Special Interview with NEW Host: Jimmy Buehler

Introducing the New Theocast Host and the Upcoming Podcast Relaunch

Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, we have the special privilege of introducing another host. If you get a chance to listen to our last podcast, we interviewed Justin Perdue, who is the pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, and he will be joining us in August in our new, renewed podcast.

We're going to have three hosts this time, and our third host is with me today on the podcast. But before I interview him and we get started, I just want to give everybody a little bit of an update. In August, the last week of August, our goal is to bring to you a brand new podcast with us three pastors, and it's going to be the same great content where we are bringing Christ to you each and every week from a Reformed confessional perspective, where we try and help point out areas in the culture and in theology of pietism and then show you how to rest in Christ.

So we're not pointing you away from something, but we're definitely pointing you to something. We'll also have a new primer available for you. It's called A Primer on Rest. I am extremely excited about this new book.

It'll be free for everyone, and hopefully it will be an encouragement. We were able to co-write this together and bring to you a perspective, something we've been working on for quite a while, so I'm encouraged to bring that to you.

So stay tuned. We'll have a couple of episodes left for you from the old team, the old boys, so you'll be able to grab those. All of the other episodes are still available. There's over 180 of them, and if you want to be a part of the total access, you can go and grab those.

All of the unfilters are still available, and then the blog articles, all of that is available at our website. So if this is the first time you're listening to Theocast, go to there. You can kind of get caught up on the conversation.

As a matter of fact, 180 hours of it for those of you that even want to try and do that, which I've heard some people have, so congratulations. Maybe we should get ribbons for people who finish all 180 of them.

Of course, I would get one of those because I think I've been on every episode. Jimmy Buehler is our new host. Jimmy comes to us from Minnesota. Right now, it's the only time you'd want to live in Minnesota because it's summer.

So Jimmy, welcome to the team. Welcome.

To the podcast. What part of Minnesota are you coming from? Hey, John. Yeah, we are coming from west central Minnesota, otherwise known as Willmar, Minnesota. We are about two hours straight west of the Twin City metropolitan area.

When I first met you a long time ago,.

I can't remember how long ago that was, you made sure to explain to me why. Willmar.

Is very important on the map. Willmar is indeed very important. Kandiyohi County, the county in which we reside, actually is the turkey farming capital of, I believe, the world. So those of you that enjoy turkey, you are welcome because I believe the statistic goes 70 of the nation's turkeys are hatched in Kandiyohi County and then shipped all over the world for growing, getting fat, and slaughtering, and eating, and all that good stuff.

Yeah, parents cover your children's ears. Yeah, I'm sorry. This is not a child-safe interview. So does the county have a unique smell to it? You know, in the fall, once they lay the manure, as they call it in these parts, the manure, yes, if there is a warm day in November, it smells pretty awesome outside.

So yes, Willmar is a large agricultural community, and so we have a lot of farmers, a lot of large farms. You know, I know a few farmers that have four to five to six thousand acre farms. So it's a pretty large agricultural area that's the main source of industry in our county.

That's awesome. Well, I wanted to just get everybody to get a.

Chance to know Jimmy and kind of his background. So Jimmy, tell us a little about your family.

Sure. So I'm married to my wife, Kelsey. We got married in 2010, October 2010. Together, we have three children, Charlie, who is going to be a first grader. He'll be seven this fall. Our son, Owen, will be five in just a couple months, and then we have a two-year-old daughter,.

Nora. Thanks, Jimmy. I think what's interesting about the team now that's around the theological cyber-octagon, now that we're all in three different states, is that we all kind of have a similar background of transitioning out of a pietistic context into more of a Reformed confessional context.

From a Pietistic Background to a Reformed Confessional Mindset

And so, Jimmy, I think it'd be helpful for our listeners just to kind of hear about, I think, your transition, just of how is it you came to know Christ and trust in Christ, and then this transition from kind of a more legalistic, pietistic background into where you are today.

