Encourage Your Pastor

Encouraging Your Pastor Through Prayer, Gifts, and Practical Help

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said,.

But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, ministry.

Take two. See, you don't know when I have to do double takes or triple takes. After about the triple take, I just keep talking, because when people talk, they do make mistakes, and so sometimes you just have to let her ride.

Now, on the NoCo 90s, which, by the way, you can get at the YouTube site, NoCompromise90, the other day I was trying to record one, and I did about 15 takes, because obviously video is less forgiving than radio.

See, like right now, I have coffee in front of me, notes, have my glasses on, and, you know, it's too vain to wear glasses for the NoCo 90. Can't do that. I have shorts on. Never forget the days back in North Hollywood.

We would go to a small little studio, and we had something called Narrowgate Ministries from Matthew 7, and I would stand in front of a pulpit and preach for a half hour, and then we would throw it onto community access cable TV, North Hollywood.

I think they call it NoHo now. It's fancy. I sure wish I owned my house back in North Hollywood. That would have been good. Bought that thing, went upside down, short sold it. So back to the point, and I would preach in this little studio.

Well, we ran out of studio money, and so we went to this guy's garage, and we had two cameras set up in there, and all the audio stuff. There were some guys that worked in the Hollywood industry. They set it up for me.

They built a pulpit, and it would be 1030 at night. I'd go over there and record these shows. Well, I would wear a suit to preach in, preach from. You don't preach from suits. You preach in suits. But the problem was, it was so hot in this guy's garage, and there's all these Harley parts everywhere.

George and Steve are the guys' names. I wonder what they're doing these days. Well, it's so hot there in North Hollywood in the summer, I would just wear shorts, you know, flip-flops, and then I would have a suit, shirt, tie, et cetera.

Nobody could see that I was wearing shorts. So it worked out perfect. So it's the same thing. It worked out perfectly. It's the same with no-compromise radio. I can just wear whatever I want. You know, Todd Friel, Todd's got that camera, so you can see him in the studio all the time.

So he probably has to look appropriate. So that's why I don't really shave throughout the week. I do shave on Sundays. And anyway, that's a scoop. Counsel to Young Ministers by Elisha Yale. Whatever attention you may see fit to give to your style and diction, let it be only with the express view of making your sermons more effectual to the good of souls.

Feed not the flock of God with sound and shadows and flowers instead of the substantial meat of the Word. The best sermon is that adapted to glorify Christ and save the souls of men. Dwell in the particularities of the gospel.

What it maintains in common with philosophy is not its glory, but what it maintains as particular to itself. I mean the justification of a dying sinner only by the righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Good counsel to young ministers. I don't know if you know this or not in ministerial, pastoral experience, but young pastors especially. I became pastor here at Bethlehem Bible Church, which was Bethlehem Baptist Church at the time, in 1997.

I was 36 years old, young minister. And I think I had pretty much the premier theological education at that time. I had the best pastor in all the world, best preacher in all the world. It was my pastor.

And I was probably as equipped as I could have been for being 36 years old and being a Christian only seven years. That was a problem, but whatever, can't go back now. Well, coming out here, there are pressures that pastors feel, perceive, understand, and just, it's just the way it goes, expectations.

So for instance, the last pastor, he was an older man. He did a lot of counseling. He did a lot of visiting. Well, they just think pastors should counsel a lot and visit a lot. And so, the last pastor preaches 25, 30 minutes, I mean, I don't remember the number.

Then when you preach 40, then somehow that's odd. There's a thousand things like that that are different. And so what about the young man? What about the young preacher? They have to be resolved to preach the Word and stick with the particularities of, as Elisha said, the gospel.

That's what we want. So here's my point for No Compromise listeners. If you have a pastor who preaches the Word of God and shows you the need for Christ's righteousness, shows you who Jesus is, then you ought to thank God for that pastor.

Oh, you say, Mike, this is all self-serving. No, I get plenty of thanks. I don't need anybody to write me and thank me or do anything else. It's not my point. But see, now that I'm older, yesterday there was an elder in the community at a different church wanted to meet and talk about some issues, and so we did.

And that wouldn't have happened 20 years ago because I didn't really have any experience. And so not that I'm that experienced now, but whatever experience I have, I want to help. And so here's how I'm helping.

I guess I could be a grandfather by now, but this is grandfatherly advice from No Compromise Radio. If your pastor doesn't visit enough, if your pastor doesn't hang out with the guys enough, if the pastor isn't a good old boy enough, if the pastor seems too intellectual, too, you know, heavenly-minded to be earthly good, if you've got a young pastor, here's what I'd like you to do.

