Brad Isbell 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.

Brad Isbell, Chortles Weekly, and PresbyCast

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and as you listeners know, I like to have guests on Wednesday. Monday is a recorded sermon that I preached at Bethlehem Bible Church.

We�re in the book of Hebrews now, Hebrews 9. We�re looking at the high priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Tuesdays, I talk with my associate pastor, Pastor Steve Cooley, about issues in the church. Thursdays and Fridays, it�s usually me kind of practicing on you as guinea pigs when it comes to my sermons, but we talk about other things as well.

But I especially like Wednesdays because I have authors, theologians, podcasters, ex-Southern Baptists, all kinds of people, and so I think we can put all those monikers on one person a day and welcome Chortles Weekly back to No Compromise Radio, aka Brad Isbell.

Welcome back, Brad.

That�s nice. I can�t be called a theologian or a public intellectual or a public theologian, but I prefer to go with private ineffectual. Okay, good.

Well, let�s get some of this stuff out of the way first, Brad. If they want to follow you on Twitter, it�s at Chortles Weekly, not like every day of the week or month, but weekly as in not strong. Tell our listeners again why Chortles Weekly.

Oh, well, it�s all because of social media. Years ago, in our church on Facebook, and she said, �LOL. And I sort of resolved never to say that, so opposite of LOL, and that would be a barely audible chortle, DAC, and that didn�t catch on, but Chortles Weekly, that became my handle.

And your little icon, little avatar has a side profile of Calvin, and then there�s looks like a Bob Marley, reggae, Peter Tosh kind of hat on top. What is that?

Well, that�s a Rosticap, and that�s to show how woke I am. Okay, good. And I�m looking left. I�m looking left as well, not right. Oh!

See, that�s important. I didn�t know if it was that, you know, original Star Trek series where they had those people that couldn�t get along, and some of them had half white faces and half black, but they couldn�t get along with the other people that had it reversed.

Remember that show? Uh, no. I missed that one. Okay. You also host or co-host PresbyCast, and it�s a podcast. Lots of people ask me, �What do you listen to And I tell them I listen to Heidelcast, I listen to Chris Gordon, I listen to Credo Podcast, and I listen to PresbyCast.

Could you tell me why I listen? Is there any reason, any good reason I should listen to PresbyCast? Total depravity, I think.

We�re thoroughly disreputable, but hopefully human in a good way, and we�re not trying to sell you anything, and ultimately, we�re probably not trying to please or entertain anyone much except ourselves, and some people react to that, some people like that.

So we�re small time, and we always will be.

Brad, I have to admit that one time I was listening to you guys, and I�ve listened to every show, and that tells you how my depravity level is. And I was listening, and you said, �Well, we have to take a station break or one of our sponsors, our advertisers, and I thought, �I cannot believe they actually have a sponsor and it was you hawking some kind of funny thing.

So I was glad to know that it wasn�t really real.

Well, that was probably slope coat. Our imaginary product, it�s for the slippery slope that we denominational types find ourselves on. And some of my, I�ll say the brothers, but my opponents in the PCA, they hate the slippery slope argument, but I always say, �If you don�t believe in the slippery slope, ask the guy at the bottom of the ravine covered in gravel.

The PCA, Southern Baptist Roots, and Denominational Drift

So Brad, that lends us to talk about this very issue. You come from a Southern Baptist world, and now you�re in the PCA, and for the listeners who don�t know what the PCA is, it�s Presbyterian Church of America.

They probably are familiar with OPC, Orthodox Presbyterian Church, also known as the Only Perfect Church, and they might not know that there are conservative elements in Presbyterianism. Maybe they�re just used to the Presbyterian Church down the street.

Tell our listeners a little bit about the PCA in general, maybe how it started, or anything you want to talk about, and then we�ll talk about some specifics and General Assembly and motions and stuff like that.

Well, for people who don�t know anything about the liberal Presbyterian denomination, that would be what�s called the PCUSA. They�ve got sort of a funny little, I think it�s red and blue cross, kind of modern.

