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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 who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this fifth day of January 2024, and I'm thrilled to have on the program today a first-time guest to discuss a very important new film.
His name is Dave Griffin. He is a confessional Reformed Baptist. He's an evangelist with Jeremiah Cry Ministries and an independent filmmaker, and we're going to be discussing his new film, The Crisis of Missions.
It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron.
Radio, Dave Griffin. Chris, it's an honor to have me on. I really appreciate it, and I am certainly looking forward to this discussion. Amen. Well, tell us about.
The Jeremiah Cry Ministries. I've had Jeff Rose on the program in the past, who I believe is the founder of Jeremiah Cry, if I'm not mistaken, and I've had him on way back when Iron Sharpens Iron Radio was broadcasting out of WNYG and WGBB in Babylon, Long Island.
In fact, he was in the studio the very first time he was on the show, and I see other fine men affiliated with that ministry, and this this film, Dr. Michael Haken, I've had him on the program numerous times, and Jeff Pollard's been on the program, and Don Curran, and Ryan Denton, and a couple of the other brethren, a few of the other brethren I have not yet had on the show,.
But tell us about Jeremiah Cry. Yeah, so Jeremiah Cry, you are correct, Jeremiah Cry was founded by Jeff Rose, I would say probably going back about 20 years. Jeff was invited to move out to Scotland, and when he was in Scotland, he was, actually let me back up, he was invited to Scotland as an evangelist, and when he was out evangelizing, that's where he came to an understanding of Reformed Doctrine, and really, Jeremiah Cry was birthed there.
So it is an open-air preaching ministry. You mean they invited him to Scotland when he went as Arminian? Correct, yeah. There are actually Arminian Scots? Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it was an Arminian Church, and actually after he became Reformed, they actually kicked him out of Scotland, and so he moved back to the States.
Well, I'm sure there would have.
Been many other churches and parachurch ministries in Scotland that would have welcomed him, since I believe that there is still a good, solid presence of Calvinism there, even though I think that Christianity as a whole has been on the decline there for centuries, but I think there's still a remnant of good.
Reformed folks there. Yeah, absolutely, and so we go back, we try to go back every year for itinerant preaching trips. We'll be going back again this summer, and we are partnering with a Church, a Reformed Church over there, and so we'll be going out with them, helping to train their guys, and yeah, just to lift up the name.
Of Christ on the streets. Amen. If anybody wants more details about Jeremiah Cry ministries, you can go to jeremiahcry .com, jeremiahcry .com. We have a tradition here, Dave, whenever we have a first-time guest in the program, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which the guest was raised, and what kind of providential circumstances our Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them, and I'd love to hear your story.
Yeah,.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for giving me that opportunity. So I didn't grow up really in a religious family. We were Roman Catholic by name only. You know, we would go to Mass on holidays and whatnot, and it wasn't until I was in my early 20s, I moved out to California, and it was right after 9 -11, you know, I think the Lord used that to awaken kind of the brevity of life, you know, the shortness of life, and up to this point, I had just been living a complete pagan lifestyle, living in sin and loving my sin, and so I was invited to a church out in California, if you're familiar with Chuck Smith.
Of course. Yeah, and so I went to the church there, and I remember at the end, they did an altar call, and I remember walking down the aisle and saying the sinner's prayer, and, you know, they declared me saved at the end, and so after that, I moved back home and joined a church in New Jersey, but I went right back into the world, still, you know, living the same lifestyle, and I was part of the youth group at this church I was attending at the time, and the pastor asked me to preach a sermon to the youth, and so I went online, and I googled sermons, and I came across the shocking youth message by Paul Washer, and that was the first time I really was confronted with my sin.
It was the first time I ever really heard the gospel of free grace in Christ alone, and so the Lord just radically changed my heart from that point forward, and since then, I've just had an insatiable desire to get in and read His Word, and also to make Christ known to other people, and so that's really what I've been doing ever since.
That's what I.
Believe the Lord has called me to. And how did you get involved in mission work?
Yeah, that's a great question. So for a number of years, I was just going out and passing out tracts by myself, and one time, actually at this time, I just started to learn, I was reading Van Til, I just started to learn about presuppositional apologetics, and I came across the guy named Sy Timberigan Cade.
Online. Oh yeah, I've met Sy in the show. I've known him for years.
Okay, yeah, yeah, and he invited me to a conference in New Jersey. I went there, and we all went out, and it was the first time I preached in the open air on the Seaside Heights Boardwalk, and so after that night, one of the brothers that was there said, hey, listen, there's this guy that lives about 20 minutes from you.
You have to get connected with him. His name's Jeff Rose, and so that's how I met Jeff and got connected with him, and then from that point, after we had been going out for probably about a year preaching on the streets, I went to the elders of my church and said, you know, I believe the Lord is calling me to this work, and they said, we see the same thing in you, and we fully support the work you're doing, and we want to send you out, and so my church sent me out and supported me in that work, that evangelistic work.
Well, we are discussing.
As our main theme, your new film, The Crisis of Missions, and are you focused on missions in general, which would be domestic as well as foreign, or are you specifically talking about foreign missions?
What is the core focus of.
This documentary or film? Yeah, so different people have different views on what missions is, and so my view of missions is more general, so I believe that missions is, you know, being sent, going, and whether that is domestic or foreign, so I believe missions encompasses that work of going, planting churches, evangelizing in an area, and replicating, and so it's focused on the whole of missions, generally.
And what became so alarming in your.
Mind through your experience, through what you've witnessed, that you said to yourself, man, I've got to sound an alarm to the church at large, perhaps especially to my fellow Reformed brothers and sisters, about this crisis that I believe exists in missions.
Tell us about what it was that compelled you.
To write and create this film. Yeah, that's a great question. It really all started when, so going back to when I was sent out by my church as an evangelist, I, you know, I was living off of, you know, my wife and I were living off of a very, very low salary, and so we had moved into missionary furlough housing.
