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Gimme Sympathy (Part 1)
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. It is a Sabado. It is Saturday. Is that it? Sabado? Domingo? What�s Saturday? It can�t be lunis, can it? Martes? Midvach? Oh, to be multilingual, pretending.
I think as time has gone on, especially in light of the cancer prognosis last year, doctors, radiation, biopsies, pharmaceuticals, and other things, I�m hoping that I am more empathetic. I�m hoping that I�m kinder.
I�m hoping that I exhibit more gentleness. God has a way of using trials to sand the rough edges off of us, doesn�t he? I�m 57 years old, and again, I�m hoping, I mean, just with the doctrine of progressive sanctification, I�m sure I have more patience now and gentleness and kindness than I did when I first got saved.
Otherwise, there�d be no progressing in sanctification. I would never want to say�well, I would want to, but I would know it was not right to say, �Oh, yeah, I�m more sympathetic now, and I�m more kind, and I�m really growing so much.
I don�t mean that at all. I�m just saying cancer has a way of doing a number on you, especially when it is in the hands of a sovereign God as He does soul surgery with cancer. All that to say, I think I�m also more perturbed and more disgusted with seeker-sensitive church growth techniques.
So I don�t know if both can be true. I�m hoping they both can be true, where I say to myself, you know, I want to be kinder to people if they are going through a difficult time. Where�s my paper back here?
Here it is. But I�m also fed up with some of these other things. And you can probably see that on the Twitter feed, our NoCo feed. I have Hootsuite, and then I just post something to Hootsuite, and then it posts it to both of those others.
And as you notice, I don�t really go back and forth or type a lot or respond. The times that you hear me respond will typically be on Twitter, and they�ll be in between sets. The Twitter flurries are usually when I�m at the gym.
So that�s the way that goes. I received in the mail, all this intro for this, I received in the mail at the church a special little 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, so 6 pages times 2, that�s 12, 13 pages, something like that, 14 pages with the cover.
And on the front, it�s got a little bunny, kind of a cute bunny. And it says Easter with felt brings hop. And then there�s a little E drawn in. Easter brings hop, modern postcard. There�s a little bunny there.
On the back, because, you know, you�d probably turn it to the back before you had to open up the seal, what�s this all about? It is to the current pastor, maybe there�s something I don�t know about. And it says, �Get more people to hop into church.
One in five people are undecided about going to church on Easter Sunday. Change the statistics. Invite people to church. Now, of course, I think if you preach the gospel to them and say, �Come to this worship service where you�ll learn more about this Jesus so you�ll know the object of the faith and the one in whom you should believe and the one in whom you have to do on Judgment Day, invite people to church.
I�m not against that. As you�ve heard me say over the last eight years, I think you should preach the gospel before you invite them to church. But anyway, that�s a different subject. �Small letters inviting the community to your Easter service is the perfect opportunity to introduce your place of worship to the unchurched or re-engage those who�ve fallen away.
Modern, that�s the postcard company, modernpostcard .com, forward slash growmychurch. See where I�m coming from? See where the ire is? See how much gentler I am? �Modern can help you reach thousands of people and boost attendance with quality invite mailers, impactful promotional handouts, large format displays and more.
I mean, you know, I know people are depraved. I know they�re dead in trespasses and sins. I know that they�re alienated from God. I know they�re blinded by Satan. I know that they�re evil and perverse and full of iniquity, and I know that they can do no good thing.
And 1 Corinthians 2, verse 14, they�re spiritually unable and they�re ignorant. But boy, with the large format displays and more, come on. Okay, so what is this actually? It�s a direct mail, and that�s on page, well, technically two.
Direct mail increases church attendance and growth. I mean, if that was all it took, you know, I want to give you my sorrows and woes about being here in New England, the pastor�s graveyard. If this is all we need is direct mail, I have sure wasted a lot of time in the last 21 years.
I mean, just preaching through the Bible verse by verse and trying to encourage people for evangelism and singing songs that would honor the Lord Jesus, having public Scripture reading, baptisms, Lord�s Supper.
What a—if they just would have sent me this earlier, it would have been so much better. Proven to help businesses of all types acquire new customers and boost sales, direct mail is equally successful in helping churches increase attendance and growth.
I mean, come on, you can get more goats to your church. That�s fascinating. If you haven�t used this time-tested marketing method as part of your outreach efforts, consider these hard-to-ignore facts.
Okay, I have not read this, as you know. We don�t do any preparation work on the show. I�m sure it shows. This is all off the top of my head. I have a day job. When Pastor Steve and I do the show, I�d say nine times out of ten we have no idea what we�re going to talk about, and then just, you know, there are things like this that just exist around the orbits of local church buildings and mailboxes.
That�s why I come in here to do the shows on Saturday afternoons. I could be at the gym tweeting. Number one hard-to-ignore fact. Direct mail response rates outperform all digital channels by 700%, nearly.
Number two, 79 of customers either read or scan advertising mail sent to their household. Yeah. Is this a check or is it a bill? Unlike email, postcards have 100 open rate, which means your message is guaranteed to be seen and read.
I think all of you have experienced some of these things. You have a church, assembly, community, fellowship, and they buy into this, and then they buy into it, and they purchase these, and they send them out.
Come, you know, hear New Church, Rad Church, Excel Church, Overboard Church, Cutting Edge Church. By the way, if your church is called Excel, and you�re kind of backwards, and you�re not really cool and hip or trendy, and your body�s kind of broken down, and you�re poor, and you have a dead-end job, and your kids are just normal, could I come?
If I�m that person, can I come to church? What if I�m not excelling? I mean, out of all the names in the world, Excel, really? So, you get one of these postcards, and you go, �Oh, I think I�ll go there for Christmas.
I think I�ll go there for Easter. And so, this company tries to sell you. You�ve got quality printing, and you can advertise your church in countless ways, postcards, squares, business cards, rack cards, door hangers, bookmarks, vertical folds, tri-folds, panoramic folds, panoramic tri-folds, verticals, presentation folders, letterheads, envelopes, notepads, notecards, posters, yard signs, X-frames, retractables, vinyl banners.
I mean, that is a way to really customize the professional design to talk about the community egg hunt. Come on. Celebrate Easter. Well, here�s one that at least isn�t too bad. You can see Jesus�s beard, but not His face, and His hands out, and it says, �He is risen.
Come celebrate the resurrection at First Baptist Church. Okay, you know, I mean, I�m not buying into the postcard thing and trying to grow your church this way or anything like that, but I at least like that.
�He is risen. Celebrate the true meaning of Easter. Okay, fine, I like that. No greater love, K-N-O-W, but the N-O is kind of a little more bold, and no greater love. So you can either no greater love or no greater love.
The egg hunt. Okay, you want to have your kids do some egg hunts. I don�t care. What do I care? Maybe do that on Saturday, though. That�d be better than on a Sunday, don�t you think? Get up and you want to know what the Easter money left you.
Hop, hop, hop. This is true. One day, I believe it was the early �70s, maybe there was a sale or something like that at the local Baker supermarket or Hy-Vee in Nebraska. I think this was pre-Hy-Vee, so it was Baker�s, or did they have Piggly Wigglies back then?
They probably did, but not in Nebraska. We always went to Baker�s, and mom served rabbit for Easter. Now that is a Nebraska moment right there. That is something that even our Scott Clark would be ashamed of.
I�m eating one of these Andy�s mints. The secretary, her job is manifold, and one of her jobs is to keep the candy stocked with professional designs customized for your church. Usually she just has the last secretary, she had all kinds of candy and snacks and malted milk balls, you know those?
And then the new secretary, who�s just as proficient as the old one in all the church things, but when it comes to candy, she doesn�t, she doesn�t, she�s been dropping the ball. It�s just, it�s just minty things for your breath.
And so I don�t know what happened, but she got some Andy�s mints the other day, so I�m very happy with that. When was the last time you had Andy�s mint? Hmm? Can you think of it? What if I said this? I know that the Lord builds a church, Matthew 16, but we�ll give you free Andy�s mints if you come and worship with us.
And underneath one of the seats, there�s a gift certificate for one of these industrial secretarial size Andy�s mints with 240 mints, and you can go down to Costco, cash that in. Only if you excel. Well, a few more of these that you can get is you can get a Palm Sunday celebration with some palm fronds.
