Episode 47: Christ in Mexico

Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son with whom

I am well pleased. He is honored and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church and spend your life serving

Jesus in a local, visible congregation. Welcome to the

Ruled Church Podcast. I've got with me my brother and good friend,

Jonathan Murdock. And we're not going to talk about amillennialism today, right? That's right.

Good morning. Did you know, brother? By the way, good morning. Did you know that that episode is now the most listened to Ruled Church Podcast episode?

Are you kidding me? No, I'm not. It's a little bit lengthy. So we're not going to do that today.

We're not going to go that long either. But we are going to talk about leaving loose dates, right?

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, there you go. You're always trying to get me in trouble, bro.

But no, we want to talk about something near and dear to both of our hearts. It's the summertime. I know recently, and I don't know the order yet,

Jonathan, but Eddie and Gunnar recorded an episode about their preaching at the

Gay Pride Parade in Fayetteville. Oh, nice. Yeah. I actually think it'll come out after this one.

But anyway, so we're recording some stuff that's going on in the summer. And, you know, for a lot of people, the summer is like,

I've got a summer reading list, and I'm going to do this this summer. And I'm like, dude, I feel like summer sometimes is busier.

What do you think? The summertime for me is way busier. I'm preaching a church camp coming up.

You've got a church camp coming up. We've had already one trip to Mexico at the end of summer, really kind of beginning of fall,

I guess. We'll have another trip to Mexico. I actually had two trips. One of them was vacation to Mexico.

It's kind of been nonstop for me. You're really suffering on that trip. I was very suffering, taking on the team.

Well, what we want to do today is we want to talk about what we're doing in our mission work.

We've had an episode like this is about a year ago, and they can go and listen. And really,

I think it's probably the first episode you were on. We're talking about FIRM and talking about our trips and all that.

But we've recently come back from Veracruz, Mexico. We had what I think was a great trip.

By the way, I preached for over an hour again when I got back. So something about my church going to stop letting me go to Mexico.

But let's just start for a minute again. I know it'd be a little bit of a rehash from if you listen to this a year ago.

But in case you didn't, why don't you talk about, Jonathan, what is FIRM? Yeah, so last time we did this, we talked about the fundamentals.

Kind of the doctrine behind it, which we can do that again if you want.

But I think coming back this time, one thing that was interesting to me is the ideas really coming about.

So when we started looking at this as a church and we started weighing out the two ideas of formal association and fellowship of missions.

So that's what FIRM stands for is a fellowship of international reform missions.

As we've come back from this trip, we're sitting in that room that day with all those brothers having this incredible time together.

It's really what we have is a fellowship. And so we have a fellowship in two regards.

One is on this side of the border, not just with Mexico, but Honduras, Salvador, between a couple of churches.

You guys, us, by the word. And so we have a fellowship where we've come together for the efforts of training pastors and planting churches.

And we've decided to take our mission efforts and put them there. And as we decide this, we've brought some brothers in from Mexico and from Honduras and from Salvador.

And so we just come back from that meeting with the Mexico guys.

And so in our idea, in our strategy of training pastors and planting churches, we were able to come together and say, what is the need for these brothers and pour ourselves into them and them into us.

Right. And so that is what we're doing. We're taking our small efforts that we can as a local church and walking together with brothers internationally.

Yeah, I think that's good. So a lot of times when people hear, you know, when you go to Mexico, I think and I really don't want to disparage some of the good things in this.

But I think they think of people going down there and building something or, you know, those sorts of things.

Actually, let me be so bold to say this. I think by and large, short term mission trips have tended to be more harmful.

And what I mean by that, what I mean by short term mission trip, obviously our mission trip was short term.

But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the church that says, OK, this year we're going to go for a week in this place and then a week in this place and a week in this place.

And a couple of things that happens. One, sometimes the church itself doesn't have very good motivations.

Sometimes the place that they go to doesn't have good motivations. And then oftentimes there's just more harm done than good.

There's not long term commitment made. There's not long term relationships built. Sometimes not even the gospels being proclaimed, you know.

And so I just want to state from the art, from the outset, that's not what we're doing. And let me also add, we're not against going and helping a church build something.

Amen. Yeah. Jack just went after our trip, Jack and Tanya, and he helped a brother build the structure for their church.

But the difference is it's a local church base and focus. That's right.

Yeah, that's that's the key. That's what this whole thing is about, is pouring into not a missions organization, not in any other institution, but pouring into specifically the local church.

