Episode 137: Beauty from Trial

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.

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, visible congregation. Jason, it's been a while, a whole week, hasn't it, since we've had this discussion?

That is it. If you're a listener, you have missed us for a week, but we just kept right on rolling in our recording.

I am Alan Nelson. I'm your host of the Rural Church Podcast. I'm one of the pastors in Central Arkansas, Providence Baptist Church, Perryville, and I am with, again,

Jason Guthrie, and Jason is now the pastor.

Is it Cornerstone? Is that the name? Cornerstone Reformed Baptist Church.

Good old C -R -B -C. And the town, it's West Plains, or is it?

Yeah, West Plains, Missouri. So if you just somehow, crazy, found this podcast and you're listening to this, you're way out of context, you gotta go listen to the last episode, because in this episode, we're gonna talk about the ending.

So kinda give us some dates, because now we're talking about 2025. So this is gonna come out, this episode should come out either the end of November or maybe the, well, this one will probably, this one, the second one, will probably be in the 1st of December.

So we're talking about December 2025. And when you left First Baptist Church, Willow Springs, is that right?

Right. What Sunday? What was your last Sunday there? Trying to think of the date.

I know what I preached on. I preached on spiritual warfare from 2 Corinthians. But I think it would have been right around the beginning of May.

Okay. May of this year, if I remember right, would have been my last, it might've been the very end of April, but I know, no, it would have been the middle of May.

So one of the things that I did was in the middle of everything, trying to dig in my heels and do what

I could to hold things together there. I'd sold the house that we moved into and had a deal on a house that would have been real near that church.

And the day that our house went under contract, that house that we were buying, it was a contingent offer, they took another contract.

I don't know if it was a cash buy or what. So I had a house that was sold with nowhere to move into. And so we were kind of frantic then just trying to find something.

We looked at some bad houses that were just in the right place, thinking, well, we can make it work. And then we ended up here moving over to West Plains, which is about 20 minutes from Willow Springs, down the highway.

And we moved into this house on May 2nd. And I think I had two

Sundays still at that church after we moved, after we bought this house. So yeah, we're right around the second

Sunday in May, was probably the last, I have to look at the calendar, probably the last Sunday there.

And it, go ahead. Well, I know you're getting counsel from Jeff Johnson, mutual friend, great brother, president of Grace Bible Theological Seminary.

And I'm sure you've got other counsel. What, when, and you kind of talked in the light, we ended the last episode by you saying a reformed

Baptist church was being birthed out of First Baptist Willow Springs. So what was this in the works?

Like how long between the churches? Or was it like one Sunday you're in this church and next Sunday, hey, we're gonna gather together or did it take some time to process?

What did that look like? So that in between time was difficult in different ways.

I wasn't exactly sure, cause whenever I resigned, I didn't know what our next step was going to be.

I was just praying that the Lord would show that. And so I talked to a church in the

Dallas Fort Worth area. And kind of had some interest there, but we just moved again.

And so this was really not excited about relocating. Anyway, just wasn't really sure exactly what that was going to look like.

And I hadn't talked to anybody in the meantime of kind of waiting to hear, to see if I would hear from the elders to get some sort of advisement or anything.

But after it was announced, of course, the call started coming in. And then there was a meeting,

I guess when they announced that at the end of the service was just really quick. They read that letter and then said, if you've got more questions, we're gonna have a meeting

Wednesday night, come to that. And that was it. And so people were just calling like, hey, what's asking questions and what's going on?

I said, listen, I don't, just go to that meeting. If you've got questions, the elders there,

I'm sure can address whatever that they need to. Just pray for me,

I don't know. And so a few days go by there and then they had the meeting and in that meeting basically said they were gonna kind of go a different direction.

I think they were gonna stay at Southern Baptist Church, but they were going to,

I guess, become less reformed for lack of a better phrase. You know, they changed all of the titles and wordings and things

I think that we're going to on the website. I think they were gonna start maybe introducing invitations again and some other stuff.

And so anyway, that's the call started coming in like, hey, what are you gonna do?

Because if they're going the way they say they're going, we've got to find somewhere else too.

You know, we came to this church because of the theology, because of the preaching, like, you know.

And so anyway, I said, well, let's just get together and pray.

You know, if you're feeling like we need to, which your family is gonna have a decision to make, you know, we'll get together and we'll just have a prayer meeting about what the

Lord would have us to do, because I don't want to move either. So we had a prayer meeting at a brother's house and so many people were there, you know, like 50, sorry,

I'm getting a drink. 50, 60 people maybe came to this prayer meeting. And at that point, they didn't have really any idea of what was, you know, had kind of been happening in the background.

You know, it was, I think, kind of seen like, oh, wow, Jason all of a sudden just got ties and left.

And so basically at that prayer meeting said, hey, look, here's what's been -

Safe to say, none of the people that had written letters were at this prayer meeting. They didn't come. Okay. They didn't show up.

I like to think they were praying, you know, from afar. Imprecatory songs.

Yeah. We're with you in spirit, brother. But we, I had that, the paper that was handed to me by the elders of those churches using,

I said, well, here's what was given to me. This is kind of where things really seem to kind of be out of my control, you know, for better or worse.

I think the right, felt like the thing for me to do for the sake of the unity of the church was just to step down.

And I said that, you know, I'm not gonna talk about this anymore. It's just gonna die right here tonight.

So I'm not interested in, you know, blaming, you know, I should probably put more of it on myself than I have, you know, in times of reflecting and responsibility for the way

I handled certain things or didn't handle certain things or, you know, so anyway, but, you know, we want to try to move forward to see what the

Lord might do. Let's just pray about that. Kind of in the spirit of, you know,

Moses crying out to God, if your presence isn't going with us, then, you know, we're not going.

Amen. So we had a prayer meeting, you know, to that effect. And then we get done and somebody said, well, what are we gonna do on the

Lord's day? That's like, well, you know, it's a good, that's a good question.

So we can, I guess we could just meet and pray, you know? And so that Sunday we, you know, the,

I pulled up to that brother's house and walked inside and all the furniture is like moved out of the way, you know, and there's like, you know, 50 camping chairs and folding chairs and everything, all just pointed to the front of the, or to the living room.

And it's just like, all right, brother, you know, give us a word. I'm like, ah, man, you know, I wasn't coming for that.

I didn't. So one way it was really encouraging in that you see all of these people just there to be, there to be fed, you know, sheep with mouths open.

And so I think I took a little seat, a little bar stool or something, and just sat kind of in the front.

I think we talked through, I think the church is the pillar and, you know, ground.

Amen. Yeah. And just kind of had, and we sang a couple of hymns. And. And so just my timeline's correct.

We're, now we're in May, 2025, right? Mid -May or something? It would have probably been the last

Sunday in May. Last May, okay. I do want to. No, it'd been this May 25, but that last

Sunday of May would have been that, that meeting that we had there on the Lord's day. Yeah. So, I mean, just, you know, six months ago or something.

Yeah. I want to make this comment first, that a lot of churches, you need to be careful with churches saying they want to grow.

A lot of churches say they want to grow, but what they mean is they want to, they want to clone.

They want to clone. They don't want to reform. They want to, don't want to reform according to the word of God. They don't want to move in a healthier direction.

They just want more people who will sit under their leadership. I've observed that.

Many pastors observe that. I don't know if you have any thoughts that you'd say that, if you agree, disagree, but that's just kind of what

I'm seeing. You know, a hundred percent, because it is what you realize is it's, there's, they want to, they want to, they want to be a big church because, you know, big churches are.

At the prestige. Yeah. They're exciting and people will, you know, have a certain perception of that church, but they just, they want, like you said, they want more people that are like them.

And it's really, really hard. And you know, this in a rural context, in small town, small town

USA, especially coming as an outsider, because there is a buddy system.

There's a good old boy system in the community and you're outside of that.

And that's hard enough. And if you are trying to break that up, then you're really stepping on some toes.

And so, you know, like the ministerial alliance, I'm saying, look, there's one gospel.

There's one gospel. And it is the gospel that we preached. It was handed down to us once and for all.

And then there's what the Catholics preach. These two are not the same. Yeah. And so we're not going to have fellowship there, but in that alliance, you know, there's

Baptist church, there's a Methodist church and so forth and so on. And I'm seeing, you know, doctrinal distinctions and I'm seeing, you know, theological, you know, heresies and conflicts with our confession and what we believe and what they're seeing is, well, that's my buddy over there.

I've known that family for 20 years. You know, I can sit at his table or I can sit at his church, you know, it doesn't matter where, you know, he's just like me.

And so that's kind of the context that you're trying to speak into and break up a little bit.

And it's, you know, it's a hard, that's a hard road to hope. You know, I had that debate with the

Roman Catholic priest back in May. Actually, I guess, ironically, providentially, interestingly, it was in the same month, right around the time when you're in the hardest part and I'm doing that.

And it's a lot of, in a small town, which that was a different town actually, but in a small area, rural

Arkansas, rural Missouri, there's not a lot of discernment when it comes to doctrinal distinctions.

So it's sad. At the same time, we should have more of, look,

I can love this person as a fellow American. I can love this person as a fellow

Missourian, I guess, or Arkansan, but that's different than me saying, oh yeah, they're in the kingdom.

You know, especially when they flat out deny the gospel anyway. Sorry, brother. So hijack that for a second.

Let's get back to this. So when, so you show up, that's pretty amazing.

You know, you show up, they've got the chairs ready. They're like, okay, let's have, we're gonna worship.

When do you move from that at the end of May to saying, okay, sure enough, the

Lord has put a burden on my heart that we need to actually plant and have a church?

It was pretty fast. Well, in terms of getting a space to meet in that could accommodate everybody, we met there at that brother's house for a few weeks.

And then on Father's Day, we had a church service in the building that we meet at now here on the square in West Plains.

So within, you know, about a month of that prayer meeting, we had a space and we had a burden and a conviction to meet together as the

Lord's people. And, you know, to work through, you know, doctrinal distinctions and formalizing the constitution, you know, to plant this church.

Did you guys, or you guys adopted the 1689? Yeah, yeah.

So we, that was one thing that Grace Bible and Conway helped us with. You know, Jeff, it's so, you know, talking to him, he said, oh, this is, you gotta plant a church.

And it's like, well, I don't think I'm a church planter. And he said, well, the Lord's already planted the church. You just gotta, he just, and I said, well, yeah,

I guess that's true. I was like, but I don't know how to do that. And he's just, oh, it's the easiest thing in the world. We'll give you our, you know, here's our constitution.

You know, you've got the 1689, you've got your confession. And so, yeah, just go, just go do it, you know?

I'm like, oh, okay. So what we did is we took their, he sent me their constitution and me and about 10 men, just kind of read through that and worked through that.

And we made a few changes that were more fit for our context. And it was a great document.

It really wasn't a lot to, but being a church plant versus their church that's been there 20, is it 25 years?

You preached at that? Yeah, 25 years. So there were some things like, you know, we don't have a nursery, you know, there's stuff like that that we did.

So just some little changes that we made. And then I started preaching through these distinctives for about 10 or 12 weeks and working through, you know, why these are our distinctives, just kind of laying that foundation.

You know, what is a confessional reform Baptist church? And then

September is when we formalized ourselves as a church.

We had our constituting service and brother, it was the sweetest service, one of the sweetest just spirit filled services and moments

I've ever had in my life. Whenever we were take, cause we hadn't taken communion, you know, and however long, you know, five months or four months or something.

And so when it got to the point to where, you know, we read the covenant and then it was kind of a formalized ceremony,

I read the names of all of the, you know, would be the charter members or all of the constituting members.

And then everyone came forth and signed, you know, that document and then approached the table, got the cup and got the bread and went to the seats.

As we took communion and then we sang the doxology, I remember thinking, this is what it feels like to be a one accord, to have one mind in Christ.

And I've never felt it, you know, that strongly. You know, you had all of these people who were here, you know, somewhat wounded or, you know, saddened, but man, we're all here at this point, kind of in a building that's, you know, maybe less than desirable.

And I think at that point we're just on, you know, maybe some old folding chairs. We'd gotten some donations from Dustin Miller and Puxica, like the church over there, three pastors.

They had brought us a bunch of stuff, an old pulpit out of a building. And so, and we have these old,

I might have one here, old red American Baptist symbols that are falling apart, you know, and we're, but man, just the joy of the

Lord in that service was just almost, you know, tangible. And so it was, to say it was worth it.

I mean, obviously, yeah. You know, to get to where we are now,

I think I would probably go through that again. I hope the Lord would never require that.

But I, you know, one of the things that I need to, that I need to say, and I probably should have said on the last episode is, and there's people in that church still that I just absolutely love.

And I believe absolutely love me with First Baptist. They're believers. Yeah, they are.

They're brothers and sisters in Christ. I mean, there's some there

I'm sure who are glad I'm gone and I'm glad to be gone from. But by and large, you know,

I want that church to know the power of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the gospel.

I would love for that church to have true and good, you know, gospel growth and unity there.

The Lord would work through those men, those elders to shape and formalize something, you know, something godly and special there.

And I don't know. I don't really know what's going on there. I've had to just distance myself in a way from it.

I've talked to people there. I've gotten phone calls and stuff. And so there's a cordialness there.

There's, you know, some administrative things that had to be dealt with and still a few things kind of lingering on.

But, you know, I went down to New Albany, Mississippi, I think maybe in June, and spent some time there with -

John Snotter. Yeah, Christ Church. And it was really just, man, it was such a blessing.

Like, I just wanted to go somewhere near a good Bible church away from, you know, everything and just kind of pray that I could still worship.

And as I was leaving, getting ready to leave, I hadn't even talked to John. He texted me and said, hey,

I heard you're coming to town. I've got some time if you want to meet. And I just thought, wow, yeah, that would be great.

So I was able to meet and pray with him. You know, his church plants probably 25, 30 years, maybe older now, and they've been through many difficult things, some right at the beginning.

But one of the things that he told me that was just so helpful when we were talking, and he's such a wise man.

And it was just like something that he said, in passing, and he gave me so many good, encouraging things and convicting things, and admonishment, you know, even to think about.

But he said, or I told him, I really just couldn't stand to have any roots of bitterness growing in my heart.

Like I wanted those to be uprooted and taken away. And I was struggling to pray for that church.

And he said, well, if your wound is clean, then it'll heal.

But if it's not, it's gonna continue to fester. And so, you know, he's speaking about bitterness.

And he said, if you can pray for that church, and if you can continue to want

God's best for them, genuinely, then the Lord will heal that wound. But if you hang on to, you know, blames and faults, and he said, even your own blame, you know, even self blame, you know, like, say if you really have to, you know, to move on, and the

Lord will heal that, will heal that wound. And so it's healing.

You know, there's still a lot of hurt and a lot of pain that's there. And it's kind of like, if your girlfriend breaks up with you, and then like, and then you see her picture, you know, like on the board, it's like, oh, man, you know, like, just kind of that.

It's like, man, I love those people so much. And, you know, they're not, I don't have them anymore.

They've been trusted to the Lord. And so not that there's any ill will, there's just some hurt there that does, it feels like, it feels like, you know,

I got divorced or something, maybe. Well, I can tell you this, because similar, you know,

I think about it in my own heart. I don't know if this is true with you, but like, I'm so grateful where we're at now as a church.

It's the most beautiful thing I've ever been part of, Providence Baptist Church, confessionally reformed.

I mean, and we've had similar overlaps. We had some people moving in, moving in. We had a family move in from Canada and that just shocked some people, you know, but that's a different story.

But what happened here, I, now there would be different ones that we would definitely have to go through some restoration, repentance, that kind of stuff.

But I could tell you with the integrity of my heart that, you know, given that the reconciliation, the repentance, you know, the work of God in their life,

I wish they were here, you know, I wish they wouldn't have left, I wish they would stay. I much rather than be part of a healthy church, you know, and I think about in the

New Testament, the one church come to my mind is the church at Corinth, you know, man, they were messed up, but Paul never says, hey, you're not a church and you're all going to hell.

He lovingly corrects them. It's not dismissing the need for correction, but it's still the idea that you want that church to be healthy, you know, and so it's a beautiful thing that God has taken you through and the church through, but, you know,

I feel it. I know, I'm not trying to say it's the same. I know every pastor different deal with things different, but I feel the similarity of,

I desire the good of those people, you know, so. And there was, you know, there's people there, you know,

I don't want it to sound like all of the, you know, those who have theological depth, you know, they all left, or there's reformed solid, you know, brothers that stay just because that's what they were going to do.

This is the church that they've been in their whole life. Yeah. And I respect that, I think that's great and I'm glad that they stay there.

And I never, never attempted to like get anybody out. You know, it was just kind of those who felt that inclination from the

Lord that reached out, you know, so I know there's still good and godly people there.

And those are people that I still love and I'll always love and hope the best for, but yeah, now, like you said, there's,

I couldn't, I couldn't go back, you know, I couldn't imagine being in a different church, a different context than what we have now.

It's just been so, you really, or we've really been able to see just the beauty of the simplicity and the purity of regular, the principle worship.

Oh, amen. We've, and we spend a lot of time, cause that was one of the big issues, really a lot of things came down to that, you know, just the worshiping

God, the way that God has prescribed for us to worship him. And so we - So much freedom there.

And it's, there's just, I don't know, there's just a pureness to it, you know, and I don't want to get like pure church in here, church, you know, kind of thing.

But when you're coming, coming to the Lord, just in the ways that he has told you to come without any extra, you know, frills and thrills.

I mean, right now, like we don't even have, you know, we don't have any instruments. And so we're just singing, you know, a cappella, a cappella hymns, but we come and we pray and we sing and we pray and we sing and we preach the word and take communion, sing and pray.

And it's just, man, so, it's just so special. So, so sweet because there's nothing, there's no crutches, there's no hooks, there's no gimmicks that anyone is being drawn in by, you know, everyone is there just to seek the

Lord in the way he's told us to be sought. And the way that the Lord blesses that worship, as you know, is just, it's just the most amazing, amazing thing.

And so now it's, you know, we have this little church, there's probably, you know, between 60 and 80 people in our, you know, in our congregation.

As far as charter members goes, I think we're 60 and 70, but we've got, you know, we've got a few people coming in that have been visiting a little bit and, you know, family members will show up.

But we're between about 60 and 80 people on awards day. So it's - That's amazing. Yeah, that's bigger than us. You know,

I think there's so much freedom and you're not worried about like, oh man, if we sing this song, is somebody going to be upset?

You know, it's just, it's just all that, what happened here, you know, it was like the first Sunday is like just a huge, it was like a huge weight was lifted and you're like, wow, you didn't even realize it until it, you know, happened.

Well, okay. So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna give a quick, just been thinking as you've been talking.

I'm gonna just get a quick little alliteration about something. And then I'm gonna ask you, the question

I'm gonna ask you is, where do you see Cornerstone Reformed Baptist Church in 2026, you know, and what can we, how can folks pray for you?

But, so it's not a perfect outline here, but I just think about if you're in a church seeking revitalization, seeking reformation, something

I've just noticed in my own life and hearing from you and other brothers, you know, number one, there needs to be conviction.

You have to be convinced that these truths of the scripture and reforming a church is true.

You can't be doing it for, you know, popularity or to get internet likes. You've got to love the church and you've got to love the glory of Christ.

So that's conviction. Secondly, there's gonna have to be a catalyst. And for me, it was kind of this one thing with the one main thing,

I guess, was the music, but there were other little things. And you, you know, there's a couple of different things for you with the moving that kind of revealed some things, but then also with the ministerial, you know, and alliance situation.

And, but there's gotta be something that begins to reveal what's underneath the surface.

Because everybody is great. People are great with things on the surface.

Usually, I mean, what I'm saying is, a lot of people can check off boxes with things on the surface, but when you got to apply these things, then there can become a problem.

And then the third thing I'd say, there has to be a commitment. And that is once you understand, okay, once the catalyst happens, once the explosion happens, as far as like, okay, now there's people upset.

Now there are people that wanna go a different direction.

They don't like you anymore, all that. Are you gonna be committed to stay the course? And then however that, so for us, so for us, what happened is people left and we stayed here.

But for others like you, and I think we're kind of an exception with that. A lot of times what happens is, you have to be the one that leaves, but are you gonna stay committed to the cause of Christ?

And so that's just maybe an encouragement to brothers. I mean, you don't necessarily need that encouragement.

You've already been through it, but that's just kind of an encouragement, maybe a help to anybody listening that might be going through that.

And I think both Jason and myself can say as hard, and I don't know, you said you'd go through it again.

I don't know if I wanna do that, but I can say this for sure. It was worth it, without a doubt.

I 1 ,000 times rather be where we are right now, as hard as that other stuff was.

I just wanna encourage people, if you're going through something difficult in the church, in terms of this kind of situation, the

Lord is faithful. So I don't know if you have anything you wanna say to that, all that, and then maybe you've had some time, just think about, okay, you're a new church plant, recently constituted, we're winding down one year, you're looking to the next.

Do you see your church? What kind of steps is it that you hope that your church is able to take in the next year?

First, going back to what you just said, I really thought

I would die at that church. That's what

I came to do. Yeah, yeah. I guess

I did in some ways. But yeah, I was there for the long haul.

That's what I've always wanted, was to have that long -term ministry of seeing the

Lord work in a place for years and years and years. But yeah, as the

Lord saw fit, the old guard kept the church and so forth.

And so that's the way it worked out. One of the things, especially in regard to commitment, that has surprised me, and we're still young, but we're just six months into our constitution, or into being formalized, everyone is still there.

And there's people there that have, I'm not the only one who's had any kind of a sacrifice.

People have sacrificed greatly, and they're still driving a long ways, and all those kinds of things.

And they're all still there. That commitment, seeing that commitment in them has been such an encouragement for me.

That's one of the fears, like, you're gonna do this, and then people are gonna realize, like, hey, this is kind of hard, and it's not the big, nice, comfortable space that we had, and it's far away.

Maybe we'll just, he's back. But as of now, everyone has stayed committed, and it's just been such a blessing to see that.

But to come in and try to reform a church is, I don't know if there's anything harder to do for a pastor.

I mean, I'm sure there's context where it works, and that stays, which

I think, brother, I think your testimony to that, I think the Lord keeping you there, and I know the pain of seeing those people walk away was just immense,

I'm sure. But to see that steadfast faithfulness of the Lord in you to keep you there, to that church that he sent you to being reformed.

So the Lord does that. Not every case ends this way, with people leaving or being pushed out, and other people staying.

The Lord does great works like this. And so I don't, we need pastors that will do this work, that will go in and do the long work, the plowing and plowing and plowing to see a church reformed.

We have so many churches in, especially in the SBC that are unhealthy, that have

Christians there who will be led, they believe the word of God, but they need someone to come in and lead them, gently but firmly.

And so I hope that if there's opportunities there for maybe young pastors coming out of seminary or whatever the case may be, that they will at least consider what the

Lord might do in some of the churches that need pastors, even though that it would be a hard work.

So I don't wanna just detour anybody away. So, oh, I'm not going to a church that's not completely healthy or needs revitalization because you're, as we all know, the perfect church doesn't exist.

And if you think you're gonna get called to that church, it's probably highly unlikely.

But if you love those people, and I don't know that I love my people as well as I should have there.

I know I didn't. But if you love those people and they know that, they'll let you lead them.

But I don't wanna go too much into that, but I think that was a great alliteration.

So where we're at now, we've got a good, strong core body.

And we're really hoping to kind of step into the community and engage in the culture here and try to start tearing down some walls from the kingdom of darkness around here.

There's some fights to be won. There's a small college campus here that's

I think fairly liberal and we're starting to try and shuttle in the

LGBTQ community with pride festivals. So we wanna see the head chopped off of that snake pretty soon.

So there's some fights that we need to engage in with the gospel to try to start meeting in.

And internally, we're trying to make an effort to really apply our theology to what we're seeing in the world around us.

So like Wednesday nights, we're doing an applied theology night where we're just taking a topic and addressing it with the word of God.

We went through Charlie Kirk, his martyrdom. Was that really martyrdom and what that looks like and what does the

Bible say and how should we view that? And how's the gospel at stake there?

And I think we're having a talk on feminism tonight and I think the next one's on the death penalty if I remember right.

So we're trying to bring our theology home to bear on some of the top tier issues of the day.

So our people are really equipped to engage in the culture wars and be a voice for truth in the town that we're in, the community that we're in.

We wanna see this city, this county won by Christ.

I don't think there's anything in our Bibles that said Christ can't save an entire town.

So we really wanna try to start with our being stronger and personal and even pointed evangelism and reaching the lost.

Yeah, I prayed that just recently. It's amazing you said that except it was about our county, but like why

I understand the doctrine of election. Of course, I'm like you.

No, I see you got six points, I'll go 60 points, whatever, but that's what

I'm saying. Like, yes, I'm all in. The Bible's clear on the doctrine of election. But from our perspective,

I hold out hope. Why would I not expect God to save many, maybe even all in our county?

When we go out preaching, a little saying we say sometimes is God must love our community to put a healthy church within its borders.

So why would we not have great expectation as we proclaim Christ? I think one time they asked

Spurgeon, people are always getting saved when you preach. And he was like, well, do you think people are gonna get saved every time you preach?

And the guy's like, well, no. And he's like, well, that's the difference, because I do. That's the perspective we should have.

The Lord delights in saving sinners, calling people to himself. And that's just one of the,

I don't know, maybe one of the problems that's in the reformed church. I'm afraid of somebody non -elect getting saved.

That's funny. When we talked about this at our church recently, we pray for revival continually.

We want desperately to see the Lord revive his church and do a great work in our day, maybe an awakening greater than the ones in the past.

But I wonder if, you know, who knows why

God tarries, but the churches, can they even handle a revival?

Just like you said, plan on, if you're praying for growth, plan on some painful growth, that with any kind of growth, there's always going pains, but we want to see revival.

We want to see people saved, but is the church prepared to handle the type of people that God is going to save?

I mean, right now, you know, a lot of the people that you'll run into, you know, on the street, they're antagonistic, man, they're a mess.

They've been radicalized. You know, they're suffering with, you know, identity crisis to the 10th degree.

Their gender, their ideological view on gender is just so skewed and wrong and unbiblical.

And those are the kinds of people that God's going to save. You know, we're going to have one of our churches, I know that have gone through probably gender change, you know, surgeries, and they've got, you know, they've maybe been married into a same -sex relationship as far as the state is concerned.

You know, we know marriage is only two men and one woman, but those are the people that we're trying to reach and that we want to see

God save, but we've got to be willing to minister and help, you know, those kinds of people and a desire to reach them.

You know, everybody wants, you know, I say everybody, a lot of the churches, they just want clean cut, you know, middle class, you know, don't smoke, drink, or chew people to just start getting saved and come to the church.

Like, that's not, you know, how, that's not how it works. You know, if we're going to reach the lost, it's the lost that are going to be, that are going to be coming to Christ and they're going to have some baggage.

And so we're really trying to, it's kind of like if you're praying for rain, you got to prepare for water, right? Like if we're going to go out and reach these people, we've got to be prepared to minister to them and their problems and the baggage and the years of just being brainwashed by, you know, society and Marxism and all sorts of things to correct that.

So we're going out and, you know, evangelizing. We're also trying to undergird that with prayer, like Lord, give us the wisdom to minister to the type of people that desperately, desperately need the gospel.

And I believe the Lord can do that. I believe he will do that. If we can add 2 ,000 souls to the church and, you know, one hour, however long

Peter's sermon was, what can we do in, you know, 20 years, you know, 40 years, you know, in a community where the gospel is preached and people are loved and Christ is held forth.

So we're just really hoping he'd give us that opportunity to be a light in the darkness here, but just not on a superficial level to where, you know, it is just a box.

Oh, we went out and we handed out some tracts today and now it's in the Lord's hands, you know, like, man, we really want to keep going forth.

We kind of want to be a battering ram. And then one of the prayers that I have that's not to that degree in terms of, you know, souls, but, you know, just to, that he would give us a long -term meeting house that we would, you know, have a building that we can kind of grow into.

It's, we could build or take over that's, you know, shaped for a church or we've got, you know, maybe multiple, you know, classrooms and things like that.

So I'd love to have us a building somewhere to meet in sometime in the

Lord's time. Yeah, right now we've got a, you know, secondhand, the secondhand church, man, it's really meeting our needs.

Well, we've got pews that were donated from a church in Springfield we went and got, you know, we've got stuff donated from the brothers over at Puxico, you know, pulpits and hymnals.

And, you know, Jeff's church has been so helpful and he's came up and, you know, taught on different subjects.

And it's just been amazing to be a part of it. This, man, it's gut -wrenching to get there.

But like you said, when you're on the other side of it, it's just like, man, the freedom there, the liberty there is just unimaginable.

And the ceiling is just, it's removed in terms of like how you can mobilize, how you can assemble, how you can lead your people, because everybody does have the doctrinal underpinning, the same understanding of why we're called to do what we're called to do.

And they have the grit to do it. You know, they got some scars that they've been through some things.

And so they've seen the steadfastness of the Lord. They know the perseverance that He offers.

And so now it's almost like, okay, if we can survive this, well then there's a lot more that we can be doing that the

Lord can carry us through that we probably haven't been doing. So I'm super excited for whatever the

Lord, you know, has in store for us and whatever ways He might lead us.

But I know there's not any, you know, reformed churches in the area.

So I hope there's, you know, well, there's a, I say that, I think there's a

Presbyterian church that meets over here that's, I think, pretty solid.

Yeah, they just need to keep reforming. They're Presbyterian. They're almost there, so close, so close.

So I noticed, I was just kind of looking on here, doesn't look like they can get a ton of information.

At least they can get an address, though. A ton of information, but it's a great website name.

It is cornerstone1689 .com. That's it. But that's pretty, looks like right now you can pretty much just get the date, or I mean the date, the address.

Yeah, we're hoping to have like sermon links and stuff, stuff up there pretty soon. That's on me.

My brother's like, hey man, you need to give me, because he can do all that. And so he's, that's my actual, my brother, he comes to our church all the way from Springfield, which is pretty awesome.

Yeah, I got my brother, my mom, and my dad all here, which is just, that's a whole story in itself.

Hey man, I was just looking at, go ahead, sorry. No, I was saying that he's able to update things.

He said, man, will you give me this or give me that, and I'll get your website. We had the domain, and we wanted to get something on there.

I think it's got maybe just a doctrinal statement, and that it will hopefully have our links. We're on YouTube right now.

The sermons have started to be uploaded, and just last week, maybe, or no, it's a few weeks ago, we actually started doing a live stream of the services.

My brother got that online for us. We got racked with just, man, strep and sickness and a lot of things.

So we were having a lot of people out. So we decided to start doing our streaming services, which is, you know, it's not the church, and it's not coming to church.

But it is helpful if you're not there, that you can still see what the Lord of God, the word of God is what's being preached to your brothers and sisters, and kind of staying on that same page there.

So we got a Facebook page and a YouTube page where they could find the sermons and stuff like that.

Yeah, okay, well, I was looking at your YouTube. What is it on YouTube? Just Cornerstone Reformed Baptist Church?

It should be. Okay. Well, yeah, I think I found one.

It's not you. But - I found out there's, believe it or not, you know, there's more than one.

Yeah, it's a great name. Okay, I found it. It's just Cornerstone 1689 on YouTube.

So there it is. That name's got a ring. Yep. Yep, so if you just type in at Cornerstone 1689 on YouTube, you can find it.

Brother, I know it's kind of raw to share your story, but I hope it's blessed somebody, helped someone, encouraged someone.

I think it's a beautiful thing to hear about what God's doing. If someone has, you know, family or friends or somebody close to that area,

West Plains, Missouri, you need to look up Jason. You need to, if they're looking for a church, send them to Cornerstone Reformed Baptist Church.

Pray for Jason, pray for the church. And anything else you want to say before we sign off here?

Just agreeing with you. I hope it's helpful. You know, church and ministry can be messy, but there's no greater institution on earth.

You know, there's no more. Amen. I don't think there's a greater revelation of God's glory or Christ's glory than in the local church.

You think of the human establishments that are just so revered and prestigious have nothing on the simple church of the

Lord Jesus Christ where the word is preached, the ordinances are handled rightly, and he's worshiped rightly.

So it's worth it to get in and get your hands dirty. It's worth it to have some scars.

Yeah, wow. So I hope that we'll just continue to see more pastors raised up willing to do the hard labor because it's really easy.

You can come to a point, I think, in your ministry where you realized, okay,

I can just kind of stay on the surface here and I can preach, feel good sermons, and I can lead studies and prayer meetings, and I can be pretty cozy, you know, or I can do the work of the evangelist and I can preach the whole counsel of God and I can confront sin and I can be protective of the church covenant and so forth.

And so I just pray that brothers would take the latter route and not just, you know, see this as a cozy position as long as I'm getting a sermon or two out a week and I'm at the prayer meetings and the potlucks, man,

I'm just gonna be able to kind of ride it out here and as long as I play nice with people and love your people enough to protect them from sin and to teach them the truth.

And if that means that you get bruised deeply, then that's fine. And, you know, what's the quote?

Those that the Lord uses greatly, He will first generally bruise quite deeply.

So the church is worth it, man. I can't think of anything else in the world that I would rather give my life up for than the bride of Christ.

Yeah. Amen. We have a saying, I hope it's not more than just a saying, but a reality, you know,

Christ is worthy of a healthy church and that will, that cost, that can be costly, but Christ is worthy, you know?

And so that's where we wanna be at. But yeah, I really appreciate you coming on, brother,

Sharon, I'm grateful for your friendship over the years and even just some things that's going on behind the scenes that we're able to be staying in a lot more contact and I'm grateful for that.

So yeah, if you wanna reach out to Jason, what would be the best way to do that?

You could go through the church Facebook page or just, you know,

I'm online sometimes. I think just Jason Gunner on Facebook or our email is cornerstone1689 at gmail .com.

There you go. Yeah. Yeah, good deal. Just show up at church. Yeah, just show up.

Well, amen. You can always find him there. Just come to church. Well, thanks for being on today.

Thank you guys for listening to these episodes of The Real Church Podcast. We'll catch you next week,

God bless. 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.