Church Repents of Firing Pastors

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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

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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.'"

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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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

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and it's early in the day today in real time in our studios here in Burbank, California.

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And I don't know, you just, if you don't talk much, then your voice is deeper.

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And so maybe this is my radio voice. Maybe this is what I should always do, just get up early and then not say anything until I get to the studio, which is actually no studio at all.

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It's just my office, technically study. I do some officing here, but I mainly study here.

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And so I try to call my office my study.

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Okay, well, I have a variety of things to talk about on No Compromise Radio. We basically want to do this. We want to push you and goad you and prompt you to study the person and work of Jesus Christ, the one who never compromised.

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And in light of that, we don't wanna compromise either. And so I just like to talk about things in a blunt way, in a direct way, in a no compromise way, always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

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And I have a variety of different subjects. You know, sometimes on Tuesdays, it's Tuesday guy unless he's on sabbatical. Wednesdays, I try to interview some person versus a robot.

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I'm not no robot, I'm not a puppet. And on Thursdays, I try to do positive, encouraging

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K -love Thursdays, something nice and kind and sweet and positive and enlightening.

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And then on Fridays, I think we call them woodshed Fridays. So I don't know what this day is.

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So what day is today? Oh, I did see on Christianity Today, the magazine, the one that has on the front,

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Lecrae, why the gospel needs hip hop. Hmm. What would

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Carl Truman say about that? What would Paul the apostle say? Does the gospel need hip hop?

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It does say on the subtitle, rappers like Lecrae are making the truth fierce again.

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Now, I'm not one of these who is anti hip hop due to epistemological, etymological, incredible edibles.

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Remember those when you were a kid? You've got to be old like me to know what incredible edibles are. And Plastigoop, come on, type that thing in.

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This is probably Hasbro toys in the late 60s.

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And you'll have to type it in to figure out what they are. But the gospel doesn't need hip hop.

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I'm glad that hip hop people, we have some here at our church, I'm glad they try to preach the gospel and do in fact preach the gospel in their music.

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But the gospel doesn't need any of this. And when it says making the truth fierce again, but that's not really what

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I'm here to talk about. It has an interesting section in it that is Christianity Today, not hip hop.

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Although hip hop has interesting sections too. Gleanings, it's called.

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Important developments in the world and in the church. And here's one right here.

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Church to former pastors, colon, sorry, exclamation point.

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An Indiana church recently, recently invited four former pastors to return.

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Okay, so far so good. I've been to Indiana a few times and a couple of conferences in Indianapolis.

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My friend Kirby's there, of course, in Indianapolis or someplace close. I always found it fascinating when

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I was in Louisville, which was just south of Indianapolis, I don't know, a few hours. And then

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I would drive due north on whatever highway that is there, through Kentuckiana and then up into Indianapolis.

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I found it fascinating that the time changed or something. But I went in a straight line north, directly from south to north and then the time changed.

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So that gives you an idea of the, that is indicative of how crazy people are there in that portion of the world, the netherworld of Indianapolis.

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So four pastors come back. For what reason? Some reunion. You know how you go to churches and then they have down their halls and they have pictures peppered throughout and they have the pastor from 1930 and he had a suit and tie on and glasses.

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Kind of look like, I don't know, Carl Bart or something. I would have loved to hang out with Carl Bart.

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That would have been cool. Talk about the literal resurrection or something and just listen to him. I'd try to sneak around it, but it would have been neat because, hey, he was a religious figure.

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So then they have another pastor and the one that was the pastor in 1990s, he was a big

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Rick Warren fan. So he had the Hawaiian shirt on even though he lived in Indianapolis. As Cameron Buttell says, what does it say when a pastor wears a, of course he was talking about Rick Warren, a

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Hawaiian print shirt in the pulpit. But when he goes to the White House, he puts a suit on. Now, what does that tell you?

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Hmm, that was good insight from my friend there in the City of Angels, the city we live in.

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An Indiana church recently invited four former pastors to return so the congregation could, no, so this is not the old reunion.

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This isn't the pastors' pictures plastered with their portraits in alliteration gone wild.

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Always alliterate as Jay Adams would say. So the church could repent of sins that drove the leaders away.

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That is unbelievable. Unbelievably happy, colon, exclamation point, sorry.

