Episode 80: Pastors, Stay!

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

I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

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

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

Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

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

Jesus in a local miserable congregation. Two words. Two words. Justin Timberlake.

Justin Timberlake? Where did that come from? Because today is his day, right?

I have no idea what day it is. It's going to be May. That's not really my generation, you know.

I'm old. Oh, come on, dude. How old are you? I'm 45 years old. Okay, I'm fixing to turn 38.

I mean, we're only like seven years difference. Yeah. Well, no, I guess April 1st was your birthday.

So, yeah, in June is mine. So, yeah, seven years. No, my wife, she grew up an

NSYNC fan. And if it wasn't for the, like, she actually debated, I think

Justin Timberlake is coming to town or something. She actually entertained the thought of trying to go, but two things.

One, the ticket's just crazy. Oh, sure. And two, it's just like, okay, I really can't, like the nostalgia that I feel from NSYNC, it's actually not going to be that.

Right. A similar thing would happen with people who like Taylor Swift. Yeah. Who is absolutely, and Justin Timberlake's the same, but has absolutely gone off the deep end.

And so I think people that were like, yeah, but I like, you know, the old

Taylor Swift and they go to, I think that if they were to go to a concert, they would just be blown away.

Like, I remember like 10 or 11 years ago, Stephanie went to,

Stephanie and a friend went to, this kind of opened her eyes because sometimes she's kind of, sometimes she's,

I don't want to say sheltered. I don't know the word I'm trying to say, but about these things. And so she went to a

Dixie Chicks concert and it was her and her friend, and she just couldn't hardly stomach it.

You know, like it was so horrible. Thinking about growing up, driving down the road with the windows down and listening, you know, and it's like, yeah, but when you go to one of those places, it's not that, again, not the subject, but you get a lot of people with that kind of worldly, secular, godless mindset in the same room together.

It really is a worship service. Well, I kind of do think that, yes, it is. I kind of do think

I can turn this, maybe a bit of a sideways into what our topic is to talk about, because, you know, you're thinking about NSYNC, and I never listened to any of those 90s boy bands.

That really wasn't, or early 2000s, whatever. Were you ever in a 90s boy band? Yeah. Oh, sure it was.

But I never listened to that music. So, but it was funny the other day I was feeling kind of nostalgic.

So I went back to what I was listening to in the mid to late 90s. And I was listening to like DC Talk.

Jesus Freak Album, right? And so there's this, you know, we have this recovery ministry here in Marshall.

And at the end of my teaching each week, a lot of times I'll play a song, like we'll play something from Sovereign Grace, or Shane and Shane, or something like that.

Or Shy Lin, or something like that. Well, the other day I said, well, I'm going to play y 'all something nostalgic.

And I thought they'd all be like, oh, yeah. So I played some DC Talk and they're like, who's that?

And I thought, man, I thought everybody knew this, but I guess

I was growing up in my little, my little Christian youth group bubble that I was in in the 90s.

Quite a long introduction. Welcome to the Rural Church Podcast. I am your cohost,

Allen Nelson. I'm one of the pastors at Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas.

And the boy band man, Eddie Ragsdale, pastor of First Baptist Church of Marshall.

Eddie, today we're going to talk about pastors staying in their churches.

So this is the Rural Church Podcast. We talk about the, we love the local church.

And we talk about life and ministry and the gospel, theology, all these things really centered around and from the perspective of the local church.

And we've had several conversations on this podcast about pastoral ministry.

And today we want to talk about the really the, I don't know if I want to say necessity.

Maybe that's the word, but really more pastors should have the desire of I'm going to a place and I'm staying there.

So, first of all, let's mention now there are some good reasons to leave a church.

But let's talk about what are you, what, let's talk about batteries. Why do you think so?

So I've been today actually is kind of an anniversary. Really, I didn't start here till June.

By the time this comes out, I'll have been here eight years if the Lord sustains me. But May 1st, 2016,

I preached. So one of the things I want to do is I wanted to preach three. I wouldn't mind preaching more, but I want to preach three things.

I didn't just want to do the one and you vote. So I preached. So this day, eight years ago,

I preached Sunday morning. Then I preached Sunday night. And then I preached Monday night. And then the next week the church voted on me.

