January 9, 2025 Show with Steve Hofmaier AND Austin Huggins on “The Minister as Shepherd” (Part 2)

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 and 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 in 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. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this ninth day of January 2025.

This is another special broadcast we are about to conduct to promote the

First Love Ministries Conference. This is another one of those very rare commercial free broadcasts of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and we are going to be interviewing today two more speakers that will be featured at the

First Love Ministries Conference, which by the way is going to be held next Thursday through Saturday.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, January 16th, 17th, and 18th at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York.

I will be there as the master of ceremonies hosting the three -day event.

I hope that as many of you listening who are able to get to Long Island, New York will attend this very important event.

The last time we had a special on this three -day conference, we featured

Dr. Conrad Mbewe, pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church of Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, and also the founding chancellor of African Christian University, and I say without exaggeration or hyperbole or flattery that Conrad is truly the most powerful preacher that I've ever personally heard on the planet

Earth. He was on the last special program that we had promoting the conference, along with Dr.

Joe Jackowitz, a very longtime personal friend of mine as well. He is pastor of Christ Bible Church in Pleasanton, California, and also the founder of First Love Ministries, and so today we are going to be joined by two of the other speakers, the other half of the speaking roster.

We have joining us today Pastor Steve Hoffmeier, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey.

Anybody who is a Reformed Baptist is fully aware of this landmark church in the

United States that was among the original pioneering churches that were seeking to restore the doctrines of sovereign grace to Baptist churches in the latter half of the 20th century.

Starting about the mid -20th century, Trinity Baptist Church was well known as a crucial and key church, changing the landscape theologically of Baptist churches by the grace of God.

He is going to be on the program today, along with Pastor Austin Huggins, pastor of Mount Zion Bible Church, which operates the world -renowned publishing ministry

Chapel Library, and he's also vice president at First Love Ministries. By the way,

Mount Zion Bible Church is located in Pensacola, Florida, but it's my honor and privilege, first of all, to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Pastor Steve Hoffmeier.

I'm glad to be here. It's a privilege to be part of this ministry and to work alongside my esteemed brethren.

Well, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit more about Trinity Baptist Church of Montville, New Jersey? Our church was established back in 1967,

I believe it was. My wife's father was one of the elders of a church to which

Pastor Al Martin came and ministered as an itinerant minister, and they enjoyed his ministry so much he was just being biblical, seeking to apply the

Scriptures as he understood them, and they called him then to be their pastor, and that church was an existing church in a denomination, eventually left that denomination and became

Trinity Baptist Church. So my father -in -law was an elder in the church before Pastor Martin was, and it was at that time that Pastor Martin was coming into an understanding of the doctrines of grace back in the 1960s and began to preach them, and the church then adopted the 1689

Confession as understanding grew. And Pastor Martin's conviction, his determination was to do what the

Bible said and to go where the Scriptures lead and to just preach the Word, and that's what he did, and he was my mentor.

I came to that church in 1978 to the Trinity Ministerial Academy, which was a church -based seminary at the time, and I was in the second graduating class of that establishment, and it was a great blessing to have that training.

Great, and unless they've changed it, the website that I always knew for Trinity Baptist Church of Montville, New Jersey is trinitymontville .org.

Is it still that? Yes, that's correct. Great. So there are sermons, you can find a whole backlog of sermons there dating back many years.

Terrific. And also joining us today is a returning guest, Pastor Austin Huggins, who, as I said, is one of the pastors, along with Jeff Pollard at Mount Zion Bible Church in Pensacola, Florida, which operates the world -renowned

Publishing Ministry Chapel Library. Believe me, I'm not exaggerating when

I say that they have something for you on every topic relevant to the

Christian faith by all of the greats who embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace from the past and present, and I'm sure that you will find the very vast catalog of available titles and themes and authors quite breathtaking, available through Chapel Library, and the prices cannot be beat.

And he is also vice president of First Love Ministries, the ministry that not only live -streams this show,

Iron Trip and Zion Radio, but also is hosting, along with me, the conference on Long Island next week.

Well, welcome back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Pastor Austin Huggins. Thank you so much, dear brother.

It's good to be back with you. I think, first off, I just want to say we've been keeping you in prayer, brother.

I know that your health situation has been difficult and the saints here at First Love have been keeping you in prayer.

Yes, it's always a joy to be reminded of that, and I've been hearing from brethren all over the world who have been letting me know that not only are they personally praying for me, but their congregations are as well.

And just to keep those up to speed who might not be aware of my health problems, I have congestive heart failure, and during the week of Christmas, I was hospitalized for seven days.

I have been out of the hospital since, I believe it was the

Saturday after Christmas, somewhere in that neighborhood, and I have been recovering slowly, continuing a medication protocol prescribed by the hospital, and I will keep you updated on my progress.

But tell our listeners something more about Mount Zion Bible Church and also Chapel Library. Absolutely, dear brother.

I have the privilege to be one of two elders that serve here at Mount Zion Bible Church in Pensacola, Florida.

As you pointed out, it is the home of Chapel Library as well as Mount Zion Bible Institute and Spurgeon Gems and a few other ministries that we have the privilege to oversee.

We are a congregation here that's been going on for a little over 40 years, and the same with the publishing house.

As of today, by God's grace, we have been enabled to send literature freely into about a hundred different nations around the world, where we're able to send sound literature, books, booklets, tracts, things of, just like you mentioned earlier,

Chris, some of the Puritan greats, things by Spurgeon and Pink and Whitfield and Martin Lloyd Jones and Jeremiah Burroughs and John Flable.

And it's a tremendous blessing to be able to see how the Lord answers the prayers of his people, provides for those resources, and enables us to send them largely free of charge to so many who are, you know, in the midst of so many cultural circumstances where there's so many heresies and false teachings that are rampant.

And the Lord has allowed us to be able to get our foot in the door, as it were, and bring those things that are good to eat.

Very thankful for the saints here. As you know, Chris, earlier this year I was actually pastoring over at Baghdad, First Baptist Church Baghdad.

But my mentor when I was a young man was Mike Snyder, the founding administrator of a chapel library and L .R.

Shelton Jr.'s right -hand man. Brother Mike passed and went home to be with the Lord last November at 90.

And in the Lord's Providence, the saints here at Mount Zion were looking for another pastor to join alongside

Pastor Jeff. And it was at that time that the saints at First Baptist Church Baghdad, recognizing the need, lovingly agreed, laid hands on me, commissioned me, sent me to Mount Zion where they received me and installed me just this past beginning of July.

So still get my legs up underneath of me, but it has been a tremendous and exciting time.

And I'm very thankful to be here by God's grace. Anybody who has listened to Iron Sharp and Zion Radio long enough knows that I have frequently announced the website of Chapel Library, chapellibrary .org,

because of the very fact that I mentioned earlier that many of the topics that I'm bringing up during Iron Sharp and Zion Radio have its teaching reflected in either a booklet or many booklets that have been brought into print by Chapel Library.

And so I have occasion to plug them many times and love doing so.

And these are things that have been written by the greatest men of the

Christian faith from the past and the present, and that's chapellibrary .org. Well, before we go into the conference and the theme of the conference, we have a tradition here.

Whenever we have a first -time guest, we have that guest give a summary of his or her salvation testimony.

And since Pastor Steve Hoffmeier has never been on this program before, we would love to hear your story,

Steve. All right. I don't know how brief will be, but I'll seek to keep it brief.

If we go back to the beginning, Jeff Pollard and I, by the way, share one thing in common.

We were both born down south in Louisiana. Jeff and I both have our roots in that state, the

Pelican State. You might not know from my accent today because we moved to New Jersey when

I was 14, and I lost my accent pretty quickly because you would get, if you all spoke like that down here in New Jersey, they would laugh you to scorn.

Forget about it. So anyway, you know, God has his purposes and all things.

Down south, I was a member, an unconverted member of First Baptist Church New Orleans and was converted actually after we moved to New Jersey.

But in New Orleans, I was baptized. The pastor asked me, do you believe that Jesus died for your sins?

And I said, of course, because that's what I was taught. But I was not yet saved.

I was not delivered from my sins. I lived for myself. I wanted to go my own way.

But a couple things bothered me as a young person. One thing was that although I didn't do, quote, bad things that other kids did, it bothered me that they did that and they were still members of the church.

