February 12, 2018 Show with Interviews from the 2018 G3 Conference Part 5: Tom Buck & Michael Wieszchowski

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Opens the G3 Conference Interview Series

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, quote, 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 Monday on this 12th day of February 2018, only two days away from the birthday of yours truly and for my birthday this year, alls I am requesting is 1 million dollars in cash in unmarked bills mailed to the address you'll see if you go to ironsharpensironradio .com and click on support, you see a mailing address there, when you click on support, mail that money as I requested, 1 million dollars in cash in unmarked bills and I look forward to receiving that money for my birthday to help Iron Sharpens Iron remain on the air and today we are going to be continuing our series of on-site interviews or playing I should say our series of on-site interviews that were conducted in January at the G3 conference right there in the exhibitors booth hall where I had an exhibitors booth for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and it was such a joy and a blessing and a delight to be there and I look forward, God willing, to returning for the 2019 G3 conference in Atlanta Georgia next year but without further ado I am now going to start to play some of those interviews at least two of them that were conducted on-site and and keep in mind those of you who are listening perhaps that were interviewed at G3 conference at the G3 conference and you have not yet heard your interview.

I intend to eventually play all of them so keep your eyes and ears open for future broadcasts where I will continue airing the G3 interviews but today we are going to begin with the interview I conducted with Tom Buck and I hope you enjoy it just as much as I did here is part one of three parts of the Tom Buck interview this is Chris Ornson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio again a live on-site at the G3 conference in Atlanta Georgia.

Tom Buck on His Church, Testimony, and Reformed Convictions

In fact I keep saying live on set I guess it wouldn't be live for those listening over the airwaves at the moment they're hearing me speaking because this is being pre-recorded for a future date so perhaps that's an inappropriate use of language but I am on-site at the G3 conference and it's been such a joy to not only meet so many people even more than last year people I've never seen before in my life who have told me that they have been listening to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and loving it and people of all skin colors and backgrounds and geographic locations and it's just been blowing me away and humbling to see how many people have been blessed by what we do here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio but I'm so glad to be interviewing right now somebody that my dear friend of many years Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries has spoke very fondly of for quite a while.

His name is Tom Buck and he is the pastor of First Baptist Church in Windale Texas and he is in attendance here at the G3 conference and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastor Tom Buck.

Well thank you it's an honor to be with you today. Well tell us first of all.

Something about First Baptist Church of Windale Texas. Well our church is located in East Texas about an hour east of Dallas. I've been the pastor there senior pastor for 12 years. It is established church since about 1887 so a long-standing church and just thankful for the opportunity the impact that we have in that area we're focusing on building a solid church on the Word of God and also helping to equip other pastors in the area in building healthy churches so that's kind of our vision both inwardly and outwardly in the community.

Now how would you.

Describe your church theologically and any any way else that you'd care to describe it? Well I.

Would say we're Southern Baptist Church so it has been Southern Baptist not its entire history it was actually a Baptist Missionary Alliance BMA prior to becoming Southern Baptist about 75 years.

Ago. I don't even think I'm familiar with that denomination or that fellowship of Baptists. It's.

A smaller group that's mainly located in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas but a very solid theological group as well they're reformed. Their seminary is located in Jacksonville Seminary one of their seminaries also in Little Rock Arkansas and our church would be considered to be reformed in its doctrine specifically soteriologically and Southern Baptist as well so we're aligned with the Founders Movement in the Southern Baptist Convention, Nine Marks-ish in the sense of helping churches.

Dr. Tom Askell is a good friend of mine has been on my program many times and I'm looking forward to interviewing him at some point before I leave Atlanta because I know he's here. And well one of the things that I like to do when I especially when I interview somebody for the first time.

I'd like you to give a summary of your testimony of salvation about the kind of religious atmosphere if any you were raised in what the providential circumstances that the Lord used to draw you to himself and also how you came to embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace which may have been simultaneous with your salvation experience.

But perhaps they're not. They weren't with me. Tell us.

Something about that. It certainly wasn't with me either. I grew up in a Southern Baptist Church in East Tennessee and that was in the late 60s early 70s so that was the time when the Southern Baptist Convention was in quite a bit of turmoil regarding its theological convictions coming out of the seminary.

So my pastor was quite liberal and I didn't know that until later on. But he was. He preached from the Bible. But he didn't preach the Bible. But I'm thankful that I in other words he read the words but then reinterpreted them.

I was involved in eisegesis absolutely. I remember one sermon in particular that he preached regarding the demoniac when Jesus encountered and when Jesus asked his name of course the demon spoke Elysian which means one of many.

