Episode 24: Cultivating Godly Manhood in Your Local Church

Rural Church Podcast 2.0

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Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom

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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?

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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.

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The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

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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

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Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

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Jesus in a local, visible congregation. Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast.

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I'm here with Gutter Madewell. Sir. Reporting again from an underground bunker in Quesa, Arkansas.

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We're about halfway between Quesa and somewhere else. We're recording at the round table.

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We went through Pontoon, Arkansas. Pontoon is where I grew up. We're recording again without Eddie, but we've got

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Jacob Robinson, Gutter Madewell, Alex Osmond. Hello. All members of Perryville Second Baptist Church.

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We're going to talk a little bit more on this episode. Oh, and Jack. Say hello, Jack. Hello. He's not a member, but.

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Jack's not a member yet. He's not yet. Jack, are you fixing to have a baby brother? Yeah.

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I'm not going to have a sister. That's what I'm talking about. You ain't going to have a sister. What's that baby brother's name? Jace. Are you excited for him?

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Yeah. I'm excited. Do you like our church? Yeah, I like it.

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What do you like about our church? Going to Sunday's class. Sunday's class.

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What else? When you preach. Oh, you like when

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I preach? Yeah. Do you like your pastor? Yeah. What's your pastor's name? Cuatro.

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Cuatro. We're on a first name basis. What about when your daddy preaches? I like that too.

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Do you like your daddy preaching more or brother Cuatro? Both of y 'all. Oh, okay. That's a good answer.

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Diplomatics. Very generic. Do you like the new playground? Yeah. Yeah.

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But I can't go down the slide because I'll fall down. Yeah. He can go down the slide.

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You banned him from going down the slide? Whose sermon did you fall asleep in though?

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Mine or Cuatro's? Mine. Oh, wow. I think he likes you better.

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He didn't fall asleep in Cuatro's sermon. Both of y 'all put my kids to sleep, so. I thought I passed the test.

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A good sermon always puts my kids to sleep. Who preaches longer, Jack? Me? That's not true.

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Last time, both Jacob and Alex talked about the need for godly men, so we just want to press on that.

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You got something else to add, Jack? I like the new playground really a lot.

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I want some music in the new playground. You want some music in the new playground? You bring that up at the next business meeting.

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How about Gunnar stands over there. Well, we want to talk about the need for godly men, and we touched that last time.

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We talked about the signs of health in a post -COVID church. So we'll talk about godly men more today.

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It's not only the need for godly men, but kind of how you get there. So if you're in a church, it doesn't matter if you're a rural church or not, if you're in a church, how do you get to the point of having godly men?

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You have to be born Southern Baptist, number one. No, that is not true. You have to be born again.

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Actually, I will say this, not to joke around, but I think one reason we don't have godly men, even in pulpits and in churches, is because we have a lot of unregenerate people in our churches.

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So that's obviously number one. We need folks to be born again.

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They have to encounter God. So that's one thing. But what are some other practical ways to cultivate manliness in the local church?

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I didn't give you guys a heads up what we're talking about, but let me just throw some things out there. So one,

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I think there needs to be an expectation. So one thing that we have at our church, there's an expectation that we're doing family worship.

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We talk about it. We talk about how things go on in family worship. We talk about it from the pulpit.

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We give tools and resources for doing family worship. As well as personal worship.

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Yes, for sure. I will say to that point, since I've been at Second Baptist, sharing with you guys and you guys sharing with me what family worship looks like with you, those are things that strengthen our family worship.

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Number one, it's giving accountability. Like, okay, we're going to talk about it. Let's talk about what we do in family worship.

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I know for sure both Gunnar and Quatro have asked me, what does family worship look like?

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And we've shared that, but also encouragement. I've received encouragement.

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And there may be things that you share like, hey, this is what we're doing in family worship, where I think that would be great to incorporate in family worship that we do.

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And I think that's so important for men as fathers, who are the leaders of their home, to share that with one another.

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Yeah, at our church there's not an expectation of a monolithic sort of, everybody's doing the same thing in family worship.

