Pastor Jaime Owens Interview

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Ebendroff and it has not occurred very often where I have live guests in the studio.

It's always by phone now or teams or FaceTime or I don't know what's that old old way we used to do it.

Do you remember Jamie? What was the first way we would do videos and and all that? Skype.

Skype. Yeah, that's right. Well, anyway, I can't think. My name is Mike Ebendroff, No Compromise Radio.

You can always email me, Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com. Don't forget the new book,

King, is out and it's not about theonomy, it's not about Christian nationalism or anything like that.

I thought to myself, if we could understand a king back in the Bible days like Persians and Medes, Assyrian kings, if we could understand kings,

I think we could understand the king of kings a little bit better. So you can get it on Amazon, King, How the

Sovereignty of God Changes Everything. Today in the studio, Jamie Owen. Is it

Owen or Owens? I don't even know who you are. Well, I'm a descendant of the inimitable

John. Too bad. You could name your child Owen Owens. Right?

People name their children. If we have a fifth, then I may consider it. Thank you. I know you have a son named

Noah, but that's all I remember from your bio. There's a Noah, there's a Jackson, a Mercy, and an

Audrey. Awesome. So excuse me for mispronouncing your name,

Jamie Owens. I'll never forget it. No, thank you very much. Jamie, we saw each other a couple weeks ago at the church that you pastor in downtown

Boston. What was going on there? What kind of event did you hold? Because I found it quite interesting, and I think our listeners would like it too.

Right. So it was a talk by Adonis Vidoux, who's a professor at Gordon -Conwell

Theological Seminary. And Matthew Barrett of MBTS puts on a talk every year around ETS, and I think he goes to wherever the location is for the national conference, and there's a theological talk.

And so he gave a talk on the Trinity and its practical uses. How'd you feel about that talk,

Mike? Well, I just think if your name's Adonis, you better be handsome. Did you have him, by the way, at Gordon -Conwell when you got your

THM? I did not. So I was just particularly looking at preaching when

I was there for the THM, and so he wasn't part of that. Okay. Well, I was tired.

I've had long COVID now for...I'm still a little stuffy. About 42 days ago, I got it.

And so I've just felt...I'm underwater, can't think that well, fatigued.

I haven't had a nap yet today, but I think there's one probably on my schedule. So I tried to pay attention.

I was happy to listen. I was trying to figure out the Aquinas, Augustine stuff.

And so I guess overall, Jamie, I was just glad to listen and think to myself, you know what?

I should probably study inseparable operations a little bit more and read his book. That was kind of my takeaway. Sure. I felt like you had to have a certain vocabulary to really engage some of the conclusions there, classical theological vocabulary.

And so I think it was above a lot of people's heads. Yeah. Agreed. And once in a while, I don't mind that because it will force us to humbly say, oh, we have not arrived theologically, and there's so much more to learn.

I did like the Q &A afterward. Barrett was a little sick as well, but he asked really good questions,

I thought. And while I think Louis Ayers might be the smartest man in that building that night, still as a

Roman Catholic, I thought it quite funny that he was lecturing people like us pastors on how to preach.

Right, right. Yeah, you know what? I try to spit out the bones, right? So I thought his encouragement to preach more

Trinitarian sermons was really apt. That was good. Well, it was a year ago.

I should have probably called you and invited you. I went to Harvard Divinity School and listened to Thomas Joseph White speak on the

Incarnation, a Roman Catholic scholar. And he's also in the Hillbilly Thomist band.

Do you know that? Well, I do now. Yeah, they play the Grand Ole Opry. Oh, really?

Yeah, they're very popular. And he delivered a really excellent message on the

Trinity. And it just kind of boggles my mind sometimes. How can they be so good when it comes to Trinitarian stuff on the

Hypostatic Union, Incarnation? They're so good with that. And then I think, wait a second, and the next chapter is praying the

Rosary. Oh my goodness, yeah. How does that happen? I don't know. Yeah, this is a great book by Matthias Media by Ray Gallia called

Nothing in My Hand I Bring, and it really lays out the differences between Catholicism and Protestant Christianity.

And so I would commend that. Thank you. Speaking of which, you're in Boston. A lot of Irish people, and that means a lot of Catholic people here in West Boylston.

I think the census is 80 % a professor Roman Catholic belief, but probably only 30 % go to Mass every

Sunday or regularly. What's it like in Boston? Yeah, I think it's similar. I think that many ascribe—I mean, downtown, you have a melting pot, a lot of transfer folks who came in from different parts of the country.

And yet, I think as you pan out from downtown and you move into greater

Metro Boston, you'll have more and more Catholic folks. And I get the sense that, as I was,

I grew up Roman Catholic. I'm very committed to the forms and the rhythms of being there, but not really deep in what

Trent said or any of the actual doctrines. And so I was, I think, a nominal

Roman Catholic and just kind of droned on as I went Sunday to Sunday with my parents. And so I get the sense that most people are like that.