And the pastor who denied he didn't believe in miracles and didn't believe in the spiritual world saw the man answering that and saying that he had kind of lost his identity in the world and he was just one of many people and forgotten his own name.

So that's I mean that's still in my memory. Interestingly enough from when I was probably about seven or eight years old. So I came to know the Lord though. Because I was raised my parents were believers and my mom constantly shared the gospel with me.

But later on as I would I realized that that my pastor probably about interesting enough about eight or nine years old I realized that my pastor wasn't preaching what was in the Bible. He would read and say something else and I would ask my parents about that.

I began listening to WMBI out of Chattanooga and listening to the pastors preach the Bible in a very different way and I had decided that I wanted to go to Moody Bible Institute. I went there and that's where I was introduced to the doctrines of grace of which I immediately was repulsed by what I heard at Moody Bible Institute.

Yes you were introduced to the doctrines of grace there because it's not really known for being at least a thoroughly reformed Institute for higher education. Well I was introduced to four points.

Calvinist with the lists at least as I said to up instead of tulip as we would call them. But dr. Marvin Mayer he's still alive today and taught me the Word of God and and it didn't take me long though to be convinced because as soon as I went back and wrestled with what the text said and he I was taking him for the book of Romans.

It was as clear as could be to me although I had been raised completely opposite. So I immediately saw what the Word of God was saying and was ecstatic to see that you know here's this is truth. And so I repulsed at the beginning but very quickly embraced it and went back home to my home church and and had interesting discussions will say with my pastor who was quite concerned that I had been taken over by the dark side.

Of course. Erwin Lutzer's a thorough going Calvinist from what I understand. Yes. And so while I was in Bible callers there at Moody that's where I attended church love to hear Erwin Lutzer unpack the word.

He was an expositor. For sure. Yes. For sure. And that's where I came to fall in love with the handling of God's Word in an expositional manner and I went on to Dallas Seminary so I did the full dispensational route and then decided that I wanted to go and begin what I called at that time and there it's kind of popular now.

But it's been 25 years ago revitalizing churches. I want to go into a church that had just died not in the sense of just its effectiveness and began to just preach the Word of God I went to Florida and was there for 12 years and the Lord was gracious and blessing that.

And now I'm in East Texas so I've been in two churches both for 12 years. Yes in fact when.

Your or our mutual friend dr. James are white wrote the book the Potter's Freedom. Erwin Lutzer was very enthusiastic and excited to write an endorsement for it which he did and he was in a panic that he might not make the deadline but he God thanks be to God was able to get his his endorsement in his commendation for the book before it went to print so that that commendation is still in the current edition of that.

Regenerate Membership, Church Discipline, and the Bible Belt

What can you tell our listeners about what it is like being a pastor of a sovereign grace-believing church in what is known as the Bible Belt. In fact even you could even make it a broader issue as well being a person who I'm assuming if you are a reformed church that you believe in a regenerate membership and the Southern Baptist Convention as every single Calvinist I know in the Southern Baptist Convention has freely admitted to me you have scores of churches where the credibility of conversion of multitudes in those congregations especially the very enormous ones is very doubtful.

At times in fact I can still remember speaking to an old preacher Mississippi years ago when I told him I was from New York he said well you guys in New York you get it easy. All you got to do is get people saved.

We got to get them lost then get them saved. Now he was reformed so obviously he didn't believe that anybody any human gets anybody saved but it was the way it was just a quaint way of speaking about evangelism and the fact that in the Bible Belt people most people think that they're Christians just because they're from.

Baptist or Pentecostal or some kind of evangelical background. Absolutely. In fact that's one of the reasons I originally went to Florida because I had grown up in that cultural Christianity and I was actually repulsed by that and I just said I'm not gonna I don't want to go into that I would rather go into southern Florida where a lot of people were moving down from New York and Boston in those areas and just it was very different interacting with those individuals who were fine to tell you that they were lost and didn't care one bit to claim that they had no religious affiliation but the Lord worked in certain ways and this opportunity opened up to go to First Baptist and I found that it was going to be a different challenge in one sense of where I was in in southern Florida and going to the cultural Christianity that was there in East Texas very much like where I came from in East Tennessee I the church it was very different than the church I went to in Florida that we had 50 people now I was going to a church that had attendance of about seven to eight hundred with over two thousand members and that was going to be a challenge.

I was thankful that and the reason I went there was very open. I think that one of the things that happens often in the Southern Baptist Convention is I have found that there are some guys who aren't really open and honest up front about where they are in their doctrine.

