2021 Summer of Interviews: Jordan Standridge Interview

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

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

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

Jordan Standridge’s Background and Call to Italy

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. And as I�ve said for many years, even the last nine that I�ve been on the radio, Monday through Friday, my favorite days are the days where we air interviews with pastors and theologians and friends of mine in gospel ministry.

And I�m always encouraged in two different ways. The first way is, I�m encouraged that God uses sinful men and women for His program, for His gospel outreach, and I�m also encouraged that I listen to other men in particular and their ministries, and I think, you know what, I need to buckle down and I need to expend more energy.

The Lord Jesus is worth it. And so today, I have one of those men online. I�m thankful for that, Jordan Standridge. Welcome to No Compromise Radio. Thank you so much, Mike. It�s a joy to be on. Jordan, tell me, I don�t know if I�ve ever pronounced your last name in public.

How do you pronounce it? Standridge. Standridge. Okay. I stand corrected. Like standing on a ridge. Okay. About to be. Perfect. Well, I wanted our listeners to get to know you a little bit for several reasons.

When did we first meet? Was it at Branson, at a big conference, maybe? I think so. Okay. And you were sitting in the front row with Jesse, and you were pelting me with rocks and garbage. Was that right?

Tomatoes. Just tomatoes. Good times. Jordan, how about this to start? Give our listeners a little background on where you minister and how you got there, and then the next step, we�ll talk about your future.

How�s that? Yeah, sure. Yeah.

It�s a long story short. I grew up as a missionary kid in Rome, Italy. And around the age of 13, we stopped being missionaries because of my home situation. My parents were not doing well, and so we had to stop being missionaries.

And I told myself one thing. I was not going to be a missionary, and for sure not a pastor, and for sure not in ministry at all. And slowly but surely, the Lord changed my heart and used a Bible school I did in Italy where I read the entire Bible in 10 weeks and did evangelism for the first time.

And actually, the week before the Bible school started, MacArthur was preaching at a conference in Italy, and I just remember hearing about God�s sovereignty, really, for the first time. Or at least for the first time, my heart was ready to listen, and my whole life transformed completely.

And I started reading the Bible verse by verse, really at a fast pace, in 10 weeks at this Bible school. And just my whole view of God just completely transformed. And then I started doing evangelism, and just throughout this 10 weeks, every time I would do evangelism, I would get more and more exhilarated about what I was even saying.

You know, kind of the responses of the people, especially the Italian people, were really depressing in some way and really discouraging. And yet, the more my heart broke for them, the more my heart rejoiced in knowing the Gospel and preaching the Gospel.

And so, I finished this Bible school knowing that the Lord had completely transformed my mindset about life. I knew I had to live for Christ every day, and I knew I wanted to be a preacher. I knew I wanted to preach the Gospel.

If somebody would pay me to do this, I�d do this for free, but if somebody were to pay me to do this, that would be incredible. And so, the only school I knew about was John MacArthur School, the Master�s College.

And so, I took the rest of the year to make as much money as I could, and I moved to the Master�s College and met my wife. And so, at the end of the college, and I went right into seminary, and actually, my plan was to go to Italy as a missionary right away.

But a guy named Jesse Johnson, who is a pastor at Emmanuel Bible Church, he was on a mission during a shepherds� conference my last year of seminary, and he was supposed to get as many resumes as he could.

And I was one of the resumes that was turned in, and the Lord really was very gracious to me. If I had gone to Italy as a missionary five years ago, I probably would have split a couple of churches. It would have been a mess, but coming to Emmanuel was the greatest move that the Lord had planned for me.

And so, I became the college pastor out here for three years, and then I became the evangelism pastor. I became an elder and was ordained while I was out here, and I've just learned so much about ministry in general, and how to love people, and how to work with people, and it's just been an incredible experience out here in Springfield, Virginia.

Rome, Family History, and Fluency in Italian

So Jordan, tell me a little bit about your background in Rome. Do you speak fluent Italian?

Fluent Italian, and my kids are Italian names, Davide, Matteo, Nico, and Gabriela. And like I said, since I was 18, I've known I wanted to go to Italy. My grandfather was a missionary to Italy when he was in his early 20s.

Right after graduating college, he went to Italy as a missionary, as a single guy. Made himself Italian right away, changed his clothes, changed his food. He ate and learned Italian at a really fast pace, and just decided, hey, I'm going to spend the rest of my life in Italy.

So he married an Italian lady, one of the only Christian evangelical workers in Italy at the time, right after the war. He actually attracted her, because he was—most of the men in Italy at that time wore very gray and dark suits, because they were very—obviously, it was a depressing time to be alive right after the war.

My grandpa showed up with these—she had asked him to speak at a conference, and here he shows up with all these multicolored horses on his shirt. And she remembers seeing him from a distance and being like, who is this guy?

He's non-Italian. And she was right. He was an American missionary. And so they ended up getting to know each other and ended up getting married. And then my father was—he came back for college. My mom went back as missionaries themselves.

Both of my uncles are both missionaries in Italy. So most of my family on my dad's side is all working in Italy in some shape or form. And so it's kind of in my blood, in my heart. And yeah, and so that's—my plan is to go there as a missionary.

God’s Sovereignty, Mission Support, and the Hardship of Ministry in Italy

Well, Jordan, as I listened to your story and was thinking about the sovereignty of God in Psalm 103 and how His sovereignty rules over all, and that the Lord is King in several of the Psalms, of course, it just made me think, all right, you grew up as a kid in Italy and you learned the language and learned to love the people there.

And for me, when I think of Rome and men dressing and tailors and all that stuff, I like the way the men in Rome dress better than the Americans, but I guess that was a different era. When I am looking for Lucio at the Shepherd's Conference, I just look for the man that looks the nicest and has all the Armani clothes on.

And then when I give him a hug and I smell the Armani cologne, I realize that's Rome right there. That's right, that's right. So are you going to work with Lucio or no?

Yeah, well, for sure, large scale. I mean, I'm going with GMI, which is Grace Ministries International, which is an organization that comes out of Grace Community Church in Los Angeles, and they have several missionaries all over Italy.

In fact, they may be the biggest amount of missionaries that they have in a particular country is Italy. And then there's possibly two or three more coming soon, and I'm one of those. So there's definitely a big cohort of guys, and we'll all be working together in some way.

As far as in a local church context, we're going to have to think through all that and who we're going to partner with in a local church kind of context. But I'm definitely going to be spending the first few years just learning from all these guys, learning what they've done, maybe just meeting with them and getting to know what they did and what went well, what went wrong.

Italy is a very hard place to minister. I don't know if you know this, but 90 of missionaries that go to Italy, they leave before reaching year four, and they have the intention of staying there for the rest of their lives.

And there's several reasons for why that is. The main reason is because of the Roman Catholic Church and the fact that there's no real fruit from ministry. People don't see their first convert until...

The Need for Gospel-Centered Ministry in Rome

Well, it's amazing when I was there several times in Rome, some for ministry and some just for pleasure, it just was amazing to me as I would look at the city at night, would go up on a high hill. I think they have several hills there, don't they?

Maybe seven or so. And look out at the city and think about the millions and millions and millions of people enslaved to a system that has a lot of talk about Jesus, but has the wrong Jesus. And even when I was trying to find an English speaking church, I was there on an Easter, two Easter's ago, I was there trying to find a church that would simply open up the Bible and let the Bible speak for itself without adding or subtracting.

And I know that's really your desire is to go there and let the Word of God do its work and perform its work in those who believe and also how it makes alive people who are unregenerate. How are you going to protect yourself, Jordan, from going there and then saying, well, you know what?

I just don't see the fruit now. I have to leave too. What's your kind of strategy?

Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I think that just knowing the difficulty of it, there's a few things that come to mind. You know, my grandpa, you know, he would have new missionaries come visit him because he was kind of the main missionary in Rome.

