Pastor Carl Gobelman Interview

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00:12

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Ebendroth. Glad you've tuned in today.

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I guess we don't tune into things anymore. I do remember in my first car, which was a 1967

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Chevy Nova II, it's a two -door, you know, it had that old radio. It wasn't a dial, but you have to pull it out and push it in to set your channel on the right thing.

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And that was in actually Omaha, Nebraska. Speaking of Nebraska, Sutton, Nebraska, I have a guest today, and he's pastoring in Nebraska.

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No co -listeners might think that only Pat Ebendroth is a pastor in Nebraska, but Nebraska is a big place.

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And today, Sutton, Nebraska, Pastor Carl Goleman, welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry.

00:59

Thank you, Mike. Thanks for having me. So, Carl, how do we know each other? Well, we met at the

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Pactum Conference back in October, so a little over a month ago, but I've been kind of listening to NoCo for at least a year or so before then.

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Well, I'm offended. We've been going for 14 years. Where have you been? Under a rock,

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I suppose. Yeah, in Nebraska. By the way, before we get into theological discussion, some of my family is from Minden, Nebraska, kind of Grand Island -ish, and we would regularly go to Holdridge and Minden for visiting the family.

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And I want to say we would drive on the 80 and we would drive past Pioneer Village.

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Does any of that make sense? I know where Minden is. We actually have a family that comes to our church from Minden, so they drive just about an hour to get here.

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But yes, I know where Minden, Grand Island, Grand Island, I go to a lot because when you live in a town like Sutton, you got to go somewhere that has a

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Walmart. So that's either York, Hastings, or Grand Island.

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That's exactly right. Well, Carl, my purpose today having you on is I love to hear the sovereignty of God in the lives of men, especially in terms of pastoral ministry.

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And so just imagine we're sitting down having a cup of coffee there, a Pactam coffee in Omaha, Nebraska, and I just want our listeners to get to know you a little bit better.

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Tell me about your background. How'd you grow up? Did you grow up in a religious home, Christian home? And then how did the

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Lord save you? Yeah, okay. So I'm trying to keep this brief. I'm a native

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Chicagoan, born and raised in Chicago. And my dad had been a lifelong

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Baptist. He was kind of lapsed when I was younger. My mom was a lapsed Catholic. And by the time

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I was about seven or eight, my dad got serious about going back to church. And then my mom, not wanting to be outdone, wanted to go back to her roots.

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So for about a year or so, I was kind of being yo -yoed back and forth between a

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Baptist church and a Catholic church. And it was driving me crazy because I wouldn't know whether to stand, sit, kneel, or raise my hands, raise my holy hands and, and shout.

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So, but eventually my mom converted. Then when I was, when

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I got into high school, I kind of left the church for quite a while.

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It wasn't until I was in my mid thirties, after a failed marriage, looking to get married a second time, that the

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Lord grabbed ahold of me and the church we got married in. The pastor there who was very gracious and very patient with me, answered all my annoying questions that I had and just gave me some books to read.

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And as I was reading through these books, some of them, you know, one was more than a carpenter. The other one was the case for Christ, you know, apologetic books like that.

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And it was through reading those books that pretty much all of my intellectual objections to the faith were pretty much answered.

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But it wasn't a little bit until a little bit later that the Lord really grabbed ahold of my heart.

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So that was about 23, 24 years ago. So ever since then,

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I've been, been a Christian from that point on. Carl, you're pastoring

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Emanuel Reformed RCUS Church. Why would I ever have a

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Pato Baptist on this show? What's wrong with me? Because, because the body of Christ is much bigger than our differences on baptism.

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I should have called Scott Clark and see if you pass the litmus test to be on the show or not. I know,

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I know Scott Clark tangentially. I haven't met him in person yet, but we have conversed.

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Well, I brought that up as a joke, obviously, but leading into my next question, tell our listeners a little bit how you move from half

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Catholic, half Baptist to Baptistic to more Reformed. I'm not really that interested in baptism and the mode of, but I'm thinking about confessions.

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I'm thinking about Belgic and Heidelberg and how did you become Reformed as the point?

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Yeah. So, so like I said, I came to faith, it was around 2001. And then because of my background and where I lived, the only thing we had to, to really get content was through Moody Radio in Chicago.