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But there is the expectation, because we all have different ages and such, and that's just part of it. But there is this expectation that this ought to be happening.

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And so we ask about it, not to be like, gotcha, but as an encouragement and to discuss it.

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And I don't know if this is just in circles that I was familiar with, but it seems like family worship in the last decade, couple decades, is something that has kind of went on the backburners.

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A lot of churches, we've expected, hey, that's what Sunday school is for. And that is what,

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I think it was Votie Bauckham talked about that, that was one of the, when they first started the

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Sunday school movement, I think it was over in England, somewhere like that, that one of the things they worried about is that two things would start happening.

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They would start pulling children out of worship with adults, and families would stop doing family worship.

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And I think we saw that. I think we saw a mass movement away from that, and that's something that I think.

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So at our church, we're family integrated when it comes to our corporate worship, but we do do

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Sunday school classes and Wednesday night classes, and so we don't have a problem with those things. I don't think those things are necessarily wrong, but I think there is the mentality that if you don't, that you just bring your kids to church and let them be discipled.

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It shouldn't be a replacement. That's right. You shouldn't expect the church or Sunday school teacher to do what

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God has commanded you to do as a father. That's right. So how do we encourage and cultivate godly manhood?

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One thing is there's just the accountability expectation, the encouragement with family worship.

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Okay, what else? I think one thing is it's like the kingdom of God that starts as a mustard seed and grows into a large tree, right?

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It starts off with you getting along with God in prayer and in reading the

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Scriptures. You can't lead family worship even if you're not worshipping and communing with the

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Lord yourself. It's surprising how many people don't read their Bibles on a regular basis.

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That alone is where we need to start. Read your Bible. That sounds legalistic.

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So having godly men in the church starts with having godly men seeking

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God and then leading their families in worship, and then that will flow out into the church.

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Men who are given to the Word. I'm given to the Word. I'm not just reading it just to check a box.

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I want the Word of God. I hunger for the Word of God. I think in order to have godly men, just to tie in back to elders,

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I think to have godly men who are going to be in positions of leadership and that their church body are going to be submissive to them, they have to be men that know how to pray and they know how to read their

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Bibles. Honestly, men,

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I'll just say this, and everybody knows this, but a man who doesn't pray often, you can tell when they'll start praying.

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You don't pray. A man who doesn't read his Bible, you can tell you don't read your

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Bible. Why are you looking at me? If we're going to be men that are in a position of authority, if you're going to be an elder, you have to know your

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Bible. You have to hunger for God's Word, love it, and meditate it, and you have to know how to pray.

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Psalm 1 says, Not only does the blessed man not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers.

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We could stop there. I think there are a lot of moral men in the world today that would be like, well,

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I don't do that. I don't stand in the counsel of the wicked. I don't walk in the counsel of the wicked, stand in the way of sinners, sit in the seat of scoffers.

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I don't do that. But that's not all the blessed man is. In verse 2 it says, His delight is in the law of the

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Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. So it's not just about not doing something.

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That's part of it. But it's also doing something. I would say that creating a culture and expectation of reading the

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Scriptures daily. One of the things that we're doing, again, this is not the be -all, end -all, but I'm just trying to offer suggestions.

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We're learning and we're growing as a church, but we're trying to do a Bible reading plan this year and encouraging.

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You don't have to read the same plan, but it's an encouragement to the church to read. I've seen several grab the plan, and the idea is that we're going to read through the

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Bible together and be able to ask one another about it, discuss. We'll all be reading the same thing the same day, essentially.

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And I think that accountability is important. I don't think people should be legalistic about it, but we are fallen creatures.

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We're prone to laziness and procrastination. Having that discipline of, oh, somebody's going to ask me how my

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Bible reading is going. It may be a wrong motive, but it's not completely having that discipline.

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Is that not a good example of why Christians need the local church?

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Yeah, it is. Accountability, I don't think it should be just for sin, although I think even that is very lax these days.

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But even just, yeah, are you getting into God's Word? Are you leading your family in worship? I don't think these should be controversial things.

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I think men should be doing this in their homes, personally seeking God and leading their family in seeking

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God. And if you can't do it, you're not being a godly man. I don't think you can.

