Pastors Must Disciple Men

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

It's Mike Abendroth. It is a hot September day today. Hot and sunny, at least the day I'm taping it. We at No Compromise Radio have a little slogan, and that slogan is always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

And we try to strive to do that. And on No Compromise Radio, I will be the first to admit that I compromise. And if I compromise, that means you all compromise as well. But there's one to whom we look, Jesus Christ, fully man, fully God, as the creed would say, very God of very God, begotten, not made.

And this great God, Jesus Christ, never compromised. Can you imagine that? He never, ever compromised. He always did the things that were pleasing to the Father. And so today on No Compromise Radio, we want to continue with that theme of no compromise.

But before I get there, don't forget at Bethlehem Bible Church, we have the Psalm 119 Conference. Wretched Radio Conference, you can go to wretchedradio .com, or I think Wretched TV as well. Todd Friel will be here.

He is wretched himself. R .W. Glenn, Tim Challies, Trevor Wax, and myself, Mike Abendroth. And that will be September 23rd here, just north of Worcester, 1 p .m. to 8 .30 p .m. Teaching sessions and then teaching sessions on the 24th of September, 9 a .m. till 4 .30 p .m.

So you can go to Wretched site and get on that and then register. It's not technically a Bethlehem Bible Church production. It is a Wretched production. And so you have to register through them, pay through them, pay out the notes through them.

I will say my conferences are cheaper than Todd's, but he's got to fly a lot of people in and I usually only have to fly one in. The other bit of news that I have that I want to keep reminding you of, we have the new book out, Sovereignty and Supremacy of King Jesus, Bowing to the Gracious Despot.

That is to say, Jesus Christ is a king. And even though I wrote it before John wrote his, John's book, Slave, MacArthur's book, Slave, talks about how we are slaves and it's something that wasn't well known because of modern translations that we are slaves.

Many times it'd be translated bondservant instead. And so too, several years ago when I wrote the book, I had the idea that we don't really understand God as king very much and certainly despot. Do you ever think of Jesus as a despot?

But when you see the English text, you never see despot. You see master and the Greek word sometimes for master is despot. And so Jesus Christ is a despot. Of course, he's a kind despot. He's a holy despot and he's not the kind of despot you would think of today with some kind of cruel dictator.

But anyway, I think you'll appreciate the book. It talks about worship, prayer, preaching, listening to preaching, the return of Christ, everything about Jesus, the king. And by the way, since we just were talking about Todd Freel, I did have Todd write an endorsement for this.

Stephen Nichols did, Richard Phillips, Todd Freel, Dick Mayhew, Tom Schreiner and Steve Lawson wrote the forward. And this is what Todd Freel said about the book when I asked him to endorse it. And I just got done telling him that Sinclair Ferguson asked me about the book and I told him what the book was about and Jesus, the king.

And he said, oh, books about Jesus never sell. Modern evangelicals don't buy books about Jesus. And I just thought, you know, how tragic, but how true. And so Todd Freel, after I told him that, wrote this.

You are holding what is to be destined, what is destined to be one of the worst selling books of all time. And if you would like to know what else he wrote, you are going to have to buy the book and see the endorsement.

Anyway, it's a $16 book and you can get them through No Compromise Radio Ministry, $10, including shipping. And you can just write to us at No Compromise Radio or you go on the website and you should be able to hook yourself up that way.

Or you can go on Amazon if you'd like. I think it's 11 bucks there or Christian Discount Books or something like that. In a bookstore near you. I don't think they're in too many bookstores actually. It's on day one and I like that English publisher.

And so we'll see what happens. I got three or four other things cooking in terms of books and maybe those will come out sooner than, this one took me three years to get out. I wrote it three years ago and it took me three years.

That takes a long time, I guess with 70 ,000 words, what are you going to do? Okay, so much about that. Today we want to continue talking about and talking to pastors and clergies. Clergies? It's that buzzing sound in the background.

I can't get off this mixer board. I tried and tried. I called Charlie, I can't make it. So I've got to tape shows anyway. I'm so far behind. I had 40 ahead of time taped, taped ahead of time. And now I've just sat all summer, not really done anything all summer for No Compromise Radio.

And so I've got to get back on the ball. So ground sound or not in the background, here we come. So if you don't let any pauses happen, if I don't let anybody, if I don't say anything with pregnant pauses, you might not hear it as much.

But anyway, hey, a low budget and what are you going to do? I just can do what I do. So we're thinking about clergy members and we're thinking about congregations that have pastors. And so I want to give some charges to pastors that will help, A, pastors, B, it'll help congregations understand a couple of different things.

Number one, why they should pray for their pastors. Two, how to pray for their pastors. And three, they can understand the roles of a pastor, what they are to do and what they are to do. And this will also help with churches that have search committees.

We want to have a nice man. We want to have a nice family. We want to have a good looking pastor. We want to have a well-spoken pastor. We want to have this, that, and the other. And I wonder if 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus go along the same lines, which I don't think they do.

So if you have your Bible, we're looking at 2 Timothy and there's a bunch of different commands or imperatives in 2 Timothy that Paul gives to Timothy, basically on Paul's deathbed, to tell him to continue in the ministry, to stand firm in the ministry, to be a man in the ministry.

For the glory of Christ Jesus, because of what he's done for you, Timothy, and what he's doing in the lives of other people, you need to respond to the gospel and to what God has done with these commands.

And so certainly this is not a how-to list because it all has the backdrop of who Timothy was in Christ Jesus and how God had graced him and strengthened him and given him the Holy Spirit. And so today on No Compromise Radio, we're talking to pastors and that means we're talking to congregations as well.

Congregations, I think you like 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus, I think there are verses in there for you, but they're written to elders so they know how to conduct themselves, at least 1 Timothy specifically, how to conduct themselves in the local church.

And so let's go to 2 Timothy 2, verse two, and talk about how pastors need to pass on the baton to the next generation. Discipleship, if you're a pastor, you need to be discipling. If you are in a church, you need to be discipled.

And it all starts at the proverbial top where pastors and elders train the next generation of young people. In this particular context in ministry, train the next generation of men for local service. And certainly there's discipleship involved with ladies.

And you look at Titus chapter two, both older men teaching younger men and older ladies teaching younger ladies. By the way, I think many churches today have no older ladies, no older men. Oh, dead mainline churches, they have lots of old people.

They're dying out by the dozens. I'd like to have a few of their buildings when they're all deceased, but I'm not rushing them. When it comes to modern evangelical churches, lots of those churches, you don't see any gray-haired people for lots of reasons.

One, the real mature godly gray-haired people don't want all the hokey pokey stuff going on. They don't like to have, you know, tilt-a-whirl rides in their church building. They don't like the horses that come in for their drama skits.

They don't like any of that. They want the Bible. They want the meat. They want to be taught the word of God. And so lots of the older people, they leave. But I like to have, I'll tell you another reason why old people leave the church is they don't like rock music.

And you say, oh, he's legalistic. There he goes again. I love rock music. I'll tell you right now, I, well, listen to the intro to the show. That's the English Beat. It's a ska kind of band from England.

And actually, if truth be told, I think I said this a while ago, that I took my family to go see the English Beat at Cesar Chavez Park, downtown San Jose a couple months ago. And they played Mirror in the Bathroom and I thought, no compromise radio.

So I'm not against rock music. There's time and place. And you know, that's what happens with kids, kids in maturation. When it comes to maturity, children will show their immaturity by not knowing what to do at the right time.

There's a time and place for everything. And so a sign of immaturity is not knowing when to do something. There's a time to goof off. There's a time to, you know, goof around with kids and make funny pig noises.

But that's not the time to do it in church, right? So similarly, if you'd like to listen to rock music, I'm not one of these people that say rock music is of Satan. And if you put a speaker loud enough next to some plants, those plants die and see what happens.

I don't really think there's anything inherently wrong with some rhythm. But I do think that when you have a bunch of loud rock and roll man-centered songs full of all kinds of extreme repetition, drowning out any congregational singing that turn into a coffee house band during worship service where the congregation is supposed to be spurred on to worship corporately, not to be entertained or sung to necessarily, although we can look at Ephesians and Colossians to talk about singing to each other.

I can't remember which one it is. One of them, I think it's Ephesians that talks about singing to, of course our audience is the Lord, but we sing to each other to encourage. So anyway, that's one of the reasons why I think there's no old people at the church is because this inane, insane rock and roll music.

I was in California. We don't really have any radio stations here that are national, but in California, you've got the K Loves and you got the, I think is it Air One? Is that what it's called? Something like that, I don't know.

And I'm flipping through the stations in Santa Cruz and in Santa Cruz, you have your typical, well, this is the vegan hour and this is the hemp hour. And this is the free medical marijuana consultation hour.

And this is UC Santa Cruz slugs, gay, lesbian, transgender hour. This is a feministic hour. This is the hour where all men are wicked hour. They have all those kinds of stations on there and they have all kinds of Spanish speaking stations too in Santa Cruz.

And then I'll come across some singing and I'll think, oh, well, the good part is they're not bashing males. The good part is I can understand this English station, but the bad part is it is sappy, inane, repetitious.

Jesus is my boyfriend. And, you know, it just, I just think most of the music, there's some good music out there, I guess, in Christianity, but I don't know how much. So anyway, if you're sitting there wondering why there aren't any old people at your church, could it be that they don't like immature churches?