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So I was listening to guys like John MacArthur and others that were on that radio daily.

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So I would listen to a show. And then after listening to enough of MacArthur, you know, you start to develop some

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Calvinistic leanings because he was kind of like a Calvinistic Baptist guy.

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And then from there, kind of graduated over to R .C. Sproul, listening to that a lot. And then, you know, going down that rabbit hole,

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I finally started listening to things like White Horse Inn and Theocast and other things like that, you know, your show, the

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Pactum. But I would say I started becoming Calvinistic about three or four years after conversion, then kind of leaning more

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Reformed, you know, maybe three or four years after that. But it was, it took a while because, you know, of the five points of Calvinism, the

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L in Tulip was the one that really hung me up the most. And then, and then you realize that being

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Reformed is more than just being five points. There's a whole doctrine of worship, a doctrine of the church and things like that.

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And that came later as I was listening to guys like Mike Horton and Kim Riddlebarger.

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And I can't remember the name of the, Rod Rosenblatt and guys like that talk about those things.

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And so I've been Reformed -ish probably for the last 10, 15 years.

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But I was still in largely evangelical churches until finally when

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I decided to go to seminary, which for me was later in life. I mean, I was already in my late forties, early fifties when

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I entered a seminary after working in the corporate world for a while. At that point, I said,

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I needed to be in a Reformed church. So I ended up going into an Orthodox Presbyterian church that was close by.

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And they were Westminster, but always had a love for the three forms. So Belgic and Heidelberg.

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And it was through seminary that I received a call to come here to Sutton. And the

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RCOS is a three forms church. That's how I kind of got into Belgic Confession, Heidelberg Catechism and so on.

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ISKRA Amen. What seminary did you go to, Carl? CARLSON So I went to Mid -America Seminary.

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It's in Dyer, Indiana. They were originally up in Northwest Iowa. So big kind of a Dutch conclave.

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And then in 19, it was like nineties, somewhere in the nineties, they ended up, or maybe late eighties, they ended up moving to Dyer, Indiana.

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So it's Northwest Indiana. It's effectively Chicago. So if you're a native Indiana, you know, a person from native

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Indiana, they would look at that area and say, that's basically Chicago, because it's so very different than the rest of the state.

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But it's in that greater Chicagoland area. And when I was looking for seminaries,

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I was literally went to Google and I said, reform seminaries near me. And that's where Mid -America popped up. It's like,

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I never heard of this place. So I was like, I had to check it out. And they are non -denominational in the sense they don't, they're not a denominational school for any one particular reform denomination, but they were largely comprised of people who came out of the

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Christian Reform Church, then United Reform Churches, and then some Orthodox Presbyterians.

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But they will receive students, Presbyterian Church of America, they've had some

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Baptists in there. So they will serve anybody who desires to come, but they're going to teach, you know, distinctly reformed theology and ecclesiology and things like that.

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Carl, I am from Nebraska, as you know, and now you're living in Nebraska. What's the climate like on a

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Sunday when there's a home game? Oh, sorry. Sorry. I was thinking pro.

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That's Saturday is college. That was a dumb question. Yeah. I retract that question. But no, it's interesting.

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Cause I, you know, on Saturdays when I, I have a, I have an eight -year -old German shepherd and we, you know, I walk her, you know, a couple, three times a day.

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And whenever I walk on a Saturday and there's a home game, the flags are out. And on the lately, the rare chances that Nebraska wins when the people come into church on a

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Sunday morning, I can kind of see it in their step. There's a little bit of a, you know, bounce in their step and a twinkle in their eye and the sun is shining a little bit brighter and the birds are singing a little clearer.

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So yeah, it's, they, they live and die by their Nebraska sports here. Well, I guess you could always start off with lament

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Psalms or something like that. Lately it's, yeah, lately we have been singing laments and imprecatory

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Psalms, I think. There you go. Tell our listeners a little bit about the R -C -U -S and, you know,

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I think probably we have a good amount of Presbyterians who listen or OPC Reformed and we have Baptists who listen.

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I don't know if many listeners would say, I'm in a town visiting and I'm looking for a church and should

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I type in R -C -U -S near me? Right. And I think they should. Tell our listeners why you think that might be a good idea.

