September 20, 2016 Show with Tim Bayly on “Daddy Tried: Overcoming the Failures of Fatherhood” PLUS Stephen Baker on “Church-Based Pastoral Training: Its Method & Advantages”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 20th day of September 2016 and I am delighted for two reasons today.

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I have a guest on for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron. I also have a co -host that I've never had in studio with me before today so it is a double blessing for me today.

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We have today as our guest, our first guest for the first hour, Tim Bailey who is an author and he is the senior pastor of Clear Note Church in Bloomington, Indiana and we are going to be discussing his book,

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Daddy Tried Overcoming the Failures of Fatherhood and it's a my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Tim Bailey.

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Good to be with you Chris, thanks so much for having me on. It's my pleasure and we'll be getting to know more about Clear Note Church in a minute but first I want to introduce to you my co -host today,

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Pastor Jeff Waddington who is the stated supply at Knox Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania and we're gonna hear more about what exactly a stated supply is for those of you who are not

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Presbyterian. He is also a part of a couple of podcasts,

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Christ the Center and East of Eden which is a part of the Reformed Forum.

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He also writes for R21, Place for Truth and the Westminster Theological Journal and it's my honor and privilege to have you in studio as my co -host for the very first time,

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Pastor Jeff Waddington. Oh thank you Chris for having me join in in this conversation with Pastor Bailey on a significant topic but also to be in this lovely historical home and studio.

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Yes for those of you listening who do have no clue what Pastor Jeff is speaking about, as you may hear if you listen carefully enough at the opening announcement of my program every day this broadcast is coming live from the historical 19th century parsonage of George Norcross who was the very first pastor of Second Presbyterian Church here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania which was founded in the late 1800s and Pastor Norcross remained as the pastor in in this town of Second Presbyterian until the early 1900s and he was a bulwark of biblical inerrancy and a strong conservative

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Presbyterian pastor in a day when liberalism was beginning to rear its ugly head and and perhaps at some point during the interview today

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I'll read you a quote by him which is a pretty profound that he was a part of a book that he co -authored it was a book that came out during an anniversary of the church and he had a conference on New Year's Eve and this was actually

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I think it was New Year's Day the first Sunday of 1899 and he had a number of pastors preach at this conference and he was one of them and it's a profound quote that I will read to you where he's basically warning of about liberals creeping into the church and denying the inerrancy of the scriptures and so on and unfortunately much of the denomination that took over that congregation that he pastored has been among the leaders of teaching the that these scriptures are not inerrant right and denying many of the things that George Norcross would have stood for but we'll go back back to you in a minute

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Jeff but first of all I want Pastor Tim Bailey to tell us something about Clear Note Church in Bloomington Indiana.

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Thanks Chris. Clear Note Church is an unusual church which Pastor Jeff might have his hair stand on end about this but when we started

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I had been in the PCUSA for a number of years after graduating from Gordon -Conwell and then our church had left and gone into the

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PCA and when I came to Bloomington I took a church that used to be in the UPCUSA but it was a church that had not been in any way

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Presbyterian it rejected going into the PCA and that church had godly

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Baptists and godly Presbyterians it was a sweet mix and when this church started it just seemed inconceivable to tell the

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Baptists that they would not be able to be elders or deacons in the church so from the beginning we have allowed an exception on time and mode of baptism where Westminster standards all our bylaws and everything are typical reformed the preliminary principles going back to the 1700s all that stuff is the same but we do allow freedom of conscience in time and mode of baptism and the officers and so that's probably the thing that's most distinctive our ministry has always been trying to have a mix of people that work with their hands for a living and people that work with their brains being in a university community it's a sweet group of people and I'd say probably we have about maybe two -thirds

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Pato Baptists and one -third credo and mostly young people we have about a hundred kids under the age of five or six and so that's our ministry well give my greetings to the one -third that are credo and for those of you interested in finding out more about clear note church you can go to clear note

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Bloomington dot -com clear note Bloomington dot -com and you got to explain clear note what it where did that come from the name well we used to be called

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Church of the Good Shepherd everybody thought we were Episcopalian or Lutheran or Anglican and it just got difficult to there were some other reasons and so we decided to change there's a lot of discussion about what name to come up with and we ended up choosing clear note because of the

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Apostle Paul talking about it the war horn doesn't sound a clear note who will prepare for battle it seems like today in the church and I would say just as much in the

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Reformed Church as any other part of the church instead of contextualization causing us to sharpen the sword of the

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Word of God it causes us to dull it and so we want to be found faithful to sound a clear note because there's no question that today a battle for the church and which reminds me that you are in some way involved in war horn media w -a -r -h -o -r -n media and their website is war horn media calm tell us something about that we do a lot of music our current project is to set 150 songs to music we have tremendous musicians here

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I use the biggest and one of the best music schools in the country and so we've always had a wonderful blessing of top -flight musicians so part of the media are the just a ton of resources for church musicians where we have good music and it's it's there are a lot of resources you go on the web and you search for songbook clear note songbook there's cheat sheets and everything a musician needs to use the music settings of all the historic hymns that so that's part of the media another part of the media are books we've for instance did a critical edition a new edition of what

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I consider to be a classic book in in church history called persecution in the early church by Herbert Workman published in the first part of the 20th century and it's the perfect book to read to understand what's going on in America today because what's going on in America is identical to what went on between the church and the

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Roman Empire in terms of why persecution happens how it is the

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Christians are viewed as being anarchists and and and atheists and so that's and then my dad's books might

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I don't know if neither of you men have ever heard of dad but he wrote a number of books one was a satire about evangelical evangelism called the gospel blimp it got made into a movie yes he has an excellent book on death a book of poetry and so there are a number of books that we publish and so that's the reason for media great well we have to have you interviewed on some of those books and if any of the authors are living you can send them our way and we'll get them on the show and again that is war horn media .com

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war horn media .com and by the way Jody Killings Worth is going to be our guest tomorrow on the second half of the program in fact

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Pastor Tim Bailey is going to be on again tomorrow as well for the first hour and Jody Killings Worth who is in a group that is a part of Clear Note Church and I love the name of this group my soul among lions.

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Isn't that wonderful? No I love it and and I just love their version of why do the nation's rage but also why don't you just give our listeners a brief taste of what you'll be speaking on tomorrow.

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Well there's been a loud argument on the internet for the last couple of months over the issue of the

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Son and the relationship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It's focused on the relationship of the

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Son and the Father and the debate comes down to whether or not the

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Father and Son's relationship has any hierarchy or any asymmetry.

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Whether it's asymmetrical outside of Christ's incarnate state and I'm stating it very precisely.

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Years ago this argument began to be made by feminists. It wasn't made by complimentarians, trust me.

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I was there when the argument started to be made and if you're like Roger Nicole, he was my professor and a dear, dear friend, father, dear father to me and my brothers who went through seminary.

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But Dr. Nicole, when I was at seminary, Dr. Nicole was in favor of women pastors and elders.

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Then he went to reform down in Orlando and while he was reformed, but he always thought that Gordon Conway always argued for the headship of the husband and the father in the home.

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Well when he went to reform in Orlando, he repudiated the headship of the father in the home.

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Really? And in marriage. Really? And yes, absolutely, no question about it.

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I was very close to him personally. And what he then began to say was that, and he wasn't the only feminist to say it, but they began to call into question the relationship of the

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Son and the Father that there was a hierarchy to that relationship economically.

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And you know, we can get in tomorrow to the various words that are used, but what was going on is, really at the heart, you always have authority at the heart of feminism, of the debate over homosexuality, it really does come back to authority of God and of his

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Word. And the reason that they attacked the submission of the

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Son to the Father except in his incarnate state is because feminists are always going to want to say that in a perfect world there isn't authority, right?

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And so it was a concession that God made in order for his Son to do the work of redemption, but that in the

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Trinity, from all eternity, there's never been any hierarchy at all. Well, that's not what

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Scripture says. And you know, you can step on a minefield in trying to discuss what

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Scripture actually says and using any words other than what Scripture uses, because then, you know, you might overstate it, you might understate it.

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But Dr. Nicole began to say that those people who said that there was an order in the relationship of the

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that transcended Jesus' incarnate state were heretics, that they were subordinationists, and that it was a heresy.

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Well, it's not a heresy. If you go back and read the early

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Church Fathers, if you read Church history, you realize it's a bunch of bombasts by the feminists.

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But feminists are not in short supply of bombasts today. And it turned into a real battle.

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A lot of famous people were involved in the battle. It kind of broke down into a battle between Philadelphia Presbyterians and Louisville Baptists.

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And so that's what we're going to talk about tomorrow is, to what degree is it accurate to say that there is asymmetry, that there is order in the

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Trinity that is not simply a concession to man's fallen state? Mm -hmm.

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Well, yeah, that's enough to whet the appetite of our listeners for tomorrow. And now, very briefly, Pastor Jeff Waddington, tell our listeners something about the church where you pastor in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania.

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Sure. I have the privilege of serving as at Knox Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which, by the way, was the congregation where Professor John Murray worshipped when he himself wasn't preaching back when he served as a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary.

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And this congregation is somewhat unique in that it is an exclusive psalm -singing congregation.

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And I don't personally share that conviction. There are other unique convictions that they have that are like the psalm singing that are that are actually reflective of a traditional

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Presbyterian perspective, non -instrumentation and worship, and non -Christmas or Easter observance.

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Again, I don't share those convictions, but in God's providence, they've been very receptive to my ministry and love the people.

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They are a good group of saints there in the

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Lansdowne area, which is right next to Upper Darby, which is the most cosmopolitan city or community in either the

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United States or in the state of Pennsylvania, with some 71 different nationalities and ethnicities represented all in that small space.

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And that's to the southwest of downtown Philadelphia. And that's why you are a stated supply there, because you disagree with them on the exclusive psalmody and acapella.

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Right, and understandably they would want a pastor who shared those convictions.

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Now, I've been there four years, in my fifth year, and every once in a while we'll have a conversation about these kinds of issues, but I respect their position.

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In fact, I've learned to appreciate the psalms in a way I had not before, and that's a good thing.

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We sing eight psalms, four psalms per service. Apart from that, the service is your typical

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Reformed service. Nothing unusual apart from the psalms.

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And the particular psalter that we use is the 1950

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RPCNA psalter, so many of the tunes are traditional hymn tunes. Okay, well, if anybody wants further information about that church, go to knox -presbyterian .org.

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knox -presbyterian .org. But today we are talking about, for the first hour, Daddy Tried Overcoming the

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Failures of Fatherhood. Now, what led you, Pastor Tim, to want to write this book?

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What kind of life experience did you have that made you say, I've got to write a book on this theme?

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Well, I've been in the ministry, what, for 33 years, but more than that, because even before I was ordained,

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Mary Lee and I worked in churches, my wife and I. Father Hunger defines our age.

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There's an intense attack upon fatherhood. Fathers are the butt of jokes, and so nobody today sets their sights on being a father.

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They set their sights on getting married, maybe, and having children. But fatherhood is not respected, it's not something that people aspire to today.

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And I've just seen so many men and women who have father hunger.

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They won't use the term, but they just, their lives are defined by the failure of their dads.

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And men who want to be fathers say they become a Christian and their father was absent emotionally or physically in the home or abusive.

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Those men are scared to death about being a father and feel completely inadequate. So when

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I've told stories about my dad, who was a wonderful father, in fact, we grew up 11 minutes from your church.

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And we grew up, I grew up on Rodman Avenue in Havertown. Ah, yes, okay.

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Yeah, yeah. And my parents were one of the couples that started Delaware County Christian School when we lived there.

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But when I talk to people about my dad and tell stories about him, you can just see men's eyes come alive.

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They take hope because the stories aren't gilded, you know, they're not beatifications of dad.

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You know, he had failures, he had faults, but... And after years of telling accounts that would encourage other men to go ahead and fail in the right direction,

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I finally realized that if I were going to write a biography of dad, I'd title it,

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He Failed Gloriously. And it's come to me that that really is such a good summary of what the

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Christian life is. You know, you think of Lloyd -Jones saying that faith is keeping the serpent still under your heel.

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Other great saints saying that the Christian life is made of ever -new beginnings.

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Luther's first thesis that the life of a Christian is a life of repentance. And I think there's such perfectionism and so much, you know,

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I always refer to it as, you know, the church today being the cosmetics counter of a

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Nordstrom. You know, everybody puts their face on and everybody thinks that if they sin, and the fact is, we all know as pastors, just everybody does sin.

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Scripture's quick. So that's the reason for the title, and that's really the ethos of the book. It's, look, fail in the right direction.

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Here's the direction you should fail in, and get back up and live by faith.

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I'm going to give our email address if anybody would like to join us with a question of your own.

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Our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA. And I understand with a topic like this, especially, that might involve sensitive private information.

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If it makes you feel more comfortable to remain anonymous, we will respect that request and honor it.

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So that's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Tell us about the

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Fall and the fruit of the Fall today in regard to this topic. Well, I think it was

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Edwards who said that the basis for revival is to preach the Fall. And it sounds counterintuitive, and it certainly is not what we

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Reformed pastors do today. But the Fall is a powerful thing to preach, because once people understand that we're not sinners because we sin, but we sin because we're sinners.

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And you know that quote by Pascal where he says that without the

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Fall and Adam's sin, we don't begin to know ourselves. We can't understand ourselves.

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And I think, I will tell you this, the book is one quarter as long as it was when

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I finished it. And about 150 ,000 words were taken out of that section on the

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Fall, because I just felt like I had to do such heavy lifting to impress upon the readers what a significant thing it is that we lived in a fallen world.

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And to show them in Scripture, in all the heroes of Scripture, you know, that the heroes of Scripture, the

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Bible parades their sins. Not just their weaknesses, but their sins. And then to talk about the impact of the

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Fall on our world, you know, abortion is the most notorious, but the incidents of incest and sex abuse and conservative

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Reformed homeschooling families, I spend much of my time working on that at churches around the country, and I've had a number of cases here in Bloomington.

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So if people don't come to thinking about what it means to be a father, having seen what actually happened in Scripture, in the

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Old Testament, what happened in the Garden of Eden, what happened in the Old Testament, what happened in King David's household, what happened at the

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Corinthian church, if they don't see that in this life we struggle with our sins and the sins of the people we love, then there's this expectation that's completely unrealistic, could never be fulfilled except in Heaven.

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And so then what you end up having is hypocrisy. You end up having everybody with the outside of the cup clean, and the inside filled with all manner of evil, and the church ends up being a place that just, everybody hides it from each other.

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And I'm assuming one of the areas that the Fall has affected fatherhood is that Eve had the desire to have rule or control over Adam, and that to a degree exists many, many times in our life, thousands of years later in our world

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I should say, where the mother perhaps is trying to rob the husband of his role, but perhaps not consciously, especially when you're talking about a

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Christian, a Bible -believing Christian wife and mother. But is that a part of the problem as well, since it's a part of the

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Fall? Yeah, there's no question that none of us like to be under authority, and I might not have been able to say that three centuries ago, but let's admit that the ethos of America is rebellion.

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And I wrote a blog post this last week saying, and the abdicator and the rebel always live in a symbiotic relationship, and they both have...

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it's both the same sin. Both of them are repudiating the authority that God has delegated in this life, but God will always hold the abdicator more responsible than the rebel, right?

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And so yeah, in the marriage, one of the things that struck me is you read books on raising children and on fatherhood and motherhood, and they absolutely have nothing to say about the conflicts between the husband and wife over the discipline of the children.

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And I think, man, were my wife and I like monsters that we fought over that? Because it doesn't seem like anybody else fights over it.

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And so yeah, I do think you're right that the striving between the husband and the wife, and listen,

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I actually think that striving is wonderful. I think that God ordained children to grow up in the black soil of the tension between man and woman.

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That's an interesting way of phrasing it. And by the way, I didn't even remember to mention this to you before the program,

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Pastor Jeff, but you could chime in with a question anytime you want. You don't have to wait for me to gesture you.

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Oh, okay, that's fine. I just want to make sure you knew that. I'm enjoying listening to Tim lay this out.

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I'm just thinking my own growing up and seeing my parents and then my own experience. I grew up in a household with a loving father and mother, and they used to get into fights in front of us.

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They didn't hide it. Well, maybe they did hide some of them, but and I think that was a good thing to see how a real

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Christian husband and wife would have disputes over, sometimes over, you know, how to handle the misbehavior of their son.

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And especially if they resolve the disputes in a biblical way, it's helpful. They did. That's what I'm saying.

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I had a good upbringing in that regard, and I'm thankful. They weren't perfect, but they endeavored to model a

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Christian marriage before us. And then so when I entered into my own marriage and then became a father,

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I had that good background. And so I appreciate, and especially now in the years

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I've had in ministry, I faced situations where, just as Tim has described them, where the fathers have either abdicated their responsibility or, you know, the wives or women have rebelled against it.

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And usually, as he said, they're both together or one leads to the other.

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And had some situations where very sad circumstances were involved, especially with, you know, various kinds of abuse.

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And those are always generational. In other words, from what I've seen, and of course reading the

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Scriptures, you see this in the life of all of the saints.

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As has already been pointed out, we see warts and all, right? But I've seen just from pastoral experience that a bad parental situation will yield years of sorrow and sin, behavioral issues in children, and perhaps even,

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I guess, grandchildren. We already have a number of people waiting to have their questions asked and answered, so we're gonna go to them after the break.

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And so don't go away. We're gonna be right back after these messages. We'll be returning shortly with our guest Tim Bailey and Daddy Tried.

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I'm Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and here's one of my favorite guests,

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Todd Friel, to tell you about a conference he and I are going to. Hello, this is Todd Friel, host of Wretched Radio and Wretched TV and occasional guest on Chris's show,

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Iron, Criticizing Iron. I think that's what it's called.

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Hoping that you can join Chris and me at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, my new hometown.

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It is going to be a bang -up conference called the G3 Conference, celebrating the 500th anniversary of the

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Protestant Reformation with Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Bauckham, Conrad and Bayway, Phil Johnson, James White, and a bunch of other people.

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We hope to see you there. Learn more at g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

31:46

Thanks, Todd, I think. See you at the Iron Sharpens Iron Exhibitors Booth.

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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.

33:30

This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the first hour is Pastor Tim Bailey of Clear Note Church in Bloomington, Indiana.

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We are discussing his book, Daddy Tried, Overcoming the Failures of Fatherhood. In studio with me as my co -host today is

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Pastor Jeff Waddington of Knox Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Lansdale, Pennsylvania.

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That's Lansdale. Yes, isn't that what I said? Lansdale. That's okay.

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That's nearby. It's nearby. It's to the north of us. Okay. It's a beautiful community. Okay. I still can't understand the difference between the pronunciations, but anyway.

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Dale and down. Oh, okay. We do have a listener in White Plains, New York, Bob, who has a question

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He will still be there for them throughout their lives because they are covenant -protected.

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Do you have an answer for that, Tim? Yeah, sure. You know, you have five years of your life, and I'll answer the question.

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I mean, I don't want to be rude, but we're talking about such heavy issues.

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We're talking about the nature of God's covenant. We're talking about divorce. We're talking about a man trying to work with children that I don't think live with him.

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It sounds like they live with his wife, and there are so many issues there.

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I think the one thing that's absolutely necessary, though, is that we realize that when

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God made the covenant with Abraham, he said that he had made the covenant with Abraham so that Abraham would command his children to keep the way of the

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Lord, to do justice and righteousness, so that he could bring upon Abraham all of the fulfillment of the covenant.

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And so we have to always be careful not to look at God's covenant with our children.

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The covenant succession concept, which is clearly biblical as a unilateral concept, and I think so much of what has been written and spoken on covenant succession today borders on a sacramentalist sort of exo peri operata kind of thing.

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This brother who's writing in to ask what he can do to make sure that God continues to be a

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God to his children needs to know that he's very limited in some ways, because he doesn't have the command authority that a father that is in a home with a wife who is who is who is working alongside of him has.

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So he has to worry about bitterness on the part of his wife, on his part, on the children's part.

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He has to worry about not having them in a physical home. And so what I would say to him is we must be the father we can be in the circumstances we have, and we must plead with God to cover the nakedness of our sin.

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I think one of the most important things, and it doesn't matter whether you're divorced or whether you're in the home with your wife, with your children, is

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Reformed men have to confess their sins to their children and to their spouses.

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And because what it does is it makes it clear that none of us deserve the mercy and grace of God.

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And he might feel more acutely what a blessing this is, but he also might be fearful because his wife's attacking him.

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I don't know the circumstances common for a divorced wife to undercut the authority with the children.

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But we have to lead by saying that we really do believe that God is good and that we are sinners.

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So I think that's the thing. Humility, and not this not this pathetic weakness of,

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I'm just a sinner, and don't look up at me and all that sort of stuff. But nevertheless, to acknowledge that he has failed, that he is a sinner, and that he demands that his children walk in the way of the

38:16

Lord so that God can fulfill the covenant. I'm sorry, I feel so inadequate when it's just asked by email.

38:23

But that's what I would say to him, and then that would start a long conversation. Well Bob, give us your full name and address, your mailing address, and you're getting a free copy of Daddy Tried by our guest

38:37

Tim Bailey, compliments of Warhorn Media. And we look forward to having that shipped out to you, and that will be shipped out to you free of charge by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com,

38:52

CVBBS .com, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. And we thank

38:58

Todd and Patty Jennings for their faithful support of Iron Sharpens Iron, and for mailing out all of our free

39:03

Bibles and books that we give to listeners who submit questions. Can I tell you a quick story?

39:11

Yes. I used to go every year with my brothers who are both pastors, one has gone to be with the

39:17

Lord, but I used to go to the Banner of Truth Conference. And every year we would go over to Cumberland Valley, say hi to the guys, and spend a lot of money at that store.

39:30

Come from that store. One year when our new church started, I didn't have permission to do this, but we were a new church, and I think

39:41

I spent $3 ,000 in that store. Loaded my car, took all the books back, and then said to the elders, would you guys reimburse me?

39:54

Is that why you're in a different church now? No, it's the same church. Very understanding elders.

40:03

Well it's a good thing that you didn't have to say that to your wife when you got home.

40:09

No, no, no. Was that when Fred Huebner owned it, or was that when?

40:14

That. Yeah, that is the father of one of the current owners, Patty Jennings.

40:20

Her maiden name is Huebner, and Fred is her dad. And it's

40:26

Todd and Patty Jennings now own that. But anyway, thank you, thank you Bob, and thank you

40:31

Tim for the story there. We do have Tom in West Islip, Long Island, New York.

40:40

Do you have thoughts on raising an adopted child in the midst of natural born biological children?

40:52

Well yes, we have had a lot of work with adoption. My wife has become something of a knowledgeable person on adoption, and had very difficult things.

41:05

And also, my five children, I have 21 grandchildren, three of them are adopted. All three of them from Ethiopia by two different families who also have their own natural children.

41:16

Adoption has to be done trusting that God is going to work through the family, and that it's not going to be pie in the sky, and it's not going to be all sweet.

41:29

There are very difficult things about adoption. One of the things I've noticed is that parents typically, when they adopt, think that the adoption is going to go well because it's an act of their

41:43

Christian love and mercy. And because something is motivated by our love for God and faith, and a desire to be merciful and compassionate, does not mean that it's going to be easy work.

41:57

And one of the most difficult things is often the adopted child's personality is completely at odds with the ethos of the home.

42:06

You know, because the child doesn't have the same genes, and so this child just doesn't fit in.

42:13

The child sets everybody on edge, because his personality is completely different.

42:19

And I think that one of the things Christian parents have to do who are adopted, is they have to realize that they actually do love their child, even though many times he drives them wacko.

42:31

And just continue to love him, and don't let the child ever hold you hostage by saying you're not my real father and mother.

42:39

You just can't do that. But it's a wonderful work. Give yourself to it, brother. Well, thank you,

42:46

Tom. And you're also getting a free copy of Daddy Tried, Overcoming the Failures of Fatherhood by our guest

42:53

Tim Bailey. And give us your full mailing address, and we'll get that out to you as soon as possible. We have

42:59

Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, who says, what do you recommend for single men who want to learn to be a father, not intellectually, but in accordance to the

43:14

Word of God? I'm not really sure what he means by that, but maybe you do. I don't know what he means by that.

43:20

Not intellectually. Well, listen, I mean, I hate to say this, but buy the book and read it.

43:31

Well, he's getting a free copy. I know, I feel horrible saying that.

43:37

I haven't said it on any interviews that I've done. But my goodness, I wrote the book precisely with young men, young college students, grad students, brand new fathers, men who aren't fathers in mind.

43:51

And it's filled with stories, but it really does present the character of God.

44:00

And what really, you could understand this book being is an extended meditation, theological and spiritual and emotional, on the character of God as a father.

44:11

And I don't think there's any better way of preparing for marriage than to learn about God's discipline of his sons, to learn about God's jealousy for his own glory, and that he's not going to share it with a woman who makes an idol out of her children.

44:28

Are you with me? And that kind of thing will acclimate you to what kind of life you need, you know, because you'll begin to see your weaknesses and what kind of strengths you need from a woman to compensate for.

44:43

But honestly, I would say, I'd say buy the book and sit down and talk about it with some of your friends.

44:49

Have a weekly discussion group of it, because it's going to cause your hair to stand on end in a way that other books aren't.

44:58

This book is written to men, and it doesn't coddle you. And no woman is buying this book. 70 % of Christian books are bought by women.

45:06

And everything I did about this book, I'm aiming to deal with men in a manly way, in a way that Scripture deals with them.

45:13

And I think, and I don't think it'll be discouraging to you, but I think it's not going to just flatter you, and it's not going to coddle you, you know.

45:22

And so that really is what I would say. Now, one other thing. If you are a single man, the best way to prepare for marriage is to take on responsibility.

45:33

And don't make the mistake of wanting responsibility at a high level. Take on the responsibility that the men of your church ask you to take on.

45:43

If they ask you to clean the bathrooms, don't complain, don't think it's beneath you.

45:49

Clean the bathrooms until the chrome shines. That's the best preparation for marriage.

45:55

Because if you're willing to be a servant in a church, to whatever the needs of the church are, you have begun to get to the point where you're going to be capable of changing your child's diaper.

46:08

Hmm. That's great advice. Well, Tyler, you don't have to buy the book because you're getting a free copy.

46:13

But please, when you get it, buy one for someone else that is a father. And that would be great if, in fact, if all of our listeners who win a free copy of the book buy one eventually for someone who else is a dad and perhaps struggling and so on.

46:30

And we need your full mailing address, Tyler, and we'll get that out to you as soon as we can. And I want to get into the section in your book.

46:42

And by the way, you may have realized already, Tim, why I wanted you on for a full two hours on this subject.

46:50

But Fatherhood Redeemed, if you could get into a little bit on that issue.

46:58

Well, the book is broken into sections. Fatherhood Lost, that's what you referred to the fall.

47:05

Fatherhood Redeemed, well, that's looking at God's fatherhood. And the chapters are

47:10

God is love. I think a lot of times we Reform people don't want to talk about the love of God because it's twisted by liberals so badly.

47:19

But I try to reclaim our commitment to the love. Then God disciplines his son, then

47:24

God is jealous. And then a chapter called This is My Beloved Son, where I do talk about this issue of the relationship of the

47:32

Father and the Son. It took me years in the ministry to really see what the Gospel of John presented about the tender intimacy and the sharing of work between the

47:42

Father and the Son. And so that's the section Fatherhood Redeemed.

47:49

It casts the vision. After we deal with the fall, then we go to God and get rejiggered so that we begin to see fatherhood starting with God, because God is the

48:00

Father, Ephesians 3 says. God is the pater from whom all patria in heaven and earth gets its name.

48:08

Well, thank you very much, Tyler, for asking your question. And I have a question of my own.

48:18

The thing about kind of stemming on what

48:23

Bob from White Plains was asking about. I think that some fathers, and I know a couple, that have failed so miserably in their past that they are paralyzed, or they allow themselves to be paralyzed, to actually bring about the restoration with their children that they know needs to occur.

48:50

And they are afraid of approaching their children that are perhaps estranged from them with humility, with asking for forgiveness, and so on.

49:03

It's not that they don't think that they need to do that or should, but they're in a state of paralysis over it.

49:11

If you have any advice or counsel in that regard, because there are perhaps even some non -Christians listening who especially have that in their lives.

49:26

I believe a Christian, if he is a repentant person, must press forward and bite the bullet and do whatever is necessary, even if he goes through a period of humiliation or embarrassment or whatever.

49:43

But if you could just address that whole issue of trying to make amends and restore a situation, even if you think it is hopeless and helpless.

49:55

Well, first of all, take the long view. Rome wasn't built in a day.

50:02

And I think anybody reading the book is going to realize some major areas of change that are needed.

50:13

I don't see how you can study fatherhood scripturally and not end up seeing that there's some areas that you've failed.

50:20

And honestly, when I look back at our church and I think, what was the

50:26

Sunday where our church was more filled with the grace of God and the glory of God than any other

50:35

Sunday? It was a Sunday that a young man, a young father, got up and confessed just a terribly, terribly wicked thing he had done for a number of years, years before.

50:48

And the grace of God in that room, he did not justify himself.

50:56

He did not minimize his sin. He did not plead for people to forgive him.

51:02

He simply brokenly said, this is what I did, and I ask you to please forgive me.

51:09

Now, he had been under a period of discipline before that, so everybody knew the parameters, sort of, of what had happened.

51:15

But I mean to tell you the power of that service where the very thing he had done to someone,

51:22

I knew personally as a pastor, a number of people there had suffered under a similar circumstance, and to watch everybody go forward and hug him and say quietly to him,

51:33

I forgive you. And I mean, the grace of God was powerful.

51:39

And so what I want to say is, you read Psalm 51, and David doesn't focus on his family.

51:47

David focuses, it's against thee and thee alone have I sinned. He seethes the holiness of God.

51:53

I think if we'll get it out of our brains that the real people we have to worry about are our wives, our ex -wives, or our children's judgments, and realize the one that we have to do with is

52:02

God. And when we look at God and His holiness, and we realize, honestly, we are sinners, okay?

52:12

You know, the most consistent thing people object to our church about when they come into our church from an evangelical background is that we begin the service with a prayer of confession.

52:23

Well, can you imagine that? And I think that if we as fathers will see the holiness of God, and therefore the mercy and long suffering and the pity of God, like as a father pities his children, so the word pities them that fear him, for he knows our frame that we are made of dust.

52:49

If a father can communicate in a dignified, respectful way to his children that he has seen the holiness of God, and that he trembles for God's mercy at the sins he's committed, and that he wants to do everything he can to lend his weight, anything he can do to help them not commit the sins he's committed, and to be a good father to them in the years that he has left.

53:18

And the key is humility. You know, we had to work. One of the cases we had to work with was a man who had molested all of his grandchildren.

53:26

Wow. And so we were brought in, and he was up at a church in the

53:31

Chicago area, and the pastors, big church, pastors didn't want to do anything about it, you know, and we were we were helping to clean up the mess.

53:40

And what that man did is the minute he got caught, and it was multiple families, the minute he got caught, he began to say that he had gone to his pastor and confessed his sin, and God had forgiven him, and why couldn't his family forgive him, right?

53:56

And he was more abusive and manipulative in his demands for forgiveness, and it's accusing his children and grandchildren of being bitter against him, almost than he had been by abusing the children themselves.

54:10

You never want to manipulate people through your requests for forgiveness.

54:17

You don't want to be undignified. It does not matter what sins you've committed, you are still their father, and you should have dignity in the forthrightness and directness of your confessions of sin, and it may be that you shouldn't even ask them to forgive you.

54:35

You should just say, I ask your forgiveness, but please don't answer because it may take you years to forgive me.

54:43

Just out of curiosity, did the husband of one of those victims write a book? Because I interviewed someone in the past who wrote a book about his wife's experience, and it sounded nearly identical to what you're describing.

54:56

No, no, no, no. Listen, Chris, I deal with this just constantly, which is all over the place.

55:05

I was talking to Joel Belz, he's the guy that started World, talking to him about getting advice in a difficult situation

55:15

I had, and he said his immediate reaction was, I am so sick of this.

55:23

I mean, you talk to men who are in ministry where they really are pastors and shepherds, and it just doesn't stop.

55:30

It just does not stop. I'm convinced that the reason we have so much incest and sexual abuse, including in very conservative

55:41

Reformed churches, one of the reasons is because of the Yeah.

55:49

We do have an anonymous listener who wants to know, I feel awkward reintroducing myself into my children's lives to do any restorative activities because my ex -wife is remarried and the new husband is seemingly successfully raising these children in a happy home.

56:13

What is your advice? That's very, very hard. You know, people can talk about being friends with their exes, but it's just extremely hard.

56:24

I was reading this last week, and Alcanna, you know,

56:29

Hannah and Penina, they're referred to in Scripture as rivals, okay, and so we have to be aware of jealousy, of envy, of grief, of bitterness, and we have to try to work in the lives of our children in such a way that they don't end up resenting our involvement because they feel that bitterness or jealousy or envy, okay, and that's why

56:54

I keep saying, with dignity. We cannot stoop to the kind of emotional manipulation that so much attempts to be involved in the lives of our children can be guilty of.

57:05

What I would say is, try to find ways that you can help your children's lives without it being about you.

57:12

I think that's the most important thing. If something is about you, it's not going to be helpful.

57:19

You've had your years, and for whatever reason, God has left you in a situation where you are not the one that's in the home now, and so give without any expectation.

57:32

I talk about this in the book of reciprocity. Give freely, as you have been given by God, give freely to your children, and do it in a way that it doesn't make you look like an iron -shining armor, really sensitive, or it's just helpful.

57:49

I often say to my congregation that what we should expect of pastors is that they're just helpful.

57:55

That's all, just helpful. And I say it that way from the pulpit, because I want us to stop putting everybody on a pedestal.

58:05

It's like, everybody's living their lives on Facebook for peer review today, you know what

58:10

I mean? And it's like, let's just be helpful to our children. If we're divorced, if they have a good father now, we don't have to think about that.

58:20

Let's just help him, you know, help the father, help the mother, help the children, and God in his time will give back to you the affection and trust and love of your children.

58:31

I'm convinced in most cases if it's not emotionally manipulative, that's what's going to happen.

58:37

Well if you could, just leave our listeners now with what you most want etched on their hearts and minds when they leave the program today,

58:44

Tim. Let's love fatherhood. In the book

58:50

I talk about the fact that there is the modern Bible translations, not so much the

58:56

ESV and the NASV, I use the NASV, but the other ones have taken out one third of father words in its cognates in the

59:05

English translations. And that's indicative of the condition of fatherhood in the Church today.

59:10

And we don't need fathers to be put up on a pedestal and worship, that's bunk. But we have to live by faith and be fathers and do what

59:23

God tells us to do and trust him to bring the fruit. And I hope this book helps men have faith to sail in the right direction.

59:32

That's what the Christian life is. Well if you would like to purchase this book go to warhornmedia .com,

59:41

warhornmedia .com and click on books. And I just want to let our anonymous listener to know, if you send me your full name and mailing address you'll get a free copy of this as well.

59:52

And this is Daddy Tried Overcoming the Failures of Fatherhood by our guest Tim Bailey. And we obviously will not reveal your identity since you prefer to remain anonymous.

01:00:04

Well thank you Thank you so much, Tim, I'm looking forward to our interview tomorrow, and I really would like to also have you return to discuss this same topic on fatherhood at some point in the future.

01:00:14

I'd love to do that, Chris, and Jeff, I'm sorry I didn't get to talk to you more, but it was fun having you.

01:00:21

Well, I was actually learning a lot, brother, so I'm, you know, being,

01:00:27

I consider myself a student and listening, and I very much appreciate what you had to say, and it basically jibes with my own experience.

01:00:38

Yeah, I appreciated what you said. I thought it was very pastoral, and that's what we need in the

01:00:45

Reformed Church, is more pastors. Amen. Well, thanks, Tim, and we're going to be joined by a member of Tim's church,

01:00:53

Stephen Baker, after these messages, and he's going to be speaking on church -based pastoral training, so I hope that none of you go away, because we're going to be right back after these messages, and our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:01:10

chrisarnson at gmail .com. We'll be right back with Steve Baker momentarily.

01:01:21

Chris Arnson here, and I can't wait to head down to Atlanta, Georgia, and here's my friend Dr. James White to tell you why.

01:01:28

Hi, I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. I hope you join me at the G3 Conference, hosted by Pastor Josh Bice and Praise Mill Baptist Church, at the

01:01:37

Georgia International Convention Center in Atlanta, January 19th through the 21st, in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the

01:01:46

Protestant Reformation. I'll be joined by Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Vody Balcom, Conrad Mbewe, Phil Johnson, Rosaria Butterfield, Todd Friel, and a host of other speakers who are dedicated to the pillars of what

01:02:00

G3 stands for, gospel, grace, and glory. For more details, go to g3conference .com,

01:02:07

that's g3conference .com. Thanks, James. Make sure you greet me at the

01:02:12

Iron Sharpens Iron exhibit booth while you're there. Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said,

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01:04:37

Welcome back this is Chris Arns and if you just tuned us in, our second guest today for the remaining hour of the program is

01:04:45

Stephen Baker. He is Dean of Clearnoat Pastors College in Bloomington, Indiana, and we are discussing church -based pastoral training, its method and advantages, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron, Sharpens Iron, Stephen Baker.

01:05:03

Hello Chris, thank you so much for having me, really appreciate it. And I'm assuming I am pronouncing your first name correctly, it's not

01:05:10

Stephan, but Stephen? No, just good old -fashioned Stephen. Great, and let me introduce you now to my co -host,

01:05:18

Pastor Jeffrey Waddington. He's my co -host in studio today, and he is pastor of Knox Presbyterian Church in Lansdale?

01:05:28

Lansdown. Lansdown, Pennsylvania. I'm gonna mess it up every time.

01:05:33

If you could greet our guest, Pastor. Greetings Stephen, it's good to talk with you.

01:05:39

Hello Jeff, good to talk to you too. Well, we already heard a background of Clearnoat Church from our first guest, your pastor,

01:05:49

Tim Bailey. Right. Tell us now about how you had this vision, or at least whoever it was that started speaking about training pastors within the context of a local church, so that they may become effective leaders and shepherds or under -shepherds of their own congregations in other parts of the country and world.

01:06:17

How did this all come about? Right, well, first of all, I should introduce myself in the sense that I am of the

01:06:26

Baptist contingent here at Clearnoat. I should have had you on first.

01:06:34

Only kidding. Yeah, so I am one of the pastors here as well, and this model of pastoral training really has been in my mind for many years.

01:06:49

Years ago I read an article by John Frame called,

01:06:55

A Proposal for a New Seminary. I'm not sure if your men are familiar with that. He wrote that back in 1972, you can find it on the internet to read.

01:07:05

Really excellent proposal for, and this is coming from an academic, you know,

01:07:11

John Frame, professor, saying, look, the seminary is not the right format, it's not the right venue for training shepherds.

01:07:23

It's great for academics, it's not good for training pastors. And I was persuaded by that, and it fit with my experience.

01:07:33

As a young man, I had been nurtured and mentored by pastors.

01:07:41

I had an internship at a church just north of Indianapolis, I'm from Indiana out here, and that pastor took me under his wing while I was in college and taught me a lot.

01:07:55

After that, I ended up out in Pennsylvania. I actually lived up in Hazleton, Pennsylvania for ten years or so.

01:08:03

Oh, where Ted Tripp's congregation is. Exactly, and so I was a part of that congregation and ultimately became an elder there.

01:08:13

But while I was living there, a group of Reformed Baptist pastors in New England started a little pastoral training institute.

01:08:24

It's called the Reformed Baptist Pastoral Training Institute. It met in Worcester, Massachusetts, so this is a group of Reformed Baptist men,

01:08:31

Jim Rinehan, Mike Rinehan, his brother, a man named Ed Bocci, Steve Graham, Ron Baines, who just died of complications from brain cancer just a few weeks ago.

01:08:45

They were all part of that Institute, and the model there was a decentralized kind of pastoral training.

01:08:53

So we would come together for classes in the classroom two days a month, and the rest of that time we spent in our home churches.

01:09:00

These men came from all over New England. I was actually really outside of the scope that was intended geographically.

01:09:08

I drove up from Hazleton, which is a five hour drive one way, to do that work.

01:09:14

And so over the course of that training, I think I drove 30 ,000 miles to be a part of that.

01:09:21

But so thankful for it, because it couched pastoral training in the context of actual pastoral ministry.

01:09:30

And so we would go back to our churches and the elders and the pastors of my church, which was

01:09:35

Grace Fellowship Church there in Hazleton, shepherded me and my family. You know,

01:09:41

I was a part of the actual ministry of the church, and that really gave me not just a theoretical taste for that model, but a real, you know, firsthand experience with it.

01:09:55

Yeah, and one of my former pastors, Mark Rimaldi, was a classmate with you, correct?

01:10:02

He was indeed, although he's Mark Rimaldi, of course, pastor of Grace Reformed Baptist Church on Long Island.

01:10:08

We would call him Mock Rimaldi. I just saw him back in November at a missions conference, and it was a delight to see him again.

01:10:22

I really love Mark. Well, I will mock him the next time I speak with him. You know,

01:10:30

Stephen, I think it's a small world. Ted Tripp's granddaughter is my daughter's college roommate.

01:10:38

Oh, no kidding. And they're very, very close friends, so we have that connection there.

01:10:45

Now, how would, you know, I'm seminary trained. I recognize the limits of the seminary training.

01:10:54

In other words, what you're talking about is what I would want to see provided to a seminarian in the context of the local church they're involved with, and that, of course, presupposes that a man and his or her family, his family, would become, and if they have moved, pulled up stakes and have moved to a location where a seminary is, that they would find a congregation and would become involved.

01:11:27

Now, perhaps in your experience, well, you've already said that part of it was your experience.

01:11:37

Now, the training that you had on the ground, that was at the church in Hazleton? Correct. Okay, so the classroom experience was in Worcester.

01:11:45

That's right. But they would have interacted, I'm assuming, right? They would have been integrated.

01:11:52

And that's really, that may be where there's a breakdown in seminary training.

01:11:58

I can say that at Westminster, where I went, they've been working to improve that.

01:12:06

Right. Because we know, even, you know, Jake Ressa -Machen, the founder of Westminster, said that the classroom is good for certain things.

01:12:17

But it is not capable of doing the, you know, the teaching, maybe what we would describe as things that are caught more so than taught, or maybe both, right?

01:12:33

Spiritual formation, mentoring, discipleship, working with your family and children, all these kinds of things.

01:12:39

So you want to, and that's what I like about what you're talking about, there's an integrated training. There's accountability.

01:12:48

And when I came to the Philadelphia area to go to Westminster, I hooked into a local congregation and did a two -year internship part -time, because I knew that I had to be.

01:13:03

I had to be a part of a local congregation, and my family as well.

01:13:08

I wanted my wife and my daughters to be grounded with a regular congregation that we were attending on a regular basis, who got to know us.

01:13:19

We got to know the pastor and the congregation and had that. And that's very significant.

01:13:26

Now, did you, in your own thinking about this, with regard to the pastors, the college that you have there at Clearpoint, does

01:13:41

Spurgeon figure into that in terms of the historical precedent? Oh, absolutely. Okay.

01:13:46

Tell us a little bit about that, if you could. Well, actually, there are a lot of historical precedents, if you think about it.

01:13:53

I mean, not just, you can go, obviously, back to Scripture, and you could see, you know, the sons of the prophets in the

01:13:59

Old Testament around Elisha, particularly, who lived together, they shared meals together.

01:14:05

We get some of the interesting stories around Elisha or surrounding the students, as it were, the sons of the prophets, you know, building houses and eating soup, you know, and pretty interesting stuff there.