Sure. Yeah, so I grew up in Toledo, Ohio, so those are my stomping grounds. It's where many of my family still live. My parents were children of the Young Life movement, and so my mom came out of a Roman Catholic background.

My dad came out of an Evangelical Lutheran background. They met in the Young Life movement, and after they got married, they had us as kids, and then we went to an Evangelical church growing up. Still have very fond memories of that church, very dear friends that are still there that I'm still connected with.

I was the kid growing up that was kicked out of Sunday school for being disruptive, for being rude, for not listening. I was also the kid that would beg to not go to church and also beg to leave church as soon as it was finished, and so that is kind of a little bit of my background, my childhood.

So appreciative of my parents. They were so faithful in bringing us to worship on the Lord's Day each and every Sunday. I mean, I remember even after prom, my parents waking me up and saying, you're going to church.

We're going to church. And so I'm grateful for my dad and my mom and their influence in me in that area. So growing up, I was never really interested in Christ, not interested in the gospel. I couldn't explain what the gospel was, and I vividly remember actually having a sit-down with my youth pastor at the time.

I was probably 14, 15 years old, and he asked me kind of the classic question, if you died, where would you go? And I said, well, I'd for sure go to heaven, and he asked me why. And I kind of gave the typical Evangelical answer as a teenager.

Well, I'm a good person, and I've done many good things, and I'm actually just not that bad. And so he explained to me the gospel in very simple forms. And for whatever reason, that instance or that moment just kind of sticks out in my brain as the first time that I heard about Christ bearing my sin and my offense against the Holy God.

And so that kind of sticks out to me. And so I believe I was baptized about a year later in my church. Very grateful for that season. I was a classic teenager doing classic, dumb teenager things. But the interesting thing for me is that as I kind of Monday morning quarterback my adolescence, I look back, and I definitely saw this change in my mindset, and yet I was very much living in a Roman seven world, if that makes sense.

So I was still doing things that I did not want to do, and the things that I wanted to do, I couldn't do. And so my oldest brother was very influential, still very influential on me. I still look up to him in many ways.

He went into full-time ministry. He went to Bible college to become a pastor. And so I thought, man, that looks cool. He looked like he was having a fun time in college. So I thought, I should do that.

And so I always had a draw. I had a really good relationship with my youth pastors. They were godly men who loved me in spite of my flaws and my weaknesses and my general idiot-ness, if I can say that.

And so I decided to go to Bible college. Went for a little bit down in Georgia, but ended up in the Twin Cities at a Bible college there. And it was there that I got connected to a Calvinistic college ministry.

And during my involvement there, I attended Bethlehem Baptist Church, which is where John Piper was the pastor at the time. And so really during my time there, I got to sit under some expositional preaching for the first time, learning a lot about what it means to preach the sovereignty of God.

Men who were investing in me in the college ministry were teaching me just about the doctrines of grace. And so it was during my time there that I really began to grow in my understanding of the gospel.

So that's just a little bit of my background of kind of where I'm coming from.

Ministry Experience and the Move Toward Church Planting

Yeah. So talk to us a little bit about your ministry experience. At what point did you start pastoral ministry? How long have you been in pastoral ministry now?

Yeah, since 2011. So once I graduated, my wife and I, we got married in college. So we got married in October 2010. I graduated college December 2010, and then I started my first ministry job January 2011.

So it was a very short period of transition for us. So we transitioned from the Twin Cities to about an hour north of the Twin Cities. So at the time, the college that I was at had a college campus pastor, if you will.

And he took a full-time senior pastor role and really just brought me with him on a risk. He took a huge risk in bringing a young college grad. And so I began in this small rural church as the director of youth worship and young adult ministry.

So imagine that job title at the signature of your email. It just got really old typing all the time. And so my lead pastor was a super gracious guy, very influential on me, loved me really well, was part of the Calvinistic ilk, if you will.

He was loved to teach the doctrines of grace. One thing that he said almost every Sunday is, I'm a preacher of good news. And that was something that I didn't appreciate then, because I was still very angsty.

I was an angsty Calvinist, and I wanted to get people to change, and so, but he was always a preacher of good news. And that's something that kind of stuck with me. And so, yeah, we served in that church for about three and a half years before we transitioned to a different church, which was a larger evangelical free church.

And it was during my time there that worked with a really good staff, made some really good friends. And it was during that time, that phase of ministry, that I really began to rethink what it was that I was doing, and the larger movement that I was part of, the evangelical America that I was ministering in.

And so it was during that time, mix, there was a lot of working and moving pieces, a lot of things within myself, a lot of things outside of myself, that really caused me to question a lot of the things that I was part of.

Assurance, Morbid Introspection, and Resting in Christ

Well, talk to us a little bit about this, how you've kind of made this full transition and what you're doing now.

Yeah, so I should maybe rewind just a little bit and talk about really one of the greatest struggles for me. And so I want to be careful because I'm very grateful for my college season and the things that I was learning.

It was super influential on me. But I remember very vividly in college, I really began to struggle with the idea of assurance and really began to struggle with the idea of, I just never felt like I was enough.

And so one of the things that was very popular during that season was just the idea of Christian hedonism and the idea of being satisfied in God and those kinds of things. And it was just something that my inner man just could not grasp.

It was something that I couldn't quite, it just never clicked in my brain. And so what that led me toward was kind of this life of morbid introspection. It's like I became a really good Puritan. And so I was always investigating my fruit and I was always investigating my feelings and the things that were going on inside of me.

And ultimately what that led to, and you guys have talked about this a lot extensively on your podcast. Ultimately, what that led to was just a lot of despair because I never felt like I was enough. I never felt like my feelings were in the right place.

I never felt like my assurance was there. And so honestly, John, how this played out as a pastor is I became so exacting in my tone. I became so angry as a pastor because I had this deep struggle within me.

And so I thought the way to deal with that with others, I thought the way to shepherd through that was to preach and teach and pastor in such a way where you had to kind of shake people up and wake them up to, hey, there's some spiritual realities that you need to be alive to.

And the way to do that is to almost scare you into it, almost to use some fear mongering. And so it was almost as if I was trying to do that to myself, but I was really taking it out on others. And this really played out in the first church that I served in.

I actually went back and emailed the elders and the pastors of that church and apologized to them for many of my sermons and the tone that I had, and told them that I was so sorry. And they were very gracious.

And we call that the scared sanctified.

Yeah, that's right. And so that struggle with assurance, that kind of went up and down during particular seasons. And it was about a few years ago that I was going through some things personally, just some battles with personal sin.

My wife and I were working through some things in our marriage. I was working through some struggles with our church that we were serving in. Our daughter was about to be born. So we just had a lot of transition going on.

And I very vividly remember I was preaching a sermon on Ephesians 1, one of the greatest and most glorious passages of all of the Bible, talking about how from eternity past, our salvation is secure. To use the covenantal language, it's the covenant of redemption on full display in Ephesians 1.

And I remember preaching this sermon, coming home, and the way I describe it is imagine a tall glass of clear, pure water, and then taking an ink dropper and dropping ink in there, and just watching it slowly consume the water.

And I honestly physically felt in that day, it's like my mind broke. And it's like the inner voice within me was screaming, yeah, but you don't believe that. You don't believe that. You are not there.

Your heart condemns you. Your life condemns you. And what that led to was really just a long season of crippling, crippling, and I mean crippling. I could not get out of bed, but crippling doubt and crippling depression.

My wife always says, we never want to return to that because I was a terrible individual. Literally, we would be sitting at my dinner table, and I would just be playing with my food, and I would just start sobbing.

And I remember my oldest son, who was about four, three, four at the time, I remember my son, he put his hand on me and said, Daddy, what's wrong? And I just started sobbing. And I said, buddy, I don't know.

All I could say to him was, Daddy's heart hurts. And so what that led to was just some pretty intensive counseling. We have a great Christian counseling center here in Wilmer, and so developed a really good relationship with the counselor.

