April 19, 2023 Show with Robert Spilman & Will Cole on “Fixing What’s Broke: How Relationships Work”

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

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

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensirenradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 19th day of April, 2023.

Once in a while, I meet someone at one of my Iron Sharpens Iron Radio pastors luncheons that is doing something that I think would be of great interest to our listening audience, and that is what is bringing about this program today.

Will Cole, who is pastor of St. Matthew Lutheran Church in Millerstown, Pennsylvania, which is a congregation of the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations, has attended several of my Iron Sharpens Iron Radio free pastors luncheons, and this most recent one, he brought with him flyers promoting an event that he is having coming up very soon, and in about a week, I think it's a week from this Saturday, the theme of this seminar that he is hosting at St. Matthew Lutheran Church in Millerstown, Pennsylvania, is Fixing What's Broke, How Relationships Work, featuring Robert Spillman, who is a retired pastor in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod for 55 years in North Carolina and New York State, and a retired certified educator in the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, who for 30 years ran a program training pastors in pastoral care and leadership.

St. Matthew Lutheran Church and the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations

But first of all, let me welcome to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, for the first time, Pastor Will Cole. It's great to have you on the program today, Will.

Oh, it's great to be here, thank you.

And let me know how you enjoyed, whether or not you enjoyed, the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio free pastors luncheon this past Thursday.

Well, I've been to three of them, and I've liked every one. I mean, most of your speakers I haven't heard of yet, but I've been able to get something out of all of them. It's been wonderful.

Well, it was great to have you there again. And also, let me welcome to the program for the first time, Robert Spillman. It's great to have you on the show today.

Thank you, Chris, I appreciate it.

Well, as we do every time we have this program, when we feature a guest who is a pastor, like Will is, first of all, we'd like to hear something about the congregation where you pastor, Will, St. Matthew Lutheran Church of Millerstown, Pennsylvania.

And also, since you're a first time guest, tell us something about, in summary form, your testimony of salvation, any kind of religious atmosphere that you may have been raised in, and any kind of providential circumstances our sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you.

Perhaps you were even raised from infancy in a Christian home, and might even have been a Lutheran home. But tell us, first of all, about St. Matthew Lutheran Church of Millerstown.

Well, it's a small congregation outside of Millerstown. We're literally that light shining on the hill because there's nothing else there. But yeah, it's a small church, very friendly. We're informal.

I mean, I normally preach in a polo shirt. I mean, they're so informal, they make me look high church.

I think you're the first Lutheran pastor I ever met that preaches in a polo shirt.

You know, but it works in that area. And, you know, I honestly don't think that God really cares too much what we wear, whether it's a collar, shirt and tie, almond stole or whatever, you know, as long as we're presentable and respect the office, and more importantly, him.

And I know that your church is a member of the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations. Tell us about that.

Yeah, well, the AFLC, it's an association of independent Lutheran churches that work together. We are grounded on the word of God. We are Bible-believing, we are conservative, you know, and we do our best, you know, that everything that comes out of our mouth should be from scripture, from that pulpit.

Amen.

Amen.

And just out of curiosity, are there any significant differences to the denomination that your fellow guest, Robert Spillman, is in, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod? I know it's another very conservative Lutheran denomination in stark contrast to ELCA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which is neither evangelical nor Lutheran, and for some reason I'm hearing an echo on my end,.

I don't know why.

But obviously the ELCA Church, I'm not saying that every single congregation are pastor in that denomination, but it is largely an apostate organization, and I know that the Missouri Synod Lutherans and the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations are seeking to be a light not only for true historic Lutheranism, but much more importantly, biblical Christianity.

But is there any significant difference?

Well, I mean, the main differences are cultural. The Missouri Synod is German. Originally I actually grew up in the Missouri Synod, and the AFLC, most of those folks came out of Norway. But I would say the biggest claim to fame for the AFLC is how we're run.

We're independent, but we work together.

Yeah, that actually sounds like some of the Reformed Baptist associations, or Baptists historically have believed in the independence and autonomy of each local congregation, but they do, on occasion, form associations where congregations from all over the United States and even all over the world can cooperate on things like missions and other issues.

Yep, it's pretty much that.

Well, if anybody wants more details on St. Matthew's Lutheran Church of Millerstown, Pennsylvania, go to stmatthewpa .org, S-T for Saint, Matthew, P-A for Pennsylvania, .org. And if you wanna find out more about the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations, go to aflc .org, aflc .org.

And if you could now, Pastor Will, give us a summary of your salvation testimony.

Well, sure. Well, let's see here. My mother grew up Pentecostal. My dad grew up Methodist. And they weren't really big churchgoers in the beginning, but they actually found my home church through politics.

