were all ordained in the church of England. That one I can't explain.
CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island wants to know what the Puritan view on moderate alcohol consumption was.
They did consume alcohol in moderation. Um, they were a fun -loving bunch.
Uh, one, because they had large families, so they believed in conjugal relations.
Would have lasted too long if they didn't. Right. They didn't want to propagate the movement.
And, uh, they didn't see anything wrong with alcohol as long as it was in moderation.
And they would often chastise one another. For example, Matthew Meade, who wrote a tremendous book called
The Almost Christian Discovered, uh, when one of the Puritans spoke of him, he said he enjoyed the pleasures of the table too much.
In other words, he ate too much. He was fat. So it was all things in moderation, not just consumption of alcohol.
But, uh, I've never yet read a Puritan treatise on abstaining completely from alcohol.
Well, and back, back when the Puritans were prominent, uh, very few
Christians anywhere were really teetotalers, were they? I mean, as far as total abstinence is concerned.
I am not aware that they were. Um, it wasn't where it is today, where if you're a
Christian, you don't drink at all. Um, I just have to remind my listeners that since I definitely had a very serious problem with alcohol abuse,
I do not touch alcohol at all anymore. But I still believe that for other people, it is a liberty because it's clear from the scriptures that you can't find a text or a passage that totally condemns the, the use of the, uh, the beverage.
I know that when I became a pastor, I decided I would not because it might offend somebody if I did.
It wouldn't offend anybody if I didn't. Right. And, uh,
I would often have guys in the church say, Hey, come on. You want to go have a beer and pizza with us? I said, well, I'll have a
Diet Coke and pizza with you. And so, are you going to be offended if we have it? Not in the least. Uh, if I have to drive you home,
I will. Well, I can tell you that I have met, uh, those who flaunt their liberty to drink so much that they are offended even by something that I would say in regard to abstinence.
Uh, I've even heard one, uh, brother who is now in heaven, uh, who said to me that I was doubting the miraculous work of grace in my life of, by God who delivered me from the abuse of alcohol.
But, uh, I thought that that was absurd, but he knows better now he's, he's with the Lord. I've heard the two wine theory and all those kinds of things.
I'm not convinced, but again, I'm with you. I think that's a issue of liberty that there is no command in scripture.
Do not drink alcohol. Again, there is a command to honor the weaker brother.
Right. And, uh, you know, Paul said, if it offends you, I won't eat meat. Um, so I think, uh,
Christian liberty has to be tempered with Christian charity. Now, you said something that was probably shocking to a lot of our listeners.
If it didn't go right over their heads, you said that they were a fun loving bunch, the stereotype that many people have, including myself, before I learned more about the
Puritans, largely actually through you and your conferences and books that you've brought back into print and also have coauthored and so on.
Uh, but, um, the, the, the vision that we, most of us get immediately triggered in our minds, you say
Puritan, you think of people dressed in all black and white, very sour and dour and stoic and, and, uh, laughter less and on and on I could go with the dreary picture.
Uh, but this, uh, according to what you just said is a false caricature, I'm assuming. Well, they were somber in worship.
You'll find a black cloak. Now that was true of most of society. It wasn't restricted to the
Puritans that, uh, you know, the ladies would wear a red gown or a blue gown or something like that.
But for most of the men, it was black clothing. Uh, it's an interesting thing to go to Plymouth, Massachusetts, to the
Plymouth plantation, uh, which is a historical living village, living history village where they recreate, uh, 1620
Plymouth. And, uh, these character actors know their stuff, but the, uh, the ladies wore a gray and blue and green clothing and the men wore gray and white and black, but they were not fun loving in worship.
That was to be reverential and respectful. But in real life, yes.
In fact, in some of the, uh, proceedings of the Westminster assembly, there are places where the moderator criticized the guys up in the high rows for reading the newspaper and fooling around.
Maybe that's why it took six years to get anything done. And, uh, before we run out of time,
I don't know if I told you this, Dr. Kistler, but I stole something from you. I'm, uh,
I don't think that I'm guilty of violating a commandment though. I'm actually just, uh, repeating it or borrowing it is a better word probably.
I, uh, at the - Chris, I've never had an original thought in my life. Well, I'm actually, actually, it's not from you.
It's when I, when I went, when I went to a conference that you conducted, you quoted
Christopher Love. And at the conclusion of every one of my broadcasts,
I, I sign off with that Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner.
And I remember when you quoted Christopher Love at this conference, out of nowhere, I just uncontrollably began to weep.
But it just hit me for some reason, that just simple sentence just, just totally, uh, broke my heart, if you will.
Um, that came out of his book entitled Grace. Christ is a better savior than you are a sinner.
You add up all the sins you ever committed. It's a finite number, but Christ is an infinite savior.
It also came out of Richard Sibbes, um, the bruised read, where he has a, uh, conversation between Satan and a weak believer.
And Satan attacks us this way. You are a great sinner. And he says, don't argue with him.
He's right. But you can say this, yes, but Christ is a greater savior. Amen. But you have much sin, yes, but Christ has more mercy.
Amen. And that's why I love these guys. Yes. That's why I wanted to end with your concentration now on their grace -centered, uh, theology and so on.
If you don't mind, if any of your listeners, I do a weekend conference on the
Puritan. Yes. And all I ask for is travel expenses. I don't have a fee.
Uh, I come and I'll do all weekend. And, uh, if they pay me,
I spend it. But if they don't, I don't refuse, uh, just to do a book table and to get things about the
Puritans out there to people. Yes. And I was in the audience, as I just mentioned at one of those conferences that was held at Grace Reform Baptist Church on Long Island a number of years ago.
And, uh, I know, uh, at least one pastor who absolutely loved your conference, who ordered the recordings of it, who is a vehement anti -Calvinist.
