144: The Joy of a Healthy Church

To the Ruled Church Podcast.

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

Christ the King and the Need for a True Church

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

Well, it's a beautifully frigid December day.

Yes?

I mean, no.

Literally sweating on the last Saturday of December. December 27th, 2025. Welcome, gonna love this part, to the Rural Church Podcast. I am your host, Alan Nelson, one of the pastors at Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas.

With me today is no stranger to the Rural Church Podcast. How many times have you been on?

I think this is maybe my fourth time. I think my third or fourth time. Third or fourth time.

Well, you're basically, should call it the Madewell Church Podcast.

Veteran.

A veteran on the Rural Church Podcast. Grateful to have Gunner with us. Gunner is, what is a bio of Gunner? Gunner has been married to his lovely wife, Elizabeth,.

For...

10 years.

10 years. 10 and a half years.

Whew.

He is the father of six children. The last one yet to be named.

I don't know.

Go ahead and say it, go ahead.

I think we're naming him Benjamin.

We'll find out.

We'll see if my wife lets me.

You've heard it here first. Benjamin Madewell, due when?

Due middle of March.

Middle of March, 2026. And your oldest is gonna be 10 this summer.

Yes.

And then so you'll have a 10 all the way down to newborn in 2026. The Lord has been good to you, brother.

Yeah, for sure.

So what about this great French press coffee we're drinking right now?

This is, well, they didn't ask me to advertise, but I recently got the Stanley French press for Christmas. My wife got it. And for some reason, the coffee just tastes better. It's the same hot water and coffee, but if you do it in a French press, it just tastes better.

French press is the way to go. The only bad thing is like, in the time that it takes to make French press,.

You could

Made seven pots of coffee.

What Makes a Church a True Church

Okay, before we get started, I need to ask you about this book I got from our friend, Josh Bush. The Church Impotent, The Feminization of Christianity.

I haven't read it.

What do you think?

The cover looks good. Like what does impotent mean?

Like without power.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I would agree that some of the churches are feminized, yeah.

I knew you'd like that title.

Especially with the women pastors.

Yeah, absolutely. Are they even a church?

With the women pastors?

Yeah.

No, they just a building.

Well, what would you say, this is a test for you and also a test for my teaching. What would you say are the three marks of a church? Not a true church or sorry, not a healthy church per se, but just an actual true church.

Historically, there've been three marks given. What are they?

Preach the gospel.

Okay, the gospel is rightly preached. What is the gospel?

The gospel is the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ in a nutshell. But it is our hope of eternal life after this life, if we take hold of Jesus Christ and what he's done for us by faith, by his righteous life, his death on the cross, his resurrection, and then our justification by what Jesus has done for us.

Yeah, amen.

And received by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Good, so the gospel is rightly preached. Second?

Is the observation of the ordinances which are the Lord's Supper and baptism.

Okay, so what about our Presbyterian brothers?

I would, well, they're observing the ordinances, but they just have a misunderstanding.

They're observing the ordinances, particularly Lord's Supper. Correctly, those who do credo communion, that is communion based on professional faith, but they are not observing the ordinance of baptism like we would.

Correctly.

Correctly, like we would say, but they do not see it as an ordinance that brings about regeneration, okay? All right, yeah, all right. Well, I mean, I was gonna insert something there. Baptists see, Reformed Baptists do see the ordinance of baptism as salvific in this sense, if you're talking about sanctification, you're talking about a means of grace in our sanctification, but it's not in justification and not in regeneration, but God does bless his people through the ordinance of baptism.

We understand that it is an outward symbol of an inward reality, but it also is a true means of grace where God blesses his people through it, sanctifies us. So anyway, okay, and then thirdly.

Thirdly is the right administration of church discipline.

Church Discipline, Membership, and the Marks of a Healthy Church

So now we kind of, so when we talked about Presbyterians, now we come into like our fellow Baptist churches and we think, well, there's not a lot of them doing church discipline, so what should we think about that?

Well, there's two types of church discipline. There is what's called corrective church discipline, which is if we have a brother caught in sin, we try to correct it and we try to pray for him and we try to do the things that Matthew 18 talks about to bring him to repentance.

And then what we have is, what's the other? Formative church discipline, which should be happening all the time. Accountability, teaching, edification, encouragement, exhorting, all these things that are happening within the life of the church.

So if you say a church is not doing church discipline, you should be very careful because actually most more than likely they're doing formative church discipline, but maybe not to the point of where you're at with corrective church discipline, but they may be moving in that direction but are not doing it maybe what you think.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, does there come a point where a church that refuses to do corrective church discipline ceases to be a church?

