A "Not Yet Calvinist" Takes Over the Show!

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July 4, 2022

On this special episode, Matthew Hinson takes on the role of the interviewer and our normal host Keith Foskey answers his questions about ecclesiology (the doctrine of the church) including the roles of pastors and deacons. This is a fun and informative episode you don't want to miss. Conversations with a Calvinist is the podcast ministry of Pastor Keith Foskey. If you want to learn more about Pastor Keith and his ministry at Sovereign Grace Family Church in Jacksonville, FL, visit www.SGFCjax.org. For older episodes of Conversations with a Calvinist, visit CalvinistPodcast.com. Follow Pastor Keith on Twitter @YourCalvinist Email questions about the program to [email protected]

00:00: Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.
00:02: My name is Matthew Henson, and I am not your Calvinist today, but I did bring one with me.
00:27: Today we're going to be doing a really special episode.
00:30: It's an idea that I had that Keith and I could do because we've developed such a friendship and a brotherhood together as fellow believers who do differ on some important things, but Keith has had the grace to have me on his show several times, several of my friends as well.
00:43: And so, I've often thought, what does Keith think about this subject? Because he does such a great job at keeping his cards close to the vest, but what if we were to pry a little bit and say, Keith, what if you were the one being interviewed? Because I can tell there's a lot he has to say and a lot he wants to say, and I wanted to give him a chance to do that and also sit on opposite sides of the interview table for that process.
01:05: So, Keith, how are you doing today? I'm doing very well, and you're not yet a Calvinist.
01:09: Not yet a Calvinist.
01:11: Every time.
01:11: Yeah, you're contractually obligated.
01:15: It just has to happen.
01:16: Absolutely, absolutely, yes.
01:16: Not yet a Calvinist.
01:18: Jake told me, Jake Korn, who you had on a couple of weeks ago, told me that it's a slow-burning wick, but eventually it'll hit the gunpowder, and that's when we have to put you in the cage, and then after you smolder down a little bit, then you're good.
01:31: Yes, yes, absolutely.
01:33: You're the most knowledgeable non-Calvinist friend I have.
01:36: I appreciate that.
01:37: Well, I mean, I enjoy talking with you.
01:39: I enjoy our conversations, especially areas where we may differ some, and I look forward to today.
01:45: I think it's going to be fun.
01:45: I think it will be, too.
01:47: So, to the viewer or the listener, today what we're talking about is a big church word called ecclesiology.
01:52: Now, if you have not heard of that word before, what it means is, how does a church organize itself? How does it do its operations? Who's in charge of things? What kind of elements happen during a church service? What is a church service? Does it differ from, say, a Wednesday night Bible study? Those kinds of things.
02:10: And so, Keith has, and I have talked about this before, we've touched on it, we did a podcast about N.T.
02:18: Wright not too long ago, in which the subject of can women be pastors came up, and that required us to define what is a pastor? What's an elder? What do these words mean? What does the New Testament have to say about that? So, that's what we're focusing on today.
02:33: The offices of the New Testament, how they function, and what might that look like in a 2022 church.
02:39: Pete Amen.
02:40: Looking forward to it.
02:40: Jared Okay.
02:40: Good stuff.
02:42: So, the New Testament, Keith, as I understand it and as I read it, presents us with the foundation of the very first church there in Acts, when the Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost, Peter preaches, it says a bunch of them were saved that day, 3,000 I think it is, which if you've ever had a church service where that happened, please let me know.
03:02: I want to know exactly what you did there because I'd be all about that.
03:07: But that happens and the church is in this state of flux at first.
03:11: There's not, the apostles are 100% in charge, and we'll have to define what that means in just a minute, but there's this idea of it's just the Holy Spirit is just running this way, running that way, and the church is struggling to keep up and figure out what the next move is and all that.
03:27: But come around a couple of Acts and we start to see just a little bit of structure develop, and I'm thinking specifically of Acts 6, but before we, because that's the formation of the deacons.
03:38: But before we go there, let me ask you this, in the first five chapters of Acts, what, how would we contrast our churches today with how they operated then and how should we be consistent with that? Are there things that they did that we either shouldn't do or no longer can do, and are there things we can learn from them? Well, there's always things we can learn from them, but I caution people a lot at even later chapters of the Book of Acts, assuming that this is normative.
04:12: I've heard people say, we need to go back to the church in Acts.
04:14: Well, the church in Acts is birthing, it's being birthed in the sense, and I understand the Reformed argument of the Old Testament saints were in the church.
04:25: So from the perspective of, for that argument, for those who might make that argument, I'll say the New Covenant Church is birthed after the resurrection of Christ and then, of course, Pentecost, and like you said, there's this grand movement where the Holy Spirit is saving thousands of people at a time, and it says it's, their numbers are being added to daily.
04:48: Yeah, multiplied frequently, yeah.
04:50: Amazing.
04:51: And yet, this is not going to be the norm.
04:56: Not as far as numerically, that wouldn't be the norm either.
04:59: But also, the structure, it seems as, I like what you said about the church trying to keep up, it seems as if there was movement to organize this entity that is now existing in a new way that is not necessarily in line with the synagogue or the old covenant structure of priesthood and those things, because there's one high priest who is Christ, and so even though our Anglican friends would argue there are priests in the New Covenant, we would say there's elders, pastors, and deacons, but not priests.
05:36: Well, I want to make sure this is Solus Christus on it.
05:39: Yeah, absolutely.
05:40: So there we go.
05:40: So we have this model that is, well, let me back up.
05:46: We don't have a model.
05:47: What we have is we have a lot of change over a short amount of time, and we're going to talk about the deacons in a moment, the formulation of the deacons.
05:54: So what do we learn? We still see authority.
05:57: You already mentioned this.
05:59: We still see the apostles exercising leadership, governance, loving authority within the church.
06:08: We see care for the people within the body.
06:10: We know that's what brought about the issue of the need for the deacons, because there were certain people who felt like they weren't being cared for enough or weren't being cared for in the right way, and so the function of ministry is happening, but we don't see the structure that we would later see in the epistles of Paul to Timothy and Titus, known as the pastoral epistles.
06:34: We don't see that structure right away, and that makes sense.
06:37: As the Spirit is moving, as the Spirit is leading, as churches are being established, these things are being recognized, and there are still apostles in the world.
06:45: I do think we live in the post-apostolic age.
06:49: Okay.
06:49: In the sense that, my wife and I actually had this conversation at lunch.
06:52: Okay.
06:52: Because she asked me, are there apostles today? And the reason why she was talking about that is because recently Costi Hinn did an interview on the subject of apostles, and he was saying, there's no apostles today, and I said, well, that's true in the sense of the original twelve, and then Paul, who says he was born out of due season, there's no original apostles today.
07:14: But depending on how we use that word, uppercase, lowercase, you know, a missionary might be considered one who was sent by the church.
07:20: Yeah.
07:20: Could you define just in a general sense, what does the word apostle mean? One who is sent.
07:25: Okay, so it just means sent one.
07:27: So in that case, I'm not going to die on the hill if a church wants to call their pastor an apostle, somebody sent by God to lead the church, or if somebody wants to call their missionaries apostles, I'm not going to die on that hill, I'm not going to make a big deal.
07:39: But I would distinguish between the original apostles that carried the apostolic authority, and the Bible talks about the apostles doing the works of an apostle, having the gifts of the apostles.
07:51: So there was something unique about that first century apostleship that did go away and gave way to eldership.
07:59: And it's so interesting that Paul wasn't one of the twelves, and he calls himself an apostle, Peter was one of the twelves, and he calls himself an elder.
08:05: That's right, he does.
08:05: So there's sort of a unique sort of bypass and exchange there.
08:09: Peter didn't mind calling himself an elder.
08:11: And Paul was, of course, affirmed as an apostle.
08:14: So it's just, we can't say, well, here's what they did in Acts, therefore, that's what we need to do.
08:20: Because there is an evolution there.
08:23: Ooh, bad word.
08:25: There's a beginning of formulation and structure.
08:29: And certainly, over that first century, or throughout that first century, there were structures that were put in place by God, through the Holy Spirit, through the apostles.
08:41: And so that's, is there value there? Yes.
08:45: But it's not normative.
08:47: I see.
08:48: As least as I would say.
08:49: Not normative.
08:49: Not normative.
08:50: Now, could you tell us, and the shorthand I use for it is lowercase A Apostle, capital A Apostle, one to refer to a descriptor and one to refer to the office.
08:59: Yeah, I've said that.
09:01: Okay.
09:01: Could you do the same for the word church? When someone says, okay, the New Testament Church did this or that, and then there's the capital C Church, as I say it, which is, I think C.S.
09:12: Lewis called it, all the believers throughout time in history spread like an army with terrible banners or something like that.
09:18: I think it was in the screw tape letters, and it was screw tape saying, you know, your person's gone to church, and by this, I do not mean this church, which is the capital C Church, which terrifies us, but I mean this small little group that we as demons can tamper with and whatever.
09:36: So he made a distinction there.
09:37: What would you say the distinction is between lowercase C Church and capital C Church, if that's a useful way of differentiating? Well, in the book, I just did that.
09:47: There you go.
09:48: That's right.
09:48: I do have a book, Biblically Functioning Church, which is right there.
09:51: There we go.
09:52: And I wrote that over 10 years ago on the subject of ecclesiology, and I do talk in the church about what's typically referred to as the visible and invisible church or the universal and local church.
10:04: But I do make this point, and this is becoming ever increasingly important to me, is it's rare that you can find a passage in the New Testament where the word church is not referring to a local church.
10:19: It's almost always pointing to either the church at Corinth or the church here at the church.
10:23: Very rare do we see that term used of the… Moreover, you see that used of the body of Christ.
10:31: I would say the capital C Church is the body of Christ all over the world.
10:34: When I take communion on Sunday morning, there's people in Afghanistan, there's people in China, there's people all over the world that are taking that same communion at the same time, and we are all sharing in one body.
10:44: We've all been baptized into one church, and that's the capital C Church.
10:48: That is the body of Christ.
10:50: And so typically when I say church, I'm referring to the local church, because again, when you go through and you read through Acts, you read through, the church is the church at the church at Corinth or the churches of Galatia.
11:04: It's that local church.
11:06: So that's not to say that the body of Christ doesn't make up the church, but I just, in my own teaching, I've begun to sort of come away from the universal church language to simply say the universal body of Christ or the whole body of Christ, because a church, the assembly is what meets together.
11:24: Ecclesia, yeah.
11:25: And this is, and I'll tell you why too, and I don't want to take too much of a tangent.
11:28: No, it's okay.
11:29: We're talking about ecclesiology.
11:30: I mean, ecclesia, yeah.
11:31: Well, people maybe have heard me say this before.
11:33: I've said this in lessons on this subject.
11:36: When I meet somebody, I say, hey, do you go to church? They say, well, I am the church.
11:39: That's a big common refrain, because what they're saying is I'm part of the universal church, therefore I don't need to go to church.
11:44: I see.
11:45: And I say, you're not the church, because the word church, ecclesia, it does mean the called out ones, but actually it means the assembly.
11:52: Right.
11:53: It's the assembly of those called.
11:54: And so you can't assemble by yourself.
11:57: And so when somebody says, I am the church, no, you're not.
11:59: I takes it away, because when you say, I am the church, you're not in assembly all by yourself.
12:04: No matter how big I am, I'll never be in assembly all by myself.
12:08: So that's another reason why I've become more specific with my language, and when I refer to the church, I'm referring to a local church.
12:18: I see.
12:19: Okay.
12:20: Well, that makes sense.
12:21: So last thing on this, and then we'll move into Act 6, where we start to get a little bit more organization.
12:27: If someone, and you're talking about Apostle, because this is so important.
12:31: When I teach the New Testament, especially we're in 2 Timothy now with my Connect group, and we're about to get to that all-important chapter three, verse 16, about scripture being God-breathed.
12:40: Yeah.
12:41: When the number one question when we're done with that is if someone picks up some other piece of literature, say this book, say your book that you wrote, and they were to say, okay, what if the author of this said, I am a capital A Apostle? Why can they not say that, and what grounds would you use for pushing back on that claim? Or anyone throughout church history, say there's a document from 500 AD, and someone says, this has the same authority as the scriptures that we have because it was from an Apostle, because they claim to be, or something.
13:14: What is the category, or what is the gate, if you will, that guards the capital A Office of Apostle that you would say, how would you describe that? That's a good question, and one I guess I haven't thought about, but I'll give you my initial thoughts, and this may develop as I think through this.
13:33: My initial thoughts, if somebody said that to me, I would say, upon what grounds are they claiming this authority? Because even the Apostle Paul, who was of course called directly by Christ on the road to Damascus, you know where Paul was going on the road to Damascus? Kill Christians? No, he was going to where he was going.
13:56: It's a joke.
13:56: It's a bad joke.
13:57: I appreciate that.
13:58: It's a bad joke.
13:58: Ask your students, where was Paul going on the road to Damascus? He was buried in Grant's tomb, right? Yeah, exactly, yeah.
14:04: Sorry.
14:06: Wow.
14:06: Edit that out.
14:08: That's going away.
14:10: Okay, so Paul is on the way to Damascus.
14:13: Christ appears to him.
14:15: He sees the risen Christ.
14:17: One of the things that is an affirmation of an Apostle, I would say, is the commissioning by Christ, and I would say the actual commissioning directly, not just the commissioning of the Church, which has the authority to commission pastors and elders, and we'll talk about that later, but the direct commissioning of Christ.
14:42: So Paul has that, but he calls himself something, in 1 Corinthians 15, he identifies himself in a very unique way.
14:50: He says, I was born out of season, meaning, at least the way I understand it, meaning I am the one unique as opposed to the others.
14:59: The others were from the beginning.
15:02: They walked with, and even when they were choosing between Matthias and Justice, and they chose Matthias, they choose him by casting lots, and we know what happened in the upper room.
15:16: But the idea was he had to be there from the beginning.
15:20: There was a pedigree that was required for this person, and I'm right about that.
15:24: Matthias, right? Am I getting the name right? I named my son after the other one.
15:28: Yeah, okay.
15:29: My son, Justice, is named after the unchosen.
15:31: Well, yeah, let's just go right over here to Acts chapter 1, right? Acts chapter 1, yeah, and I'm sitting here opining, and I'm thinking, I think it's Matthias and Justice.
15:41: To the listener, be like the noble Bereans who, when they had a question, they said, search the scriptures to see if these were so.
15:48: Yeah, Matthias chosen to replace Judas.
15:50: Yeah, so Matthias gets chosen, but he has to be there from the beginning, right? Paul says, I'm not like them.
15:55: I wasn't there from the beginning.
15:56: I was born out of season.
15:58: I wasn't birthed into this apostleship like they were.
16:02: And then in the book of Galatians, it tells us that went to Galatia, not necessarily to get their approval, but to assure that his gospel was their gospel, and they were all preaching the same thing.
16:14: But when he was there, he did get their essentially seal of approval.
16:19: There was a certain sense in which they gave him their blessing, and there was a unified belief that this guy is an apostle like us.
16:30: So 500 years later, nobody has that ability.
16:33: Nobody can go to the other apostles and receive that.
16:37: And I do think that's why we talk about the apostolic age and the ending with John, of course, the last one of the 12 to die.
16:45: This age, this time was unique.
16:48: It was a time of birth.
16:50: It was a time of new, and it was a time of inscripturation, which is unique.
16:57: And that's something else.
16:58: If you look at the time where scripture is primarily being written, you go back to Moses, and he's writing the books of the Torah.
17:07: There's all of these things that are happening, and they're being written about as they're happening.
17:12: He's writing Exodus in the Exodus.
17:16: So we come to the gospels and Acts.
17:19: They're being written about 30 years later, essentially, but Acts is being written as these things are sort of coming about and after, but these are all within this time frame.
17:31: You get 500 years later, there's just not that proximity.
17:35: And so I would have a really hard time with somebody who said, this guy was an apostle in the 5th century.
17:41: Well, by what confirmation? Did Jesus, like there was a pastor here in Jacksonville who said, Jesus visited...
17:48: I know who you're talking about.
17:49: And sat on his porch or something.
17:50: Couple of Easters ago, yeah.
17:52: Yeah.
17:52: It was like, Jesus came and sat on my porch and we had coffee or whatever.
17:55: I don't know what he said.
17:56: It was ridiculous.
17:57: And it's like, there's no confirmation in that.
18:00: The apostle Paul was confirmed by the other apostles.
18:02: He was confirmed by his works.
18:04: He was confirmed by miracles.
18:06: He was confirmed by the working...
18:08: By Peter.
18:09: Yeah, by the working spirit.
18:10: In the text of his letter, yeah.
18:12: Yeah.
18:12: So yeah, because he said that what he writes is scripture.
18:15: He confirms it is scripture.
18:17: So we have no way to confirm a man today.
18:22: And again, I think this is why we have that passage at the end of Revelation, which there's often argument about when John says, don't add anything to this book.
18:32: I do believe that that's directly related to Revelation.
18:36: However...
18:37: Revelation as in the divine concept or the book? No, the book.
18:40: The book of the Revelation ends with, don't add or take away from this book.
18:44: So in the context, historically and grammatically, that's related to the book of Revelation.
18:49: Gotcha.
18:49: Because we see other similar statements made in other Old Testament books about not adding or taking away from the word of God, right? So the concept is we should never add or take away from the word of God.
18:59: But it also bookends the last thing written by an apostle.
19:04: And it's about the last things that are going to happen in the world, the end of all things, the consummation.
19:10: And so when you come along later and say, hey, I got something to add, what are you adding to? It's already got the end of the story.
19:16: What could you possibly add to the end? I think there's a verse in Jude where he refers to the once for all delivered to the saint's faith.
19:27: I talked about that when I just preached to Jude recently and that particular phrase, and you actually said it right because in English, we translate it, but it's the once for all delivered to the saint's faith.
19:36: And that's the way it is in Greek and it sounds funny, but that's what he's saying.
19:40: So I studied German in college, and so German word order seems so strange to English ears, and it is, but awkward constructions like that are not uncommon because often they're trying to tell you something based upon the order of the words.
19:54: It matters.
19:55: Anyway, that's a topic for another time.
19:57: No, absolutely.
19:58: Okay, so someone, if I could, in summary, and you can just say yes or no, a capital A office-holding apostle is one of the 12, plus Paul, and Matthias and Judas.
20:12: And what about the gospel of Judas? No, I'm kidding.
20:14: We don't need to go there.
20:15: It's just first century Gnostic nonsense or whatever.
20:18: Actually, I think that was fourth century Gnostic.
20:19: Okay, I'm thinking of Thomas.
20:21: Thomas and I contend possibly second century.
20:24: Some argue for first century, but most of those people are liberals who are trying to stick it in to get it into the point.
20:29: A little Jesus seminar action there.
20:31: Exactly.
20:31: Sorry.
20:32: It's okay.
20:33: So capital A apostle, someone who had a commissioning or an encounter with the resurrected Christ, who the church from the very beginning accepted their authority, and what they wrote that we have that God has chosen to give us is, we believe, scripture.
20:48: Is that a good summary of a capital A apostle? Yeah, absolutely.
20:51: And then a lowercase a apostle is just more of a descriptor, and if you wanted to call your pastor an apostle or a missionary or something, that's fine as long as you clear that up.
21:00: Yeah, like I said, it wouldn't make it or break it for me if that was the way the church had defined.
21:07: Okay, cool.
21:08: So then something really important happens in Acts chapter six, though.
21:12: And so in Acts chapter six, we get the first taste that maybe this sort of, and pardon the term, because it's all, of course, God's church in the first five chapters, this sort of wild west, like the Holy Spirit running all over the place, and I've heard a lot, well, we don't need to put strictures on the Holy Spirit, okay, of course.
21:34: But the apostles in chapter six of the book of Acts were confronted with a problem, and they chose, and it was their apostolic right to do so, to establish something in the start of the sixth chapter of Acts.
21:49: What was that, and what was the problem they were facing? Well, there is, I believe that this is the proto-Diaconate.
21:59: Okay.
22:00: Some people say this was the commissioning of the first deacons.
22:03: Yes, but I don't think that that is, I don't think that that's how they define themselves.
22:10: I think they define themselves as taking the weight of ministry responsibility off of the apostles so that they would not be kept from the word and prayer.
22:23: This is what they say.
22:24: And I've often said this, I say, pastors are not, what you got? Sorry, I was just, so this is just a sheet that has Acts chapter six and then first Timothy, because we'll get into that.
22:35: Yeah, absolutely.
22:35: Just to have handy.
22:37: So they say, we don't want to be kept from the word of prayer, and that doesn't mean that we're more important or too important to, I've said before, I am not too important to clean a toilet or to change a light bulb.
22:53: And as a small church pastor, I've done all of those things.
22:55: I imagine you have.
22:57: But the most important thing that I do is study to prepare the sermon that is going to feed the flock and to pray for the people.
23:07: And so my most important duties are not counseling or meeting people or any of these things.
23:12: My most important duty is preaching and teaching the word and prayer.
23:18: And so anything that would take away from that becomes a distraction from the most important thing.
23:24: And so this is where the apostles saw themselves.
23:27: They saw themselves dealing with what could essentially have been the first church split.
23:31: We've all seen church splits.
23:33: You're right.
23:33: Where the Hellenistic, which is the Greek speaking Jewish people, were having issues with the Hebrew speaking Jewish people.
23:40: And there was a feeling like there was a division and some make a big deal about social justice and racism.
23:47: Yeah, I've heard that before.
23:48: There was just a disagreement about who was getting treated fairly in regard to the distribution of food, which tells us something about what they had to face then.
24:00: Because most of us in churches are not distributing food to our members.
24:04: Some are.
24:05: I mean, I preach at a church every Thursday that is a recovery ministry called Set Free, and they do.
24:10: I mean, they got to feed those guys three times a day because those guys live there.
24:14: And so they have to deal with things that you and I in our church probably don't have to deal with because we have people that come to church and then they go home and they eat lunch at home and they all have food.
24:24: Yep.
24:24: Unless we're potlucking.
24:25: Yeah, exactly.
24:26: But the church was having to deal with people who had been displaced, who had been put out of their homes, they had been lost jobs, all for the sake of Christ.
24:35: And so they're ministering to a unique portion of the body in regard to historically.
24:43: And so in the midst of this, they say, okay, we need to choose some guys to take this job and do it well.
24:52: And so they say, choose from among you these men, which is interesting in and of itself is they don't go about choosing.
24:59: They say, choose from among yourselves.
25:00: And I think there's a model there, which we may talk about later, but basically allowing the church to recognize within itself gifted men and then commissioning them to a task.
25:13: And so the reason why I say this proto-diaconate, because we don't see anything in this text about qualifications other than, and you have it here, so I might as well read it.
25:24: It says, pick out from among yourselves, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty.
25:34: So he's telling them to pick out seven men.
25:37: He's saying they need to have good reputation, be full of the Spirit.
25:40: Well, that's two qualifications.
25:41: Later, when Paul is writing about the office of deacon, the qualifications are expanded.
25:46: They're not necessarily changed because everything that Paul says is of good repute and is full of the Spirit.
25:52: So what we see is more specifics later.
25:56: And therefore, I would say this is a proto-diaconate, which gives way to the more full-orbed office of the diaconate, which we see in Paul's letter.
26:06: Okay.
26:06: Would you say the apostles here are acting as a proto-eldership over a church? Indeed.
26:11: Okay.
26:11: You think that that parallel holds? Yes.
26:14: The only real distinction, I would say, is because we do see little a apostles, like Barnabas is called an apostle, and even the brother of Jesus, James, who wrote the Apostle Epistle of James, is not one of the original twelve.
26:28: So they're called apostles, but I don't think with the same, as the capital A.
26:33: I don't see them as being on the same level as Paul or Peter.
26:37: So when you see that, I think that there is a transitional point.
26:45: That's why I said Peter will later call himself an elder.
26:47: Paul never calls himself an elder though, which is interesting.
26:50: Always calls himself an apostle, which that's actually come up in conversation within my own conversation with other people about eldership, about was Paul really an elder? Because Paul, we would see maybe as a church planter, an evangelist, an apostle, but was he an elder? Did he function as an elder in the same way as maybe Peter did in his own church? Or perhaps Timothy.
27:15: Yeah.
27:16: And when you look at the qualifications, like Paul is not married, talks about being married and things like that, at least that we know of.
27:22: So these are questions that come up.
27:24: Was Paul functioning in that role? Or was he more of a, because we know he planted churches, we know he was an evangelist, and so does that again sort of further widen that distinction? But would we say the apostles are functioning as proto-elders? Yes.
27:39: I would have no issue with that.
27:41: Okay.
27:41: And for the listener, if you want to check in and see what one of the first things the deacons did, I would invite you to read Acts chapter 7, which was Stephen preaching the gospel from the Old Testament.
27:54: One of the very first things he did was starting all the way back at Abraham, and he's preaching to the Sanhedrin who would have known this story, and then at the very end, he puts the finger right at them and says, and you crucified this guy, and then they stoned him for it.
28:09: And you know what's so interesting to me is something I noticed here.
28:12: It says Paul was there, Saul, excuse me, at the time, Saul was there giving approval or, you know, it was people were laying their cloaks at his feet or something like that.
28:22: There's some phrase like that.
28:24: The same Paul who either martyred or at least was present and approving of the martyrdom of Stephen is the same one who wrote us the pastoral epistles that lays out what a deacon is supposed to be.
28:36: I find it so interesting that he watched the very first deacon go down under a hail of stones, and so, and then obviously post his experience on the road to Damascus, he now knows this is what a deacon is supposed to be.
28:50: Yeah, I find that so interesting how the Holy Spirit weaved that.
28:53: Okay, so in a modern church, so we've covered apostles and what that word might mean.
28:59: In a modern church in 2022, what does it, okay, let's start with this.
29:05: Does a church have to have deacons and if they do, what do they do in today's church? This is an area that I think there could be some disagreement, but I would say that a church rightly constituted would have at least two elders and at least one deacon.
29:30: But that is not to say that a church plant would automatically have to have that right away.
29:36: I see, okay.
29:37: So here's my argument.
29:40: The concept of the presbyteros, the elders, the episkopos, the overseers, and that's one office, the office of sometimes translated bishop, sometimes translated pastor or elder.
29:55: It's always in the plural when Paul is addressing them in churches, and when he says he's raising them up in churches, it's always in the plural.
30:02: So I have a really difficult time with a church that is single pastor-led.
30:09: I'm not saying it's necessarily sinful, because I understand there are things that happen, but I don't think it's wise.
30:22: I think you end up in the that I have seen, oftentimes you end up with a little Protestant pope who has no one who is going to call him.
30:32: Now, they'll call him out on the color of the carpet, but nobody's going to call him out on his doctrine of the Trinity.
30:37: Yeah, I understand.
30:38: And so you get guys who start going off into la-la land theologically, and there's no one else in the church.
30:47: And I've actually heard this, not with my own ears, but I've heard this through another individual that he was friends with a pastor, and the pastor said, I'm the one who went to seminary.
30:57: These people really don't know what I know.
31:00: Who are they to question me? I know, I know.
31:03: Exactly.
31:03: It makes you just want to just...
31:04: I'm itchy now.
31:05: Yeah, yeah.
31:06: And when you get that, you got a guy who is in serious danger.
31:10: He's got some problems.
31:11: Yeah.
31:12: If there's no one who can say to him, how'd you come to that conclusion? That's a question that we ask around here sometimes.
31:21: You just said something, and I'm not sure I agree, how did you come to that conclusion? Right, I understand.
31:26: And I think that's a legitimately kind way of saying, what you talking about, Willis? Because that's really what you're thinking.
31:32: Yeah, you are.
31:33: What you talking about? How did you get there? Yeah, let's exegete that together.
31:37: Yeah.
31:38: Whereas in some churches where there's only one pastor, one elder, there is seemingly no one to be the...
31:48: And he's the arbiter of what's right and what's wrong.
31:52: And there's no one to call into account.
31:54: So I think a plurality of elders is necessary.
31:57: And plurality just means two or more, at least one person that can come to you and act in that sense as your equal.
32:05: And then you have, on the other hand, the need for a deacon.
32:09: I think this is more needed than anybody realizes.
32:13: Our church functions right now...
32:16: Our membership, around 100, and we function with three elders and four deacons.
32:21: And each one of the deacons is assigned a list of people in the church.
32:27: And they are expected, and they know that they are expected, to be in contact with their list for as long as they have that list.
32:33: And the list will change.
32:35: Okay.
32:35: And your church does formalize membership roles? Yes.
32:38: Okay.
32:40: Well, that's a whole other topic.
32:43: It is, yeah.
32:43: Because we do have formal membership, but our formal membership is...
32:48: We are commonly purging the role because we don't believe in having an unrealistic role.
33:01: If we had a role that had everybody who's ever joined this church, it'd be 300 names.
33:05: Our church goes back to the 60s.
33:08: It would be thousands.
33:09: And it's not...
33:09: I mean, we're 150 on a Sunday, plus kids' men, so maybe 200 souls on the campus.
33:14: Exactly.
33:15: So we are very...
33:17: In fact, that's part of the deacons and what they do.
33:19: They help us keep up with who is active in the body.
33:23: And if we begin to see someone who is being inactive, they're the first line of defense.
33:29: They're the first phone call.
33:31: Hey, haven't seen you in church in two weeks.
33:32: What's up? You've been out of town, are you sick? And if we know that beforehand, we'd have already contacted them.
33:39: We know they were sick or know whatever.
33:41: Or if they've already told us, hey, we're going to be out of town for two weeks, we're going to pay homage to the mouse in Orlando, which I hope they're not.
33:47: At this point, I mean...
33:50: But whatever.
33:50: If we know what they're doing, we know where they're at or something.
33:53: We used to have a couple that owned a house in the mountains.
33:58: They were gone three months a year because they were retired.
34:01: And so they would go up there during the best season.
34:06: And so three months out of the year, we didn't need to call them or check up on them.
34:09: And we would still keep in contact, but we weren't worried when we saw them gone for a couple of weeks.
34:16: So the deacons are...
34:17: In our church, and I do believe this is biblical, the deacons are helping us manage the body.
34:22: There's so many more of them than there are of us.
34:25: And...
34:26: By us, you're referring to yourself and the other elders.
34:28: Yeah.
34:29: Let's just say a hundred people.
34:31: There's three of us.
34:32: And you say, well, there's only four deacons.
34:34: Yes, but they're not doing all that we're doing.
34:36: They're doing this.
34:37: They're keeping up with that.
34:38: And when we meet and we meet once a month, the first thing we do is we say, okay, let's go down your list.
34:44: You tell us how the folks are doing.
34:46: Is there anybody here that needs a visit from an elder? Is there anybody here who needs attention? Is there anybody here who feels like they're not being ministered too well? Because you've had a conversation with them, and hopefully you've asked that question.
34:58: Recently, we had a situation where we just realized a person felt neglected.
35:05: Okay, we need to know that.
35:06: Yeah, for sure.
35:07: Because none of us have intentionally done that.
35:10: And so, okay, this person feels neglected.
35:12: We need to address that.
35:13: And so they are that for us.
35:17: Now, do they do other things? Yes.
35:19: One of them is gifted in regard to technology, sort of like yourself.
35:25: So he takes care of our website, he helps on the finance team, so he does some other things.
35:30: You know, what I'm hearing when you say all this is what the Apostles said in Acts 6 is it is not good that we should give up prayer and the ministry of the Word in order to wait tables.
35:40: That's right.
35:40: And immediately we think, well, how snobby and elitist.
35:43: No, they've been serving with Jesus, they've been feeding people, like, this is nothing new to them, but they recognize the hierarchy of the importance of what they have to do.
35:52: That's right.
35:52: And so what I'm hearing all that you say there is, and if there are any single pastors of small churches out there who you are the chair setter upper and you're fixing roof leaks and plumbing toilets, we're not saying that an elder should be above that or should think that that is menial work, but that is not his primary task.
36:13: Yep.
36:14: And if the New Testament has given us a solution to that, and I think we're in agreement that it has, we should take it.
36:20: And I also say this, I've been pastor of the same church for 16 years, and it hasn't always been the way it is now.
36:28: So did you establish the deacons here, or did you, in concert with your eldership, establish deacons here? The story is long, so I'll make it short.
36:36: When I came here, I was already on staff as an associate pastor, the other pastor retired, I became the pastor.
36:42: And there was already an eldership, and there was already a deaconate, but neither one of them were functioning biblically.
36:47: I understand.
36:47: And so...
36:48: Is that perhaps why we were wanting to find a biblically functioning church? Yes.
36:53: In fact, I...
36:54: Dear viewer...
36:56: Yeah, I don't know if it's going to go blurry, but yeah.
36:58: Your beard is much cooler now.
37:00: It is.
37:00: It's much fuller.
37:01: And if I had it to do over again, I would not have put my picture on...
37:03: You wouldn't have done that? No, that was awful.
37:05: I got you.
37:07: Again, I was 29 years old when I wrote that.
37:10: I see.
37:10: But now you're raking in all that big book revenue and royalties.
37:15: Not a dime.
37:16: Just doing this, yeah.
37:17: Exactly.
37:18: So in 2008, we went through a period of sort of reformatting the church because of some things that had happened, and I did almost an entire year of sermons on the church, on ecclesiology, starting with who's the head of the church? It's Christ.
37:34: How does he govern the church through the word? It was that foundational.
37:38: I see.
37:38: And that's how the book starts, so that foundational.
37:40: Who's the head of the church? How does he govern? Governs through the word.
37:43: Elder's job is to interpret the word and to teach it and to govern by it.
37:47: Therefore, Christ is still governing the church through his word.
37:51: He's just doing it through the work, the hands and feet of the...
37:53: The undershepherds.
37:55: Yes, exactly.
37:56: So Christ is still the head.
37:57: This is not Keith Fossey's church.
37:59: This is not anybody else's church.
38:00: This is Christ's church.
38:01: And so in that regard, we have this very important understanding of the role of the elders as being the mouthpiece of the Bible.
38:10: The Bible's the...
38:11: Thus saith the Lord.
38:12: Yeah.
38:13: And so our eldership, we used to have a...
38:18: we had a board of directors and we had committees for everything.
38:24: I mean, there's committees for shoe tying.
38:25: I mean, it was ridiculous.
38:27: And so one of the...
38:28: Little gallows humor here, because my church is and was in many ways similar.
38:33: Okay.
38:34: So all of these committees and all of these...
38:37: I remember one time I changed the order of worship for something.
38:40: I just moved a song or did something.
38:42: And afterwards, one of the elders at the time, who again, was not functioning as an elder, as I would say an elder should function, came to me and he goes, why'd you move that song? And I told him and he goes, well, who gave you permission to do that? He said, did you go to the worship committee? Oh my.
38:57: I said, no.
38:58: Oh my.
38:59: And it started this sort of big thing.
39:01: Well, you have to go to the worship committee if you're going to move things around.
39:03: Oh boy.
39:04: And so, yeah.
39:05: And like I said, I was like, no, I'm not going to do that.
39:07: Yeah, I got you.
39:08: And so that sort of became a little snafu, but again, all that gave birth to...
39:12: Now you were, but you said you were an associate pastor at the time? No, no, no, no, no, no.
39:17: That was after I became a pastor.
39:19: Okay.
39:19: So I would say...
39:20: So you're a pastor and you had elders coming to you and saying you need to get permission to do that.
39:26: Yes.
39:26: So it was clearly not an equality perceived between the two of you, wasn't it? And again, the story is long and legendary about all the things that happened.
39:37: There were elders who began to have issues over Calvinism and things, and it became everything I did was a problem.
39:46: And so, yeah, in 2008, I thought I was leaving.
39:49: I thought I was going to have to resign because it was so bad, but God kept me here and has continued to keep me here.
39:54: But yeah, so like I said, that's a podcast for another day.
39:58: I understand.
39:58: But all in all, we had to reformat the church and say, okay, we've got this board of directors that's over everything, even the elders.
40:07: The elders reported to the board of directors.
40:10: I keep going.
40:11: I want to say something.
40:13: So we said, we're going to put the elders over the board.
40:18: And now we don't even have a board anymore.
40:20: But since then, it became...
40:22: Because the first thing that happened after that, we had our first board meeting, the elders were in charge, and everybody said, well, what's the board for? We're like, exactly.
40:29: You picked up what we're putting down because this is the point.
40:32: And that did lead to a little bit of contention because, well, why do we still have a board? You're right.
40:37: We don't...
40:38: Well, imagine that.
40:41: And you're gone.
40:43: It's like, I dream of Jeannie.
40:45: And again, that created some difficulty, but it was what it was.
40:50: We just did this exercise at my own church, and I want to keep it as an interview for you, but we did this exercise at my own church in which there was a guy who worked for something called Blessing Point Ministries, a gentleman named Mark Bernard.
41:03: I'll be honest, I was a little skeptical at first because the parachurch-type organizations that come in and don't worry, we're the consultants that are going to fix your church.
41:13: I just have a natural, allergic reaction to that.
41:15: I always think about office space.
41:16: Exactly.
41:17: Yeah, yeah.
41:17: The bobs are here.
41:18: What do you do? What would you say you do here? I work with the customers.
41:23: I'm a people person.
41:25: What's wrong with you people? We're not gonna finish the rest of that quote.
41:28: We're not doing...
41:29: Very unsanctified.
41:31: Listener, you did not hear that.
41:33: Watch it on VidAngel.
41:34: That's right.
41:35: There you go.
41:35: That's it, that's it.
41:37: But we had to go back into our church's history.
41:39: We went all the way back to when it was founded, which it grew out of a community club down in Switzerland, Florida.
41:45: And so we were literally a country club church.
41:50: That's a insult used when people show up and they want something from the church rather than giving to it.
41:56: And you say that, and it's an insult and all that, but that was literally our foundation.
42:03: It was a group of people at a community club with godly motives who wanted to start a church, but it held onto a lot of that.
42:09: And so anyway, long, long, long, long story short, in this investigation, one of the things that we found was that at the start, there was a board of officers is what it was called.
42:18: It's in the church charter.
42:19: We still have it.
42:20: It's on yellowed paper and all that.
42:21: It's a historical document from the 1964, whatever.
42:24: It was a board of officers is what it was called.
42:27: And they called a pastor.
42:29: And this board, there was a treasurer and all that.
42:31: So it was a financial aspect to it.
42:33: And we did not get elders until the late 80s.
42:36: So the church functioned with single pastor and a board for 25, 30 years or so.
42:40: Well, the problem that created is this went all the way up into the mid-2016s, 2015 to 2018, sometime in that range, where...
42:48: And by then, it was simply called the council.
42:51: It was the council of officers, but it was just simply referred to as the church council.
42:55: Believed themselves to be deacons, because we used the qualifications for deacons to qualify someone for that board, and they were told they were deacons at times, but they weren't doing what deacons did, and they're good, godly men on that board that did great things.
43:09: But the problem is they came into conflict with the elders.
43:12: There were times where the elders said, this is what God has for our church, and the council simply said, okay, that's fine, but we're not going to fund it.
43:18: Like, we disagree.
43:20: There was turmoil there.
43:22: And so the reason this is so, the reason I want to interview on this, and this is so close to my heart, is because I'm finding, and people may roll their eyes when they hear this, I'm finding when you do things the way the New Testament says, things tend to work better.
43:34: It just, God has a design for his church, and I want to know what that is.
43:38: And that's what actually prompted this topic and the interview with you.
43:43: Archers is going to be commissioning its first deacons officially in about four weeks.
43:46: I'm one of them, which is really exciting.
43:48: Wonderful.
43:49: We have three elders, we have a couple of pastors, and that leads us into our next category.
43:55: Before we get out of deacons, and I know we kind of took a long detour around about stuff, but I think it was profitable.
44:01: Is there anything you wanted to say about Paul's qualifications for deacons that we find in 1 Timothy chapter 3? Two quick things.
44:11: The first is, the qualifications are very similar to what is given for elders, so the biggest distinction is elders have to be able to teach, and the deacons don't.
44:24: So therein lies, sort of, when we start talking about elders… Yeah, which we'll go to in just a minute.
44:29: An elder has to be able to do that.
44:31: That's not saying a deacon can't.
44:32: You already said Stephen preached a sermon.
44:34: You've preached sermons.
44:35: You've taught the Bible.
44:37: We're not saying deacons are ignorant of the Word or can't do it, but it's not a requirement that they be able to.
44:44: And so you could have a man who is not gifted to teach, but is gifted to serve.
44:49: And so what one gift does a deacon have to have? He has to have the gift of service.
44:53: He has to… That's what the word means, is it not? That's right.
44:56: And I did preach a sermon on this just a few weeks ago because we commissioned another deacon, our fourth deacon, and I said if he's not gifted to serve, then he's not gifted to be a deacon.
45:06: So that's above all.
45:10: Now, the second thing is how your church is going to manage the question of female deacons.
45:16: And again, another podcast, another time, but there is a question about 1 Timothy 3, specifically when it refers to women, gynakos, whether or not that's referring to their women or their wives, which would be the way that ESV translates it.
45:30: Yeah, it says there in verse 11.
45:32: Yeah.
45:32: Whereas in, I believe it's New America Standard Bible, it just says women, and that's where you get like the MacArthur position where John MacArthur would say there are women deacons.
45:42: And I would not allow that to be a divisive point if I were going to a church, but in our church, we only commission men to the role of deacons.
45:52: We do believe that this refers to wives of deacons.
45:54: But I say that saying that there are some questions about that interpretation, and particularly in regard to the questions that come up are, one, if there are qualifications for the wives of deacons, why not for the elders? Good question.
46:11: So that's a good question about exegetically, why is this here? And secondly, that in regard to what they are called, the qualifications are so similar to that of a deacon, it would be it would be reasonable to assume that this is its own thing.
46:30: Okay.
46:30: The only thing, though, I would say on the other side, my side, is the deacon is referenced in 8, the deacon is referenced in 12, and therefore it seems odd from a linguistic position to throw in women deacons in 11 if that's its own thing, rather than it being tied to what came before and what came after.
46:50: I see.
46:50: And so I see it as tying to the deacons and the wives of deacons.
46:53: Okay, so you would, and so that brings up something I hope we don't, I mean, we don't have to go too far into, but if you had someone who had that gift, but they were married to someone who had lots of issues, let's say, in verse 11, you would say, I'm sorry, but you have a marriage issue you need to work out.
47:11: Absolutely.
47:11: Okay.
47:12: Absolutely.
47:12: And I don't mean that to sound brash or that it's easy to say that.
47:15: Yeah, sure.
47:16: But no, and I would say the same thing would go for a pastor, and I would actually, going back up, if you go back up to the qualification, it's not on this, but if you go back up to the qualifications for elders, it talks about managing his household well.
47:30: And therefore his wife is implicitly referred to in that.
47:34: That's a fair point.
47:35: Because if he has a wife who is an unbeliever, or if he has a wife who is not managing the home with him, is not submissive to him in the home and those things, he's not managing his household well.
47:45: So his wife is implicitly referred to in that.
47:48: This specifically still doesn't satisfy every question about why wives specifically of deacons.
47:53: And one of the things that I do think that we can extrapolate from this is that the role of deacon in the act of service is something that the wife can participate in.
48:03: For sure.
48:03: And especially in our church, all of our deacons, their wives are exemplary servants themselves, and therefore we encourage a working together now, not in regard to things that are deacon business.
48:20: We don't encourage the women to come into the business meeting and have a say.
48:23: And I don't mean to say, well, we want to be keeping quiet or anything, but they're not involved in the meetings, but in things like calling on the sick and things like that, we certainly encourage that.
48:31: We have one of our deacons is in charge of our fellowship ministry and his wife is a great cook and she does all the food and does.
48:37: So all of those things, they work together.
48:40: And so if a man has a wife who is not committed to supporting him in that, whether it's elder or deacon, I don't see him as qualified.
48:50: I see.
48:50: Not yet.
48:51: That could be a big drag on his ability to minister.
48:53: Yes.
48:54: Yeah, I understand.
48:55: And before we close out deacons, something I learned just in preparing this and some other stuff is if you go back to, and this is something I, we had this dinner with our deacon candidates and I was, me and another gentleman named Mike Smith, which I understand is the name of your deacon that you just commissioned.
49:12: Our elders gave us what, and he's a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, so this is the terminology used.
49:17: He said, we got battlefield promotions, essentially.
49:19: And that was basically an exercise of the elder's authority in sort of an urgent situation.
49:26: We had the gentleman who was our lead pastor resigned a couple months ago and there was, he was shouldering a lot of that congregational care and counseling and sick visits and all that sort of thing.
49:42: And so our eldership, who were not full-time pastors, if you will, that were just, they held other careers and stuff like that, still all three of them good, great, godly men, gave us what they called, as he called it, battlefield promotions to say we need help right now.
49:59: And then we'll get through this transition.
50:01: And the justification for that, and I think it was good, was that Acts 6 appears to happen in like an afternoon because you've got people who are hungry.
50:08: You can't do a 60-day process and then figure out how we feed hungry people, you know? Jared And now we have the ability to do a little more.
50:15: And again, like I said, we're going to do it in a few weeks.
50:16: We're going to be a little more, a little more deliberate about it, that sort of thing, but that's good.
50:21: But one of the things I noticed while we were having this dinner is Mark chapter 10, specifically around verse 45-46, it's like the atonement verse in Mark.
50:30: You know, the Son of Man came not to be served, not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
50:37: Which is actually, what Mark actually wrote was the Son of Man came not to be deaconed, but to deacon and to give his, he makes it a verb, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
50:46: So, I told our deacons, as a proto-deacon, I guess you could say, be like Christ.
50:53: That's the biggest qualification is be like Christ.
50:56: And that will, you'll never go wrong with that.
50:59: Mark I agree.
50:59: And that's very similar to something I said in the sermon that I was preaching on, sort of ended the sermon there.
51:05: If you're looking for an example of what a servant looks like, look to your master.
51:09: Jared Look to Christ.
51:10: Mark Because he was the, he came to serve.
51:12: Jared Yep.
51:12: Mark Absolutely.
51:13: Jared All right.
51:13: So, let's push that clutch in and shift into the next gear on this Road Ranger.
51:18: And we will, we're going to talk about the third office.
51:21: So, we've covered apostles and their function in the early church.
51:24: We've now covered deacons.
51:26: Let's talk about the third one.
51:27: So, the third one is given a variety of different Greek words and also we translate them as a variety of different English words.
51:37: So, I'm going to throw these, all these words out there and you sort this alphabet soup around and you tell me, okay, this is this, this is this, this is this.
51:45: So, the New Testament has presbyteros or presbyteros.
51:49: It has episkopos, episkopos, however you want to pronounce it.
51:53: And then poimen, shepherd, I guess you would say.
51:57: Then the English words are shepherd, pastor, elder, bishop, overseer.
52:03: Are these all the same office? Are they all the same role within the same office? What do the words mean? Does one, is one like in authority over another? Just kind of lay that out for us if you would.
52:13: The office is the same.
52:15: And I base that not just on my opinion, I base that on when Paul is writing to Titus specifically, he uses presbyteros and episkopos interchangeably.
52:29: Okay.
52:30: And so, we see that in, I have to, it's actually here in the book.
52:34: Oh, it is? Yeah.
52:36: You look in the perfect book.
52:38: That's right.
52:39: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
52:39: But I do reference that passage, what are the requirements or, let's see, responsibilities of the elders, 64.
52:50: I see verse 6 and 7, verse 6 says, an elder must be blameless, the husband of one wife, et cetera, et cetera.
52:56: Then in verse 7 it says, since an overseer is trusted with God's work.
53:00: Yeah, because that word elder is translating presbyteros and the word overseer is episkopos.
53:04: Episkopos, okay.
53:05: Episkopos, to oversee.
53:07: So, this must be the same office.
53:09: Yeah, because he's, in the context, he is using it interchangeably.
53:13: Okay.
53:13: So, those two offices at least are used interchangeably by Paul, therefore, I would say that they are the same office.
53:22: Okay.
53:22: Because one is titular, an elder, and the other is what he does, he oversees, he's an overseer.
53:32: And so, and even the same way with shepherd, he shepherds.
53:36: I see.
53:36: So, they can be used together.
53:39: Now, that does not mean that all the elders are the same, that just means all the elders are elders.
53:47: All the elders are pastors.
53:49: And in our church, we have actually sort of moved away from the use of the word elder to the word pastor.
53:55: Okay.
53:55: And the reason for that is because of just colloquial sentiment.
54:01: In churches in the South, the term elder is still somewhat odd.
54:09: You know, my wife, my wife went to a church, I don't mean, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.
54:13: My wife went to a church that was pastor elected by a board of deacons, that was the model.
54:19: And when she first got down here, and I told her about an elder-led church, she thought it was so pretentious.
54:25: Elder, who are these guys calling themselves like, oh, we're the wise elders on the mountaintop or something like that.
54:31: Exactly.
54:31: She had a, and it took, of course, we talked through it and all that, but it took her some time to warm up to the idea that, okay, this is a biblical word, this is good word, but I still feel weird about it.
54:42: Yeah.
54:42: And also, those young men that ride around on those 10 speeds with their white shirts and their short sleeves and their ties, they're elder so-and-so.
54:52: And so, there is a sense in which the cult of Mormonism has co-opted the term.
54:58: And therefore, if you introduce yourself as elder Smith...
55:01: Yeah, they're expecting something.
55:03: They may think.
55:04: And again, not that the culture demands what we do, but we are sensitive to how people understand things.
55:12: Therefore, if I and Mike and Andy, who are three elders, if all of us introduce ourselves as pastor, then nobody...
55:19: The only question then is, well, is there a senior pastor? And we'll talk about that in a minute.
55:24: But the idea is, okay, but you're still a pastor.
55:26: Because even in churches...
55:28: I have a buddy who pastors a church in Callahan.
55:32: I just preached here recently.
55:33: He's a sweet, sweet brother.
55:34: He has an associate pastor.
55:36: I just say he has two elders.
55:38: But it is a pastor, an associate pastor.
55:40: And that's since they're both ordained, they're both functioning in a role that's pastoring the body.
55:46: They work together really well.
55:48: And so, I say they've got a plurality of elders.
55:51: They've got two elders.
55:52: They're both pastors.
55:53: It's just they do see themselves as...
55:55: I hate to say senior and junior, but there's a senior pastor and an associate pastor.
56:00: And that's a term we have avoided here, rather than saying I'm senior and they're associate or anything like that.
56:07: What we do in our constitution is we define vocational and non-vocational.
56:13: Now, are you a confessional church? We are.
56:17: 1646 London Baptist.
56:18: Okay.
56:19: Does that touch on this issue at all? A little, but not much.
56:22: It's only 52 articles, and they were really just trying to differentiate themselves from the Anabaptists.
56:27: So primarily, it does deal with some ecclesiology.
56:31: One of the bigger things that it does is it allows for non-clergy to administer the sacraments, which is actually something that the later confession does not.
56:40: Because we would allow for...
56:43: We allow fathers to baptize our children because we don't believe someone has to be ordained to administer that sacrament or ordinance.
56:54: There's different...
56:56: I don't have any strong stake on that.
56:58: Oh, I know, but there may be.
56:59: I see.
56:59: Yeah.
57:00: The ordinance of baptism, we will allow fathers to baptize their children.
57:05: We've done it, and it's been very beautiful.
57:08: But the reason you were asking me if we're a confessional was...
57:12: So you said that you had to clarify a lot of this language, and you said that you had elders that weren't functioning very well as elders.
57:20: Yeah.
57:21: But now, to clarify that, to be faithful to what the Bible says, but also to be culturally sensitive, you tend to introduce your three elders as pastors.
57:30: Yes.
57:30: Okay.
57:30: All right.
57:31: But the document that we have isn't specific to that language.
57:36: That's just more...
57:36: And again, our three elders are the ones that brought in that confession.
57:39: We weren't always confessional.
57:40: I see.
57:41: We've really only recently adopted that confession.
57:43: And after...
57:45: It's only been about a year, and we talked through it and everything.
57:47: So that particular confession was the one we felt best lined up with what we believe and teach.
57:53: So that was actually a product of having good elders who were willing to go and study and say, this is where we are.
57:59: This is what ties us to a historic church, the historic particular Baptist movement that came out of London in the 1600s.
58:09: So beginning back, I know we sort of veered there.
58:12: That's okay.
58:13: Getting back to the issue of...
58:16: And I'm trying to remember exactly where I was going.
58:19: In regard to the titles, we don't differentiate senior associate, but we do differentiate in our constitution, which is not the same as the confession.
58:32: For those who don't know, churches have a constitution, which is basically...
58:36: It's like a governing document for our business, because the church does conduct financial business, it conducts business within a building, and so we have rules about who has the capability of opening and shutting the building, things like that, little things that are just not necessarily biblical, but...
58:52: Perhaps bylaws would be another word for that? Well, it's our constitution bylaws.
58:55: Okay, got it.
58:56: And it's only six pages long.
58:57: It's not...
58:58: That's about where ours is, actually, somewhere around there.
59:00: And so it says in there that there are two...
59:04: There's the vocational elder, which means that he makes his living from being an elder.
59:12: As the scripture says, he who preaches the gospel makes his living from the gospel.
59:15: So that is a role that right now there's only one of us, and that's me.
59:21: And then the non-vocational elders are men who are giving their time as elders and who exercise the authority of elders or pastors, but they do not have the same expectations in regard to responsibility.
59:37: I see.
59:37: And that doesn't mean they're any less valuable, but because the church is supporting me, and it's not supporting Brother Mike, who has a business, who owns a business, and who's responsible to be there 50, 60 hours a week, because he works hard, there would be no expectation upon him that would be on me in regard to the time given to the study and preaching.
01:00:02: And this is why I'm the one who preaches the primary Sunday morning message, because I'm given to the week to study that for that message.
01:00:09: And I do a lot of other things within the church that are under that scope.
01:00:15: I see.
01:00:15: So it's not so much a division of authority or distinction of authority...
01:00:21: I see.
01:00:21: ...as much as it is a distinction of responsibility.
01:00:23: Okay.
01:00:24: But if, God forbid, Brother Foskey here got hit by a bus on a Saturday night...
01:00:29: Absolutely.
01:00:29: ...then when your church gathers on the Lord's Day, one of those other two men, and again, they have a lack of preparation or whatever because they weren't expecting it, but one of those two men would be qualified and capable of getting up in front and saying, this is the Word of the Lord.
01:00:43: Absolutely.
01:00:44: Okay.
01:00:44: And a good example of that is my wife is with child.
01:00:51: And so when we first learned that she was going to have our sixth child...
01:00:57: Congratulations.
01:00:57: Thank you.
01:00:59: I went to the elders and I said, hey, this is how I told them.
01:01:03: I didn't tell them we were having a baby.
01:01:04: I said, hey, come around September, I'm going to need a few weeks off.
01:01:08: And they both looked at each other and said, oh, congratulations.
01:01:11: Oh, there you go.
01:01:11: They had to figure it out.
01:01:12: Yeah.
01:01:13: Because they were like, do the math.
01:01:14: Yeah, the little clock, stop watching the calendar.
01:01:17: Yeah.
01:01:17: Yeah.
01:01:18: So it was like, yeah, I'm going to need several weeks.
01:01:22: I see.
01:01:23: And they're going to give me...
01:01:24: We've talked maybe doing four weeks.
01:01:26: Okay.
01:01:27: I may still come to church, but I won't have to have the duties of through the week preparing.
01:01:32: You won't have that heavy lift.
01:01:33: And if I can't be here, if the baby needs me or mama needs me, then I don't have to be here.
01:01:37: I see.
01:01:37: And that's a wonderful blessing to have other men who are capable of preaching and teaching, who if I did wake up unable to speak or unable to move because I had hurt myself or something, I have that.
01:01:51: And like I said, we do a lot of other sharing of responsibilities.
01:01:55: Like for instance, during the resurrection season, we have several messages in a row where for years, I was the one who did all the messages because we did have elders, but only recently have I had elders raised up that have desire to preach.
01:02:10: The elders we had before, one had a little bit of a speech impediment.
01:02:14: It was a little hard for him.
01:02:15: There was another who had a desire to teach Sunday school, but he didn't really have a...
01:02:21: He didn't feel confident to stand and preach.
01:02:24: I see.
01:02:24: I understood that distinction and he was able to teach, but he just didn't want to do that role.
01:02:28: So when I was out those years, I would invite someone from another church or another pastor to come in.
01:02:34: And that was always fine.
01:02:35: But now that God has raised up these two men who can preach well and preach, again, like you said, a drop of a hat, it's nice because at any moment, I know that either one of them could fill the pulpit.
01:02:51: And we share...
01:02:52: Oh, getting back to the Resurrection Sunday.
01:02:54: We have a Good Friday service, sunrise service, and a regular service on Sunday.
01:02:59: So normally, in years past, I'm preparing three extra messages that week, or two extra ones on top of the regular one.
01:03:06: But for the last two years, I've said, gentlemen, would y'all like to share this duty? Yes, they want to preach.
01:03:13: So Brother Mike preached one of the best Good Friday messages we've ever had this last Good Friday.
01:03:21: Brother Andy preached a wonderful sunrise service, and then I preached the morning service, and it was wonderful.
01:03:26: And so there's a lot of blessing in that.
01:03:28: There's a lot of blessing in being able to lean on them, and them not feeling that it's a burden.
01:03:36: They want to do it.
01:03:37: So you've said, and we can kind of draw to a close a little bit on eldership here, but you've said that there are certain things that...
01:03:47: You drew a bit of a distinction between deacons and elders, and that the elders ought to be able to teach.
01:03:51: Is there anything else that only elders have the biblical warrant to do in a church? That's kind of a tough question, because it's a good question, but I don't want to misspeak here.
01:04:05: But I'll give you some examples.
01:04:06: Okay.
01:04:08: If there were a need within the body for shepherding in regard to something that was a sin issue, and it needed to be dealt with, I think that that would be a role that the elders should take point on.
01:04:30: Okay.
01:04:31: So church discipline, is that what you're suggesting? Yeah, but not necessarily always, because discipline, you know, I see that as the end.
01:04:37: But even in the beginning, you know, we've kind of a...the way that we've described it with our deacons is this.
01:04:44: If in your monthly calls or quarterly calls or whatever you're having these conversations, if something arises that it seems like there's a need for counsel and a need for shepherding, you know, feel free to talk to the people, love on them, pray for them, but please make us aware.
01:05:00: I see.
01:05:01: Because we do feel like in regard to the shepherding of the soul, you know, Hebrews talks about...
01:05:08: Give an account because they're watching over your soul.
01:05:10: Yes, it talks about the reason they should do this with joy, because they're watching over your souls, right? Is Hebrews 13, right? Yep, yep, yep.
01:05:17: And so don't...it says, and I'll go ahead and finish that out because you can't preach this from the pulpit without people squirming a little bit.
01:05:24: Dear listener, it says, do not burden them and do not make this a burden, but rather make it a joy.
01:05:30: And then it says to the congregant, don't make it a burden because this would be of no benefit to you.
01:05:36: That's right.
01:05:36: There is no point to doing that.
01:05:37: So make their lives easy if you can as make the sufferings that they endure come from the outside world, not from inside, if possible.
01:05:47: Amen.
01:05:48: And so I think looking at that passage, it talks about the elders specifically, the overseers giving an account for the souls.
01:05:56: Now, will the deacons have to give an account for how they served? Yes, but we're going to give an account for how we shepherded their souls.
01:06:02: And so because that burden or responsibility is placed upon us, I do think that that is something that the deacons defer to the elders with.
01:06:11: And so the elders do have an extra measure of responsibility.
01:06:15: And like I said, if there is a marriage that's collapsing or there's a man who has fallen into drunkenness or something, this is not something that we would expect the deacons to handle.
01:06:29: We would expect the deacons to bring us the ball and let us run with it.
01:06:32: And that's not saying we're perfect, but that's our job is to shepherd their soul.
01:06:36: So you get the nice hard ones, you let them have the soft balls, you get the hard ones.
01:06:40: Yeah, that doesn't mean it's easy for us, but that's another, you asked about distinction.
01:06:44: I would say certainly bring it to us and don't let it, we don't want to be surprised that six months later you've been trying to help this guy out.
01:06:53: And not saying that you couldn't do well, but this is our duty.
01:06:58: I see.
01:06:58: I gotcha.
01:06:59: Well, I know we're kind of where we're wanting to be on time-wise.
01:07:04: Is there anything else that you wanted to say? And this is, by the way, a biblically functioning church by Pastor Keith here.
01:07:11: And so, I will be taking one home today.
01:07:13: Thank you very much for that.
01:07:15: Is there anything else that you wanted to say? Like, if you could just get on your soapbox and shout for the rooftops on specifically these three roles, or two roles, I guess we really have active in the New Testament, in the post-apostolic church.
01:07:29: The pastor, the elder, the overseer, the deacon, bishop, these words that we use, even though we've now said that that's just two offices, pastor, elder, overseer, and then the deacon.
01:07:38: Is there anything else you wanted to say? And let me just clarify, because I know that sometimes churches will distinguish between the pastor and the elder.
01:07:45: And in our sense, I guess we would say vocational elder versus non-vocational.
01:07:49: There is still some distinction there, but it's usually not in authority, it's usually in responsibility.
01:07:54: So you think, would someone be an error to say, you know, I really do feel called to be an elder, but I could never be a pastor.
01:08:00: That would be somewhat of a strange...
01:08:06: I guess you would have to know what they mean by that.
01:08:08: Yeah, I would want to know their terms.
01:08:09: If what they mean is, I feel called to shepherd God's people and to teach in the church, but I can't give my...
01:08:17: I have a vocation that keeps me from doing this full-time or something like that, but I want to...
01:08:22: And again, I still think it's vocational distinction.
01:08:25: And the Bible talks about those who preach and teach that they'd be worthy of double honor, and there's a certain distinction even in Scripture between the vocational and non-vocational.
01:08:35: That's 1 Timothy 5, by the way.
01:08:37: Yeah, and so there is a...
01:08:39: I think that's the biblical distinction.
01:08:41: And when it comes to authority, though, the three of us come together and we make decisions together.
01:08:46: We speak with one voice or not at all, that's a rule that we have.
01:08:48: If we can't agree, then we don't move forward until we can, until we go back in prayer and we come back.
01:08:53: And so that's been a rule even before the two elders we have now, with the two that I had before who were older men, they were in their 70s and now in their 80s.
01:09:01: It was, we speak with one voice or not at all.
01:09:03: Okay.
01:09:04: All right.
01:09:04: So the authority is all three of us together.
01:09:06: All right.
01:09:07: All right.
01:09:08: Oh, and last thing.
01:09:09: Yeah, sure.
01:09:09: I'm going to add, and we are over time, but this will only take two minutes.
01:09:13: Okay.
01:09:14: And go.
01:09:16: Okay.
01:09:17: We've talked about elders, pastors, and we've talked about deacons.
01:09:21: There is another essential component in the Church, and that is the body itself.
01:09:27: Yeah.
01:09:27: And the gift-based ministry, that's something I focus on in the book, is that if every church member is utilizing the giftedness that God has given them, then the Church will function biblically, because where people are gifted with administration, where people are gifted with mercy, where people are gifted with generosity, where people, there's seven specific gifts referenced in Romans 12, and where those gifts are active and people are not just warming a pew on Sunday morning, but they're actually active in ministering one another, you will see a church that is functioning biblically.
01:10:03: I see.
01:10:03: And so a church is made up more than just the elders and deacons.
01:10:07: Yeah.
01:10:08: It's made up of the body.
01:10:09: And the whole body, the Book of Ephesians, I believe it is, where it says that the role of these teachers is to equip the body for the work of ministry.
01:10:21: Yes.
01:10:21: Not to do the work of ministry, but to equip the body for the work of ministry.
01:10:24: And so that's what we're doing.
01:10:25: We're equipping them to do this within themselves.
01:10:28: I see.
01:10:31: So yeah, this is something we covered in our deacon stuff back at my own church, which was, is it the deacon's role to care for the sick? Yes.
01:10:40: But it is also the body's role to care for the sick.
01:10:42: That's right.
01:10:43: The deacons, I think you used the terminology point person.
01:10:45: I love that.
01:10:46: But the last, maybe not the last line of defense, because that would be the eldership, but hopefully the body's caring for itself and the deacons are there to provide an extra measure, you know, where it is needed and to coordinate that.
01:10:58: Yeah.
01:10:58: I'll give you a quick story.
01:10:59: Sure.
01:11:00: Early on in my ministry, I was always told, you know, if somebody's sick, you need to go to the hospital and see them.
01:11:05: And that is true.
01:11:07: Yeah.
01:11:07: Especially in a smaller church when, you know, I made that my mission.
01:11:12: If I knew somebody was going to have a surgery or something, I was there.
01:11:16: But, and I was always told they want the pastor there.
01:11:18: They want the pastor.
01:11:18: Right.
01:11:18: And it got to the point where I went to the hospital a couple of times.
01:11:24: I had one time I had to go in for a surgery and I was there for a couple of days.
01:11:27: And I remember how much more special it was to me that church members stopped by.
01:11:34: Sort of lay people.
01:11:35: Yeah.
01:11:36: You know, I was visited by a deacon and a couple of people, but the people that it was not their duty.
01:11:41: Oh, okay.
01:11:42: But it was their joy.
01:11:43: Yeah.
01:11:44: And one, as leaders, we should always serve because it is our joy, not our duty.
01:11:48: But when you see a church member doing that, when you see a church member leading the food train or leading the, you know, leading the charge to visit the sick, that is a blessing.
01:11:58: For a pastor to see a person do that who's not a deacon or anything else, they're just, you know, that's a blessing.
01:12:04: I love it.
01:12:04: I love it.
01:12:05: Well, to the listener, I hope this has been of use to you.
01:12:08: And I think that Brother Foskey and I would both agree that if your church does not precisely align with stuff we've laid out here, it doesn't mean you have a defective church, it doesn't mean that your church does not have believers and that God's spirit is not at work.
01:12:20: What we've endeavored to do here is to draw as close to the New Testament as possible because we think that the God-breathed scriptures are the rule of faith for the church, the sole infallible rule of faith for the church, we would say.
01:12:33: So, I have been Matthew, I am Matthew Henson, I have not been your Calvinist, and this is my good friend, Keith, who has been your Calvinist on a unique reverse episode of Conversations with Calvinists.
01:12:42: We hope that this episode has been a blessing to you, and we hope that you join us next time we post, and that may be next week.
01:12:49: God bless you.