My dad was big into the Republican Party at that point. And one of the major players was also the church secretary. And I needed a place for preschool, so there you go. I was baptized at the age of five.

So I grew up in the faith. Very shy, though. In fact, a lot of folks actually were shocked that I ended up becoming a pastor. But during high school, I think, was when I really began to grow strong in my faith.

And it seemed like God was preparing me big time. Not only with scripture, and I got big into the creation evolution debate with folks like ICR, Institute for Creation Research and Answers in Genesis, but he also helped me get out of my shell.

Because I had like huge stage fright. I was very much introverted. So to break that, I did stand up comedy. Talent show at the high school, took first place in the comedy division, bought a tank of gas.

And so about halfway through high school, when my parents got a divorce, that was like when God was really pushing me towards ministry. And so in my junior year there, I was looking for colleges and ended up picking Concordia College in Bronxville, New York, which is a Missouri synod school to do the pre-seminary program.

Also wanted a degree in music there too, but that didn't work out. All the classes conflicted and I ended up having to choose one. You know, and I know I sing purdy, but God didn't intend me to be a professional singer.

And then I went to seminary in Canada because it was cheaper outside of Niagara Falls in St. Catharines, Ontario. And that's where I actually met Pastor Bob here for the first time. Although we really weren't close yet.

Let's see here. And, you know, that's when, you know, God really started honing the skills. Preaching seemed to be a natural gift, but like one of the professors, you know, I kind of got from him. He's a good preacher.

He doesn't know what he's preaching, but man, he can preach it. You know, so, you know, I think I had to work on the content a bit there. And so did that, graduated with my MDiv and ended up in Scranton, Pennsylvania in a Missouri Synod Church.

Left there, went back to Rochester. And that's where, you know, Pastor Bob and I really got close cause I took his CPE class.

So, and, yes.

For some reason, the echo has come back. Oh, now it's stopped, thankfully. It seems that according to what you have said, that you have no knowledge of having a period of your life where you believe you were a rebel against Christ.

It seems as if, unless I missed something, you believe that you were saved by Christ Jesus in his grace and mercy. When you were so young, you cannot remember a point in time in your life where you did not love the Lord and want to follow him.

Am I gathering that correctly?

I mean, that's true. But I mean, there are times in all of our lives when we do something stupid.

Oh, of course.

You know, and it affects us. And, you know, I mean, there was a time like during my first church where, you know, I really didn't trust Jesus like I should, that he was gonna take care of all of my needs, you know?

And, you know, I kind of took that into my own hands and it all blew up in my face, you know? And I needed to go through a major period of humbling.

Sure.

Yeah, cause we all do dumb things and I happen to be an extremely stubborn person. And so God had to humble me big, you know? But I learned my lessons. I was humbled. Pastor Bob was a big instrument in God with that and, you know, recovering from that and, you know, getting me back on the right path.

And then after, you know, after that, actually shortly after CPE, I met my wife. Which the funny thing is evidently she reached out to me through an online dating app while I was in CPE and I never responded because, well, when you take CPE, you have no life.

It just, it takes so much time and I was also working a secular job too at that time. It's like, there is no life. But, I mean, miraculously, and I think God had something to do with that, she reached out again.

That time it only took me two weeks to respond. You know? So, and about 13 months after that, we were married and then I was working on a church plant with the Lutheran Brethren and learning how to do it.

Which, the church plant itself ended up failing, but, you know, there were some people that came to faith and it kind of put me into another line of ministry of revitalization. Because it's the same toolbox as church planting, you just use them a bit differently.

And so then I actually ended up taking another call to a church in Pennsylvania, this time with LCMC, Lutheran Congregations and Mission for Christ. And I was there for about eight months. And then to make a long story, well, after that we went to North Carolina where I was in a major car accident and that slowed me up for a bit.

But during that time, I ended up writing a book. My first book there, Bumps and Bruises, Making It Through Alive. Believe it or not, it had absolutely nothing to do with the car accident, but I don't do nothing very well.

And so since I was confined to like a wheelchair and stuff for three months, I had to do something, so I wrote that. And then, you know, after about four years of looking and praying, I ended up here at St. Matthew with the AFLC.

And shortly before that, you know, I ended up writing another book, this one on marriage, just because I had a hard time finding some good, you know, marriage counseling material, stuff that I would actually like to use and that I thought could be beneficial to try to cover as much as I could.

And, you know, I've been here for almost three years. We came here August 1st of 2020. I have my wife, Nicole, and we have two kids. My son just turned nine. His name is Martin. His birthday was on the 15th.

