Converge Collide Confabulate

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the
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Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.�
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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.
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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the
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Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.
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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. It�s, I think in real time, it�s
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April 1st. No co -time, it�s, I don�t know. I look at Twitter probably.
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I don�t know. I do the Hootsuite thing so I can preload posts, and I have whittled down.
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I�m going to actually pull this up here. If you want to follow us at Twitter, it is at NoCoRadio, N -O -C -O -R -A -D -I -O, and bingo was his name -o.
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We have, I think I used to follow 500 people, and we are whittled down to about 337 today.
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I think I got rid of most everybody that says they�re a Christian and they�re a
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Christian leader. I don�t even think they say they�re a Christian, but they�re a Christian leader, and they like to be super political.
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I think there was a couple exceptions I think I kept, but most of the time if you�re always talking about politics, that�s why
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I subscribe to Reuters, Jerusalem Post, Washington Post, Huffington Post.
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I think I do follow HuffPo religion because it�s a bunch of kookies, kooks and Barneys.
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Anyway, so many people are on either for Trump or against Trump, and you can be whatever you want frankly, but I get tired of saying basically all
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Christians need to do this, and if you�re not a Christian, you can�t do that. What about what
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Ted Cruz believed about NAR? I don�t know. I just think
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Christians probably should be more gospel -centered, as some people have been posting these days on Twitter.
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I don�t like it, but I�m going to say it. R. Scott Clark, if you�re listening, plug your ears. Gospelicious.
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There are some Gospel Coalition people posting that. I think I�ve not only unfollowed all the
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Gospel Coalition people, except I think Kevin DeYoung. I like Kevin DeYoung. But the political things,
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I�ve pretty much stopped following. Anyway, maybe we can get back to sanity at another time.
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Who else do I follow? I don�t know. Real men style. But here�s my point.
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I expect the politicians and the pundits to pundify about politicians, but I�d like some quotes about the
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Bible or something related to it if you�re a Christian person. I just went outside to get the mail, and we�re no longer a
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Baptist General Conference church. We haven�t been a Baptist General Conference church for one, five years, 15 years, a decade and a half, yet we still get their magazine.
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Back in the day, we left Baptist General Conference because I think three particular reasons.
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But now that I think about it, four, but three at the time. One was they were following every church growth strategy under the sun, including
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Bill Hybels. On the magazine, Bill Hybels was regularly found. So that�s strike one. Strike two, they were very into psychological counseling.
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And I wouldn�t even say it was integration. They�re throwing a Bible verse here or there, but that�s not truly integration.
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All is a mist. And what was the third reason? I don�t know. Maybe easy believism or something like that.
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I�m not sure. But I would leave the Baptist General Conference. I think the only person you probably know about who�s a
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Baptist General Conference person is John Piper. Although now that he�s retired,
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I don�t know if he�s a Baptist General Conference or not. I would imagine. I think all the multi -campuses there.
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You show up and you have, I think, live bands at all the places, but then you only get the preacher.
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I think his name is Jason now at one particular place. If I lived in Minnesota, I�d want to know what the secret random calculator was like.
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Will he be on campus one here? No, he�s going to drive over there. How does that all work? Maybe they�ve since changed it, but I don�t think so.
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I would have probably guessed that they would have had to close a campus after Piper retired. They needed to close at least one campus, but maybe not.
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Maybe things are going gangbusters there in Minnesota. I went to the Minnesota State Fair once.
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Talk about awesome onion rings. Talk about everything fried awesome.
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Wow. Anyway, back to Baptist General Conference. The last reason we�re not Baptist General Conference, the most important reason really, we�re not general
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Baptists. We are particular Baptists. I don�t think it�s technical, but we�ll just make things up here on No Compromise Radio.
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Hey, it�s my show and the beatings will continue until the morale increases.
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We�re not general Baptists. We are particular Baptists and we don�t believe
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Jesus died generally. We believe he died particularly. Why?
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Because it�s exegetically true, systematically true, biblical theologically true, biblically true in the theological fashion.
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So we believe he died for his bride. We believe he died for the sheep. We believe he died for the church and them alone, because if Jesus dies for you, you�re going to heaven, friend.
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What sin is there for you to pay for? Oh, lack of faith? Well, no, he died for those sins as well.
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So you need to read The Death of Death and the Death of Christ by John Owen for some help.
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But anyway, I just walked outside in between shows. I just kind of take a breather. I found some
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M &Ms in the little children�s room, so I had a few of those. No, they were just in the kitchen.
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I remember once when it was�we�ve got a little ramp here to go up and out of the parking lot.
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There�s just one entrance, one exit. I had a two -wheel drive truck from Los Angeles, long story, couldn�t get out of the parking lot.
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It�s too snowy, too icy, too slippery. I was here. Somebody said they could pick me up at 5 p .m.
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It�s 11 a .m. No lunch. I�m looking around in the nursery for goldfish crackers or soup crackers, oyster soup crackers.
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What do they call it? Oyster crackers? I don�t know. I love raw oysters, but I�m just�oysters, but I�m afraid.
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I�m afraid to eat them. I�m going to get sick. So that�s why I had the steak tartare today. I don�t think
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I�ll ever make it back to India, but when I�m in India, I just go to the pharmacy and say, �Could I have some of those deworming pills ?�
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�Oh, sure. How many do you want ?� �How many do you think I need ?� �I�d take one of these two times a day for 10 days.
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You�ll get dewormed.� See, if you like sushi, then� See, here�s my problem. You can identify,
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I�m sure. If you like sushi but can�t really afford it, you got to go for the cheaper sushi, the grocery store kind.
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Since I don�t like the California roll imitation crab kind of sushi, which isn�t sushi at all, then you�re taking chances.
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The bad news is you could get bugs. The good news is it�s so cheap there that the sushi chefs slice the fish so thinly that I could put it in my inkjet printer,
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HP 61. I don�t know. It�s not an HP 61, but that�s the cartridge that it takes.
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Anyway, I�ve got this thing out there. Converge Point Spring 2016
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Baptist General Conference. Close the back door. Five states of church health preventing burnout, assimilating visitors.
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It says on the inside by Scott Ridout, president of Converge. See, Baptist General Conference, they�re into that too.
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Collision, collide, converge, confluence, congruence, conflagulation.
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That�s a good name for a church. That�ll work if preaching the Bible verse by verse.
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And for my Presbyterian friends and the proper administration of the sacraments. And for my even more
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Presbyterian uber -reformed friends, proper church discipline. If that doesn�t work, then
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I don�t know, maybe it�s back door, front door, conflagulation, convergence, assimilation, milk.
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I don�t know. In a recent devotion time, I came across this verse, �Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, seeking the
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Lord.� Romans 12 .11. The apostle Paul challenges us to keep our focus on Christ and to let him be the fuel and focus of our service to God.
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I find this difficult because ministry is very demanding, extremely complicated, and always messy. Messy Jesse.
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Leading a church requires great knowledge, skill, character, and vision. What if I�m short on the vision?
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Building effective ministry teams require good strategies and effective implementation.
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Overcoming the obstacles that accompany our work require grit, tenacity, dependence, and determination, which cause many to give up.
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In our winter edition of Point, we challenged our leaders to open the front door. Converge exists to help people meet, know, and follow
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Jesus by starting and strengthening churches together worldwide. We open the front door by sending church planners and missionaries while we all live evangelistic lifestyles.
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See, here�s my point on No Compromise Radio. You cannot run from this these days in evangelicalism.
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This whole lifestyle of evangelism, lifestyle, live like Jesus life, that has nothing to do with good news.
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Zero, nil, none, empty set, no set, subsets, conflagration sets.
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It doesn�t work. I want you to live a godly life. I want you to live a moral life.
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I mean, like New Testament imperative moral life. While we all live evangelistic lifestyles, now let�s just stop there for a second and let that sink in.
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Say, �Law.� Okay, if I were to tell you, �Go live an evangelistic lifestyle ,� what would you do?
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But this is evangelical speak. I don�t think he really is thinking through the issue.
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I think we talk this way so much. This is the air we breathe. It doesn�t make any difference to us.
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You know, it�s not like we�re a fish that�s on the side of the ocean and it�s laying there up on the beach and we�re trying to breathe oxygen through the water, but now there�s no water, so the gills are just opening and closing, desperately trying to get oxygen out of the air.
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No, no, it�s just, we�re just floating along, no problem, living evangelistic lifestyles.
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I�ve said it before and I�ll say it right now. It�s a waste of time to say what I just said, but that�s just for emphasis.
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Evangelistic lifestyles have not saved one person in the history of the universe, in the history of time.
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No one has gotten saved by watching someone�s life. You could even watch
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Jesus�s life and still not get saved, right?
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How much less would you have an opportunity to get saved by watching somebody�s life who�s not sinless?
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In this issue, we focus on closing the backdoor. So many factors contribute to a backdoor fight of people leaving the church, pastoral problems, congregational crises, poor systems.
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I didn�t learn much about systems in seminary and lack of succession plans are just a few we experience in our churches.
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The backdoor problem may be a result of leadership�s ill health, difficulty with adjustments to change, or some other factor.
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It is paramount for our leaders to be able to assess, address, and overcome these issues to stay on mission.
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The desire of our district, national, and international team is to see your ministry thrive. Healthy leaders living out a
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God -centered vision and promoting God -honoring action result in the breakthrough in church health and growth
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God desires. We pray this issue will give you the tools you need for a vibrant future. I have a question for the listeners and for this man as well.
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I forgot his name already and I can�t read it because I�ve ripped the page up. How about faithfulness to the gospel and its proclamation?
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How about that? And then a real, genuine, genuine, genuine anchoring in the truth that if we do that, that is enough.
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And if we do that and we�re persecuted, killed, we don�t thrive, we don�t converge, we don�t collide, we shrink.
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Listen, I�m not one of these people that say, �Well, you know what? You�re not really a faithful church unless you�re tiny.
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Any big church, they compromise.� It�s not that at all. God sovereignly and providentially can do whatever he�d like in terms of church size, but the focus isn�t on this kind of growth, front door, back door growth.
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Oh, we want Colossians 1, 28 and 29 and 30, the growth of the
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Christian, maturing, 1 Peter 2, 1 and 2, we want you to grow and mature. 2
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Peter 3, grow in grace and the knowledge of the truth. We want that.
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We want you to grow. But in terms of church growth with new people, more people, nickels and noses, assets, buildings, and cash, the
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ABCs of church growth, pennies and what�s their other slogan?
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Ministry thriving. Boy, he�s got a thriving ministry. I don�t know who talks this way.
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Reading this, if this is the leadership of Baptist General Conference, then I�m glad we said, �C�est la vie� 15 years ago.
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We should have said it 19 years ago, but I didn�t want to change things that fast. Oh, the other one
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I remember now is women in leadership positions in ministry, preaching, teaching, elders, that type of thing.
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That was the other reason we left the Baptist General Conference. I remember when
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I met with the district manager, whatever the position was, and I was young, 36.
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I probably shouldn�t have been a pastor, but I did know you preach the Bible verse by verse and whatever happens, happens.
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Beholden to no man type of attitude, just preach it away. MacArthur as an example of just somebody who�s going to preach and whatever happens, happens.
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Then they did say to me, �You�re leaving the conference because MacArthur told you to, right ?�
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I said, �I never even asked John. John would probably tell me to hang in there a little bit longer and don�t change within the first couple of years something that�s as big as leaving a denomination.�
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But how long can you give money to the Baptist General Conference when this is the stuff you get from them?
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I can be taught. I regularly think, �Boy, I just need to be a better learner.� I could learn a lot from people.
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I like to read books, and I like to hear messages by men, and I just think, �How inadequate am
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I, yet God still uses me? I want to learn more. I want to live out what
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I�ve learned more in terms of response to who the Lord is and what He�s done. I�d like to be faithful.�
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I think that way all the time, but I don�t want to learn from people who are so man -centered and who are so compromised.
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I don�t want to learn from them. I could learn from them. There�s something in their life about maybe humility, the way they raise their kids, the way they treat their wife.
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I�m sure I could learn from them, but I don�t want to learn from them because once you have a man -centered view of ministry, it is over for me.
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It�s over. I don�t want to listen anymore. I want to follow men who have a
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God -directed view of ministry.
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I don�t want to listen anymore. That is to say, �God, if you�re pleased, come hell or high water. I don�t care what happens.
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If you�re not pleased, thriving ministries, converging ministries, colliding ministries, conflagration ministries, confluence ministries, contouring ministries, confabulation ministries.�
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I�m trying to think of another good word that starts with �con.� �Con�
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I think in Espanol is �with.� Yes? You see? Yes? What did poor
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Isaiah do? Saw how holy God was, therefore saw how sinful he was.
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Asked God to judge him. The judging angel came, but instead of judging him, gave him a cleansing, sovereignly initiated cleansing.
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Of course, based on the future work of Christ, the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate propitiatory sacrifice, that�s the word used in Isaiah 6.
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Did you know that? Kippur, to cover. Ever say to somebody when you go buy a meal, �I�ve got it covered.�
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Similar to that. And then he responds, Isaiah does, to the sovereignly initiated grace, �I�ll go wherever.�
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God said, �Okay, there�s going to be a stump, a little remnant, but basically you�re going to go harden people�s hearts.
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You�re going to go thrive. Go thrive, Jeremiah. Thrive away. Thrive, she said.�
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See, this kind of stuff makes me want to be an OPC person. But they have their problems too.
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Do I even go farther? Do I go farther? I don�t know.
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I�m kind of afraid. In the back, it says, �Ready for a sabbatical ?� Yes, I am ready for a sabbatical from man -centered magazines like Converge.
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I would love a sabbatical. I haven�t picked one up in 10 years. Now I know why. The back, it�s got
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Converge Connection. Numbers, 990, shows a woman kind of two hands up in the air, water, name tag, black gown deal.
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It says, �Number of baptisms on Eagle Brook Church�s 6th Minnesota campuses during the weekend of January 31 to February 1.�
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So we�ve got Eagle Brook Church�s Minnesota campuses, weekend between the 31st and the 1st.
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My guess is because they have what kind of services? Not just Sunday morning, but they�ve also got
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Saturday night. Side note, if you want to have a Saturday night service, you could have a service every night of the week, but not at the expense of Sunday.
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I want to think it�s called the Lord�s Day. That�s how many baptisms we had.
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Hoorah. All right. It�ll make or break your church.
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A church board can help or hinder your church�s pursuit of Christ�s mission. Here�s how any board can become better.
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Church board. Well, let�s see. Maybe number one. I�m on. Church board.
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Elders are the church board. No, no, they don�t say that. I wonder why. Maybe it�s church in a box.
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Maybe we have leaders and trustees and tensions, board meetings.
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Board make decisions. It doesn�t tell me here. I�m looking for verses. United in spirit, intent on one purpose,
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Philippians 2. That�s good. I�d like to know who are these church boards. How are these church boards made?
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How do we make up a church board? Who�s on the church board? What are the qualifications for a church board?
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That�s what I would like to know. I don�t need to know about church -wide crisis management. I don�t know for implementing vision stuff.
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I don�t know about executive sounding boards. I don�t know about pulse takers.
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Do you have pulse takers at your church? Now that makes it an easy joke.
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What�s the pulse of the church, not are the people in the church alive or dead? Pulse takers.
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The old pulse taker trick. See, I never learned that, the pulse takers.
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We have the dance team ministry with the streamers to start off the show.
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That�s the call to start off the show. I almost said that would have been true. Start the show. What else do we have?
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We have the Mariachi Marrakesh.
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See, this is the problem. If you�re going to look at Twitter while you�re talking on the radio, you probably shouldn�t do it anymore because sometimes
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I�ll talk to Twitter. I mean, I�ll look at Twitter when Steve�s talking because I can do two things at once.
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If I interview James White or somebody, they just kind of go on and on and on because James is dividing the line wherever he goes.
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I don�t have to say anything except, �Hi, James. What�s going on with you ?� Then for 24 and a half minutes, he talks and I think
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I�m on dividing line. I just sit here and play words with friends. Just James.
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I�m just kidding. I know Reformed Baptists have a hard time taking jokes. But here on the radio show,
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No Compromise Radio, here�s what we�re after. Now, here�s the punchline. This is a short punchline, but it�s needed.
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Friend, if you teach Sunday school, if you teach your children, if you have a small, quote -unquote, ministry at church, all
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God requires of you is faithfulness. Not thriving, not contouring, not converging, not conflagration.
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Faithfulness. Just be faithful in the small things. That�s all God requires. Isn�t that good news?
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No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God�s Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.
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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. We�re right on Route 110 in West Boylston.
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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.