You see that in front of a church, or you see the words �USA� after Presbyterian Church. That�s the old, what was the old Northern liberal church, which reunited with the liberal Southern church, the PCUS, in the late �70s, early �80s.

The conservatives in the Southern church saw the handwriting on the wall, and by 1973, they left the PCUS, which is the Southern mainline Presbyterian church. They left the PCUS and formed the PCA in 1973.

Today, has about almost 400 ,000 members, which is microscopic in American religion, but much larger than any other conservative Presbyterian or Reformed denomination. The PCA picked up another church called the RPCES in the �80s.

It started as a kind of a big tent, although generally conservative, not everyone equal about what that means. In the last, lots of good churches in the PCA, lots of good ministers, and very high standard of theological education, and�.

Brad, I think I�d be interested in knowing this, and if our listeners aren�t interested, it doesn�t really matter, right? Because it�s my show, and I�m talking to you. Tell me why you left the Southern Baptist Convention.

Was it they did a lot of dopey things as an SBC denomination or local church, or was it you were more. You know what, I think doctrinally, I see paedo-baptism and some other things, and I�m sure it was both, but can you give me some percentages?

I mean, did one thing lead you to then study the other? How did you make the transition from going from a Baptist to a Presbyterian?

Well, I grew up Southern Baptist in smaller churches.

Tim Keller, Ligon Duncan, and the Two Poles in the PCA

Well, for our listeners today, we�re talking to Brad Isabel at Chortles Weekly regarding his Twitter handle, and he is a co-host of PresbyCast. As you were talking about Southern Baptist, Brad, I was thinking about Broadman, Holman, or just Broadman, and of course that came from the name from Broadus and Manley.

I think it was John Broadus and Basil Manley that some of the founders of the at least the Reformed Calvinistic type of Southern Baptist. Let�s talk a little bit about Presbyterianism. When I used to look at PCA as an outsider, as kind of a no-co-Baptist guy, I would look at PCA and say, �You know, in my mind, there�s two general kind of drifts, our factions or our philosophies, our ministries.

It was the kind of the Tim Keller approach or the Ligon Duncan approach, and the Tim Keller was, you know, redeeming the city and here�s what we have to do methodologically and exegete culture type of things.

And then the Duncan approach in my mind back in those days, it was exegesis, exposition, we just teach the Bible verse by verse, or the high view of Christ, etc. Correct me if I�m wrong, when I think of the PCA now, I don�t really see those kind of two poles with those two figures, because it seems to me Duncan has gotten closer to where Keller is, and therefore I don�t have those two poles.

Am I reading PCA correctly as an outsider?

Well, I don�t think, when you�re talking about Ligon Duncan, a former pastor of mine is a good friend of his going way back when they were in early college and seminary days. I don�t think his theological convictions would have changed, but there was a series of meetings at our General Assembly, which is our national meeting of people there or something like that.

Ligon Duncan sat down together, and they would talk about things, and each would give their perspective, and they�d kind of hug at the end, and they sort of legitimized one another. And they�re both legitimate because they�re elders of the church, but I think because of, and I respect Ligon Duncan, but because of his involvement with the Gospel Coalition and as head now of Reform Theological Seminary System, which has 10 campuses or so, he�s probably not viewed as being, he�s playing in a pretty big pond.

I think in the old days, if you look back to the PCA in the 90s, it was sort of the R .C. Scroll, except for Duncan, you don�t have any confessionalists inside, whereas Tim Keller sort of looms over everything in the PCA.

I thought it was Kathy Keller looming over the PCA.

I don�t think I ever said that. Most wives have influence over their husbands, and she�s been very involved in New York, and you can read articles.

Okay, good. Well, I guess that was just my kind of like Twitter snark there. I think it was. I think so. How about helping me, as an outsider, think through PCA direction, and I guess my question to you, Brad, is if things really go well, from the confessional standpoint, conservative standpoint, what�s going to happen to the PCA, and if things don�t go well, the liberals, the moderates, whatever we want to call them, what will the PCA look like in 10 years under each of those scenarios?