And so I'm even thinking about like, so I went on vacation and meet this brother, Rodolfo.

I'm hoping that at some point we take a trip to Playa del Carmen. This brother has jumped in.

He's hungry. He's he has a great need. But that trip won't be even like the trip we just did.

Yeah, we just did. We just went and poured into a local church and poured into pastors.

That trip would be completely different. We'd be knocking on doors. I mean, he has three people coming to his church.

Yeah. You know, I mean, we're not opposed to doing those type of things. Well, and I would say this, like even it's possible in our trip in September that we're going to do some street preaching.

You know, sure. And there's nothing wrong. In fact, in fact, I'm I'm I'm just saying when

I talk about short term mission trip, I'm talking about going down, you know, passing out candy or something, even though my girls, one of my girls passed out candy this time.

But, you know, and that's just like it and like you forget about them. And that was great. The summer of 2020, that was great.

And now next year we're going to this place. And it turns out being kind of touristy, you know, the point I'm trying to get at is and what you get and what we share is like we're pouring into the local church.

So just logistically, our trip we left on a Tuesday. We flew down. I think we ended up getting.

Man, it was late. It was like 10 or. No, it's like close to midnight. Midnight.

Yeah. Yeah. Like 1245. Yeah. You got to coordinate all the different people coming from different churches, all those things.

We go down there in a van. Yeah, that's right. Packed in a van, driving for two hours.

Another thing is because of the way we're doing it, we ride in Christians van and not some kind of super rented first class van.

You know, I mean, yeah, we're doing this pretty economical. Yeah. So Wednesday, we'll just walk through day by day

Wednesday. Wednesday. It's not that we sleep in. It's just that we don't have much going on in the morning.

And we start out on Wednesday with devotion. So you want to talk about that for a minute?

Like it was with the family. Yeah. With Christian and his family. Not just our team, but.

So it was in English and Spanish. I translated for that. And it was a good good time to pray together and get the trip started off right.

Yeah, I think one of the things that I love about our trips, and of course, I've only been on two. My third will be in a couple of months, but Lord willing.

But, you know, starting the day with the word together and encouragement, then the rest of that day, we just really kind of lay low and try to recover from all our trip.

And then and then what we did that night is we gathered with the saints at Grace Baptist in El Pechote.

That's right. And Brother Randall preached a great sermon on how to listen to the preaching.

I want to talk about something before that, which was a phenomenal message. I posted it.

It reached out to us. I would encourage any pastor to listen to it. Tell me.

Tell me what you think the average churchgoer in America would think about the amount of Scripture that was read on a

Wednesday night service. They they wouldn't bear with it. I mean, we read two chapters out of Judges.

Judges. Yeah. And they were long chapters. Yeah. When he said that, I was like, there's no way we're going to read.

Same. I'm glad you thought that because I was like, I'm I'm thought I'm misunderstanding something, you know, like even even in my own heart, it was like, man, this is really taking a long time.

And I was convicted. It's like it's the word of God. Yeah. So they that's what one thing

I love about Christian in the church there. They have a high priority on the word of God. They have they have the deal.

We're going to read two chapters. And I believe that they were reading through the Psalms and they come to Psalm 119.

They're not going to do the American. Well, we'll break it down into a few weeks. Yeah, they're going to read it.

Amen. So then so then Brother Randall preached from James 1, 19 through 21. And basically that night was just like a service.

A normal their normal Wednesday night service. And we were we were there with them. So then we get up Thursday.

We do a little running that day. Y 'all ran along. Y 'all left me, by the way. I'll go ahead and put that.

I show up to run at seven. Y 'all are already gone. And so I have to run on the streets of Mexico by myself.

I'm not even sure if I'm going the right way. Ran on Wednesday, too. Yeah. Well, I didn't run Wednesday.

Yeah. So I was I was enjoying the split unit. Yeah. And no air conditioning.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It's it's it's not. Well, if you're from Arkansas and Texas, it's not that it's hotter.

It's not hotter. It's the same. It's. Yeah, it's pretty close to the same. Maybe even a touch cooler cooler.

Right. But but you have no AC. And so you just go all day. You can't get away from it.

So you. So then Thursday was similar to Wednesday in the sense we get up devotion again

Thursday. But Thursday we begin to prep. Thursday went to Cordova, didn't we?

You did devotion that morning on on Elisha and the mauling of the 42 kids.

Yeah. So but then Thursday night is when we started the conference and Thursday night.