But so I've been here eight years. And that's really just getting started in a lot of ways.

But before I got here, the longest pastor and the church had been around 20 years when

I got here. The longest pastor was almost five years.

Oh, wow. And basically, in some 20 years, they had had like I was the 10th pastor.

Now, also, you think about this. So one pastor had been here almost five years. They had gone like two years one time or a year and a half without a pastor.

So you start factoring all that in. The average pastor was there like 18 months.

Right. And I crossed the Southern Baptist Convention. I think that's pretty standard. So anyway, I'm throwing this to you now, brother.

What are some bad reasons that people pastors don't stay at a church? I think one of the bad reasons is that you see sometimes guys are looking at churches just like their career advancements.

They're stepping stones like they come into church. This is just this is just the next step till I get the bigger church.

And so I think there's there's that they're already not seeing that church as a long term ministry for them.

It's just it's just where they're at right now. Sometimes now I don't think it's always wrong for a pastor necessarily to move to a larger church.

I don't want it to sound like I'm saying, man, if you ever take a church larger than the one you're in now, then you're you're sinning.

You know, but but if the only reason is that the church that's offering you a call can pay you more money or or make life a little easier.

If that's the only reason that you would switch, I would say that's probably not a good reason if that's the only thing.

Yeah, I think let me ask you this. Maybe we'll get a little controversial, but I think for sure we have unqualified pastors.

And I'm talking about I'm not look, I'm not talking about the UMC or whatever. Right. No, no.

I'm talking about I'm talking about conservative churches, Baptist churches, whether you're talking about missionary,

Baptist, Southern Baptist, you know, whatever, independent Baptist. I definitely think so.

We're talking about right now a reason some pastors don't make it or they just move on.

I think we have some unqualified pastors. So I think I think we have men that they they they're really not they're really not able to preach.

And they have about 18 months or maybe two years of sermons. And when they get out of that, they go there on and they're preaching them at another church.

Right. Also, here's a controversial maybe. I think there are unconverted pastors in our midst during the

Great Awakening. Some of the young guns were calling that out. And some of the wiser brothers like Jonathan Edwards, you know, they'd come alongside

Whitfield and say, hey, man, you can't you can't be calling all these pastors unconverted.

And so we want to be careful there. And I'm not trying to name specific names, but I'm just saying there are undoubtedly unconverted pastors.

So that's an issue. Unqualified pastors is an issue. The career advancement is an issue and maybe just giving up on people.

So, like, I'm not saying there's never a time. Some people have been really beaten up, but some cannot deal with conflict at all.

Yeah. And if you can't deal with conflict at all, you shouldn't be a pastor because you're going to inevitably.

And it's like the first sign of resistance there out. So they're not going to a bigger church.

They may even go to a smaller church or maybe parallel, but they just don't want to deal with that.

They you know, because so so there's a couple of things I've noticed and I've only been here eight years.

But I will say and I think this is typically true. You have like the one year or 18 month or maybe two year kind of honeymoon.

Two years is kind of long. But that's why I think most of the the statistics are pastors leaving so early.

Right. Once the honeymoon part is over, OK, they're out. Yeah, I can remember you bitching.

That's funny, because in our church here at Marshall and I don't remember how long

I'd been here, but it had been a little while. And I'd gotten some questions about, you know, why you don't do like a altar call, you know, the normal kind of altar call, which

I never had done that. So, I mean, and and I came to Marshall kind of thinking that that was already not a thing here.

Yeah. Well, it kind of still was a thing here. I didn't realize that. So I just didn't do it and didn't think it was.

I thought everybody understood. Well, I was starting to get some questions. Hey, you never do an altar call.

Why don't you never do it? So I preached a sermon on my conviction about that and what

I thought the biblical way was and everything. And a lady of my church, and she's still a part of our church, love her to death.

She but she came up to me after the service. She said, well, the honeymoon's over. Well, that's true.

And she was and she agreed with me. But she was just like, OK, now that you preach that people are going to they're either going to have one position or the other.