Yeah, if you take the revealed word of God and you blatantly disregard it, that's when you have to say, well, the Lord has removed the lampstand, so to speak. You refuse to be a church, really. You see what God has given you, you see what the Lord says about a true church and you don't wanna be it, so.

Removed the lampstand, where does that language come from?

Well, it comes from the scripture. It comes from being a light, a city on a hill and one that would shine light in the darkness and that language would have mean that you're not a light anymore, you're not.

So just to affirm what he's saying, it comes directly from Revelation and is exactly what Jesus warns the churches. So one of the scariest things I think that can be, even in Revelation, brother, you talk about some places call themselves the people of God, but they're synagogues of Satan.

And the scariest thing that can happen is that people can be assembled, regularly assembled, but not a church. We wanna be careful about these marks. I mean, these are in the sense of they're not meant, they're meant to use as like a checkup.

What am I trying to say?

A litmus test.

Yeah, yeah, like they're not meant to use as like a club to beat people over the head. Like, are you really? So we're not meant to use it to like beat the Presbyterians by, well, you're not even a true church.

I would argue that they are a true church, the conservative Presbyterians, those who hold to a different understanding of baptism than I do. I would argue they're a true church. However, even though we do have a very, very important disagreement that I think matters over the mode and type and candidates in baptism.

In the same similar way, I wanna be gracious to some of our Baptist brethren who are like you said, you handled that so well. There may be on the road to recovering corrective church discipline, but they're not there yet, not where we wanna see them yet, but they still are an actual church.

Nevertheless, there is a real, there is a reality in churches today, even conservative, if you will, at least politically conservative places that are gathering, but they're not true churches. What do you think about that?

Well, there's something like that around here.

Give me a list.

No, no, no, no. Well, here's the problem is what I just talked about. A church that sees the revealed will of God, but they refuse to do what God has said. Let's take for instance, church membership, which is a form of church discipline.

You have to have membership in order to do church discipline. So a church that refuses to do membership is refusing to do what God has said is orderly and good and right and what he wants his church to do.

Well, you have a church like that and they just continue to meet. Well, what they're doing is they're just, they're just going into debauchery and foolishness and idolatry and really stubbornness and being stiff necked.

I'm not gonna do what the Lord says that I should do. I'm gonna do it my way. I'm gonna make church into what I want it to be.

What was the first church you joined, Apollo?

I think, yeah, the very first church.

The second church you joined, we don't have to name it,.

But it was in Kentucky.

I wanna ask you a question about it. What was that membership process like?

That membership process was you would meet, I forgot one of the elders names that we met with. It was paper, you filled it out before, you met with somebody and I believe it took, I believe it took multiple meetings.

I don't think it took months, but I think it took multiple meetings to be a part of that church. They wanted to know how you were saved, what you believe about the church, salvation, the Lord Jesus, all these things.

And then based on your meeting and what you said, you would be added to the church by a vote.

Yeah, I think that, well, that's good. That's healthy. So you don't have a lot of experience. I do have experience in seeing it both ways. And that is literally walk an aisle during the so-called invitation at the end and join right then and not even know whether, hardly know the person.

Or some people do know some things about, well, I know where that person is every Saturday night. They're out there getting drunk, but you still, you vote them in. And when you handle membership like that, I talked about that recently in a sermon, when you handle membership like that, well, then eventually the church is full of goats and not sheep.

And eventually the sheep are starved. They wind up going somewhere else or some hold on to the very end, but eventually it's no longer a church. It's just, it's a clown show. And I'm not saying that to be pejorative, but that's what happened.

Like, why do you have situations where it's like, well, we need to do these things in the church. We need to have more feeling good sermons. Maybe we could introduce some more fun and let's do movies.

And like, why is all that coming to church? It's because you no longer have churches that are actually churches or those that are still churches are very, very anemic, very, very sick. They're on life support.

If the candlestick has not yet been removed.

You see many churches, so-called churches that see the historic maybe way and traditional way. And I would say not every way like this is good, but let's say this reformed Baptist way of how churches should be and how the scripture says the church should be.

They see that model and they are disgusted by it. They don't want it because they believe it's outdated. It doesn't give them the effects that they want. It doesn't bring the people like they want. It pushes too many away and it's not inclusive.

And so they don't, places, the buildings that say they are a church, they don't want to do that. They just want to do what they want to do.

I got a personal question for you right now. Are you drinking that coffee black?

Yes, yes.

Okay. All right.

In the spirit of Christmas.

So I'm going to use it as an analogy because Gunner, we give him a hard time, likes a little cream in his coffee.

Yes.