And then my daughter is five. Her name's Cynthia. Yeah.

Well, wonderful names. Now, Bob Spillman. I still hear that echo for some reason in my voice.

I hope it's not my microphone or anything here.

Okay, well, you've already explained to me before the show that you are retired from the pastorate in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, and you were pastoring for 55 years before retirement in North Carolina and New York State.

And you're also a retired certified educator in the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education. Can you tell us about that organization?

Yes, that's an organization that attempts to help pastors primarily and persons becoming chaplains. Could include lay people as well, who want to hone their pastoral skills working with people in crisis situations.

Originally, primarily in the hospital setting. So you will find lots of hospitals in there, including in Harrisburg, your area, and around the country that have clinical pastoral education programs, where pastors and seminarians and lay people as well will come to be trained to be more effective in their bedside manner, relating to people in the struggles of healthcare, dealing with loss, grief, and so forth.

And essentially, to simplify it, hone and strengthen their ability to listen to people when they're in pain. And that's a critical thing, yeah.

Yes, and so let's hear your story, a summary of your testimony of salvation, because there are, even though there's one gospel and one means by which our Lord Jesus Christ saves lost souls, there are different stories, many different stories in the body of Christ on how and when people in their lives discover that gospel and when our Lord arrests them and grabs a hold of them and brings them to a saving relationship with him.

So let's hear your story.

Well, I would like to say that my story, and probably for all of us in many respects, is generations deep in terms of the faith. Now, not all of it. People come from a totally new on the outside. Mine was not that way.

I am a fourth generation clergy in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod from my father's side. My father was a Lutheran pastor, his father was, and my father's mother had five or six siblings who were pastors and her father was.

So I don't wanna complicate this too much, but it goes back four generations. So you could say, you know, after my baptism at age two months, many years ago, almost 80 years ago now, really, I don't wanna, shouldn't get into age here, that there was a path there.

I'm the only son of my two, an older and younger sister, and only son. And I would say there probably was in that sense, a path set, would I follow in my father's footsteps and his forebears. And I fought against that, Chris.

I did not go to the regular seminary that Lutherans would go to. I went to a secular university up here in Western New York and University of Rochester, nearby Buffalo here, was intent in going into the sciences, ended up going into history, but it was while I was at the University of Rochester that this, well, I'm actually getting ahead of myself.

Let me go back. Before I got to the University of Rochester, I spent four years at a Christian prep school on Long Island in New York State called Stony Brook School.

Oh yeah, that's where the late James Montgomery Boyce was a student when he was a kid.

That's right, that's right. And it was a, the headmaster, we lived on campus. So I've been away at school since freshman in high school. Frank Gabeline was the headmaster. And this was a different sense or variety, if you will, of Christianity than I grew up in.

The staid Lutheran biblical focus that I had, you know, very, very orthodox, but you would say less feeling oriented, less into the experience of the spirit, certainly than other forms of Christianity in the church.

Out at Stony Brook, that was different. We learned to give our testimony when we were in the boys' choir, you know? Here I was a Lutheran giving my testimony like anybody else about how I learned about Christ.

Now, let me give you an example. I don't want to spend too much time on this, but here was a clash of two parts of my life. I love this sense of feeling in the faith, and yet I was rooted in my Lutheranism.

I had a teacher at the school. In fact, he lived in the dorm where I lived. I was a sophomore, and he knew my dad was a Lutheran pastor, Chris. He knew that. And he came up to me one day. It was in the afternoon, and he said, Bob, is your father saved?

Is your father saved? And here I was standing between two worlds. He may have meant something slightly different. Did my father have a born-again experience? I didn't know that. My father was steeped in the faith from his early years and lived out a faithful life as a pastor for many, many years.

So how do I respond to that question? I responded, I said, yes, he is. He is. He's a born-again Christian in his own way. And that set me kind of on more solid ground. But at the same time, I was searching for something more than my tradition.

So I went to college, University of Rochester, not knowing what I wanted to do. Got involved with IVCF, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, very rooted in spirituality and the life of faith and giving one's testimony.

And I love that. I also love joining a fraternity and being a part of that life. And so I'm thinking that there are two pieces of me that are kind of working together, often colliding, until I finally kind of worked that through.

And over the course of those years, I mean, I stayed true to the faith, I think. Over the course of those years in college, decided, yes, the greatest thing I can do in life is to learn about the faith and to share it with others.

So it was kind of trying, I was thinking about faith almost as a science in a way. Strange, I could understand this stuff and make sense of it and help people gravitate to it. I think that's all good.

