Episode 139: Happy New Year!

To the Ruled Church Podcast.

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

Christ the King and the Necessity of the Local Church

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king.

You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus.

In a local, livable congregation. 76 degrees.

Balmy Saturday. Last Saturday, December. It is December 27th, 2025. My week is all messed up, in a good way, because of Christmas. So I'm recording on a Saturday, which is a bit unusual, but I thought I would do an episode here on maybe kind of a looking backward, looking forward type episode.

Think about what happened in 2025, and then look forward to things for 2026. Welcome to the Rural Church Podcast. I am your host, Alan Nelson. I am one of the pastors at Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas, Central Arkansas, maybe 35 minutes or so northwest of Little Rock, depending on how fast you're driving.

I'm glad you've joined us on the last episode of the year. And with that, I thought I'd talk a little bit about 2025, podcast speaking, personally speaking, church speaking, you know, in 2025 for our longtime listeners.

So here's the story of the Rural Church Podcast. I believe that we started up originally around the 2017 year, maybe into 2018, and I think we did like 50 or 100 episodes or something like that, and then we just stopped.

We got real busy, Eddie Ragsdale and I, who was the former co-host on the show. Then we picked it back up again in 2022, in the fall of 2022, I think it was either, yeah, I think it was August of 2022, we picked back up with the Rural Church Podcast, and we have had an episode airing every single Wednesday since August of 2022.

I think we're in the 150 range or something coming up. I can check that real quick. We are in the, well, I thought I had that pulled up. Well, I could tell you this. At episode 100, at the beginning of the year, episode 100 was when Eddie bowed out of the Rural Church Podcast because he had to attend things in his own local church.

And so we love Eddie, I'm grateful for Eddie. Eddie Ragsdale is like one of the best brothers in the world, and there may be some things at times that we don't see eye to eye on theologically or with ecclesiology and such, but Eddie Ragsdale is a great brother, and so I'm very grateful for him.

And it was tough when he had to say, hey, look, I need to step away. And so at the beginning of last year, it was like, am I even gonna be able to keep the podcast going? But in the Lord's mercy, we're able to find a lot of guests over the years, over 2025, and we kept the podcast going and very grateful.

Eddie, now you can pray for him, is going to be, or is in the process. I don't wanna talk about it too much. I can let him talk about it. Maybe sometime he'll come on the show and talk about it, but he's planning a church in the kind of Marshall area.

And so you could pray for Eddie and his family and his great brother and grateful for him, as I've already mentioned. But that left the podcast then when Eddie stepped away in a conundrum, are we even going to make it?

And so 2025, I opened up the, so we host with Anchor or whatever, with Spotify. And I opened up the Spotify Wrapped, it does an end of the year thing for your podcast. And I was just gonna share some of these statistics, which I was pretty encouraged by for the podcast.

So let's see, there we go. 2025, total audience is up 92%. I don't know, total new audience up 660%. I don't know, increase in new audience from last year. I don't really know all that means, but 660 increase is pretty good.

Up 64 increase of total followers. Up 151 increase in total listening from last year. Let's see, anything else relevant? Yes, the number one episode of 2025 was with Pastor Jacob Rayom on the annexation of Canada.

That was back in January of this year, 2025, episode 102. You can go listen to that. Jacob Rayom is a dear brother and a great pastor. We have reached 14 countries overall. So that was great. Top five countries are number five, the Netherlands, four, Peru, three, New Zealand, two, Canada.

And number one, of course, the US of A. Let's see if there's anything else relevant here. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Said you're a top 10 show for 110 fans and the number one show for 25 fans. So I don't know, that sounds good.

So all that was overall a pretty good year for the Rural Church Podcast. I'm grateful. I wanna say thank you to the listeners. Thank you for just joining in every week. Some of you guys, sometimes you text me.

Some of you I see at church. Some of you message me or email me. I just wanna say thank you for listening. And if you have suggestions or ideas for how the podcast can go forward or people that I should bring on, or maybe you're listening and you're saying,.