But there is something about drinking coffee black that builds the taste. Now, some of you guys out there aren't coffee drinkers. I get it. But I was similar to Gunner, but I was still a child.

But no.

Thank you.

I'm just joking.

I was similar to Gunner when I started drinking coffee. I want a lot, I want cream and sugar in it. But then I realized, well, I can't keep doing that. That's not very healthy, but it doesn't taste good black.

But the more I drink it, like I enjoy black coffee. And also this French press, it's good. I could, I taste good. But the analogy is, maybe it's a bit of an acquired taste. And it's very, very similar when it comes to church and a church with reform worship, a church with seriousness about the gospel and scripture reading.

Pursue impurity.

Pursue impurity. Like if you're used to just the candy, if you're used to like, every time I go to church, I need to have some sort of heightened emotional experience. You know, I need to have a come to the altars moment.

I need to feel something rushing through my veins. Well, you've been indoctrinated in our pragmatic world to live on that spiritual high when it's not even a high at all. It's akin to you eating a bunch of sour patch for supper and saying, oh yeah, I feel good.

And then someone saying, okay, eat this steak. And you're like, no, no, I don't want the steak. I want the sour patch. Okay, well, what's the sour patch going to do? It's going to give you diabetes and it's going to rot your teeth out.

Does that analogy make sense or no?

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it does.

So the whole idea is that we live in kind of a spiritual anemic age, if you will. It's not, actually it's interesting. There's not a whole lot of, especially where we live, not a whole lot of atheism, not a whole lot of rejection of spirituality, but there is a big, a lot of wrong views of spirituality.

Nominal Christianity and the Offense of the Gospel

Nominal Christianity. Nominal Christianity.

Yeah.

You get people say they're Christians, but they're really not. And they worship themselves. I think maybe I sound, I'm just catching myself. I think I sound a little bit rude, but it's really sad because we go into the streets and we go into the neighborhoods and we talk to people and we're giving Christ to the people.

How are they going to receive Christ if they've already got him? Because everyone's a Christian. Where do you go to church? Well, I haven't been in church in a while, but I got to start going. Well, okay, do you know the gospel?

Yeah, it's the Bible. Well, the Bible is not the gospel. So everyone's a Christian, but nobody knows Christ. That's the problem with our, I can say, I don't know every town. I don't know every place, but I know my town.

And I know that's one of the problems here.

Yeah, that's good. The idea of saying that you're Christian and not even understanding what the gospel is. And then when you actually hear the gospel, talk about this for a second. When you actually hear the gospel, like we're out there preaching or whatever, like it's actually offensive.

Like you're actually upset that someone else would tell other people they need to repent. Talk about that for a second.

Yeah, so the gospel that many have heard is actually not a gospel, but what they believe is the gospel is trust Jesus. He loves you. If you do these things, God knows your heart. It's okay. You ain't gotta go to church, be the church.

All these different things. What they realize is when they come in contact with the real gospel is they've actually never heard the real gospel before. They've heard a gospel of someone's own making. And the sad part about it is, is they've heard a gospel maybe their entire lives, but that gospel doesn't save.

Yeah, so you're gonna hear this tomorrow in the sermon, but in Acts 5 20, after the apostles are rescued from prison, the angel says, go back to the temple and tell all the people all the words of this life, all the words.

And I think some people don't understand the fullness of the gospel. So they say, well, I told them John 3 16, that's the gospel. Well, John 3 16 is a beautiful verse. We should love the verse. We should share that verse.

But if that's all you're sharing, you're not actually sharing the gospel. There's nothing in John 3 16 about the resurrection. There's nothing in John 3 16 about the propitiatory sacrifice that Christ's wrath is a propitiation, or sorry, that Christ's sacrifice is a propitiation.

There is the word about faith there, but it's not whoever believes. So the faith is there, but if we don't explain that. So I'm just saying is we often give a truncated gospel. And so sometimes when people hear the fullness of the gospel and that it demands total allegiance, and it also results in a life that is, I talked to a man the other day, I was like, well, I told him, I didn't think he was a Christian.

And of course he was upset about that, but it's like, there's things I could point out, but it's not pointing out about like this or that sin. It's about, you don't have a life that even cares about the church because the gospel produces a life that loves his church.

And that's where we wanna get to in the episode with you, although we've talked a lot already, but really in this last part of the episode, what I really want to hone in on is something you said to me the other day.

So we're going through that book. Is it Worship and Song?

Yeah, Worship and Song.

Worship and Song by

By Scott Anial.