I was very open and honest the pulpit committee as they talked with me that's what they wanted so it meant made made it easy in that sense but I shared with them that it it was gonna be a long road because you can't go in and bring the kind of reform that needs to take place overnight and so one of the things I would say is that as guys go into the Bible belt pastors they need to have a patience patience of Job so to speak that they're willing to take the time that it's going to take to make the changes that need to be made.

The churches don't become unhealthy overnight. They certainly don't become healthy even at this as fast as they become unhealthy. So we we began just preaching the word but one of the first things we addressed was on was regenerate membership and rather than just wiping the rolls clean we felt we had a responsibility and this is what I shared with the church that we have a responsibility.

We at one time took these individuals whether we did it flippantly or not we took them into the care of this church and we are to be shepherding them. We are the ones are at fault for allowing them to drift away from the church.

They certainly have a responsibility. It is the responsibility of that individual Christian to stay connected. But the church had allowed these people to disconnect themselves and had done nothing to that I'm aware of to have pursued after them and so we spent two years.

I was probably there a year or two before we began this but we spent two years of working it caught to try to contact each and every person that was no longer connected to the church was on the membership rules and we began with the approach that we failed you.

The biblical role of the church is to love and care for its flock. We haven't done that and we began to reach out to them visit each home that we went to try to visit each home. Many of them we couldn't find but we took a two-year painstaking effort to locate them and then after we had recovered a very very few minuscule amount of 2 ,000 maybe two maybe two or three four people we began to take to the church those whom are unwilling to come back and begin the process of removing them from the membership of the church.

But we tried to do it in the most loving and caring way we can. I think pastors need to do that and not go to the extreme of just come in and begin to wipe out the rules and begin over again. Now to those people who were being removed react to that.

What's kind of interesting one couple that we went and visited sweet dear couple and they said we we're really busy. We worked a lot we have our own business and we don't. We're not probably going to be coming but we don't want to be taken off the rolls and we lovingly said that's not the path that we would take forward.

We went to the church we removed them from the rules. Two weeks later they come they're in church and they come up and they say this is not what we want. That was four years ago and they haven't missed church since.

Wow they came and rejoined the fellowship. Now that's one couple out of the myriad. Some of them got very angry so they even give a reason they had just fallen out of the habit. And what I mean is do they give a reason why they're angry.

No they they would call us judgmental. I think for so many the reason I say it's the fault of the church for some so much as we we took lightly them coming in. So what's the big deal if they're not around.

So I think churches one of the things they must do is have a more careful process of how you allow members to come into the church so that they understand the gravity of what it means to be a member. So it is odd when you say why are you removing me.

You haven't cared for 20 years. Why do you care all of a sudden. So I think their anger was probably out of just not understanding on many levels and some of them probably weren't believers and they had made a profession got baptized became a member and they may have not come back at another day.

Which was my experience growing up in my churches in East Tennessee. Now is the First Baptist Church of Lindale confessional. No. Well we are in one sense we are in the sense that we hold to the Baptist faith and message but we're not at the point where we have you know kind of reformed to that degree.

I think that is when you're bringing change about in the church. I think you have to begin to say what are the most important things I need to deal with right now. What hills do I need to die. Yeah I'd be willing to die and I've even taken it in this kind of analogy if a doctor goes in he may have three different patients that all need the same surgery but they have various other things that might be wrong with him and he has to determine what do I treat first.

What risks am I going to take if a surgery is needed to take place this patient I'm going to rush him in this patient. I've got to get these other things under control first. So I think that takes great wisdom and patience as you work with the church.

So we just adopted a church covenant in the last two years. The reason we were did not adopt that church coming to the last two years is because one of the things in the church covenant dealt directly with that.

If you participated in any level of alcohol you could not be a member of the church and I am personally a teetotaler. But I wanted I felt like the church need to understand. We should not bind the consciences of our people with anything God's Word doesn't.

So we're gonna say we believe the word but then bind their conscience with something extra biblical. That's not right. But our church was not ready for that. So it was better to not use a church covenant.

For example until the church was ready to make that change. When we made the change we had a hundred percent vote to not include that language and have a covenant that was was different than that. So that's just one example.

It's kind of interesting how one would.

Have a mindset where we don't want people in the church that ever drink at all any amount of alcohol but as if they stay away from the church they can still be members. Does your. As far as being in a church or pastoring a church that is theologically reformed what is the reaction then to what you believe and the way you preach and teach and disciple from Christianity or Christendom in the surrounding area of that.

Lyndale Texas.

Vicinity. Well of course we've had some folks who have rejected that and have left our church. I believe you attract who you are so when you preach the word it becomes clear. I'm not one who speaks of terms like Calvinism.

I don't wear my reform points upon my sleeve but I preach the text and I don't shy away from what the text says. So it's. I'm. I know I'm clear enough because I get in enough debates that people come after up after a sermon to know that.

