November 23, 2018 Show with Rev. Bill Shisko on “Developing Regional Home Missionary Work & Radio Ministries” PLUS Margaret Shisko on “The Need for Hospitality in the Homes of Christians”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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

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

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with 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 hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. 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 Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this day after Thanksgiving, November 23rd, 2018.

And I'm so delighted to have two people on this program today, one per hour, whom

I love very dearly. First we're going to have Pastor Bill Shushko, who is director of Reformation Metro New York and the host of the weekly talk radio show,

A Visit to the Pastor's Study. He's going to be addressing developing regional home missionary work and radio ministries.

And for the second hour, we're going to be discussing with his wife, Margaret Shushko, the need for hospitality in the homes of Christians.

But it is my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio the day after Thanksgiving, my friend

Bill Shushko. Hey, Chris, good to be with you. You got my better half on, though, for the second hour, so people need to stay tuned.

That's right, they do. And I happen to be, personally, I have firsthand knowledge of the gift of hospitality that your precious bride has, because I have stayed in your home and you have given me the open invitation whenever I'm on Long Island to stay there.

And I really appreciate that more than words can describe, brother. Well, our only regret is you don't take advantage of the open invitation as much.

Well, it usually has to do with geographic reasons where I have to be at a conference, and I prefer being there like five minutes away, if at all possible.

Yeah, sure, I can understand. Thanks for the opportunity to be on the program again, Chris. Well, I want to give our listeners just a little bit more background about you, because they may be, even some of your friends may be unfamiliar with some of your background.

Pastor Bill Shishko professed to be an atheist during the late 1960s counterculture days.

He converted through a Christian radio program while working in radio in 1970. He gave up full scholarship to go to law school and attended a

Christian college from 1970 -1974 and graduated school 1974 -1976.

He continued to do radio things in college years. He also met the woman who would become his wife on June 5th, 1976.

Bill Shishko attended Westminster Seminary from 1976 -79, began hospitality ministries, which

Margaret will discuss in the second hour. His first pastorate was at McClellanville, South Carolina, the

Jeremy Creek Reform Presbyterian Church in July 1979 through January 1981.

He did the first visit to the pastor's study programs on Saturday mornings from a radio station in North Charleston.

The second pastorate where I got to know him was at the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, Long Island, New York from February 1981 through June 2016.

I can't believe it's been two years already that you retired from that ministry. Pastor Bill did a visit to the pastor's study programs periodically on WMCA where I was employed for 15 years and other radio things.

Pastor Bill Shishko became regional home missionary for Presbytery of Connecticut and Southern New York for the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church beginning in September of 2016.

A visit to the pastor's study is part of his weekly ministry. First of all, if you could start off with Pastor Bill, how did you get the idea of doing this as a part of your regional home missionary work?

That's a great question. I've been involved in radio,

Chris, I think I was about age 15 when I started working at a secular radio station up in Northeastern Connecticut.

I have done little radio things since then, when

I was on vacation during my college years. I'm one of these guys who can't stand

TV, but I love radio and I've got it in my blood. But what happened was, back in 2014, the then new

General Secretary for Home Missions for the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, John Shaw, met with me and asked me if I would be willing to, because funds were available, assume this regional home missionary position for our group of Orthodox Presbyterian churches called the

Presbytery in Connecticut and Southern New York. So I said, well, what would my responsibilities be?

He laughed and said, we have to figure out some way that you reach the entire population of your

Presbytery. So nothing like a small request, because we're looking at 20 million people between Connecticut, the metropolitan

New York area, and Nassau County, Suffolk County, and New York, which actually we're looking at about 3 million people just here on Long Island.

So, you know, I know, I mean, radio is the way by which you can reach that number of people.

And so what I decided to do was what, of course, you and I had done some of these things together, was take this visit to the pastor's study concept that we brought through radio and decided

I would work to develop that as our outreach to this area. Yeah, well,

I'm very thankful to God that you have done that. And I'm sure quite a number of your listeners are equally blessed and thankful to our

Lord for that providentially. So how did the

Lord provide for you to do this in such an expensive radio market, meaning

New York in the tri -state area is quite cost prohibitive? I know that personally being in the radio industry.

If you could tell us about that. Yeah. Well, Chris, you're part of that. So I'd love to tell the story.

Well, first thing we did, Chris, is once my Presbytery gave me the okay to move ahead, at least the concept, because before I was actually called,

I realized that we needed to do what every church body that ministers in the metropolitan

New York area does, and that's have some mechanism for fundraising. There's no major church body that does mission work in the metropolitan

New York area that doesn't raise funds in one way or another. So that was what precipitated the formation of Reformation Metro New York, Incorporated, of which

I serve as actually treasurer or secretary rather. And that is our fundraising organ for the

Presbytery of Connecticut and Southern New York, and that's where we began to continue to raise the funds for part of my salary, but also for the expenses for the radio project.

So that was step one. I remember when I was talking with the missions committee about this idea, they grilled me for a couple of hours afterwards, and they were asking questions like, well, how much is this going to cost?

I said, I don't know. I've never done it before. And they said, well, what station are you going to use? I said, I don't know, but there's going to be a station that reaches the whole area of the

Presbytery. Who's going to listen? I said, well, I don't know. And they said, you don't know who's listening with radio.

But by this time, my normal lack of patience and my own remaining carnality was beginning to take the best of me.

And I said, look, I can't answer all your questions, but I know that once the Lord works this out,

I'll be speaking to more people every week than all of our regional home missionaries combined speak to in a month.

So anyway, what happened was there was the bringing together of our very good fellowship and friendship with an

Indian, as an India -Indian businessman who owns a number of pharmaceutical companies, drugstores, so to speak, here on Long Island and also in New Jersey and in New York City.

They've become very close friends of ours. He and his are very committed Christians. But also there was this organization that I think you're familiar with called

Cruciform Media headed by a very dear friend and brother called Chris Arnzen.

And Cruciform Media and Chris Arnzen found out this deal with then

WLIE radio, which is this radio station in Suffolk County, which actually was the earliest telephone talk program on Long Island.

And it was a deal to get every Saturday an hour and a half from 12 noon until 1 .30

for this programming at a very good price for this area. And again, to kind of cut to the chase here, this businessman agreed that he would contribute for the first hour, he would make a to Reformation Metro New York so we could be without commercials on a visit to the pastor's study.

That paved the way for simulcasting on the Redeemer Broadcasting Network, which is a

Christian station committed to the Reformed faith and to the local church.

And so he contributed so we could do the visit to the pastor's study commercial -free.

And then the last basically 27 minutes would be a program to advertise his pharmacies called

Healthwise. And that's spent a lot of fun doing that with his nutritionists and chemists and so on, dealing with how we take care of our bodies that are fearfully and wonderfully made.

It's one of these few health programs that's distinctively Christian in its perspective. So that's how that all worked out.

For the first year, all the funds were provided for by this very godly Indian businessman, and we've been doing this now for a couple of years on what is now the former

WLIE. Darrell Bock And you simulcast on Redeemer Broadcasting. David Morgan Right, exactly right.

Redeemer Broadcasting, which I commend to your listeners, because it is a Christian network that is committed to the

Reformed standards and to the doctrine of the church, has excellent music and so on and so forth.

That's RedeemerBroadcasting .org. Darrell Bock Now, what was your format for the first two years of a visit to the pastor's study?

Tell us about some of the programs that you had. David Morgan Well, as my dear brother,

Chris Arnson, would quip, he didn't mind me doing a program like this on Saturdays, because it wasn't competing with Iron Shirt.

Darrell Bock Chris has never lost that New York bluntness. That's why we get along so well together.

There's a sense in which the programs are similar. I mean, I've learned a lot, Chris, from what you've done on Iron Sharpens Iron.

I think some differences, one, this is a distinctively church -focused program.

In radio, there's the personality that's there, and much

Christian programming, especially from pastors, focuses on the pastor's name, the pastor's personality, the pastor's church, or whatever.

I've really tried to low -key that. In Pastor Bill, the focus is on pastoral ministry, opening up the

Word of God, and its goal is to present to people what we call magazine articles for the ear, little slices of what

Reformed church life is. That certainly makes the program, if not unique, at least distinctive.

I'm doing that, Chris, because there is this organization called NAPARC, the

North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council, that's made up of about a dozen

Reformed and Presbyterian church bodies in Canada and in America, in the

United States of America. There's no media presence for these church bodies, and so I'm trying to provide a media presence for the

NAPARC churches. The format, basically, was very similar to yours in one sense.

It was an interview with people, a monologue, and then I would have an interview with people, and like you, we would have either call -ins, questions, because we have that ability through WLIE, or text questions and email questions.

Really, it's been interesting to see. Some of the ones that stand out, at least from the analytics as far as downloaded programs and responses, having

Tim Geiger of Harvest USA, which is the leading

Reformed organization for working with people with sexual issues, whether it's pornography or problems created by adultery or same -sex relationships or whatever, and Tim Geiger and Jamie, I'm sorry, last name, from World Magazine, Jamie Dean, they did a program on the transgender revolution that has been downloaded over a thousand times.

It really opened up the issues that are facing churches and how to deal with things pastorally.

Another one, I'm thinking of the ones that have gotten, that I know have been used by the Lord greatly, one of the most, what's the word

I want, programs that just so got to your heart, was a program on adopting children from hard places, which a fellow named

Paul English did. He and his wife have adopted a number of children, large family.

I didn't know what children from hard places meant, but it's children who were born, their moms that had maybe drug abuse when they were carrying a child, children that were abused or children born, and there was other abuse of the mother beforehand that affected the baby.

In some cases, abuse that came or trauma that came after a baby was born, or in many cases, children that were brought up when they were very young were in horribly abusive situations.

I got introduced to this whole world through Paul English, and his accounts,

Chris, of the demands and yet the blessedness of raising children from hard places,

I mean, it just brought you to tears. So we're trying to bring those aspects of, if I can put it this way, personal ministries that people have in church life.

Yeah, and one of my favorite hobbies is stealing your guests and interviewing them.

We borrow, Chris, we borrow from one another. But I have had wonderful interviews myself with some of the guests that you've mentioned.

Hopefully I'll get around to interviewing all of the same people that you've interviewed. Rosaria Butterfield obviously stands out as a really precious gift of the body of Christ, quite a fascinating story that she has being a self -professed leftist and lesbian in the academic realm, a tenured professor,

I believe it was Syracuse University where she was a professor, and then abandoning all of that and being transformed so vibrantly by the power of Christ.

Right. Yeah, Rosaria Butterfield's books are one of God's gifts. I mean, you talk about displays of sovereign saving grace.

Now, Margaret will be developing some of the themes in her most recent book, The Gospel Comes With a

House Key. But her interview, we gave a little different spin to it.

This was the month in which we dealt with the power of the gospel to change people.

And hers was on the power of the gospel to open our hearts and open our homes.

And that's another one that has had quite an impact. It's been used in study groups, believe it or not.

People will listen to this 54 -minute interview or whatever, and then use it. Also, seeing networks.

I know you've had Christina Miller on your program. Yes. Christina was brought up under a

Reformed pastor, Mike Ploughman, pastor of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Bohemia, New York.

And Christina, of course, was brought up with the fact that you're to look at everything in life from a perspective of the

Lordship of Christ and the final authority of the Word of God. And Christina has done some of the finest work that I have ever not only read about, but seen, because I've been in her home, working with children who have autism.

And her program was on helping parents of children with autism.

That has spawned a blog that she does and quite a number of contacts with people, so a visit to the pastor's study really, in a real sense, has done through the radio what pastoral ministry does, where to equip the saints for works of service, which the program does for the building up of the body of Christ.

And those kinds of networks and kind of horizontal ministries have come from a visit to the pastor's study.

That's really been kind of thrilling to watch. Yeah, one of my favorite guests that I've borrowed from you is

Pastor Lowell Ivey, a former white supremacist gang member who was saved by the grace and mercy of Christ in prison.

And I was so blessed to know that he benefited greatly.

He told me he really benefited enormously from reading the publications of Solid Ground Christian Books, the book ministry founded by a mutual friend of ours,

Mike Gaydosh, my very first pastor, who actually was the pastor who invited you to speak at what was then called

Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville, where I first met you. But Pastor Ivey is going to be on next Saturday.

This is going to be the third interview with Pastor... I'm sorry, not next Saturday. I am confusing it with a visit to the pastor's study.

That's right, I am. Lowell's going to be on this Monday, the 26th of November, for the third time already.

And I am assuming, I am hoping that he'll be on many times more after that. But quite a fascinating brother.

Yeah, well, like you, we believe what the Bible does, that God is the one who changes hearts, and he does it sovereignly.

And it's a real liberation by sovereign grace. And Lowell's interview,

Pastor Ivey's interview on our program, was the power of the gospel to liberate captives.

One other thing that is, I don't know if it's unique, but it certainly was something unusual.

In the month that we dealt with the power of the gospel to change people,

I had an interview with a restored, I just called him a restored prodigal son. We, for obvious reasons, didn't want to use the name on the program.

But this is a man that I'd known, that I'd got to know years ago. He was a very committed

Christian. I believe he'd been an officer in the church that he was in, and then fell into horrible sexual sin.

That brought about his divorce, lots of difficulties with his children.

But the church of which he was a part, very, very carefully, thoughtfully, graciously, lovingly, in a

Christ -centered way, carried out church discipline. He was excommunicated. But the account of how

God was working in him, even from the time he was excommunicated, how

God dealt with him over the years before he started going back to church and eventually professed faith in Christ, we chronicled that story on the power of the gospel to change prodigal sons.

