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

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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. 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.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnson.

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

Before I introduce my two guests and our topic of the day, I just want to remind you, please mark your calendars for this Friday, August 1st, when I will be interviewing Phil Johnson, the executive director for the media ministry of the late 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. 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, 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 I was broadcasting out of WNYG Radio, 1440 AM in Babylon, Long Island, New York, Jim Capo, who is the former pastor of the 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. But today I am very excited to have both a returning guest and a first-time guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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. 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.

They're both going to be addressing preparing men for pastoral ministry and church planting. And first of all, let me welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for the very first time, Pastor Ryan Franchuk.

Thanks, Chris. Good to be here.

And let me welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Jason Contino.

Hey, Chris. Thanks for having me.

River Community Church and Harborview Christian Church

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

Sure.

River Community Church was planted, I believe, about 17 years ago now, maybe 18 years ago by my good friend, Pastor Andy Wright, which was kind of his first major ministry project coming out of seminary.

And so this is a Baptist church that's in the small town of Dell Rapids, South Dakota, about 3 ,500 people. And we're a congregation of, I don't know, 120, 130 on a Sunday morning. And we really seek to make 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, I believe. Before that, I had been commissioned by River Community Church to plant a church in nearby Baltic, South Dakota, which is where my family and I live currently, which is only about six miles down the road from Dell Rapids.

And so I served that church plant for eight or nine years, and then we closed the doors of that church plant. And I then came on the pastoral staff of RCC, like to say, we kind of merged back into the mothership, so to speak.

I hope Louis Farrakhan is not on the pastoral team there.

Yeah, so some of the folks that were part of our church plant, 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.

Now what would be the theological makeup of River Community Church?

We belong to what's called the North American Baptist Conference of Churches, which is a small denomination of Baptists that was started in the 1800s by primarily German immigrants that came into the country through New York and then spread across the country and across Canada.

And so we're essentially a conservative evangelical Baptist denomination. And so that really defines who we are, too. You know, in terms of sort of more distinctives, theologically, River Community Church is, we as pastors and elders are primarily 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. 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.

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.

And other than that, we're pretty easygoing, honestly.

How could you be Calvinistic and easygoing? Those two things don't coincide.

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

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

That's Del Rapids, South Dakota.

That's right. Del Rapids, South Dakota. Go to rccdells .com, 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.

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

That is true. It's not even hyperbole. It's very true.

Yeah. Harbor Village, Little Port Village. Our church is 170 years old. It was planted by Island Christian Church in 2011. Island Christian Church, a larger, non-denominational, Baptistic church, and I was saved under the ministry of Pastor Pete Jansen.

And around 2020, we were becoming a little bit more Calvinistic, a little bit more Reformed. I was an elder at the time, and we became independent of Island Christian Church and changed our name to Harborview Christian Church.

In God's providence, as an elder at Harborview Christian Church, working as a detective for the Nassau County Police Department, I had a fraud case which tied me to a phone conversation with the pastors of River Community Church in Delaware Rapids, South Dakota, as a check that was mailed to—I believe, 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.

The routing number was used in a fraud case in New York, which I was the investigating detective. This phone conversation, Chris, led me to speaking to these men and realizing that they had a pastoral apprenticeship program that at some point in the future I might be interested in.

As I wrapped up my career and was retiring under Pete's direction, 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, Pastor Pete retired, and I took over.

So, Harborview Christian Church is a non-denominational cradle Baptist church in a Reformed tradition, is the way I would describe us. Amen.

And not only is your connection with Ryan Franschuk clearly an example of God's unexpected providence, the friendship that you and I have is also the result of that. For those of our listeners who are not aware of this, I just happened to one day, feeling very nostalgic about my late wife, Julie, who I miss dearly, happen to post on Facebook a photograph of the old Amato's Italian restaurant in Amityville, Long Island, where I used to live, that restaurant no longer exists.

I believe the building does and is completely remodeled and looks different than it used to, but I posted that photo of Amato's Italian restaurant because it was the location of the very first date I had with my late wife during a snowstorm, which caused my late wife's pastor to cancel a 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. But I was looking at responses on Facebook to this photograph, and Pastor Jason Contino said, My grandparents owned Amato's.

And he also said,. And by the way, I'm coming to your pastor's luncheon. So that's how I first became aware of Jason and also how I first met him face-to-face at the luncheon. So it has been an honor, a privilege, and a joy getting to know you, brother.

Thank you for it. God's providence is all around us.

Well, before we have Ryan, since he's a first-time guest, give a summary of his salvation testimony,. Ryan, why don't you give us a summary of the Trinity Pastoral Apprenticeship Program? Oh, by the way, I can't remember right now if I gave the website for Harborview Christian.

Church.

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

Yeah, the Timothy Pastoral Apprenticeship is a radically church-centered theological 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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

Amen.

Well, if anybody wants more details, the website of the Timothy Pastoral Apprenticeship is thetpa .info, 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 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 Cantino, who's been on the program before.

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 I traced my conversion back to the day after Christmas 1984, when I was, I guess 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 Lord and about, you know, I think we probably phrased it, asking 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 Lord and asking Jesus to save.

Me.

And so I really traced 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 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 the bulk of my childhood was spent, and I just am so grateful to God for giving me a mom and a dad who loved the Lord, who loved the Lord still, and sought to honor Him and serve Him and to teach me His ways and to show that the Bible was the most important source of data that I could possibly have, and that to love Jesus Christ was an active thing that didn't just stay in the head, but it was lived out in one's whole life.

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 so gracious and would kind of fill me in with lots of different views and just kept telling me it's really about what 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 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.

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

Of course, without the blood of Christ, even the most moral of children raised in a Christian home are still headed for hell if they are not saved, if they are not regenerate. 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. And I'm going to give our listeners our email address if they have a question.

It's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .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 the church planting.

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 .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. And as always, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. You may remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

So don't go away. 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 September, I'm heading out to Pennsylvania to speak at two events that my longtime friend Chris Arnson has lined.

Up for me.

On Thursday, September 18th at 11 a .m., I'm speaking to men in ministry leadership at Chris's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville. Then, on Sunday, September 21st, at 1 .30 p .m., I'm speaking at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle on the theme, Can We Trust the Bible is the Authentic and Inherent Word of God?

I hope you can join Chris and me for both events. For more details on the Free Pastors Luncheon, visit ironsharpensironradio .com. That's ironsharpensironradio .com. For more details on Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, visit trbccarlisle .org.

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

I'm Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love, Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.

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 Christ Jesus the King and His doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island, and beyond.

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Timothy Pastoral Apprenticeship Structure

We're now back with Ryan Franchuk and Jason Contino, and we are addressing the 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?

And to begin with, how do they even usually find out about it?

Yeah, you know, it's kind of one of two ways. 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.

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 tract just really isn't what's kind of floating in their boat.

And they maybe know about the TPA and they say, what's to prevent us from being a part of this? Could we be a TPA partner church and be the mentoring church for this man or these men during their time in the program?

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 and kind of this non-traditional sense or mold Google for pastoral apprenticeships, or I'm not sure exactly what they Google for maybe, but they find the TPA on the Internet and they get a hold of us sort of cold turkey and by registering an inquiry through the TPA's website form, inquiry form, and they say, hey, you know, 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. What do I do? What can we kind of kick the ball down the road here? And that opens up conversation with them.

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. 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 TPA church network. And that's happened a few times in our, 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 TPA just through our relational connections.

We're a small network of churches. 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.

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. 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 Master of Divinity degree where the program is comprised of two things.

Number one is an apprenticeship component. And so that's where a student in the TPA has a mentoring church and mentoring pastor. 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.

And so that means in a guy's experience in the apprenticeship component of the 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, 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 I'm doing. I want you to observe what my demeanor is like, the sort of scriptures that I read. 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 is in this really vulnerable place in life.

Or perhaps, you know, a pastor might have a couple coming in for premarital counseling. The expectation and hope in the TPA apprenticeship would be that that pastor would say to his student, You know, I've got this couple coming in for premarital counseling.

I'd love for you to, if this couple is open to that, I'd love for you to sit in and just observe and watch and see how I go about this ministry if we're trying to help this couple get ready for biblical marriage.

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.

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.

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. 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.

Some of our guys are oriented more toward worship or worship leading. Others are really wanting to get kind of the solo pastor or lead pastor experience under their belt. And so it kind of depends on what the context of the church is like and what the desires of the student are like.

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 what the physical mechanics of baptizing somebody are, what it's like to preach your first sermon, what it's like to teach a 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, like I said, the watchful care of a mentor pastor. 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.

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

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 TPA students, that material and to lead the class that way.

So that curriculum is, again, you know, kind of similar to what you'd expect somebody might experience in an MDiv program. So men take Systematic Theology I and II. They take Preaching I and II, which is, you know, a sermon composition and then a preaching lab class.

They take Biblical Interpretation in Greek and Hebrew and Church History and Old Testament and New Testament. 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 Book of Galatians in an adult 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?

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

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