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I don't think you're qualified to be an elder if you're not. Me and Quantra have been reading a book that really dives into a lot about elders.

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It talks a lot about accountability. If you've got a group of men who are elders at the church, like Alex said, it's accountability in every walk.

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I don't know how we would define it in a legalistic way, but it's more of accountability because ultimately we're accountable to God.

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Legalism is an issue, don't get me wrong. But in my opinion, it's way less of an issue than licentiousness,

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I think, in the churches today. The pendulum is swinging. That's right. We don't correct licentiousness with legalism, for sure.

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But we say, look, you ought to, in America, it is a reasonable expectation that you're reading the

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Bible every day. Why do I say that? Because more likely than not, whatever the literacy rate is, you're literate.

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More likely than not, you're not working so much that you don't have 10, 15, 20 minutes a day to read.

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More likely than not, you have access not only to God's book, but so many resources where you can either listen to it, you can get commentaries like Matthew Henry's or John Gill's, like these commentaries like for free.

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Yeah. Right? And so you can enact. So there's such access, but there's such ignorance of God's word.

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And so, yeah, so one, family worship. Another, the expectation and accountability of reading the

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Bible together. Let me throw one out here. One thing that we've done for, I guess, over five years now is we have met on Thursday mornings to study the

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Bible together. And, again, this is just an extra meeting. We meet early and not mandatory.

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We're scripturally mandated. Well, it's not mandatory that we have to do it, but it's just a way that we iron sharpens iron, and we just go through books of the

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Bible. I mean, that's all we do. We just go through books of the Bible together. We just finish 1 and 2 Peter. And this morning, we started out with Isaiah, and it's not a huge study.

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We just read the verses together, and we talk about it. I mean, I know it sounds simple, but it's what we do. And particularly,

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I won't say his name, but particularly one brother in our church, I've seen a tremendous amount of growth over the years.

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You know, he's only been a member three years, but it's been amazing to see and an encouragement. And we just read the Bible, and we just look at what it says, and we just talk to one another about it.

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Iron sharpens iron. Yeah, amen. You're right. Another one I was thinking about is evangelism.

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Oh, that's good. I was thinking, like, you know, it's easy as men to get conceited with pride, but approaching someone with the gospel that, in their simple nature, will probably hate, that's humbling.

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But it also builds courage. And these are qualities, humility and courage, that we need as men, as well as learning to articulate the gospel, not just to our family and to our children, but to strangers and to other adults.

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I think that's extremely important as a godly man, to be evangelistic. Go ahead.

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I was just going to say, we've had a couple of opportunities to do that together, and those have been wonderful.

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But I think it's also been whenever we've been out there, we've done that together. I think going back to the

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Goat Fest, and I think you probably talked about this on a previous episode, about going and evangelizing at the

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Goat Fest, with the encouragement of having you guys there. That was my first time to ever open air preach.

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You did great. Well, no. But I've preached behind a pulpit numerous times.

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I mean, pastored five years, preached behind a pulpit. That was my first time. And I was nervous, and to have the encouragement of brothers that I get to serve with, and then to see each one of you stand up and proclaim the gospel and evangelize and to do that.

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I'm not saying you always have to do it together, but I think that was so wonderful as a group of men.

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It is more encouraging. And I want to add this. This is what I was going to say. In these opportunities that we've had, and we've had several in the last several months, even in a small town.

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We've just done different things. Gunner and I went to a library reading thing, and then we've had a couple parades.

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These were just normal parades, but there was a fair parade in September and a

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Christmas parade in December, and then the Goat Fest. We didn't do it as much with Christmas caroling, but we did pass out a couple tracks.

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But in all these events, not only have we had men preaching, there's been a couple specific instances

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I remember of brothers who didn't preach at all, but they were there for support, and then they were actively passing out tracks.

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So when you talk about preaching, I don't believe every man in the church is called to go out and street preach, but every man in the church is called to evangelize.

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It's a tangible way to not just talk about evangelism on Sundays, but to go do it together.

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It's like when you're in the trenches together. There's a bond that's built. A camaraderie.