Things go really well, or things go south, and then I have a follow-up question after that. Well� Brad, that�s interesting. Thank you for that analysis. If I was on vacation, and it was the Lord�s Day, and I was going to go worship, and something we always taught our children, it�s not will we go on Sunday, the Lord�s Day, to worship the Lord, but where will we go, right?

If we�re out of town, we�ll go somewhere. And if I thought, here�s a Southern Baptist Church, our PCA, I�d probably go to a PCA church to worship if I was out of town, if I had those two choices only.

But I�m afraid sometimes I probably walk into those PCA churches, and I got the blue lights and the praise band and all the other things that I would normally get in a Baptist church. So it would almost look the same, and then I probably would go to a place where you�re at.

What�s the name of your church again? Can you tell me online, or is that alright? Oh, yeah. It�s Covenant Presbytery. Okay. Near Knoxville. I�m just kind of jumping around randomly. I listened to a Joey Piper interview, and he was talking about staying in the PCA.

If things don�t go well in the PCA, I mean, my kind of mentality, of course, as an outsider and just kind of a different person, I guess, but I�m thinking, you know, I was surprised to hear Piper talk about staying almost like no matter what because we have to hold the line.

At what point do you think people leave the PCA, or churches rather, leave the PCA and go to OPC? What would be the final, last straw that would break the back of a church to say, �We�ve got to leave PCA and go somewhere else

Well, there are different opinions on that. Probably disposing was, �As long as I�m not required to sin, as long as there�s not something that�s required of me, my church has to do something unbiblical to remain in fellowship.

We�re so concerned about the direction that they�re already talking about forming a new denomination. Just a very few churches leave the PCA, not many, nothing like a flood, not even a trickle on that.

Some people, I mean, in my Presbytery, I think a church has just a little denomination. Just north of me, a couple of churches went to the Bible Presbyterian Church, which is very small, and you�d have to understand the history of Presbyterianism.

So there are a few churches leaving PCA churches that have gone to the EPC or even ECO, and those are where it goes. You know, they�re in the margins on both sides. There are people actually ordained male and female, serving together with the same title.

That would be enough for some people to leave the PCA. Some would not think of leaving unless there was women as elders against women. Those of us who think that the simple teaching of scripture is

PresbyCast, Confessionalism, and the Conservative Voice in the PCA

Brad, I don�t know if you realize this or not, but I was talking to one fairly well-known and respected Christian leader, and he was talking about really the he didn�t call you the heartbeat of the PCA, but it was almost like you were the leveler, if there was a balance to some of the liberal tendencies in the PCA.

The voice for the opposite side, the confessional side, the conservative side, was Presby-cast. Do you think that�s.

No, I don�t think that�s true. We don�t have that many listeners, but, I mean, we do put a lot of information out. We want to follow the issues and the progressives. I think one of the reasons why we get along is because I think we have that similar kind.

Of edge and pushing some things on social media. So that�s at least how I explain it. I don�t know how you explain it, but probably cut from the same cloth. What does it say about evangelicalism when NoCo was more Presbyterian than some of the Presbyterian churches in the PCA?

What does that mean? Well, that brings up something. If you didn�t know it was a PCA church, it might not be obvious that this was. I saw a lot of this stuff.

Talking to Brad Isbell, we shouldn�t probably go too much longer. Brad, thank you for taking time out of your workday to talk to me here at No Compromise Radio. Let�s do a little kind of round-robin, kind of faster-paced I say something to you and then you just kind of give me your gut-knee-jerk responses, whatever comes to your head.

Are you willing to do that?

Yeah. You know, one of the answers might be Taco Bell. Yeah, I know.

Okay. Let�s start with �Don�t be an Erdman.

Oh, well, that�s you know, we love Machen. J. Gresham Machen was an important figure in the Presbyterian controversy of the �20s, and one of his nemeses at Princeton Theological Seminary was not a liberal.

He was a moderate named Charles Erdman. It�s really when we say, �Don�t be an Erdman we say, �Don�t be the kind of moderate that is going to allow bad things to happen. A desire for moderation and being evangelical ultimately does you in, as it did in the real moderates and evangelicals in the PCUSA.

