May 4, 2026 Show with Rich Jensen, Anthony Uvenio, & Chris MacDowell on “30 Years of Proclaiming the Doctrines of Sovereign Grace on Long Island, NY”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you a very happy Monday on this fourth day of May 2026.

May the fourth be with you, and I am thrilled to have three very dear friends on the program today to celebrate a very important anniversary of proclaiming the doctrines of sovereign grace on Long Island, the 30th anniversary, in fact, of Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, and I have joining me today the three pastors of Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, Pastor Rich Jensen, Pastor Christopher McDowell, and Pastor Anthony Eugenio.

And first of all, let me greet them one by one. Rich Jensen, it's a joy to have you back on the program.

Always a pleasure to see you and be with you, Chris.

And Pastor Chris McDowell, it's great to have you also joining me today. Are you there, Chris? And Chris is frozen. Okay. And Pastor Anthony, are you there? And Pastor Anthony is frozen. Can you guys hear me?

Yes, I'm here.

Okay.

I thought you were frozen, actually.

Yeah.

Yeah, I thought he was frozen.

Well, I am Calvinist. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

You've been the frozen chosen.

Yes. Well, first of all, Pastor Rich Jensen, tell us something about Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island.

I was celebrating 30 years, and that's truly something. I can honestly say that as I look back and see that it was 30 years ago that we planted this church, it's like a breath, blink of an eye. It's gone that quickly.

Yes. And you are a confessional Reform Baptist Church holding to the 1689 London Baptist Confession, correct?

That is correct.

And I have known you even before you were pastoring and even before you planted Hope Reform Baptist Church. In fact, I don't know if you remember, I was at your ordination examination. And I remember full well my dispensationalist friend, Ron Glass, giving you a hard time about your post-millennial position.

But I can remember also you approaching Conrad M. Bayway at Grace Reform Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, where he was speaking for the first time in the United States, his first American speaking engagement.

And I remember you asking him to meet with you because you were just in the planning stages, I believe, of Hope Reform Baptist Church. Tell us about how that even came about.

Well, we had had a relationship with Grace Reform Baptist Church, where Conrad was speaking. And I was invited by Mike Gaydosh to bring the youth down. And it just so happened to coincide with me leaving the ministry that I was part of and the thoughts of planting a church.

And so when Mike introduced me to Conrad, we had a little chat and we did meet with him later on in that weekend and discuss some of the pitfalls and some of the things we should look for as we plant a church.

And you're pretty much a rare church on Long Island. From what I understand, and I could be forgetting somebody, you're only one of two confessionally Reformed Baptist churches on Long Island, am I right?

As far as I know. I think there are some other churches that are considering the 1689 becoming confessional, but right now it's only us and Grace Reform Baptist, I think, that actually used the 1689 as our confession.

Yes. And I do know that a church in Woodhaven, New York, which is not exactly on Long Island, Nassau or Suffolk County, but they have not long ago, I believe, embraced the 1689 as well, Grace Baptist Church.

Yeah, they would be in Queens. That's almost like another country.

Right. Even though technically Queens is on Long Island, you don't cross a bridge to get there. And Chris McDowell, you were the second pastor to be appointed at Hope Reform Baptist Church. Tell us about when you started going there and how you became aware of the church and so on.

We were actually on a theological journey, my wife and I, and so we were looking for a church that was more on the same page as us in terms of vision for how the family should function in the church and minister and be ministered to.

And we were also, we'd come to the Doctrines of Grace and we were right on the cusp of full reform theology and coming to Hope helped to seal that and just get us firmly grounded. So that was back in 2013 that we first arrived at Hope in the fall.

And it's just been a blessing ever since.

How long after that did you become appointed as a pastor there?

A couple of months, I think it was. I hope they got to that little joke.

If not, it'll only be...

We lost Rich right in the middle of a joke there. For some reason, we're having difficulties today with the live streaming. I don't know why.

I see you freeze it sometimes, but I can hear you.

Yeah.

Can you hear me?

Yes, I can. So tell us about, again, since you were cut off there, really, how long was it before you became pastor?

2019, I was installed as an elder.

So that was six years.

We got there about, yeah, about six years. 2013, we started attending. We became members probably in 2014. And then not long after that, Pastor Jensen started a mentoring group for men who were interested in teaching and preaching and possibly ministry in the future.

And so that's, you know, we talked about mentoring the last time we were on the show. And that's what actually introduced me to the idea of possibly becoming an office bearer and actually teaching and preaching.

It wasn't something I had officially planned on. And so I had some ability in it and was able to grow in that. And that was all from Pastor Jensen starting that group. So in 2018, I was installed as a deacon.