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And you learn. You really get to know people. I didn't know Alex. I don't think

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I had met you before that time. I think it was that first time we met, but to get to experience that, to get to open air preach together the first time we met.

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And then there's another brother in our church who was there. Both of these incidents, the

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Christmas parade that I've been to, the Christmas parade and the Goat Fest, who did open air preach, but like Quatro said, passed out tracks.

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They've had a lot of that. Like a maniac. Like a madman at the Christmas parade. I ran off and left him.

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He was a mile back because he wanted to make sure every single person got a gospel track, and he did the same thing at the

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Goat Festival. Goat Fest, whatever it is. Whatever it is. But there's a bond built there, and a spiritual maturing that happens there when you're doing these things.

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And don't talk. Okay, so here's an evangelism example. Don't talk just about courage, but that's a way to go be courageous as it were.

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Yeah, it's edifying. Very good. Gunner, you've been looking at some stuff. No. Okay. All right, what else?

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I have one more thing, but I was kind of saving it for last. Go ahead. Let Jacob go. Well, I just, and I don't want to,

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I think we've done a pretty good job of not leaving out men, but this is not just, we're not just referring to,

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I don't think, men that are elders or going to be elders. We're talking about men as a whole, and that's what in Titus chapter 2,

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Alex has read that. Was that this episode? Last episode. Last week. Go look at last week's episode if you want that little tidbit.

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But it says, it starts out, older men are to be sober minded, dignified, self -controlled, sound in faith.

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I mean, and so it's not, we're not just referring to men. You may never, you're not going to, you may say,

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I'm never going to be an elder. Why do I need to be strong in the word? Or, you know, I think I use the example of,

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I know we're not talking about women, but older women, I'm a 70 year old woman. I have no kids at home. Why do I need to be strong in the word?

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Well, what you can't, um, as you go on down in Titus, how can, how can you go into a, a young woman and train her and, you know, and, teach her all these things that it says, you likewise urge, uh, that's younger men, but to be self -controlled, working home, kind, submissive to husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

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How can you do that if you're not in the word? And that goes for the older men, you know, who are sound in faith.

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And so don't think that I'm not an elder. He's, they're not talking to me. I think we're talking to any, any man, any

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Christian man in the church that, or if you're not married, like you may think, like that family worship stuff isn't for me.

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Like the, I think these are like, if you're a young man who's, who's not yet married, like that, these should be goals like that.

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You should be preparing for like, um, that if God does call you to marriage and try this as a young, most likely you will be, try this as a young man, try going to your pastor or try going to, you know, older men in the church and say,

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Hey, look, I'm single. Could I come sit in on your family worship on that? You know, I've been, that is very edifying to sit in on other people's edify you.

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And it would encourage, I did it. Um, okay. So here's the one, here's the last one I want to do.

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And I want you guys to weigh in too, because I don't want to miss this one at all. How do you cultivate godly manhood in the church?

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Eddie and I have talked about on number, numerous occasions that the pulpit is not the only way that you reform a church.

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And that's so true. There's so many other things that, that, that go into it. However, in saying that we in no way are minimizing the pulpit.

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And that's where I want to go to now. I want to talk about one of the ways that is, is non -negotiable.

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So some of these other things, you have to figure out how they fit with your church, the Thursday morning men's meeting or, or maybe what

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Bible reading plan or, or your evangelism events. You know, these, these are going to change depending on your specific church.

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But one thing that we all share in common unity here is the pulpit.

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The pulpit is a central place of making disciples. As we preach, we don't back down and we don't apologize.

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Hey, we, we have bought into this idea. And again, we go to a coffee shop. I guess it's really a donut shop every

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Thursday. So I'm not minimizing sitting, sitting around a coffee shop or a donut shop and having discipleship that way.

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But we have thought because of various material out there, we have thought that the main thing about discipleship is sipping your lattes and reading a good

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Christian book together. I'm not minimizing that. Okay. But I am saying this,

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I'm maximizing the pulpit. Do you know, 400 years ago, our Baptist brothers did not have, did not have a

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Starbucks, right? So how were they doing discipleship? They were preaching the word of God. They were making sure that church, that, that men were doing family worship and, and catechism.