And so he'd have people come through his office doors who had just come as missionaries. And he would have dozens upon dozens upon dozens over the years show up and talk about this big game about being, you know, doing a new thing and bringing in a new mindset or a new trick or whatever.

And you know, they would be part of the 90 percent who don't come back after four years. They would leave discouraged. And so I feel like at least I, at the very least, I know the difficulties of it. I'm going into it with the mentality of I'm not the next best great big thing.

I'm not the only one who's going to do evangelism. There's so many missionaries who faithfully shared the gospel and passed out tracts and went door to door for years before they saw their first convert.

So to think that I'm going to be some kind of different because I'm more special in some way, I think it would be a prideful mentality to bring into that. And that's probably what ends up causing discouragement is that it doesn't go as planned.

So also, one of the big things is usually that the wife has a hard time adapting to the culture. Italians are very hard-headed. It's a great place to go visit for a week, but it's a hard place to live in for a year or ten years.

The bureaucracy is slow. It takes years, you know, to really get into the culture and to figure out how people think in Italy. It's hard to get into the family concept. People are really all about family.

And so they'll be very nice to you if you knock on their door. They may even let you in and feed you pasta and give you a coffee. But to get into their hearts, it's a whole other thing. And so one of the things that I'm going to do is, especially because of my home situation growing up, is that I'm going to take a whole year, the first year, to allow my wife to learn the language and to allow...

She's more excited. In some ways, she was more excited than I was over the last ten years to get to Italy. She's known she's been wanting to go since we started dating. She has to make that decision because I've been very clear.

I'm going to Italy. So if you're not interested, you know, we probably shouldn't date even. And so she made that decision early on. She's been praying for it. She's been learning about Roman Catholicism.

She's been learning Italian. So she's... So we named all our kids Italian names. But I think for that first year, just really concentrating on making sure she is the priority and that she's learning the language and she's learning the culture.

And if that means less ministry for me, though, it's going to be hard for me. I think that she will be my main ministry.

Supporting Gospel Ministry and the Priority of Faithfulness

Thank you. We're talking to Jordan Standridge today, Emanuel Bible Church. If you want to get a hold of him at the moment, you can go to EmanuelBible .Church, I think is the website, if I'm looking at it rightly.

And go to the leaders there and elders and pastors and find Jordan. And you can click on Contact Jordan if you want to get to know him more. One of the reasons why I'm having him on is that I want you, listener, to think, all right, are there people that I need to support when it comes to gospel ministry?

And I know if you're listening to No Compromise Radio, you don't go for all the, you know, the latest 40 day kind of trick to evangelize. You want someone who will try to be faithful, right? That's what it's required of stewards is to be faithful.

And you know, one of the things, Jordan, when I look at the book of Romans and Paul set apart for the gospel of God there and wanting to preach the truth, I love verse 7, to all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints.

Tell our listeners a little bit more about why the gospel is so important in light of all the social stuff that's going on now. I mean, Paul could have said, these are my programs. There's a lot of incest there.

There's a lot of abortions there. There are lots of poor there. There's lots of slavery there. There needs to be reparations there. There needs to be this, that, or the other. But for Paul, he didn't talk about that at all.

It was straight to how can people be reconciled to the Lord through the mediator, Christ Jesus. Elaborate on that a little bit. Yeah.

Well, it's all about the gospel. You know, the gospel is what transforms lives. The gospel is what really, I mean, what we're talking about is dead people, dead souls who are walking around. And they're going to do what they're going to do.

They're going to follow the devil and go towards, really run towards hell. And the only thing that can awaken their soul, the only thing that can awaken them is the gospel. You know, when you think about Italy in particular, there's all these rituals, there's all these.

You know, I was just at the Holy Steps just recently, and I'm sure you've been there. Have you heard of these Holy Steps in Rome?

I have. I one time taught the book of Romans there in Rome with that SOS Johnson commentary. And I started to go up the Scala Sancta on my knees, but it was so crowded, my knees hurt and there was no fast lane.

So I quit.

Rome, Roman Catholicism, and the Exclusivity of the Gospel

So we're there, we're at the Holy Steps, and we're watching a lady on a wheelchair just sobbing her eyes out to the left of us. And she's, you know, our hearts are breaking because here's a Roman Catholic who's missing out on something that supposedly is so essential for her salvation, and she can't go up these steps.

And if you look on the right of these steps, there's a sign that says that if you do this and if you pray 10 Hail Marys on each step, something like that, that you will receive purgatory. And here's this, my heart just breaks.

And then you have, across the street, there's the big St. John Church, and there's a holy door there that's opened every 25 years by the Pope, it's called the Year of Jubilee. And supposedly if you walk through this door, that you can be saved, and you can have all your sins forgiven.

And then two years ago, the Pope even did a special Year of Jubilee where he opened up this door, and people could come from all over the world to this door and walk through it and get their sins forgiven, and you're like, first of all, if you could open this door all the time, why don't you?

Why don't you just keep it open, and if you have the power to save people's souls, why don't you always do it? And it's all because it's all about money, and it's all about trying to keep people attached to the Roman Catholic Church.

But that's kind of the mentality here, is that it's not about rituals, it's not about externals, it's not about this life. It's about eternity, it's about your soul, it's about your heart. And so in everything, you can't undo your destination towards hell by helping a lady cross the street, by even ending abortion.

That's not something that's going to transform your soul. The only thing that can transform your soul is through humility, repenting of your sin, giving your life to Christ, being transformed, receiving a new heart, and then the good works come.

It's not something that you do good works in order to achieve some kind of salvation, but it's the opposite. You're first saved, and then the good works start coming. And then, sure, do whatever it takes to open doors for the gospel, but it's got to be the gospel first.

It's got to be the transformation first.

Rome, Sacramentalism, and the Nature of Roman Catholic Deception

Jordan, when I'm in Rome and just watch everyone and even go to the churches where they've got Mary statues slain, the Protestants, you know, the enemies, there's Calvin and Luther there at her feet. Part of me wants to say there's no better satanic system of deluding people and deceiving them and adulterating the Word of God.

On the other hand, I grew up Lutheran, and at least the Lord, in His sovereign kind providence, used some of my background in slave to sacramentalism to my advantage, and that is to say I didn't have to, no one had to explain to me that God was one, three persons.

I didn't have to be explained that Jesus was divine, that He did miracles, that it wasn't that He walked on a sandbar, He really walked on the water, that He was literally raised from the dead. He literally ascended.

I knew all those facts, although like Galatians, I perceive that I receive those benefits by faith and by works. And so, is there any way that you think, well, at least Rome has taught the people X, Y, and Z, or do you just say to yourself, you know what, this is just as deceiving as you can get?

How do you work through that? Yeah, it's a tough question, and I think it's one that I've wrestled with over the years, especially since coming to America. What I've realized is American Christians have a diluted view of Roman Catholicism, and I think part of the reason is because Roman Catholics in America don't have the opportunity to do certain things, like go up the steps.

The holy steps are in Rome. You can only do that there. You can't do it here. Or, you can't, there aren't so many relics in America. There's no building older than 300 years here. So, the opportunity to expose your Roman Catholicism is much greater in Rome.

There are no parades going down the street with Mary on top of it, where people are crying their eyes out following Mary down the street. That doesn't happen in America. Maybe in Boston, maybe where you are, maybe in New York, but not so much in the rest of America.

So, I think a lot of Americans... This was my biggest frustration when I first got here. I was like, it's so clear that we're dealing with a false religion here, or as Spurgeon would say, the devil's masterpiece.

I mean, a lot of Christians in America are so confused about it. They just don't see the level of idolatry and the level of falsehood that we're dealing with here. I started hearing this word, ECT. I'm sure you know what it is, but I kept seeing it, because every paper I did was on the Roman Catholic Church when I could, in college and seminary.

And I kept seeing the ECT, and I finally realized what it was, it was the Evangelicals and Catholics together. And a bunch of American pastors had written a document, pretty much saying, hey, we're not going to share the gospel with Roman Catholics, they're saved.

And I was like, I could not believe my eyes, and thankfully I heard the story about how MacArthur and Sproul kind of, you know, pleaded with these men not to sign this document, and they pretty much pleaded with them to embrace the true gospel.

And I think that we're dealing with a, you know, I kind of agree with Spurgeon when he talks about that this is the devil's masterpiece, that when you're dealing with a Roman Catholic Church, you're dealing with a completely different religion, Galatians 1, 8, and 9 kind of religion, where it's a different gospel, and those who preach it, whether it's us or an angel, if he were to preach to you a gospel contrary to what we preach to you, let him be a curse.

That said, you know, I've been to a Roman Catholic Mass before, I went to a funeral recently, and the pastor did read from the scripture. So can God use a verse read in a church service to lead somebody to the truth?

Absolutely. He can use, I've heard of God using a Mormon tract before, where somebody saw the verse on the Mormon tract, went home, read the Bible, and believed in the true gospel, and obviously never went to the Mormon Church, but, you know, God can use anything.

God can use Spurgeon, you know, practicing, you know, before a sermon, you know, he's practicing, behold the Lamb of God, it takes away the sin of the world, and you have a janitor in the back who just keeps hearing that over and over again as Spurgeon's trying to get a feel for the room, and that man, you know, comes to know Christ.

Because obviously he had a lot of knowledge already, he realized what the Lamb of God was, and he knew he needed Him, and so he gave his life to Jesus, and God can use anyone to lead anybody to the Lord, but that doesn't justify that we're dealing with the Roman Catholic Church.

How to Support Jordan Standridge’s Missionary Work

Amen. That's why I want our listeners to support you. If they want to get ahold of you, Jordan, besides Emmanuel Bible Church, how would they support you as you are trying to ramp up and get support financially to get to Italy?

Yeah, the main way is probably to go to our website called Standridge .org, it was easy. Standridge is S-T-A-N-D-R-I-D-G-E, and you can go on there and just see what our ministry is like, and what we're planning on doing, and then there's a tab called How to Partner with Us, and you can click on there and there's different options to do that.

Again, it's a mission organization called GMI, and they provide a non-profit, you know, they're a non-profit, they provide a tax refund, and people give to them, and then they just give us a budget, we come up with a budget with them, and they pay us, so it's not coming directly from anybody to me, it's going through an organization.

Alright, well I'm looking at that now, Standridge .org, and you look older and wiser in that picture than you do with your manual. It looks to be deceiving. Well, I agree with you on the Roman Catholic Church, of course here in New England, 80 of the people profess to be Roman Catholics, and of course if you just have a little bit of the truth, and the enemy uses that as an inoculation, and then you think you're fine, and it's just sad, but the power of the Gospel for all those that the Lord would want to have their eyes opened certainly does that.

Jordan, we're out of time, but I'm going to go over today, if you'll just help our listeners with this, because you know so much about Rome and Roman Catholicism. Regularly in evangelical discourse, I hear people say, well, you know, there can be, you know, believers in the Roman Catholic Church, and should they leave, or should they try to stay to try to evangelize, and what do you think about Roman Catholics who become saved?

Of course, in medieval times, you didn't get saved unless you were in a Roman Catholic Church. There were no other scriptures. What do you tell a person who says, I'm a Christian, but I want to stay in the Catholic Church and kind of evangelize, etc., etc., and when they talk about Mary, I just disregard that.

When they talk about transubstantiation, I disregard that, but I've got friends, and I want to evangelize. What's your plea to them, or what's your advice to those people?

Why Christians Should Leave the Roman Catholic Church

Yeah, yeah, this is a, I don't know how much longer you want to go, but you know, my first point would be, first of all, you're severed from the Church body. You are, you're not weekly gathering with believers.

You're called to gather. You need to be around believers. You need people around you who love the Lord, who are transformed, and who will help equip you to be able to face the week next week. You can't be around unbelievers all the time.

So you are severing yourself from the Church. You're missing out on expository preaching. You know, there's a pastor who's preaching, who's prepared a sermon each and every week with the purpose of equipping you so that you can live a holy life, and you are just squandering that and really giving up that for this supposed evangelism that you're doing at the Roman Catholic Church.

And then there's a little bit of pride in that, too, because you can't reform an apostate religion. What Luther and Calvin couldn't do, what makes us think that we can do that? And once a church has gone apostate, you know, it's from the top down.

You need to reform the top in order to be able to...it's never from the bottom up. And so I think there's just a little twinge of pride there that thinks that I'm the person that can actually transform this thing.

And really, ultimately, I think the thing that would discourage me the most or that would bother me the most if I were this person is that there's a weekly blaspheming of God every time you take the Mass, every time you're eating the wine and the bread and the little wafer they give you, that really what you're saying is, Jesus's death on the cross was not sufficient to save my sin.

You know, I just heard a Roman Catholic say recently that they're saved every single time they take the Mass. There's this mentality of salvation, I need to be constantly resaved each and every time I take the Mass, because I keep sinning.

And this whole idea of, it is finished to be an offering for sin, He doesn't continue to have to die on the cross for our sin. What He did on the cross, when He died on the cross, He sufficiently assuaged the Father's wrath.

The Father's wrath was placed on Christ, and our sin was placed on Christ, and we no longer need an offering for sin each and every time. And that's, you know, I would beg this person to say, you know, to hear, I love your passion for evangelism, I love the fact that you want to win your family to Christ, or whoever, but you can do that, you know, Monday through Saturday.

Don't do that on Sunday. Sunday's the Lord's day. Go to church, be around believers, grow in the Lord, and they're friends.

Amen. Well, I'm glad our listeners got to hear you preach a little bit and hear your pastoral heart. I've been preaching through Hebrews, and of course, Hebrews 9 additionally says, He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of His own blood.

And then it says wonderfully, thus securing an eternal redemption. And I remember S. Lewis Johnson saying that when you go back to the temple and tabernacle type of worship, with so many symbols and representations and tactile things and sensual things like incense and sounds and all these kind of things that they have, you're going back to the old covenant kind of worship.

And Jesus has died and the veil has been rent asunder, and we don't have to go backwards anymore. And when I think of Rome, I think they are trying to go back to the old covenant type of systems. So Jordan, thanks for being on today.

I want you to know that I think I'll be in Europe teaching next May, early June, and then my wife and I are going to slip down to Rome for our 30th wedding anniversary. We celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary in Rome.

And if you're there, I'll take you to my favorite gelateria place. It's called Old Bridge, and they have this ricotta gelato. It's right across the street from the Vatican Museum, and it's over there by St. Peter's, and it is great.

And have you been to the Old Bridge Gelateria?

No, no, but I have to check it out.

Okay. It's by far my favorite place. It closes at midnight, so you can always make it there. One time we had breakfast there. We were so excited. I just looked it up. It looks pretty good. Oh, by far our best.

We'll travel the world to go to Old Bridge Gelateria. Okay. So, and then we have to walk, you know, for hours, and then it's an espresso, then gelato, espresso, gelato. That's how we visit Rome. Yeah.

Jordan, thank you for being our guest today on No Compromise Radio. And if our people want to support you in any way, shape, or form, you can go to Standridge .org. And if you are a supporter of No Compromise Radio, and you want to partner with the Standridges, that would be great.

And I love his slogan, not a slogan, but the statement underneath his name, for the sake of the lost in Italy. Thanks again, Jordan, for being on No Compromise Radio. Thank you so much. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's Word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text. Please come and join us.

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