And then the following year, they called me to the eldership.

And Anthony Eugenio, I had known you years before you even became a member of Hope Reformed Baptist Church. That's right. And I don't believe that you had committed to the doctrines of grace when I first became aware of you.

Tell us about your journey and how you eventually wound up as one of the elders.

Yeah, so I came to faith in a kind of charismatic congregation and attended that church for 11 years. And probably in the second or third year, I came to an understanding of Calvinism, embraced it, and was caged stage for a little while.

But they let me through it. They really did.

And I'm grateful to them because they treat me with grace. But as things progressed and I grew in those doctrines more and more, I wanted to be in a place that we could actually talk about election and predestination and those type of things.

So providentially, we were going to homeschool my daughter. And I heard a podcast about classical Christian schooling. So I looked it up online and it was only two classical Christian schools on Long Island.

The first one I called was closed. And the second one I called was Grace Christian Academy, where Pastor Rich Jensen happened to be the headmaster. At the same point in time, good friends of my wife were attending Hope Reform Baptist Church and praying that we would eventually go there.

So as we send our daughter to the school and Pastor Jensen graciously agreed to pick her up and drop her off almost every day. It was amazing to me. I became familiar with Pastor Jensen. I started attending the men's breakfasts.

And then it started to be clear to me that it was time to leave the other church and go to Hope. And I started attending there in 2015. And then it was 2020 that I was installed as an elder at the church and just have been blessed by Pastor Jensen and Pastor Chris and just the whole congregation.

It was a completely different paradigm than what I was used to.

And Pastor Rich Jensen, I know that you, as I even hinted at before, having attended your ordination exam, you were a post-millennialist before you even founded Hope Reform Baptist Church. And you are amongst a very small minority of post-millennialists in the Reform Baptist movement.

How easy or difficult is that for you to be such a tiny minority?

Well, firstly, being Reformed puts us already in a minority. I haven't found any issues with that at all. In fact, most of the pastors that I have fellowshiped with are amillennial. And it's never been an issue.

We have some good spirited discussions, you know, from time to time. But that only helps you to stand firmer in your convictions and to study, make sure that you have all your ducks in a row. But I would say that I think from when I first came to post-millennialism and to where I see it now, there's a lot more people who are embracing post-millennialism.

Tell us about why the doctrines of sovereign grace are so important. Even though you do have biblical fellowship at certain levels with not only pastors but congregations that are not committed to these five points of Calvinism, you still, nonetheless, hold these teachings as very, very important.

And you believe that they do have a tremendous impact on every area of the Christian life. Not only what we believe, but how we worship, how we evangelize, how we react to the different problems and sins of this world.

Tell us more about why the Reformed in your name, Hope Reformed Baptist, is so important.

Well, yeah, because it establishes what your worldview is. To have a truly biblical worldview, you have to understand the sovereignty of God, the security of your salvation, the total depravity of your soul.

Why does God have to elect you? Why does he have to choose you? Why can't you choose yourself? And you start laying it all out, and it's only the Reformed Calvinistic understanding that gives you that whole worldview.

And that affects the way you worship, even. So it affects every aspect of your life, how you live your life, how you view. How do you view tragedy? How do you view suffering? How do you view good times?

How do you view money? How about education? How about your home? That's all affected by your worldview. And right at the core of that is the doctrines of grace.

And Pastor Chris McDowell, you have already said that you were on a theological journey that eventually, by God's sovereign providence, landed you firmly in the Reformed Baptist camp and eventually an elder of a Reformed Baptist church.

How has that impacted your own life, how you evangelize, how you teach the Scriptures, and so on?

Yeah, I mean, the church I was part of previously, where I actually came to the doctrines of grace, I came through a discipleship group by the associate pastor. And so that was sort of the first theological domino to fall, I guess to say.

I started reexamining things that I had just grown up with, traditions I had been handed that I took for granted. It's just true, and we don't need to examine it too hard. And so coming to that understanding helped me to look with fresh eyes at the Scriptures.

Also, I had been previously very involved in the youth ministry, and I came to have a different understanding of that for a number of reasons. But I saw a tendency, even though the church I was part of was a good church, great people, they held the gospel out, they understood that to be central.

It was rather eclectic, though. It was non-denominational, and you had everywhere from people who had a slightly charismatic bent to even someone fully Reformed all came together and worshiped. But I found at times, with how we approached the youth, where we would deny the seeker-friendly, consumerist mindset, and yet I felt we were doing that with our upcoming generation, constantly separating them out, constantly trying to put things on their level and trying to reach them and make the faith and the Scripture as fun as possible.