That'd probably be a good thing to ask. Could it be that they're tired of having to wear earplugs during quote unquote worship? So back to the text, 2 Timothy 2 .2, pastors need to disciple. And so we're going to have intergenerational discipleship.

We could have a pastor who disciples an 80-year-old, even though the pastor's 30. It has nothing to do with age, but just if God has saved you in his wisdom early on in your life, or you've got some years under your belt being a Christian, then you pour yourself in the lives of others.

But specifically here for the pastor, Timothy, the things which you have heard from me, the things which you, Timothy, have heard from me, Paul, in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

That's what you need. When I've talked to you, Timothy, about the deity of the Holy Spirit, when I've talked to you about spiritual gifts, when I've talked to you about church discipline, purity of the church, preaching, Jesus Christ, substitutional atonement, and the list goes on, those things that I've given to you, you, of course, need to retain them and guard them, like he said earlier in the book we looked at last time.

But you also can retain them and guard them by passing them to the next generation. That's an interesting way to guard the truth, is to spread it and to give it to the next group of people. And so we are to, as pastors, train other people.

And you have to ask yourself the question, if you're an elder, you're a leader, who are you discipling? I think of Jesus, and he had the three, and then he had the 12, and then he had the multitude. And so, so too pastors.

They cannot run around and train everyone. They can preach to everyone and minister everyone that way. They can pray for everyone, but there's only so much time you have in a day. And when you have a ministry, you ought to do what Paul says, for the health of the church and for the glory of God.

Now listen, on No Compromise Radio today, we're talking a little bit about pastoral leadership and then how it affects everyone else and how, I don't want you to turn off the radio because not many of you maybe are pastors, but you still need to understand the issues.

Here's what happens with many pastors. There are needy sheep, there are weak sheep, there are faint-hearted sheep, there are unruly sheep, 1 Thessalonians 5. And these sheep need care. These sheep need tending to.

These sheep need encouraging. These sheep need a whack. These sheep, did you catch that? This mixing board needs a whack is what it needs. So anyway, these sheep need to be tended to. And so the pastor, if he is not doing what Paul said, training up the next generation of godly people, in this particular case, godly men, pastoral ministry, he is going to have to do all the work himself.

First of all, he'd be disobeying scripture. Second of all, there are practical ramifications. You have to do all the work yourself. You are the go-to guy. How about training other people to do the work of the ministry?

Your job, pastor, is the people. Their job is the work of the ministry. Pastor, your ministry is the people. The people's ministry is the ministry. Did you get that? So what you do is you train up the next generation and you teach other men.

You fine-tune their teaching gift. You teach them how to serve. You teach them how to move people. You teach them how to counsel people. You tell them how they're equipped and adequate through the scriptures to give counsel.

They're adequate to counsel, competent to counsel, as J. Adams would say. And then you begin to spend most of your time with people, pouring your life into those who will be the next generation of leaders.

So you have some pastors do counseling week after week, day after day, filling up their entire schedule with counseling with people who pretty much would just take all the time you would give them. I'm not saying they don't need the time.

I'm not saying they don't need discipleship, but they don't need the pastor's counseling. They need other people's counseling because the pastor needs to train up the next generation of leaders. It was years ago, I got an email from someone and they said, could you give me a recommendation?

I'm trying to leave the church that I'm at. I'm trying to go to this other church and could you help me grease the wheel? So I said, well, why are you leaving the church you're at? And he said, well, there's no men in leadership.

I said, well, how long have you been there? I can't remember what he said. Three years, five years, something like that. Long enough. And I said, well, it's your fault. It's your fault there's no men in leadership.

Now, I guess there could be an extreme case of you're on an island someplace and your congregation is 30 women and it's just you and one other guy as elders. I guess something like that could happen, but I don't think this was the particular case.

It is our responsibility not to save people. It is our responsibility not to give people spiritual gifts, but it is our responsibility to train people and to motivate them and to do exactly what 2 Timothy 2 does.

I think that was the breakthrough in the ministry at Bethlehem Bible Church. We were resolved to preach the Bible verse by verse. We were resolved to do church discipline. We were resolved to preach Christ Jesus and not moralism.

And then I think the floodgates broke loose here with the folks. Once we were committed to discipleship, ladies discipling ladies, men discipling men, leaders, of course, I meet with people who are weak and who aren't in any way, shape or form prepared for leadership.

But I don't do it week after week after week after week because some people are just weak and they'll always be weak. And what they need is encouragement. They need to minister. They need to have fellowship.

They need to do one another's and be one another too. I could say it that way, but they don't need the pastor's time every single week because then all of a sudden you've got nine of those people and that's one whole day.

So I want pastors to train others, men who are especially gifted to teach, men who want to be leaders in their homes and at school. They don't have to all be teachers, but at least here in context, 2 Timothy 2 .2, these people are going to be teaching what they have learned to pass on to the next generation, from Paul to Timothy, to Timothy's listeners, and then those listeners to the next group of people, fourfold.

And so on No Compromise Radio today, we're talking about pastoral ministry and how important it is for pastors to train other people and disciple them. Paul goes on to say in 2 Timothy 2 .14, remind them, I think he's talking about those people way back up there in chapter two, verse two, remind them of these things and solemnly charge them in the presence of God, not to wrangle about words, which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers.

So these people are teachers because these people affect hearers. And so Paul says, he's charging them in the presence of God to teach them what is right. And he wants people to be discipled. So if you're a pastor, you need to be discipling other people.

And how does this start? Find one, find one person that you can pour your life into. And I don't care if it's at the coffee shop, I don't care if it's during Sunday school, I don't care if it's nighttime.

I talked to Stanley Tussaint this summer a little bit in California, and he told me how he was personally discipled by S. Louis Johnson. And I picked his brain to learn more about S. Louis Johnson, one of my heroes of the faith, modern day heroes and preachers.

And I love to listen to S. Louis Johnson. And so it can be formal discipleship or informal discipleship, but still discipleship must take place. I find it interesting that the text doesn't tell us exactly what we should do.

Give them homework, have them memorize Bible verses, make them show up on time, give them things they can do not in their own strength, but they have to pray about getting done. Help them to read, you know, a Michael Horton book.

It doesn't say any of those things. So you just use your brain. And when it comes to discipleship, the main thing that I could tell people who want to disciple others is, have the disciple-y either be able to succeed or fail.

That is to say, have some goals. And if you just meet and talk and sit there, that's it. That's not really right. I guess that's better than nothing, but give them goals. Say, this is what I'd like you to get done for next time.

And the way I work it is, this is what you do for next time. And if you don't get it done, there's no next time. So the entrance exam to come into the next discipleship group, the next discipleship meeting, is to finish what I've asked you to do the first time.

And of course, things come up and flat tires need to be fixed and sicknesses need to be attended to. But just in general, this is what you need to do. I had a group of men here at the church and we were going to have a discipleship.

I think it was a couple of years ago. And I said, all right, for the summer reading, I'd like you to read Romans five times, I think it was. And then to come into the discipleship group during Sunday school at nine o 'clock here at Bethlehem Bible Church, you need to walk to the door of my office and then say, I've read Romans five times completely.

And then I would say, enter. And all the guys would line up, 10 or 11 of them. I've read Romans five times. I've read Romans five times. I think men are attracted to that. This is certainly not bootcamp.

But when you look at second Timothy chapter two and continue on, there are athletes, there are soldiers, there are farmers, there are hard workers. There are men who suffer and toil and sweat. And we all like to achieve things and accomplish things.

And to say, by the grace of God, I got that job done. And you feel good about it. That's one of the reasons why we help people who are depressed by getting a list of things to do and get busy doing it.

Because as you accomplish and achieve, you feel good. And so too in discipleship, you give people things to shoot for. Because if you don't aim for something, you'll always make sure you hit it. And that is you'll hit nothing.

So no compromise radio today. I didn't get very far, did I? I didn't get very far at all when it comes to discipleship. We in the local church, I think this is the lost jewel in the modern evangelical church these days.

No, let me rephrase that. I think it's the lost jewel in healthy, I don't want to say that either. What should I say? I need somebody to write these shows for me. That's what I need. I think it is a lost jewel in churches that know the right philosophy of preaching.

They know the right philosophy of worship. They've got their ecclesiology down, but they just can't make it over the hump. And they can't just kind of break through. I don't mean breakthrough is 500 people, a thousand people, 20 ,000 people, 50 people.

But just they can't break through to spread the ministry load around other people. I remember one time someone said, well, if I don't go to the church Sunday morning at six o 'clock in the morning in New England and turn on the heater, it's going to be cold.

Nobody else will do it. And I said, well, just don't do it and somebody else will. It'll take one time of somebody being super cold to say maybe we should help the pastor so he doesn't have to come to the church at 6 a .m. and turn on the heat.

Now he should be humble enough to want to do that, but the church should protect him so he can be doing other things while folks can help serve and help minister because we all have gifts and we all get to serve the same Lord.

Teachers aren't better than nursery workers. We're just gifted differently. So no compromise radio today. We've talked about pastoral discipleship. If you're not a pastor, find someone who knows more than you do and learn everything you can.

And then find someone else who knows less than you do, take what you've learned from the person who knows more than you do and teach it to the person who knows less than you do. Figure that out. That's difficult.

That's a riddle. That's a Chinese finger puzzle right there. No compromise radio today. We've talked about many things. Don't forget the new book is out. If you want to go to nocompromiseradio .com, you can get it or write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

Always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

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 six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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