And it was to the point where, John, I was going to counseling almost three times a week, and just working through some of these realities. And then it was during that time that a friend of mine, shout out to Terry, I have to give a shout out to Terry.

Terry sent me your podcast. He sent me your podcast and Leaving Pietism. And it was during that time, I remember listening to that podcast, and my hands were cupped over my mouth. And it was like parts of my world, it's like the lights were beginning to turn on.

And I was beginning to understand for the first time, this idea of pietism. And a friend of mine here locally, we began listening to the podcast together. And just during that season, we were just, it was like fireworks.

I would listen to one and then I would run to him and say, have you listened to this? Have you heard this? And then he would listen to one. He said, man, have you listened to this? And both he and I together, we began on this journey of just exploding with this new idea of what it really means to rest in Christ.

And so I began to really understand assurance in a different light. And I'll be honest with the listeners to say, that's still a struggle. Assurance is still a struggle because my tendency is to look within, is to look at the progress of my sanctification, the progress of my life.

How much am I defeating sin? How much or how much better am I today than I was yesterday? And I don't want to doubt the progressive sanctification because I don't want to flatten the discussion. But I think it's Louis Burkhoff, systematic theologian, who was so helpful in talking about our assurance is found in the promises and word of God, particularly in the face of Christ.

And where I was seeking to find it was, how good am I? How much better am I? And so all of those dumb things that I was doing as a teenager, post-conversion, before I just could not make sense of that.

Because the lens that I had was, well, if I was a Christian, I would never do this, and I would never do that, and I would never do this. But now I see as, well, I was a teenager, I had little understanding of the gospel, and yeah, of course, I made dumb decisions.

And so just during that time, there was a few writers and authors and books that really helped kind of shift some things for me. So I think of Chad Bird. Chad Bird was super helpful in my understanding of how these things work.

Of course, Theocast was really helpful. Michael Horton and his understanding of justification by faith alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone. Those authors, those podcasts, those books, those things really began to pull me into this more Reformed confessional mindset.

And so as a pastor in an evangelical church, what that created in me was just kind of this almost crisis of conscience, because I just began to see things differently. I began to see the world differently.

And I began to teach in this way, which created a lot of interesting office conversations where people were like, what is it that you're saying here? And so there was definitely some cagey moments, if you will, some cage stage.

Some cage stage Reformed confessional moments that, of course, you want to go back and redo. But yeah, I began to just kind of shift into this area, which eventually led me to graciously depart from the church that I was serving in, because I was seeing some things differently.

I was having a shift in mindset and a shift in focus, which then ultimately led to a greater friendship with you and the journey that we're on now.

Leaving a Church Well and the Cost of a Changed Theology

Which we should absolutely do a podcast on. Early in my seminary, right after seminary, I had to do the same thing. I had to shift out of a certain context that I was in. I've actually had to do it twice.

When I became a Calvinist, I had to still switch out. And when I became Reformed versus just being a Calvinist, I had to do the same thing. And it'd be good to talk about how you do that. Because I remember that was the first conversation, the first time we ever met was a couple of years ago when you said, John, how do I leave this church?

Yeah. What do I do? How do I be a unifying agent and get out?

And it's hard. When you're in a context that you love people and you've shepherded them and you've walked through death, marriage, excitement, birth, and now you're telling them you're going to leave.

Them. That's a hard context. Yeah, absolutely. It was very painful and very difficult. I still love them, still support them in their ministry and what they're doing. I think eventually, for me, I just had a different way of viewing things.

Well, we've said this. As a pastor, we made this mistake, and Byron's even talked about making this mistake. When you get to a place where you understand that you're playing a different game than everyone else, and the rules have changed, and you try and make everybody play that new game.

Fair is the best way of saying it. It's not right to try and transition people in that way unless they're willing to do that. I think it's better to bring in someone who can continue to shepherd them in the way that they rightly have been being shepherded.

It's a whole other context. Let's talk a little bit about where you're at now. This is some exciting stuff. You were on right on the edge of launching a brand new church.

As you said, just about a minute or so ago, you and I began a friendship a couple of years ago. I remember asking your advice and really came to this place where the current context that I was serving in, I couldn't faithfully serve in, having that crisis of conscience.

My wife and I, we made the decision last year to walk away from that. We were really walking into the dark. We had no idea what was next for us. We loved where we were. We loved our town. We loved the area.

We believe that there is a lot of work to be done here, which is where we are currently living. We got connected to you. We started having these conversations just about what it looks like. You were pastoring a relatively young, brand new church.

I was asking a lot of questions about what that looked like. I should, again, to rewind, the whole idea of church planting to me was something that was so foreign. A former associate of mine was always pushing the idea of church planting.

I thought he was nuts. I thought he was crazy, because who in their right mind— You have to be crazy. Yeah. Indeed. Yeah. Number one qualification for church planter. Insane.

Crazy. Yeah.

Mentally unstable, if you will. And a solid marriage. Yeah. And a solid marriage. Yeah. And a very forgiving wife. So, he was always talking about church planting. Again, I just thought he was crazy. Why in the world, when you could be working at an established church with a steady income, as steady as it can be, a lot of things moving, a lot of pieces already there, why in the world would you want to walk away from that in order to probably work a second job and minister in a context where it's difficult?

Why would you want to do that? And so, I just always thought that that was, to be frank, was rather dumb. I just never wanted to do that. But as I began to shift into this more Reformed confessional mindset, and to see the joys therein, I began to see, man, there is room and there is need for this.

There is need for this. People are beginning to be hungry for Christ and His benefits. And the idea of the Sunday morning worship gathering being a place where I'm not being given a pep talk or a TED talk, but I'm being given Christ and His work and where I can find rest.

And so, that began just a conversation with you. Our friendship began to blossom. And then, all of a sudden, I think it was you who just kind of out of the blue asked me, what do you think about church planting?

And I think I hung up. We just began that conversation of what it would look like to begin to partner with Community Bible Church South and the idea of church planting. And so, that led to conversations and over-the-phone interviews, and eventually me flying down to Nashville and being interviewed by you and your elders.

And to make a long story short, here we are. Here we are being sent by your church to plant in our town. And so, we have a group of nine families, 18 adults, over 20 children. So, we are just...

That's a good church right there.

Yeah, we are bursting. Yeah, Presbyterians like that. We were bursting at the seams of kids. And so, right now, we are kind of in what we're calling core family phase, walking through our church confession, the 1689 Lenten Baptist Confession, talking about different doctrinal points, learning how to love one another and serve one another.

And so, it's been, quite honestly, one of the hardest things I've ever done because you don't get into church planting to become rich or famous by any stretch of the imagination.

It's the easy thing to do.

Yeah, right. You don't get into church planting because it's easy. And so, I've learned things the hard way. I've had to apologize to people multiple times for things that I've done and things that I've said and things that I haven't done and things that I haven't said.

And so, we've had a large learning curve. But one of the things that I've just come to appreciate is that when you get people in a room and you start to think about the unreached in your community and the unbelieving in your community and the message that we're seeking to bring, which is Christ and Him crucified for sinners, it electrifies people and it gets people excited to be on movement for that.

And so, we're excited. We're probably a couple months away from launching right now. And so, it's been a journey and it will be a journey. And so, just a quick note to the listener, you're probably going to go try to Google our church, Christ Community Church, Wilmer, Minnesota, and just be really embarrassed by our website.

So, it's still a work in progress. So, we're relatively young.

Wait, you haven't gotten public yet?

No, no, we haven't. So, we're still in our core family phase. So, the doors are closed, if you will. We're not a publicly launched, constituted church as of yet.

But it's been great. It's been a lot of fun watching you guys develop your team. It's a 10-week series where you're going through right now, just walking through the core of the confessions. Is that right?

Yeah, that's correct. So, we've talked about the Trinity. We've talked about the Bible. We've talked about the covenants of redemption, covenant of grace, covenant of works, began moving into assurance, perseverance.

We'll move into what is the church? What is the purpose of the church? And so, it's just been rich to get people together. The interesting thing is just kind of walking people into this reformed confessional mindset and just the idea of what we're seeking to bring is not merely theology for theology's sake, but rather the Jesus that it brings through it, which has been so helpful for me.

And so, we're excited. My wife and I, we are walking through this with hands open, realizing that the Lord is the senior pastor. Jesus is the senior pastor of this church. And so, we trust fully in Him.

And so, it's been difficult in many respects. It's been rewarding in many respects. But I think the thing that continually pushes me is the joy and the rest that I have found in Christ and so badly wanting other people to experience that as well and to see that as well.

And just the whole idea of the gospel, assurance, all these things just lie outside of you. That's been so refreshing for me. And so, yeah, we're continually moving forward one step at a time, and we're excited to do so.

Why Church Planting Matters in Over-Churched, Under-Saved Places

Yeah, you've had to field a lot of the same questions I have. Nashville's become the hub of church planting. If you want to plant a church, for whatever reason, you move to the suburbs of Nashville. And people think I'm joking when I say this.

If there is a corner of Spring Hill, where I'm at right now, south of Nashville, if there is a corner where a church can meet, a church is meeting there.

Yes, I remember that. Visiting, yes.

If you have a strong enough arm, you can hit six churches with a rock from my front door. You can even hear the bass thumping of certain churches as you walk through my front door.

That's pretty amazing.

So people always ask, why did you plant a church? The answer is, look, we're not here to bash these other churches or put them down, but we do offer something that is, I think, unique and needed, and that is a message of resting in Christ and His finished work versus resting in your own ability or the self-improvement message that's out there.

I think that's needed, and definitely it's needed in Willmar. It's not that it's not there, but you never can have enough of that message because it is a unique message that really there's not a lot of people who are trying to pursue people in that manner.

So I think what's exciting about the guys behind the microphone now is, Justin's been a church planter or planted his church almost four years ago. I'm going into my third year, and of course, you're starting.

So what's fun is that you have three guys who are extremely passionate about the gospel, about Reformed theology, who are confessional, who understand how it is to come from out of evangelical, the broader evangelical, legalistic, pietistic, and then know what it's like to live in that world and then try and shepherd people in that world.

So kind of the tone of the podcast is going to be very pastoral and helping walk through culture of how do you now rest? How do you now live? How do you now obey? What does it look like to obey? So it's going to be fun to watch.

I can't wait to announce your church plant. So if there's someone who's in Willmar or nearby, you're not a part of a church yet, we'd love for you to come over. Well, I guess.

Once the door's open. Once the door's open, yeah, don't come now because you don't know where we.

Are. We're secret. We're like the underground church. The underground church, secret church.

And I think too, John, it's important for me to realize, and we've said this at Willmar, and I'm sure you could say this in Nashville as well. And whoever's listening could say this to their town. Most cities are over-churched and under-saved.

And so that's what really motivates us is we want to be part of the broader church community and co-labor along our brothers and sisters who maybe see things differently, but we want to be part of that greater movement of bringing Christ to this area.

Looking Ahead to the New Season of Theocast

Well, just again, thank you for those of you who have kind of.

Supported us through this transition. So we kind of have our team now. These are the three guys who are going to be part. We're going to still interview. We have lots of great interviews set up, but it's these three guys who are going to be sitting behind the microphones trying to lead you to a better understanding of what does it mean to trust Christ, a better understanding of the history of Reformed theology and how it impacts your understanding of your relationship to God and how you read your Bible and how you listen to preaching.

So we're excited to do that. Thank you for the support for those of you that have continued to support us through donation or through the membership. And many of you have reached out and have been very encouraging in that way.

So we appreciate that. Well, new Primer coming out, Primer Unrest in August. So look for that new episode starting in August. And we're going to be going back and starting over really in a way of talking about or doing episodes on the introductory to Reformed theology.

What is law gospel? What does redemptive historic mean? How do we understand a covenant of works, covenant of grace? So we're excited to record those. So we'll see you guys soon in a couple of weeks. And thanks for listening.