November 6, 2025 Show with Rich Jensen, Anthony Uvenio & Chris MacDowell on “The Importance of Developing Mentoring Ministries in the Local Church”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse 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 two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

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 Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this sixth day of November 2025.

Before I introduce my guests today, I want to remind all men in ministry leadership that you are invited to my next biannual free Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon, which will be held, God willing, on Thursday, March the 5th, 2026, and is featuring for the second time my dear friend since 1996, Dr. Conrad Mbewe, who is our keynote speaker.

I have known and cherished a friendship with Dr. Mbewe ever since he preached at Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York, which was my former church home before relocating to Pennsylvania.

My church was the very first American church where Dr. Mbewe preached, and so we have been connected ever since, maintained a friendship, and he has been gracious enough to accept my invitation for the second time to be my keynote speaker at my Pastors Luncheon.

And this is free of charge on the strict orders of my precious late wife, Julie, who created these Pastors Luncheons in the 1990s when I was still on Long Island. And not only is the lunch free and your opportunity to hear Dr. Mbewe preach free, but also every man who attends will receive at least one, maybe even two, heavy sacks of free brand new books personally selected by me and donated by generous Christian publishers all over the United States and the United Kingdom.

So mark that down on your calendar if you're a man in ministry leadership, Thursday, March the 5th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania. And if you would like to see a flyer for that, just go to www .irontrippinsironradio .com, and there is a rotating banner with that flyer on it at the very top of the page.

Also, especially for those of you coming out of town who might want to stay here in Carlisle for two days, the night before the luncheon, Dr. Mbewe will be preaching at the church where I am a member, Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and that will be at 7 p .m. on Wednesday, March the 4th.

If you'd like directions and information about Trinity Reformed Baptist Church, go to the church website, trbccarlisle .org, which is spelled C-A-R-L-I-S-L-E .org, you'll have all the information that you need.

That meeting is open to everyone, men, women, and children. You do not need to be a man in ministry leadership for that event. So we hope to see you there for one or hopefully both of these events. But I am so thrilled to have three of my dearest friends on the program today.

These are Rich Jensen, Anthony Eugenio, and Christopher McDowell, who are all pastors of Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York, which is in Suffolk County. And today they're going to be addressing the importance of developing mentoring ministries in the local church.

Hope Reformed Baptist Church and the Call to Mentoring

And first of all, let me welcome back to the program, Pastor Rich Jensen.

Hey, Chris, how are you doing today?

Oh, it's even better for me today, now that I'm hearing your voice and you're on the program. Why don't you tell our listeners about Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, and be as detailed as you can.

Well, Hope Reformed Baptist Church is a, as the name signifies, it's a Reformed Baptist church. We're a confessional 1689 church. We were founded back in 1996 and have been here in Coram for this, we're going on our 30 years.

In fact, in June, we'll be celebrating our 30th anniversary. And the Lord has blessed us and we've seen the Lord working in many ways here on Long Island.

And I just mentioned Dr. Conrad Mbewe was not his first speaking engagement on Long Island at Grace Reformed Baptist Church. Isn't there some connection with when you first formed and constituted Hope Reformed Baptist?

That's correct. In fact, when we were preparing to form Hope Reformed Baptist, it was at a meeting that Conrad spoke at down at Grace Reformed Baptist, which is about 50 miles from us. And he was involved in some of the early discussions and giving some advice on planting this new church.

Yeah, well, that church, as you know, has been my home away from home. Every time I visit Long Island, I try to make every effort to fellowship with you on the Lord's Day and to fellowship with you before and after the Lord's Day, privately at a restaurant or something.

And I just thank God for your friendship. You have been a true friend through thick and thin in my life and wonderful celebratory days and also very depressing and sad days. So I can never thank you enough, Rich, for being such a dear friend to me.

Well, it's my pleasure, Chris, knowing you all these years. We've always had great times in the Lord.

Amen. Amen. And also joining us is the aforementioned Anthony Eugenio, another pastor at Hope Reformed Baptist Church. Greetings, Anthony.

Hello, Chris. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great. And how long have you been one of the elders now at Hope?