They're not really in tune with what the Church actually declares. That's my sense of it. A lot of young people at Tremont.

And by the way, Tremont Temple Baptist Church, you can go online and access Jamie Sermon's TremontTemple .com.

Around these parts, as they would say in Nebraska, if something's got—a church's got Temple in its name, it's usually

King James only. Yeah, well, I can disavow you. Yeah. What do you preach from, by the way?

So I preach at ESV. And when you got there, what was the state of the

Church? So I got there in 2015. So the way it came together is

I was an associate pastor at a church called Grace Harbor in Providence. The senior pastor there was

Kevin McKay. He was an intern there in Washington, D .C., at Capitol Hill Baptist Church prior to my coming to D .C.

And I also did the internship there and was on staff for a couple of years there. And so when it came time for a third year of being the assistant to the pastor there,

I declined because, you know, admin is not my passion. Let's just say that.

And I'm not sure how they gave me a second year there after that. But I ended up landing as an associate with a like -minded as far as ecclesiology.

And so I was in Grace Harbor Church there. And the senior pastor there, Kevin, went out to the

Cape to preach. And the senior pastor at the time of Tremont Temple, his son was good friends with Kevin, and they had a dinner together, the three of them.

And Denton Lotz, who was the senior pastor at Tremont, said, hey, I've been looking for a guy to serve with me as an assistant.

I've looked around. I've gone Gordon -Conwell looking. I've put out on the internet some invitations to come and check this out, but I've not found anyone.

Do you guys know anyone? And Kevin was like, yeah, I've got a guy. And then also John Paul, his son, kind of at the same time said my name.

And so Kevin came back to the church and said, hey, have you ever seen this church before? And he pulls it up on his cell phone and I'm like, is that a cathedral?

Like I had never known, never seen anything like it. I mean, there's no Baptist church that looks like the inside of our building.

And I said, no, I don't know that. He says, well, that's in downtown Boston. They're looking for an associate. Would you ever come and check it out?

I couldn't believe it. So I went up and I met Denton in the office there of the church back in, you know, at the end of 2014.

And despite some of the differences, which we'll get into, but some of the differences between he and I, as far as ministry, we kind of hit it off.

He was in his early seventies and I was in my early thirties. But it all began there. So yeah, pretty unusual story, let's say.

The building is a wonderful building and so unique. I first saw, I think I mentioned to you a couple of weeks ago,

I saw R .C. Sproul live for the first time when he was there at the church.

And I think there was another conference someplace. Oh, by the way, I also saw R .C. at Park.

Parkside is Alastair Beggs. This is just Park Street. Yes. And it was the first time

I met a woman elder. I still haven't.

No, I'm kidding. She was a very nice lady. And so then the next day after the

ETS, Adonis Vidu Barrett deal, you had the hymn sing. Tell me about the hymn sing because I didn't make it.

Yeah, right. So Crossway, I have a friend at Crossway that I just met in passing and stayed in touch.

And then this was several years ago. And then just recently got an email from him and Crossway, the new hymnal, the sing hymnal that the

Gettys, Keith and Kristen Getty have put together and Crossway has published and printed. They're looking for an opportunity at ETS to introduce it to,

I guess, the academic community and then whoever else was available. And so we have we had a hymn sing together and it was really great.

A lot of the folks are going to ETS and SBL, this other conference that was happening over the weekend. And then our church members and then a number of other churches and the word got out.

And so we had about probably about twelve hundred people in our sanctuary or meeting hall, which

I normally call it. And, you know, the maximum capacity is seventeen hundred. We have two balconies.

So it's just this massive cavernous space. But we almost filled it, but it was close. I'm sure you filled it with great singing.

Probably sounded wonderful, all those voices. That's right. I mean, Keith Getty is just kind of a surprisingly great showman.

Like he's just the way that he wove the hymns together and he would talk and then he would weave in a hymn and he would walk us through the whole hymnal.

It was just it was fantastic. The time was great. It was well spent. Nothing like men and women singing praises to the glory of God in a building that I think in my mind had pretty good acoustics.

Oh, sure. Yeah, I would agree with you. Unlike the building that I'm in right now. So you have to be careful that I don't covet.

Actually, that's one of the commandments, right? The tenth commandment is I'm not supposed to covet other people's buildings.

Don't envy me, my brother. Jamie Owens is here in the studio today. Give me a little of your background.

How did the Lord save you? What were the circumstances behind it? You know, it reminds me of Michael Horton when some people say, well, you know, my testimony is not fantastic.

It's not, you know, I was a prostitute and then I got saved or whatever, but it's the Lord doing.

And sometimes even the self -righteous that gets saved. It seems like it's more of a miracle than the unrighteous getting saved.

But were you unrighteous, self -righteous? What were you, both? I'd say I was both. Yeah. And it's interesting that the preaching of the word when

I was saved, that you had both of those scenarios in the story of the prodigal son, older and younger.

I felt like I was a combination of both when I came to Christ. But I'll back up a little bit. So I grew up Roman Catholic, very devout as far as, you know, always there on Sundays, sometimes confession on Fridays and catechism as a child where we would just go to class basically.

And some nuns would hammer us with, you know, questions about Jesus. And every answer was

God or Jesus. Did you ever get hit by them? No, I never got wrapped in the knuckles or elsewhere. My father, interesting story.

He grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and he was in a Catholic school and they just unmercifully would beat him unmercifully.

And then he was at one point as he got older, a custodian in one of the schools.

And as an act of rebellion on the final day, he clogged all the drains, turned all the water on and walked out.

And that was his goodbye to the Catholic school. Anyway, so yeah, what was

I getting at? Unrighteous, self -righteous, Luke 15. So I, you know, I was a worldly kid.

I would say I was, you know, in some ways, I grew up playing sports. I was an

Eagle Scout. I was involved in the Boy Scouts. I, you know, I was pretty moral outwardly,

I think. And then when I hit 15, I was a freshman in high school and then, you know, sin awakened and I, you know,

I had girlfriends and drank a lot of beer and played football and sports in school. I kept things together academically from an outside veneer and yet inside and kind of, you know, my partying tendencies and my desires of the flesh kind of took over during high school.

The same kind of thing into college, you know, maintaining a veneer of morality while at the same time, just indulging in other ways, perhaps secretly to some.

And so it was my junior year in college when I was at the local gym.

I was there at Gould's Gym and there was an attractive girl up in the treadmill. And so this is back in the day where you could talk to a woman at the gym.

I don't go to a gym, you know, anymore, but I know that, you know, you attain instant creeper status if you kind of look in the direction of a female.

But anyway, so I went up there and walked next to her in the treadmill and conversation was flowing.

Things were going well. And then at the end, there was a little hook that I didn't anticipate. She said, my dad's a pastor in town.

Would you come in here and preach? And so I guess it was kind of missional fishing for converts on the gym floor.

And so a couple of weeks later, I ended up at Grace Gospel Church in Swansea, listening to the preaching of the word, listening to her father preach.

And I felt like his preaching was textual. His preaching was, I don't know that I would say that it's expository preaching, but he in some way exposed the text.

And I began to, for the first time in my life, feel that God wasn't a far off, that he didn't just kind of make the world and walk away from it.

And through a series of months after that, I kept going. I would drive the 40 minutes from Bridgewater State College, where I lived in a dorm with a bunch of athletes, drinking and partying.

I would drive the 40 minutes down to Swansea and I would go to church and I would see her and I was there for all the wrong reasons.

But the word of God, the Lord began to draw me by spirit because I began increasingly to feel that my lifestyle and my desires were opposed to God, that God is holy, that he was very much close to me, and that my life was really wretched towards God.

And over time, the Lord drew me to himself. And then it was Father's Day of 2005.

I was, I think, a little hungover from the night before. I drove, it was the beginning of June 14th, perhaps, of 2005.

I drove, made the drive, a little under the weather, but I sat in there and he used a canvas of Rembrandt's, The Return of the

Prodigal Son, this painting you've seen. It's an old man hovering over his son who's frayed, part of his heel is gone, and his shoe, and he's been in the pig pen of sin.

And as he preached, and it's interesting, as somebody who preaches now, I look back at the sermon itself and it was focused on the younger son who essentially went to Vegas and blew his inheritance on prostitutes and everything.

The older son really wasn't mentioned in the sermon much at all, but I knew myself to be the younger son that I'd wasted my life, that I had lived in rebellion against God.

And I couldn't believe, I could not get over the fact that the father ran to the son.

It just, it still to this day pierces me, the idea that we deserved to be destroyed in our sin.

We deserved far more than a cold doorknob on our return. We deserved complete destruction for the ways that we rebelled against the

Holy God. And yet he ran out, the picture is this incredible seeking that Luke's gospel is highlighted, that he came to seek and save the lost.

And I couldn't believe it. And so it was undeniable that I was at the same time aware of my rebellion and my sin against the

Holy God, but I was also overtaken by the love of God in Christ Jesus. And I was undone and I repented and trusted in Jesus Christ on that day.

My life will never be the same. That is wonderful. I never get tired of hearing testimonies of God's grace, sovereign grace, right?

He was the one running, right? We were running the other way. Incredible. I love that.

And then you were probably learning and growing and attending church, studying your

Bible. When did the turn come when you—I can't talk.

Hey, it's Monday, it's my day off. I'm going to plead I don't feel well. How about call to ministry?

Let's just put it like that. When did you say, I'd like to preach? It's a daunting task, but Lord, would you use me to preach?

Oh, sure. Yeah. So, you know, I was about two years in the church as a police officer, and I would sometimes even work the shift during that time.

