Pastoral Search Committee

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'"

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, ministry take three today,

Steve. How are you? I'm good, thanks for asking. Well, now that I'm asking, are you asking me or are you telling me my father used to say?

Uh, asking, or am I in trouble? Which answer do you want me to give you, Dad? We're looking at Christianity Today, the magazine, because it's fun to do.

It's, wouldn't you say this is low -hanging fruit for the no -compromise onslaught,

Steve? The only thing lower would be astrology. I mean, we're just gonna, yeah, it's pretty easy.

You know, why don't we interview Nancy Reagan's astrologist? That would make good radio.

It would be excellent radio. But I liked Ronald Reagan. He seemed like he was a, to use the vernacular, a good man.

Yeah, well, his son thinks he was a Christian, so. I so hope he is.

Although I wouldn't go so far to say if Ronald Reagan's not in heaven, it won't be heaven. I wouldn't go that far at all.

I wouldn't go. I mean, I'd go so far as to say if Jesus is not in heaven, it's not heaven, but I wouldn't go.

Right on. What's that little mug that you, you probably have one of these mugs now that you're the proud grandfather of two granddaughters.

If the best thing about grandpa's house is? Grandma. Well, no compromise radio.

We have a slogan and the slogan is always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. And we're trying to talk to you about issues that matter.

That matter to you. Encouraging, we're known for what we're for and not what we're against kind of mentality.

Think of it as a hug through the radio. I thought about changing the name of the show to Perpetual Mother's Day.

Wow, that is so wonderful. Or Our Lady of Bad Counsel Radio. Ooh, that's hitting a little close to Wes Boylson home.

Wow, that would be bad to get bad counsel from a lady. Our Lady of Perpetual Helplessness.

Perpetual Bad Counsel. Actually, if you ask Mary living on earth, if we could transport ourselves 2 ,000 years ago and ask

Mary, the wife of Joseph, I think she'd probably give us good counsel.

And here's the counsel that Mary would give us. Look to my son. He is the one who is the

Messiah and that it was God's good pleasure to have him inside of my womb.

Joseph was not the true father, but just the stepfather and you look to Jesus. I offer you no mediatorial work.

I think that's exactly what you would say. In fact, let's just write it in a book. Yeah, yeah,

I think that would be like, why don't we just have Mary chapter one? Mary chapter two.

All right, Christianity Today, October 6th, Steve. I know you've read the magazine. Every word.

I think I sign off on your expense report so you're allowed to expense this. That's true. I think that's a misallocation of funds.

Spending Bethlehem Bible Church's money on Christianity Today. I don't really think it is because it's good to have our finger on the pulse to know what's going on.

I think so. But maybe we're just going to have to do it out of our no compromise budget. Okay. Christianity Today magazine,

Baptist fellowship offering cash incentives. Now that'd be no compromise worthy right there.

Yeah, let's just stop right there. Stop there. To churches. Okay. Well, it's still okay.

Considering. Okay. Female pastors. It's like you're walking further and further out on the plank and eventually, boom, you go into the ocean.

Now, I don't know if this is bad to say or not, Steve, but why is it written by a lady that has kind of two last names?

I don't know, but I can't say either one of them. Well, I guess Zylstra. Sarah Echoff.

It looks like Echoff. Well, maybe that Z is like a TS sound like in German. Zylstra.

I don't know. Well, maybe that's her real name, but if she's keeping her maiden name, then that would be another show.

But anyway, think about what the subtitle is here. Why leaders are willing to pay expenses for search committees that consider women for church leadership.

Yeah, I thought the funniest part of this article was they actually compared it to, like in the NFL, they have to interview minority candidates before they hire somebody.

What rule is that called? The Rooney rule? Yeah, the Rooney rule. Yeah, and I just thought, what in the world?

How do you compare yourself to the NFL? That makes no sense to me whatsoever.

A church and the NFL. Well, your salvation and eternity passed in the covenant of redemption between the

Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit in this compact agreement, our covenant. It's like getting drafted.

You hope the good team drafts you, and in a sense, the team, the home team, the Father drafts you into his service.

Okay, but I think the analogy might break down because who's the agent that negotiates for us?

The agent actually is the mediatorial work of Christ Jesus, the Son. Okay, so he would be the equivalent of these money -grubbing sports agents?

As you know, all illustrations and analogies break down. The Holy Spirit is like water, vapor, and ice.

Yeah, it broke down. Maybe Jake said so. It broke down. Well, there probably are listeners today, and so just to be

PC on No Compromise Radio, women are equal in Christ Jesus, Galatians 3, verse 28.

Women do all kinds of ministries and are freed from the tyranny of sexism that was found in the

Old Testament and New Testament times. And you can read 1 Corinthians 7 to find pretty much an explicit illustration of that very issue.

And we are not anti -women. Steve, you've got a mother and a stepmother, kind of two moms.

You have a wife. And you have? Sisters. Sisters, two daughters. And two granddaughters.

Yeah, I do. So you're a hater. Hey, haters! That's it. Hey, haters!

And so I - Maybe we should start all our new radio shows like that. Hey, haters! I think I started a segment on Wretched like that.

Did you? Hey, haters! And so this has nothing to do with equality of the sexes.

And we would do everything we can within our power to make sure that men and women are equal in Christ Jesus and have same access to Christ Jesus, et cetera.

But there are different functions. And dads aren't moms and moms aren't dads. And so dads have different functions.

And you can see some of these responsibilities in light of Christ's work that the fathers have. And they are not symmetrical to the mothers.

So for instance, the wives are supposed to respect their husbands and husbands are never told to respect their wives.

Even though, of course, I think they should. But why are the women told to do that and the men aren't?

I particularly think, Steve, as a submissive wife and having hard, sinful leadership at times by the husband, it would be difficult to respect him because you realize some of the decisions he makes are not good, yet you still have to submit to him.

And so that's just an illustration of functional differences. Well, right. And why are husbands commanded to love their wives?

Does that mean the wives don't have to love their husbands? Right, exactly. Right, good. So we are not anti -women.

We are not anti -women involvement in local churches. We're not anti -women teaching, but we are anti -women teaching men.

Let me just read a verse to you, Steve. And you tell me that this is from the Bhagwan Raj Rajneesh or from the Apostle Paul.

As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches for they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission as the law also says.

I'm gonna go with the Apostle Paul. If there's anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

Now, interestingly, 1 Corinthians 14, verses 34 and 35, if you look at certain commentaries of the charismatic persuasion, you'll find people questioning are those two verses in the original?

And you know, every good manuscript we have, they're in there, but they don't fit the theology because especially charismatic friends of ours.

Do we think all charismatics are doomed? No, we don't. Okay, good. Just wanted to check. But I mean, that's really the last refuge of scoundrels that can, well, it's not in the original.

We're not really certain if it's in the original manuscript. That's no different than Gordon Fee when it comes to 1

Timothy chapter two about women and exercising authority and teaching. He says that's in the text, but then his wiggle weasel deal is that it's only for the church at Ephesus at the time, 2000 years ago.

We're on a different trajectory. Yeah, I've read other commentators saying the exact same thing. So he's not alone in that.

I mean, the weasel wiggle group is growing and growing. Have you ever seen a weasel wiggle? No, but that would be like WW.

There must be Wiggling Weasel Federation. How much wiggling would a weasel wiggle if a weasel could wiggle weasels?

Probably a lot. Yeah, I know. And so if people have a theological construct ahead of time and then go to the text, they put that over, kind of like those anatomy layered books where on the underneath side, you've got the skeleton and then you put the layer over of arteries and then the paper layer over of veins and then some soft tissue.

And then you get to see the whole body's anatomy. It's the same thing. What we don't want to do, eisegesis, laying our levels of theological constructs onto the text.

We want the text to inform us straight away, straight up, kind of like New Englanders are, blunt.

To put it in plain English, I think what you're saying is people shouldn't go to scripture with their mind already made up about what it said and then wrestle with the words so that they get the meaning that they went into it thinking it meant.

And that's what they do. We know that women can teach, so therefore let's look at 1 Timothy 2, verse 12 and figure out how that means the opposite of what it says.

Sounds like William Webb's book about trajectory of women, slaves, and homosexuals. Well, that's what

I had in mind. That's exactly right. So when it comes to hermeneutics, we know we have preconceived notions and we have presuppositions.

There are only two kinds of people with presuppositions, those that know they have them and those that don't know they have them, but they still have them.

They're presuppositions, but we try to put those to the side and we try to say, let's just let the text speak.

And so with 1 Timothy 2, with 1 Corinthians 14, with Jesus picking apostles, et cetera, we are not anti -women.

You can bet your life on that. You can bet your bippy. I think people used to say. You can bet your life on it.

But here when it says the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Missouri, that would be CBFMO. Yeah, in case you were wondering.

We'll offer cash incentives to any church that is willing to consider hiring a female pastor.

Can you imagine, let's consider it and then we get some extra cash, cashola.

Well, you know, I'd consider it too, depending on how much money, you know, how much money would it, if they're talking about a couple mil,

I'll consider it. We won't do it, but we'll consider it. We'll give it all the consideration it's due.

Duly considered. Well, you know, that's like what I used to tell my kids. Would you at least think about, oh sure, I'll think about it.

Okay, I've thought about it. Would you at least consider it? Okay, I've considered it. The venerable

Al Mohler said, to me it's very telling. This reveals a sincere level of frustration on their part.

It's easy to look across the theological divide and say, look at those hypocrites, Mohler said. They aren't hypocrites at all.

The leadership is just not where the churches are on this. But I think it's actually the basic sense of biblical memory that keeps congregations from moving in that direction.

So since churches don't have spiritual Alzheimer's quite yet, they don't wanna move in the direction of women leadership because they actually remember what the

Bible teaches. Yeah, I like what he says here even more. He says, you know, as seminaries graduate, more and more women, the problem grows.

You know, there are all these women who are ready and they're trained and they're able to pastor. And then he says, if churches aren't going to call them, they really are facing a crisis of sorts.

Well, yes, you know, underemployed women who think they've got the call for ministry, even though the

Bible says they can't have the call for ministry, full -time pastoral ministry. So, you know, what do they do?

And so the answer for this particular denominational group is to incent churches to consider hiring women pastors.

Did not the Supreme Court just say that it is okay for worldview or world vision or world something to hire?

They said it was okay for them to continue to hire only Christians. Yeah. Something like that. They weren't going to hear the case.

And so I wonder what it's going to be like when churches are forced to hire women.

Now, these aren't in the same category. I'm not putting them in the same species. The taxonomy is not the same, but hiring homosexuals, hiring unbelievers.

Yeah, I could tell you exactly what it's going to be like. We'll just have to give up our tax exempt status so that the state is no longer involved in the church.

In other words, if we ran just like any other group, they couldn't tell us who to hire. You mean to tell me that the church,

Bethlehem Bible Church is underneath the satanic rule of the 5013B thing.

You are just ungodly for doing that. How many emails do I get from people who are whacked out on that?

You get some really weird emails. I have to give you that. I got to forward them to you from now on. Please do. Steve at NoCompromiseRadio .com.

You actually have that? I don't even have my own email. You need to get one. Yeah, not that I'm complaining. I'm just saying is all.

Steve, I'm drinking iced tea unsweetened from a Powerade Zero bottle because I'm recycling.

I'm proud of you. It's good for the earth. Good, that's good. What a good steward you are. All right, what else does

Molly Marshall have to say? Remind me of Molly Marshall. Molly Marshall. Who is Molly Marshall? I'm glad you asked because I did do some research on this.

Molly Marshall in 2004, she was elected the president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri.

And she became the first female president of an accredited Baptist seminary.

Now, Molly has a little bit of history. Interestingly, she succeeded

Thomas Clifton, whom I don't know. But anyway, for the past nine years, Molly Marshall has been the professor of theology and spiritual formation at Central and currently serves as acting academic dean, blah, blah, blah.

Well, she used to, and it's amazing because it doesn't get into this here, but she used to be at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Whatever happened to Molly? Well, I've seen that interview with Molly regarding, what was the name of the show?

Losing Our Religion or something. Yeah, something like that. The negative portrayal of the screw tape -esque tale of Southern Seminary when

Moeller came in and flushed that septic system right out of Dodge.

And I don't know if he was the direct one who fired Molly or Danny Akin did. You're fired. She gave her the

Molly hatchet. Oh, yeah. Steve, did you not just type into Wikipedia for Molly Marshall and it came up Molly hatchet?

Yes, it did. Is that a sign? Now, if I was a mystic, what would the Lord be telling me? This is no compromise radio ministry.

This is obviously Tuesday. When you hear two voices, you know that it's Steve and Mike.

And we are flirting with disaster. Steve, did you hear that quote that I used the other day from the theologian,

Lily Tomlin? Yes, I did. Okay, yes, when God, Lily Tomlin said, when you speak to God, that's called prayer.

And when God speaks to you, that's called schizophrenia. I really like that one. Now we've got

Molly hatchet. And tell me, flirting with disaster, did they sing any other song that we would know?

I have no idea. I mean, I was a huge Molly hatchet fan. He's rolling his eyes. Insert eye roll here.

I was never a Southern rock kind of guy. 38 special. I liked them. No, I didn't. Yeah, I liked them.

No, I didn't like Leonard Skinner. Yeah, I'm not so much of a Leonard Skinner fan. Who are some other Southern rock fans? Especially, what was that song?

Family, Parents, and Wife. Oh, Free Bird. Hated that song with a holy passion. Even before I was saved.

With a holy passion. But anyway. Steve hated that with an unholy passion. Yeah, getting back to Molly Marshall, you know, she was kind of centrally involved with a lot of the liberalism and ungodliness, quite frankly, that was involved.

Homosexuality, pushing that. That was going on. And in fact, didn't she divorce her husband? I would like to know if that's technically correct before you get sued.

Okay, allegedly. She allegedly. Allegedly. I'm protecting myself. But I think there was,

I remember hearing something about. Well, I'm not saying anything else, but I think she did get divorced. But since she's not in Wikipedia, I really can't.

We can't find that out. Well. Can't verify that. Here's a bigger issue. Maybe we can talk about this for the rest of the time,

Steve. Let's talk a little bit about church pastoral search committees. Let's talk about the wrong way and let's talk about the right way.

Can I just say one more thing? You can do whatever you want. I want to quote Molly Marshall here. She says, the incentive may be clumsy.

In other words, this idea of giving money to churches to consider, but it has been a tool to get churches discussing the idea,

Marshall said. Then she says, when I was in seminary, I had to put myself out there. That's how change happens.

When a church hears a competent woman offer the word of God in a thoughtful manner, change happens when the issue wears a face.

Well, so we're going to use money to get churches to ignore what the Bible says.

Steve, being the face of No Compromise Radio Ministry, I take umbrage to that.

Well, you can take all the umbrage you want. Or as Herschel York would say, I take humbridge to that. He pronounces it as H.

Is that right? Herbs. I didn't know that. No, he takes off the H when he pronounces humble.

But there is no H in humbridge. There is in my book. Yeah, let's throw money at a church so they can do unbiblical things.

But you know what? It makes sense because let's try to throw things out to consumers to try to get them to come in those same liberal churches.

So it's like a coupon. Hey, if I give you a coupon, will you hire this unqualified pastor?

Back in my day, we had some SNH green stamps so we had to save up to get some kind of gizmos from the store.

We did. I mean, we did that. And I think we got a toaster oven, you know, when I was a kid and we used to have books and books.

I can remember licking those stamps till my tongue was covered with glue. Stick them and lick them. Yeah. Or lick them and stick them.

Those were the days. So if you don't have a pastor and you have a church pulpit pastoral search committee and you just say, let's, here's the first mistake that you could make.

We don't have a pastor. We want to get a pastor. Let's pick a few people in the church that seem to have some clout and seem to know what's going on.

And let's just have a representative sample of people that help us find a person. Let's just pick a few people, representative sample of the church, and they can go find us a pastor.

To me, that's a disaster. That's flirting with disaster. People who've been there for a while.

And you know, then some newer people so you can get a new perspective on hiring a pastor. You know, you just kind of have to mix things up, you know, maybe throwing in an unbeliever so that you get everybody's viewpoint.

Rich one though. Yeah, rich one. Yeah. No. And lots of women. You want to have lots of women on that committee. Steve, you're being bad.

Here's what you want to do. Who are the, let's just go back to the Bible. I mean, I know it's no compromise radio, but let's just consider what the

Bible would say. Who leads the affairs of the local church? Who would manage or supervise or lead the affairs of the church according to first Timothy chapter five, chapter three?

Who would oversee? Yeah. Who would shepherd? Should be spiritually under qualified.

Elders. Who should be men. And so if you have elders, we believe a no compromise radio, you are doing a disservice and you are abandoning your duty as an elder to delegate it to someone else.

Now, if you want to delegate some tasks to other people who do things like send out the mail, send out, you know, rejection letters.

Buy tables, you know, whatever. Couldn't you have a secretary or a committee do some dirty work for you as an elder board so you could just get the resumes straight off?

Absolutely. And absolutely, all of that stuff is perfectly fine. I mean, they could print off the letters, they could do whatever.

But when it comes to actually narrowing the candidates down, going through the applications and then talking to people, why would you give that to anybody but the elders, the most spiritually qualified men at the church?

Now, if you don't have elders, then I could see how it would be a free for all, but we want leaders to lead.

And so elders, please don't delegate your responsibility to find a new pastor to people who aren't spiritually qualified.

You are the leaders by God's decree, by God's design, and therefore lead. Now, you're not going to lord it over the people according to 1

Peter 5. You can get input and all that, but here's the input that should be given.

It should be given from the elders to help shepherd the people so they realize, we want a preacher, we want a man of God.

We don't need a CEO, we don't need a mentor, we don't need an administrator, we don't need a song leader. We would like to have a preacher, a godly preacher who's afraid of God to the extent that he'll just preach the word.

And then you shepherd your people in that way, and then they respond. You don't say, let's have a survey and tell us what are the three most important things that you'd like in a pastor.

I'd like somebody who's sensitive, somebody who's available. Gentle, somebody who's basically effeminate.

And somebody who's on the cutting edge of theological correctness. Wow, he's on the cutting edge.

You know, these churches that would say, well, you know, if you gave a little survey to people, what would you like in a pastor?

I could see a single lady who's 27 would say, my most important thing about having a pastor would be that he's single.

And everybody just votes what they think is right. Everybody did what was right in their own eyes. Let's match up to 1

Timothy 3 and Titus chapter one. And if we can't find someone in short order, then maybe we're not really a church.

Or maybe one of those elders should step up and take over. Yeah, I mean, that happens fairly often that that sort of thing happens.

But it's definitely just the wrong thing to do to think, well, gee, how can we get some money or maybe we should consider a woman just because they're gonna throw some money at us here.

You know, so no thanks, Molly. Maybe Steve's with some of the huge budget we have here at No Compromise Radio.

We should send money to churches just so they don't consider women candidates. We hear that you're considering one.

Here, here's some money not to consider. Oh man.

A big fat check out of our No Compromise budget. If you don't have a pastor, then let's do what we probably should do.

Let's walk by faith and not by sight. Let's just ask God to provide a pastor. The church can pray and the church can interview and then say, you know what?

You've called us out to worship you and we need to have an overseer and a pastor and a preacher.

Lord, would you grant us one? I think God would probably grant such a request, don't you? Amen. So on No Compromise Radio today, you can go to iTunes and download

No Compromise Radio or you can go put on Steve's account the Molly Hatchet downloads and I think they are a special iTunes deal right now.

You know what's amazing about the iTunes store is that it's absolutely free.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE its staff or management.