I was installed in February of 2020, right before COVID. So about a little over five years. But I've been attending Hope for, I would say, 12 years or so at this point.

So are you trying to insinuate that Hope Reformed Baptist Church was cursed with your presence there as an elder and that's why COVID erupted and wreaked havoc all over the world?

Since I can't control those things, I would just say it was the sovereign move of God maybe warning them and they didn't heed the warning.

But here I am.

And Pastor Chris McDowell, it's great to have you also joining us today.

Thanks, Chris. Good to be here.

And how long have you been an elder at Hope?

I was installed in the beginning of 2019. So just a year before, Anthony.

Great. Well, it's a joy to have you on. Let me give our listeners our email address in the event that they'd like to join the conversation with a question of their own. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. So Pastor Rich Jensen, please explain to our listeners what exactly a mentoring ministry or program is and when did Hope Reformed Baptist Church first launch this ministry to others in the church?

Well, a mentoring ministry is simply that, what the name implies. And that is that we started holding special classes specifically for men who had a desire for ministry or men that we noticed had gifting for ministry and holding special classes, going deeper into the Word and going through systematic theologies, books on homiletics, hermeneutics, and with an eye of seeing if this was something that the Lord was using to bring leadership into the church.

I have a special heart for this type of ministry because it's how I wound up coming into the ministry. I had a full career in law enforcement and was attending another church, not Hope, and I was mentored into the ministry by the pastor there.

And to me, it just seems like the way to go biblically, you know, is sitting at the feet of men smarter and wiser than you are and leading you personally in the scriptures and in the way of the ecclesiology of the church.

And we actually support two Reformed Baptist seminaries from our church that we work, that we utilize, and I see a correlation between both having an advantage, the formal seminaries, but also then the mentoring part of it being more practical, but also getting the deeper studies as well.

And when you were being mentored, did you already have a belief that God had placed a call upon your heart and life to enter into pastoral ministry, or was the mentoring something God used to make you realize this?

It was both, actually, kind of simultaneously, and I did my level best to try to avoid it, but it just didn't work out.

Now was your wife, your lovely wife, Ginger, on board with this right away, or did it take some time? Because I have known circumstances where the wives of men who have a desire to enter into ministry want no part of it.

They know that there is very often a lot of hardship that go along with being a pastor. There is heartache. There is all kinds of emotions that can disrupt a family. There could be betrayal. There could be the demands of the flock that lessen time spent with wives and children.

There can be all kinds of things that come up. So how much was Ginger on board with this, and how quickly?

Let me put it to you exactly as she put it to me. When she realized that the Lord was calling me to ministry, and we weren't sure if it was pastoral ministry at that point, she said, I will follow you anywhere.

I'll do anything. All I want to do is serve the Lord, but I will never be a pastor's wife.

It's interesting that I asked that question, because I didn't know that.

Yes, it is.

How long did it take for her to say, you know, I think I'm going to go through with this?

It was very quick. It was almost a tongue-in-cheek thing from her, because she's a very godly woman. She's one of my biggest supporters. I've been in ministry for 30 some odd years now, and she's always been by my side.

I could not have had the ministry that I've had without my wife. Like I say, she has proven herself to be the prototype pastor's wife.

Amen. She is certainly a wonderful and godly woman. I've loved getting to know her, just as I've known you, and look forward to the next time we can have fellowship. Pastor Anthony, or as Long Island Italians would call you, Antony, I know that your very position there as an elder of Hope Reformed Baptist Church has something to do with you being mentored.

Am I right?

Oh, of course.

Yeah, my situation was a little different, because prior to coming to Hope, I was in a non-denominational church. I was teaching Wednesday night studies, and God opened up a door. I, over the course of three or four years, had preached at over 10 different churches.

It wasn't something that I was looking to do, but I was just being invited. As people heard it, word got out, and they would invite me to do pulpit supply. I was teaching and preaching, doing evangelism.

I started New York Apologetics. Then it became time to lead the church that I was in. Thankfully, I had a relationship with Pastor Jensen, because he was the headmaster of the classical Christian school that my daughter was going to.