So the conference we began to there's at least two pastors

I was not familiar with from the area that we got connected with. Yes.

I think about Louise and Daniel. Well, they're not part of firm.

Right. That's right. That's right. Were there any more than that? No, just those two. OK, so that's that was like for me, that was a benefit of the conference that I wasn't expecting.

Right. That that would go down there. So I know the other other brothers and and it was great to reconnect with them.

Oh, let me say this on that point. We're not saying that we're the best at this and we're not saying that we have the most to offer.

What we're saying and I think what we're doing is we believe it's biblical for pastors to invest in pastors.

Right. And and we're saying we see our responsibility to invest, even if we are some ignorant country guys from Texas and Arkansas.

But it's right that we invest in what the Lord has given us and others. And so you take

Daniel, for example. Daniel is Christian's uncle pastoring a church in Cordoba.

And we would love to help him. We would love to invest in him. We'd love for him to be part of firm.

All we can do is serve it up. And if it's beneficial to him, he can eat or not. Yeah. And this is let's talk about this for a second to.

The idea here and I have no idea about the stock market, so probably a terrible analogy.

But if you have two commodities that you can invest in. One is like flash in the pan, you know, like you can you can invest in this and it may get you some like big time investment, maybe real quick.

But it's really just kind of like here today, gone tomorrow, you know. Well, you've got this other commodity that in the long run, like right now, it may be hard.

You're pouring in, you're pouring in, pouring in. But in the long run, it's going to give you the best return on investment.

That's that's the one you should choose. Well, it's a terrible analogy. But I think maybe it sticks a little bit as you think about when we think about investing in the kingdom.

OK, there are ways to do some sort of all the always doing these rallies and stuff like that.

And you're always getting people to come forward and you're doing these crusades or whatever. And listen, sometimes

God has worked through those and has brought people, you know, faith or whatever. But the long term investment has to be in the local church.

And in investing in the local church, you invest in the leadership of the local church.

If you can help the pastors of a local church, you are going to make the biggest impact long term in the kingdom.

And also it comes to this, Jonathan, when you say, do we trust do we trust the scriptures about this or not?

Because God's vehicle for reaching the nation's local church is the local church.

But exactly. And so what we're doing, we're going down here, we're investing. We got connected at least more connected probably with one church, but at least maybe a little bit connected with with another church, like just going down there.

You know, just going to eat at their church. Yeah, yeah. But let me let me share with you something that hit me last year.

I think it was when David Allen got axed from Southwestern. Supposedly the most important thing in the local church is the pulpit.

Yeah, but supposedly wherever the pulpit is, that's where the church is going to be.

So if we look at seminaries and we say, what is the most important thing for a seminary to invest in?

It's the pulpit. Right. So teaching men how to study and preach.

Well, whether we agree with this theology or not, David Allen was probably the number one guy in the

Southern Baptist Convention doing that. You know, I mean, he was the preaching guy.

You can disagree with his little work on the atonement, but he's good at teaching men how to preach and they fired him.

He was the best. And it kind of hit me when that happened. We need to make that our focus.

Like that should be the focus in moving forward. Like if we're going to make an impact in Carlos's church where he has three families, including his own.

It's going to start with the pulpit. Right. We've completely minimized and mocked the pulpit in many places in America, especially in the

SBC. You know, we made a joke about the plagiarism stuff. It's like it's wicked.

It's wicked. Right. And so I'm thinking about Juan Carlos there. He's got three families in his church.

Right. So you get two things. And this is probably going to bring it back to FIRM.

When we go in September, we're going to go to a big church. Right.

Felipe has a big church. He's probably the largest church in FIRM, including him.

Right. Maybe him and Brother Randall are battling for the award for the largest church.

Right. But it's a large church. They're doing well. They're flourishing. Went through a little bit of a problem here, but they're making it through it.

Right. After we do that, we're going to spend three days in Buena Vista.

All right. Tabasco. So I asked my wife's cousin. I've heard it's pretty in Buena Vista because the name

Buena Vista means good view. Well, Carlos told me that it used to be called the center.

And no one would go there. And it was just kind of the town was falling apart because no one wanted to go to a place called the center because it's like the center of Mexico.

Yeah. So they changed the name to Buena Vista to attract people. And he said, it's not pretty.

It's the ugliest place in Mexico. It's the hottest place in Mexico and it stinks.

And so Yvonne's cousin was like, he's right. I've been there. It's the worst place

I've ever been. So you have that's the worst place in Mexico. Right.

With a church of three families. So the question is, why would we spend resources to go spend three days in Buena Vista?

With a guy that. You know, no one knows he's never going to have this big church and there's three families, including including his own.

Well, two two reasons. Number one, I believe God's worthy of a faithful church in Buena Vista.

Amen. Right. And number two. The way that we build a right church in Buena Vista is investing in the pulpit.

Amen. And so we model it. We invest. We teach the people to listen and we pour our lives into one,

Carlos. Amen. And that's what we're about. Yeah. Amen. That's the heart of FIRM is investing in local churches specifically, ordinarily, primarily by investing in the pastors of churches.

And we have we have good relationships with them. That's right. We meet every week on Zoom and we we we have gone through different teachings on Zoom.

And then we have times of of interaction or questions, answers, those things.

But the face to face, you just you still can't ultimately beat that as great as Zoom is.

You can't ultimately be being down there with these brothers. And so Friday, we start off again with devotion.

But then Friday afternoon, something a little bit different. We actually sit around with the pastors and and had if you're at a big conference, you would call it a breakout session.

But it's really good, really helpful, you know, teaching through church discipline.

Because here's the thing, like membership and discipline, membership and discipline. So here's here's the thing.

It's like you can read about it. You can read lots of good books out there. You can read about membership and discipline.

But none of those books ultimately answer every question they can't.

They're not designed to. And so we had an opportunity to walk through. OK, here's what here's membership.

It's biblical. Here's discipline. It's biblical. OK, but what does it look like in your church?

But and here's here's the reason we did that. I don't even know you and I didn't have this conversation about this.

But when we started firm, if you were going to if you so we started from a little bit before you came along.

But if you were going to be on on the front side of that. And you said we've got these 20 guys that we're meeting with on Wednesdays from different parts of South America or Latin America.

What would you think is going to be the number one problem they're going to face in their churches learning the theology that we're teaching?

Oh, I would I would say deal with the doctrine of predestination. Destination and election.

Yeah. What has tore the churches apart? Three churches has been church membership.

Yeah. And and that has been their biggest struggle. And so that's why we decided to do church membership together with discipline in that first session.

Listen, let me just make a plug here. In some ways,

I'm thinking on my feet here. So in some ways, it's easier to to just embrace the doctrines of grace in a church like you'll find a church.

You'll find churches all over the place. Oh, yeah. We embrace the five points of Calvinism.

Yeah, we're Calvinistic. Yeah. It's harder to actually care about membership and discipline.

It's far harder. And it's way hard. Yeah. You can find churches that will embrace the doctrines of grace.

But will blow up when you start talking about elders, when you start talking about church membership.

When you start talking about church discipline, I feel like in some cases that happened here.

Oh, because it wasn't over the issue of it wasn't over the issue of doctrine, although it was.

I mean, but, you know, I'm saying it wasn't over the issue of like the doctrines of grace. They were fine with you being a raging

Calvinist, but when you. I'm not angry, bro.

Yeah, I know. That's how they refer to you as that's. But when you brought that into practical implications of that in the local church.

It became an issue. Yeah. Yeah. So I think if you say as if you're a pastor out there and you say, hey, we've we've come a long way.

We've moved from Arminianism to the doctrines of grace in our church.

Well, I want to first of all, commend you and say, praise God. That's important. And I don't want to minimize that.

But let me say this. You're not done. Don't stop. Yeah, that's right.

Don't even rest in that victory. I mean, I commend you. I congratulate you. I say, praise

God for you, brother. I know that's a hard battle, but but it's just begun.

Like don't quit. Like you've got like God cares just as much about the structure and order of his church as he does the beliefs of his church.

I'm not saying it doesn't matter what you believe. Of course it does. What I'm saying is it all goes together.

I remember when I was when I planted the church in Mexico, I preached the Ephesians. And the first three chapters was like a pep rally.

Yeah. Everybody was like, amen. Hallelujah. I get to four one.

And it divided the church. Half the people left. And it was because you got to take these and walk these out in the context of a local church.

You got to take these doctrines, walk them out in the context local church. And that's that's when the fire got turned up.

Yeah. And that's what these brothers are experiencing. Yeah. You know, like Felipe, they just had a, you know, a division in their church and it didn't have to do with the doctrines.

That's right. It was it was membership and submitting to the authority of the church. Carlos preached the church empty.

And it was because he started a new membership class and told people you have to sign a covenant with the church. Yeah. Yeah.