Okay, that�s good. I have something for you. That�s the Machen horn. When we mention Machen, everyone, if you don�t know Machen, M-A-C-H-E-N, just look him up and read Christianity.

All right, next topic here, the Gospel Coalition.

What comes to your mind? Well, I guess the founders, Tim Keller and Don Carson, come to mind. It comes to mind because, in some ways, they made some of the this word but the more progressive directions of evangelicalism, sort of mainstreaming some social justice ideas and even some of the SSA Christian ideas with Sam Alberry and people like that, pulled back on that, cautious on some of these social and cultural issues.

It was not to have much change, predicated on constant change. So there�s a lot of change and fluidity with the Gospel Coalition. Lots of good stuff, lots of good people, but ultimately, I think, not helpful or necessary.

Okay, excellent. How about worship dancers? What comes to your mind? Oh, yeah, the worship dancers.

Brad, it�s interesting, as you talk about that with King David, of course, we can look at descriptions in the Bible and narratives, and they�re not prescriptions for the New. I guess if we use the philosophy that David danced, why don�t we have 12 loaves of show bread, and we could have some show bread in the sanctuary.

And I think people like the bread of the presence, and maybe they like the moniker �show bread� better. I guess we could do that. You just sent me something on Twitter, and it was from a website in a church in New England here, and it said the quote you sent me was �a church that can distinguish the word-based elements in worship from the socio-cultural-based forms that the elements must assume in order to transact God�s living presence.

And then the webpage, you said, had a picture of a worship dancer.

Yeah, that�s very strange. I don�t hear that a lot to transact. God�s living presence.

Yeah, how is that done? Maybe Nadab and Abihu, I think they tried that.

Yeah, we don�t think we have any tool, anything to offer except the Scripture. And that�s what the Holy Spirit uses, and everything else is static and noise at best, and possibly a positive evil at worst.

That�s what we saw with Nadab and Abihu, for instance. So the safest thing is to believe that that�s what God uses, that�s what the Holy Spirit uses. And that�s where it takes courage and patience to do that sometimes, because it�s a slow work.

Sometimes it�s always an invisible work. But just like the evangelicals of the past and the revivalists of the past, like Charles Finney, everybody wants to see something, and they want to short-circuit that process.

As Americans, even in the 1800s, we wanted something we could package and replicate, and we wanted results, and we liked excitement, although they�re much more true now.

Brad, as you were talking, it reminded me of a story here at the church. Somebody came to the church, and they had a very semi-Pelagian at best background when it comes to theology, and they didn�t believe in the doctrine of election, unconditional election.

And they said, �Are we welcome to attend, even though we don�t believe that I said, �Of course, and we�re going to be teaching you through the Bible verse by verse. Here�s what I mean when I say that, here�s what I don�t mean, and we�re glad you�re here.

And I�ve been here 22 years now, and I said to him a while ago, �How are you doing with the doctrines of grace and five points of Calvinism or unconditional election? Are you believing in those now

And he said, �I am. And I said, �How long did it take you to submit to or get over or whatever words we want to use to the doctrine of unconditional election He said, �Oh, probably five to seven years.

And to me, Brad, that made me think, okay, week in and week out, preaching the Word of God, these are the ordained means and how the Spirit of God changes people and changes their minds and grants them repentance so they�re conformed to the Word of God and what it teaches.

And don�t you think that the society today has so influenced the church, everything has to be fast and quick and we�ve got to go for the big score versus just, you know what, we might not see a lot of fruit, but that�s not our responsibility is to even see the fruit or try to get the fruit.

We�re to be faithful to the ordained means and the Lord will take care of the rest, whether that is under damnation, under salvation, under slow sanctification, under fast sanctification, etc. Isn�t that the right paradigm?

Oh, yeah, I have since I�ve opposed sociological concepts, but it�s the old saw, the medium is the message. I think that what that means is if our work is done with reverence and awe and seriousness, that sends a message about who God is.

