Lance Roberts Interview (Part 1)

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.

How Lance Roberts Was Called to Missions

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name's Mike Abendroth, and I think this is the first time in the history of No Compromise Radio, probably 1 ,700 shows that I've recorded on a Sunday. Why would I record on a Sunday?

Well, the answer is we had a guest preacher this morning, Lance Roberts from the Czech Republic, and Lance and I are friends, and he preached for me today. And so after a cup of coffee and some lunch, I said, Lance, let's go do a radio show together.

And Lance said, I'm with you. So Lance, welcome to No Compromise Radio. Yeah, it's great to be here. Lance, you have been in the Czech Republic now for 15 years. Tell our listeners, how did a guy from Florida, Virginia, wherever you come from, Alabama parents or something, I don't know where, you've got kind of a mixture like me, how'd you get to the Czech Republic?

Well, when I was in college, I believe the Lord called me to missions during that time. Now, was it a high tenored voice? Was it like a soprano voice? Was it a thundering voice? What kind of voice was it?

I just, Lance is looking at me like, what? No, no voices, no revelations, but I've been working in my heart the summer before I went to Liberty University. And during the summer between my freshman and sophomore year in college, I started thinking about missions.

And then they had a missionary conference sometime in the fall. And I just remember sitting there listening to all these missionaries share their stories about what they're doing around the world. And I thought, wow, what greater thing can somebody do with their life than to take the gospel to someplace in the world where they don't have the gospel?

And I just remember praying, Lord, if you'd had me to go to Africa and live in a cardboard box in the mud, that's where I'll go. So I just availed myself to go wherever God would send me and ended up going to Master's Seminary.

And when I was there, I was always looking for an opportunity to go to someplace where there's no Bible, no Christians, no church, no radio, no anything. And an opportunity like that never came along, but I was asked to consider to go to the Czech Republic because there was a missionary there doing church planning.

And I believe that missions must be about church planning. And so I thought, okay, I don't know why they need missionaries in the Czech Republic is they had the Reformation. But I went there and I was shocked that we just go through town after town, no church, no evangelical witness, no known believers.

And I didn't know a place like that existed in Europe. And so I thought, well, this isn't like officially an unreached country, but wow, it's pretty close. So long story short, the Lord directed us to Czech Republic.

Seminary Training, Expository Preaching, and a Wife at Grace Church

Now, tell us a little bit about your background. You went to the master's seminary. So you had enough sense to be going to, to go there or be pointed in that direction. What kind of pastor or elder board helped influence you to go to that kind of a seminary versus let's say a fuller seminary?

Well, when I was at Liberty, there was a professor there named Dr. Paul Fink, and he taught us diagrammatical analysis. Really? Yeah, I was shocked. And I never heard of that before. I took a class on inductive Bible study.

And I was so impacted by the class that I thought I want to take it for another class. So I took over the book of Romans and it just rocked my world. I never heard anybody ever teach the Bible verse by verse before.

And then when he opened the book of Romans, I heard of things I'd never heard in my entire life. And I grew up in the church from day one. And so I remember he used to say that he had some former students who were teaching diagramming and expository preaching out at the master's seminary, which I'd never heard of.

I never knew who John MacArthur was. And so I thought, wow, if they're doing that out there, then I'm interested in going there even though I don't want to move to California. So that's what kind of got me interested in going to the master's seminary.

And who would imagine that your wife, that one day your wife was there waiting for you and she was working for the master's seminary, wasn't she? Actually, she was the missions secretary for Grace Church.

Seriously, okay. And so I was looking to go to the mission field and here's the mission secretary single, so. Well, it would be bad if you met a lady who worked for the missions board and that she wasn't willing to go anywhere.

Yeah, that would be a problem, I guess. Now, I'm sure there are some folks that are listening that were maybe influenced by some stories of the jungle or eating certain kind of bugs and missionary life.

Some of those things are certainly thrilling and exciting. But talk a little more, Lance, about the desire that you had to go do anything, be willing to serve and to be spent for the gospel. I think it's an important conversation for every Christian in terms of the Lordship of Christ and submitting to Him.

Missions, the Gospel, and the Local Church

Yeah, it comes down to understanding the truth of scripture. I just remember when I was in college, I heard these missionaries and the only thing I could think of was the gospel. Some of them talked about teaching people to dig wells or plant corn or whatever.

And that's okay, that's interesting, but ultimately they need the gospel, ultimately they need to be justified. And so I was all about taking the gospel there, not so much some of those other things, although sometimes people need help like that, but ultimately it's about the gospel.

And so if you look in scripture, and when Paul traveled, I mean, he didn't plant Bible institutes, he didn't start radio stations, he planted churches. And so today missions must be about churches and all those other things are little additions that support the church and encourage those in the church, but it has to be about the local church.

Now I've been to the Czech Republic several times and tell us a little bit about the ministry that the Lord has given you there within the local church. That is, you've got the Bible Institute and it's a training people under the auspices of, and technically part of the local church.

How does it function there? And tell us the name of the city that you're at as well. I wanna say Komorzice or something, but I don't know how to pronounce it. Yeah, it's Komorzice. Yeah, there you go.

And it's just east of Brno, the second largest city in the country. I almost died in Brno. Yeah, you did. I know, I'm happy for the healthcare they have in the Czech Republic. Yeah. So tell us about the city, let's do it that way.

Tell us about the city and then the church and then how your ministry is in and through the church because that's such an important thing from the New Testament perspective. Well, the city is kind of a mid-sized city in the Czech Republic.

It's about 30 ,000 people. It's in Moravia, which is the eastern part of Czech Republic. Historically, it was a very Catholic city and there's still, you know, the former bishop's castle or chateau, whatever word you wanna use for it.

And they had, I guess, a monastery or they had a school there. So it was very Catholic. Actually, if you go way back in the Czech Reformation, the father of the Czech Reformation was from our town, Jan Milic.

He was Catholic, but, you know, a lot of those guys were in reform as they came to understand more of scripture. So that's a little history of the town. What's the statue? There's a statue right there by the church downtown and maybe some guy who was in education or something like that.

Yeah, there's a couple of like squares in our town and the one on the corner where, well, the square where our church is, there's John Kominsky. He's known in English and he's basically like the father of the European educational system.

And there's a statue there of him holding like a book or a Bible and he's kind of pointing to a child who's standing left of him. Interesting about that is during communism, somebody in our church, you know, I don't know, 50, 60 years ago, they took a picture of that and his hand was pointing to our church building.

Well, the communists saw that and I've been told that they actually moved the statue so nobody could take pictures like that. And then later, I guess they moved it back to that spot. And the church building, the church meets in a building right there downtown.

What's the name of the church? Well, in English, it would be the Chromius Jesus Baptist Church. Okay. And you have a TMAI that works through there or how does that work? Yeah, we started a Bible Institute.

Well, first of all, when we came to this church, there was a lot of turmoil. There was no leadership basically. A young pastor with very little training, no experience became the pastor there. And so we had to work through some issues.

First, the church needed to be stabilized. We were even warned not to go there. They said that church has 10 generals and no army. But by the grace of God, we were able to work through those challenges and establish an eldership and write a doctrinal statement of church constitution and things of its own.

And after that, we said, hey, let's start teaching the Bible, not just to our people, not that we weren't teaching them before, but let's open it up and have like a Bible survey program and a practical Christian living just to expose people to the Bible, to get them in the word of God.

And so four years ago, we started the Bible Institute in our local church. And we want it to be church-based. All of our teachers are either pastors or our servants or elders and their deacons in their local churches.

And because we wanted people to realize that the church is the place where training should take place. Talking to Lance Roberts today on No Compromise Radio. Lance, if people want to know more about your ministry online, where would they go?

Well, we have like a missionary page through gracechurch .org forward slash Roberts, or you could check out our Bible Institute online at CBI, K-R-O-M-E-R-I-Z dot C-Z. You better say that one more time.

Yeah. We're going to simplify it, but right now it is CBI, which means Czech Bible Institute. Okay, so far so good. Yeah, and then the name of our town, Kroměžiš, which is K-R-O-M-E-R-I-Z. All right, good.

Dot C-Z. Dot C-Z. Lance, when I was there a few years ago, and then probably, you know, six or seven years ago, I could see the Lord was bringing more men, and there's ladies that learn the Bible as well.

They don't learn how to be pastors, but in both groups, the lay folks and then pastoral training, ministry training, more and more people were coming. Tell our listeners your philosophy of ministry when it comes to people and the amount of people that come.

Is it worth just for one or two? And how do we grow people versus grow the institute? I want them to hear your philosophy of ministry in terms of church growth done the biblical way. Well, actually this morning in the message, I talked about church growth according to Acts 9 .31, which is walking in the fear of God.

Faithfulness, Church Growth, and Discipleship in a Hard Mission Field

But basically, you know, we don't run around counting the number of people in our church every week and, you know, trying to map out how we can get more people. We just try to be faithful with what God has entrusted to us.

He's given us His word, we're to preach it or to proclaim the gospel. And I was always taught in seminary, you focus on the depth of your ministry and let God worry about the breadth. Seems like I had the same teacher.

So that's what we believe and that's what we do. Very small in number, when we came to this church, we came down to a low of about 18 people in our church. And now somebody recently counted all the people with children and everything, there's about 70, you know.

So, you know, that's just the grace of God. And we're just thankful for the spiritual growth in people's lives. You know, we look at church growth as according to spiritual growth and being faithful and proclaiming the gospel.

If we want the church to grow, we gotta see people need to be saved. You know, because otherwise you get a bunch of retreads that come in and bring their problems with them or they try to make you like their previous church.

And I remember one of the Baptist leaders one time told me in Czech Republic, he said, Lance, he says, most of the problems in our churches are from people coming from other churches, other denominations and trying to make a Baptist church like their previous church.

It is so true, wherever you go, whether it's in New England or the South or in Europe, aren't new converts so much easier to deal with because they have no tradition, you know, for good or for ill. They just, you know, oh, this is how we do baptisms.

This is what preaching's 50 minutes, it's verse by verse and all those things versus people that come in. And I mean, we're glad to have anyone come, but it makes it easier with those new converts. They're all excited for the gospel, fired up.

I think Lance, people have let church growth terminology become hijacked by the Arminian man-centered folks. We want church growth. Lance wants that, I want that, but we want the maturation of the saints as they say no to temptations and yes to righteousness in light of the finished work of Christ.

Lance, let's talk a little bit about methodology as we discussed a little bit this morning and 2 Timothy chapter two, when it talks about discipleship and then it uses some language that can readily be identified with hard work, good soldier, athlete.

And then finally in chapter two of 2 Timothy verse six, it is the hardworking farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Tell us a little bit about farming and ministry because to me, it seems very similar to Paul as well.

And there's a lot of work and toil, and then you just have to wait for the growth to come that only the Lord can supply. So there's a lot of work and not a bunch of immediate results, don't you think?

Plodding Ministry, Sovereignty, and Long-Term Fruit

Yeah, I remember when I first moved to the Czech Republic, the missionary I went to work with, he said, you know, Lance, he said, the statistics are that 50 of missionaries that come to Czech Republic leave after the first four years.

And actually Prague is known kind of in the missionary world there as the missionary graveyard. You know, people come with all their gimmicks and tricks and I won't call on any denominations, but there's a particular denomination that comes over and has enacted their methodologies.

They said, we're here to do what God has called us to do. If the Czechs want to join us, wonderful. If not, we're going to do it anyway. Well, all of those people have been unsuccessful. And as I talked about this morning in my ministry presentation, that if we want to have a lasting impact, we've got to basically focus on three areas, I believe, of ministry, and that's evangelism and church planning, because people need a healthy church that they could go to, they can be discipled in, because a lot of times these people come over and they do all these different things, you know, youth work and parachurch ministry, and all those things are helpful, but they're not transforming the church.

And so we need to be focused on the local church, strengthening local churches, planting local churches, and that takes time. In an atheistic country, 70 of the people profess to be atheist. You know, you talk to them about the gospel, and they're like, well, I don't believe in God, so why talk about this?

And so it's slow. And so when I describe our ministry, I describe it as laying a foundation, that we're not going to see the numbers, we're not going to see lots of fruit, maybe even in our lifetime, but we're trying to lay a biblical foundation for the next generation to build upon, and hopefully they're the ones who are going to see the fruit and the numbers and all that, as far as people getting saved and pastors being trained.

Lance, how frustrating would it be? I know this is probably rhetorical, but how frustrating would it be to be a man-centered Arminian strategist when it comes to church growth, especially if there was no fruit that was visible?

I mean, it would just be so frustrating. You just leave versus, you know what? I think the Lord loves to hear his word preached. I think the Lord loves to have the gospel proclaimed to unbelievers, and I'm just going to hunker down, and as William Carey said, I can plod.

Yeah, you just have to be a plodder. One pastor encouraged me one time, he says, just keep your hands to the plow, don't let Satan peel them off, you know, and just keep moving forward, and that's really what it comes down to.

There's no quick fixes, there's no gimmicks. You know, the church there has been ravaged by liberalism and communism and things over the last century or two, and it's just, it's one-on-one, life-on-life discipleship, you know, investing in lives of young men and training up new leaders, and we don't have lines of people.

You know, I have friends in other countries and Russian places. They've got hundreds of guys standing in line to be trained to be a pastor. One of our, well, ascending churches in Virginia, they started looking for a pastor last year, got 150 applications.

We know churches in Czech Republic haven't had a pastor for years, and they're not gonna have a pastor. I've had a church ask me whether to be their pastor, and I says, no, but I'll help train you, the elders, and we'll try to train up a guy to be the pastor, but you're not gonna find one in the next couple years because they don't exist.

Some of them even have to be saved. So we really should be praying that God would save and raise up men to lead the church, and it's, if you're not willing to just be faithful and to trust the Lord, then you don't wanna be a missionary in Czech Republic.

It seems to me, Lance, as we talk about missionary work, whether that's in New England, which is not quite as secular as a Czech Republic, but pretty bad in comparison to other places in the country, or we look at the Czech Republic, or maybe somebody's, you know, maybe you're in Missouri listening or Wisconsin listening.

Aren't some of the same philosophies that we have here at Bethlehem Bible Church, No Compromise Radio, and where you serve, Lance, don't some of the, aren't some of our philosophies, shouldn't they be similar to people who, you know, go to work every day, or they wake up at work and they take care of four kids, faithfulness, a reliance upon God, a trust in God.

Maybe they've got a bunch of loved ones who aren't saved. Don't the same things apply to them as moms and dads who are in the work world or stay at home with their kids? Yeah, I mean, God doesn't demand of us to bear a certain amount of fruit.

You know, he said some bear tenfold, some hundredfold. You know, that's not for us to control. That's what God produces. That's the fruit of the spirit. That's the work of God through us. And we're just to be faithful.

You know, I was at a missionary conference a few months ago and the guy in front of me, the missionary guy in front of me gave a presentation. He said, you know, our organization plants six churches a week.

And I was thinking, okay. So then I got up there and I said, well, in Czech Republic, if you can plant a church in 10 years, you've done something because the bare minimum to plant a church is about 10 years.

And I've told people that if you can do that, most likely you're not even gonna have a pastor in that time. So, you know, what do these people define as a church if they say they can plant six a week?

That's just red flags go up all over the place when I hear stuff like that. 1 Corinthians 4, this is how one should regard us, Paul said, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful or trustworthy.

I just think that's so encouraging. If God gives us little bits of encouragement through salvation of souls and growth in saints, great. But if not, we need to serve him and be faithful to him in light of the cross.

And whether, maybe it's Isaiah. Isaiah had the ministry of hardening hearts that we would even have a ministry from the Lord. Tell us about how you stay encouraged over the last 15 years, even though you don't see tons of fruit.

Faithfulness in the Face of Slow Results

Well, when I was in college, my missions professor used to say, if you're not called, you won't stay. And I remember just remember thinking, that's an interesting statement. But after being in the Czech Republic for as long as we have been, almost 15 years now, I understand what he's talking about because we've seen so many missionaries come and go and some for legitimate reasons.

But, you know, God has just called us to faithfulness. That's what he requires of us. Like I said, he doesn't require us to plan a certain number of churches or to present a certain amount of numbers of people that have been trained for ministry or have been saved.

Because those are things that you can't control. If you're being faithful, there's people that God is going to save, but you just got to preach the gospel. And I've heard of missionaries who've been missionaries for 15, 18 years before the first person comes to Christ.

And some of these Muslim countries and places, well, what are you going to do if you're in a country where you can't make people get saved? You can't make people turn from their sin and embrace Christ.

So the only thing you can do is just be faithful, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. You know, when I sign my name, a lot of times I write that verse because that's what it comes down to.

Talking to Lance Roberts today on No Compromise Radio. A few minutes to go, Lance, in part one. We'll stick around the studio and record another hour. How do you think this whole idea of man-centered versus God-centered theology and methodology has affected those who would give to missionary organizations?

That is to say, don't people who give freely and generously, and we're thankful for those, are they more tempted to give to people who have lots of numbers? Here's the missionary letter, and so on. So 14 people got saved, 20 people received Christ, 35 walked the aisle, six church plants, versus, well, you know, we faithfully taught through Ephesians in the last year, and we saw some ups and downs, and God is faithful.

Don't you think it's influenced, this kind of thinking has influenced even those who would support missionaries? Yeah, absolutely. You know, if I'm staying on stage and there's another missionary next to me who's feeding kids in Africa, I mean, who's gonna get the money?

And so that's just the way it is a lot of the times. But, you know, I've been in discussions with people, even in church meetings where they talk about, they try to prevent people from having their favorite missionaries and supporting only those who do the social type ministries.

But in the end, God is sovereign, and you know what? So many people have contributed to our ministry and Bible Institute, and I don't even know them. I don't even know how they even heard of us. And so ultimately, we trust in the sovereignty of God.

But, you know, a lot of people, their hearts are moved by hearing of needs. And if it's something that they can see the fruit of immediately, like feeding a kid, then that gets them excited. And it's hard for people to sometimes get excited about giving towards a commentary.

Like we just published the MacArthur one-volume commentary because there was no Bible commentary in the Czech language for Can you imagine not one commentary? Yeah, not on the whole Bible. There was a few individual books here and there, but not on the whole Bible.

And so, you know, that was a $100 ,000 project to get the entire Bible done. You know, 2 ,000 plus pages, which average book side would be, I don't know, three or 4 ,000 pages probably. But what people don't realize is that you're contributing to something that's gonna impact decades, you know, generations of believers.

It's always gonna be there now. You know, it's in print. Hopefully one day it'll be an electronic version for people. And so you may not see the fruit of that, but I can give you testimonies of people who've been impacted by things that we've published.

And one guy, he read MacArthur's book, Faith Works. And as a result of that, he stopped working for his non-lordship organization and he became a pastor. And he's one of the guys we work with. And it's just such a joy to see God take his truth and transform lives.

But you know, a lot of times people don't see the fruit of that. And the person who helped fund that book, I told them the testimony so they can understand the impact that they made. And that's just one person.

And there's many more out there. Amen, the Lord just gives us a little bit of encouragement here, there, and sometimes a lot of encouragement to keep us going. And so I'm so thankful for that. At No Compromise Radio, you, our listeners, know that I don't ask for money and we don't beg and we don't do that.

It's kind of the S. Lewis Johnson, Mueller model. But I do sometimes ask for money for other people. Lance didn't put me up to this, but if you want to support Lance and other books translated into the Czech language, or support he and the ministry there at the local church, you can write me, Mike, at NoCompromiseRadio .com and I'll get you all his information so you can help out Lance and the ministry there.

Lance, thanks. We'll see you next week, same time. Thank you. Look forward to it.

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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