April 16, 2026 Show with Dr. Keith Foskey on “A Biblically Functioning Church”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

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Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 16th day of April, 2026.

I'm so delighted to be back together again with my friend Dr. Keith Foskey, author, pastor, podcaster, humorist, and one of three elders at Sovereign Grace Family Church in Jacksonville, Florida, and today he's going to be addressing the theme of his new book,

A Biblically Functioning Church. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Keith Foskey.

Chris, thanks again for having me on. It's always fun to talk to you, and this is not my first time on, so I just want to say thank you for having the faith in me to bring me back.

Oh, I love to have you back. I'm not always re -invited. Well, that's not the case with me.

Sure. I guess some other jerks out there are not inviting you back.

By the way, you should feel very honored because I only reserve the song

Back Together Again by Larry Coriel and Alphonse Mouzon, a couple of my favorite jazz fusion artists, both of them now deceased, but I usually reserve that song only for when

Dr. James R. White is in town speaking at local engagements or if we're going to Georgia together or somewhere else attending the same conference.

So you should feel privileged that I played that to introduce you today. Absolutely. Always appreciate you, brother.

And tell our listeners, for the sake of those who are just discovering you today, tell our listeners about Sovereign Grace Family Church in Jacksonville, Florida.

Yep. We are a Reformed Baptist Church on the north side of Jacksonville.

Jacksonville is a pretty big city, so we are on the northern side near the airport.

I've been the pastor now. I just celebrated my 20th year as the pastor of Sovereign Grace.

We celebrated that in January. And we are a First London Confession Church, which often raises questions.

People want to know why we're not Second London Confession, and maybe we'll do another show about that.

But we are a confessional Baptist church holding to the 1646, the

First London Baptist Confession of Faith, and we're a small church here on the north side, but we would love to have people come and visit us if they were interested.

I'm sorry. We're going to have to conclude this interview now, discovering that you're not a

Second London Baptist. That's right. Well, if anybody is interested in discovering more about Sovereign Grace Family Church in Jacksonville, Florida, go to sgfcjax .org,

sgfcjax .org, and you can also find out more about Keith Foskey himself and his writing and everything else he's up to at keithfoskey .com,

and Foskey is spelled F -O -S -K -E -Y, keithfoskey .com.

And it's a joy to have you back on the program to discuss what

I think is a very important issue, and what were the factors that compelled you to write a book on a biblically functioning church?

It seems to me over the 40, let's see, about 40 years that I've been a born -again believer, most of that time working in Christian media, which has led me to meet a very wide spectrum of professing believers, predominantly within evangelicalism, from a whole host of theological perspectives and so on.

And one main issue that seems to be plaguing the church, as long as I'm a

Christian, is that many church leaders and their congregations really don't think that God requires that we use the

Bible to determine how our church functions, ironically, even though they say they believe in the

Bible. They say they believe it is the inerrant Word. They say they believe it is

God -breathed. They say they love it. They say they live by it. Allegedly, their pastors teach from it and preach from it.

But they think that now that we're in the new covenant,

God gives us far more liberty than many of you Reformed folk think, and we could basically have a church function according to our tastes, preferences, and whatever we think will draw the lost into our building.

Have you noticed the same kind of thing? There may not be that open, honest, and blunt of a admission by these folks that I'm describing, but it's basically what they're really conveying in the way that they behave and the way their churches function.

Yeah, and this book actually arose out of a series of sermons that were preached because our church needed to change, and by God's grace, around the year 2010—so we're talking about 15 years ago—around the year 2010,

God allowed our church to go through a time of real revival and soul -searching where we were sort of rediscovering who we were and who we wanted to be, and that was actually when we changed our name.

I've talked about this, I think, on your show before, that our church used to be called Forest Christian Church. We had come out of the old

Disciples of Christ denomination, and we had totally gone away from that.

I mean, the Disciples of Christ are very liberal, but they're not only liberal, they're also very corporate. The way the model of church governance is, is there's an executive board, and there's a general board, and there are committees, and everything is run off of these—it's very much when the pastor is basically an employee and the elders are like a spiritual advisory committee, and nothing was functioning from a biblical perspective.

Everything was functioning from a corporate perspective. So I said to our church,

I said, I want to preach on what does the Bible say the church model should be?

How should the church function? And I began to look for resources. Now, there were some good resources at the time—you know,

Nine Marks was already out and things like that. There were some books. But most of the books

I found were actually on the subject of church growth, like how to get 500 new members by Christmas or something like that, and finding books that were primers on how to manage, how to run a church, like how do you do this?

How do you start to finish, you know, have a church that functioned biblically?

I didn't find a lot of those resources. And so once I completed the sermons, and it was six months of preaching through this topic, and I did everything from how does the church handle finances to how does the church handle choosing its leaders, how does the church—you know, all of those things.

It's not a long book, but I would say it's pretty full as far as the amount of subjects, you know, men and women in the church, what does the

Bible say? And there's a whole chapter on that. And so this book was birthed out of a need from our church to sort of have a manual, like how do we govern the church?

And so I preached it. We then took the sermons that I wrote, and I had a friend edit them down to like a manual, and I had it self -published, but I really only did it for our people.

Like I gave it out in our church. We used it at our church. A few other people had it, but it was mainly like an in -house thing.

And a few years ago, Mark Goodson from Grace and Truth reached out to me, and he said, hey, do you have anything that you think would make a good book?

Do you have anything that you think would be good to publish? And I had this manuscript that had been sitting for several years, and I sent it to him.

He and his wife read it. They both thought it was good and worth publishing. Ben Zeitloff came along and edited it.

So this new version is a new version. If anybody had bought the old self -published version, that was not professionally edited.

This new one is a completely new edition. It's got a little bit more information and little changes here and there.

But for the most part, this is those sermons that I preached now set to a solid work that people can take.

It's easily digestible. It's only a little over 150 pages, so it's not a long book. And I hope that it will be a benefit to church leaders and church members who want to know how the church should function.

Now, I'm assuming that if those, even those who either already have the book or buy the book, they want a more thorough and longer treatment of these subjects under that heading, that they can hear your sermons on.

All of these subtitles underneath how a biblically faithful church functions.

Well, you know, it's funny you ask that because I would have to go back and see.

We've had our sermons online for years, but I actually don't know how far back we go.

I would have to go back to see if they're available. Maybe I need to re -preach them.

That could be something to go along with the book. Again, I preached them in 2009, 2010, so we're talking 16 years ago.

I know I have over 2 ,000 sermons online because we started using an online publishing service years ago, and they now have all of my sermons.

Maybe they're there. I have to go see. That's a great question. I'm glad you asked because I'm going to see if I can find it.

It'd be also a great theme for a Bible conference where you would be at least one of the speakers.

Let's see if that can be developed and brought to fruition. What were some compelling factors that made you realize this book needs to get in the hands of Christians who really desire for their churches to function biblically?

What were those things that you saw—everything from gross negligence and going across the spectrum to the other side of well -meaning men, men that you even think may be very close to you in your theology, if not identical in 99 percent of the ways, but in some ways they're missing the mark, and they may even admit that, which is why they may sometimes seek counsel on these things.