And the doors were open where I would sit with my full uniform, my radio on, and I was able to sit in the back and listen to his preaching and not have to go on calls or whatever.

And I really just admired good preaching from the very beginning. But it wasn't until about two years in that the youth pastor and there was a college -age minister as well, they would often at times invite me to share my testimony with either the youth or the college students.

That happened a few times where I was able to kind of give a testimony of faith. And then there was a time when the college pastor was sick and he asked me to just share a little devotional.

And so it wasn't like preaching per se, but it was like share some thoughts, some devotional thoughts from the word. So I began to really enjoy that.

It was a little nerve -wracking from the very get -go, but I enjoyed it. And probably about six months after I had shared my testimony with the church at the beginning of one of the services, the two pastors invited me out to have a dinner at Not Your Average Joe's in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.

And both of them encouraged me to just quit my path of policing.

I wanted to be a state trooper here in Massachusetts or go into the FBI or ATF or something. I did some internships during college to just consider going all in for ministry.

And I thought they were crazy and that I felt like there was very little job security and all that.

You were right on that. Exactly. But I took the year and prayed and I was tasked with teaching a

Bible study to the college students. And it was assigned to me that I would teach the book of Revelation, believe it or not. That might kind of show you some of the discernment of those who called me to ministry here.

But I grabbed John MacArthur's Things to Come. We were deep in MacArthur.

I had a MacArthur study Bible. I had the gospel according to Jesus, which actually changed my life very early on. And I'd gone to a shepherd's conference in 2008 and just fell in love with expository preaching.

And so that was three years after my conversion when I started to really drink from the fountain of some good preaching and read some good stuff.

And so, yeah, I was influenced that way. And after that year and the members of the church encouraging me on,

I resigned from Swansea Police and enrolled at Southern Seminary. I moved to Louisville, Kentucky and started my

MDiv there. Nice. Now, when you were in law enforcement, law enforcement, did you have your hat down low like a typical statey, like a state trooper would?

Did you have that look? I had a bit of a, you know, I was a bit gung -ho from out of the academy and I was basically stopping anything that moved.

And I would give mostly just verbal warnings, but that's how I got to know the community and how they got to know me.

So I stopped everybody. In fact, I pulled over the senior pastor who preached my conversion, the sermon where I was converted, and I just let him sit there for a while and had the spotlight on him, and it was nighttime, and I just let him cook there for a little while.

Although we laughed about it later, but yeah. Well, my approach is this when

I'm pulled over. Hands 10 and 2, and I just usually say, Officer, I want to give you a hundred excuses, but I should not, and so I think you should tell the truth.

I'm guilty. And then I usually get off. That's a good law gospel man right there. Very clear on the law.

They are like, not guilty. I mean, you are guilty. Okay. So what was the wildest story?

You pulled somebody over and they pulled a gun out. They tried to run. You did the

DUI test and they tried to tackle you. I mean, give me a wild story. I'll just give you the one wildest night that I had, and there were two incidents.

It was pretty interesting that in a small town of Swansea, about 20 ,000 people over 25 square miles, that this happened in the same night.

We had four sectors in town, and so I was the far sector from what's called

Route 136, which is where there's some businesses over there, and where I was pretty quiet.

It was about 2 in the morning, and so it was in someone else's sector, but we all went to this call.

There was somebody who was harassing a woman at a gas station. There's a little Dunkin' Donuts inside the gas station, and apparently it was boyfriend, girlfriend.

The boyfriend had apparently stolen some kitchen knives and some silverware and had stolen them from her house, and he was accosting her there.

And so I showed up, and as I was getting out of my car, I parked kind of a certain position where we kind of had the whole place covered.

I was walking in, and I saw a fellow officer I'd gone to the academy at Plymouth with, and he was, as I heard over the radio, he had given a false name, and his true name was betrayed by the girlfriend who gave it to us, and then we ran his name, and then there were warrants for his arrest.

And so the wily guy that I went to the academy with, who was just a scrawny guy, but with a big attitude, he said to the guy, hey

Calvin, and he wasn't close to him. He knew his real name, and then the jig was up at that point.

Calvin knew that we knew who he was, and he knew he had warrants, so he started to run as fast as he could towards the highway.

And so, you know, John shouldn't have done that, my friend, because he should have had him like buttoned up before he told him who he was, but I guess he just wanted to chase after somebody that night.

And so there we were. We started to sprint, and this guy had a triple fat goose.

You ever seen those jackets? They call them triple fat. They're like these big down jackets. They used to call them triple fat goose jackets, big puffy jackets.

All of a sudden, as he runs, all these kitchen knives are falling out of his jacket, and then

I see my partner pulls out this 20 -inch maglite from his belt and throws it at the back of this guy, which was clearly not a good thing to be doing, but it missed, and that was good.

But I passed him up, and then on the other side of Route 136, this guy

Calvin lifts up his hands like he's going to punch my partner and punch me.

