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Jamie Bickel Interview
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. We have a little slogan around here, and that slogan is, �Always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.
We want you to try to use your mind, and we want you to think. I refer to Romans chapter 12 and the renewing of your mind. I think about the great commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
And so, we want to try to engage in a world of feelings and emotions and subjectivity, mental engagement. So, that�s what we�re after. On Wednesdays on the show, we have different theologians, pastors, authors, and we talk to them about ministry, the ministry that God has given them.
And today�s kind of an interesting show. I had said several weeks ago on No Compromise Radio, if you listen to the show regularly and you have a pastor who preaches Christ Jesus faithfully, verse by verse, and has a theological base kind of like we have here at No Compromise Radio, send me that pastor�s name, and I will ask him if he�ll be on, because I want to get to know some of these men who are just behind the scenes.
So here�s an email that I received a couple weeks ago. �I�ve been a listener since you were advertising on Wretched and love the show. It�s part of my daily routine to listen to No Compromise Radio while at work.
I would like to give you my pastor�s info as a possibility for an interview. His name is and has pastored our church in a small town in Maine for seven years. My family has just joined the church after having to leave our previous church due to a new pastor coming in who turned out to be highly influenced by free grace theology.
Our pastor here has made South Hope Community Church a place for us to heal, to grow, and to be challenged to apply the teaching we receive in our daily lives. These last two were sadly missing from our previous church.
At South Hope Community Church, we get verse-by-verse, expository, Christ-centered preaching that is much more aligned with Lordship, salvation, and historic views of repentance. But most of all, Christ is glorified each Lord�s Day.
Thank you, Greg Harrison. And so he sent me this, and I thought, �That�s exactly the kind of guy I love. Verse-by-verse, expository, Christ-centered preaching. So Jamie Bickle, Pastor Jamie, welcome to No Compromise Radio.
Well, thanks, Mike, for having me. Those were pretty generous and humbling words to hear.
Yeah, how wonderful is that? Just when we need encouragement, the Lord knows when to give it to us, that a congregant would send something like that to me. I hope you are encouraged. It is.
It is encouraging. Surprising and encouraging. Not surprising from who it came from, but just surprising to hear, you know, what you don�t always hear.
That�s right. Well, I was on your website today, and that is South Hope Community Church, all one word, southhopecommunitychurch .org, and you�re preaching verse-by-verse. Tell us a little bit about, first, the church, Jamie, and then your philosophy for preaching.
Yeah. So the church is a small church, non-denominational, but we�re very Baptistic-started, most believe around 1963, though there�s no paper record of that. It was a small group of people in the town of Hope.
There was an Advent church, and there was a Universalist church in that area in those days, but there was a desire for a group of Bible believers to have a church where they could learn the Bible, honestly.
And they gathered together, and a man came along, and Hope really seemed to grow and be more of a cohesive unit in the �70s and �80s when Norman Finnemore, who was a Bible College student at a local Bible College that�s now the Funk Blanco Bible College, came.
And he, while he was a student there, used the things he was learning at school, and was training to be a pastor, and filled in during the interim, and eventually, a self-hooked community church. In 1984, he moved away to pastor a church in Heartland, Maine.
Another pastor, Jonathan Paul, came, and when Jonathan Paul resigned in around 2000, 2002, the church was out of Pastor Heartland at that time, was transitioning out of that ministry, and really wanted to be in a helps ministry and help laundering churches.
And so, I was called by Self-Hope again, because they said, �Hey, we need a pastor. We need help. This is what you�re doing. We would be honored if you come back. So he had two terms there. And as he was aging, 2008, they began a search for areas of events.
I came alongside the Sir with Pastor Finnemore in 2008, and then when he retired in 2011, the church took me on as their candidate, and then eventually voted me on in 2011, where I�ve been serving.
Now, before I talk a little bit about your preaching, Pastor, what about the town you live in? You said it�s small. I�m in New England, and so are you, and tell me a little bit about the demographics, the town, what people do there for industry, because I think a lot of people, maybe in Texas and in the South and California, some of these large churches, large cities, have no idea what it�s like to minister in a small little city in Maine.
Yeah.
