Consulting Firm

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. I have Steve, Tuesday guy, Cooley in the house. In the house. We are laughing already here in the house when there's about a foot of snow outside and it's day five for me without power.

Well, day five, really?

Only day five without power? Well, by the time you hear this show, it might be a lot more than that, but Saturday, if I'm biblical and count part of a day as a day. Sure, go ahead. Saturday night, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,.

Today is the fifth day. We were only without for two days. All right, well. That's because we live in that island.

Of righteousness. Tell me about your island of Catholic righteousness.

Don't you have such a thing? Yeah, I was just contemplating that, the idea of, you know, Armenians say that you have an island of righteousness with which you can choose to obey God. And I think that some of our reformed brethren have an island of Catholicism in which they still believe that you need to baptize babies and a few other odds and ends.

Isn't it amazing to think that this whole island of righteousness deal, that the fall, they would say, affected our minds, it affected our emotions, it affected our life, it affected the way we work, it affected childbearing, it affected our standing before God.

It affected pretty much everything, Steve. Except. Except your will. The mighty will. Yes. Yeah, the will is still free. So that's kind of an amazing thing. It's kind of like that Star Trek movie, the new one, where they're trying to get, the Romulans are trying to get Captain Pike to speak.

And so they put that special bug down his throat that makes him talk. Yeah, I remember that.

You know, here's the title, just a suggestion for your next book. How about The Sovereignty and Supremacy of Human Will? You know what?

That is excellent. The Sovereignty and Supremacy of King Will. And they'll think it's really, you know, Charles' son, the son of Charles. And then the subtitle, instead of bowing to the gracious despot, it could be bowing to the gracious despot, the will.

I mean, free will. I love, you know, I once taught a class, well, I've taught a few classes, but I once taught a class, and a man said, you know, right in the middle of class, he says, you know, you're always talking about the sovereignty of God and salvation.

Why don't you ever talk about our free will? And I said, well, I'd love to. I said, did you have a particular verse in mind? And, you know, silence ensued. And so then I had everybody in the class turn in the authorized version, the MacArthur Study Bible to John 644, where John MacArthur says, there's no such thing as free will.

And I go, that's pretty good right there.

That's pretty good that you're a student of that study Bible so much that you can know the quotes.

I remember It is my favorite right there.

I did the same thing with the Life Application Study Bible. Remember that doorstop? Yes, I do. The Life Application Study Bible. I had one of those doorstops. Now, the good thing about the Life Application Study Bible is it does contain the Bible.

Yes, it does. That's excellent. And actually some of the notes aren't too bad, but I remember the one on Romans 12, it said something about self-esteem and learning to love yourself so you can love other people.

It was some kind of erroneous, bogus, some statement like that.

You can't love anybody else unless you love yourself.

How do you apply Leviticus in the Life Application Bible? What would that mean?

Well, the notes were somewhat spurious.

During that section. I'm sure all the men raced to Song of Solomon hoping for some application. All right. Moving right along. NoCompromiseRadio .com. We have guys who are regularly updating the website now.

So if you're an iTunes person and you never get to the website, you should go there. And I think this week we have some new pictures of people up. There's new shows. So you can link to Facebook from that, to Twitter, et cetera.

Who isn't an iTunes person?

I don't know, but if I'm regularly downloading shows, then you might as well just go to iTunes. Matter of fact, this might be interesting for our listening audience. Steve, what shows, Christian shows, religious shows, do you have subscriptions to in your iTunes?

The Truth. I think I have Grace to You.

I have John MacArthur. Yeah, I have BBC and I have

British Broadcasting Communications.

No, that'd be Bethlehem Bible Church. And then I have Andrew Smith's Christian Gaming thing.

Oh yeah. Is that more Christian or is it more gaming?

It's more gaming, but I like Andrew. Well, I have, I do too.

He's one He's a fine boy. He's a, he's a, he's got it going on. Yeah, he does. I have Sinclair Ferguson's Sunday morning, Sunday night, whatever church he's at. And where is he? M-I-S-S-I-S-S?

He's in South Carolina. Oh, South Carolina, Mississippi. What's the difference? I mean, you could spell South Carolina, M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I, but

So Sinclair Ferguson, Sunday morning, Sunday night. The White Horse Inn. Oh yeah. With Horton. Michael Horton. Rigger, Rigger. Mortis. Kim Riddlebogger, Bogger, what's his name? Kim Riddlebarger.

Yeah, at least I got the Kim right. Only I almost made it sound like it's a hyphenated or that's his middle name.

It's Kim Riddlebarger. Yeah, it's actually a man and it's not a hyphenated last name. And then Lex, Lex Luthor.

Lex Luthor is not on that show. Sorry, Lex Luthoran. Lex Luthor. I see a comic book in your future.

I actually made that up and I called Tony on Wretched Radio and he's the kind of producer, he's the Tuesday guy, Monday through Wednesday guy, Monday through Friday guy. And so I called him Lex Luthoran.

I said off here, did that make you mad? He said, no. Lex Luthoran. So, and then who else do I have? I have, theologically, I don't think there's anybody else. I don't know. Yeah, maybe the reformed referee.

I would have S. Lewis, I would have S. Lewis Johnson, but you have to download those separately, right?

Yeah, yeah, they're not available. Maybe we should volunteer to do that. We'll be their iTunes person. That'd be good.

What Churches Look for in a Pastor

All right, Steve, let's do this today. I read an article by Michael S. Horton. Yes. If that other guy is Lex Luthoran, who's Michael Horton, this is Superman.

Super Lex Luthoran.

And the article is called, it's an older article, Ministers Who Preach Not Themselves, But Christ. And so here's what Horton does. I know you've read this. He surveyed want ads for pastors. And you can do that now online, pastorsearch .com or something like that.

And he looked through a bunch of want ads for pastors. So churches need a pastor. And you know, your pastor gets fired. You kick him out. He leaves, he stomps out, he dies, et cetera. And you need a new pastor.

So certainly vacancies aren't always the wrong thing. And then you get a pastoral search committee together and try to find a pastor.

Must have money market experience. You know what? Seriously, I mean, I know it's

You aren't too far off. So let's talk a little bit about what we're looking for a pastor and what we aren't looking for. And what things are just Steve, if the guy's a good administrator, that's just kind of gravy, isn't it?

Absolutely. I mean, what's more important, that he be able to teach and preach or that he be able to advise you as to what stocks you should buy?

How about if he's a good singer? Because we got kind of, you know, we'd like to have him do special music once in a while. And if his wife can play the piano, that might be a score. Ooh, it's a double bonus.

Yeah, I mean, maybe they could, on Saturday evenings, be on the Lawrence Wilk Show. I used to watch that growing up.

Not at my parents' house, though, because we'd watch All in the Family there with Edith and Archie. No, you'd hang out with the cool kids and watch Lawrence Wilk, right? Yeah, but at grandma's house, it was Lawrence Wilk.

It probably was on the Lord's Day, too.

We probably were breaking the Sabbath. They actually, your parents actually watched All in the Family?

My parents loved All in the Family.

I never got to see, I don't think I saw five minutes of All in the Family growing up because my parents hated it. Oh, they were probably liberal.

No, they were conservative. They hated it. So here, the random sampling that Horton has put together over past issues of different publications have some of these words. Each word is directly taken from the ad.

Innovative, progressive, change-initiating.

You know what? I have to say me, me, me, and me. There's only three of them. Well, that's how progressive I am.

I can say me four times. That is so funny. What about the Bible? That's what I would wonder. I just want to back up to that thing.

What does innovative mean? I mean, yeah, I know what today's passage really says, but you know, I want to be innovative. I want to be on the cutting edge.

Come out on the cutting edge with me. You know what? I'd like to find somebody who is so backward culturally, so obtuse in the world, that that guy actually had enough gumption to say, I'm just going to teach the Bible.

Morning, noon, and night, that's all I'm going to do is teach you the Bible, the Bible, the Bible. And whenever I wake up, I say, the Bible says. Whenever you put me in front of a Juana, I say, the Bible says.