And so that was when I was able to use my taser for the first time. So I pulled it out. I said taser, taser, taser, and I let one go, and the hooks come out.

It's like a little gun that throws hooks, and he gets zapped, and he's like a piece of bacon kind of frying on the sidewalk, and then

John jumps right into it. But all these wires from the taser, they start wrestling, and there's this bird's nest happening.

And finally, we're able to handcuff this man, and a huge rock of crack falls out of his pocket.

And so it becomes like this drug distribution charge on top of everything else. And so it was one of the most exciting things that I've ever seen, the small town of Swansea, you know, you're able to carry that through.

But later in the evening, I got called to my sector called

Ocean Grove, and it was four in the morning after we had processed all this stuff. There were two men fighting.

They were over six feet tall giants, and they both had baseball bats, and they were like swinging these bats at each other.

Apparently, one of them had stolen, they were brothers, and one of them had stolen a car rim from the other one's yard, and now they're having their fight over it.

And I pulled up, and I said, hey, drop the bats. And they started to walk towards me with the bats.

And I started to, you know, I was a Christian at the time, but I started to, I used words that I regret at this point, but I had pulled out my weapon and pointed it at them.

And I said, if you don't drop those bats, and you can guess the rest. And they kept walking towards me.

And as I look back on it now, I think I was probably justified to fire my weapon, because here the six foot four, these two brothers, they're like twins, they're massive guys.

They're coming at me with metal bats, like they're gonna, you know, come at me. So my partner, the same guy pulls up in just the nick of time and pulls out his weapon, and they finally kind of give up and drop the bats.

We had to interlock two handcuffs for each guy because their shoulders were so wide.

Wow. And so we made those arrests. And so that was the wildest night that I've ever had, policing.

Well, as I said off air, my associate pastor Steve, LA Sheriff, retired, and he was a beat cop for a while.

And then he worked at Supermax. And I would always say to him, well, I'd say things like, you know, how could

I survive if I ever had to go to jail for the gospel? And then I asked him what's the wildest thing he ever saw in jail.

And he said, I was making the rounds, and I looked in the cell, and this guy was eating his arm.

Oh my goodness. I said, what did you say? He said,

I said, stop it. Jamie, I know you were an intern at Capitol Hill.

I did go to Weekender years ago, maybe 18 years ago or something. Give me something behind the scenes that I don't know about Mark Dever that's interesting, encouraging, something you learned behind the scenes maybe.

One interesting thing about Mark is that he just walks constantly. So you may have heard the word parapetite or parapetetic, you know, he walks and teaches.

I mean, most of the times when I've, you know, memorable moments, I received wisdom from Mark.

It was because we were just walking down the mall or walking around. It would just be throughout the day.

He would just come in and out of the office and just take people for walks. So it's just an interesting dynamic, how much he walked and how much he talked.

And that was the context for a lot of his personal one -on -one discipleship. One other thing, too, is that he was just so constant in discipleship and sharing the gospel.

He would go to the same restaurants in the neighborhood, and he would know everyone's name in the restaurant, the store, the drugstore, wherever it is, wherever he'd go.

And he would know them all by name, and he would seek to share the gospel with almost everybody. And it was just so—I think the thing that stands out about him, one would be his trust in the sovereignty of God in his own life and in the lives of others.

I think that was a huge impact on me, just trusting in a sovereign God was a theme in his ministry and life.

But also just his evangelism. I mean, he was just a consummate evangelist, and he would model it for all of us.

And so, yeah, that was memorable. That was fun to go to his house at the Weekender because I was the senior pastor here, and so I got to go there and kind of see behind the scenes.

I, to this day, love that old video where it's Mark and James McDonald and Mark Griskell, and they're busting his chops for having only one service in one building and not multiple services and all that.

Did you see that video? Oh, yes. That's like a cultural icon, iconic moment.

And I think maybe my other favorite Mark Dever story is we're at the Shepherds Conference, and they did something—I mean,

I've probably been to 30 of them over the years. They did something different, though. They had Mohler, Mahaney, Ligon Duncan, and Mark Dever upstairs in what they call the

J Building, and you needed a special ticket, you know, like these underground tickets to go because you could only, you know, only 200 people could fit in there or something.

And so it was after the conference that night, maybe 9 p .m., and so we go up into this special, you know,

Gnostic ticket thing, and somebody asked

Mark—somebody asked someone a really difficult question, asked the panel, like super hard, you know, out of the 46 views of Baptism for the

Dead and First Corinthians, which one's right? It was something like that. And Dever said, well, we don't know the answer to the question, but we have an apostle here.

Certainly he knows. C .J. Mahaney, self -proclaimed apostle. I thought that was so classic.

A charismatic apostle. Jamie, a few other things before we wrap up the show. Fun books that you've been reading, good books.