But I was missing something, I think, more deeply about the sense of the presence of God that just overwhelms us in the liturgy, if you will, and in our personal relationship in the reading of scripture and so forth.

And then I wanted something that gradually grew. And it actually, when I went to seminary, wasn't a Lutheran seminary, another seminary, I got connected to a Lutheran church that was highly motivated to be active in the inner city church in the community and with a pastor who was just a spiritual presence.

And that really reinforced my sense of the presence of Christ in my personal life and in the liturgy of the church and the faith. That made a lot, and the path kind of got set as I went along from that point on.

Let me stop at that point.

The Christian Life, Faith, and Family Systems

Okay, well, we have to go to our first station break. And if you have a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.

And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And with a theme like fixing what's broke, how relationships work, I'm assuming there will be people that do have personal and private questions that they want to ask.

So obviously, I will grant your request to remain anonymous if you make that request. But if it's just a general question, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence. And let me take this time also to announce before I forget to announce it later, especially since we have Lutherans on the program today, which is not very common on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, but we do have our Lutheran brethren, and I don't mean that in the sense of the denomination Lutheran brethren, but I mean my brothers in Christ who are Lutheran.

We do have them on the program on occasion as guests. And we have one who has grown in his notoriety, and people have been contacting me both in and outside of Lutheranism, raving about his recent book that he has written.

Chad Byrd, who many of you may recognize that name, Scholar in Residence at 1517. He has written a book called Limping with God, Jacob and the Old Testament Guide to Messy Discipleship. Chad Byrd will be on the program, God willing, on June 21st, 4 to 6 p .m. as always, 4 to 6 p .m. Eastern Time, on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, so you might wanna mark your calendars for our discussion with Chad Byrd.

We had previously announced an earlier date, but due to providential circumstances that arose, we had to change the date of our interview. So as of today, June 21st is the date we are intending and planning to have Chad on the program, so mark your calendars for that.

So now we're going to our break, as I mentioned, and if you'd like to send in questions, it's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we're gonna be right back after these messages.

James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here. I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend, Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the G3 National Conference.

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So please help Iron Trip and Zion Radio and simultaneously bless yourself or whomever you are giving the gift of jewelry by going to royaldiadem .com and mentioning Iron Trip and Zion Radio. We are now back with our guests, Will Cole, pastor of St. Matthew Lutheran Church in Millerstown, Pennsylvania, and Robert Spillman, who is a retired pastor in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod in North Carolina and New York State and also a retired certified educator in the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education.

We are discussing Fixing What's Broke, How Relationships Work, and that is also the theme of the upcoming conference on Saturday, April 29th from 10 a .m. to 2 p .m. at St. Matthew Lutheran Church in Millerstown, Pennsylvania.

If you have a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Before I go to any listener questions, I have something that I want to start our discussion with. From my experience in my own life with relationships that I have had, whether it be my marriage to my precious late wife, whether it be my relationships with my parents, with my siblings, with my friends, with my colleagues at work, with my employers at work, with my neighbors, fellow congregants at church, pastors.

I could go on and on with every single relationship that we could possibly have, but the reason why in my experience that problems arise is that we as Christians who are simultaneously sinners, each and every one of us sins more times per day, even per hour than we even realize, but we fail to put the needs of others above our own.

We fail to view these people with whom we are having difficulty, especially if we're speaking of Christians, we fail to view them as people for whom Christ shed his blood, and we, in the case of a marriage, husbands are failing to love their wives as Christ loved the church, and wives are failing to submit and respect their husbands, and these truths are the basic truths that everybody who is a Christian knows in their head as a teaching and a command to be obeyed or commands to be obeyed, but we unconsciously or even consciously throw them out the window when it comes to conflict because we want to be the one who is right, we want to be the one who loses nothing as a result of the conflict, we wanna be the one who is the victor in the conflict, et cetera, am I making sense here, and do you agree with me, Bob?

Yeah, thank you, that puts so well. It's almost as though, and just to follow up on your thinking, people, when they get close to each other, have deep love, and it starts out great, something happens that they get so intertwined that they lose their ability to think straight, and I think you're onto something there, and what happens in close relationships is critical, and it's almost as though we lose the values that we espouse in our marriage vows, in our faith, the Ten Commandments, if you will, the guiding principles of our lives, and the same things happen with people who are close, not just in a marriage, but in the entire family, and in other groups that are similar to families in that people get very close, such as in congregations, or in communities, for that matter, so I've always been interested in the question, how come people who are deeply rooted in their faith, Christians, and it could be other people, I understand that too, the world is varied, but just our own faith, which we believe to be the true faith, how is it that while we are rooted in that and try to live by that, we go off the rails nonetheless?