01:14:19

Then you have, of course, Jesus, who, in his ministry, gathered to himself twelve men, and they shared life together.

01:14:29

They lived together, they traveled together, they ate together. The Apostle Paul, of course, traveled with men who were pastors and training, like Timothy, and then

01:14:39

Paul instructs Timothy himself in 2 Timothy 2, 1 to 2, of course, the classic passage for this, is to teach men who are able to teach others also.

01:14:53

And that's a kind of a, it shows that the ministry of, the work of training pastors is the ministry of the

01:15:00

Word. And in historical examples would be many, many, you mentioned

01:15:06

Charles Spurgeon and his Pastors College. There are others, there's a man, a pastor named

01:15:14

John Sutcliffe, who was an English Calvinistic Baptist pastor, lived and ministered in the late 1700s in England.

01:15:23

You can read about John Sutcliffe in Michael Haykin's excellent book called

01:15:28

One Heart and One Soul. Excellent book. And he talks about, really, John Sutcliffe was instrumental in the group of pastors that started the

01:15:36

Baptist Missionary Society that sent William Carey to India. And John Sutcliffe trained pastors in his home.

01:15:45

The men would come and live literally in his house, they would take their meals together, he would observe, they would observe him in his family life and in his life as a pastor.

01:15:55

He would teach them theology, teach them biblical languages. One of his former students said that John Sutcliffe, in every respect, was a father to him.

01:16:09

And so there's something more than just academic instruction that's needed, right? And that's what we're trying to build here in Bloomington.

01:16:19

It's not just the classroom. The good thing that is happening in many seminaries around the country is what you're talking about, an internship program or some kind of integration with the local church, and that is wonderful and I'm very thankful for that.

01:16:33

One of the problems is, I don't think it goes far enough, because there's a lot of life that has to be observed, not just in the context of the church, but by the men who are actually teaching the content of the classes, dealing with the character of the man in the context of the classroom, letting the instruction about systematic theology or about scripture or about pastoral ministry be integrated into what's actually happening pastorally in the life of the church at the moment.

01:17:11

And that's something I think is unique in terms of what we're doing. For example, we have all of our men who are students attend all of our elders meetings, so they are watching all of the discussions that go on in an elders meeting.

01:17:25

They see that, we debrief with them afterwards to talk about what happened, and what did you learn, and what were your observations.

01:17:33

Sometimes as they get older in their studies, we ask for their input, so they're actively engaged in that context.

01:17:41

And that's just one way that we literally integrate not just theory, but the actual practice of the church into the classroom.

01:17:49

I think that's excellent. I don't know, I serve in the

01:17:58

Presbytery of Philadelphia, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. However, I serve on the Candidates and Credentials Committee for the

01:18:03

Presbytery of New Jersey. And one of the concerns that we have is that as we're dealing with men coming forward to be licensed and ordained, you know, to go through the process of becoming pastors, that we be not merely an academic clearinghouse, but that we be working with the pastors of the congregations where they've been serving as an intern, to mentor the men who are going through seminary, or who are in college, but who have, what we call, come under care.

01:18:35

That is, they have indicated their interest and desire, intent to pursue a calling in gospel ministry.

01:18:43

And so we've, in the last couple of years, we've made it our commitment as members of that committee to meet with and get to know and interact with these men in a personal way, and then also to interact with and know both in a formal and informal way with the ministers who are working with them on a day -in, day -out basis.

01:19:08

Because we recognize that pastoral ministry has, obviously, an intellectual component, and I have my doctorate, so you would guess that I think that's important.

01:19:21

But that's not the only thing. And so I'm pleased to hear about what you're doing.

01:19:28

Can you give us kind of an outline of, I don't know if you want to, you know, describe a day in the life of a student who's part of your pastor's college?

01:19:40

Give us a sense of what happens, what he goes through. Well, we kind of break down in our thinking about what has to happen to create a pastor, a man who's a good candidate for the ministry.

01:19:55

We think of knowledge, character, and skill. And those things actually come from,

01:20:01

I was looking over John Frame's article, Proposal for a New Seminary, again, and I realized, oh, that's where I got that.

01:20:10

It's been a long time since I've read it. So knowledge, character, and skill. And those are categories that you see all through Scripture, all through the

01:20:19

New Testament, the pastoral epistles. Obviously there is a kind of knowledge that's needed, you know, retain the standard of sound words which you've heard.

01:20:28

There's a doctrinal content. The elders in Titus 1 are to hold fast the faithful word, which is in accordance with the teaching, so that they could be able to both exhort and sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict.

01:20:45

There's a knowledge component of that. And so when we think of the classroom or the academic side, we have three years of study.

01:20:54

The first year is biblical theology, the whole sweep of Scripture, systematic theology one, and Greek.

01:21:02

The second year is we finish systematic theology with a real emphasis on the heart, on heart religion, on applying the gospel to yourself first, to your family, and then being able to do that with your people as you walk with the

01:21:18

Lord in the grace of the gospel. We also, in the second year, have hermeneutics in Hebrew.

01:21:24

The third year, biblical shepherding, which is a class that covers all the work of pastoring, from counseling to preaching to leading meetings to doing weddings and funerals, all of that kind of stuff.

01:21:37

Church history and biblical exegesis. So we have a robust classroom component, but that's not all there is to it.

01:21:48

So there's character. And so, obviously, the biblical basis for that is all through the pastoral epistles and the qualifications required for elders and pastors.

01:21:59

And some of that component, obviously, is the home and watching men in their home.

01:22:05

And so we have a mentoring program. All of our students are assigned a mentor.

01:22:11

If they're married, it's a pastor or elder and his wife who deal with the couple.

01:22:17

And most of our students historically have been married. And their job is just to track with them, to take their temperature spiritually, to think about their home, their children, how are their...how's

01:22:29

the dynamic between the husband and wife, how are they doing spiritually. So really spending time with them and mentoring them.

01:22:38

And then we have the third element of skill, which is the ability to actually do the work, to preach, to reprove, rebuke, exhort.

01:22:50

And so that's part of the component of having them in the elders meetings. We also assign to them different ministries.

01:22:58

So by the time a man has graduated after three years, typically he has done just about every element of pastoral ministry that can be done by a non -ordained man.

01:23:08

In other words, he hasn't administered the sacraments or married somebody. But you know, he's preached multiple times.

01:23:18

He has...with input afterwards, he's taught classes, he's discipled people, he's been part of the discipline of people, he's organized things administratively.

01:23:30

We just wanted them to be able to have done all of those things. And one of the great things about it, this kind of model really only works, obviously, if the

01:23:42

Church has the bandwidth to handle that kind of thing. And a lot of ways, the humility. So we have the bandwidth in terms of pastors and men who are able to teach, but there's the humility of the congregation that is willing to be, you know, willing to sit through a lot of first sermons.

01:24:02

Yeah, which is a painful experience for both parties usually, right? Yes. So, but the people are just, they understand they have a role in this work of encouraging these men, giving them feedback, loving them and their families, and I think that takes a real sweet kind of humility.

01:24:23

That's a congregational vocation, isn't it? Yes. Very much so.

01:24:29

That's tremendous. Now how long has the pastor's college been in operation?

01:24:36

Yep, so we started in 2005. Okay. It's been 11 years. Yep, we started originally as a joint effort between our church here in Bloomington, Clear Note Church in Bloomington, and another church in Toledo, Ohio, which is a

01:24:53

PCA church called Christ the Word up in Toledo, and that is pastored by Tim Bailey's brother,

01:25:00

David, that you just interviewed a bit ago. And it was, so we started as a joint effort.

01:25:06

We needed one another's help to kind of pull this off, and so we banded together and did that for several years together as one college, and several years ago we found it was more convenient and helpful to actually break it into two separate colleges, easier to administrate locally, that kind of thing.

01:25:29

We still have shared instructors and classes by using video conferencing and things like that.

01:25:37

So we started 11 years ago. In those 11 years, if you count graduates from the time period when we were jointly held with Christ the

01:25:47

Word up in Toledo, we have had 21 graduates of our full program, three students who graduated with what we offer as a two -year certificate.

01:25:59

We have 15 of those 21 graduates are ordained as pastors or elders and are serving either here locally in our church or other churches that we've planted or in other denominations.

01:26:13

We have a few men serving in the PCA. We have one serving in the RCUS up in Ohio Reform Church in the

01:26:20

United States, and so we've, that's our track record. That's how we've, that's what we've been doing.

01:26:26

We have a small class right now of three men who just started about a month ago in their first year, so that's where we are.

01:26:36

What do you find to be the, I guess, the challenges to this, to the program that you're implementing?

01:26:48

The, I think the challenge is, the biggest challenge I think has been expectations about what seminary training should be.

01:26:59

A lot of emphasis today has, and this is not a new emphasis, it's very, very old going back to the 1700s probably, of an emphasis on the academy, on an institution, and you know, pastoral training just became a part of the university, and that carries with it certain expectations.