What's on your desk now to read outside of the Bible? Sure. I've gone back to Augustine.

I'm reading Confessions right now. I'm just working my way through it. It's just a companion, constant companion.

I'm reading a Kevin de Young book. It's a small little booklet on the

Nicene Creed that, I mean, you could sit and probably read in one reading, but it just takes the kind of contested phrases in the

Nicene and just kind of gives a Trinitarian theology. And I've been reading that for a couple of days with my devotions and really appreciate that.

I picked that up. I don't know why or where, but I read that and I thought, this is such a great little book.

It's simple enough that you could give to a layperson, but deep enough that I, I mean, not that I'm the deep person, but you know, this is what we do.

I thought, I loved it. It's just a great way to phrase things and to say things. I thought, this might be my favorite

Kevin de Young book. Oh, really? That's great. Yeah. I mean, I think we, we more recently at Tremont, we've, we've become more confessional in the sense that we've, we, we recite the

Apostles Creed monthly and I'm considering, you know, including the

Nicene and moving more in that direction. And so this has been helpful for me to look at it up close. What statement of faith do you have?

So we have, we have a statement of faith that was probably written by one of the pastors of the church. It was quite solid.

There are some nebulous kind of parts of it. I don't think it's as detailed as it needs to be.

I'm thinking of moving towards the New Hampshire or considering some other historic statements that I think will be more helpful for us as a matter of reform.

So we've not gotten there yet. And I think if we do that, we have to do some, some robust teaching on the statement.

And we've been pretty busy, you know, with reform on church governance more recently. And, and so we've not gotten to that yet, but yeah.

I think the New Hampshire is a good confession, solid. And it's almost like a,

I don't want to belittle it, but it's a, it's kind of a good halfway house maybe to the 1689 or something like that.

You know, you're on your way, or you could keep it the rest of your life, right? It's, I think we had here, it was a

Baptist general conference church, and we had, you know, 10 points or something like that.

You know, these are the 10 things we believe. And we ended up leaving the Baptist general conference because, well, we're, we're

Baptist, particular Baptist, not general Baptist. And back in the day, they started to embrace a bunch of ill -hyble stuff and women pastors.

So then, I'm sorry to say, we took the 1689 and we kind of edited it, because from my old theological viewpoint,

I wasn't quite there in certain spots, maybe under law and stuff like that. I think

I was kind of maybe New Covenant back then or something. And so then we edited the confession.

It's a humble move. You know, I look back in life, and I'm sure you do too, how kind the

Lord is, and generous, and patient with people like at least me.

What a doofus. So many mistakes I've made in ministry, in my life, in what to do, and it's, you know, back to that song, you know, grace greater than all my sins.

So I would not recommend anyone to write their own confession. Know what I recommend them to do?

Change as much as we did. You know what? Maybe people want to change a little bit on congregational polity, or maybe they want to change something on Sabbath, maybe those things.

But we tampered with things that we ought not to have tampered with. Ah, I see. And I got a question for you.

Yeah, sure. I am aware that you wrote a book called Cancer Is Not Your Shepherd or My Shepherd. Correct.

And I wonder, from a ministerial standpoint, having walked through that difficult time of cancer, has that changed the way you minister to others in your church, and in what ways?

Well, thank you for the question. It could be probably 10 shows, because it's probably the story of my recent life.

And what I mean by that is, I was in sales before I became a pastor.

In sales, if you're going to be good at it, you have to be a self -starter. And I've been a disciplined person pretty much my life, even before I was saved,

German and just get things done. And I probably, looking back,

Jamie, thought as I was pastoring, why don't these people read their

Bibles more? I read my Bible. Why don't they stay away from pornography? I do.

Why do they have such a hard time ministering? I'm serving. Why aren't they sacrificial givers?

I am. And I mean, I would admit it probably then, but looking back, I had those thoughts.

And then what happens is, I got prostate cancer in 2015, and then

I got leukemia in 2021, or whatever the time was.

And when I first got cancer, prostate cancer, I was preaching through Hebrews. And so it was a revolution.

And the revolution was Christ -centered preaching, because that's what Hebrews is. There are the warning passages.

You've got 10 imperatives in chapter 13, etc. But here's a bunch of people who are struggling.

Their possessions are being taken, persecuted. All they have to do is go back to Judaism and just imagine how warm and wonderful the sites would be back at the temple with the gold and the marble and the incense and the trumpeters, and now no more persecution.

They're huddling in the basement, as it were, or in a cavern or in a cave. And as Sinclair Ferguson would say, but you have everything because you have

Jesus. And so to preach Christ every Sunday and have the takeaway, the application be, here's the beauty of Christ, was different for me, and coming from a very kind of law -heavy...

I didn't even really understand probably three uses of the law or anything like that. And so between Hebrews and cancer, it really broke me.

And I thought, if I, in my basement, am in need of kindness and mercy and grace to help me in time of need, as Hebrews 4, 16 talks about, yeah, 4, 16, don't other people?

And so if I need that, I need to give that. And so it was a real revolution for me to say, you know what?

I'm weak. My problem isn't unrighteousness per se, it's self -righteousness, and so I need to present the person and work of Christ to encourage, to lift up guilt, grace, gratitude,

Christ for pardon, Christ for power. All that started happening right around there. So to answer your question, how did cancer fit in?

On one hand, this part you would understand very easily. When you go through a trial, somebody else goes through the same trial, it's easy to talk about it.

You can talk, cop talk, to people who are cops because you just have that common bond and that identity.

And so now I can walk into anybody's room with cancer, and there's automatically this identification.

I know what it's like to hear, I have cancer. And so the Lord has used that.

I just was talking to a student the other day, I said, are you sure you want to be a pastor? Because you're going to have to suffer, and I don't know how you're going to have to suffer.

It might not be cancer, but that's just the way God works, is He molds, and He shapes, and He disciplines, and He trains,

Hebrews chapter 12. And so whatever it might be, it's just going to be a humbling process.

I hope, Jamie, that I'm more kind to people, patient. People, I think, at church might think that it's because I'm getting older and softer.

Maybe I am, you know, grandfatherly type of thing, but I really think it's a theological thing, where I realize,

I read this Thomas Goodwin quote, and I was at the Shepherds Conference, and I read it, and I just started breaking down, crying.

Probably people thought I was weird because it wasn't a moment where everybody else was crying, it was just me. And basically it was, when you have a child,

Mercy or Noah, my children, and they're sick, you give special care to them.

You love the other children just as much, but my wife would make a little spot on the couch for the sick child, and she called it a nest, and pillows, blankets, special food, attention, while loving the other children, specially loved.

And Thomas Goodwin was talking about children of God in the crucible of suffering, and how

God, you know, from our perspective, I mean, He's omnipresent, obviously, but He's good, close, and attentive, and He cares, and that really helped me.

And so now when I preach, I don't want people to say, oh, how could I even be a Christian after that sermon? And now

I want them to say, that was encouraging. So when I hear someone at the end of the service come up to me and say,

Pastor, that was encouraging, that's what I want them to say. They don't have to say it to me, because preaching,

I think, somebody used to say it was a means of grace. Sorry for the long answer.

I know it's my show, but you're the guest. So is that an endorsement of the Gentle and Lowly book that you just gave? This is not a

Discernment podcast right now. No, I know. I would endorse it, except just toss out the stuff on passability, and a couple other things here or there.

But I think that book is important for folks, especially coming from a heavy law background that I was involved in.

I think it's a good antidote and a reminder that out of the 89 chapters of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, only one place does it say, here's what

Jesus is at heart, and He's gentle and lowly. Praise God. Thanks for sharing that. Were there any—I dated you into it.

Were there any members that were here prior to 2015, and then that change that took place with Hebrews and the cancer, that have said to you, hey, there's something different about your ministry now?

They have. I mean, I'm reticent to say it, because then it's going to sound like I'm somebody, and I don't want that to be the broadcast today, that I'm broadcasting, oh, look at me.

But they regularly say it. I want to be the recipient of Paul's admonition, let your progress be made evident to all, right?

We should be learning and growing. You as a pastor, when you see someone learn and grow, you say, way to go, I see you growing, and you're serving more, you've got a better attitude, you're praying more biblically, whatever it might be.

And so, should we not expect ourselves to learn and grow as well? And so I think people see that.

I think they approach me more now. In the old days, maybe I was more unapproachable, just because they probably thought

I was just going to hit them over the head with a Bible verse. I mean, I still give them Bible verses, but I'll probably hug, if it's a man,

I'll probably hug him just as much as I give him a Bible verse. Great. Some balance. Well, in the old days, if somebody's had a big problem, let's say with pornography, and they've come in here to this very room, and I'd probably get after him for, if we met for an hour,

I'd probably get after him for about 55 minutes, and the last five, I'd probably tell them that I love them, and God loves them too.

Now, if I think the person's really a Christian, it'll be much more, this is who the

Lord is, here's who you are in Christ, you know, like in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. There's law there.

Don't be deceived, flee immorality, glorify God with your body. In chapter 6, verses 9 to 20, three imperatives.

But there's all kinds of indicatives, and here's who the Lord is, and by the way, you've been washed, you've been sanctified, you've been justified, union with Christ, resurrection of the body, you've been redeemed with a price, therefore glorify

God with your body. So probably for 50 minutes, I will talk about their identity in Christ, how important that is to make them want to flee sin, and then the last five minutes will probably be my finger to their sternum like a dad to a son saying, now don't you do this again.

Actually, sometimes I've really done this finger to the sternum. Have you? Uh -huh. Not even to my own, but to theirs, like son, this is, you gotta run from this particular sin.

I like that robust pastoring. Hands -on.