Whenever I do a wedding, the Bible says.

Well, the problem is, pastor, you're not going to really pack them in if you just give them. The Bible says. Come on, we need something fresh, something new.

Consulting Firms and Church Growth

Okay, so let's just do a little no-compromise, Steve, for a minute. Let's talk about the notion, especially affecting some of the churches, even in our area, even in our listening audience. Even within the sound of my voice.

Churches who say we'd like to have a pastor are churches who say we'd like to grow, one of those two. And then they say, well, we need some help. After all, based on how many empty seats there are, empty pews, we're not very good when it comes to growth.

So we want growth, growth, growth, growth. So let's hire a consultant to come in and tell us how to grow.

That's a good move. I mean, many businesses do that. That's a good move. I'm innovative, progressive, I'm on the cutting edge. And I think, you know, if you're having problems in your church, the best thing you can do is find a good consultant and bring them in.

If your church has hired consultants to lead, that means your leaders aren't leading. What is the problem? I thought elders were to lead, not hand over the leadership keys to A, their wives and B, to the consultants.

Well, wait a minute. For example, let's say you have a consultant coming in and it's called This Rock. Didn't Jesus say, upon this rock, I will build my church?

Let's, you know what, Steve? If our goal was to make money, we could make a lot of money and we could be consultants, church consultants. And then you say, well, you know what? We want to have 4 ,000 people show up at our church and we're not really getting there with this, you know, buck 20 that we got going on.

Yeah, I'll tell you what the problem is.

You need a better guitar player. You know, that's what you really need.

I hate to correct Steve on the radio because I don't really like to do that because we're a team united in goal and purpose and aim. But if the guitarist that you already have does windmills like Pete Townsend, then you'll be okay.

Yeah, or if he plays behind his back or with his teeth.

Or he gets a little lighter fluid and plays left-handed guitar like Hendrix. Nice. And then you'd pack him in. $100 underneath one of the seats and just, you know, look under the seat and you could find yourself.

No, you know what would be better, Steve? There's a scratch ticket underneath 10 of the seats today. And if you sit down and then look under your seat, you could be one of the lucky winners. Churches do that.

But, you know, when I'm getting back to lighting the guitar on fire, imagine that. Imagine the guitar player says, and now an offering to the Lord and he just throws his guitar down and lights it on fire.

Well, I guess if you think the Old Testament is for the church, maybe you have to have some kind of sacrifice on fire for the Lord.

Well, I could hear somebody saying, well, wait a minute, is that guitar unblemished? You know?

Stratocaster. You have to give the best to the Lord. So it can't just be some cheap $100 guitar that That's right.

And if that Gibson has any illegal wood, it may not be offered on the altar. Fenders for the Lord.

The Elders’ Authority Under the Word of God

So today we're talking a little bit about consulting. Hiring a consulting group, pretty much for any reason. We have just bought some new land and I don't want to hire a consulting group to tell us how to get money out of our people.

Oh, I guess I better fire them then. Well, I guess I was out of town for two nights and I come back to no power and Steve's hiring the consultant. Things have changed, I'm innovative. So Progressive.

Here's the thing, I think the elder board is the highest ranking leadership that the Lord of the church has ordained. And in other words, Steve, to ask it in the form of a question, is there a higher authority that the church has?

Yes, the word of God.

And people say, well, those elders, they'll just run rampant over everybody. And what about this? Well, of course, if we take the Bible out of the equation and we presume that those elders will never be held to account by the Lord, which the Bible very clearly says, then we'd say, well, we can't trust those men.

Who knows what they'll do? The whole point is, the elders are restrained by the word of God. If they believe and teach in the word of God, then you hold them to that standard.

That's pretty basic. I like that. And absolute power does not corrupt absolutely because the king of the universe, King Jesus has absolute power and I don't think he's corrupted at all. That's right.

And he doesn't give, just to follow along with what you're saying, he doesn't give the elders absolute power. I mean, if they violate the word of God, then they're not acting within the course and scope of their duties, as we used to say as police officers.

And if this was no compromise radio, I wouldn't say this, and of course the text says that not to lord it over the people. That's right. Steve, I never figured out that. If people, I never have figured this out.

People come to the church and they don't like it that the elders lead the church. Elders rule the church to actually quote 1 Timothy 5, let the elders who rule well. They don't like that kind of stuff, but they sit there week in and week out, allowing us, allowing me, allowing you to teach their family how to go to heaven and how to understand God better.

And so, I mean, ultimately your point is, I think, that it's fine to take the most important responsibility, really, the preaching and teaching of God's word and give that to some men. But then when you start talking about the lesser responsibility, which is only a slightly lesser responsibility of shepherding the people, of spending the money, then everybody wants their two cents.

Everybody wants to fight about what color the carpet should be. But if you want to spend 20 hours preparing a sermon, that's fine.

The Church’s Goal Is Maturity in Christ

Today's No Compromise radio discussion is about consultants, churches, elders, et cetera. If a church says our number one goal is growth, that is numerical growth, and then they hire the consultant, we've got one bad decision and followed by another bad decision.

What can consultants do? How can they help an elder board?

Well, ultimately what they've got to get at is your philosophy of ministry. They've got to convince you that you've been doing things too biblically, and you need to lighten up, Francis. You got to change things.

You're so right. Actually, when you have a biblical philosophy of ministry, especially if you don't know what you're doing and then decide to come up with one, you're probably going to lose a lot of people.

Now they might be goats or they might be immature sheep, but you're going to lose people because biblical philosophy of ministry is narrow. That is to say it's prescribed by Jesus. This is what you do.

This is what you don't do. And so when you say we've got to get a lot of people in, we've got to get a lot of money in, we've got to support a lot of missionaries, we've got to get more staff, those are our goals.

Then you hire consultants and you know what they end up doing in this part of the woods, this neck of the woods? They fire the pastor.

Which would be most unpleasant around here. We wouldn't like that.

But you know I'm saying in churches in the Worcester area, they fire the pastor, not because he's sexually sinning, not because he's stealing money, but because he can't get the church to the next level, Will.

And because the consultant said he's the problem, right?

Sorry, church. You should have spent more time hiring the guy and figuring out he's the right guy. Because sure to sin till death do you part.

Well, what does it say about a church if Jesus said, I will build my church and the church says, well, thank you, Lord, but we prefer to go with the consultant. What does that say? Appreciate that promise, Lord, but...

It would go against my conscience. That's a good name for a consultant firm, against my conscience, consultants. To be a consultant, then go in. Now, here's how these churches get around it. The consultant gives us advice.

It's not binding. The elder board has the binding boat, et cetera. Right, but you hired the guy. So what do you do in hiring him if you're not going to listen to what he says? How about, I wonder if we just took this the opposite way, let elders who rule poorly be considered unworthy of double honor.

Okay, well, I mean, that is right, right?

It is, I know. And so if you hire the consulting firm to do the shepherding, to make the decisions, then you've just basically said, sorry, an absolute power, some say corrupts absolutely, not always true, see Jesus, but number two, a lack of authority and power corrupts absolutely because vacuums must be filled.

That's right, you know, I just had an idea too, it'd be like a little bit of a dog bert thing. We could have a consulting company. And as soon as the churches call us, we just go, well, we know exactly what the problem is and what to do, but it'll cost you $5 ,000.

And they give us the $5 ,000 and we go, okay, each one of you elders need to step down because you are thoroughly unqualified. And they go, that's it? That's it, thank you for the money, see you later.

We've got to grow a lot.

Is this particular pastor, the guy who's going to get us to our unbiblical goal of a lot of people. You know what just popped in my mind? The correspondence isn't one-to-one, it's not apples and apples, but there's a way you can get a lot of people to follow you.

Jim Jones got a lot of people to follow him. That's right, yes, he did.

And it wasn't biblical principles that he was using.

I wonder what Isaiah would say in Isaiah chapter six. After he saw the holiness of God, the holiness of Christ Jesus on a throne high, lifted up, exalted, seraphim swirling all around, the train of his robe filled the temple.

Isaiah knew how sinful he was. Jesus, by sovereign initiating divine grace, blesses him and says, by the way, here's your ministry. It's going to be really small.

I'm sure he was thinking, you know, if I only had a smartphone, I'd look up a consultant and

Yes, but we need to get a consultant that is early, that's in alphabetical order so they look at us first. So something like Abendroth Consulting. Because if it was Cooley, then it would be down to C.

What about just AAA? No, I thought maybe Aardvark. Aardvark. That'd be good, AA. So how about this, Steve? How about a church? What should their goal be? And when I read Colossians chapter one, I think it's that people might mature, that they might be perfect, that they might have wholehearted devotion to the Lord.

Isn't that a better goal?

Absolutely, and you know, along with Ephesians four, equipping the saints for the work of ministry, that's what the church is all about. I mean, we gather together, why? To learn about Christ, to worship him, to be equipped to do the work of ministry, and then to go out into the world and to do that ministry.

Him we proclaim, Colossians one, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature or wholeheartedly devoted to Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

What would you tell a church that's already hired a consultant firm, brought him in?

Is it ever too late to boot him? No, I mean, I think even the consultant would say, hey, you're free to fire me at any point, you just got to pay the bill.

Well, first the pastor that gets kicked out, he pays the first bill.

Should the elder board ever step down for doing something so stupid? Oh, I definitely think so. I mean, the only guy who wouldn't have egg on his face after something like that would be the guy who said, you know what, I laid down in front of these guys trying to stop them, and in fact, when they said, I'm going to do this, I said, I'm going to resign, and I did resign.

That's the guy you want as the elder.

There's no harm in saying as an elder board, how do we lead this church and where would we like to see the Lord take us and let's pray to that end. But we pray a prayer and it's called thy will be done.

And we pray another prayer that Jesus has taught us, at least in form, and that is, hallowed be thy name. And if it's about the pews that are empty, how to fill them up, you're wrong. And if it's about the pews that are full and how to minister to those people,.

I think you're on the right track. Yeah, people get too concerned with numbers. You know, what are you running? How big is the church? What you in? Yeah, are you guys growing? How are the, you know, how's the giving?

The giving is exactly what God has ordained to give us. You know, the number of people are exactly the right number. And our focus, our job, as it were, is to minister to the people who are here to be concerned about their souls because those are the ones.

That we're going to give an account for. What if we were the consulting firm, Steve? It could even be Steve, Mike, consulting, SMC. And we said, you know what? Here's what we suggest. We suggest that every program that you have, you cancel, and you should have prayer meetings, a couple of Bible studies, and Sunday morning worship.

That's all you have. I think we better get the money up front. Yeah. That was such a loud guffaw by me. I had to back away from the microphone. Hands in the air.

Yeah, it's a flat fee. We just collect that up front. And then you're, you know, you're off the hook. No further bills.

Steve, we had to cancel service on Sunday because of Governor Deval Patrick saying that the roads were bad and a state of emergency. And so we submitted to that.

How are we going to get all that money back from last week's offering? I don't know. You know, I didn't tell you, but I called a consultant this morning.

To see what we could do about that. And the consultant was called Double Down. No, I think we'll call it Let Her Ride.

Yeah, you just can't fret about those things. You know, you just have to trust in the Lord. I mean, if God is building this church, who's going to stop him? And if he's not building the church,.

Who's going to help him? And the answer is no one. You ask difficult questions that I don't want to answer.

Well, that's what I, you know, that's what consultants do. That's what the Tuesday guy does.

I know we've got the new name, the Tuesday guy. And then you have the Tuesday guys. They all show up. Here's what we do.

Give us your financial statements. Give us some of your money. And we're off and running. I like it. Well, that's a great name for a consultant, Tony.

Sufficient Scripture and Qualified Elders

Today on No Compromise Radio Ministry, we've tried to poke and prod you into saying the Bible is sufficient. The elders are the leaders of the local church. And to the extent that you trust the God of the universe, you can trust your elders are your pastors are your husbands.

Amen. 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.