July 30, 2025 Show with Ryan Franchuk AND Jason Contino on “Preparing Men for Pastoral Ministry & Church Planting”

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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

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George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

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Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 30th day of July 2025.

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Before I introduce my two guests and our topic of the day, I just want to remind you, please mark your calendars for this

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Friday, August 1st, when I will be interviewing Phil Johnson, the executive director for the media ministry of the late

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John MacArthur. We are going to be paying tribute to John MacArthur and loving memory of a champion for truth in the 20th and 21st centuries.

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Joining us will be Dr. Doug McMasters, the pastor of New Hyde Park Baptist Church on Long Island, who was at one time the director of pastoral correspondence for John MacArthur's media ministry,

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Grace to You. And also joining us is a longtime friend and former frequent co -host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio back in the old days when

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I was broadcasting out of WNYG Radio, 1440 AM in Babylon, Long Island, New York, Jim Capo, who is the former pastor of the

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Massapequa Church of God. So please make sure you mark your calendars for this Friday, August 1st, for our special tribute and loving memory of John MacArthur.

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But today I am very excited to have both a returning guest and a first time guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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The first time guest is Ryan Franchuk, pastor and outreach team leader at River Community Church in Dell Rapids, South Dakota, and director of Timothy Pastoral Apprenticeship.

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And also joining us will be a returning guest, Pastor Jason Contino of Harborview Christian Church of Port Jefferson, Long Island, New York, and a board member and pastoral mentor with Timothy Pastoral Apprenticeship.

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They're both going to be addressing preparing men for pastoral ministry and church planting.

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And first of all, let me welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for the very first time, Pastor Ryan Franchuk.

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Thanks, Chris. Great to be here. And let me welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Jason Contino.

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Hey, Chris, thanks for having me. Well, let me first of all have Pastor Ryan give a brief description of River Community Church in Dell Rapids, South Dakota.

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Sure. River Community Church was planted, I believe, about 17 years ago now, maybe 18 years ago by my good friend,

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Pastor Andy Wright, which was kind of his first major ministry project coming out of seminary.

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And so this is a Baptist church that's in the small town of Dell Rapids, South Dakota, about 3 ,500 people.

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And we're a congregation of, I don't know, 120, 130 on a Sunday morning. And we really seek to make

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God's glory known and felt through worship, outreach, growth and love. And I've been a pastor on staff here for about eight years,

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I believe. Before that, I had been commissioned by River Community Church to plant a church in nearby

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Baltic, South Dakota, which is where my family and I live currently, which is only about six miles down the road from Dell Rapids.

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And so I served that church plant for eight or nine years, and then we closed the doors of that church plant.

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And I then came on the pastoral staff of RCC, like to say, we kind of merged back into the mothership, so to speak.

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And I hope Louis Farrakhan is not on the pastoral team there. Yeah, so some of the folks that were part of our church plant,

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River Community Church is their home church, too, and we still try to have a significant ministry presence in Baltic, South Dakota, where I live.

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Now, what would be the theological makeup of River Community Church? We belong to what's called the

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North American Baptist Conference of Churches, which is a small denomination of Baptists that was started in the 1800s by primarily

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German immigrants that came into the country through New York and then spread across the country and across Canada.

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And so we're essentially a conservative evangelical Baptist denomination.

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And so that really defines who we are, too. In terms of sort of more distinctives, theologically,

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River Community Church, we as pastors and elders are primarily

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Calvinistic in our soteriology. We hold very strongly to the sovereignty of God and, at the same time, the responsibility of human beings to repent and believe the gospel.

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We're also, you know, you might say, complementarian in that we see that God has distinct roles for men and women in the church and family life, and so we practice that at River Community Church.

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And we love expositional preaching and teaching of the Bible. We love kids and try our best to minister to them and to their families as well as we might.

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And other than that, we're pretty easygoing, honestly. How could you be

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Calvinistic and easygoing? Those two things don't coincide. Well, you know, we've got folks that, you know,

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I wouldn't say we ever shy away from those doctrines, you know, and even love to celebrate them in our preaching and teaching.

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But we do have dear friends and members and partners in ministry who wouldn't maybe see eye to eye on the pastoral staff here on that question in particular.

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Well, as I like to say, yet. Well, if anybody wants more details on River Community Church and that church is located where, again?

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I'm sorry. That's Del Rapids, South Dakota. That's right. Del Rapids, South Dakota. Go to rccdels .com,

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r -c -c -d -e -l -l -s .com. And now, Pastor Jason Contino, tell our listeners something about Harborview Christian Church in Port Jefferson, Long Island, New York.

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Harborview is located in, as you like to say, Chris, one of the most beautiful villages in the country,

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Port Jefferson. That is true. It's not even hyperbole. It's very true. Yeah. Harbor Village, Little Port Village.

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Our church is 170 years old. It was planted by Island Christian Church in 2011.

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Island Christian Church, a larger, non -denominational, Baptistic church, and I was saved under the ministry of Pastor Pete Jansen.

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And around 2020, we were becoming a little bit more Calvinistic, a little bit more

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Reformed. I was an elder at the time, and we became independent of Island Christian Church and changed our name to Harborview Christian Church.

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In God's providence, as an elder at Harborview Christian Church, working as a detective for the

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Nassau County Police Department, I had a fraud case which tied me to a phone conversation with the pastors of River Community Church in Della Rapids, South Dakota, as a check that was mailed to—I believe,

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Ryan, correct me if I'm wrong—a widow of a retired pastor who had passed away, and the check was stolen in the mail.

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The routing number was used in a fraud case in New York, which I was the investigating detective. This phone conversation,

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Chris, led me to speaking to these men and realizing that they had a pastoral apprenticeship program that at some point in the future

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I might be interested in. As I wrapped up my career and was retiring under Pete's direction,

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I contacted Ryan and his partner Andy and found out about the Timothy Pastoral Apprenticeship, did a three -year program with that, and in the interim, got ordained,

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Pastor Pete retired, and I took over. So, Harborview Christian Church is a non -denominational cradle

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Baptist church in a Reformed tradition, is the way I would describe us.

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Amen. And not only is your connection with Ryan Franchuk clearly an example of God's unexpected providence, the friendship that you and I have is also the result of that.

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For those of our listeners who are not aware of this, I just happened to one day, feeling very nostalgic about my late wife,

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Julie, who I miss dearly, happen to post on Facebook a photograph of the old

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Amato's Italian restaurant in Amityville, Long Island, where I used to live, that restaurant no longer exists.

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I believe the building does, and is completely remodeled and looks different than it used to.

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But I posted that photo of Amato's Italian restaurant because it was the location of the very first date

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I had with my late wife during a snowstorm, which caused my late wife's pastor to cancel a

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Bible study that I was attending. And we had our first date there, and then later on in our relationship, that was the location where I gave her an engagement ring.

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But I was looking at responses on Facebook to this photograph, and Pastor Jason Contino said,

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My grandparents owned Amato's. And he also said, And by the way, I'm coming to your pastor's luncheon.

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So that's how I first became aware of Jason, and also how I first met him face to face at the luncheon.

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So it has been an honor, a privilege, and a joy getting to know you, brother.

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Thank you, Chris. God's providence is all around us. Well, before we have

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Ryan, since he's a first -time guest, give a summary of his salvation testimony,

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Ryan, why don't you give us a summary of the

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Trinity Pastoral Apprenticeship Program?

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Oh, by the way, I can't remember right now if I gave the website for Harborview Christian Church.

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HarborviewChristian .Church. HarborviewChristian .Church. Sorry if I omitted that. But Ryan, give us a summary of the

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Timothy Pastoral Apprenticeship. Yeah.

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The Timothy Pastoral Apprenticeship is a radically church -centered theological and ministry training program that aims to raise up men for vocational ministry, for pastoral ministry in the context of the local church, and to do it in such a way that apprenticeship and academics both are an integral part of the guy's experience.

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And we're also trying to take away as many hurdles as possible from guys that might feel and sense they need to be trained in a specific way and get that training before they would be launched into pastoral ministry.

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But perhaps they have a number of roadblocks in the way. Perhaps they see obstacles that would prevent them from pursuing that, perhaps in the normal or traditional way that men have sought to get that training in the

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U .S. in the past, by getting a bachelor's degree and then maybe by going to seminary, and then maybe by pursuing ordination in their family churches.

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Maybe that's just not feasible for them for whatever station of life they're in or whatnot. And we are trying to take away as many hurdles as possible financially and flexibility -wise and otherwise so that we can just see more and more faithful men who love

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God's Word, who love Jesus Christ, who love the gospel, who love God's people, who love the lost, raised up to serve churches and church plants and to see churches revitalized and to do that as quickly and cheaply as possible.

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Amen. Well, if anybody wants more details, the website of the Timothy Pastoral Apprenticeship is thetpa .info,

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thetpa .info, and we'll be repeating that later on as well. Well, as I just mentioned, whenever we have a first -time guest in the program, we have them provide for us a summary of their salvation testimony that would include a description of how they were raised, the religious atmosphere, if any, in which they were raised and what kind of providential circumstances our

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Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives to draw them to Himself and save them. So we'd love to hear your story, since you are a first -time guest, unlike Pastor Jason Contino, who's been on the program before.

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Sure. I lived the first nine years of my life in Auburn, Washington, where my father pastored a small church plant there, and I remember,

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I trace my conversion back to the day after Christmas 1984, when I was, I guess

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I would have been about six years old then, and I had been speaking with my mom, my dad, and my grandmother about the things of the

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Lord and about, you know, I think we probably phrased it, asking

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Jesus into your heart, and having a relationship with Christ and being saved from sin, and so I remember the day after Christmas, I remember kneeling by my bed and praying to the

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Lord and asking Jesus to save me. And so I really trace my conversion to that moment, and then as I grew older and lived life with my mom and dad, as my dad was serving as a pastor, we moved to North Dakota when

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I was nine years old, I believe, and my dad served a church in North Dakota for 30 years after that, and so that's really where both my childhood was spent, and I just am so grateful to God for giving me a mom and a dad who loved the

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Lord, who loved the Lord still, and sought to honor Him and serve Him and to teach me

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His ways and to show that the Bible was the most important source of data that I could possibly have, and that to love

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Jesus Christ was an active thing that didn't just stay in the head, but it was lived out in one's whole life.

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And I remember my dad, the church building of the church that he served was right next door to the parsonage that we lived in, and my dad had an office in that building, and I remember being a young guy, being a kid, and just loving to wander over there and hang out with my dad in his office and ask him questions and talk about life and talk about spiritual things, and I can even remember being a teenager and asking some of the vexing questions of Christianity of him, things like predestination and other things, and he was always just so gracious and would kind of fill me in with lots of different views and just kept telling me it's really about what

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God's Word says, it's really about what the Bible says and not just having a theological grid, though that's important, but he urged me to search the

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Scriptures. And so I'm grateful to the Lord for that experience in my life, for my mom and my dad, and grateful that I kind of have what you might call a boring testimony, so to speak, in that I didn't really have any wild periods of wandering or profligate behavior or anything like that.

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It's just sort of been a long walking with the

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Lord, but by his grace, he's kept me in, and I'm most really grateful for that. Well, I've been asking people for their testimonies for a long time, and I am never bored to hear that God has preserved someone from their childhood through adulthood from wandering into scandalous, wicked behavior.

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Of course, without the blood of Christ, even the most moral of children raised in a

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Christian home are still headed for hell if they are not saved, if they are not regenerate.

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But at the same time, it's always a joy to hear that God sees fit on occasion to spare many of his children from ever having to experience the darker side of life, and so I am rejoicing that you are one of those children that he spared from ever going through that journey into overt wickedness.

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And I'm going to give our listeners our email address if they have a question. It's chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

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chrisarnson at gmail dot com. We're going to go to our first commercial break, and when we come back, we're going to be diving into the main theme of our program today, and that is training men for pastoral ministry and church planting.

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And if you are a young man yourself, perhaps, either one who is beginning for the first time to believe he has a calling upon his life to enter into pastoral ministry, or perhaps you're a new pastor and you're starting to think that you're over your head or you're starting to wonder if you truly have been given a call by God or whatever the case may be, we would love to hear from you at chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

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chrisarnson at gmail dot com. And as always, give us your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence.

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You may remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. So don't go away.

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We are going to be right back right after these messages from our sponsors. James White here of Alpha and Omega Ministries announcing that this

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September I'm heading out to Pennsylvania to speak at two events that my longtime friend

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Chris Arnzen has lined up for me. On Thursday, September 18th at 11 a .m.,

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I'm speaking to men in ministry leadership at Chris's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon at Church of the

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Living Christ in Loisville. Then on Sunday, September 21st at 1 30 p .m.,

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I'm speaking at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle on the theme. Can we trust the

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Bible is the authentic and inerrant word of God? I hope you can join Chris and me for both events.

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For more details on the Free Pastors Luncheon, visit ironsharpensironradio .com.

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That's ironsharpensironradio .com. For more details on Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, visit trbccarlisle .org.

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That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, I'll see you in September in Pennsylvania for these exciting events.

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I'm Dr. Tony Costa. Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

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I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

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Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.

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It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corham who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word and to enthusiastically proclaim

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I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love as I have.

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that's hopereformedli .net, or call 631 -696 -5711, that's 631 -696 -5711.

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Tell the folks at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

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This program is sponsored by HOPE PR Ministry. HOPE PR Ministry is a podcast produced by HOPE Protestant Reformed Church in Walker, Michigan.

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I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Originally from Cork, Ireland, the

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Lord in his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.

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At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession. We embrace congregational church government and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost, and the glory of our triune

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In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every

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That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.

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That's royaldiadem .com. Mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with Ryan Franchuk and Jason Contino, and we are addressing the

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Timothy Pastoral Apprenticeship Program. And Ryan, if you could, what is the typical experience of a candidate and somebody who registers to be involved in your program?

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And to begin with, how do they even usually find out about it? Yeah, you know, it's kind of one of two ways.

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One, as the program has kind of just slowly grown over the years, one of the ways that God uses to bring new students in the program is a lot of times there's a church and a pastor or pastors that we already kind of really have a lot of affinity with.

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They're in our spheres, so to speak, in our circles. And they maybe have a man or men that sense a desire to be trained for pastoral ministry, but maybe the traditional practice really isn't what's kind of floating their boat.

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And they maybe know about the TPA, and they say, what's to prevent us from being a part of this?

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Could we be a TPA partner church and be the mentoring church for this man or these men during their time in the program?

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And so that's kind of the most organic and natural way that it happens. Other times, men that are just searching out training for pastoral ministry in kind of this non -traditional sense or mold

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Google for pastoral apprenticeships, or I'm not sure exactly what they Google for maybe, but they find the

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TPA on the internet, and they get ahold of us sort of cold turkey by registering an inquiry through the

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TPA's website form, inquiry form. And they say, hey,

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I'm so -and -so from such -and -such a place, and I'm just really sensing that I want to be trained to be a pastor in the kind of mold that you're describing.

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What do I do? What can we kind of kick the ball down the road here? And that opens up a conversation with them.

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We try to get to know them as best we can from a distance often is the case, and just kind of get a sense for God's call in their life and their church scene.

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And if the TPA is really going to be a great fit for them or not, and sometimes some of those men have actually moved and relocated to be mentored in one of the churches in the

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TPA church network. And that's happened a few times in our,

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I guess, about 12 or 13 -year history now. But more often than not, it happens kind of organically where, like I described, there's a church or a pastor or a student, prospective student, who's kind of already aware of the

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TPA just through our relational connections. We're a small network of churches.

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We have 18 churches that are formally part of the TPA network. Those churches are primarily in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, New York, Long Island now, and Washington.

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And so, you know, it's just sort of this organic circle of relationships that God just seems to grow slowly but surely over the years.

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So that's how it happens. In terms of what the experience is like, we really envision the TPA program as a three -year program, roughly analogous to a

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Master of Divinity degree, where the program is comprised of two things. Number one is an apprenticeship component.

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And so that's where a student in the TPA has a mentoring church and a mentoring pastor.

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And that student is expected to be as involved in the life of that church on a day -to -day basis as possible and to get his hands dirty with the stuff of pastoral ministry under the watchful care of a mentor pastor and the leadership of the church and really the whole church.

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And so that means in a guy's experience in the apprenticeship component of the

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TPA, we expect that he'll be meeting with his mentor pastor at least once a week for kind of mutual discipleship and ministry discussion and theology breeze shoots and all those sorts of things, as well as when the pastor, when his mentor pastor does something, the expectation is and hope is that he would then invite his student along and say, hey,

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I've got to go visit so -and -so in the hospital today. I'd love for you to come with me and I want you to watch what

39:46

I'm doing. I want you to observe what my demeanor is like, the sort of scriptures that I read.

39:53

And then the next time I'm going to have you come with me too, and I'm going to ask you to read scripture and become prepared to minister to this person or this family who's in this really vulnerable place in life.

40:05

Or perhaps a pastor might have a couple coming in for premarital counseling and the expectation and hope in the

40:13

TPA apprenticeship would be that that pastor would say to his student, you know,

40:18

I've got this couple coming in for premarital counseling. I'd love for you to, if this couple is open to that,

40:23

I'd love for you to sit in and just observe and watch and see how

40:29

I go about this ministry if we're trying to help this couple get ready for biblical marriage.

40:37

And so the apprenticeship component really, from the TPA side of things, we don't direct a lot of that from the top down because each church and each pastor and each student are kind of unique and individual and have varying contexts and needs.

40:54

And so we let a lot of the apprenticeship component be directed kind of on a week -to -week, month -to -month basis by the mentor pastor and the student in dialogue and also in dialogue with their leadership, the leadership of the church.

41:10

And so some of our students, for example, some of our students really work a lot with youth, and that's maybe the primary locus of their experience in the apprenticeship.

41:20

But at the same time, we're hoping that they would also be able to get a feel for what pastoral ministry is like in other respects as well.

41:30

Some of our guys are oriented more toward worship or worship leading. Others are really, yeah, wanting to get kind of the solo pastor or lead pastor experience under their belt.

41:45

And so it kind of depends on what the context of the church is like and what the desires of the student are like.

41:51

And so that's about approximately one half of the program is this apprenticeship, getting your hands dirty in the day -to -day, week -to -week stuff of pastoral ministry, learning how to, you know, what the physical mechanics of baptizing somebody are, what it's like to preach your first sermon, what it's like to teach a

42:12

Sunday school class, how you help a group of, you know, crazy six - and seven -year -olds get a grip on stories from the scriptures and the love of Jesus and the gospel, all kind of under the, like I said, the watchful care of a mentor pastor.

42:28

The other half of the program approximately is an academic component that is a 60 -credit curriculum that consists of nine core classes that are taught on a trimester system.

42:40

And so we offer three classes a year that meet for 14 weeks at a time. We have 14 -week trimesters.

42:47

Currently, our kind of preferred day and time is Tuesday nights from 7 to 10 p .m. Central Time, again, for 14 weeks at a time.

42:55

And those classes are taught by men who are mentor pastors in the TPA program who have been sort of charged to prepare for this class and be as expert as they can be in that field, and to teach them, this cohort, this group of students, that material, and to lead the class that way.

43:20

So that curriculum is, again, you know, kind of similar to what you'd expect somebody might experience in an

43:28

MDiv program. So men take Systematic Theology 1 and 2. They take Preaching 1 and 2, which is, you know, a sermon composition and then a preaching lab class.

43:39

They take Biblical Interpretation in Greek and Hebrew and Church History and Old Testament and New Testament.

43:46

And then the bulk of the rest of the academic work is made up by sort of self -study -style elective classes that can look a number of different ways, but often that's if a guy, say, in his apprenticeship, maybe he knows he's going to be teaching through the

44:06

Book of Galatians in an adult Sunday school class this fall semester in his church, in his mentor church, we would say to that guy, you know, to get some elective credits, since you're already doing that work and already kind of learning it on the job, so to speak, why don't we come up with a syllabus for you for that?

44:24

That would be, you know, a three -credit, for example, three -credit syllabus for this to be an elective class.

44:30

And we'll say, here are some commentaries that we expect you to read and digest in your preparation, and we're looking to see that you're preparing sound biblical lessons and thinking through how you're going to go about teaching this, and then looking for a report on how it's went, that kind of stuff.

44:53

And so we love to sort of piggyback the academic electives with things that students are already doing in their apprenticeship components so that there's kind of a minimum of academic work that's unconnected from their day -to -day or week -to -week ministry life, though we're also happy to come up with syllabi for elective classes that maybe aren't necessarily related to what they're doing.

45:19

I mean, some guys want to do a deep dive on the theology of Jonathan Edwards or or, you know, go deeper in biblical preaching or something like that.

45:30

In that case, you know, there's so much world -class theological training, lectures that are available online for free through the unbelievable work of outfits like biblicaltraining .org,

45:43

which make entire seminary -level classes, the lecture components of those, free for all comers, whoever'd like to listen to those can.

45:54

We love to take those sorts of things and couple them, pair them with about a thousand pages of scholarly literature on that topic, and prescribe a few papers, and then kind of have a guy work through an elective class with those lectures as the source of the primary teaching that's coming from that.

46:15

So you may get the sense that we're pretty flexible in how electives, in particular, work out, and that's true.

46:21

We love to say that one of the beauteous parts of the TPA is flexibility. We want to be adaptable and help men get the training that they need and want with a minimum of overhead and difficulty.

46:39

Pastor Jason, you already told us how you discovered the Timothy Apprenticeship Program, Pastoral Apprenticeship Program.

46:49

Please give us a step -by -step account in detail of your experiences of when you started to stick your toe in the water and then plunge in, and how you eventually even became raised up to the point of being a mentor yourself.

47:13

Yeah, so I retired from the Nassau County Police Department on Joe Biden's Inauguration Day.

47:23

That was, I believe, a Thursday, and then Friday— Was that intentional, by the way? Oh, yes, it was.

47:29

Yes, it was. I took an oath to uphold the Constitution. All right.

47:36

When I saw that ending, I—but yeah, so that was in January of 2021.

47:43

And the next day, well, I had been working for about six months to set up when

47:50

I would be starting, and there was an interview process, a thorough interview process, in which

47:56

Ryan and Andy spoke to my people who recommended me, as well as Pastor Pete, even to the point of interviewing my wife to make sure that I was—the family knew what we were getting into.

48:11

And so that process started probably in the fall of 2020.

48:17

And in January of 2021, I began the program, and I think the first class

48:25

I took was Ryan with your father. It was bereavement and grieving, so pastoring people through the bereavement process.

48:33

And then shortly after that, things got real serious when Hebrew started, and I was reading from right to left with letters

48:42

I had never seen before. But the process itself, the studies itself—I had had my bachelor's, my undergrad, so I was not afraid of scholastic work.

49:00

I found it to be very scholarly. I found it to be very challenging, and I found it to be quite equipping.

49:08

I had a mentor pastor who I was involved with, and I had—because

49:14

I had retired at that point from the police department, I was putting in full -time hours at the church.

49:20

I was able to be at the church with Pastor Pete and to sit in on some of those things that Ryan spoke about.

49:27

So to watch how he brings a couple through biblical counsel, premarital counseling, or bringing somebody through pastoral counseling, who is dealing with a life struggle, and to be invited in on those conversations.

49:44

As the program would develop and unfold, and I got to the preaching class,

49:53

I was given opportunities to preach at Harperville. I was given opportunities to teach, to be involved in leading the men's ministry or a life group, a study in my own home.

50:06

And so it just became quite seamless, as one of my professors was my pastor, in a way, in that I could go to him, walk into his office, and talk to him about what we were learning in the schoolwork part of the program, the academic part of the program.

50:32

And so it was seamless, and it's something that we try to provide now with my pastoral apprentice.

50:39

And I would also say that one other way that we saw growth, and that we could say we have a couple churches now in New York, is that when we had my own ordination,

50:50

Ryan flew out from South Dakota and had an ordination council with five other pastors, one of whom you know very well,

50:58

Rich Jensen. He's actually conducting the memorial service for my late brother,

51:07

Andy, on September 6th. That's right. That's right. That's when I'll see you next in the flesh,

51:14

God willing. And so when we did the ordination,

51:21

Ryan was able to say to these five other pastors who had grilled me for close to three hours, if you like what you saw here, this is how this man was prepared.

51:36

And so I know Chris Coates, who's the lead pastor of Island Christian Church in Northport, now has two pastoral apprentices that are under him, and Harborview has one.

51:50

So it grows in many ways, some simply by Google searches, and others by us sharing this with other people.

52:00

And in time, as I graduated and became the lead pastor,

52:07

I decided I want to continue my education. I don't think we should ever stay stagnant, and I found a program called

52:17

Forge Theological Seminary that gave me a third of my Master's in Theological Studies credits from the

52:27

TPA. So we have a seminary that I'll be getting my master's from that gave me a third of those credits from the

52:36

TPA. So it's something that is being recognized by other programs, and I think that's important for our people to realize.

52:46

Okay. We have to go to our midway break right now, and when we come back, we'll have both of our guests give more details and take audience questions and so on.

52:56

And please, if you know of young people desirous of entering into the ministry or young men who have already just recently entered into the ministry, maybe they want to take advantage of this, please call them up or text them.

53:13

However you communicate with them and tell them to tune into our discussion today, ironsherpensirenradio .com,

53:21

no matter where they live in the world. And if you have questions, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

53:28

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. You may remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

53:38

Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages. It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners from all over the world.

53:58

Here's Joe Riley, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed,

54:07

Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener here in a tie in County Kildare, Ireland.

54:14

Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is

54:20

Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia are largely to thank since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.

54:33

Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the metropolitan area.

54:39

Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church, unwaveringly committed to the Westminster standards, and Dr.

54:44

Joe Moorcraft is the author of an eight -volume commentary on the larger catechism. Heritage is a member of the

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Hanover Presbyterian Church, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great

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Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Heritage maintains and follows the biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the reformers, scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone,

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Christ alone, and God's glory alone. Their primary goal is the worship of the Triune God that continues in eternity.

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For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com.

55:23

That's HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com or call 678 -954 -7831.

55:30

That's 678 -954 -7831. If you visit, tell them

55:35

Joe Reilly, an Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener from Attoye in County Kildare, Ireland, sent you.

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This is Pastor Bill Sassu, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

56:02

Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support

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Iron Sharpens Iron radio financially. Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in scripture through the person and work of our

56:24

Lord Jesus Christ. And of course the end for which we strive is the glory of God.

56:31

If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

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Lord's Day in worshiping our God and Savior. Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin.

56:53

Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org. That's gracechurchatfranklin .org.

57:02

This is Pastor Bill Sassu wishing you all the richest blessings of our sovereign

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Lord, God, Savior, and King Jesus Christ today and always.

57:17

Iron Sharpens Iron radio first launched in 2005.

57:30

The publishers of the New American Standard Bible were among my very first sponsors. It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the

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Puritan Reformed is a Bible -believing, kingdom -building, devil -fighting church. We're devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine in practice, preserved in scripture alone.

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01:00:16

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And finally, if you're looking to worship in a reformed church that holds to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, please join us at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Coram, New York.

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Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Invinio, and thanks for listening. Hi, this is

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James White here of Alpha Omega Ministries announcing that this

01:04:46

September I'm heading out to Pennsylvania to speak at two events that my longtime friend

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Chris Arnzen has lined up for me. On Thursday, September 18th at 11 a .m.

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I'm speaking to men in ministry leadership at Chris's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastor's Luncheon at Church of the

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Living Christ in Loisville. Then on Sunday, September 21st at 1 30 p .m.

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I'm speaking at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle on the theme, Can We Trust the

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Bible is the Authentic and Inerrant Word of God? I hope you can join Chris and me for both events.

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For more details on the Free Pastor's Luncheon, visit ironsharpensironradio .com.

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That's ironsharpensironradio .com. For more details on Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, visit trbccarlisle .org.

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That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, I'll see you in September in Pennsylvania for these exciting events.

01:05:48

Welcome back. Before I return to our conversation with Ryan Franchuk and Jason Contino, I have some important reminders for you.

01:06:00

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Also, I want to remind you that if you are not a member of a

01:07:59

Christ -honoring, biblically -faithful church, no matter where you live in the world, I have extensive lists spanning the entire globe of biblically -faithful churches, like River Community Church in Dell Rapids, South Dakota, and Harborview Christian Church in Port Jefferson, Long Island.

01:08:23

And I've helped many people spanning the globe find churches in our audience that are biblically -faithful, sometimes even within just a couple of minutes from where they live.

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So, if you are in that predicament, you do not have a church home that is biblically -faithful, and you don't even know where to find one wherever you live, please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:08:48

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Ryan Franschuk and Jason Contino on our conversation today about mentoring and preparing young men for pastoral ministry and church planting.

01:09:12

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

01:09:17

We do have an anonymous listener who wants to know, what if you have a candidate, for instance, who is interested in pursuing pastoral ministry because others have told them that they see gifts in them suited for that purpose, but at the same time they have nagging doubts about their giftedness in this area?

01:09:43

Will your program help to either confirm that they are worthy of this calling or that they should look for another vocation in life?

01:09:56

Let's start with Ryan. I think the short answer is it might.

01:10:06

We do admit students to the program that after going through the admissions process, which is, you know, you submit an application, we call your references, we talk to four of your references, and try to get to know you as best we can from a distance, and have a

01:10:26

Zoom interview with you, and that sort of stuff. And we have admitted guys into the program that just aren't sure if vocational eldership, serving as a pastor, really is what

01:10:41

God is calling them to do with their life, or if they're in a place where maybe they feel like they've got some significant growth still that needs to happen in their life, or maturity, and that sort of thing before they would go into pastoral ministry.

01:10:59

We do sometimes, on a case -by -case basis, might admit a such man to the program with the expectation that the

01:11:10

TPA is, one, able to do that, because, like I said, flexibility is kind of the name of the game, and we can have that mindset.

01:11:23

We ask a mentoring church, a mentoring pastor, to have that mindset for the student. This man is seeking the

01:11:30

Lord's face. He wants to really discern if that inward call that he senses, perhaps, to vocational ministry, if that really is going to have an external confirmation by a value believer, by his local church, by his church family.

01:11:48

So we ask the church and the mentor pastor to have that mindset, that stance, and to recognize that, yeah, it might not pan out for him.

01:11:58

He might not finish the program. He might get a year in and discover that he really doesn't like people that much, or just doesn't maybe have the right temperament, or the right gift, the right gifts, or whatnot.

01:12:15

And we've had a number of men, I think I counted, I was just counting this the other day, I think we have 19 men that have been part of the

01:12:22

TPA who did not finish. They DNF'd the program for a large variety of reasons, but a large percentage of those guys, we actually consider those successes because they discovered that vocational ministry wasn't really something they were gifted, fitted, or called for.

01:12:40

And instead of then pursuing that, and to the detriment of the people that they're trying to serve in that way, or to their own detriment, or the tune of getting $40 ,000 or $50 ,000 in debt to do a master's degree at seminary, or something like that, and then finding out that or discerning that pastoral ministry isn't really the thing that they're supposed to be doing.

01:13:08

Instead of that, they've been mentored, lovingly shepherded, and cared for in a church, and have gotten a chance to explore those things in a so -called safe environment, a place that is going to help them kind of tease those things out and see.

01:13:28

And so we have far more guys that have not finished the program than have graduated the program.

01:13:36

And a lot of the time, most of the time, we consider that success and are grateful to the

01:13:43

Lord that he's helped bring that kind of clarity. So again, that's the long answer. The short answer is, it depends.

01:13:50

We love to, for any new applicant to the program, we want to try to get to know them as best as possible as directors.

01:13:57

We have five directors, which I'm one. Pastor Jason, who's on today, too, is one.

01:14:03

And then there are three other men, too, that serve as directors. And we really try to make sure that we do due diligence and get to know a guy as best we can from a distance, most of the time, that is, and help see, is this really going to be a good fit for you or not?

01:14:23

So I like to think that we're fairly diligent that way. Pastor Jason, why don't you give us some examples of what has occurred in your own relationships with the men you are mentoring?

01:14:44

Yeah. So as you go through these relationships, as you develop these relationships, you're seeing people in a whole different light.

01:14:54

And just to jump back into that last question, what

01:15:02

Ryan says as far as making—it's a win or it's a success because as pastors, we're helping to—if we're keeping people from going into ministry, if we're helping people recognize that they're not called to ministry, that also is helping congregations.

01:15:22

But men who go into things like this and study these things, even if they don't finish,

01:15:27

I guarantee you, you come out of it with a greater appreciation to be a better churchman in your congregation, to be a better deacon if you are, or if you're a deacon, or a better husband because of what you will have learned in the amount of time that you are in these studies.

01:15:44

And so for myself, the pastoral apprentice that I have is a young man.

01:15:52

He's the age of my younger son. He's 24 years old. He has a heart for his generation.

01:16:01

And so at Harborview Christian Church, this young man, Jameson, is in charge of our young adult ministry, and he networks with other churches.

01:16:11

He networks with other congregations on Long Island, and he teaches on Monday evenings a young adult ministry in which it's not just getting together and having coffee.

01:16:25

He was preaching to them through the book of Ecclesiastes. I mean, find 20 or 30 young people in a secular place on Long Island who want to hear somebody posit

01:16:36

Ecclesiastes on a Monday night, and I guarantee you, they're all growing in their faith because of this.

01:16:43

And so he's just been such a blessing to Harborview and to me because he could speak into a generation and into a group that perhaps would be harder for me to speak into, or I get that opportunity on Sunday mornings, but he takes that opportunity on Monday evenings.

01:17:04

And I do want to make some corrections. Ryan has said young men several times, and I began the program at the age of 48.

01:17:11

So it's not just for young guys. It's for married men. I can't move to Louisville, Kentucky or to some of these places, although there's a lot more online presence by a lot of these seminaries.

01:17:24

But to have this available to me at a time in my life when my kids were grown,

01:17:32

I was coming out of a career already. I was retiring and I didn't want to be pulled out of the congregation where I already was an elder, but I'm able to stay in my congregation and now do that same thing with Jameson, where he's able to stay in the congregation.

01:17:48

He's able to run a young adult ministry. He does not have to move and put himself tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and these men can find out if they like it or not while they are doing ministry and learning about the process as well.

01:18:11

Sorry about that. I had myself on mute. We have another anonymous listener.

01:18:19

The anonymous listener says, I am fully aware that 1

01:18:26

Timothy chapter 4 verse 12 tells us, let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe.

01:18:42

My question is, how do we who have a problem with despising young people in ministry to get over this?

01:18:52

Of course, I do not mean the more extreme understanding of despise, but when you distrust somebody much younger than you, can have anything meaningful to teach you and guide you as an older Christian?

01:19:08

Let's start with Ryan. Yeah, I can see where that would be a difficult thing in a lot of people's lives.

01:19:22

Take that verse and apply it retrospectively or whatever.

01:19:29

I can see even in my own life sometimes just hesitancy and a little bit of apprehension about young guys being given ministry responsibilities or taking bigger and bigger roles in ministry.

01:19:52

I share a little bit of that sense of what that question is asking.

01:20:00

I think for me, what's helpful to remember is that the

01:20:05

Lord is a sovereign God. Not one sparrow falls from the sky apart from His good will and His good pleasure.

01:20:16

I don't have to be an all -controlling mentor or dictator or something like that.

01:20:28

Not everything has to go my way. I can trust because I know that the

01:20:39

Lord loves His church more than I do and that Jesus gave

01:20:45

His own blood for His church. I can trust that He's going to see us safely through and in the hands of young people and that everyone starts somewhere.

01:20:59

I remember being a young guy. I was talking to Pastor Jason about this a little earlier.

01:21:06

I remember being a young guy. I was a college student. I wasn't in a formal ministry training program or anything, but I was mentored by my pastor when

01:21:16

I was a student at North Dakota State University in Fargo. My pastor Monty at Metropolitan Baptist Church there, he poured into me.

01:21:24

He poured into my life. I was just this young buck who was kind of ready to spout off at the hip about lots of stuff.

01:21:36

He just sort of gently, patiently bore with me and was an advocate for me and created an apprenticeship, a ministry internship position for me and walked alongside me and gave me books to read and dialogued with me about them and helped me through tough discussions and tough conversations that needed to happen and kind of peeled back the inner curtain a little bit into what church life was like and talked with me about how he was navigating those things and kind of let me enter into that.

01:22:12

I realized he took a huge risk in doing that because the first year

01:22:18

I was in college, I was a computer science major at NDSU. In the very first week that I showed up at that church,

01:22:25

I decided I'm going to church here. I was talking to Pastor Monty after service, my first service there, and he said, what's your deal?

01:22:34

I said, I'm a computer science major at North Dakota State, but I really sense a call of God to ministry on my life.

01:22:41

I really want to be a pastor. I want to pursue that when I'm done with college. He said, well, why don't we just start meeting?

01:22:47

Why don't we just start hanging out and we can talk about life and ministry and theology? We met almost every single

01:22:53

Saturday after that for the next five years to do just that, to talk about life and ministry and theology.

01:23:01

He walked me through my cage -state age

01:23:07

Calvinism, so to speak, and just helped me kind of come to grips with a lot of theology and story ministry stuff.

01:23:18

He even let me preach that first year when I was a first -year college student. He'd never heard me speak before.

01:23:24

It was maybe even a little bit irresponsible of him, honestly, but he just took a chance. He went for it.

01:23:31

He booked me, Karen Bell. I can't tell you how that shaped me, that he would take that risk.

01:23:41

He would trust God. God's got things. God's got the church.

01:23:47

He's got these young guys. He's got my flock. He trusted the

01:23:53

Lord, and he let me swing. He gave me a bat and let me swing. That just means the world.

01:24:00

Pastor Marty's dead now. He's in glory. Between him and my own father, who was, like I said, a pastor my whole life, the mentorship

01:24:12

I received from those guys as a young man was just incalculable.

01:24:17

And so I would urge our questioner to consider that maybe

01:24:24

God has purposes for bringing up guys in our lives, young men in our lives too.

01:24:32

Jason's right. TPA isn't just for young bucks. We've got some guys that are in their 30s and 40s and 50s as well, family men with lots of kids.

01:24:45

We're over the moon with those guys. But maybe the Lord has young guys in your life for that reason that you would be willing to risk a little bit and see what

01:24:56

God does. Yeah. One of my favorite preachers, as well as one of my dearest friends, the late

01:25:03

Dr. Robert J. Cameron, who was at one time the pastor of Mount Carmel Church in Somerset, New Jersey, an

01:25:14

Orthodox Presbyterian congregation. Brother Cameron was one of the very few black pastors in that denomination, and he did not pursue ministry until he was in his late 40s.

01:25:30

He was the owner of a trucking company and decided to answer the call from God to enter into pastoral ministry.

01:25:39

So I fully agree with you that entering the ministry is not exclusively for young bucks, as you've been saying.

01:25:48

Now, Pastor Jason, although obviously the

01:25:55

God -breathed words of 1 Timothy 4 .12 are true, and those of us who are older folks need to take heed and examine our motives as to why we're having difficulty perhaps even submitting to a pastor who's a lot younger than us.

01:26:20

At the same time, even as was revealed recently in a conversation that you and I have, there are occasions when we witness in younger folks that they are unfortunately guilty of things that may be more typical for folks in the younger generations than they would be in our generation.

01:26:56

For instance, I remember you saying recently that a lot of the young men avoid confrontation, and they kind of got their ostrich head in the sand and don't want to be upfront and honest about certain things.

01:27:16

So as much as we have to obey Scripture as older people and not despise anyone because of their youth, especially when you are in a position where you're mentoring people, you've got to be very quick to be upfront and honest if you see things like this, don't you?

01:27:31

Oh, absolutely. It's a balancing act. Every profession is going to be passing on to a newer generation, the next generation, ways of doing things.

01:27:47

And if you don't think that, whether it's medical residencies with surgeons learning how to operate or lawyers learning how to do law or police officers who come in as rookies, you need to train up the people that are going to be replacing you and inheriting this.

01:28:08

When it comes to ministry, for those asking these questions, the best thing for them to do is to be in prayer for these men, be in prayer.

01:28:17

And as we pray for people, as we pray for their maturity and for their growth, we're going to see that our hearts are going to be changed, right?

01:28:24

It's like that with every issue that we pray about. But there is definitely a responsibility and I take it very seriously.

01:28:31

And I told my pastor of apprentice, I said, I raised my two sons, my sons who were your age, and I raised them to be solid men.

01:28:43

One is a pastor down in North Carolina and the other is in the Coast Guard flying on helicopters as an aviation maintenance technician.

01:28:53

And I said, my sons were different than their generation.

01:29:01

So if I'm going to mentor you, I'm going to start treating you the way I treated my sons.

01:29:07

And this young man sat in my office, looked me in the eye and says, I so appreciate that.

01:29:13

I so want that. And that's the heart of a man, I believe, that will one day be a great pastor because he's looking to be trained up.

01:29:22

He's looking to be raised up and to be educated and to be told the hard things.

01:29:28

And there's not something that I don't tell him that I don't see an immediate response to.

01:29:34

So I'm seeing a pastor's heart. I'm seeing a heart of a man who certainly needs more life experience.

01:29:42

But in that life experience, if God is going to be shaping him, then we'd better get out of the way and do our best job.

01:29:50

If God's choosing him, right? If we believe in election, if we believe in God preordaining things, then just get out of the way and do your best job to raise up the next man.

01:29:58

If we call ourselves Calvinists, perhaps we should be consistent in our

01:30:04

Calvinism. Now train him. Okay, we have

01:30:09

Corey in Boynton Beach, Florida, who says, could both of you be more specific about signs that someone is qualified for the ministry and also not qualified?

01:30:26

And for the latter, obviously, I'm not talking about things that are more obvious and scandalous when it comes to sinful behavior, but more subtle things that might be overlooked by many people, including the pastoral candidate himself.

01:30:43

I guess let's start with Ryan, and then we'll have Jason follow up on that for any additional signs that people should be looking for in churches and elder boards and so on.

01:30:59

Sure. You know, the kinds of things we're looking for when we're working through admitting a student into the

01:31:05

TPA are a lot of character things that correlate with the character qualities for elders, like in Titus and Timothy, and those things.

01:31:18

And those are the kinds of questions we ask of the references that are listed by an applicant to the program.

01:31:27

So we want to know that this man, he genuinely knows the gospel and believes the gospel.

01:31:34

He loves the Lord with all his heart, and he loves the scriptures, and he's committed to them.

01:31:41

So I mean, that's kind of basic level stuff. But we're also really looking for guys that have a certain ethos about them, certain temperament that accords with the seriousness of pastoral ministry, as well as the joy of it, like John Piper talks about, you know, gravity and gladness both being key components of the church's worship and of preaching.

01:32:10

And we're looking for men that kind of exemplify both those things, who have a real true sense of the reality of eternity, heaven, hell, and eternal life, and the gospel, and the exclusivity of Jesus, you know, and the the message of salvation, but also just a full -throated, deep -hearted love of God, and all that God has made, and a deep, deep satisfaction in those things.

01:32:43

Now, that's true for—we obviously desire that for every believer. And so what is it in particular about, you know, a guy that's wondering if he's led toward pastoral ministry?

01:32:54

And a lot of that is, you know, like what Charles Spurgeon said, there has to be an overwhelming desire for the work, a burning sense that I need to do this.

01:33:06

I really desire to preach and teach the Scriptures to the utmost of my ability.

01:33:13

I desire to refute false doctrine and confound those who teach it.

01:33:19

I desire to shepherd the flock that Christ bought with his own blood. I love people. I love Christ's church.

01:33:25

Like Paul said, I want to spend and be spent for souls. And so, like I said, there has to be some sort of a little bit of pathos there in—not just a little bit, but there's a desire to do that work.

01:33:43

And a lot of times, there's a guy that has that desire, and maybe a sense that the gifting just doesn't quite match, and that perhaps, you know, vocational eldership just isn't really the best way to live that out.

01:33:56

But that said, we still want that to be true of, of course, every believer, that they would be a full -throated, sincere, glad, and serious member of the church,

01:34:15

Christian who loves the Lord and seeks to glorify him in every aspect of their life. But for guys that are specifically seeking pastoral ministry, there has to be an earnest desire to do that work, and there should be some aptitude to do it.

01:34:28

It doesn't mean you have to come into the program, you know, the TPA, say, already, you know, having a good grip on exegesis or already having thought through any finer points of homiletics or anything like that.

01:34:43

But there should be some sort of natural aptitude, some sort of well -spokenness, a desire to study, an ability to study and read deeply, to concentrate for long periods of time, to work hard, to be able to deny yourself, to kind of jettison lesser pursuits in favor of greater, more important pursuits, and to manage time well, to manage your family life and your ministry life and your personal life all under the banner of discipleship of Jesus.

01:35:22

So, those are the kinds of things that come to my mind when I'm hearing that question. Pastor Jason, after I give an example of a negative sign that a particular church, which will remain unnamed, witnessed in a pastoral candidate that led them to the decision not to accept his application, and of course, you can add your own thoughts and signs regarding applicants for pastoral roles on your own after this, but I'd like your comments about what

01:36:02

I was told by a certain church. There was an applicant that was brilliant and extremely gifted in oratory.

01:36:18

He preached excellent messages that not only had rich biblical content, but homiletically were delivered in very captivating and just powerful ways.

01:36:43

There were a number of people in this church that were upset that the vote on this individual was negative, and the pastor of this church told me what the people who were unhappy about the negative vote were overlooking was something that I was keenly observing.

01:37:14

He said it was the way that the candidate interacted with people before and after he preached.

01:37:24

He said the man was aloof. He didn't ask questions of people that he was meeting.

01:37:32

He didn't ask them how they were doing, didn't ask anything about their lives, and so this pastor, who obviously had a lot of weight with his congregation, and they agreed with him in their negative vote, they concluded that this man may be ideally suited for a seminary professor or a whole host of other roles and positions in life, but to be the shepherd of a flock at this point in his life anyway, they did not believe that was one of them.

01:38:11

So if you want to comment on that, and then if you want to bring up your own thoughts on other things, that's fine.

01:38:19

I think what you're describing is exactly what you want to be looking for.

01:38:26

It's not just—a man's character goes so much deeper than his cerebral understanding of things, and anyone could study something and regurgitate, or not anyone can.

01:38:39

Smart people can study something and regurgitate it to pass a test or to perform, but we're looking for pastors to have a pastoral heart, have a heart that's broken for what hurts

01:38:52

God, for what breaks God's heart. We're looking for people to have a heart to feed the

01:38:59

Christ sheep, to serve their King, someone who's willing to wrestle with a passage before expositing it, who's willing to put in that time and to be shaped themselves and to prayerfully approach

01:39:17

God's throne, because they have been given that immense responsibility of feeding for and caring for his sheep.

01:39:26

I mean, my goodness, and what a blessing that that pastor and that congregation was able to pick up on that.

01:39:34

In some of the interviews that we've done, I've heard that, and one time

01:39:41

I heard it. Someone said, I'm able to get up and I'm able to perform when asked to speak publicly.

01:39:48

What? This is why you're meant to become a pastor?

01:39:54

And he used the word perform. Yeah, he used the word perform, and so the vote would have to be no, just like with that pastor.

01:40:06

The vote would have to be no, because you seem to misunderstand what this is all about. So yeah,

01:40:13

I mean, thankfully, the Bible gives us in 1 Timothy 3 and in Titus 1, it describes to us who these men are supposed to be—above reproach, faithful to a long -woman man, faithful to your wife, self -controlled, respectable, disciplined, not given to drunkenness or addiction, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome or quick -tempered, not a lover of money, not greedy, to be hospitable, to be a lover of what is good, upright, and holy, to manage your household well, to have obedient, believing children.

01:40:49

And what do you do? Are you able to teach? Are you able to hold firm to the sound gospel? Are you not a recent convert?

01:40:56

Do you have a good reputation with outsiders? And then that calling on your life, a inner desire and compulsion to serve, and that doing these other things.

01:41:06

I think Spurgeon says, don't tell me you would have been a good merchant or you would have been a good lawyer, that you tried those things and you couldn't do those things.

01:41:18

Tell me that you tried them and there was no way you could have done anything but become a minister.

01:41:25

Don't come to me after you tried these other things and failed. But tell me that there was nothing else that was going to satisfy you.

01:41:34

Do you have a gifting and a fruitfulness to your spiritual gifts? Is there an affirmation by a church of believers, your elders, that they recognize this call and qualification on your life?

01:41:48

Is there a willingness to serve and not at all for selfish gain but for the advancement of his kingdom?

01:41:54

All right. We have to go to our final break. And once again, if you have a question, you may submit it to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

01:42:02

And if you have any intention to submit a question, do it now because we're rapidly running out of time. chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

01:42:09

Don't go away. We're going to be right back. I'm Dr.

01:42:17

Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

01:42:26

Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight -volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the

01:42:36

Westminster Larger Catechism titled Authentic Christianity by Dr. Joseph Morecraft.

01:42:42

It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology.

01:42:54

Dr. Morecraft is pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation.

01:43:05

For details on the eight -volume commentary, go to westminstercommentary .com, westminstercommentary .com.

01:43:13

For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,

01:43:20

heritagepresbyterianchurch .com. Please tell Dr. Morecraft and the saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia that Dr.

01:43:29

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01:49:33

Welcome back, and please don't forget, folks, that this program is paid for in part by the law firm of Botafuco and Associates.

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And we are going to also be joined by Dr. Doug McMaster, pastor of New Hyde Park Baptist Church on Long Island, who was the director of pastoral correspondence at one time for Grace to You.

01:51:02

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So please mark your calendars for this Friday, August 1st, for this tribute to the late John MacArthur. And we're now back, and we have

01:51:25

Manny, who is located in Little Ferry, New Jersey.

01:51:32

And Manny says, isn't the motives that is lying behind a person's desire to be a pastor as equally important as his gifts?

01:51:48

For instance, some obviously want fame, they want accolades, they want compliments, or they want power.

01:51:58

Yeah, that's a very good question. And I've even said on this program, and I was actually surprised that some of my fellow

01:52:07

Reformed Baptist folks were uneasy with my statement, but I have said that I would prefer to join a church that had a shepherd who really cared about my soul and demonstrated that in vivid and loving and kind and compassionate ways, that was not in agreement with many of my key areas of belief as a

01:52:42

Reformed Baptist, then I would prefer joining a church like that if there were no

01:52:49

Reformed Baptist church local to me where the shepherds demonstrated that kind of heart of a shepherd, and perhaps were cold and guilty of authority, abuse, and so on.

01:53:10

So I think that the listener's question has made a lot of sense, and we'll start with Ryan and then have

01:53:18

Pastor Jason chime in on that as well. Yeah, I do agree, too.

01:53:26

I think one of the things we try to make really clear with the Timothy Pastoral Apprenticeship for anybody who's interested in pursuing being a student or something like that is that at the very outset, we try to be upfront.

01:53:39

Look, we're not an institution, and we don't grant a degree, we're not accredited, and there are a lot of churches that are looking for pastors that for them, having a pastor who's got a degree, got a master's from a recognized institution, that's going to be really high value for them.

01:54:01

And if you're trained in the TPA style, kind of this no -nonsense, sort of down -home, grassroots sort of program, there's a good possibility that there are some congregations that are just aren't going to be really too interested in pursuing you to be the pastor.

01:54:25

And if you're interested in the TPA, you just need to be aware of that at the outset. But if you don't really care, and you love

01:54:34

God's people, and you love the church, and you have a desire to preach the gospel, and to teach

01:54:40

God's Word to the utmost of your ability with all your strength, and to labor kind of in the front lines of maybe a place that not too many people live, or maybe not too many people think about even, but God's people are there, and the lost are there, and you just want to go where the

01:54:56

Lord sends you, then the TPA might be right for you. And so, yeah, the motives are huge.

01:55:05

The motives are huge, I agree with that. And Jason? Yeah, I think if you're looking to pastor a megachurch, or pastor a church with multi -site videos, and I don't know how you do that.

01:55:25

You saw a picture of my congregation from this past Father's Day.

01:55:31

Every Father's Day, we take a photograph, and Chris, I think you were surprised by the size of it.

01:55:39

We have 62 members. When we get three digits on a

01:55:44

Sunday, I'm ecstatic, but I've got my hands full. I've got me, and my two elders, and my four deacons, we have our hands full.

01:55:54

And I'm not saying that other churches can't have different models, and perhaps for some of these bigger churches,

01:56:04

God bless them, and God bless the men who pastor there, and minister there, and the elders there.

01:56:12

But I think something about a small program like this, a grassroots program, it weeds out some of that, in that if you're looking—the man that you described before, if he's brilliant, he rightfully should be teaching some aspect of ministry in a seminary somewhere.

01:56:33

But to just get your hands dirty, and to get involved in people's lives, and to lead with your heart, and to love them the way you should, and yes, continue to get educated.

01:56:43

Get as much education as you can, but don't let—you need a pastor's heart, and a pastor's heart is so rare, and so important, and really, ultimately,

01:56:54

I think it's close to everything when it comes to ministry. These are his sheep, and your heart better be broken for them, and you better fight for them, and you better keep the wolves at bay, and you better not let goats into membership, and voting in your—there's so much to that.

01:57:10

And I just think the TPA, I think, in my situation, and for many men,

01:57:17

I think it's a great opportunity to get yourself into ministry for the right reasons.

01:57:25

All right, great. I want each of you to have 30 seconds to provide for our listeners what you most want etched in their hearts and minds, and we'll start with you,

01:57:34

Ryan. I would just say, yeah, to churches, pastors out there that might be listening that maybe have a desire, oh,

01:57:42

I've got men in my congregation that I would love to see trained up, and God might have a call to them on their life for vocational ministry, and I'd love to be a part of shepherding them through that.

01:57:54

And I really resonate with kind of these theological distinctives of the TPA, and kind of this, for lack of a better term, kind of punk rock spirit, this grassroots kind of deal.

01:58:07

I'd love to talk. And for some of you who's listening that might wonder, am

01:58:13

I called to shepherd Christ's flock, and is this a good opportunity for me, I'd love to—we'd love to talk to you and see.

01:58:21

And of course, no guarantees of anything, but we want to just find out where you're at, what

01:58:27

God's doing in your life, and how, if the TPA might be a great fit for you. And Pastor Jason, about 30 seconds, please.

01:58:33

So, I might need Ryan's help here. I think what we're asking of students,

01:58:39

Chris, is for students to have just a little bit of skin in the game. Is it $150 we're asking for them a trimester,

01:58:45

Ryan? No, there's no amount stipulated. As you recommended. The program is free for students accepting their expenses for books and stuff.

01:58:55

And how much for the church are we asking for? I think it's, we recommend $2 ,500 a year per active student in the program for a church.

01:59:07

Yeah, again, so that the congregation has skin in the game, so to speak. Chris, it's so low, Chris, I don't even know what the numbers are, and I pay it every year.

01:59:15

So, I think this is something that, you know, it really is a reasonable thing.

01:59:21

And as far as finances go, you can't beat it. All right, we're out of time, and the website is thetpa .info,

01:59:30

thetpa .info. Thank you so much, Ryan and Jason, for being excellent guests today, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater