November 7, 2018 Show with Dr. Harry L. Reeder III on “3D Leadership: Defining, Developing & Deploying Christian Leaders Who Can Change the World”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century Gospel Minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 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 whom we converse with 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 hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now, here's our host, Chris Arntzen. 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 Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this seventh day of November 2018, and whether you are rejoicing or whether you're weeping today after the elections last night,

I'm sure that today you will be blessed by our Lord, God, and Savior, Jesus Christ, through our interview with Dr.

Harry L. Reader III. I am so glad that he has returned as a guest to Iron Sharpens Iron today.

He is an author and senior pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which is a congregation in the

Presbyterian Church in America, more commonly known as the PCA, and we are going to be discussing today his latest book, 3D

Leadership, Defining, Developing, and Deploying Christian Leaders Who Can Change the

World, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Dr.

Harry L. Reader III. Yeah, Chris, it's good to be back with you. Thanks.

Oh, my pleasure, brother, and before we get into the discussion on the book, 3D Leadership, please give us a summary of what

Briarwood Presbyterian Church of Birmingham, Alabama, is all about. Well, we're a congregation that had the blessing of being the host of the very first General Assembly of the

Presbyterian Church in America. It's a church that was planted under the leadership of Dr.

Frank Barker, who served for 40 years. I then was called as the senior pastor in 1999, and I've been now here for 20—I'm going into my 20th year.

Briarwood is—we're pretty much a meat -and -potatoes church. We just simply stay focused upon worship, evangelism, discipling, the

Great Commission, world missions. Those are the things that we do. Our mission statement is we are equipping

Christians who can worship God to reach Birmingham, to reach the world for Christ.

Amen. Well, let me give our listeners our email address if they have any questions for you.

It's chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Well, tell us what led to you wanting to write this book, 3D

Leadership, Dr. Reeder, because obviously, as you know, there are many books on Christian leadership filling the shelves of pastors' studies, some of them excellent, some of them horrendous and unbiblical.

What led you to say to yourself, I think that we need another book on developing

Christian leadership? Well, Chris, you know, one of the things

I love is a passage of Scripture in Acts chapter 17 and verse 6 where it says, these people who have turned the world upside down have come here also.

That's an amazing statement when you realize it's being made by an adversary of the gospel, it is being made in the continent of Europe, and it is being made less than 25 years after the ascension of Jesus.

So let me restate that. Less than 25 years after the ascension of Jesus, someone in Europe who is an adversary of the gospel says these people, their assessment is these people who have turned the world upside down have now come here also.

Well, I know who turns the world upside down. It is the Holy Spirit through His church.

I know what turns the world upside down is the power of the gospel. What also intrigued me, though, is how did, in less than 25 years, how did they do it?

And so when I studied the ministry of the Apostle Paul, I noticed that every time he went to a city, he did gospel evangelism and discipleship.

Secondly, he did gospel church planting. Thirdly, he did gospel deeds of love and mercy.

Fourthly, he did gospel leadership development and deployment, multiplication and mobilization.

And then I realized that the church, when it's been its most effective, has not only developed leaders in the church for the world, leaders in the church for the church, but leaders from the church into the world.

And that's what this book is about. It is what I call an immodest proposal.

And the immodest proposal is that the church would become a leadership factory and a leadership factory that defines leadership, develops leaders, and deploys leaders into every sphere of society who know how to lead with a

Christian world and life view. And that's the whole concept. And if we could start where your subtitle starts, because people have many different definitions for leadership, obviously there is a

Wall Street and secular societies definition of leadership that very often the church imitates.

And there is a biblical understanding of leadership. There is a definition of leadership that imitates

Christ, involving not only authority, but also humility and servitude.

But if you could define leadership for us. Well, again, the 3 -D, maybe if I could do it this way, the 3 -D says you want to define leaders, develop leaders, and deploy leaders.

So when you first start off with, one of the things that's happening now is the secular world, as you just intimated, the secular world is defining leadership, they're developing leaders, and then they're deploying their leaders.

And then we get leaders that have been developed in the world with a worldly definition of leadership, we bring them into church and we think that five or six officer training classes is going to change them.

Well, the reality is that's not going to do it. We've got to have a bigger view of some generational changes of how do you nurture and define and develop leaders with a longer term impact.

And so to start with the definition of leadership, a very simple definition of leadership is that a leader is someone who influences others to achieve a defined mission together.

So a leader is someone who influences others to achieve a defined mission together.

Now, how do you make that into Christian leadership? Well, Christian leadership begins with character.

And that's where, you know, Christian leaders are servant leaders, they're sacrificial leaders.

They are they are not self -reliant, they are self -sacrificing.

They are not self -exalting, they are self -denying. How do you get there?

Well, you get there through the gospel of Jesus Christ, and how does that define the character of a leader?

I can teach people leadership skills, but I don't. I don't teach people leadership skills first.

If I do a conference on leadership, I never start with skills because I know leadership works.

And I can teach you skills, but if you don't have the right character, then you will use the skills to manipulate people instead of motivate people.

Amen. And sadly, that tragically happens more often than we care to admit in the

Christian church. Well, there are people that might say that if you look around at the men in any given congregation, there are some that have an innate God -given gift toward leadership.

Others would say you can take nearly any faithful Christian, of course every faithful Christian is still a sinner on this earth, but every faithful Christian that that stands out as a moral man, an obedient man, a faithful man, a man after God's own heart, and you could make that person with the proper training a leader, even if you don't recognize leadership skills innately in them to begin with.

So where do you fall on that? My answer to that is yes.

People are always asking that question, is leadership nurture or nature?

And I think it's yes. I think there are certain individuals and certain families that basically seem to have a leadership

DNA that is constantly manifested in their progeny.

It just seems to, they just seem to keep producing leaders. So I think that does happen.

But I also believe I can teach anybody leadership skills. I mean, I can teach whether a man is gifted as a leader or not,

I can teach him how to lead his wife, how to lead his children, how to lead people to Christ.

You can teach people leadership skills as well as you can nurture people who have leadership gifts.

So I think it's like evangelism. Everybody can evangelize, but some people are gifted at evangelism.

Like worship. Everybody can worship, but some people are gifted at worship. Some, it's like a prayer.

Everybody can pray, but some people are gifted to pray. And I think the same thing is true of leadership.

I don't know if you saw Hacksaw Ridge, the movie, it was a true story of Private Desmond T.

Doss, who did not, according to the movie, and from what I understand, the movie very closely follows his real life, but you didn't see any innate, natural leadership qualities in him.

But he sure, after being tested on the battlefield, became a tremendous leader that that Christians can truly look upon as a role model.

Did you see the movie and would you agree with my statement? Oh yeah, I totally agree with you. I did see the movie and I was aware of the history of that particular soldier and how he served and the impact that he had.

It was really well done. And you know, I see that all the time. I mean, at Briarwood, Dr.

Barker is the founding pastor. He's just absolutely legendary in his leadership.

Well, he is an introvert. He's very quiet. He has no type

A personality at all, but yet he just impacts. And we have a tendency to think that leadership has to come in a certain personality package.

And I disagree with that. I mean, I have met introverts that are effective leaders. I have met extroverts that are effective leaders.

I think that I've looked at the Myers -Briggs and I realized there are certain patterns about certain kinds of leaders.

But the fact is, is in the church, the Lord can take people and use them in leadership by doing something in their life and giving them certain skills and nurturing certain graces in their life.

And those are people that just impact people wherever they go, even though you would not pick them out as a leader in a room full of leaders.

You wouldn't pick them out as a leader. Well, the person that immediately came to mind when you were describing

Brother Barker is the late Dr. James Montgomery Boyce. I had the privilege of meeting him on a number of occasions and he was a very friendly man, but he was very quiet before he ascended into that pulpit.

He was he was soft -spoken. He seemed like he was a bit shy, but as soon as he ascended into that pulpit, he became a very powerful preacher and a really gifted leader where you believed that he was truly guiding you accurately through the scriptures and spoke in a very commanding way that seemed to contradict the way that he might seem before he ascended into the pulpit.

I don't know how often or if you've ever met Dr. Boyce before he entered into glory, but do you think

I'm accurately describing him? Yes, Dr. Boyce is actually one of my mentors and I knew him very well.

I, in fact, was pretty close to him right up to the end, and in fact, his sister is a member of my congregation.

Oh, wow. And Linda Boyce's wife was just down to visit just a couple of months ago.

I recommend the book, by the way. Linda has just put out his sermon series on the life of Moses.

I think it's out with Presbyterian and Reformed.

It is an excellent volume. But anyway, back to your question. Yes, there's a perfect example of a fellow, you know, one of his close friends was

R .C. Sproul. Well, R .C., whenever you're with R .C., he fills up a room wherever he is, but Jim was not that kind of personality.

Yes, wherever Jim went, he affected the room ultimately and finally, and that's what a leader does.

They influence others. They have different personality packages. They have different gifts, but they influence others because of the gravitas of what they say and how they live and the insights that they bring.

And you sense that here is someone that's got depth and breadth, that has height and width to their life, and that's you begin to sense and are drawn to.

Well, how do you envision not only pastors who already exist in leadership and other men that are involved in leadership, how do you suggest that they develop other leaders?

Well, number one is anything as a pastor, anything you do by yourself other than private matters and other than private matters of life, you've just wasted time.

People, you develop leaders by instruction and imitation. Both of those things are necessary.

Jesus said, what you have seen and heard in me. The Bible says,

Luke says, all that Jesus began to do and teach.

So what we have, you have to have models in your life and you have to have mentors in your life.

So I always tell pastors, if you want to develop leaders, you need to give instruction and you need to get guys with you.

About 80 % of what people learn is by imitation and about 20 % by instruction.

But the instruction is what shows you what's valuable to imitate and shows you how to conserve what you're imitating.

So both are crucial. Leadership is both caught and taught.

We have a listener in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, BB, who says,

I am not an egalitarian by any stretch of the imagination. I strongly believe that the complementarian understanding of leadership in the church and in the home is the most biblical.

However, I was wondering if your book has value for women, because women do, as you know, have leadership roles over other women in the church.

And older women are in fact commanded in the scriptures to train younger women.

I was just curious if the book contains anything in regard to that. Yes, the book is by no means just focused on how to develop ordained officers in the church, which would be qualified men.

The book is a general principles on leadership. And yes, there'll be a lot of masculine illustrations, but they're easily transferable.

And so what you're studying and how to define leaders is not just ordained leaders for the church or just a husband as a leader.

These would be general principles of leadership, and I think you'd find it useful. And secondly, there's also a book that just came out on leadership for women.

And I have a chapter in that, or I have a contribution to that, a small chapter in that, that is put out by Karen Hodges and Susan Hunt, and they might find that helpful as well.

But I think this book is easily adaptable to developing male and female leaders.

Thank you, B .B. By the way, you have just won a free copy of 3D Leadership.

And this is because of the generosity of Christian Focus Publications. And they are going to be, or should

I say, our friends at CVBBS, Cumberland County Bible Book Services, they are going to be mailing that out to you as soon as we get your full mailing address.

And we thank you for contributing to the show today with an excellent question. We have RJ in White Plains, New York.

And RJ says, other than giving biblical instruction through the word preached and taught, what other ways are leaders developed in the church in tangible, physical ways?

Well, there's a lot of things that are developed in the book, and not to undo the book or make it, or try to explain everything in it, but one of the things that we talk about is how you need models for your life, how you need mentors for your life, and how you need motivators in your life.

And so those three levels of models from history and the Bible, mentors, spiritually mature life coaches to develop you as a leader, and then number three, motivators.

And that would be a band of brothers where you would hold each other accountable, or a circle of sisters, that you would hold each other accountable, uphold each other, and encourage each other.

So on the one hand, all of the things that we develop about how to develop leaders really flow from biblical practices and precepts.

And then there's a number of illustrations in there that I think you'll find helpful. Now, I will alert you,

I don't draw heavily upon business leadership practices, and my reasoning is, while I think there is things that you can learn from business leadership, there is overlap.

When the Bible describes Christian leaders, it's usually in terms of family, army, military, family, military, and the body.

So a leader in the body, that is someone that knows how to bring unity from diversity.

In family leadership, that's paternal and maternal leadership. How does a father and a mother lead?

And those two models are things that we draw upon. And then thirdly, military leadership, because, you know, we're not in a business, we're not producing a product, a service, a customer, clientele.

No, we're in a war. And now, praise the Lord, the war's been won, but we still got battles to fight.

And what does it mean to lead people into life in which life and death is at stake, and matters of eternity, and the well -being of individuals?

So we draw upon illustrations in the book that I think they'll find extremely encouraging and helpful.

Well, thank you, R .J., and you have also won a free copy of 3D Leadership, so please give us your full mailing address in White Plains, New York, so that CVBBS .com

can ship that out to you as soon as possible. We have

Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says, one problem

I have found in life when encountering men who may be excellent leaders in many ways is that they have an aura of being so lofty that they appear to be unapproachable.

They appear to be men that you might be intimidated to walk up to and have a conversation with.

Don't those in leadership, and also those cultivating leadership in others, need to be humble and make that humility very obvious?

Yeah, and that's one of the things we deal with. There are three in the curriculum for developing leaders in the book.

I develop character, content, and competencies. Some guys and their competencies, some women and men and their competencies that you just think, how could

I ever approach them? But when they display the content of what they know, you've got to know your stuff as a leader, and then when you package it in their character, all of a sudden, what you would think would be an unapproachable person because of the breadth and height of their impact, what you begin to see is, no, they are approachable.

The Bible says in 1 Timothy chapter 2, the Bible says that the Lord's bondservant must be approachable, easily entreated, and so great

Christian leaders don't surround themselves with entourages so that they are unapproachable and unaccessible.

On the contrary, good Christian leaders need to be accessible. Now, that doesn't mean you don't have to put certain margins in your life, but it does mean you want to be accessible, approachable, and to whatever degree that is appropriate, transparent.

Well, thank you, Arnie, and guess what? You've also won a free copy of 3D Leadership, thanks to the generosity of Christian Focus Publications and also

CVBBS .com, who is shipping that out to you at no cost to you or to our interpreters on radio.

Make sure we have your full mailing address. We're going to our first break right now, if you have a question for Dr. Harry L.

Reader III on leadership, and since he is a pastor, we will even broaden the spectrum of the questions we will take to any pastoral issue, but of course, we would most like you to ask about leadership, and the email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com, and please, as always, give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal private matter.

Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages with Dr. Harry L. Reader. Hi, Phil Johnson here.

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.nyc. Have a great day. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

If you just tuned us in, our guest today is Dr. Harry L. Reader III. We are discussing his latest book, 3D

Leadership, Defining, Developing, and Deploying Christian Leaders Who Can Change the

World. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

We do have another listener from Clifton, New Jersey. Joey says,

Thank you for your helpful insights today. You said earlier this book is easily adaptable to developing male and female leaders.

Could you please comment or clarify what those applications for female leadership might be?

I have to enlarge the email here that Joey sent because the type is quite small.

I am not intending to put you on the spot, but there seems to be a lot of confusion in modern evangelicalism on this point, and I wonder if you might have some guidelines that might be helpful to Christians.

Thanks for any light you might shed on this subject. Well, thank you, Joey in Clifton, New Jersey.

Dr. Reader, if you could. Well, I guess he's, yeah, well,

I think a while ago, Chris, I affirmed the fact that I believe the Bible teaches that there are roles and responsibilities within the family, that a husband is to lead his wife, and that the husband and wife together are to lead their children.

Then in the church, there are to be those whom God has called as qualified men, not just men, but qualified men, in the office, the ordained offices of elder and deacon.

But out in the world, I think that that's a, you know, for instance, the Proverbs 31 woman had the servants that she oversaw.

She looks like she had at least three, maybe four businesses that she led, all the while affirming her role as a mother and as a wife.

In fact, her husband was being exalted in the gates through the way that she functioned, and clearly she had a real estate business, she had a manufacturing business, there were a number of things that she led in that context.

You find the leadership of Deborah in the Scripture, Lydia, you find

Paul referring to leading women on four different occasions in the book of Acts, and then you find how

Jesus developed this cadre of women who were engaged in complementarian leadership in support of the disciples.

So I think this matter of complementarian leadership can be seen in the business world, and I think the big key is that men and women lead, both can lead, and there's overlap of leadership, but male and female leadership has their own distinctives to it as well, that a female leader brings a certain distinctive and a male leader brings a certain distinctive.

It's not a matter of superiority or inferiority, it's just a matter of difference, and that men and women are different, and therefore their leadership, while overlapping in the business community or out in the civic organizations, while it was overlapped, there would be some distinctive marks to it.

Well thank you Joey, and you have won a free copy of 3D Leadership. Please make sure we have your full mailing address in Clifton, New Jersey and cvbbs .com.

We'll ship that out to you, and we thank our friends at Christian Focus Publications once again for the generosity.

Before I move on to another question, I just want to read a couple of the commendations that this book has received, so I can give our listeners a better idea of the value of this book.

Peter A. Lilbeck, who is president at Westminster Theological Seminary in Glenside, Pennsylvania says,

Harry Reader's gifts of communication and leadership are legendary. This book is not only a source of spiritual wisdom, but a manual on the practical application of the principles of biblical leadership.

And Mark Dever, many of our listeners may recognize Mark Dever's name from the

Nine Marks Ministries, and also he is the pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D .C. Reader is disturbed that churches have entrusted the world with defining what it means to be a leader.

He tries to take that job back, and with it, he gives us help in knowing how we can develop and deploy those leaders in the church and beyond.

And last but not least, Philip Graham Ryken, president of Wheaton College, who has also been a guest on this program.

All of these men have been on this program at one time or another. Drawing on a deep understanding of scripture, a lifetime of ministry in the church, and a practical knowledge of military history,

Reader lays out clear biblical principles for success in spiritual leadership. Well, with commendations like that,

I think that people should take this book very seriously, and very seriously consider purchasing many copies to give out to not only pastors, but men who are perhaps inspiring to be pastors, or anybody else who is aspiring to be a leader in any sphere of life.

We have another listener here who seeks to remain anonymous.

What do you say about those who return to leadership after committing scandalous sins?

We all know that Christ's death covers every sin of the elect.

However, in everyday life and in matters involving the church here on earth, that does not mean that there are not consequences behind our sins.

If you could give your view on this. Well, I think here's what we have to remember, is that the glorious truth of the gospel is the forgiveness of sins, and we praise the

Lord for that. But leadership is not a right that is attached to your justification.

Leadership is a privilege that is attached to the process of your sanctification.

And in the scriptures, the number one responsibility of a leader is they have to be above reproach.

Obviously, that doesn't mean perfect, doesn't mean sinless, but it means trustworthy. So can a leader forfeit leadership by their behavior?

Yes. Can that leadership be restored at a later time?

Yes. But that restoration of leadership would be a process whereby it would be obvious to all that the leader has now regained that status of being trustworthy and stewardship of life.

So that would be my basic answer.

Just remember that leadership is not a right attached to justification. It's a privilege attached to sanctification, and while one can be restored to fellowship, one is not automatically restored to leadership, although there can be a process of restoration.

Now, I have three guys. We've been in an accountability group for 35 years.

Our commitment to each other was that if any of us fell into the sins of sexual immorality, we would labor to restore you back to fellowship in your marriage and in your family, but you could not be restored back to leadership in the church.

Now, why did we take that position? It was not because we thought we were strong.

It's because we realized our weaknesses. So we automatically put into our accountability relationship a factor that said, if you are considering being unfaithful to your wife, remember this will cost you your ministry, that the door only swings open one time.

And we did that, again, not because of strength, but because of weakness of ourselves. And so while I think somebody can be restored back to leadership,

I have never yet seen people more effective after the restoration than they were before the faltering.

Therefore, I want to encourage people to stay faithful to Christ, be honest about your life, be transparent, keep accountability, and realize you can be restored.

But the reality is that leadership is a privilege.

It is not a right attached to our salvation. You have phrased it in a way that I have never heard before.

I've heard, obviously, the basic elements of what you said, but the way that you phrased it specifically is excellent, and I've never heard it phrased that way.

We actually have another anonymous listener who asks, are there any sins that a man may have committed before his salvation that would prevent him from being a candidate for leadership in the church after his salvation?

Well, again, I do not want to preclude the possibility of an extended period of time whereby someone could re -establish trust within them.

But there have been times where I, as a leader and responsibility, we've had to make judgment calls.

For instance, there was a young man who we had the great privilege to lead to Christ in prison.

He was in prison because of a molestation. He confessed, he repented, we put him through extensive discipleship.

He actually came out of prison, and we saw him restored back to his family, his parents.

We saw development in his life. Eventually, he was married, and so we were grateful to see all of that, but we made the decision he could never be an ordained leader in the church because of a number of things, not the least of which the nature of his offense.

We believe that you should not put him in a place of temptation in terms of the various dynamics of ministry and the children's ministry, etc.,

that would be required of that office. And so we made that decision, nor should we put parents in a position of realizing that that's there.

That would not be prudent at all. So I think prudence may lead you to some situations where there have been past sins that have rendered you outside of an ordained leadership.

Now that doesn't mean that you can't have other positions of leadership, but those ordained positions of leadership would not be accessible.

Excellent. And of course, I'm assuming that you would not preclude even very horrible sins always preventing someone from being a pastor or a leader if those sins were committed, especially before salvation, because we have as the greatest example, obviously,

Saul of Tarsus. He actually rounded up men and women for execution because of their faith in Christ, and then of course he was transformed by the power of Christ after his salvation.

So obviously, even somebody with a record, a track record like Paul, doesn't exclude them from candidacy, but there are occasions, like you just mentioned, the pedophilia or the molestation where it would.

Yeah, you've got these around, these sins around certain sexual sins of perversion,

I think have to be looked at very carefully, and specifically when you have a power structure of an adult to a child.

Now, having said that, yes, you're right. I mean, it's amazing. I mean, who are three of the most prolific writers of the

Bible? Well, you've got David, you've got Paul, and you've got Moses. Well, all three are guilty of murder or manslaughter at best.

And so here's your most three prolific writers of Scripture. And so very clearly,

God can and does use people. I mean, I tell people Paul was the

Osama Bin Laden of his day. He was a religious terrorist, killing

Christians and destroying churches, and then he becomes the greatest evangelist in producing

Christians and planting churches. So God takes great delight in not only overcoming those things, but many times taking our greatest vice and turning it into our greatest virtues by his grace and for his glory.

Amen. Well, at the risk of being repetitious, because I'm assuming that there's a possibility that some of your answer to my next question may be things that you already said.

But you also feature in your book, the chapter on what leadership is not, if you could go more into detail about that.

Well, just a couple of things. I mean, leadership is not manipulation. Leadership nor is it management.

Now, a leader is responsible for management, but being a manager is not necessarily being a leader.

So every leader is responsible for management underneath their leadership. But if you're a manager, that does not necessarily mean you're a leader.

One of my examples of that is in the presidency of Jimmy Carter, you had a man who was extremely capable intellectually of mastering great depths and volumes of material, but he was not a good leader at all.

And then you've got someone like President Reagan, who was constantly delegating that kind of thing, but yet he was a leader in giving people vision and direction and inspiration.

So a leader must get management done, but managers are not necessarily leaders.

Excellent. We have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, New York, who says,

Should Christians adopt as heroes for leadership men that have no record of being

Christian? To give you an example, I even know pastors who are theologically reformed, who are biblically sound and solid, but they will refer to on occasion men like Teddy Roosevelt and others that have leadership qualities that are notable and excellent, but they had no record that we know of actually being regenerate.

Another example that comes to mind is Winston Churchill. What is your opinion about using these men as examples and role models for the

Christian? Well, my dear friend George Grant would argue that Roosevelt and Churchill might, he might, he did a series of books called

Profiles, and in it there are a couple of authors that actually argue that Roosevelt and Churchill were believers.

They didn't convince me, but they did argue that. But I have absolutely no problem in taking leaders who are unregenerate and who, by God's common grace, incorporate things that we ought to learn.

So yes, I used illustrations from Teddy Roosevelt, I used multiple illustrations from Winston Churchill, and it's not because I am saying that they're believers, but I am saying they're not.

They may be totally depraved, but they're not absolutely depraved. And in God's common grace, there are things that you can learn from leaders.

And I enjoy, for instance, I quote Douglas MacArthur, um, there's a number of leaders that I think you can learn from principles of leadership that, in God's common grace, we can draw upon them, even though we do not necessarily, even though we do not affirm the fact that they do redeeming grace.

Right, yeah, I immediately just thought of an example in a different area.

I remember years ago being present at a Bible conference led by Al Martin, Reformed Baptist pastor, now retired, and he surprised many, telling them that he thought one of the most excellent preachers in regard to homiletics was

Norman Vincent Peale. And yet, he did not believe Norman Vincent Peale was He was just speaking about the mechanics of speaking and so on.

Yeah, you've just mentioned another mentor of mine, and that's Al Martin. And I just had a chance to talk to Al last year, and almost everything he says,

I write it down and explore it, because it has just great insight. And I think he's absolutely accurate.

You can preachers, they're unbelievable communicators, that if you will watch how they communicate, they may not yet be converted.

They certainly may not be preachers, but their communication skills you can draw from and learn many things in God's common grace.

You have to remember, a clock that's broken is not reliable, but it's still going to be right two times a day.

Well, we are going to go to our midway break right now. The midway break is longer than our typical breaks, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of our show, because they air their own public service announcements and commercials to localize

Iron Sharpens Iron to Lake City, Florida. So please be patient as we take this longer than normal break and write down questions for our guest,

Dr. Harry L. Reeder, who will be with us until the conclusion of this broadcast at 6 p .m.

Eastern time. And also write down information provided by our advertisers so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize our advertisers.

We rely upon our advertisers' financial support to exist, so please patronize them as often as you can.

So if you have a question for Dr. Reeder, the email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away.

We'll be right back with Dr. Harry L. Reeder and more of 3D Leadership. One sure way all

Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners can help keep my show on the air is to support my advertisers. I know you all use batteries every day, so I'm urging you all from now on to exclusively use

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Or go to BatteryDepot .com. That's BatteryDepot .com. James White here, co -founder of Alpha Omega Ministries and occasional guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

I'm so delighted that my friend Chris Arnzen will be heading down to Atlanta for the next G3 conference from January 17th to the 19th, 2019, where I'll be joining a very impressive lineup of speakers on the theme,

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Hello, my name is James Renahan, and I'm the president of IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas.

The Word of God says, If a man desires the office of an overseer, he desires a good thing.

Do you have the desire to serve Jesus Christ in pastoral ministry? Twenty years ago, the

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It has been a wonderful partnership. Now we have advanced our school into an independent seminary offering a full program of courses leading to the

Master of Divinity degree. This is IRBS Theological Seminary. We believe that the scriptures of the

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Do you sense a call to serve Jesus Christ in his church as a pastor? Why not consider IRBS Theological Seminary?

You'll find more information at irbsseminary .org. That's irbsseminary .org, two

S's in the middle. I hope to hear from you soon. God bless you. Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is sponsored by Harvey Cedars, a year -round

Bible conference and retreat center nestled on the Jersey Shore. Harvey Cedars offers a wide range of accommodations to suit groups up to 400.

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James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here. If you've watched my Dividing Line webcast often enough, you know

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That's ptlbiblerebinding .com. My name is

Steve Lawson, founder and president of Linn Passion Ministries, as well as teaching fellow for Ligonier Ministries.

I serve as professor of preaching and oversee the doctor of ministry program at the Master's Seminary in Los Angeles.

I would like to recommend the church where one of my preaching students, Andy Woodard, serves as the pastor.

It's called New Covenant Church, NYC. They are a Reformed Baptist church that meets in Midtown Manhattan.

You can find their service times and location on their website, which is www .ncc .nyc.

They believe in a sovereign God who commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.

If you're looking for a church that believes in expository preaching, which is simply biblical preaching, in New York City, I'd like to recommend that you visit

New Covenant Church, NYC. Again, their information can be found at www .ncc

.nyc. Have a great day. I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Aronson on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio.

I would like to introduce you to my good friends, Todd and Patty Jennings at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

Todd and Patty specialize in supplying Reformed and Puritan books and Bibles at discount prices that make them affordable to everyone.

Since 1987, the family -owned and operated book service has sought to bring you the best available

Christian books and Bibles at the best possible prices. Unlike other book sites, they make no effort to provide every book that is available, because frankly, much of what is being printed is not worth your time.

That means you can get to the good stuff faster. It also means that you don't have to worry about being assaulted by the pornographic, heretical, and otherwise faith -insulting material promoted by the secular book vendors.

Their website is cvbbs .com. Browse the pages at ease, shop at your leisure, and purchase with confidence as Todd and Patty work in service to you, the

Church, and to Christ. That's Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service at cvbbs .com.

That's cvbbs .com. Let Todd and Patty know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio.

And you can call cvbbs .com at the toll -free number 800 -656 -0231, 800 -656 -0231,

Monday through Friday between 10 a .m. and 4 30 p .m. Eastern Time. If you mention

Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio and you purchase a minimum of $50 of merchandise, you will receive absolutely free of charge the book they are currently offering,

Always Reforming by David Engelsma. And you'll also get on top of that free shipping on your entire order of $50 or more by mentioning

Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. We just have a few more announcements to make before we return to our guest

Dr. Harry L. Reader III on our topic 3D Leadership. There's some events that I want my listeners to know about.

And the first one is tonight at 6 p .m. So you'll actually have to leave wherever you are now and head over there to the

York College of Performing Arts or the York College Performing Arts Center in Jamaica, Queens, New York.

This is a debate featuring my friend David Wood, who is a brilliant apologist, especially in the realm of Islam.

He is a Christian apologist in the realm of Islam. He is going to be debating Muhammad Hijab on Trinity or Tawheed.

And I probably am pronouncing that incorrectly. I believe it's Tawheed. And that is tonight from 6 p .m.

to 9 p .m. in Jamaica, Queens, New York at the York College of Performing Arts at the

York College Performing Arts Center. If you have more details that you need, you can call toll -free at 866 -323 -3336.

That's 866 -323 -3336. Then coming up this weekend,

Friday and Saturday, I am going to be manning an exhibitor's booth at the next event being hosted by the

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, and that is the Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology here in Pennsylvania at the

Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Quakertown, Pennsylvania, and the speakers include David Garner, Ray Ortland, Richard Phillips, Timothy Gibson, and Carlton Winn.

That's Friday, November 9th, and Saturday, November 10th at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Quakertown, Pennsylvania.

The theme is The Glory of the Cross. If you'd like to register, go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org,

click on events, and then scroll down to the Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology. I hope that you attend, and I hope you visit me at the

Iron Sherpa's and Iron Exhibitor's booth during a break during the conference. Then coming up in January, the

G3 Conference returns to Atlanta, Georgia, more specifically College Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, at the

Georgia International Convention Center. The G3 Conference stands for Gospel, Grace, and Glory, and it's being held from Thursday, January 17th through Saturday, January 19th.

The speakers include Dr. James R. White, John Piper, Stephen J. Lawson, Votie Baucom, Mark Dever.

You just heard Mark Dever's name mentioned because he endorsed the book we are discussing, 3D

Leadership, by Dr. Harry L. Reader. Provided an excellent commendation for that. Conrad M.

Bayway, Tim Challies, Phil Johnson, Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, Stephen J.

Nichols, the president of Reformation Bible College in Sanford, Florida, which is the college founded by the late

R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries, and many, many more are on that roster of speakers. If you'd like to join me there, go to g3conference .com,

g3conference .com to register. The theme is The Mission of God, A Biblical Understanding of Missions, and they are expecting between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 people, so I strongly urge you not only to register to attend, but if you have a church, parachurch ministry, business, professional practice, special event that you want to promote in a crowd of 4 ,000 to 5 ,000 people,

I would register for an exhibitor's booth if I were you, just like I will be manning at the

G3 Conference. Go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com. Last but not least, if you love

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, you don't want this program to disappear from the airwaves, please go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

click support, then click click to donate now. You could donate instantly with a debit or credit card, and I always try to remember to remind you of this caveat,

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Those two things are commands of scripture, providing for your church and home.

Providing for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is not a command of scripture, obviously, but if you are financially blessed above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands, and you love the show, and you don't want it to go away, please go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

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If you want to advertise with us, as long as what you are promoting is compatible with what I believe, I would love to help you launch an ad campaign because we truly do need the advertising dollars.

Send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line and we'll try to help you launch an ad campaign as quickly as possible.

Also, if you do not have a church home, a biblically faithful church home near you, and if you're not prayerfully seeking for one, you are living in rebellion against God, please rectify that situation immediately and if you have a hard time finding a church, please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put I need a church home or something similar in the subject line. I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the world and I've already helped a number of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners find a biblically faithful church home near them, so please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put I need a church home in the subject line. That's also the email address where you could send in a question to our guest

Dr. Harry L. Reader on his book 3D Leadership. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Now let's go to the area of your book that involves the deployment of leaders, if you could start with that.

Yeah, so we want to define leaders, we want to develop leaders, and then we want to deploy leaders.

I think one of the big mistakes that we've made a number of years ago, perhaps I could do it this way,

I'm old enough that I can be a footnote in history now. I think back to the to the 60s and the late 50s when

I was just a little kid, but I remember the church was fascinated with prophecy conferences and therefore the dispensational view of the rapture, etc.,

was at its height, as it were. And so the notion was, look, the world is headed to, into, well, what is it, the hell in a handbasket?

Hell, yeah, I never figured out how you could get to hell in a handbasket. But that would have been the phrase.

And so you don't polish brass on the Titanic, so if it's going down, so why worry about it?

Just get out and share the gospel and everybody needs to go be a missionary. Well, of course, I think you're either a missionary or you're a mission field,

I agree with that. But not everybody is called to be a cross -cultural missionary, not everybody's called to be a pastor, and that you can actually be a missionary by going into every field of life.

And so I really, I got, then I got exposed to Reformed theology and the understanding of calling, and that actually when you're called of the

Lord, that a brick mason can actually be a servant of the Lord and bring the testimony of the gospel to their business by the way they do business, by the way they do their work, and that all of work is a calling before the

Lord, and therefore we need to produce leaders. So look, you've got, what, there's something like 300 to 400 universities, of which 80 to 85 percent of them have their origin in Christian churches,

Christians, or Christian organizations, and now 90 plus percent of them are categorized in the framework of secular humanism.

Well, why? Well, it's because the leadership. We pulled, we, instead of putting the Christian presidents in these colleges, the world developed its leaders and deployed them into the colleges, and we lost them.

And what we need to do is to develop leaders that can move into every sphere of society.

So we have leaders, we develop Christian leaders who know how to do media, who know how to do entertainment, who know how to do academic, move into the field of academia, who can move into statesmanship, who know how to move into the corporate world.

That we develop leaders that can move into all of those arenas.

One of the things we do at Briarwood that I love is called our Briarwood Fellows Program, and that's not a, that's a program when young people have finished their college, they come to us for a year in which we saturate them with a

Christian world and life view as they move into some sphere of society to be a leader for Christ.

And that's what we need to be doing intentionally, and that's what, that's part of the burden of this book.

Amen. We have, let's see here, we have

Christopher in Amityville, Long Isle, New York, actually my hometown where I was born and raised and lived for many years afterward.

Christopher says, can you recommend seminaries that you yourself would attend if you needed to go, or where you would send your sons or members of your church?

Okay, well I would send my son and the members of my church to Birmingham Theological Seminary, which is a ministry of Briarwood Presbyterian Church.

And one of the reasons is my son is the president. Oh great, well we got to get your son as a guest here on Iron Yeah, he is an excellent educator and a great president, and this seminary is doing a marvelous job of making seminary good, solid, reformed education available in a flexible way financially.

Now, beyond Birmingham Theological Seminary, I'm very grateful for my alma mater, which

I believe now as the best faculty we've had since the days of the founding faculty, and that's

Westminster Theological Seminary. Peter Lilbeck, our president, is doing a great job.

Our faculty is phenomenal. I have the opportunity to serve on the adjunct faculty as well as the board, and so I am constantly recommending

Westminster Theological Seminary, and I also am adjunct faculty and recommend

Reformed Theological Seminary, particularly I'm drawn to the campus we were able to start when

I served at Christ's Covenant in Charlotte, and that is Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, and of course they have their other campuses as well, and they're noteworthy in terms of the teachers, scholars, and students, and administrators, so those are the ones that I highly recommend.

There are a number of excellent regional seminaries, Greenville Seminary, Puritan Seminary, there are a number of others that I think are doing an excellent job as well.

And I have interviewed the presidents of all of those seminaries except for the one at Briarwood, which

I'm looking forward to interviewing your son, and I've interviewed many of the faculty members of all of those seminaries.

I would be deserving of a very hard smack in the face if I did not remind our listeners about a sponsor of this show that helps keep us on the air, irbsseminary .org.

That's the Institute for Reformed Baptist Studies Seminary in Mansfield, Texas, irbsseminary .org,

so please obviously keep them in mind as well because they help keep the electricity, and the lights on, and all the other stuff that we need to pay for on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

We have an anonymous listener in Canada who says, what does the, what does the doctor reading,

I'm not sure if he made a typo here, what does the doctor reading think, oh

I think he meant to say Dr. Reader. What does Dr. Reader think is a good way of getting a conversation started about getting not necessarily terrible leadership restored, but improving the current leadership.

I have no roles of leadership in the church I attend, but definitely see things lacking in the leadership.

Thank you and take care. Well may I unabashedly refer this questioner to, unashamedly

I should say, refer this questioner to something that you and I've talked about at a previous interview, and that's my book,

Embers to a Flame, and our conference on church vitality at Briarwood Thursday through Sunday, the third week of January, I think it's the 21st through the 23rd of 2019, and it's for pastors and leaders of local churches, the 10 strategies for church revitalization, which includes the strategy called the leadership dynamic, and so I think that would be a good thing to encourage leaders to go to.

Secondly, if they're not able to go there, or even if they are able to go there,

I would get them good books on leadership, again unashamedly, I'd say 3D leadership, and by the way, this 3D leadership has questions at the end of each chapter so that it can be used as a study guide for leaders as well, and you might make use of that, and then

I would give, I think one of the things, if you can get biographies of great leaders and good books on leadership in the hands of your leaders, hopefully to whet their appetite.

You know, you can't, you can lead the horse to water, you can't make them drink, but you could pour some salt in their mouth, and maybe they would then want to...

They were going to get complaints about cruelty to animals. So I would encourage you,

I would encourage you to just try to give them some ideas, expose them to good leaders, expose them to biographies of good leaders, good books on leadership, perhaps a conference,

I've heard some good conferences advertised today on your program, I would love for you to consider

Embers to a Flame in Birmingham on January the 21st through the 23rd,

I think, and then just good books and biographies. You know something, you just reminded me,

I am very seriously amiss here, I forgot to mention one of our sponsors conferences that is right after that, that conference.

This one is in Laurel, Mississippi, being hosted by a new sponsor of Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Bethlehem Baptist Church of Laurel, Mississippi, that is from January 24th through the 26th, it's the

Deep South Founders Conference being held at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Laurel, Mississippi, and the speakers of that conference include my friend of many years, going back to 1995,

Dr. Conrad Mbewe, the pastor of Kupwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, and the chancellor of African Christian University.

Also joining Dr. Mbewe will be Rusty Reed, Gerald Henderson, Jason Goodwin, and Bobby Crenshaw, and the theme is sanctification.

So go to deepsouthfounders .com for more information, deepsouthfounders .com,

and I'm glad that Dr. Reeder just jogged my memory about that by listing the dates of his own conference.

We are going right now to our final break, it's going to be briefer than the last one, and now is your time, if you haven't already, to send in your questions or forever hold your peace because we are rapidly running out of time.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, that's c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

That is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

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Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon eastern time for a visit to the pastor's study because everyone needs a pastor.

Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, for am I now seeking the approval of man or of God, or am

I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

We are a Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.

That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the apostle's priority, it must not be ours either.

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If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

You can call us at 508 -528 -5750, that's 508 -528 -5750, or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our

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I accepted this call to teach at the seminary because I'm firmly convinced that the people of God in the churches of our

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Criticizing. Iron. I think that's what it's called. This is Todd Friel of Wretched Radio and TV with Phil Johnson of Grace To You, inviting everybody to come to the

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It's a great conference. I love it. And Chris Arnson was there last year. He's been there, I think, every year.

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Call Lynnbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402.

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They believe in a sovereign God who commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.

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Spread the word about firstloveradio .org. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen, and this is our last 20 minutes or so with our guest today,

Dr. Harry L. Reader III. We are discussing his book 3D Leadership, and our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

chrisarnzen at gmail .com. If you have a question, I just want to quickly say to remind you that our friends at Solid Ground Christian Books, founded by my dear friend and very first pastor,

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We are now back with Dr. Harry L. Reader, and we do have a question.

This one is from Christian in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and Christian asks, do you think that too many churches automatically look outside of their own congregation for leaders that they hire from seminaries and so on, rather than cultivate the leaders from within their own family?

Well, that's a good question. I would just merely say I don't want to over -emphasize that because we don't want to fall into some incipient form of landmarkism that all the gifts are within our local church.

They're not. I don't mean to get into the area of church government, but you know, when we acknowledge the fullness of Christ is given to the body of Christ in Ephesians, that's referring to the church universal, not to any one local church.

And therefore, finding and gaining leadership outside the church is not wrong in and of itself.

Now, what is wrong is if you're not defining, developing, and deploying leaders from within the church where you are.

So I don't think it's an either -or, I think it's a both -and, but I think there ought to be an intentional commitment to making the church a leadership factory is the picture

I try to give people, where you're constantly producing leaders not only in the church for the church, but from the church into the world.

And again, it's not just where do we go get leaders for the church, but how can the church produce leaders that go into the world?

I just met two men that I've had the privilege to work with and disciple who were just elected.

One to Congress, well, this is his second election to Congress, and one to the

State Senate. Another young man that I was working with has just taken over the leadership of a company, and so he is going to impact other people with the kind of job he produces, the product he does, how he services it, and he does his work heartily unto the

Lord. That makes an impact for Christ when people bring

Christian leadership to bear into certain segments of society and every sphere of society.

So that would be my little bit of a long answer there. Yes, I think it's fine to bring people in.

It's also fine to bring people up out of your own congregation. Now, I will say this, whenever we're looking for filling a staff position, we always look internally first, but not internally exclusively.

We do look outside as well. I'd like you to, at least in summary form, go through three leadership styles that you feature in your book.

Authoritative leadership, participatory leadership, and delegated leadership.

Yeah, those are three I really had added to a colonel out of the military. His name is

Bill Cohen, and his insights and work that he's done on this. What he makes the point of is there's a time for authoritative leadership.

For instance, you know, I went down to help a church that went through a hurricane, and the pastor had set up command central right there at the church.

They were getting the names of places where people were hurting without electricity, without water, without food.

We had our teams there. He was directing the teams. Well, that's just, listen, when the storm hits the ship, the captain grabs the mast, grabs the rudder, and just leads.

You don't need to have a committee meeting. You don't need to have a council meeting. You don't need to have a vote who's going to do what.

You just grab hold of the mast and you lead. Times of crisis is the times that you need that leadership, but you always need to remember whenever you exercise authoritative leadership, you are burning up relational capital that you're going to have to restore.

Even if it's a crucial moment that needs that kind of leadership, you're still burning up capital.

Second is participatory leadership, and that's when you are drawing people into the leadership process by building what

I call, and this is a big part of my book, the difference between a leadership team and teams of leaders.

A leadership team usually ends up serving the leader, but a team of leaders has to be served by the leader.

So you want to develop a team of leaders for participatory leadership. Then delegated leadership is extremely important because that's how you start developing the leaders.

When you delegate to someone something that they're to do, you train them, you teach them, you give them what they need, they've got the materials, they've got the resources, and then you give them the responsibility to get the job done.

Well, that's how they begin to develop out of that context and out of that concept.

So delegated leadership is actually the most important style of leadership because it of necessity starts the process of developing new leaders by developing those to whom you have delegated responsibilities.

We have John in Bangor, Maine, who asks, Do you think that having as a goal a large congregation can actually cause a church to outgrow its capability of properly shepherding the people within that flock?

Yeah, no, I don't think so. I think it's a matter of how you shepherd the flock. I don't think big's good.

I don't think small's good. I don't think big's good, small's bad. I don't think small's good, big's bad.

You want a healthy church, and a healthy church has leadership and shepherding. So in our congregation, for every four family units we have one shepherd, and for every shepherd we have an elder to shepherd the shepherds.

And so you develop these levels of leadership and shepherding to care for the flock.

I think the notion, you know, I think if your view of leadership is that everything has to work through one person, then the scope of impact of your church is going to be the scope of the impact of that one person.

If you truly believe in a plurality of leadership, then leaders are developing leaders, and leaders have followers, and therefore you are able to have larger churches.

Probably the best profile of a church in the Bible is Acts chapter 2.

Well, they start off with 120, and after a prayer meeting and a preaching service, they got 3 ,000, and that's just probably counting the men.

So the church is about 8 ,000 to 9 ,000. People are being saved every day, and then they add another 5 ,000.

That's just counting the men. So you got a church of 16 ,000 to 18 ,000, and it's one of the prototypes or characteristics of a godly church.

So it's not, and then again you get a church meeting in a house like Philemon's church, in the house of Philemon.

So it's not a matter of big or small, it's a matter of being healthy. Large churches can be healthy, small churches can be healthy.

So I think the answer is not in the demographic of the church, the answer is in the spiritual vitality of the leadership.

Very seldom do churches go beyond their leadership, and therefore if you want a healthy church, you develop healthy leaders, and healthy leaders will find ways to shepherd the flock.

And of course I'm assuming that you would agree that there are, however, churches that are so consumed with numeric growth that they begin to change the message being declared from the pulpit to accommodate the desires and tastes and interests of lost people.

They begin to design worship according to the tastes of the lost.

They begin to really cater to the lost, to draw them in, and wind up very often giving a distorted gospel, if not denying it, and having worship that's actually offensive to God.

What do you think about that? Well of course, but I also think there are churches that are so absorbed with being small, they've lost the message as well.

Us four no more shut the door. I never heard that one before!

Again, let me go back to what I said. You don't make small your objective, and you don't make big your objective.

Church growth is not your objective, and church shrinking is not your objective. Your objective is to be faithful, effective, and spiritually healthy.

I call it a well church. A well church worships with authenticity, evangelizes intentionally, loves purposefully, and learns consistently.

That's a well church. And a well church, sometimes you'll be bigger, sometimes you'll be smaller.

A lot will depend on where you find yourself. But the answer, I've met small churches that are as dead as a doornail.

I've met large churches that are superficial and dead as a doornail, although they got a lot of excitement around them.

So it's not, to me, it's not big or small. It's what does it mean to be healthy. And I hear the criticism of large churches, and I think it's a valid criticism.

But I can also criticize small churches because they are absorbed with creating the church that I want to be comfortable in and make sure anybody that disagrees with me is uncomfortable in that church.

And I think that that is a self -absorbed church. I like the way Jack Millerson called it, outgrowing the ingrown church.

So I think that those are, I think it's not big, it's not small, it's healthy.

Now let me just say one other thing. Here's the thing you have to remember, is whatever becomes the functional mission of your church, that will ultimately determine the message of your church.

If your church mission is to be big, then you will then design a gospel message that just gets people, regardless of whether you're faithful to the gospel of Christ or not.

If your objective is social justice, then you'll get a social gospel. If your objective, if your objective is people's self -esteem, then you'll get a therapy gospel.

If your objective is success, then you'll have a prosperity gospel.

Your mission will ultimately develop your message and determine your message. That's why we want to be on message and on mission.

Our mission is clear, and there are a lot of great consequences of gospel ministry, such as social justice, such as people understanding they're made in the image of God and all this attached to that, but those are consequences.

Those are not your mission. Your mission is to fulfill the Great Commission while you live the

Great Commandment and stay on mission and on message and in ministry. Yeah, that's excellent, because there are conservative evangelicals who have adopted the model of the liberal churches that championed a social gospel, and the conservatives today, many of them have adopted a social gospel that just is conservative, where they are welcoming into fellowship those that deny the gospel just because they agree with them on moral and social issues, and that can be very dangerous, can it?

Certainly, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. We have an anonymous listener who wants to know, how important is it for leaders in a church to develop friendships with other leaders outside of their own local congregation?

Absolutely, absolutely. You need to cross -pollinate, and you don't need to be so open -minded that your brains are falling out, but you've got to, you need to cross -pollinate, and you don't just get absorbed, you know, so that all of a sudden you've just got this ecclesiastical incest going on.

You need to make contact with other people, and you know, as I mentioned to you, my first five years of ministry were with my

Reformed Baptist brother, and I draw from them all the time. I'm actually going down to preach for some freewill

Baptists. I told them, I said, you know, if you'll add a letter, I could be pretty comfortable. If you'll just put a

D on the free, we could have a lot of conversation. That's excellent.

So I think that, you know, you know what you believe, you're confessionally, you have confessional integrity, but yes, you can get, and you can find ways that you can begin to find out where can we function together, where do we not function together, and what can

I learn from this person, what can I learn from that person? And again, that for me includes unbelievers.

There is much by God's common grace I have learned from unbelievers throughout my life, and I'm very grateful for that.

That doesn't authenticate their unbelief. It only authenticates the doctrine of common grace.

Excellent. We have a listener in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, Susan Margaret, who has a similar question.

How important is it and what cautions need to be used when a pastor is developing friendships among the flock that he is shepherding?

Yeah, boy, that is really a great question for a pastor. I want my people to know

I'm accessible. I want to be friends with them, and I want to be friendly.

I mean, one of the things I do after I pray with my elders is I just go out and walk through the congregation to say hello to people before we come to the time for preparation for worship.

I just think it's great to do that. I think it's good to have friendships, and I think it's good to have friendships outside the church, but I think a pastor to some degree has to be careful, not because he can't have friends within the church, but because people don't want to feel like, well, there's an inner circle for the pastor, and so I try to have a relationship that's very even -handed throughout the congregation, and my closest friends are pastors who pastor in similar situations as I do.

Those are my closest friends, but I have a lot of friends and attempt to be friendly throughout my congregation, but I do believe if the pastor gets a kind of a close friendship with two or three or four people, that a lot of other people, some people are going to be, you know, spiritually weak and be jealous, but other people that are actually mature are just going to feel like, well,

I guess there's an unofficial oligarchy in the church, and you don't want to give that appearance.

So that's the way I do it, and secondly, I have five elders appointed by the session who evaluate me and my performance every year and then make it known to the session so that I am being accountable within the session.

You know, a guy said to me, you actually let elders evaluate you? I said, you actually, and I said to him, do you actually believe your elders aren't evaluating you?

So I would rather do it in a profitable way. Well, that's actually a good word for our friends and brothers in Christ who believe in the one leader model of churches, the one pastor who has only subordinates beneath him who are deacons and so on, and they may have some kind of invented board of directors or whatever, that's not a biblical office, but the plurality of elders, and I even believe in the parity and plurality of elders, but the plurality of elders is a very important element in church polity, isn't it?

Yes, it is. I tend to be, like my Orthodox Presbyterian brothers, I tend to be a three -office person, that there's the teaching elder or minister of the word, there's the ruling elder, shepherd of the flock, and there are the deacons, but the teaching elders need to be accountable to the ruling elders within the church, and the ruling elders need to be accountable to the teaching elders, and therefore we can have a good functioning relationship together.

I just think that's important so that the church does not get dependent upon one man, and because with every man's strengths, you also get his weaknesses.

Amen. Well, I want to make sure, before we go off the air, that our listeners have all the information that they need to get in touch with you and to be blessed by your ministry.

First of all, the Briarwood Presbyterian Church, their website is briarwood .org,

b -r -i -a -r -wood .org, and of course, if you want to get a hold of this book, 3D

Leadership, if you live in the UK, and we do have listeners in the UK, go to christianfocus .com,

christianfocus .com, and you can type in reader in the search engine r -e -e -d -e -r, and this book, amongst others, will come up.

And of course, everybody in the United States, you can order that from our friends at cvbbs .com,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cv, for Cumberland Valley, bbs, for biblebookservice .com.

They are actually an American headquarters for Christian -focused publications.

And I would like you, if you could remind our listeners, Dr. Reeder, about this conference that you mentioned that you will be participating in in January.

Yes, if you don't mind, I'll mention also, if you go to our website, I have three programs, a 30 -minute teaching program called

In Perspective, a 10 -minute program that looks at Christian issues from a world and life view,

Monday through Friday, called Today in Perspective, and then a five -minute devotional called

Fresh Bread, and there's an app that you can get, the Briarwood app, off of our website, or you can get it through the normal places you go for the apps, and it's free.

The conference is Embers to a Flame, the conference on church vitality, and Embers to a

Flame, How to Lead Your Church Back to Health and Vitality, the 10 biblical strategies outlined by our

Savior to lead the church to health and vitality for leaders, it's for pastors and the leaders of the church, and it'll be

January the 21st through the 23rd at Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

Come visit us, it'll be a lot of fun. You need to visit Birmingham, Alabama, that way it won't be a culture shock when you get to heaven.

Well, I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.