Yep, from Free Grace Press. And so it's been good. It's been helpful discussions we've had. But one of the things you said is that you feel, I'll let you talk about it, but if I'm remembering right, something along you feel sadness, a brokenness, your heart's sad, something along those lines, first, how so many people don't even experience what life is like in a true church.

So flesh that out.

Joy in a Healthy Church and What Many People Have Never Tasted

Well, the last, I think we've been at this church for maybe eight years.

Eight years, yeah, 2017, over eight years.

Eight years.

And it has not always been where we are today. And the reason that I said that the other day is because I was thinking back on the first five years of the church here and how different it was.

When you were here, for your first five years.

Yeah, when my first five years. If you take my eight years, the first five years is different than the last three that I'm here now. And the reason that it's so different is because I believe in the first five years, we were trying to be a healthy church.

There were some things that we did not do, but in the last three years, we have become a healthy church. Not the most, the perfect church, but I believe a healthy church.

Yeah, I don't mind saying like, we've got some things that we're not where we wanna be. We don't have deacons. That's a goal that we have for 2026. Hope to be preaching about that soon. Hopefully by the time this comes out, I'll have already preached a message or two about deacons.

We wanna grow in areas. We wanna be more faithful in attendance and giving and all these things. So we're not a perfect church. And we are a healthy church, but we're not as healthy as we could be. So we wanna continue to grow.

Okay, that's good. And I think I would say the first five years you were here, there was a trajectory moving in that.

That's what I'm saying, we wanted to be.

But once we hit the events of 2022, that trajectory accelerated in a beautiful way.

Once we hit events that were like, okay, this is where the Bible says and we're not doing it. This is what we need to do. Then things started really just shaking. But the Lord worked through that through his providence, through his, I think it's, I'm comfortable saying the word pruning.

He worked in our church to make us a healthy church. And that's all because of God. But what I said was, my original statement was, I know the joy of a healthy true church. And it makes me sad that others don't even understand what a true church is and they've never experienced one.

So what I mean by that is not, even though we're going through the book and worship and song, not just the music. I believe our church has great singing. I believe our church has doctrinally rich music, but not just that.

I believe our church is ordered well. I believe our pastors are involved in the lives of the saints. I believe our members are generous and hospitable. I believe there's true unity. I believe there's joy in our church.

I believe our church loves the gospel, loves preaching, loves true worship, loves orderliness, loves the church in its evangelism, loves mission. All these things that I think our church loves and is a part of, I have never, and I am sorry to say, I've never been involved in until the last three years where we're at now in our church.

And it makes me sad that there's so many out there. It's not that they have been a part of a healthy church, but they don't want it. They've never even experienced it. And the joy that it's brought to my life and my spiritual walk with the Lord, my love and my commitment and my unity with the saints here at this church has never been stronger because of the healthy church that we're in.

And it's only because of what God has done and his grace in our church. And many have never seen that. Many have never even been in a church service where that is going on. The scripture is clear that he wants unity in his church and he wants order and all those things.

And that's good and that's right. And I think that's why there's so much joy in a healthy church is because when you do what God says to do, you don't try to make up what you want. You don't try to just have worship on your own terms.

You just do what the word says. It's beautiful, it's cohesive, it's pleasant. All those things are happening when you just do what the book says. And I think really the reason why many churches don't experience that is because they're not doing what the book says.

Yeah, I saw a few responses to that. First, I wanna say it's easy, but it's difficult. And what do I mean by that? Well, it's easy, it's really not confusing when you open up the scriptures and you begin to say, okay, these are the things we wanna do.

We wanna have a church in line with the word of God and for us, we feel like a faithful articulation of the scriptures is the Second Lent of Baptist Confession. And we say, okay, these are brothers in the past who have agreed with us to last 400 years.

So what do we need to do? Well, it's really not difficult in the terms, it's not difficult in terms of figuring out what we need to do. The difficulty is taking that to the present culture on sugar. Again, give an example, like with your children.

If all we give our children every night, candy, candy, candy, candy, candy, and then all of a sudden, we're just gonna say, you know what, we've been doing some research. Apparently, giving them candy every night is not good for them.

We're gonna be good parents now and we're not gonna give them candy anymore. Well, is that easy or hard? Well, it's easy in terms of, yeah, this is the right thing to do, but it's hard in terms of what?

It's hard to get them to get off the candy.

I mean, they're gonna throw a fit. I mean, it's a little bit different dynamic, but they're gonna throw a fit. Well, this can happen sometimes, and so I encourage patience and prudence when it comes to bringing changes, of course, but it's worth it.

And the other thing I was gonna say is, I love how you say so many people, I believe they're genuine believers, but they don't know what they don't know. And so I'll give you an example of my own life.