Another thing that bothered me even more was when I met some genuine Christians that had something

I didn't have, and that showed me that what I had wasn't real. And that bothered me.

When we went to New Jersey then, faced with an ungodly society where only a few,

I mean, out of, say, 33 students in my English class, three of us went to church.

One was a Catholic, one was a liberal Baptist, and then I was a Southern Baptist.

And we believed the Bible at least. So I basically went along with the flow and denied the gospel, although I still went along with my parents to church.

But it was in the summer before my senior year at a youth camp.

I was wrestling with God because my way was turning out to be a mess. And the option was

God's way. And I knew His way was right. And it was at that youth camp that I repented of my stubborn self -will, my wanting to do my thing.

And it was there that the great transaction was made.

And the Lord Jesus took me as His. But then from that day forward, I knew it meant I was not my own.

I belonged to Jesus. And whatever He was going to do with my life, that was

His business. He was my master. He was—the idea of the lordship of Christ to me,

I mean, that was settled when I was converted. I had never wrestled with that after that point. He was my lord.

He was my savior. He was my master. And so I went away. I had my senior year in high school.

Things were changed. Things were different. I was not living for myself. I had a long way to go, but it was a new life.

And I went away to college, found Christian fellowship, and took up chemical engineering, finished my four years, but at the same time was involved in a college fellowship, and wondered, is the

Lord calling me to ministry? But I determined to work for a couple years. And then as that two years working for a little company here in New Jersey called

Exxon—you might have heard of it—after those two years, I was convinced that the

Lord was calling me to the ministry. And at the time found in a magazine, the

Sword and Trowel magazine, I found actually the little advertising blurb.

It was an advertisement for Trinity Ministerial Academy. And it listed experimental

Calvinism. Now, I'd never heard that before. Experimental, but I was an engineer, so I knew it meant taking stuff out of the theory and putting it into practice.

That appealed to me. Also said emphasis on grace as well as gift.

I knew that was important. It also mentioned local church base and historic

Baptist distinctives. And all these things appealed to me because all other

Reformed schools I knew were Presbyterian.

And just a little side note, I had come to the doctrines of grace while I was in college through a college friend who asked me the question,

Steve, are you a tulip man? And I didn't know what he was talking about.

So anyway, and after I finished three years at Trinity Ministerial Academy, I ended up interested in missions, went for six months to Kenya and worked with Keith Underhill in Nairobi, Kenya, and then came back to the

United States, realizing it was not good for me to be alone and so I found my dear wife and together we were sent by Trinity Baptist Church to the

Philippines in 1984, where I labored in the ministry for some 35 years, church planting, training men for the ministry, helping other churches be established.

So that brought me back to the United States in 2018 to help care for my mother -in -law.

And in God's providence, we had three, two

Filipino pastors, two more were coming into the eldership.

We had no new students in our ministerial training program there. And the church planting works

I was helping did have men laboring, so I was free to come home and then

I was called to the eldership here at Trinity. So that's it in a nutshell. Great.

And if I understand correctly, you have a number of elders there and one of them is

Dave Chansky, brother of Mark Chansky, but how many elders do you have there?

We have five elders. So besides Dave and myself, there is Bart Carlson, Jeff Smith, not the one from Coconut Creek, but another

Jeff Smith, we call him Jersey Jeff, and Shahzad Khan, who is the son of our martyred missionaries,

Arif and Kathi Khan, who were in Pakistan and were martyred there. Wow. Well, what is the website, again, of Trinity Baptist?

It's trinitymontville .org, correct? Yeah, so trinitymontville, all one word, dot org.

Great. Well, let me return to you now, Pastor Austins, especially since you are the vice president at First Love Ministries.

Please tell us about the purpose of this conference that's being held next

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in Coram, Long Island. Absolutely.

Thank you, brother. Yeah, so the goal of this year's conference, and First Love, just for the record, has had a history of conducting conferences similar to these in various missions locations overseas.

First Love exists to be able to provide needed and necessary resources, tools, doctrine, training, books, and booklets for a number of those

Third World areas where the churches are very often fighting uphill battles against just a slew of different kinds of heresies, false teachings, where they encounter the kinds of difficulties that we read about quite often.

And in the face of those difficulties, sometimes they have access to very little good resources, good teaching tools.

And so we come alongside certain local churches that are known to us, we've built long -lasting relationships with in places like, you know,

Kenya. You said Trinity Baptist Church there, Brother Steve, and Pastor Murungi is a very good friend and fellow laborer with us at the

First Love, and we love him dearly, and we get to see some of the fruit there of Keith Underhill's work in Nairobi, and it's quite precious, as well as the

Philippines, as we were talking about earlier, and Nepal and India, and one nation in particular that I labor at consistently, which is

Nigeria, which is an area in West Africa that is plagued with some of the most incredible difficulties and insurmountable odds.

You know, Boko Haram is there. Of the Christian martyrs in the world that were martyred just last year,

I want to say about 5 ,000 to 6 ,000 of them came from just Nigeria specifically. A lot of that is consolidated in the north, where Boko Haram is, the

Fulani herdsmen. There's a lot of martyrdom and killing. The general crime rates there are quite high in a number of areas.

But theologically, probably one of the greatest difficulties is the prevalence of a health, wealth, prosperity gospel that has come from the

United States and amalgamated on the ground with a kind of tribal African mysticism, and it's produced this noxious offspring of some of the worst kinds, where very often your church leaders or quote -unquote pastors are essentially and functionally no different than witch doctors.

And it is in the face of incredible systemic difficulties, economic, cultural, theological, and political difficulties that our brethren, their labor at Sovereign Grace Bible Church in Lagos.

Actually, as a matter of fact, if Brother Chris, our listeners, could just keep that church in prayer,

I just received a call within the hour, just within an hour ago. A dear brother of mine,

Brother Shola Abraham, was crossing the road with his daughter and was hit by a motorbike and violently thrown to the ground.

He's in very critical state. He is a key brother in the translation of gospel resources into the

Yoruba language, and we do not know his state right now. One of the heart -cry missionaries there had contacted me,

Pastor Osi, and if we could please keep Brother Shola in our prayers, that the

Lord would do a miracle and raise him up. He has a young family. Amen, definitely. Well, I know that your first, if I'm not mistaken, your first message at next week's conference is the shepherd's love, if you could give us an overview of that.

Yeah, absolutely. And the connection from the mission field to the conference is that as we provide the conferences in the third world and in these regions to equip, we wanted to be able to do the same thing stateside and carry the same model of not charging anything, inviting pastors to come free of charge, equipping them with sound, theologically rigorous and experimental doctrine, and to be able to provide them books, booklets, and resources free of charge as well.

So the goal is to bring them in, to feed them, equip them, encourage them, and send them away without charging them a dime and without compromising.

And so my particular sermon is going to deal with the love of the shepherd.

And the overall theme is the minister as shepherd. It's incredibly important, even as the apostle

Paul would point out in the book of Titus, that not only Titus himself would be a man of eminent godliness, even as Paul said to Timothy, take heed to yourself and to the doctrine.

But we see in Scripture, as Peter says, that you'd be an example unto the flock.

There is power in a godly example and a formidable aspect of a pastor's teaching ministry goes well beyond just the real and vital necessary preaching and teaching that occurs in the pulpit.

But there is a life that attends that doctrine. There is an example that is walked out in the midst of the sheep of God.

And as we break all the different elements and pieces down, I say all, but all that we can cover in a few days anyway,

I'll be focusing on the love of a shepherd, that the pastor is to, in a typological way, a similar way that we as regenerate men and women who were sinners and have now been translated from the kingdom of darkness and made saints of the living

God, we love only. Why? Because he loved us first.

And there is a powerful, typological example for the true shepherd, under -shepherd of the

Lord to follow. Very often, our people are coming from a loveless society without natural affection, where the love of many has grown cold.

There's an icy indifference that grips the land. We're handed over very oftentimes to a radical apathy.

And what we do understand of love is often defined by a kind of syrupy sentimentalism that does not mirror the

Bible's definition of love. And the shepherd, the pastor of a church, has a tall order.

He must not only preach the love of God, but by the power of the Spirit, be enabled to walk out a tangible, manifest example of the love of God, to even the degree that he might be able to say, as the apostle

Paul said to the church of Philippi, I love you with the bowels of Jesus Christ.

Now, who can say that with a clear conscience today? That's incredible.

But there's an element to this where the pastor must embody the spiritual, real, biblical love of God to his people, if they will have a suitable example, something to follow, something to imitate, that they themselves may then be enabled to love one another and to love

God rightly through the teaching, ministry, and the means of grace that the shepherd is to be.

Yes, whenever men try to invent a new version of what love should be, even, and perhaps even especially, when it comes to the love of God, they wind up concocting a really harmful idea of love, don't they?

That it's quite ironic that parents, even if they're unregenerate, would recognize that there's kinds of love that are attributed to God and have been for quite a while, but it seems to get worse in our modern era.

But they wouldn't even treat their own children with this kind of love, because they would recognize immediately it's harmful, and yet they want

God to love that way. You want to follow up on that? Yeah, I appreciate what you're saying, and I think

I know where you're going. You know, there is an expectation of man that God will simply wink or turn a blind eye or overlook or disregard the very sins that utterly destroy, not only in the ultimate sense of hellfire, but those sins that destroy the mind, the blinding power of sin, the sins that destroy the conscience, the sins that move like gangrene and like cancer and metastasize into all the most vital areas of our life.

You know, sin is insidious and it can do incalculable damage beneath the surface, and yet because of its blinding power, we could be totally ignorant of it and play with the very venom that destroys us.

And here, a father would never look at his son and see him sticking a fork in the electric socket and go, well,

I don't want to startle the young boy and I don't want him to think I hate him, so I'm just going to overlook that and look the other way.

Well, that wouldn't be love. That would be a criminal negligence. That's criminal negligence.

That is apathy of the worst kind. If a father sees his son on the railroad tracks, just the typical example, right, the train's coming, you don't go out and with a soft voice politely request he considers stepping off.

The father loves his kid. He's going to full body tackle him off that railroad track. He's going to do everything in his power for the good of his son, whether or not in the moment the son actually understands all that comes with it.

Love is sacrificial in nature. And I know this is going to eventually segue into Pastor Steve's message, who's dealing with the sacrificial nature of a pastor, but you can't separate that from love.

And the pastor has a responsibility to love his people justly, to love his people rightly, to love his people not only for their own good's sake, but for God's sake.

He is a bond slave of Jesus Christ. God defines what love is. And like you said,

Chris, even an unregenerate mother or father that is not completely handed over a

Romans 1 style to the insanity of the age recognizes that love is protecting in nature, even from themselves, even protecting a child from their own innate self -inflicted danger.

And the expectation of the common person today that God will just find people in destructive sins, destructive to self, destructive to others, and that his love is some kind of unjust tolerance that just simply dismisses what's taking place is an absolute, abominable concoction of doctrines of devils, and it does not represent the pure and holy and clean and just love of Almighty God.

There is a video that I frequently refer to people who are having a hard time understanding what we are talking about in reference to the love of God.

And believe it or not, the video is a product of an atheist who was compelled to tell his audience about an encounter he had with a

Christian. His name is Penn Jillette. He is a magician that breaks the number one code of all magicians is that he and his partner,

Teller, the team is called Penn and Teller, they reveal the secrets on how tricks are actually performed.

And he was telling this story. In fact, if you go to YouTube and type in the search engine,

Penn Jillette gets a Bible or just Penn Jillette Bible, it will come up.

But he's telling the story of how after one of his Vegas acts, a

Christian man approached him and gave him the gift of a

Bible. And Penn Jillette was so impressed with this man, he saw that he was sane.

He saw that he was genuine. He appeared to have the utmost of integrity.

He was just very kind and Penn believed he could sense that the kindness was genuine and not artificial.

And the whole point of Penn Jillette's telling his audience about this, keeping in mind that Penn Jillette is an atheist, is that he was giving a rebuke, not only to his fellow atheists, who just get furious when

Christians evangelize them. He was saying that they should take a few steps back and really appreciate the fact that very often when this is being done, this is an act of genuine love and concern that somebody is demonstrating to them, even if they disagree with the existence of God.

But Penn Jillette was also rebuking Christians who are too cowardly to evangelize, who basically are putting in top priority things like the fear of hurting someone's feelings, the fear of just falling out of favor with someone because you're presenting something to them that they disagree with.

But he asks the question during this video, how much do you have to hate someone if you believe that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, the life, and that no one can come to the

Father but through him? You cannot have eternal life. You cannot enter into heaven without faith in Christ.

If you believe that and yet keep your mouth shut when you are providentially engaged in conversation with either strangers or even people that you know, if you are putting your own fear and the fear of what you may lose as a result of telling somebody about your faith and that they need to repent and share that faith themselves, you must really hate them because you are consciously doing that knowing that they will be in hell or at the very least not be in heaven.

And I have been so blown away and moved by this video for years that I've been sharing it frequently with people because I think it really gives a perspective on things that they may have never heard.

And that goes hand -in -hand, wouldn't you say, Austin, with your description of God's love that you were just discussing?

Yeah, well, I appreciate that. And I think that the distillation of that is if we who have light see the danger that, let's say in this case, the unregenerate clearly cannot see, and out of apathy we do not act, that's not love.

That's not love. Love in Scripture is ultimately defined, and in this case

I would say demonstrated, just as the text gives us, God demonstrated his love for us and that while we were yet sinners,

Christ died for the ungodly. And we see love is an act.

Love is a choice. Love is a sacrifice. It's a behavior. It's in motion.

It bears fruit. James points to that. How can I say I love my brethren and have this world's goods in my hand?

See him starving and just the prayer, be warm, be fed. That's not love.

It's the height of hypocrisy when Christ upbraids the Pharisees, when he said, you devour widows' houses, and for a pretense you make long prayers.

There is a demand in Scripture that we love not only in word, but in deed and in truth.

Love has a behavior. When it gets up and walks around, it bears fruit. It's identifiable. And the shepherd is to be a fruit -bearing, spirit -filled experience, as it were, of the love of God to the sheep of God.

And this will be one aspect out of the other subjects that are going to be covered there with regard to the shepherd's character, the shepherd's walk, the shepherd's strength, the shepherd's sacrifice and care for the flock, the shepherd's fruit.

All of these different things. I think it is important, and for those pastors who are listening, with all the respect due to your office and your station, for it is the

Holy Spirit that has made you overseers. We have a due diligence and a responsibility not to think of ourselves only as sermonizers and sound theologians, but we are to be shepherds in the midst of the sheep, caring for the flock and providing for them a kind of a godly example that we might be enabled to say, like the

Apostle Paul said, follow me as I follow Christ. Yeah, I want to repeat, by the way, the conference dates.

The conference is being held Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of next week,

January 16th, 17th, and 18th at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York.

And if you want to register for this event, it's absolutely free of charge for men in ministry leadership, whether you're a pastor, elder, deacon,

Sunday school teacher, etc., go to… Or even a seminary student and aspiring for the ministry.

Yes. Go to FirstLoveMinistries .org, FirstLoveMinistries .org, and you can click on events and just follow the instructions.

But Pastor Steve Hoffmeyer, I know that your first message on the theme of the conference is the shepherd's sacrifice and care for the flock.

If you could give us some more details and an overview. Yeah. Actually, in a way, it's two subjects.

As you see, there's an and in the middle there. The shepherd's sacrifice speaks of what it will cost to engage in this labor.

And when you've considered the other topics that we looked at last week with Conrad and Bewe, the shepherd's character, the shepherd's walk, and then his last message is on the shepherd's fruit, but also

Joe Jackowitz on the shepherd's strength. These other things, his character, his walk, who he must be, this involves sacrifice.

It involves sacrifice to take up the labor and even the love, as Austin mentioned, of a shepherd to care for flock.

You're not putting yourself first. Now, love is really putting the needs of others before yourself, doing that which is for the greatest good of the one that is loved.

And just as God's love for the ungodly, as you quoted the verse from Romans 5, involved his sacrifice.

He delivered up his son. Now, he spared him not, but delivered him up for us all.

Well, that was sacrificial love. Love is going to sacrifice the labor of turning from the world, of giving yourself to caring for others, is going to involve sacrifice.

And even just before you even become a pastor, before you enter the ministry, before you get that far, as I mentioned in my testimony, the issue for me coming to Christ was, is it going to be your way or is it going to be

Christ's way? And ultimately, when you come to Christ, you say, not my will, but yours be done.

You say, I am not my own. I am bought with a price. I belong to Jesus. And so even from the get -go, a

Christian, the life of a Christian is a life of sacrifice because you must deny yourself, take up your cross and follow

Him. And that was the issue when I came to Christ. Is it going to be me pleasing Steve Hockmeyer, or is it going to be my life belongs to Him?

And then when that issue is settled, then if you are called to the ministry—and not all who are

Christians, of course, are called to the ministry—but when you are, you know that it's going to involve not making a name for yourself, not seeking the praise of men, not seeking to please men and have their applause, but to please your

Master in heaven, even when people don't appreciate you. And there is a sacrifice involved in loving people that much that you're going to love them and serve them even when they kick you in the backside.

And you're going to still love them and give yourself for them. And so there's sacrifice involved in the self -denial, in giving yourself to preparation, giving yourself to study.

In my life, I did work as an engineer, as I mentioned, for a couple of years. I worked as a sheet metal worker.

I worked in a kennel, dog kennel, when I was in high school, shoveling dog mess.

I've done all kinds of work, but the hardest job I've ever had has been a pastor.

Whether that's on the mission field or in the United States, it involves sacrifice.

You must renounce yourself. And so the sacrifice of the shepherd, that's a lot.

But then the second part of the message that I didn't make up the title,

I didn't choose the topic, but this was what I was requested to speak on, is the shepherd's care for the flock.

And when you think of caring for a flock, of course, there's a negative example.

There's the shepherds of Israel, and they didn't feed the flock, they didn't care for the sick, they didn't seek the scattered, but rather they made themselves fat.

And there are shepherds, pastors, whatever you want to call them, out there who are getting fat.

And I'm not talking about their physical girth. I'm talking about their bank accounts, and they're in it for themselves.

And whatever they say, however they promote themselves, it's about themselves.

And that's the negative example. And the scathing rebuke that the

Lord heaps upon them in Ezekiel 34 is well -deserved. But then there's the positive example in Ezekiel 35.

I'm going to turn to Ezekiel 34 there, by the way, is what God says,

I'm going to shepherd them. You have failed, you have neglected them, but I love my sheep.

I'm going to care for them. And so we have the positive example then, if we are under shepherds, under Christ, then we are to walk in his ways.

And what does he do? He feeds the sheep. He leads them to rest. He seeks the lost.

He binds up the wounded. And again, there's sacrifice involved in all this labor.

But, you know, I'm going to draw out of that passage, and then as the example, what must we do if we're going to care for the flock?

What does that entail? And there's a lot of work there. So I'm not sure…

By the way, Brother Chris, how much time are we supposed to take with each message, I should ask?

Oh, you're talking about in this interview, there is no rigidly timed segments.

Yeah, but I don't want to be sensitive to the guys sitting there. I aim for an hour at most.

I'm not really sure what you're saying. You could speak… Because I have a lot to cover here in the conference.

Are you talking about the length of how you speak at the conference or here at the… Yeah, yeah.

Oh, well, that has nothing to do with me. I'm not in charge of that.

That would be Joe Jacobs. You'll have about 50 minutes to an hour.

Yeah, okay. All right. I'm in good shape then. Great.

By the way, we have a… I'll interject a brief question from a listener,

Bryce in Lynchburg, Virginia. And I'll let both of you, starting with Austin, answer this.

What is your most frequently heard complaint about pastors, whether the complaints are legitimate or illegitimate?

I'm sure there's truth in every complaint in some area. Wow. Yeah.

I mean, that's loaded. And the difference between legitimate and illegitimate can be quite vast in some circumstances.

I would say at least—and this is going to be experience -dependent—so, in my experience,

I think some of the greatest complaints that I hear from Christians and members of the congregation will often either come down to things that were said in sermons that either they felt were aimed at them or that they did not understand it or it was misapplied.

And so there is either a desire to wrestle with the Scriptures or figure out whether or not they are in some particular way that there's special application.

Sometimes, obviously, people are walking in certain circumstances and situations where they're going to be uniquely sensitive to the appeals in Scripture, the imperatives in the

Scripture that speak uniquely to their case. And if they have not been walking with the

Lord in experimental Christianity for some time, there could be areas where the

Spirit highlights things, and we can be very much made uncomfortable. But it's intended to bring about a godly desire that leads to repentance.

So, I think beyond that would be the pastor's time, the pastor's availability.

It's very, very easy in ministry to be going one, two, three, four, five, seven, twelve different directions at one time and trying to keep your breath.

Even I have five children at home, and so I have my first duty to my wife and to my children.

Then there's the local church. I oversee chapel library. I'm vice president of First Love. I do a lot of mission work overseas.

It's very easy to, as you're trying to keep one plate spinning—and this can be a legitimate critique—have a wrong emphasis or a wrong priority in an array of responsibilities where you want to do all things well as unto the

Lord, but your deck may not be stacked in a way that the Lord's going to honor. So, you may not get the grace needful to be able to do all those things at once, and that may require you to go back to your deck and reshuffle and prioritize the needs of the saints in the context of the local church so that you can be able to fulfill your ministry and your calling in the context here.

There's give and take in that, and there are times where, when there's multiple sheep that all have needs and they all need something right now, there's also a degree to which you teach the saints a godly character trait of patience so that you can be able to get to them in the

Lord's timing. Yeah, that is the complaint, even though I am not a pastor personally, the complaint that I've heard from other

Christians or professing Christians the most. And there are a few things going on here.

First of all, you have different kinds of men who are in the office of the pastorate.

On one negative extreme, you have the celebrity pastor who only wants to preach and teach, and then after he's finished, he disappears and nobody has access to him.

And then you have the other extreme of the pastor who is being totally abused by the congregation, who feels no need to allow him to have private time, and who rob him from his wife and children unnecessarily with demands and constant calls and emails and texts and so on.

And so you not only have sometimes the people in the congregation acting illegitimately and sinfully, either by idolizing a man and allowing him to become this celebrity or sinning by totally abusing the time of the pastor and acting as if you personally would be fine with somebody trying to remove you from your responsibilities with your spouse and children.

Of course, people will say, well, they have a unique role in life, a unique calling.

A pastor is not the same thing as a plumber or a barista or a person who's working as a

CEO of a large corporation or whatever. But the thing is, if you want your pastor, you want your shepherd or your undershepherd to be functioning in a most

God -glorifying way, he must also fulfill his obligations to his wife and children. That's right.

So Pastor Steve, go ahead. Yeah, in fact, that's one of the things I do add when

I speak about the sacrifice involved in the ministry and shepherding others, that you do not sacrifice your family, because otherwise the man would then be disqualified from the ministry.

And so I do want to emphasize that as a sacrifice that is not called for. God is not calling the pastor to sacrifice his family or the missionary to sacrifice his children, because he's called to bring the gospel to another land.

I think that's an important point. I was just going to say, have you heard of complaints that are other than the two that Austin has brought up about the pastor?

Yeah, I would have to say that, number one, I want to say that I have been blessed by pastoring congregations, both in the

Philippines and now here at Trinity Baptist Church, where that is a relative rarity.

The people in our church in the Philippines were very warm, appreciative, not perfect by any means.

And the people here at Trinity Baptist Church are not difficult to pastor.

Just last night in the prayer meeting, one of the men I was talking with, and he said to me, well,

Pastor, I know I'm not the only pebble on the beach, I don't want to take all your time. To have someone who's that sensitive and not demanding of, you know,

I'm a squeaky wheel, you better give me some grease, is a great blessing.

But I would say that the most difficulty I have had or the most complaints

I have experienced have come from personal offense, which

I did not intend. So it's a misunderstanding, miscommunication. I think maybe

Austin, that's part of what you were referring to. As a person puts on colored glasses and whatever you say, however you say it, is filtered through those glasses, and you're the bad guy.

And to get out of that, it's almost impossible. That's been a difficult situation

I have faced in the Philippines with an individual or two, and it's very painful.

But in a way, it's the devil's work and he's going to do it.

It's difficult to get around. Yeah. Well, the pastor's heart, when

I had Conrad and Bewe and Joe Jakowitz on, we were discussing how there are two elements of a pastor that are extremely important.

Sound doctrine, the maintaining of sound doctrine. You want your pastor to be theologically and doctrinally knowledgeable.

You want his knowledge to be deep. But there is something unique about the heart of an undershepherd, isn't there, that transcends those things as important as they are.

Because, as Conrad and Bewe said, ideally, you want your pastor to be as knowledgeable a theologian and as loving and compassionate as a shepherd as possible simultaneously.

But there are times in life when one has to have priority over the other, and I was making the case that as much as you want your pastor to be a brilliant theologian, a

Christian can get education in theology and doctrine outside of his own four walls of his congregation.

There are other resources available to him. But to be shepherded by a true man of God in a true way, that is an extremely rare thing, isn't it?

Brother, Pastor Steve, if it's okay, I'm going to jump to it. But I think what you're speaking to is completely undervalued.

There is a great dearth of awareness of the depth and the severity on this issue, and even on the biblical coherency and legitimacy and support for what you just said.

I mean, it's imperative that we keep in mind this is not a dig at or a suggestion that doctrine is not of the utmost vital importance.

But when you look at the Scriptures with regard to the fact that the man of God is to take heed to himself and to his doctrine, the order there is important.

When you look at the qualifications for an elder, for a save one, that he has aptitude to teach, that he's apt to teach, all the other aspects dealing with his family life, the way he relates to his children, his wife, who he is, how he relates to money, his temper, how he carries himself, everything about that man that qualifies him for the ministry is an immediate and direct outflow of his character and his heart, who he is, why he does what he does, what he's after, what keeps him up at night, how does he walk, why does he walk the way he does.

When the Apostle Paul came to the church in Thessalonica, he said, Behold, brethren, we didn't come to you in word only.

We didn't come to you in word only, but in power and demonstration of the Spirit.

For you see, brethren, what manner of men we were among you for your sake.

Paul believed it to be an absolute legitimate and right substantiation and claim to the message he preached by pointing to the evident

Spirit -empowered life, behavior, and character that those men presented themselves with in the preaching and ministry of the word.

I wonder how many men today can be able to say, You see, brethren, what manner of men we were among you for your sake.

Character is of utmost importance. It takes way longer to develop a character, to bring a heart through the kinds of sacrifices that Pastor Steve is pointing to, to make him the kind of man that can be bit by the sheep when he goes to feed them over and over and over again, and still wake up that next

Lord's Day morning with the Spirit pouring a supernatural concrete in his spine, march out there before the people of God, look with an eye to Christ being made broken bread and poured out wine for his people, and feed those sheep again.

Pastor Steve, do you have anything to add to that? I would agree.

I would also say that, and I think Conrad and Bewe made this point last week, that it's really not to be an either -or, and I'll make this point in the conference, that if we care for the sheep, like God gives us the example that he cared for the sheep, he says,

I will feed my sheep. And so feeding them with good, solid preaching, doctrine, teaching, take heed to yourselves and to your doctrines, it should not be either -or.

In fact, the love that we're talking about in caring for them individually, overseeing them, giving a good account for their souls, taking care of their souls as those who will give an account, if we're going to do that, we can't neglect feeding them.

And so you have the dichotomy, perhaps, of here's the egghead pastor who's spending all his time in his books, and I'm not taking a shot at those who have higher degrees, but he's got his

PhD, and he's studying all of the Puritans or the latest thing that came down the pike in Reformed Baptist, whatever.

And so he's all there in study, study, study. And then you have, on the other hand, if we're going to paint the caricature, the man who's just out among the flock, and he's got his fingers in their wool, and he's just stroking them and caring for them.

But then he neglects to do that hard work of exegesis and making sure that what he preaches on the

Lord's Day is truth and accurate. He gets sloppy in his exegesis, and he just preaches the first thing that comes to his mind.

Those sheep are not going to be well cared for. And so it's not really either -or, it's got to be both.

If you love those sheep, you're going to spend the time, and you're going to be with them. And you're going to bind up.

This is the point of Ezekiel 34. You're going to bind up the broken.

You're going to chase after those who are wandering. You're going to put in those heartbreaking, sacrificial hours, visitation to the hospital and whatever.

You're going to do it. Do both. Yes, and I agree with that. But I do still nonetheless believe,

I am convinced, that you will have a multitude of godly men who are undershepherds of Christ's flock out there who are not brilliant men.

They are not vastly knowledgeable in many areas of theology and so forth.

But their condition is not because of overt sin and sloth and apathy and indifference.

It's just because of the limited gifts that they have in that area. But a pastor who is not loving the flock, that's always the result of sin.

Yeah. Let me just jump in on your side here, Chris. I have taught men for the ministry over the years, some here in New Jersey, some in the

Philippines. And at times I've had men who were very intellectually gifted that I would not want to be my pastor.

And on the other hand, I've had men who, for example, I taught Hebrew, and they could hardly pronounce, and that way they would slaughter it.

And yet I would much rather have them for my pastor than one of these more intellectually gifted men.

And why? Well, it's just the very point that you're making that they loved and they cared.

And perhaps because of other ways that God put them together, they could express his truths in a more simple, clear way than the more intellectually minded student who's always in his books.

There was one man who was—and I don't even give a hint of who he was, but he was from down south,

I'll just put it that way. And, you know, boy, he struggled with that Hebrew. He could not—it was painful to hear him try to pronounce it.

But he could take God's truth. And to use another one of my pastors from way, way back, his illustration, he was from Arkansas.

He said, you got to chop it up so small, even the little pigs can eat it. And his brother could do that.

And I would rather have that than the intellectual giant. And I'm certain that you two both agree, since the vast majority of confessional

Reformed Baptists that I'm aware of have a strong belief in the plurality and parity of the elders that this is—or these are glowing examples of why it should be the goal of a church.

Sometimes it's just not possible at the certain stage they're in to have a plurality of elders, but the goal, the goal for the ideal situation is to have a plurality of elders.

The church where I'm a member of is a brand -new church. It's a brand -new church plant,

Trinity Reformed Baptist Church, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. And right now we only have one elder,

Pastor Simon O'Maney, but that's because we're brand -new.

But I know that Pastor Simon eventually, certainly wants a plurality and parity of elders.

And I'm sure that God will bring us to that point where we have that. So these are examples of why this teaching is important.

This practice is important, is it not, Austin? Yeah. I mean, yeah,

I was in a situation where I planted a church and I was the only elder for a number of years.

It wasn't the ideal situation, but we were trying to be faithful with what we had.

And that can be said for a number of circumstances and situations, especially if you were to bring in the context of missionaries.

But when you look at God's design for the plurality of elders—and Lord Willing, it looks like my text is going to be coming out of Acts chapter 20 for the conference and looking at Paul's heart being poured out, as it were, before the

Ephesian elders—we see that there is, even within the context there, a built -in accountability structure that God has designed where you have men who are accountable to each other rather than a single

CEO corporate structure where all are accountable to one. And it is a tremendous help to an elder when he has the gifts, the strengths, and the assortment of diverse abilities of a team of men with all maturity, all meeting the qualifications of the elder, but who may all vary in the degrees by which they excel in specific areas, and their strengths are able to cover each other's weaknesses.

It's a beautiful design that the Lord has made. By the way, if I would echo that, just in our situation here at Trinity with the four men that I work with, we balance each other and complement each other and help each other.

And it's a blessed privilege to work with these four men. I wanted to take advantage of the fact that this is a commercial -free show today, as I said at the outset, an extremely rare episode of Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio.

I want to take advantage of that fact by plugging new advertisers that we are blessed to have support us throughout the entire year of 2025, who have blessed us financially so that we may continue.

And one of those sponsors is Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the church where I am a member.

If you want more information on this church, you could visit their website, trbccarlisle .org,

C -A -R -L -I -S -L -E, T -R -B -C -C -A -R -L -I -S -L -E dot org.

That's for Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Also, we are honored to have the sponsorship for an entire year of Lebanon Federal Credit Union in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

And for more details on this financial institution, go to lebanonfcu .org,

lebanonfcufederalcreditunion .org. So I want to thank both

Trinity Reformed Baptist Church and Lebanon Federal Credit Union for their generosity and their belief in me and belief in Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, so much so that they are putting their money where their mouth is and blessing us with an annual sponsorship, each of them, on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio.

So I also want to repeat for those of you who are listening, if you would like to register for this free pastors conference, and this pastors conference is an open invitation also to elders—and my two guests and I believe that's the same office, by the way—but deacons,

Sunday school teachers, and even seminary students, those who are aspiring to be in pastoral ministry and studying to be in pastoral ministry, all men who are pursuing those calls, you can go to firstloveministries .org,

firstloveministries .org. Click on events and register. The event is being held next

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. That is January 16th, 17th, and 18th, and I am going to be hosting the event.

I'm master of ceremonies, and I hope that all of you who are familiar with me and Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, who are able to be there, especially those folks who are already out on Long Island, please be there.

We'd love to see you. And that's January 16th, 17th, and 18th, next

Thursday, Friday, Saturday at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island.

And by the way, if you want to get more details on that church, hopereformedli .net

or li .com. Hopereformedli .net or li .com

will get you to their website. Go ahead.

If I may, sir, say here, Chris, I looked at the weather for next week, and it will be coldish, not super cold, but no snow is forecast for those days.

If you were worried about coming to Long Island in the middle of a blizzard, that won't happen, as far as the forecast says.

Well, praise God for that. I'm from Florida, and I was kind of hoping there might be some snow.

Sorry, brother. Well, okay. Praise the Lord. Well, go ahead,

Alston. I was just going to say, anyone's looking for more information on the conference particulars, a conference description, the speakers, the different subjects that'll be covered, you can go to firstloveministries .org.

Again, firstloveministries .org. You'll be able to get all that information there, as well as a link to register.

And we do encourage you to register, because while it is free, and you will also, everyone will be receiving a pastor's pack of books that will be given away freely to each attendee.

The food is free. The books are free. The teachings are free. So please come out and enjoy fellowship.

But even in light of it all being free, we need a good count so that we can know exactly how much resources and material to be able to provide.

So feel free to check out firstloveministries .org. It'll be right there on the main page.

You can see 2025 First Love Pastors Conference, the Minister of Shepherd. Just click the link, either

More Info or Register Now, so that we can reserve you a spot. Great.

And I want to give one last plug to not a new sponsor of Iron Trip and Zion Radio, but a renewed sponsor.

Heritage Presbyterian Church of Becoming Georgia has renewed their one -year sponsorship of this program.

And I want to thank them from the very depths of my heart, Dr. Joe Moorcraft, his wonderful wife,

Becky, and the entire congregation there in Coming Georgia, that's Heritage Presbyterian Church.

For more details on that fine congregation, go to heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,

heritagepresbyterianchurch .com. Pastor Steve, there are folks that have an attitude of dismissal in regard to the importance of events like this.

They don't want to waste their time. They think that they're adequate in and of themselves to handle these challenges.

But isn't there a lot of wisdom in hearing men that you might not normally be hearing every day or every week teaching on some vital issues, even those that are involved in the pastorate, to hear fresh voices, especially when you know that they're men of like, precious faith, share your confession and so on, to hear what they have to say and what their input is on these things?

Well, of course. Our church also has a pastor's conference annually, and so we're totally behind in that kind of ministry.

Pastor Mbewe, I know personally, I've been to his home in Zambia. He's a fine man and very much used of God, not just in Africa, but all over the world.

So you have seasoned saints. Joe Jackowitz and I, by the way, were classmates at Trinity Ministerial Academy in 1978.

He was not able to finish the program because of other factors. He was nothing moral.

He was not dismissed from the program. But I think, if I recall correctly, his wife was expecting and he needed to provide for his own, so he could not continue as a student in New Jersey.

But we began together, we were together there in New Jersey for a couple of years before he then moved on,

I believe it was to California, straight from New Jersey, if I'm not mistaken.

But anyway, yeah, so going back to your question, these conferences are used, we hear men.

Perhaps you say, well, I know these things, I've considered what it means to be a shepherd.

I find for myself, it is challenging to be reminded.

For Peter said, to say the same things over again is not painful for me, and it's needful, it is necessary.

So even to say, well, I've considered what it means to be a shepherd. We, let's be honest, we become gradually, perhaps complacent, we slow down, we need to be challenged repeatedly.

I do. Let me put it that way. I need to be repeatedly challenged to take again the yoke, and it's not my yoke, it's

Christ's yoke, and bear it along with him in serving in his church.

And so that idea that, oh, I don't need to go to that, I've been to these things before, is neglectful of the fact of the inertia that builds in the

Christian life. And we need a kick in the backside from time to time to keep ourselves moving.

And I trust that this conference will provide such a kick that will promote a greater zeal for the cause of Christ in caring for his people.

Any thoughts also to add to that, Austin? Well, the first one is amen.

Amen. You know, there are some things that we never mature out of or grow out of or no longer have a need for, and that is a continual admonishment to the nature and the truth of not only the

Christian life, but for us as shepherds, to the seriousness, the sobriety, the depth, and the nature of the immensely privileged and hallowed work as pastors that we are called to do.

Yeah, no man is a lone island unto himself, even in the midst of a plurality of elders.

You know, there is great value in having those friends that we reach out to across the U .S.

or the pond from time to time, men who we can lean on for input, whose experience we value.

And as Scripture says, there's safety in a multitude of counselors. And that is a very necessary part of the life, not only of the local church, but even the under -shepherds of the church.

And so our goal really is to come alongside, strengthen, assist, build up, encourage, and yes, even lovingly admonish the eldership and the pastorate for the good of the church, for the honor of Jesus Christ.

And no matter whether you're in your thirties in the ministry and you're looking to hear some clarified concepts and get some things a little more crystallized in your thinking and have an opportunity to think deeply about what to apply to the practicum of your ministry, or you are a man of great and advanced experience and years, there is a place in Scripture for the continual encouragement, support, and admonishment of those counselors and those men whose desire it is to honor

Jesus Christ in all that they do. Amen. Amen. What counsel do you have to offer—and

I'll start with Steve this time—to those that are frustrated because they happen to geographically live in an area where they can't find a church that possesses the same theology, doctrine, confession, worldview, or even the same vision for the pastor that you men are boldly declaring today?

What can you say to these folks that feel so frustrated about something like that?

I would start by saying that we need to not have a perfectionist view of the church that, well, if the church doesn't dot its

I's and cross its T's just so I can't be part of it. I think we need to have a love for the body of Christ that is accepting of something less than ideal.

Now, having said that, of course, there are lines that we have to draw, and we have to say that, okay,

I can't tolerate a preaching in which God's name is—or

God's character is maligned by painting him as this poor God who is there just bringing his hands, waiting for men somehow to respond to him.

So there are lines, yes, but again, balance.

Don't have a perfectionist view, but on the other hand, if in your area there is no church with which you can in good conscience join yourself, then

I would say you have two options. Plan a church or relocate to an area where there is such a good church.

And I would say to a young person who is looking for a job, starting a career, that you should not even consider taking a job where there is not a good church.

I would make that a priority for you and your family to be in a place where you can serve

Christ in good conscience and have your soul fed. Amen. And Austin, you want to pick up?

No, I mean, that's hard to add to. I was actually in God's providence having almost this exact conversation with my co -elder,

Pastor Jeff Pollard, yesterday or the day before. You know, in certain contexts, this issue is more real and more prevalent than in some other context.

You know, we have seen some of the difficult nature of ministering in some of the foreign contexts.

You know, I'll just use Nigeria as an example. It's one very near and familiar to me. You know, we may have conferences, kind of like what we're doing here with Minister of Shepherd in Long Island, and there will be people driving in and coming in from four or five hours out and, you know, through difficult terrain and infrastructure to get there.

And that is about the distance they would have to travel to find any faithful doctrine to any appreciable degree.

And, you know, the Reform Baptist movement in particular, I would say back in, I think the statistic was 2017, something like that, and, you know, how reliable statistics are.

But, you know, it was saying something to the effect that the Reformed Baptist represented, you know, 0 .00,

and I believe there's a third zero, then a one percent of what is called Christianity in Nigeria.

You know, you map that out to, you know, over 200 million people. That comes down to like a thousand people -ish, you know.

But by God's grace, actually, since COVID, there's been several churches planted now, and slowly by slowly, the

Lord is raising up godly and gifted and warriors, soldier -like men in the planting of faithful biblical churches.

But for reality, for a lot of people, they hear, you know, this is just the case in a lot of circumstances.

They hear a Paul Washer sermon on YouTube or, you know, John MacArthur. They're introduced to some, you know,

Calvinistic teaching. They hear the gospel presented faithfully for the first time.

Sin is being preached on, the blood price of our redemption, the person and the crosswork of Jesus Christ, and they're wonderfully born again.

And they are drowning in a context where they don't hear anything like that anywhere. And so I want to be careful, you know, people in those contexts, that struggle is difficult.

And whereas, let's say in America, you know, we may find a church where, you know, there are issues and secondary areas that we disagree, and you're already starting a contention by using a phrase like secondary areas, because what's secondary, what's primary, and what's a conscience issue, you know, that changes based on the informedness and the conscience sensitivity of the individual.

What may be a conscience issue for one may be a secondary issue for another, it may be a primary issue for another.

But very often, there are churches that are preaching a sound gospel, somewhere within your drive radius.

It may not be as big as you would like, it may not have all the young people that you would like it to have.

It may not have a number of things that you think makes for the perfect church. And in American society, in particular, we are hyper individualistic and isolationist.

And we have a tendency to be mavericks and right in our own eyes, very oftentimes.

And rather than submit to the imperfect reality of others around us, many would rather sit on the sofa, have their one or two favorite preachers and armchair quarterback the deficiencies of everyone else who's not those one or two personalities.

And that's sin. There is a responsibility to not just buy into the consumer mentality that America has produced in the church, and go and look for the one that suits all your preferences and all your tastes and all the fifth and seventh and sixth issue down the checklist that you think is indispensable to you.

I do think in our context, that is a severe and a real issue. You have people that have put off the need of the local church and don't want to be held accountable and justify it in the context of a discussion just like this.

So it really does come down to, A, the reality of your circumstance. Are you of a sinful mindset or is it a real legitimate issue?

You really don't have access. And then in that case, you are left with a couple of decisions.

Are there other like -minded believers around you? Can you get in touch with a faithful local church that has a biblical eldership?

Even if they're not near you, you can at least get in touch with the eldership, explain your situation and seek their counsel and follow their counsel.

They may be willing to send them in there and plant a church. You have no idea how many church plants have begun just that way.

Someone called and said, Pastor so -and -so, you don't know me. I'm in this circumstance. There's two or three believers out here, and we need a church.

The Lord may even use you under those kinds of oversights and auspices to be used to the

Lord in the planting of a church, and that's glorious. But if not, I would just rephrase the entire question and make it simple.

If you had no food to eat and feed your family, and you were signing yourself up for certain death by staying where you're at, would you move to find a job and to find a place where you could put dinner on the table?

Of course you would. Why do we put spiritual food and spiritual bread so much lower on the priority list?

Amen. And Pastor Steve, I'm sure you would agree with me. We have a lady in our church who's from Indonesia.

It's kind of a long story how she came to us, but her family is in a town in Indonesia, not a major city, where there is the options are two—Roman

Catholic, of course Islamic, but Roman Catholic, or Pentecostal of a health, wealth, wild nature, which is not genuinely evangelical.

So in other words, there's no evangelical church in the town. Where does she tell her mom and her sister to go to church?

There's no option there in that town. So in such cases, at least we have the options of sitting on your couch and not critiquing, but at least receiving some good teaching.

But again, maybe, as you say, Austin, this would be an opportunity for somebody somewhere to say, we could send a man there.

And that leads us to Matthew 9, was it 35? I forget the exact verse number.

Pray the Lord of the harvest, to send more laborers into the harvest field. We need more laborers.

Well, one of the things I was going to say is that I'm sure both of you would agree, and we'll start with Austin this time, that one of the most valuable aspects of events like the

First Love Pastors Conference that's coming up next week, January 16th, 17th, and 18th, is the fellowship.

The fellowship can be equally as valuable as the messages that we are all going to hear the four of you men present.

And those times, those off times of getting to know brethren that you may have never met before, and even rekindling friendships with men you haven't seen in a while, or just getting a time to have some good, relaxed fellowship with people even that you've known for years, but you rarely have an opportunity to spend a great deal of time with these folks.

This is one of the greatest and most valuable aspects of events like this.

Austin, isn't that true? Definitively. I mean, to the extent that it's kind of,

A, even just on the first love side, I can speak candidly to this, it's baked into our internal structure.

You know, all the men who labor, you know, regardless of whatever, you know, titles you may see on the website, we are a collection of brothers whose friendships have been formed in the trenches of ministry, both here in the

U .S. and overseas in a number of these places. You know, we've endured things together.

We call each other up for counsel. The conference, whether it's a pastor's conference or like the annual

Bible conference that's coming up next month here in the panhandle of Florida and Baghdad, it's always a sweet time for all of us to get together, enjoy one another's fellowship, build each other up, edify one another.

I mean, it really is a family. And all of our conferences, even in the, you know, early on when it was mostly just church members from our churches, because a number of us are pastors that work together, you know, if, you know, especially when

COVID happened and, you know, we weren't able. You know, Pastor Joe's Church is out of California, and they took a particular and unique hit in that context.

But the church, it was the church members, you know, after a year or two saying, you know, where's the conference at? We want to get back together.

We miss each other. You know, so it's definitely baked into the infrastructure. I think people who have found those kinds of things valuable to them, they do look for that.

You'll find that just in the cloth of conferences, especially with First Love like these.

Pastor Steve? Yes, absolutely. Conferences I've been to over the years to see old friends.

Iron Sharpens Iron is the title of this radio talk show. And indeed it's so.

We help each other, we strengthen each other, we encourage each other, we bear one another's burden, sometimes cry on each other's shoulders and strengthen each other in the fight that we might continue steadfast until the end.

So that, I was going to say this actually earlier, Chris, when you asked the question about having conferences and somehow it dropped off my, dropped out of my brain, which happens sadly more frequently than it used to.

I was going to say that, yes, this is indeed one of the advantages of having regular conferences to see dear brethren and help each other along the way.

And Pastor Austin, what might you add to what we've already said to help convince the person listening who is physically capable of getting to Coram, Long Island next week on January 16th, 17th, and 18th, they need some kind of an extra shove to get them to actually do it.

And by the way, I want to remind our listeners, this is a free event. You don't hear about that too often.

But what else can you say to give that extra shove? You know, this is where I wish

Pastor Joe Jackowitz was on the line. We have a mutual understanding, you know, whenever we strong arm people, he's the bad cop,

I'm the good cop. But we only have 20 minutes left, though. And if Joe was on, you know.

Yeah, yeah. I know where you're going. Yeah. There's a backstop somewhere. No, I would say, you know, look, this is an opportunity that really only can benefit you.

I mean, you're going to hear Dr. Comrade Mbewe is our keynote speaker, and you're going to hear from him more than once.

And as Brother Chris pointed out, I mean, this brother is an elder statesman among Reformed Baptists in the

African context. You know, even Brother Paul Washer, you know, pointed out this spurge of Africa.

And it's not that we're trying to promote some personality. We really wanted to make sure that we had brothers who themselves are pastors.

They understand the sacrifice and the labor in the work. And I'm close friends with some of Conrad's closer friends, like Cholwe and Ronald Kalafungwa.

I actually just ministered with Pastor Conrad just a couple of months ago in Nigeria. And, you know, these are rare and precious, unique brethren whose ministry experience even far excels my own.

And to be able to sit down with a man who knows what it's like to do some unusual things in ministry and with them have some unusual degrees of spiritual warfare, pain, tears, and labors, and also see the victories of the

Spirit of God work mightily and who has a great many testimonies of God's deliverance and power through a myriad of circumstances.

That's invaluable. Pastor Joe is a mentor of mine. You know, as a young man,

I wouldn't be where I'm at today if not for the open doors he gave me in the mission field early on.

You know, really, Pastor Steve is the one person

I have not known quite as well and as long. And so if you're listening, you're watching the beginning of a friendship blossom,

I hope. But you're on mute, brother. But the thing

I will say is, you know, I have met the men that Pastor Steve has taught and ministered on the ground where he planted churches in the

Philippines, the pastors from Moonwalk. And I've seen the indelible marks left by the

Spirit on their own soul from the ministry of this brother. I think there has been some damage done, some real damage done.

I don't think I'm being bold or brazen by saying, you know, some of the conference circuit culture in America has possibly well worn out and gone beyond the actual spiritual need in America.

I would think that especially some of the promotion and elevation of the turning preachers into idols, the celebrity pastor kind of thing, has done some real damage.

And I think we've felt and seen the effects of that. But what I'm inviting you to come do is actually sit down and engage, ask questions, fellowship, not only with men who simply see themselves as brothers and want to engage with you, want to be a help to you, but all the different pastors that are going to be sitting in the chairs to the left and right of you.

I mean, there's going to be men in there with far more pastoral experience than maybe what you would even find with some of us on the stage.

I think you have an opportunity to rub shoulders with men who care about the truth, men who want to grow, men who are not satisfied with their current degree of attainments and sanctification and shepherding, but whose heart is aimed towards pleasing the

Lord. And if that is the kind of culture and circle and friendships you want to make and be a part of,

I think this is the opportunity for you to be able to do that free of charge and walk away with resources that'll continue to teach long after the conference has ended.

Any more ammunition in your arsenal, Pastor Steve, to help to convince some of our listeners on the fence who are not yet decided about coming?

Yes, I would say this. It was mentioned, I forget which of you said it, but that one of the monikers that has been given to our brother,

Pastor Conrad Mbewe, is the Spurgeon of Africa. And I interacted with him,

I guess it was a year or so ago at a conference, and I told him this. I was thankful nobody ever called me the

Spurgeon of anything, because that would be a hard thing to overcome. It would be easy for that to go to your head.

I'm the Spurgeon of Timbuktu or wherever. Well, I'm not the Spurgeon of anywhere.

But he is not a cocky, proud, self -important individual.

One thing that characterizes this man, if you might be afraid of coming to hear a celebrity pastor, that is not

Conrad Mbewe. He is a humble, gracious, godly servant of Christ.

And I can say that because I've interacted with him, I've been in his home, I know him. Not that he's a close friend that I've known all my life, but from what

I've seen, I can say this with absolute certainty, he is a humble servant of Christ.

And you will learn from him if you come to this conference. I have actually gained,

I think, a well -deserved nickname over the years of being the Spurgeon of the buffet line.

So I just wanted to let you know. One of the members of my church recently paid me maybe a backhanded compliment and said,

Brother, you run like Spurgeon. Well, by the way,

I am blessed. I know this will be viewed as braggadocio, and it probably is, but I am a very close friend of Conrad Mbewe, and thank

God for that friendship. I've known him since 1996. Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York, which was my former church before I relocated to Pennsylvania.

That was the very first church in the United States where Conrad preached outside of Africa in 1996.

And we have maintained a close friendship ever since then. And that reminds me to ask of you who are listening to please pray for a mutual friend of Conrad's and mine.

His name is Gary Wolf. Gary went to the same high school with me back in the late 1970s.

He graduated in 80, at least I did. Gary may have graduated a different year.

But Gary and I were both saved at Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville, which would eventually become

Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick. And Gary has been diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer.

And both Conrad and I intend to visit Gary. I don't know if we're going to be visiting him at the same time, but we are going to be visiting

Gary when we're on Long Island, which may be the last time we see him face to face.

And I would appreciate your prayers for Gary, that if the Lord is pleased to bring about a physical miracle in his life or use physicians and the gift of medicine and the gift of surgery and so on, and medical procedures to prolong or even heal

Gary of this terminal illness, or just to make

Gary to be the boldest and most joyful and effective ambassador for Christ in the midst of this trial that he could possibly be as he continues to have interaction with others while he faces death, something that has terrified him.

But at the same time, since he is a true believer, he is facing his eternity with grace.

And he is, I think, handling it remarkably well in spite of his fear.

But please pray for Gary Wolf and pray that both Conrad and I know what to say and when to remain silent and certainly know what not to say, as this will possibly be our final conversation with Gary, or at least face to face.

So I appreciate your prayers. He's a precious brother in Christ. And I'd like, first of all,

Austin, to give some final words of summation before we go off the air on this conference.

Absolutely. And for those who may be tuning in later, just now catching the end of the episode, there is a

First Love Pastors Conference, which is co -sponsored with Iron Sharpens Iron radio program, where Brother Chris will be our host and speaking and moderating the master of ceremonies for the event.

It'll be held January 16th through the 18th. It is a Thursday, Friday, Saturday of at, rather,

Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Coram, Long Island, New York. The conference is free. The conference will also be providing a pastor's pack of books.

You'll also be getting a copy of The Minister as Shepherd, the book, which was a tremendous blessing to me as a young believer, excuse me, as a young minister, with regard to not only thinking about the ministry in terms of being a preacher or a theologian or an elder in terms of authority, but the minister as a shepherd, the one who is constantly pulling from the pharmacopoeia of Scripture and applying it to the needs of the sheep and doing it with the kind of wisdom that actually knows the

Scriptures well enough to apply the right remedy to the right ailments and to walk out a kind of character and heart and attitude that provides the sheep of God an example to follow.

And so this conference will be dealing with the importance of character and compassion in the pastoral ministry, and that we should be reminded that our job is not only to preach

Christ and to preach the gospel, but to grow in our own Christ -likeness and cultivate that loving heart of a shepherd that we may accurately represent the

Lord's interest to his people and be able to say, as Paul said, follow me as I follow Christ. If you have any questions for us at all, you can reach out to us via email.

You can get either austin at firstloveministries .org, tom at firstloveministries .org, joe at firstloveministries .org.

You can go directly to the website at firstloveministries .org, and there's a contact us option at the top of the page.

You can go there and get all the information on the website you need with regard to the speakers, the registration links, the venue, the venue address, the dates, the entire schedule.

Everything you need is provided there, but we do encourage you if you do decide to come to go ahead and click that register now button that you'll find there.

That gives us an accurate count so that even though everything's free and you're not going to be charged anything, you don't need to put in your credit card number or anything like that, but we do need an accurate count so that we can ensure we are providing a sufficient amount of resources for all the people that are coming.

Please invite those pastors and ministers or those young students that are aspiring for ministry that you think would benefit from something like this.

We're looking forward to having a good time of fellowship and meeting new friends and being able to compare notes and rejoice in the weighty and sober calling that has been placed upon us, and be a means of grace and a resource in one another's lives that we may be as godly and spiritual and accountable of the pastor as we can be and be as helpful to the sheep of the

Lord Jesus Christ as he's intended us to be. So, the Minister of Shepherd—go ahead,

Chris. No, go ahead. You can repeat it. I was just going to just tell Steve that he has about four minutes to give a summary as well.

Well, I was just going to say, in closing, the Minister of Shepherd 2025 First Love Pastors Conference.

We hope to see you there. Great. And Steve, if you have four minutes. All right.

Just to say that I'm looking forward to also making new friends. I'm not sure how many of my old, old buddies are going to be there.

I look forward to seeing Joe Jakowicz again for the first time in over 40 years and retouching base with him again.

And I don't know, will Jeff Pollard be coming out, Austin? No, he won't be able to make it this time.

And when he found out you were coming, I think he had a certain sadness added to that note.

We met at the conference, the Trinity Conference here. In fact, I picked him up at the airport a couple of times back when we were home on furlough from the

Philippines and he came. And also, say hello to Pastor Simon.

I've had the opportunity of having breakfast with him in Pennsylvania one time, Chris. Oh, great.

Will he be there? Oh, no, he will not be. All right. Well, I do give my greetings to him as well.

So I look forward to meeting more of our listeners and having fellowship with Brethren on Long Island.

I've been to the church in Merrick at least once or twice over the years. It's been some time.

There are a couple of Filipino families there in that church that I've known. And so I hope maybe to touch base as well there.

So I hope to see you and may God pray for our preparation and pray for the fellowship, pray for the travel as Pastor Mbewe comes over from Africa, pray that all the arrangements will be done to the glory of God and that his name will be exalted in this conference.

Amen. And folks, please remember to pray for Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio.

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First of all, Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania is a new sponsor for the entire year of 2025.

Their website is trbccarlisle .org. trbccarlisle .org,

that is the church where I'm a member. Pastor Simon O'Mahony is the pastor. And Lebanon Federal Credit Union in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, their website is lebanonfcu .org.

lebanonfcu .org. And last but not least, do not forget about Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia.

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I look forward to hearing from all of you who are listening at some point in the future when we are interviewing a live guest.

We love getting questions from listeners, especially if we've never heard from them before.

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And thanks again to all of you, the hundreds of you who have contacted me, letting me know that you have been praying for my health, especially when you heard that I was in the hospital for seven days during the

Christmas season. And I really thank God for you. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater