142: Table Talk with Dewey Dovel

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, visceral, congregate church. Our guest today is coming from the, he says, dark area.

Well, are you talking about physical dark or spiritual darkness? Definitely both, but I had the physical darkness in mind as it's just after 7 a .m.

in December of 2025, and it's pitch black, and definitely takes some getting used to if you're from Texas like I am.

We're, we're, we are recording this at, well, it's nine o 'clock our time here in Arkansas, but it is, yeah, we're getting closer and closer to the shortest day of the year, but grateful to have our guest.

I'll introduce him in just a second. Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. My name is Alan Nelson. I'm your host.

I'm one of the pastors at Providence Baptist Church. We're a Reformed Baptist Church in central Arkansas.

We're just north of Little Rock. I saw a thing today, Dewey, that said

Arkansas, it's crazy to me, really, that it's like the number one state, maybe, for people moving into, which

I don't even know how that's figured, but I don't know, somewhere up there, it's one of the states in the last couple of years that has had the highest number of move -ins.

Wow. And there's probably several reasons for that, but I like to keep it secret. It's really a beautiful state.

You've been here. Mm -hmm. I love, I love Arkansas. My grandparents lived there for 20, 30 years up in the

Bella Vista, Fayetteville, Rogers, Northwest corner. And, you know, whether going up there as a kid on family vacations or just to visit them, or, you know, in recent years, going out to your neck of the woods and seeing

Pastor Creston Thomas there and Pine Bluff, which our church supports. And, of course, you've got

Grace Bible Theological Seminary right there in Conway, whether you're in the Northwest or towards the southeastern part of the state, or even northeastern.

I've got a good pastor friend up there in the Pigot, Arkansas area as well.

So in some ways, Arkansas is kind of a home away from home, or at least it has been for many years for me.

Yeah, it's a great state. And we're not a perfect state for sure, but I'm grateful for that. But we're not talking about Arkansas.

I want to introduce Dewey Dovell. Brother, you are pastoring in Seattle, Washington.

How long have you pastored there? Been pastoring officially. It's funny that in our circles,

Reformed Baptist circles as a whole, I would say, we're very particular about terminology. So formally pastoring

Emanuel Reformed Baptist Church in SeaTac, Washington since June of 2024. But I've actually been out here since September of 2023.

I came out, I think my official title was Interim Resident Pastoral Labor, otherwise known as Pastoral Intern, and did that from September of 2023 until I was installed officially in June 2024.

So in some ways doing the work of a pastor for over two years now, but formally doing the work as pastor in terms of holding the office of pastor since June of 2024.

Okay, so when you say, because a lot of people have different, I know what you mean, but just for our listeners, when you say that your church, or do you call yourselves a

Reformed Baptist Church or Particular Baptist? Okay, when you say that, what do you mean? Yeah, so I actually gave an episode on the

Covenant podcast that kind of gave a 30 ,000 foot flyover of what

I mean by Reformed Baptist. And Tom Hicks, of course, wrote a recent book with founders that even gets into more details than I do.

But a lot of people in our day will use the phrase Reformed Baptist kind of as just another term for a

Calvinist who baptizes believers or those who've made a profession of faith, baptizes them subsequent to their profession of faith.

So there's some who would say that's a Reformed Baptist, but I take a little bit more of a narrow viewpoint. I think that's the more historical approach to defining a

Reformed Baptist. And what I mean by that more narrow approach, I think there's five, at least five distinctives that you've got to identify a

Reformed Baptist as being, on the one hand, small C Catholic, we're part of the universal church of Jesus Christ.

We're not the only true Christians out there, but we are certainly part of Christ's universal church.

So we're small C Catholic in that respect. We would affirm the theology proper of Nicene Trinitarianism.

We would affirm the Chalcedonian Creed, the Athanasian Creed, Apostles' Creed, those sorts of things that Christians have held as standards of orthodoxy on the basis of scripture for a thousand plus years now.

So small C Catholic, then beyond that, another C, we're confessional, flowing out of that Catholicity reality that I just highlighted there with those sometimes known as ecumenical creeds, meaning different denominations will affirm them as biblically, as teaching biblical realities.

We hold to the second line of Baptist confession of faith, and that is our doctrinal statement.

It is an authority subordinate to scripture's ultimate authority, but is an authority nonetheless of defining our core convictions about a number of theological realities pertaining to God, to Christ, to man, to salvation, to the church, to how we conduct ourselves in the world as believers, last things, end times, those sorts of things.

So we're confessional. We're Calvinistic, as I mentioned. We have a high view of the sovereignty of God and salvation.

We would affirm the historic realities that were ironed out, the

Synod of Dort going through each of the heads related to the doctrines of grace, otherwise known as TULIP in our day.

So we're Catholic, confessional, Calvinistic. We're also covenantal.

We view the Bible as a covenantal document that outlines how

God has related to his image -bearing creatures by way of covenant, from the

Garden of Eden to eternity future and the new heavens and the new earth, starting, of course, with the covenant of works, flowing into all the redemptive historical covenants that culminate in the new covenant or if you're a 1689

Federalist like I am, the covenant of grace being the new covenant. And of course, that also entails the covenant of redemption as an inter -Trinitarian covenant enacted in eternity past as well.

So it's mostly Catholic, confessional, Calvinistic, covenantal, and we're

Credo Baptist. And that also gets back to something I said a few moments ago, where we believe on the basis of Scripture that the biblical model is for baptism to be conducted by immersion and to be done after a sinner makes a profession of faith in Jesus Christ.

So we don't baptize babies. We don't baptize by pouring or sprinkling water on the head of a baptism candidate.

We believe in baptism by immersion and to be done to those who've made profession of faith, hence the name

Credo Baptist. So those are what I've called kind of the five

Cs of Reformed Baptists. And you can go check out that episode if you're listening. I get into more details about that on the covenant podcast, which

I co -host with my brother, Pastor Austin McCormick, and I get into some more details in that episode.

So to answer your question, Alan, and your listeners will find I can be long -winded at times, that's a big picture overview,

I would say, of what at bare minimum, historically, you would have to say to rightly identify as a

Reformed Baptist. There's more to it, but I don't think you can necessarily say there's less to it.

And Tom Hicks' book expands on some of those realities that I've just outlined for you there.

Yeah, and I would add, I think probably a sixth C would be maybe covered dishes, and that is for the potluck.

No, I'm just kidding. Crockpots. Yes, crockpots, covered dishes.

Yeah. It's great, man. No, we do have some good potlucks out here.

I will say we know how to eat. It's not just a

Southern Baptist thing. I think Baptists as a whole just know how to eat good food. Maybe congregationalism, that'd be, no, no, you did a really good, you did a good, that's really great.

I've heard that before, but it's just a reminder that you can take the Baptist out of fundamentalism, but you can't take the fundamentalist out of the

Baptist. We're gonna alliterate when we can. No, that's very good, brother, and that's very helpful.

And so, yeah, your church actually has Reformed Baptist in the name, Emanuel Reformed Baptist Church.

But I just wanted to, look, I'm not trying to be a gatekeeper. I'm not gonna try to beat people over the head, but I just know a lot of people say, well,

I'm Reformed. And they just mean, all of the other things that they do are really kind of not very

Reformed, but they do hold to TULIP. And so they're like, well, I'm Reformed. And you're like, well, okay, but we're just trying to recover and establish like, hey, when we say, and actually we're going through that book on Wednesday nights,

Tom Hicks' book. So when we say, Providence Baptist Church or Emanuel Reformed Baptist Church, when we say, hey, we're a

Reformed Baptist Church, well, we mean something much deeper than just the five points of Calvinism, which we gladly hold and are absolutely important, but we mean more than just that.

Yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, I remember being a student at the Master's University, and I'll just say this, put my cards down on the table.

I may not be from the dispensational kind of John MacArthur school of thought anymore in terms of my theological convictions, but I hold those brothers in the highest esteem in the

Lord, just sharing a personal anecdote here. When I was a student for at least the first few years, and it may have just been my experience.

I don't know if this is what everybody experiences as a student there, but I was kind of under the impression that if you're

Reformed, that just means that you're a Calvinist. That was kind of the overarching sense that I got talking with students and even some professors there in my early 20s.

So it took me kind of leaving that campus and beginning to study more historical theology and to talk to people who were actually in a confessional context, whether that be

Presbyterian, whether that be Reformed or particular Baptist. And that kind of helped me clarify in my own thought, what does it actually mean to throw the word

Reformed around? And as you mentioned, the gatekeeping, there's even some brothers out there, scholars who I hold with high esteem as well, but they would even go so far to say that we're not even

Reformed. And they would look at historical documents that have been debated and make the case that unless you baptize babies and hold to a particular covenant theology, that then you can't really call yourself

Reformed and that the earliest Reformed thinkers wouldn't have called you Reformed. And for me, that's the case.

At the end of the day, call me a Reformed Baptist, particular Baptist. At the end of the day,

I'm just trying to rightly divide the word of truth and whatever that means that's outlined in the

Second Lenten Baptist Confession of Faith. That's what I believe accurately represents the word of God. So Reformed Baptist, particular

Baptist, call me either of those. I think it gets to the heart of what I believe the scriptures teach.

So I think you and I are on the same page. Yeah, and you know, almost a year, by the time this comes out, it'll be about a year ago that I think it was at the

Founders Conference that I talked to Brother Tom Askell. And I said, one of the things that's on my heart right now, and I think he's in agreement.

I think Jeff Johnson's in agreement. These are guys that I know personally. So I'm not saying that other guys aren't.

I'm just saying these are guys I know personally. That within the, so let's limit this down.

Within the Reformed Baptist world, there can be a lot of infighting sometimes.

I'm talking about guys that say, hey, we hold the 16 -8. And all those things that we just talked about, these are guys within those boundaries.

And sometimes there can be a lot of infighting, you know? And so one of the things on my heart is, because there's a lot of great work, you know,

Dr. Sam Waldron, Dr. James Renahan, Dr. Jeff Johnson, Dr.

Tom Askell. I mean, these are, and there's many others that I didn't mention, but these are all dear brothers.

And like, we have such beautiful things going on, I believe, in the Reformed Baptist world that I sure would love to see.

Not that some of the differences may not be important. I'm not trying to say they're not. But, you know, just having a sense of camaraderie and fellowship.

But anyway, anything else you wanna say about that, we can move on, topics. Yeah, we can move on, brother. I just keep looking at your beard, thinking that my beard will be getting shaved, regardless, down at least to kind of a two in February.

But I envy your beard. My wife is at her wit's end with the length of mine right now.

So, you know, unless you had plans to talk about your beard next, man, I'm good moving on.

So let me ask you, you have this like, what's significant about February? Well, so I'm going on a trip to Zambia, Ndola, Zambia for a week, and then

Lusaka, Zambia for a second week there. I'm gonna be teaching a course on Christian apologetics at the

Copperbelt Christian Ministerial College in Ndola, and then Lusaka Ministerial College in Lusaka. And my thought was, if I'm going overseas,

I'm going to Africa, I gotta have like a Voddie Bauckham type beard, you know, when

I'm over there in Zambia, where he faithfully labored in a variety of ways.

So I started growing this out around Labor Day. And my hair is thinning to such a degree now that I can survive really on two haircuts a year.

I just, I cut my hair down to probably a four or six, and then I keep the beard, you know, relatively trimmed up.

It never really gets this long. But when I was given the opportunity to go to Zambia, I talked to my wife and just said, hey, babe, you know,

I know you're not a big fan of the facial hair getting too out of control, but you know, just this once since I'm going overseas, can

I grow it out a little bit? And I promise when I get back, we'll go down, get it nice and trimmed up. And she graciously agreed.

So this will be the longest it's been when February comes. I'm excited to see how it looks, but you've got a true old school

Reformation beard that I've always wanted and probably will never have. Well, here's the thing, brother,

I'll just be honest. There's a lot of ugly underneath this beard. And so it really helps, you know.

But, well, look, I'm looking at your church website and here's something - It needs work. We're gonna renovate it.

We've got the bare minimum on there and we're in the process of getting it updated, but I'm sure it serves its purpose for those who are looking for more information about who we are.

Yeah, Emanuelreformbaptist .org, and that's Emanuel with an E, Emanuelreformbaptist .org,

so you can check out more about that. Or say sometimes you might know of a family up there or you know of people even just traveling through that area.

And so, look, my position is, I think you're in agreement, that even if you're gonna be on vacation, vacation's great, but the

Lord's day is still the Lord's day. And so find a place where you're vacationing and go to church and Emanuelreformbaptist .org,

check them out. I'm gonna ask you something. I'm looking on your website because this is a little bit unique in our day, and that is you guys still do, well, you guys do both

Sunday school and evening worship, and we're like -minded in that.

We do both of those too. So our typical Sunday is Sunday school, morning worship, evening worship.

You wanna talk anything about that? So some churches kind of have moved away from that.

Now, I'm not arguing like why we should, I'm not trying to bash anybody else doing it for a different reason. I'm more of a positive defense of why you guys are doing it this way.

Yeah, so I'll just be the first to say about the way that our Lord's day is structured.

It long precedes my time out here. This is not something that I, out of my own wisdom, conjured up in the church and then adopted it.

They've been doing this for many, many years now. I mean, they may even have been doing it before they officially became confessionally reformed

Baptists. And we can get into the history of the church if you're interested in going that direction later in our conversation.

But in terms of why we do it the way that we do it, with our structure of the Lord's day, we wanna own, for the glory of God, the good of our souls, we wanna own the

Lord's day. We wanna be together as the people of God as much as we can to fill our minds and our hearts with the truths of scripture and to encourage one another through our fellowship, through attending to the ordinary means of grace that God has provided for our spiritual good.

So we believe to accomplish that, that having the Sunday school hour to supplement our morning worship service is good, it's wise, it's for our benefit.

And then, of course, having the evening service, also wise, good, for our benefit. But Pastor Steve Meister, actually, thinking back to an episode that we did on the

Covenant podcast with him, he actually gives a compelling case for some of the biblical patterns or practices that we can see, whether in Old Covenant Israel or even the

Book of Acts, looking at the church in the first century, just God's people gathering for worship in the evening.

And so there's at least a biblical paradigm there for evening worship, evening gathering as the people of God.

So whether you're looking at it from that lens or you're looking at it more broadly as there's wisdom and gathering as much as we can for corporate worship and for biblical instruction and for fellowship, then we believe at Emmanuel Reformed Baptist Church that we wanna take advantage of those opportunities and then to see how the

Lord blesses them. And like I said, the Lord has blessed those efforts to gather frequently on the

Lord's day long before I came out here. But what we're doing right now, the first Sunday of the month, we actually don't meet in the evening.

Instead, we have a fellowship meal, back to the potluck or the crock pot theme that we were talking about earlier.

We have a fellowship meal right after the morning service and then we have an afternoon prayer meeting after the fellowship meal.

So the first Sunday of the month, a little bit unique where we still meet three times, we still have three gatherings, but we also have a fellowship meal and everybody's at the church building from about 9 a .m.

until probably about 3, 3 .30 on the early end, because prayer meeting will go from like two to three or two to 2 .50

and then people linger in fellowship and those sorts of things and kind of have to kind of start turning lights off to get people to go home, which is always encouraging.

But so yeah, and then the first Sunday school, I actually do the Sunday school, I teach the Sunday school class and then

I will preach in the morning service. So that's the first Sunday of every month and then the rest of the month, we do a

Sunday school, one of my co -pastors teaches through the second line of Baptist Confession of Faith. He's been working through that since I arrived in October of 2023 and well, arrived in September, but started the study in October of 2023.

And then, so he does that in the Sunday squire, then I preach the morning and evening service unless we have somebody filling the pulpit for me for, whether it be just a guest speaker that we wanna come in or a brother in our church who wants to fill the pulpit or that we as elders wanna fill the pulpit for a particular reason, they'll fill either the morning or the evening service.

But under most circumstances, I'm preaching twice a Lord's day, my co -pastors doing the

Sunday school hour and it's just been such a treat to see how God's people out here at ERBC just love being together.

It's not a burden for us to gather three times on Sunday. Sometimes, you look back at church history and you'd see there'd be your services, you'd have your

Sunday school and every Sunday there's a fellowship meal and in some cases in the afternoons, there's like a theology class or some sort of additional instruction time.

So I just think as a pastor, you wanna encourage God's people to be together as much as you can on that one day that the

Lord has set apart for rest and worship and that's just a way practically that we've tried to do that here in SeaTac.

I love that, brother. Again, it's not my desire to knock a church because I think the scriptures are clear that the church ought together.

Sunday is not just a good idea or even just a historical pattern together. I believe it's a moral obligation that the church ought together but the scriptures are not, if the scriptures explicitly said you have to meet this many times on the

Lord's day, well, then we would have to do that. But I know there are churches, there may be providential reasons.

Some may not even meet in the morning, they may meet in the afternoon or evening, whatever. So I'm not knocking churches that only have one service but I would say for us that we are like -minded with everything that you just said.

I wanna be around God's people. Another thing too is, I don't know if you guys have this but we have at least one brother in our church who feels he may be called to preach.

And so Sunday evening gives another opportunity for younger men.

Like if you wanna say, hey, we wanna raise up elders here. Well, I don't know, it just offers an opportunity to say, look, you're not gonna go on Sunday morning but you could preach on Sunday night as you kind of get your feet wet and kind of observe and let the church observe.

And so anyway, I know that's tertiary but it's another benefit.

So anyway, we're like -minded with that. So what have you been preaching through lately? Yeah, so man, it's been, it's hard to believe how much has just come by in just a little over two years just coming up on two and a half years of being here.

So just to kind of give an overview, I guess, of how I've approached pulpit ministry.

Up until really this year, the first Sunday school hour of every month was kind of a thematic or topical message that I would give.

But I'm supposed to be giving a class on the history of Christian philosophy for CBTS over Labor Day weekend of 2026.

So I have been using the first Sunday school hour of every month to provide basically the substance of what will be taught in that course because I'm shooting for a high

Sunday school class level of curriculum that will hopefully still be edifying to the students of the class who may not come from a philosophy background, some of whom

English might not even be their first language. So I wanna be faithful to teaching them the curriculum but also making it accessible.

And I'm not a philosopher either. I do not specialize in that in my education. So I'm trying to help our people have a little bit of a better knowledge of the history of Christian thought and theology and philosophy and those sorts of things.

So I'm learning and they're growing from that. That's what I've been doing in 2025. Morning worship service, going back to the beginning of this year, the elders and my co -pastors and I, the elders as a whole, we wanted to really use this first full year of me having been installed and the three of us being together as pastors, we wanted to use this first full year as an opportunity to kind of lay the groundwork for who we are as a local church.

So I did a six -part series at the beginning of the year on our church's understanding of the

Lord's day and the biblical theological foundation or grounds for affirming the perpetuity of the fourth commandment, the

Sabbath or the new covenant Lord's day. Why do we believe that? And then practically, what does that look like?

I gave a couple of messages on the application of principles that we should keep in mind in our observance of the

Lord's day as the people of God, not trying to bind consciences where scripture doesn't bind consciences, but give general principles from the scriptures and even general principles of wisdom as well.

And then I gave a message on common objections to the perpetuity of the Sabbath. And so we started the year with that in the morning service.

That transitioned us into then hitting the high points of our church constitution, looking at our distinctives as a local church, membership, responsibilities, the why we do what we do with business meetings, church membership, all of those sorts of things that really make us unique as a local church and probably have continuity with other

Reformed Baptist churches as well. But in terms of our constitution, the co -pastors that I serve with and myself, we wanted to make sure that our church members understood this is who we are as a church.

These are our distinctives. This is what's spelled out in our constitution. And then when we finished that around April or early

May, we launched into a series through the book of Titus. So we've been in Titus now off and on.

I've had a few times where I've not been able to preach due to providential circumstances. My wife had her second daughter.

I was doing a youth conference in July and my flight got delayed coming back home, had some other travel in the fall.

So it's not been every Sunday, but most Sundays from May to now, the time of this recording in December of 2025, been going through Titus.

God willing, we'll wrap up chapter two sometime around new year. And then the evening service has been just the book of Genesis going slowly from the time that I arrived in the fall of 2023 to now, looking at the book of Genesis and teasing out those foundational issues that the book of Genesis specifies all the way from creation up through the end of the book.

So we're gonna be studying chapter 13, Lord willing, this Sunday, which would be December 21st,

I believe, if my memory is correct there. And by the time your listeners stumble upon this episode, probably be somewhere 15 or 16, depending on our pace and how things play out.

So I've been preaching through that. In 2025, I preached Philippians when I first came.

I think I did 42 sermons -ish in that book when I first arrived.

And yeah, first hour of Sunday school, first Sunday school of every month. And then the evening service pretty much been consistent throughout the totality of my time out here.

Yeah, that's great. You know, there's so much we could talk about like in just so little time. I'm gonna have to have you on again, but here's a question

I wanted to ask you, thinking, you know, as we're just listening, this kind of comes up a couple of different times in our discussion today.

What do you think about the biblical wisdom and practicality of plurality of elders?

A, that's the first question. Second, what would you say to brothers who are maybe either wrestling with this or they kind of agree, but they just don't know how to proceed?

They're just kind of that single pastor model, which by the way, I would argue that a single pastor model, it's not that you're not a true church, you're still a church, you know, still biblical, amen.

But there is biblical precedent and prudence in the plurality of elder model.

So how have you found that a benefit to you personally? And then maybe what would you say about churches moving in that direction?

Yeah, man, there's so much there and I'll do the best I can to be succinct, which is always a challenge, but I've heard it said that to your point about, even if your church doesn't have a plurality of elders or pastors, which we would affirm that whether you're using the term, you know, overseer or pastor or elder, it's interchangeable terms for the same office.

So we're not talking about different roles in the church, we're talking about the office of elder, pastor, overseer.

1 Peter 5, using those terms interchangeably for the same office, that's the biblical grounds for that conviction.

But so yes, you can have a true church, true church where you have one pastor, but we would say on the basis of scripture, insofar this category of distinction is correct,

I think it is, it's an irregular church to have one pastor and not a plurality.

And what I mean by irregular, talking about the rule of scripture, the regular of scripture, the authority of scripture, the standard scripture, a fully orbed biblical church is going to have a plurality of pastors, or maybe we say a fully healthy church, not saying a true versus a false church, we're just, we're talking about the biblical ideal.

If you read the New Testament, even beginning of like Philippians, for example, there's the assumption there that you have a plurality of pastors or a plurality of elders overseeing and leading, shepherding a congregation and throughout the

New Testament, that's what you find. Let me just interject there, cause I wanna make sure, cause I wanna point the finger at myself too.

So we've only had, at our church, we've only had through reformation, we've only had a plurality of elders almost three years.

And so, we haven't always been this way. The other thing is we don't have deacons and that's for other reasons, but right now we don't have deacons and we want deacons.

And so in those regards, even our church, so the reason I say this, you don't know the background, but the reason

I say this is sometimes I have people that would accuse me of saying, well, you're saying we're not even a church if we don't have a plurality of elders.

And I'm not saying that. And there's things about Providence Baptist Church that we need to grow.

But what I am saying is that a plurality of elders is biblical and it's the right model to work toward and it's beautiful and it's very wise.

Anyway, so I just wanna make that clear cause I'm not trying to come across as saying like, well, if you don't have a plurality of church, you're not church.

I'm not saying that at all. And we need to grow even in many ways, we need to always be reforming, but our church, we don't have deacons.

And hopefully in 2026, that's kind of one of our goals pursuing that. So anyway. You're exactly right, brother.

And I wanna just piggyback on that to say, if you're listening and you see in the scripture, those biblical norms, plurality of pastors, or even deacons, just because that's the biblical norm doesn't mean that in a zeal for faithfulness, you need to just start throwing men into that office without ensuring that they meet the biblical qualifications or that you need to run roughshod over your congregation and say, hey, this is what the

Bible teaches. So we're doing it next week. And I'm not gonna teach you, I'm not gonna patiently shepherd you and show you from the word of God, why we need to do this for the glory of God and the good of our souls and the good of this congregation.

Obviously, there's the biblical ideal to shoot for and to pray that the Lord will bring you to that point.

But there's also principles of patience and wisdom in bringing the people of God along to these convictions so that there's unity in the body.

When you get to the place of the culmination of reformation, when you're installing those new elders or you're installing those deacons, and you've seen they meet the biblical qualifications,

God has placed them here for a reason and for a purpose. And now we're affirming what the

Lord has done by putting them into that role. So brother, I commend everything you've just said.

I don't wanna come across as either, me saying, hey, if you're not doing this, you're either not a true church or if you're not doing this, you need to do it next week.

Otherwise, you're not being faithful. I would encourage our listeners to be gracious and to be patient, to trust the

Lord as you teach your people the biblical basis for why we should have plurality of elders, why we should have deacons.

And then as God allows, move the church in that direction over the course of time. It's gonna look different from culture to culture, context to context, but by God's grace,

I think if you apply those principles generally, that you should be able to get your people there at some point down the road.

In so far, you're shepherding born again, spirit filled believers. I think that the

Lord can certainly work with that to accomplish his purpose and bring in local churches to a fully healthy model.

The problem is, in my estimation, a lot of people hear the horror stories about rogue elders or deacons that manipulate and caused all kinds of problems in the church.

And what they do is kind of pragmatic. Okay, well, I know the Bible might say this or it's in scripture, but maybe it's descriptive, but not prescriptive, or at least that's what they'll try to maybe tell themselves and they'll find ways to justify why they don't wanna bring their church to that particular conviction of eldership plurality or having deacons, so to speak.

Although I think typically in our baptistic circles, you're probably gonna have more of the soul pastor model and the deacon plurality, the board of deacons.

That's gonna probably be more in our context, what you're gonna find less of elders and no deacons, but in whichever of those options you're talking about, the standard of why we do what we do must be the word of God.

It can't be pragmatism. It can't be fear of man, or it can't be on the basis of scars that we have or problems that we've encountered, that that would somehow dictate how we do church or how we view the church's structure.

Instead, the scripture has to be what informs our convictions. And then we submit our fears and our insecurities and even our past pain to the word of God.

And we trust the Lord and say, Lord, this is how your word teaches us and instructs us with regards to the church.

I submit to that. I trust you and have your way. Give me wisdom as I strive to bring your people to these convictions at a very practical level.

So that's what I would say, brother. And that's a lot of scatterbrained thoughts to your question, but that's my thought in any case.

No, I think it's really good. It's really helpful. It reminded me of something I'm preaching in a couple of weeks from Acts chapter five, verse 20, the angel is when their apostles are rescued from prison.

And the angel says, go and stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life.

And I'm just gonna make a point there, similar to Romans 10, 17, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.

We hear the scriptures and this is a different thing than what you're talking about.

But when we communicate the gospel, we come up with all these things that we can do.

You know, we're like, yeah, but what if we draw pictures or show a film or what if we, you know, and some people would make these old

Jesus statues, which that's a completely different topic, but definitely against all that.

But sometimes we overcomplicate things. Well, here's just what the scripture says. Go speak to the people all the words, words, words, the gospel communicated through words.

So what should we do in our evangelism? We should communicate the gospel with words, the words of this life, because faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of Christ.

Now that's a different thing than what you were talking about, but it just, it sparked in my mind because sometimes we can really make things overcomplicated.

The scriptures say, here's how the church should be. And we say, yeah, but, and frankly, brother, and I'm guilty,

I'm guilty. I've had to repent. I am too, and we all are, right? None of us are perfectly faithful. We're always being sanctified.

We're always having to put sin to death and put fear of man to death and insecurities to cast them aside.

So I'm right there with you, my friend. Yeah, amen. But when it comes to reformation in the church, at the end of the day, it's like, look,

I'm gonna lay open my Bible and I'm going to say, this is, okay, this is what it says.

And now I need to, and you gave some great wisdom. So you don't stand up next Sunday and say, okay, you're a deacon, you're an elder.

You're like, okay, no. But you say, okay, this is what the scripture says. Whether you're talking about worship, evangelism, polity, whatever the case may be, okay, this is what the

Bible, this is just what it says. And so this is the direction. We don't have an excuse. We have to go this way because at the end of the day,

I'm not gonna stand before deacons. I'm not gonna stand before the mayor of my town. I'm not gonna stand before any other institution, a seminary professor, whatever the case may be.

I'm gonna stand before the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, look, I gave you instructions for how I wanted my church.

And you were more afraid of men than God. So at the end of the day, I'm just like you, brother.

I went scatterbrained there, but I'll try to bring that together too. That's great.

Well, we're kind of dragging on a little bit here and I'm just gonna have to have you back on,

I guess. That's gonna be our excuse. But let me ask you this. It's 2026, I mean, not now, but by the time people listen to it, it's 2026.

What are some things, I know you said you're going on a trip. Actually, by the time this comes out, you'll be going on, your beard will be have, it's dazed.

It's not gonna be at your level, but it'll be a little bit even more than it is now. But it's days will be very close to numbered of being gone or down to.

But anyway, I'm not trying to make you sad. What are you excited about in 2026 as far as like maybe personally, family, church?

Yeah, a lot of things to give praise to God for this past year and reasons for optimism as we go into the new year.

But I would just say in terms of the church, we are such a thriving multi -generational church, if I could use that term.

We have 63 members, but we also have nearly 50 kids under the age of 18 that could be at our church on any given

Sunday. And on top of the 63 members and the 50 -ish kids under the age of 18, we have a number of people who visit regularly, maybe moving in the direction of church membership someday,

Lord willing, at least they've shown promise in certain cases. So I just see

Christ faithfully building his church numerically and of course, spiritually as well here in ERBC.

We've got a huge mission field in the church with most of those kids having never professed faith in Christ, but sitting under the preached word week after week after week, hearing the gospel proclaimed to them from the pulpit.

And at home, many of our parents have been faithful to model regular and consistent family worship in their own home, which we're so thankful for as pastors out here.

We also have a huge mission field outside of our church. We live, according to the

Seattle Times, they did a study back in early 2024. And according to that study, your listeners may find this intriguing.

You mentioned Arkansas, everybody wants to move to Arkansas. It's a great place to live and I agree, it's a wonderful place. But Seattle, it almost feels like it's the exact opposite because according to this study, the

Seattle Times, Seattle is the least religious major US city.

And I've got the stat, I jotted this down before we talk because I didn't know if we would talk about my ministry context.

I want to at least drop this stat on your listeners. According to the United States Census Bureau, approximately 64 % of adult residents in the

Seattle Metroplex attend a religious service less than once per year.

So there's estimates of anywhere between, two to three million adult citizens.

And by adult, I'm talking 18 years and older. So two to 3 ,000 ,018 years and older in the whole conglomerate of Seattle, Washington.

So for the sake of math, I'm not a math guy, so I'll keep it simple. Let's say there's 3 million adults in the greater

Seattle area. That means roughly 2 million aren't even going to a religious service one time in a calendar year.

And of the 1 million -ish who do go, that religious service could be anything.

It could be a Muslim context, a Jewish context, a

Roman Catholic context. It could be any kind of formal religious service that that 1 million adult demographic is going to.

And then out of that small slice of the 1 million who go to a self -identifying Christian religious service, again, just once a year or more, many of those contexts aren't even biblical.

They're not gospel preaching or biblically informed contexts for worshiping the one true and living

God. So the reason I share that with your listeners is just to stress we are in a immensely wicked and spiritually dark part of the country.

And even though we have many of the same privileges and many of the same blessings that come with being a

United States citizen that you'll find anywhere in our nation, it is, in a very real sense, a domestic mission field because we're in such a place that has turned its back upon the truth of God's word and the truth of God's character and even the conscience bearing witness of their status as an image bearer and the

Ten Commandments, of course, that all men know innately but suppress in unrighteousness.

We see that out here. So when I think about 2026 and beyond, I just see the field white for harvest.

So much opportunity inside our church walls and even outside our church walls to proclaim

Christ and to expose those who we come into contact with to the truth of God's word.

And we're trying to do that. We're enhancing our outreach. We're getting our benevolence with local schools and the community in which our church building's located.

We've had some great opportunities to provide benevolence and meet needs and then, of course, share the gospel in conjunction with that.

We're going to a local lake during the times of the year where we're not just getting inundated with rain and cold but during the spring and summer and even in the fall, we've got a group that goes out to a local lake to pass out gospel tracts and to witness to those in our community.

There's some opportunities as well where we're getting plugged into a local pregnancy crisis group here in the greater

Seattle area where we can give pregnant women options to keep their baby and even share the gospel through that and point them to Christ and point them to the sanctity of human life.

So there's a lot of different buckets that our church is trying to really get immersed into and to utilize for the sake of bearing witness to Christ.

So as I look ahead, I see great opportunities in our church walls. I see great opportunities outside our church walls for the sake of the gospel and the truth of God's word going forward.

And then I just think about my own family. Just thinking about we're from the

Bible Belt, we're from North Texas, and what a privilege we have to be in a foreign land, as it were, and to just serve and invest ourselves wholeheartedly in the work of Christ, in the mission of Christ, the work of laboring on his behalf and investing in the local church.

And I wanna see this local church thrive. And I pray that God would give the grace to help us be faithful out here.

And he's done so over the past two years, and I trust he'll continue to do so in the years to come. Man, all of that's amazing.

I was actually gonna, one of the questions I was gonna ask you is like, how could we pray? But you've really given us that, how we could pray for Emanuel Reformed Baptist Church that is

Emanuel Reformed Baptist, wait, did I get the right, .org, is that right? Yep, that's it, man.

And Emanuel Reformed Baptist Church, and the cool way to say it is SeaTac Washington, right?

Not Seattle or Tacoma. Yeah, yeah, I go back and forth because everybody's heard of Seattle, but you say

SeaTac, and they're like, what in the world are you talking about? It's interesting, when you come out here,

SeaTac is the, it's a small, I mean, I say small, I've got like maybe 30 ,000 or I don't know how many thousands of people, but it's a suburb within the broader

Seattle conglomerate. But the actual airport, SeaTac International Airport is like two miles from our church building.

So if you look on a map, you'll have Seattle North, Tacoma Southwest going right along the

Puget Sound, and then right smack in the middle is SeaTac, where the airport is. And then if you look on a map, you'll find us literally within two miles of the airport.

And we're in a very strategic spot, many, many different ethnicities and cultures that have settled in within the

SeaTac area. It's a lower income area. So because of that, there's a lot of people moving in and making that home for their families.

And we're trying to take advantage of witnessing opportunities because there is a mission field right here where God has planted this local church.

Well, I think it's amazing to me as I think about the kingdom of Christ. It is amazing to me and so encouraging to me that in one of the darkest places in the

United States, God not only has a church there, but a healthy church, a

Reformed Baptist church. And people can push back on this, and I understand we can nuance this kind of stuff to death, but I'm gonna just tell you what

I tell when we street preach out here in our little town, you wanna talk about small, 30 ,000, well, that's a

Metroplex. We're at less than 1 ,500 people. When I preach out here, one of the things

I say is God must love Prairie County, Arkansas, because he's given the gospel here for you to hear it.

And I think about SeaTac, Washington, God must have a love there for that place because he's put his light there, put the proclamation of his son right there, smack dab.

I love that about how God works. It's like right in the face of darkness,

God says, you know where I'm gonna build? Right here. And so I think that's amazing.

I think that you've really encouraged us today and just lots of things that we talked about, kind of a conglomeration, it was a potluck.

We had a little - We had a potluck. Discussion potluck, as it were, of various topics.

But Emmanuel Reform Baptist Church, praise God for his work there and your work.

I'm grateful for our friendship. I don't even remember how we first got connected, but it's been great, especially the last little bit of time getting to connect all the further and to get to know you more.

Amen, brother. And let me give a plug, one last word. I'm sure we're getting close to the end of our episode because we're hitting an hour.

Joe Rogan, he's one of those few guys who can go for three hours and keep an audience alive. I'm not that interesting.

So maybe you are, brother. You definitely have an interesting beard, but I know people are probably getting to their limit with listening to me.

But if you're in the Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, that whole little

Midwestern part of the country, in April, there's a conference in Puxico, Missouri for His Glory Conference.

I'm gonna be speaking there with some of the men that you mentioned and have even had on this podcast,

Jason Gunter, Jeff Johnson, other men as well, Faithful Brothers, Justin Miller's church,

First Baptist Puxico's hosting it. If your listeners are wanting to get connected, if they're looking for other like -minded brothers and like -minded churches to get connected with, even families, because it's open to families, go and check out for His Glory Conference in Puxico, Missouri, April of 2026.

And Alan, man, I hope to see you there. I hope we can find an excuse to have some barbecue and hang out.

I'd miss the opportunity to be in the famous Perryville, Arkansas.

So I wanna make it out there sometime, brother. Did you know that I'm speaking there too? Are you really?

But it'll be at the Free Grace Press booth. I'll be talking to people at the Free Grace Press booth. Praise the Lord, man.

We're gonna have some fellowship there. And we'll definitely gotta get another meal.

And to answer, you mentioned how we got connected. I've just, I've loved your ministry.

I've loved your faithfulness as a faithful husband and father and pastor and bold in the faith, proclaiming

Christ in the highways and byways and in your hometown. So I have all the respect in the world for you and have loved watching you and your family just flourish over the years from afar.

So love your work with The Real Podcast. So honored to have been on the show today. And I just look forward to continuing to encourage one another and pray for one another and watch how the

Lord works through our friendship in the years to come. Amen, brother. Amen. Well, thank you for being on.

We'll have to try to snag you sometime. I know you're busy again in 2026. Maybe we can talk about some other things, but.

Would love to. It's really encouraging to hear about what God's doing with you and the church. We love the church.

And by the way, it's The Rural Church Podcast, but you are proof, you are proof that we don't just love rural churches, right?

Amen. We just love the church, period. I just think the rural church sometimes can be underrepresented in the podcast land, so that's why we do what we do.

Okay, well, we are landing the plane, not at Sea -Tac Airport, but we are landing the proverbial plane as it were.

Thank you guys for listening to this episode of The Rural Church Podcast, and we'll catch you next week.

If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

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