TiL Podcast- Pastoral Ordination Church of God #pastor #ordination #churchofgod

Welcome to the Truth and Love podcast. Tonight we have another special edition in our series,

Pastoral Ordination. We're gonna look at the Church of God. Stick with us. ♪

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Let us know that you're there. Say hello. Ask a question critique. We're talking about ordination pastoral ordination and tonight is concerning the

Church of God. Yes, sir. I will I will open up with a question that I've been asking everybody and then then

Dan can take over with some questions. So I hear this a lot in different conversations and I played a video for Pastor Jonathan of Vertical Life.

I'm not going to play it tonight, but you'll have a conversation or you'll hear a conversation and somebody wants to interject.

Well, that's biblical or this is biblical and what Dan and I discussed and worked through in the introduction is that what people mean by that is it's biblical in the in such a way that their meaning is descriptive or it's prescriptive and some people elevate a descriptive something that's biblical biblically descriptive and they're elevated to something that is prescriptive and vice versa.

And that kind of leads into pastoral ordination. Somebody might say, well, that's that's biblical.

What is it biblical descriptive or is it biblical prescriptive? Is it something that we should practice?

We should follow. So what do you think is pastoral ordination biblical and if so, in which sense?

So I think that it obviously, yes, it is biblical. I also believe that if something is prescriptive prescriptive, in scripture, it is by default descriptive in scripture.

So there's a possibility that something in scripture could be descriptive and not be prescriptive.

As an example, in Acts, we see that the church sold everything that they had personally and put put all their money in one pot.

That's definitely something that was descriptive of the time, but we find over in scripture where that is necessarily prescribed that believers do, right?

Is that fair? Likewise, if we see something that is prescribed in scripture as being necessary, then it will be described in scripture as well.

So that you have an example to go by. So I would say that yes, not only is it prescriptive is also descriptive in scripture.

Now, obviously, I've reserved right to be wrong, but we look at I use the book of Acts a lot whenever we talk about how the church functions and how the church ought to function as an example, sometimes how the church ought not to function, right?

We can we can go to scripture for all that. And I don't want to I don't want to jump ahead now.

Am I if I give an example of my jumping ahead because it did say and why in here and why?

Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Okay. So, tell me

Bibles and Acts chapter six. We went over this several times as a as a club here as a ministry team.

The disciples were increasing in number. A complaint arose on the part of the Hellenistic Jews against the native

Hebrews because the widows were being overlooked in the daily serving of food. We're talking about the way the church interacts with one another.

Mm hmm. We without going into it, you already see how the daily workings must be leading up to this.

Like I said, everybody sold their private possessions and they all had one had all in common so that no one had need among them.

So you see right here. Now, there's been a there's been a hitch in that giddy up, right? Is the 12th from the congregation of disciples and say it is not desirable for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables.

Now, let it be known. They did not demean the serving of tables.

But they had a job to do that was different than just serving tables alone.

Right? So we already see a variation in callings.

Do we not? We get into verse four. Nobody's call seems to be more important than the others, but we would agree that the

Apostles had been given a task separate from the rest of the disciples, right? Okay.

Therefore brethren select among you seven men of good reputation full of the Holy Spirit and of wisdom whom we may put in charge of this task that right there is ordination.

That's what that is. Pick from you seven brothers of good reputation for the

Holy Spirit and of wisdom. Now Paul would later on open this up a little bit further in the book of Timothy.

Right? He must be of good report, the husband of one wife, blameless. You can shorten that and say of good reputation, right?

And full of the Holy Spirit. So I would say that that is both descriptive of what the

Apostles did and I think that is prescriptive in whom you ordain.

I don't think that you ought to just be ordaining any Tom, Dick or Harry that shows up because you need somebody to take care of a job in the church.

These are to be people of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wise to discern

Scripture and to be able to teach. Right? I mean spoiler alert, the guys that they picked, the first martyr, was he murdered for serving tables?

Was he murdered for helping this? How was he murdered brother Dan? He was preaching. Boom. So it didn't mean that his role in the church negated his call to the

Great Commission, did it? Right. So he was to be someone who was apt to teach, somebody who could lead folks to the

Lord and it was this preaching of Christ and his gospel that cost him his life ultimately. Well received in glory,

I imagine. You pointed out this is ordination.

Can you define it in your own terms? Ordination simply means to be appointed or called, to be backed by somebody.

So as a general rule, the term ordained can both mean it can be appointed to good or bad really.

You can be set aside for a time and a season by God's choice that is bad.

It says God hardened Pharaoh's heart to bring about his own divine end, right?

I would say that he ordained Pharaoh for that time and for that season, but I don't think nobody wants to walk a mile in Pharaoh's shoes.

Likewise, he also ordained Stephen and there would be a short period of time.

I don't think anybody would walk in his shoes either, but I don't think, I believe any of us would trade places with him now.

So simply ordained means to be called and to be appointed.

Did I answer that question in its fullness? Let me check. Absolutely. We kind of got into the next question too, didn't we?

I didn't mean to. Well, that's going to happen. Okay, we're going to, we're going to bleed over no matter what.

It's like a Sharpie on thin paper. You just keep on talking. We'll figure out what question we're on and go from there.

Okay, so I think the question that is going to,

I listen to Foster, Brother Foster and y 'all's podcast, and I don't think there's going to be very much different in the way that he would have answered the questions.

I don't remember them, the way he answered them, but I can't imagine being very different, very much different than the way the

Church of God ordains people, the way the way the Baptist Church ordains people with the exception of they will ordain women.

And I know that that's a massive difference between the denomination.

I don't know about the Presbyterian. Do they just ordain women to the Office of Deacon or do they ordain them to the

Office of Pastor as well? They'll ordain them to the Office of Pastor now. Okay. Yeah, my particular denomination is only one that will ordain women to the

Office of Deacon, but we don't we don't ordain women to the Office of Pastor. So there's three.

There's three offices inside of the Church of God in terms of licensed ministry and they start at Exhorter and then it goes up to an ordained minister and then above that is an ordained

Bishop. And there's extremely little difference between each level with one exception being that an ordained minister has the freedom to marry and to bury is what some people say and an ordained

Bishop has the ability to vote on certain things that others can't without getting into the polity of the

Church of God and boring everybody. When I go get the minutes, I got in my bedroom and I can read it. I can't vote on certain issues at General Assembly, but I can vote on the things that the elders or bishops vote on.

Right? Does that make sense at all? Yeah, it might help if you give us just a basic rundown of Church of God Church polity just so we can kind of see where you're coming from.

And from the bottom up at the top up. I mean, so I'm not the way just a just a real quick rundown so we can kind of get a framework to know how you're using your terms.

So the Church of God is a centralized has a centralized form of government not much different than the Wesleyan Church.

In fact, it's a Wesleyan holiness movement that was founded in the 1896

Shearer Schoolhouse in Eastern Tennessee, Western North Carolina Mountains. It was in a it began at a revival meeting between some

Wesleyans and some Methodists and it's grown ever since every year.

It's grown. It was originally not designed to be a denomination so much as it was designed to be a movement.

But over the years it has become a denomination all the same the each

Church reports to an overseer and each overseer reports to an overseer until you get to the general overseer and he has accountability through what is referred to as the

Council of 18 and that is the group of elders inside the church.

One of the things that is appealing to me. I'm a man that likes structure even though you wouldn't think

Pentecostals do. There's a very I wouldn't call it concrete or rigid in the sense that there's no freedom in it and that there's no joy in it, but there is a structure so that there is accountability for everybody to everybody.

Does that make sense at all? Yep. So a church member that is recognized as a believer who is 16 years old and older can vote on who their pastor is going to be and a district is set up by a certain amount of churches make up a district and that district has a bishop who oversees that district and then each set of districts belongs to what we would call a state overseer.

This is where things can become a little bit tricky. If you know, you know, but like in North England and what's called

Northern New England, which I believe you'd fall into that district brother, brother Dan is three states.

Three states make up one one one state overseer has three different states because there's not enough churches to have that many different districts.

You understand where North Carolina has two different states inside of one state.

I'm in Western North Carolina Church of God and there's an Eastern North Carolina Church of God in the in Gaston County.

Area in the Lincoln Gaston County district. I think there's 38 Church of Gods. There's more

Church of Gods in that district than an entire Northern New England district in one County.

So it's a very populated. This area is very populated with Church of Gods where other parts of the country are not for instance,

Gillette Wyoming only has one. The entire state of Wyoming has one Church of God and it's in Gillette.

Ask me how I know. How do you know that? I'd like to move to Wyoming one day. So when I was looking at a map,

I said, I wonder if there's a Church of God out here and there is Gillette. So when so when you become a pastor.

Who the fine pastor was because the one called out to to be the the main preacher to do the pastoral shepherding duties of the church who's calling you besides we know

God's calling you first, but as far as the church church structure goes who's calling you out you talk about congregation voting.

Okay, does the bishop place you does congregation call you and vote vote on you?

How does it work? So the way this works is for instance, I'm not a senior pastor at a church even now.

I'm an ordained minister in the Church of God and have been for I think three years.

I've been licensed for four or five. I can't remember now and the order of it is once you're an exhorter you're licensed and then you're ordained it's ordained and then

Bishop is the following you have to have so many years of service before you qualify to test for a bishop the way that I went about it.

There's primarily two ways. One is I felt the call to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So I talked to my pastor. I told him I said I feel like I've been called to preach and he said, okay, we're going to fill out a form.

We're going to pray about it. We fill a form out that form gets sent to the state office and the state office put me in what's called a calling administering service class and for a year.

Well, roughly nine but almost a year. I went to class once a month and I went over doctrine.

We went over church polity. We took several different tests to see areas that we might be good at or areas we might suffer at and all that is is a check to make sure that this call that you felt like you have wasn't just an emotion, but is something that you're willing to push through.

For instance, you can feel like you would be really really good at guitar, but until you buy a guitar and you sit down and you try to play it for six months, eight months and you hurt your fingers and you get disheartened and you break your strings and you spend piles and piles of time and still sound like hot garbage.

You don't know if you really want to play guitar until you keep playing through that. If you throw it away after about six months, you know, you really didn't want to play guitar.

You just like the idea of playing guitar. So the calling in the ministering service process that I went through is to sort of weed out people who really aren't called.

Maybe they feel like they should be because daddy was a preacher or maybe Papa was a preacher or maybe maybe they just thought it was a really cool idea and they and they love the

Lord and they love scripture, but it does take a different.

It takes a calling. It is totally different to reside to pastoring people, right?

Yeah, if you pass that class and you go through a panel interview after you've passed the test and those men who are bishops will ask you assortments of questions.

They'll let you answer them. However, you feel led to answer them. Then they'll make a judgment call as to whether they really believe that you're called or not.

You'll pray together and then they'll let you know, right? Yeah, once they agree and you've passed all the tests and you've cut the muster or whatever.

They'll issue you a license and the license simply says that the Church of God has agreed to allow you to share the gospel and there with their blessing.

They've given you the right to defend the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's the way it's worded, but you're not really allowed to baptize anybody into the church or take membership or marry somebody unless you have the direct supervision of an ordained minister because that's actually a state law.

I think I think in order to marry somebody had to be ordained. If you go to the next step and you decide that you want to become an ordained minister, then a similar process you sit with your pastor or your or your if if you're the pastor of the church and that's possible, you may need to sit with the overseer and you need to talk through it.

You fill out an application you go back and then you and I went back to something that was called the MIP program, which is a ministering internship program where I work hand -in -hand with the minister.