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But the pulpit was, took center stage. And I would like, don't apologize for that. Like, like that's one of the reasons.

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And we talked about the last episode COVID was so devastating is, is it tried to silence the pulpit and many, in many ways, in many churches, it did.

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Yeah. And we need to, if I could borrow, um, uh, change a phrase a little bit, make the pulpit great again.

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But the, but the, but the pulpit, that on a hat or something, but the pulpit must be, take center stage in the discipleship and sharpening of the men in the church.

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Y 'all have any thoughts or comments about that? I couldn't agree more. We shouldn't minimize lattes and promote dry coffee.

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For real, man, that's the way to go. Get that, cut that cream out. I think the, no, I agree. Preaching of the word has to be central.

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Yeah, I think absolutely. I mean, I think scripture speaks to that and you cannot be obedient to scripture without the preaching of the word being central in local church.

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you can't do that over Zoom. No, that's right. No. I would add that, um, cultivating fellowship, you know, is something we didn't talk about, but eating lunches together and on Sundays we do that kind of stuff and we try to just be in each other's lives.

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Oh, sorry. I will say this. Oh, a lightning bolt has struck Gunnar. Look at this.

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Here comes the wisdom. Prepare yourself. And I think you guys were already doing this, but we have not mentioned it.

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Cultivate godly manliness is be a church that cultivates hospitality.

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And you've said it already, but we haven't actually said the word, but hospitality, right?

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We're having meals together. We're being in each other's lives, not just in the Sunday morning gatherings.

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We get to know each other. So being a godly man is being intentional on being with your church body.

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In Titus one, that's one of the qualifications of a, of an elder. It says in first starting in verse seven, as an overseer of God's household, he must be blameless, not arrogant, not how tempered, not an excessive drinker, not a bully, not greedy for money, but hospitable.

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Loving one is good. Well, like in what we do on Sundays, we have lunches at your house or my house, or hopefully in the future,

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Alex, his house or, you know, probably not Jacob's cause he doesn't live here, but he lives in a nice little location.

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We eat lunch together. I can't know where I live. Yeah, we eat lunch together and whoever is a, as a member or a visitor even can, wants to come, they can come eat with us and we talk about the word.

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We talk about the sermon and we encourage each other and we talk about the Lord. And that's, what's important too.

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We don't just sit around and, and, and intentional in talking about the ball game or, or hunting.

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Although sometimes those things come up, we're intentional on talking about the Lord. And that's what

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I think cultivates godliness. Not, Oh, we have something in common in deer hunting. Okay, that's good.

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But we have this in common that we both know Christ and we both love him and we both want to know him more.

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Absolutely. One practical way to put this into effect is to take advantage of the Lord's day. Cause you hear this and you say,

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I'm so busy. My, my kids are busy. I'm busy. We're working. I work late. I work 12 hour shifts.

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There's just no way that I can add more time with brothers. And I think that there's legitimate situations that that's true.

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Maybe you're, maybe you're driving 45 minutes to church. And so it's just, and so you, you live, you know, you live a long way from people and it's just hard.

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So one way I do think that we can be intentional in, in days outside of Sunday, but let me just give you one easy win.

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And that is take advantage of the Lord's day. That is your, your gathering already. You might as well eat together, eat together in one another's homes.

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Or we were at a church recently. I was at church recently preaching at my friend, Jonathan Murdock.

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And, and what they, what they do is they all just kind of pitch in and bring food to church. And then after the morning service, they just eat together.

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And, and, and they, they do what we're talking about, but spending, spending time together in, in, in true fellowship is important.

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True fellowship, not hanging around, talking about whatever. That's what a lot of churches. True Christian fellowship.

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Right. Right. Not just, you know, but I think that's, what's lost in our culture. One of the reasons is, is because so many people have this independent mindset and private mindset.

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Like if we're going to be people together in the same church as a church body, we are to know each other's lives.

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And you can't do that being surface level. Like you have, how am I going to encourage you or hold you accountable if I don't really know you?