Hey, you know what?

I'd like to come on. I've got something I wanna talk about. Well, I'm reserving the right to say no, but you could at least message me and reach out and we could see if we could set something up. I'm already excited about some of the guests that are lined up.

Some episodes are recorded for 2026. We actually have through the first part of February recorded. So you'll be listening a new episode every Wednesday through that. Sometimes I know I'll post a sermon or a teaching Wednesday night teaching series.

That just helps me to keep content coming because frankly, I'm a full-time pastor. I work two additional side jobs and then I have six children. So keeps me pretty busy. But thank you for those who have made the Rural Church Podcast, quote unquote, successful.

And in 2025, I just enjoy the opportunity to talk about the Christ, his gospel, the church, theology. So it's been a fun year in terms of the podcast. Couple other highlights, I guess, for me personally in 2025.

Of course, my daughter, my middle daughter was converted this year and we baptized her in October and that was a great joy to my life. Wonderful to count her not only as a daughter physically but as a sister now in the Lord.

And so that was a huge highlight. Our church, I feel like we did. We added some members, we grew. I think we grew spiritually. Sadly, we did lose a brother in the Lord. He passed away in October and that was sad, difficult, still sad.

An older gentleman, we had two, a couple, two members, a husband and wife that moved about, oh, 45 minutes away or so and they're going to wind up moving their membership just providentially. Bought a house in a different area of the state and so they're gonna go to a healthy church.

I'm very sad to see them go but we understand those sorts of things. So as we turn the corner into 2026, I think about, I'm sure there are other, I know there's other highlights in 2025 that I could talk about.

I had a few trips to Mexico, three trips to Mexico actually. And those were great. I was grateful for all three of those. I got to speak at a few different places, Texas and Louisiana and Arkansas outside of Providence Baptist Church.

That was great. We started the Book of Acts at Providence. I think that was in April, grateful for that. And so, yeah, I'm sure, I know it's hard to summarize an entire year in just a few minutes. I'm grateful for the relationships that we've deepened, relationships in the church, friendships outside the church, brothers that I met and have getting to know better and connect with and grow.

I'm thankful for all those things. As I look to the future of 2026, I think about our church, think about, we always are praying here for growth. We're a tiny church. We have 18 families now, and that's a total membership right now of 40 members.

So we're a small church. Maybe in some senses can kind of be like, I don't want to say black sheep. Maybe that sounds too harsh, but we're a little different in our community because we are, well, we're a true church.

We seek to be a healthy church. We seek to not to try to be in competition with the other churches in terms of we're better than you or whatever, but we want to be really serious here about our membership and church discipline and our worship and our theology and the gospel.

And so evangelism. So all of these things can kind of make us stick out a little bit sometimes, maybe sometimes in a negative way. I don't desire that, but that just sort of seems inevitable if you're going to take the Bible seriously in this day and age.

And so as I look to 2026, it's not that I don't want to soften that as it were, but I do always desire for people to understand, hey, this is who we are and this is why. We're not just trying to be different, but we are different by the adherence to the scriptures.

We're different because sadly in so many places, the world has crept in so strongly into the church. So as I look to 2026, I hope for growth. I hope to see more conversions. We have some people in our church, not members, but I'm thinking about there are some visitors and there are also some children of members that seem to be at that age of understanding, grasping, even some of them having conversation with their parents.

So I hope to see more conversions. I know that we have, for providential reasons, we have a couple of different families in our church that are not sure what 2026 will bring for them, even considering moving to different parts of the state and even out of state if things line up.

And there's one hand, of course, I hope that doesn't happen. But on the other hand, you have to resign yourself to the sovereignty of God. And so you just really don't know who's gonna come in and who may, for providential reasons, need to leave.

Those sorts of things happen, but we just have to trust the Lord's watch, care, and love and work in the church. And I believe that He is working here. And so I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful to see His work here, even though at times I do not fully, well, no, at no time do I fully understand all that He is doing.

I am grateful that He is at work here. And I just need to increase in my trust in Him and love for His church and His people. But my wife and I celebrated in November, 19 years of marriage. I'm so grateful for her and never been more in love with her and grateful to share life with her in the future.

And both of us are just so committed to this place. And we love these people. Some of you listening may or may not know this, but both of us are from this town. So she's from this town like generationally on both sides of her family.

But I am a newcomer. So that's why I joked she had to marry me because I'm an outsider. So new genes to the gene pool. But I moved here, started Perryville Elementary when I was in first grade. So that had to be around 1992 or something.

Yeah, probably 1992, fall of 1992. And then I stayed through high school, graduated in 04. We moved off. We were married in 06, and then we moved off to various places, but we came back here in 2016. So this is our hometown.

When we came back, I mean, we said, yeah, we wanna be here for the long term, but was there that level of commitment then that there is now? Probably not, you know. But the Lord has been gracious to us.

And so now it's just like, look, we're all in. This is where we wanna be. And we love the people here. And we want to see the church continue. The trajectory that this church has been on in my 10 years here has been great.

But particularly in the last three years or so, we've grown so close to one another. And we've seen reformation in our worship and in our evangelism and our membership and in our theology church-wise.

It's just been so great to see light bulbs come on and people mature and family worship happening and dads leading and men iron sharpening iron and those things. So I've been so encouraged by those things.

And I hope that all of these things just continue to grow as we go into 2026. Personally, there are some things happening in 2026 that I have no control over if I'll even live long enough to see all these come to fruition.

But if just in the ordinary expectation, you'd expect that I would see these things, but they're all in God's hands. But if I live long enough, well, in June, I will see my oldest son graduate. And that is quite the, we homeschool.

And so that is quite the accomplishment. We're encouraged by that. It just seems like that has gone in the blink of an eye. Also in June, I will officially celebrate a decade as pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

In July, it will be 20 years since I've surrendered to the ministry. So 20 years ago, July of 2006, I can still remember I had surrendered to ministry and it was in maybe around July 20th. I don't know if that's a Sunday or not.

You can look that up. But sometime around July 20th on a Saturday, I talked to my pastor. And the next day at the church was supposed to be like a youth Sunday type thing. And I was helping with the youth at that time.

And I said, hey, what are you gonna preach tomorrow? And he said, well, I don't have everything ready. And I said, I got a sermon. And so I preached that Sunday and the church just really encouraged me.

And really affirmed that to me, the external affirmation of what I believe was an internal call to ministry. So that will be 20 years. In November of 2026, it will be 20 years of marriage to Stephanie.

And in June, back to June of 2026, it will be 40 years of life. So I turned 40. So 2026 in those ways is on par to be a good, a big year, a celebratory year in many ways. And we just put all these things in the Lord's hands and trust what He'll do with these things.

And I hope that I can bring glory to Him. I can't believe I'm 40. There's parts of me that does not feel like I ought to be 40. I should still be in my 20s. But here we are. And that's the way time happens.

And we're reminded that we ought to make good use of the time, the scriptures say, because the days are evil. And every year that I grow in the Lord, I'm reminded of that and how fleeting time can be.

Redeeming the Time in 2026

But what I thought I would do on the rest of the podcast is talk about, maybe encourage you, as this is the last day of 2025. So maybe encourage you with some things in 2026. And I'd made a post the other day, just pretty simple, but just three really achievable goals for your 2026.

And I'll just talk about those for a minute. The first is, I'll read them all, and then I'll go back and pick up each one. So the first is goals for 2026 that you can set, I think are really achievable.

The first is to read the Bible every day. Number two, read through Pilgrim's Progress. Number three, pick one Christian biography. Now, this is very, I don't mean to be rude about it or pick on anybody, but it's very bottom rung, if you will, goal.

Very lower level, lower shelf, bottom shelf goal. What I'm trying to say is it's very, very achievable. It's very achievable. Most of you could do number two and number three, reading Pilgrim's Progress, reading a Christian biography.

You could do number two or number three by the end of January, probably. The rest of you, maybe by the end of February or by the 1st of March. But for all the listeners, this is really, really easy. I know some things I'm doing in my own life is just evaluating my social media time, evaluating my reading time, and just like, look, I have to spend less time on things that don't matter so much.

And that's not just because I'm turning 40, but every year is an opportunity to consider, like, you know, how much junk do we intake with our eyes and our ears? And you just find yourself maybe scrolling or watching, you know, foolish.

It's not sinful things, perhaps, but just time-wasting things. And I'm not talking about time you spend with your family or if you do a movie night. I'm not saying we should feel guilty about all that, but you can just stack up a lot of meaningless things and you can look at the rest, you can take a, at the end of the year, you take a survey and you say, wow, I spent a lot of time doing pretty lame things.

So it's a good day, the last day of the year, to assess how about next year? What is that going to look like for me? And so this is a very bottom-run goal. You can do this. You can read your Bible every day.

You can read through Pilgrim's Progress. Maybe some of you, that's reading with your family. It is very doable to read with your family. And then you can read through one Christian biography. So I'll go back through those again and just talk about that.

Reading the Bible Every Day

So reading the Bible every day, this is my strongest encouragement. Resolve that no matter what you're going to do, read your Bible every day, even if this takes putting an extra Bible by your bedside.

So maybe, so one place I would say is like, have like a pattern of where you're gonna read your Bible. Maybe it's in your chair. Maybe it's at the kitchen table. Maybe you have some specific room you can do this in.

Okay, great. But even if it takes putting an extra Bible by your bed, so that if some crazy thing happens during the day and you didn't get to your Bible reading, that when you lay your head down on your pillow, you see your Bible there by your lamp, and you say, okay, I'm not gonna shut my eyes.

I'm not gonna go to sleep until I've read the Bible every day. 365 Bible readings next year. That's a goal. And it's very, very achievable. I encourage you to use a plan. For our church, our other pastor here, Pastor Jacob Robinson, he created a plan for our church.

He does this every couple of years, and we're grateful for that. But it's a two-year Bible reading plan. And by the way, if you reach out to me, I can send you that plan. But it's a two-year Bible reading plan, and it's actually a five-day-a-week plan.

And so the idea is that on Saturday and Sunday, you can either A, catch up. So if you didn't read every single chapter that's said Monday through Friday, well, then you can use Saturday and Sunday to catch up.

Or B, you can use Saturday and Sunday to read something else in the Bible. You can read a psalm those days. You can read Proverbs those days. You can go back and read a shorter epistle if you wanted to, or you could read the chapter that your pastor's preaching through.

But the point is about reading the Bible every day is to have a plan. And there are tons of plans that are out there that you can use, but have a plan. There's the old saying that if you fail to plan, then you're planning to fail.

So have a plan and just be resolved to read the Bible every day. But another thing about the plan and the resolve is to have a measure of accountability. So have someone in your life, maybe it's even a pastor, that will text you, a friend that will text you, and you say, hey, we're gonna make sure that I actually go through on this plan.

And every day we're gonna read. And you can be accountable to someone and someone else can be accountable to you. Okay, so read the Bible every day. Seriously, every day. Now I'll say this, in the United States of America, we have no excuse for not reading a portion of the scripture every day, okay?

So if you're unconscious in the hospital, sure. I'm not talking about that. But for the rest of us, read the Bible every day. And it's only like 12 minutes a day you can get through the whole Bible in a year.

Now I do a Bible, I do a different, I do a plan every year, I get through the Bible every year. And I think that's very profitable. But it's not so much about you have to get through the Bible in a certain amount of time, so much as it is, expose yourself to God's word every day.

Reading Pilgrim's Progress

All right, number two, read through Pilgrim's Progress. So Pilgrim's Progress is originally published in 1678 by John Bunyan. It was originally under the title, The Pilgrim's Progress, From This World to That Which Is to Come, Delivered Under the Similitude of a Dream.

And this book has been a staple among Christian literature for nearly, well, 400 years almost. And it was written by Bunyan during a time when he was in jail because he wouldn't quit preaching. And the book is a narrator, unnamed, falls asleep, and he dreams a dream.

And the man, it's about a man once named Graceless, who is from the city of destruction. He's renamed Christian because of his conversion. He begins his journey toward the celestial city, which is heaven.

And so the book is an allegory of the Christian life. It tells of a man's pilgrimage towards heaven, recounting his pre-converted state, his conversion to Christ, and the perils of his journey on to heaven.

It's a great book.

It is blessed.

Now, look, I have heard some people say they didn't like it, and that's okay. God makes all sorts of people in this kingdom, doesn't he? But the vast majority of believers who have read this book have been benefited by it.

And I encourage you, if you've never read it, read it. If you have read it, maybe early in your Christian walk, or it's been a few years, will be a good year to read it again. I think you'll be encouraged in the faith, and you'll be challenged in some ways.

And what I love about the book, I first read it, oh, it had to be probably, yeah, it had to be the fall of 2008 I read this book for the first time. I didn't even know it existed before then, and I wish I would have.

But one of the things that I found most beautiful about the book is like, look, Christianity, Christianity is real. Like Bunyan writes so pastorally, so wisely, and really shows the beauty and the genuineness of biblical Christianity.

And you'll be blessed by it. So, and it's an easy read-through. Like you could easily read it through in a week. And even if you're a slow reader, a couple of weeks, and you say, well, I'm a really slowly reader.

Okay, fine, a month. You got 12 months in the year, and you could add this to your reading list for one of those months. And maybe you'll read it with your family. Maybe you do a study in your church, or with a few believers in your church, but read, read Pilgrim's Progress.

Reading Christian Biographies

And then finally, the last part of that challenge was to read a biography. So read the Bible every day, read through Pilgrim's Progress, and then pick, just pick a Christian biography.

To read through.

There's so many good ones. I just, when I walked in my office just a minute ago, I just grabbed from a stack of biographies that I had sitting out. One of the really most impactful one probably is the George Whitefield, God's Anointed Servant in the Great Revival of the 18th Century by Arnold Dallimore.

That really started for a couple of years, a journey of reading at least, let's see, like one, two, three, at least three different biographies on Whitefield, and then a couple of different primary sources and papers and projects on Whitefield.

But the single volume Dallimore, the reason I'm recommending the single, I know he's got the double volume, and it's very helpful as well, but the single volume of Dallimore is great because it's so accessible.

I'm looking at it right now, and it's less than 200 pages. Well, let's see. Actually, it actually ends, it actually ends, sorry, not less. It ends on page 201. You'll be blessed by reading about Whitefield.

Here's the great thing about reading a biography. You get into the life of a man not from this century, and he's got his own blind spots, and he's certainly not a perfect man. There's only one perfect man in Christian history, and his name is the Lord Jesus Christ.

But you learn, and by living in his world for a few weeks as you read through this book, some of your own blind spots and your own shortcomings and your own failings, they come to light, and you can grow.

You can be challenged by his life. You can repent of errors you need to. You can be encouraged by his life. And so I highly recommend George Whitefield by Arnold Dallimore, the single volume. If you want to do the double volume, well, all the more to it.

Similarly, I have the single volume right here next to me of The Life of Martin Lloyd-Jones. His dates are 1899 to 1981, so he brings you up a lot closer to contemporary times. But I'm holding the single volume by Ian Murray.

In fact, this book, let's see the published. It is, I think we got this maybe at the 2014. I think I might've got this at the 2014 Together for the Gospel. Sounds right. And read this, and wow, once again, such an encouragement.

And I'd say the same things about Lloyd-Jones that I would about Whitefield. Not perfect, but certainly worthy of imitation. This one is a little bit longer. This one is like, oh, 500 pages. So maybe, you know, if you want to go for a little bit more of a challenge.

But again, you will be encouraged. A couple more I just have sitting right here by me. I want to give a shout out to my friend, David Steele and Bold Reformer, celebrating the gospel-centered convictions of Martin Luther.

There are, this is another easy read, 100 and, well, the last chapter ends at page 181. Martin Luther, there's several good biographies on Luther. Luther's a good one to read. I'm also right here next to me.

So that is, again, Bold Reformer by David Steele. Another one sitting right here by me, George Mueller of Bristol, His Life of Prayer and Faith by A .T. Pearson. If I remember right, Pearson is, yes, Pearson is the son-in-law of George Mueller.

So written by someone that didn't just know about Mueller, but knew him personally. Again, it's George Mueller of Bristol. Not a perfect man, and I would disagree about, you know, some of the things in his life, but there are many things in his life that we can be challenged by and encouraged by.

And he is a saint worthy of imitation and worthy of knowing. So I was going to grab one. It is by Faith Cook. I think it's on Lady Jane Grey, Nine Day Queen of England. I don't have it. I think that's what it's called.

So Lady Jane Grey, Nine Day Queen of England, something like that, Faith Cook. That's another short one. It's good learning about, especially when you learn about how Lady Jane Grey handled the end of her life.

And I won't tell you, I won't ruin any of that for those who may not know, but for how she handled the end of her life, really, really inspiring and encouraging. But again, what happens when we read Christian biographies, first and foremost, you know, Paul says things in the scriptures like, imitate me as I follow Christ and keep your eyes on those who are walking according to the example you have within us.

Well, there's a contemporary application there. You know, in your church, you should be looking at those who are imitating Christ and you should seek to imitate them. But I think there's also application for church history.

You know, these brothers and sisters, it's all a testimony to the grace and faithfulness of God, but they've lived lives by his mercy and his grace that are worthy of us learning about. It's even part of the fifth commandment, if you will, to honor our father and mother.

And so certainly to honor our fathers and mothers in the faith, as it were, and those who've gone before us. And so Christian biographies are a great way to do that, to honor those who've gone before us, to learn from them, to imitate their way of life and to follow them as they follow Christ.

They're not all gonna have everything. You're not gonna agree with everything in their life. That's just the nature of Christianity. In a fallen world, I should say, there's going to be disagreements at times.

And even with beloved brothers and sisters in the faith, you know, take Jonathan Edwards or John Owen. I have a little book on John Owen by Sinclair Ferguson, and that's the one I'm gonna tackle first this year.

And so I don't agree with everything John Owen ever said. I agree with a lot of what he said, but there's gonna be disagreements, but that's okay. The value of learning from them is far eclipses any disagreements we might have.

So that's just a little challenge. I hope that you've had a blessed 2025. I'm sure like me, there's been some high points and some low points. And frankly, the same will be true in 2026. We live in a fallen world, but Christ is worthy.

Christ is King. Christ still rules and reigns in 2026. I don't know what 2026 has in store for all of us, but I pray that it brings goodness to you and glory to God. All things work together for good.

Not that all things are good, but God works all things together for good for those who love him, for those who are called according to his purpose. And so I hope that as we enter into 2026, we enter with that mindset.

Okay, so that's it. We've reflected on 2025. We've looked forward to 2026. We've already got some great episodes scheduled into the first part of the year. If you have suggestions or maybe you'd like to come on, well, you can contact me at quatronelson at gmail .com.

So that's Q-U-A-T-R-O-N-E-L-S-O-N at gmail .com. If you enjoy what you're listening to, you wanna just send an encouragement, that's helpful. You can message me on social media. You can send an email.

You can text me. You've got my number. Those sorts of things are helpful because sometimes it takes a little bit of extra time and energy to get these podcasts out. But I'm grateful for where we're at right now.

And I hope that the Lord will use these for the encouragement of the body and in the furtherance of his glory as we begin a new year. Happy New Year. Thank you for listening to the Rural Church Podcast.

We'll catch you guys next week.

The Church as God’s Work and the Image of Ephesians

If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what God's doing. This is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poemos, the masterpiece of God.

How are you gonna respond?