Don Green Interview

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said,.

�But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

A Bible-Teaching Contrast with Megachurch Ministry

Compromise Radio Ministry, my name is Mike Abendroth, and we have on the line probably one of my favorite guests. I�d say it was my favorite guest, but then it might inflate the ego of said guest. And of course, we here with Puritan Radio 24 -7, we talk about self-loathing, not self-esteem, so Don Green, welcome to the show.

Mike, this has to be the favorite radio show that I�ve ever been on, so I�m just really grateful for the opportunity to be with you.

Now, Don, what we were talking about off-air, I think, needs to be brought into the light. I ask you, like I ask many guests, is there any particular thing you�d like to talk about today or a particular question you would wish that I would ask you, and you responded with?

Mike, I trust your leading. When I�m on No Compromise, I just find myself in a dark closet and go along for the ride. I never know where this is going, and so I just trust you to make it what you want it to be.

Okay.

Well, the good news is, while I�ve never done a show in the past in this particular position, I have my legs crossed now, I�m sitting on the floor, and I�m looking toward the ceiling for help.

Well, and we�re alike in that way. I�ve got my fingers crossed about how this is going to go. Okay, good.

Don is the pastor at Truth Community Church in Ohio. Tell me one of the most exciting things about Ohio when it comes to spiritual things, and I mean that with all sincerity now as we turn from joking to frank speaking, honest speaking, unvarnished speaking.

What�s going on in Ohio? Some positive things when it comes to evangelicalism, the Lord�s work, what�s going on there?

Well, it�s an interesting time to be a Bible-preaching pastor in the Cincinnati area because there�s a proliferation of megachurches that oppose our philosophy of ministry, and they get a lot of positive news coverage from the Cincinnati Inquirer, and I love that.

I like the fact that there are things going on like that that give us a clear contrast in our philosophy of ministry, what we do in the pulpit, and what we�re trying to produce as disciples of Christ.

And so, while in one sense it�s not good to have that kind of ministry flourishing, I�m very thankful to the Lord to be in a position to provide through our church a different philosophy of ministry that will stand out by contrast.

Don, it�s fascinating to me as I survey evangelicalism in the city that I�m at in or the city you�re in, it�s fascinating to me that the people that are at these megachurches, that have more of a man-centered ministry philosophy, they have Christians at those churches and they have some Christians that really want to learn and study and grow, and they�re pushed to maybe Wednesday night studies to get the growth or a Thursday night class, but Sunday is reserved for essentially watered-down evangelism.

My question to some of those churches is, why are you going to lose your best people to other churches when you should just ratchet things up at the church you�re currently at? Do you see the same thing going on there?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, we have somebody that came to our church recently from one of the kind of charismatic, seeker-friendly churches, and she�s just been overjoyed to be under Bible instruction.

She said, �I didn�t know that these things were true. I didn�t know these things were in the Bible. And going through a number of difficult trials, she is greatly encouraged to find Bible teaching, and she wouldn�t have had to have left her church if they were simply providing that to her the way they should be.

You know, Jesus said, �Feed my sheep. And it seems like these churches are just more interested in attracting goats.

Don, for me, and I�m sure it�s true for you as well, you know, we are frail, sinful people and we cannot provide every need that a person has. So, what we are required to do, just as you referred to when Peter was told to feed the sheep, and of course, Paul says, �Preach the word.

We are able, by God�s enablement, to preach the word. And why would we do everything but that when that�s one thing, by his strength, we can�t actually do?

Yeah, that�s right. I cannot be omnipresent in the lives of the people that are in our church. I can�t be deeply involved in the details of 70 or 80 families or however many we have. But if I simply preach the word faithfully, God is going to use that and apply it in different ways through the power of his Holy Spirit to meet the needs of their heart.

I�ve often said many, many times that a strong Bible teaching pulpit is the best counselor that a church has, and I run my ministry that way.

Don, I noticed online about Cincinnati, the original surveyor, John Filson, named Cincinnati �Losantaville. So, maybe you could call it Losantaville Community Church. How�s that?

We�ve already chosen our name, and it�s probably not subject to change. And I also don�t have any idea how that would fit on our church sign out by the street.

Don, we have you on No Compromise Radio regularly, quarterly. I think we�ve got to have you on more, because what we need to do is you make me seem nice. So, by comparison, by relative stuff, I�m now the Mr. Kind Host.

Well, anything that I can do to add to your growing reputation, Mike, I�m happy to do.

Seminary Training, Local Church Counsel, and the Limits of Celebrity Advice

Don, you don�t necessarily spend your time exegeting culture and exegeting evangelicalism, but it�s hard not to see some of the trends and see some of the ditches that people drive themselves into theologically.

We have a little segment on the show when you�re on called �What�s in Don�s Craw And so, do you have anything in your craw today?

Well, not so much on politics or culture or even theology so much, Mike, but there is something that�s been on my mind over the past few weeks, if you�d like me to go into that.

Well, I mean, you�ve got to condense the few weeks into the next ten minutes, but that�s fine.

Yeah, you know, Mike, from time to time I�ll get contacted from guys around the country or people that are more local asking about whether they should go to seminary or not. And you and I have both been to seminary.

We�re thankful for the training that we got, and it�s hard to picture a man today going into ministry without seminary training. So let me preface everything that way. The thing that�s on my heart as I think about these young men is I just want them to be careful on the front end and go into seminary with their eyes open, and not fall in love with academics just for the sake of academics.

Not to fall in love with titles just for the sake of titles. And to be careful about the men that they let lead them and make decisions for them. I heard of a guy who was at a conference and he went up to the famous speaker.

It was not John MacArthur, because I want to be clear about that. It was not John MacArthur, but it was someone famous, it was someone well thought of, that he said, �Should I go to seminary And he said, �Yes, absolutely.

You need to get your doctorate of ministry and preaching and go forth and fill the pulpit. This was a guy that the speaker had never met before. And the prospective student said, �Well, if Speaker Sam says that, then that settles it for me.

That�s what I�m going to do. I�m going to choose my life direction based on that counsel. And I just think that�s irresponsible on both sides of the equation. It�s irresponsible for that speaker not to disclose that he gets paid to recruit people into that program, first of all.

It�s also irresponsible to presume to give a guy a life direction when you�ve never met him before. You know nothing about his history of faithfulness and matured implications. I don�t like that. I think young men, on the young man�s side, a guy like that needs to factor that in.

He can be encouraged by the fact that a speaker took time. That�s great, wonderful, I�ve been in that position and I know how meaningful that can be. At the same time, he needs to show some deference and interest in the input of his own pastor and elders who know him, who know his family situation, who have seen him exercising giftedness.

Those men who know him better are in a far better position to assess whether he should pursue full-time ministry or not. And that�s just something I seem to deal with a lot over the course of the years, and that�s what�s been in my craw over the past few weeks.

Don, if I ever go speak someplace, and I�m amazed at the opportunities that I�ve been given, but if I go and someone says, �Should I go to seminary and they�ll ask me afterwards, we�re not talking about the D-Min level, but even M-Div, how do I know?

I don�t know anything about them. And if I say, �Well, you have a propensity to teach and you study a lot and you�ve been given opportunities to teach at the church there�s a variety of things that I could say, �Well, it seems like that�s what a lot of other people have done, but I�m not an elder and I�ve never seen them, I�ve never watched them, I�ve never listened to them, and I always push them back to the elders.

And what if I even, you know, little Mike Abendroth said, �Oh, no, you�ve got to be in the ministry and now he goes back and tells the elders, �Well, Abendroth said I should.

To these men. And so I�m glad that you think about it that way. Once again, you and I seem to think alike on crucial matters. It�s great for a conference speaker to encourage a young man to set his eyes to lofty goals of ministry through what he preaches and setting high aspirations.

But he needs, I think that a conference speaker needs to point that man back and say, �Well, what does your pastor, what do your local elders say? Are you working with them? Because those are the men that God is going to immediately direct you through.

They�re the men that are charged with the care of your soul, and you need to pay heed to them and factor what they say highly into your decision. And I�m grateful that I had a pastor many years ago who was involved in my life and affirmed my direction in seminary.

That meant a lot to me, and it wasn�t simply based on what the chief recruiter for the seminary was saying to me. It was affirmed by a man who knew me well.

Peter Deluso. Don, this leads into a broader discussion with people asking others for advice and counsel and wisdom, and if someone were to come up to me and if I was a conference speaker and they asked me about a general life question or divorce or remarriage or should I take this job or should we move here, what about my kids, public school, private school?

There�s all kinds of things they might ask. They�ve been thinking about it for a year, maybe six months, and then now within two minutes I have to diagnose a situation and give them a positive or negative response.

I don�t really like to do that. I mean, I might say if I were you, I�d talk to so-and-so or have you ever read this book or have you considered such-and-such, but one of the best things, at least I think it�s the best thing, one of the things I like to do is I ask this question, have you talked to somebody in your local church who you know will give you the opposite advice of what you want?

Wouldn�t that be a better way to go about some of these things? How can I give them a life decision answer right now?

Dr. Deluso No, that�s exactly right, and it reminds me, Mike, of some work that I did. I was privileged to work at Grace to You early in my seminary years answering correspondence for John MacArthur.

Mike Long By the way, I have to interrupt you, Don. I tried to get that job and they turned me down, so I think you took my spot.

Dr. Deluso Well, you went far beyond anything that that job would have led you to anyway. Getting back to the question, people write in for advice in the exact same situation, whether they�re speaking to you in person or whether they�re writing a letter from across the country.

I quickly came to realize I�m not in a position to give them sound, reliable, knowledgeable advice. If nothing else, I�m only hearing their side of the story, and Proverbs makes it clear that we should hear both sides of the story before we give our advice.

So the best that we can do is be provisional in what we say, point to broad, general principles, and trust in the providence of God. And when it comes to needing more specific advice, this is where it is so important for people to make the effort to engage their life in a sound, local church, with qualified elders.

That�s the role of the elders to help people with those kinds of things, not to write to a prominent pastor across the country who doesn�t know you, who doesn�t know anything about the situation. Even in the best of his intentions, the value of his advice is going to be limited because he doesn�t know the situation and he doesn�t know you.

It points to the problem that we have of looking for celebrities to give us our advice rather than the humble shepherd that God places in a local church that maybe no one�s ever heard of.

Don, when we, as elders, pastors, give advice, we have to tell people, this is just what we think. We�re just elders from our opinion. This is the way we would go. But if you�ve got a pastor, I don�t mean you, but listeners, if they�ve got a pastor who�s telling them you can�t do this or you must do that and he�s exercising authority outside of scripture, maybe he shouldn�t be called pastor or elder.

Maybe he should be called apostle?

Don�t you think? Don�t you think? Well, yeah, it reminds me of 1 Peter 5, that elders aren�t supposed to lord it over their congregation, and I�ve known men who have been very, very involved in the lives of their people, down to opening checkbooks and seeing how they were spending their money, and I think that's completely inappropriate.

You know, we're shepherds. We guide with a staff and a rod. We give counsel where we can, but my view of my role in counseling and as a pastor is not for me to make decisions for people or on their behalf or to tell them what they are to do.

My primary role is to teach God's Word, to pray for them, and to help guide them so that the decisions that they are making come from biblical convictions formed in their own.

Heart in response to Scripture. Don, I want to suggest our listeners go to your website truthcommunitychurch .org and you've been teaching through the Psalms, other books as well, but preaching through Psalms and when you were here at Bethlehem Bible Church, you preached Psalm 6, if I remember correctly, and I was very encouraged by the exposition and the message that you preached.

And you told me at the coffee shop that you're doing one Psalm a week or one Psalm a shot and no matter how long or short that Psalm is, you're going to teach one entire Psalm. I'd encourage the listeners to get there to the website to listen to some of those, but tell me your strategy for teaching the Psalms, why Psalms are important, why people love the Psalms and just wax away.

Well, it reminds me of a scene from the movie Miracle, which I'd almost never quote anything from movies, but for some reason this popped into my mind. Herb Brooks, when he was coaching the 1980 Olympic team, he was interviewing for the job, they asked him, said, there's no way you're going to win the gold medal, and you think you can't.

He said, that's a pretty lofty goal, don't you think, Herb? He said, well, that's why I want to pursue it. The fact that it's difficult doesn't mean that I want to avoid it, it means that I want to do it, that's why I want to pursue it.

And for me, you know, if I could come to the five years from now and look back and say I had gone through and taught the Psalms, number one through 150, that's a lofty goal and I hope that the Lord gives me the strength to do it.

Psalms are meaningful to the people of God because they are an expression of our daily experiences, they give us guidance to have a God-centered trust and a God-centered focus as we go through joy, as we go through sorrow, as we confess our sins, as we face enemies in life, and they're very practical that way.