I've been clear about what I believe. But the good thing is is that there are some folks in our church who are diametrically opposed to some of these things but yet they remain. They know that I'm preaching the word.

They remain faithful to the church. We have some good interaction sometimes strong. I wouldn't even I wouldn't use the word heated but strong debate. But they have stayed and they are not disgruntled.

I think sometimes they're disturbed by certain things are said. We have interaction with that. So we've had classes of people. We've drawn people that are committed. We've we've kept people who are or maybe somewhat objection objecting to certain things.

We've lost some people. And then you also draw sometimes the people that are the cage stagers and and they don't think I'm reformed enough. So you get it all across the spectrum. Now. I don't know how you know thoroughly studied you.

Are about the history of the Southern Baptist Convention and about the South in general but it seems interesting that in the 21st century of course Calvinism is a minority everywhere perhaps except Grand Rapids Michigan but it's especially rare and a minority view in the South and yet the Southern Baptist Convention began completely by Calvinistic pastors.

Do you have any idea what happened to reverse the situation where you have now Calvinists in the Southern Baptist Convention who are a tiny minority and in some cases are even vilified and condemned and there are warnings being sounded against them by the majority who are calling themselves traditionalists who are not Calvinist.

How did we reach that point. And how can there be such universal ignorance about the.

Calvinistic roots of this denomination. Well I think that you begin to see the movement away from strong reform soteriology at least around 1925 with the Southern Baptist Statement of Faith. Then they were wanting to they began even then watering down the language even of the New Hampshire Confession which itself was somewhat of a watering down of the language and so you begin to see that drift take place.

And I think that I know this is going to sound probably by those who are on the side and say that this that's arrogant but the convention drifted away from that theological position and we also see it drift away into what it became in the 70s 60s and 70s.

Which liberal denomination. Yeah now the moment you say that the other side cries that you know that you know that that's arrogant to say that Calvinism is what keeps you there. I don't think Calvinism keeps you anywhere.

I don't think reform theology sir necessarily keeps you anywhere but here's the thing that's tied to it when you preach the scriptures and you preach them clearly in an expositional manner of what is the text saying that is the key I think to bringing about those who come to understand the doctrines of reform theology or Calvinism because it's clearly in the Word of God and so I credit the drift in the convention to the failure to of the preaching in the pulpit.

You have W .A. Criswell he was an expositor now he wasn't as strong of a Calvinist as some Calvinists are today in the convention but he was much more Calvinist than he was what other people try to paint him out to be.

And what was he. He he wasn't you know the quintessential expositor but he certainly was an expositor and so for me as we preach the Word of God I think that's what's called the Revivalization. This in in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Now those who oppose it I have dear friends that opposed that opposed reform theology in the convention and I love them they're they're godly men intelligent men. But I think there's a disconnect where they somehow believe that these doctrines are a threat to evangelism and Southern Baptists have always been praise God committed to want to evangelize.

I think that committed to a to some faults that they commit in order to get people to respond because we push those baptism numbers and that makes us you know feel good that people are being reached and so I think they have a false connection there as well that a baptism means somebody got saved when we both know that that's not always the case so I believe that's where the disconnect comes is they just can't they believe that this is going to destroy missions that Calvinists don't care about evangelism.

And one of the reasons they point to is take for example my church it's been said he took the church of two over 2 ,000 and now it's down to 850. No I didn't I took a church of 850 and exposed that they had fake numbers.

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This is the second of three parts with Tom Buck and. But please sit back relax and.

Enjoy this wonderful interview. And Southern Baptists have always been, praise God, committed to want to evangelize. I think that committed to some faults that they commit in order to get people to respond because we push those baptism numbers and that makes us you know feel good that people are being reached and so I think they have a false connection there as well that a baptism means somebody got saved when we both know that that's not always the case.

So I believe that's where the disconnect comes is they just can't they believe that this is going to destroy missions that Calvinists don't care about evangelism and one of the reasons they point to is take for example my church it's been said he took the church of over 2 ,000 and now it's down to 850.

No I didn't. I took a church of 850 and exposed that they had fake numbers. Can your church building even hold 2 ,000 people? No. I inherited this but we have to have two services to hold the number we have so we would have to have four services to hold 2 ,000.

So it's not like you have dozens and.

Dozens of empty pews. You would have had them anyway if these people were absentee members of the church but it's a ridiculous charge because you were just as you said exposing.

That those people weren't truly members. We also have fewer baptisms compared to many of the other churches but I you know I had a pastor tell me just the other day that they run on Sundays 300 or so they've ran that for a long time and that this last year they had 200 saved.