I had started attending their men's breakfasts. When it was time for me to leave, I knew where I was going, and I landed at Hope. They had the mentoring group going already. I joined pretty much after it was in full swing.

Coming from where I was coming, no knock to that pastor, but I wasn't being mentored. It was just something that I was doing based on my own understanding of the Scriptures and the study that I was doing, whether online or in books, that kind of stuff.

But now, being part of a mentoring group, it's like the way the rabbis taught. It's not just listening to what they say. It's imitating what they do. It's living like that person. The more you're around that person, the more that person wears off on you, which is where some of my get to sarcasm.

But as you're with somebody who's seasoned and experienced and following the Lord, I would say mentoring is more caught than taught. I don't think you can teach somebody. Maybe you can teach somebody how to be a pastor, but it has to be a work of the Holy Spirit in their heart, the calling of God on their life, as well as finding a mentor who's going to sow into you not just knowledge, but the activity of a pastor, how a pastor comports themselves, what a pastor does.

It's not just preaching on Sundays. There's so much more to it, which I ended up learning once I came to Hope and sitting under Pastor Jensen. So it was a blessing. And it was also scary because it was a lot more than what I had thought in my mind prior to coming to Hope.

And just to clarify, I believe what you are trying to convey is the idea that it is very important for men entering into the ministry to be taught the principles and the mechanics of it, things that are expected of them in regard to their character and knowledge and things that they are commanded to do.

And you might even be in a seminary and get very high grades in your classes for everything that you need to know to be a pastor. But if the calling of the Lord is not upon you, that could actually wind up to be an utter disaster, wouldn't you say?

Oh, for sure. Yeah. Look, and this is one of the things Pastor told me and the other guys coming into ministry. If there's anything that you would rather do than be a pastor, then do it. Don't go into pastoral ministry.

So basically what he was saying is, if this isn't the sole motivation of your mind and heart as given to you by God, then do something else because it will be tough. There will be trials, there will be tribulations.

You're going to spend a lot of time with people. Some are going to listen, some aren't. You're going to go through heartache. This is something that you're not going to be able to do in your own will.

You're going to have to do this in the power of the Holy Spirit. Being an elder is an incredible privilege and an honor, first of all, but not something to take lightly, not something for the lighthearted.

It's something that you have to really recognize as being called by the Lord to shepherd God's people. We are under-shepherds. We answer directly to Jesus Christ, which is unbelievable but also very scary at the same point in time.

We put our hand to the plow and not turn back and recognize that these are God's people, that He's entrusted with us. So it's incumbent upon us, given this responsibility, to do the absolute best job we can, do our work with excellence, recognizing that these are saints of God.

Amen. And Pastor Christopher McDowell, were you not also someone who was mentored as you eventually came to be called to be one of the elders of Oklahoma Foreign Baptist Church?

Absolutely. If it wasn't for the mentoring group, I would not be a pastor. Whether that's good or bad, we'll see. But no, I got to the church roughly 12, 13 years ago, and we were just looking for a good home church.

We were on the same page doctrinally. We had the same understanding of how things ought to be. And so hope was a breath of fresh air in that respect. But what I found really interesting was Pastor's story about how he came into ministry.

He had a full career in law enforcement. He retired. He was looking to get into ministry. And yet his own pastor was mentoring him and a few others and giving them opportunities to preach and to teach and to put them on the Pope fly list of conservative Baptist churches on the island.

And then when his church was seeking a new associate pastor, he ended up preaching around that time. And they said, why are we looking for someone? We have a guy right here. We know him. He's qualified.

We should make him the pastor. And I thought, how biblical. When you think of the qualification for office bearers in the church, one of the main things is you look at the family, you look at their character.

And it's hard to do that based on a resume, an interview, a little bit of a meet and greet. And here's someone that they can look and say, we know this one. He's qualified. And so I was really impressed by that.

And then shortly thereafter, and I was working for the post office, I was raising a young family myself. And shortly thereafter, he started the mentoring group. And it was for men who might be interested in ministry in the future or if they just want to get into some of the deeper things of the Lord.

And so we had a good group of guys who started off, and some of them weren't interested in teaching and preaching. They just wanted to get into some of those deeper things, get into the systematic theology and learn those things.

And a few of us were interested in possibly ministering. And so through that, the various things that we covered and giving us opportunities to teach and to preach, it was through that that I started to realize, I think the Lord is calling me to this.

I had a chance to exercise gifts I didn't fully realize I had. And so long story short, I ended up coming into the full-time ministry, and it was all because of Pastor Denson's mentoring group.

But it sounds to me like you are one of those men who became aware of your calling from God to be a pastor during or after the mentoring.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, churches I had been part of previously, they would have deacons and trustees, but functionally the deacons function as elders because they're sort of in charge of the spiritual oversight of the people.

And the trustees are more like deacons taking care of the logistics and the finances and the building and grounds and stuff. And from my previous church experience, I thought, you know, maybe one day I'll be a deacon or something.

I'll help out. My wife and I, we had opportunities to serve in ministry in various capacities over the years. Nothing super formal, but I've taught. I've been like a youth leader. We were doing a homeschool co-op that we had.

We were leading a chapter there. I was hosting some Bible studies here and there. And it's interesting because Pastor mentioned the idea of a formal seminary, and I've taken classes and I had joined. And one of the things they were looking for was a mentoring relationship in the church or whatnot, because they realized that the formal teaching is there to give you the theological knowledge.

But in terms of the practical how-to and living it out and all those other things that entail being a pastor, you know, like Pastor Anthony mentioned, you're dealing with people and it can be a blessing.

It could be—well, it's a blessing either way, but sometimes it's very difficult and it's very challenging. And what the seminaries were seeing is that a lot of pastors were burning out. They weren't ready for that, and so they wanted them prepared with a mentoring relationship.

And fortunately, I'd already had that in place with Pastor Jensen, and just being able to engage in other things—hosting Bible studies, engaging in hospitality. These things all kind of led into that, and it was just part of what God used to bring me to where I am.

Amen. Well, we're going to our first commercial break right now. And if you'd like to join us, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Chrisarnsen at gmail .com if you have a question for my three guests today.

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I'm Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love, Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.

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Our guests today are Pastor Rich Jensen, Pastor Anthony Eugenio, and Pastor Christopher McDowell of Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, Long Island, New York. We are discussing the importance of establishing mentoring ministries in the local church.

And if you'd like to join us, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail dot com. Chrisarnzen at gmail dot com. As always, give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence. And we do have a very excellent question that I was going to ask myself from CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island.

And CJ asks, can the pastors please explain in detail what exactly goes on in mentoring meetings? Obviously, a very logical question to ask. And let's start with Pastor Jensen.

Well, the meetings are centered around study of the word. And so an important part is going through systematic theology. I think that's one of the one of the important aspects of the ministry that we need to instill in young men is understanding what the truth is.

And secondly, we study hermeneutics, how to interpret the word of God from a biblical reformed tradition. And then those who are seeking active ministry of preaching and whatnot, homiletics, how do you preach the word?

And then for anyone who might be seeking higher office and whatnot, we also go through Alexander Strauch's book on biblical eldership.

Excellent.

That's required for anybody who is seeking any kind of office. And also if for our deacon, the deacon in our church, we use his other book, Alexander Strauch's other book, Ministers of Mercy.

He has been gracious enough to provide on different occasions, both of those books to every attendee at my pastor's luncheons for free.

Yeah, from my perspective, I think they are the two top notch books for anybody coming into church office.

Yes, amen. And Pastor Anthony, tell us more about what you've experienced in more detail at these mentoring meetings and, you know, the structure of them and so on.

Sure. So we're actually going through Lewis Perk, systematic theology, continuing to go through it, I should say. And we meet, you know, seven o 'clock in the evening. Good group of guys. We go through whatever the chapter is.

We begin to ask questions. We look up the scriptures that he cites and we ask the difficult questions. And obviously we have a great mentor in Pastor Jensen who has a ton of experience. So he's able to answer the questions or we're able to, you know, now as elders answer the questions for the younger guys who are coming up.