They put they place you in a church. You don't often get to pick which church you're going to and you work with that minister and he with the help of the state and with you develop a program of what it of teaching you how to minister.

Hands hands and hand foot and foot boots on the ground kind of thing. You still have to report every month to Charlotte sit through your lectures.

You still have five six hours worth of homework and computer work that must be maintained every day as well as research papers.

You have college level papers to write at the end of that nine months.

You take a test. If you pass the test, then you get an opportunity to be grilled by more bishops.

They ask you harder questions. They give they want to see an example of how you started a ministry successfully during your time with the church.

And then once you pass that if they ordain you then you have to stay at that church for a year. Working with that pastor.

So that's how you get to become an ordained minister. If you want to pastor a church, the way that works is you submit a resume to the overseer.

You tell him your intentions and then he'll call you if there's a church that needs a pastor and you go to that church and you submit your resume.

You interview with the elders at that church, the pastor's council, or whoever they've picked to be if there's not a big enough church to have a pastor's council.

You'll sit down with a with a committee. They'll ask you questions that they've dreamed up. Then you minister a couple

Sundays or whatever. However, they have many times they've asked you to and then they have a heads up vote up and down.

If you don't get the vote, you don't get the vote. See that's why I think this conversation is so important because so a lot of those things that you just described you lean more towards the

Presbyterian method that Dan and I have already discussed then you do the

Baptist method. If the Baptist and Church of God, if we would wipe away our animosities, our little quirks, our nitpicks, if we would just get rid of those things just for a second and say, hey, what does this guy have to say?

Because in the Baptist Church when it comes to ordination, it could last the process could be five minutes.

It can be five days. It's whatever the church wants and then you have a committee that you get together.

It could be committee from your church or your local association. They ask any question that they desire to ask.

It could be anything. They vote. They approve you. You're done. You're in and then beyond that, where's your accountability?

You don't go back to classes like you're talking about. You don't go to the lectures. You don't have a bishop that you go to in the Baptist Church.

There's not that accountability there. And so that's why this conversation is so great because I can say, here's the things that I have against the

Church of God denomination. I'm setting that aside. Well, what can I learn from Big John and the process that they go through in the

Church of God and bring that over? Is this biblical?

Where am I weak and where are they strong? And what can I bring over? Well, I mean, anytime you want to join

Church of God, I mean, we'd love to have you. I mean, I'm just going to throw that out there. You know what I mean? We take

Baptist. We take Presbyterians. Brother Dan, you know what I mean? Well, no,

I think it's good for us to have this conversation with the different denominations that we're trying to reach out to.

We talked to Pastor Jonathan, who comes from the Southern Baptist, and that's the background that I come from.

Dan, the Presbyterian, and his branch of Presbyterianism. You're from the Church of God, and hopefully plenty others will have a chance to have a conversation with.

And lining up, of course, lining up from Scripture is what they're saying biblical. Can it help me where I'm weak?

And maybe shore up some things that are that have been missing for a long time.

And I think I think Baptists have a lot to learn in that area. I really, really do. Well, I think that I don't and obviously, you know that I care about you boys, and I wouldn't sell the

Baptist too short because here's a couple things that I like about everybody, right?

Here in our state, North Carolina, Brother Dan, you're not from North Carolina, or you don't live in North Carolina now, but you used to live in North Carolina.

You know that this state, for all its conservative values, is a very liberal state in terms of its government.

During the pandemic, the governor adhered powers that really weren't his to wield and decided he would just stop church, stop the gathering of the saints.

Now, there were people inside of my denomination who were like, well, maybe we need to stop for a period of time and listen to what the governor says.

There were other people in the same denomination like, no, well, you might imagine people don't always agree on everything.

Everybody looks at things a little bit different, and I recall a conversation that was had, and we were not forbidden from having church.

I want to make sure that everybody understands that. We were not forbidden. However, within the polity of our church, if our state or general overseer and state overseer had forbidden us gathering together, we wouldn't be allowed to meet at the church building because, with few exceptions,

Church of God congregations don't own their building and grounds. It's owned by the Church of God International. So what would you do in this circumstance?

Let's say your congregation deemed their call on a situation unbiblical. Would you say, hey, is it possible that you and your congregation say, hey, we're doing this or we're not doing this, despite what they say, because they're taking an unbiblical stance and then tackle those circumstances or consequences later?

Do you see that ever happening? So I think that if we were going to handle it biblically in those kinds of situations, if I were asked to do something that went against my convictions, and I believe that asking someone to stop gathering together in accordance with Scripture is unbiblical, and I believe that that would go against my convictions,

I would say that we would just meet at someone's home and let everybody, like I would open up my home to whoever wanted to come, and that would be at your own personal discretion.

You act in accordance with the convictions that God's laid on your heart. I'm not going to condemn you if you don't show up.

I'm not going to thank any less of you if you don't show up, but I'm also not going to go against those that are over me in the

Lord and use somebody's property that is not my property in a way that I think is right, because now

I'm getting out of line. Now, I'm out of step with those that are over me, right?

So I think that you can disagree with people that are over you, but you have to, if you're going to do that on your own, it has to be on your own.

You have to take that step outside and say, okay, this is the Jones family and whoever else wants to come.

This is no longer a Church of God sanctioned event, right? This is

Christians meeting in my home and all of you are welcome. And I think that that's really the take that we had to take as Christians.

I think it's a very similar approach whenever the governor or anybody that is in the office assumes power and authorities that really aren't his and uses emergency powers and actions to do it.

I think in order to follow Romans 13 and be submissive to God, you have to listen to God first and you have to continue to meet, but it might be that you meet at home and you take the mode that we see in Scripture that is descriptive, right?

Which is house church. And that's okay, if that's what it takes. What is that?

This was supposed to be my cheer button. Oh, I gave you a cheer. I can't hear it. I'm lying.

It worked. It's all right. We couldn't really hear much on our end either, but I mean,

I think that's a biblical. I think that's a healthy understanding of Scripture and an applicable way to use

Scripture and also not to be disrespectful to our elders.

I think that's a very honorable approach. I appreciate that. Yeah, can we go back on something you said a little bit ago because there's something that you said about the process that a lot of folks don't get a lot of folks.

It's just not how they do things. You talked about being placed with a pastor to work for a period of time sound like no hands -on discipleship.

That's right of how to how to actually minister for a time.

Now, I know our our presbytery requires you to have it's either one or two internships and usually you take care of those during during your school time, but it sounds like they actually place you with somebody in the within your denomination and you're supposed to be there for what you said nine months or a year or something like that.

The program is nine. The program is not much long after the program. It's a year. You have to stay.

So you're not much minimum. Yeah. So you're looking at what like 18 18 months night or what's that math 21 months to 24 months something like that.

Yes, sir. What does that look like during that time? Like what did you do in order to like what paces were you put through in order to kind of set you up for success?

So in my case was slightly different. I was on staff at Real Life Community Church.

I ran the outreach program and had been running the outreach program for some period of time and the bylaws say that if you're already on staff at a church, they wouldn't move you if it affects your pay because all this is on voluntary basis and I didn't have to move in hindsight.

I kind of wish I had sometimes not that not that I didn't absolutely love working with with my pastor and and getting to see more about what he does on a daily basis as opposed to what you see from, you know, the members point of view.

But because I've realized that just like you were talking about brother Rob a while ago,

I stand to learn so much more if I listen to more people not that everybody you listen to you should be listening to but we should hope that those that are leaders inside the church, even if we disagree with their approach, we stand to learn something from them if nothing else learn what not to do, right?

I mean, so in in the case that I was at, I did not leave my home church.

But instead of just helping with outreach, I wound up I wound up working with with Pastor Johnny on a much more day -to -day.

It was it wasn't every day. But do you recall any of these times

Rob during the times we was reading scripture outside or the outreach programs that we were putting on or during a zoom how many how many weekends how many days during the week

I was at real life or we're doing something with real life. I mean, it was a full -time job for the most part on top of a full -time job.

There's things that I'm hesitant to even say, you know,

I'm not going to say it in total because I don't want to I don't want to take away from the blessing that it means to people to pastor.

But there's things that I never I never thought about it not even a million years and maybe this is different than other denominations.

But I mean, I've worked on people's cars and helped move furniture of I've worked on on their homes and built stuff for them.

I've never in my wildest dreams called my pastor any other church and asked him to come help me fix something on my house because my water was frozen or but in some cases.

Some of these some of these pastors are are literally helping hand and everyday life this to the members of their church and that's not seen nobody sees that and it's not something that good pastors tell anybody ever about right?

So there was a lot of stuff that was going on that I would have never thought there was enough hours in a day.

For for one man to do and sometimes there wasn't in those cases. I would do those things that that he wasn't allowed to do and another thing that brother

Robert and myself were talking about one time. You love these people.

It's it's hard to put into words. How much you can love somebody that they don't really they don't really care.

It doesn't seem like they really care that much about you or your church, but but you find yourself at the altar crying with them because they're praying for somebody who's sick or loved one is lost or for their for their own soul and and you you care about them.

It's that's it's it's otherworldly the way that you care about them and there's times that you have to say things from behind the pulpit that you know hurts their feelings.

And it hurts their heart and they got to hear it in order to be whole.

And you know, if you say it they're going to hate you for it and there's a part of you that don't want to do that. At least there's part of me that don't want to do that.

And I remember I was listening to the pastor one night preaching and I could tell it was killing him to deal with some of the things that he was having to deal with my pulpit and I thought what if he didn't have to always do that?

What if I could be? Sort of the bad cop from time to time and give them somewhere they could go and complain about me in the harsh teaching or the harsh preaching that they've had to endure then he can have an opportunity to give them the same truth, but maybe a little bit softer or maybe with with what appears to be more love in a way that they'll listen to it from another point of view in which case we found that we became more like a team of ministers.

Then we became one minister and associate pastors that worked with him. We became like a

I don't know like a ball team. Does that make any sense at all? I my wife's not going to want to hear you say things that hurt her feelings or in any way make her kids look bad.

But if if I can say something that makes you check where you're at then you can go to the pastor and you can say how about that you can you can let them come to you and and and be a and be a loving pastor and they don't have to be a bad guy all the time and and he wound up showing me a lot of stuff that that I'll be honest with you.

If I was a younger man, I don't think I'd have been ready for because I have a hard I had a hard time for a long time putting up a stupid and sometimes people do stupid stuff and and you just want to say man that was stupid.

Why would you do something like it? You know, that's not really the attitude you can have with them. A lot of times when we have the attitude that we don't like stupid.

We also don't like it when people call out our stupid. Oh man, I don't do nothing stupid Rob. What are you talking about?

Let me let me ask you this question and it may be kind of tough because obviously based on what you described the the

COG they have they have an interest in that position and they have an interest in who's in that position.

So they they've developed this the system where they are developing men and others.

They're they're developing people to take this position and a caring about that that office.

So the question is and then in something you said caused me to write down a follow -up question, but the question is does a person have to is a person have to be ordained to for what you have to be a pastor?

No. Okay, not inside our denomination. Okay, you talking about ordained by the church?

I mean the first has to be called by God, but if we're talking about ordination in terms of the church ordination, no, as a matter of fact, at least one one couple that went through the cams and the

MIP with me. We're already pastoring a church whenever we went through the first level.

So I know you don't have to okay, so that will be a little different than some of the other denominations that we've looked at already where they won't ordain until they've been called and given the position.

I can't speak about every case because I don't have all knowledge about it. But at least in this case, there was a an ordained bishop that we had almost like a satellite campus and they were answering directly to him and they were working in conjection with or with in conjuncture with the pastor that was in another part of the same

County. So they weren't they weren't alone in ministering.

They were working. They were pastoring full -time in the mountains, but they had somebody that they had to answer to on the daily and there was a report given on the daily.

They were there was they were guarded and I almost every area because they weren't licensed or ordained yet.

I assume is the reason why you said we've got something similar in our denomination that we're going through our church plant are the one leading it is a pastoral intern.

He's not or he's licensed to preach now. He'll be ordained coming up shortly, but for the last year or so, he's been doing the bulk of the preaching there, you know, basically serving as a pastor in some respects, you know, without ability to baptize or administer the

Lord's Supper Mary all the while our our home church, you know, we meet and answer to that pastor and that group of elders for everything that we do and now he'll get an ordination as As the church will congregate and materializes its own entity

Hill who become the pastor over there at least that's that's the plan. I don't know what's actually going to have, you know,

James tells us not to say hey, this is but as Lord wills that that's what we're we're aiming to do agree.

You brought up baptism and then you just talk about baptism and I've been asked this question. I think it was probably been years ago.

But does the someone need to be ordained before they can can baptize some denominations may may see it differently, but from a biblical perspective, what do you think does the person have to be ordained?

So from a from a purely biblical perspective, I can't say that I find in scripture a prescription for that is most assuredly that you see it described and if we're going to just lean wholly on the bulk of acts,

I would say if the description that we've seen the leadership of the church behave and acts is always prescriptive then then

I would say you there's an argument to be made that yes from the Church of God's point of view, I baptized all four of my daughters under the guidance of my pastor,

Pastor Caldwell, who was a not just an ordained minister but ordained

Bishop over Real Life Community Church while I was an exhorter and it was permissible because he was there as oversight.

But I was able to have the privilege to water baptize all four of my children, which if you know, that's that's a special I mean that that's something that I'll never

I'll never not be excited about that's something that I'll never take for granted.

At least I hope and pray. I don't is how how special that was if you look at the pictures you'll see

I look almost angry and it's because there's a solemnness to this.

There's a seriousness to it and I didn't want to paint it lightly. I just I wanted to take it all in and I my smile sometimes look like frowns.

I'm Presbyterian. I've seen you worship one time. I know some of some of us just have that natural scowl look and we accept it.

There you go. That's that Scottish smile right there. Scottish smile. I'm smiling on the inside.

I don't know if it was stated or not, but you've got the Exhorter how many positions in the local church

Exhorter and then and then pastor Exhorter minister and Bishop Mr.

And Bishop and and how do you obtain one of those positions and then going to talk about the hierarchy that you mentioned so don't think about don't think about the licensing as a position.

That's not a position. You can be a licensed minister and never hold a position. Okay, you can be licensed driver in North Carolina and never get in a car.

All right, never even own a car, but you can have driver's license. I don't love another state. You can do that.

But in this one you can. We'll say that you do obtain one of those positions. How did how did you get in there and then beyond the church and those other positions like you said

Pastor Johnny was the Bishop over something else. So I may have led you wrong.

So in order to become an Exhorter or a licensed minister, you have to either take the cams class or college equivalent of education, which

I don't know what that is. I didn't go to I didn't go to the Bible College. I went to cams at the end of at the end of that you take a test provided that you pass with I think it's 80 or higher on the test and that the panel of bishops that interview you agree.

They'll issue you a license from the Church of God to defend the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you wish to pursue a additional level of licensing, there will be an ordained minister and a similar process would take place if you have equivalent education in college or you go through an internship program.

It's one or the other. I suppose you could do both if you just wanted to go through the MIP program. I suppose you could go to college and go through the

MIP. But the end of that program. After passing a test with an 80 or higher and being interviewed by a panel of bishops if they agree, they believe you've been called they'll issue you an ordination.

They'll ordain you as a minister. At that point, you have the ability to administer all the sacraments, to baptize, to take in members, to marry, and to conduct a funeral without any oversight whatsoever in the

Church of God. You can pastor a church as an exhorter. You can actually pastor if you're not an exhorter given a certain set of circumstances as I said.

The first level of exhorter you can pastor a bishop. I mean a minister obviously you can pastor and a bishop you can pastor.

The next level of bishop is only obtained after you've been a minister. It's an ordained minister for either seven years.

If you're under the age of 35 or if you're over the age of 35, it's five years.

You have to have maintained your license, maintained your credentials, and every month

I have to fill out a form and send that form in. There's a continual renewal, not renewal, but a continual accountability of my license and how many times

I've preached the gospel, how many times I've defended the gospel, or how many times I've ministered through lectures or if I've led anyone to the

Lord. There's a whole bunch of fields you fill out and then after having kept that up for five years and serving in a capacity as minister, you have the ability to take a test for ordained bishop and then you've had to pass another panel interview and be allowed to be a bishop.

At that point, you would have the ability as a bishop to be an overseer of other churches and there's things like that.

Overseer, serve on the Council of 18, teach other classes.

Pastor Johnny was an ordained bishop, but he didn't hold an office like an overseer or anything.

He served as a pastor, but his title was Bishop Johnny Caldwell, and there's others just inside of LinkedIn, several others actually inside of LinkedIn who hold the title of bishop, who don't use the office to run for overseer or anything like that, but they serve as their pastors.

One thing that they can do as a bishop, that you have to be a bishop to do, is as I said, there's overseers and a district overseer is a bishop inside of a district church.

In our church, LinkedIn Church, in this area, LinkedIn Church of God is the LinkedIn District Church. So if you go on past Mooresville Church of God is the

Lake Norman District Church. Does that make any sense? So those men that pastor those churches have to be bishops.

Women cannot be bishops in the Church of God. Only men can. So let's say that I pass all those classes.

