Interview with the Spurgeon of El Pochote - Part 1

The Rural Church Podcast. Two point up. Just a couple of pastors discussing life, ministry, theology, and the gospel from a local church perspective. Eddie, what's it time for?

The Rural Church Podcast.

Introduction to the Rural Church Podcast and the Guest from El Pochote

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of The Rural Church Podcast. I'm your co-host, Allen Nelson. Just had to give an introduction to this episode. Actually, two episodes. This summer I went on a mission trip and met a dear brother in the Lord, Christian Martinez, a 29-year-old faithful pastor in a little community known as El Pechote, Mexico.

El Pechote Veracruz in Mexico. I think our listeners will be encouraged by Christian's faithfulness, his stand for truth, and his love for the local church. Listen to this episode and the next one, and see if you're not encouraged by all that he has to say about his ministry and what the Lord is doing in Mexico.

We hope that you are blessed. Here we go. The Rural Church Podcast, episode four. Is that right, Eddie? Episode four?

I believe that is correct.

I'm here with Eddie Ragsdale and two other brothers. We'll talk about that in just a minute. Before we do, Eddie, how was your Sunday?

We had a great day Sunday. We actually had the opportunity to baptize a couple of people. It was strange because we had a lot of people that were sick, and so several people were out. And particularly, both of the people being baptized, several people that were close to them were out, but still had a good gathering.

We've got problems with our baptistry, so we gathered at the home of one of our church members that has a pool that Sunday evening, and we sang, and we talked about baptism from the word of God, and then we baptized these new members.

Into the church.

Like a kiddie pool?

No, like a glorious in-ground, beautiful pool up on top of a glorious hill in the beautiful rolling hills of Searcy County.

You guys promote transgenderism?

We do not.

That's what happens if you baptize by immersion, which, by the way, is a redundant phrase, baptized by immersion. You immerse by immersion.

Yes, I was thinking about that very issue just the other day, and I was thinking, none of us baptize babies. Not the Presbyterians, not the Catholics. Nobody baptizes babies. Nobody immerses babies. They sprinkle them.

Yeah, preach. Well, we had a good Sunday. We're going through Ephesians, and we stopped at Ephesians 430. I pumped the brakes, and did you know in the whole Bible, the only place that you find the Holy Spirit of God, the whole phrase like that, the Holy Spirit of God is in Ephesians 430, and so we've just stopped for a moment, and we've beheld his glory, and we've talked about the Trinity last week, and then this week, we're going to talk about inspiration, and we're eventually going to get to the text of talking about grieving the Holy Spirit, but that's kind of where we've been at, and I've just been encouraged by things going on here.

I'm glad you slowed down. I thought you were pushing through Ephesians a little too.

Fast. I know. I did two verses the week before, two verses, and I was, you know, so yeah. Now, we'll do several sermons on one verse, but anyway, we started our Wednesday night stuff back last night, and we do kids stuff on Wednesday nights, and we run around on the church van and pick up kids, and we just catechize them, and we share the gospel with them, and so it's been going good.

Fall has kicked off here at Second Baptist. Well, let me get to our topic today. We are blessed, really blessed beyond measure with our guests, our two guests today. One, we have Jonathan Murdock on again, and we're grateful for him.

Jonathan is the pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in Port Arthur, Texas. He's been on. Jonathan, this is your third podcast in a row with us. Third in a row. We're fixing to have to call it.

Eddie and Alan and Jonathan. Or you're just going to have to drop off the face of the earth.

Amen. Yeah, yeah, so, and then our other guest is none other than the Spurgeon of El Pechote himself, Pastor Christian Martinez. Say hello, Christian. Hello, this is Christian. It's good to have you here, brother, and let me make sure I get this right, but you're in El Pechote, which is in the state of Veracruz.

Is that right? Right. In Mexico, and Jonathan, is that like.

Southeast, right? Yeah, yeah, so it's southeast, right? Veracruz is a very historical state. The American-Mexican War was fought a lot of it in Veracruz. Yeah, El Pechote, we went,.

So how I got connected with Christian, Eddie, is we went to, we went on our trip to Mexico, and we did the conference in Tuxla, but we stopped off, and I had no clue what we were doing. We flew.

Into, where did we find to? Veracruz? La Puerta Veracruz, so the port Veracruz. And then we drove.

Like an hour, a little over an hour, wasn't it? Hour and a half. And we drive into this little.

Bitty town. The roads, by the way. Okay, tell me, did you have clothing at this point? No, I mean,.

I was wearing my clothing, but I didn't have a suitcase. I wasn't like Isaiah. By the way,.

I was reading through Isaiah. Y 'all, Isaiah was totally naked for three years. 20 verse 3. Yeah,.

So I wasn't doing the Isaiah, but I think I said this, correct me if I'm wrong, Jonathan, I think I commented that when we were driving, how warm and I felt because it was like we're driving on roads in Arkansas again.

Yes, you felt it. So, we drove a little over an hour, and we get to this little town. How many people are in El Pechote? 300? No, less, around 150,.

Around. Okay, they celebrate when somebody has a baby, they celebrate. The whole town? The whole.

Town. Yeah, so we get out here, there's less than 150 people. The first thing we do is, I think it was like 10 30 at night, and we go eat tacos. And then, it's Kristen's parents put us up, and we had a wonderful time.

I guess, I'm trying to think the time frame. I guess the next day, we kind of hung out, went driving around, and we drove out in the mountains, and we visited this lady, and Kristen was reading scriptures with her.

We prayed with her, and then that night, Randall preached there, and then we all went to the conference together. But anyway, all that to say, over the week there, I felt like my heart was knit to Pastor Kristen's, and just seeing his love for the church.

And so, when Eddie and I started the podcast back again, I thought, man, it'd be really great to get him on. I was going to ask if you got anything to add to that, Eddie,.

But you don't know anything I just said. I know, yeah, I heard everything you said. Well, what I mean is like, I don't know anything else about it, right? I don't know anything else to.

Add to that. Jonathan, anything, any big picture thing I'm missing from the story, and then I'm.

Going to turn it over to Kristen. No, just that. It was Kristen's first time to fly on an airplane when we went to Tuxla, and I just want to say that they know who the Spurgeon of Pechote is,.

Because they put him in first class. They did. They put him in first class. Okay, let me tell this real quick story, and then, okay, so we're singing at the conference, and one of the songs that we sing is, Death Was Arrested, and here's how I know that.

Like, I thought a lot of Kristen anyway, but when I looked over and I saw the facial expressions he was making at this song about Death Was Arrested, I was like, this guy's the real deal, man. This guy's a good brother.

Kristen, can you explain to us real quick, what does it mean that Death Was Arrested?

I don't know, really. I don't know what it means.

Should we sing songs that we have no idea what's being communicated?

Oh, sure not.

It's wrong to do that, he says. That's right. Amen. Amen. Well, Eddie, feel free to jump in here,.

Expositional Preaching, Scripture Memorization, and the Second London Confession

I'm just going to start with this. So, Kristen, you probably heard of this podcast. I'm pretty sure it's internationally known, the Rural Church Podcast, but Eddie and I pastor in small towns. Perryville has about just under 1 ,500 people, and Marshall has about 1 ,300 people, and so we're bringing you on, and we're like, whoa, this is even smaller, and we want to know what you think about pastoring the Lord's Church, what you think about pastoring in a small town, and we're going to get to all that, but why don't we just start out, and you just tell us a little.

Bit about who you are. I am 29 years old, you know. The Lord called me at my 17 years old. When the Lord called me, I don't want to really respond to this calling, you know, but the Lord brings me to Him.

When I finished studying in seminary, the Lord called me to work in my own church. When I started to work here in El Pochote, the church here are Catholic, Roman Catholic, you know, and this broke my heart because they want to hear the gospel, you know, and I started work here because I really feel this weight on my heart, and I felt a burden, a real burden for this place.

After a couple years, the church, I talk with the church, and the church talk with me, and the Lord bring me this opportunity to be pastoring in the church. When I start to work, I see that we need to start again.

I don't know if you can understand this. We needed to replant the idea in our minds of how we were doing church.

Amen.

It wasn't necessarily wrong in the way we were doing it,.

But we needed to be more intentional. So, we started with a distinct plan, starting with memorizing the scriptures. Understand the scriptures the best way. We started about seven years ago to preach expositorily.

You're 29, so you started when you were 22.

Yep.

Okay.

I want to pause right here, too. I want to ask a question. Allen, Eddie, do you guys memorize scripture as a church?

Not formally. We've done different things with our kids and challenged our church, verses here and there, but not large passages of scripture, no.

What about you, Eddie?

Yeah. Very similar to what Allen was saying. Our children's classes do scripture memorization. We encourage, of course, families to be doing scripture memorization in their family worship or their family devotionals or whatever they do, but yeah, we don't have a formalized scripture memorization program.

So, we do a verse of the month here at our church where we encourage everybody, and sometimes it's encouraging, sometimes it's discouraging in the amount of people that memorize or don't memorize a verse of the month.

Hey, Christian, on Sunday mornings, do you guys quote scripture together?

Yep.

How much of the scripture do you guys quote together on Sunday morning as a church?

We are memorizing Hebrews 1, chapter 1, chapter 2, and we are still in chapter 3, verse 18.

So, your whole church on Sunday morning quotes three chapters of Hebrews together that you've memorized?

Yep. Yes, sir.

Wow. That's amazing.

We were there on a Sunday morning, and they said, we're going to do our scripture memory, brother Randall and I, and they quoted three chapters of Hebrews, and everybody knew it. I'm talking like from kids to people that are in their 90s.

It was very encouraging and convicting to us. I'm convinced that only the Word of God can transform hearts and minds.

And that's what we're trying to do.

Amen.

So, you're there for seven years. So far, you have the conviction to be preaching expository. You're memorizing scripture, and talk more about your church's statement, your church's confession of faith.

What is your church's confession, and how did you arrive at that confession?

Well, when I come to be pastor here, I introduced Second London Confession, and we're still learning about our confession. Also, we have our statement like a local church with bases in Second London Confession.

And here in Mexico, I don't know in the States, but here in Mexico, we have a kind of regulations with our statement like a local church, and each one of our local church can make this statement.

So, they have some distinctives that they also have as a local church. So, the law in Mexico requires that every church to constitute as a church has to have their own. Like, you can't just say, this is ours, but they also have that as well.

It's like a constitution.

Okay, sure. So, you're saying you led your church to embrace the Second London Confession, and how did that go?

That's great. In the beginning, when we started to learn this, we started with the kids. We started like a catechism, some kind of this. And when I preach about this, each one point in the confession, the church start to understand in a very simple way what is our faith, or what does it mean to be a Christian Baptist or Evangelical Christian Baptist, you know, some kind of this, and start to walk like a church, not just like some guys that meet together some day in the week, and that's it.

This part of the first years that I come to be pastor, the church come to be more in unity and start to grow in knowledge about what is the means to be a Christian Baptist, you know.

Amen.

Church Membership and Discipline in Mexico and at Grace Baptist

Let me, and Eddie, you feel free to jump in, but let me just, first of all, dude, my heart is just overflowing just hearing all this. This is wonderful. In the States, there are, so I have two questions here.

In the States, there are a lot of Baptist churches that have what we call inflated church roles. You have, say, 100 people in your church role, and 20 people come to church.

Do you understand what a church role is?

No.

Like membership of the church. You have like 100 members of the church in membership on paper, but only 20 come.

Okay.

So I guess one question is, is membership taken seriously in Baptist churches in Mexico. From your experience, number one, and then number two, is membership taken seriously at your, did I ask you your church's name?

Tell us your church's name.

Iglesia Bautista Gracia del Pochote. It's like a great Baptist church from El Pochote.

So in grace, so two questions, is membership taken seriously, do you think, in Baptist churches in Mexico from your experience, and two, is membership taken seriously at Grace Baptist?

Okay.

No, sadly, no. Here in Mexico, it's like a lost doctrine, this part of the membership in church. I only know a couple of churches here in Cordoba that take seriously the membership, and also I know some Presbyterian churches that take seriously this part of the membership, but the most part of the Baptist church here in Mexico don't.

I think that they know that this is important for the health of the church, but they can't apply this doctrine, or this is part of a good way to function for the church and God's glory. They can't apply because here in Mexico, we are so...

No somos tan serios a la hora de decidirnos por una iglesia, y las personas van de una iglesia en otra.

They're not serious about going to a church. They go from this church to that church, and so they think if we apply church membership, no one will come. This happens to all the churches that I know here.

Jonathan and Eddie, just before he gets in the second, I mean, wouldn't you say it's pretty similar? I mean...

Oh, yeah.

In here.

Absolutely, absolutely.

I mean, like, you know, praise God we've taken down the number board on Sunday morning because I remember we used to go to churches, and it'd be like 385 people, and there's 20 of us.

Let me give you an example. I have a friend, Jonathan, no, him is Luis. When I know this...

Oh, you cut off there, buddy.

Independent Fundamental Church, you know?

He has a friend named Luis that's in the Independent Baptist, Fundamental Independent Baptist.

Okay.

And when I know this guy, he said, he told me, my church, we are like, exactly, he told me 140 people around. And the first time that I went to his church, I only see 25, 30 persons around. So, I could see that here in our background in this area, in Yangon, I think in the whole country, this is the kind of mentality that you have a lot of people in this kind of...

In the paper, on paper, you have a lot of people.

But in reality, you don't even have half of those people.

And in reality, you only have half of those people.

Christian, do you know what the Southern Baptist Convention numbers are? Are you familiar with what the numbers are?

With the numbers, no.

On paper, there are 16 million Southern Baptists on paper. Do you know how many of those show up to church? Just guess. 16 million on paper. How many would you think show up to church?

Half.

If half showed up, we'd be doing good. It's less than one third, less than 33%. So, on paper, this largest, if you want to call it denomination, but this largest denomination... Is it the largest Protestant denomination in the world, Jonathan?

It is.

Okay.

The largest Protestant denomination in the world.

On paper.

On paper, 16 million people and less than a third come to church on Sunday. Really, it's not laughable. It's heartbreaking. I know that you take seriously membership at your church, Christian, and I would like you to talk about how does Grace Baptist and El Pachote deal with membership?

How do you guys take membership seriously?

Okay.

When I see that the most churches here in Mexico don't take seriously membership, my heart was broken. So, I take time to explain to the church that this is very important because we give honor to God, have this point clarified in our mind, because we take this not just like a kind of...

Not just a formality. But to see what the Bible teaches on this. For the glory of God.

Because it's not just have your name in that kind of card. It's your life behold to God. As a Christian, as a member of one local church, you can't be Christian without a local church. You know, you could see the invisible church.

You can't see this, but you can see the local church. So, you can say that you are Christian without a local church. But not just like a visit.

Not just as an assisting or attending a church or visiting a church. But a member, a part of a local church, a local body as a member of the body of Christ. And that took us a few years ago to... That idea took us a few years ago to focus on membership in the church.

Okay. So, practically, because you don't even realize what you're doing, Christian. You're fixing to instruct pastors here to be listening to this. Give us practical steps that Grace Baptist Church and El Pechote Veracruz.

How do you handle members? So, for example, do you discipline? Do you have membership classes? Talk to us about that.

Okay. I'm going to do this in Spanish because my English is very limited.

When a new person comes to the church, we see how they receive the gospel, how they receive what they're taught. And we encourage them to take seriously what they're hearing. Once they've been visiting constantly for a few months, we encourage them to take a discipleship class.

We do this in a personal way. So, it's very personal with each family. And this allows me to get to know them personally and know what they're doing personally. To observe their life. That's the first point.

After they finish this class,.

It takes about five months.

So, it's about seven or eight months from the time they come to church.

And they finish the discipleship. I encourage the church to talk with them, to speak with them during this time, to observe their conduct. So, during this time, if they observe something that shouldn't be in their life, you know, we speak with them before we, you know, take the step of baptism or membership.

The last step that we can say that we take. So, they must share publicly with the church their conversion, their testimony, and they must write it down. So, if there's nothing that the church or I can confirm that would impede them from being baptized, then we'll go to baptism as the next point.

So, they do this on the same day. So, they confess and they get baptized the same day. We've only had to practice church discipline once. A man committed adultery on his wife and the situation turned very badly.

He did not repent. He would not return to his wife.

The woman was fighting for a marriage, but he was gone.

So, we came before the church and told the church that this man cannot be considered a member of the church because of what he's done and the lack of repentance. And he could hear this as well. I mean, you know, he could still hear this.

It was something that it was an opportunity to teach the church as well, because it was something new they had never seen before. This is the last step that Matthew gives us for discipline. We've had other occasions where we've started a process of discipline, but they've repented.

Their life has changed for the glory of God. There's been various occasions of this, and we've gained a brother.

Amen. Eddie, I told our church, I think I might have told you this too. So, like, just in my arrogance, when I went on this trip, I was like, yeah, I'll go down and help these pastors, you know, encourage them in the local church and all that.

And you can see how the Lord just humbled me. And I was like, bro, there are churches that need help for sure, for sure. But there are also churches out in little places out of the way like El Pechote that are doing it right.

And all that God's doing there in Mexico. Thanks for tuning in. Catch us next week.