July 27, 2022 Show with Brian Borgman on “Pastoral Theology”

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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 a 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, Lake City, Florida, 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 Wednesday on the 17th day of July 2022.

I am thrilled to have as a first -time guest someone with whom

I have been familiar for quite a long time due to a very close mutual friendship with Dr.

Conrad M. Bayway, who I have had the honor and privilege of calling a very dear friend since 1996 when he came out to the

United States for the very first time to preach at the church where I was a member at the time while still living in New York, Grace Reform Baptist Church of Merrick, Long Island.

And that was Dr. M. Bayway's very first American -speaking engagement, and I had the privilege of being there.

I can recall very vividly that we had over 500 visitors over the three -day conference, and that does not include members of our own congregation.

So that was definitely a memorable event. We aired commercials for Dr. M.

Bayway on a radio station for which I was employed, and the phones were ringing off the hook because we included in those commercials a clip of Dr.

Conrad M. Bayway preaching, and he is certainly one of my very favorite preachers.

In fact, I would call him my favorite preacher alive on the planet Earth. And because of that shared friendship,

I have known of Brian Borgman, founding pastor of Grace Community Church of Minden, Nevada, for quite a long time, but this is the first opportunity that I have had to interview him, and I'm ecstatic over it.

He is going to be discussing pastoral theology today, which is also the theme of the 2022

Northwest Fire Regional Fellowship in Prineville, Oregon, and we'll be talking about that as well.

But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Brian Borgman.

Thank you, Chris, and it's a pleasure to be here. Well, first of all, tell our listeners about Grace Community Church of Minden, Nevada.

Well, in 1993, I just finished seminary in Portland, and my wife and at that time two kids moved down to the

Carson Valley, and we planted Grace Community Church. We had three other families and had our first morning worship on March 6, 1994, and God has been incredibly kind to us over these past 28 -plus years.

We're a confessional Baptist church, and we have a number of ministries that we're very excited about, and just a wonderful church family, and I really,

I couldn't, Chris, I could not be a happier pastor, I will tell you that. Praise God for that.

And if anybody wants more details on this fine church that has a fine reputation across the country and, dare

I say, even globally, Grace Community Church of Minden, Nevada, the website is gracenevada .com,

gracenevada .com, and God willing, we will be announcing that again towards the end of the program.

Well, I have already mentioned that you are going to be speaking, along with Bruce Ray, who is my guest in August on this program, you are going to be speaking at the

Pastoral Theology Conference, which is actually the 2022

Northwest FIRE Regional Fellowship in Prineville, Oregon. Tell us about this fellowship event.

Yeah, so, you know, FIRE, you know, Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals, and these are, you know, a fellowship of churches, and we have regional meetings.

For a number of years, the Pacific Northwest has been held up in typically

Seattle area or Port Angeles. This year, Chris Cookston, our dear brother in Prineville, is going to host, and so it's a time where pastors and church leaders get together, and one of the things that actually makes it unique, of course, there's preaching and there's singing, but one of the things that I really enjoy about our

FIRE fellowships is we hear from each of the churches, there are church reports, and we spend a significant amount of time actually praying for each other, praying for the churches, and so I'm looking forward to being with my dear brother and good friend,

Bruce Ray, and just ministering from, actually this was

Chris's idea, to take First Thessalonians as sort of a paradigm for pastoral theology, and so that's what we're going to be preaching on.

Well, praise God, and for more details on this conference, you can go to events .entrustedword

.org, events .entrustedword .org, and you will find out more about the 2022

Northwest FIRE Regional Fellowship, and I also want to take this opportunity to thank

Christopher Cookston of Prineville Community Church in Oregon for the generous financial support that he has provided and for being just such a dear and encouraging brother in Christ.

Well, as I've already mentioned, today we're going to discuss a bit about this theme that you will be addressing at the conference, but before we do that, we have a tradition here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, whenever we have a first -time guest, that we ask that guest to give a summary of his or her salvation testimony, including the religious atmosphere, if any, that the guest has been raised in, and what kind of providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in that guest's life that drew him or herself to God and saved that person.

So why don't you tell us about your salvation testimony, brother? I would love to,

Chris. The context of the

Lord's grace in my life, I was born into a Catholic home.

My dad was from a German Catholic background. Everybody in his little farming community went to the

Catholic Church. I was baptized in the same church my dad was baptized in, and my mom grew up in a very really irreligious home, but she really had a hunger, and she would go to church with whatever neighbor would take her.

So she had really no religious background other than just sort of a Heinz 57 exposure, but around 1978 or 79, right in there, my mom walked into a

Christian bookstore with her sister, who had professed faith, and my mom, being in a

Christian bookstore, was sort of like a fish out of water, and she was standing there, and there were, the

NIV was brand new, so I'm almost positive it probably was an NIV stack of Bibles that caught her attention, and she picked it up, and this is no joke, she picked it up and randomly opened, not to John 3, 16, but to the dietary laws in Leviticus.

And the Lord actually used that to create just an insatiable interest in her.

All of a sudden she just realized God is, the

Bible is more than just, you know, Noah and Moses, there's a lot more here, and she started reading her

Bible, bought a Bible, started reading it voraciously, and had met some

Catholic, fellow Catholic believers who really, I say believers because I really do think that they knew the

Lord, and she came to faith in Christ, and my dad, of course, was much more of a cultural

Catholic with quite a bit of, you know, family connections,

I mean everybody in my dad's side of the family was Catholic, and so he was very apprehensive, but he was a theater driver for UPS, and he would listen to the radio obviously for 8, 10 hours a day while he was bringing trailers up and down California, and he was listening to my mom share about what she was reading and learning, and he was apprehensive, but he'd get into his

UPS truck and he came across Dr. J. Vernon McGee, and through the

Bible radio. Oh yeah, I worked for WMCA radio in New York, a

Salem media affiliate, and they were airing J. Vernon McGee's program far after he was in glory with Christ already.

Yes, yes, and so this, like I said, this is about 1978 -79, and my dad did not feel the freedom to read the scriptures, you know, he was very much a pre -Vatican

II Catholic, and he was talking to my mom, and my mom said, why don't you go see the priest over in Stern, Sicilian man, who was not approachable.

There was a young priest in Roseville, California, and my dad went to go talk to him.

I always thought it was humorous, he was Father Ryle, and so I think of often

Bishop J .C. Ryle. Oh yeah, one of my favorite authors of all time. He used a rile to help my dad, and my dad went to talk to this priest, and the priest said to my dad,

Steve, the Bible is God's word, and you need to read it. And so my dad felt the freedom, having the priest's approval to read the scriptures, and my dad came to faith in Christ.

Hallelujah. Yeah, my parents were very zealous, and I thought my parents had gone nuts.

So I'm maybe 12, barely 13 at this time, and I'm an altar boy,

I was proud of my Catholic heritage,

I felt like everybody else most certainly was substandard when it came to religion, and I thought my mom and dad were going nuts.

And so my mom and dad sat down with me one night, and they said, we want to start going to a church that reads the

Bible, or teaches the Bible, and I told them that I was born a

Catholic, and I would die a Catholic, and they said, God gave them wisdom and grace, and they said, that's fine, but what we want to do is, we want you to go to church with us one week, and then we'll drop you off at Mass the next week.

Well, it seemed fair to me, and so they said, you have to go to church with us first, though, and so we ended up going to a church that, you know, brother,

I wouldn't go to today, but I will tell you that the Lord used the message, the pastor preached a very powerful sermon on the rich man and Lazarus from Luke 16, and God really began to create a hunger in my heart to read the scriptures, brought me under tremendous conviction for my sins,

I would continue, I went to confession a number of times, trying to find relief and peace, and I couldn't find any, and finally, one night,

I'm reading my Bible, because my mom gave me a Bible, and I just thought, if I do one more religious thing, maybe

I'll have peace, and I'm reading the Sermon on the Mount, and I get, I'm in chapter 5, and I read, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the

Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven, and I was crushed. I felt that I was lost, and I was almost irretrievably lost, and I went out into the living room, my mom and dad and sister were watching television, my mom could see

I'd been crying, at this time, I'm 13 years old, she comes into my bedroom with me, and I start trying to my very best to confess every sin

I could possibly think of, you know, because the Catholic mindset is, you know,

I gotta do something to get forgiveness, to get pardon, and so I thought maybe confessing to my mom would be the silver bullet, and my mom sat there, and she listened to me, and she smiled, and even chuckled a little bit, which

I thought was completely inappropriate, as I was burying my soul, and she looked at me, and she said, you know, she goes, you will always be our son, we will always love you, but you need to understand that God loves you more than we ever could, and as I sat there and listened to her tell me that,

I really, I sensed just the weight of the world coming off of my shoulders,

I began to just devour the Scriptures, and God just opened my eyes more and more as I read, and I don't know if that was the exact night that I was saved, but I know that once I started reading the

Word, I never looked back, we ended up going to a church that taught the

Bible and had real Christians in it who loved us and discipled us, and we were in that church for a number of years, and I am really thankful the

Lord ended up saving my sister as well, and so I give thanks to God who visited the

Borgman household with salvation. Well, praise God. Now, which is especially appropriate since our theme is pastoral theology, tell us how, when, and where you knew that you had a call from God to enter into pastoral ministry.

Yeah, as I look back, when I was about 14 years old,

I, you know, I'm reading my Bible every morning, every night,

I'm at church every time the doors open, and at about 14,

I had this deep, deep desire to serve the

Lord, and I didn't know exactly what that looked like. I couldn't, I could not have articulated it to you in any, you know, in any way that would reflect a, you know, a sophisticated understanding of the call.

I just knew that I wanted to serve the Lord, and I went and talked to my pastor, and he was a very, he was a very kind man, he was a very nice man, but I don't think,

Chris, that he knew exactly what to do with this 14 -year -old, zealous, earnest kid that wanted to do anything he could for the sake of Christ, and so it was, it wasn't all that encouraging to me, so I just continued on doing, you know, everything

I could, you know, we would evangelize, we, I mean, we did all kinds of things as young believers, and then a friend of mine, a neighbor, she also, she went to the same

Catholic church that we had gone to. Her nephew was a Southern Baptist pastor in Texas, and she put me in touch with him, and this man was an incredible blessing to me.

He helped me think through what a calling looked like.

He helped me think through what it meant to serve the

Lord, and I wouldn't recommend this now, but at age 15, he told me, he said, you need to go and ask your pastor if you can preach.

Now, I just want to say that if I had a 15 -year -old come to me now and said he wanted to preach,

I wouldn't just turn the pulpit of evening service over to him, but my pastor did, and I preached my first sermon at age 15, and—

Wow, I think Spurgeon did at exactly that age as well. Well, I can guarantee this,

Spurgeon's sermon was way better than mine. Well, I'm sure Spurgeon's sermon was way better than most pastors who have reached the age of 80.

I'm sure that's true, and what ended up happening is, I just,

I just sensed so strongly the desire to preach the

Word, and my pastor was a very gracious man, and he let me preach in the evening service about once every three months, and as I was going through my teen years, we would do all kinds of things.

We would, my friend and I ended up organizing youth rallies where there would be young people that would do singing, and then one of the two of us would preach an evangelistic sermon, and so as I got close to college age, of course,

I knew that I wanted to go to college and hopefully seminary, and I, at that time, theologically,

I was very confused. You know, I'm talking, you know, 16, 17 years old.

My theological hero at that point was, you know,

I would read a lot of Charles Finney sermons. I was enamored with Finney, actually.

I'd read biographies on Moody and Spurgeon and so forth, but I really did not have any sense of theological stability or clarity.

Yeah, that's made evident in the fact that you loved Finney. Yeah, exactly.

And so by the time I got ready to go to college, it really, in God's providence, some of the colleges

I was considering, I think, would have been disastrous for me, and in God's providence,

I ended up going to Biola University and being a Bible major there, and it was there where really sort of the

Lord sharpened some sense of calling in me. I started to get better theology, obviously, than what

I had been getting. You know, I had professors that were moderate

Calvinists, and so from there, I ended up going to Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon, and it was there that the

Lord not only brought me into a Reformed understanding, but it was there that the

Lord really, really focused my calling, gave me a pastor up there who was one of my professors as well, but he was a pastor's pastor, and he helped me so much, and I'm thankful to God.

His name's Jim Andrews, and he's been a faithful pastor for decades, and the

Lord used him to help me, and in fact, even direct me into the area of church planting, which is what we eventually did.

Praise God. Well, we are going to go to our first station break right now, and when we return, we will enter into our discussion on pastoral theology, which, as I already mentioned, is also the theme of the 2022

Northwest Fire Regional Fellowship in Prineville, Oregon at Prineville Community Church, where our mutual friend, a friend of both myself and my guest,

Christopher Cookston, is the pastor, and he's also a supporter of this program and a dear brother, but if you have a question for Pastor Brian Borgman, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. As always, when you're submitting questions, please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, and I could see that if you're discussing anything under the theme of the pastorate, that there will be possibly people who have personal and private questions, because they may be a pastor themselves going through a theological transformation, and they're not ready to identify this publicly yet.

They may know that it will anger the fellow elders or the congregation or the denomination that they're in, or you may be even a member of a church where you are sensing that things that are being taught and applied and lived on in a congregation where you are a member are not quite matching up with what you believe the scriptures to teach, and you don't want to, at this point, identify who you are, because you don't want to immediately become vilified wherever you are a member.

Well, we would understand that those are very valid reasons to remain anonymous, and so therefore we'll grant your request, should you make that request.

But if it's just a general question on pastoral theology, please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Brian Borgman in Pastoral Theology, right after these messages from our sponsors.

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English language. We are back now with our discussion with Brian Borgman, pastor of Grace Community Church of Minden, Nevada.

We are going to be discussing pastoral theology, which is also the theme of the 2022

Northwest Fire Regional Fellowship in Prineville, Oregon.

In fact, you just heard Pastor Christopher Cookston of Prineville Community Church endorsing the

New American Standard Bible along with other men in that ad for the NASB.

And I am looking forward to this discussion, a very important one indeed.

In fact, let me also just say that one of your colleagues in ministry and also a mutual friend of yours and mine,

John Sampson of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, who is an avid listener to this program and financial supporter, he wanted to extend to you his greetings in Christ and was thrilled that you are on the program today.

Well, John is a great brother. I just talked to him a few days ago, so that is very encouraging to hear.

Yeah, I have to sadly announce that I can no longer endorse King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, because I just learned that one of their elders is a boozer.

No, I'm just kidding, folks. That's actually his name. Andrew Boozer is one of his elders, his teaching elder.

But I know John well enough where he would not be offended by that joke. Not at all.

One of the most hilarious men I've ever met in my life, and that's not an exaggeration.

The issue of pastoral theology, I think that in our day and age, that is an area that is largely overlooked, not necessarily in the study of it, especially when you're talking about Reformed men and churches, but sometimes even those who may study it very deeply and thoroughly and frequently are not applying it very properly.

And so, tell us first of all, what is a good definition of pastoral theology in regard to what would be the subcategories that would fall beneath that as areas that would be properly identified as parts of good, solid, biblical pastoral theology?

Yeah, so when we get to the topic, or the more technical word, the loci or the loci, that of systematic theology, we end up coming to, in a sense, some areas that have been considered more practical or applicatory.

One, of course, would be ethics. And the other is pastoral theology, or what sometimes may have been referred to as practical theology.

I don't think, I actually don't like practical theology because all of our theology should be practical in one way or another, but pastoral theology is basically a biblical theology of the calling, the role, the function of the pastor, but it's also a little bigger than that.

In a sense, pastoral theology is the practical application of theology of biblical truth to the life of the church, to the life of individual believers.

So when I think of pastoral theology, I think of someone who is skilled, not only in preaching, but in just bringing the word of God to bear on the life of the church.

The subcategories really would cover things like the call, what is a call to the ministry.

It would also cover things like the homiletics preaching, biblical counseling, and then, in a sense, shepherding issues, covering such issues as church discipline, or other sort of practical, applicatory type issues that you face in the church.

And so it's a pretty broad category, but when I think of, let's say, the primary subsets,

I would say call, preaching, counseling.

Of course you have other things, weddings, funerals, and things like that, but I would say that the bigger categories really fall under preaching and biblical counseling.

Now we already have an anonymous listener who says, Greetings, brethren.

I happen to be a fellow Reformed Christian and I know that those who are

Reformed have a trademark where we are tenaciously clinging to objective truths rather than subjective.

However, the whole concept of a calling into the ministry at some times puzzles me because it seems to be the only thing where there is a relative connection to subjective truth.

That is, a person is receiving in his mind and heart what he believes is a call from God to enter into the ministry.

Now I know that the Bible clearly outlines the qualifications and requirements that must be fulfilled in a candidate for ministry, but at the same time, there seems to be something that could almost be categorized as charismatic in the way that a person personally applies what he believes a call into the ministry is.

Can you please explain where I may be off on this? Well, that actually is a great question because there really are, in a sense, two sides of the horse that you can fall off of when it comes to the call.

And I would say, let me just make a number of observations and then talk about the elements.

I do think that today, there probably is, to some degree, within our circles, a tendency to be incredibly rationalistic when it comes to the call.

And what I would say is that there are two primary elements that help us.

One is, in fact, very subjective or experiential, but the other is much more objective in a sense.

If you look, for instance, in church history, you read R .L. Dabney's work on the call.

I think Dabney ends up being so, in a sense, rationalistic. You know, you kick off these qualifications, you could go into the ministry.

I think that Dabney's approach probably brought men into the ministry that maybe should not have been.

But then if you look at Spurgeon, who is really truly a hero of mine, Spurgeon is almost so mystical that he may have precluded men from the ministry who should have been there but didn't have necessarily a mystical experience.

And so I would say that the two elements that really help us is, one, there is this internal sense of calling.

There is, you know, if any man desires the work of an overseer, he desires a good thing.

And that very sense of desire, there's an element of subjectivity to it, there's no doubt about it.

The very idea, woe to me if I don't preach the gospel. There is a sense of deep desire, even a compulsion to serve the

Lord. But here's the thing, Chris, is that in our day and age, a lot of times that has been the only requirement, and I think that that's a very bad mistake.

Because the more objective side to the call is that the church has to be involved, there has to be a recognition and even an affirmation of the church of a call.

And so what that means, in a sense, that lays a prerequisite. You need to be in a biblical church and have good qualified biblical leadership.

And so the church ends up recognizing the gifts, ends up recognizing the qualifications, and I'm not saying necessarily those things are in full bloom, but the church has enough discernment.

And we're not talking about the sweet 80 -year -old lady that comes up and says, hey,

Sonny, it seems like you really have the gift of gab. And then you go, oh, well, the church has confirmed it.

I'm talking about actually the elders of the church recognizing that this man has gifts, this man has abilities, this man is morally qualified.

And so both of those things need to work in tandem with each other for,

I think, for a call to be a biblical call. Amen.

And in fact, I can remember, especially when I was a young Christian, there were members of my family.

I was raised Roman Catholic, just as you were. And there were members of my family who were very impressed with my biblical literacy compared to them, because they weren't students of the

Scriptures at all, as most Roman Catholics are not. And I can remember hearing on numerous occasions from my mom and my sister that I should enter into the ministry, and I always responded, because I know what that entails,

I have no interest in entering into the ministry, because I know that I don't have the calling, because it's more than just public speaking.

You really have to understand the weight and the severity and the awesomeness of that responsibility, because you are watching over the souls of men, women, and children, and not that any human is responsible for the eternal destiny of another human.

At the same time, there is an enormous weight that is connected to the pastoral ministry, and of course

I would equate that with the eldership, that should not be taken lightly by anyone who thinks that they have a calling.

I'm sure that there are many people who believe they have a calling wrongly, just because perhaps they're even brilliant in their ability to exegete the

Scriptures and their gift for Scripture memory, and they may be really compelling orators, but those things by themselves do not make them qualified to be a shepherd, am

I right? Yeah, that's absolutely right. When I was a very, very young Christian, maybe 14 years old,

I was absolutely enamored with the preaching of Jimmy Swaggart, and the eloquence, the fervor, and all of those things.

My dad one time said to me, he said, listen, he said, earnest speaking, those guys are a dime a dozen.

We get to hear them every year when the Teamsters bring in guys who are supposed to whip us up to vote a certain way.

And my dad's wisdom really was something that has stuck with me, and that is that it is not simply oratorical gifts that constitute a calling.

Now, if a man has no oratorical gifts whatsoever, then he should certainly question his calling, but there is no one -for -one equivalent that the guy can stand up and give a sermon and say, okay, well, that's all that we're looking for.

Yeah, a man that has no oratorical gifts at all would possibly, however, be qualified for a ruling elder position where he wasn't preaching.

Of course, the ability to teach is one of the qualifications, but that doesn't necessarily involve enormous gifts for oratory.

I mean, obviously you have to be... I agree with that 100%. I think that's right. Well, we are actually going to our midway break already.

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Brian Borgman. Pastor of Grace Community Church of Minden, Nevada.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, can you contrast preaching from teaching?

It seems that many in the non -reformed world preach and may have very eloquent speakers without substance.

And in the reformed world, you very often, although not in every case, have teachers who are brilliant, but their presentation of the gospel is more appropriate for the classroom of a seminary rather than in a church.

There seems to, on some occasions, depending upon the church and pastor, more of a professorial approach to opening up the word of God.

And I say that knowing full well that some of the most powerful and passionate preachers on the planet are

Reformed. I am just saying that I have witnessed this far too often from churches and pastors identifying themselves as Reformed.

What is your reply to this? Yeah, that's a great question.

I teach preaching for Reformed Baptist Seminary, and this, of course, has been a great interest to me for many, many years.

And I would say that as you examine the words in the

New Testament for preach, which is keruso, and teach, which is didosko, and then the related nouns, what you end up finding is that there is an overlap.

Now, they're not exact equivalents, but there is an overlap.

And so preaching is, the emphasis falls on the idea of authoritative proclamation, whereas teaching ends up having more of an emphasis on didactic instruction.

But the overlap ends up being, not just in terms of various passages where there's clear overlap in the words, but I think that the idea,

Chris, ends up being that as we authoritatively proclaim the word, we always proclaim that word.

We preach that word. And in our preaching, there needs to be instruction.

There needs to be teaching. And, you know, that should be fairly obvious to us.

If a person is up there and it's all heat and no light, then it hasn't done people any good.

And so I would say that all preaching most definitely includes teaching.

But there can be occasion where the emphasis is on the didactic, it is on the instruction.

But even then, I would say that even if what we're doing is called teaching, that it should never, ever be void of earnestness, passion, zeal.

In other words, there should be very little difference, observable difference, so that if somebody says, well, was he preaching or teaching, you would just say, well, yes.

And I would say that just like it's been said, Pastor Al Martin said this many years ago, it's a sin to bore people with the

Bible. I would say just a cerebral, academic approach where you're just disseminating information actually is a betrayal of the great task of proclaiming the

Word. Because God's Word is the most exciting, most thrilling, most glorious truth in all of the universe.

And those who herald it should be gripped by it. Amen. And I would assume that you would agree that there are many good, solid preachers out there that are not as nearly loud and robust and powerful as Al Martin.

Very few people could live up to that. But they may have more of a soft -spoken approach, but they're still nonetheless passionate.

They still may be at times even weeping in a sermon appropriately when the subject would very logically produce such a reaction.

Wouldn't you agree that this is not a contest about how loud you could be, but the key would be the manner with which you preach something should reflect how urgent you are for your hearers to embrace what you're saying.

Yeah, there's no doubt. You can't judge earnestness and passion in preaching simply by decibels and perspiration and how many flecks of saliva go flying out of your mouth.

The reality is that earnestness is going to look very different in different people.

And for instance, some of the finest, most powerful preaching

I've heard in my whole life of course has been from Pastor Al Martin. I did my doctoral work on his theology of preaching.

But in that very same pulpit, I've heard Pastor Ted Donnelly or Pastor William Hughes, and they certainly don't have the same, let's say, vocal powers that Al Martin had.

But you don't doubt for a second their earnestness, their passion, and their zeal.

And sometimes it is actually, I would say, even in someone that is, let's say, softer spoken, the thing that grips the listener is that that man who's preaching this message to me believes down to his very toes what he's saying to me.

And it is that conviction that I think, in a sense, defines our earnestness.

Amen. In fact, when you mentioned the name William Hughes, who I've had the privilege to interview on this program, one of the finest sermons

I ever heard was by William Hughes at Al Martin's pulpit in Montville, New Jersey, when he was a visiting preacher from the

UK. And his message, the title, is still etched forever in my memory,

Do You Want Jesus or Barabbas? And I can just remember being totally blown away by that message.

And you've also reminded me, by mentioning Al Martin, that I've got to get in contact with him if you wouldn't mind giving me his contact information off the air, because I have recently interviewed a former

Church of Christ minister and a university professor, who is actually going to be on my show again on Friday, David Lawrence.

A part of his testimony of coming to the Reformed faith was hearing a sermon by Al Martin. Wow. I want

Pastor Martin to know that, to bless him with that. Yes, for sure.

We have somebody who has a question who we've been mentioning already, Pastor Christopher Cookston of the

Prineville Community Church in Prineville, Oregon, who's also the host of the 2022

Northwest Fire Regional Fellowship on the very theme that we're addressing today, pastoral theology.

He asks a related question, really, to what you just answered. How does a pastor preach to the needs of his congregation with winsomeness, precision, and effectiveness?

That's a great question. I would actually think that Chris, if he was going to send a question in, would probably ask, why does

Brian continually put cream in his coffee? I do as well.

But Chris' question is really good. How do you preach to the needs of the people being winsome and so forth?

I was just having a discussion earlier with a friend of mine, and I think that one of the things we need to be utterly committed to in order to do what

Chris is talking about is we need to, first of all, stick to the text.

And as we stick to the text, we need to make sure that our application is flowing from the text.

And one of the things that really, and this is such an important reminder for us, you know,

I love my Bible. I love to exegete the scriptures. I love theology. I love teaching doctrine, all of those things.

But there is an emphatic requirement that I need to apply the

Word of God. And, you know, J .I.

Packer famously defined preaching one time as teaching the

Word with application, right? If there's no application, you can't say it's been preached.

And so I think that when we are committed to applying the scriptures to our people, as a good pastor, you have to know your people.

You have to, you know, to quote Al Martin, you have to have your fingers in their wool.

You have to know what they're struggling with. And I think that when you read, for instance, like we're going to be doing at the conference,

First Thessalonians, you see the way that Paul is applying truth to the Thessalonians.

He knows them. He knows what they're going through. He knows their suffering. He knows their challenges.

He knows the areas where there is some unbiblical thinking.

And I think that it's prerequisite that we know our congregation. We know our people, which means we must spend time with them.

And then as we bring the Word of God to bear, we don't go into a scolding mode in our application.

But just even as Paul says in First Thessalonians 2, we're like a nursing mother, a loving, encouraging father.

And we're trying to bring the Word of God to bear in a way that strengthens their faith and establishes them and helps them grow.

And I think that when our motive is that, right, our motive is not to just simply get them to do what we want them to do.

Our motive is not, you know, I just want you to be more deeply committed to give more or whatever.

But our motive is just love, right? The goal of our instruction is love, you know, from a pure heart.

I think that the idea then is as a shepherd, I'm going to preach the

Word in a way that first of all is loving, which means I aim for winsomeness, but also with application that does good to the people of God.

Amen. And what this question by Pastor Cookston reminded me of, especially in regard to specifically preach to the needs of the congregation,

I've had conversations with some of my long -time, very dear, independent fundamentalist

Baptist friends, and not all of them, I don't want to brush, but there are some which has really earned the reputation of this for the whole group, and people shouldn't broad brush at any time.

But some of them will hobby horse on scandalous sin when they are preaching very animatedly and loudly.

They'll be preaching against the damnable wickedness of homosexuality, adultery, fornication, drunkenness, scandalously, provocatively dressing.

You can go on and on with the things that have become a hallmark of fundamentalist preaching.

And although those things might be more properly the frequent topic of messages when you're doing open -air evangelism, especially maybe in the inner city, and I'm not saying they're never appropriate behind the pulpit of a church, because you could have people privately involved in those sins, but that is typically, those are typically not the sins of congregants in a fundamentalist church.

They need to be hearing about the sin of pride and other things that might be more frequently present in a congregation that would be under that description.

Am I making sense here? Yeah, I totally agree with that. That's why

I'm a strong advocate of consecutive expository preaching.

Consecutive expository preaching actually prevents the preacher from riding his hobby horses.

And you have to preach what is there in the text. And here's the beauty of it,

Chris, is that the same spirit who inspired the entire book of Romans or the entire book of Deuteronomy, is the same spirit who's at work through the preaching of that Word.

And so the effectiveness really is the Spirit of God using the pastor's faithfulness as he faithfully opens up the

Word and then seeks to faithfully apply. And the glorious thing is that the

Holy Spirit can apply the Word in ways that the preacher could never plan for.

And so we really trust the work of the Spirit, but we seek to be as faithful, as accurate, as earnest, and really as applicatory as we possibly can, knowing that the

Spirit of God is pleased to do 10 ,000 things that we could have never made plans for.

Amen. And, well, let's move on. What would be one of the other more critical areas that you'd like us to address today?

Well, I will tell you that I think, and I thank you for the question, because when

I was in seminary, and this goes back to the early 90s, so much of pastoral theology was method, it was strategy, it was basically giving people very practical things to do.

And there's an element where you have to kind of deal with practical things when you're dealing with pastoral theology.

But I really think one of the critical things in this area is that our pastoral theology needs to be, first of all, rooted and grounded in the

Scriptures, and it needs to be theological.

Before it's ever methodological, it is theological. And so what we're really trying to do in pastoral theology is we're trying to, in a sense, base the way that we shepherd the people of God, whether that's feeding them, counseling them, etc.,

it needs to be rooted in the authority of Scripture. And I'm thankful that there has been a resurgence, at least in smaller circles, of this emphasis, but I think that one of the things that is an absolute detriment to pastoral theology is a pragmatism that is simply looking at results, simply looking at numbers, and the reality is that what we do in pastoral ministry is rooted in a much bigger narrative.

And so pastoral theology can never be reduced to my weekly tasks.

I need to preach three times this week. I have six counseling appointments. I have an elders' meeting.

Those things all may be true, but all of those tasks stay in the larger theological perspective of the glory of God, the gospel of Christ, in a very real sense, preparing people for eternity.

And so I would just say that making sure that our pastoral theology is robustly theological and in a sense not lamely pragmatic is one of the big needs of the day.

Amen. And we're going to our final break right now. If you have a question for Brian Borgman, I would strongly urge you to send it in immediately, because we're rapidly running out of time.

chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Brian Borgman and pastoral theology right after these messages.

I said, make it tough, make it tough.

James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here, excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading to Washington, D .C.

for the G3 Ministries Regional Conference on the theme Just Thinking About the Bible. The conference will be held

Thursday, September 15th through Saturday, September 17th. I'll be speaking along with Steven Lawson, Josh Weiss, founder of G3 Ministries, and Daryl Bernard Harrison and Virgil Walker, co -hosts of the

Just Thinking Podcast. To register, visit g3min .org that's g3min .org

and click on Events. Your registration will include a ticket to the Museum of the Bible nearby the conference venue in Washington, D .C.

So join me and Chris Arnson September 15th through the 17th in Washington, D .C. for the

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that's g3min .org Stop by the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Exhibitor booth and say hi to Chris Arnson while you're there.

Lindbrook Baptist Church on 225 Earl Avenue in Lindbrook, Long Island is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century.

Our church is far more than a Sunday worship service. It's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant.

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Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman and I invite you to come and join us here at Lindbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.

Call Lindbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402 that's 516 -599 -9402 or visit

Lindbrookbaptist .org that's Lindbrookbaptist .org Anchored in Truth Ministries is the mission arm of Grace Life Church of the

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and how he shall be represented in the world. They believe churches need to turn to the

Bible to discover what to include in worship and how to worship God in spirit and truth.

Grace Covenant Baptist Church endeavors to maintain a God -centered focus. Reading, preaching, and hearing the word of God, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, baptism, and communion are the scriptural elements of their corporate worship performed with faith, joy, and sobriety.

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Long Island Youth for Christ staff and volunteers meet with young people who need Jesus. We are rural and urban, and we are always about the message of Jesus.

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That's liyfc .org. I'm Dr.

Joseph Pipa, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight -volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the

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For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com

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When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005 the publishers of the

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Hi, this is John Sampson, Pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnzen and the

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. Welcome back and Brian Borgman we have a question from Ronald in eastern

Suffolk County Long Island, New York and he asks I've heard this area addressed on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio before but I was wondering what today's guest had to say because I know there are differences of opinion on this even amongst those that identify themselves as Calvinist.

I was wondering if the ordinances of the church are only to be provided and performed by those who are pastors and elders and also

I was wondering if you would also include diaconate or just members in good standing who happen to be male to provide the ordinances.

Yeah, that's a good question. You know our confession actually addresses it's a little different in the

Westminster they require ordained people.

Our confession actually says these holy appointments speaking of baptism and the

Lord's Supper are to be administered only by those who are qualified and there unto called according to the commission of Christ and there does seem to be a little bit of ambiguity in that statement but perhaps put that way to in a sense give a little bit of a broader understanding as to who could administer the ordinances and so our practice would be that the elders are the ones who administer the ordinance in the sense of we're the ones that get up to fence the table.

Now we may have a deacon offer prayer before we take the bread or the cup and then of course the same would be true of baptisms.

Our elders would be the ones that do that. If the church had a different practice where there was a little broader application as to who could do that I mean

I certainly wouldn't object or make a stink over it.

Yeah well let's try to actually make this more precise. Let's say a father who has been well known in the church and community as being an upright and outstanding member of the body of Christ obedient and so forth his son or daughter is asking for baptism the church allows him to baptize the son or daughter would that person who was baptized require being baptized again by a pastor or elder or deacon?

No, I mean my opinion would be that that's a valid Christian baptism and that there would be no need.

You know what we're talking about in a sense is what's the general practice of a given church and I would you know if we had somebody applying for membership and they had a godly father who baptized them you know in their church as a layman that would not be an issue to us.

Well Robert has a second question also involving something that he has heard discussed on this program.

Robert says I have very rarely seen reform Baptist churches providing the elements of the ordinances whether they be baptism or the

Lord's Supper in nursing homes and other places where a person might be home bound.

I was wondering what your opinion of this is because it seems to me if baptism and the

Lord's Supper are very very important albeit non -essential for salvation that we would not want to deprive people who cannot attend the corporate gathering of a local church because they are physically hindered from doing so and I'm not saying that it would be necessarily appropriate that one person like a pastor goes alone to the nursing home or the house of a person physically incapable of attending church but perhaps a small gathering of members so that they would be fulfilling the requirement especially in regards to the

Lord's Supper where two or more are gathered. What is your opinion? Yes, so I would say that that the normal practice of observing the

Supper in particular would be as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 11 a number of times when you come together as the church.

So I would say that these are corporate ordinances. Now, there are going to be times where you have somebody who is shut in or they have been unable to be present and I don't have

I actually don't have any any fundamental objection to having a representation of the church you know, having church leadership and a number of members gather for a service.

I wouldn't want that to become necessarily standard practice but I could see most certainly making an exception especially, you know, if you have somebody who, you know, because of health or, you know, other issues but the thing is what's important is that you end up having a representation of the church.

It's not a privatized communion service you know, like is pretty common.

It's not a just a handful of friends saying, hey, let's have the

Lord's Supper together. It actually is a representation of the church with representation of leadership as well.

By the way, I'm sorry I believe I referred to our listener as Robert, his name is

Ronald. Thank you so much for the question. Excellent questions, plural

I should say. Before I go to any other listener question, I want to make sure that you have several minutes to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners regarding this topic.

Perhaps you even have another element of pastoral theology that we haven't addressed that you want to include in today's broadcast.

I already know that I want you back on the show very soon to either continue this same topic or address another issue.

But if you could give us your summary of what is most essential regarding our discussion today.

I would love it if our listeners would really take to heart the importance of pastoral theology and it's not that you don't have to be a pastor to learn and grow from pastoral theology.

And so I think that it needs to be recovered in our churches and I think in our reformed churches we have a heightened sense of the importance of it.

There's been a resurgence of literature and good resources.

So I'm thankful for that. But I think that one of the things that is lacking in so many quarters today is just a good ecclesiology generally speaking and then also a good pastoral theology more specifically.

And so I would just say that you know, read your Bible through the lens of Paul as a pastor ministering to these congregations through his writings.

Pick up, you know, good solid works that deal with the issues of pastoral theology.

If I could recommend an old one, I would say Charles Bridges, The Christian Ministry.

If I could pick a new one, there's a brand new book out that's actually essays that are in honor of Sinclair Ferguson called

Theology for Ministry and it's sort of a systematic theology but pastorally applied.

And these are really what pastoral theology does is pastoral theology reminds us that the

Bible and its theology is really for every man, and it's the pastor's responsibility to bring that truth to bear to all of life for the life of the church.

Amen. We have time for at least one more question from a listener, another listener who requests to remain anonymous.

What sins, in your opinion, from a biblical point of view, would forever bar a man from re -entering into the pastorate after he has fallen in some sort of wicked way?

Yeah, that's a relevant question. You know, the thing about adultery or infidelity is that it is a sin that not only deeply violates the trust of the marriage, but when a pastor is guilty of it, it violates the trust of the congregation, and because it's a sin that could be held, you know, under the cover of darkness for a very long time,

I would say that and I wouldn't say this in the absolute utmost restrictive sense,

I think elderships need to be actively involved, but I do think that a person that has committed adultery disqualifies themselves from ministry.

I would also say that theft, stealing from the congregation, embezzling funds, again, it can be done secretly without detection, it's a violation of trust, you know, and so I would say that that also would be a disqualifying sin.

You know, pastors are sinners, but hopefully we just have warts, not cancer, and so the pastor needs to watch over his life, but I do think that there would be sins like the two that I mentioned that would automatically disqualify a man from ministry.

And something has arisen very sadly, in my estimation, and I'm sure yours, even amongst professedly reformed churches and denominations, where they will permit a man to be ordained into the ministry, even knowing this about the person, they will identify as being a chaste homosexual.

They will say that they do not physically participate in the sin, but they identify themselves that way because that is their attraction.

In my opinion, that person should never be permitted, not only into the eldership, but even in the membership if they are professing to be an ongoing homosexual, even in the thought life or the desiring of the heart.

What's your opinion? Yeah, I would agree, and I think actually that part of the problem is that we have a confusion of categories today.

So, for instance, there is this common notion that you can be a homosexual and a

Christian just as long as you're not a practicing homosexual. And I don't see that distinction in Scripture.

I'm not saying that a person can't have struggles and things like that, but here's part of the cultural confusion is that we turn that same -sex desire into an identity, and the minute that we do that, we've really, in a sense, we've capitulated the culture, and you know, it really is, it's a terribly confusing thing for people, but I would say that a person who identifies like that should not be you know,

I mean, I don't know how you can be a professing homosexual, but not practicing, and then be in the

Christian ministry, so. Amen. And we're out of time, and I want to repeat your website for Grace Community Church of Minden, Nevada.

I hope I'm pronouncing Minden correctly. gracenevada .com gracenevada .com

Don't forget about the website for the 2022 Northwest Fire Regional Fellowship, October 5th through the 7th.

That website is events .entrustedword .org and also don't forget about the website of Prineville Community Church in Prineville, Oregon, which is the hosting church of the

Northwest Fire Regional Fellowship. That is prinevillecommunitychurch .org

prinevillecommunitychurch .org I want to thank you so much, Pastor Borgman, for being such an extraordinary guest.

I want you back very soon. I want to thank everybody who listened, and I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. Amen. Amen. Well, thank you.