Vertigo

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2 verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said,.

But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry,.

Pastor Esteban Culi. Si, como no.

Buenos dias por el todo mundo. Con permiso.

Steve, anything new in your life? You got like five new grandkids by now or something? Well, actually six. Six, well, you know what? That's pretty good. Is that some in vitro deal or something I don't know about?

No, it's just counting my dogs too. Okay, now your dog was sick for a while. How is your dog? He's still not doing too good.

He's on crate rest. I don't exactly know. You know, he had the surgery on his neck and that seems to have gone pretty well. But now he still has a limp. He's never going to be 100%, but he's still got a limp in his back leg that is not neurological.

And we haven't really figured that out yet, so.

Now, do our listeners know that you have named your dogs after coffee related things or is that some kind of non-proprietary information? It is proprietary. We can't really release that. I mean, it's a family secret and we don't like to talk about it.

Okay, I won't say anything more about it. Steve, would it be fair to say we as pastors should be willing to help pretty much about anybody?

I'm, yeah, pretty much. Yeah, except for lion dog heretics. Okay. I don't want to help them other than to call them to repentance.

I think we've talked about this before, Steve. Okay. One of the things we like to do though is we like to tell people who come to us for advice, especially if they don't attend our church, have you talk to your pastor?

Yeah, we ask them that, right? Right, we ask that upfront. Actually, I think I learned that a long time ago from Harley Howard of all people. Really? KKLA. Little shout out. Yeah, 99 .5. I'm sure Harley's doing something else these days.

Where is Harley Howard? I don't know. Ridin' a Harley. So we have people that write in and they ask us for advice and I like to say that too regularly. Have you talked to your pastor? Because are we trying to supplant the authority of the local shepherd?

Sure. Oh no, I guess we're No, I didn't say are we trying, I didn't say would we like to do that.

Yeah, well, I mean, obviously if you have an issue, the first person you should go to, other than maybe your spouse or if you're younger, a parent or something like that, you should go to your pastor.

If it's a spiritual issue, you should go to your pastor. Why wouldn't you? Or other elders. Yeah, I mean It doesn't have to be the pastor. You trust them, we'll say a plurality of elders, you trust them to shepherd you, to teach you the word.

But if you have a theological issue, you won't go talk to them? That's kind of odd, isn't it? I mean, if you won't talk to your pastor about something that's going on at your church, then there's really something wrong with that relationship.

But I'm shy.

Steve, what if we were like Harold Camping and we were to say all churches are bad, the church no longer exists in this dispensation, Lord's Supper's not for today, baptism's not for today, certainly foot washing's not for today.

So send us your money.

Yeah, well then we'd be a cult, just like Harold Camping is.

But we don't have the same wattage as that guy does with his network of radio stations.

I'll never forget the first time, and actually it's funny because I got a letter, I haven't told you this, but I got a letter from my friend in California prison the other day. I met him when he was an inmate working for me in California, and our family went to visit him and we're just radio flipping around, we heard Harold Camping on the radio.

And I probably listened for, I didn't know who it was, they didn't identify or anything, but I listened to him for probably seven or eight minutes and had no idea who he was, and he didn't say anything wrong.

And then all of a sudden we started bending off into some rant or another, and I thought, wait, that's not right. And so then I found out it was Harold Camping.

Is he going to be at the Shepherds Conference this year? Yeah, he's one of the featured speakers.

He's a featured speaker. I think we're hearing him Thursday night.

It's the Shepherds with an apostrophe S conference, not the S apostrophe conference. That would be terrible. There's something in people's minds that they can't spell shepherd correctly, nor can they spell Bethlehem correctly.

Well, I could tell you why they can't spell shepherd, because they want it to be heard, like, you know, hearing. Oh. Shepherd. I thought it was Shephard. Well, yeah, they do that too, right?

And then it was, it's Bethlehem, Bethlehem bioptist. Why is that? Why is it Bethlehem? Bethlehem, I don't know. It's the same people that say Acapulco instead of Acapulco. And I think that's the same people that say, what's another, there's a food that people like to say.

They say jalapeno or something. No, they say jalapeno.

I'll have a jalapeno on it.

Without the tilde across the end. Of course, at No Compromise Radio, we don't make mistakes about fusillade, fusillage, tip your hat, tip your hand.

We never make those kinds of mistakes. Ever. Et cetera, et cetera. No compromise, no mistakes, ever.

So we get calls on a regular basis and emails and other things. And so my question is, have you talked to your pastor? And while we want to help people, and I still eventually end up answering the questions that the people have, unless it's a thing I'm not supposed to know and they need to rush back to talk to their pastor.

But we want to remind you in No Compromise Radioland to go talk to your pastor before you go talk to other people who are pastoring other folks. Now, Steve, we've got the moniker of radio hosts and so we should be willing to minister to anybody, right?

I'd like to put that in the hymnal.

You know, I must tell pastor. Tell out my soul. I must tell pastor.

So we think it's fair to ask questions on No Compromise Radio, but really some of the personal questions that you have, you should probably run them by your pastor. But here's one of the interesting things, Steve.

Regularly when I ask that question, they'll say, I don't have a pastor right now. I'm kind of between pastors. Between shopping sprees. And I've left my carriage someplace else or my shopping cart and I'm looking for another place.

A place that has a fun ministry, large youth groups, and a church that's tailored after me. And a bowling league. See, I have a big shirt on and the shirt says goat and I like to be amused. That's amazing.

And eat tin cans. Have you ever seen a goat eat crazy things? I don't really hang around goats. Yeah. I wonder, can you shepherd a goat? I think you can, yeah. Can you shephard a goat? Not very well, no.

You can in Bethlehem. Steve, in front of you, you've got the TBN newsletter. And I think this is kind of like bad luggage. You just have this the rest of your life. You can't get off it. You're once and for all a member, I think, of the Mormon church and a TBN listener.

And I think Mormons actually listen to TBN occasionally. Well, you know what? In defense of the Mormon church,.

It was easier to get out of the Mormon church than it is to get off the TBN mailing list.

Well, there you have it, because you probably gave a special donate button link in your address. And then how did they figure out you moved from California to Massachusetts?

I think the post office rats me out. I don't know, because I don't tell TBN, but they just keep sending it anyway.

But what about those poor people that live at your old house now in California? They would have been getting this, but at least you can filter through it.

Maybe this just goes out to almost every person in America except for you.

It's got kind of a cool purple border with their TBN logo and horses and all that. But why? I thought it's a purple border,.

But that's actually Jan's hair. Well, yes, it's lovely though. Look at this. We must be doing something wrong, because look at all these channels they have. The Smile Network, the Church Channel.

We were on the Smile Network until the Tuesday guy came and then they kicked us off.

Yeah, they put us on the frowny network, frowny face. So asking pastors, is there anything specifically that people would come to you and say, have you talked to your pastor? Is there anything specific you wanted to introduce?

Actually, Steve, in all fairness,.

Some questions that we get that are sent to No Compromise Radio, they're trying to figure out how to actually approach the pastor. Well, that's true. They want to in a respectful way, in a submissive way, in a biblical and godly way, how do I talk to the pastor about his moralistic, therapeutic preaching, his view of drama in the church that goes on, Braveheart snippets during the middle of the sermonettes?

So how can I talk to him? Because we want this church to thrive. We don't want to just leave, but we have to talk to the pastor.

How do I do it? That's a fair question, I think. I think it's a very fair question. And I tell the people,.

Until you have this resolved with the pastor, you send No Compromise your tithe money.

And then that'll teach him. Yeah, I'm sure you tell him that. That'll teach him. Your tithe, because that's how we give. We give based on the Old Testament. That's what we don't eat shellfish on.