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Well, we are a historic Reform denomination. The church started, it has its origin going, dating all the way back to pre -colonial or pre -United

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States days during colonial time. We date back to 1725 with some

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German immigrants up in the, in the Northeast, kind of close to where you're at. And, and through the years that the church grew became one of the larger denominations in the

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United States until around the early 20th century, when there was a whole bunch of, you know, everything was moving toward one big world church.

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Everything wanted to merge. And there was all these mergers between mainline denominations and the

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Reform, the R -C -U -S was one of those denominations that was looking to merge in the late twenties, early thirties.

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And there was a group of German, Germans from Russia, immigrants in the

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Midwest in South Dakota, Nebraska, and that area who had come over in the late 19th century and being

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German, they were pretty stubborn and didn't want to change. And they, they held firm to the teachings of the confessions, particularly the

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Heidelberg Catechism. And when the, the, the denomination wanted to merge these, you know, these faithful brothers, they held firm and they became what was then known as the continuing

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R -C -U -S or the Eureka classes because of Eureka, South Dakota. And the churches that remained was,

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I want to say like less than 1 % of the, of the denomination. So most of it ended up merging.

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And then there was another merger later on in the fifties that ended up becoming the United Church of Christ, which as you probably know, is very, very liberal, has long since, you know, left the reservation.

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But these faithful churches in the Midwest started to, you know, grow over the years and they are faithful.

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And as we have grown and as time has moved on, a lot of that kind of old

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German influences started to kind of fade a little bit. And we're bringing in, you know, new blood, people who are interested in, in reformed theology, but are not obviously not coming from a

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German reformed background. So, you know, we're, we're a good denomination, we're small, but we're very faithful to our confessions.

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And, and you will hear the gospel and you will hear the law and you will, you will grow in your faith in our denomination.

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And like I said, we don't have a ton of churches, but you know, we are faithful and we are committed to planting churches, to growing into evangelism and things like that.

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Joellen Carl, I am on your website, which is Emanuel with an E reformed rcus .org.

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And I just like to pull up sermon series, see what people are preaching through, if any books in the Bible. And so,

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Sunday morning, Sunday school is Belgic Confession, followed by the morning worship service, you're going through Philippians, and then nighttime, you're going through Genesis.

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How, how was, how do you get any sleep? I guess that's my real question. Well, the evening is only a first and third

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Sunday, so I don't do that every, every, every Sunday. That's one, that's another interesting thing with the

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RCOS, because a lot of reformed denominations, they, you know, they hold, you know, they hold fast to two services and part of the history, it's kind of got baked into our

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DNA we had more churches than ministers at one point.

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So ministers were going from town to town to service multiple churches. So, you know, you didn't really have the luxury of doing a second service and that kind of got baked into our

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DNA. But when I got here four and a half years ago, I asked and said, would people be willing to do a

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Sunday evening Bible study, even if it's just a couple of times a week or a couple of times a month, I should say. And they were agreeable to that.

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So I do get my sleep and, but it's, it's, it's fun going through the, the

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Belgic. Usually in the, during adult Sunday school, we would do just another

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Bible study, but I really wanted to do the Belgic because for myself, I wanted to kind of dig deeper into it and, and kind of get to know it at a, at a deeper level.

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But also again, you have to understand the RCOS is a very strong on Heidelberg, maybe not as strong on Belgic, even though it is one of our confessional standards.

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So I figured we do the Heidelberg every Sunday morning, we read the Lord's day and we talk a little bit about it as part of our liturgy.

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But I really wanted to impress the Belgic people here. So we do that.

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Amen. I'm going to listen to one. I'm sure I'll be encouraged. I have a left field question for you,

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Carl. Sure. And the second I ask it, you'll know what I'm talking about and you'll probably laugh. Here's the question.

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Drum roll. Were the pyramids built by aliens? Yeah, that's a, yeah, no, they weren't.

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So part of what I do is there, there is a website called gotquestions .org

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and it's a question. It's like a, it's an evangelistic ministry and, and they answer people's questions.

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And I serve, I volunteer my services to answer questions.

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So these are questions that get sent to me through this, through their, through this website.

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So people go to this website, they pose questions. If they don't have them, if they don't, if they're not answered on their website, they can ask the question to the ministry.

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And then the ministry has got a team of writers that volunteer their time. And, you know,

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I said, well, sure, I'll, I'll do like a question or so a week. And, and someone, someone posed a question.

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It was basically, you know, I have an unbeliever, unbelieving father, and he's skeptical about that the pyramids could have been built by people.

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And, and he thinks that, you know, maybe aliens helped. And I'm just like, okay. So that, that was where that question came from.

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Well, maybe, uh, intelligent orangutans did we, we, we just don't know these things. Yeah. I mean, if you ever watched 2001, a space odyssey, you know,

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I mean, the monkeys, right? That's exactly right. Carl, tell our listeners a little bit, uh,

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I'm going to go two directions first positive than negative. What are the most encouraging things that you see, uh, as you look at evangelicalism at large?

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Oh, evangelicalism at large. Um, I would coming out of the evangelical church as I have,

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I, I, and I still believe this. I think one of the strong, one of the things they do well is community.

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And, and they're very intentional about building community, usually through small groups or home groups or things like that.

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Um, so I, that was one of the things I always enjoyed in the churches I've been a part of as a member was, um, these opportunities once a week or once every other week to, to meet with people outside of the

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Sunday context in worship. And to, you know, as the cliche goes, quote unquote, do life together or, you know, study the

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Bible together and just, you know, have this time of sweet fellowship with one another. Uh, as far as I know,

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I think, you know, the evangelical church still does that pretty well.

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Um, but then the flip side, I think the reason why they do that very well is one of the things I think is a weakness in the evangelical church is because in general,

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I think evangelical churches have a weak ecclesiology and they, they want to build large kind of congregations, but they recognize the fact that a pastor at a church of thousands cannot really shepherd thousands by himself.

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So you have to break it down into smaller and smaller groups. So the idea of small groups, which

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I think is a strength is born out of which something in which I think is a weakness in evangelical churches is this idea of building larger and larger church mega churches.

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Um, I think if you want to serve, you know, your people, well, I think you'd be better off when you get to a certain, you know, number of people in your church, you break off and you start planting churches elsewhere instead of trying to group them together.

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It kind of fits in with the mandate in Genesis, right? To be fruitful, multiply and spread across the earth kind of a thing.

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Um, so I kind of see their idea of community as both the strength, but also born out of the weakness of their weaker idea of how the church should function.

20:20

Great answer. So let me ask you another question because it's kind of fun uh, for me to just listen to you.

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How about, you know, the desire in so many people, even in evangelicalism, you were talking about bigger, larger, more people.

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I think about ministries that focus on the city. We have to redeem the city. How would you encourage our listeners who are at small churches, uh, small communities out in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska, and it's okay to have a small church, to have a small

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Bible study, to have a small Sunday school. What's your word of encouragement to them? Yeah, you know, that's an interesting question.

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Um, it's, it's interesting because as you mentioned, you know, this idea of redeeming the city, being out here in rural

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Nebraska, um, you kind of see these rural communities kind of dying in a sense, um, because there's not a lot to keep the people here.

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Um, particularly like in my community, which is a farming community and a lot of the communities in Nebraska are farming communities.

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Um, fewer and fewer people are staying in their, in this area to kind of take up the family farm.

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So you've got fewer and fewer people farming the same amount of land. And, and, and as such, you, these towns, they start to, they start to dwindle.

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You can drive through, you know, rural Nebraska and you could see, you know, towns, you know, it's just dotted with little towns that, you know, are dead or dying.

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Um, but as far as encouragement is, you know, you know, the

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Lord is speaking to these people too. These people need shepherds. And it was one of the reasons why

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I came here. Um, it wasn't so much that I was looking for, I want to be in rural

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Nebraska because that was, you know, to be perfectly honest, it was like one of the last things on my mind. It wasn't, it wasn't on my mind at all, but it was more like,

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I just wanted to be somewhere where I could do life with the people that I serve in the church.

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And, um, and the Lord called me here and it was a good thing. And it was one of those things when

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I was coming here to just, to fill the pulpit, I started to fall in love with the people because these people really, you know, they love the

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Lord. They love to study his word. They were committed to one another. They wanted to keep this church going after her previous pastor took another call somewhere else.

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And, and they weren't even sure that, you know, I would accept a call here because it was like, well,

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I'm from Chicago. I want to, why would I want to come to Sutton, Nebraska? Um, of course

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I'm thinking, you know, why would they want to take a chance on a seminary student who's coming out of seminary and is, you know, early fifties.

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That was my, my, my reverse question. Uh, but it was a good match.

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And I think what you find in these rural communities are the salt of the earth.

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I mean, I know it's kind of a cliche term, but I mean, these people are people who literally work the earth and they, they, there's so many farming and agricultural metaphors in the

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Bible. And I think, you know, these people understand that at a level that I think people in the cities won't necessarily get to the same degree.

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These people work the earth. They know what it means to rely on the providence of God to provide the rains, the sun to provide the growth.

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You know, when you have that great line from first Corinthians three, where Paul is trying to, uh, knock the

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Corinthians heads together because they're, they're dividing over favorite teachers. It's like, who are we?

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It's like, we're just servants. I plant a Paulist waters, you know, we're servants of God is

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God that brings us growth. So I think serving in these communities is, is so it's, it invigorates me because to see these people understand, you know, they, they just soak this stuff up and they, and they, they just love the

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Lord and they love the word and, and, and they really get it. And I think these are people that are just, you know, they're just good, solid people because they're not caught up with a lot of the things that, you know, being from the city that city folk are caught up with.

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So that's kind of where I would go with that. Thanks for the answer. I think about those that are always talking about unchurched cities and unchurched people groups and everything else.

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And lots of times I'm thinking about rural areas and country churches and, you know, maybe they were churched years ago, but not so much now.

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Who said it? Maybe Carl, God made the country, man made the city and the devil made the suburbs.

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I don't know. Why game and draw that? Well, I'm sure if I learned it,

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I got it from somebody, somebody else. Tell our listeners a little bit why it's important to hear both the law and the gospel when it comes to Sunday morning corporate worship or teaching the

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Bible on Sunday night, mom and dad teaching their children, the Bible. One of the things we're linked together with besides Christ -centered preaching is law gospel.

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Why is law gospel important? Well, because it really boils down to, you know, what

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God has told us to do and what Christ has done for us. And if you don't understand both,

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I don't think you'll understand the scriptures at all. God has, you know, in early on when he created

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Adam, he gave him a commandment and it was, you know, do this and live. And Adam failed that.

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And the problem is we're still under that broken covenant when we come into this world.

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And grace is not natural to us. Law is natural to us.

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We understand doing because our general tendency is, um, as you know, you know, you're, you've been preaching through Luke and you know, you know, the, everyone that comes up to Jesus asks

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Jesus, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What must I do to see the kingdom of heaven? That's how we're wired.

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We're wired because that's how God made us to be. The problem is we cannot do because we've broken that law and we're fallen.

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And even our best attempts fall far short. So you need the law to, to be held out as that mirror that shows you, this is

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God's standard. All your attempts at doing will never meet the standard. So now let me hit you with what

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God has done for you so that, um, so that you can achieve or so that you can receive eternal life.

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And what he has done is he has met that standard. So we're the first Adam failed. The second Adam came in and succeeded.

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Uh, where the first Adam was in a paradise. Jesus, the second Adam was in the wilderness, uh, defeating the devil with the word of God.

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So, uh, you need to have that law to confront you that to, first of all, to tell you what

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God's standard is and then to show you how far you fall short. But then you have that gospel that shows you how

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God in his grace and his mercy and his love for you has, has accomplished that law and then freely gives you, uh, that righteousness, uh, through faith.

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And then of course, the law comes on the back end as that, you know, that rule of faith, how, how we then live our lives in gratitude, free from the burden of having to, uh, earn our salvation and, and free to, uh, love

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God and love neighbors. So that guilt, grace, gratitude of the, of the Heidelberg. Carl, I knew

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I liked you and I knew you would not fail our no -compromise radio audience. Thanks for being on the show today.

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People can go to emmanuelreformedrcus .org and you can listen to one of Carl's sermons.

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And I appreciate you, Carl, faithfully preaching the word. May the Lord bless you and give you great fruit there in Sutton, Nebraska.