But one of the things that we did that really stands out to me is going through J. Adams book, Preaching with Purpose. Like I said, I had been preaching prior to me getting to hope. And as we started to go through the book, Pastor had us do 15 minute sermons and then be critiqued by the other guys in the group.

Now, I was used to doing 45 minute sermons. And I said to myself, you know what? I need to rethink everything that I thought I knew and just go through this whole process. So I submitted to Pastor. I submitted to the process.

And it was just revolutionary in just the way I would, I would garner the information from the text. That was different than what I was used to doing. The way I put it out in a systematic form. And one of the big things that J. Adams talks about, which Pastor Jensen reaffirms over and over and over, is to write out a purpose statement.

When you come to the, when you study a passage of Scripture, you write out the purpose statement. What is the text saying? You don't want to just import your own opinions or ideas, but what is the text actually saying?

And that becomes the purpose statement for the rest of the sermon, so that everything is going to tie back to that purpose. And one of the things that I was doing, which again was wrong, I would pick an illustration.

Right at the beginning of me putting together the sermon, I'm like, oh, this is a great illustration. And what I found myself doing was tying the Scripture back to the illustration that I picked, rather than now tying it back to the purpose statement.

So now, under pastor's guidance, I now pick an illustration after I'm done with the sermon. So the point of the sermon comes directly out of the text, and I now look for an illustration that would match it, rather than the other way around.

Pick the illustration first, and now have all the Scriptures tie back into the illustration. I was doing it backwards. So this was enlightening to me, and certainly more biblical and more effective in my preaching and getting the actual truth of the text and the point of the text across to the people who were there to feed on it.

So that was a big change in the way I viewed how to exegete the Scripture, put it down on paper, get the purpose statement, and then backfill in with an illustration.

And we do have a Lister question, and I'll start with Chris McDowell this time. We have Lyle in Brightwaters, New York, another Long Islander. And Lyle says, Do you ever approach men that you think are qualified, even if they have never expressed an interest or belief in a calling into the ministry, to join these mentoring groups because you think that they might not even be aware that they have what it takes to be in a role such as that?

I would say for our group, it's more of an open invite to men talking about what the intention of the group is. So whether they're ministry-minded or they want to get into the deeper things, it's a good opportunity to do that.

Our church is relatively small, and so everyone kind of knows each other. One of the things about our church, and again, this stems from how Pastor came into ministry himself, is in other churches I've been part of, sometimes it might be the pastor who has the need for a deacon or trustee.

Sometimes there's a nominating committee to just a few people who will get together and put some names forward and approach those people. If they're all in agreement that they qualify or that the pastor themselves will tap people on the shoulder and say, Hey, I think you'd be good for this position.

With us, basically. Each September, we put out an office bearer nomination letter with the pertinent scriptures regarding that and ask the congregation, Do they recognize anyone who meets these qualifications?

Who seems to already be taking on these roles in one way or another and shows some aptitude for some capacity for it? Because as we've addressed already, being an office bearer is a calling from God. The Lord gives the giftings and he gives the opportunities, and it's really incumbent upon the church to just recognize what the Lord has done.

And so we look for the church to nominate as a congregation. People, they submit a nomination slip, and if there is a ponderance, we see a name that there seems to be some consensus growing around. Then the elders would look that name and hopefully knowing more would consider, is this person qualified?

Is this person interested? And then approach that person about it and ask them to speak. We talk with them, we would talk with their spouse, give them a book, either the Alex Render Strouch book on the acronym or the eldership, and ask them to read it through and pray about it and see if they're interested.

So when it comes to approaching people and asking them if they'd be interested in doing that, that's more of how we bring people possibly into office, where once the elders have a chance to examine them, then the name is put before the congregation.

And in our next business meeting, they'll be voted on. But the mentoring group itself, it's sort of an invitation. And like I said, our church is small. So we have a number of guys who are serious about the Lord and studying the word, and they're eager to engage in evangelism.

And so they're already kind of part of that group. So if that helps, I would say if you're in a church and you're seeking to do this, I would put the invite out for people. And if you see someone who maybe has shown some aptitude for it and hasn't volunteered, maybe approaching them.