So in New Jersey, there's a community of about 20 homes that is supported by churches, and they accept in missionary furloughs from all over the world. And so they allowed me and my family to live there for two years.
And when I was there, there was a high turnover because missionaries are coming and going all the time. And so I had gotten to meet missionaries from all over the world, representing just about every missions organization out there.
And every month, a new missionary family would give a presentation on their ministry and what they're doing in the country they're in. And it seemed to be the same theme over and over every month. The missionary family would spend an hour giving statistics and the demographics of the country they're in, and at the end of the presentation, they would say and pray for so-and-so we had the opportunity to share the gospel with this person.
And I would think to myself, after hearing this so many times, is the gospel not actually going forth on the mission field? What's going on? You know, you've been there for 10 years, you've probably received a half a million dollars in support, and you've only shared the gospel with a couple people.
And so that to me raised the alarm bell saying, what is going on on the mission field? And of course, through my own experience as well with Jeremiah Cry, so we would preach itinerantly around the world at different places.
And one of the biggest criticisms we would get, it wasn't from Muslims, it wasn't from atheists, it was typically from Christians or professing Christians who would give us the hardest time. And they would all tell us we were doing it wrong, and we shouldn't be preaching on the streets, and we need to earn relational currency.
And so these were the things that really rose those alarm bells in my mind, and which really compelled me to dig into this further. And I actually read a book around that same time by a man named A .T. Pearson, who was the interim pastor after Spurgeon died at the Metropolitan Tabernacle.
And he wrote a book entitled The Crisis of Missions. And so after I read that book, that's what really gave me the idea to begin planning out the filming of this documentary. Now, is the.
Crisis that you are specifically addressing exclusively a crisis among those involved in theologically reformed missions, or is it a broader spectrum of what you see as a crisis, regardless of the specific theology of the Christian.
Mission work? So I would say it's broad, but it certainly includes those within the reformed camp as well. So it is going to be basically what I want to do with this film is I want to—the theme of the film is that healthy missions begins with a healthy church.
And so even in the trailer, one of the brothers in there describes this process, really. Our missiology flows out of our ecclesiology, and our ecclesiology flows out of our theology. And so ultimately, what we believe as a church is our grand mission will affect our mission.
It will affect what we do on the mission field. And so that's something, of course, I'd love to get into that in more detail, but that's really the theme of what the.
Documentary is about. Now, you just mentioned earlier something that you saw as a problem, where those either on mission boards or involved in mission work themselves were saying that successful, meaningful mission work requires of us to earn relational currencies, I think the way you phrased it.
Now, I'm thinking, I'm assuming, and perhaps you could correct me if I'm wrong, that you would not reject the notion of that being an important part of being on a mission field, but that should not be the exclusive approach.
In other words, obviously, if you're in a community where you're going to be for an extended period of time, maybe even for the rest of your life, you do want to earn that relational currency, but that should not stop you from being an aggressive and passionate evangelist and proclaimer of the gospel, as if you have to wait long periods of time before you drop the bomb that you're a Christian, and yes, you believe that embracing Christ and his gospel and trusting in his finished work on Calvary are the only way to eternal life, this should be something that has always flowed from your lips from the moment you set foot on whatever mission field you intend to be laboring.
Am I off base here, or.
Clarify, please. Yeah, no, amen, I agree with that wholeheartedly. You know, the way I see it is that I compartmentalize it in that as Christians, so those who have been regenerated, we have new hearts, we have new desires, we now love God and love people, and so that's really the outworking of our Christianity, that's the fruit of our lives, is that we naturally do want it, we care about our neighbor, we love our neighbor, we want to do good to our neighbor, and so that that's really just the outworking, the fruit of the Christian life.
Now, as far as missions where it goes in our evangelistic work, you know, obviously we as Christians are going to still display that when we're out on the mission field, because the main objective when we're going out there is we love God and we love people, and we want to see people get saved, and so yeah, we're not saying, you know, this is a term we use a lot in Jeremiah Cry, you know, we're not going out to be jerks for Jesus, that's not what we're, that's not our intention.
So yeah, absolutely, you know, earning that relational currency with people is really the natural outworking of our Christianity in wanting to do good to our neighbor, but at the same time, there was a movement really that began with the birth of the missional movement, so when you hear that phrase, missional movement, this ideology really came out of that, and that was to say that we first have to earn the right with people before we can share the gospel with them, or they will not listen to it.
So in essence, people are not ready to hear the gospel until we do X, Y, and Z, until our personality is X, Y, and Z, or, you know, there's all these stipulations on what we have to do in order to beautify the gospel before we can make it palatable to share to people, and that's what I reject.
And would you say that something that would be very similar to this would be what has been known as friendship evangelism, and obviously we believe as Christians that it is our duty to befriend those who are lost—Jesus was a friend of sinners.
Scriptures even say Judas was his friend, and, you know, we are to obviously do that, cultivate friendships, invite people over our homes, our barbecues, bring them a meal when you know they're sick, you know, on and on and on I could go, but at the same time, we're not supposed to prolong some kind of getting-to-know-you kind of a situation before we reveal to these people exactly where we're coming from and what they need to know and who they need to know in order to be rescued from their death sentence that is hanging over them if they do not know Christ.
So would that be something that would be in the same orbit that you're opposing here, what has been called.
Friendship evangelism? Yeah, so again, just to clarify that point, thank you for bringing that up, I don't want to reject the idea of making friends in order to evangelize. Absolutely, we should befriend our neighbors, we should befriend our co-workers, etc., you know, but I think the idea with friendship evangelism, where it went astray, is that it began to teach that that was the only way.
Right. That was the only way to evangelize, was you had to make friends first before you could share the gospel. Like a Bill Hybels approach. Exactly, yes, exactly, and which is why we got a lot of slack and criticism when we were out on the streets preaching the gospel.
It was those people who were the biggest critics of what we were doing, saying we were doing it all wrong, we're turning people away from Christ, you have to earn relational currency, you have to build friendships first before you can earn the right to share the gospel.
Now again, that does not negate the fact that we should be building relationships and friends with people, so we're not saying that in one bit. Yes, we all know that.
That friendship pattern was what John the Baptist conducted, and what Jesus Christ conducted when he was speaking to the Pharisees. He wanted them to be their friends first. I'm speaking sarcastically, obviously, and we'll get involved in more of a deep discussion in the different kinds of evangelism and mission work that are very often determined by the setting, not that the message is changed in any way, but we'll get involved in that when we return from our first commercial break.
If anybody has a question for Dave Griffin on missions, on the specific film he has created, The Crisis in Missions, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.
As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. We'll be.
Right back with Dave Griffin. Don't go away. I'm Pastor Keith Allen of Lindbrook.
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So go to royaldiadem .com today. That's royaldiadem .com, and please, don't forget to mention Iron Trap and Zion Radio. We're now back with my guest, Dave Griffith. We are talking about his new film, The Crisis in Missions.
Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Give us a first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. We do have a question from Penelope in Aquabog, Long Island, New York. And Penelope has said, I have heard over the years that I have been a Reformed Christian.
Most of the complaint about what takes place on the mission field seems to be almost the opposite of what you are referring to today. The complaint seems to have always been that the Armenian missionaries are being put under too much scrutiny, where if they do not produce numbers as far as people who make professions of faith in Christ within a fairly short period of time, they are yanked off of the mission field, and that very often missionaries using such a theological paradigm are basically accepting anybody as a genuine, bonafide, born-again believer because of their recitation of the sinner's prayer, etc.
Is this something that is equally of concern to you, or are you mainly talking about what you have already described in regards to cultivating what you called relationship currency?
Yeah, that's a really good question. I would certainly include that as being a part of the crisis. You know, when you look at a lot of the work that many Armenians are doing out there, not all across the board, but what many are doing is there's a lot of gimmicks, there's a lot of tricks.
And so you'll see, you know, there's certain college groups that I'm thinking of that they go out and they'll flip pancakes for students when they're partying during spring break, and they'll do all different types of gimmicks to draw people in.
And then, they do, and the whole purpose and intention of what they're doing is just to get a decision. And there's really no communication of the gospel. There's no understanding of the gospel. They're just decisions.
And so this, of course, has been a major issue for many, many years in the church. And so, yeah, I would certainly incorporate that into the problem of the crisis. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, the gospel is really not being proclaimed.
It's not really going forth. They're just trying to get decisions from people.
And perhaps we should also have you give a disclaimer, a caveat, that you are not broad brushing or condemning everything that is going on under the umbrella of mission work, and that all or most missionaries are failures or conducting themselves unbiblically.
You're not making that claim. You're just talking about a real crisis that exists, in your opinion.
Yeah, that's a great, great distinction. And thanks for bringing that up, because that 100 absolutely is true. There are many, many missionaries out there who are doing it very well. And that's part of this documentary as well.
What I wanted to do is I wanted to first dive into the crisis, but I also wanted to give several positive accounts of missionaries on the field who are doing it really well to show the world what a biblical view of missions looks like in real life out on the field.
And so, yeah, there are many out there. You know, there's a story. I was with Ryan Denton. Yes, he's been on the show too. Yeah, he's a dear brother. And I found a print from, you know, the print is about 150 years old, and it was of a guy preaching at the Galveston shipyard there.
And so, Ryan and I went down to the Galveston shipyard, and there was this guy there named John McCullough. And what, you know, during this time, Protestantism was actually illegal. Roman Catholicism was the predominant view, and Galveston was a pirate stronghold.
So, the pirates would attack the U .S. Navy, and then they would come back, and that's where they would, you know, unload in Galveston there. And so, John McCullough went in, and he just stood up on the docks and started preaching to pirates.
You know, how cool is that? Yeah. And he planted a church. The church is still there in Galveston today. You know, I don't know if it's theologically sound anymore, but, you know, the point of that story is to say there are many unsung heroes out there.
They're not trying to make a name for themselves. We probably have no clue who they are or what their name is, and yet they're out there serving Christ faithfully on the mission field. And those people, you know, I just say amen.
I mean, they're doing a phenomenal work. By the way,.
I heard that when the pirates used to try to refute the Christian teaching that was being presented to them that the pirates really didn't have a leg to stand on. I'm sorry. I had to throw that out there.
That's a good one. Well, yeah, please bring up some of these more orthodox—and, of course, I don't mean by that Eastern Orthodox—biblically sound techniques and manner in which great men of God have biblically partaken in the labors of the mission field.
And some of the things that our listeners who have a burden that they believe God has put upon their heart, that they can emulate, that they can seek to replicate in a way that, of course, is a biblical understanding of what I just said.
You know, I don't want to give the impression that we are advocating some kind of a five easy steps to do this or that, and follow this blueprint, and you'll be fine and dandy. I don't mean that. But, I mean, obviously, we do have Christian heroes, not only from the pages of the God-breathed Scriptures, but we have Christian heroes from history that we should seek to emulate in many ways as we can.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, I think before that, too, you know, part of the crisis here, I would say, especially in America, in the West here, is there's a lack of desire to want to make Christ known.
I think that ultimately is, you know, even putting aside some of the other issues with friendship, evangelism, and everything else, I think there's just all around a lack of desire within the church in America to want to make Christ known.
And so, you know, that's something else that I'm going to, that I explore in this documentary, is what's the cause of that? Why is there a lacking of desire? You know, I'll just say this, a lot of times when we want to go out and evangelize on the streets, we'll ask people in the church, and oftentimes, you know, you're lucky if you get one, maybe two, who will even go out with you.
And so, you know, that's not to condemn Christians and say, well, you're a lesser Christian or anything like that. But I think it comes back to a bigger problem, ultimately, and why is there such a lack of desire in our hearts?
And, you know, in the trailer, this comes up, that, you know, we ultimately, we want to make known what we love. We want to tell other people about what we love. You know, if we see a great movie, we want to tell people about that movie.
If we hear a great song, we want to share that song. If we see a beautiful sunset, we want other people to see it with us. And so, at the end of the day, I think we have to ask the question, you know, why is there a lack of desire in my heart to want to make Christ known?
Am I not seeing him as a great Savior, worthy to be made known to the world? And so, again, those are some of the things we explore as well. But so getting into the question about, you know, methodology and what are some of the methods of communicating the gospel, of course, you know, coming from a background with Jeremiah Cry, we advocate for open air preaching.
Now, that is not something that you can do in every context and every culture. You're not going to go to Iran and stand on the street corner and openly preach Christ. You probably won't last more than five minutes.
But in those countries where there is a freedom to do that, I think we absolutely should go out there and openly proclaim the gospel. But I would say any way that we can verbally communicate, you know, the life, death, you know, and resurrection of Christ.
And, you know, we have to verbally communicate this. As Vodie Bauckham once said, he said, you know, we cannot live out the gospel. Unless you can die on a cross and rise from the dead, you personally can't live out the gospel.
So you have to communicate it with words.
Yes. If words were not used, none of Christ's disciples would have been martyred. And Jesus Christ himself, were it not for the ordination of his father, that he be the sacrificial lamb on Calvary's cross, he would never have been executed.
If there were not words involved, it was the words that raised the ire of the enemies of Christ. If they were just feeding the poor and so on, that would not have riled people up to the point of wanting to kill them.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, you see that all throughout church history as well. You see, you know, even Justin Martyr and different people in the early church that were killed for their faith.
You know, these men, the reason why the world hated them is because they preached, you know, of course, when we preach, when we say we preach the gospel, we're saying that within the context of preaching the law and the gospel.
And so we just kind of shorten it up and say we preach the gospel. But, you know, as Paul said, if it wasn't for the law, I would not have known what sin is. And so when we go out, we herald the law. And then, you know, the law is our schoolmaster that drives us to Christ.
And of course, we preach the free grace of the gospel. And so, yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, verbally, we have to be able to, we have to communicate that gospel to people. And I think, you know, this comes back to then a question of why are we not verbally communicating it?
And what we tend to see on the mission field is social justice and mercy ministry. And so we see a lot of, you know, water wells being built. We see, you know, sending youth groups over painting school buildings.
We see all kinds of mercy ministry being done in the name of missions. And yet there's very little, if any, gospel proclamation or communication coming from a lot of this mission work.
No, I'm assuming once again, because people, I've been in Christian media long enough to know that people have very short attention spans. They don't listen clearly. They don't follow instructions very clearly.
You're not saying that Christians shouldn't be doing those things. You're saying that they shouldn't only be doing those things.
Correct. Correct. Yeah. So, you know, when we go out on the mission field, yeah, I'll give you an instance. When we, Jeff Rose and I from Jeremiah Christ Ministries, we went to Camden three days a week, Camden, New Jersey, and we would preach there.
And it was a really poor place. So at the time when we went, it was considered, it was the most dangerous and poorest city in America at the time. And we would collect clothes and food from the church, and we would bring clothing to the homeless, and we would bring food for the homeless that were there and the needy.
And as we were doing that, we would preach the gospel there. And so absolutely. And again, this is because it flows out of who we are as Christians. We just, we love people and we want to see good come to people.
And so, you know, what good is it if we just preach to them and we don't help them with their physical needs as well? And so, yes, that absolutely is an aspect of it, but we can't exclude the verbal communication of the gospel.
And that's really what I'm referring to, because oftentimes on the mission field, there is that exclusion that takes place. I'm going to go out on the mission field. I'm going to earn the right to be heard.
I'm going to do mercy ministry. And yet I'm going to wait for the opportunity to share the gospel. And oftentimes that opportunity doesn't come. And so then really what good was the mercy ministry? You know, we say, you know, atheists can do mercy ministry too.
And so if you're not communicating the gospel, ultimately, what really, what is the purpose of that mission that you're on?
And we have Kirk in Brave, Pennsylvania. And Kirk says, I'm just curious, where are you hearing about these complaints about what is occurring on the mission field in order to develop the notion that there is a crisis we need to be warned about?
Yeah, that's a good question. So being out on the mission field myself, interviewing missionaries from around the world, I've preached in cities all over the United States, in Canada, in Great Britain, Jamaica.
I have friends that have preached throughout Europe. I preached in Europe. I've been in China. I've been in many different places throughout the world. And so I've seen firsthand this crisis. The missionaries that I know of out on the field would affirm this crisis out on the field.
A dear brother down in Belize, Nate would affirm this crisis. I have brothers in Great Britain that would affirm this. And so, yeah, this is a problem that we see all over, not everywhere. There's places in the world where the gospel is going forth boldly.
There's places in India. There are places in China where the gospel is going forth in power mightily. And so again, I don't want to make blanket statements to say there's nothing good out there. There's a lot that's good out there.
But yeah, I would say absolutely from my experience personally, and from those I know, there is a serious crisis.
We have Bob in Albany, New York. And Bob says, what is the root of this problem you see in the mission field? Where can you trace this,.
And how can it be resolved? That's an excellent question. That's a very great question. And that really is the question I'm asking in this documentary, and that's the question I'm getting to in this documentary.
So I appreciate that question. This isn't something that is new to our generation. When you read biographies and books going back a hundred years or a couple hundred years, when you read of the Great Awakening with men like the Westleys, and you have Whitfield and Daniel Rowland and Hal Harris and Christmas Evans and all these guys during the Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards, they all would say the same thing.