There you know, there's not there's not any room left for this kind of vague middle. Yeah. So for me,

I would say typically conflict number one, let's say between 12 and 18 months.

And I'm not saying big, big, you know, maybe 10, 12, 16, 18 months.

And a lot of people don't make it past that one. Right. You know, my situation, my first pastor at First Baptist to where I was there for a year and a half as youth pastor.

And then they called me as which I'm not even a fan of that nomenclature anymore.

Right. Right. Right. But then a year. So then a year and a half into it, they call me as pastor the night they called me as pastor.

So this was weighty from the get go. But my wife told one older lady,

I'm so excited about being here. And she said, we'll see. And so like it was like it was it was difficult from the beginning.

And I was voted in. This is easy to remember. 10, 10, 10, October 10th, 2010.

Wow. I resigned October 16th, 2011. So I made it barely a year anyway.

So there's that first kind of initial honeymoon wears off. There's something usually a lot of guys don't make it.

Then there's another one that comes up. I'm going to say in the five to seven year range.

Now, I'm just speaking typically, you know. So you have something that major, if you will.

The life of the church is always a little stuff that comes up. But I'm just speaking anecdotally, really.

I mean, like five to seven year range. Something else comes up, you know, and a lot of guys don't make it past that one.

You know, I almost didn't make it past that one. I mean, for me, in August of 2021,

I got COVID. And so then at that point, I had been here five years.

And that's when we really, of course, you had COVID in all this. It's an issue. But that's when we, you know,

I really just felt like there was nothing. I just wasn't making headway. And I had some people upset with me that I got

COVID, you know, because I hadn't taken the vaccine. And so they blamed me for getting

COVID, even though people with the vaccine still get COVID. And so there's just some conflict there.

And I actually reached out to some faithful brothers, Tom Askell, Tom Buck. I actually, you know, sent some guys my resume.

And I was like, I don't think I can stay here, you know. By God's mercy, he didn't allow me to leave, you know.

And then, of course, we went through some more conflict. But now we're on the other side of that.

And now I'm only here, been here eight years. So it's not like I've been here 30 years or whatever.

But now I'm like, I cannot imagine a church calling me and saying, you want to come here and starting over?

Like, I'm like, no way. I've been through it. I've been through it now, you know. Like, I'm here.

I'm staying. This is where God's planning me. So anyway, I've kind of rambled. There's more things

I want to say. But let me kick it back over to you. Well, you know, something I would just mention, you know, your tenure there at Perryville and mine at Marshall are pretty close.

You know, I came to Marshall a few months after you came to Perryville. But with that being said, you know, same thing.

My four to five years in was right about COVID time.

And then it actually, for me, that second thing that happened was coming out of COVID, it was people not coming back.

Yeah, yeah. But in the Lord's Providence, what he did, he brought new people here and we've had such a turnover.

And I think you could say this about, you could say this Providence Baptist Church is not the same church as Perryville Second Baptist you began pastoring eight years ago.

For sure. They are not the same church. Yeah. And while Marshall First Baptist retains the same name, this is not the same church that I was pastoring in 2006, 17.

Yeah. It is not the same church at all just because of the turnover in people.

Yeah. And so I'm not saying that's a bad thing, although I regret those who have gone on.

Some have gone on to be with the Lord. Some have moved on. Like my desire would be for everyone to stay and reform with us.

Yes. That's my desire. And it's sad. It's hard. And some people, you know, have apostatized, if you will.

But the point is there's something, and then guys who have been at churches twice as long as we have, or three or four times as long as we have,

I'm sure they're ready to tell us how you don't even understand yet. And you're just beginning, you know? And it's like, but I've seen now

I've tasted and seen what happens. If you can make it through some of these initial speed bumps, that staying is worth it.

And it's really when you start becoming the pastor, not just the guy in the pulpit, you know, but you start becoming the pastor in the lives of the people.

And, of course, part of that is when I started here, I mean, we mentioned our ages earlier, and even you, when you started young,

I mean, I started here, I turned 30 in June, and then like on one

Sunday, and I think it was like the next Sunday I started here. So I started here officially when

I was 30 years old. That's young. You started there when you were, what, it'd be 34?