We don't have many windows where we can read about church discipline. People hear about it sometimes rather negatively, but to be able to hear a radio broadcast with a restored prodigal son talking, really to the point of breaking, almost breaking into tears at points, about God's dealing with his heart, the combination of those accounts that grow out of obedience to the

Word of God and the power of the human voice over the radio to communicate these things makes a program like a visit to the pastor's study or Iron Sharpens Iron, I believe, unusually powerful in the

Lord's hands. I've got to get him on the program of Iron Sharpens Iron. That sounds fascinating.

As you know, church discipline is something near and dear to my heart because I believe it saved my own life.

I never reached the point of excommunication, but I would have if I had not followed the steps required of my elders at Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island to be restored to fellowship.

You were with me through thick and thin during that period of time, and I will appreciate that for the rest of my life more than I can possibly describe to you.

I still remember a classic thing that you said to me that could best be said by a

Presbyterian, when you came to pick me up in my hotel room and you saw the wine that I was drinking.

You were not only upset that I had returned to drinking, being an alcoholic before I was saved, but you said, it's not just that you're drinking excessively and sinning in drunkenness, but you're drinking bad wine.

Yep, that's an Orthodox Presbyterian for you. Well, you know,

Chris, you know this as well as I do. So many people have had just tragic experiences in church life.

Sometimes they've seen almost totalitarianism in church life, or it can be the other churches that just don't practice discipline.

The pastors aren't visiting with the people. It's just a program or a concert, and we've gotten probably the first bit of feedback

I got on one of the programs, oh my, this is when we began the program a couple years ago.

Somebody texted and said, I have a church that I go to, but if I didn't have one,

I would want to go to a church like the one you're describing on the program. That really impacted me, because the churches are meant to be, people are meant to see

Christ working in his church by the Holy Spirit. Of course, many of them won't go into a church to see it, but if they're listening on the radio, they'll hear a little bit about this, and hopefully that will be attractive to them.

Yeah, praise God. We're going to our first station break right now, and if you would like to join us on the air with a question for Pastor Bill Shishko of Reformation Metro New York and a visit to the pastor's study, our email address is

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us at least your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, and I could readily understand having a pastor as a guest, or at least a retired pastor who is still involved in ministry.

Don't say I'm retired. You're a false witness against your neighbor. I think

I said retired from the pastoral ministry. Is that accurate?

Yeah, that's... well, yes and no. I'm doing pastoral ministry in a little different way.

Well, I'm retired from the pastoral ministry at the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. There you go. Okay, that's okay.

That's good. But I could readily see somebody wanting to ask a personal and private question and remain anonymous.

But if other than that, please give us your first name, city and state and country of residence. Don't go away. God willing, we'll be right back with Pastor Bill Shishko of Reformation Metro New York in a visit to the pastor's study.

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.nyc. Have a great day. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen.

If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the first hour with about a little less than a half hour to go is

Pastor Bill Shishko of the Reformation Metro, New York, and also host of the weekly radio broadcast,

A Visit to the Pastor's Study. If you'd like to join us, we are discussing developing regional home missionary work in radio ministries.

Our number is 631 -291 -7002. 631 -291 -7002.

Before I go to some more questions of my own, I just wanted to get a couple of our listeners' questions covered.

We have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who asks, it's so difficult to get unknown men of God that truly have a voice and a gift that should be known globally on major radio and television networks.

How do you stick in there and convince people to help support financially what you're doing?

Because it has been very difficult for me, not that I am trying to get myself on the air, but I'm trying to get other local pastors that are so powerful and so gifted that they should be known in households all over this country and abroad.

I appreciate Bobby's question. Part of my work is fundraising, so I relate to what he's saying.

I don't have a simple answer to that for Bobby. First of all, when

God is using a man, that man's voice and ministry will get out there in one way or the other.

You think of Redeemer Broadcasting Network or in the past, Family Radio, for example, when they were making use of a lot of different pastors.

There's SermonAudio .com, which is an absolutely wonderful outlet for ministry, so that will get done.

But when we're talking about using broadcast media, let me use that term, that's a challenge today because there's so many...

If it's no longer your local radio station, and there's one of them, there's thousands and thousands of radio stations, both terrestrial and internet -based, and of course people can do podcasts and so on.

So it's not as easy to convince people today that it's a good investment to be investing in radio ministries.

What you have to do is show, as I'm seeking to do, how the

Lord is using a program in changing lives. When people see, regardless of how something is presented or broadcast, if you will, when people see that a person's ministry is instrumental in changing lives, and you can put that need before people, people will support it.

That's what we're beginning to find now, after being at this for two years, as we're talking about how

God has used a visit to the pastor's study in prisons, which is really quite interesting, and how

God's used it, for example, with the development of the network for parents working with autistic children or children with autism.

When people see that something's effective, they will support it. So I guess that'd be my kind of a simple answer to a heavy -duty question from Bobby.

And I could also chime in from my own experience working in radio since the 1980s.

I have successfully created two radio programs.

Neither are on the air right now, the ones I'm speaking of, that is. But if you can find enough congregations who are willing to chip in financially to get a radio program launched that expresses and declares and defends and teaches the same doctrine that all of these congregations would have a passion for, you could even do a search nationwide for congregations in your own denomination or fellowship that may want to contribute to airing a program.

You may remember, because you were a part of it, I created in the

Right. And I got that on the air by getting many congregations involved, and we had at one time five churches that actually hosted the program, including the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Franklin Square. Right, right, right. Yeah, well, I don't know if you want to ask the other question now, or I mean, that's going to really get us into how the visit to the pastor's study is changing now.

Or do you want to field that other question that you've got? Well, I'll very quickly get it out of the way.

We do have, let's see here, Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, and she says,

I do not mean this as a criticism to either you, Chris, or your guests, but there are churches that use radio and television as a substitute for membership and attendance at a local

Bible -believing church. What words of loving criticism can you offer to those who are doing that?

Well, I appreciate that question, and that is something that I was aware of right at the beginning with our own presbytery that was concerned for that.

Excellent question. There is no substitute for being physically involved with a local church.

I realize there are shut -ins who can't get to worship, and we have listeners who are shut -ins, and they will listen.

At that, though, churches need to bring their ministry to those people. But I think to answer the listener,

Margaret, I think her name was... Susan Margaret. Her question, when we make clear in the program each week that it is done on a

Saturday, tomorrow is the Lord's Day, you should be worshipping in a church that's faithful to the

Word of God, everyone needs a pastor, I make clear when people communicate with me that they need a local pastor, and part of my work with listeners is to try to steer them to faithful churches.

So again, I so much appreciate the question. I don't regard that as a criticism at all.

I'm thankful she mentioned it, and we seek to try to do everything we can to get listeners with whom we're in contact into faithful local churches.