Is that right? Oh yeah. And he, uh, we'll see, he, he's a, he's really a, uh, an enigma, this man.
He's a vehement anti -Calvinist, but he loves the Puritans because unlike many anti -Calvinists, he has a high, high view of repentance.
And he just happens to know that the Puritans, uh, stood out against many other, uh,
Christians throughout history in their, uh, clear teaching on the, on the necessity of repentance.
So that was one thing that, uh, he, uh, shared in common with us, but, uh, he, uh, he still, to this day, when
I bump into him, will bring up your conference. But, uh, we have to, uh, make sure that our listeners know that your website is northhamptonpress .org,
northhamptonpress .org with one H. And before we run out of time, if you could just repeat any contact information that you have, uh, that they can get ahold of you for these conferences and for your books too.
Yeah, they can contact me through the website at, uh, D -R -D -O -N, Dr. Don at donkissler .org
or just through the website northamptonpress .org. And, uh, like I said, all
I ask for is it doesn't cost me anything to come to your church and talk to you. Um, other than that, but I just wanted to say your last name is spelled
K -I -S -T -L -E -R for those. So Dr. Don at donkissler .org.
Yes. And, uh, tell us something about Christopher Love, uh, since, uh, I sign off repeating that, uh, great quote of his.
Tell us. Christopher Love was beheaded by Oliver Cromwell at the age of 33, and he had already written enough and preached enough that his books fill up 18 volumes, uh, many of which
I've published prior to Northampton Press. But, uh, great, great historical figure.
Um, I wrote a book about him called A Spectacle Unto God, which is what he said on the scaffold before they cut his head off.
He said, I've been made a spectacle to God, the men and the angels. And then he tipped the man with the axe so that he said, get it right on the first blow, please.
Because evidently that they would do several of these in a row and the axe would get blunted and it took two or three swipes to cut a man's head off.
So he tipped him a gold coin and said, please get it on the first hit. Will you now, why did
Cromwell do this? Uh, because Christopher Love as a Presbyterian believed in the divine right of Kings.
And so he was writing to King Charles, who had been exiled and that letter got intercepted.
And so Christopher Love was accused of treason. And, uh, so he was convicted and then beheaded as an example to anyone else.
But, uh, J .I. Packer says this brought an end to Cromwell's reign because of that brutal act.
Now, is there anything to admire Cromwell about other than this, obviously horrendous event that, uh, he was very anti -Catholic and, uh, he was a
Calvinist and he too believed in repentance. And if you could,
I want to make sure that our listeners, uh, have one thing. Uh, when I did my genealogy, I found out through my mother,
I come from Oliver Cromwell through my father from Jonathan Edwards. Really?
When I mentioned over in England that I was from Oliver Cromwell, that didn't go over very well.
Well, I don't think very highly of them over there. Well, I'm wondering if my friend, uh,
David Purdy, one of my old, uh, high school buddies, uh, who used to tell us that, uh, he, his mother was from England and he used to tell us that he was in Cromwell's lineage.
And I don't know if that was true or is true, but if maybe you could check on that name P -U -R -D -Y.
But, um, if you could, um, leave our listeners now with what you most want etched in their hearts and minds when it comes to the
Puritans before this broadcast is over. Yeah, that they were so strong on grace because they were so strong on sin.
You need to know what you've been saved from. And it's not a bad haircut or a bad self -image.
We've been saved from sin and from the wrath to come. And until we understand that, we will not understand grace.
But again, Christopher Love said it best in the final analysis, no matter how great a sinner you are,
Christ is a greater savior. He has more mercy than you have sin. Amen.
And, uh, what, uh, if you could, uh, list some of the primary works that you'd like our listeners to get ahold of in addition to None But Christ by John Wall, who
I understand this is a, this was a new discovery for you. Yeah. John Wall, tell us about some of the other books before we run out of time that you would like.
Well, Thomas Watson's book, Heaven Taken by Storm, uh, Thomas Watson's book,
The Christian on the Mount, which is on meditation. Um, anything by Jeremiah Burroughs and anything by Christopher Love.
If they only read one book by Burroughs, I would say gospel worship, which is, here's a novel concept.
Worship is for God. It's not for me. Amen. And I remember from your conference that the reformed pastor by Richard Baxter is actually one of the very few things that you do recommend by Richard Baxter.
Well, he was strong on practical theology. He was not strong on justification by faith alone.
Uh, he did believe in universal salvation, but, uh, interestingly enough, in spite of that, the
Puritan still accepted him as a brother, but, uh, his practical works have been reprinted, but not his theological works.
And that's for a reason. Now, is he the only non -Calvinist of renowned among the
Puritans that you know of? Well, that I'm aware of, but again, when you're talking about thousands of men, there could be others, and I, I just don't know about them.
Yes. And was he, uh, semi -Pelagian actually in his, uh, understanding of things?
I'm not sure that that's an accurate statement. Uh, that's calling him an
Arminian and he was not. Okay. Then he wasn't a full -blown universalist either though, was he?
No, he was not. Okay. Well, uh, we have run out of time and Dr. Kistler, I did tell you that I wanted you on for two hours because I knew that the time was going to fly by too quickly.
And when you said we're going to debunk all the myths, I said, well, you're not going to do that in one hour. Well, next time that you come back,
I definitely want, uh, if you can, if your schedule permits, a two -hour interview with you and we could address anything that is a burden on your heart that you'd like to discuss.
Cause I really appreciate you and your ministry and the knowledge and gifts that God has given you.
Thank you so much for the time. And thanks to your listeners for hanging in there. And once again, the website is northhampton press .org
northhamptonpress .org. And there's only one H in North Hampton. And I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives, as Christopher Love once said,
Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner. We look forward to hearing from you and your questions for our guests tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.