The first time I really saw this was in 2010. And in 2010, Stephanie and I got to go to a conference at Christ Church in New Albany, Mississippi. And at that church, Brother Pastor John Snyder, one of the elders there, and Richard Owen Roberts had come and done a conference, but we stayed with the family at that church.

And it was like, first of all, that was weird. It was like, we're gonna go and these people are gonna be hospitalized, like we don't even know them, and they're gonna be hospitable. And then just the conversations with them and the way the church sang and the way the church interacted, it was like, I'm seeing something that has a semblance of what's going on in other churches I've been part of, but it's different.

And the thing about it is, I remember, probably Stephanie would admit this too, but I remember the first reaction was, what do you think?

I want this.

No, it wasn't.

This is weird.

My first reaction was,.

Oh, I gotta get out of here.

Yeah, my first reaction was, this is a little different. This is a little weird. It felt weird.

Why?

Because they took all the creamer out of my coffee.

Right?

Ooh, that's deep.

Yeah, you like that?

Yeah.

I know you like that. So they took all the creamer out of my coffee, man. They took away the sour patch. And I was like, my taste buds were like, well, this is a little strange. But after being there for a few days and working through things, and then of course now, 15 years later, I'm like, no, it wasn't.

That wasn't strange. It's beautiful. And it's only strange because of the remaining worldliness and carnality that I must mortify in my own heart. And so, we have had people actually tell us, we have had people, I've had multiple people, even dear friends who have visited our church have said about a couple elements of our service, that's weird.

Now, I don't want to be intentionally weird, but I'm okay with our, like, you step into Providence Baptist Church each Lord's Day, you're stepping into a different environment. You're stepping out of this godless pagan world that we've had to be subjected to the whole week.

And here we are gathering together at the heavenly Jerusalem. We've come to Mount Zion, Hebrews 12. And it ought to feel a little different. There ought to be a little bit of whiplash because when you live in this world that we live in, we are inundated with ungodliness.

And then we gather before the throne, as it were, and we are entering into a completely different world. Does any of that make sense?

Yeah.

Yes, it does. Good, good. Yes, good job.

Good word.

Yeah, I,.

The,.

The hard part, this is the easy part, is to see the scriptures. That's what they do. The hard part is, this is another hard part, I would say, is when you feel like you're the only one that wants it. And you got people around that don't want it.

I'll give you, for instance, in Exodus 32, when Aaron is with the people that God has brought out of Egypt, Moses is on the mountain. Well, Moses is gone for a little bit. God has given them what to do, the commandments.

And the people, they are waiting. They don't know what to do. And the first thing they do is, Aaron, guess what? Let's get our rings together. Let's get our gold. Let's melt it. Let's make an image. Well, what Aaron should have done is say, no, no.

That's not what God has said to do. It's hard when you've got so many people either not wanting to get on board, or they're trying to do what's ungodly and unscriptural. And you have to bring them back.

Like, no, no, we don't wanna do that. There's nobody's gonna come if we do that. But this is what God has said. But the preaching is too long. This is what God has said. Well, if we don't show at least one video, it's not gonna be a true service.

No, that's not what God said. And so I think the hard part is sticking to the scripture, sticking to your gun, so to speak. And just trusting the Lord to be faithful.

You know, I think another, I can say this as a pastor, and I can say this in front of you because you've seen me fail. You've seen me succeed. You've seen me succeed. So anyone listening, like, this is not me bragging.

This is me just saying this is where I'm at. And God, it took a long time for God to bring me into this. But I can speak as a pastor, and I know that some pastors are out there, maybe you're listening to this, and I'm gonna tell you one of the issues that your church is having is that you're not all the way bought in.

You still have your segmented life. So you have your ministry career life, as it were, and then you have your family and your friends, and you're being faithful to do certain things as far as like preaching.

And you're not an ungodly pastor. Your life is in line with the scriptures. But in terms of like buying all in into the church, you're keeping too much separation. And I get it because we hear these kind of conferences and all the time, it's like, you know, God first, then your family, then the ministry.

And I get that, and I agree with that. It's not wrong to have those categories in our mind. But the problem is if we let those categories, if there's too much gap in between our lives and the church in the sense that like the church is just this business part of my life.

This church is just this extra part of my life, and it's not all in like I'm here. This is where God's called me, and I'm here. Now, I don't think that you have to stay at a church your whole life always as a pastor.

But I would say, as this is a general rule, the idea of pastors bouncing around every couple of years is not godly, and it is to the detriment of the pastor and to the church. So we've created this model where the church is this distinct thing, and we're not bought all in.