City vs. Rural

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, ministry. Steve, welcome.

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for flying me in. Bitte. Anything happening with you these days? What have you been studying, reading, thoughts? If someone wanted to pull back the curtain of the Tuesday guy to see what he's pondering these days, what would the pastoral pontification be?

Well, let's see. I recently spoke about the purpose of the Atonement. I'm reading about the humanity of Christ, studying that so I can teach it.

You're a big radio star now. Tony Miano's interviewing you and stuff like that. Well, sure. But you know, you can still book me. Sure. Steve, in front of me, I have the Book of Common Prayer. And it is the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.

And they have... Did they come out with a book that was like, book of better than common prayer? You know, above common, excellent prayer, you know? Mmm. I mean, to me, see, you know, common is average, you know, so...

Confession, Absolution, and the Finished Work of Christ

Steve, I wanted to pick your brain. There are prayers here and things that the pastor should say. So for instance, if you're going to have a funeral, you're going to have a wedding, there's a variety of these things.

And then you just, you show up with this book and you don't really have to prepare anything. You just do what the book says. Nice. Now, the good part is you're not going to be off on some kind of weird modalistic tangent.

Which is very nice. They understand Trinitarian thought. It says here, Then the minister shall say, this is on page three, Dearly beloved brethren, the scripture move with us in sundry places to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness, and that we should not dissemble nor cloak them before the face of Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, but confess them with a humble, lowly, penitent and obedient heart, to the end that we may obtain forgiveness of the same by His infinite goodness and mercy.

And so, Steve, what I like is, there's not much talk like that about sin and confession and penitence. But what I don't like is necessarily the rote thing where I have to say these things. So help me with the rub.

Well, it's good to confess, that is to, you know, agree with God to say the same thing as God homo legeo, to have that mindset that my sins are heinous, that my sins are not to be taken lightly. But I was curious about that because it said to obtain forgiveness, because if I don't already have forgiveness, that's a problem.

You know, because then that would mean I'm obtaining forgiveness based on my confession of my sins, right? And that's not really true.

Okay, Steve. So in light of that, when a congregation, certain congregations do this, some don't, has a formal time of public confession. Do you like that? If you visit another church, we don't do that here.

And there's a formal profession, your sins are forgiven based on the finished work of Christ. What do you like about that or don't like about that?

Well, I like it because I would like it from this standpoint, it's good to be reminded of that, right? Our forgiveness is only due to the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I like that part.

I maybe wouldn't like the fact that some people are saying that, and it may not be true. So we're kind of affirming people by having them participate in that. We're affirming that people may be saved who aren't saved.

And so I would be concerned about that part.

Steve, it gives a general confession here that everyone's supposed to read together, the whole congregation, all kneeling with the minister. And then there's a declaration of absolution or remission of sins to be made by the priest alone standing, the people still kneeling.

So basically it says here, the absolution and remission of their sins, he pardoneth and absolveth all those who truly repent and unfaintedly believe his holy gospels. So if people attend a church where there's a public profession, excuse me, confession, and then the minister gives absolution.

Te absolvo. Or my favorite, me absolvo. Steve, don't you think there's…. Yeah, me absolvo. Don't you think there's a desire now to go to a more formalized, higher liturgical structure coming out of emergent, seeker-sensitive rock music for 30 minutes in a 25-minute sermon?

Yeah, I think, well, and I think it's kind of reasonable in this sense, understandable, I guess, maybe not reasonable. People see chaos, you know, in the world all around them. I mean, we live in a world where people call good evil and evil good, you know, and you go to church and it's more of the same or, you know, it's, they don't preach the word, they don't do anything worthwhile, and you just think, I just long for some kind of structure in my life.

Can I have some kind of structure? Can I have some kind of organization? And, you know, you wind up in a liturgical church because that's what it brings that week in and week out, you get the same thing.

Well, Steve, when I first got saved, I went to Calvary Chapel and it just seemed very comfortable. It was a relaxed setting. I could wear my, what was I wearing back in those days? Huaraches. I think, no, I had my OP shorts on.

Remember those OP corduroy shorts? Ocean Pacific. Totally. That was the style back in those days. I wouldn't have known because I was never stylish. Okay. And remember Dave Jeffries would always say, oh, that tie's coming back into style again.

Yep. He called me last night and said, is this the party to whom I'm speaking? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And so anyway, it's just a relaxed feel. And so when you go to Europe and you sit in one of the cathedrals there and you see how tall they are and you're impressed with transcendence and someone is over you and above you, and then you go to a warehouse, you know, kind of an old Safeway turned, you know, grocery store turned into a sanctuary.

There's a casual feel. And I think there's just a rebound now. People want more formalized worship.

I think that's true. And again, I think it's just kind of a, this will sound funny. I think it's a rebellion against the way things are, not just in the church, but in the world altogether. And I think it's a plea for structure and for just quiet and, you know, that sort of thing.

Steve, talking about dress in a local church and our attitudes regarding that, it's almost, I don't know, it seems like a man wearing a tie in church. It's almost the exception these days and not the rule.

Well, I certainly never wear a tie.

Oh, wait, I do. Well, it's because that clerical collar that you have on right now rides highly on your neck.

Well, I mean, it does kind of help identify us right now on Sunday, we look around the church and, you know, who are the elders? Oh, yeah, the tie, tie, tie, tie. So, I mean, to me, you know, I don't really find it offensive, especially during the summer.

I think people want to be a little more comfortable, and that's fine. But I, you know, I don't know that I'd be ever comfortable, you know, coming to church in shorts and a polo shirt, but that's just me.

Steve, I regularly preach at a church that's a little more liturgical than here at Bethlehem Bible Church. And I know my kids one time, they ran a race on Sunday morning on the Sabbath. It was like a 10k.

Oh, wow. And then you get free t-shirts and stuff like that for running the race. And so, I had to preach at that church, and then I'm in the middle of preaching, and then the four Avendroth kids and Kim come walking in with their tennis shoes from running, they're running shorts, and then they all have the 10k shirts on.

And you said, so returning to our text, running the race before you.

The fourth commandment is, remember the Sabbath can keep it holy.

Run your race with diligence.

City Churches, Country Churches, and the Pull Toward Urban Ministry

Steve, what do we do in our society today thinking about churches and the makeup of churches? A lot of people live in small little towns. There's a big push for city church, a big push for urban church.

There's a big push for, you know, this is a multiplex, but there are a lot of small suburban, rural churches. Is there anything right or wrong with a city church versus a country church?

I don't think so. I mean, I think you just want to, you know, you need to assemble regularly with the saints. So, I mean, if it's just the location and the setting that you're talking about, no,.

I don't think so. Yeah, but I guess here's what I'm trying to convey. It seems to me that the big shots driving the Christian publishing world, it's the city church. So we got to go to the cities and let's go back to the cities and the cities where it's at and the social city deal.

I don't know. Well, I am.

Okay. Now I get it. But I'm, I, God loves cities. Yeah. God loves cities. God loves people.

Who said it? Was it Thomas Chalmers who said something like man made the cities? No, no, no. God made the country. Man made the cities and the devil made the suburbs.

See, that'll preach. Well, I think there's rightly in one sense, a focus on the cities because that's where the people are, right? I mean, it's good to, it's good to go where the people are. I mean, if there are 250 ,000 people in Worcester, it's better for us to have an impact in Worcester than it is for us to have an impact in Sterling, which I think is population 3 ,000, you know, or whatever.

Steve, their, their, their self-esteem city, city self-esteem has gone down. I think it's 6 ,000. Is it? Probably.

Well, well, whatever it is. I mean, I live there. So with all due respect to Sterling, when you, when you can't get pizza delivered to your house, that's when you're in a small town.

Oh, see, when there's a little statue of Mary's lamb in the town common, the town.

That's when you're in a small town because nobody, nobody's taken the time to sue yet and haven't removed.

Right. So, so we have Paul, he goes to the cities. Is there a different paradigm for Paul's apostolic, he goes to Athens, he goes to Ephesus, he goes to the, these big cities because he knows that's where the synagogues will be and all that.

So do we use that same deal?

Well, in his epistle to the church at Podunk, he, I don't, I don't know. I mean, I don't, I don't think you, you know, necessarily approach ministry any differently. You shouldn't anyway. I mean, I, if what you're getting at is, you know, I would presume that most of the people who are focused on the city now, you know, think the church has to be urbane and cool and hip, you know.

Social justice, arts, missional.

No, no, I don't, I don't go for any of that. I mean, if, you know, having a church in a big city means that you need to have a drama team and, you know, the dancing girls with ribbons and stuff, then no, just no.

The Church Should Reflect Its Surroundings, Not Chase Diversity Metrics

Steve, what if your church is in a small little town and it's not diverse? Is that bad? I mean, come on, Jesus, every tribe, tongue, kindred, nation, Gentiles, Psalm 117. What if everybody's just the same color and the same economic background?

I actually touched on this momentarily when I was preaching Ephesians 4, and the answer is no. I mean, you're going to be a reflection, Lord willing, of the area around you. So, you know, we were just in the middle of Iowa here, my wife and I, a couple weeks ago, and went to visit family.

And I don't know what the demographics are, but I'm going to guess, you know, for the last hundred years, that town has probably been 98 white. And it's, you know, so if you started a church there, first of all, it would be very small.

But secondly, it's going to be 98 white, because that's, those are the people around you. So, I think, you know, if you're in an urban area, you would expect, over time anyway, for the church to reflect the people who are there.

So, you'd probably have more minority folks, one would think, you know, in a large city church.

Steve, my philosophy is, and so you can tell me if you like it, or you need to correct me. I think…. Oh, I will. Yeah, that's when you do the shows, when I'm on vacation.

Well, that's what, you know, when I straighten them out, you know, when I straighten out what Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday guy does.

I think you actually posted that online once.

I did. Yeah, you took me to the witch-hen.

I think that's when I said, that's enough of you paying for Twitter followers. We have to cut some of those down. Steve, that was something new to me. I did not know people paid for Facebook followers.

Well, I don't pay much. And so, you know, here's the thing. We all have problems with contentment and coveting, and the church down the street seems bigger or brighter, and the waves down the shore seem, you know, better barrels down there, and all kinds of things like that.

But I think to myself, Steve, if I'm in an urban church, or I'm in a community church, or I'm in a suburban church, I just think there's a bunch of people that God has called out, and I'm to worship and serve Christ Jesus together with them.

And I never think to myself, we need to be more urban. We need to be more socially oriented towards the city life, because I'm stuck out here in the middle of West Boylston.

It's a little suburb. Well, I think, you know, do we believe that the Lord is building His church or that we have to tweak things to kind of help the Lord along? You know, I think that's the way some people approach ministry, which is wrong.

And I agree with you. And I mean, we've seen over the years, I think our church has gotten a little less white, you know, but that's all the Lord's doing. It's not anything. We're not doing an outreach to, you know, other than Caucasian people.

I mean, we're just thankful for anybody who shows up on Sunday, literally anybody.

Ordinary Christian Faithfulness in Small Places

Pete Steve, we've got radical Christianity. I'm thankful my Corton's new book is going to come out soon. Ordinary. It's called, I think, Ordinary Christianity. An Ordinary Person, but with radical and city and city catechisms and urban stuff.

I just, I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm in a small town, but you almost get this complex, this psychological inferiority complex that we don't have an orphans ministry. We don't have an adoption ministry.

I mean, a formalized ministry. And so in the old days, people would not want to go to a small church because their youth group wasn't hip enough. Now, some people don't want to go to smaller churches and city churches and country churches because they don't have the social ministry structures where we're big into adoption agencies.

And we have all these things. Yeah. Don't you stand for social justice and aren't you for the orphan and the poor and the widow?

What's wrong with you people? I want to try to encourage those that go to smaller churches today and who just start places that are smaller, quiet, you know, living a quiet life and working with their hands, as Paul would say.

If you have Jesus at your church, I don't mean bodily. I mean, through proclamation, you have the Holy Spirit indwelling the people there. There's faithful preaching and there's body life going on and the ordinances are administered.

And then don't you have everything? What else is there? And if a congregant says that I want to start something for orphans, then off they go.

Pete. Well, and we've been blessed, you know, this isn't anything that we've done, but we've seen families in our church, you know, adopt people and adopt children. And it's a great blessing. It's not anything that we've had to organize.

People want to adopt. So, you know, I don't even understand the need to have a ministry, an adoption ministry. It's just saints do that. This is just how we're, how we think.

It's how a Christian would do something. And it doesn't necessarily have to be driven by the church leaders, I think is how I would probably put it. Pete. Yes. Pete Marvin Alasky in the World Magazine from earlier this year, he said, do you feel that you're wasting your gifts if you settle into an ordinary job, get married early and start a family or live in a small town or suburb?

And then he talks about Anthony Bradley's new legalism that pushes sometimes, or we feel the push to do the opposite. And so I want faithful housewives, faithful plumbers, faithful male people, mailmen, male women, and just regular folks in a suburb living the Christian life.

Pete Yeah, you almost seem to spell that M-A-I-L. Pete A male woman.

Satan's Strategy: Comfort Without the Gospel

Pete. That's exactly right. Well, Steve, sometimes when shows, you know, I'm not saying you're bombing this, but you know, sometimes if I'm thinking to myself, we need to spice things up on No Compromise Radio.

Pete Spruce-O-Rama. Pete I have in front of me the Puritan Golden Treasury.

Pete. Because nothing will spike ratings like reading Puritans.

Pete. And the IDE Thomas put together, and I'm just opening it up randomly. And then it said, I don't want that piece. Let us watch Satan, Thomas Adams says, for he watches us. Now, see, I think that's bad advice.

Let us watch Satan. Steve, if Satan were to really take over a church, what would he do?

Steve What would he do? Well, I mean, I think he would want everything, everyone to come in and be happy, be comfortable. Pete On time. Steve Yes, be thoroughly fulfilled, everybody to be nice and quiet and orderly and go home nice and quiet and orderly and everything for there to be no crime.

And actually, I think he would push the idea of social justice because his goal would be to get everybody to act in a circumspect way with one little exception. They wouldn't care anything for the gospel or the Word of God.

Pete. Yeah, what we'd do is we'd say, make sure you focus on the subjective feelings of your faith, not the objective truth. So it's all about an emotional feel.

Steve I mean, if you look at, go to any liberal church website, because when I did my Ephesians 4 thing a few weeks ago, I went to some liberal church websites and you know what they're just focused on?

100%. They're focused on diversity, and they brag about their diversity and their diversity outreach. I mean, they have ministries of their church that are devoted to making sure that they are reaching out to minority communities, to gay and lesbian communities.

So they're focused on that. They're focused on social justice. They're focused on ending poverty and all these other things. The one thing that's lacking from their website is the Bible. You won't find much of anything about the Bible because they don't really, it doesn't interest them.

Their sermons are not sermons, they're love-a-thons. It's like going and listening to Oprah on Sunday because she's not on the air, you know?

So, Steve, I'm looking at a book by Chris Fabry called The 77 Habits of Highly Ineffective Christians. Highly ineffective Christians. And remember, you know, Count Your Blessings song?

Count your blessings, name them one by one. So they have a new book.

It's a new hymn, rather. It's called Count Your Problems.

Count your problems, name them one by one.

When upon life's pillows you are laying down, when you are in comfort and without a frown, add up all the negatives you think you see, and you'll be surprised at just how mad you'll be.

Count your problems. Name them one by one. Well, I mean, you know, this almost relates to our last show, right? I mean, count your problems one by one and guess what you will get over time? I can guarantee you, you will become depressed, right?

Thankfulness, Grace, and Receiving God’s Gifts

Steve, why, I wonder, oh, why does it say in 1 Thessalonians that it's God's will for you to be thankful?

Because our tendency is not to be thankful, you know, and to be consumed with ourselves and our problems and our lack and, you know, the things that we don't have.

Steve, let's talk about that for the last couple of minutes here. When we're thankful, aren't we really saying we receive from the Lord or through his servants, other people? We are receiving something that we didn't deserve or earn.

It was just a gift. It's all out of grace. And so it takes the self, it takes ourselves out of the equation. It is something that we receive. And so what a great self-sacrificial thing to do is to just be thankful.

Yeah, I mean, the easiest way, and you said, I think the key word is grace. If we have a grace-focused life, if we're thinking about the grace of God in our own lives, then we think this way. In light of what I've done and what I deserve, look at all the Lord has given me, you know, all that he has granted me.

And it starts with forgiveness of sin. It starts with the sure hope of heaven. And then you just look at what he adds on to it. You just go, I don't deserve all this. And now you're thinking rightly. Now you're thinking the way you should be and not focused on, oh, man, I can't believe this girl dumped me.

I can't believe that's happening.

He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Romans 8. Steve, I was taking the dog for a walk a couple of weeks ago up in the orchard, and there's a little pond there and all kinds of apples, this, that, and the other.

And really, it was an emotional experience for me. As I was just watching the dog swim in the lake, I'd throw a stick in and she'd go get it. And I just thought, Lord, that you would give me a dog. I mean, I have other gifts that are much greater than that.

I know I have a wife and four kids and there's all kinds of, I mean, way greater gifts. But I just thought that you and I, that I could even have like a dog, a companion. It shows me when it's happy by wagging its tail.

And I had this emotional experience thanking the Lord for a soulless dog.

This will shock you. But I've done that on many occasions because I just think they are, um, I would say that they were specifically designed by God to be companions for us and, and they do it well. I mean, dogs, dog, that's what they do.

You know, they are doggly. And, and they, and they do it perfectly. But I, but yeah, I mean, I've gotten emotional just thinking about what a great blessing and a privilege it is to have a dog.

Yeah. If the Lord gives the greatest gift, He gives these other gifts as well. And, you know, I, I probably hate myself the most and, and, and chasing myself the most when I'm self-righteous, but I also right up at the top is when I'm thankless.

I hate my sin of thanklessness.

Because how, you know, we have no right to be thankless. We ought to be thankful and cross, cross in light of the cross all the time. We ought to be thankful. Mike Avendroth, Steve Cooley.

We're thankful to be on this radio station. Yes, we are. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Avendroth 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 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.

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