Well, let's move on to some changes that are taking place with the visit to the pastor study.

Yeah, it fits really with your comments, Chris, that you made. I continue to be in awe of God's sovereignty over our lives and what

He does. We're aware that WLIE radio has changed its format.

It's our speaking right now, it's WBWD. I won't say what that stands for, but it does stand for their new format change, and therefore it is no longer a primarily

Spanish Christian format. That brought, at the end of October of this year,

I was notified that the program would no longer be aired on Saturday, and it would have to be bumped to a

Sunday. And again, kind of a long story, something you have helped me with.

This came at the time that, frankly, I was beginning to have difficulties getting everything done each week because I had the visit to the pastor's study, which is essentially an hour, and then health -wise, which is another half hour, and I don't just wing it.

There's a lot of preparation that goes into it. But what had happened is our Presbytery, our regional group of churches, has authorized me to work with groups of people out in Suffolk County, in the

Deer Park, North Babylon area, to help begin a home -and -time,

God -willing, a home mission work, which is really more of one of my responsibilities as a regional home missionary than doing the radio program.

So the way things stand as of now, and as of this broadcast, we're still working on the details, but it looks like what we'll do is go to a complete open forum format.

We've had a tremendous response to our open forum programs, which are completely made up of questions that come to us from listeners, in some cases from others, that just say, would you discuss this on the program, that kind of a thing.

And each week, dealing with those questions that come, and then building on the texted questions and email questions as you get, however, the challenge is that now we are getting more stations that are simulcasting or wanting to simulcast the program on Saturdays at 12 o 'clock.

So we're hoping the arrangement will be that we'll still be able to do the program at 12 o 'clock, and then the stations that simulcast it will have it available to them, and then will actually be broadcast on Sunday morning from the former

WLIE studio in an early morning format. Now here's the way the

Lord wonderfully worked this out. This will enable more churches that want to use the

Visit to the Pastors study as an augment to their ministries. They can use it.

Reformation Metro New York will be paying less for the actual broadcast time, so we can work through AMBOSS, which is the largest satellite provider of Christian radio programming, and through their facilities we can upload the program there.

Stations will then be able to download that program for free, and they'll be set up so they can do a little segment at the end promoting their own local church and local ministry.

So it's a beautiful example actually of how God is taking what was really well done for the first two years, because we've gotten great comments on the quality of the program and so on, and without diminishing the quality, making it more available to other, particularly

Reformed and Presbyterian churches and others that would like to use their local Christian stations for a means of outreach.

By the way, I'm delighted that you are working on a mission church in the North Babylon, Deer Park, Long Island area, because I am unaware of any

Reformed works in those areas, and this will be a joy to have that added to Long Island, if indeed the

Lord is pleased to bring that to fruition. What's amazing is that in Deer Park area, there is no

Evangelical church at all, which is something else.

At least I've not found one, others didn't know of them, and we're right next to North Babylon, and I'm not sure there's even an

Evangelical church there in North Babylon. So that's an exciting opportunity.

Of course, we want to leverage the radio program, because part of our own outreach, so to speak, would be the visit to the pastor's study that would be broadcast on Sunday mornings on WPWD.

Okay, well definitely keep me updated on that, because we want to have you back, and anyone else who might be involved in leadership if that North Babylon, Deer Park area congregation takes off.

My dear brother, we've been working together for a long time. I don't anticipate it changing. Me neither, and an encouraging word to hear.

What kinds of questions do you get from listeners on the visit to the pastor's study? This, Chris, it is fascinating to me, and of course the number of questions, as I'm sure has happened with your program, has increased as the program gets traction, gets visibility.

We're getting more questions every week. I should actually give the text number for your people in just a moment, but we had a whole series of questions about depression that came in, and so clearly this is a major challenge for people, and so we took the half hour.

Actually, Pastor Mike Plugman was my guest for that, and we dealt with various questions that came.

We kind of combined them because some of them were similar, but we dealt with the depression issue, and then in the middle of the program, we received a call from a pastor in Michigan who gave a testimonial of an extended period of depression, and he's actually out of the ministry for a while, and then how the

Lord brought him back, and how the Lord has given him a ministry, particularly to other pastors who are going through burnout and depression.

That has been downloaded hundreds of times through sermonaudio .com. Another one that we've done, it's actually this much precipitated questions, although we got those, is certainly a lot of healthy interaction, is programs that we've done on apologetics or defending the faith, and my guest for those was

Pastor Paul Vigiano, who pastors Branch of Hope Orthodox Presbyterian Church out in California, and the way he fielded questions that different questions people ask, so to speak, about defending the faith was really quite remarkable.

I remember one of the questions that somebody called in and said, I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious, or something like this.

How do you respond to that? Or maybe it was a pastor actually. How do you respond to people who say they're spiritual but not religious?

And Pastor Vigiano, his advanced degree is in apologetics, and he's a tremendous communicator.

He said, well, I tell people spirituality is dangerous because you open yourself up to anything and everything, and there's a real devil out there.

And he just kind of dilated on that for several minutes. I thought that was fascinating. So the apologetics ones have been interesting.

But I want to blather on. I mean, we've got marriage and divorce questions come up because our view is committed to the

Westminster Standards, and I believe the biblical view is that marriage is to be once for a lifetime, but divorce does come, and while it's never commanded, it is permitted in the case of adultery or willful desertion that can't be remedied by the church.

And of course, we always get, whatever that's covered, we always get people from the no -divorce, no -re -marriage crowd that come in.

An interesting question about church conflict, and a lot of these questions have a pathos to them.

They're heart -wrenching, people talking, writing about church conflict, and how do you help bring about peace in church life, and so on.

So they're really, they're the kinds of boots -on -the -ground questions that came.

One that really stunned me was a listener had asked about views about the end of the age, and he said, do you get, essentially, are you optimistic about what

God is doing by the gospel in history? And my answer, and also my visiting pastor who was on the program,

Pastor Ben Miller, you know, we both said, well, the gospel is God's power unto salvation.

And he promises that the knowledge of his glory is going to fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.

And if you're not optimistic about what the gospel's going to do, then you've got to kind of wonder if you really write your

Bible all that carefully. There will be opposition. There's certainly, in fact, as the church is even more faithful, it will get more opposition.

But I mean, we need to be, I mean, of the Christian faith, nobody was faithful to Christ when he was crucified.

Everybody, basically everybody departed from him. Pentecost, you got 3 ,000 converted. Lydia, 5 ,000 converted.

Also, the gospel had gone into the whole known world, and the world was turning upside down. And now you've got about a third of the world that is in one way or another identified with Christianity.

And that opened up that whole field of, I think, as a means to encourage Christians not to let their view of the gospel and the kingdom of God be formed by what the mainstream media is telling you, but by what the

Word of God and what the history of the church have told you. So those are the kinds of topics that we'll be able to develop more in these open forums.

We do have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says,

Can you please comment on the two rather disturbing trends I see amongst our fellow

Reformed brethren? One seems to be a growing phenomenon that involves ecumenism with Rome and neglecting the seriousness of the chasm of difference we have in the gospel itself.

And the other one is involving a hyper -covenantal understanding of baptism that would say that anyone who is baptized in the name of the

Father and Son and the Holy Ghost should be identified as a true, regenerate Christian.

Well, those are two good questions from Ronald, and I'm intrigued that he's from Eastern Long Island. I don't know where he is in Eastern Long Island, but we have a kind of a paucity of faithful churches out in that area, and my hope is that once God -willing the work begins in the

Deer Park, North Babylon area, we could be moving out toward Patchogue and even Riverhead.

Okay, regarding the first question, it's interesting that this whole matter of kind of the interest in moving toward the

Church of Rome has intrigued me. I actually addressed it at a Reformation conference in South Jersey in late

October, and it's scary because the historic

Roman Catholic view of justification is that essentially we're being made righteous by what

God is doing in us, that is, for them, by the sacraments through the Church.

That is a formula, that's a religious treadmill. You keep going and going and going and going, and you never do enough.

The best you can do is supposedly work your way out of purgatory a little bit, and so it's really a religion of despair, whereas historic

Protestantism, whether it's historic Lutheranism or historic Reformed or historic

Episcopalian or historic Baptist, has said very clearly we're declared righteous by what

Christ has done for us in his absolutely perfect obedience and in his taking the punishment of all of the sins of his people, and it's received by faith alone.

That's when Ronald uses the word chasm of difference, that's putting it mildly. And I suggested to people, as I did in that conference, it's not enough to believe the doctrine of justification.

That can be a head trip for people. When we're gripped, actually my message was on Calvinists filled with the spirit of Luther, when we are gripped with what sin and death is and what it is by nature, we are in bondage to sin and death, and that impacts us.

There is no way on the face of God's earth you're going to move away from the glory of the gospel of free and full grace in Christ to, again, the

Roman Catholic treadmill. So that would be my answer. I mean, it's a simple answer. There's more to it, but that's kind of a basic answer to Ronald.

And then as far as we're getting to at the end of the program, hyper -covenantalism basically says it confuses sign with things signified.

It will say in one way or another a person baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the

Holy Spirit is a Christian. I don't have a problem saying they're marked out in that way, but a mark doesn't save us.

I'll take a person's baptism and work from that to tell them about what true Christianity is back to question one, justification.

But this view that basically assumes, it's kind of like a presumptive regeneration in many ways.

You just presume people are Christians unless they show the contrary. That has always proved to be deadly, especially in any religious affiliation, but especially among Reformed people.

Well, finally, I want to know if you are planning on continuing the health program that was attached to the visit to the pastor study known as Health Watch.

No, we're not. We're actually doing the last program tomorrow. I'm kind of sad about that. But the whole archives of those programs, those are all available at our visit to the pastor's study website at www .sermonaudio

.com. And not because I did them, but because of the quality of the nutritional consultants and chemists.

These are really helpful programs from a Christian perspective. Now you're going to give me the opportunity to give my own contact information.

Of course, because I want as many of the Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners to become a part of your audience if they haven't already.

I already know that many are because they report back to me how much they enjoy your show. Yeah, we're great to be able to, and we'd love to promote

Iron Sharpens Iron, too. Hey, text -free number. I want people to write that text -free number down for calling their text questions, 516 -367 -0391.

People can text their questions now any time, 516 -367 -0391.

And in most cases, we'll use those questions on an open forum without mentioning names, 516 -367 -0391.

Also, people can call me at my study. They'll get my electronic secretary. But if they have questions there, my study number is 516 -593 -1507.

Again, it's 516 -593 -1507. And then my website, visitthepastorstudy .org.

It's all one word, visitthepastorstudy .org. And you can email me at visitpastorbill at gmail .com.

One word, visitpastorbill at gmail .com. I think I got it in on time. Yes, you did, and I am so delighted that you came on today.

I'm looking forward to many future visits from you, and I'm also very much looking forward to my very first interview with your precious bride,

Margaret, in the second hour. You'll be blessed by it, as I have been blessed by her for 42 and a half years.

And I'm sure you have. And thank you very much, brother, and we look forward to hearing from you soon. Thanks, Chris.

The Lord's blessing, my brother. Press on in the good work. Thank you, brother. So long now. Don't go away, folks, because as I just said,

Pastor Bill Shishko's wife, Margaret Shishko, is going to be joining us in just about 12 minutes or so.

She is going to be talking about the necessity of hospitality in the homes of Christians.

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

if you have a question for Margaret about hospitality. And please also, during this long station break that we have, which is required by Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, so that they can air their own commercials and public service announcements, please use this time not only to write questions for Margaret Shishko on hospitality, but use this time to write down the information provided by our advertisers so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize them.

We depend upon the advertising dollars of our sponsors to exist.

So the more frequently and successfully that you patronize them, the more likely they are going to remain our advertisers, which means the more likely we will remain on the air.

And if that is a concern for you, if you want us to remain on the air, please patronize our advertisers as much as possible.

Don't go away. We'll be right back, God willing, with Margaret Shishko. Tired of box store

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back.

We are going to be joining in a moment our second guest for the day, Margaret Shishko, who happens to be the wife of our first guest,

Reverend Bill Shishko, and Margaret is going to be speaking on the need for hospitality in the homes of Christians.

But before we go to Margaret, we just have a few announcements about some upcoming events that we hope that you will attend, all of you, or as many of you as possible in the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience. I will be at all of these events, God willing, and I hope to meet you there.

First of all, this first invitation is only for the men in the audience, men in leadership in your congregations or parachurch ministries, whether you be a pastor, elder, deacon, or a parachurch ministry leader.

I'm having my next Iron Sharpens Iron Radio pastor's luncheon, God willing, on Thursday, January 3rd from 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m. at the Carlisle Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

My guest speaker will be Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

The theme will be announced shortly. This is absolutely free of charge. You'll be fed delicious food and you'll be fed spiritually with an excellent message,

I'm sure, by Dr. Tony Costa. And every man in attendance is going to be leaving there with one or two heavy sacks of brand new books that have been donated, as they are every year, by the majority of major Christian publishers in the

United States and the United Kingdom. So I'm talking about each man is likely to be leaving with at least 30 books, and I'm talking brand new books.

So if you'd like to attend this Iron Sharpens Iron Radio pastor's luncheon here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put pastor's luncheon in the subject line.

Then, immediately following that from Friday through Sunday, that's Friday January 4th through Sunday January 6th,

Dr. Tony Costa, who I just mentioned from Toronto Baptist Seminary, he will be conducting a conference at the

Enola First Church of God in Enola, Pennsylvania, where my dear friend Pastor George Jensen is the pastor.

The theme of this three -day conference is going to be the most dangerous threats to the

Christian church in North America, and this is also a free conference. If you'd like to register or we want more information, you can send me an email again to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put Tony Costa conference in the subject line, or Enola, Pennsylvania conference in the subject line.

You could also, if you want directions and other information about how to get to the Enola First Church of God, you can go to enolacog .com,

that's e -n -o -l -a -c -o -g, which stands for enolachurchofgod .com,

or you can call them at 717 -732 -4253, 717 -732 -4253.

Then, coming up in January, I am so thrilled to be once again attending and manning an exhibitors booth at the

G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, more specifically College Park, Georgia.

It's going to be held once again at the Georgia International Convention Center there, and they are expecting between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 people.

The speakers include John Piper, James White, Stephen Lawson, Vody Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad Mbewe, Tim Challies, Phil Johnson, Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, Stephen J.

Nichols, the President of Reformation Bible College, the college founded by R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries, and many more are going to be speaking on that roster.

If you'd like to attend along with me, go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

The theme this January is The Mission of God, a Biblical Understanding of Missions.

I strongly urge you to not only to register to attend, but also register for an exhibitors booth if you have a business, professional practice, parachurch organization, church, special event, or anything else that you want to promote in a crowd of between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 people.

Go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com. That stands for, by the way, Gospel Grace and Glory, if you're wondering what

G3 means. And then finally, also in January, I am so happy that I will be for the very first time in my life,

God willing, in the state of Mississippi. I'm going to be attending and manning an exhibitors booth at the

Deep South Founders Conference that will be held, God willing, from January 24th through the 26th at the

Bethlehem Baptist Church in Laurel, Mississippi. The speakers include

Rusty Reed, Gerald Henderson, Jason Goodwin, Bobby Crenshaw, and my dear friend

Dr. Conrad M. Bayway, who I believe is the most powerful preacher alive on the planet Earth. He is the pastor of Kabwatha Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, and Chancellor of African Christian University.

The theme is going to be sanctification. So if you want to join me January 24th through the 26th in Laurel, Mississippi at the

Deep South Founders Conference, go to deepsouthfounders .com, deepsouthfounders .com.

Last but not least, if you love Iron Trump and Zion Radio and you don't want this program to go away, please go to irontrumpinsironradio .com,

click support, then click click to donate now. You can donate instantly with a debit or credit card.

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click support, then click click to donate now. And if you want to advertise with me, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put advertising in the subject line. We surely could use your advertising dollars as long as whatever it is you're promoting is compatible with what we believe here.

And by the way, if you do not have a church home and you're not prayerfully looking for one, you are living in rebellion against God.

So please, if you need my help, I can help you find a bible -believing church near you.

I have lists all over the world of faithful churches. Send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put

I need a church home in the subject line. I've already helped a number of listeners to this program find churches all over the world near them that are faithful to the scriptures.

That's also the email address where you can send an email to Margaret Shishko in hospitality. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And it's my honor to welcome you for the very first time as a guest on Iron Trump and Zion Radio, Margaret Shishko.

Thank you for having me, Chris. How are you? I'm doing better than I deserve, as always. Oh, good.

Praise God. Well, I'm going to repeat our email address if any of our listeners have a question on hospitality that they want to ask

Margaret Shishko, who will be with us until 6 p .m., God willing. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Margaret, when you think of hospitality in the

Shishko household, what has it looked like for your 42 and a half years of marriage?

Well, that's a very long time, so I guess the Lord must have known that he was preparing us to be hospitable.

I was a home economics major, but that doesn't mean I was one that was outgoing.

Of course, my husband has made up for that. He's very outgoing, but the

Lord did seem to catapult us into hospitality before he actually was ordained as a minister.

We lived with an older man and took care of his home while Bill was in seminary in exchange for rent, so we did the shopping, the menus, the cooking.

Bill did the yard work, and we were both able to, along with that, work part -time, each one of us.

So the man that we lived with near the seminary, his wife had just passed away, but he would go away for the winter, so we had four months there at the house where we could have people and anyone in that we would like.

So here I am the first time in the North, and my husband is inviting seminary professors over.

So it was a little daunting for me, a little intimidating, but I know the Lord loves to take us out of our comfort zone so we can be more useful, and I really thank

God for those opportunities and even pushing me from where, you know, cooking for a family is one thing, but cooking for others, and that's not all there is to hospitality either.

Well, Bill shared with me that there was something that you were doing ahead of the time, if you will, something that was not a commonplace thing that may have been frowned upon by your average citizen in the southern

United States, but you were inviting folks of color into your home, and that was in some way a risky move, but something

I believe we are compelled as Christians to invite people into our homes and be hospitable and gracious to them, especially perhaps if they are not like us and not amongst our close circle of friends.

Well, that's true, Bill has always reached out to foreigners and strangers, and especially the 18 months that we were in the south, there was a man there who was, he had some learning disabilities,

I think, but he was very genuine, and we would have him over to the house, and Bill would present the to him, and it is in the village that we lived in was very much the antebellum south, so we, sorry about that.

That's live radio for you, don't worry. That's my husband calling. I told him

I couldn't get through, so now he's following up on it, but so we did, we would have, and I grew up in the south, in the southeast.

I don't remember there ever being African -American students in my grammar school.

Now, by the time I was in high school, there, I was living in a different state.

I wasn't in South Carolina, so there was more, the ethnic climate had been changing for quite a while, and so then there was that crossover, and my children grew up going to a

Christian school that had many, many different ethnicities, and I was so thankful for that, and they didn't take notice of the fact or think of the fact that our skin colors were different.

They loved these students because they were like cousins to them, and we would have them in the home, you know, on occasion, even sometimes.

One of the teachers, she knew we had a newborn baby. She wanted her class to see how a newborn baby is bathed, and I said, well,

I'll give a demonstration, then come on over, and we did, and in the

Lord's use, you know, those kind of opportunities to continue to make me want to reach out to all nationalities, and that's the thing

I love about New York, is the diversity. Amen, yes. Did you feel inadequate at periods of your life to be someone who is welcoming people into your home?

I think that when I have had conversations with Christians about this very subject, the biggest excuse or the most frequently repeated excuse that I hear from people who never open their doors to either brethren in Christ or even to strangers in the neighborhood that they want to get to know, is that they say,

I don't have the gift for hospitality. I don't know if that's an acceptable excuse or not, but did you feel inadequate?

Well, I felt very inadequate. I think perfectionism is what people think of, like everything has to be perfect.

It's almost like they're going to do an open house, you know, like when you sell a home, but that's a misconception.

I actually had to learn to look at it from a different perspective and look at it from the eyes of stewardship.

How many things can you juggle in a week? And no, I can't have a perfectly clean house, but I can have an adequately cleaned house.

And it was, I've been embarrassed before because I wasn't even up to a standard that I felt may have been adequate, but I learned to balance things out, trying to take care of the family and their children and their needs, but teaching them also.

We, the Lord says, in as much as you've done it unto one of these, you've done it unto

Christ. And we want to serve Christ this way. I would try to cook things that I could cook ahead and freeze and then just pull them out ready.

And with the children, I learned to put a little sign on the door of the bathroom that's on the main floor, use the other bathroom, not this one, not now anyway, just a little thing so that I could do it ahead of time.

And, you know, if the bathroom and the kitchen and the dining room are clean, we're good to go. There's always going to be some clutter somewhere because our house is lived in and it's a workplace.

So anytime you work, you can make a mess. That's right. What was most difficult for you, opening up your home and creating a ministry of hospitality?

Well, there were two things I found the most challenging, was trying to have people back on Sundays.

And Bill really loved to invite anyone who was visiting, didn't have a place to go.

And you know, most of the time we were able to do that. But when we had our large family,

I did have to take some time out, maybe about six months until the baby was older and I could plan better again.

And you're not on call as much as you are with a newborn. And then

I began looking forward to it again. The Lord knew I needed... It was good for us in so many ways.

I grew up being extremely shy, which now I'm not. And I really just feel like the

Lord delivered me from that through opening our home. This is who we are.

I don't really have anything to hide. I may not feel adequate, but so many people don't.

So I find if I'm comfortable with them coming in, they're comfortable being there.

And praise God, none of my children grew up being shy because they were around people a lot and in their home.

And the Lord has blessed them tremendously by the experiences that they've had and meeting people from all different countries, especially from our

New York area. My son once said to me, somebody asked him if he knew if they had any black children in the church.

He said, I don't think so. Well, the week before we had had an

African American little boy stay with us. And he just doesn't think of him in those terms.

He thinks of him as one of his great friends. Those were things that rejoiced my soul.

Amen. In fact, you just reminded me of something. I don't know if you're familiar with the Timothy Hill Children's Ranch in Riverhead, Long Island.

Yes, I've heard of it. Yes. Well, that's a ministry that I have contributed to for many years.

And in fact, that was their very first Volunteer of the Year when they began having an annual Volunteer of the

Year award. But that ministry began because a little boy who was just short of 12 named

Timothy Hill was so impressed by his parents taking in foster children.

Oh, wow. Many of them, if not most, were African American children and some from very horrific backgrounds, children of prison inmates or victims of abuse or what have you.

And Timothy, as a young boy, said, I want to start a home for homeless children.

And I want to have it on a ranch where they can work with farm animals and ride horses, because one of Timothy's great loves, even as a little boy, was riding horses.

And he purchased his own Appalachian horse, Appaloosa, I'm sorry,

Appaloosa horse, through money he raised from a paper route.

But he was actually going from a real estate agency to real estate agency out in Riverhead, asking real estate agents for prices on land out there.

And they began calling Timothy's parents, Jerry and Fern, saying, do you know your 12 -year -old son is asking about property and so on?

That is wonderful. I love it. But that young boy, tragically, was killed riding his bicycle to school.

He was hit by a truck. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, this was back in the 70s and might have been late 60s.

And Jerry and Fern said, we know that we have to make Timothy's dream come true. And that's how the Timothy Hill Children's Ranch started.

In fact, they had fundraisers. And one of the people that reached out to help them raise money was Lorne Green, the actor who starred in Bonanza, who used to live out in eastern

Suffolk. Oh, well, that's wonderful. But one of the things that is most intimidating,

I believe, for Christians, as far as opening up their home, especially to strangers or acquaintances that they don't know very well, is welcoming non -Christians into their home.

And I don't know how close you've gotten to Rosaria Butterfield, but I know, Bill, your husband and I have a mutual friendship with her.

And as you know, she was saved because of the hospitality of a Presbyterian pastor and his wife welcoming this anti -Christian active lesbian into their home for dinner.

And the Lord used it eventually to save her. Isn't that wonderful? Yeah. So tell us about that, inviting non -Christians and people from other cultures into your home.

Well, most of our hospitality has been church -related and those that are inquiring of the

Christian faith. So a lot of it is, you know, more comfortable.

But we are determined, and have been more recently, having our neighbors in and reaching out in that way because we have nothing to be ashamed of.

Christ is, He says He's greater than he that is in the world. He came into the world to defeat the evil one.

We have God's truth incarnate in Christ. And we also have the

Word of God written. And we have great promises that Christ, before He ascended, said, all authority in heaven and earth has been given unto me.

Go therefore and preach the gospel and baptize and make disciples.

So overcoming fear, fear is a very cruel master, and it can be very debilitating to live out of fear.

I'm so thankful that on many occasions, I've just had to ask the

Lord, Lord, please. I have a lot to do today, but I know these people are coming.

I want it to be an enjoyable time. And yes, we want to reach out to the unbeliever.

And we had one occasion, not, we've never had foster children in because, well, that was not something that we could seem to manage.

But we did have a young man, and if I'm off the topic, you can rein me in here.

Who needed help that Bill met overseas, and they're Coptic Christians, so it's not totally unrelated to Christianity and who

Christ is. And they needed help, and they actually have come intermittently and stayed with us in the summers, like two months at a time.

And then finally, in 2016, they came again to update his hearing aids, and he actually was able to get a cochlear implant.

So he ended up staying and living with us for the year. I always find that more of a challenge because I do think that's the biblical view and what biblically hospitality really is, not just having people on occasions, although they both are.

But as he lived with us, I really did have to pray that I wouldn't get impatient, pray that I would be able to help him with his schooling and really give of ourselves as a family, although I count it as a great honor to do that and a privilege.

It does tax you. And so I was relieved at the end of the year, you know, that he was...

So I have a great and deep admiration for those that do fostering, foster parenting.

I think that to reach out to the fatherless is really undefiled, and that is the best representation of Christ reaching out to us.

We are not desirable in so many ways until Christ begins to work in us and gives us his own righteousness and close us.

But to bring these children into your home and minister them, I'm just thrilled and I'm in awe of that aspect of hospitality.

Amen. And we have to go to our final break. If anybody would like to join us with a question from Margaret Shishko, do it now or forever.

Hold your peace because we're rapidly running out of time. It's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Christian books. So please remember that. We are now back with our final 10 minutes of interview with Margaret Shishko.

And we are talking about hospitality. And we do have an anonymous listener on the line who says,

Margaret, I am an older woman who's exhausted very easily. I also have a very tiny home and don't feel comfortable or even have the ability to invite a larger group of people inside my home.

Do you have any alternatives that you could recommend and how we could use a gift of hospitality that doesn't require us having people inside our house?

Thanks, Chris. I think that's a very legitimate question. I was with a group of women a couple

Saturdays ago and we were talking about hospitality for people who have very small homes and, you know, even disabilities or, you know, fatigue issues.

And sometimes the way to address that is in the church itself.

When the church has a luncheon, just cooking for that, that is a means of hospitality.

And instead of sitting with people that you've known all your life, look for those that are new in the church and single them out and say,

I'd love to sit with you and let me get to know you. And, you know, bringing that...

Another thing that was suggested at that meeting was meeting someone even for Starbucks, you know, meeting for coffee.

That's hospitality too. And also they said when people, families who have children and have small places, they can actually each pack a lunch and bring it to the park.

And while the kids are playing, you know, sit and talk, make sure the kids are fed first so that they're happy.

But I thought those were very valid ways to show hospitality and not actually have to use your own home.

Right. And in regard to the size of her home, she can invite one person. Right. And sometimes that's wonderful.

One -on -one conversations are... Usually you can have more in -depth and you can read scripture together and pray together.

It's... I find that very rewarding myself. Let's see, we have

Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who asks, do you think that sometimes people do not invite others into their home because there is a pride issue of wanting their homes to be in the state of meticulousness and immaculateness of a museum and they are more concerned about what others are going to think about the cleanliness and orderliness of their home than they are about actually being gracious and hospitable to others?

I definitely think that was part of my difficulty, personally, is that, you know, we lived in a church house.

I felt it had to be, you know, taken care of properly. And, you know, here's a cobweb and what are they going to think?

You know, I think stewardship is the way the Lord has helped me to overcome that and focus.

Yes, I like to clean the whole house, but if I'm having people in for a meal and fellowship,

I do the main floor. I'm not giving an open house. It's not...

And I think, you know, I learned a lot from my own sister. She had just had a baby and the place was kind of disheveled and, you know, it wasn't terrible, but...

And somebody just dropped in and she just invited them in so warmly. And I'm like, you know, this is some picture that I need to take in.

And, you know, Bill and I finally got to a point where we'd say, if people drop in, they take us as we are.

If we invite them, yes, certain things will be done because we'll plan and make sure that it happens.

But that doesn't mean perfection. For one thing, there is no thing as perfection. Only Christ is perfect.

And, you know, He, as the God -man, was the example of inviting us into His home and giving us the right garments to wear.

And also with His disciples, He took up a towel and washed their feet. Now, that's remarkable.

And we really, we want to become less self -conscious and more

Christ -conscious. Amen. I want you now to spend a few minutes uninterrupted to just summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today and perhaps even give some more practical advice.

Okay, I have some practical things that I jotted down before we got on the phone.

I think that, you know, do as much cleaning and cooking ahead of time as you can.

Make it as simple as you can. You can repeat these meals over and over. And you can also, if people ask to bring something, let them bring it.

It's wonderful. They're contributing to the hospitality that way. Also, the cleanup, that is, can be pretty quick and pretty streamlined.

Usually when you have families over with children, it makes a mess. But it's a good mess to have and it's definitely worthwhile.

And then when you get a few minutes of quiet, evaluate how things went. And what could you change?

What could make it more reasonable for you? Now, my husband has been helping me more with the cooking.

So, I noticed that when I visited your house and spent at least one night there.

Anytime, Chris. You're always welcome. I appreciate that. Just let us know when you need a place in Long Island.

Yes, and he does methodically what we plan. And that's the biggest.

That is extremely important. You can't do these things. Well, some people can. I'm not able to do it on the spur of the moment.

I can do things for my kids on the spur of the moment because I know what they like. But I also want to know if people have allergies and if they're allergic, you know, what foods they can't eat and what they can't.

And I think that God saves us by his hospitality.

It's just we're enemies and strangers to him. But Christ came and we come to Christ and he's the door to God.

I love it that we're no longer aliens and strangers. And I would also put a plug in for a

Crossway publication because that's where Rosaria Butterfield's book, The Gospel, comes with a house key.

And I want, I love the book. I want to thank her for putting this in the book. If you can't, you may not be able to do what she's doing, but you can do something and you can do it with whatever

God's blessed you with. And we want to be faithful stewards. We don't want to be at the last day saying,

God bless us with all this, all this. And we've not opened it up and used it.

We want to, we want to stand before God at the last day. And even if we have a meager means, hear the

Lord say, well done, good and faithful servant. And we can only do that in Christ.

Christ is really the shining, the bright and only one that can do it in perfection.

But he is our perfection. And in him, he takes up our work and improves on it.

Amen. And wouldn't you agree that women or even men, for that matter, shouldn't be overly hung up on preparing some spectacular gourmet spread?

Unless, of course, that is your gift. My wife had that gift and used to love to do that, my late, my precious late wife,

Julie. But if you get too hung up on it, people are going to be more happy and joyful that they were invited, even if it's just to have burgers and hot dogs, then not be invited at all because you are worried about what you're going to serve.

Yes. And, you know, I make a lot more use of paper products and things.

Early on, I didn't think we could afford them because you're on such a tight budget.

But now we can because, you know, things change.

We don't have all the children at home. And that's a tremendous help. I mean, I use them pretty consistently, but unless it's a seminary professor,

I have a hard time putting oil on paper, or unless we're eating something that has to be cut.

You know, I hate to cut through a paper plate. But I think each of us know kind of what we're most comfortable with, but I've become more comfortable with making things streamlined.

Amen. And by the way, I have another plug. In fact, I'll even see if I could get you a copy of it.

But I have a very dear friend that I've known since the 1990s, Dr. Latane C. Scott.

And she wrote a book called The Heart's Door, Hospitality in the Bible. Wow, sounds wonderful.

Yeah, and I will try to get you a copy of that. In fact, if anybody wants to hear that interview with Latane that I did some time ago, you can go to ironsharpensironradio .com

and type in L -A -T -A -Y -N -E in the search engine in the past shows podcast section, and you will be able to find that interview.

Oh, I think that'd be great. I'd love that. And any time you need a place, Chris, just let us know.

Bill's my secretary, so you have to go. Well, I want to make sure our listeners remember that they can get a hold of Bill Shishko, which would then lead to you being able to get a hold of Margaret.

That's right. If you go to ReformationNY .org, I'm sorry,

ReformationMetroNY .org, ReformationMetroNY .org,

and if you have any further questions for Margaret or you'd like to get in contact with her, perhaps you'd like to invite her to speak at a conference, at your church or ladies meeting, that would be the best way to do it.

Unless you have another way that you'd like to announce. No, that really would be the best way. And that way

Bill and I can discuss our schedules and things before I commit to something. Well, I really appreciate you coming on,

Margaret. I look forward to seeing you face -to -face in the near future, God willing. Good. And I hope you and Bill have a blessed weekend.

And by the way, if you could hold on, I'd like to say a proper goodbye to you before we go off. Sure, absolutely. I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in.

I hope you all have a safe, blessed, and joyful weekend and Lord's Day. And I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater