2021 Summer of Interviews: Kendall Lankford Interview

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said,.

�But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. And it is not very often that I have special guests in a house. Sometimes they call on the phone, sometimes I read articles that they have written, but to have somebody here incarcerate, incarnate, in the flesh, this is not the main incarnation, but it�s something, you know, way down the line.

Kendall Langford is here today, pastor here in New England and in Massachusetts, and so we have lots of common bonds. Kendall, welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Thank you so much, Mike.

Tell me where you�re from. Originally, I�m from a small town in North Carolina called Kulame, which has about. Now, say that again? Kulame. Kulame. Kulame. Okay. Yeah, which has about a 400 population.

And is that like a French name or what is that?

I don�t actually know. My grandpa told me that it came from an old story of an Indian who was thirsty. He came to the river that runs through the town and he drank some of the water and he said, �Aye, cooleth me.

And I think my grandpa might have been pulling my leg, but. That is such a farce.

That�s where I�m from, brother. Well, great. I want to hear about what the Lord has done in your life and call into ministry. But first, just to set the stage, tell us where your church is, the name of it, contact information, and all that.

We are the Shepherd�s Church and currently right now we�re meeting in Tewksbury, Massachusetts. We�re meeting at another church, that�s where we�ve been renting for the first year of ministry. But currently that could change.

We�re looking at buildings, we�re looking at space, we�re hopefully going to be moving into a space that�s ours 24 -7. So we�re going to be located in Merrimack Valley, especially central to Route 3 and 495.

All right. Excellent. And so if you are trying to find out where exactly, it�s theshepherds .church? That�s right. Okay. Can you do that, .church? Is that legal? Yeah. It�s a new thing. It�s a new domain.

Okay. I like that. We�re pioneering it. Oh, I like that. When I first moved here, Kendall, 23 years ago, I had one of my cars from California shipped out. I mean, we flew and then they brought a car out.

And I was staying at Shrewsbury at the time, and my car was supposed to be delivered on a Monday. Monday night comes around, no car. I call, �Where�s my car �Well, we�re in Tewksbury. How do you get from Shrewsbury to Tewksbury?

I have no idea. And give our listeners a little bit of background about the church in terms of why do we need a church there? Right. I know you do lots of new, novel, fangled things and give away oil changes for people to come.

How does that all work?

We don�t do any of that, which is a great segue into why we planted. See? I�m a professional. Can�t you see all my notes? Right. I�ll just say it this way. We planted the Shepherd�s Church because the church is Jesus�s church.

He is the shepherd over his church. And what we�ve noticed is that in modern evangelicalism, there are so many different expressions of what the church is, but very few of them are actually biblical. There�s entertainment-driven churches.

There�s culturally compromised types of churches. But what we noticed is that very few of them actually were the church as laid out in the scriptures. So, we wanted to plant a church that belonged to Christ, that honored Christ, that glorified Christ, that proclaimed Christ.

And we just looked around and we did not see that in our area whatsoever, other than Thanks a lot. We�re just kidding. You guys I am just kidding. I didn�t even, what�s so crazy is I didn�t even know about Bethlehem until I left the church that I was at.

I left the church that I was at because it was drifting and it was compromising. And then I found out about Bethlehem. And I was so pleased that there was a ministry like this here, 45 minutes from where we live.

Well, of course, I�m just joking. I like what you said, Kendall, about the Shepherd�s Church. I mean, if you think about, well, out of all the churches, we�re just not the church. We�re the church, but there is just the definite article �the� for �the shepherd.

We�re simply under shepherds. I was thinking about what the New Testament says about Jesus, the shepherd, and he is called the chief shepherd, I believe, in 1 Peter chapter 5. He in John 10 is called the good shepherd.

And then when I was preaching through Hebrews, he�s called the great shepherd. And most commentators say, how has he gone from the good shepherd to the great shepherd? And the answer is in Hebrews 13, by the resurrection from the dead.

And I thought, oh man, that is so good. That is so good. Tell me a little bit about Colossians 128, front-loaded with an interesting Greek kind of thing. It�s called, in English, we say hymn, we proclaim.

Tell me why Christ-centered preaching is so important in a day and age of moralistic kind of pietistic, behavioral-driven pragmatics. Yeah, it�s so great.

I�ll even go at it from Romans 116. It says that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. Our entertainment-driven ministries are not the power of God. They�ll produce results, but they�re not producing results for the kingdom.

It�s the gospel, and Christ is the gospel. So the reason why we can go back to Colossians and say it�s hymn we proclaim, because he�s the only thing that has power to save. He�s the only thing that has power to invigorate and enliven his church.

And it seems so simple. I don�t know why we�ve abandoned it.

Christ-Centered Preaching Versus Moralism

Yeah, I often think about that as well, and what�s the focus of ministry, and who�s the the subject of our sermons should be the object of our faith, I like to say. I think people want they just want to be told kind of what to do.

Maybe some of it, if I give them the benefit of the doubt, their dads never taught them, their moms never taught them, they were too busy with careers or something like that. I mean, when I teach young men now even to go on a job interview, I just assume they don�t know anything.

So maybe they want to be told what to do, but can�t we get that kind of practical advice from Tony Robbins and Oprah Winfrey, what�s your name again? Oprah Winfrey, yeah. And Dr. Phil?

Sometimes they give good advice. Yeah, of course they give good advice, and it�s practical. But there�s a difference between what is good advice in a human sense and what�s going to save your soul, and what�s going to not only redeem you, but awaken the Spirit of God within you.

The Spirit of God loves Christ and loves the Gospel, and if you�re just giving people moralism, it�s just like you�re spraying cologne on a coffin. But if you�re preaching Christ, you�re not only teaching them how to think biblically, but you�re also, the Holy Spirit�s coming alive inside of them and helping them learn how to think biblically and helping them learn how to live biblically.

People can memorize a bunch of maxims and go and live and try to juggle all those things, but that�s a pressure they can�t even bear. And over the course of their life, it�s going to really actually harm them to try to live that way and to try to go and be their own Savior and Lord.

Isn�t it amazing that we have plenty of commandments in the Bible which reflect God�s character and nature, the law is good and holy, yet lots of these practical preachers, and sadly, I probably did a lot of it too, I repent and don�t want to do it anymore, but they just give extra law.

Instead of making people guilty that they�ve been breaking the law of God the last week, now we have seven extra promises that I�m going to have to make, and then I break those, and I just think people spiral down into despair, �I can�t keep all these laws.

Or they cut corners and say, �I have good motives and then they�re self-righteous.

Honestly, that�s my story as a young believer.

I believe that You�re not a young believer. Now, you look like you�re about 20.

Well, thank you so much, I�m 36, almost 37.

You told me you have six kids, how long have you been married?

I�ve been married almost 11 years, so going on our 11th year.

Okay, 11th year, six kids, and you�re 36. I believe Genesis 1, 28. Okay. Well, that�s good, I appreciate that. Can I just give you like random verses? Yeah. Do you believe Psalm 28, 8? Yeah, for sure.

But okay, coming back real quick to what you just said. Hey, it�s my show. Oh, just kidding. As a young kid in church, I heard just moralism, I heard just commands, and every week it piled upon me that I have to obey this, I have to obey that, I have to obey this, and every time I sinned as a 13-year-old, I imagined this Zeus-like God who was going to punish me and hurl lightning bolts at me, and I came to the conclusion I could not satisfy Him.

And that�s what we do when we preach the law, unintentionally maybe even. We give people hopelessness.

Well, it�s fascinating because as you know, and our listeners I think they know, that for the unbeliever, a la Romans 3, verse 19, we just keep giving them the law until their mouths are shut, and they say, �Well, if that�s the case, then my good does not weigh my bad.

I�m not a good person. I don�t deserve heaven, and I am guilty, and therefore is there any relief? What must I do to be saved? God have mercy. But for the Christian, as we give them the law, there�s a different approach, and I don�t know how you think through it theologically, Kendall, but in my mind, I�ve been taught that now the law, instead of coming from the lawgiver who expects perfect obedience, the law comes from the hand of Christ, and it comes from therefore a brother, or it comes from the Heavenly Father, and therefore we want to obey Him for all that He�s done.

Out of gratitude, we�d love to please Him, but He�s not going to kick us out of the family when we sin one time, right? And so theologically, what these churches do, and they don�t even know the terminology probably, they are putting believers back underneath a covenant of works when that should not be happening.

I was just thinking about 1 Corinthians 6 as you were talking about this moralistic preaching and why talking about Jesus is so important, even for Christians. As Rod Rosenblatt, I think, said in the Michael Horton book, Jesus died for the sins of Christians too.

1 Corinthians 6, we as pastors realize our people, many of them watch pornography, deal with sexual sin, sexual temptation, and what does Paul say in this section to the licentious living Corinthians who we even have a word to Corinthianize, right?

And so he has in 9 through 20, I count three imperatives, don�t be deceived, glorify God with your body, and flee sexual immorality. Something close. That�s just off the top of my head. But he scatters all kinds of imperatives, all kinds of gospel language throughout that entire section, washed, sanctified, justified.

He talks about raised up by his power, the resurrection. He gives language of union. And so it�s not just don�t do this, it�s here�s who you are in Christ and of course don�t do this.

It�s like I tell our church a lot of times that obedience is the fruit that comes from our relationship with Christ, it�s not the root that leads us into a relationship with Christ. And if we get those wrong, it will really cause a lot of problems.

Like assurance.

Assurance, Repentance, and the Fruit of Union with Christ

Tell us why that kind of wrong view of root fruit evidences, why does that cause people to lack assurance if they get it wrong?

Yeah, well, I mean, you fall into a particular sin, you have a particularly rough season, COVID hits, you lose your job, you start to doubt. All of these things, especially in the Word of Faith movement, are evidences of a lack of faith.

And if you don�t have faith, then you�re not pleasing to God. And you could have absolutely no assurance at all that God loves you because it�s all predicated upon your obedience. But if you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God does love you and that your obedience comes and flows out of His love for you, then like you said a second ago, a single sin doesn�t condemn you.

A single sin, I tell our people, every sin that Christ ever, or that you ever committed, Christ has already died for. So your repentance is not to bring God back into a pleasing posture towards you. Your repentance is to bring you back into the experience of joy in your relationship with Christ, because all your sins have already been forgiven if you�re truly in Christ.

Amen.

Talking to Kendall Langford today, a pastor, the Shepherd�s Church. Is it the Shepherd�s Church? Yes. I don�t know. I almost thought of the Shepherd�s Seminary. Do people confuse you to think, did you go to that school?

No.

Okay. Where did you go to school? I went to school at Liberty for my undergrad, and then I went to Gordon-Conwell for my graduate school. Okay. Did you get your MDiv there or something else?

I did. Oh, you did. Okay. And you still believe in inerrancy and complementarianism and all that stuff? Yes. All that stuff. I made it out of seminary alive. What was the best part of Gordon-Conwell?

Honestly, I came in, I didn�t see some of the things that I think would be more discouraging now that I see. I was just a young man who wanted to learn everything I could learn about Jesus. And Gordon Hugenberger was probably my favorite professor there.

He taught Christ in the Old Testament. And seeing how both Testaments come alive together and how Jesus is the fulfillment of the old and how it was just glorious and seeing all that. Neat. Did you have David Wells?

No. He was a research professor by the time I got there, so he wasn�t doing a lot of teaching. Okay.

You know, I need to go back and reread his trilogy. I don�t know what the first one was. God in the Wasteland? No. Oh, yeah. Something like that. I thought, you know what? I think he really hit the proverbial nail on the head when it comes to analyzing the church culture and then what the church needs to do in light of that.

I�m looking at your website a little bit and checking out the website. What books of the Bible have you taught through? Do you want to teach through? What�s your philosophy of trying to teach all the Bible if you live long enough?

Teaching Through Ruth, Jude, and the Gospel of John

Yeah. We started with Jude.

Actually, that�s not technically true. We started with Ruth because we left a church that we felt like was in a place of Moab, and we�re this little fledgling group of people who are trying to make it, and we need our true Redeemer Christ to help us.

That was our first little sermon series that we did. Okay, good. And then we went to Jude because we felt like that Jude really hits hard this idea of contending for the faith and contending for the faith in a culture that�s compromised.

And we looked out at the church. We looked out at what�s going on in the world, and we need strong churches that preach the gospel and that contend for the faith in a time where false teachers, clouds without water, all of this stuff is happening.

So we started, officially started with Jude. Now we�re in the Gospel of John. We want to have a high Christology as a church. We want to be everything Christ-centered. So we started with a nontraditional book to plant a church with, which is Jude.

Now we�re learning why we contend. We contend because of what Christ has done.

That�s excellent. I started off, this wasn�t a church plant, but when I got here 23 years ago, I started with James. And I think probably there was, maybe there was a good motive in there somewhere. I mean, I wanted to teach through a book of the Bible.

But I think I thought to myself, well, this will either drive them to the cross, or maybe it�ll drive them, not necessarily out the doors, but I didn�t want them to trust in the Lord with a faith that wasn�t saving.

Now when I teach preaching classes and I meet young pastors, and I just say, do you know what? Why don�t you, instead of doing what I did, kind of honoring Mike, you know, I�m going to get you. Why don�t you preach the Gospel of John?

And then let people just see the glories of Jesus every single week. The tough part will be, a lot of the sermons have the same content, that is, the person and work of Christ. Right? So there�s not a bunch of these, you know, how to do these things.

But then other things will happen, and so you let Jesus, His own words, although Paul�s words are just as, you know, Spirit-inspired as Jesus�s words. But for instance, John 6, and you�re like, oh, God really is the Sovereign One here.

That�s what Jesus said. So I like that. So I commend you for your, you know, starting off essentially with the Gospel of John.

Last week was interesting. We did the final conclusion of John 3, which is the epilogue, and it says He�s above all. So what did we talk about? It was His supremacy. He�s supreme over my life. He�s supreme over my finance.

He�s supreme over my job, my relationships. He�s a supreme word. He�s a supreme spirit. He�s supreme testimony. Like, I think understanding as Christians that Christ is supreme will actually cause us to understand the kind of joy that we can have in Jesus is better than anything we can have in the world.

Well, as you were talking about that, in our world, this fallen world, we do need a way to have joy in spite of all this stuff. I�m going to preach this Sunday, Lord willing, Psalm 90. So in the middle of all the death, and God�s everlasting, we�re ephemeral, we�re temporal, we�re also sinful, and we need to think through things properly.

And then He says something fascinating. If it wasn�t for the Lord Jesus�s work sent by the Father, energized, as it were, by the Spirit. I don�t mean a weird energy, but I mean I�m trying to think of another word for that.

I usually have that word. The Spirit of God helping the Lord Jesus. I�ll just that�s a bad word, too. Anyway, it says, �Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil. In other words, in this fallen world where there�s death everywhere, and most likely when Moses wrote this, he�s thinking, �You know what?

On average, 87 funerals a day in the wilderness to have all those people who are 20 and older die. I mean, have you ever done two funerals in a day? I never have. I�m exhausted after one. So in a world of death and decay, can we get a little satisfaction, a little bit of joy, a little bit of you know, God confirms the work of our hands.

And if you don�t have that right object of your faith, there�s not really any hope, is there? No. Yeah. So when I was in Scotland one time, I went to St. George�s Tron Presbyterian Church, and Sinclair Ferguson was the pastor at the time.