Well why aren't you running 500? You ran 300 last year, 300 this year, 200 got saved. Now that many people didn't relocate it's because we are satisfied sadly with evangelism that calls people to a decision but does not call them to repentance and faith and discipleship.

One thing that I have heard.

From Southern Baptist brethren who are believers in the doctrines of grace very strongly Reformed or Calvinistic. Soteriologically it's ironic that the charge that you mentioned is so common that Calvinism kills evangelism.

And yet from what I've heard from Southern Baptists about the mission field is that you will have people who are non-Calvinists who are far less persistent and patient and persevering in evangelism. They and the those especially those on mission boards who uproot people if they don't think that there is quick enough numeric growth in decisions for Christ and they'll pull them away from that area.

And and it seems to me that if you really believed that God you know will bring his people from out of every tribe and tongue and people a nation that you would be more patient and more persistent and to linger in areas longer even when there is not.

Very quick fruit or fruit bearing very quickly. I agree and I think I think it was Piper that said it that Calvinism is the hope of missions that we can know it's the fuel for that that we can know that God has a people and it allows us I think to continue to be persistent to realize that it's up to God to bring about the growth.

And if I go in thinking here am I and I'm gonna say this quotations around it so I don't mean this to be insulting but my five gimmicks or my five you know plans or whatever it may be that I've used everywhere else.

And if I go in and those things don't work I move on to somewhere else. That's what I've seen as a pattern even among pastors in churches in America they go in they have a five-year plan. It either works or it doesn't work.

If it doesn't grow I move on to the next place. Whereas if we're really going to build healthy churches and have healthy missions we need the mindset that we have a promise from God that he is going to come now.

He may not do it with my particular ministry and in my particular lifetime. But my call is to be faithful and I can go in with the confidence and continue to serve there knowing that God is going to accomplish his goal he's going to accomplish drawing people into his kingdom.

That's what keeps me going. Or there would be many times I'd pack my bags and move on to the next town.

Race, Racism, and the Church’s Response

I'm gonna say something I'm gonna ask you about something that is I have to be very careful the way I word my sentences especially in a day and age of hypersensitivity and I hope that people don't misunderstand what I'm saying.

But I have been a witness to things lately that some of your Southern Baptist brethren have been participating in that reveal such a desire and I think it has a right motive in a right desire to erase the horrible stereotype and actual horrible stain of a history that has involved the sin of racism.

And it has been a real sin that has existed amongst Southern Baptists. And basically it's existed amongst all humans in one level or another for one reason or another. I mean you have all kinds of people who are the same ethnic background who despise those who are from a different region of the country that you know speaks the same language they do and so on.

I mean I know I have met and spoken firsthand with Puerto Ricans who are very bigoted against Mexicans and South Americans and I've spoken with South Americans who despise Puerto Ricans. And you could go on and on and on.

So the white race is not the only people group that have been guilty of the sin as as many especially liberals would have the world believe but this is a long way of saying that I am concerned about some Southern Baptists who so much want to apologize for the sins of the past of the denomination that they are overlooking theological aberrancies by believed by those who are black or by those who are known for being involved in civil rights groups and activities and so on if it concerns me that there are some who are so desperate to be welcomed as those who do not personally possess the sin of racism that they may overlook sins that are equally as damning.

Am I making any sense here. No you're making sense.

Completely I mean I've been having this conversation with a variety of pastor friends of mine within the Southern Baptist Convention and might I say that the conversations are not exclusively with white people.

I'm having these conversations with people of various different color and one of the things is that is painted is that as if all black Christians agree on this issue they don't and they don't the ones who are in the camp of saying that we that there is a need to figure out a way to forever cleanse the stain there those who don't agree with that that are black are not given the same voice that at least even they say that as those who are on the side so there seems to be a one-sided conversation.

That's what deeply concerns me. I have pastor friends and I'm one of them so I'll be honest even saying it here that we're sometimes afraid that we are afraid to talk about it because the moment we talk about it it's almost as if there is the thought that well then you're racist.

I do believe that I need to listen to my black brothers and sisters and you're right there's Hispanic there's issues of racism towards not just black people but other races as well. But let's just talk about the black I I do agree that I need to listen to my black brothers and sisters to understand their experience to understand that they may have experienced something very different in my worldview and I don't understand what they're feeling what they've been through what all of those things.

But I would say yes that you need to listen to not just the voices that are over here in the side that say there is systemic racism but listen to the voices of black men and women who say that's not my experience.

So to say that the experience of all black Christians are the same is is absolutely demeaning to you the word that has been used with me by black brothers and sisters in Christ that have not experienced that.