If we are, you know, we�re responding in worship, but we�re there to receive and hear God�s Word and not to be the stars of the show, not to be entertained in a nursery that�s safe and orderly and things like that, you don�t want to be too hot or too cold in the building, but we�re not catering to people�s, you know, that scares people off.

I�m told we had some visitors last Sunday and they, you know, they admitted to someone that they were just absolutely shocked by our worship service. It was so different than anything they�d ever known, sort of liked it and they thought it was probably the way it should be done, but they just, you know, and that would horrify a lot of church growth people or evangelicals with a shocking want.

They want it to be in the Bible that the worship of God and encounters with him in the Old Testament is special and entertaining and it�s a different thing and it should be different.

Worship, Reverence, and the Ordinary Means of Grace

Pete Brad, my old pastor used to say when unbelievers visit the local church service for worship on the Lord�s Day, they should say to themselves, �I�ve never seen anything like this in the world. And I thought that was very insightful because we�re not trying to cater to the world, we�re not trying to mimic the world, and when we do, when we evangelicalism caters to the world and imitates it, we�re usually really bad at it, right?

The music isn�t as good and the drama isn�t as good and the musicals aren�t as good and there�s nothing like this in the world. And of course then 1 Corinthians 14 talks about these people then falling down on their faces saying, �Surely God is in this place.

And I don�t know if anybody did that this last weekend with Ed Young Jr. in the basketball March Madness skit. Did you see many people falling down for that?

Understand how adults can actually let people enjoy and let people drive across town for. I don�t understand it. I just don�t understand.

Reminded me of that Neil Postman�s book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. Brad, thank you for being on No Compromise Radio today. You did say something earlier and I want to have you have a last comment if you have the time for it.

We normally don�t allow C .S. Lewis, Chesterton kind of quotes on this show, but for you I�m going to make an exception. What did you say to me just before the show about Chesterton? Because I think the quote was pretty good and you had some good insight there.

Tell me what you were going to tell me.

Well, he was, you know, one of the things that we talk about a lot, social justice warriors in the PCA and then, of course, in the SBC and in other places, and it�s talking about a Chesterton was talking about someone who was insane and he said that they weren�t illogical.

They just worked with a very narrow set of facts. They had tunnel vision and didn�t sell the logic of some of these. You could question the basis, the illusions on. So I think in the church a lot of times today, and I fear the tendency is toward segregation and fragmentation as we talk about reconciliation and really think that, you know, there was busy with people speaking at a congremacy and some things like that, and that may be well and good in a sociology class or even in a political platform, but one of our distinct perspectives is we would say that we�re very careful with issues like that in the church and well-being, but if you read Christianity and Liberalism by Machen, if you read that fourth chapter on the church, especially the last few pages, the spirituality of the church and the church�s ultimate goal, I actually can�t read the last couple of pages of Christianity and Liberalism, I�m down usually, and Machen.

Brad, thank you for being on No Compromise Radio. If you want to follow Brad on Twitter, it�s at Chortles Weekly. He also has, I think, at PresbyCast, or you can go to iTunes or those other places you can get your podcast, PresbyCast, I think you�ll be encouraged.

Brad talked today a lot about topics that were very important and serious, but there�s a side of Brad that�s got the kind of funny, snarky, no-co type of humor, and even if you look at his pinned tweet on Twitter, you�ve got NAPARC in jeans, and so you�ve got the skinny jeans for the PCA, you�ve got the OPC kind of short, what do they call short jeans again?

Chorts. Chorts. The URCNA is Von Dutch, etc., so I think that�s very, there�s a lot of fun, there�s a lot of humor, but there�s some serious things as well. So Brad, thank you again for being on No Compromise Radio.

I appreciate you and your ministry.

Well, thank you. My partner and I are Respitearian, but he said to say hello. Oh, you know what?

I think he and I have some musical tastes that are along the same lines, same lanes. I don�t think you like that about him.

Oh, no, no. I tolerate him like a little brother, you know.

Well in this particular case, I�m your older brother because I�m 59, and you�re what, 55? No. Okay. Perfect. Well, thanks again for being on No Compromise Radio at Chortles Weekly and at Presbycast. 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 bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.