Well, no, I'd have been closer to the age you are now. Eight years ago? Yeah, I'd have been like 30.

I'm 45, so I'd have been like 37. Oh, 45. I'd have been like 37. But when

I started pastoring at Shirley, I was, what, 27. Yeah, well, the point

I'm trying to make is, especially if you take a church when you're young, mature with the people.

But let me give some theological, so neither one of us are saying if you ever leave a church, you're wrong.

No, no, we're not saying that. There are times to leave a church for a multitude of reasons, and maybe we'll have a whole episode on that, but that's really not what this episode's about.

Well, let me add just one more thing. We mentioned some different reasons why pastors sometimes leave churches, saying it from the pastor's point of view.

Yeah, that's good. We can also speak sometimes, and this is really true, this is especially relevant on the

Rural Church Podcast. This may be true in urban settings. I don't have enough experience with urban settings to speak to that.

But let's be honest. There are a lot of little churches out here, little rural churches on some dirt road out somewhere, that honestly are already dead.

And a lot of times people wonder, why do no pastors ever stay last there?

Well, it's because there's not really a church. Yeah. Nobody wants to say that out loud. I just said what you're not supposed to say out loud about that.

But those churches are already dead. Yeah. And nobody can pastor dead.

You got to have a living church. I mean, what I'm saying is a lot of the guys that go there, they don't realize that what you really have to do is go in there more like a missionary.

You really got to go there. I'm going here to start a church because what's here is not really a church.

Yeah. This is not a perfect analogy. It's going to break down a lot. But I've been reading Nahum recently.

I'm thinking about preaching that after Ephesians. And you have, let me just use this, you have

Nineveh in the time of Jonah with a soft heart.

They repent. I mean, I know there's different thoughts about that, but Jesus says they repented. So that generation there when

Jonah. But by the time you get to Nineveh in Nahum's day, which is maybe 100 years later, they ain't repented.

They are wicked again. And God is going to bring judgment.

And there's nothing they can do about it. So again, it's not a perfect analogy. I understand. But there are churches that start out some, well, every true church obviously starts out regenerate.

But over the years, and there's multiple factors, and I'm not just blaming pastors, but there is a factor in this.

What is a church supposed to do when a pastor in, out, in, out, in, out, in, out?

We have that happen over a few decades. You have the deacon body become really the leadership of the church, which they're not designed to be.

Some of them well -meaning, but then over the years, you get the mean kind of deacon.

It just happens. And then you have watered -down salvations.

You're not watching over the flock. There's no church discipline. Baptisms are done carelessly.

You're baptizing four -year -old children. You're not really guarding the gate on others being baptized, and your church rolls in a mess.

So somebody steps into that, and you're like, okay, how many true believers are here? I mean, actually, really, how many true believers are in this church?

And I'm just going to say it's a lot lower than what some people, they come in and they're like, well, they're all

Christian. They're not. A lot of them. Like you say, if they're all dead, spiritually speaking, you're not even in a church, really.

So, yeah, it's a mess. Well, and I'm not saying every little

Baptist church on a dirt road is that. But one of the big things that will probably tell you, one big indicator as to whether or not you're probably looking at a true church that it's just in a very rural area, and there's not very many people.

It's probably not going to explode in growth, because there just aren't that many people. But it's still a true church with believers that are worshiping and loving the

Lord. And one of the big indicators is, have they had five pastors in the last seven years, or have they had a pastor for the last eight years or ten years?

If they've had one pastor who's really preached them and shepherded them over some duration of time, that's probably a good indication, a better indication that what you've got going on there is a true church.

I mean, we can't speak in generalities and then people apply it to their.

And he's saying every little Baptist church is not a true church. I'm not saying that. I'm saying some of them are dead, and some big ones are dead.

Absolutely. That's absolutely true. There are big churches in the Southern Baptist Convention even with 5 ,000 people on their rolls and 1 ,000 people coming every week, and things seem alive.

You have a reputation of being alive, but they're dead. Okay, but let me say clearly and unequivocally, absolutely not.

I love the rural church, and I believe that God is absolutely doing big things in small.