Well. I totally agree, brother. And that's and that's to get back to our, you know, trip.

I mean, that's that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to Christ builds the church.

But but he does it through the preaching and teaching of the word of God. And so it's our desire to pour into these churches and trust that God is going to use these churches for his glory.

You know, you say Christ is worthy of a of a healthy church in Perryville and Port Arthur and El Patote.

Do you like that? And I couldn't make the alliteration go with Hazel. Yes.

Tabasco. But anyway. Um, so. So we did membership and discipline with these brothers.

Yeah. Friday morning. Oh, Friday. Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

That's right. And then lunch and then break and then after lunch. And then we did bearing with difficult times.

How do you continue through difficulties? Yeah. Yeah. And that was after a message that Randall again had preached on Thursday night about.

Suffering. Then Saturday. Saturday was a good day.

Saturday, we adjusted the schedule a little bit. Actually, but let's go back to a comment that Carlos made on Friday.

OK. It was funny because AJ and I were talking about it later and AJ wanted to express.

I'm so happy for you guys. You know, AJ wanted to say, I'm happy for you guys.

I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're doing this. And. Then Carlos spoke up and was like, hey.

I know this is a struggle for us to get here financially and be here and everything. But we need this.

Amen. And he just talked about what firm had meant to him. And that was probably one of the greatest blessings on the trip for me.

Absolutely. You think about some of the things that we've experienced.

Probably one of the best conferences I've experienced is Shepcon. And you think about the you just get to go there, hang out with faithful brothers, be fed.

And get some of the food. Yeah. And and obviously we didn't go down there and do

Shepcon, but a very small way. We're able to foster the fellowship.

I mean, that's what we're called. Fellowship. And it was so fun. I mean, like, you know, we come back and, you know,

Kiki and Pepe and Manuel, those guys are goons. They're so funny.

And we really, really get to hang out. And, you know, another thing is these guys are so hungry for theology.

They get out of the van when they get there on Thursday. And within 10 minutes of them being there, we're having a conversation on Baptist covenant theology.

Some of the deepest things that we're talking about theologically today. And it puts it puts some things into perspective.

So when I come back, everyone's complaining on Twitter about whether or not you should leave a blue state, you know.

And I'm like, I was like, I don't I don't I don't got time for this. I mean, like I have some opinions. My opinion basically is it's that whole argument's a lot overblown.

There should be some people that leave and it's good. There should be some people that shouldn't leave.

If they were to leave, it would be wrong. You know, so it's like, so what? The question is, are you in a good church?

If you are, stay. Fight it out. And if you're not in a good church, find a good church, wherever you have to go.

But the point I was making on it is like that seems so small. When you when your eyes see glimpses of the kingdom of Christ, then all these things that we're griping about seem so small.

Yeah, I agree. One hundred percent. So Saturday, similar up devotion.

We adjusted the schedule because of the Lord's Day on Sunday.

And that was that turned out to be providential because we we let's say we did we did the session in the morning.

Two sessions in the morning. Two sessions in the morning. But then we turned around and the next session was like at three or two sessions at three.

And then after that, by the way, we ate tamales. And I do need to say this.

I'm sorry, brother. I got to do it. I knew it was coming. So this guy, Daniel, Christian's uncle, has been coming and he comes at the end of the second session.

And as a matter of fact, in the second session, it was in the first session.

He kind of gets up and is walking around during the first session. I'm like, oh, man, he's going to bail. Like he heard something he didn't like.

And I'm thinking he's going to bail. He comes up and he's like, man, the guy that does our Bible study tonight for married people is sick and he can't do it.

And so I asked Cuatro, hey, you want to do this? He's like, oh, yeah.

I mean, because, you know, we want to pull Daniel in. I've been preaching and translating for the whole week.

And I'm like, it's a seven o 'clock Saturday evening. I'm not going. Right. I mean, I'm just wore out and I need to rest for Sunday.

And so I asked Cuatro, you want to go? And Christian has this puzzled look on his face like, well, guys, we were going to do tamales tonight.

And as soon as he says that, Cuatro looks at A .J. and is like, hey, brother, you want to take it?

And he completely sold out the gospel of preaching to these married people for some tamales.

They're really good tamales, though. But I did end up going still.

A .J. taught. Yeah, you did. It was all in Providence. A .J. did a great job. And then I was asked to preach the next day, which was unpinned.

I'm just going to start bringing extra sermons because I've been to Mexico twice.

Twice when I've shown up, I found out I'm preaching Sunday. It always happens every time.

So but again, in the province of God on Sunday, I missed y 'all's morning stuff on Sunday.

But we got to go and we got to, Felipe and I got to be part of Pastor Daniel's church.

I got to preach and got to build a connection there. You guys got to do

Pastor Christian's church. Did two sermons to two services basically in the morning.

Right. And then two services in the evening and afternoon. You know, 12 sessions in all in the conference.

Yeah. And that's that's typically what we get to do from Thursday to Sunday. We go through 12 things.

We preach the book of Colossians. And that's another thing. Christians preaching through Ephesians.

So we decided to do Colossians because it is the parallel book. And so we were able to help him in the church do that.

And all of this is word centered, like every devotion, every teaching, obviously every sermon.

That's all around the word of God. Then I want to mention

I got one extra benefit. It was it was in some sense it senses I missed out probably on a little bit of hanging out back where you guys were staying.

However, I I got to. Enjoy the fellowship with Christian and Terry and they got to enjoy the time with us.

We prayed together multiple times. And you slept in the only room in two houses that has

AC. Yes. And honestly, I thought I told my wife this.

I was like, babe, I don't know that you would have made it without this because she was hot and she had that reprieve.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So but we sang together.

We got theology together. We prayed together. It was amazing time to build into each other's lives.

And I want to say this again. I think I said this last year, but I want to just be clear.

That those guys pouring to me as much as I pour into them, you know, they encourage me in the faith, they encourage me in Christ.

And so it's like it's really a really a mutual benefit. Absolutely.

And, you know, that's really the the joy of what we're doing is that it is a fellowship.

That's right. You know, at one point, Felipe comes to me is like, hey, brother, I want to talk to you about something you preached on Hebrews 215.

Yeah. You know, that was a year and a half ago. You know, it's like, how did you come to this conclusion? You know, and but I also want to highlight something else.

One of the joys in what we're doing is we are all Second London Confession confessional.

Right. So the guys that are in firm that are in fellowship with firm. That is our confession.

You know, the Second London Confession. And that makes these trips easier because it's centered around the same doctrine.

You know, you don't have to worry about somebody going off the wall because there's liberties to disagree in doctrine in the

Second London Confession. But because it's such a great confession and so clear, those disagreements are limited.

Yeah, I mean, we fought, Brother Allen and I did the whole time about who wrote the book of Hebrews because he just he's so obstinate and and thinks

Luke wrote it. And if he just read John Owen, he'd fix himself. You know, we can fight about that, but we're not dealing with election.

You know, we're not dealing with providence. We're not dealing with the doctrine of God. And I would actually make the argument that, you know, because we're still a

Southern Baptist church. And I know the argument is the the the broader the confession, the more missional minded you can be or whatever.

But I actually say the opposite. I think, you know, and we're not trying to we're not trying to offer strict confessionalism or something like that.

It's like if you can't have the I mean, like if you can't be a Reformed Baptist church, like confessing the 1689, like what's what's wrong?

You know, I mean, like so it's like it's it actually provides a framework and structure for more fruitful and beneficial relationship.

Ministry and ministry and mission and kingdom work. Right. Let's just say that the

IMB contacts you tomorrow is like, hey, we're going to take this group to Africa. We want you to go preach next year.

What is going to be your position on that trip? Yeah, I'm answering back. No, I can't. I'm like, number one,

I can't because I'm already committed to this. You know, number two, even if I could go, even if like all expense paid, you'll pay.

We just want to take you. You know, well, I'd have some questions. You know, what are we doing here with the church?

Here's something else. I'm going to I'm going to go and say this. I'm a I because I see posts and stuff like I don't care what you're doing.

If it's not connected with the local church, I see guys online out there street preaching or they're going to abortion clinics or take

IMB missionary and you talk to them. Not all of them. When you say this, you know, you get in trouble because like now

I'm not dotting all of them. But I know because I talk to them. I know there are some.

And you ask these guys, street preacher, abortion ministry, IMB. What church are you part of?

Now that I be there, they're probably smart enough to be like, well, my membership is in Port Arthur or whatever.

Yeah, whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. But you're like, yeah. But you're not

I'm not talking about the guy that just landed on the ground like Adnarm Judson. I'm not talking about that.

Talking about the guy that's been there like, you know, five years. And we know of people we personally know of people.

And like, what are you doing? Well, you know, every third Tuesday I have a little

Bible study and this is the church. When I was in Mexico, they would not let them be a member of a church in Mexico.

It's wacky ecclesiology. Yeah, that's what it is. And and so there's going to be two issues if you go on that trip to Africa.

Right. Number one, let's say that they say we're going to do this conference with pastors and you're going to preach to the book of Ephesians.

And you get Ephesians one, three through six. You know, hey, you mentioned predestination.

Well, actually, the text did. But, yeah, you're going to be the Calvinist that everybody's like, hey, you can't be controversial.

And then the second thing, when you say, why are we not working with a local church?

They're going to say, well, we are because all these pastors are from churches, but you have nothing to do with those churches.

Right. And so that's really the issue is that whenever you have a bigger confession, you can actually be freer in mission.

Well, let me ask you this. When you read the New Testament and you read the letters. Now, there are some churches that Paul doesn't know as well.

Colossians, he'd never been. That's right. But you read and Randall taught on this one day,

Sunday morning, actually, before service. You read all these names.

What does that tell you? It tells you that Paul knew the people.

He knew the churches. There was a and that's the thing like about what we're doing. I don't just know these pastors.

Now, there's some that meet on our Zoom meetings and I and I and I get to know and I just know them.

But I know these churches. I don't you know, I know the churches. And I just think that is such a a biblical model.

It's like when we go to Pechote and we've heard of your faith. We remember you constantly in our prayers.

Yeah. And we hear what the Lord is doing here in Pechote. Yeah. If we were and if we were going to write a letter, if you were going to write a letter to Pechote, it just it'd be so Pauline like because you'd be like Brother Randall sends his greetings.

Be sure and tell Fernando, you know, like like with like it's just it's the same.

But we've got we've got a long time. I want to make one comment. And then I want to I want to ask you to just kind of let people know how could they be involved.

But let me say this. These trips aren't easy as fruitful, wonderful. They are like coming back.

It was hard. We all had tummy issues. And on the way back and everything like it's hard.

It's hard on your body. It's it's exhausting, but it's so worth it. It's worth it because Christ is worthy.

His church, his church is worth the sacrifice and the labor and the effort.

It's not easy. But most of the time in life, when you do things that aren't easy, it's because it's worth it in the long run.

So I don't know if you want to say anything about that. But also, what if people happen to listen to this and they're like,

I'd like to know more about that. Sure. So two things. One about it being worth it. You know,

I've taken many trips we've done officially as firm now. Next year, you're going to have to go to Honduras or Salvador.

You have to pick Honduras is a great trip with Brother Rolando. It's harder.

You know, it's a harder trip. Just the structure of Honduras is harder, but they are.

They're very worth it because you come back and you've invested in the local church and, you know, this is going to be something that's going to last.

Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, like we went when was it in February? Went to Honduras.

I can't remember. Pastor Rolando and members from the church are still writing me about sermons we preach.

You know, I mean, like there's it's still having an effect. It's like what you're talking about earlier, backpack missions.

We go here for two weeks and we never hear these people again. It's just a memory we have on our phone. Right. We're walking with these brothers, you know, like we're invested here.

So that's why it's worth it. It would be the same as saying, is it worth it for you to wake up on Sunday mornings and go preach at your church?

Yeah, it's the same thing. Amen. Second, how can people be involved?

Pray for these brothers. One. And I meant like if you're hearing this, you think of the names that we've mentioned.

Pray. But also, you know, we work with local churches.

And and so, you know, I don't know what your churches who are listening, what your churches do as far as missions.

But we say this over and over. It's not enough to just give a check. That is not missions.

That is not what the New Testament calls us to. You know, just like you mentioned

Paul writing the end of Colossians that Brother Randall taught on. You get all these names. Right. Where are the names of people in the churches that you're helping throughout the world?

You don't know that. Could you write the end of Colossians or Ephesians to somewhere?

Yeah. And and if not, then then you need to. You don't even know the names of your missionaries.

You don't even know the names of the mission. You know, I mean, and that's the thing. That's another thing. We don't have missionaries.

Yeah. We work with pastors. And and in a sense, they are missionaries.

You know, they're doing the work of missions. But so if you don't know the people that you're sending money to, stop.

I mean, like invest in in in brothers and sisters that you know, invest in your local church to do that.

And and so how you know, if you want to contact us and let us help you walk you through this, we know that not everybody is going to jump, jump on and be involved in firm.

But do something that is local church based and seeking to encourage, train up pastors, plant and reform churches.

Start your own. Start your own. Exactly. And here's what I want to say. Like, well, I don't know.

I was like, hold on a second. You're you are the hub. You are at the highest ecclesiastical position.

You are the local church. So Christ, Christ is the head of all things.

And everything is subjection to him. He's been given to as the head to the body.

Amen. So we are the we are the enforcing arm of Christ in the world.

If you're a member of a local church, all power in heaven and earth has been given to you. Go, go, go.

And it's like it's like us when we left the SBC five years ago and we started asking, what are we going to do?

Well, we just started praying and all of a sudden we've got five guys asking for help. So the

Lord will lead, guide and direct you. And maybe you want to be a part of a firm. You know, if you say, man,

I don't know where to start. Can I join in with you guys? Well, if you are a

Reformed Baptist church with the Second Lenten Confession, we can talk about that. You know, that's that's just that's that's our standard by which we work together.

That's right. And I would say this. And even even even if you weren't and you and you wanted to know,

OK, but can you can you help us? Like I know I know I can speak for us and and Brother Randall as well.

You know, if we had the available, as long as we had the availability. But like we can come and help or do a Zoom or whatever.

Absolutely. Even if we're not from a church like this, but we want to do something like this. We'd be more than welcome to show you like to share how we came about this and what we're doing.

And the mistakes, too, you know, the goods and bads. There's things we've done that haven't worked, you know, haven't been good, you know.

So absolutely. So for me, I'll let you leave yours as well. For me, the best way to reach out to me would be my email.

It's Quatro Nelson at Gmail. So that's C -U -A -T -R -O -N -E -L -S -O -N at Gmail dot com.

And then yours. Yeah, mine's

Jonathan. My name, Jonathan, J -O -N -A -T -H -A -N underscore

Murdoch, M -U -R -D -O -C -K at Yahoo dot com. Yeah. We're not looking for, you know, we're not like looking for financial partners or whatever.

But if you have a situation where you're like, look, we don't feel comfortable giving to this organization anymore.

Is there a way right now that we could help invest? I mean, yeah, we could give you some ideas and thoughts, you know.

But more than anything else, I hope you walk away from this episode understanding

Christ is worthy of us to do mission work, kingdom work, local church work rightly, and two, that the local church really is it really is under Christ.

It really is the highest power, as it were, in church because Christ has vested his authority in the church so that not missions, organizations, not conventions even, but in the local church.

And so those are two important things that I hope everyone will walk away with and be encouraged by.

Amen. And I know that you're not powerless. Amen. So people people ask the question or think we need a bigger mission organization because we're just a small church.

And when we started FIRM, we were running probably 25 on Sunday morning. Yeah. But we believe the gates of hell won't prevail against the church.

Yeah. And and all power. I mean, the same power that's at work at Christ is at work in us.

And he is the head. And so you're not powerless. Yeah.

Amen. And this whole different episode, like whatever you guys are doing, you're preaching.

Praise God in the streets. Praise God. I do that. Good. Preaching at abortion clinics.

You're you're you're considering whether or not your family ought to be in this state or that state.

OK, whatever it is that you're doing, make sure that your life is given to the cause of Christ, which cannot be in any other way than it cannot be separated.

You have to say it this way from the local church. So whatever it is that you can be.

Yeah. Whatever it is, your life has to be. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. No, that's

OK. Life has to be built. Your family's life has to be built around local church. Amen.

Amen. Well, I appreciate it, brother. We always talk a long time, but I have enough time.

Well, these these are good things, and I hope that people help. If you've got questions, you'll reach out to us.

My computer is saying to me the same thing that Randall's little weather thing says. It just says down here at the bottom, human.

So. So thank you guys for joining us. And I guess we'll we'll sign off.

Thanks for being with us, Jonathan. It was a blessing, brother. I hope it was encouraging. And please reach out to us.

Please don't hear us saying that we've got this whole thing figured out. We just believe in the structure of the local church as the force in missions.

Yeah. And if we've said something that has offended you or upset you, like, would you at least give us the opportunity to clarify or to discuss?

And it may be we said something that offended you. And it's like, well, we're not budging because it's right.

But also maybe you misunderstood something. So or maybe we said something poorly, you know.

But we're sure I would love for you to reach out and discuss more about these things. And hope you guys enjoyed this episode, benefited from it.

And we'll see you next week. Amen. Have a good one, brother. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

God's doing. This, this is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the hoemost, the masterpiece of God.