But just what compelled you specifically about the mission to write this book?

Well, I know that our church could not be unique in the fact that it had allowed the world's model of leadership, membership, and structure to infiltrate and overtake the biblical model.

And this is where the term biblically functioning church came from. I say even to this day, we are striving to be a biblically functioning church.

I would never say to somebody, we're perfect. We are a perfectly biblically functioning church, because I wouldn't be so foolish as to express that amount of hubris.

But I think every church should be striving to be more biblically functioning.

Somebody even told me the other day, that's a really long title, a biblically functioning church. It's not pithy.

It's kind of verbose. But the idea is that's a model. We are seeking after biblical functionality.

And so with that, I say no matter where you are, there's always something in churches that I think the book will speak to.

And I mean, I know some really great churches and some really great denominations, and I would never say, well,

I think this could solve their problems. But an example might be this.

I have friends in different churches who are all going through different things. I have churches who are fighting the egalitarian battle.

I have friends who are fighting the battle of wanting to have plurality of elders, but they've never had that.

So they don't know what that looks like. And I've got friends who are dealing with something as simple as, what does money look like?

And I know that seems like a small thing, and I think that's like chapter nine in the book. It's like one of the later chapters. But I do deal with, how does a biblically functioning church support itself?

And that was actually based on a question I had one time from a youth group member, one of our kids in the church.

I was talking about church funding and how we fund programs, and he raised his hand.

He said, I thought the church was funded by the government. And I said, you've never been so wrong in your life.

You've missed that completely. And I said, we've never received a dime from the government.

The church is fully funded through members who support the ministry.

But what does that look like? Is the Old Testament tithe the model? Is that what we should be doing?

And I talk about that in the book, and I talk about the difference between compulsory giving and voluntary giving.

What does the New Testament teach? So these are all things I think when people come to a better understanding of, it helps work these things out, especially the question of convictions and how to work out our convictions in our lives.

So like I said, what compelled is the need is everywhere. It just is different everywhere.

Some churches have no problem with egalitarianism, but they got heavy -handed leadership. That's a big problem in churches right now is they sometimes get pastors who want to be

Protestant popes, right? They want to be one -man armies that don't receive any type of authority or accountability from elders who share their same authority in the church.

They want to be the top dog, and I talk about that as well. I talk about the danger of the single -pastor model where who has no accountability.

And so those are just a few things. And you mentioned something that is highly sensitive, and we didn't discuss this before the show, so I'm not even sure if I'm stepping on your toes or not.

But when you mentioned how does the church fund itself, even amongst some very biblically sound churches, there are differences of opinion as to the length of liberty, where, of course, primarily most churches,

I'm assuming, are funded by the voluntary giving of congregations, congregational members.

But there are churches that have carnivals in their parking lot.

There are churches that do all kinds of things where they are basically trying to recruit donations from the lost and, of course, they will put a good motive into it by saying, this is an opportunity for us to evangelize to, for us to hand out tracts, for us to invite people to worship services.

So I'm not asking that question with necessarily a convinced, made -up mind either way.

I have much more of an openness to that for parachurch groups, and, of course, there are

Christians that don't believe that there should be such a thing as parachurch groups. But what's your thoughts on that?

You know, I haven't given much thought to doing like fundraisers for raising money for the church.

Our church has done some events to raise money for individuals, like we had a young girl who had cancer, and their family was trying to get some experimental treatments that insurance wouldn't cover.

So we opened that up to the community. We said, if anybody wants to come support this girl, we will have this event.

And we did a silent auction and all this stuff where people donated things, but we didn't take any money as a church from that.

That was all given to that little girl's family because we thought, you know, the community would want to be involved in loving this family and showing support.

I'm not sure how I feel about the church using it as a revenue stream. I'd have to think more on that.

That's just not something that we have done. We've been blessed with not needing to do that as far as for meeting our needs in the church.

We've gone through some very lean years, as I imagine a lot of smaller churches have, where we didn't buy a lot of extra toilet paper that year.

But the closest thing I would say that we ever did in anything like that was my predecessor.

This wasn't with me, but my predecessor, there was a faith -based initiative under George W.

Bush where they were doing some faith -based stuff for churches.

He ended up getting money to build a playground. We did do that, and it was a playground for the community.

That playground ended up going away. We don't have it anymore, but that was 30 years ago now.

We're talking mid -90s. So that's my only experience with that, and that's as much as I can say to it.

I wouldn't condemn it only to say it seems to me like if we're doing evangelism, that should be something where we would want to do with as little cost to the people as possible.

If we do a carnival, we want to fund it so that people come and have a good time and hear the gospel rather than making them pay for it.

That would be my initial thought. But again, like you, I haven't really heard arguments for it, and I don't want to be like the proverb says, the one who speaks without hearing the other side.

I'd have to think more on that one. One thing I can say makes me uncomfortable, having been raised Roman Catholic, is the carnivals that my parish as a young man and a little boy, the carnivals that they would put on would include gambling.

It's kind of roulette wheels and all kinds of stuff, and it to me is quite bizarre that a church would be raising money in that way.

Can I tell a quick story? Just last week, I was in Reno, Nevada, because I was preaching out in Nevada, and I had never been in a casino before.

I'd never even seen one, because again, I've lived in Florida my whole life. I got off the plane, and as soon as I got off the plane, there were slot machines in the lobby of the airport.

I was like, this is wild. I've never even seen anything like that, so that's interesting that you mentioned gambling.

In fact, I have to confess that as a teenager, I did doctor a lotto ticket, and the guy behind the counter, or whatever you want to call it, under the tent, he immediately yelled out that I was a winner, and then he was like, wait a minute, and he realized that I had doctored the amount of money that I allegedly won.

Are we doing confession time, Chris? That could really get a lot of people listening.

Yeah, that only happened after I got tanked up from the beer they were selling at the carnival, but anyway.

One of the areas of great controversy that you've already mentioned, and perhaps you could go into it a little further, is the belief in the plurality of elders, that this is a new idea to a lot of churches, even though it's been a concept and an adopted form of church polity for centuries, and of course we believe is biblical.

But why did this become so important to you, the plurality of elders?

One of the things that I recognized early on in ministry is that not only is this job impossible really to do alone, you need godly men around you for a multitude of reasons, but also, it just was, as you said, to me it was so obviously scriptural that this job was not meant to be done alone.

I was fortunate that when I came into this church as the pastor in 2006, there was already a group called the elders, but I was unfortunate in that the elders weren't functioning like elders.

So even though we had this group, and as I said earlier, it was like a spiritual advisory committee, that was about the best you could say that they did.

They didn't preach, they didn't teach, they just sort of gave spiritual oversight. And so I saw what they could be and what the

Bible called them to be, but what they weren't at the time. And so by looking at that,

I said, there's a need here, the Bible has given us a need, and we're not fulfilling it.

So let's begin with the most basic thing, and that is that a pastor is an elder and an elder is a pastor.

And there's an argument that can be made scripturally from this, but there's three words. There's the word for pastor, there's the word sometimes translated bishop, which is episkopos or overseer, and then there's the word that's translated elder, which is presbyteros.

And those three words are used differently, but also interchangeably to show that it's one office.

And there's a great online, there's a great Venn diagram that shows how each one of them is used separately, but then there's times where all of them are used concurrently.

They're used together to speak at the same office. Titus does this, and some other places as well.

And so with that, that became the driving force. I said, one, the single pastor model puts a lot of investment and pressure on the single individual, but it also means it's easy.

Authority is a dangerous drug, Chris, you know that. You've seen men,

I know you have, in your long time of ministry and radio, you've seen men who have allowed authority to go to their head.

I know one person that you and I are friends with, and I won't mention his name, but this guy has told me stories of people that he has met.

And one guy in particular said, who is the congregation to question what

I say? I went to seminary. I know my Bible. Who are they to call into question my teaching?

And I remember when he told me that story, I said, I can't believe anybody would think that way. But then

I said, no, I really can't. I really can't. It didn't take long before I started to imagine people saying that.

That's the way Paul responded, didn't he? When the Brazilians were asking questions.

And I just remember specifically thinking to myself,

I need somebody who can tell me no. I need somebody who can tell me if I got it wrong.

And that wouldn't be afraid. They're not here to flatter me.

They're not here to tell me how good I am. They're not here to tell me how great the sermons are. They are here to do a couple of things.

One, they're here to be my sounding board, even before I go to preach.

There are times when I'm going to preach something, I call my elders. I say, hey, I want to say this. What do you think about this?

Do you agree with the conclusion that I've come to? Do you agree with this? So they're my sounding board.

They're also my correction. Now, I'll take correction from anybody.

If somebody from the congregation wants to meet with me and talk to me, I'll listen to them. But the elders, that's their job.

They know that I expect that of them. And my wife, I'll say that about her too.

She's the most honest. But then the third thing is just to have somebody to help you carry the load.

It's sort of the Moses holding up his arms. My fellow elders have said that and use that very image with me.

They've said, we understand you have a role that you're doing most of the preaching. And I do talk about that.

The fact that even though there's an equality among us, usually there's one who is the mouthpiece, the one who is the one who's out front a little bit more.

That doesn't mean I have more authority, but I do have more opportunity to speak.

And so they feel like a lot of times they're beside me holding up my arms so that it's not bearing the burden alone.

So all of these things just fit together. And the Bible says this is the way to do it. And the way to do it makes perfect sense.

And it seems to be that it comes with so many benefits. And I know very little struggle.

The only struggle I could think would be with a man who doesn't want accountability and he doesn't want to have to answer to anybody.

And I think in that situation, a plurality of elders is not going to be his first choice.

And I'm not saying that everybody who doesn't want a plurality of elders, let me correct myself. I'm not saying that people who don't want a plurality of elders are automatically haughty or prideful men, but I would ask, what is it that you don't want?

What of the benefits do you think don't outweigh the detriments? What would be the detriment to having a plurality of elders?

And let me take advantage of this opportunity to give a shout out to my old friend, Andy Montoro, who is one of your elders, who was actually one of my late wife

Julie's pastors on Long Island back in the 80s.

And I have many wonderful memories of Andy and Candy and having meals with them in their home and so on.

And I can still remember Andy sitting on the steps of the church with me.

I think he called me up and said he wanted me to meet with him or something. And this is when I was dating Julie.

And he said, well, brother, what are your intentions? He was very protective of Julie.

And he said to me, she thinks that you're an answer to her prayers to God, and I'm just looking out for her to make sure that that is true.

And so, a lot of respect for Andy. And I know that providentially, he came to be acquainted with you when

I invited him to join me at a James White conference at your church. Yep.

And he's been here now for almost 10 years, I guess it's been, and served alongside of me.

And he's one of those guys who holds up my hands and he preaches for us. And he's been a very good friend to me.

And one of the most supportive men in one very specific area, he has been so good about encouraging the church to support our family well.

And the church has. I'm full -time in ministry. And Andy came out of a, he retired from Penske trucking.

So, he had a corporate job and he understands what it takes to raise a family and what a man needs to provide for his family.

And so, Andy has many times stood up, him and Mike, both of my elders have stood up and appealed to the church to be generous in supporting me.

And I tell you what, to have a guy like that is hugely valuable because I've heard of churches that, the old joke is the congregation will say to God, you keep them humble and we'll keep them poor.

But thankfully, I've had men who have been concerned about my family's needs and saw to it that they've been met.

And I couldn't have asked for more love to my family than that. Well, hopefully one of these days

I'll be able to meet Mike Collier, the other elder that you were speaking of. I've not met him yet, unless I met him before he was an elder there when

I was visiting your church many years ago. But this leads me to a next connected question, but I'll have you answer it when we come back from our first commercial break, and that is the parity of the elders.

Not all churches that have adopted a plurality of elders believe in the parity of elders, that they have an equal authority, although having different gifts are used in different ways.

But we'll have you address that when we come back from our commercial break.

If you'd like to join us, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and country of residence if you live outside the USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question is personal and private.

Let's say you fear that the church where you're a member is not functioning biblically, and obviously we wouldn't want you to identify yourself, which would by default identify the church where you're a member, and we don't want to do that.

So you may remain anonymous if you are compelled to do so. But if it's a general question, give us your first name at least, city and state, country of residence.

Don't go away, we're going to be right back right after these messages. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries and the

Dividing Line webcast here. Although God has brought me all over the globe for many years to teach, preach, and debate at numerous venues, some of my very fondest memories are from those precious times of fellowship with Pastor Rich Jensen and the brethren at Hope Reform Baptist Church, now located at their new beautiful facilities in Corham, Long Island, New York.

I've had the privilege of opening God's Word from their pulpit on many occasions, have led youth retreats for them, and have always been thrilled to see their members filling many seats at my

New York debates. I do not hesitate to highly recommend Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island to anyone who wants to be accurately taught, discipled, and edified by the

Holy Scriptures, and to be surrounded by truly loving and caring brothers and sisters in Christ.

For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

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I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Originally from Cork, Ireland, the

Lord in his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.

At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession, we embrace congregational church government, and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's Word for edification of believers, the salvation of the lost, and the glory of our triune

God. We are also devoted to living out the one another commands of Scripture, loving, encouraging, and serving each other as the body of Christ.

In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every

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That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.

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I'm looking forward to seeing you and your wife right after this broadcast. Thank you so much for inviting me to dinner tonight, and I'm looking forward to the time of fellowship with you.

And if you just tuned us in, our guest today is Keith Foskey, one of three elders at the

Sovereign Grace Family Church in Jacksonville, Florida, and we are discussing the theme of his new book,

A Biblically Functioning Church. If you have a question, submit it to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Before you answer the question about the parody of the elders,

I forgot to mention something very important about your activities, your Calvinist YouTube channel.

Tell us about that. Yeah, so Your Calvinist is the title of my show, and it's also the title of my channel, and it is a place where I go to not only talk about theology and to teach, but also to have fun.

We have a humor ministry. As you mentioned earlier, I think when you introduced me, I was not only my pastor and podcaster, but I'm also a humorist.

I'm a comedian. I do funny things. I do—I know that sounds silly to say, but I do stand -up comedy, and it's part of just a desire that I have.

I think one of the most untapped resources in Christianity is the resource of using humor to reach people.

Some of the things that I've actually been able to do over the last couple of years is actually speak on this topic.

I was just in Nevada, as I mentioned earlier, and one of the messages I gave was on the value of humor in the

Christian life and the fact that God actually commends the use of humor in Scripture.

I talk about that and the value of it and things like that. So if anybody's interested in going to see not only some serious theological things, but also some humorous and funny things, then check out my channel.

I have a whole series of videos on denominational distinctives, and they're called denominational videos, and they're basically humorous skits that I do, and it's a lot of fun.

By the way, do you ever get any negative feedback from the denominations that you're parodying?

In general, no. I get a lot of positive feedback, even from people that I'm hard on.

I've gotten words even from Methodists, and I'm probably the hardest on Methodists.

However, it depends on the platform. My ex -platform tends to get pretty positive feedback, but TikTok, because I'm on all the different platforms, and TikTok, I have found, tends to—and

I don't know if it's because the audience there is more left -leaning and liberal or if it's because the people that seeing it are more left -leaning and liberal, but I get a lot of negative.

A year and a half ago, I think, is when the United Methodist Church voted to do something.

I forget what it was, but it was so crazy. It was so wild. I think it was ordaining homosexuals, but it was more than that. It was something crazy.

I dressed up in my United Methodist outfit. I held a bottle of Yoo -Hoo, which had nothing to do with it, but for whatever reason, it was just funny, and I waved at the camera, and the caption was,

The United Methodist Church has waved goodbye to Christianity, and it was just me smiling and waving.

That one got hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok, and a lot of it was, who are you to say this about the church?

Who are you to say this about the Methodist? Who are you to say they're not Christian? Blah, blah, blah. That was probably the most harsh response

I've received, and it was a six -second video. That is the most amazing thing, is the six seconds, and it got attention for sure.

It's ironic when people are righteously indignant and claim that you have no business judging them, and yet they are judging you when they make their outrageous comments.

It's quite the puzzlement. But I guess you would just go to YouTube and type in You're Calvinist with Keith Foskey, or how do you do it?

If you go to YouTube and put my name, Keith Foskey, or You're Calvinist, either one will bring you right to my channel, and you'll see we have several…well, we have,

I think, over 2 ,000 videos now of different things and everything. My wife and I do a weekly show where we answer questions from all over the world, and that's become probably the most important thing we do, because every week we get an opportunity to speak the gospel to our audience and hear their questions.

I answer every question I'm given. That's one thing I'm known for, is I get 20 to 30 questions a week, and it takes about two hours to answer them all, but we do that every week.

Well, praise God. I even mentioned to you and your wife once how it touched me that you are involved in those things together, and yet you are not the very typically seen, especially in the charismatic realm, husband -and -wife pastor team.

Not at all. It is funny, though, because we make that very joke when

I have a character in my videos that I need to be a woman. She will play the character, and she has played the pastrix in a skit, but never in real life.

Well, I asked you before the break about whether or not you believe in the parity of the elders, because not everyone who believes in the plurality of elders also connects with that, the parity of elders.

What I mean by that is an equal authority, but while recognizing different men have different gifts and are used very often in different ways, of course, biblical ways that are laid out in the

Scripture, but tell us about your own view. Our particular—my position is that there is equal authority in decision making, but not equal responsibility because of the different giftings.

So that's the best way that I can describe, and I do describe this in the book, that there are things that I would be given to because of my gifting that may be different than the other men and because of my responsibilities as far as time.

We don't divide elders by—like the Presbyterians would divide elders by teaching and ruling elders.

We would divide elders by vocational and non -vocational, meaning, as the

Scripture says, there are some of us who this is their job. The Bible talks about those who make their living from the gospel, and that's my job.

So there's an understanding that Brother Mike has a full -time job.

He runs a painting company, and he's an elder, so there's an understanding that my job is more than his when it comes to time and responsibility.

Brother Andy also, when he was with Penske and now he's retired, still has understood that he will have less responsibility than I do, but part of that is because of the vocational slash non -vocational distinction that we see.

But when it comes to decision making, there's another thing that we believe, and I talk about this in the book some, and that is that we don't vote as elders.

We don't do it that way. We seek to speak with one voice or not at all, meaning, if any one of us is not comfortable moving forward with something, that one person can be the one that keeps us from moving forward, because there's a reason

God has brought us all together. I think that would be harder the more elders you have. I think if you had 16 elders, like I think they have at Capitol Hill Baptist, it'd be hard not to have some kind of functioning voting system.

But with three men, we don't have that. We don't need that. We just say if there's any one of us that is not, the

Spirit's not guiding that person to move forward on an issue, then we don't move forward. We either speak with one voice or not at all.

Well, I'm assuming that perhaps this hasn't happened yet, but I'm assuming though that if,

God forbid, one of the elders were to refuse moving forward on something that you believe the

Bible commands you to move forward with, like for instance, Billy Bob.

I'm making up a name here, folks. I'm not outing somebody in Keith's church.

How do you know about Billy Bob? You weren't supposed to say that. Billy Bob has committed adultery, and one of the elders says, we can't tell the congregation about Billy.

Billy Bob is my best friend. I'm going to work through it with him, and we're going to make sure this is resolved.

We can't discipline him. You are obviously saying, well, we can't play favorites with the congregation.

We've got to put him under discipline. In fact, it's for his benefit, Billy Bob's benefit, that we discipline him.

As you may know, Keith, I don't even know if you know, I was put under church discipline over a decade ago for backsliding into habitual drunkenness.

I believe that the church discipline I received saved my life, not only restored me to the church and brought me to spiritual sanity and a right relationship with God's church, but I believe that I might have been dead if I didn't continue drinking to the dangerous levels of intoxication as I was.

By the way, folks, I haven't touched a drop since. Thanks be to God and the fine folks at Hebron Colony Ministries in Boone, North Carolina, which is the oldest continuously running drug and alcohol rehab and recovery ministry for men in the

United States. But that was a long -winded way of saying, I'm sure that the

Bible at times forces even men who are outnumbered in a decision amongst the elders where they have to break ties, and might even result in forcing men to resign from their position.

Yeah, and that's what I was going to say. When I say we speak with one voice or not at all, even an elder is subject to the other elders.

So if there was an elder among us, even the three of us, if there was an elder among us who was engaging in some type of sin, and I think what you just said would be sinful if he was wanting to cover up for his friend,

I think at that point it would then be a subject where the other two elders would be responsible to come and discuss that with him about, hey, you are sinning in this, and this is not just you're trying to follow another route.

No, you're trying to protect your friend. It's obvious. But the thing about that is, in regard to your original question of parity and also the issue of plurality, that same situation would be possible if we did vote or there was a voting situation.