If he doesn't preach the Word, if he's moralistic and it's full of how-to's and relational, purpose-driven, then of course, you know, I think you should basically try to help him or have him move on.

Help him move on. But to just try to encourage your pastor. I have kept over the years an encouragement file, both physically and now electronically, because there are days that you need to go back to that encouragement file because it is very, very discouraging at times in gospel ministry.

So what I'd like you to do, don't try to encourage me, it's not my point. Find some pastor to encourage. For those of you that don't go to Bethlehem Bible Church, it's probably easier for you to listen to people on the radio and say, oh, I like Mike and I like these other guys and I'm not trying to put me in the level with Mark Dever or somebody, whoever you like to listen to preach.

Maybe I'm a better preacher than your pastor. Maybe you like me better than the pastor. Maybe you like No Compromise Radio's theological slant better than your pastor's. Could be true. But I'm not your pastor.

So why don't you go encourage your pastor, come alongside your pastor, pray for your pastor. Again, I have to say this because I'm not in this for any of that, any of the following. Why don't you buy your pastor a nice gift?

There are things that congregants just forget about, 24 -7, under the microscope, on call all the time. It's demanding. Is it wonderful? Yes. Do I have the best job in the world? Yes. Do I have to pinch myself occasionally thinking I get to do this for a living?

Yes. But there is a draining side. You know, when you watch the President of the United States age over the four years or eight years in his term and see how gray he gets with the weight of the literal world on his shoulders, I think the same thing is true for pastors.

It is just a demanding task. Why so demanding? Well, there are congregational demands, there are personal demands, there are spouse demands, there are children demands, there's life demands. It just goes on and on and on.

The problem is we are, as pastors, finite and fallen, so that just compounds the problem. If I was neither of those, then it would make my job a lot easier, but God has ordained it this way, weak and frail, and you just see Paul, when we're weak, we're strong.

And I understand all that. I'm just saying, why don't you try to encourage your pastor? Why don't you say, you know, here's my ministry for the pastor. I will, once a week, go babysit the pastor's kids for free so they can go out on a date or every other week.

I will write the pastor's wife an encouraging note. I will put together some, I don't know, some food platter or Pete's coffee platter or something and take it over to the pastor's house. I mean, there's a lot of things you could do.

I've been the recipient of so much generosity at Bethlehem Bible Church. It's unbelievable. It is unbelievable from people coming over to help me work on my house, both inside the house, outside the house, people working on my car, people giving me gifts, people giving me all, I mean, I don't even want to tell you what I've received because it has just been the uber generosity of the Lord Jesus Christ through his saints who want to share what they have with their pastor along the lines of Galatians chapter 6.

So I've received that. So I'm not asking for anything. I don't want anything from any listener today. But I, here's what I do want. I want you, if you've got another pastor who's not me, to encourage that pastor.

And by the way, if you're a member of Bethlehem Bible Church, pick another elder to go encourage. Either go encourage Steve or Pradeep or Scott or Harry. Go find one of those guys and just try to encourage them.

Because they're perfect? No. But because they're trying to serve a perfect Savior. And so there are ways to encourage pastors. Say, well, I don't really like him as much as I want to, and he doesn't do this, that, or the other.

Friend, if he feeds your soul, everything else is gravy. Everything else is gravy. Spurgeon basically said, if you give people a good steak when they come over to your house, you know, if the furniture's not the best and, you know, everything else doesn't measure up to five star, but it's a nice meal, especially in the day and age of nice meals, few and far between, people overlook all that other stuff.

I know I have faults. I know I have imperfections. I know I sin. I know I'm not the man that I want to be in the sense of, I want to be more mature. I want to be more wise. I want to be more kind. I want to be more compassionate, you know, but there are God-given requirements and God-given graces to fulfill those requirements.

And so I think, what am I called to do? Preach the word in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and doctrine for the time will come and I can just keep on quoting the verse.

I can't do it all, so I want to make sure I do the most important thing and I'm not trying to say, hey, BBC people, anything I give you besides preaching is just gravy. I don't really want to do that.

Yes, it comes to a tyranny of the urgent and here's an urgent matter and I have to take care of that. Here's a visitor. I have to take care of that and all these things, but if you've got a pastor, you should figure out a way to encourage that pastor and you say, well, he should be encouraging me.

True. But remember, this is Christianity. This is not, if he does scratching my back a little bit, I'll scratch his back. Just try to encourage. I bet you if you look in your concordance, encourage one another.

And of course, it's lonely at the top and leadership is responsible and like it or not, you've got to submit to leaders and so it becomes more difficult to encourage. But there are ways to encourage pastors.

And if you don't know what to do, maybe you could just pray about it. I have some dear ladies at the church who kind of adopted my kids and they're kind of aunties to my kids. And what a joy it is to see these different ladies come over to my house, swoop up my girls and go take them out for some, you know, getting their nails done or something.

I mean, what a joy. Those are great things to do where you just love on the pastor's kids and give them that opportunity. I've received, you know, here's a night at the hotel and a dinner gift for you and your wife just to kind of get out of town for a while, get out of Dodge for a while.

I'm not asking for that. I'm saying that I was blessed by that. So maybe you could do that for a pastor. Maybe there's a book that you want to order and you just order two and give the pastor the book.

Hey, even if the pastor has the book, they don't give it to somebody else. Just to say, pastor, I pray for you. I care for you. And this is, I'm sure it must be difficult. I don't even understand the half of it.

And I wanted to just say, thank you, Lord, for this particular person. So see here, here, there I go. You think, you know, easy for you to say, it was easy for me to say, all right, here's a little game we're going to play on No Compromise Radio.

The Pulpit Must Preach Christ Crucified

I'm going to quote something and you tell me from whence the quote came. Not from whence, but where did the quote come from? Sorry to end my sentence on preposition, but I'm sick. What could be more full of meaning?

For the pulpit is ever this world's foremost part. All the rest comes in its rear. The pulpit leads the world. From thence it is that the storm of God's quick wrath is first described, descried. Maybe there's a typo.

And the bow must bear the early brunt. From thence it is that the God of breezes, fair or foul, is first invoked for favorable winds. Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete.

And the pulpit is its prowl. Can you imagine? The pulpit leads the world. Who do you think might have written that? Maybe MacArthur, maybe Dever, maybe Moeller, maybe J .C. Ryle. We're getting closer to the time frame.

Herman Melville in the book Moby Dick. Actually it was fun to go down to New Bedford, Massachusetts and go to some of these maritime museums and find little pulpits shaped like the front of a ship. So that was fun.

I almost said boat, but I said ship. By the way, I was just on a ship for three days, my first cruise ever, cruising the Aegean Sea. And it was so unstable. The waves were so big out in the middle of the sea.

We had people in our group go to the little hospital on board to get shots and the Dramamine and people throwing up and sick and seasick. My wife said, honey, you should bring some Dramamine. And I'm like, I'm not going to get sick.

So I'm the kind of guy who usually does. I didn't get sick. But for five days afterward, I still, it was like sea legs. Everything seemed to be moving even though I was on planet Earth, you know, terra firma.

So the pulpit leads the world. And from the pulpit, what should come forth? What should you pray for your pastor in terms of what he should preach? Listen to Spurgeon. The motto of all true servants of God must be, we preach Christ and Him crucified.

A sermon without Christ is like a loaf of bread without any flour in it. It's like gluten-free. Gluten. No, Christ is your sermon. Go home then and never preach again until you have something worth preaching.

So if you're not preaching Christ, then go home and don't ever preach again until you preach Christ Jesus. I look back at some of my preaching. I think I've told you the story before. When I first got here, I did Old Testament on Sunday nights.

I can't talk, whatever. And so I did Genesis on Sunday nights, chapter by chapter, Exodus, Esther, Daniel, Jonah, Obadiah. That was in one week. So I did a lot of those books. I would be bugged because some of our tape guys, cassette tapes at the time, they wouldn't get them on the air.

They wouldn't get them online. Now you know what? I look back and I'm so thankful that's not true. I mean, thankful that's true, that they aren't published because I'm sure I preached a bunch of Old Testament passages with no thought of John chapter 5, with no thought of Luke chapter 24, with no thought that Moses and the law and the prophets and the writings all bear witness of Christ.

That's scary to think about. God is very patient and very gracious. Oh, I might have said something from the Old Testament that would lend itself to preach Christ and I'm sure I did on occasion. I'm sure I prayed in Jesus' name.

But I don't want to preach the Old Testament in such a fashion where a rabbi would agree with it. I want to preach Christ crucified. And so, the Lord in His graciousness has taught me over the years to be Christ-centered in my preaching.

And I think as we are more Christ-centered, we are more grace-centered, and the list goes on. Let me give you another quote. This is Spurgeon as well. Leave Christ out? Oh, my brethren, better leave the pulpit out altogether.

If a man can preach one sermon without mentioning Christ's name in it, it ought to be his last. Certainly, the last that any Christian ought to go to hear him preach. Maybe that's why the church shrunk all those years.

Spurgeon, leave Christ out of the preaching and you shall do nothing. Only advertise it all over London, Mr. Baker, that you are making bread without flour. Put it in every paper, bread without flour, and you may soon shut up your shop for your customers will hurry off to another tradesman.

A sermon without Christ as its beginning, middle, and end is a mistake in conception and a crime in execution. However grand the language, it will merely be much ado about nothing of Christ being out there.

And I mean by Christ not merely His example and the ethical precepts of His teaching, but His atoning blood, His wondrous satisfaction made for human sin. And the grand doctrine of believe and live. Good words from 1881.

Spurgeon says in 1864, I know one who said I was always on the old string, and he would come and hear me no more. But if I preached a sermon without Christ in it, he would come. He will never come while this tongue moves.

For a sermon without Christ in it, a Christless sermon, a brook without water, a cloud without rain, a well which mocks the traveler, a tree twice dead, plucked up by the root, a sky without a sun, a night without a star.

It were a realm of death, a place of mourning for angels and laughter for devils. Oh, Christian, we must have Christ. Do see to it that every day when you wake, you give a fresh savor of Christ upon your contemplating His person.

Live all the day, trying as much as lieth in you to season your hearts with Him, and then at night lie down with Him upon your tongue. We need to pray for our pastors to preach Christ Jesus. My name is Mike Gabendroth.

There's NoCompromiseRadio .com. You can listen to us and you can write me at info at NoCompromiseRadio. I read every email that comes into info at NoCompromiseRadio. I don't read the Tuesday guy ones.

I don't read the ones that go to Josh, but the ones that say info, I read and I answer most of those. Some I pawn off on other folks, but most of them I do, well, sorry, all of them I do read. I just looked outside and there's some guy and he has this red truck and he sits in the parking lot pretty much all day long.

I think he just tries to avoid his boss and he's out of his car now looking around at stuff. I don't know what he's doing, but he's pretty much here every day avoiding people. Maybe he's just trying to get out of the house and he uses this as the office.

I'm not sure, but I thought about going up to him one day and asking him, are you a Christian? See where that would lead me. All right, Pete's Coffee, good for you? Major Dickinson Blend is very good.

Okay, preaching, preaching Christ. Sooner, Spurgeon said, by far would I go to a bare table and eat from a wooden porridge or something that would appease my appetite than I would go to a well-spread table on which there was nothing to eat.

Yes, it is Christ, Christ, Christ whom we have to preach. And if we leave him out, we leave out the very soul of the gospel. Christless sermons make merriment for hell. Christless preachers, Christless Sunday school teachers, Christless class leaders, Christless tract distributors.

What are all these doing? They're simply setting the mill to grind without putting any grist into the hopper. All their labor is in vain. If you leave Jesus Christ out, you're simply beating the air or going to war without any weapon with which you can smite the foe.

So, pray for your pastors to do this. But secondly, if you are a Sunday school teacher, heed these words. Listen up. Pay attention. Dare to be a Daniel? No. Preach Christ Jesus. That is what you are called to do.

That is the privilege that you have. For what we proclaim, 2 Corinthians 4, is not ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. If you don't preach Jesus, you'll preach yourself or you'll preach some other character in the Bible.

Preach Christ Jesus. Ask yourself before you go talk to those kids, what am I going to say about Jesus today? How does this passage lead me to speak of Jesus? Does the sin of this particular character easily allow me to talk about Jesus, the Savior of sinners?

See how easy that is? That's an easy way to do it. Does the virtue that this particular Bible character have come from himself or herself or does this ultimately come from who Jesus is and what God has done?

There's a variety of ways to preach the cross, but we are needing to preach the cross. My name is Mike Ebenroth. This is No Compromise Radio. We want Christ to be proclaimed. Pray for your pastors and then thank your pastors, encourage your pastors, and believe with your whole heart that Christ is really enough.

Marriage problems, financial problems, Christ is what you need. You have sufficiency in Christ Jesus. Our sufficiency in Christ. Excellent book by MacArthur. You can also read that. My name is Mike Ebenroth.

Info at NoCompromiseRadio .com.

Program Sign-Off and Station Disclaimer

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebenroth 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 6. 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.