01:27:22

So with the expectations concerning languages, concerning, you know, kind of academic minutiae, one could say.

01:27:34

And we have, you know, I would trust men that we have graduated from the

01:27:42

Pastors College here pastorally. They're able to argue, they're able to understand the doctrinal issues of the day, they're able to handle the scriptures, but that's because much of what they've learned is inscrutable.

01:27:59

You know, it's hard to put your finger on what do you learn by sitting in an elders meeting, what do you learn by sitting under the faithful ministry of preaching for year after year after year that you can't possibly learn in the classroom, you know.

01:28:19

And you know, the kinds of, you've heard Pastor Bailey, Pastor Tim Bailey in the last hour, and your guests will hear him again tomorrow.

01:28:31

That kind of fatherly care for the men that comes from a man like Tim and the rest of the pastors here is just irreplaceable, and it gives them something that it's hard to explain, it's hard to put on paper, it's hard to reflect in the ways, you know, by the standards that are typically expected in churches today.

01:28:54

We're not accredited, we have no intention of being accredited, and so there can be hurdles that way for students thinking about their futures, you know, but I would trade what we're doing and what men are receiving here any day.

01:29:14

I think that far surpasses the kind of things that come from, all too often, from typical seminary education.

01:29:23

We have to get a break right now, and we do have a couple of people waiting to have their questions asked, and we'll get to you as soon as we can, but our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:29:34

chrisarnson at gmail .com, don't go away. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, for am I now seeking the approval of man or of God, or am

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01:29:51

We are a Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

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We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.

01:30:07

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LindbrookBaptist .org. That's LindbrookBaptist .org. Welcome back, and I want to give my personal thanks again to Lindbrook Baptist Church on Long Island for partially making my trip to Atlanta, Georgia this

01:34:28

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01:34:57

Thanks again to everybody at Lindbrook Baptist for paying for most of my expenses to be a part of that wonderful event.

01:35:07

We do have a few listeners already waiting for their questions to be asked and answered.

01:35:15

Let me repeat for those of you who just tuned us in, our guest for the second hour today is Stephen Baker, Dean of Clearnoat Pastors College in Bloomington, Indiana.

01:35:26

We have been discussing church -based pastoral training, its method and advantages.

01:35:32

We have a listener all the way in Kinross, Scotland, Murray, who asks, is the program only geared for those who are preparing for full -time ministry or a pastorate, or is there also a place for those who are seeking to exercise pastoral shepherd care but are not preachers?

01:35:50

He has a follow -up question to that that I'll ask after you've answered that one. Sure. The program itself is certainly geared to shepherding, and an element of that is preaching.

01:36:04

We have had men who have gone to the program and have graduated, and because of their particular set of gifts and sense of calling, instead of going into the pastorate, vocational pastorate, they have been ordained or are in the process of being ordained as elders, for example.

01:36:27

So that distinction being in the typical Presbyterian system of teaching elder and ruling elder, so a non -vocational elder.

01:36:35

We have one man who is a recent graduate who will be put before our congregation here in the next month or so as we choose officers as an elder.

01:36:48

And so there is certainly a place for that. There's an understanding that both elders and pastors are shepherds, and they need to be able to handle the souls of the people in their congregations.

01:37:04

So many of the things that would be studied would be exactly the same. So yes, there would certainly be a place for that to answer that question.

01:37:11

And Murray's follow -up question is, in addition to the historical precedents you've mentioned, are there any books that you have found useful that you would feel free to recommend?

01:37:24

Well, so books that would be, I'm assuming he means regarding pastoral training.

01:37:31

I'm assuming that as well, I don't know. That's a good question. Nothing comes to mind that would be a book -length presentation of this.

01:37:42

You see this all through the biographical historical work that I personally have benefited hugely from.

01:37:52

For example, the writings of Ian Murray. What I tell my men is, if Ian Murray writes it, you must read it.

01:38:01

Of course, we can't incorporate that into our curriculum or everything, but we do a lot of the historical work in our church history or classes is

01:38:12

Ian Murray's work. But what he shows is a real history of pastors taking on the role and the responsibility, seeing it as a part of their own calling to train future pastors.

01:38:34

And you see that all through the kinds of men that Ian Murray points us to. I think you find that all through almost all of them.

01:38:44

And so again, it's not a program that you can find in those kinds of books, but you find the heart of it and the need for it.

01:38:53

And those things have been very encouraging and helpful to me. Well, thank you,

01:38:58

Murray from Kinross, Scotland. And keep listening to Iron, Sharp, and Zirin and keep spreading the word about our program in the

01:39:06

UK as you have the opportunity. We have Harrison from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who says,

01:39:16

Do you think that churches far too often overlook qualified men that have come up from their own midst in the congregation and look too often when hiring a pastor as like hiring a professional for some other executive position, and therefore they immediately look to seminaries as opposed to somebody in their own midst that could be trained for the position?

01:39:50

I think absolutely that is true, yes. I think that happens very often. I think especially today, when you have the pastors taking on celebrity status, it's a blessing and a curse.

01:40:06

A blessing of being able to read or listen to men from all over the world, right, and hear sermons and all of those kinds of things.

01:40:17

The curse of that is that it causes congregations to have an unrealistic and,

01:40:24

I think, ungodly expectation for what pastors should be. Pastors aren't primarily public speakers, although that's a huge part of it, but they're shepherds, and so their speaking has to serve their shepherding, right?

01:40:41

And so there's a kind of celebrity expectation that causes us to look elsewhere for the man with the pedigree, the man with the right degree, the man who will make our church look better in the community, all those kinds of things, causes,

01:41:04

I think, certainly to pass over faithful men who otherwise, in times past, wouldn't have been passed over.

01:41:15

We have Tyler again in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, who asks,

01:41:23

Currently I am a student online with Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

01:41:29

The elders and deacons in my local church say that I have gifts towards teaching.

01:41:37

Are there any good books that you would recommend to read on the discernment for pastoral ministry?

01:41:45

Yes, so I'm assuming he means a sense of calling. Yeah, that's what I would assume as well.

01:41:51

Yeah, and I have a packet of articles and small little pieces that I actually give to any student, any potential student, about the sense of call.

01:42:06

And one of them is from Preaching and Preachers by Charles Spurgeon.

01:42:14

One is The Call of God to Preach the Gospel by Don Whitney. Another is

01:42:23

The Preacher, the chapter called The Preacher from Martin Lloyd -Jones' book Preaching and Preachers.

01:42:30

Spurgeon's would be lectures to my students. I think I misspoke there. So things like that. There are some helpful things out there.

01:42:36

Just a bunch of lightweights, huh? Spurgeon, yeah. But, you know, they can be overwhelming, but I want a man who's considering training for the work to come to count the costs, and to know, you know, this is not primarily an academic calling, although obviously it has elements of that.

01:42:58

It's a calling of, do you love people? And there are many men, I think, who go into seminary, who go into the ministry, and their main attraction, unfortunately, is not so much the people, but the opportunity to spend their lives studying things that they enjoy studying, which is a wonderful gift.

01:43:20

But I think a man who spends most of his pastoral life in the study, you know, without being among the sheep, that's a failing.

01:43:31

Remember that Peter says in 1 Peter, I think it's chapter 5, Shepherd the flock of God that is among you.

01:43:42

And that can't be done, you know, as an academic sitting behind a book 80 hours a week, or whatever.

01:43:51

Now, how would Tyler get a hold of this packet? Well, that is a good question.

01:43:57

My, let me see here. Well, I know that your website is clearnotepastorscollege .com.

01:44:02

That is correct. And if you want to go there and use the Contact Us button, send me an email, and I'll be happy to send it on to you.

01:44:11

My email address, it's right there on the website, so it is sbaker at clearnote .org.

01:44:19

And if he would like to contact me, or if anyone else would like to contact me, I'd be very happy to interact with them.

01:44:25

sbaker at clearnote .org. Yep, that's it. Well, thank you very much,

01:44:31

Tyler. We have Bebe from Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know,

01:44:39

I disagree with those that call their wives pastors just because they are pastors, but isn't it truly a calling to be a pastor's wife that should be taken seriously?

01:44:55

And not every man is qualified to be a pastor because his wife is not qualified to be a pastor's wife.

01:45:01

I could not agree more. Absolutely. With everything that that question entailed, yes.

01:45:08

So, a woman, a pastor's wife, is not a pastor, obviously. We believe Scripture forbids that.

01:45:16

However, there have been many men who have had their ministries either hindered or shut down entirely because of their wives or their children.

01:45:28

And so one of the ways we have tried to answer that or address that issue are the wives of our married students actually take a course through the three years of preparation that is directed specifically at them.

01:45:46

And those wives meet with, that class is taught by pastor's wives here in our church, and they are studying the kinds of things that would be appropriate for them to study this year.

01:46:00

For example, in the first year, their husbands are studying systematic theology, and we are having the wives study the exact same book at the exact same pace.