Would that mean that when God is, through the prophet Malachi, talking about robbing God, basically the tithe in the Old Testament was an income tax. It wasn't a gift. When people say tithes and offerings, tithes you had to give, or it was robbing God.

You've got to pay the IRS, or you're robbing the government. A tithe is something that you have to give. An offering is something that you want to give.

Because God loves a joyful giver. Yes. All right, Steve.

Why Kids Leave Church: The Relevance Trap

What I have here in front of me is 10 reasons our kids leave church. And there was an article written by, I don't think the person was familiar, or a person who was running in our camp. But I did think it was interesting.

And so top 10 reasons our kids leave church. And I want to give you the reasons from 10 on up, and then we can just use those as jumping off points. Okay. What they say about this stuff doesn't really matter.

Top 10 reasons why kids leave a church. Now, are these funny? You know what? We're going to make them funny.

That's our job. Okay. It's like Christian comedy hour. What's a, who's a comedian that you like? Is there any comedians out there that you can say you like? I have to be honest, no. Okay.

Brian Reagan. Do you like Brian Reagan? Yeah, but I don't really watch it. You know, I just got out of the comedy thing because I did it for so long. You know, I actually wrote some jokes for a guy who was doing standup once.

You know what? There are many things I know about you, but this I do not know.

Yeah. There was a guy who, now he was a really funny guy and super quick witted. And he, you know, he thought I was pretty funny back in the day. And so he was like, you know, would you write me some jokes?

So I said, sure. So we just started doing that,.

But we didn't do that for real. Did you get paid for that? No, it was, you know. You could have been a professional joke writer.

You know, some people would say I am.

Top 10 reasons our kids leave church. I can't find the original article, although this was posted on Mark 5 Solas. That's the only thing I have. 10, the church is relevant. It says you didn't misread that.

I didn't say irrelevant. I said relevant. And so I think the point is here, kids can see fake things from a mile off. And so in all our attempts to make things relevant, we actually turn real Christian young people off.

Well, you know what? I was a kid not so long ago. At least it doesn't feel like it was so long ago, probably because I didn't really grow up until in my 40s.

But I think your knees are shouting all lies, all lies.

But if you think about it, when you were a kid and your parents tried to like do kid stuff or appeal to you in a kid way, it was always just off a little bit, even if they had the right kind of sentiment and everything about it.

And so when kids are going to a church and they see the church trying to appeal to them, when it's off just a little bit, it seems like, you know, the Grand Canyon. It's so unhip in its attempt to be cool that they smell a rat.

They know it's fake.

Now, Steve, and I'm trying to be serious here. If a 20 year old kid sees me, a nearly 53 year old man, trying to be cool and hip and relevant and authentic, don't you think they can pretty quickly see that.

In fact I'm not?

Dude, he's just like us, man. That's so cool, man.

The church chases after the world thinking they can get young people to buy into things, but we can't do things as well as the world can in respect to singing, drama, music, coolness, hipness, but we can do something that the world can't do.

And that is faithfully expound the scriptures. Tell me how the world can do an exposition of Luke chapter one.

Well, they can't. And so what would be the point of trying to be, you know, some, I don't know, even somebody like some comedian, like what's a Conan O 'Brien or Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert? What would be the point of trying to be that hip and that cool and making references to the kind of the culture right now when that's not what we're to be about?

And it's gonna come across as fake and phony and the kids are gonna look at us and just go, why is he trying so hard to be hip? Isn't he supposed to be serious? Isn't he supposed to? I mean, can you imagine if you think back to when you were a kid, can you imagine your own parents just putting on airs like during the seventies, maybe wearing bell bottoms and, you know, stuff like that and hanging out with you.

And I mean, you don't want your parents to act like kids and you don't want your pastor to act like a kid.

This article does say dress him up in skinny jeans and hand him a latte. It doesn't matter. It's not relevant. It's comically cliche. The minute you aim to be authentic, you're no longer authentic.

Who was that? Maybe it was you, you know, since If it was something good, that was me. Well, I mean, it's just, if you are trying to be cool, by definition, you're not cool. That's totally right.

Right? Let's talk a little bit more about this article and youth. Number nine, they never attended church to begin with. So what's our article title? 10 reasons why our kids leave church. Oh, they never were there in the beginning.

So Which would make it tough to leave. I'm not really sure I get that point. So we go on to the next one. No, I can't do anything about it because it seems not to make sense to me. They get smart. So they leave church because they get smart?

What's that mean?

We even know what this article is about. Well, you know, our crack research team, actually, I think what it has to do is that, you know, they get involved in evolution and other things at school. And so once they get educated, then they realize that basically, the Bible's for dopey people.

You know, it's for stupid people. Well, it's interesting, Steve, that you listen to some pastors and they talk to their congregation at the lowest level of education. And they try to dumb down and water down the message with so much diluted mumbo jumbo that it sounds stupid.

Now, I'm not saying you should make everything so hard to understand that you need a PhD at Southern Seminary to get it. I'm not after that. But aren't there a grand thoughts in the Bible, transcendent thoughts in the Bible, abstract thoughts of the Bible,.

Difficult things to work through that you need to use your mind? So why don't you just preach the word? Well, is it wrong to, you know, talk about heady things or to, you know, quote Puritans or to use more than two syllables in a, you know, in a single word?

And, you know, to just kind of go along with this, there's somebody who I think has left the church here not too long ago and just kind of blasted me personally a while back. And yet this same person in the last few days had a question about something unrelated to the church or whatever, but something where they thought, well, gee, Steve seems to know a lot about a lot of different things.

So I'll ask him. And I just thought it was kind of shameless on their part to do that. But I just thought it's good to me that he doesn't think I'm an idiot, you know?

So Where are the pastors these days who talk about evil? If God is sovereign, how does evil exist? If God is all powerful, why is suffering for today? Those questions I think should be dealt with in the pulpit from the biblical perspective and from God's viewpoint, because they're going to be asked in philosophy classes, aren't they?

Well, yeah. And I think, you know, what this really gets down to is what most churches aim at as being practical, you know, stuff that you can use. We want to impact your daily life and we want to help you to be a better neighbor and to clean your kitchen better or whatever.

Get through Monday. Yeah. I'm broken. I'm wounded. Get the rings out of your husband's shirts, you know, around the collar.

Where are the ring around the collar commercials these days? Well, because those are sexist.

But so the point is, you know, the church is trying so hard to be practical. And really what it basically is saying is, we're not smart. We're, you know, we're too stupid to address the bigger questions, the existential questions, if I may say.

And therefore, you know, the kids are sitting there listening and going, you know, this is really dumb. I could listen to a lot of people who are a lot smarter than these guys. And so they won't listen.

Very good. Mike Ebendroth with Steve Cooley, No Compromise Radio. Number seven, why do kids leave churches? We're looking at this list. We didn't write the list. We don't necessarily endorse the list.

You sent them out unarmed. So basically, this relates to the last question. You don't teach children the Bible. You don't teach the youth the Bible. You don't teach them systematic theology and doctrine and other things.

So when they get out into the classrooms at colleges, which are mainly designed, among other things, to destroy the faith that the kids profess, they're trying to shoot panzers with a pellet gun.

Well, we mentioned this, you know, in our previous show. You know, what is our job here as pastors? Well, one of the things I like to say, I mean, we could point to, you know, we wanna present every man perfect in Christ, which is true.

But I like to say also that in Ephesians 4 .12, you know, our job is to equip the saints. We're here to equip the saints for the work of ministry. And saints doesn't necessarily mean, you know, 60 and above or whatever.

We've got to aim, we want to teach the whole counsel of God. We want everyone to understand it and to be able to, for lack of a better term, regurgitate it. And if you don't teach people how to defend the faith, if you don't teach them what the faith is, then they're going to be unarmed, as this person put it.

Now, I don't know what he's going to say in the future, but if I can just add my own list here, one of the reasons why kids leave churches is they aren't regenerate. Well, sure. That would be a real reason.

Yeah. Another reason they leave the church, right along with what you said, is we just assume the gospel, so we never preach the gospel. And then they live with a gospel-less, deeds not creeds mentality.

We just do things and they don't even know the gospel.

Well, and they're like, hey, I can do this stuff on my own.

I don't need the church. Dr. Phil, he can teach me how to do that. Who's that Mormon guy that teaches people.

How to live kind of a life coaching? No, the Seven Habits of Stephen Covey. Yes.

Community Without Truth Is Not Enough

Number six, you gave them hand-me-downs. And so he said, basically, you pass along all your feelings and emotions and they don't have any objective truths for their arsenal. Kind of related to the last one, don't you think?

Yeah, I do. All right. The next one, it says, community. Living in community. Community. Mix community with subjective pragmatic faith and the 100th pizza party at the local big box church doesn't compete against the easier, more naturally appealing choices in other communities.

Well, I mean, if the whole idea is to just be together and enjoy one another and kind of share one another's life stories, then basically the kids can get that anywhere. And in fact, I would say they'd probably be better off at a UU church or something like that, where it's all about sharing.

Steve, don't you think there's a real sense of community in a crack house when everybody's looped up on crack or having cocaine, sharing the needle? I'll tell you, and I hate to say this, but I think it's true.

There's a real sense of a community when people are sitting around listening to music,.

Sharing reefer together. Oh, dude, that's so heavy, man. I'm totally feeling that.

Whatever they call it now, grass and weed and everything else. But seriously It's hard to keep track of all the There's little micro communities and micro breweries. They give you good communities, micro communities and a micro brewery.

You betcha. Come on, dispensing marijuana in Colorado at a theater near you. You know, I'd like to have some soda. I'd like to have some popcorn and give me a bag of grass. Sad. How does that work? It's very sad.

The Problem of Pretending and Positive-Only Religion

Okay, what else do we have? They got tired of pretending. And so this article talks about, in the best life now, every day, a Friday world of evangelicalism, there's little room for depression, struggle, or doubt.

Turn that frown upside down or move along. Yeah, I mean, this whole positive,.

Everything's positive. We have to have a positive, think positive thoughts. You're good enough. You're smart enough. And gee golly whiz, Gee golly whiz.

People really like you. Gee golly whiz. Well, today on No Compromise Radio, we've talked a little bit about why kids leave the church. Steve, do you have any real reasons that just come to your mind why kids leave the church?

Why do kids leave real Bible teaching churches? They love their sin.

Well, I think sometimes they leave Bible teaching churches because, frankly, because of their parents. You know, their parents put on a show on Sunday and then the rest of the week, you know, it's chaos.

And they just go, well, you know, the Bible can't be true because look at how it played out in my life.

Totally. Would you say it's fair to make the statement that some kids leave churches because they want to date other folks and so they just go to the church that their boyfriend goes to because they just want to be with the guy?

Sure, including, you know, Roman Catholic Church or whatever, you know. At least it's church. Yeah, yeah. And they all believe in the same God, you know, so what's the big deal? Same vocabulary.

Yeah. I wonder why people leave TBN churches when they're young.

Well, because they can stay home and just kind of touch the screen and get the same sort of vibe. You can have the communion by yourself. You can order that in that magazine, can't you? Wasn't that great?

The personal communion cup from Olivewood,.

From the Holy Land. Have you ever done a personal communion thing at your home, either in Santa Clarita or here?

No, but, you know, I mean, personal. It really was personal. It's just for one, which I find funky.

Info at nocompromiseradio .com. Have a good day.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.