I get my license, and I desire to be the senior pastor at Real Life Community Church, or I desire to be on the panel of 18.

So that's two different things. Who puts me in those positions? So you'd be elected if you wanted to serve on the

Council of 18 by the ordained bishops and the General Assembly.

I want to say that's how it goes. Pastor John, if you're watching, I don't want to make a mockery of this. You know, I don't do good with polity.

Correct me if I'm wrong here. To pastor a church, if you're an exhorter, you can pastor a church.

If the state overseer submits your resume to a church and the church desires to listen to you, then they'll have you come on.

They'll interview you. You can preach for them for a little while, and then they'll have a vote as to see whether or not they want you to be their pastor.

And then that vote will be counted and sent to the state office, and the state overseer will appoint you at that church if that's the congregation's desire.

So there's a working together between the local congregation and the regional bishop, I guess.

State overseer. State overseer. Okay. State overseer. Working together. Got you. Got you. Okay. So, and that's interesting.

That's something good for us to learn who are not in that denomination, and our polity doesn't work that way, and we're not familiar with how you guys do it.

And it's good to hear about the oversight. I like it. And the accountability. I think that we'd all be better suited if people didn't just take our word for it.

Let's face it. A lot of the conversations that you and I have and the laborers have is about how many people out there are making a mockery of Jesus's gospel and are doing a disservice to the gospel of Jesus Christ and are not being both genuine with the text.

If there was oversight that could stop that, would it not help?

So, if I make a mockery of the gospel, the state overseer can take my license from me and say, you're not pastoring anymore.

You're not preaching anymore inside our denomination. You got to go. I don't know.

I don't know how often that happens from a Baptist context or Presbyterian context,

Church of God context. But I do know, thinking about the circumstances you're talking about, and I can think about from the

Baptist perspective, the charismatic perspective. Let's say there's oversight, there's accountability, and there's discipline when you're not meeting those standards.

It's easier nowadays to circumvent those standards because of the accessibility, because of internet.

People can appoint themselves and give themselves titles. They can have their own church at their house or online, and so people begin to circumvent those things and get to avoid accountability and discipline.

Yes. So, what I haven't heard so much of, and maybe I'm wrong, but if our churches as a whole on those higher levels would be more open to calling out these things.

Yeah. So, it would be wild and radical and totally helpful if, let's say, a handful of churches inside the same denomination or outside the same denomination, it doesn't really matter.

Say we took a bunch of an autonomous group of churches, like the Baptist Church, right?

And we said, okay, there's nine churches in Newton that are

Baptist. I know there's more than that probably, but let's just say for a number, let's say there's nine. So, we look at it and say, all right, all nine pastors come together, and they have some kind of an agreement, and they say,

I want to make sure that you hold me accountable in the strictest of terms.

If you see something inside of my life that does not resemble Christ, I want you to call me out on it.

And if it's so bad that I don't deserve the privilege to defend the gospel in front of my congregation,

I'm giving you the authority and the power to remove me from that office. What a sobering thing that would be.

To have me and gather together and give that kind of power to one another, knowing that first of all, they would use it only in a manner that is befitting that power.

That we wouldn't use that to try to make our church bigger than the other church down the road by getting rid of the pastor, but that we would use that to see that other church be successful.

I'm going to tell you, God has brought a bunch of very impressive men in my life to me to teach me things that I just wouldn't have known otherwise.

There's men inside of my denomination who will, mid -sermon, if they see you come in, tell you about your church.

I'm thinking about a man in Denver who was introducing the minister who was preaching at his revival.

He said, I see a pastor in the back of the room. He told the church and everybody that was visiting who that pastor was and where his church was and if they were in that area and they wanted to know a good church that they could join to go to that church.

The evangelist told him at the end of the service that I can't believe you told somebody else to visit that man's church.

He said if they go to that man's church and God uses them and they're blessed because they're in that man's church.

I haven't lost anybody. What if we had the mind that what's best for my brother is what's best for my brother even if it doesn't help me out a bit?

What if we desired to see God's church healthy even if it was the expense of our own congregation and God's given me men like that as mentors and I'm so thankful for that Rob.

It might shape the way that I do govern if God ever gives me a church and I hope it shapes me for the better, but I can see that idea is what is one of the reasons why

I joined the laborers in the first place was because I thought well if I can help

I want to be a help and if we can share the gospel together and we can show the world that God's church has far more in common than what separates them.

If we can show them that the Holy Spirit that empowers me empowers you and leads the laws to him and then they don't have any ammunition to go against the church and try to hurt us.

They have to say well at the end of the day say what you want to about them, but they love

God and they love one another. Now, what did Jesus say would be the evidence of those that were serving him?

So my prayer is that I mean, let's be real about it for a second.

If we know our state is growing at an exponential rate just drive through Charlotte right now.

It's ridiculous go through Mooreville in the evening when I get home from work. It's ridiculous how long you can sit in traffic.

I don't want another member from a church coming to my church. I want somebody who's unchurched coming to my church.

If God will send me the drug addict or the adulterer or the drunk or whatever whoever he wants to send me that I can share the gospel with them.

I'll be happy to take them. I'll be happy to take them and preach the gospel to them and trust that God will save them or remove them, but I don't want to see members from another church who are prospering and are healthy in that church pulled from that church to come to the church that I'm at because all that does is just smear the same number of people around an ever -dwindling population of church.

The church doesn't grow. It just gets diluted, right? So we've worked with Baptists from as far as from Ruthven, my brother

Jesse Harden at Temple from the guys over. Brother Leon doesn't pastor Spandau Fellowship Holiness anymore, but he used to.

That church has had us out there. There's been pastors come from Concord, Huntersville, some inside the denomination, some outside the denomination, all of them, all of them trying their best to see

God's church prosper and be healthy by the preaching of the gospel. And why wouldn't

I support that? So I think structure is perfectly fine.

If we could all have a structure where we all realize that we still have a little bit to learn that we don't have it all together and that somebody somewhere might know more than us and that we need to be held accountable to other people and to one another.

I don't think you can go wrong. You want to give the next question or you got anything

Dan? No, I didn't want to interrupt you.

You're doing good. I enjoy listening to you. But a group of a group of pastors that get together to hold each other accountable and have the authority to revoke credentials as a

Presbyterian church government. Well, that's the church of God. I mean, you know, that's the way it's good stuff.

I think it's what you see in the Bible. I think it's what God has for us that that the church would work together to hold each other accountable and point each other to Christ and see each other prosper in the midst of it's good stuff.

So what are what are some of the what are some of the strengths and weaknesses you see in the process and maybe even how it different.

You get me in trouble brother. Well, you know, don't trouble but you know, if there's something like hey, maybe we can improve on this and maybe the right people here and so I think one thing that we can do so it's been my experience.

I've tried out for a couple churches and and I preached twice at one church two different services on the same day and one service on one day another church.

And if I had to say there was one immediate improvement you can make I think it would be that you would have longer with the person.

That you're voting for because you don't really know this person after one meeting.

I think that you know before you before you put a lot of stock in this person.

You really need to have an opportunity to know them better and not that you're going to know somebody in any year, right?

I mean how if you if you go to church every Sunday, that's 52 Sundays and 52 encounters with one person if it's just on Sunday morning, you're not going to really know that person not like you know a friend.

But I think you know, if you say well let him come for three weeks. Now the difficult thing is how do you do that?

If somebody's coming from out of town so I can understand why we don't always do that if he's a local guy and it's he's just driving an extra 45 minutes to church.

That's one thing but if he lives in San Diego and you fly him out. I mean, that's that's not no mild cause to stay somewhere for a month three months in a hotel or in a house, right?

That's not to mention that if he's a pastor if he's currently pastoring who's filling in for him while he's gone that long, right?

You take a quarter of the year if you move your whole family. So it's easy to sit here and Monday morning quarterback this thing and say yeah, we could fix it by making people stay there longer.

I think that that would help but I don't think that that's going to be an open and shut door for every case.

You'd have to take every case independently of one another. You know,

I think that I think that the credentialing process as much as people would probably hate for me to say this.

I think that it could be harder. I don't think anybody breezes through the test.

I'm not saying that the test need to be harder. But at the end of the

CAMS program, I wasn't certain if I was going to be a senior pastor or an evangelist.

I'll be honest with you. I love evangelism work. The problem that I run into is that while a lot of the churches that we work with our kingdom minded some of them some of them aren't some of them have revival services as a thing they do and I'm not interested in going somewhere for a thing people do at a certain time of year, right?

I think that it's best revivals and evangelists coming to your church are only as good as the foundation that is there before they get there from the pastor who's working every week to see this thing made better and the pastor that supports it after that evangelist leaves that they work together, right?

So I think that the CAMS program could be geared more towards it's geared primarily for pulpit ministry.

I think that it could be geared more evenly spread from everything from teaching preaching music ministry children's ministry.

There could be a wider variety of things that it touches on.

So that could be an improvement again. I'm trying not to speak out of turn because I haven't seen what the you know, what anything else ever looked like there may have been a time in the past that did do that and I just didn't take that test or know about it.

Did I answer your question? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We're running a little short on time.

But so this one's really important. I think we'll end with this question. Okay. What is your advice to a fellow young guy or maybe even somebody a little bit older who is considering pastoral ministry?

It feels like an internal call to go into pastoral ministry and he's about to enter into this process in the church of God.

What would be your advice to that person as they start to navigate the process to say pray would be to indicate that you would stop praying at one point.

You need to be saturating your day in prayer. You can't you simply there's not enough hours in a day to say that you've prayed enough about it.

Consider the fact that if you take the position based off of anything other than what you believe to be a genuine call.

Think about the possibility of the danger that you face.

People don't understand what a pastor's family goes through. If you're watching this and you're a pastor's kid or pastor's wife.

I've seen Sister Candy on here. You know what they go through and how hard it is not on them and the family.

They need to know what in no uncertain terms what's coming because in a lot of times whether they should or not your family winds up getting treated almost secondary at times because there's so many things that have to be done and you're just one man.

Obviously, we're not supposed to put our families off but there's been times I've missed things for work and I've missed things for church that I wish

I hadn't missed but I couldn't be there for either one of them and so they need to understand that dad's going to be very busy.

If you go to a church that mistreats your children, your children are never going to want to go to church whenever they become an adult.

I give this caveat. So the first time I ever put in for a church,

I was kind of warned about going. I went anyway. I wanted to pastor.

I wanted to pastor in this area. I loved the area. I had already been ministering in that area through evangelism work for a couple years.

I knew the area. I knew a lot of the people in the area. It just seemed like a no -brainer and I don't make my children wear long dresses everywhere they go.

They wear blue jeans. If they want to wear blue jeans, if they want to wear a dress, they wear a dress. I don't really care so long as they're appropriately covered.

My children have their ears pierced. I have one child who has her nose pierced as silly as I think that is, right?

And there was a lot of side remarks given to my children by people at the church about how they shouldn't have on pants and they shouldn't have their ears pierced.

And when I heard all this, I don't mind whatever you say to me.

Say whatever you want to me. I'm a big guy and I'll take it. But you got to keep in mind as a member of a church, if you're a member of a church, listen to this.

The decisions that you make when you talk to people, it weighs heavily, especially on children.

They don't want to be beat up with your words, especially if it's unnecessary, right? I mean, these kids, my kids have all made a profession of faith.

They've all been baptized. They all read their scriptures. They pray. They follow me as I follow the

Lord in every area that I can lead them. Their attire shouldn't give you any indication that they're anything less than saved.

And I asked them point blank. I said, where are your children at? In the interviewing process, and not one of them had a child that was there.

Not one. All of their children, the moment they were old enough to leave their house, never came to church again. And I mean, that's not the kind of legacy

I want to leave behind, right? I want to leave behind my children who love going to church, who love serving the

Lord, who want their children to be raised inside the church. And I said, the damage that you can do to my family,

I can't fix. If you hurt my children because you're hateful, and I put my children in that position because I wanted this spot, then

I've set them up to be knocked down. Then if you get, you know, your rear end on your shoulders, as we say in Chereville, about how somebody's treated your children, think about the damage you can do behind the pulpit.

And you see how this could be a vicious cycle and just death, death, beginning death, over and over again.

So I think that I would really weigh out, you know, I removed my name from the drawing, from the vote, and I got half a vote.

Even after I removed my name, I still, still, as weird as it sounds,

I still love them people. You know, I've been up there since, not to that particular church, but I've been in that area and ministered to some of those people, and they're great.

Some of them are great people. They're, they've just got this way about them that, you know, if it's not the way

I was raised, it's a hundred percent wrong. And if it's a hundred percent wrong, then, you know, there's no

Lord in it. You know, they're condemned, standing there condemned because they wore pants. Isn't that silly?

Isn't that just silly? So I think if a man was starting out today and he asked me what advice I could give him,

I couldn't give him a whole lot, if I'm being honest, because I've never walked a mile in a pastor's shoes by myself.

I've only ever served as a role that was subordinate in a helping role, but I would say make sure that you're okay with everything that's in your life being very visible for every person in that church, that you're okay with all the critique that's coming, and that you can take it, and that your kids are strong enough to take it, and that your wife is strong enough in the

Lord to take it, because while it ain't fair, it's going to happen. Yeah, I really appreciate that, and I appreciate you being on with us, and I appreciate

Pastor Johnny joining with us and his input. I know you learned a lot from him, and so we appreciate him and the work that he's doing as well.

Yes, sir. If you give us just a few more minutes, will you share the gospel with us, and then will you close us in prayer?

So as we've said several times that in the Church of God, they call the exhorter's the first example of being able to defend the gospel, but by God's grace, we don't have to all be licensed to defend the gospel, but we do need to know what the gospel is.

The gospel of Jesus Christ simply means the good news of Jesus Christ. We often start with the bad news to highlight the good news, which is what

I like to do, because I believe that the law of the Lord is perfect, and seeing the soul converted.

We were born into sin because the first man decided to listen to his wife, because the first man's sin and death entered the world, we inherit that sin debt through Adam.

So whenever you're born, there's a death certificate already being printed for you. When the moment you take your first breath, we have an expiration date.

We don't know when it is, but it's surely coming. The Bible says it is appointed unto man wants to die, and after that the judgment.

And because of this sin, not only will this death lead to judgment, it will lead to judgment that finds you in hell for eternity because the sin that we've committed and the sin that we were born into was against the

Holy God, and because he's infinitely holy, that makes that sin infinitely punishable.

There would be many who would say that how can God punish me eternally for a sin that was committed in a timely manner?

And to that, I would say that it's because of God's worth that the sin that is against him is so heinous.

For instance, if you took your hands and slapped your neighbor, you would go to jail or get cited for assault.

If you took the same action against the president, they would put you to death, not because of the assault is different, but because of whom you've assaulted.

Well, we've assaulted God, who is infinitely more valuable than any man, than anything. Therefore, the punishment is infinitely worse.

But again, we're talking about the good news. The good news is that God did not desire to send every man to hell, but he has given us a way, a singular way, of escaping his judgment.

That's found in the person of Jesus Christ and his work on the cross. Jesus Christ, fully

God and fully man, took on the sins of the world on that cross, and he died. He actually died.

Three days later, he rises from the dead because he is God, because death cannot hold him, and by this act of rising from the dead by his own power, he forever defeats death and hell and the grave.

And all those who put their faith, who just put their trust in him, in him alone, not in their own wisdom and their own strength, but those that put their faith in Jesus Christ, the

Messiah, have life forevermore with him whenever they leave this world.

And it starts today. Eternity starts the moment that you ask Christ to forgive you of your sin. If you've listened to any of this, whether live -streamed or down the road at an undisclosed time and location, it's my desire,

I believe it's God's desire, I believe it's these men's desire, you'll nod if you agree with me, that you put your faith and hope and your love in Christ today, that you don't put your hope in this world or in what your mind or your hands can do, but that you trust that he took on the sin, your sin, my sin, on that cross, and that by rising from the dead himself gives him the power to be mighty to save, mighty to deliver, mighty to keep.

He's a sovereign Lord. He's a good God and he loves you today. He loves you today.

I pray that you put your faith in him. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the time you've given us tonight to look into pastoral ordination in this denomination.

We pray that the denomination would be blessed, that your word would go out, that they would see people saved, that you would build your kingdom through their work and their efforts.

We pray that you would be with those who've heard the podcast today, that they would be blessed as well, that they would know you and know you fully and truly.

We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. Now, not many people watch all the way to the end, but I thank you for all those who

I've been paying attention. There's been a lot of people or everybody that has been on tonight has been on Big John's Facebook or Big John's YouTube.

And I want to thank you for all those people who know Big John and tuned in to this episode tonight. I would encourage you to watch all our pastoral ordination series that we can get to that we've already done.

And if you know somebody who is in a different denomination that a pastor that would be willing to be interviewed, contact us or have them contact us so we can we can talk to them about getting them on and talk about pastoral ordination in their church.

But thank you again for your support and watching the Truth and Love podcast. We really appreciate it. And remember as always,

Jesus is King. Go live in the victory of Christ. Go speak with the authority of Christ and go share the gospel of Christ.