And so we would give them their own music and their own games and all the snacks and all the stuff in a watered-down version, not getting into some of the deeper things because it was sort of controversial.

You couldn't teach the whole Council of God because you didn't know where everyone was. And I found that to be problematic because you couldn't get to the meat and the substance of things. And also, it's one of those things where I feel like we're not fully trusting God in His sovereignty, in the fact that it's the Holy Spirit that has to regenerate that believer to make them a believer.

But if we're thinking that, well, it's somewhat dependent on us and how well we can approach them with it, I think it compromises the message at times. And so having an understanding of the sovereignty of God in all things, including salvation, but as Pastor Jensen said, sufferings, you have a sort of perspective as, well, is God angry at me?

Well, if I had done things differently, whatever. And it opens up a can of worms with so many theological problems and doubting on the part of the believer if they're not grounded in the truth of God's Word and His sovereignty.

And Pastor Anthony, you not only were not fully Reformed before coming to Hope Reformed Baptist Church in your understanding of theology, but you were also at one point, and perhaps still are, heavily involved in apologetics.

How has coming to fully embrace the Reformed faith impacted the apologetic realm? Yeah, great question.

So obviously I was coming in from an evidentialist point of view and seeking to give unbelievers more evidence for the existence of God, as if God didn't give them enough evidence already. So I had embraced the doctrine of total depravity.

And in listening to so many different presuppositionalists online and Pastor Jensen and Pastor Chris, it was just the application of total depravity to the person's mind, to recognize that there's no more evidence that we're going to give them that God hasn't given them already that's going to persuade them.

So our job is not necessarily, it's not that we shy away from the evidence, but we're speaking to dead men. So our job is to shut the mouth of the unbeliever, to proclaim the gospel and pray that the Spirit would give them eyes to see and ears to hear.

The deadness of man in sin and his depravity is the key to the whole realm of apologetics. You're not going to convince somebody that God exists because they know God exists already. That's what the scripture says.

So that was a big shift in my understanding. And then to start listening to guys like Greg Bonson and now Eli Ayala, who's also moved off of Long Island but is a great presuppositionalist apologist, to see it from that perspective and to see the sovereignty of God in all things, in opening the eyes of the blind, it was just a paradigm shift for me.

And I'll never go back. And obviously, the big thing that I see a lot of churches in evangelical America talking about is the power of man, how man is powerful, how he can do this, how he can do that.

Whereas when I read the scriptures, all I'm hearing about is what man cannot do. Man cannot bear good fruit. Man cannot come to Jesus. Man cannot confess Jesus as Lord except by the Holy Spirit. So I keep hearing about this big human being that's able to do all these things.

And when I read the scripture, I see the exact opposite. The big one in this conversation is God. And I looked up the word God and try to see those two words in the same sentence. God never tries at anything.

The only thing he tries is men's hearts. So you know what God does? Whatever he pleases in the heavens and the earth and beneath the earth, and none can stay his hand or say, what have you done? The scripture presents a very big sovereign God and a very small, impotent man.

And it's our job to proclaim the gospel, the good news, that God can save you if you turn to him. So seeing the sovereignty of God and the deadness of man and sin and his weakness and inability was just one of the things that sets us apart from all of the other churches that don't teach that.

Yeah, that concept of God trying to do things comes up a lot in social media when you are grappling with anti-Calvinists. And it's amazing how they really, it doesn't seem that they have thought through that whole concept.

And I had to tell one of these anti-Calvinist individuals in social media, so your God fails more often than he succeeds in accomplishing his will. Because according to you, he is trying over and over again, constantly trying every day, every moment of the day to stop evil from happening, but he's failing.

Isn't that a monstrous diminishment of who God is? And I'll let Pastor Rich Jensen pick up from there. It's really making God less of a God than the false gods of the Romans, Greeks, and the Nordics. Am I right?

Yeah, you're absolutely right. As soon as you start putting the onus on man, you're taking it away from God. And that's exactly what we see. Providentially, this has come up right at this point. One of the reasons that we formed Hope Reformed Baptist Church and why we planted it, was as I looked around, I grew up in evangelical churches.

And as I looked around, the message was doom and gloom. Now remember, I mean, I'm 80 years old. I grew up, I'm a child of the 50s and the 60s. And the main message coming out of evangelical pulpits was doom and gloom.

Pray that Jesus is coming back soon because things are getting bad out here. And no sense in doing anything extra. Just save as many people as you can. And that's the way it would be presented. And then as you read the scriptures, just flip to the end.

We win, you know. And so that's how we got our name. I said, what the world needs is hope. And in fact, we're celebrating our 30th and calling it 30 years of hope. That's the message of scripture is hope.

Yes. And one of the things that, and I say this as an amillennialist myself.

But I will forgive you.

I have always, from my earliest days of salvation, had close friendships with postmillennialists. And one of the things that amillennialists and premillennialists and pre-tribulationalists get baffled by.

Is the postmillennial idea of eventually the earth being Christianized and governed by biblical law and so on. When they look at their television sets and their computer screens and their newspapers and magazines to a less degree these days.

But they see how satanic, overtly satanic things are becoming in a more palpable way, in a more, it seems, increased way. The fact that we are now in a country that marries men to men and women to women.

That has legalized, at least in certain areas of this country. The sexual mutilation of children through surgical and pharmaceutical means under the guise of changing their gender. And these things that horrify people, they can't imagine that a postmillennial hope can be true.

But what they fail to recognize, I know that postmillennialists do not believe that it is just a steady progressive upward arrow. Where things never dip into the realm of darkness and just keep climbing into a higher level of holiness.

That's not what postmillennialists believe, is it?

No, it's not, not at all. We're called to a life of trouble. And Jesus warned that. He said, look, don't be so quick to follow me. Count the cost. Know what you're getting into, which flies in the face of modern evangelism.

You know, come, you know, you want your best life now, you know, in that type of theology. Christ says, come and follow me. Look, he met Paul on the road to Damascus. And what does he tell Paul? You're in for it.

You're going to follow me. And you're going to have a lot of trouble, no matter where you go. So you're filled for a life of suffering. That's the evangelism. People ask me, you know, how can you read the newspaper and watch the TV and still be postmillennial?

Well, if I, if that's all I'm reading, I'm not going to be postmillennial.

I'm going to be depressed.

You know how I, you know where I get my postmillennialism from? I read the Bible. That's, the Bible is a postmillennial book.

And when we return from our first commercial break, we're going to continue on the same thread, but we're also going to have you men discuss highlights of Hope Reformed Baptist Church and the 30 years that you've been claiming the doctrines of sovereign grace.

Obviously, only Rich has been there for 30 years since he planted the church. But also, and of course, we wouldn't want you to reveal details and people's names, but some of the trials that the church has experienced and how you achieve victory over some of these things.

And we're going to be right back after these messages from the sponsors. If you have a question for any of the pastors at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, just send us an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Hello, this is Brian Nye, president of Hearts for the Lost Ministry. Our sole mission is to serve the local church and work directly with and alongside pastors and elders with their efforts to equip, excite, and educate their flock in biblical evangelism.

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James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and the Dividing Line webcast here. Although God has brought me all over the globe for many years to teach, preach, and debate at numerous venues, some of my very fondest memories are from those precious times of fellowship with Pastor Rich Jensen and the brethren at Hope Reform Baptist Church, now located at their new, beautiful facilities in Corham, Long Island, New York.

I've had the privilege of opening God's word from their pulpit on many occasions, have led youth retreats for them, and have always been thrilled to see their members filling many seats at my New York debates.

I do not hesitate to highly recommend Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island to anyone who wants to be accurately taught, discipled, and edified by the Holy Scriptures and to be surrounded by truly loving and caring brothers and sisters in Christ.

For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net. That's hopereformedli .net, or call 631 -696 -5711. That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island that you heard about them from James White on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Welcome back, and I just want you to mark down on your calendars, folks, an interview that I will be having next week, on Tuesday of next week, with my pastor, Simon O'Mahoney. And Simon O'Mahoney is no stranger to Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island.

He has been a visiting preacher there at least a number of years ago. And Simon is going to be speaking on why we use fermented wine at the Lord's Supper and why we observe the Lord's Supper weekly. That's Tuesday, May 12th, so mark your calendars on that date.

And we are going to be having a wonderful time discussing the Lord's Supper. And I know that Hope Reform Baptist Church has that position of using fermented wine in the Lord's Supper and observing it weekly as well.

Care to comment, Pastor Rich Jensen?

Yeah, we came to that conclusion from a study of the Scriptures a number of years ago, and it's been a real blessing to know that we're following the Lord's commands, even down to the smallest of the details.

Well, before I go to any listener questions, I'd like you to highlight some of the most memorable and glorious events that came about as pastor of Hope Reform Baptist Church. And then we could even go through some of the trials that the Lord has given you victory over.

And obviously you only, as far as the trials are concerned, just reveal any kind of information that you see fit for public consumption. But we'll start with you, Pastor Rich, since you've obviously been there since the beginning at being the planter of this church.

Well, we've just seen the Lord's hand in so many ways. I don't have any numbers, but I think of how many times we've had baptisms, you know, five, six people at a time who have professed faith, you know, demonstrated it in their daily lives and a desire to be obedient in the waters of baptism.

That's when we have those baptisms, and we do our baptism Sunday morning during the worship service. And it's just such a blessing. It's not only spiritually uplifting, but I mean, it's one of the most joyous times when you hear the testimonies of these, some young people and some not so young people who the Lord has saved and hearing the story of how they were saved and, you know, how their desire is to follow Christ.

I would say for me, that's one of the highlights of the 30 years. And again, this 30 years, it's gone so fast. It's hard for me to believe that we're celebrating 30 years.

Amen. And Pastor Chris, do you have any highlights that you care to mention?

Yeah. I mean, for us, when we first came to Hope, it was at a time where the church was pretty small. You know, we have the Sunday school hour, then they had the worship service, and then they would have like a fellowship lunch.

And then often after that, like an afternoon Bible study. Because of being a church plant, people were coming from all over the place, and that's why they chose to do it that way, as opposed to I think they initially had an evening service and felt like this was a better way to do it.

And when we first got there, we were like, man, they're there all day. And I was like, we're here all day. I think it's such a blessing. It's such an encouragement because it's an opportunity to not just come and worship with the saints, but to really get to know one another, you know, breaking bread and have that time of fellowship.

So that was a blessing. But I know when we first got there, there were three rectangular tables. And the men were sort of at one, and the women were at another, and the children were at another. And it wasn't forced segregation.

That's sort of the way it fell out. But the men would all be around Bibles open, talking about the sermon, talking about sermons or podcasts that were theological, you know, that they listened to during the week.

And I just remember when my dad had gotten saved, you know, around the time I was born, he would tell me years later that this church that he went to at first, all they wanted to talk about was the scriptures.

All they wanted to talk about was the Lord. And he had never quite seen a church like that since then. And I was like, I know exactly what you're talking about now because that's what they're all about over here.

And so that was such an encouragement, and that was such a time of growth, a time of really getting to know some brothers in Christ and be encouraged in the faith and to go deeper. The mentoring group was another example of that, a bunch of guys coming together to study.

That was a huge encouragement for me. We were also a homeschooling family that when we came to Hope, we found a lot of the families were homeschooling. And part of the things they would pray for, one of the things that they would pray for over the pulpit on our Wednesday night study was praying for the homeschooling families.

And that still resonates with my wife in particular. I remember her hearing that for the first time and feeling so encouraged, knowing that it's such a journey and it can be so difficult at times. And to know that they were being prayed for by the church had a huge impact.

So, yes, some of the best friends I have have been here at Hope and relationships have flourished. Talking about the trials, there's been a couple that I can think of that I can't get into detail. But seeing how biblical the church was, I remember we pray for those who have been either excommunicated or have left and they're sort of under discipline and praying for their repentance.

And while I was there, we have had an excommunication. But before we had that, we had someone who had been excommunicated who came back and repented and joined the church again. And that was such a blessing to see.

This is what's meant to happen. The purpose of church discipline is now punitive in nature. It's meant to show them your need is so great. You're out of step with the body, which is a huge danger that you're out of step with Christ, who's the head of the body.

And to see someone actually come back and repent and join and be embraced was such a blessing. To see the biblical, glorious result of that church discipline coming to fruition. And it was sad to see an excommunication years later, but recognize this is what we must do for that soul and for the body in general, to know that sin is serious and we have to take it seriously.

So seeing that the church handled it biblically, which a lot of churches really shy away from discipline. They feel like it's not their place. They feel like it's not loving. They just kind of set aside the scriptures when it comes to this important issue.

And then another biblical thing that I hadn't seen at any other church that I was part of was how Pastor Jensen came into the ministry, where the church he was part of originally called him to that, where normally it's get the nominating committee, get the resumes, have him preach once or twice and meet and greet with the family over coffee and snacks or something.

Here is someone that they could see the qualifications that Timothy and Titus espouses, what his family should look like. And they say, here's a guy who has giftings and has his family in order. He should be our pastor.

And coming into the ministry through that same biblical organic process and Pastor Anthony Wong, that's a huge encouragement and helps me to think very intentionally about our future generations who are coming up and the opportunity to mentor other young men and encourage them in the faith, knowing that hopefully they'll be replacing us at some point in the future.