Vertical Churches

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. Welcome to No Compromise Radio. How fast can I say that, Steve?

Way faster than you just did. All right, well, Steve Cooley is here. It's Tuesday, Tuesday guy. I still haven't received any Tuesday guy T-shirt.

Well, that's because we're going with the staff shirt. We're gonna skip right over the T-shirt thing. We're going full bore. They'll be about $175 each, but they'll look really nice. Gold flaked, probably.

Absolutely. Yes, I saw some outrageous food show the other day, and they put some Kobe beef hamburger, Steve, with truffle sliced on top and then gold flake sprinkled.

Let me tell you something, these shirts are gonna make Elvis in Vegas look classy.

Now, Steve, tell me a little bit about your Saturday Tuesday guy show, a podcast. Just gonna be you for 24 and a half minutes. Will you use Tom Petty as intro music?

I won't back down. No, I think Elvis Costello. Oh, okay. Watching the detectives.

You know what, that'd be perfect, since you were pretty much close to being a detective.

Oh, yeah, sure, real close.

The Problem with Marketing a Vertical Church

All right, well, I just wanna have a little message moment here to kick off the show today because we've got all kinds of things to talk about.

We really need some separate music for that. Do you know, I wish I had that. Like the Olympic theme or something. You know, maybe, but I was thinking.

Some really bad music, Steve. Some Barry Manilow or something. Oh, Mandy? Yeah. When I was a kid, I think I liked that song. Yeah, well, all right, back to it. I'm preaching First Corinthians and hope to finish up here in the next couple months, and at the very end, Paul says something that he doesn't really say anyplace else.

Maybe in Ephesians 6, he says something close to it, but he says, if anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed, O Lord, come. First Corinthians chapter 16, verse 22. I wonder how the message would say that.

If anyone has no love for the Lord, give him a hug.

Well, they did their loose rendering, are they meaning him, Eugene Peterson. It's not the worst, but it's not scripture, see? That's the point. And I, Paul, in my own handwriting, send you my regards.

If anyone won't love the master, throw him out. Give him the heave-a-roo. Make room for the master. Our master Jesus has his arms wide open for you. He loves me this much. With arms wide open.

Is that a song? Yeah, it is. Who sings that? It's probably about 10 years old, Creed. Oh, really? Yeah.

I didn't know that. Creed, first there's Creed, then Conduct. Is that how it works? I don't know. Belief, then behavior? The band is not so common, Creed. It's a common Creed. All right, Steve, today, I don't know if you have your Christianity Today in front of you, but I think we should go talk a little bit about that.

Here's another Barry Manilow reference. It's a miracle. It's a miracle. Did you listen to Rod Stewart when you were growing up?

No, you know, I didn't listen to him at all until I was in the Army, probably about 81 or so. I hated Rod Stewart, as a matter of fact.

Okay, so why does Barry Manilow remind me of Rod Stewart?

Are they the same person, really? Well, yeah, they just wore different outfits.

This is Christianity Today, September 2012. And Steve, the first thing I'd like to talk about is just a few pages in. It's a full-page ad by David Cook. David Cook is, I think, selling the Thulians' new book on suffering.

I can't remember who else they're selling.

These kind of famous pastors. David Cook won American Idol a couple of years ago.

Yeah, was that David C. Cook or David E. Cook? I'm not really sure. Okay, anyway, there's a new book called Vertical Church by James MacDonald, and it's subtitled What Every Heart Longs For, What Every Church Can Be.

And so we've talked about James MacDonald before on No Compromise Radio and discussed his wisdom, or lack thereof, picking T .D. Jakes to be on The Elephant Room 2, et cetera. But here's what I didn't like.

And so maybe James MacDonald didn't say this and the publishers did, so I can't really be sure, because I know publishers sometimes do things that the authors might not like. That's right. So give them the benefit of the doubt.

But it says here, among other things, because when God comes back to church, it's time to order more chairs.

Because he occupies a lot of seats?

Well, yeah, that would go against the simplicity of God, right, that he is everywhere all the time simultaneously. There's no parts with God denying the confession, Westminster Confession, no parts, no passions.

But see, what's wrong with that? When God comes back to church, it's time to order more chairs. Now, let's do the inverse first. So if you don't have many chairs, what does that imply? That God's not interested.

But what about where two or more... Oh, sorry, that's another one out of... See how we spin into just the nether regions, the nether worlds? Now, certainly, at God's own pleasure, according to his sovereign will, when the word of God is preached, there can be spectacular things that go on, even with numbers, correct?

And with Whitefield and Edwards.

If God's building his church, he'll build it how he desires, and he could convert a lot of people at one time. We could have what some people like to call a revival, which I don't know what that all means, but there could be a lot of people saved.

There could be no people saved. I mean, you could go through all kinds of different growth or non-growth spurts, but the point is Christ is building his church. That's what he said he would do, and he is.

Good. Now, Steve, sometimes we know that a pastor will go into a church, and the church has some liberal tendencies, or some seeker-sensitive tendencies. I guess those are one and the same. And finally, there's a man who has been given courage by God Almighty, and been given an unction, if you will.

I don't know what that word means either, but just have to throw it in once in a while. The anointing. The unction. Let's have a new book called The Unction Church.

How about The Anointed Unction? Yeah, UA. I did not know Charlie Chaplin started United Artist Films. Did he? Yes.

He started it? Yes. Really? He and some other folks. Kind of a socialist thing, wasn't it? Most likely. So there are some times when God brings a man to a local church, and he begins to preach the Bible, the full counsel of God.

He preaches expositionally. He preaches Christ-centeredly. And what happens to that church? There used to be 200, and within a year, it shrinks down to 100, because the people who are marginal believers, those who are just in choirs, those who aren't really saved, those who are immature, fill in the blanks, they leave.

Sometimes when God... Yeah, sometimes when God shows up to a church, you actually need to get a smaller building. So this is, and again, maybe it's not McDonald, but David C. Cook and the philosophy that this book is promoting, if this little statement is correct, God's not at your church.

If you've got this small little dinky church, it's as if we go back to Dave Keller, Tim Keller. Tim Keller and these mega churches in the urban centers. I know Driscoll's got the big Mars Hill deal, where people now live in the urban community, so we've gotta be very urban.

I'm all for urban churches, but what do you do to the pastor in Mississippi who has about 25 people there? He's faithful and preaches. Is God showing up? He needs to learn how to rap. Well, maybe he needs a social justice team.

Maybe he needs a Mickey Mouse T-shirt. But I mean, some of the book is kind of given away by a little blurb on the cover of the book that says what every heart longs for, what every church can be. Does every heart long for the pure milk of the word?

Does every heart long to hear Christ crucified, Him crucified, preached?

I don't think so. Right, we would be naive to think that you can't control your own subtitles because I'm a nobody and I control the two subtitles that I had, right? I had to finally authorize them. Yeah, I don't

So I think James is on board with this subtitle.

I'm not too fond of your third one, though. You know, by Mike Amedroth, aka I'm a nobody.

It didn't sell a whole lot. What every church can be, what every heart longs for. I'm wondering if we would go to 1 Peter and see what every heart longs for. Certainly would not be to be martyred and to suffer for the sake of Christ.

That's exactly what God had willed for those churches in that area.

Well, and, you know, obviously Romans 3 says, no one seeks after God, and yet this would, I mean, if you take this literally, and I'm a literalist, what every heart longs for. That's not, it can't even possibly be true.

And so I just don't even, I don't even know what, and you know what I also object to is it looks like sergeant stripes on the book cover.

It does, it is, it's sergeant stripes for sure. What's, Sergeant Rock is here to help me. I think that's an XTC song. Sergeant Rock is here to help, oh, I'm sorry. Steve, this lends itself to, and maybe we'll have to read the book to see, I can just hear the callers now, have you read the book?

You know, have you read, do I need to read the Quran to know it's bad? No, and I have read it. I've read some of it too. And it's quite bad. But let's get back to this whole idea of big is better, big is more godly.

That's what our heart is longing for, what every church can be. And again, if it's, you want your church to be biblical, I'm all for that. But with this, it's time to order more chairs business. Just larger is better, when I think faithfulness is the key, Steve.

Aren't stewards told to be, in 1 Corinthians 4, faithful? Well, and guard the trust,.

You know, as Paul would say to Timothy. All these exhortations in scripture, exactly. And I mean, the whole description here, church was never meant to be safe, comfortable, or predictable.

Oh, I think it is. It should be very predictable. I think God is a God of order and a God of peace, not chaos and disorder. You know what, Steve? Let's talk about this for a second. When visitors are invited to Bethlehem Bible Church, or Grace Church, or there's all kinds of churches out there, Alistair Beggs Church, Parkside, should we say, as a congregant, to our visiting friends, it's going to be pretty unpredictable today.

You never know what's going to happen. You better get ready. Yeah, I mean, there could be an auction. There could be a hurricane. Oil changes. You never know what's going to happen. Sometimes the pastor will just get up there and, you know, he'll just start movie quotes for like half an hour, 45 minutes.

Yeah, my pastor has this little puppet. He's called Mortimer Schnurd, The Prophet. I think that's copyrighted. You think it probably is? Yeah, I think it's pretty predictable because scripture is regulated by, worship is regulated by scripture.

God tells us how he would like to be worshiped. So when I look at this and I see Isaiah 6, what happened with Isaiah? He saw how sinful he was, how a holy God was. He experienced the sovereign initiative of God's grace in his life.

And then he was sent to preach. And what was Isaiah sent to do? Harden hearts. Sometimes God sends out people to close churches.

Yeah, I mean, talk about rough, you know, that kind of a charge from the Lord. Hey, go preach and nobody's going to listen. Awesome.

Here I am, send me. Okay, and he said, go and say to this people, keep on hearing, but do not understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive. That's two points, Steve. Here's your two point sermon. And I don't even see a poem here even though the ESV sets it apart.

Here's your first point. Keep on hearing, but do not understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Hmm, and Paul, excuse me, Isaiah was told by God, make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy and blind their eyes.

Now I'm not saying the audience of Isaiah was similar to New Testament audiences, but you can see a correlation where sometimes God uses his word to open the heart like Lydia. Sometimes God uses his words to harden people in their hearts.

And so I think sometimes when God comes back to church, people have their ears heavy and their eyes blinded. That's exactly what happens. Would that sell, Steve?

About three copies. We're giving away Pastor Mike's new book because nobody will buy it.

What if I wrote a book called Horizontal? Horizontal Church? You know that's coming next.

Because first you have to go vertical, then you have to go horizontal. Well, isn't that the purpose-driven church? Oh!

Wow, well, Bill Hybels did endorse it. Vertical church will force you to think fresh thoughts about the future of the church. You know what? Again, I don't want fresh thoughts. I don't want new thoughts.

I don't want novel thoughts. I don't want How about deep thoughts?

Okay, Stuart Smalley. No, that's Jack Handy. Oh, that's Jack Handy. Who's Stuart Smalley? Stuart Smalley is, I'm nice enough. People like me.

Got it. Yeah. All right, well, maybe David Cook will send me a free copy, and if I get a free copy, I will read it. Is he off tour yet, David Cook? I'm not exactly sure. So vertical church will force you to think fresh thoughts about the future of the church.

Jesus as Creator, Iconoclast, and Fulfillment of Prophecy

Okay, next, there's another ad, Steve, that I wanted to talk about, and I think this is probably a good book, but I just want to talk about the marketing for a second. I really like the cover. I think it's kind of funny.

John Ortberg, who is this man? A question mark, the dot of the question mark is the earth. The question mark itself, the non-dot part, the top part, what would that be called? There's probably a name for that.

Yeah, the question mark. Like it's a question mark tilde kind of thing.

The curly part of a, yeah.

You see a portrait of Jesus within that, but not outside of the question, because it's a little thicker, and so here's what I don't like, Steve. This is, well, first of all, it says, the subtitle, The Unpredictable Impact of the Inescapable Jesus.

Just kind of sounds like a bad creative writing class.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of superlatives, and what does it mean?

Absolutely nothing. So then the publisher, Zondervan, and again, I think Ortberg's probably gonna do a good job in the book, but just the publishing, because the publishers know how to sell books, so what are people looking for?

So let's take it off of Ortberg and even Zondervan. Innovator, trendsetter, creator. All capital letters referring to Jesus, the next sentence says, Jesus has impacted everything from history to humanity, et cetera.

Innovator, trendsetter, creator. Now, Steve, when I was younger, I thought it was kind of, when I was a brand new Christian, I thought it was cool that Jesus was the ultimate rebel. Yeah, the rebel Jesus.

Right, that I got to follow, not James Dean. You know, he was cool, but he was dead. I got to follow a rebel, and Jesus went against the grain of the Sadducees and the Scribes and the Pharisees and the Herodians, but that was pretty immature thinking, wasn't it?

He was a religious revolutionary.

So Jesus was an innovator, a trendsetter, and a creator.

How is that possible that the creator of the entire universe is somehow, you know, he shows up a couple thousand years, 4 ,000 years after he created everything, and he changes everything? You know what, let's just kind of shake things up.

Now let's talk about, okay, creator. We would affirm that, right? Colossians 1, the God referred to in Genesis 1 .1 is Jesus in John 1, verse 1. So creator part we get, but the trendsetter. Could you please tell me a few trends.

That Jesus has inspired? Well, you know, he hated elastic, and he just got rid of all that. Everybody was walking around with these elastic-lined pants, and he got rid of all that.

Yeah, he introduced the robe. Oh, it was the robe, and you know what I thought was nice is he gave John the Baptist credit for giving the trend of whole foods and the vegan things. Bell-bottom robes, he actually did that, too.

Yeah, yeah, they're coming back. What's a bell-bottom robe? Flares. When people say, I'd like to get a tattoo, I basically think, you know, that means you're gonna have to wear flares and bell-bottoms the rest of your life, because that trend's gonna come and go,.

Just like the trend of the tattoo. Oh, I saw a tattoo today. I mean, you know, talk about a diversion, but I saw a tattoo today on a woman probably about my age, and I just thought, why would you do that?

I just don't, I don't understand it, you know?

Well, I guess if you wanna have your husband's name tattooed on your ankle or something, I don't know how that all works, but you know we're not necessarily against tattoos. We don't use Leviticus against that, but we just sometimes wonder what the wisdom of the whole deal is.

And you know, my whole thing, just to close that off, I've never understood the idea of paying to have somebody inflict pain on me in pain that I might regret later, so that's. Well, I get the first part.

I understand what you're saying, the first part, but I thought, well, I could always get my back waxed, but then later that would be okay. For three weeks, it'd just be a smooth back.

And that would probably hurt, wouldn't it? I have three words for that, TMI. TMI.

Okay, back to this book, John Orberg, What Is This Man, or Who Is This Man, rather? Innovator, and so, Steve, when I think of innovators, I think, correct me if I'm wrong now, I think that the Jews of the day in the New Testament, Jews, an all-inclusive term for the leadership, whether they were Pharisees or Sadducees or anyone in between, were trying to condemn Jesus because they, in fact, were painting him as an innovator, something new.

When you think of Jesus's words, hey, listen, men, in Mark, over and over, and in Luke 18, the scriptures testify to the son of man who's going to come and suffer, die,.

And then be raised from the dead. Yeah, he wasn't an innovator. He was returning the original truth, the intent of God's commands from the beginning. He wasn't innovating anything. He was, I would say, if you want to use an I-word, how about iconoclast?

He came in and he was destroying the idols, the false system that they had set up.

Because Colossians 1 says he is the real icon. There you go. So Steve, what about in regard to fulfilling prophecy? How can you be an innovator when you're there to fulfill prophecy that's written of you, from Genesis 3 .15 to Psalm 22 to Psalm 110?

There is no answer to that because you can't be.

Now, if they mean he's an innovator because with the Father and the Spirit in eternity past, they innovated this plan of redemption, but somehow I don't think Zonderman means that. Yeah, I don't think so.

Here's another I-word, incarnation. You could say that he was the incarnation. He was the embodiment of everything that had been prophesied, but I don't think innovator is very good.

So see what we do here on No Compromise Radio with Steve and Mike. We look at these books and then they are good jumping off points to just ramble away and to talk and to hang out. Steve and I have tough pastoral responsibilities, like every pastor, no tougher, but like every pastor.

And so it's good for us to just sit and chat and laugh and remember these kind of things.

Yes, try to remember, and if you remember.

Circumcision, Religious Freedom, and German Anti-Semitism

All right, the next thing I'd like to talk about, Steve, is in the little news section. It's called Gleaning's page 14. Did you know in Germany, a German appellate court has ruled that parents do not have the right to circumcise their sons for religious reasons?

The parent's right to religious freedom does not justify the physical harm done to the human body, judges say, despite millions of Muslims. I didn't know they were to be circumcised. Yeah. Okay, and approximately 100 ,000 Jews that call Germany home.

The Cologne court said religious freedom would not be impaired because children could later decide on their own whether to be circumcised. Now, what's your take on this issue in Germany?

Well, I think it's gonna come to a boiling point, and because of the burgeoning Islamic population, I think eventually this will get overturned or they'll do away with it. But it also, I mean, for me, when I first read about it, I read it in a secular source, but I just thought, really?

The Germans are gonna go kind of anti-Jewish, you know, against the Jewish religion? Again? Yeah. Really? So yeah, a little bit scary. But I think in the end, whether they have to pass a law or whatever they have to do, I think they're gonna, I just think that the overall, the broad German sentiment would be kind of aghast at the idea of going down the anti-Semite road again, so.

Well, if you've got, in fact, if the Muslims require circumcision, and that doesn't surprise me, you've got all kinds of Turkish people who live in Germany because they are, right or wrong, the backbone of the German economy's lower stratus.

Yeah, they've been imported to do physical labor.

Right, and so what do you do with them? Some Sharia law just for them, two sets of laws. But Steve, when I was there a few years ago for those three months, I noticed that the Germans were very reticent to be involved in any battle, war, potential war, because they realized what had happened in the 30s and 40s, and so they rebounded even farther away or further away from that position.

So don't you think they do the same thing here with something against the Jews?

One would think so. And so I'm guessing this is what some, just one of the states there, the judges made this ruling, and I think at some point it's gonna get overturned. And you could still get the circumcision done, but only by a doctor, and I'm like, okay, so you're just gonna crimp religious freedom a little bit.

I can't see this standing.

Well, what happens is you have folks that want to have their sons circumcised, if you're Jewish, on the eighth day, and if you're Christian, sometimes people have their kids circumcised. Usually if the father's circumcised, then the kid is.

But Steve, what I find it fascinating, because I don't think it's a religious issue for the Christian, for the Jew and the Muslim, yes. But when it says physical harm, actually aren't there all kinds of studies that a circumcised person will have less problems with all kinds of issues physically?

What they mean by this is it's the whole mental thing. Remember that deal going in San Francisco, and basically I blame my problems, not of my own sin, James chapter one, I blame my problems because I was circumcised.

Now just how stupid is that? That's like I've got the demon of drunkenness, and I am mean because I was circumcised.

Yeah, it's definitely loopy, and I think at one point in San Francisco they even outlawed circumcision, but I don't, of course they've outlawed goldfish too, so go figure, I mean that's one wacky place.

But I think ultimately in Germany I think this is gonna get overturned, we'll see.

And you know, Steve, maybe this is too much information for you as well, but back in the biblical day, and back in the day of Nazi Germany, and even today there is a group of people who try to reverse circumcision.

TMI. Well you would know why they would do it back in the old days, they wouldn't want to be associated as a Jew, and there would be a way to find out quickly if you were Jewish or not, if you were a man, and so you wouldn't want to get killed in a concentration camp.

And so that's just no compromise radio today. Do you have a prediction for today's show? Pain! I remember that. How cool is it that supposedly on the eighth day there is more potassium in a boy's system than any other day leading up to that?

Who knew? Yeah, it's just evolution, figured it out. Seventh day to eighth day. Steve, any last comments?

Just that God is sovereign, he's in control of all things, and whatever the courts rule, God will ultimately decide.

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.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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