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Well, camaraderie, let me just push back just a tad on that. But camaraderie exists all over the place in our society.

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People get together to hunt. People get together to watch the ball game, to go the ball game.

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People get together to, for a card night or whatever. But what we're talking about is. To record a podcast.

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Yeah. What we're talking about is true Christian fellowship. So yes, there is a private mentality in our, but, but, but these people get together.

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We're social, right? But what we're talking about is not just getting together. Okay. The world does that.

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We're, we're talking about like Gunnar says, true Christian fellowship, getting together intentionally to cultivate

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Christ in one another. You know, I guess it's okay. You're not in sin to talk about the ball game or hunting or whatever.

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But you're not doing true Christian fellowship. But if that is all your meeting is talking about. Right. Yeah. That's not true

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Christian fellowship. You're not exhorting one another or encouraging one another. So, that's fine.

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Keep your, keep the name fellowship on your church. It ain't Christian fellowship though. Whoa. All right.

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All right. That's good. I hope it's helpful. Like, by the way, everyone would say this.

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You're like, we're not a church that's arrived. We need to grow. I'm thinking of, of brothers in our church right now that, that we need to grow.

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We need to encourage. We need to hold accountable. But I do think that we're on a good trajectory, a better trajectory than we have been.

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And a trajectory. I hope that we continue, continue on. And we all need to grow in these things. Amen. If you're listening and you're like, man,

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I've failed in so many of these areas. you're not a Christian. God says you're not a

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Christian. Not necessarily. But maybe. Repent. That is true. Repent. And I would say every, every man here has, has failed in these areas.

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And if you're a true believer, you'll repent of those. I was like, don't hope, man, I can never do that.

28:53

I've failed with family worship. I've failed in my reading of the Bible. Repent of that and change that.

28:59

Repent constantly. Continue to repent. There is grace for this, but repent of it.

29:05

If you haven't been having family worship as a father, repent of that and start having family worship.

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It's not too late. I don't care if you're 17. No, you can't start. Yeah. My kids are old. Start now.

29:19

And even if like, maybe you do have family worship, but like, you know, don't have the pride to say, oh, there's no way.

29:25

There's no areas I can grow in. Like we can all grow. Like we'll never have arrived until glory.

29:32

So, you know, it's all always examine ourselves and, and see where we can grow to be more like Christ.

29:38

And, but it's why you need good men around you. Yeah. And I can speak this from experience. Not, um,

29:44

I've had, I've had gunner now for five years at the church, which I've known gunner a long time. But before that, there have been seasons in my ministry that I've had no, no like -minded men around me.

29:58

Yeah. You know, and it's, it's tough. It feels incredibly lonely. And now God and his providence, um, you know, has brought all three of you guys into my life.

30:08

And then, and then others, of course, not just you guys, but it's, it's extremely encouraging. But I understand that if you're out there and you're like, man, there's just no one around.

30:16

All I can do is just encourage you to continue to be faithful and continue to, to try to, uh, don't think about the ones that aren't there, but, but try to pour into the ones that are there and see whether or not you might be dealing with unregenerate people, but you also might just be dealing with some, some immature believers that you can encourage, you know, and exhort and hold accountable.

30:37

So that's good. Very good episode. You guys got any, um, final thoughts?

30:42

Nope. I thought it was good. I really enjoyed it guys. Really did.

30:47

I appreciate y 'all having me on. I hate that, couldn't talk to Eddie, but, uh, well, one of these days we'll get to Eddie.

30:55

We love Eddie. I will say like, I agree with Quatro, like I'm, I haven't been here, I haven't been going here super long, but I've, I've been really encouraged by, uh, your guys' fellowship and exhortation.

31:08

Likewise. Likewise. I appreciate it. It's all we do. Gloria, thanks for joining us. Say goodbye

31:14

Gunner. Bye Gunner. Bye Gunner. Catch us next week on The Real Church.

31:20

Podcast. Podcast. If, if you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

31:34

God's doing. This, this is His work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the

31:41

Hohe Mos, the masterpiece of God. Amen. How you gonna respond?