There was a crisis in their day as well, which is what drove them and motivated them out into the world to preach the gospel. Hudson Taylor said the same. That's what motivated him to go to China. He was so discouraged with what he saw in his own hometown that that drove him to the mission field.
And you can go on and on with these same stories. But what I would say ultimately is this, is the root cause of this problem ultimately comes back to what I said. There's a lacking in desire to want to make Christ known.
Well, where does that lack of desire come from? Well, what I would say, my view of this is that we first have to come back and ask the question, what is the mission that God is all about? What's the mission that He is on?
What is at the heart of the Great Commission? And ultimately I would say it's His glory. His glory is at the heart of the Great Commission. But then we have to go further and ask, well, what is it that glorifies God most?
And so what glorifies God most is that He would be seen as a great and glorious Savior. We see that from Genesis all the way to Revelation, through the exaltation of His Son, dying for sinners on the cross.
That is what brings Him the most glory. And so then we have to ask the question, well, really missions begins within the four walls of my church. Because ultimately, what is the mission of my church all about?
Is the mission of my church about that, the glorification of God and the exaltation of His Son? Because there's all kinds of missions that are out there now, whether the mission of your church could be about building a great community.
The mission of your church could be solely about mercy ministry in the community. It could even be about producing obedience in Christians. And these are all good things, but that's not the ultimate mission.
And so if the ultimate mission is not about the glorification of God and the exaltation of His Son, downstream from that, it's going to be messed up. There's going to be a sickness really downstream of that.
Because if it's all about community, well, then your missiology is going to be about just trying to build great communities wherever you go. If it's just about mercy ministry in your church, that's what you're going to do on the mission field.
It's only going to be about mercy ministry. But if it's about the glorification of God and the exaltation of His Son, then that is what our mission is going to be on the mission field. And so to summarize that, I would say we've lost sight of what the ultimate mission of God is within the four walls of our church, and that has led to a problem downstream on the mission field.
Well, we have to go to our midway break, folks. So please use this time wisely. Write down as many or as much, I should say, of the contact information for as many of our advertisers as you can so that you can more frequently and successfully contact our advertisers.
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And let's see here, we have Randall in Brentwood, Long Island, New York, and Randall asks, I'm sort of confused about you saying that people do not want to make Christ known if they're on the mission field.
That would seem to be the main thing that would compel them to be there, or are you talking about there's not enough people sending out or supporting missionaries, or are the missionaries presenting a false, safe, unbiblical Christ?
Yeah, so that's a good question. For clarity's sake, I would say all of the above. Okay. And so, and again, not all missionaries. There are plenty of missionaries out there who are doing it well, who are preaching the gospel, who are faithful in the work that they've been called to do.
But generally speaking, what I have seen is there's a sense in which when a missionary goes on the field, some, not all, what happens is they go on to the field, whether it's maybe they've embraced a theological or a philosophical system that says we may be doing business's mission first.
And so we have to go over, we're going to start a business. And then oftentimes what happens is they get so involved in the business that they rarely, if ever, share the gospel with people because they're too busy doing business.
Or it could be that they're going to go over there and they're going to do mercy ministry and they're over there for eight to 10 years and they're doing good works and they're doing good things for people, but the communication of the gospel is lacking.
There's also another aspect of it as well, where I know many brothers on the mission field who have seen this firsthand. There is thousands, if not even in some countries, millions of dollars that is donated to missions.
And what happens is a lot of these missionaries, they'll go onto the field, there's no accountability and they'll live a very comfortable life out on the mission field and they don't actually do anything.
They don't communicate, they don't preach the gospel, they don't really do anything, they don't have a church and nobody's there to hold them accountable to that. And then of course, there are those who are part of missions organizations that go out and they don't really have a purpose.
I have personal friends, good brothers and sisters that I know, that I love dearly, who have been on the mission field with even reformed organizations. They've gone out and they don't even know why they're there.
There's really no purpose, they're not there to plant a church, they're just there living life and they come home extremely discouraged because they didn't see the purpose for what they were doing there.
Now, are they waiting to take marching.
Orders or what would be the reason that they were confused about that? Do they need a detailed blueprint by those who sent them? I'm not really sure how that problem occurred.
Yeah, so what happens is they'll go on to the mission field and this is where sometimes there's a disconnect between the local church and the missions organization. And I'd love to explore that in the documentary if I have the ability to do that with the timing of the documentary.
But what happens is there's oftentimes this disconnect where a church will send the missionary to a missions organization and then they're almost disconnected from their local church at that point. And so then the missions organization, the power church organization sends them out to the mission field.
And when they get out there, a lot of times they'll join a church that is on the mission field. For instance, in this case, Friends, they went down to Southern Mexico and they joined a church, an existing church that was there.
And really they were living there and they were just serving alongside this local church, but there was no clear direction from the missions organization what they were to do. And of course, as I already mentioned, the disconnect with their own local church.
And so they weren't there to plant, they were just really there to assist, but that's not ultimately what they wanted to do. And so there's this confusion. And then you have this, amongst the team that's there, they all have these different views of why they're there.
And a lot of times that can turn into strife on the mission field. And a lot of missionaries come home very discouraged because they just had no clear direction to begin with when they went on the mission field.
Again, I'm not speaking of everyone. This is just what I've seen personally. Amongst quite a few. Well, before I go to any more listener questions,.
I want to make sure you delve more in detail into the actual film and bring up some of the highlights that you believe are the most important elements of the film and the very reason for its.
Existence. Yeah. So as of right now, I'm still editing the film. It's not out yet. You can see the trailer on crisisofmissions .com. You can watch it there. Lord willing, I'm hoping to have it completed sometime around March or April in that range.
But one of the main themes that I want to address in the film, as I said, is that healthy missions is always downstream of a healthy church. And one of the main themes is that desire to want to go. Now we're just talking about this equipping and sending missionaries out on the mission field.
So there's a decline in that desire for people to want to go on the mission field right now. And ultimately what I see is we have to see Christ as a great savior before we're going to want to make him known to others.
And so 2 Corinthians 3 says that as we behold the glory of God, we're being transformed from one degree of glory to another. And then Paul goes on to say, and God who said, let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
So that glory he's speaking about beholding that transforms us is beholding the glory of Christ, seeing him through the gospel. And so if that's not happening in our local churches, then we're not going to see Jesus as a great savior.
And if we're not seeing him as a great savior, we're not going to want to go out and make him known. And so that's at the very foundational level. It flows out of there. Another component that I want to explore is the fact that there's very little accountability of existing missionaries that currently are on the mission field.
So you can go into just about any larger size church, I would say, speaking of maybe 250 members or more. And if you ask the elders, a lot of times they don't know who the missionaries are, at least not all of them who are out on the mission field.
And again, this isn't all churches. I'm just saying in a big majority of them, I've been in many churches where the pastors, the elders, they've never met the missionaries or they know very little about the missionaries who are out there.
And so I would say for pastors, I would encourage them to familiarize yourself with the missionaries who are out on the field, get to know them in whatever way you can. And I know this can be tough. A lot of times, maybe you're a new pastor, you just came in and you've taken over preaching at a church.
And so it's going to take time to do that. But I would say it's essential, you have to do that. And then begin to focus your efforts and your finances to those missionaries that you know, that you are familiar with, who are doing the work of gospel proclamation out on the mission field.
Not necessarily saying they have to be on a street corner preaching, but they have to be out there verbally communicating the gospel to other people. That's the whole point of why they should be out there.
Yes, I can remember when my former pastor who led me to Christ, along with my dear friend Susan, who planted the seeds back in the 1980s, but the pastor who baptized me and was my very first pastor as a born-again believer, he was called to be the pastor of a church that was not theologically reformed.
And he was. And after a period of time—he didn't do this right away like a bull in a china shop—but there was a time eventually where he had the very difficult task of going through the missionaries that they were supporting and eliminating many of them because they were on an entirely different page theologically.
And they were also involving women in unbiblical roles on the mission field. So that's something that churches really need to take seriously, isn't it? Who they're sending out there to represent Christ in the gospel is extremely important, isn't it?
Absolutely. One hundred percent. And you know, I know a brother in Haiti who has seen this firsthand over there. You know, Haiti receives millions and millions of dollars of support to that country. And unfortunately, you know, it's one of those countries where every year you have thousands of youth groups that go there, or I should say thousands of people within youth groups that go there.
There's short-term missions trips that go there, and they all stay within the main cities. They don't venture out into the country areas, and they just they do mercy ministry there. They don't communicate the gospel.
And so you have millions of dollars that's being spent to send people overseas. And there's very little, if any, gospel witness going on in those areas. Another brother, his name's Kelvin, in the Dominican Republic, a dear brother, reformed, incredible testimony.
He's in the documentary. He was in prison in Europe, and he got saved through Jeff Pollard's ministry there, Chapel Library, by reading reformed writings while he was in prison. In fact, Jeff has nicknamed the booklets that Chapel Library publish, Paper Missionaries.
Yes, exactly. I love that. And so Kelvin, Kelvin, the Lord saved Kelvin. He comes back to New York, and he gets trained theologically, and he says, you know what? I'm not seeing reformed churches in the ghettos.
I'm not seeing reformed churches in the worst parts of our cities. What's going on with that? And so he decided he was going to go to the Dominican Republic, and he was going to plant in the worst, most gang-infested, drug-infested neighborhood in the Dominican Republic, and that's what he did.
And he planted a church there. Now it's thriving. He opens up the doors of his church, and he breaks out the speakers, and he just preaches to the drug dealers and drug addicts that are out there. And his church is growing rapidly out there.
But same story out there is there's thousands of missionaries that go to the DR every year, and they're doing very little work. And those who are there full-time will receive the money, and they'll live, as the saying goes, they'll live high on the hog.
And then when the Americans come over, they try to make it look like they're doing something out there on the mission field, because there's very little accountability. And so this happens quite often.
So you really need.
To know who you're supporting. We have a friend of mine who's written in, who I've had on this program, Alex Wright. And Alex is the founder of a missions group, vesselsforchrist .org. And Alex is writing from Orlando, Florida.
What are some books you can recommend for people who are thinking about going on the mission field? I'll ask that first, because he has a couple of.
Other questions. That's a great question. And yeah, I know Alex too. Oh, you do? Alex is a dear brother. Yeah. So what I would recommend is, there are some books today that I would recommend, you know, Paul Washer's books on the gospel.
I would say first and foremost, thoroughly come to an understanding of the gospel so that you can clearly articulate the gospel to people. If you don't know how to articulate it, then really begin to learn and study and know the gospel in and out before you go out and even think about going on the mission field.
And then outside of that, my favorite books that I've read, actually, I'll give you one other contemporary book. He's also in the documentary. It's called Missions by the Book by Alex Kochman. He's the director at ABWE, which is a missions organization.
Yeah, he wrote a phenomenal book and he talks about the crisis of missions in that book. So I would highly recommend his book. He co-authored that. It's a really good book. And then I would also recommend Ryan Denton's books that he's written on open air preaching.
Yeah, he's been on the show to promote those. Yeah, he's written several. I would highly recommend his. And then outside of that, what has deeply impacted me the most is old biographies. You know, we all go through dry spells.
We all go through times when we need encouragement. And there's nothing that has encouraged me more outside of scripture than reading biographies of men, like reading biographies of Daniel Rowland. Phenomenal biography.
If you need motivation to make Christ known, pick up the biography of Daniel Rowland by FN FN's. Phenomenal. You know, George Whitfield, FN FN also, I think I'm pronouncing his name right. He's long gone at this point.
But he also wrote a dual set called the Calvinistic Methodist Fathers of Wales. Phenomenal set. And then outside of that, I mean, there's just there's so much rich history that you can read about men who have gone forth, who gave their lives to preach the gospel.
You know, even Michael Hagan has written a number of books that I would recommend on that subject.
Well, you actually answered, I think, Alex's second and third questions. But let me read them anyway, in case something else comes to mind. What missionaries can we model our lives after? Galatians 1 .10 says, for am I now seeking the favor of men or of God, or am I striving to please men?
If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ. What missionaries would follow in Paul's footsteps of that verse?
Yeah, man, that's a great question, because this also gets to the heart of one of the problems that we address in the film, and that is the fear of man. And, you know, when you adopt an ideology like friendship evangelism in the sense of I cannot share the gospel unless I build friendships with people first, there tends to be a fear of man and a fear of communicating the gospel.
You know, the Apostle Paul says it was through beatings and imprisonments and riots. You know, you have to ask the question, why did riots break out from Paul's preaching? If Paul just wanted to win friends and influence people, there never would have been riots.
He never would have been beaten with the 39 lashes minus one, as he says in Scripture, right? And so I would say, you know, the men of the past who were willing to, first and foremost, who saw Christ as a great Savior, and then they were willing to lay their lives down.
So men like Hudson Taylor, William Carey, Daniel Rowland, Hal Harris, George Whitefield, you know, the Calvinistic Methodists in Wales, a lot of those men, Christmas Evans, those are phenomenal biographies that I would read that will highly inspire you through the suffering, the persecution that they went through, and yet they continued to press on, and the Lord mightily blessed them, mightily blessed them, which, of course, we know led to the Great Awakening there and in America.
Well, thanks, Alex, and once again, folks, if anybody wants to find out more about Alex's ministry, Vessels for Christ, visit vesselsforchrist .org. We have Ted in Moundville, Alabama. When I first saw that you were promoting a documentary about crisis on the mission field, I immediately wondered whether your film—and by the way, Ted, the actual title is The Crisis and Missions—I immediately wondered whether your film covers the controversy over sexual abuse on the mission field, which has certainly been an issue amongst Southern Baptist Convention missiologists in the past few years.
And he continues on, and I'll go to those other.
Parts of his question when you respond to that. Yeah, no, you know, that's a great point there, and it is not something that I specifically address in this film, as I'm speaking more generally on more of the, I would say, the desire of missions and the evangelistic aspect of missions is really where the heart of this documentary is.
But, you know, it's certainly something I'd be willing to explore in the future. Yeah, he adds, I imagine some of my.
Evangelical friends seeing the title and being of the opinion that a documentarian—that if a documentarian produces a film about the crisis in missions but omits the abuse issue, that documentarian has forfeited his right to complain about anything else wrong on the mission field.
Now, if you want to put your—let me put my two cents in there before you respond to that. I don't think that every film and every book on every subject needs to be an exhaustive study and expose of every single thing going on under the heading of such a title, including the crisis in missions.
You know, you could say that—you could complain about nearly any book that has ever been written or any film that's ever been created if it doesn't exhaustively cover every aspect of what that title would imply.
But anyway, you could go ahead yourself with the.
Response. Yeah, I think you said it well, Chris. Realistically, if I were to address every single issue that there is on the mission field, I'd have, you know, a 45-hour-long documentary that would be inaccessible to people.
And so you really just—you kind of have to summarize things in a film. And also outside of that, too, you know, one of the challenges with being an independent filmmaker is I don't have a big Hollywood budget.
So I receive no support—or actually, that's not true. I receive very little support. You know, friends and family donate it here or there to the film. But, you know, to be able to fly around the world and support a work like this is a tremendous—takes a tremendous amount of resources.
And so you really can only touch on and address so many issues. But yeah, you said it well, Chris. Yeah, I even know folks who have.
Written biographies, and some have complained to them, why didn't you put anything about the person's racist attitudes in the book? And, you know, you could go on and on and on with that kind of a mindset about you shouldn't have left that out and so forth.
And no, I guess I'll just leave it there because—. Yeah, correct. Yeah.
There are certain omissions on a certain subject that would be unforgivable if the inclusion of these facts would have changed the entire point of the documentary, you know, or the book or whatever. But, you know, that's just a broader subject.
You could include that specific subject in more of a broad film about sex abuse in the church at large and, of course, include the.
Mission field. Yeah, exactly. And there comes down to whether you're writing a book or you're filming a documentary, there has to be a level of storytelling in there. And what I mean by that is you have to be able to logically articulate what your intent is in that book or that film.
And if you go down too many rabbit trails, you'll lose people very quickly. And so you have to keep it as summarized and concise as you can. Not in every case, obviously, there's technical writings and things where you can dig in deeper.
But in a film like this, I have to keep it as summarized and concise as possible and really just show the broad overview of what the crisis is. But I would love to maybe film shorter documentaries and explore some of those other aspects in the future.
Okay, we have a listener. You don't hear this name too often in the 21st century, but Guinevere in New Orleans, Louisiana says, I heard the host Chris Arnzen mention something about his former pastor eliminating missionaries from their missions budget because of improper roles given to women who were on the mission field.
What would be improper roles for women.
On the mission field? Do you want me to? Oh, yeah. I'd like you to answer that. Okay. Yeah. So I think an improper role for a woman on the mission field would be preaching and teaching. So if you're preaching from a pulpit, even we would say, so as a ministry, Jeremiah Crime Ministries, we would even hold that preaching from a box on a street corner would come with it a sense of authority.
And I think Paul in scripture is clear that women are not to have authority over men. And so there are instances on the mission field where women are pastoring churches. This has become quite prominent in areas like China, India, where a lot of women have really taken the reins and they are the ones that are doing the bulk of the preaching.
And now with that said, though, a lot of these women, when men come alongside and they teach them kind of like Priscilla and Aquila, when they came alongside Apollos and taught him the way that was better, when they're taught better, they will embrace that sound teaching.
And so I guess that would.
Be the issues that you would see on the mission field. By the way, Guinevere, I didn't mean to imply that I was insulting your name. I think it's actually quite lovely. It's not a common name is all I meant.
By the way, folks, if you heard beeping noises, that's because there's a truck right outside the window of the studio. So I apologize for that if you thought something was technologically going on. We are going to our final break right now.
So if you do have a question, I advise you to send it in immediately because we're rapidly running out of time. ChrisArnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages.
James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here. If you've watched my Dividing Line webcast often enough, you know I have a great love for getting Bibles and other documents vital to my ministry rebound to preserve and ensure their longevity.
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It seems like it is nearly impossible to find good curriculum out there today that is true to the Word of God and is built upon sound doctrine, much less it's hard to find curriculum that will actually teach people how to study the Bible.
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It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world. Here's Joe Reilly, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show.
He really loves hearing interviewed, Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Reilly, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland. Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft.
If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio, Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia are largely to thank, since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.
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Hello, my name is Anthony Eugenio, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York, and also the host of the reformrookie .com website. I want you to know that if you enjoy listening to the Iron Sharpens Iron radio show, like I do, you can now find it on the Apple's iTunes app by typing Iron Sharpens Iron radio in the search bar.
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When Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the New American Standard Bible were among my very first sponsors. It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio audience have been sticking with or switching to the NASB.
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Please mention that you heard about Buttafuoco and Associates from Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. We have Argyle in Chantilly, Missouri, and that immediately recalls to mind Chantilly, the Chantilly Lace song by the Big Bopper.
I dare not sing the lyrics to that because I have a hard enough time getting financial support as it is. But Argyle says, I have heard that one of the most difficult decisions that missionaries have is how much to cooperate with those of different religions on the mission field when it comes to meeting the physical needs of people.
I'm not talking about people that are silent about the gospel, but those that are passionate and very vociferous in proclaiming the good news, but at the same time, they want to be good neighbors to whoever they are ministering to, and that sometimes involves meeting the physical needs, just as the book of James tells us, and sometimes that may require the assistance of people who do not believe in Christ.
Is this ever appropriate?
That's a great question. I think we maybe have to make a few nuances there with that question. It really depends on what the issue is. If you're talking about a major, large issue that is maybe a national issue where it's affecting everyone in the whole country, then I think maybe there are times when it's okay to do that.
But there's other times. I'll give you an instance. A lot of times we go out to the abortion clinics, and we will preach in front of the abortion clinics, and we want to make it very clear to the Roman Catholics who are out there that we are not with them.
We don't want to give the impression that we are working together because we have a mission that we're out there to do, and that is to preach the gospel and to save babies. The Roman Catholics are also part of that mission field as well, and so in that sense, I would say, no, I wouldn't partner with them in that work.
So it really depends on the issue. Yeah, in fact, that just.
Reminded me of my dear friend Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries. Early on in his public active involvement to rescue unborn children from infanticide, he was involved in an organization that he had to leave because they forbid him from evangelizing Roman Catholics that were working side by side with him.
So he said, no, I'm not going to keep my mouth shut about the gospel, so I will save the unborn elsewhere. Well, I want you to now spend the remaining minutes of the show to etch in the hearts and minds of our listeners the primary things that you want them to remember.
When they leave this program. Yeah, thank you for that opportunity. Chris, it's certainly been a pleasure to be on here with you. It's been a great discussion, and yeah, so I think the one thing that I would want to leave with the audience is that the work that we've been called to do as Christians, when Jesus said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, go therefore make disciples of all nations.
That is the work that we are called to do, is to go into the world and to verbally communicate the gospel to our friends, to our neighbors, our coworkers. If you're a mom at home, raising your children, you have a great mission field at home to evangelize your children, to be able to communicate the word of God to them, and those who are within the actual vocational aspect of ministry, I would say absolutely go into the world and lift up the name of Christ.
Proclaim the name of Christ. There's only one way that people are going to be saved, and that is through the gospel, and people need to hear the gospel. How would they hear without a preacher? And so ultimately at the end of the day, the crisis comes down to the gospel needs to go forward to the ends of the earth.
And if you're a pastor out there, I would encourage you as well. I know pastoral ministry is time consuming. It takes up a lot of your time. It's a lot of work, but to lead from the front, not from the back in that evangelistic work.
Ryan Denton is a great example of that. Somebody who was leading from the front. Jeff Rose is somebody that is leading from the front. And outside of that, I would just say you can check out the documentary at crisisofmissions .com, and the film should be completed somewhere between.
March and April. That's crisisofmissions .com, and also let me remind you of the website of JeremiahCryMinistries, jeremiahcry .com, jeremiahcry .com. And since my guest mentioned Ryan Denton, I urge you to contact Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, one of our sponsors, cvbbs .com, cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for Bible Book Service, .com, and ask about Ryan Denton's books that they offer.
If they don't have any in stock, they will order them. You can even type in the search engine ryandenton. I also want to remind every man in ministry leadership listening that you are invited to the next biannual free Iron Sherpins Iron Radio Pastor's Luncheon, which will be held at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, which is Perry County, Pennsylvania.
Our next guest speaker for the luncheon, for the very first time ever since I've been conducting these luncheons, is Dr. Joel Beeky. And not only will you be fed for free, and not only will you be able to have free admission where you can join the fun and the fellowship and the food, you will be receiving a heavy sack, maybe even two heavy sacks, of free brand new books, specifically chosen by me for men in ministry.
And so there is no reason for you not to come if you are able to get to Perry County, Pennsylvania, on Thursday, June 6, 2024. That's Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania. If you want to register for free, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put Pastor's Luncheon in the subject line.
I want all of you to have a very safe and happy and healthy and Christ-honoring weekend and Lord's Day, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.