Rick Holland 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.

Mike Abendroth Introduces the Show and Rick Holland

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth and I'm your host today. Every day of the week, we like to do something different. Monday, I'm preaching a verse-by-verse message from Bethlehem Bible Church.

Right now, we're in First Corinthians. Tuesdays, I talk to Pastor Steve and we deal with issues in the church. Wednesdays are always book days, either good books that I want you to read or bad books that you should burn, maybe figuratively, maybe literally.

And then on Thursdays, we like to talk about issues in the local church. And so today, I'm really pleased to have someone help us talk about some of those issues. His name is Rick Holland. He's a friend of mine and he is the assistant professor of pastoral ministry at the Master's Seminary.

And even more, he's a director of Demon Studies. For those of you that don't know what a demon study, it's not demon studies. Everybody said that at the church when I got here. You're working on your demon?

Doctor of ministry studies, Rick Holland. Welcome today to No Compromise Radio. Thanks, Mike. It's a joy to be on with you. I probably should have said it's, there's another thing that you do, and that is, are you technically the personal assistant to John MacArthur or what do you do there?

Yeah, I'm the executive pastor for John MacArthur, which really means a personal assistant to him and more or less the leader of the staff.

John MacArthur’s Character and Behind-the-Scenes Personality

How, what has it been like? I mean, I'm sure everybody, when they interview you, has to ask the question. Tell me what it's like to work for John MacArthur. That's a great question.

John MacArthur is a very simple guy. He's not a complicated guy. What you see and hear in public is who he is in private. But he's been like a father to me. I can't think of anyone I respect more on personal integrity and authenticity in life and ministry than John.

But he's also, he's a lot of fun. I mean, he loves athletics. He's a golfer. He's funny and he's fun. And I think people who see him from afar would be surprised at, if I can say this, just what a normal, fun-loving guy he is out of the pulpit.

If you had one story to tell the listeners about John MacArthur that would probably shock them, what would that be? And I don't mean some kind of highly polemical issue, but just some kind of behind-the-scenes story about John MacArthur.

Well, I could tell you a lot of stories or I could tell you tendencies. One of the things that's funny is to ride with John. John is the most intense multitasker in thinking and talking on the phone and driving that you've ever seen.

And when you drive with him, your prayer life gets in order really fast. Stop signs, lights, those are suggestions, not really landmarks. Actually, all joking aside, he's just a fun guy to drive with.

He would work well in New York or Boston. He's an aggressive driver. Well, when I picked him up at the airport in Boston, we were driving back, I could get that feeling when I was driving and he was riding.

The Purpose and Growth of Resolve

Rick, tell us a little bit about Resolve. When did it start? What precipitated the idea for Resolve and how people, even in New England, I think registration is open now, why should they go and why should pastors here in New England send their people to Resolve?

Well, that is such a nice question for me to answer. Resolve is a conference and the history of it is we used to have a weekend conference for our college students here at Grace Church. And we began, smaller churches in the area began to ask us if they could be a part of the conference of the weekend, the retreat, just because they couldn't pull off something of that magnitude just with their limited staff.

And we began to get more and more requests, which made us think maybe there's a need for a bigger retreat venue conference rather than retreat. And we began to think it through. And what we wanted to do was to connect contemporary application of scripture with church history and have those three pillars of historical theology or church history, biblical exposition and contemporary understanding and living come together.

And we looked at venues and I'm a little embarrassed to tell you, Mike, the first pass at the Resolve, it was gonna be called, but we thought that was a little bit cheesy. And one of our guys said, well, what are we trying to do?

And the answer was, we're trying to get students, young people to live the kind of life that Jonathan Edwards did when he was 19 and wrote his resolution. And he very simply said, then let's call it Resolved.

And that's where I was born out of. It grew, we started in 2005 with about 1500 people. We had 4 ,000 last year and our information is on there. And now we have some more Resolved to Christ in just in the vein of Jonathan Edwards.

Well, you're embarrassed, but I'm embarrassed.

Because I called it Resolved. I should have gone with Edwards Resolved. What is it? Resolved, because all of his resolutions start with the word Resolved. That's where we took it. That's right. When you look at those resolutions, Rick, since we're talking about that topic just for a moment, do you get more encouraged or do you get more discouraged?

And I guess what I'm trying to say is if people read those, what's a way to read the resolutions of Jonathan Edwards so that they might be encouraged? Because similarly with David Brainard's autobiography, I get more depressed if I'm not thinking properly when I read it.

You know, it's a great question, Mike. I think that when you read the resolutions, you need to see a life of trajectory, not a life of accomplishment. Jonathan Edwards wrote those resolutions as commitments to what he wanted to be, not affirmations of what he already was.

And if you read them as I'm gonna be resolved to do and be these things by tomorrow, you're gonna be pretty defeated pretty quickly. But it's fair to say that when Edwards wrote those resolutions, those were aspirations that he was gonna try to live out the rest of his life, not commitments he was gonna accomplish by dinner.

Preaching to Thousands and the Resolve Audience

Excellent answer. What's it like to preach to 5 ,000 people? I mean, in New England, 200's a megachurch, or as we say, megachurch. What's it like to preach to 5 ,000 people?

Well, first of all, it's a remarkable thing. It's an awesome thing to think about the fact that you just used or wasted 5 ,000 hours because they all committed that time to you. On the practical side, there's so many lights.

Because of our stage, you don't see anybody. You know they're there. And I think the key in that situation is to not treat it as 5 ,000 people, but just a group of friends who really need the encouragement of God's word.

Do singles only attend, or this is young people who are married and single? What's the target audience? So if people are listening, they go to resolve .org and find out. It's a great question, and it's actually.

Been a moving target, Mike. Originally, it was just college students, and then it was college and singles, and then young married came, and now it's basically, we have this conference, and if you're interested, you can come.

We have, we kind of say, this is a bizarre bracket, but it's targeted for 15-year-olds to 35-year-olds, right in that area.

How many people from New England tend to show up, many?

You know, we have had some people from New England show up, but I would love for the New England area to come. If for no other reason, that was the target for Jonathan Edwards, and I think if he were here, he would be humbled that people, commitments and writings for the glory of God.

Well, I'll have to get you out here to preach in New England, and then I usually bait people like Lawson and others, and even with MacArthur, I said, come out and I'll give you the behind-the-scenes New England tour for Edwards and Whitfield.

Oh, I'd love to, and while you mention Steve Lawson, Steve Lawson has a book on Jonathan Edwards' resolutions that would be very helpful if anyone wanted to understand what they were.

Do you plan who speaks at what time slot so you don't have to follow Steve Lawson?

Yeah, who wants to follow Steve Lawson? That is such energy in a bottle. Yes, we plan it out, and we typically use Steve, for that reason, actually, Mike, in the mornings, because you can't be sleepy when that brother opens the scriptures.

The Master’s Seminary D.Min. in Expository Preaching

Amen, let's switch gears a little bit, Rick, and talk about the Master's Seminary. Tell our listeners what a D-Min is, and if there are pastors who are surely listening either on the internet or on the radio, why they should consider going to Master's Seminary to hone some of their skills.

Maybe they've been preaching for 10 years or 30 years, but I think it's still an excellent program to deal with some of the issues of preaching. Why should they go to TMS for a D-Min?

Well, the doctor of ministry degree is a continuing education degree. It's a professional degree for a pastor. It would be a professional degree like a dentist or a doctor, not a research degree like a PhD.

So it's designed to enhance your ministry. And when we put ours together, we wanted to have a rifle and not a shotgun. So all of our, we have one D-Min, one emphasis, one major, as it were, and it's all and only about expository preaching.

Most schools have several different emphases, and those are fine and wonderful, but we wanted to be very deliberate about that one. And it's a program, a year and a half of classes, and that means you come for weeks in July, a D-Min project, and then you'll be a doctorate of, you'll have your doctorate in ministry preaching.

We're excited about the curriculum. It basically starts with the history of preaching. Advanced hermeneutics, preaching the Old Testament, preaching the New Testament, preaching theological, topical themes, and then it ends with delivery, looking at the delivery.

And during the course, we interact with master expositors. This last week, or last month, rather, we had Kent Hughes and Bruce Wearin to interact with us on preaching and theology, and just a great privilege to talk about profound things with men who have profound minds.

Since we're talking about preaching, tell me what you think the difference is, Rick, between preaching and teaching.

Great question. If you go with the straight biblical notion, if you just use the Greek language, you'll find something very interesting, that preaching is always associated with evangelism, and teaching is usually associated with the equipping of the church and also evangelism.

But we've come to use those terms today to talk about preaching, typically associated with a pulpit, teaching associated with the seminary or the class categories. Our purposes, though, I would say it as simple as this.

You cannot preach without teaching. In other words, you can't preach and assault the soul and call for a decision without solid truth that's rooted in teaching. But if you end up trying to teach truth without there being a commensurate preaching aspect where you're calling people to respond to and apply the truth, then you're in trouble as well.

Helpful distinction, but if you bifurcate those too much, I think you get in trouble with either extreme. That's a good answer.

On a little different nuance, I liked Lloyd-Jones' answer when asked the question, what's the difference between preaching and teaching? And Lloyd-Jones said, if you have to ask the question,.

You've never heard preaching. That's a great answer. And I would just defer all of my answer to Lloyd-Jones at this point. Yes.

Excellent. Well, my name is Mike Abendroth. This is NoCompromiseRadio .com talking to Dr. Rick Holland, who is the Associate Professor of Pastoral Ministry and Director of Demon Studies at Masters Seminary.

Rick, you also teach the college, I don't know whether to call it a college group or college, you're at the college ministry there. Sure. Tell our, go ahead, sorry.

Well, I think it's a group of collegians that meet basically for a Sunday school. That's like a fellowship group.

Ministry to Young Adults and the Need for Mature Teaching

And so you do a lot of things like it's gotta be rock and roll, rap music, they paint their face with peanut butter and throw Cheetos on them, right? Boy, that's a great question.

No, we do have a combination of hymns and contemporary music, but our goal in teaching collegians is to bring them up, not stoop down, and we're trying to create mature believers, not foster immaturity.

Shouldn't the philosophy of ministry that the church has for teaching adults and teaching the church at large be the same philosophy that we should use when we teach high school students,.

Junior high, or college? Yeah, it is, Mike, and not only that, once you try to have a different application of your philosophy of ministry for junior high or high schoolers, you have just entered, at what point do you function in biblical philosophy of ministry and you also are demeaning them by saying that they're not a part of the every man in Colossians 1, 28, to every man to make them complete in Christ.

Well, these young people are certainly a part of that group, and to do anything other than biblical ministry with them is to dumb down, I think, with the Scripture's command. Amen.

The Shepherds Conference, Hell, and Preaching Resources

Tell me what you're going to be teaching at the Shepherds Conference this year, come March.

Well, that's a great question. I wish I had the answer outright. We could probably just talk about this. You could help me here. There's something I've been working on that's really been, Mike, that I think I wanna study and preach at the Shepherds Conference, and that is answering the question, how different would our ministry be and our preaching be if we really had the pastoral implications of hell, basically?

And I think we largely ignore that, and who wants to look in that closet? I mean, at the same time, I'm becoming more and more to radically understand the horror and the eternality, and I wanna study that and then put that together for a copy.

I think that's a great idea, and they'll probably have to move you to the sanctuary auditorium for that versus a third-story, third-floor, J-building. Yeah. Let me say this to our listeners. If you want to hear Rick preach, I think there's a variety of ways you can do that.

If you go to tms .edu and click on Faculty and then Richard Holland, he's got a few featured audio messages there, Strategies to Avoid Sexual Sin from Proverbs 5, et cetera, but do you have another place where they can go find your audio sermons?

Yeah, there's crossroadsministry .net, and just go to Sermon Downloads, and my weekly preaching is on there, and you can also get to that same thing through the Grace Church website, just Crossroads Ministry.

Preachers on Rick Holland’s iPod

Great, let's change gears. Who's on your iPod for preachers? Oh, that's a great question.

MacArthur is, but I've been listening to old MacArthur lately. I like listening to his first, in the middle 70s. He's quite a different preacher then than he is now, and I've been listening to some older stuff.

Alistair Begg is on my iPod, and I just listened to a series, a church history series by Ligon Duncan on John Knox, which was just, and I'm finding that Ligonier's little classification or history vignette is wonderful.

Piper's on my iPod. I've got his collection of biographies that I've been working through as well.

Now, when you have John Piper come to Resolved, do you say to him, now you need to preach this topic, and you can't let the Lord lead you and teach something else? What do you say to John Piper.

When he comes to preach for you? Well, we typically have a theme, and ask him months out, what do you have that would really support this theme? And he's been very easy to work with.

He's not so easy. He's always working on what he's gonna do right up to the last minute. Well, let's talk about men who are in ministry, and maybe you can give me a little pushback on what you think about them, maybe pros or cons or weaknesses or strengths.

If I say to you, Mark Dever, you respond with?

Someone who knows, understands, and loves the church.

Okay, good. How about a harder one, Tim Keller?

Tim Keller, I think, has a very distinct affection for Christ. I don't always follow the foundations and conclusions of what he does. Sometimes I feel a little bit mystical with him.

It's hard to quantify, isn't it, when you think of Tim Keller's ministry?

Very slippery, because I've heard sermons by Tim that I would applaud and think those are wonderful sermons, and I've heard him attempt things in some sermons that I didn't know where he was coming from, and I certainly didn't know where he was going.

How about D .A. Carson? Smart guy, scary smart guy. He's one of the teachers who preaches, for sure, though.

Do you know, Rick, when I was in high school, I always was very envious of the guys who lettered in 19 sports and did everything so well, and I would've liked to just do well at one sport, and I feel like D .A. Carson, he's a humble man, but he just knows so much and is so brilliant, and I like his analysis of contemporary evangelicalism.

All right, how about Driscoll, Mark Driscoll?

Mark Driscoll is very concerning to me, because he just seems to be more loose in the pulpit than I think is for a decorum.

Do you think it's true that when people listen to certain preachers, they think of Christ often, and when you listen to Driscoll, you might walk out of there thinking about how smart Driscoll is?

Yeah, or funny, I mean, I don't know that I've listened to anyone as Mark is, but I think that he's so gifted naturally that that's an easy distraction for people from the authority and intent of the scriptures that I wanna believe that he believes.

Agreed, how about S. Lewis Johnson?

One of the best Southern draws in the history of preaching, first of all. I'm glad his stuff is online. S. Lewis Johnson is a great example of theology in practice and exposition. Every time you deal with a text, he brings the entire corpus of theology to bear on a passage, and wow, is he deep.

I just listened to a series on Malachi, and I just could not get over how God-honoring it was, how he was striving for authorial intent, how convicting it was. It made me want to go home and read Malachi, and I think that's a good sign for excellent preaching.

The State of Preaching and the Need for Exposition

That's a great, great insight. Let's talk about preaching today. We've got a few minutes left. What would you say the state of preaching is like today, and do you have any suggestions for the solution for preaching if you think it's in a bad state?

I think it, in general, is in a bad state in whatever. Mike, I'm encouraged. I'm seeing a new movement of younger guys who are beginning to get it on exposition and are not satisfied with the emerging church and with the philosophies that tell you that social justice is the only target of the gospel.

They're beginning to see the value of exposition because of the internet, because of radio, programs like this where you're exposing people to these guys, and I'm encouraged that there's a new generation of expositors coming up, but the stronger they get, the more the opposition.

If a pastor graduates from seminary and goes out to a local church and has to start with one book to preach through, what book would you tell him to preach through? Colossians. Start with Christ. When I got here, I started with James because I wanted to get rid of all the unbelievers that were coming.

And it didn't work so well.

The Gospel of John or Colossians would be my intuitive response.

I usually talk about the Gospel of John as well. If MacArthur dies, are you the next pastor there? Boy, I don't want him to die.

You know, everybody has their ideas, and our goal right now is to keep him as healthy as possible so that he can finish strong. He's 70, and his dad preached till he was 90, and his mom lived to 89. So I think we're a couple of decades.

From just making those decisions. See, since it's no-compromise radio, I had to ask that question.

Well, I certainly would not see myself as a worthy candidate to follow John MacArthur.

It is amazing to me that you look at ministries, whether it's, here's Barnhouse at 10th Press, and then he's replaced by Boyce, and who could replace Barnhouse? And then here we have Dr. Boyce's ministry.

God was so faithful there. And then Boyce dies. What's evangelicalism going to do? And then Reichen is faithful. And so the wonderful news is we don't place our faith in John MacArthur or any men, but God's work goes on to the last elect person believes.

Amen, amen. All right, we've got about one minute to go. Just off the top of my head,.

Shepherds Conference, T4G, and the Gospel Coalition

Why go to the Shepherds Conference instead of Together for the Gospel, our gospel coalition? Well, I would go to all of them if I could. I think you have to figure out what you want out of it. The Shepherds Conference is designed for pastors and church leaders.

T4G is designed for a generational resurgence, and Ligonier has its own following that's largely theological. So that's a wonderful garden of opportunities. I think you pick the flower that most meets your need.

Well, what I love to do at the Shepherds Conference is bring men who might not be elders and deacons yet, but they'd like to be. They're kind of on the fast track. They want to learn and grow. It's one thing if I criticize Rick Warren, and it's another thing if they go to the Master Seminary Shepherds Conference and then hear Phil Johnson take him to task, and then I take the people down to Saddleback for a Saturday quote-unquote worship service, then they're pretty convinced.

I think it's a good context for teaching your people as much as learning from the conference.

I think you're right, Mike. Absolutely. Well, we've been talking to Rick Holland, Dr. Rick Holland, University of Tennessee, then the Master Seminary, and then Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. We had kind of the same track, Rick, through school, except for me, it was Nebraska, and for you, it was Tennessee.

Yep. And I just appreciate your desire to preach, to train preachers, and to preach enthusiastically with passion. I think it, like MacArthur says, it's a sin to make the Bible boring. By the grace of God, you don't do that.

So thank you for your time today. Thank you, Mike. It's No Compromise Radio Ministry. You can get this show on nocompromiseradio .com. God bless you.

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 1015 and in the evening at six. 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.

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