I've seen it, and you have too. I've seen it personally. That's where we're at. We're in small churches.

That's right. I'm not talking about your church or my church only. I'm talking about brothers like Wes Brown.

I'm talking about brothers like Jeremy Williams. I have seen personally with my eyes rural churches in Arkansas where God is working.

Joseph Allen, Lee Creek Baptist Church. Yeah. Wade Lentz. Okay, so the point in other brothers,

I know we could just go on and on, but the point is that when you are able to stay at a church, the church, it's amazing

God's wisdom. He's given the church over to it. We have this example in real time, but imagine a child who switches out parents every two years.

Most of those children that that happens to, not all of them by God's mercy and grace, but a lot of children who switch out parents all the time, whether it's step -parents or they're being shipped to different foster homes, they struggle.

Yeah. And the same is going to be true of a church. Obviously, a pastor is not a parent, but he is the overseer.

He is overseer. It's another reason why, and this episode is not about this, another reason though we'd advocate a plurality of elders.

Well, I was going to say I'm still looking forward to the day when the Lord brings us to that point in our church of having plurality of elders, the direction we're headed in.

But even looking at what's happened in your church, if you hadn't stayed at Perryville, there's no way that they would now have two pastors.

I don't just mean, well, you would have to be there. I mean, you had to stay so that a second brother could also be a pastor so that you could get to the point of having you and Jacob both serving the church there.

And I'm not saying that to puff you up. I'm just saying you're never going to move to plurality of eldership if you don't have the elders that are already there staying.

If they're all rotating in and out, you're going to end up in a single pastor model if everybody's just rotating.

I think a lot of guys that come into churches, they don't even have any idea what a healthy church looks like.

They've never been part of a healthy church. They've never seen it. In 2011, I went to Christ Church in New Albany at a conference the church was having with Richard Owen Roberts.

That was one of my first exposures to what a real church, a real body, not just people showing up on Sunday and having all these programs, men's program, children's program, women's program.

So a lot of guys come into a church like, I got ideas about programs, but they don't have an idea about what

Christ Church is to look like in the sense of fellowship, in the sense of members in each other's homes, knowing one another, watching over one another in accountability, confessing our sins to one another, loving one another, the regulative principle of worship that is true worship.

I saw a thing the other day, a church was enacting, I don't even know, a play of The Last Supper or something.

It was just weird. This is the kind of stuff that too many pastors have an idea, and it's like once their programs run out, they're burnt out, they move on because they don't have a vision for the local church.

By the way, when I say vision for the local church, I don't want to see your vision. Eddie, I love you, man.

You're one of my best friends, but I don't care what your vision is for the church. I'm not going to have you come to our church and listen to your vision casting.

No, I want the vision the Bible gives. Amen, but you have to have a vision for the church, which is the

Bible's vision, Christ's vision for the church. Let me say this too.

I heard this today. I think it's the IRBS podcast I was listening to, but I believe

John Owen at the end of his life, he had offers to come over to the New England colonies, but he was pastor in a church.

John Owen, right? Yeah. Was pastor in a church of like 20 people, and you've got to get, so let me just offer a rebuke and encouragement.

Pastors, you've got to get this mentality of, I got to pastor X number of people out of your mind and heart, and you've got to give yourself to the people

God's entrusted you with. Most likely when we stand before the Lord, we're not going to say, if you remember

Hebrews 13, 17 have to give an account for the souls in our care. We're not going to say, boy, I wish

I'd had a few more souls in my care. The ones that God has given my care,

I need to do better. Let me just say this. I'm going to get real practical, not trying to meddle here,

Eddie. Let me say to pastors listening, are you praying for your people? I'm not talking about, we all pray for our people generally.

I'm talking about, do you have a list of names, a stack of note cards? I know guys do it different ways.

It doesn't matter your methodology, but do you have names in front of you that you're praying for?

Faces too. You know who these people are. You know them. That's right. You're praying for them.

If you're thinking about leaving, and these are areas I've had to grow in and repent of. If you're thinking about leaving, try that.

The point I'm trying to say is, you need to stay not because if you stay long enough, you're going to have a church of 300 people.