Well, interestingly, and I know you know this as a dad, but now

I'm kind of like the grandfather, but to many people I'm a dad, so these 30 -year -old men, 40 -year -old men,

I could be their dad, and so I could be your dad, so don't you ever...

I'm a little old for you. So there is that, and by the way,

I'm encouraged by you, as we probably should wrap up the show, that you've been there for a long time, and that a typical pastor, three years and they're out, there's something to be said.

Obviously, God can move us around, and people that move around are not ungodly. That's not my point, but just to stay there.

I've been here 28 years, and it's just to see the fruit of people getting saved, and their children getting saved, and their children getting saved, and so just stay the course.

If I were running the world, or just to encourage you as a father to a son, just stay the course.

Just stay there. There's nothing bigger. There's nothing greater. There's nothing, you know, move up to more people attending.

No, no. What a privilege it is to just be able to feed God's people, preach Christ every

Sunday. I mean, what else would we want? Yeah, man, you're encouraging me. That's wonderful to hear, yeah.

We have everything we have. We have everything we need and more with Christ. I know, and don't we have the greatest...

I know I'm going to say it's a job, but we have the greatest job in the world. Seriously. I mean, yeah, there are difficult things, and you know, you get gray prematurely, and all these, you know, and suffer, but it's like, this is the best.

I remember, I was listening to John MacArthur in person. That's where I attended church for a long time, and when

I first heard him, I said to myself, I didn't say, I want to be a pastor. I said to myself,

I want to know the Bible like that guy. Manly. You know, I'd have my differences with John over the years.

I have differences with my wife, but what I really loved about John, not ashamed of the gospel, going to preach it.

I don't care what you think in terms of, you don't like me to talk about sin or whatever. I'm just going to proclaim the truth, in season, out of season.

You never thought to yourself, oh, he's going to get up and do a book review today, and I thought, he knows the Bible too, and he knows the

Lord. I want to be like that, and come to find out about eight years later, I was a pastor.

What was it, Bunyan who, Spurgeon, I'm looking at Spurgeon's mug right now on the wall here, said about Bunyan that he, prick him and he bleeds bibline.

I know. I want to be that man. Part of my testimony, Jamie, is at my father's funeral in 1989.

He was 55, 6 '4", 240, boxer, tough guy, and he died, and the pastor,

Lutheran pastor, handed me the Bible at the dinner table with the rest of the family, and said, what do you want me to say about your dad from the

Bible? I don't have any idea, so I know how to deal with people, and I just said,

I'm just too distraught, I can't think, whatever you think's best. But inside,

I said, I'm never going to be embarrassed again if somebody, in that regard, if somebody hands me the

Bible, I'm going to know what's in it. So I started reading the Bible, kind of out of pride, I'm going to know what's in this book.

I could tell you Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but I don't know where, how it goes together, so I went to a store, a bookstore that basically sells, you know,

Kenneth Copeland, Hagen, Word Faith stuff, looking for like, an intro to Christianity, because I need to figure out what's in that book.

I will know what's in that Bible, and I meant it for pride, but the

Lord meant it for good, so. Now I generally know what's in the Bible. I can tell you that there's a scarlet thread of redemption that runs from Genesis 315 all the way to Revelation 22, how about that?

Amen, some head crushing all the way through. Whenever I ride my bicycle outside, I will regularly see dead animals, and my theology of bicycle riding would then tell me,

I'm just, you know, one foot away from getting hit by a car, and I'm dead, so be careful, enjoy

God's creation, and regularly I'll see snakes that have been run over, and it typically is their head that's run over, and it's a good reminder, riding the bicycle, seeing the evidence of God's crushing, and you think about thy kingdom come when

Jesus said, boys, pray this way, I want your kingdom to come, Lord, and that's one commentator said, war -like language, battle language, because I want

Satan's kingdom to be crushed, and destroyed, and toppled, and I want the advance of our kingdom, and one by one, as people come to knowledge of the

Savior, and then ultimately, kingdom comes when the king comes. Yeah, I was thinking about that verse in Matthew where it says, you know,

Jesus promises that the gates of hell will not prevail. When do gates come at, when do gates move?

They don't, so I think it's a picture of the church waging war, storming the gates of hell.

There's this forward kind of idea there in that image. Gates don't move, the gates of hell, we're storming the gates of hell, we're going to destroy.

Yeah, so there's this awesome image there. I like that. Well, police officers like battle stuff, right?

Ammo, weapons, are you carrying today? Nothing now. I figured there'd be enough guns in this office that we'd be all set, all covered.

I usually carry, but not today. Jamie, thank you for coming on No Compromise Radio today. I appreciate you, and we're going to go have lunch and get to know each other even better, but thanks.

Keep preaching the Word, and as Colossians 1, 28 says, make sure you proclaim

Him. Thanks for being on. It's been fun. Thanks, Mike. Great to be here.