The Laborers' Podcast- Leadership

Alright, so we are live in the house tonight. I was going to start with a, with the keys just a little bit, as if to say, thank you

Jesus! That's to let you know that Rob is letting me host tonight, so any time you hear the keys and maybe

Molly Hatchet, which I don't have it cued up here ready to go, so I'm on a whole other screen, we're on a whole different level tonight.

We are going to be talking about pretty weighty topics tonight, Rob has laid everything out nice and neat for us.

We're going to be talking about leadership in a healthy church and Hal Tomley.

How are you guys doing? I'm doing good. Fantastic, I just got done fishing.

Uh oh, did you catch anything? I caught four, they were bluegill about the size of my hand,

I got big hands too, so. Rob, how about you?

I'm doing pretty good. I had coffee for breakfast and my wife got me these latte flavored protein shakes for lunch, and they have as much caffeine as one cup of coffee, and now

I've got my supper coffee, so I'm doing great. When will you sleep?

I don't know. If you've got breakfast coffee, lunch coffee, and dinner coffee. Alright, so let's get right into this tonight, a lot of important things to talk about.

So Rob, what sparked this topic for us tonight? Oh, the

Chicano Knox is coming in, let's hang on and we'll bring him on in. Bring him in. Hello.

What's going on brother, can you hear me alright? Yes sir, we can hear you. Alright, I have a fan in the background because it's so hot, can you hear the fan or not?

Not unless I listen real close, if I put my ear up to the microphone. Sorry I'm late man, sorry

I'm late. No problem, we were just getting started, Rob is taking us into our topic tonight, leadership in a healthy church.

Yeah, well like I said before, these videos, my heart for these videos and bringing us all together, and I think these gentlemen share a similar heart that I do, is

God's glory in the local church, our love for people, especially in our communities and our local churches, and we believe, and maybe you've heard this before, that there is biblical illiteracy out there, there's shallow study of scripture, but our heart is that we want,

God has spoken, we have, some of you may have heard these key words recently,

God has spoken, we have a book, it's his book, he's spoken to us through his word, and that is his means of telling us who he is, who we are, and who he would have us to be, and that's not just personally, in our personal lives, yes that is true, but I believe he also speaks to us about how he would have us to be, and act, and behave, and do, when we connect, when we assemble, when we get together in local church, so we should not look anywhere else, not in our own wisdom, not in the wisdom of the past, not in the wisdom of the present, you know, philosophy, or whatever it may be, apart from us, or those that we study from, are looking and gaining that knowledge from scripture, which is

God speaking to us himself, and so that's one of the points for this Healthy Church series, the only way for us to have a healthy church is to learn how

God would have us to do it, that's the only way to have a healthy church, well, and let me rephrase that, that's the only way for us to have a church period, and I think some, you know, some of our theologians, and scholars, and pastors of the past have said, have made very strong statements, which would,

I think many would include that, if you don't have these certain things, if it doesn't look a certain way, then you don't have a church at all, when we did church discipline, now

I'm going to forget his name, the guy that did the

Baptist manual of church order, I'll think of his name here in a moment, but the quote that he said, and this was in context of church discipline, but he said, when discipline leaves the church,

Christ goes with it, that's a strong statement, and so not only, you know, not only do we say this is what a healthy church looks like, this is what

God wants his church to look like, period, and we want our people, we want everyone to be informed about what that is, to the best of our ability.

Amen, amen, so Jesse, what is it that is, as we go through our topic tonight, the leadership in a healthy church, so let's just start there, what are the different offices in the local church as designated by the scripture?

Well, good question, it's been, you know, elder, pastor, sometimes they're the same, sometimes they're not, deacon, you have the deaconate, which is a little different from the eldership, you know, and then you pretty much have, that's pretty much it, you have, like, the elder, the teacher, and the deacon are the main offices.

Now, in different ecclesiologies, they have, you know, debated over this, and they added archbishop, and bishop, and head bishop, and all kinds of stuff, like in the

Church of England, but more those who are reformed in their ecclesiology, we tend to stick to what

Paul has, you know, already stated, that most general reform churches would fall in line with the eldership, a deaconate, and a teaching elder, which is most commonly called a pastor, one who teaches, that, you know, in some presbyteries, we have ruling elders who are able to teach, some presbyteries are not, you know, requiring some ruling elders to teach, but for the most part,

I think the OPC does require a ruling elder who is not the main pastor, but someone who is a ruling elder, who makes decisions, who is able to vote in the presbyteries, or at general assembly, those are the men who are qualified to be an elder, who are learning men, who know the scriptures, who, you know, the eldership are a little bit, are, you know, held to a higher standard than the deacon, at least in the

Presbyterian church from where I've been at, the OPC and the OPCA, where the deacons are servants, they are helpers, they are co -laborers in partnership with the elders, you know, because, you know, imagine a church with no deacons, and then imagine a church with no elders, and only deacons, you know what

I mean? So, I would, you know, give divisions like that, you got the elders, you got the deacons, you got the teaching elder, which is a pastor,

I don't necessarily believe, you know, in the modern definitions, or the modern, a model of so many different pastors, everybody is a pastor, you know, so and so, you know, when you go to a church, you've been to a church where it's like 50 different type of pastors, coffee shop pastor, you know, college pastor, and I know what they're trying to do, and I know what they're trying to mean, but you don't find any of those type of terminologies or biblical offices in the scriptures, you know what

I mean? So, if you're going to be a pastor, be a pastor, be an elder, right? But there's no office, there's no legitimate office of youth group pastor, or college group pastor, or singles pastor.

I know what they're trying to do, and I get it, but biblical language requires for you to use the scriptures, and not use it however you wanted to.

Right, and Rob's got that laid out in the notes there too, so that's good. Let's not jump too far ahead here, let's give

Dan a chance now. So, Dan, what are the different offices in the local church?

Elder and deacon. Boom, how do we know that? Because the Bible told me so.

So, let's look at the text here too for a second, just a moment. So, we'll just go to, well, we can look real quickly at Philippians 1.

We see in Philippians 1, Paul's letter to the Philippi, Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints who are in Christ Jesus, who are at Philippi, with the overseers and the deacons.

And then we see as well in Titus, go to Titus real quick, all rights concerning establishment of elders in the churches.

We, we of course know that in 1 Timothy, we have, and we'll probably look at that too, the qualifications for bishops and deacons, or bishops is a synonymous term, like Jesse said, synonymous for elders, pastors, teachers, so on and so forth.

But in Titus, we have, we are, yeah, we read where Paul stated, this is why

I left you in Crete, verse 5, so that you might put what remained in order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you.

So, this is a divine directive. Amen, Dan. Short and sweet.

You got anything else you'd like to add there? No, there is, there can be a distinction depending on which church you're a part of between a ruling elder and a teaching elder.

The RPCNA, for instance, we, we claim to be a two office type of church where we have elder and deacon.

So, we don't in, on paper distinguish between a ruling elder and a teaching elder.

However, it's almost like a two and a half office thing because we, there's a set of like 16 different exams that you have to take in order to become a teaching elder.

But a ruling elder only has to take, I think, 12. So, they're, and those four exams are related to the teaching aspect.

So, they, I don't know, we say that there's two, but we act like there's like two and a half. That's a good point.

It's a good point because many churches do the three office. There's, you know, there's many churches in the

OPC when I was there that held to the two office and there's some that held on to the three office.

So, and that is the, the split piece, the split words in the

Greek where there's some, some, some elders are able to teach and that's all they do and that are dedicated to teach.

And then some are just ruling elders who are able to teach, but they're not principally the principles of teaching in that local assembly.

So, therefore, they're a gifted man, they're able to teach, they're qualified, but they are not the teacher in that local assembly.

They might be able to do it, but that's not necessarily where they're, where functionally they're actually going to, going to live.

Like they may have it worked out with, with the other folks that, okay, well, y 'all are better at teaching than I am.

So, you go ahead and do that. I'll take care of, you know, the shepherding, hospital visits, you know, whatever. So, I mean, they can split it up just, just functionally, just practically speaking.

But I just want to put it out there. There is a two office people and there's three office people and then there's weirdos over there saying that women can be pastors.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and then there's the charismatic that holds the fivefold ministry.

So, there, there's actually, they just keep, it just keeps branching out. But, but what y 'all are saying there,

I believe is very helpful. Don't you think so, Rob? In that, in this, in this establishment first, really, because we're, we're talking about making that distinction in what an elder is.

Certainly there are some, all are equal as far as oversight goes.

But some are more prominent, really. Some are more visibly prominent. Some are more effective, maybe at the behind the scenes of administration, administrative, you know, and, and those things, those type things, others are going to be out front.

Like for an example, for example, when you have a, when you have a church, really, no matter what size it is, whether it's super small or super big, if they've got a plurality of elders, as they should, because it's very important that it doesn't get under control of one man.

But even in a small church, when you've got a plurality of elders, three elders, right, there's typically one that's usually the one that's out in front.

And then the others are, are with, with together with him, but they're just not, they're just not the primary.

We don't, I know we don't make a distinction there. We don't, you know, we don't say this one's better than the other, because we're not, not any of us are better than the other, but there are those distinctions as you all make clear.

Rob? I'm thankful that, I'm thankful for what God has done in, in my lifetime, in recent years for, for bringing these truths back up and, and informing us and so that it's not hidden anymore.

It's not secret. And so we don't continue to follow this, you know, single pastor system. And, and so I'm so thankful for, for so many that I've heard of who, who desire to be biblical and they, they've done the hard work.

Like I know my, my pastor was one of them who spent the last 10 years, you know, doing the hard work of, of teaching that plurality of elders is, is the biblical model.

And, and so I can see that where you, you've moved into that, that direction.

And so you, you're established that as the norm, but then because there, there's so many of us who have come from that background of the single pastor model, you were talking about, you know, one, one kind of stands out as the, as the main teaching elder.

Even though we say there's no distinction and there's equality, there's, I think there's a temptation with us because we're so used to that old model that we want to elevate him a little bit higher than the others.

And it's just a temptation. And as I think that's something that we each in our individual churches should navigate.

I'm not familiar with, I'm thankful that these, these two guys are with us from the Presbyterian background because, you know, there's different nuances between the

Baptist and the Presbyterian. So it's good to hear from their perspective. Also, can

I interject, interject another question? So Rob, you or Dan, you said, what, what was it?

The, the initials that you gave are, are the RPCNA, RPCNA, Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America.

Okay. And Jesse, you're in the PCA, which is the Presbyterian, Presbyterian Church in America.

And then there's the OPC, right? Yeah. OPC is the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

Okay. Yeah. They're the only pure church. It's the mother church.

There's a bunch of good brothers in OPC. There's a bunch of good brothers. Yes, absolutely. And Rob, Rob, the Baptist is

SBC. You're, y 'all are SBC, right? Yes. It's just, it is what it is.

The Southern Baptist is not a denomination. I mean the SBC, it's a convention.

It's not a denomination. It's just a collaboration of churches that meets together once a year. I think they're just trying to be

Presbyterian. It's like they want to be Presbyterian. We want to gather and do a

Presbyterian, like we want to do what they do just a little bit. We're just not going to call it

General Assembly or Synod, but we're still going to get together. Yeah. But, but y 'all, y 'all don't, y 'all ain't had

Rick Warren train every single pastor that's ever lived in the history of the world. That's why we're doing so well.

All right. I'm sorry. Let's get, I'll get back on track. That's my, my bad guys. I'm my bad. I'm sorry.

So Rob, what are the different terms, which we kind of went over that, but Rob, what are the different terms for pastor and what, and do they mean the same thing?

So as some of the guys already mentioned, you have Bishop, you have

Elder, you have Overseer, you have Pastor, Shepherd is used.

And help me out if I'm missing any, Elder, Bishop, Pastor, Shepherd, Overseer.

Yeah. I think, I think that pretty much is the ones that we see in scripture or our

English translators use from scripture, but the different terms all describe the same office from, from everything that I've studied, everything that I've heard and listened to other people teach.

They describe the same office. And so we can, I think we're fine using any of those terms because we're talking about the same office.

And so for the sake of our conversation and not, when we get down to the question is what is the role of a pastor?

We're, we're automatically going to assume plurality of Elders in that question, correct?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right. So your next question,

I'm going to let you introduce this next question. Tyler, I was looking forward to hearing Tyler talk about this part, but you all are going to have to take the reins on this.

So what are the different spheres of sovereignty? Where does this idea come from?

Well, to me there, there's so many, I'm still learning. I'm understanding scripture better.

And, and this, this terminology kind of categorizes an aspect of scripture, how

God lays out his, his order of things. And Dan, he can fill in my gaps and I love to hear him explain and he teaches me a lot and he can help me out here, but talking about the spheres of sovereignty are there different places of where we are underneath authority.

So, so God ultimately is our ultimate authority over all things.

And then underneath him, he places the rest of those individuals or organizations in, in their place and gives them the authority that they have.

So you have government is a sphere of sovereignty, a sphere of authority that God speaks of in scripture.

The church is a, is a sphere of sovereignty, authority. And then you have the home is, is a sphere of sovereignty and they,

I know Dan and I talked about this before, they, the, the church is not underneath the authority of the government.

They're, they're different spheres of authority. We have, we have a relationship that scripture speaks of, but and, and we have our own relationship with, with underneath each different sphere of authority or sovereignty.

Dan, fill in any gaps that I left out there. No, you did pretty good.

It's interesting that any, any of those spheres are meant to be distinct from and help to inform and bolster the other ones.

So what I mean by that is, oh goodness. Sorry, my bad.

Sorry. For instance, the, the, the sphere of government is supposed to uphold good, reward good and punish evil.

That is their, their job given by God to them. Now the church is not supposed to be engaged in civil matters in the same way, but that doesn't mean that they're uninvolved in civil matters.

They're there to pray for, inform, uplift the civil magistrate.

And they do the same for the home where the, the father is supposed to be the head of the household.

They uplift the father. They help the father execute his duties as father running the household, doing all those things.

So the, the church is supposed to help. Likewise, the government is supposed to protect the church and the family and the family is supposed to grow up young individuals and citizens that serve both the church and the government state well.

So that way, under the heading of, of Christ, all, all of those things work together in order to provide a cohesive whole of how society in general is supposed to work.

So yeah, you did a pretty good job, but there's just a little, a little, a little more to it. Yeah. Yeah. And the reason that I brought up and added that into our list of questions and to talk about the sphere of psalmistry is just to address the fact that with, within the church,

God has placed the, the elders, the plurality of elders in the, in the church with authority over the congregation.

And we can talk about, and maybe I included in there the role of the pastor, which would include that.

But I included the conversation of spheres of sovereignty, just, just to inform everybody and help us to understand that the elders have that place.

The church is a place, a sphere of sovereignty, a place that has authority in our lives.

Yeah. Let me explain one other thing. It's more of an example that might help people tie it together.

My pastor, for instance, is, is all three of those because he's the pastor of the church.

So he's an elder in the church. So he has some sort of leadership in our church. He's also the mayor of the town that he lives in.

So he's in charge of the civil government in the town for leading and guiding the town of Jeffersonville, New York.

He is also the head of his household. So he will have his fingers in all of those different spots.

He, as mayor, has no authority in the church.

So his office as mayor can't dictate what goes on in the church because it's a different sphere.

His, when he puts on his pastoral hat, when he's acting as pastor, he does not have authority as pastor of Walton Reform Presbyterian Church over the town of Jeffersonville because that's a different office.

The two are separate. Likewise, he can't excommunicate someone from the church while wearing his hat as father and husband in the home.

So all of those are separate, but there is some overlap because we live in the real world.

So I don't know if that helps to kind of see a real world example of how that may work out.

But it's, that kind of helps explain the different spheres of sovereignty a little bit better,

I think. If not, just ignore what I said. Jesse, would you like to talk a little bit about sphere sovereignty?

Where the doctrine of sphere sovereignty came from? Maybe a little bit about Abraham Copper, so on and so forth for just a moment.

Yeah. You know, I'm just, I'm not an expert of Abraham Kuyper. I know

Abraham Kuyper was involved in politics out in the Netherlands and involved in the church.

So he was, you know, not an American. I'm not sure if he was fully on board with the

American constitution. I do know that, you know, the American constitution never says separation of church and state.

There's never a sentence that says that. It comes from a personal letter from Thomas Jefferson.

And a lot of people take that as license and they think it's doctrine.

There's a lot of principle in that. There's a lot of general equity in that because America has experience from England.

We have experience from our mother country where, you know, America comes from with great

Britain where, you know, the church and the state were literally kind of one. And there's a lot of problems a lot of times with that.

There's a lot of pros, but there's also a lot of cons. Like for example, the, you know, a

King could own the church building and own the church lands. And then the King authorized pastors and then, you know, ordained pastors.

The King becomes the head of the church, basically. That's what King Henry did. He became the head of the church.

If you wanted to look at King Henry, you know what I mean? And then, you know, the English civil war and all that stuff, that's how we got where we're at.

But, you know, I think the church being

Presbyterian, I like that checks and balances. You know, there's got to be that there's got to be a distinction.

There's got to be a distinction between a church and state. I don't like the word sovereignty as much because sovereignty refers to lordship, refers to and I like to use the word jurisdictions.

If I can even use that word because jurisdictions means I have authority within this realm to use a

Lord of the Rings type thing in the realm. I have authority outside of this realm.

My authority weakens. It does. It's not as predominant. Right. And like, you know, like one of you said, the

Lord has placed different different realms of authority on earth. And obviously he is the head authority overall and the head of the church.

So we have to respect that realm. We have to respect those boundaries. You know what I mean?

And we're human. We're sinners. If you read church history, it's all about disrespecting those realms.

It's all about crossing those realms. It's all about, you know, turf battles.

It's and I'm speaking metaphorically and then somewhat literally, you know, metaphorically, we disrespect our brothers and sisters in Christ.

You know, we disrespect. You know what I mean? So church history is kind of messy in that sense.

People were just fighting. But, you know, we do. God has given us, you know, father's authority.

God has given the mother's authority. God has given the government authority. God has given our church elders authority.

And that's against our nature. It's in our nature to rebel against authority, which is one of the primary sins in the garden is that they rebelled against the

Lordship, against authority in heaven, against the main authority, which was God.

They wanted to be their own authority, self -sovereign, autonomous. That's the problem. Autonomy is self -rule.

They want to be self -ruled. And for those who are rejecting Jesus, you know what

I mean? For those who are accepting Jesus, but rejecting the church is basically saying, you know,

I love Jesus, but I hate his bride. It's like telling you, hey, I like you, but I hate your wife.

Yeah. That that doesn't it's not going to fly.

It's not your right. So I would rather use a jurisdictions rather than sovereignty.

Kuyper was involved in state and government. He believed that the Lord was the

Lord of every single every single authority. He's the one that kind of preached the, you know, the the cultural mandate, meaning that Christians are supposed to be more active, more involved in the culture, in every single church, in every single realm that the culture produces, you will find

Jesus. You will find that the Lord Jesus is the is is the

Lord of that realm, whether it be art, music, you know, law firms, school, whatever it is.

Yeah, actually. Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. He's the one that promoted that. He's the one that was like a pretty diehard.

Yeah, he actually one of one of his most prominent quotes is this.

There is not one square inch in the whole whole domain of our human existence over which

Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry mine. Yeah.

But you're you're exactly right. That's that's some good information there. So back to Rob now.

Back to Rob. So I think that's basically what we just tackled, wasn't it? Why is the church included in this list and how does it exercise its sovereignty?

Sovereignty is in a in a locale and over over the church itself, the domain there.

So, Rob, can the office of pastor have multiple meanings or adjectives to describe different types of pastors?

Here we go. This is this is what we got in before Jesse got into it early on.

Yeah, this is this is the hot button issue. Push it. And that's it.

Wait, before you do it. All right.

I think we I think we mess up by adding all the adjectives and adding so so many different titles or additions to the word pastor and creating so many different offices with within the church that aren't included in scripture.

And it comes from our history of pragmatism. We the ends justify the means.

We want to see a certain type of result. And so we come up with a plan to to achieve that goal, to see those results.

And so part part of those means of achieving that goal is to have different types of pastors to to oversee different ministries or programs within the church.

And so we just don't see that in scripture. Oh, OK. We unfroze.

We just don't see that in scripture. We we see two offices. Plurality of elders and a plurality of deacons.

We have qualifications for those pastors, for those deacons, and we have a role for those pastors and for those deacons.

And it doesn't include it doesn't include the different spheres that that we've created.

And and in that conversation, in my reflection, in my thinking, I'm I'm I'm curious to know where we come up with the scripture or or God giving us such creative license to to come up with these different offices, to come up with these different programs.

I just don't see in scripture where God has given us such a creative license.

Um, I was listening to Vodie Baucham and he said there are places in scripture where God does allow us or call us to be innovative.

And one of the examples that he used was sing to the Lord a new song. And and so he was using that as a place where God allows us to be innovative.

But in these areas where he has spoken, he has spoken clearly where he wants things to be a certain way.

And he he did not include the permission to be innovative, to have a creative license to.

You know, dream up visions and come up with the means to achieve those goals.

I just don't see it in scripture. Yeah, and I think I would say that just looking back on everything as it transpired over my lifetime and seeing churches do the things that they do, it's largely based in in this thing.

This ain't meant to be going back to making fun of Rick Warren, but it is going back to that business model that the purpose driven church is built upon, that that the whole emergent church and seeker sensitive movement is built upon.

It is a business model. And so that's that's where those micro roles,

I'll call them micro roles, R -O -L -E -S, not Swiss cake rolls, but micro roles.

That's where. Yes. Mm hmm. That's where those roles,

I think, you know, largely stem from. That's where we see them creeping into the church where, you know, you've got you've got a so quote unquote executives overseeing the youth.

You've got the executives overseeing the children. You've got the executives overseeing that and that and that when there has never been, like you said, that those roles never we do not see them throughout the text of Scripture.

We see a simple standard in a simple pattern set forth for church government, and that is pastors and deacons or elders and deacons.

Yeah. And we and we always like to talk about the argument, you know, if we're going to if we're kind of have the same heart here, similar mindset.

So, you know, we're not going to combat each other too much here, but we do come in conversations with people who disagree with us.

And so they're going to throw arguments back at us. So one of the arguments, which is another thing that Bodie brought up was their argument against us is, well,

Scripture doesn't tell us not to do it. So how would any of you guys,

Jesse, how would you respond to that? You know, Scripture doesn't keep us from doing it, tell us not to do it.

Well, there's a lot of things that the Scripture doesn't really tell us not to do that, not change my oil on my car just because I would say change oil in my car or or nowadays charge my

Tesla. Right. So I will say that's a hermeneutical problem for people who are trying to say, oh, the

Bible doesn't say. Well, you know, it's very interesting because all of this, you know,

I you know, we mentioned Abraham Kuyper going back to Abraham Kuyper. I think we could learn a lot from the context in which he was in.

Right. Because he was in, you know, a zero separation of church and state environment.

You know what I mean? He was in the Netherlands, Calvinistic society, Calvinistic heritage.

The state was not one with the church in the sense where the state appoints pastors, but one in a sense where it's heavily influenced.

And the state pays, pays the pastors, pays the salaries, funds, church funds, missionaries, all these, all the money, you know, to build new buildings.

The church has the strong right arm financially. And that's from the government. You know what

I mean? So imagine that world. And then all of a sudden, here comes Armanianism. Here comes the revolutionaries.

Right. And here comes the modernist from the West, from Europe, from the

Western Europe, France and England. They came into the Netherlands and they cause a theological revolution in his country that that's the party lines like within a second.

It's like from liberal, you know, from Republicans to Democrats, I guess. And they shut off the they shut off the funding to the church.

And, you know, it causes a church split and all these things. And then, you know, people membership starts to drop.

So it caused a chaos. So which is interesting of, you know, the situation that he was in fighting now, which call it modernism.

One thing he did get wrong is that he predicted that modernism, modernism was a fad, a fashion in style that it was going to pass away in a short matter of decades, which it did.

And it just transformed into post -modernism. But we could learn a great deal from him because he he stayed to the word.

He went back to the scriptures. He went back to the Christians and said, hey, we can't be joining the government in this liberal type style of politics.

What have we got to do? Well, they want revolution. What do we want? We want no revolution.

We don't want any revolution here, because once we get revolution, they're all going to come after us and they're going to hang us.

And so there'll be a bunch of dead bodies everywhere. So that's what revolutions do is kill people.

We want reformations that changes people. So, you know, you know,

I just thought, you know, you know, from his historical context, we can learn a great deal of how he handled that situation, how he navigated through that.

Well, it's very, very it applies to us now because that's basically what we're dealing with, just a little bit different because it's post -modernist, not modernism, but it's almost the same thing.

It's it's basically taking the word of God. Like it's like you're taking the lemon, but you're not eating the lemon.

You're trying to squeeze all the lemon juice from the lemon peel. That's what the people are doing with the hermeneutics.

They're getting the Bible and they're basically making it they're basically forcing a hermeneutic on it.

They're making it there. You know what I mean? They're they're putting words in there. I said, Jesus, right now, putting in there and they're taking words out and they're redefining everything because we live in because post -modernism, the whole thing about post -modernism is that, you know, is everything is relative.

That's one of the elements. And that's very slippery because that means truth for you is truth for you.

Truth for me. Everybody can have a truth. Right. Everybody could be everybody could have a truth.

We live in a world of a thousand disqualifications and that's OK. So with that being said, that means the

Bible is no longer untouchable. The Bible is no longer no longer. I don't know if you guys saw this, but there was a video during the protests of overtone of the of the role decision.

There was a bunch of girls, ladies, you know, kicking the Bible around like a soccer ball.

And then someone came up and said, you can't kick this Bible. And they're like, why not? There's no truth in it.

It's all, you know, they started saying dumb stuff. But the video speaks volumes because that's they're basically telling you what they think.

They're kicking the Bible on the floor like a soccer ball between like five five people, like a hacky sack.

That right there tells you where we're at in culture right now. You know what I mean? Publicly. So we have to go back to what's rooted in scripture, hold up scripture, meet the higher view of scripture.

And, you know, we need we need to go back to recruiting and and, you know, ordaining better men for for for the office.

That's you know what I mean? Because we don't have better men in the office of the elders and deacons than pretty soon it'll be a social media post of pastors kicking the

Bible around in the parking lot. Yeah, go ahead.

Well, if I could just say this, too, in line with what you were talking about as far as how they're hermeneutic that they choose to use and what

I was saying before about having that conversation with somebody who's and I want to say the traditional view, but the traditional view is just a really new view, probably the mid 1800s as far back as it goes.

But if you're having a conversation, I would like to speak to whoever if there's somebody watching who, you know, who holds that view, who doesn't have a problem with a youth pastor, children's pastor, the

Starbucks pastor, whatever, facilities pastor. You know, if you hold that view, you know, in love,

I would like to say this. Bodie Baucham was right. He's like the strongest biblical argument that they make is the one that I mentioned earlier, that the

Bible doesn't tell us that we can't do it. He said that's that's their strongest. And if I would just encourage if somebody is watching that holds that view,

I would encourage you to reflect on that view, because I believe that it is true that that is the strongest biblical argument anybody could make for all these different types of programs and pastors.

If you listen to the arguments that are made for those positions, it's well, how are we going to reach that group?

It's not what does the Bible say? It's well, how are we going to meet this goal? How are we going to minister these folks?

How are we going to draw these folks into the church? It's never what does the Bible say? It's always a lot of pragmatic thinking.

Yeah, you're right. I would agree. And again, bringing back to bringing us back to the to a question, really the role of what is the role of a pastor?

Dan, what is the role of a pastor? Oh, we don't know. I can't make the connection, you know,

I can't make the connection between. So, Dan, what is what is the role of a pastor?

The role of a pastor is to. I'm trying to think of a concise way to put it.

The role of the pastor is to lead and guide the church in its following of Christ and his word, command and gospel.

So what that what that means is the pastor is the one who should know the scriptures the best, who can preach and teach what they mean, who is not only willing, but able to rightly administer the sacraments to the people and to basically to to care for the souls of those people under under his care.

It says that was it Hebrews? It says, don't basically don't be a jerk to your pastor because he has to care for your soul.

So make his job easy on him. Yeah. So so the one who undertakes the the job of a pastor is basically put there by God in order to care for the souls of the people who are not just the souls, the entire person of of the the the people in a particular local church.

So heresy, making sure that they're moving in the right direction, helping them weed out sin, administering the gospel to them.

I guess that's about as concise as I can get it. Yeah, I think you pretty much covered the bases there.

That was a good job. That was a very good job. And I would say in light of the plurality of elders as we were talking about it, really, again, to keep it as simple as possible, the function of the pastor or the pastor elders, the plurality of elders primarily above all is to oversee doctrine, because this is where the churches this is this is this is the helm, so to speak, of where churches are steered from the church is steered from from the pulpit and from the classroom.

So from the pulpit to the classroom, there needs to be as Paul writes to Titus, Paul writes to Timothy, but particularly in Titus, we see those those qualifications laid out and not only the qualifications, but we see the why of those qualifications.

I'm going to show that real quick. You good with that, Robby? Oh, yeah, definitely. Okay, so let me take that off again.

All right. So in Titus chapter one, I know we started there, but Paul said in verse five, this is why

I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained in order and appoint elders in every town as I've directed you.

And then he gives the qualification. If anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination.

For an overseer, they receive the term as God's steward, as the manager of God's house, must be above reproach.

He must not be arrogant or quick -tempered or drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, which part of those, it's like the men have gone the opposite way.

They are these things. They're all quick -tempered, they're all drunk, they're all violent, they're all greedy for gain, which is by biblical definition, a false teacher.

But the scripture says they must be hospitable, a lover of good. They must be self -controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined.

He must hold to the trustworthy word as taught, there's where the rubber meets the road, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.

So there we have, not only the care, the offensive role of the pastor, the elders, the caregiving, the giving of the word, but they must also be able to defend the word.

And if men are not instructed in the truth of the scriptures, men are not versed, as the term is used, in the scriptures, then certainly they will eventually fall off into false teaching and heresy, which will lead the church in a direction that it does not need to go.

It's very, very important that the men be qualified. And I will go so far as to say this, that it's not necessarily, we're not talking about book learning, but we're talking about an acquaintance, a heart acquaintance with theology, where the man not only knows the truth in his head, but he has the reality of it in his heart, that he first and foremost must be born again, that he first and foremost must be partaker of the gospel that he preaches.

Paul was clear in communicating that fact. He said in 1 Corinthians 15, he said, first of all,

I deliver to you that which I also received. That really ought to be, I mean, we think as Christians in the church that all this is just taken for granted.

We'll talk to this man. He's a good speaker. He's eloquent. He's able to communicate great.

Let's have him come in, because he's the type of guy that will attract the crowds to this church.

And Lord knows, we need crowds here. But they fail to ask the simple question that ought to be first and foremost, have you been born again?

What is your testimony? What is your testimony of redemption?

Where were you? Where have you been? Where are you and where are you going and why?

And I've seen where it's more important that they be a good business leader in the community, successful business leader in the community versus their character.

Instead of looking at the qualifications that you lined out, they look at who's the most successful business leader in the community.

And just like we'll see with Deacon, I was looking at those words as you was reading and sharing with us there in Titus.

I think the same thing is true just as it is with Deacon. The words themselves are not just titles, but the word elder speaks to what you just said.

The scripture tells us that they shouldn't be new believers, young in the faith. And so it kind of speaks to the word itself.

And then you see the word overseer. It's a title, but it's also speaking to their role.

Yeah. So that's in First Timothy. Let's just bring that up while you're talking about that. First Timothy chapter three.

This is a trustworthy saying. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.

An overseer must be, again, this is repeated. This is the same word of Paul. That's the same word of God communicated everywhere he went.

It didn't change. He didn't tweak it. It's the same through and through.

But you had mentioned Deacons. Do you agree?

So they must be dignified, not double tongues, not talking out both sides of the mouth, right?

Not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain. They must hold the mystery of faith with a clear conscience.

Let them be also tested first, then let them serve as Deacons if they prove themselves blameless.

It also gives qualifications for their families. Their wives must be dignified, not slanders, but sober -minded, faithful in all things.

That they can be each the husband of one wife, many of their children, and their households well. For those who serve well as Deacons gain a good standing for themselves and also great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus.

And I'm sure most people have heard this before too, but those qualifications, they're character qualifications.

And the distinction between pastor and Deacon is the teaching aspect that the qualifications for an elder pastor is that they are apt to teach.

They're able to teach. And that's the only difference between character, basically, or qualifications between a pastor and Deacon.

But these qualifications are character qualifications. And then

Deacon, and somebody else can take it if they want to. Yeah, so, you know, the

Deacon is a servant, you know, so Jesus said, you know, it should not be so among you, but whoever would be great among you must be your servant.

So maybe, you know, a lot of churches probably need to slow down, once again, laying on the hand.

Yeah, we need to slow down because maybe, just because they're good in character, maybe they need to become servants first.

Like, you know, there's something that the monks had in the monasteries, and that's a hard work, a hard work for Christ.

Meaning, you know, they were not just there in the monastery singing all day. They were like working like 20 hours a day, like, you know, and that includes prayer and everything, you know, so, and they were serving all for free.

So maybe before you become an elder, maybe you need to get ordained as a Deacon for a few years and see how you do.

You know what I mean? You know, so, you know, so maybe if someone wants to become an elder, okay, that's great.

But how about, let's slow this down. And, you know, before we make this

Rick Waring guy a pastor, an elder, how about we, you know, make him something less, a

Deacon, make somebody, you know, you know, because with that, you have an opportunity to be like, is this man called to be an elder?

Is this man called to be a teacher? We shall see. Maybe give him a few years, couple, three years, maybe, three, four years as a

Deacon. And then, you know, time will tell, time will tell, time will tell. Time's the best tester.

You know what I mean? And, you know, and churches fail in this area. You know, a lot of churches fail in this area. They just lay hands quickly and then they ordain them and he becomes a pastor.

And then that's how you get Rick Warren. And it's like, you guys ordain them too quick.

And, you know, I've seen that in my church tradition when I was young and, and the

Lord gave me a heart to, to want to be at church and go to all the revival services that I could attend, be at churches as much as I could.

And I'm just thankful that he gave me that heart on my own. I wouldn't. So I that tradition,

I see, I saw exactly what you're talking about where a young man would aspire to, for whatever his motivation, whether it be of the

Lord or it be that he just wanted to, you know, be on stage.

We, I don't know everybody's motivation, but if somebody would, a young person would share that desire, boy, they would, they would get them in as quick as possible.

Oh, you want to preach next Sunday? I mean, it, it wasn't that quick, but it was really quick that, you know, teenagers, when we, when we would see that or they would express that desire, you know, our leadership and our churches and associations would, and some of them probably still have that mindset that we, we get them in there quick.

God's called them. We get them in there quick without that time that Jesse was telling us about. So as far as just a very quick glancing blow, can deacons be considered part of the leadership?

If so, is there a difference between a leader with authority and a leader without that was kind of touched on earlier.

And I would say too, to the role of deacons to give some, some more color commentary to, and in context to the role of deacons in their, their appointment, that they don't, they don't appoint themselves.

They don't come to the elders and say, I feel like I need to be a deacon.

But according to the book of Acts, they were chosen from among the people by the people, because like, like Jesse had said too, there was a demonstration.

There was an evidencing of their willingness to serve. I mean, because again, if you, you know, in Acts chapter six, if our listeners encourage you go to the book, go to Acts chapter six, read, read

Acts chapter six. And we see when the church grew, it became too much for the apostles to, you know, to take, to care for the congregation because the church grew so fast and the

Lord gave them direction. Take out from among you seven men of good report, of honest report, men who are full of the spirit and full of wisdom, who you will appoint to this duty.

And that's another, that's another function of the eldership of a church to, to be able to, to identify to some degree, this, this willingness to serve and to see it demonstrated.

And then in application as Jesse, again, as Jesse said, he made some great points there in application over the long haul saying,

I think this will be a good fit. And then, and then you don't even, they're not even appointed by the elders themselves.

My, my estimation, my understanding of the scriptures that they are appointed from amongst the people, like how, like how we operate at Ramona Baptist church, we talk to the congregation itself as a whole, give them the biblical qualifications of what a deacon should be.

And we ask them to consider what the scriptures say, consider prayerfully a man that you feel like might be a good fit for this role as elder, and then bring him to the, or yeah, not the elder, but a deacon, and then bring, you know, their name to us as the elders, we discuss it.

And then, and then I encourage our congregation as well, if they feel like that they're willing to bring the name of a man to us to be set aside as the deacon, then they need to go to that man as well and say, look, here's what, here's what the scripture says.

And I feel like you line up with what the scripture says and what a deacon should be. And we're, we're bringing your name before the elders to sit before the church, you know, would you be willing to do this?

Because again, it starts with a willing heart, a willingness, not a appointment or a hiring.

And then what does it mean for, so here's a good one.

Dan, let's get you, you're being quiet. What does it mean for a pastor to have authority or rule in a church?

Pastors make decisions. Yeah. Yeah. Pastors get to make decisions in the church.

They're supposed to be the ones making the decisions anyway. Now in their wisdom, they may pass it off to someone else in a certain situation, form a committee to say something out or something.

But I mean, ultimately they're the ones who are responsible before God for the direction of the church. So it's their job to get together, discuss things, say, this is where we need to go.

This is the direction we need to head in. These are the folks we're going to do it with and then pull the trigger and run with it.

Yep. And Rob, how have we gone wrong concerning, this is your question and I'm ready to hear this.

How have we gone wrong concerning the functions of the offices, i .e. single pastor submitting to deacons functioning as elders?

This will go back to really, well, I know you and I, Rob, both fully understand what you're talking about here.

And Dan and Jesse, I don't know being in PCA, you may not have encountered this, but Rob, go ahead and talk to the idea of the pastor submitting to the deacons.

Well, I want to qualify this because if I didn't qualify my argument, it would sound like I was arguing in such a way that I was condemning earlier.

So I qualify in this way. I want to point out these shortcomings of this single pastor model.

Traditionally for the past century and a half or whatever, we've had a single pastor and a plurality of deacons.

And some of the failures in that model, and I'm not saying it's wrong because it fails.

I'm not arguing that way. You have a single pastor and they can become like a dictator and they are overbearing and they rule everything.

You've got to do it their way. Or flip that, you have a pastor who doesn't have a backbone, then we, there we go, we're unfrozen again.

So we ordained these men in the community who were great business leaders as deacons instead of looking at the qualifications.

And so we get a plurality of deacons. We have a pastor who doesn't have a backbone. And the mindset is that the deacons, instead of serving the church, they're the ones making the decisions, which then told us that the biblical qualifications, having authority and rule over the church, is that the pastor is the one making decisions, leading us to Christ, speaking to us, thus says the

Lord, what scripture says. But in most of our models, primarily in the

Baptistic church tradition, you have deacons, they're the ones making the decisions.

They're the ones that have any of the authority, but that's not the biblical model. That's not what we have a call for in scripture.

Deacons are to serve, and the elders are to, are the ones who to have the authority and rule and making the decisions.

And so you have the deacons who tell the pastor what to do, tell the church congregation what we're going to do.

And they make spiritual decisions about curriculum and what's going to be taught.

And we just got that backwards. Now that's not wrong because it doesn't work.

The reason I point out those pitfalls is because when you follow scripture and you have a plurality of elders who function in their role that God has given them, you eliminate both of those scenarios.

And that's why God is wiser than us. And that's why I truly do not understand why we want to continue in that model.

I know the reasoning, it's pragmatic. We want to see results. And it's the way we've always done it, all these different arguments, but none of those arguments are biblical.

And when we see the biblical model about how God wants us to do it, then we see how we escape a lot of those pitfalls when we do it

God's way. Amen. Amen. Which makes the last question super easy.

Big softball here, guys. Big softball. How does a local church get back on track if they are not operating according to biblical instruction?

Okay. I'll answer it. They return to the scriptures. I think

Jesse hit the nail on the head earlier. He said that we need to be ordaining biblically qualified men.

He talked about that weight process. You went over the qualifications, the character qualifications.

I think that is primary. I read a tweet from a pastor

I follow and I wish I knew who it was, but he did say, if you want to be famous, don't become a pastor.

Don't become a church leader if you want to be famous. How many people want to be famous?

Everybody wanted to be famous in America. Maybe you grew up in the middle of nowhere and you didn't want to be famous, but there's even a song of Johnny B.

Goode that grew up in the woods and he could play a guitar like he could ring a bell. He became famous.

We live in a culture where everybody became famous. Everybody wants to be famous. That affected somehow the church as well.

A lot of pastors are celebrities, big people, big names. It gives them power.

It gives them a sense of authority, leadership, whatever. If you're trying to be famous, you're trying to be big and celebrity like that, the church is not the place.

The church don't need it for celebrities or famous people. The church is where the servants of Christ are.

We were servants. That's who we are. We live in a world where we're protected by the state.

We have 5083s. We don't pay taxes in a sense from non -profits organization. Church is kind of like a corporation, but anyways, you have protections in line.

We are privileged to have that. The church has never had them in the past.

We've grown kind of soft. I guess to say we have a soft underbelly right now. We boast like we're big and bad, but we're not all that big and bad.

In Christ's eyes, we're big and bad only because he's the top dog. He's the one that has that victory.

Right now, it seems like in the culture's eyes, we act like we're the big dog in the neighborhood, but we're not.

The church do a lot of barking right now, but we don't do a lot of talking right now, walking.

We don't walk the talk, should I say. We don't walk the walk, whatever that quote is. We don't. The church is dealing with all kinds of issues right now.

The government just told the church, why don't you shut down for a year? Don't open your doors.

We obeyed. A lot of churches didn't, but there's a lot of churches that did. The church is not perfect.

The church has to grow from this, and we have to mature, and we have to reassemble, and we have to do things better next time.

Next time will be tomorrow. We need to do things better tomorrow. Definitely, we need to unlearn everything we've learned before.

Then build on the foundation of the scriptures. Yeah, amen.

All right, Dan, would you care to share the gospel, and then Rob, pray us out?

Thank you. Let's do it. All right. All right, so the church that we've been talking about today is a beautiful thing, because it is a bunch of folks like ourselves who have been radically changed by the power of Jesus Christ.

Here's the thing about it. It's something that happens by the very grace of God.

God looked at us, saw our sinful ways, our sinful deeds, the way that we wanted to rule

His creation, and the way that we wanted to run things, and how we acted with one another.

He knew that without doing something drastic, we were completely and utterly doomed.

Jesus came to the earth, and truly

God and truly man lived a perfect life.

Then going to the cross took the sins of His sinful creation upon Himself to take them into the grave and kill them, to pay for sins with His own blood.

The punishment that should have gone to us went to Him. He didn't just stay in the ground, though.

He got up out of the grave three days later, which is absolutely incredible.

It doesn't happen. People don't just rise up from the dead. You have to have been able to conquer death itself, death coming about because of sin.

Jesus rose from the dead and proved to us that our sin doesn't have hold, just like the grave didn't have hold over Him.

So, He has come to provide a means of salvation to actually save those who would turn in faith and repentance to Him.

I would plead with anybody that hears my voice today that if you hear the call of the gospel to turn from your sins and turn to Christ, heed that call.

Do whatever it takes. Sit at the feet of Jesus as long as it takes for your heart to turn from a heart of stone into a heart of flesh, until you feel that conviction and trust in the

Lord. Then find a good biblical church and have them point you to Jesus the rest of your life. That is the good news.

The good news doesn't stop there because He's not just saving individuals. He's saving a whole world for Himself.

The whole of the cosmos, the whole of history is being redeemed and turned into something absolutely wonderful and beautiful.

That is the good news of Jesus Christ that we screwing stuff up as bad as we did, entering sin into the world, evil, wickedness, as vile as we could be, is taking that, redeeming it, and turning it into something so glorious that people are dying to get there,

I guess you could say. Amen, amen. Let's pray.

Father, we give You all glory and praise and honor. You are worthy, and You are the only one worthy.

You are the only true and living God, and we want to honor You, and we want to lift You high, and we want to thank

You. We are so grateful for You communicating to us and didn't leave us, leave us in our sin.

It was us. It was Your creation. It was mankind who disobeyed

You, and we continue to disobey.

It's us who bear the responsibility of wrecking

Your creation. Father, we cannot express our gratitude for Your kindness to have not cast it at all because of what we did into hell, but You chose to love us anyway.

You chose to redeem Your creation as Dan was talking about Your gospel, and so we're so thankful, and we thank

You for this opportunity that we get to have this conversation together about those things, and we pray,

Father, that You would use this for Your glory. We want to see this generation and generations to come to go back to the

Scriptures as Paul was telling us. You are our only hope, and we find

You in Your Word and how You would have us to live, and Father, for the people who in our communities and the people who listen and watch this podcast, heed those words of Paul that we would go back to Scripture, and through that we would, as Jesse was telling us, ordain and call those biblical men that You have gifted to lead us so that You can receive the glory in Your church through saving us and through redeeming us and through sanctifying us, and so,

Father, we're just so grateful, and we thank You, and we pray all these things in Jesus' name.