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Now, before I read the rest of this gleanings in this Christianity Today, there are obviously unqualified pastors who haven't been vetted properly and they get in the churches and they run amok and they do all kinds of dastardly things.

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Pastors, all pastors are created beings and finite and they are also fallen.

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Adam's sin credited their account and consequently they're sinful by their nature and by their acts and deeds.

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But they should, they could be. I don't know what I wanna say.

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How do I wanna say this? I looked outside and I got distracted for a moment. If there's some Pete's Coffee around here, I could find some and get some thinking back into my brain here, some five hour energy or something.

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So anyway, sponsor today of No Compromise Radio, five hour energy in my dreams.

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So anyway, what was I gonna say? Talking about pastors and stuff like that. I don't know exactly what

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I was gonna say, but I will say that there are, oh, I know. Some pastors are sinful and there are bad apples in every bunch, right?

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One bad apple spoils a whole bunch, girl. So I'm not saying that pastors are off the hook just because they're pastors.

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I mean, pastors do dumb things. Some pastors should get fired. Some pastors do blow out of ministry.

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And I have seen that with my very own eyes and it's not a pretty thing and it just seems to happen and it gives a bad name to Christianity and it's sad.

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The Spirit of God though, He, in His good pleasure, gives gifts and qualifications and makes men into leaders.

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And so it is possible to be qualified according to the elder qualifications of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.

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It can be done. God raises up, it's all His credit, it's all His power, it's all

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His sovereign plan to have men have qualifications to take care of the church that Jesus purchased with His own blood.

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And so there are bad pastors and they need to be run out according to 1

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Timothy 5. So there are churches that fire a pastor and I say, amen, they couldn't fire him faster.

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But more often than not, the cases that at least

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I know of in my ad hoc anecdotal evidence. But seriously, most churches run out pastors and they're not running them out because of qualifications gone wrong.

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They didn't really like the guy as much and most of the time, it's shame on the churches because they didn't vet the guy enough.

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They didn't do enough research. And so if you're listening today and you're on a pulpit committee, a pastoral search team, do your homework.

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I'm begging you, I'm imploring you. This pastor is going to come in and you're gonna give him the keys to the kingdom, not literally, a lower case, and your family, your group, your people, your world is going to be changed in one way or another.

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And I'm hoping it's going to be for the good, but if you don't do your homework, maybe your expectations aren't going to be matching the delivery.

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So instead of saying, just a side note here, I should do a whole show on pastoral search committees. But instead of saying, can you send me a couple of your sermons so we can listen to them?

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You know, in the old days, cassette tapes, now of course, MP3 and everything else. Don't say that. He's going to send you his best, wouldn't you?

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I don't send my worst sermons to people if I'm candidating. This is the only church I've ever candidated for.

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I guess I sent resumes out to other churches in school and this is the one who didn't vet me.

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Tell your candidate, please, if you think this is, you know, the person's got the qualifications and you like the education and you like the resume, you like the experience, you like the work ethic, you like what you've seen so far, say, can you send me your last 10 messages?

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Now, if the guy's already a pastor, you can just go to his website and pull them up, but listen to the last 10, because there's probably a real zinger in there.

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I mean that in a positive way. Really excellent sermon. And of course, to God be the glory.

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And there's probably really a bad one in there. And that's to the pastor be the shame.

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But if you say even the bad sermon, the guy's faithful to the text, he doesn't strike me as lazy because he's done the work in the trenches of Exodus Jesus and in his office study, colon exclamation point, et cetera.

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Then you'll get an idea. And just day in and day out, every Sunday, this is the kind of message he'll be delivering.

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And then you call and talk to the other elders and you talk to the church that he was at, that he got fired at last time, but you need to do more of your homework.

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And of course I will be telling the pastor on the other end, if you're a pastor listening and you're candidating elsewhere or a seminary student candidating someplace, you need to vet the church.

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Can I please have the number of the last two pastors so I can call them? What church in the area is most like your church, theologically, philosophically, methodologically, doxologically, liturgically, ecclesiastically, and then call them and say, what's the reputation of that church over there?

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How do they treat their pastors? What are they good at by the Lord's strength and what are they bad at by their own dopiness?