When I first got to the church here, people wondered where the palm fronds were the first Sunday that I said it was Monday. Palm Monday. It might have actually been Monday, by the way, just for those of you.
So then it shows a bunch of rabbits. This next page is really killer. Watch your congregation multiply. So let�s see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 rabbits I see. On the front page, there�s only one rabbit. But after you send out all these postcards, trifolds, flip-overs, nonprofits, business cards, squares, door hangers, bookmarks, panoramic folds and panoramic trifold, vertical folds, now we�ve got eight rabbits.
By the way, if you order by March 2nd, you get 500 free postcards. Now the only problem is you got to mail these, right? You got to mail them and figure out who to mail them to and re-engage people. If only people would have told me, it would have been so much nicer.
Well, this is Mike Abenroth, No Compromise Radio Ministry. Always biblical, always provocative, always in that order, always gentle, always kind, etc. You know, it�s like the people that, you know, leave the church here and they go to the other church and they got the Easter egg hunts and the helicopter drops the stuff and you�ve got, I don�t know, some Incredibles.
Remember the cartoon, The Incredibles? You got some Incredibles, you know, that are there at the door welcoming the kids. I mean, really? Captain Nemo? No, not Captain Nemo, Nemo, Finding Nemo, Finding Captain Nemo at the bottom of the sea.
Oh, brother. If it was just as simple as that, I regularly tell people when they want, remember we had talked about mission statements and stuff like that, I mean, here�s the mission. We want to present Christ Jesus through the Scriptures primarily, right?
There are some songs, of course, that present Him very well, but we would like to, through verse-by-verse exposition of all the Scriptures, talk about the Lord Jesus. And if that�s not enough for you, then this really is the wrong church for you.
If you need all the other things that go along with it, I mean, and I saw some things on social media this week, you know, for God�s sake kind of thing, don�t let your children choose the church. And why would people say that?
I didn�t read the articles, but I read articles similar to that and talked about it before on the show. Children, by definition, are immature. I was talking to my daughter last night, my youngest daughter, Gracie, is 16, and I said, �Gracie, no offense, but how can you at 16 be really wise?
How can you have a life of knowledge applied, if that�s going to be our working definition of wisdom for the day And it is, since it�s my show. I saw one of these Easter cards that said that knowledge is wisdom applied.
The other way around, maybe. It's 48 degrees outside today, Fahrenheit, for all those who live here in the U .S. We have some non-U .S. visitors, listeners, and visitors, too, for that matter. And it was a slushy, nice and warm day, though, so when I was getting some of the ice off the driveway, you didn�t even really need a sweatshirt, just a T-shirt, it�s T-shirt weather.
I didn�t really want a bicycle because it�s still kind of goopy out. If you ever had goopy weather and ridden a bicycle, your back then is extra goopy. So what was I talking about? Nemo, Easter, something about churches, oh, Christ Jesus.
Paul said, �I determined to know nothing among you. I made a conscious effort. I made a plan ahead of time because what if I got there and then I had to see which way the winds were blowing and change my message.
No, in 1 Corinthians 2, Paul knew with these carnal people and these immature people, I�m going to preach Christ to you. Oh, yeah, going back to Gracie, so you just don�t have, just by definition, you can�t be super wise.
I mean, you could be smart and you could have learned some lessons and you could have watched other people make bad decisions and already learned lessons. There�s the beginning of wisdom, of course, and I know the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, so I�m not saying you can�t have any wisdom, but you�re just by definition not mature.
And similarly, with children picking churches, by definition, as much as you love them and care for them and think they�re wonderful and cute and extraordinarily see them as a blessing from God, great, I like that, I understand, good job, good, but you don�t let them pick where you put the 401K.
I mean, I guess if they would have picked it this year, probably up into last week, they would have made some money, but anybody can make money in the market that was happening in 2017. No, you just don�t do that.
You know, did you like it? You know, I think that�s a fair question. Did you like Sunday school? Did you like junior church? Did you like the worship service? I guess in the right way, in the right manner, you could ask such a question.
But you should be saying something like, did the pastor teach the Bible? What did you learn from the Bible? Did your Sunday school teacher teach the Bible? What did you learn about from the Bible? Would you learn about Jesus from the Bible as your Sunday school teacher taught it?
That�s what we�re after. It goes back to the day where, here in New England especially, in the 1700s, you would say, well, you know, driving home in your, you know, horse and buggy carriage, what was the sermon about?
Was it from the Bible? Did it extol Christ Jesus? Was the pastor faithful to the text? And that�s how you would have roast pastor on Sunday, by asking yourself the question along with the family and the dad leading the discussion, did the pastor talk about Jesus today?
If so, what did he say? Please recap the sermon and then how is this relevant in our lives? It is relevant, but how is it relevant? How do we now go about critiquing messages? Well, with the same philosophy with these Easter brings hop, hope, multiplying like rabbits.
What do we do? You bring in romance novels, feminine novels and writings in the 1700s, Ann Douglas chronicles all this in the Feminization of American, something or other of America, I can�t remember, I have her Harvard Ph .D. thesis here someplace, and it would be a roast pastor conversation after the influence of Unitarianism and Feminism, it would be this, �Well, how did you feel?
How did you feel during the message? How did you feel after the message? Does the pastor seem empathetic? Did he seem above everyone? Did he seem like he was relating to the congregation? Was he really good with eye contact and stories and his approach and his demeanor?
Isn�t that crazy? That is crazy, but that�s exactly what has happened. I mean, I put my mug out on YouTube videos and my voice out on the radio shows and podcasts now. Oh, you�re just a podcast. That�s true.
No longer on the radio, just a podcast. I get times all the, you know, I get offers all the time, pay money to be on a radio show, but if you�re out there and you want to carry the show on your radio show, you can do that.
You can do it for no charge, assuming that you don�t change the content, assuming that you play all the shows, assuming that, assuming that. Just write me first, then I�ll give you the okay after I make sure you�re copacetic.
That's a good name for the show, �Theologically Copacetic. Yeah, yeah, like a good Christian punk band. Can you have Christian punk? Can you have Christian heavy metal? Can you have Christian hip-hop?
Can you have Christian rhythm blues, Christian jazz, Christian classical, Christian contemporary? Can you have any of those? Good question. What we�ve seen, though, in America and other Western countries and Eastern countries, for that matter, everything�s just man-centered.
From the promo, how do you get people, how do you keep them? I guess if the adage is true, you keep people by what you win people with, you keep them with, or you�ve got to keep them with. So if it is kids� fun, then you�ve got to keep having kids� fun or the family leaves.
If it is cool advertising, don�t you have to keep sending people that? How would that work? How does this strategy work? If it�s, well, you can go to a lot of other places and hear professionally done music and have cool blue lights with a little bit of strobe and parking lots that will thrill you, thrill your soul, but there�s only one place in the world that you can go to hear Bible teaching that extols Christ Jesus from His Word, and that�s at a local church.
That�s at a local church. So if you�re going to get anything right, you better get that right. I�m sure there are plenty of things here at Bethlehem Bible Church that we could do better at. We�re supposed to end it with a preposition like that.
There are many things that we could, in which we could excel at. Where was you? Where was you at? Remember that Brian Regan thing? Classic. But when Paul said, �I�ve made a determination to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, which is a Greek word, which could mean and or even, and Christ and in Him crucified, or even Him crucified.
And I think it�s the second one because earlier in chapter 1, people want wisdom, people want signs, people want prophetic things, people want signs and wonders and wisdom, and Paul said, �I know what you want, but I�m going to give you the crucified Messiah.
How�s that? I mean, the Messiah is one thing. We all want the Messiah, don�t we? But the crucified Messiah, the Messiah that�s on the cross naked, people spitting, hitting, wagging their heads, pointing their fingers, mothers telling their children don�t look, and Paul said, �That�s what we�re going to do.
We�re going to preach this Messiah. And yes, there will be a theology of glory one day, but here�s the theology of the cross first, the crucified Messiah, Jesus Christ, even Him crucified. Now, I don�t know what kind of postcard you can put to take the offense of the cross away.
Is it with little bunnies? I mean, even if I did do this and then they show up and they�re like, �Wait a second, your message has nothing to do with this nice little sweet Easter bunny. So, if you want to get more people to hop into church, encourage the people by showing the congregation Christ Jesus and then they go out to evangelize other people.
My name is Mike Abendroth, the gentler, kinder Mike Abendroth, NoCompromiseRadio .com.
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.