01:46:11

And there are several reasons for that. One reason is we want them to be theologically trained, because there are a lot of conversations and helpful ministry that happens from our wives if they are going to be engaged with us in the work.

01:46:27

But also it gives them a way to stay connected with their husbands as their husbands are going about this work.

01:46:33

I think in a lot of cases when a couple goes off to seminary and a man is engaged up to his eyeballs in the work of study and writing and reading, and his wife then begins to inhabit a different world, or he begins to inhabit a totally different world from his wife.

01:46:54

And we found it helpful when our men are reading something about justification, have the wives read something about justification.

01:47:00

Have them read the same thing so that they can actually talk about it. And so we're not only training the wives, but we're training them as a couple to be engaged together in the work they're going to be doing.

01:47:14

In other years with the wives, in subsequent years, they're studying hospitality, what it is, the rigor of having an open home, where one of the qualifications for ministry is a man must be hospitable.

01:47:31

A couple, obviously, that depends largely on his wife and his wife's willingness to open her home and serve people in that way.

01:47:40

So we teach them about hospitality. We teach them about counseling, how to help other women who come to them, because there are many things that a man just simply cannot handle or would not appropriately handle that need to be handled in the context of a church.

01:47:57

So, yes, I think that's a great point. And we want the wives of our students to see themselves as a key element of his ministry.

01:48:12

Do you think that too many churches have grandiose visions and aspirations for growth, numerically, when they can't even really adequately handle the people that they're shepherding now?

01:48:30

Yes. Yes, I think so. And I think that's when, you know, there are many, many churches that are not necessarily just the ones that are grandiose, but I think it's become, even in the

01:48:48

Reformed world, it's become the main event, the thing that is most important in the church is the

01:48:56

Sermon on Sunday, which is more of an academic lecture in many instances.

01:49:06

And so pastoral care is what's neglected. And I think we have to have enough, if we take pastoral care seriously, that in and of itself is a full -time job.

01:49:18

And pastors who are in the position, or church congregations that are in the position to have multiple staff members or lay elders who are doing this kind of work have to focus on pastoral care.

01:49:33

That's the real time -consuming work that we give ourselves to.

01:49:38

We have eight pastors here at Clarendon Church in Bloomington. Wow. And that's crazy, if you think about it.

01:49:45

We're not a big church. We have, you know, 350 maybe on a Sunday, and a lot of those are children. But we're in a university community, and a university community is filled with needy people, because they're young, they're making the decisions that are going to shape the rest of their lives, they're meeting people, they're getting married, they're having children.

01:50:06

And those people need intensive shepherding and pastoral care.

01:50:12

And not just them, but people of all walks of life and ages and demographics. And so this congregation has really put an emphasis on not just preaching or Sunday morning as an event, but really caring for one another.

01:50:31

Yeah, in fact, your former classmate, Mark Grimaldi, or Mock Grimaldi, he brought up something, a very similar criticism when

01:50:41

I interviewed him just a couple of weeks ago on the subject, Reformers in Need of Reformation, where he was basically speaking about some of the things that may have become typical amongst

01:50:57

Reformed Christians that are not all that praiseworthy.

01:51:03

Right. And being Reformed myself, I think it's necessary, or at least very wise of me, to occasionally seek to pull the weeds from our own front yard when

01:51:15

I do this show, because I do a lot of criticisms of other people's theology and religions and so on.

01:51:22

Right. So we do have to turn our focus back on ourselves on occasion. Yes, and that reminds me of something

01:51:29

I think is important to understand in terms of why we began the Pastors College here in Bloomington and Toledo.

01:51:37

We have, because of our location, a university community, Indiana University here, many, many young people coming through.

01:51:44

And what had happened throughout the years of the congregation's life was young men would come through.

01:51:51

They would come from outside of Bloomington, come here, somehow land in our church, come alive spiritually.

01:51:58

Many of them then are, since God's call to ministry, and so this was before we started the

01:52:05

Pastors College, they would go off to seminary. And they would go off to respectable Reformed seminaries. The problem is they would come back and report to us, you know, it seems like the main thing that this seminary wants to teach me is that for a pastor to have conflict in his church is the height of failure.

01:52:29

And we have found that to be true in many instances in many seminaries.

01:52:36

In other words, pastoral ministry is about making things easy, making the life of a congregation smooth, whereas Scripture teaches us that the essence of the work of a pastor is conflict.

01:52:51

Right? I mean, this is why Paul tells Titus you have to find men to be in the office of elder who are able to hold the word so that they can silence false teachers.

01:53:06

I mean, the whole, every epistle is at its heart in these churches is conflict that needs to be worked out in a godly and faithful way.

01:53:16

And the way to work the conflict out is not to ignore it, but to engage in it.

01:53:23

So that's one of the reasons why we decided, you know, we need to be able to train men how to do conflict in a godly way, in a biblical way, in a way that glorifies

01:53:36

God and ultimately brings peace. And we are finding that many of the seminaries just don't have that on their radar.

01:53:45

Well, I want to make sure that you have at least five minutes to really close the program with what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today regarding what you're doing at Clear Note Pastors College.

01:54:01

Great. Well, I think I would say, you know, no model is perfect.

01:54:08

And you asked a question earlier about some of the downsides of our work, and there are many.

01:54:16

And the downsides, you know, that come from the weaknesses that we have individually as instructors and pastors, the weakness or the downside that comes from being small and unaccredited, all those things, of course, are true.

01:54:34

And no model, I've said a lot today that critiques what has become the traditional academic model.

01:54:45

I think those critiques are fair and need to be said. But no model is perfect.

01:54:52

And so, but what is most important is what is biblical. And, you know, what do we find in Scripture?

01:55:00

What is the best preparation for a shepherd? What is the actual work of the ministry?

01:55:11

Is it simply academic and scholastic, or is it deeply personal?

01:55:18

And I think of Acts chapter 20, where the Apostle Paul speaks to the elders in Ephesus as he's about to leave and depart and never see them again.

01:55:28

And if you read Acts chapter 20, starting with verse 17, and get a taste for what

01:55:35

Paul's ministry was like. He was with them. He did not shrink from declaring to them anything that was profitable.

01:55:45

He taught both publicly and from house to house. He declared the whole purpose of God to them with tears.

01:55:53

He says, Night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears. And there is a deep personal intimacy to that.

01:56:03

That just is not about parsing everything exactly correct.

01:56:10

It's about laying out the word of God in a way that's faithful, in a way that is trustworthy, and has something personal at stake.

01:56:23

You can't minister for three years with tears. If you don't love the people there.

01:56:29

And that's one of the things I think we have to recover in training pastors.

01:56:35

And I think it's especially true in the Reformed world. Well, I really appreciate you being on the program today.

01:56:43

And I'm looking forward to interviewing your fellow elder there,

01:56:49

Tim Bailey, again tomorrow on this Trinity controversy that's been brewing around.

01:56:56

And also looking forward to interviewing Jody Killingsworth.

01:57:02

Jody is one of our graduates. So you'll get a little taste of the kind of man that have come through the

01:57:10

Pastor's College here. Yeah, I'm looking forward to playing some of his music as well. Great.

01:57:15

And from the group My Soul Among Lions. Let me repeat some of our contact information.

01:57:25

ClearnotePastorsCollege can be found at clearnotepastorscollege .com. That's clearnotepastorscollege .com.

01:57:33

Pastor Tim Bailey, who we heard during the first hour, he has a blog. And you can find that at baileyblog .com.

01:57:42

And Bailey is spelled in an unusual way, B -A -Y -L -Y. So that's

01:57:49

B -A -Y -L -Y blog .com. And the Publishing House, who produces not only

01:57:59

Tim Bailey's book, but other books and I believe even the

01:58:05

CDs of My Soul Among Lions is warhornmedia .com.

01:58:12

You have to be very careful when you say that name. Don't say it too fast.

01:58:20

Warhornmedia .com. And I want to thank also my co -host today,

01:58:28

Pastor Jeff Waddington, because you really made my job a lot easier today.

01:58:34

I mean, I'd like to have you on more often so I could be like on co -pilot a lot of the time. And his church website for Knox Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, is knox -presbyterian .org.

01:58:54

knox -presbyterian .org. I look forward to having you back as soon as possible, brother. Oh, it's been a joy.

01:58:59

Thank you, Stephen, for the wonderful conversation. Thank you, Jeff and Chris, both.

01:59:05

Really appreciate it. And I just hope that all of you, or as many of you as possible, can tune into the program tomorrow for Pastor Tim Bailey and Jody Killingsworth.

01:59:17

We have also Pastor Doug Van Dorn returning to the program on Thursday to discuss baptism.

01:59:24

And we have former Jehovah's Witness Deborah Antignano, a dear friend of mine who was rescued out of that cult by the sovereign grace of God.

01:59:33

And she's also a Christian recording artist, so I look forward to playing some of her music as well and interviewing her on her fascinating testimony.

01:59:41

I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in with questions. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater