August 11, 2023 Show with John Bingaman on “The Necessity of Church Planting”
August 11, 2023
JOHN BINGAMAN, board member of Mid Atlantic Reformation Society, will address:
“The NECESSITY of CHURCH PLANTING”
& announcing the upcoming Future of Christendom Conference & DEBATE featuring renowned apologist James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries
Transcript
Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father, James Wilson,
19th century hymn writer, George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister, George Norcross, and sports
legend, Jim Thorpe.
It's Iron Sharpens Iron.
This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning
issues facing the church and the world today.
Proverbs chapter 27, verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man
sharpens another.
Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to
have an view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener,
with your own questions.
And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.
Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on
the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio
.com.
This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday
on this 11th day of August, 2023.
I'm very excited about some major events that are rapidly approaching,
and one of those events includes a three -day event in Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
more specifically Mannheim, Pennsylvania, in Lancaster County.
This is the Future of Christendom Conference, which is going to be held Friday,
September 15th through Sunday, September the 17th.
The Sunday portion will be the worship services of Independence Reform Bible Church,
and this three -day event is going to be held at Spooky Nook Sports, very bizarre name
for a gorgeous, breathtaking event facility, Spooky Nook Sports
and Events in Mannheim, Pennsylvania.
This is the Future of Christendom Conference, which will feature Dr. James R. White of Alpha and
Omega Ministries, and the theme is The Gospel at War.
Dr. White is the keynote speaker, but there are quite a number of other speakers at this conference,
including my guest today, who I will be introducing momentarily.
There's also going to be a debate during this three -day event that I have
orchestrated.
It will be held on Saturday, September 16th, starting at 3 .30 p .m.
This is a debate that Dr. White will be having with an individual who identifies himself
as a gay Christian.
His name is Dr. Gregory Coles, and the theme of the debate is,
Is Gay Christian a Biblically Acceptable Identity for a Member of Christ's Church?
Dr. James R. White will be opposing that thesis, and Dr. Gregory Coles will be
defending it.
I hope that all of you listening will make every effort to be there, no matter where you live.
Take a train, plane, automobile to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I
would love to meet many of you that I've never met before at this event, and you can register
at this event at futureofchristendom .org, futureofchristendom
.org.
Register as soon as possible so that you can take advantage of the discount price.
And by the way, the price comes with free lunch and refreshments on Saturday.
So I hope to see you there, and we'll be repeating that, and you'll be hearing ads during this program promoting
that event as well.
But today I have a first -time guest who I just mentioned briefly earlier is
one of the speakers at the Future of Christendom Conference.
His name is John Bingaman.
He is a board member of the Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society, and today we are going to be addressing the theme, The
Necessity of Church Planting.
And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, John Bingaman.
Chris, thank you. Appreciate it.
Am I pronouncing your last name correctly?
You are, Chris, yeah.
Many years ago, there was a TV show called McHale's Navy, and there was a guy on there named Captain
Binghamton, and all my life I've been getting that, but it's been off the TV so long that people actually
struggle with my name now and get it right more than not.
Yeah, in fact, I remember that captain very well.
I don't recall ever seeing that actor again in anything else, but he was quite humorous, had the
perfect voice, annoying, nasally voice, and nerdy appearance.
And by the way, I'm gonna tell our listeners right away to mark on your calendars
the second Friday of September.
My guest's wife, Beth Bingaman, will be our guest on Iron Trip and Zion Radio
as well, so you might as well mark down your calendar for that date.
Yeah, Chris.
Which is September 8th, by the way, the second Friday of September.
Yeah, I should point out, Chris, that actually my wife, Beth, will be speaking and I will not.
When you were able to arrange the debate, we, not trashed, but we deep
-sixed some of the speakers, and I just, I didn't make the cut.
So, but.
By the way, I didn't either, but I voluntarily told, I told Joel, if
anybody needs to be cut, make me first, because I would rather give as much time to James White as possible.
So I fell on my sword and got cut.
Well, and I'm happy to do so.
Beth will be speaking about the gospel at war with feminism, so that'll be, she's really
looking forward to giving that talk.
Is there such a war?
That's amazing.
Yeah, well, yeah, let's ramp it up, huh?
Now she's an author also, correct?
She is.
Beth's passion is in mentoring women.
She's, like me, she's a gray hair, but she takes the Titus Two passage very
seriously about the older women mentoring and helping the younger women.
And so she's written a book on that, and I'm sure she'll be happy to talk about that when
she's on your program.
She blogs two or three times a week as well, and she speaks at Women's Ministries
whenever asked.
She gives as much time to it as possible.
She's got one coming up in Western PA at the end of August.
Now, what is the title of her book?
You know, I should know this, but it's not right in front of me.
I think it's titled The Trials of Being Married to a Man with a Bad Memory.
Wow.
There you go.
She would appreciate that, yes.
But tell us something about the Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society on which, or for which, you
serve on the board.
Yep, thank you, Chris.
Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society, and I'll shorten it to MARS for now, got
started in 2010, I believe, was several guys getting together at
restaurants and just talking about how does the Bible apply to things that are
outside of church and outside of what the church is talking about.
I was not at the first two meetings, but I was invited to subsequent ones.
After that, I was able to insinuate myself onto the board.
And for the good number of years, from 2010 through, oh,
2016 or so, we were doing weekly meetings,
I'm sorry, not weekly, monthly meetings in and around either Brooks County, which is just north
of Lancaster County, or sometimes in Lancaster County, where we would go to a
restaurant, they would give us a meeting space because a number of us would have supper there,
and then invite anybody who was interested, anybody who we could catch their ear, to
listen to several of us give talks about how the Bible
applies to various issues of life.
Joel Saint, who is the executive director of MARS, will tell you that our
original thought was that we would develop MARS into an organization that could help churches,
perhaps by going in to teach a Sunday school class or have a
Saturday meeting at their churches and point out
how the Bible deals with immigration or taxation or feminism or
various issues of the day.
And boy, were we wrong.
The pastors gave us one big fat silent
treatment.
We did get a number of pastors come out one time when we bought their supper, but
as one of our members, once he said, well, yeah, you got the plate lickers.
And that's where our work with the churches kind of stopped.
But anyway, we were getting a bit of a following.
And it's in 2016 or 2017, we decided that we
would try to have a larger conference, a bigger meeting that would last for a
couple of days.
And so we started those and we had the first couple of those in Reading, Pennsylvania
and then we moved to Lancaster and then we got shut out by COVID.
We had plans for a 2020 conference that got,
we got frozen out of the venue, of course.
So since then we've been having a smaller events
at campgrounds in and around Lancaster County, where we would have, instead of a
two or three day event, we would just have a single day event.
But that's the origin of Future of Christendom.
Our very first conference was entitled the Future of Christendom.
And we invited a number of speakers.
Actually, we had the late Gary North at that very first one.
Although, yeah, he did not come physically, he had just been diagnosed with the
cancer from which he died.
Wow.
But he did dial in and give a presentation by, I guess it was
Zoom or something like that, something that resembled Zoom at the time.
And yeah, so this Future of Christendom conference that we're looking forward to that you gave
us such a nice big plug for, is the latest of those.
And we're looking for big things.
We're just thrilled to have Dr. White involved.
Out of Mars grew our church, Independence Reformed Bible Church.
And we'll talk about that later as being a possibly viable way of getting a church started.
But Independence Reformed Bible Church is Reformed Baptist.
And of course, you don't get any better spokesman for the theology and the
mechanics of theology than Dr. White.
And I'm sure especially now that he has not only become a post -millennial, but a theonomist,
which is even more of a reflection of Independence Reformed Bible Church.
That's a fact.
When I was a new Christian and somehow, by God's providence,
by the way, I'm confessing right now that I'm still a millennial, but I'm very open to be educated
on other eschatological views.
But -.
There's still time.
Well, especially since you're a post -millennial, there's definitely a lot of time.
A lot of time.
But when I first became a Christian and somehow by God's providence,
very quickly developed friendships with not only post -millennialists, but theonomists,
never had a problem with that at all, even though I had disagreements.
And in the beginning of my Christian life, in fact,
R .J. Rushdooney was a client of mine on WMCA Radio,
an affiliate of Salem Media, the largest Christian radio network in the world, where I worked for 15 years.
I worked for their New York affiliate, WMCA.
And R .J. Rushdooney was one of my clients on a program that I invented called The
Voice of Sovereign Grace.
It was on every night, Monday through Friday, and five different pastors
hosted the show.
And R .J. was one of them.
And at that time, you could hardly find anywhere in the world a Baptist who was
a theonomist.
The only one that I was aware of was William Einwechter of
a church in, I can't remember if it's Enola, Pennsylvania right now.
I'm drawing a blank.
Yeah, I think it's in Stevens?
Perhaps.
Yeah.
Emanuel Free Reform Church, I think.
Emanuel.
Free, yes.
Yes, which is an odd title because there is a Pato Baptist denomination in the Free Reform Church, but
they are Reformed Baptists.
And Brother Einwechter used to write articles for Rushdooney in the Chalcedon
Report.
And he was the only one that I was aware of for decades.
And now there is a volcanic eruption of Baptists
who are embracing not only post -millennialism, but theonomy.
So it's kind of an interesting phenomenon that's happening.
It truly is.
Here's a little bit of trivia for you, Chris.
William Einwechter was Joel Saint's roommate in college.
Wow.
So, yes.
So we know of his writings and
of his church for sure.
Great.
Well, we have a tradition here
that I've been conducting ever since we launched this program in 2005.
Whenever we have a first -time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony.
And that would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which they were raised and what kind of
providential circumstances our sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself
and saved them.
And we would love to hear a summary of your story.
Okay.
Well, Chris, I'm 69 years old.
I grew up here right outside of Reading, Pennsylvania.
And I still live in the same little borough that I grew up in.
And my parents were at least nominal Christians, but we attended
what's known as, it's a denomination called the UCC, United Church of Christ.
Very, very liberal.
And that's actually, that's putting it mildly.
Yeah.
I would call it apostate leftist.
Well, it certainly is now.
I mean, there's no question that I would not attend a UCC any longer.
But it was a church that I grew up in.
We walked there.
This little town that I live in called West Reading is a live, work, play kind of place.
And we walked to church.
And so I grew up there.
I grew up in the church.
I sang in the choir.
My mom was what you would, often people would call her a church lady.
If the doors were open, mom was there.
And she was very involved in the choir.
And so I grew up singing.
I grew up going to, I was in the cherub choir, and then I was in the junior choir, and then I was in the
intermediate choir, and then I was in the senior choir.
Grew up singing the hymns of the faith.
It may have been a liberal denomination, but they still had a hymnal.
And I never got anything out of the service per se, but I learned a lot
from Sunday school teachers who taught the classic Sunday school curricula.
And I learned a lot by reading the hymns, not just singing them, but reading them.
And so I had this ingrained love of the harmonies in
the hymnody of the Christian faith.
So I got to 18.
I left for college, and I left the church, and I didn't look back.
I lived a thoroughly pagan lifestyle through my 20s and 30s.
I had met my wife at the University of Delaware where I went to college.
And we were good people, Chris, the kinds.
We had two children.
We didn't kick the dog.
We paid our bills.
We're good, right?
My wife grew up Methodist.
And when we had kids, she took the kids
to her Methodist church here in Reading.
And I didn't object to that.
I wasn't hostile to Christianity.
I just didn't see much sense in it, didn't see much value in it.
But of course, as we know today, the United Methodist Church is hostile toward Christianity.
It truly is, it truly is.
With some exception, I know some conservative Bible -believing pastors who are
still in the United Methodist Church, some of whom are intending to leave for the
global Methodist denomination, the new conservative group.
And may God help them.
I mean, I believe that there's a remnant of people in a lot of these churches.
So much tradition goes on that keeps people in the church.
It's my church, after all.
This is where I grew up, and I'm not leaving, yada, yada.
But anyway, so back to my
salvation.
So the kids were getting a little bit at the Methodist church.
And the Lord was working on my wife.
And I was, I am, I should say, a serial entrepreneur.
You know, I grabbed for the brass ring a number of times in my career.
When I was first out of college, I became a CPA.
And then after that, I became a carpenter and a contractor.
And after having been put out of business, that business, by a tornado, got
involved in a couple of other startups.
And, you know, so I was scrambling, always scrambling.
And I found myself in the late 80s, 89, 90, 91.
I was driving from Berks County towards to Philadelphia for a part -time
job to keep some food on the table.
And you could only listen to talk radio for so long.
You know, I was a political junkie, listening to all the politics of the day.
And it just started getting a little tiring.
And one day, as I was driving down to work, I was casting about on the
radio, and I came across a Christian station, WBYN.
Actually, it was WBYO then, out of Boyertown.
And they were playing hymns.
Well, I knew the hymn, so I was singing along with the hymn.
And I started timing my drives to catch the hymns.
Well, what was interesting is that after the hymns were over, that little period of like 6 .30 to
7, they had a preacher coming on.
This guy's preaching the gospel.