There's always the possibility that you have an elder who makes a really bad decision, and this is why

I think the Scripture does say that even the elders are subject to discipline, you know, it has to come from two or three witnesses.

It has to be something serious, but they are to be reprimanded publicly according to Scripture. The elder is responsible.

James 3 .1 says, let not everyone be a teacher because a teacher will be judged with a stricter judgment. And so an elder in that situation, and I pray it would never happen that way as you described, but I know it can.

I know certainly elders are not perfect. But I talk about this in the book, though.

I do talk about how one of the things that the Scripture, in giving us a list of qualifications for an elder, one of the things that it does is it makes us look for a specific type of man.

And this is something I said, and I think this is a good rule. If you wouldn't have him as your pastor, he shouldn't be your elder, because an elder is a pastor.

And I think that's where we've put a different qualification for the man who's pastoring than the man who's an elder.

And because we've done that, and I even quoted from an early church father in the book. I talked about the fact that there was an early church father, and I don't remember who it was, but he said that we spend all this time and money to develop the features of the church and the buildings that we're building and different things, but we spend very little time on the qualities of the men who lead us.

And I can't quote it verbatim, but it is in the book. Basically, this quote was so beautiful, though, because he's like, we spend all this time on the outward things, but we don't.

I think the exact quote is, but to the men who serve in the church, no heed is paid.

And it was like, we pay no heed to who we're putting in these positions of leadership. And I think if you do have men who meet the biblical qualifications, you could still have failures because anyone can fail, and we've seen it numerous times.

But at least you're putting yourself in a much better position than one if you only have one guy, because if there's only one pastor and he has no equals, there's nobody in the church who rises to his level of authority, then there's a much bigger chance that he would misuse that authority.

I mean, you have the whole power corrupts and absolute power corrupts, absolutely, right? That's the danger. But then on the other hand, you have a church where there's, if you have these elders, but they're not biblically qualified, then now you've got a whole other danger.

And this is where, I know this isn't what you asked, but it goes along with it. In a lot of churches, the deacons function as elders.

They've got one pastor and they've got a board of deacons, and the deacons are essentially the leaders of the church.

They are the functioning elders of the church, and they're not even qualified to be deacons.

And you've got guys who are not biblically qualified to be in leadership, and yet they're the ones calling the shots.

And I think that's a much more dangerous model than to seek out truly biblically qualified elders through the biblical standards.

And I walk through in the book exactly what each of those phrases means when it talks about husband of one wife, not a drunkard, not a swindler, not a striker.

It talks about not being a pugilist, right? Now, that doesn't mean you can't ever defend yourself, but it means you're not a man who goes around looking for a fight.

These are terms that the Scripture calls us to look for. You don't want a man—a biblical elder is not pugnacious, right?

And so all of those things can really bring a church to its knees.

Bad leaders can destroy a good church. Yeah. And you were mentioning before about the interchangeable titles of the same office, because you and I agree that there are only two offices in Christ's church biblically, that's elder and deacon, but elders are in the

Scriptures, also called bishop, overseer, presbyter, etc.

And this came up actually during my recent conversation with Sam Farag and Craig Trulia.

Sam Farag is a former Oriental or Coptic Orthodox brother who converted to evangelical

Christianity and is now a Reformed Baptist pastor, and he is going to be having an upcoming debate in May that I am moderating with a former

Reformed Baptist who is now Eastern Orthodox, Craig Trulia. And we just had them on the program together recently.

It was just a conversation, it wasn't a debate. And Craig was taking a lot of time, he was belaboring the issue of why

Eastern Orthodoxy is the true church and Sam's church is not, the proof being, we have bishops and you don't.

And he was going on and on and on about the bishop, and why don't you have bishops, Sam, etc. And I said, excuse me, we've got to define bishop here, because as far as I have learned from people who really know the original languages of the terms, including bishop in the

New Testament, are interchangeable terms for the same office. And that kind of shut the whole thing down as far as his complaint was.

But we have to be careful about that kind of thing. Yeah, and this is one thing

I don't deal with in the book, because and it might give way to a part two at some point, but that is the historical change that occurred.

And most recognize this historical change, which arose in the second century.

And I do think it arose out of a need, the need for battling against heterodoxy and heresy.

And so leaders arose over areas, and these leaders became identified as bishops of certain areas, where when we read like Clement, who's earlier than this, we don't see this model, but we see this model coming up later in the second century, and especially in the third century, where you have a distinction between the bishop and the presbyter, a distinction between the episkopos, the overseer, and the presbyter.

But that's not a distinction we see in Scripture, and it's not a distinction that we see even into the second century.

It's not until later. And like I said, I understand the reason, right? Like you're battling the

Gnostics, and you're battling heretics within the church, and you need someone who can speak with gravitas.

You need someone who can speak with authority. And so there arose this idea of apostolic succession, that there's this line of authority that is passed down through the bishops, and that's where Eastern Orthodoxy and even

Roman Catholicism make their claims to authority. They're saying, our church goes back to the original. Our guys can trace their lineage back.

I had a guy on my show who was Anglican, and he told me that he could trace back his ordination all the way back to the apostles, that there was a hand...

I laugh too, but he said there was hand -on -head succession, that he knew who had put their hand on his head, and he knew who had put the hand on that guy's head, and he carried his resume with him that had this list of names that apparently went back to the apostles.

And I said, you know what? The pope can't even do that. I said, because of the Avignon papacy and all the problems that happened with the

Babylonian captivity of the church and the different things that happened at that point, I said, even the papacy doesn't have an unbroken succession, even though Rome claims that it does.

But you're telling me you do? Bishop Bob from Jerkwater, Georgia, you've got an unbroken succession that nobody can claim any disparity?

So I really call into question that thinking. The Bible never tells us that what we are to look for is a man who's had his head laid on by another man who had his hand...

The Bible says here is how you qualify a man. One, he has a desire to do it, and two, he meets these qualifications.

And who determines whether he meets these qualifications? The people of God, because they've got the Word of God. They've got him who they look at, and they compare him to the

Word of God, and does he meet these qualifications? That's the way it's done. It's not done through some magical hand -on -head transfer of authority down through the ages.

Now, is there a form of apostolic succession that we could say the gospel has, from the apostles, been brought down to us through the church and through the history of the church?

Yes, and I think Gavin Ortland talks about this in his book and does a good job what it means to be Protestant.

I think that was a pretty good book. And he talks about that line of what we mean by apostolic succession in Protestantism is not the same as what is meant by it in Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism.

I would love to see that Anglican in a conversation with a landmark Baptist. Oh, man.

I'm actually real good friends with Thomas Ross. He debated James White over the

King James issue, and we became friends. We still talk over the phone some, and he came on my show to defend landmark

Baptist theology. It is wild stuff. I disagree with him. I say we're friends. I disagree with him wholeheartedly, but he's a fun guy.

He's fun to listen to because he gets out there. And they actually divide amongst themselves over the doctrines of sovereign grace because there are militant anti -Calvinists who are landmarkers and militant anti -Arminian landmarkers.

It's wild. But I've had friendships as well with some of them. Pastor Jason Contino, we're going to be asking your question as soon as we come back from our midway break.