Perryville here is a population, it's funny, depends on which sign you look at.

There's different population numbers on different signs. I'm like, okay. We're so small, we can't count ourselves.

But we're less than 1 ,500 people. Right. Us too. We're about the same size. I think Marshall and Perryville are within 100 people.

I'm not discrediting the Lord. I'm not discrediting his supernatural and powerful work.

He could raise up a church here of 10 ,000, but likely we're never going to be a church of 300 or 200 or maybe even 100 because we have serious convictions in a culture that hates

God. But the reality is, is Christ worthy of a healthy church in Perryville, Arkansas?

Answer, yes. And so we're not like deliberately running people off.

Don't gloat in your smallness either. Ah, ha, ha. Y 'all got 20 people? We've only got eight. We're more faithful.

No, that's not what we're saying either. But we're saying give yourself to the church for the sake of Christ.

Any other thoughts you got? Well, and I think give yourself to this is worthy of you.

A healthy church, no matter where or how big or small, that is worthy.

Like I think a lot of times guys go into ministry, they feel called into ministry, maybe when they're young, maybe when they're a little older, and they maybe have this grand thought in their mind, you know, they're going to be the next whoever, you know, the next, you know.

Charles MacArthur. Yeah, yeah. Charles Haddon MacArthur. Martin Lloyd Spurgeon.

Right, right. Or even more, you know, people back in the day would have thought, they're going to be the next

Billy Graham. That's why you got all these different people with their ministry names, such and such

Evangelist Association, because they thought they would be the next Billy Graham, you know, or something like that.

And I would say, look, if you find yourself pastoring a true church of believers, and you say if you spend the next 30 years pastoring that church faithfully, that will be a great, that will be a

God -honoring thing when you enter. That will be worth it. That will be worth it. Even if the numbers of baptisms and the numbers of people sitting in their pews aren't something that the world would ever consider impressive.

Yeah. It will be God -honored and worth your life. You didn't spend your life, you didn't waste your life if you spent it.

That's right. Amen. So I'm grateful for the big names in Christianity.

I'm thankful for the big pastors. But labor, put your hands to the plow, labor among the people of God, right where you are, and just have this mindset,

I'm staying. Again, we could talk about reasons to leave, and maybe someone's listening to this.

I'm like, yeah, but you don't understand my situation. But I'm saying as a general rule, stay.

Stay. Commit yourself. Keep preaching. I think I've been here eight years. We've added two children since then.

I've got to preach. Finally, we're closing in on finishing the book of Ephesians.

Now that's been only just over three and a half years. But we've got to preach through these great books.

We've got to see baptisms. We've got to see births. We've got to see, sadly, deaths.

We really hadn't seen marriages that I can think of. But the point is you begin to live with these people, and I don't like this phrase, but doing life, if you will, with people.

As one church member of our church says, putting your feet under the same table as these people, and you really begin to see.

Here's what you get to see, biblical Christianity. Christ is worth it, whether your church moves from 10 people to 1 ,000 people or if it moves from 1 ,000 people to 10 people.

Be faithful. Order the church according to the Scriptures. Press on. Do evangelism.

The other night, I'll tell you this. I hesitate to say this, but I think I can say it in a way that I've just grown.

We were at a few series of Providences. Someone sent me a

Spanish -English Bible. Was that you, Eddie? It was not me, but I've seen your post about that.

Pretty encouraged by that. I love it, actually. It's nice. But I took it. My daughter had a softball game, so I took it with me.

I thought, well, it was in the van from the mail, but what I'm talking about is I took it out of the van into the bleachers with me.

I was like, I'll just look at a couple passages. Because there's a lot of downtime in 12 -U softball, rec league.

All of a sudden, unexpected, I didn't know it was coming, a storm blows in. There is a pause in the game, and there's lightning, and there's rain.

We're just sitting there waiting, waiting, waiting. I'm like, ugh, come on. Then I'm like, what if I just stand up on these bleachers and preach?

Because I'm not a fan of doing that at an event like a kid's softball game.

Because look, people will - Not if you're disrupting the softball. Yeah, you're really not trying to - You know what I'm saying?

I'm not trying to disrupt what's going on. Right, right. I know we're here. We've paid to get in.

We're watching. Right. I was like, you know what? I'm going to preach. I preached.

Now, it was like three to five minutes, but I just said, hey, we're in this rain delay.

I'm going to take an opportunity to preach the gospel to you guys, and I did. Called people to repentance, and then

I got done sitting down. I didn't see anybody visibly upset. I did have a few people come over and say thank you, but I want to say

I've grown in that. Part of the reason that I've grown in that is the church.

It's not just like me bringing sanctification to the church, right?

It's the church. It's God sanctifying his people through the life of the body, and he grows pastors, too.

As you stay, not only will the church reform, you'll reform because the means of grace, they're not just being applied from you to the church or whatever.

That's the wrong way to look at it. Although I understand you're the primary instrument that if you're the main preacher or whatever.

No, but you're growing, too. I've grown. I've failed in so many ways as a pastor, but by God's mercy and grace, he's grown me over these eight years.

By God's grace, I pray for 80. Not really, but I really did pray when

I started here that the Lord would give me 30 years because I was thinking 30 to 60, that's 30 years.

So I'd love at least 30 years, but it's not unreasonable, maybe 50 years.

I think MacArthur might have started at Grace Community when he was 30. Anyway, the point is, as we stay, we're going to grow, too.

Well, and that gets back to something we were saying earlier. When these tenures, these pastorates are 18 months long, and the pastor basically goes to this church and he preaches his, you know, he's got 18 months of sermons from all over the

Bible. And when he goes to the next church, he just preaches that set of sermons again. Yeah. He's not going to grow like the guy that, oh,

I've not preached Ephesians yet. So now I'm going to preach through Ephesians or, you know, you spoke of Nahum.

Well, last fall, I preached through Jonah and then

Nahum. Well, I mean, if I were just redoing the same sermons that I'd preached, you know, at the last church,

I wouldn't have done that because I had never preached those books. But when you stay at a church, you're probably not going to go back and do the same book you did last year.

You're not going to preach through that again. You're going to preach through a different thing. One, because they need to hear it, but it's also good for the preacher because we're growing and studying and learning as we're preaching.

I mean, I think every preacher and teacher of the Bible can attest to this.

As much as we may have studied a book of the Bible, you get to know it even better when you've preached and taught through a book of the

Bible. Absolutely. You never get to know it as well as you get to know it when you're doing that. Yeah.

And so, yeah, that really grows us. You know, I remember when I first, and I don't have time to go into my whole story of everything that happened at Shirley, but when

I first came to Shirley, I remember going into our director of missions office. You remember

Brother Jim Box? Yeah. And I've been to his office and he was kind of talking to me about, you know, so what's your vision for the church or whatever?

But I just remember telling him back then, so this was like 2007, man, my plan is to pastor this church for 50 years and die.

It didn't work out that way. But then when I came to Marshall, you know, basically before I came to Marshall, I was like,

I wasn't ever thinking about pastoring another church than Shirley. And I don't have a desire to ever pastor another church than Marshall.

I'm looking at like, I plan on pastoring here as long as I'm, as the Lord has me in pastoral ministry.

Now, could things change? Certainly they could. So I'm not saying that I know that that'll be the case, but I think pastors need to come to churches and maybe this is a good place for at least my comments on this to come to their conclusion.

But I think pastors really should go into each church that the Lord would call them to with the idea of,

I'm here to stay. Like this, if this is the last church I pastor and I pastor it for the next 20 years, 30 years, however many years, praise the

Lord. Amen. I'm coming here to stay. Now, if the church ends up moving, if the Lord ends up moving you again, that's, that's up to the

Lord. He can do as he wills with his servant, but we each, but I feel like we should go into each church with the mindset of,

I'm here to stay, not here looking for the next. Some of the most faithful pastors you can think of in church history, there might've been some initial movement at first, but then there was longevity.

Sometimes you run into situations like Jonathan Edwards served at a church for what, 20 years and then they get, they bounce you.

That's a different episode, but let me say this. Same thing with Calvin. Yeah, that's right. I have something last

I want to say, we've talked to pastors, but let me encourage church members listening, like expect your pastor to stay.

