Pastor Andy Woodward Interview

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, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and we thank you for listening. I don�t know how many downloads we have per show. I think I know about the average, but the most downloaded day of the week is Wednesday.

Monday is a recorded sermon of mine that I preached at Bethlehem Bible Church. Tuesdays, Pastor Steve and I talk about theological issues. Thursdays and Fridays, well, I think one�s a rerun, and the other we talk about whatever I prefer to talk about based on my own free will, wink, wink.

Interviewing Pastors Who Faithfully Plod

But Wednesdays, I interview people. Interviewed last week Craig Carter, theologians, pastors, friends, and one of my favorite things to do is to interview pastors that pastor not some kind of mega-church, they�re not very well-known, they�re behind the scenes, and they just faithfully plod.

I think it was William Carey who said, �I can plod. And that�s really an important thing when it comes to gospel ministry, not fabulous but faithful, as 1 Corinthians says. So today I have a great, I have a pleasure to have my friend today, Pastor Andy Woodward from Providence Baptist Church in all places, not Orlando, but New York City, Manhattan, the Big Apple.

Pastor Andy, welcome to Don�t Compromise Radio Ministry.

Thanks so much for having me on, Mike, I appreciate it.

Well, I just was there, what, a month ago and had the privilege to preach at Providence Baptist. Tell our listeners a little bit about what you�re doing, why you�re unique, where you are, when you started, when you meet people in the city, you know, what do you tell them?

And so now tell our people that same thing.

Providence Baptist Church in Manhattan

Yeah, so we are a Reformed Baptist church, church plant that just started. We came from a previous church that we restarted the church here this fall. We are confessional, we subscribe to the 1689. We believe in expiratory preaching, meaningful membership, congregational singing, these types of things that we just use are pretty ordinary, but in New York, they�re kind of rare.

So, yeah, that�s the nutshell of what our church is. We preach the gospel, we try to emphasize that in everything that we do and say, yeah.

So Andy, I was there, like I said earlier, about a month ago and was preaching. What are you on? It�s about 63rd Street, just to the east of Central Park, right? So it�s easy to get to, and you�re meeting at a place called the Rock Church, is that right?

Yeah, so we are on 62nd and Lexington, so our address is 153 East 62nd Street. We meet in a building that is owned by a church called Rock Church, which is different from the Rock Church. There are multiple campuses for the Rock Church, which I think is an NAR church, but Rock Church is an Old Line Pentecostal church, and I somehow ran into the folks at Rock Church a few years ago and struck up a friendship with them, and they invited us to come and use their building.

So we have, honestly, a really great relationship with them, and they�re meeting on Sunday mornings in their building there on the bottom edge of the Upper East Side. And what�s the coffee place across the street?

I like that. You know, honestly, I don�t remember the name of it. I don�t really drink coffees, so I�ve never been there.

Why Reformed Baptist Confessionalism Matters

Okay, well, when I think of the landscape of New York, and particularly Manhattan, I think of certain bigger names and people that try to redeem the city, and this, that, and the other. What�s the church on, I don�t know, is it 52nd or 3rd or something?

What are the famous churches in New York? Redeemer, Tim Keller? What�s the other one right there? Calvary? Calvary. What are the other big ones? What�s like a famous. Yeah, that�s what I was thinking of, Times Square Church, yeah.

And so, when you think of these churches, these maybe larger churches, and maybe people know about them, what�s the need for a Reformed Baptist church, expository preaching, Christ-centered, making sure to proclaim the good news?

Are you saying these other churches don�t do that? Are you saying they don�t focus on that? I know you�re not saying any of those, but this is no Compromise Radio, so I�m trying to get something out of you.

Yeah, so, I mean, if we�re just putting it out there, yeah, there�s basically dead mainline churches, like Episcopal, PCUSA, United Methodist, those types of churches. So you go in, they own buildings, and they have no people.

And then there�s churches that have been planted in the last 30 years that typically don�t have buildings, but they do have people, and those are churches that I would consider to be part of broader evangelicalism, and those churches are all about renewing the city, they exist for the city, they want to renew the church, or renew the city culturally and socially and economically, and then, perhaps lastly, spiritually.

So their priorities are all over the place. The theology of the pastors is usually all over the place. Many of the pastors are universalists, they�re virtually all egalitarian, even if their church happens to subscribe in name only to the Westminster Confession, so that�s what�s happening at Redeemer these days.

Some of their pastors loosely hold to the Westminster Confession, but a lot of them just, it�s a job. So I mean, honestly, Hillsong and Redeemer are almost identical, except with a different target market.

It�s the same philosophy of ministry. Broadly speaking, it�s the same training. It�s the same, I mean, everybody gets their training at Redeemer City to City, and then they launch out and plant some kind of church with unique branding, but it�s basically the same osteological, speaker-sensitive, I mean, if you go down the rabbit hole on YouTube and Vimeo and stuff, you can find the videos of the founders of Redeemer City to City saying that they got their ideas from Willow Creek.

So it�s the same type of stuff, with just a slightly different outward-facing brand.

Hmm, that�s a good analysis we have today on No Compromise Radio, Pastor Andy Woodward, Providence Baptist Church, New York City, �The City. And whenever I�m in close to San Francisco, they call that �The City.

But this is really �The City. Out of all cities in the world, this is �The City. Since your church there that you are allowed to shepherd, to be an under-shepherd, it�s confessional, that is, it confesses that the Scriptures teach what�s in the London Baptist Confession of 1689.

Tell our listeners why that�s so important, especially in light of these churches right there in the city that are celebrity, right? So you have Tim Keller, and so he�s resigned from being the pastor, and I know he�s struggling with cancer, which I wouldn�t wish on anyone, but he�s kind of going to be pulling back, right?

One day he�ll die of something. And then you have Hillsong, and of course there�s been recent allegations, and I think the pastor there has stepped down. What happens to the next generation of some of these churches?

Is it, �Okay, celebrity�s gone, then what I mean, when you�re gone, hopefully the church will hire somebody that subscribes to what the church believes, 1689, so we have some continuity. See where I�m going there?

What�s your thoughts on that?

Law, Gospel, and the Role of Confessions

Yeah. I think that the main reason�so, my last church did not subscribe to 1689. We were, I�d say more broadly, we were Calvinistic and we were Baptist, but we weren�t Reformed Baptist. We weren�t confessional in that sense, and one could even say that we were more towards New Covenant theology.

But one of the issues that we came to deal with was this issue of very loose definition of sin, and kind of getting away from a defined use of the law as defining sin, and so then sin kind of became anything that someone says is sin is sin, which is just a breeding ground for legalism.

And so that�s where we felt like the 1689 can really help us by being far more detailed in serving as guardrails and guiderails, because you have to use the law properly if you�re going to be preaching the gospel.

If you don�t do that, it really undercuts the gospel by laying a faulty foundation and people will be ridden with guilt for things that are not sin. I used this illustration in a sermon a couple weeks ago about the there�s a meme about a guy who�s sitting there talking to his either counselor, therapist, pastor or priest or somebody, and he says, �I need to confess that sometimes I like to roll around in the dirt and pretend like I�m a worm.

And the pastor goes, �Okay, that�s weird, but not a sin. And so we have to realize, like, people can have different convictions on things that are not in the Bible, and that�s okay. They don�t all have to be clones of me.

Like, let�s say that you�re Mike Ebendorf and you enjoy bicycling. That�s great. It�s not sinful to enjoy recreation or to go on a nice vacation or to drive a car that�s not 40 years old. So honestly, that�s one of the reasons for us going in a more confessional route, because it�s providing more detailed guide rails, especially on the definition of sin, the use of the law, and the freedom that we have in Christ, and that the Church is not to be a slave to a domineering pastor�s personality or opinion, things of that nature.

So at the same time, we clearly see in a lot of denominations that your statement of faith isn�t necessarily what keeps you faithful, because if that was the case, they wouldn�t be starting a new Presbyterian denomination every couple of years, because the Westminster hasn�t changed.

So I�ve come to really believe that the Lord is the one who keeps us. The power of the Spirit through the Gospel of Jesus is the one who holds us. It�s not our confession, it�s not our baptism, it�s not our tribal identity, it�s Jesus.

But a good confessional faith sure helps.

The Relationship of Law and Gospel

That is so true, and what I was thinking about, Andy, as you were discussing that, if the law is wrong, then the Gospel is wrong, then what you end up getting is what you just described. And I could describe it in another way, if people read David Platt�s book, Radical, it is a radical way to live which comes from a radical distortion of law and Gospel, and the Gospel is not God is angry, and God is a God of wrath, that�s not good news.

The law tells us that, and should shut us up, Romans 3, 319. But the good news is found in the person and work of Jesus, that He in fact loves sinners. So when the law is wrong, then a lot of times the Gospel is wrong, and then even in the city that you minister in, you�ve got a lot of people who don�t even have the Gospel as the primary, of first importance, paramount thing, because it devolves into the social Gospel as something that�s the most important, and the social Gospel, to me, is no Gospel because it�s really law.

How do we love our neighbor? And of course, loving neighbor is good, but that�s not the Gospel. Loving God is good, that�s not the Gospel. The Gospel is a triumphant indicative, as Machen said, from outside of us, and it needs to be proclaimed.

And so, I know this is, you know, you�re the guest today, and you�re supposed to talk, but I couldn�t stop myself. And I think the other thing that the Confessions will help with is, you know, there are many people that say they believe in �sola� with an �a� scriptura, but essentially they believe in �solo� scriptura, and that is instead of the Bible alone, it�s just the Bible only, and they don�t see the work of the Spirit of God in church history with good tradition, i .e., the Confessions of Faith, like the 1689 or the Westminster Standards.

And so, you know, you don�t have to reinvent the wheel, right? You look at the text and you go, �Hmm, having been justified, that seems to be present tense. Maybe we�re justified on an ongoing basis like Rome would say.

No, no, we�ve already dealt with that issue and that passage, and the 1689 is brilliant when it comes to justification. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. One of the things that I said to your folks on that Saturday night when I was allowed to give them a little it�s not a pep talk, but just from scriptures, maybe some wisdom from the outside, and I wasn�t trying to be demeaning and I wasn�t trying to be like I�m some big shot, but I don�t know if you remember I said to them, �Why am I here, right?

I have a church to minister to, and taking my weekend away from that particular church with my wife and I, and here, 15 people, maybe 35 or 50 on a Sunday, small little church, why am I here And the answer to that question is the same answer to this question, �Why is Andy on the radio show today

And that is to say, I love pastors who will preach the gospel in season and out of season, and it doesn�t matter how many people show up, people in this particular place where the Lord has planted you need to hear expository preaching.

You were in Romans 5 when I was there, you�re probably in Romans you were in 519 when I was there, you�re probably in 520 now, but they need sequential where are you now?

We just finished chapter 7, so we�re starting Romans 8 right now.

Oh boy, you were on rocket fuel there!

Yeah, well, I did one sermon for 7, 13 through 25, so I just kind of packaged that, so chapter 7 was three sermons.

Okay, good. But anyway, that�s why I want to support young men like you in gospel ministry, because I needed that when I was younger, and then I want to pass the baton on to the next generation, and it�s exciting to be able to go to the city and say, �Do you know what?

Is there a church here that preaches the gospel faithfully, verse-by-verse, week in, week out, and they�re not here to transform the city? And by the way, I just was there a month ago, the city didn�t seem transformed to me, or redeemed.

Yeah, I thought to myself, �How is that working out for you It�s been 30 years of this, and I mean, the cities across America all have dozens and dozens of church planters who have been trained by the same ideology of renewing the culture, renewing the city, and these are the very places that are burning, because the people throwing bricks through the windows are being told that those ideas are valid.

Critical theory, all that stuff, is a useful analytical tool, it�s a useful way of thinking and analyzing your theology and your culture. So it�s like, across the nation, this ideology is spread, and not only is it unbiblical, but it doesn�t work either, practically speaking.

Yeah, that�s amazing, right? If we were pragmatist-only, which we don�t want to be, we�re like, �This doesn�t even work I mean, if we said, �This was a biblical philosophy, so let�s do it no matter what okay, fine, right?

Adoniram Judson, after 30 years, hardly any converts. We get that. But here they�re pouring all this money into the city, and then what? So here�s what I like, Andy, about the ministry that the Lord has given you and your philosophy of ministry and theology.

I could take your sermons, and with maybe an exception or two, right, like I learned the hard way about cars, right, nobody has cars in the city, right? But you could take the sermon that you preached last Sunday from Romans 7 and go to Sri Lanka and preach the exact same sermon, or you could go to Mississippi or the cornfields of Iowa, and it�s not a city message, it�s not having the focus people in the city to redeem the city, it�s faithful to the text, and then of course God redeems people, He sanctifies them, they go preach the gospel, and the city�s not necessarily transformed, but people, the elect people in the city are transformed, right?

The Gospel Is the Same Everywhere

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And one of the things that I first, when I first moved to the city, 2014, so coming up on seven years ago, I started going to a lot of these training meetings with Redeemer City the city, and meeting some of these senior successful pastors from around the city, and they would always talk about how New Yorkers were different, you know, these are unique people, you can�t talk to them and treat them the same way you would somebody from Sri Lanka or Idaho or Mississippi.

But you know, now fast forwarding a few years, and I�m not in those meetings anymore, and I am responsible for a congregation of people, and I realized that what is a New Yorker? A New Yorker is somebody who moved here from somewhere else.

So they�re literally from Sri Lanka, and from Idaho, and from the Mississippi, and from wherever. So the idea that New York is a unique type of person is just not even true. They�re from all over. You know, you�re finding Texans and people from North Carolina and New Englanders and European people, and just all over.

But they need the same gospel here that they need anywhere. And so there�s sort of a I don�t know if it�s implied or if it�s explicitly taught, but there�s this Gnostic sense, too, of we have a secret knowledge, we have a special way of reaching New Yorkers, and it�s, �Oh, here, buy my book, and it�ll teach you this special way to have a megachurch, and just do my training.

That kind of thing.

Church Planting, Financial Pressure, and Seeker-Sensitive Models

Talking to Pastor Andy Woodward today, Providence Baptist Church in New York City, Andy, I know New England isn�t exactly the same as Manhattan. But in my mind, I�ve watched church planters identify, rightly so, New England is a place that needs the gospel.

There�s not many people there preaching the gospel. It�s, by profession, 80 Roman Catholic. We need to send people into New England, and of course, Southern Baptists send a lot in. And then, same thing happens in Manhattan.

When you and I were talking about that, it�s a place where church leadership and denominational leadership rightly understand there are not many good churches there, so let�s go send men in. Same philosophy, New York, New England.

But then, why do so few of those men stay? What�s the deal with that?

Honestly, I haven�t really thought about this in recent months and years, but I know a decent handful of church planters who have come and go. If we�re talking very practical things, a lot of it�s financial, because they can�t pay the bills anymore.

But a big part of those financial problems are based on the model, because they�re modeling, they�re building their church on a seeker-sensitive model, which requires basically a huge budget. And they�re hiring professional and unsaved musicians from the best conservatories in the city.

They�re paying for the pretty nice venues and nice spaces, which is a fine thing, but then they�re putting on a production on Sunday, Sunday morning, and it costs a lot to do that. And they�re designing it with the unbeliever in mind, trying to make the church for the non-Christian, which I think the Bible�s very clear that that�s not the mission of the church.

The mission of the church is not to entertain unbelievers on Sunday morning, but actually to make disciples. So I think that that model is a large part of why a lot of church planters leave the city, because they run out of money, because they�re spending money like there�s no tomorrow.

I think there�s also a difference in their definition of success. They come expecting to light the world on fire, to transform the city, to have people come in flocking into their church as soon as they throw a sign out on the sidewalk.

And, you know, they might build it up to 10, 20, 30, 40 people after a few years, but they view that as not the success they were looking for. Then stress comes, financial hardship comes, maybe they have another kid and they need to move into a larger apartment, and the wife is saying, �I just can�t deal with this anymore.

And they get a job offer somewhere in the Midwest, and out they go. So that�s a very, very common story. Sadly, there�s also a very common story of pastors failing in ministry theologically, morally, just abandoning the faith, or their spouses abandoning the faith, their wives abandoning the faith.

And, honestly, I see a strong correlation between that and the shaky, at best, theological training that they�re getting when they come here, this cultural renewal theology, which really is kind of a Rauschenbusch-type, social gospel-type theology, which is honestly very works-based.

So Sunday is really a grind, it�s really a drain, it�s exhausting, trying to keep up that, you know, it�s like you�re running on a treadmill, and church is just one big treadmill, it�s one big marathon.

I had some hard times here in 2020 before we restarted the church in August, and I�ve preached more weeks consecutively since then than I had in the previous three years, but I�m more rested and refreshed today, and my wife says I�m less stressed now than she�s ever seen me, ever known me.

So there really is something that is restful about the gospel. We don�t have to be burned out, we don�t have to be running the ragged edge of disaster, and I don�t think that that is the way that God has designed it to be.

I think that when we�re doing that, that�s of our doing, not of God.

Supporting Gospel Ministry in New York City

Good advice from Pastor Andy in New York City. If people want to go to the website and listen to some of the sermons there, or if you�re visiting the city these days, pbc, Providence Baptist Church, pbc .nyc, that�s a full website address, pbc .nyc, and of course, if you�ve been listening to the last, I don�t know, 3 ,000 no-compromise radio shows, I don�t ask for money, and when people ask for money all the time, I usually bust their chops, and the only people I ask money for on no-compromise radio is I always tell people, Andy, that if you�re a millionaire, you can help support the radio ministry, and if you�re not, you can ask a millionaire to do it.

I�ll make an exception this time because I�m not asking for myself. Lots of needs at Providence Baptist Church, and if you go to the website there, I�m sure you could either mail something in, or maybe there�s something on the website where they could give, but if you have some money after you�ve given to your local church sacrificially and generously and eagerly, and you think, you know what, I�d like to see gospel preaching faithfully week in and week out in New York City, you could direct some funds to pbc .nyc, I�m sure they�ll be used for gospel ministry, and Andy, I�m looking forward to sending some ladies down to New York pretty soon, and I think they�re going to go visit during Christmastime and try to be the encouragers up in New England to the folks down there in New York City because we love the ministry, and by the way, if they show up on a Sunday, in terms of drama and ballets and all that stuff, I think they�ll just get some songs about Jesus, some scripture reading about Jesus, a sermon about Jesus in a benediction on behalf of the work of the Father through the Son by the Spirit,.

Right? Yeah, and they might get some food too because we do have a fellowship meal.

Oh yeah, and here�s how the fellowship meal went. It was fun. I mean, my back was hurting so I couldn�t enjoy it like I normally would, but so after we got done preaching, there was some, well, I think my wife and I slipped across the street and we got a quick coffee at that place called Burnt or something, I don�t know what it�s called, and then we had the fellowship meal, and it was authentic Indian food made by real Indian folks, and then we sang a few hymns in the little hall there, and it was, I don�t know if lovely is a good word, but in my mind, it was lovely.

It was wonderful.

Yeah, so we do this, we do a joint lunch with Rock Church, and they�re a heavily Indian congregation, and they make authentic curry and rice and several different things every week, and then we sing some songs together, and then we pray together, and it�s, we�re out by 1 .30, and it�s really a blessing.

It�s encouragement to us and to them as well.

Amen. Pastor Andy Woodward, thanks for being on No Compromise Radio. I will see you soon. God bless you. Thank you so much. 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 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.