And the reason that I want to treat the Psalms in a different manner, maybe, than I do a letter of the Apostle Paul, where I'll go one verse or two verses per message, each individual Psalm is a unit of thought, and I want to get that whole unit of thought so that the flow of the Psalm is clear and evident and you can see how the sections relate to one another, rather than perhaps lifting a verse and giving a good message, but not really treating it in its whole context.

What I've found, and I'm very excited about it, is that as you study these Psalms, you see a flow of thought that just gives you a comprehensive view of the topic that that Psalm is addressing, and the flow is something that is sometimes lost if we just speak on one or two verses without tying it to the overall context.

Listeners can go to bbcchurch .org if they'd like to listen to that particular message. I think, Don, the message of Psalm 6 that you preached here was more anointed than the Psalm 6 you preached in Cincinnati.

Well, I'm happy for people to find either one. It was, and this is a statement of my respect for your ministry, Mike, and being very serious here. It was quite an honor for me to step into your pulpit, to see and to interact with your people.

They show the effects of a lot of faithful Bible teaching. They were loving, they were attentive, and it was a joy to be with them and to just make a little bit of an acquaintance. And the truth of the matter is, is that I would have been far better off sitting under your teaching that Sunday than vice versa, but I'm grateful that you gave me the opportunity to fill your pulpit.

That was a highlight of the past year for me.

Don, for weeks after folks came and they were talking to me about the Word, and I think that's a testimony to expository preaching and hiding behind the text, and so I was very encouraged by your ministry.

That leads me to some comments about radio versus pulpit ministry, and I think both of us have the same kind of philosophy. When we're in the pulpit, we're all, I hate to use the word business, it's not about finances, but the colloquial, we're all business, meaning we want to be faithful.

It's not about a show, it's about who the Lord is and His Word. And if people only knew us from radio, kind of laughing back and forth or talking about certain things, I don't think they'd really know us unless they combine radio with, well, okay, now we have pulpit ministry, and so when I'm in the pulpit, I'm a preacher.

When I'm a radio host, there's a little more, you know, fun, maybe zaniness, stuff like that, and so I'm glad you know the difference between pulpit and radio.

Well, yeah, and the thing of it is that we have to treat the pulpit that way because even by our demeanor in the pulpit, we show that it is a sanctified place, it is set apart by God for a unique exposition of His revelation to us.

And by having a little bit different demeanor on radio in a time like this, we show that we take the Word seriously by the way we treat it in the pulpit, but on radio, we don't take ourselves so seriously that we think that we're something more than what we are.

Well, Don, for a long time I would listen to podcasts just at regular speed, and somebody said to me that they listen to No Compromise Radio at 1 .5 speed because they wanted to get through it faster.

I was just glad they were listening, but I have to tell you, I've started to listen to podcasts, not sermons, but just talk shows at 1 .5 speed, so I'm wondering what you sound like at 1 .5 speed. A little bit like Daffy Duck.

Yeah, a little bit. Now, I read your article long ago published in the Master Seminary Journal about Ipsissima Verba and Ipsissima Vox, and we don't have very much time. People can type in those Latin words if they'd like, but why is it important, we've got probably two minutes to go, why is it important to make sure we understand that what Jesus said, what was recorded of His words, were actually His words, down to the letter, down to the word, versus just kind of His general.

Tone or tenor? Yeah, the Ipsissima Vox position says that we have just the voice of Jesus in the gospel, not His very words, and so the writers of the Gospels were only trying to give a summary of what He taught, and they might add or change some things to what Jesus said as they were writing the gospel.

That's not my view of the Gospels, even though it's the prominent, popular view in evangelical teaching in New Testament scholarly studies. That's a serious mistake, because Luke said at the beginning of his gospel, I want you to know with precision, I want you to know the exact truth about what you were taught.

A gospel writer who approached it with that way wasn't playing it fast and loose with the words of Jesus. Those men knew that they had heard the words of God, and so they were giving us the most precise account of even His words, not just His deeds, but His words under the influence of the Holy Spirit who helped them record exactly what Jesus taught.

And so we need to have a high view of those words and protect it from those who would turn it into summaries and diminish the authority of what Christ.

Said in the Gospels. That is some excellent preaching. Pastor Don Green on No Compromise Radio today. You can go to Truth Community Church and listen to some of his sermons. We have Don on quarterly. Once his paychecks increase a little bit to the NOCO ministry, we might have him on monthly.

So, Don, thanks for.

Being on the show today. Always my pleasure, Mike. Thank you. No Compromise.

Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

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