Paul Shirley Interview

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said,.

�But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

A New Guest Pastor and the Gospel of Mark

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, your host today, and I have a special guest today. See today being Tuesday, well it isn�t technically Tuesday, it�s a scorching hot 98-degree Wednesday, but the show will be aired on Tuesday.

And Steve Cooley has been sick, and now he�s in Los Angeles, and so I�ve recruited someone, not to fill my shoes, but to fill Steve Cooley�s shoes. And so we have Tuesday guy substitute, and I think you�re going to be very impressed and you�re going to be encouraged by Pastor Paul Shirley, pastor of Grace Community Church.

Paul, welcome to No Compromise Radio.

Thanks, Mike. Glad to be here. I don�t know if I can fill those massive Tuesday shoes, but I�ll do my best. All right.

Well, Paul was just telling me off-air that his favorite No Compromise episode of all time was when he was on Percocet listening to one of the shows in the hospital. So see how it all works out, Paul.

Yeah.

It�s the same exactly as you were going through those Puritan quotes, you know, with a shotgun approach to it.

Paul, give us a little background about who you are and what you�ve done. Let�s start off with, A, how God saved you, and then let�s move into the reason why you�re a pastor today. You�re called to ministry.

I was blessed, as many in the Church are, to grow up in a family of believers where I was exposed to the Gospel from a very early age, and so I was grown up and taught a reverence for the Word of God and a love for the Church, and the Lord used the faithful witness of both of my parents to call me to Himself, and thankfully, they loved me enough to teach me to love the Church, and so we grew up in the Church.

I watched my parents minister and serve my dad as an elder in the Church that I�m coming from. He�s actually also a firefighter, and he volunteers as a county chaplain as well, so he actually has done more funerals than anyone else I know, even the pastors I know.

So I grew up in that kind of atmosphere, and not only did the Lord call me to Himself in that atmosphere through their faithful witness, but He began to give me a desire for ministry as well. As I saw the Church, the Lord began to put that desire in me for full-time ministry, and so I went and got my undergraduate degree in Bible, and during that time was interning at the Church there in Brandon, Florida, where I�m coming from, Grace Bible Church, and I knew that I needed training, but I also knew that I needed the affirmation of the Church.

I needed the elders and pastors around me to identify and help me see if God had gifted me in that direction, and thankfully, I was in the Church environment where I was able to have that happen. Interned at the Church there for a while, got done with school, got married, and came on staff at the Church down there all at the same time, and was able to serve down in Florida at my home church for about seven years before we made the move up to where we�re at here in Wilmington, Delaware now.

So the Church that you�re at now is Grace Community Church. What�s the website if they wanted to see what you�re about and listen to some sermons?

W-I-L-M dot org.

Alright, and so you�re preaching through the Gospel of Mark. Tell somebody who�s listening about why you picked Mark and what it shows about Christ Jesus.

Well, if I�m being honest, part of the reason why I picked Mark is because I just got here in January, so this is new ground for me, we�re trying to get the Church running here, and so if I�m being honest with you, which is this is no-compromise radio, so I have.

To be honest with you. I see, or else I�m going to have to send you back to the hospital for more Percocet.

Exactly. Part of the reason I picked Mark is I had already been through part of it in my previous ministry, so I had notes on it, and I knew that life was going to be crazy when we first got up here, so that�s part of the reason why I picked Mark.

But maybe a more spiritual answer to that is, as I�m starting out my ministry here, and we�re trying to set the pace for ministry in Wilmington and what the culture of the Church is going to look like, I just wanted to take the people through the Gospel of Mark so that we could follow Jesus together.

That way, when tough doctrines and tough teaching comes up, it�s Jesus who�s teaching it, not me. I�m not teaching thematically or topically through anything, I�m just letting Jesus teach it, and then I�m helping the people see what Jesus is teaching, so that�s really the biggest reason why we�re going through Mark on Sunday mornings right now.

Well, I think it�s a great idea to go through a Gospel, especially as a new church and a new pastor. I picked James to start, and Paul, I wanted to try to smoke out all the unbelievers with these tests of saving faith, and if I had to do it over again, and the advice I give to young guys now is pick a Gospel for the exact reasons you said.

Show them the magnificent beauty of Christ, let Him bring up the controversial doctrines and so you�re a wise man.

If you say so, I guess I have to take that. Now I love.

It�s your show, you know. Well, that�s right, and I can just turn down Steve�s button any time I want, and I have a theological accuracy button. Sometimes I have to torque for Steve, and so I can always use it for you if you go down the wrong line.

Oh, please, feel free. It would help me. All right, well, one of the key things in a local church that I found, both in the New Testament and then in my own life, in that order, is that if the pastor and the elder board does not train men, there�s going to be glaring weaknesses in the church, and so we are called, according to 2 Timothy 2, verse 2, as you know, to train the next generation of godly men for ministry, and I noticed on your website something called Iron Men.

So I�m hoping it is some discipleship of men and not guys getting together to watch VHS videos of Iron Mike Tyson. So tell me which one it is.

Cycling and swimming together, Mike. That has nothing to do with the Bible.

Oh, well, I hope maybe you can quote message verses to each other as you�re doing the Iron Man.

Yeah, it�s toughest during the swim portion, but if you�re really talented, you can make it happen even during this.

See, you�re doing a pretty good job on Tuesday. You�ve got the wit. I�m doing my best, Mike.

I�m pouring it on pretty thick. Yeah, our Iron Man ministry is our men�s ministry. It�s a men�s discipleship ministry. We meet every Tuesday morning at 6 a .m., and that�s really been a blessing, because we really are a church in our infancy.

I�ve only been here since January 1st, which is my first Sunday in the pulpit here as we�ve been getting things going, and we have almost 100 participation in our men�s meeting on Tuesday mornings. We just have a group of guys who are hungry for the word, hungry to know how to shepherd their family.

That�s one of the rules we have. If you�re going to attend Iron Man, then we�re going to hold you accountable. If you�re married, you have to share what we talk about and what we�re learning together with your wife.

If I see your wife on Sunday, I�ll ask her about it and say, �Hey, did Jimmy or whoever, did he talk to you about what we were talking about? Did he tell you what we learned If they say no, then we�re going to have some hard conversations, and they�re going to be the one bringing coffee, and after a certain time, they�re going to be the one who�s going to be bringing donuts, too.

So we want to make sure that the guys are accountable, not just for receiving facts, but internalizing these truths and then using them to disciple and shepherd other people.

So it sounds like, with the Iron Man philosophy, you�re entrusting the men not just with facts but also go do some homework, and I�m glad that the book you�re going through is �The Sovereignty and Supremacy of King Jesus.

That�s a great book to take the men through. Good job. Well, that�s our next book. That�s our next book. That�s right. That�s right. Paul, tell us a little bit about your philosophy of church planting, and as I ask you the question, what I really want to know is, what are you doing, and why are you doing that, up and over against other philosophies that we�ll get to in a minute?

Church Planting Through Grace Advance and Autonomous Local Churches

Yeah. Let me give you a little background for the listeners. Maybe this might help. Last year at this time, I went out to L .A. to do some training through a ministry called Grace Advance, which is a new ministry connected with Grace Community Church and John MacArthur at the Summerlong Academy on church planting.

And I actually went out there to go through the academy, and then the plan for me was to go back to Bradenton, Florida, which, you know, up in Massachusetts, that may not mean much, but Bradenton, Florida, like, imagine all those beach scenes you see on the Visit Florida commercials on TV.

That�s where we were going to plant a church, and in God�s sovereignty, that didn�t work out. The Lord moved things around, and we ended up here in Wilmington, Delaware, because there was a group of believers here who were working to get a church plant started.

They needed help. They needed a pastor. They contacted this ministry, Grace Advance, and sought out that help, and through a series of very strange circumstances, here I am, a loving ministry in Wilmington, Delaware.

So that�s a little bit of background on how I got here to Wilmington, Delaware, and kind of, I think where you�re going with this is, why did I do it that way?

Hey, before you�let me just interrupt you for a second, Paul. I think it�d be important, because I get lots of emails to No Compromise Radio Ministries saying, �We�ve got a group of people here that we�d like to start a church.

Can you send us someone? Can you come be the pastor? They�ve asked me to go do that. And so one of the best things they can do is, if there�s a group of people to call up Grace Community Church in Panorama City, California, and ask for Grace Advance.

Lance Quinn can help them, right? Yeah.

And you�ll have all kinds of information. There�s some videos on there. There�s a process that you guys can, you know, if there�s a group out there, they can get into contact with Grace Advance, and that�s exactly what this ministry is geared toward.

It�s an emphasis on church planning, but trying to get away from this idea that church planning is just one guy going somewhere and setting up his lemonade stand. It�s trying to get away from this entrepreneurial vision of church planning and get it back to churches planning churches.

It�s Grace Community Church finding a group of believers that God has already brought together and then helping them with leadership and practical things so they can plan a church, rather than just looking at a map and saying, �Wow, it would be strategic for our ministry to have a church in this city or that city because it could grow our brand if we had a church here or a church there.

This is identifying already existing believers and trying to help them in the work that God has called them to do.

Now, I think I know the answer, but it�s an honest question. Do you have to call yourself Grace Community Church?

No, we don�t. We don�t. That was actually something that the group that I have here, they chose that before I got here, and I am more than happy to wear that title.

Well, the reason why I ask is, one, it was an honest question. Two, Harvest Bible Chapel, you�ve got to be Harvest Bible Chapel of this city and that city and the others. How is Grace Advance different than Harvest Big Picture?

That�s a loaded question, Mike, and you can only get away with those questions on a show like No Compromise.

See, when no one listens, no one cares, then we can just talk about whatever we want.

I�m going to send the link to my mom so she can listen to this. She won�t be offended by my answer, so I can just speak my mind.

Because in my mind, although no one has told me this, that Grace Community Church is Grace Advance is trying to fill a void that is being made by Harvest Bible Churches, or maybe Harvest people are taking Grace folks, and so Grace wants to do it the right way.

So how are you different at Grace Advance and at Grace Community Church there than a Harvest church?

Sure. And I can�t speak to the motivation behind it, but as far as for me, and I�m just speaking for me here, as I investigated both options, you know, Lord had given me this desire to be a part of a developing church like this, a church plant situation, that�s always the direction I wanted to go in.

Other options out there, including Harvest Bible, felt more like buying a franchise, literally a McDonald�s franchise, than it did actually planting an autonomous local church. And one of the things, and that�s just my opinion, but one of the things that I think is the strength of the Grace Advance program is that every situation is treated differently, and every situation is viewed as an autonomous local church, and that is something that going into the process I felt was more biblical.

Leaving Harvest Bible Fellowship Over T. D. Jakes and the Prosperity Gospel

All right, we�re talking to Paul Shirley, pastor of Grace Community Church in Wilmington, Delaware. �I will no longer think of Wilmington as the place where I send my credit card checks. I can think now of Grace Community Church.

How�s that?

You can send your credit card checks there as well. Just make it out to GCCWilms instead.

We�ll accept that. All right, now since this is no Compromise Radio, let me ask you the question, Paul. If you did decide to go the route of Harvest Bible Fellowship or chapel, I forgot how it is termed, and then James MacDonald did what he did with Elephant Room II, several people have left, several churches have left the denomination, for lack of a better term, or the fellowship, would you as the pastor then take the group of people out of Harvest because of the open-armed MacDonalds, open arms to T .D. Jakes, prosperity gospel, modalism, etc.?

What would you have done?

Me personally? Yes. And again, this is my conscience, so I can�t�nobody else is bound by my conscience, so I know good guys who haven�t done this, but me personally, I would have had to have left. And again, that�s my conscience on the issue, but T .D. Jakes is a dangerous guy, and it�s not just for the modalism, Mike.

To me, the thing that is more pressing for the church is the prosperity gospel that he�s peddling. You know, we have people both in our church here in Wilmington and in the previous ministry that I was at that would come to me as their pastor and say, �Hey, pray for my relatives.

They�re in this church down the road that�s into all this T .D. Jake stuff. They�re not saved. It�s not the true gospel. They�re getting conned out of all their money. They�re being told if they just give enough money that God will bless them and give them all these other things, and it�s not happening.

And so I�ve seen firsthand the damage that can be done through that, and so to kind of bring them in the room and pat them on the back and say, �Yep, he�s a colleague. I don�t know what everybody�s all upset about.

I just think that�s dangerous. And for no other reason than I wouldn�t want to expose my sheep to that. I would want to protect my sheep from that version of the gospel, the false gospel. My conscience would have bound me to pull out of it.

Baptism, Preaching, and the Weight of Pastoral Responsibility

Paul, with this church plant, tell me the most exciting thing about it, and tell me the hardest thing that you�ve gone through so far.

Those are great questions. We have, on July 8th, we�re going to have our first baptism service. We have five individuals who are going to be baptized on July 8th. That�s exciting, Mike, to go through and explain the gospel and see growing believers and even have believers who want to be baptized and need to be baptized.

That�s exciting. That�s thrilling. I�ll tell you, just being here preaching the Word, the people are hungry for it. They�re scarfing it up. It�s challenging for me, because I have to show up ready to go every Sunday, because literally, Mike, I have the most note-taking church I�ve ever seen in my life.

On Sunday mornings, when I preach, I don�t use a lot of notes. I maybe have two or three pages of notes on my iPad that I preach off of. Literally, most of the people in my church, about 50 or so people, they will have more pages of notes than I will.

There�s one lady I�ll actually go to after the service and ask her if I can get her notes of my sermon. So, I mean, they�re just hungry for the Word, and that is exciting for me, and that�s just something I mean, you know how it is, Mike, you thrive on that.

Sometimes the study is hard, but when you see that kind of response, it invigorates you and gets you going. The hardest part has probably been just getting out of the way of myself. This is my first time in the role of preaching pastor.

I heard yesterday, or the other day on the show, you were talking about all the different titles senior pastor, senior associate pastor, you know, pastor of vision, all these other things. Well, whatever you want to call me, pulpit pastor, preaching twice a week on Sunday.

It�s the first time I�ve done that. And so, just the rigorous schedule of that, and then the wisdom it takes to know kind of when to push on things and when to be patient on things, it�s been a growing process for me on that.

Paul, I loved it that you used a word that I�ve never heard on No Compromise Radio, and I rarely hear it, probably because I don�t get down to the South much, or even into the South of Florida, and that is the word �scarf.

Your people scarf up the word. That�s it, man. That is great.

How about this? Every time I�m fixing to preach, my people are ready to scarf it down. I ain�t even kidding, man.

How about that? All right, let�s think. I think that�s great. And now let�s talk generalities here just for a second. As people are listening, maybe they�re at a church that�s been established for a long time, maybe they�re at a new church, they�re listening to two pastors kind of talk shop a little bit over a cup of coffee.

How would you ask people to pray for their pastors? Now, of course, they can pray for you this way, but if you can just talk to the people for a couple minutes on the radio and say, �Now, beloved, this is how you should pray for your pastors.

What would you tell them? That�s a hard question. That�s No Compromise Radio. This is no scarfing going on here.

That�s right. You�re going to scarf me down if I�m not ready to answer the question. That�s the deal, man. Pray for them as they shepherd their families, if they have families, which probably the majority of pastors out there are married with families, not all of them, but there�s always a balance there between trying to shepherd the church and then remembering that you have to shepherd your family as well.

I know I struggle with pride a lot, which makes me at times a workaholic, a perfectionist. I�ll do everything, and I�ll stay in my study forever to get it done the way I think it needs to be done. If I�m not careful, my family will suffer for that, and that�s pride, that�s sin.

So pray for them in shepherding their family. I would say also pray for them to trust God, because in ministry it�s so easy to get caught up in the highs and lows of ministry. One minute you�ve got more people there than you�ve ever had in your life, and you�ve got people professing Christ, and you�ve got people who want to get baptized, and then the next moment you get an email in your inbox saying, �Hey, what you said Sunday was heresy or something like that.

And it�s easy if you take your eyes off of the Lord and trust in Him to work all these details out. It�s easy to get caught up in the highs and lows of it. And so just pray for your pastor out there that not only would he be preparing to diligently and clearly preach the Word to you, but he would also be feeding his own soul with the Word of God so that he can do those things, like shepherd his family, and weather storms, whether they be big ones or little ones or perceived storms.

And in a nutshell, that�s kind of the area where I would say focus on praying for your pastor in those ways.

N.T. Wright, Dallas Willard, Mark Dever, and Matt Chandler

Great. We�re talking to Paul Shirley, pastor of Grace Community Church in Delaware. You can pull up his website that I thought I had here, but I still don�t have it. What�s the site again?

I�m looking at my sheets. It�s www .gccwilm .org. There we go.

Okay, let�s do a little Todd Friel kind of word association. I�ll throw out a name. You can give me more than a word back. You can give me a phrase, a sentence, whatever you want. Yeah, I can�t keep it to just a word.

Yeah, okay. Let�s do N .T. Wright.

Frustrating. Okay. How about frustrating? Because, you know, it seems like everything I�ve been reading lately, especially on the mission of God, I�ve been reading a lot about God. Of the church, everything is footnoting N .T. Wright and some of his works, especially his work, �Surprising Hope.

So all this stuff about the mission of the church, should we be doing all types of work like environmental work and working for everybody to get fair wages and should the church be doing those kind of things, everybody keeps saying yes to that.

They�re footnoting in their books, in their articles, N .T. Wright. So you pick up N .T. Wright, and it�s just frustrating because it�s like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall, because on some of the things, you just know it�s wrong, but he�s so good at doing some hermeneutical hip-hop that it�s hard to exactly even figure out what he�s saying.

But certainly, I think embedded in there, there are some dangerous messages, especially when it comes to justification by faith. All right. Great answer. That�s a no-compromise answer.

I like that. How about Dallas Willard? He�s got a new book called Hearing God. Dallas Willard.

He probably needs to check his hearing aid if he�s hearing God.

See, you are a Tuesday guy for sure. That is excellent. All right, let�s do something more positive, a little Caleb moment here. How about Mark Dever?

You know, I just read his book, The Church, that came out. I think it�s helpful. I don�t agree with all of it, because I don�t think it�s helpful to have the church voting on everything that they do, I believe, in the Elder Rule Church.

But overall, Mark Dever, it�s helpful in what he provides to conservative evangelicalism. Even if sometimes I get frustrated with some of the folks that he�s willing to associate with and partner with, I think that may have almost burned him a couple times, especially with some of the guys in Acts 29.

But overall, especially his writing ministry, I find to be very helpful.

Okay, we�ve only got 45 seconds left. How about Matt Chandler? Now that he�s Acts 29 leader, is it going to be better now, do you think, under Chandler, or worse?

I�ll say this. I think it�ll be better. I like Chandler, because I think Driscoll�s dangerous, but when he preaches, he reminds me of like the Regis Philbin of the pulpit. Just all this excitement, and sometimes I have a hard time finding the substance.

But I�m going to get in trouble for that comment at some point.

Well, that�s a no-compromise comment, but I was glad for Matt�s preaching at Elevation Church that time for the Code Orange revival. I thought that was excellent. Well, Paul, God bless you and your ministry.

I appreciate you and your diligence at Grace Community Church in Delaware. If you want to get a hold of Paul, you can either go to his website, or I�ll forward the email. Write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

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

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

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