And, well, I didn't know it was the gospel.
I was just listening to it.
And one day I said to my wife, I said, Beth, you really need to listen to this guy, Chuck somebody on
this radio.
And it was Chuck Swindoll.
And now Chuck Swindoll is a dispensational preacher, but you don't listen to him for too long without getting a
serious gospel message.
And, I mean, I got saved listening to Chuck Swindoll and radio
preachers like David Jeremiah, also wildly dispensational.
But that's what God used to get ahold of my, get my attention.
He used the hymns to get my attention.
And then he used that preaching to get me into the Bible.
And then, you know, once God has you open the scriptures and actually reading
it and giving you some eyes to see what's in there, you know, it's not even
fair.
Holy Spirit's just gonna do its work.
And that was that.
So there it is.
I got saved listening to dispensational preaching on the radio.
We went to a, my wife came to me about the same time saying, you know, I'm a Christian.
I said, well, great Beth, let's, there's this church up on the hill that I knew
about from my contracting days.
They used to be on a job site and there was this old man who was a flooring contractor and his knees were just
done, Chris.
You would see him on the floor, he'd be pounding the carpet in, or he'd be laying tile and he was in obvious pain.
And he would get up and he would smile.
And one day I said to one of the other guys on the job, I said, what's with Bob?
Man's always got a smile on his face.
Ah, he's a Bible thumper from up there on the hill.
Goes to that church up there on Hampden Boulevard.
So, you know, it's just something that's stuck in my head.
And we went in there and it was a Reformed church.
And so we parked there for a number of years.
That's where we met Joel St.
He had walked in there with his family shortly after we started there and I
learned a lot there.
And then I learned more from Joel and then, you know, the reading just kept coming and coming and coming.
And Joel's the one who really, you know, turned my head as far, I had pretty much left the
dispensationalism behind after about a year, but I was like you, Chris, I went to the Aumil camp
for a while and then Joel got ahold of me and then it was all over.
And by the way, I want to let our listeners know since I
clearly identified the United Church of Christ denomination in a very negative light.
There are a minority of those congregations that are still faithful to the scriptures.
And one of them is Salem Church of Martinsburg, Pennsylvania.
The pastor there, Micah Klaus, is intending to draw
the congregation out of that denomination.
It just hasn't happened yet.
And you might want to listen to, after this live program is over, an interview I did
with Micah Klaus and also Ed Boyle, who's the pastor of Trinity
Christian Church of New Bloomfield, which is a former United Church of Christ congregation.
That church already left that denomination.
And the theme is, is there hope for the United Church of Christ?
So you might want to listen to that.
It took place on June 16th of this year.
And if you type in Klaus, C -L -O -U -S -E into the search engine at
irontreppanzionradio .com, that will be the only recording that comes up.
I just thought I'd throw that out there.
Well, I'm glad you did.
That'll be an interesting interview to listen to.
It does seem that if anybody's faithful in the UCC, they're working at getting out.
Right.
In fact, after interviewing Micah Klaus, whose church is still in there, I
found out that in some ways, in some areas, he's more conservative than I am.
So he certainly could not survive too much longer in that denomination.
Yeah, it's a shame.
I mean, it's just, it's awful.
Yeah, I mean, they are almost neck and neck with the universalist Unitarians, or
Unitarian Universalists, however they order those words.
The most left -wing denomination, I think, known to man.
But we're gonna be going to our first break, and when we return, we are going to be
diving into the discussion that is the main theme of our broadcast, the necessity of church planting.
And if you have a question for John Bigaman, please send it to chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C
-H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N, gmail .com.
Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the USA.
Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.
Let's say you are in disagreement with your own elders at
your church over an issue that involves church planting.
Perhaps you're even a pastor yourself, and you have disagreements with your own fellow elders, or your
denomination, or something like that.
We would understand that those reasons and others would compel you to remain anonymous.
But if you're asking a general question, please give us your first name at least,
city and state, and country of residence.
Don't go away, we'll be right back with John Bigaman and the necessity of church planting right after these
messages from our sponsors.
The Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society presents The Future of Christendom 2023, The Gospel at
War, September 15th to the 16th in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania featuring Dr. James
White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.
We are excited to be including a formal debate in this year's conference.
Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries will be debating Dr. Gregory Coles, author of Single Gay Christian,
A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity.
The debate topic, is gay Christian a biblically acceptable identity for a member of Christ's church?
So come join us for the sixth Future of Christendom conference.
The event will take place at Spooky Nook Sports in Mannheim, Pennsylvania, and will run from Friday evening through all day Saturday
with an invitation to the Sunday morning worship service of the Independence Reform Bible Church.
This will be a weekend packed with practical teaching with a theme of the gospel at war in many areas of our culture, including
government schools, the Supreme Court, missions, feminism, and even the church pulpits.
Head to futureofchristendom .org.
James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here.
I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend, Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I
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That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd on a theme that I've been preaching, teaching,
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Make sure you mention Chris Arnzen of Iron Trip and Zion Radio.
We're now back with our guest today, John Bingaman.
We're discussing the necessity of church planting.
If you have a question, give us an email at chrisarnzen at gmail .com.
Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.
Well, tell us, first of all, John Bingaman, especially for the
fact that there, in addition to people who listen to this show who are seasoned Christians
and pastors and seminary professors and theologians, there are also
very new babes in Christ who listen, and there are also people of different religions who listen.
So why don't you define church planting?
Because I even was speaking to a young man recently who's a new convert, and he didn't even know what I was talking
about.
Okay, well, I mean, church planting is really nothing more than starting up a new church.
The question ends up being, when I say the necessity of it,
I think that is because of the state of the church that we see around us in
America today.
We were just discussing the UCC and the United Methodists as being
churches that really have gone off the rails as far as conforming
to anything that you would recognize in the Bible.
And so it seems necessary that we get churches
started again.
Then there's the question of the megachurches.
I don't know if you've ever read Gary Gilley's book, This Little
Church Went to Market.
No.
But it's kind of an indictment of the big churches, those churches
with thousands of members as being essentially just a business.
It turns into the money.
And so if the church that you're in is
neglecting the Bible, has abandoned the Bible, if the church that you're in has
more or less abandoned you because you're just a number in the pew,
then I think it's incumbent on us to think about at the very
least, think about getting a church started.
It's not something that you do lightly.
There are some things that you have to have in place in order to do it.
But if we could get thousands of little churches started that were
biblically literate and biblically sound and who were
devoted to the Bible, God could fan those little fires into one big conflagration anytime he
wanted to.
And I think that's what we're seeing without seeing it.
Some years ago, my pastor Joel St. and a number of young men from our church
went to a, oh, it was a debate sponsored by Apologia Studios out in Arizona.
And the most encouraging thing that came out of their trip was the fact that they
ran into a dozen guys like themselves.
So a dozen, let's say churches like IRBC were just this little
church that's completely off everybody's radar.
Nobody knows about it, but there they were.
And if that's going on, and you can meet those guys at
one debate, then there's a lot more of that going on than we
realize.
And I think it's vitally important.
I called this, I mean, the topic that I wanted to talk about was the importance
of church planting.
And it's mostly based on the experience that Joel and I have both
had with churches.
Well, actually you use the term necessity, and I wanted you to clarify that
because I'm assuming you do not mean that it is a required necessity that
every single congregation is involved in the planting of another church somewhere.
No, not exactly.
But I would encourage people to think about
in their churches, think about if they're growing, to spin out daughter congregations so
that the pastoring, the shepherding can take place on
biblical terms, on a biblical scale, that when things
get so big, it gets very impersonal.
A lot of churches try to work around that with small groups or adding pastors
of visitation and pastors of this and that.
But I think that the models of churches that we see in
Acts and in the Bible are much smaller affairs
than that.
So it seems to me that there's this necessity that comes about because of
the apostasy of some of our churches, of the mainline churches especially,
and also the size of our churches.
I think it becomes necessary to start spinning these out into new churches or maybe daughter, if you wanna call
them daughter churches, that's fine too.
But our experience was that we couldn't just leave
the churches that we were in, that we were dissatisfied with because we couldn't find anything
that was seemingly, well, it wasn't,
that was theonomic, that was postmill.
And we, of course, we see that as biblical, as biblical way to organize
your church.
So, I mean, that's where the necessity comes from for us.
If you can't worship in the church that you're in, then it may be necessary to
start one.
And it's not impossible to do.
Well, we already have a listener question who happens to be an anonymous listener.
All right.
The anonymous listener says, I am remaining anonymous because I'm very disturbed
about a church that is being planted and even though this church is
being planted by a close friend, I am in strong disagreement with
how he is conducting this plant.
He basically just took it upon himself to plant a church,
to make it publicly known through flyers and social media that this church was being planted.
But this was not a plant of another established congregation.
Isn't this a violation of biblical principles?
It may very well be.
A lot of people say, oh, I've had the call.
And when we began our own church, we did look to
outside help for ordination and for confirmation of the call.
You can run into some real problems if you're
just running off half -cocked and you don't have a strong team of advisors and
believers alongside.
So your listener, I think, is right to be concerned, but
maybe he really needs to speak with the fellow who's planting the church to find out
where his call is coming from and if he has some sort of
backup on his calling and on his startup.
I'm assuming that since the listener said it was a friend of his or hers,
that that conversation happened, but.
Yeah, I would, yeah.
And so it's something to be very concerned about.
It's always a concern if what you're trying to do is start it on the force of your own
personality.
I mean, that's a cult, not a.
Or pride.
Yeah, well.
And there's no shortage of pride going around.
I fight with that every day.
Do you?
Yes. Everybody that I know does, except for me.
And you're proud of that, Chris, I hear that.
People who are endeavoring to plant a church really have to
prayerfully rule out wrong motives.
I personally know of some instances where vengeance
was even a motive, where somebody left a church in bad
blood for some reason or another and they planted a church very close to that church.
Even if there's no bad blood or vengeance involved, isn't it wise to do
some investigation about the theological makeup of churches in a specific area?
And if there are already churches there that reflect your
theology and doctrine and so on, shouldn't you be not only more respectful of
the existing church, but if you really believe what you
stand for is biblical and vital, wouldn't you want to have that church planted in an area
where that viewpoint, or viewpoints, plural, were a minority or perhaps even non
-existent?
I would agree with that, Chris.
With the proviso, again, that you're not moving into perhaps a
megachurch.
It's certainly something, if we could have found a church where
we could worship, where we were not constantly fighting
either a dispensational thought or some sort of
overbearing membership requirements or things like that.
We found churches, both Joel and I tried at a number of different churches,
that we thought, well, rather than start a church, let's go here.
I tried this, he tried that, and always found something that was
preventing us from actual, truly worshiping.
And so that's why we landed on a church plant.
And so for us, we found it to be necessary.
I believe that it's, as I said, I believe that it's possible to do this.
The topic of our first Future of Christendom conference, so it's actually what Gary North
spoke about, was church planting and church building, and what to be
looking for.
And I would encourage people to go listen.
While I wouldn't necessarily agree with everything that Dr. North said in his talks, they were both
very helpful, and we have those posted on our Future of Christendom website in the archives.
Great.
The area of church planting, if I'm not mistaken,
the importance of it, seems to, in your understanding, be coming
from an apprehension of the idol that
many people have.
Many pastors, elders, congregations, and denominations have made an
idol of the huge congregation.
And I have to be very careful because there are huge churches that
I admire what they're doing greatly.
John MacArthur's congregation, where he pastors, Grace Community Church is one.
But there are obviously megachurches that, in comparison,
make Grace Community Church a dwarf church.
But, so the size can be relative, according to who you're speaking with.
And, of course, Grace Community Church has probably enough elders
to adequately oversee a congregation that large.
But it was kind of funny.
I've interviewed Phil Johnson, the executive director of Grace to You.
I've interviewed him probably more times than any other guest on Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio,
perhaps with the exception of Dr. Joe Moorcraft of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia.
But Phil, one time during an interview, made me chuckle when he was describing
a gathering of believers within Grace Community Church
that he was involved in the oversight for.
And he described it as, it's a tiny chapel of folks of about
500.
And I laughed.
I said, do you realize that's about five times the size of your average Reformed Baptist
congregation?
But in fact, I'm gonna let you pick up where I left off there after we return from our midway break because we have to go to our
midway break.
And I'll have you respond to the whole matter of church size and
the area of being compelled to perhaps break apart a large church
so that they are receiving more adequate oversight and that kind of thing.
Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
So send in your questions to John Bingaman on church planting at chrisarnson at gmail .com.
Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.
I wanna remind you, please be patient.
This is the midway break, which is longer than the other breaks because Grace Life Radio, 90
.1 FM in Lake City, Florida, who airs this program, is required by the FCC to
localize this program geographically to Lake City, Florida, where they're located.
And they do so with their own public service announcements and other things.
While they do that, we simultaneously air our globally heard commercials.
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Write down as much of the contact information as you possibly can for as many of our advertisers as you can so that you
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Don't go away.
We'll be right back after these messages.
The Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society presents The Future of Christendom 2023, The Gospel at War,
September 15th to the 16th in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania featuring Dr. James White of Alpha and
Omega Ministries.
We are excited to be including a formal debate in this year's conference.
Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries will be debating Dr. Gregory Coles, author of Single Gay Christian,
A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity.
The debate topic, is gay Christian a biblically acceptable identity for a member of Christ's church?
So come join us for the sixth Future of Christendom conference.
The event will take place at Spooky Nook Sports in Mannheim, Pennsylvania, and will run from Friday evening through all day Saturday
with an invitation to the Sunday morning worship service of the Independence Reform Bible Church.
This will be a weekend packed with practical teaching with a theme with the gospel at war in many areas of our culture, including
government schools, the Supreme Court, missions, feminism, and even the church pulpits.
Head to futureofchristendom .org.
James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here.
I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend, Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I
are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the G3 National Conference.
That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd on a theme that I've been preaching, teaching,
writing about, and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.
I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Paul Washer, Virgil Walker, Scott
Anuel, and Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries.
And there's more great news.
Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio can get you a 30 discount off the registration
fee.
Go to g3min .org, that's g3min .org, and enter promo
code G3ISIR.
That's G3ISIR for the 30 % discount.
Chris Arnzen, I look forward to seeing you all Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd for the G3
National Conference in Atlanta, Georgia on the sovereignty of God.
Make sure you stop by the Iron Sharpens Iron radio exhibitor booth and say hi to Chris Arnzen while
you're there.
Go to g3min .org and enter promo code G3ISIR for
your 30 discount off the registration fee.
It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners.
From all over the world.
Here's Joe Reilly, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show
he really loves hearing interviewed, Dr. Joe Moorcraft.
I'm Joe Reilly, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Attai in County Kildare, Ireland.
Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe
Moorcraft.
If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio, Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming,
Georgia are largely to thank since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.
Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.
Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards.
And Dr. Joe Moorcraft is the author of an eight volume commentary on the larger catechism.
Heritage is a member of the Hanover Presbytery built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great Protestant
reformation of the 16th century.
Heritage maintains and follows the biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the reformers.
Scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, and God's glory alone.
Their primary goal is the worship of the triune God that continues in eternity.
For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com.
That's HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com.
Or call 678 -954 -7831.
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If you visit, have them Joe O 'Reilly an Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener Mattoy and Councilor Gilderold
Sanchu.
If you love Iron Sharpens Iron radio, one of the best ways you can help keep the show on the air is
by supporting our advertisers.
One such faithful advertiser who really believes in what Chris Hansen is doing is
Daniel P. Patafuco, serious injury lawyer and Christian apologist.
Dan is the president and founder of the Historical Bible Society.
Their mission, to foster belief in the credibility of scripture as the written word of God.
They go to various churches, schools and institutions to publicly display a rare
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This is Pastor Bill Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.
Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpens
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Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives
to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in scripture through the person and work
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And of course, the end of which we strive is the glory of God.
If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes,
or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will
join us some Lord's Day in worshiping our God and Savior.
Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin.
Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org.
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This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our sovereign
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When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the New American
Standard Bible were among my very first sponsors.
It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience have been
sticking with or switching to the NASB.
I'm Dr. Joseph Piper, President and Professor of Systematic and Homiletical Theology at Greenville
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I'm Pastor William Taylor of South Carolina, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.
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Getting a driver's license, running a cash register, flipping burgers, passing sixth grade.
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They all require training, assessments, and certifications.
But do you know what requires no training at all?
Becoming a parent.
My name is A .M. Brewster.
I'm the president of Truth, Love, Parent, and host of its award -winning podcast.
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That's why Truth, Love, Parent exists.
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Hello, my name is Anthony Uvinio, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corum, New York, and
also the host of the reformrookie .com website.
I want you to know that if you enjoy listening to the Iron Sharpens Iron radio show like I do, you can now find it on the
Apple's iTunes app by typing Iron Sharpens Iron radio in the search bar.
You no longer have to worry about missing a show or a special guest because you're in your car or still at work.
Just subscribe on the iTunes app and listen to the Iron Sharpens Iron radio show at any time, day or night.
Please be sure to also give it a good review and pass it along to anyone who would benefit from the teaching and the many
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Truth is so hard to come by these days, so don't waste your time with fluff or fake news.
Subscribe to the Iron Sharpens Iron radio podcast right now.
And while you're at it, you can also sign up for the reformrookie .com podcast and visit our website and the YouTube
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We are dedicated to teaching Christian theology from a Reform Baptist perspective to beginners in the faith as
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From Keech's Catechism and the Doctrines of Grace to the Olivet Discourse and the Book of Leviticus, the Reform
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And finally, if you're looking to worship in a reformed church that holds to the 1689 London Baptist Confession
of Faith, please join us at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, New York.
Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Avino, and thanks for listening.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, Give yourself unto reading.
The man who never reads will never be read.
He who never quotes will never be quoted.
He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves he has no brains of his own.
You need to read.
Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the Prince of Preachers to heart.
The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and
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We invite you to go treasure hunting at solid -ground -books .com.
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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
And please, folks, I'm urging you to go to solid -ground -books .com today
and purchase as many books as you possibly can because our dear friends at solid
-ground -books .com who have been sponsoring this show since its inception are
going through some financially hard times.
They've gone into a slump, as it were, with their book sales and if you really want Iron Sharpens Iron Radio
to continue airing, you need to be helping our advertisers like solid -ground -books
.com.
And you're not only gonna be doing them a favor by purchasing books from them and you're not only going to be doing us a favor by
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An enormous favor of incalculable value because they publish and also bring back into print
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and extending forward to our current day including such modern day authors as Dr. James R. White of
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and always mention that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
Before I return to my guest today, John Bingaman who is one of
the board members of the Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society.
We are discussing the necessity of church planting and promoting a three -day event in Lancaster
featuring the aforementioned Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, September 15th through 17th.
But before I return to that discussion, I have some important announcements to make.
Once again, folks, if you really love this show, you don't want it to disappear, you look forward to the topics and
guests that I have on this program daily.
Sometimes you'll never hear some of these folks ever anywhere else and these are
very often brilliant people who are among the
shining lights in their field and yet the majority of the milquetoast
neo -evangelical or evangelifish radio and
television networks would not touch them with a 10 -foot pole because they're too controversial.
But if you love this show, please go to ironsharpensironradio .com, click support
and then click click to donate now.
The giving to our show plummeted to an all -time low during the
insanity of the COVID mandates, the tyrannical mandates imposed upon people by
both the federal and local governments and I can only assume that this had something to do
with the plummeting of the giving to this show because it happened simultaneously and I'm assuming people's
livelihoods were severely damaged as a result.
Some of them may have lost their livelihoods as a result of these insane mandates.
So as I said, we've never bounced back.
We need your help more than ever.
If you love the show and want it to continue, go to ironsharpensironradio .com, click support, then click
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If you want to advertise with us, whether it's your church, parachurch ministry, your business,
private practice like a law firm or a medical firm or perhaps it's just a special event you want to promote, whatever it is, as long as
it's compatible with what I believe, I would love to help you launch an ad campaign because I am just as much in urgent need of your
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So send me an email, chrisarnson at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line.
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So don't give your church less money on the Lord's Day than you normally give your church in order to bless us
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Please don't do that.
One of the main pillars of why this show was founded was to be a helping hand, a right arm
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I also want to remind you of some upcoming events.
First Love Radio, who live streams this program that you're listening to,
they are a subsidiary of First Love Ministries and they are having a conference
coming up very soon, August 26th and 27th, which is a Saturday and Sunday.
And this is going to be held at the Reformed Baptist Church of Tama, Iowa.
And the conference speaker is my dear friend, Joe Jackowitz, president of First Love
Ministries and Austin Huggins of First Love Ministries and also the pastor,
a pastor in Baghdad, Florida.
The theme of the conference is sanctification, how to grow in holiness.
If you want more details, go to firstloveministries .org, firstloveministries .org.
Also, don't forget about the three -day event that you've been hearing advertised every day on this show, the
Future of Christendom Conference in Mannheim, Pennsylvania, which is Lancaster County, featuring Dr. James R. White of
Alpha Omega Ministries, which also includes a debate on homosexuality.
Go to futureofchristendom .org for that three -day event, futureofchristendom .org.
And also, I just got word that we are, we
finally have our full Iron Trip and Zion Radio Free Pastors Luncheon established
with a speaker, Jeff Noblitt, who is the pastor of
Grace Life Church of the Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, one of the most powerful preachers I've ever heard in my life.
He is our guest speaker on Thursday, October 5th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the
Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, absolutely free of charge for men in ministry leadership.
And not only is admission free and the meal for free, but everybody there will get a heavy sack of free brand -new
books personally, personally selected by me, which have been donated by Christian publishers all over the United States and
the United Kingdom.
For more details on registering for that, go to ironsharpensironradio .com,
ironsharpensironradio .com, and we would love to get you registered.
And last but not least, if you are not a member of a biblically faithful Christ -honoring church,
like the Independence Reform Bible Church in Lancaster County that we've been discussing, well, please,
no matter where on the planet Earth you live, if you're without a biblically faithful church home, send me an email address
to chrisarnson at gmail .com, and I may be able to help you find a church, as I have done with many people in our
audience spanning the globe.
That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put I need a church in the subject line.
That's also the email address to send in a question to our guest today, John Bingaman, on the necessity of church planting.
And we were saying before the break, John, that there are, and I don't wanna
impugn the motives of everybody who is the pastor of a very large church, possibly
even correctly identified as a megachurch, but there are people, I have met some
men who have no interest in church planting because they want their empire to grow and grow and grow.
And remember, folks, I'm not broad -brushing everybody with a large church, everybody who pastors a large church.
But that is something that people have to really, on their knees in prayer, contemplate.
If their church is busting through the walls and they have thousands of people,
don't you think it is a really wise and biblical and Christ -honoring thing
to contemplate the planting of other churches so that these churches can have
adequate oversight and so that the good news can be spread in a further
direction geographically?
Yeah, Chris, I'm kinda getting in the weeds here when I talk about the
size of churches, because you're right, there are faithful pastors out there who have large churches.
During the break, I looked it up here in 1 Thessalonians.
At the end of the book, it talks about, beginning in chapter, or in verse 13, it says, live in peace with
one another.
We urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the faint -hearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone, see
that no one repays another with evil for evil, but always seek after that which is good for one another and for
all people.
And that's all being said in the context of Paul's letter to a church.
He's talking about that church.
How do you do all those things with 500 people?
It's gonna be very difficult to do those things.
So, I'm not saying leave your large church.
What I'm saying is examine yourself, examine your motives.
Are you going to a large church so you can say, oh gosh, I go to so -and -so's church and he's heard on the radio from coast to
coast?
Or are you going to that church because the teaching is absolutely so biblical that you can't wait to
get there on a Sunday to get recharged?
Or are you going to large churches?
You can go to the church and hide.
Sometimes it's tempting if you've been in a tough situation where you feel like you've
either been neglected or even abused in your church, and like emotionally abused
or just ignored or cast aside, it's easy to go to a big church and hide.
You know, oh, I'm still going to church, but you're just putting in your time, you're marking time.
So, I don't mean to make this whole thing a diatribe against big churches, I
really don't.
I'm really arguing for people examining their hearts, looking at the Bible,
finding out and examining whether their church is doing the things that the Bible
says, the book of Acts and the epistles where Paul's writing and Peter's writing to these
churches.
It gives us so much insight into what's intended in Christ's church, how he
wants his churches to be organized and to care for one another.
And so, that's where I see the necessity of church planting coming into
play.
So, perhaps I should have said importance of church planting or even
just scaled it back to mechanics of what we did at IRBC to get going,
but that's where I kind of land on the big church thing.
It just seems to me that it's almost impossible to meet
the biblical admonitions when you get in a church that's too big.
That's my two cents on big churches, so.
Well, what else would you like to tell our listeners in regard to the necessity of church planting?
I can give you some of the mechanics of what we did to get
IRBC going.
In many ways, it sprang out of the startup of Mars.
Joel was endearing himself to people locally.
In most of the talks that we gave at Mars were done by Joel.
And he's a very strong personality and he's got very quick
and ready answers for the questions that people will throw at him.
You've interviewed him, I believe, and you know that to be true.
And so, when we were
decrying the state of our current churches back in 2013
to a friend of ours, I don't know if you've ever interviewed Paul Michael Raymond out of Appomattox.
Actually, I've known Paul Michael Raymond for decades, but I am interviewing him
for the first time coming up in September before the
conference that you're having.
Of course, he'll be a speaker.
That's Thursday, September 7th.
He is gonna be on the floor.
Yeah, yeah, well, Paul was visiting here in Pennsylvania
over the 4th of July in 2013.
And we had dinner with him at Joel and Audrey's house and
Joel and I were wringing our hands about our churches.
I was in a church that was dispensational in its leanings and the
pastor was going through Matthew and we were getting into, we were into Matthew 23 and I was
dreading getting to Matthew 24.
And anyway, we were talking and Paul said to us, well, why don't you guys,
you have a following with Mars.
Why don't you start a church?
And we both kind of looked at each other and said, well, you know, starting a church is a pretty serious
business, which is what your previous
listener had written about is gosh, here's a guy kind of out on his own starting a church.
But we talked about it a little bit and again, he challenged us, what
on earth is holding you back?
And Joel looked at him and said, I'm afraid it won't be successful.
And Paul just, he put his finger right in Joel's face and he said, that's the wrong answer.
He said, it's not your work.
It's the Lord's work.
They said, what you need to do, you need to be faithful at it.
If you're serious about it, just go at it and be faithful and let
the Lord bring the increase.
Let the Lord bring success.
It's his church after all.
So Paul had to leave and Joel and his wife and
my wife and I sat and we talked about this up to about almost midnight and decided
that indeed we would start a church with the help of the
members on the board of directors at Mars and with Paul Raymond's help and a couple
other pastors that we knew, we would craft a statement of faith,
a constitution, put some things in place and
see if we had enough interest.
And that's why we're named the Independence Reform Bible Church because it was on Independence Day in 2013 that we
decided to start our church.
And so the mechanics of it were that we
had found like -minded people through the Mars
lectures.
We were talking about how the Bible applies to all of life.
And so we knew that people who would be attending the church are coming with that mindset already.
That's what they're gonna hear and that's what we're gonna try to fill them with on a Sunday morning is
some admonition and exhortation and edification on
how to apply the Bible to day -to -day circumstances.
And so we began in a rented fire hall and
I think we probably had 50 people at our first church service.
And now we've moved to a school, a Christian school where we
meet in their gym on a Sunday.
And we probably have 140 to 150 on a Sunday
and we're starting to get, we're starting to feel like, is this getting too big?
Not to revisit that theme, but we grew
because we didn't shut down over COVID, although we did get tossed out of the building.
We met in a pavilion during the summer of 2020 until they allowed us back into the building.
But again, with the mechanics, we often look at the idea of,
should we be finding our own building or continue to meet in a
rented space?
And Joel's stock answer to that is when
the building would serve Christ's church and not us serving the building, that's time to get a building.
When we don't have to be worrying about keeping the parking lot paved and
the roof on and that kind of thing, but that the building is getting worn out by homeschoolers in there every day and that
kind of thing, well, then we should have a building.
And at the moment, it seems very simple to continue to rent and stay lean.
And that's the way we're operating now There are some other
maybe quirks that we have.
We're not big fans of the state, as you might guess, being
reformed Baptists.
We didn't like what they did with COVID.
We like even less when they're looking over your shoulder with banking accounts.
So we've stayed pretty small and we simply operate
on cash.
Our needs are very limited, because all we got to do is pay the rent and
some expenses here and there.
But we've just decided that we're not having the government look
over our shoulder for every check we write and every check we receive.
So we've just decided to stick with that.
And we continue to be active in the community.
We just did an event in an outreach to a
pride festival in Lidditz, Pennsylvania.
That was, gosh, what was that back in June?
During pride month, so -called pride month.
And our goal is really to feed our people who come on a
Sunday and encourage them to go out and be Christians all week.
We don't wanna beat them up with programs all week long that they need to be coming into the church
to keep them out of their houses.
Instead, we encourage them to be Christians on the job, be Christians in whatever their passion may be.
We've had abolitionists.
We've had people who are very active in adoption ministries.
We have book writers.
We have speakers.
It's our job, we see, to feed them and keep them going and to
hold their arms up in the fight.
So that's kind of the story of IRBC, how we got going.
The question ends up being, at what point do we try to spin out daughter or
sister congregations?
And we hope for that problem.
We'll face that when we get to it.
Not quite there.
Before I go to another listener question, I have a question of my own.
Can pastors be too possessive of
congregation members that have developed
different perspectives on theology and doctrine where they
would respond overly negatively, if that's even
grammatically correct, about a group of people, perhaps even one of the elders,
who says to the pastor and the other
elders, we have come to, let's say, we have come to believe in the doctrines of
sovereign grace or we have come to believe in post -millennialism.
We have come to believe in theonomy or perhaps these are people in your congregation and they say,
we've come to believe in an amillennial position or we have
come to believe in pato -baptism.
You could go on and on with these things where they say, we believe it is best for us to
leave and possibly plant a church, calling a man qualified to
pastor it.
We don't wanna be too close to yours.
We don't wanna create a conflict as far as geography is concerned, but we feel this is best.
And you may have pastors that blow a gasket over this and act like a
serious crime has been committed.
And I'm not talking about people that are delving or devolving into aberrant
heretical theology.
I'm talking about people who just have developed an understanding within a church that is
significant enough in its difference from what that church stands for, that they believe
it is best that they part company.
And don't you think that elders of churches, even though they might
want to have a series of sit -downs with them and go over these things in a study and things like
that, but don't you think that too many pastors might be overly possessive, not wanting these people to go?
Oh yeah, absolutely, Chris.
And so, boy, that's a minefield.
When we got started with Mars, as I mentioned earlier, we thought that, well, Mars will be a lovely adjunct to a number
of churches in order to teach how the Bible applies to all life.
Well, and the pastors put this, the old Heisman trophy arm out
and said, thanks anyway, we're not interested.
And I think what you just elucidated there is exactly what was going on,
is the threat was that, okay, we're gonna come at them with a theology
that they've never heard.
It's a bit more robust form of Christianity than what most people are accustomed
to, because it's putting feet to your faith and saying, no, you need to go out
and get something done.
You need to go out and apply the Christianity that you're learning on a Sunday all week long.
And I think there are too many churches who have bought into the two kingdoms theology, that there's this
kingdom and that kingdom, and that Sunday's what you need to worry about.
And we're also, you start to get involved in the idea of when
people leave, they're taking their tithes with them.
And so, because IRBC runs so lean, we're not concerned about that.
We have people in our congregation who lean towards paedo -baptism.
They have Presbyterian tendencies.
We have people who've came to us during COVID who were Presbyterians, and they tolerate
us because, well, we're at least being faithful to the scripture.
And so, just a matter of fact, it was last weekend, we had a baptism.
We, I think we had seven candidates that we
baptized, and the Presbyterians came along and watched.
It's a wonderful thing, but we're not going to kick
people to the curb for their paedo -baptist beliefs, but on the other, or if they leave,
that it's a matter of their own conscience.
And that's, we try to hold on to our congregation very lightly, but you're right.
There are pastors who are looking at the bottom line.
There are pastors who are looking at the empty pews that are going to react
very negatively to even honest and sincerely felt
differences in theology where people feel like they gotta leave.
My pastor of the church that I left, when we started IRBC, I
thought it was the only decent thing to do was go in and have an exit interview, and
he was actually a great disciple of John MacArthur.
I think he'd been to 24 or 26 straight Shepherds conferences, and
really sincerely held dispensational belief that I just didn't
have, and we talked very honestly about it.
And to his credit, after the meeting, he sat back in his chair and said,
well, I guess we really see things differently.
And he sent me out, not necessarily with his blessing, but he sent me out with his understanding of why I
was leaving.
And I was grateful for that.
I truly was.
And he was a very nice man.
I really had a lot of respect for him.
He was a great evangelist.
He hated public schools with a passion, which made him very admirable in my
estimation.
And the terrible irony was that he ended up getting killed by a school bus on this motorcycle.
Yeah, it's just a few years after we started IRBC.
So anyway, that's a little bunny trail.
Nonetheless, I couldn't agree with you more that too many
pastors are looking at their churches as if it's a business.
They're worried about too many of the peripherals, that
they're majoring in the minors, I'm afraid.
And that's a shame.
Well, we have to go to our final break right now.
And if you have a question, I would advise you to send it in immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.
ChrisArnson at gmail .com.
Don't go away.
We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.
The Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society presents The Future of Christendom 2023, The Gospel at
War. September 15th to the 16th in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania featuring Dr. James
White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.
We are excited to be including a formal debate in this year's conference.
Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries will be debating Dr. Gregory Coles, author of Single Gay Christian,
A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity.
The debate topic, is gay Christian a biblically acceptable identity for a member of Christ's church?
So come join us for the sixth Future of Christendom conference.
The event will take place at Spooky Nook Sports in Mannheim, Pennsylvania and will run from Friday evening through all day Saturday
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Head to futureofchristendom .org.
James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here.
I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I
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I'm Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.
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Hi, this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona.
Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnzen and the Iron Sharpens Iron podcast.
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We are now back with our guest, John Bingaman, and we have Arnie in
Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says, in your opinion, when a church is being planted,
how much diversity of thought, and over which areas, do you think is permissible for
elders to have?
Well, so, in our church,
we believe that to be an elder, you would have to subscribe to
Baptist theology.
We use the 1689 London Baptist Confession.
If you can sign off on that, that's fine.
We don't actually require you to sign anything.
But then there's the questions, in our own elder board, we have questions about membership,
whether or not we should have a closed table at communion.
And we have differing opinions on that within the elder board.
As far as what other diversity, I think you have to agree
on the doctrines of grace, and, you know,
yeah, I mean, we are theonomic
and post -millennial.
I think that we would have a little bit of wiggle room for how post -millennial you wanna be.
There are some different views on whether or not you're gonna be an idealist or not, but -.
How about a very optimistic amillennialist?
There you go.
Yeah, thank you, Chris.
You know, as far as being on the elder board, I think we'd need a little bit more
conformity than what we are expecting in the pew.
But I don't know how else to answer that.
No, I think you've answered it sufficiently.
And before we run out of time, I really want you to summarize the
primary things, the most vital things that you want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners
about this topic before we go off the air.
Yeah, well, Chris, in one of your breaks, you had talked about the brilliant people you have on your show.
I'm not one of those.
I'm just a guy that got saved and trying to put feet to it.
Well, you did a fine job as far as I'm concerned.
And when I said that, by the way, I love having local pastors and elders on my show
because they are the guys on the front lines and in the trenches when it comes to the body of
Christ and discipleship and so on.
So I don't only have celebrity theologians on my show.
I just want to make sure that that's clear.
Understood.
Thank you for that, Chris.
I would like to say to people, you know, we got our start at IRBC through Mars.
And people are gonna say, well, you know, I don't have a Mars to start a church out of.
But what we often do is encourage people who are, if you're theonomic and if you're post -mill,
we don't copyright anything that we've written or recorded.
And if you were to go to thefutureofchristendom .org, you'll find
links to the Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society.
You'll find links in there to previous videos and some audio that we've done in the
past.
You know, get people together.
See if you have interest in these kinds of things.
If people are like -minded, you may find that you blossom into what
can easily become a church.
And so, you know, build on what we've done before.
Look around, see if you can find a work that is getting started
and find that those people love the Lord.
If you can help, put your helping hands in there.
What this world needs is not more churches on corners.
What this world needs is the Church of Jesus Christ out there in the public square, in society, doing
what the church is supposed to do, which is proclaim the rights of King Jesus.
And, you know, and that we love his law and that his law is perfect and good.
That that's what I want people to take away from what they've heard from me today.
Put feet to it.
Well, thank you so much for doing such an excellent job today.
And I want to remind our listeners, please, if you are able to get to Lancaster
County, September 15th, 16th, and 17th, please register
for the Future of Christendom Conference featuring Dr.
James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, who is the keynote speaker.
There are a number of speakers, but he is the keynote.
And on Saturday, September 16th, during that three -day event, at 3 .30 p .m., Dr.
White will be conducting a debate with an individual, Dr. Gregory Coles,
who identifies himself as a gay Christian.
And the theme of the debate is, is gay Christian a biblically acceptable identity
for a member of Christ's church?
So I hope that you register for that three -day event as soon as possible at futureofchristendom
.org, futureofchristendom .org.
And don't forget about the Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society who is putting that event
on.
And that website is midatlanticreformationsociety
.org.
Actually, I think it's, no, I'm sorry.
There's no society in the website.
I apologize.
Midatlanticreformation .org.
Midatlanticreformation .org.
And also, don't forget about the Independent Reformed
Bible Church in Morgantown, Pennsylvania.
And that website is irbc .church,
irbc .church.
And make note, folks, also, James White is returning to Arnie Trupp and Zion Radio again for
another interview on Wednesday, September 6th, 4 to 6 p .m. Eastern.
So please mark your calendars for that as well.
And folks, one last time, please don't forget that we are in urgent need of your financial help.
I always hate to bring this up.
It really makes my stomach churn to have to do it.
But we are in really a dire need of your financial help ever since the COVID
crisis and the mandates, the giving to this show plummeted and we've never bounced back.
If you wanna donate or advertise, please go to irntruppandzionradio .com, click Support, then
click Click to Donate Now or send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put Advertising in the subject line.
I hope you all have a wonderful, safe, blessed, joyful, and Christ
-honoring weekend and Lord's Day.
And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior
than you are a sinner.