Carl Trueman Interview--On Celebrity Culture

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2 verse 5 where the Apostle Paul said, "...but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.".

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth and I'm your host. We like to have regular guests on this show, friends of the ministry. Maybe we should start charging money for recurring appearances and we can have the longer show and if you give us money, we give you the bonus minutes of behind-the-scenes guests like our current guest, Carl Truman, professor at Westminster Seminary, professor of historical theology and church history.

Carl, welcome back to No Compromise Radio. It's great to be back, Mike. Carl, where do I send the money for your press agent so I had the privilege of having you on today? Where do I send that?

It's slightly complicated because I've got an offshore account which allows me to dodge the tax, essentially, but I'll pay somebody to get in touch with you and talk to you about that. Okay.

Thank you so much. I'm sure that person's paid by the hour. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. Well, I'm a retainer. Carl, you were just here at a conference at Bethlehem Bible Church and we were blessed as you preached the word and talked about Reformation and the Bible.

My question this morning is for you. Why did you require me to get Green M &Ms, Evian Water, Led Zeppelin albums, and lattes with light froth delivered to your room?

Because I'm a rock star and if you want a rock star speaker, man, you've got to give them the rock star treatment.

Honoraria, Travel Expenses, and the Proper Way to Pay Speakers

Well, let's talk a little bit about that today. Celebrities, rock stars, speaking fees, gospel ministry. I think it is fair to pay someone when they come and preach at your church and honoring the minister with money as he delivers the word of God centered on Christ Jesus.

There's nothing wrong with that. But there are some problems and so first let's go to the good side. When you get invited to speak someplace, how do you deal with that. If they say, do you require money up front?

What do you do, Carl?

My response is simple. I would say I'd like you to cover my travel expenses. My wife would not like me traveling around the country on her dollar essentially, so I like my travel expenses to be covered.

A fee for speaking, my response is I don't have any kind of fee schedule. I speak for people that I think are worth speaking for and that worth is not a function of who's appropriate. If that's nothing at all, that's fine.

As long as my travel expenses are covered and I'm not losing out on the weekend, that's fine. If you're a small group and you pay nothing at all, that's fine. If you're a church, then give me what you think is appropriate.

But bottom line is, speak to people that I think it'd be worth speaking to. I don't do it for the money. I'm with benefits. I have a part-time pastorate, which pays me a little bit of money as well. I don't need to speak elsewhere to make money.

I'm freed up by those two jobs.

Carl, is it true that Lloyd-Jones, if he had two speaking opportunities at the same time, he would defer to the smaller church?

That is what I was told when I was younger, and it made a huge impression on me at the time that Lloyd-Jones clearly was a man who never forgot where he'd come from, that he came from relatively humble backgrounds in any book or anything you might care to think of, but who are nonetheless the Lord's people and are worth speaking to.

Carl, I don't travel as much as you do, but I do speak on occasion and travel and do conferences. I still, to this day, can hardly get over the fact that I'm first of all saved, then gifted with some level of teaching giftedness from God, and then they pay my bills so that I can study and preach on a regular basis, and that anyone would ask me to go do anything, to speak and to preach the Word of God and to talk about Christ Jesus.

I can't believe I get an envelope at the end of the conference with any money at all. Isn't it a shocking thing? Remember that first check you got? It's unbelievable.

Well, I first started speaking, if you like, in the United Kingdom, and there the church is by and large very poor, and more often than not, at the end of a weekend where you speak, often to a youth group or something, you'd have the embarrassing conversation where the person would come up to you and say, you know, we haven't made any money on this conference, the church is really tight for cash at the moment, you didn't even get traveling expenses covered all the time in the States, and I'd preach and somebody would give me a check for a hundred dollars for having preached a sermon.

For the first couple of years here, actually, I took the check, but I kind of felt sort of awkward and guilty about it. At the same time, it struck me as odd. I guess I've come to the position where I think, you know, the worker's worthy of this.

If I'm away for the weekend, my wife is having to, when the kids are young, having to look after the kids by herself, so having spoken away, it allows me to, it lessens the financial burden on the household, which is a good thing.

How much money they'll get paid, it becomes a significant motivating factor.

Carl, in what you do to decide whether you're going to preach or not, I never heard anything about, well, if there's 500 people or more, if there are a thousand pastors or more. Why does that factor into some of these folks?

I read online and they want to know how many people they're going to speak to. Why do they care? And what about the church of 40 people versus a church of 5 ,000? What's going through people's minds when they try to always go for big, or is that more cash?

What's the motivation, do you think?

It's difficult to know. I mean, it would be easy to jump and say, well, it's obviously bad motives that they're wanting to do it because they just want to be big shots and speak to big crowds all the time.

It may be that their time is very valuable and they feel that if they're going to speak away from their home church, they want to speak to it too, to maximize the, how many people do you expect to get there?

I've been to college groups and six or seven people have turned up. I won't mention the college, but a few years ago I was invited to speak at a college and I drove. They'd advertised the college to seven people, 4G, where I did a seminar and then I was on a panel.

And on the panel, they were probably in a stadium, I guess, at that point. And that was fun, but it was no more valuable than speaking to half a dozen pastors. These websites and you click on, you know, how do I get Pastorex to speak at my church?

They're being asked on what kind of honorarium are you able to offer? There's a very, you know, there could be good motives behind them, but it looks and smells bad to me.

Celebrity Culture and the Temptation to Be a Rock Star

We're talking to Carl Truman today on No Compromise Radio Ministry. Carl, I read an older article and it was entitled, So You Wanna, W-A-N-N-A, Be a Rock Star? And it was written by Keith Green. And it is very fascinating.

I always think Keith Green would have become Calvinistic if he would have lived longer,.

At least in my mind. He'd have had to have done something about the hair, I think.

And he said, my answer to their question, if somebody comes up and says, how can I be in music ministry like you? My answer to their question is almost always the same. Are you willing to never play music again?

Are you willing to be a nothing? Are you willing to go anywhere and do anything for Christ? Are you willing to stay right here where you are and let the Lord do great things through you, though no one may seem to notice at all?

They all seem to answer each of these questions with a quick yes, but I really doubt if they know what their answer entails. And then he goes on to just fillet people who want to be rock stars. Certainly some Christian men in ministry, they aren't looking to be a rock star, but because of publishers and companies and other organizations, I call it the Britney Spears effect.

They put people on a pedestal and a platform when they're not ready to handle it yet.

Comments regarding that issue? Yeah, I think there are so many problems that you put your finger on there. One of them, I think, is the aspirational model of ministry that's becoming normative, particularly in the United States, that now that it's cool and hip to be a minister, the kind of ministerial models that are coming forward are not what I would regard as the more traditional, sober, Word and Sacraments-oriented models, but it's the glamorous stadium speaker.

It's the skinny-jeaned hipster with the swagger problem. I think the lost my thread here.

That's okay. When you go someplace to speak, do you like to tell the people, this is the kind of food you like to eat?

No. If they ask me if I have any dodgy requirements, I don't eat fish.

Well maybe it's because no one hardly asks me to come and speak. Maybe somehow people think I'm jealous or envious, but I don't want to have on a link related to No Compromise or Bethlehem Bible Church my speaking requirements and forms to fill out.

I saw one the other day, and I'll change the guy's name, but it says, what does Jim like to eat? We appreciate the spirit of hospitality that is behind the question. Generally, Jim is not a meat and potatoes guy.

He does not care for fish, seafood, Chinese or Asian food. He likes beef, chicken, pizza, Tex-Mex, etc. And then he goes on to say, decaf is preferred in the evenings. He can snack. I don't get that this is, isn't this National Lampoon?

Is this Mad Libs? What is this?

That's completely bonkers. I mean, that's absolutely ridiculous to have that on a page. You need to, you know, if you have allergies or something like that, I can understand that when you get down to the nitty gritty of the individual speaking engagement, you might want to say to your host, I've got a bad peanut allergy, please make sure there are no peanuts around because I might die if they're there.

But to actually have that up front on a website strikes me as starting to spiral out of control at that point. I'm not necessarily saying that that's sinful, I think it's ridiculous.

Now what our listeners don't know is I took you to lunch in Northampton and then you had a coffee at the famous Starbucks incident there. But when we had lunch, or maybe it was dinner, I took you to a Tibetan place with my son and Bob, and we had yak.

And do you know what? You didn't talk back, you didn't complain, feeding Carl Truman yak. And you cleaned every bean on your plate, by the way.

I did, and I've actually added it to my webpage that now if you want me to come and speak, I particularly like Tibetan food and yak, done medium if possible.

Do you know what I miss, Carl, is having speakers come and stay at my home. Think about over the years if you've got a pastor's house, and some negative things happen if your dad's a pastor. But then you look back, you're in college or you're in the workforce, and you say, yes, I remember we had speakers, and Carl Truman stayed at our house, and John MacArthur stayed at our house, and all these different people.

And then I ask them questions, and this, that, and the other. I understand why it's nice to stay at a hotel, but if someone asks you, you know what, we can't put you up at a hotel, would you be willing to stay at our guest room, what would you say?

Absolutely.

Yeah, it's not a problem. I mean, I have a slight preference for staying in a hotel for two simple reasons. One, if you're speaking, sometimes you've actually got to do a bit of work while you're there.

And in a hotel room, you've always got guaranteed privacy. That's nice. And the second thing is, I know it can actually be a burden to people to put a stranger up in their house. You know, it's the odds that it actually frees somebody else up.

But if somebody would say to me, you know, we can't make budget, or we haven't budgeted for a hotel room, are you okay staying in an elder's house? I do that regularly. That's not a problem to me, as long as, you know, a roof over my head and a comfortable bed.

Ministry, Not Celebrity

Carl, I've noticed over the years when I've had speakers come to the twice-a-year Bethlehem Bible Church conferences, rarely do the speakers say to me, tell me about your ministry, Mike. How could I be praying for you?

How are things going on the elder board? Any situations in the church that I might help you with? Usually the people, and again, there are exceptions, usually the people are concerned about their ministry and their travel.

First Thessalonians chapter two says, so being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.

Where is the ministry in ministry these days from many corners?

I'm racking my brains to see if I asked you about your ministry, Mike. I think I might have done. I think you did. You did. But I think you've got a very good point. Again, all ministers of the gospel are ministers of the gospel.

Some are called to minister to thousands and praise God for them. Some are called to minister to a few dozen. They all have the same gospel. They all speak to people who are equally valuable in the Lord's eyes.

And if the repentance of one sinner is spent, we simply can't say that the small church is of less value to the Lord than the large church. They all have their place and they all do great work. But you have no interest in the lay of the land, in your ministry, in what's going on in your neck of the woods.

I think it's clearly too self-absorbed here. But my primary calling is at the seminary. I actually have it pretty easy compared to working in my bivocation, a reasonably paid one, in school buses in order to make ends meet.

I think it behooves those in a surprising way, but in a way that is interested and invested, frankly, are doing much tougher ministry jobs.

Well, some of these pastors behind the scenes, they'll never get asked to go speak at a conference. Nobody will ever know about them, yet they're faithful and godly and week in and week out ministering.

And I think if someone gets asked to go speak someplace, they should pour their life out for those one-day, two-day, three-day conferences and try to encourage that faithful brother who's behind the pulpit.

Carl, I look at speaking requests online. I guess that's part of my weird mind going at work. But speaking request forms, please note, so-and-so always has a travel companion, either his wife or a male friend.

By filling this form out, you are agreeing to cover the travel plus event cost of this person and his companion.

I haven't got a clue whose web page you're talking about there, Mike. He lied on air.

Well, all right, well, let me ask you about this one, since this one seems to be the most blatant and the most concerning to me. When you say that your ministry will make all the hotel and travel arrangements, and then it says, this is the second-to-last sentence on Paul Tripp Ministries' website for hosting an event, audio or video recording Paul Tripp at a speaking event is prohibited due to copyright restrictions.

Something's wrong. PaulTrippMinistries .com, you can't even record us because of copyright issues. What do you think of that?

It's come to that path. People say to me, is it okay if we record you? Is it okay we put it on your website? I shrug my shoulders and say, sure, if it's any use, please do it. It seems to me, I preach, it's God's word I'm preaching.

It's not my word. I have no copyright. I just think it's, I mean, you're pointing there at another problem, in that I can see the comeback saying, well, it's this man's livelihood, and a church ought to be accountable to other people, and part of a church is there, but I think copyrighting the Lord's word, I have a real problem with that.

Well, it says also here on the same website, a non-refundable deposit is also required to secure the conference date. I remember when I had a conference here scheduled, Steve Lawson was the speaker, and something came up in Steve's life and ministry, and it was a time of change for him, and he called me on the phone and said, Mike, I made a commitment to come and speak to you, speak to your folks, and I will keep that commitment, but some things have changed personally.

Do you think I could take a rain check? Would you allow me to defer? And I said, of course, absolutely, Steve, no problem, and then to have some non-refundable deal?

I want to say, you know, you're not that good, you're not that unique, we can get somebody else who could say just the same. I'll give you a counter-anecdote to that, Mike, I think I shared this with you on email, Nancy Guthrie, she's coming to do a Westminster in the spring, and because one of the ladies goes to my church, I said to her, Nancy said, I've committed my church, and I said, you know, we want to honor you, what is your honorarium for coming and speaking at our church?

Email return, I got an email coming back saying, pay me, none of that kind of stuff, this is just a linging of them is, it should be pretty clear, mainly by the tone of my voice at this point.

Carl, I looked up the definition of honorarium, it says online, it is an ex gratia payment, i .e. a payment made without the giver recognizing themselves as having any liability or legal obligation made to a person for their services in a volunteer capacity, or services for which fees are not traditionally required.

And so I think honorarium should reflect that. We only have about two minutes to go, Carl, what would you tell the listeners today, who are laypeople and laymen and women listening, how do they not put their preachers on a pedestal?

How do they not put, obviously, gifted speakers on a pedestal?

I think it is right and appropriate, and I'm sort of semi-rebuked on this by Tabithian Wabile on Reformation 21, I think, last year, I think it is right and appropriate to honor. But it is also vitally important to remember that they are, they're just men, you go through his teachings, they're just, they're just teachers they bring.

But I think remember the spirit of John the Baptist, you know, Jesus said of John the Baptist, nobody greater had risen in the kingdom of God before John. John the Baptist said of himself, he was unworthy.

I think remember he teaches, received from God, and though we are to honor God to whom they point.

John the Baptist, Humility, and Honoring Christ Above Speakers

Great words from Carl Truman today, Professor of Historical Theology and Church History at Westminster, and also a pastor,. Carl, thank you so much for your ministry, your friendship with No Compromise Radio Ministry, and thanks for asking about my ministry when you were here in West Boylston.

I'm glad I did, Mike, you had me worried for a minute there.

Info at No Compromise Radio, thanks Carl. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.