Really appreciate you submitting a question, and there are several other people waiting to have their questions asked and answered, so please be patient.

Once again, if you would like to join those folks already waiting to have their questions asked and answered, submit an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

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We are discussing the book that he has written, the new book, A Biblically Functioning Church.

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Keith Foskey on his book, A Biblically Functioning Church. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And going now to the question of a mutual friend of my guest and mine,

Pastor Jason Contino of Harborview Christian Church in Port Jefferson, Long Island, New York.

And he says, Hi, men. Such a joy to have you both on one show. Question for Pastor Keith, how do we respond to people who claim that the home church model is more biblical?

I say there's a Greek word for that. It's baloney. That's a joke

I use on my show a lot, so please don't take offense, brothers, if you disagree with me. That was just meant to be humorous, not meant to be a shot too hard across the bow.

There is a real sense, though, that I think we need to consider what is being argued for with the house church model.

Oftentimes, the argument goes something like this, that if a church has a building to meet in, it's automatically treated like a business, and that's not the biblical model, so the only way to do it right is to do it in a home.

That's not what the Bible teaches. Were the churches meeting in homes? Yes, but that was mostly out of necessity, not out of the fact that this was the best way.

In fact, we see that the Apostle Paul actually used the Hall of Tyrannus to teach in, which was the best way

I can describe it, was basically like a rented space that was being used while he was teaching.

A church that has a rented space or, by God's grace, like our church, a fully paid -off building is not in any form of sin by being in a building that is useful to the body of Christ and useful for many other things.

Our church is used for all kinds of outreach to the community and different things that we do. We worship here, but we also have a community karate program that we do.

We used to have American Heritage Girls. That stopped now, but that was a community program that we did, so there's all kinds of stuff that the church can be used for.

But getting back to Jason's question, specifically, if someone says that the house church is the proper or only model, as I said, the biggest problem with that is that's saying that because the

Bible describes something that a description is automatically a prescription, and that's not it.

Here's the problem also. The problem is that in many house churches, and I'm not speaking with too broad of a brush, so before anybody wants to chastise me,

I'm not saying this is all, but in many house churches, what we don't find is we don't find a biblical structure of leadership and we don't find a biblical structure of church relationships.

Instead, we find families that gather together in the church and worship together, but I often ask, do you have elders?

Do you have deacons? Do you practice the ordinances that are commanded in Scripture?

If you're not doing those things, then you're not a church. You're a glorified Bible study. It's not the same thing.

The Bible gives a prescription for the function of the church, and it is a place where there are recognized men who are called to shepherd the people of God, where there's recognized people who are called to serve the people of God as deacons, and there are supposed to be gift -based ministries occurring within the people, and if this is not happening in a home, then it's not a church.

As I said, it might be a great Bible study, but it doesn't make that a church, and so that's where I would say you have two sides of it.

One is those who say the house church is the only model. I would say that's wrong, and if someone says that the house church can't be right,

I say, no, that's wrong too. You can have a church in the house, but the functioning church should still be happening in the house.

It should still be a biblically functioning church. Right. So you're not opposed to house churches, but you're opposed to the exclusivity that some of them claim that they are the only ones functioning as a biblical church.

Yes. I think they're misusing the description of Scripture and turning it into a prescription.

Right. I have run into both forms of house churches.

One where they just do that because they think it's better for them.

It frees them up from the expenses of renting a building, buying a building, and I've also run into some militant house church -only folks.

But so many things, unfortunately, eclipse the gospel when people hold on to something that is not a required thing in the

Scriptures. In fact, I don't know if you've ever heard of this, Keith, and I'm not exaggerating, folks, it's absolutely true.

The Church of Christ has many divisions and wars going on amongst their own kind, and one day

I was in the nursing home visiting my late brother Andy, and I heard some a cappella worship services going on.

It was a hymn singing going on in the kitchen, or in the dining room, I should say. And I told my brother that I'd be right back, and I went to investigate, and I said to the minister, excuse me, after he was finished, of course,

I said, excuse me, what church are you affiliated with, brother? And he said, Chippendag Church of Christ.

Okay, that's interesting. Providentially, I'm going to be at a Bible conference at the

Carlisle Church of Christ on creationism, six -day creationism, and I was just wondering if you were going to be there.

Never heard of it. Like, hmm, that's odd. And I asked the minister of the Carlisle Church of Christ, excuse me, why doesn't the guy leading worship services here in Carlisle at the nursing home from the

Shippensburg Church of Christ know that you're having a creationist Bible conference?

He goes, oh, they don't want nothing to do with us. I said, why? Because we have a kitchen in our building. I said, what?

I said, I mean, that's lunacy. And yeah, they believe that since the

Bible doesn't mention kitchens, if you have one in your building, that you're a false church. I said, gee, I wonder if they have bathrooms in their building.

I mean, the fact that the early church did meet in homes, they obviously had some kind of a kitchen.

They had an area where they prepared food, maybe it's in front of the house or whatever it is, but I mean, that's insanity, isn't it?

Oh, yeah. And it just goes back to what some might, and even in our circles,

Chris, we know that there's something we call the regulative principle of worship, which means what is done in scripture, what is done in worship should be what is regulated by or is commanded by scripture.

But some people press that to the point of ridiculousness, and that's what you just said. Well, the

Bible never mentions kitchens, so the church can't have a kitchen. Really? That's the hill you're going to die on?

That's where you're going to—yeah, that dog won't hunt, as the late

Votie Bauckham would say. Okay, we have

Darren in Fernandina Beach, Florida.

He's close enough to come visit Sovereign Grace, if you ever have. That's only about 30 minutes away, yeah.

Are you as troubled as I am about the fact that sometimes churches will appoint people to eldership just because they are successful in business?

And I guess the key phrase there would be, just because. Because, obviously, if a man is going to be appointed to an elder or even a deacon, and by his own flaws and sins is a failure in business, he may not be qualified.

But to appoint a man to that position just because—and you know that he's theologically ill -equipped, spiritually ill -equipped, just he's successful and he's got some good business savvy—that should not be the motivation for appointing a man to eldership.

Yeah, and this actually is—I appreciate you, Darren, asking this question, because this actually goes to a bigger issue, and that is the issue of what really qualifies a man to this position.

Because I've known churches that people get in that position because they're the most, honestly, for lack of a better term, they're just the most affluent among the people, right?

And they're giving the most to the church. And therefore, if they're the most affluent and they're giving the most to the church, then they should have a say.

And the elders make decisions, so they need to be an elder, right? That's sometimes the way—and it's very rarely is that stated.

I don't know that it's ever stated that way, but you can tell who are the elders, whether they're the givers, they're the movers and shakers, right?

They're the decision makers. And I think that can be part and parcel of what

Darren is saying. And this is why I think—and I talk about this in the book—eldership is not a popularity contest.

It's not the guy who is necessarily the most popular. It's the guy who is the most qualified, the most gifted in the area of what it means to be a shepherd and a leader.

And as you said, Chris, if a man is a businessman, that doesn't disqualify him from being an elder, but it certainly doesn't qualify him either.

That shouldn't even come into the running. I remember years ago, and we're talking almost 20 years now at this point, but I remember a guy saying to me one time—and

I couldn't believe he said it, so when you hear this, you're going to say, I can't believe somebody would say that, but he said this to me.

I promise I'm not exaggerating at all. He said, you know what? He said, I wish we could have a doctor or a lawyer join our church.

You know, somebody important. And I remember, like,

I was so dumbfounded by that. Like, you just said the quiet part out loud, right?

Like, you let the inner voice become the outer voice, right? But he was serious.

And I even pressed him. I said, what do you mean? Like, what are you saying? He said, if we had some important people in this church, we'd get more people to come.

That was his logic. And it really was literally like the epistle of James on display, you know, don't put the rich person in a high seat and the poor person in the low seat, right?

Like, he literally was saying, if we could have a couple rich people up in here, that would change the dynamic and demographic of the church and maybe get a few extra people to come.

And I was so off -put by that. I mean, I was hurt by that. I felt, what a sad way to think.

And I tried to talk to this person about it and, you know, tried to correct him softly.

He was an older man. I think he was just a little, you know, just a little confused about what the priorities are.

But that goes to Darren's question, though. I think sometimes people are put in position because they're seen to be important. This is a businessman.

This is a rich man. This is somebody who, you know, who should be making decisions.

And as you said, that doesn't qualify them for eldership. We're not even supposed to give them a preferential seating because of that, according to the

Bible. That's right. Certainly not preferential leadership position. Right. I know.

Yeah. Thank you, Darren. Let's see. We have

Violet in Orangeburg, South Carolina. And Violet says,

Do you think a church can get too big where it is obligated to start planting churches so that they can be adequately shepherded by elders?

Yeah, I have some very strong personal opinions about this, but I want to say two things before I give my opinion.

One, as a small church pastor, it's very easy to say

I'm biased to small churches, and therefore, you know, I've never been a part of a 5 ,000 member church or 2 ,000 member church.

So some people would say I'm either ignorant or biased, and I understand that. And two, I want to say also to Violet, one,

I love your name. That's a beautiful name. Violet, I don't talk about this in the book, interestingly enough.

I don't address this. So I'm glad you asked because it allows me to share something that's not something

I talk about. I am not averse to larger churches, but I am averse to churches where there is no possibility for discipline.

And this is where I think the large church model has its biggest problem, is it's easy to move in and about a larger church undetected when you're dealing and living in sinful conditions, and no one would know, and no one would know you well enough to call you into account.

One of the chapters I do talk about in the book is the need for church discipline. One of the Reformed Confessions says, the three marks of a church is that it preaches the gospel, it administers the ordinances, and it practices discipline.

And if any of those three are not there, then it's not really a church. But when you have a church of 2 ,000 people, if there's not enough leadership, if there's not enough eldership that knows the people and is actively shepherding the people, then it would be very easy for there to be unaddressed sin in the midst without any ability to deal with it.

So that's my biggest issue. And I know there are bigger churches that do practice discipline, so I'm not saying it can't happen.

I'm saying it's one of the things that I see most practically absent from larger churches.

And because, again, how do we get large? Well, we want people to come. I know of at least one megachurch that says you don't even have to be a

Christian to be a member, because we want... And if I said the name of the person, everybody would know who

I'm talking about, and he is on record as saying it, so this is not a secret. No, it's

Andy Stanley. He said we want atheists to feel as much at home here as anyone else.

And if I remember correctly, and I'm almost certain he said that he would allow somebody who didn't believe in God to join the church because he would want them to be part of the community.

Now, if somebody corrects me on that, I can tell you this was years ago I heard him say this, but it surprised me so much, it stuck with me.

I said, it's one thing to say I want an atheist to be here, because I do want atheists to come and hear the preaching of the gospel.

But the question of are they willing to receive somebody into membership who hasn't confessed

Christ, that would be really hard to believe that that would be the case, but I remember him saying that. And again, if he corrects me,

I will repent and sat cloth in ashes, because if Andy Stanley hears this and says, Keith Foskey lied about me,

I promise I'm not trying to. I remember him saying that, but of course my memory is faulty.

You could just say, Andy, we'll make sure that the next time we quote your heresies, they're accurate.

Indeed. I'm not trying to throw him under the bus specifically, but this idea...

He is a dangerous leader, though. He is a dangerous leader. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, again, but I want to be fair.

He baptized unrepentant homosexuals. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it's got its own set of problems, for sure.

But yeah, getting back to her question, Violet's question, I do think that, like, for instance, our church plan, we are growing, and not exponentially, but we are growing, and we're seeing growth, and we're consistently seeing new people, and we're thankful for that.

We have a certain number that we believe would be the number that we would want to begin looking at planting a church, and I don't want to throw that number out there because somebody might say it's too little, too big, but honestly,

I think if you can take 50 people and start a church with 50 people, that's giving a new church life, right?

If your church is big enough to say, here's 50 people to start a new church, I think that would be a blessing to a church plant, if you have 50 people ready to go.

Tom Horrell Great. When we come back, we're going to have Keith highlight some of the areas that we have not yet delved into that are in his book,

A Biblically Functioning Church. And we will try to, if we have time, answer any more listener questions, but we're going to try to have him highlight the things that we have not yet spoken about.

And we are going to be right back after this final commercial break, so please do not go away.

Tony Costa I'm Dr. Tony Costa, professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

Hope Reform Baptist Church in Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jansen and Christopher McDowell.

It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God, like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word, and to enthusiastically proclaim

Christ Jesus the King and His doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island, and beyond.

I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love, as I have.

For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net,

that's hopereformedli .net, or call 631 -696 -5711.

That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

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If you're the victim of a very serious personal injury or medical malpractice anywhere in the

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Please tell Daniel P. Botafuco, attorney at law, that you heard about his law firm, Botafuco & Associates, from Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Also, all men in ministry leadership are invited to the next free biannual

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Why America Hates Biblical Christianity. Everything is free, not only the admission and the meal, your time to fellowship with new acquaintances and old friends and colleagues who are in ministry.

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And let me just quickly announce some exciting upcoming interviews that I want you to put on your calendar.

This coming Monday, April 20th,

Pastor Kurt Smith is the author of a biography on George Whitefield.

The biography is called Thundering the

Word, The Awakening Ministry of George Whitefield. He is going to be providing a movie review of the wonderful movie that I just recently saw,

A Great Awakening, which is the story of George Whitefield as told through the eyes of Benjamin Franklin.

That's this Monday. Kurt will be talking about that. Next Thursday, the 23rd of April, we have

Justin Peters doing another exposé on the so -called spiritual advisor for our president, who is an absolute dangerous heretic.

We'll be talking about that as well. And Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis, returns to the program in two weeks, on the 30th of April.

And Ken's going to be paying tribute to a mutual friend of ours, a

Six -Day Creationist who had his own ministry called sixdaycreation .com. Charlie Liebert, who just recently went home to the

Lord, and we'll be paying tribute to Charlie Liebert. That's just some of the many programs we have coming up.

And don't forget, our show airs Monday through Friday, every day at the same time on irontripandzioneradio .com.

Well, Keith, I want to just make sure, before we run out of time, that we don't overlook some important aspects of your book that may be very important for our listeners to hear something about.

And of course, we're just wetting their appetite today so that they actually get a hold of the book and read more in depth for themselves what you are advising today.

Yeah. Probably the part that a lot of people might not expect is,

I have an entire chapter called Gift -Based Ministry. And my wife, after we published, she re -read the book.

I mean, she had read it years ago, but she re -read the final proof published version. And she reminded me of how important that chapter was, because I don't deal with the whole cessationist, continuationist argument.

It's not that. It's the question of what does 1 Corinthians 12 look like when it's practiced in the church?

The hand does not say to the foot, I have no need of you. The eye doesn't say to the ear, I have no need of you.

What does that look like in a biblically functioning church? What does gift -based ministry look like?

The Bible says the elders and the pastors, their job is to equip the saints for the work of ministry, not do ministry for them, but to do ministry with them.

And so I think that might be probably the most practical contribution to the regular church member who reads the book, is what does it look like to put that into practice?

So I would encourage anybody to read it, but especially if you're a person who wants to know, what am

I in God's church? What is God calling me to do? If I'm not an elder and I'm not a deacon, does that mean I'm nothing?

No. You're the reason the church exists, right? The elders and the deacons are there to serve you, but you are also there to serve one another.

And I think that's an important part that a lot of people miss. Elders and deacons are not any more important in the eyes of God than the average listener sitting in the pew.

Oh, by the way, when you mentioned speaking the quiet part out loud before,

I was reminded of an elderly lady, sweet Christian elderly lady, who approached me,

I think it was visiting a church or something, and she approached me and said, Hello, Mr.

Arnson. I just wanted to tell you I heard your show the other day, and I really enjoyed it.

You almost sound professional. I love those kind of compliments.

Those are the best. And did I retort with, and you almost sound

Christian? No, I did not say that. I just thanked her and sent her on her way.

Amen. Amen. Okay, we have an anonymous listener, and the anonymous listener is…

It's Andy Stanley. It's Andy Stanley. Anonymous listener says,

What would be a list of reasons why a person should and perhaps even must leave a church?

That might take two hours. Yeah, I was going to say, I'll make this…

I was recently asked a similar question. I was on a panel, and I was asked,

What should you look for in a church? So this would be, I guess, the opposite. I said, There are the standard answers, which are,

We want a church that preaches the Word. We want a church that practices discipline. We want a church that we're accountable to in covenant membership.

But also, we want a church that has leaders who actually shepherd the people, and they're not heavy -handed, mean -spirited men.

And so I do think there are times to leave a church when there are bad leaders. I've said it earlier in the show, bad leaders can destroy good churches.

And so there are times where leadership is a reason to leave.

Certainly, if the gospel is not preached. Certainly, if discipline is not practiced. Certainly, those are good reasons.

But I would also say, if the church is being led by cowboys and not shepherds, that's a problem.

And the difference is, cowboys drive and shepherds lead. And there is a difference, and it's such an obvious difference when you sit under one versus the other.

So I would want to see, How does the church choose its leaders?

And how do the leaders minister to the people? Great. This person probably is one of those rich people that we were mentioning earlier that should not have preferential treatment in the church, but he is from Old Brookville, Long Island, New York, which is a very affluent area.

Sure, it's a beautiful neighborhood that you live in. I've been in that fine village several times.

Tristan in Old Brookville, Long Island, New York, and Tristan says,

I do not believe in denominations like the Presbyterians and others that have denominational hierarchical structures, although I love them like brethren and can appreciate having fellowship with them.

But being an independent person who believes in the autonomy of local congregations,

I think some take that too far and don't have any interaction with other congregations who are biblically faithful.

Is this not the dangerous other extreme of how to govern a church and function biblically?

Yeah, and this is where I'll speak to our own confession of faith. I mentioned earlier we hold to the

First London Confession. It actually addresses the fact that there are oftentimes a need for reaching out beyond the local congregation to other congregations to help in times of need.

I can't quote the confessional standard directly, but it says essentially that while the church is, as he said, autonomous, that doesn't separate us from the body of Christ that is present in the world, and so we should have relationship.

I have heard Presbyterians argue for their form of government as being superior to a

Baptist form of government where every church is autonomous, and they say, because we have this structure that's above the church that can come in and help, that solves problems.

And I say, yeah, but it also has other issues as well. Everything has a trade -off, right?

I do think that ultimately each church has its elders and its deacons and its members that are responsible in that body, and I don't think that another church has authority over that church, but they certainly can come alongside and help, and so that's the way

I would understand that. Well, thank you, Tristan, and I'd like you,

Keith, in about three and a half minutes or so to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today, and we can't forget to let our listeners know how they can get a hold of your book.

Well, the most important thing that I would want you to know, if you're not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and you just happened upon this radio show today,

I would want you to know that the Bible says that every man is a sinner and that every man needs a

Savior, and that Jesus Christ is the only Savior. The Bible says that he is able to save to the uttermost all who draw nigh unto

God through him, and that you as a person are a great sinner, but he is a greater Savior than you are a sinner, and he is able to save you.

And the Bible says to repent of your unbelief, to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and the finished work that he did on the cross, and you will be saved.

And then I want to encourage you, if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, to seek out and join a biblically functioning church, because the

Christian life is not meant to be lived alone. There's no such thing as lone wolf Christianity. We are called to do this in community as part of a body of Christ, a local body of Christ.

And so if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you don't know what church you should go to,

I would encourage you to reach out to Chris, reach out to me, and I'll give you my website as well.

I will help you. I know Chris would help you, and there are other great resources like founders .org has a church finding feature.

There's all kinds of places you can go to help find a local church in your area, and we would point you to those.

And if you do want a copy of my book, it's available for pre -order right now on Amazon. Grace and Truth Press is who are putting it out, so you can also go to their website.

And I am still at number one in Calvinist Christianity on Amazon, the number one selling book, even though no one has read it, so I'm nervous.

I'm nervous because all the pre -sales are doing very well. I'm just scared that as soon as people read it, the reviews will come in and we'll see how people really feel, but it's doing pretty well right now.

And you said the publisher is Grace and Truth Books, correct? Yeah, Grace and Truth Press.

Grace and Truth Press, yeah. Okay. And well, I'm sure if they do a Google search on that, they'll find

Grace and Truth Press. And I want to thank you so much, Keith, for just being an excellent guest, as I knew you would be since you've already been on the show and have always proven to be a wonderful guest.

I want to make sure that our listeners have all the contact information that they need.

First of all, your church website, once again, is sgfcjax .org.

That's sgfcjax .org. And also you can go to keithfoskey .com, keithfoskey .com.

Thank you so much, brother. I look forward to your return to the program, and I hope that the Lord provides us with opportunities sometime in the future to see each other face -to -face.

I want to thank all of you again for listening today, and tune in tomorrow and submit your questions to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Always love hearing from you, both new listeners and old listeners alike.

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I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.