The town of Hope, Maine, is in the mid-coast region, kind of gone by the wayside. The largest town nearest is the town of Rockland, and that was known for canneries and a lot of things related to fishing.
A lot of those things are shut down, and now one of our biggest sources of income is tourism and the summer and fall. It seems as though there are a lot of people who kind of have to be a jack-of-all-trades in order to survive here financially in Maine and really be independent contractors and find all kinds of work, whether that is cutting wood, a variety of different things.
It�s not easy economically, but the people here are very hardworking, diligent, loyal once you break through the circles and get to know them and show you care, and really more of a blue-collar group of hardworking people who are easy to love.
Pastor, one of the things I�ve noticed here in New England, you have quite a few churches there, you know, Unitarian, Universalist, liberal congregational, liberal Methodist or liberal Lutherans, a lot of Roman Catholic churches, of course.
Are there many evangelical churches around, Bible-teaching churches that would say, �We believe in Sola Fide, Sola Gratia that type of thing?
Yeah. Surprisingly, now if you look in the rest of Maine, I don�t believe that�s really the case, but in my area, I�m kind of shocked and surprised about how many churches are preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Within our church�s radius, I have four or five churches who, within probably a 10 or 15-mile radius, who are preaching the Gospel in their towns, and pastors are friends of mine and would be people who I would have no problem fellowshiping with and collaborating with on various levels.
I think part of that is because of the influence of Glen Cove Bible College in the �60s and �70s and �80s, but however, that being said, we�re still not reaching the whole county here, and we have a lot to do between all our churches.
What about your philosophy for preaching verse-by-verse? I don�t know if people just say to themselves in seminary, �Oh, I think that�s a good thing to do. Usually they�re taught that, or they see it modeled by someone that they�re listening to on the radio or on the Internet.
Why did you come to those convictions that you should teach through books of the Bible sequentially and weekly?
Yeah. Mike, when I came here, Pastor Watson is still a well-respected man and deservedly so. He labored for many years, and his pattern was to preach through books of the Bible as well. He had something, though, that I didn�t have, and he had many years of wise experience.
I didn�t have that. I served under him. I grew up in a church planter�s home, so I kind of seen the ins and outs of ministry, but as far as my abilities and skills and enablement, that was kind of untapped, and I really didn�t know what to expect.
And I hadn�t walked through all the different situations that pastors had, and so I kind of felt like Solomon did when he prayed and God gave him that gift of wisdom and said, �You�re going to rule the kingdom.
And I felt like I was a child in a lot of ways, but I knew this, that Word of God could accomplish what I didn�t have or couldn�t do. And so I realized that if I was going to lead, I had to lead with the Word of God.
I couldn�t base anything on all my experiences. It had to be the Word of God, and I felt that preaching through the Bible, verse by verse, for the most part, here has led to an integrity that this is what the Bible says, and it�s also helped me not steer away from uncomfortable things in the Bible.
It has laid all that God has said, and not just my selectiveness or pet peeves, and forced me to grow and stretch here to preach the Old Testament and New Testament, alternate. It�s been a rich journey for me, and I hope a rich journey for the Church as I plant water, but God�s got to give the increase, and I really believe that increase has to come through the Word of God.
Amen. We�re talking to Pastor Jamie Bickle today, South Hope Community Church in Maine, and if you�re up there visiting sometime in the summer, you can certainly swing by to hear verse-by-verse teaching.
When I go to a website for a church, the first thing I do is I pull up the education of the pastor, if I can find it, and then I go to the sermon series, and I want to see if it�s a man-centered series or a verse-by-verse series.
And of course, when I went to your website, I could see going through books of the Bible week by week. What are some of your favorite authors that you read, or you like to hand out books to people? Who do you like?
I really, right now, at this stage, I really enjoy reading books about equipping and missiology right now. I really have a burden for global missions. Authors that have influenced me in the past, probably the book that most influenced me when I was a student in college was a book that changed his life, Desiring God, by Dr. John Piper.
Reading that helped me gain a certain sense of sanctification that ultimately about the five things on the bad list and the five things on the good list, but it�s about the heart and where that heart�s at, and that was significant for me and also motivating to realize that as I increased my joy in God, I increased my holiness in Christ and by His grace.
And that was powerful for me. A book that I would give anybody is Delighting in the Trinity by Michael Reeves. That book had a profound impact on me, understanding that our faith is a Trinitarian faith, not just in words, but what that actually means for me.
I enjoy some books by Paul Tripp, and kind of getting in the mix, books and crannies of life and touching uncomfortable things in my own heart. Those have been helpful. I enjoy reading on sanctification and Christian biographies.
Right now I�m really interested in some of the ancient Church Fathers, the Apostolic Fathers, and seeing what do they believe about the Christian faith, that first generation after the Apostles. So that�s where, right now, a lot of my reading is.
Jamie, how about a different curveball question? When you guys have potlucks, pot provinces, do they bring a lot of lobster?
No, they don�t. They don�t. You know, I found that there's not a lot of people in Maine that do like lobster, surprisingly. You would think everybody likes lobster, but that's not necessarily true. It's, I guess, a certain taste.
So when I moved here to central Massachusetts in 1997, I still can remember McDonald's had, you know, sometimes they sell McRibs for the summer or something, or they have a seasonal product. Yeah. And they had the McLobster, and it was $8 .99, real lobster on one of those, you know, buns, those lobster bun hot dog meals.
And I just thought, boy, this is New England. McLobsters. Yeah.
They still have that. Oh, do they? Yeah, at a few of the McDonald's around here. Well, we regularly...
I wouldn't go there for a lobster roll, though. That's right. We regularly go to York Beach in Maine because it's a nice, long sands beach, and you can surf there and do all kinds of things. I meet a lot of people from Quebec in Maine.
They're down visiting in York. Do you deal with a lot of people from Canada? Are there many people in Canada where you are, or do they just go to those tourist places like I do?
No, not really in our area. And by the way, we call York in that area Southwest Cassidy. We call that Northern Massachusetts, by the way. Oh, you do? Well, I see why. I have friends in the Church who say we need to build a wall that was Cassid on Route 1 and then separate from the rest of Maine down there.
What would you like people who are non-New Englandites, people who don't live here in New England, what would you want to tell them about ministry here? I mean, there's lots of books. Here's how you do ministry in the city, and here's how you get people from different ethnic backgrounds in your church, and here's how you do this, that, or the other.
Very pragmatic. But New England is different. If people want to pray for New England and the ministry here, is there anything you could tell us about ministry in Maine and New England that would be helpful to the listeners?
I went to a New England Expositors Conference a few years ago, and ministry in New England is like plowing granite. I've come to realize that what people need to pray for is that people stick it out for five years, or the first three years, or the first two.
There is a continued obedience in the same direction for those who are leaders in ministry, that they don't become antsy, that they don't start to look for all the things that can be cute and manipulative and appeal, ultimately, to emotions, but that they stick with the stuff, and they love the people, and they have a missional focus in going out beyond the church, but yet they are equipping and establishing the saints for the work of the ministry and the Word of God.
That's what people need to pray for in Maine. We're having a lot of church planters come, and I think 35 of evangelical churches I just saw the other day in Maine are church plants, and that's exciting.
I want to see them in 10 years, and I want to see them in 15 and 20 years. That to me is the sign of the, shall we say, churches that continue. So that's really what people who pray for New England need to pray for, is that there is longevity, because that is fleeting here, and all the other opportunities that are around the—.
One of the things I've noticed, Jamie, about New England is it's particularly on the radar now with, let's say, the Southern Baptist or other large groups, and they want to go plant churches. And for that, and I'm sure you agree, we're glad, and we need more Bible-teaching churches.
Even in your area, you said we're not reaching the whole county, yet that whole New England is a pastor's graveyard. Where are they in five years, in 10 years? It is harder, I think, here to stick it out those first five years, just because it's a—I don't know, I'm from Nebraska, then moved to California, and then 22 years ago moved here.
Those first five were hard because they're—you know, we spoke the same language, I could still go to B of A, I still could use my driver's license or my American passport, but there just was something a little different.
And I don't know psychologically why that's true. I mean, in my mind sometimes, I think, well, when everybody moved west, you know, those people that were really into adventure and freedom and kind of careless attitude, they all left, but those who are very staunch in their ways and kind of hunkered down, this is the way we do things and we're not going to change, I know this is a stereotype, but those are the New Englanders.