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So you need to do some of those kinds of things. So half the time it's the church's fault, half the time it's the pastor's fault, but this church ran off four pastors and they say, sinfully, and now they brought them back to say, sorry.

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Now, just how great is that? Now, here's what happens. I think the number is, if I recall correctly, if you're at a church and you run your pastor off, now there's a variety of ways to run off a pastor, aren't they?

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Aren't there? Well, you could not give him a raise, take away some of his finances, maybe you make him pay more for medical care.

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You know, it's gonna cost you 20, 25 grand a year to pay for a pastor and his family for his health care.

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Maybe you say, nah, he doesn't need a long -term disability. He doesn't need a dental plan. He doesn't need life insurance.

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He doesn't need an expense report. He doesn't need to go to a conference. He doesn't need any extra learning.

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He doesn't need any of these other things. And so you start pinching pennies. That's a way to run a person off because typically pastors are younger and they've got a growing family and costs go up and then they don't have any money to pay for the bills.

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So then they end up leaving. So that's a way you could try to discourage the guy and you could always be after him.

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You could look around for something in his life. And you know, if you can't find anything, the way to get rid of your pastor is to just throw out the umbrella of you're not loving enough.

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That's what people do. If you can't find anything, you know, if the guy's faithful to his wife and faithful to preach the word and then faithful in every other area, you're just not loving enough.

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80 % of churches that run their pastor out, they'll run the next pastor out as well. And in this particular case, the next pastor.

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And in this particular case, the next pastor. The report in Christianity Today dated, it says

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Canada 495, oh, May, 2013. Peter Jowdry, current pastor of Madison Assembly of God hosted a reconciliation weekend where he and his wife washed the feet of the former pastors whose tenure spanned three decades.

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Although many of the church's 260 current members are not the same men and women who caused the other pastors to leave, quote, wounded and deeply distressed.

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End quote. Jowdry had congregants apologize for misdeeds and unchristlike attitudes, including gossip and publicly maligning them.

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Wow. Now that is thrilling to the soul of this particular pastor.

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Not because of my experience at Bethlehem Bible Church. The people here are wonderful. The people here, we're a family.

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The people have accepted this crazy California person that's transplanted from Nebraska here in New England and I can even bust on their chops about being

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New Englanders and we are knit in gospel ministry in West Boylston. I know it's

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God's will for me to be right here in beautiful downtown Burbank, which isn't so beautiful, by the way, most days, unless the smog's out.

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Most likely the way I see this, as I see it, we have this pastor and he realizes these other pastors got run out.

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Now he may have helped run out. He could have been an associate, it happens a lot, the associate pastor tries to run out the senior pastor because the associate wants to be the senior pastor.

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Hey, come on. But most likely, I don't think that's the case here. I wouldn't know.

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I'll take the high road. And so this pastor realizes these last four guys got the ax, got the machete, figuratively, and we should do something about it.

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Now, the whole foot washing thing, I might wanna, we can talk about that in John 13 and is it really a sacrament and Plymouth brethren, brethren like, and what do we do here?

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But the tenor and the attitude and the idea of trying to love these pastors, who, for the most part, again, there's bad ones, but who just wanna go.

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Just to tell you my view, my experience, and we went through some rough times here, of course, and I just didn't really sign up for that because here's what

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I signed up for, naively. I thought there was a group of people that wanted me to go teach the Bible to them and I've been gifted by God.

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I never asked to teach the Bible. I never promoted myself to teach the Bible. I didn't wanna teach the Bible.

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I don't wanna do any public speaking. I don't wanna be up in front. I don't wanna have to organize and eulogize and all these other things.

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And God saved me and God gave me the gifts and it's God's world and God equipped me. And so therefore, what do you do?

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How high? That's what you do. And it's not what I like or don't like. It's what

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God requires stewards to do. And I want to be found faithful in light of God's Son's faithfulness.

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So when I am not faithful, I still am covered with his faithfulness. And when I'm not faithful,

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I'm not failing in my faithfulness, then Christ has already bought those, purchased those, purchased that debt and he has paid for those sins.

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And he's also given me his spirit to empower me to obey his imperatives in light of the indicatives, right?

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So anyway, pastors just say, I'd like to go minister and then they get there and then the family is related to that family and another family.

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And if you say something bad to one or say some crossword, or if you exhort, or if you criticize, or if you confront and then all the other families are mad and then it's up in arms.

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And I know dozens of men who have had their churches rise up against them.

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And these days, it's a pretty, let's do the no compromise style. It's a pretty sick world when so -called

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Christian congregants take to Facebook and social media sites to go after their pastors and their elders.

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It just drives me insane. Now I'm not anti, anti, anti -Facebook, only anti, anti -Facebook.

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But using Facebook to slander and defame a pastor, what you're really doing is shaming yourself.

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And so there's a way to remove a pastor, and if he's not qualified, or if he's in sin that makes him not qualified, then you have to do things according to the

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Bible. First Timothy, Second Timothy, and Titus are given for a reason.

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That is why when pastors call me and say, I'm in trouble, and the church is trying to get rid of them or have already gotten rid of them, and they've done it not according to the

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Bible, but according to the backdoor shame, withhold money, Facebook, gossip, slander, and the list is the same because the one who's driving it all is

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Satan, using people as puppets and pawns. No wonder God hates divisiveness and slander and these things,

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Proverbs chapter six. So for this church then to say, sorry about that,

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I just, I wonder what the wives of the ex -pastors and the ex -pastors must have been going through emotionally.

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I just imagine they're getting their feet washed, just crying with joy, because I'm telling you, no one knows what it's like, short of pastors and their wives and elders who really elder, because there's no difference really.

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You have a team of elders. No one knows what it's like. No one knows those lonely nights, those sad nights, those nights where you realize that, you know, you're fallen and sinful, but you're really trying to pour your life out for people and then she bite you and they criticize and they condemn and they go behind your back and it is heartbreaking.

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This is not Mike pouring out his life right now, but I've spent many sleepless night in ministry, sad, crying with my wife, just devastated by how people treat other people, usually for a pound of flesh.

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So to think about the joy of reconciliation and, you know, I'm not gonna argue, don't repent of sins that you didn't commit, right?

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I'm not gonna say to someone, you know, please forgive me for my ancestors' sin of holding your ancestors as slaves.

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I'm against slavery all the way, 1 Timothy 1, it's sin to kidnap. But I can only commit my own sins.

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I can only commit myself to the St. Bartholomew's Middle Institution.

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But I can only confess my own sins, but I get the picture and I love the picture. And so if you're a congregant and you've whacked your pastor,

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I'm not talking about Bethlehem Bible Church because I've really been loved by these people here. But if you've gossiped against your pastor or slandered your pastor, don't wait for the church to have one of these big deals like they did in Kentuckiana, because it's probably not gonna happen.

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Why don't you just go? Why don't you track down your pastor? Why don't you track down that elder?

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Why don't you look online and Google or spend 20 bucks to have, you know, an

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FBI guy track them down? Or, you know, it's not FBI, but just, you know, online white page type thing.

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And call your pastor and say, pastor, it's been 15 years. It's been three years. It's been one month.

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It's been five years. And when we went through all that trouble back in that church split time and all that, here's what

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I said about you. Or you don't even have to give them the details. But I said some things that were wrong and sinful against the

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Lord. I've asked the Lord to forgive me. And I'm asking if you have it in your heart to forgive me for those things.

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I'm sorry, please forgive me. How can I restore our relationship? How's ministry going now?

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Wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't that be good? And see, because of the gospel, you can do it. Pride says no.

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Self -righteousness says no. Morality says no. Be good says no. Be nice says, well, maybe yes.

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But the gospel allows us just to do that. I'm sinful. I'm wicked.

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I acted out. Yes, I could blame others. I got caught up in something. Yes, there were some sons of Korah who were the leaders and I followed them, but I did it.

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And I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have spoken that way against God's people. You taught the Bible. You lived it out.

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You were qualified and I just got caught up in things, but I did it and I am sorry and please forgive me.

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And in the mail is a fruit basket just as a small token of my thanks to you. Isn't that good?

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Don't you like the joy of reconciliation? Don't you like the joy of repentance? Don't you like the joy of your salvation?

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Don't you like Jesus who for the joy set before him ran his race in our place, on our behalf, in our stead?

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Good job church in Indiana. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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.

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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.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.