And I was a new pastor. I was in the Book of Mark, and I�m just trying to think of like practical applications in my sermons and all this stuff. I said to Sinclair, I said, �Dr. Ferguson and he was gracious with his time.

And I said, �I�m just trying to preach through Mark and trying to get some practical stuff. And he had written that little commentary, �Let�s Study Mark I think. And I said, �Any help for a young pastor?

I want to be faithful. And he said, �I wish I could give you the Scottish accent Kendall. He said, �Is there anything wrong with showing people the glories of Christ every week So good. I thought, well, no.

And what happens? What happens when you show people the glory of Christ. Is you make it possible for them to start applying the scripture to their own life in light of who Jesus is. If you tell them every week, here�s your three steps, in a year, you�ve given them 150 things to juggle.

Let�s assume one week you didn�t have three, 150 on average, you can�t bear that pressure. If you give them one thing every week, just Jesus Christ, you�ve taught them now how to apply the text.

I don�t know what our congregation would say, the average person in the congregation. And I don�t know if they would say, �Well, I�ve noticed some theological changes and some nuances and maybe some hermeneutical things, or maybe this or that, or what about dispensationalism, covenant theology

I don�t know if they would notice a lot of that. Some of the sharp ones would. But I hope the average person in the pew, grandma, 14-year-old, teenager, I hope they just say, �You know what? I don�t really know what�s going on theologically.

I�m sure the pastor�s learning and growing, but I just know that every week he talks about Jesus.

That�s the main difference that I see. What�s so funny is I actually know the answer to this question. I visited Bethlehem about six months ago before COVID, and the lady I sat beside of didn�t know me from Adam, I didn�t know her.

I said, �What do you like most about this church She said, �Every week he gives us Jesus. Wow. So that happened. All right. Well, I�m going to buy you lunch today.

I�m not just making that up. That really happened. And, you know, think about our lives as sinful men, frail, fallible, finite, sin, sick. That would be good to have on your tombstone. Every week. He showed us Christ.

And by the way, one of the great things about that is if I show them me, well, eventually the veneer is going to go off and they�re going to see the behind-the-scenes mic that sometimes isn�t so pleasant, right?

I try to live a life at home and here around the church campus and all that stuff. It�s the same. I mean, I�m trying not to be the hypocrite, but if they really knew the real me, wow. If I knew the real them, would I want to be their pastor?

So we all need the Lord Jesus not only for the first benefit we receive, and that is for pardon, right, justification, but also, as the Reformers would teach us, for power, that we have the power than to say no to sin and yes to righteousness.

Prayer for New England, Church Planting, and Persevering in Ministry

Kendall, tell me, I�ve got a couple minutes to go. What do you want to tell me about the church, your life, your testimony? You got two minutes to just tell me whatever�s on your heart. Whatever you feel as the Lord leads.

Yeah. Well, wow. What an amazing question. Well, I know. That�s why I get paid to do this show.

You know, I�d just ask everyone who�s listening to pray for our church, we want to see Christ made much of in New England, and we want to see that happen through the planting of faithful, local churches that preach the gospel.

And if we could start doing that in a way where we become sustainable as a church and then raise up other young men to go out and do that work, I think that I want my life to be about that, the raising up and planting of little, faithful, Jesus-centered churches.

And you know what, Kendall, that is the highest aspiration that we could have in this, what is called the graveyard for ministers, New England. And I can tell you�re not from here because you�re down from Cooligan or whatever it�s called.

And I�m not from here either. And so the way you win New England Christians over is preach Christ year after year, Mary, Barry, you know, all that stuff. And then, you know, I hope you�re here. I�ll probably be gone, but I hope you�re here in 23 years, right?

People come and people go, and we stay. I asked a pastor in Montana, he�d been there 40 years, I said, �What�s the key to success You know, outside of, you know, by the grace of God, he said, �People go, people come, I stay.

So good. Anyway, thanks for being on the radio show today. TheShepherds .Church. That�s right. God bless you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God�s Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text. Please come and join us.

Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We�re right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbc .org. Theshepherds .church.