Pray for him to stay. Help him to stay. Support him. You say, well,

I just don't like my pastor right now. Well, by God's grace in three years, he'll be different.

Cause if he's growing and you're growing, like stick it out. I mean,

I think it's not one -to -one correlation, but consider the marriage situation.

A lot of people, we just romanticize marriage in ways that a hundred years ago, they didn't.

My wife's grandparents, her paternal grandparents, my, her, her, her grandma,

I think it was like 15 or 16. And her grandpa was like 17. They met in at a County fair and they got married like a week later and they stayed married and they just stayed like,

I'm just staying. And it's like, okay, but some mornings I don't like that or whatever.

Okay. But stay, commit, love. And if, and in Ephesians, Paul says, maintain the unity of the spirit.

So if the spirit of God is in the pastor and the spirit of God is in the congregation, then you're going to, you're going to find unity.

So I'm just saying to the church members, help your pastor to stay, make it easy for him to stay.

And you know what'll help him stay? You stay. Yeah, stay. If you stay, that'll help him stay.

Stay, commit, encourage him. Hopefully you have plurality of elders and you're doing that with multiple, but encourage them.

But that's just an exhortation to church members. It's very sad that church members have this expectation of, well, he's not going to be here that long.

You know, that's, that's why the whole deacon thing gets thrown at, like, I don't, yes, deacons need to repent if they areas that they have failed.

But part of the reason the deacon thing is out of kilter is because pastors bounce in and out.

Now, part of it is deacons certainly are wrong, but part of it is if you're going to leave every two years, the church members begin looking at the deacons as their functional pastors.

And what happens oftentimes is people do get this idea of, look, you come in here and you're wanting to make these biblical changes.

Look, I'll just outlast you. You're going to be gone and we'll go back to doing things the way we've always done it.

And you really do have to, as a pastor, especially when you're coming in to a church where there needs to be biblical reform, you do have to have a certain resolve.

Because if people think, man, this guy's not, he's not committed to stay here, then they're going to be like, well, we're not making those changes.

But once they realize this guy's not leaving, then

I think that really does affect, I mean, I know that's happened here at Marshall. I've had people that actually they ended up leaving and I still count them as people

I love, but we disagreed on some things and they were like, you're not leaving, so we're going to leave it.

Because they become convinced that they weren't going to outlast me because I'm not going anywhere.

Stay, but don't stay. I'm talking to church members. Don't stay as a thorn in the side. Stay, be humble.

You need to grow. You need to learn. You need to reform. There's not a church out there that doesn't need biblical reformation.

We're just talking about to the degrees. Every church, there's not a perfect church. So every church needs to grow in some area.

Most churches need to grow in multiple areas. And then there are some churches that need to have drastic.

Well, if your church is alive, living things grow. Amen. Right. I mean, if you're if look, how old is

Hadden now? Five, six. Is he six now? Wow. This month, which is

May next week, he turned seven. Okay. If all of a sudden he just stopped growing, you and Steph wouldn't be like, hey, cool.

We get to keep a seven -year -old forever. You'd be like, we got to go see the doctor. Stephanie might be okay.

We got to go see the doctor because seven -year -olds are supposed to be growing. Right.

That's right. They're supposed to be growing. And so if you're looking at your church and you're like,

I don't want anything to change. Well, that's not if it's alive, it's going to grow.

It is going to change. One hundred percent. It's going to change. It's got to change. Yeah, that's right, brother.

Well, this has been helpful. I hope this has been encouraging. I hope it convinces some pastors out there on the fence to stay.

I hope it convinces some church members to support and love and encourage their pastors and be willing to learn, be fed.

We are for the church. And I really believe I see it. God is working in the rural church. But I know it's not just a rural church.

God is working in churches all over the world, rural and urban. But for my context, even when we go to Mexico and stuff,

I see God working in out of the way, backwoods, small places that no one knows about for the glory of his son.

Christ is, listen, if you get nothing else, know this today. Christ is worthy of a healthy church.

Take us out, Eddie. We'll see you guys next week. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

God's doing, this is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poemos, the masterpiece of God.