And so then for me to come here, or any church planter who's not from New England, to plant a church, there's really kind of a different feeling, a vibe. I mean, I'm being very subjective in my words, but there's just something that people don't understand.
And after five years, though, you do understand, and after ten you understand all the more, and that's why if these guys can just hang in there, they will become one with that congregation that God called them to.
Do you think so?
I agree. I think you have to come here like a missionary. You can't come here with your agenda, how you're going to change things. You need to listen, you need to learn, you need to understand how they process things, you need to understand that you are an outsider, but yet you are trying to grow into that culture and not look at yourself as—or look at the people as, well, why do they do things that way?
Or, you know, that's dumb, I wouldn't do it. But you need to learn why the stakes have been put in the ground and why certain decisions and traditions are there. And then, by the Word of God, show that no culture is too hard for the work.
I think if you went anywhere, you know, overseas, there would be cultural quirks that every culture has, but the calling of the Word of God is that ultimately it is God's agenda that has to trump all of that.
And that is the challenge in Maine, but that's the challenge in California, that's the challenge in England. And it's so true.
That's how I've approached it. I was a new pastor here in Massachusetts, and I picked up MacArthur at the airport, and he was going to go someplace and come here and preach. I was probably complaining and saying how difficult it was and how strange it was for me to be here, and John looked over at me and he said, I think the Word of God is powerful enough to do its work here in New England, don't you?
That's been proven, hasn't it? Yeah, and you know, and I've noticed that as time goes on, and of course, both of us, we would acknowledge ourselves as weak and sinful and frail, but God's Word is powerful, and I think of 1 Thessalonians 2 .13, we also thank God constantly for this, that when you receive the Word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the Word of men, but as what it really is, the Word of God, which is at work in you believers.
And I'm sure you would echo, Jamie, with me, that when you do preach the Word, even though we're weak and frail, God's work is powerful, and it changes people. It takes unbelievers and it makes them believers.
That's what the Spirit of God uses as He changes people. And for Christians, it grows them and matures them. And so that's really our main job, is to be faithful in the proclamation of the truth. And I think in New England, it's very helpful.
It makes it easier for me, I guess to say, then I don't have to worry about church growth with numbers or getting a bunch of people here. I have one responsibility. That is faithful proclamation, and the Lord will take care of the rest.
That's probably true for you, right?
I think so. And my question would be, if people wanted to go other places because it was easier, then your trust is in the circumstances instead of the unchanging power of the Word of God. If it's easier in other places, and that means where it's harder, you really have to trust the Word of God, but isn't that what we're supposed to be doing anyway?
Whether it's easier or whether it's hard. That's right. Are you from New England originally? I grew up in Connecticut for 14 years before my family moved away, and now I'm kind of back in New England, although Maine is its own flavor of New England, that's for sure.
Well, you know, I always thought of Maine as a place where, you know, a person's house was also their business, was also their hobby, which they could also have garage sales on the front and sell minnows in the back.
And firewood as well. Yeah, that's in some ways just described life here. But it's not easy, but I'm not going to say that it's ridiculously difficult and hard, and no one should think about coming here.
Absolutely. Well, if you're in the South, you know, you have your own challenges, and that is everybody says they're a Christian. And here it's easier for me when I meet people and they'll say, well, no, I'm not a born Christian, I'm a Roman Catholic, or whatever they say, they're just blunt about it, and then the dividing lines make it easier for me to see, at least from my perspective, oh, this person I should probably evangelize, versus they already know the Christian nomenclature, and who knows if they're saved?
They act like they are, but anyway. Time has fleeted. Southhopecommunitychurch .org, Pastor Jamie Bickle, I really appreciate men like you who are behind the scenes, and who may not never be known in the world's circles and in the celebrity circles of evangelicalism, but God knows you and your work, and He is faithful and just to not only help you with that work, but also let you see encouragement when you need it, and then the ultimate encouragement, the revelation that Jesus brings on that last day.
Pastor, thank you for being on No Compromise Radio.
Thank you, appreciate your time and the opportunity. St. St. Doris said, preach the gospel, die and be forgotten, right? Amen.