Count the Cost of Pastoral Ministry: An Interview with Chris Bolt

Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom

I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

Jesus in a local, visible congregation. So, Eddie, our listeners can't see it, but you notice anything different about my face today?

I noticed you're not wearing any glasses. I know I'm suffering right now through context. I really like the context.

Actually, our trip to the Buffalo was like, I got to get some context, because you lose your glasses too easy.

But I have an astigmatism in both eyes, and I'm really struggling to read this computer screen right now.

My wife and my son both have astigmatism, and they don't do well with contacts.

I wear contacts every day and have for close to 30 years now, and so I can't imagine wearing glasses and not wearing contacts.

Just a side note. I used to think it was you have a, as in the article, astigmatism.

No. But the word is astigmatism. Astigmatism. Yeah. So, all right. That's enough banter.

Welcome to the Rural Church Podcast. I'm your co -host, Allen Nelson, one of the pastors at Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, and with me, one of the men with me, is your co -host,

Eddie Ragsdale. Say hello, Eddie. Hello, everyone, and we're coming to you from a Tuesday, which it won't matter when.

No one cares. But we normally do this on Wednesday mornings, and it's a Tuesday just afternoon, and so you may get a little different version of the rule.

I'm sure you can tell if you're listening on a Tuesday. No, we had to bend the rules for the famous or the infamous

Chris Bolt. How's it going, brother? It's going all right. I think the famous versus infamous just depends on the day or the hour even.

And the listener. That's true. That's true. Although sometimes I'm a little bit worried when some listeners like me.

Sometimes you say something and you think, oh, why are those people liking what I'm saying?

I was trying to think this before we came on. I can't remember actually what year you and I met, but I know we've known each other a few years.

We've been on a few FBI watch lists. I hope our names are touching.

Is that FBI or SBC? Are they different? I'm really glad Chris hasn't taken his

Twitter down, because that happens every now and then. Chris has Twitter, and then he doesn't have Twitter. But I pulled this up.

I was able to pull up your tweet. I was looking at the date. May 15th. We're recording this on May 28th, so just almost two weeks ago.

A tweet that had, or as of right now, 600 and almost 13 ,000 views.

I reached out to you after the tweet, because I actually really liked it. Even though on one hand, you may feel, and Ada, you haven't heard it yet, right?

I'm going to read the tweet. On one hand, you may feel it's kind of pessimistic. I kind of see it more as realistic.

Then I know there's an optimistic aspect of it as well. I'm going to read it, and I'm going to ask

Eddie's first impression. Then we're going to let Chris have an opportunity to chat about it. We'll just see where the conversation goes.

Here it is, the tweet I'm now reading. Chris writes, You are not

Billy Graham. You are not John Piper. You are not Al Mohler. You will struggle to find a church.

The church will have 75 people. It will be away from your family. Legacy families will control the church.

You can listen in on the committees. Their traditions cannot be broken. You will spend half your week on sermon prep.

People will forget everything by next week. They will remember the joke you told. Your children will be taught heresy.

They will be the only kids there. They will be strictly judged. You cannot complain about your finances.

Nobody cares about your degrees. You cannot afford a place to live. Your wife will envy your time with church members.

You will feel guilty about neglecting your family. You will think you're neglecting your flock. You will fall in love with some people.

Your closest friends will die. The others will leave. Count the costs before you answer the call to ministry.

If you think I'm overstating my case, I'm not. If you think you're the exception, you're not. All the above is just the bare minimum.

If you can, find something else to do. If you can't, you're still not called.

But if you are, count the costs. Then enjoy. Smiley face emoji.

All right, Eddie. What's your live reaction here? Oh, you're muted or something, bro. My live reaction is that there is too much in that that hits too close to home.

Yeah. And you guys, before this podcast, maybe y 'all knew of each other that you're not recollecting, but basically don't know each other, right?

Right. It's not like Chris was like, I'm going to write about Eddie in this tweet. Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, so many things.

I'm like, man, that's exactly what it's like. You know, just thinking about things that have happened.

You know, you said this tweet's about two weeks old, and I'm thinking about just the things that have happened in the last two weeks.

Well, Chris, tell us a little bit about the reaction you've had and also talk to us about your heart in this tweet.

Yeah. So, I mean, there were some negative responses and people typically focus in on the negative.

That's essentially what X exists to do, I think. And I know that because when there are controversial tweets out there, things that are kind of fighting, right, people just gravitate toward it versus when there's some sort of post of reconciliation or something to that effect.

Nobody pays attention to it. It doesn't go anywhere. There are no views or anything like that. So, yeah, there were negative responses.

There were people who thought that I was complaining, you know, about me or my place of ministry or about my church, that sort of thing.

But I'll point out, this is not just, I mean, I can certainly resonate with some of the things in this, but this is not just about me, and it's not a complaint at all, actually.

The other thing is that this is interesting, and it's actually in contradiction to the complaint complaint.

Some people acted as though I was just lying, like I was making it up, which was fairly disparaging, to be honest, especially when it was coming from people who should,

I would think, know better. But that really just drives home the point that I'm trying to make here, which is that there are a lot of people out there who don't know better.

And I do think that, for one thing, obviously, there is a little bit of hyperbole here, right?

So, like, I'm not prophesying that these things are going to happen to every single person who ever goes into pastoral ministry.

But if these things don't happen, something else will that's similar. When I say that it's the bare minimum,

I just mean there were people who were afraid I was deconstructing my faith when they read this.

There were people who were afraid for my mental health when they read this. And I just looked at it, and I thought, this is fairly basic stuff, at least in some of the settings that I've been in.

And I've been in, I guess, six different Southern Baptist churches now throughout the course of my life.

And there are similarities in all of those that can line up with a lot of what I say here.

So, no, this was meant for young men who are entering into pastoral ministry or have the desire to, which is a good thing, and they have too high or too unrealistic of an expectation, both of themselves and also of the place to which they'll be called.

And I don't mean that to cast some sort of cloud over the local church.

The way that I mean that is young men training for pastoral ministry often have an unrealistic idea of what it looks like to actually do pastoral ministry.

And so they think they're going to be the guy who goes into a place and is beloved and ascends to the heights of these celebrity pastors, that sort of thing, which

I wouldn't count those heights, by the way. But also they often think,

I believe, that they'll walk into a church that's not one to be reformed, but one that is preformed.

So they go in thinking that they'll have a plurality of elders and they'll have church discipline that's there already.

Everything will just kind of be in place. And frankly, that's just not the case.

I would wager with most churches. I know that there are some distinctions that you could draw here along denominational lines, also along maybe the size of the church.

I still think there are things in general here that almost every pastor should be able to relate to in some form or fashion.

Of course, this is a rural church podcast, and I do know that this is the case for most churches,

I would say, in rural settings, especially in the South, especially in traditional—my circles are traditional

Southern Baptist churches. So that's just kind of my initial framing of this for the sake of the listener.

Yeah, thank you, brother. I'll share a small anecdote. When I was 24, I became—my first,

I guess for lack of a better term, just for the sake of understanding, I became a senior pastor. And I was at a church, and I knew there were some issues.

I was actually a youth pastor and became pastor. And during that time,

I was just consuming all this non -Mark stuff. And I was just like, look, I know some of this will be— there'll be some hesitancy with some of this stuff.

But if I just teach them, if I just open up the Bible, and I say, hey, look, but look, it's right here in the

Bible, everybody's going to be like, wow, thank you for showing us this stuff. Praise God.

And we're going to go forward together. And that could be for another episode.

But needless to say, it didn't work out. So the question I want to ask, and Eddie, you can weigh in too, like, what is the

Chris Bolt assessment on why— I'm agreeing with you, everything that you said.

A lot of churches are like, this is not disparaging the church. Actually, in my opinion, this is holding a high view of the church because you're trying to have men ready to come in and truly bring about reformation, which is only by God's grace and the

Spirit of God. But the question I have is why are churches, particularly SBC churches, but it's not exclusive to them, why are churches in this condition?

Yeah, that's, man, I mean, that's a good question. I mean, ultimately, the answer is because we're sinners.

Another answer is probably because of, you know, a type of cultural Christianity that did take root in the

South. You've got, I think that we have, I mean, I could speculate on this all day. I don't know how helpful it will be.

Maybe you or Eddie want to kind of throw in what you want to say on that. But, you know,

I do think that culturally, even outside of the cultural Christianity aspect, there are things that are,

I don't want to say unique, but in some instances they are. I think you're in a similar setting. You know, small town, community, southern style of thinking, a southern way of life where there's tribalism, where the people who are there have been there for, you know, since the 1700s.

They've established themselves there such that, you know, they have the church that they're in, they have the positions they're in in the community, and those two kind of overlap.

And by the way, and I mean, we'll get to this, I hope, but that's not all necessarily a bad thing, but it can very easily give way to a type of thinking, a type of emotion even, a type of tribalism, a type of culture that is very difficult to penetrate with a strong biblical ecclesiology.

Almost so much that you can see strong communities at times, and I think that their ecclesiology actually suffers for it.

So the community becomes the central point of the relationships that people have and whatnot, and then the church plays a subservient role to that rather than the other way around.

Now, I think with you, Alan, I mean, you grew up in that type of setting, I believe. I did not, but I fell in love with it in the 10 years that I served in Alabama and in Tennessee.

So I'm kind of providing what I felt as an outsider, just kind of looking in on that and the challenge that is there.

Eddie, do you have anything you want to weigh in there? Well, I have a question that may take us in a little bit of a different direction, so if you guys want to.

Sure, so one thing I want to say is, and I think we're seeing this in the SBC, like the women pastor fighting in the

SBC right now, it's really, in my opinion, it's just a fruit issue. Yes. And it's the fruit issue of a poor ecclesiology, and a lot of that is

I think today we have a low view of the pastorate. And so you say, well, how do churches get in this situation?

I'm not blaming pastors only, and I'm not blaming churches only. I think Chris made a great point that we're sinners.

But as you have used to, a pastor is more of a staple in a community, and now no one cares what he thinks, maybe because there's so many in one sense, and another sense because maybe so many have really burned bridges or shown themselves unfaithful or unqualified.

And so today, or I feel like today compared to for sure 100 years ago, the pastor is just another guy in the community, and he's not really set apart in the community, whereas used to, he would be.

And so there's a lowered view of the pastorate, and a lot of that is because we have guys pastoring that shouldn't be pastoring or guys are using the church to just, especially with the rural church,

I think it happens really significantly with the rural church, and that is you start with some little church, and then you just keep working your way up.

I'm not going to say this name, and I'm not trying to disparage the name. I'm just giving you something

I saw, and that is a few years ago, I preached for my sister's church just outside of San Saba, Texas, a little community called

Cherokee, Texas, San Saba County, and I was looking at the previous pastor names. One of the pastors there was a man by the name of Ronnie Floyd.

Have you ever heard that name? It's just interesting that these many rural churches have guys have come in, they've stayed, and then they've catapulted somewhere else, and so I think that that has played into the point.

So in one sense, you can't blame the committees and the deacons. They've taken over what pastors should have oversight of.

They've just taken it over, but they've done it in an unhealthy and sinful way.

Anyway, so what question do you have, Eddie? Take us in. Can I add something to that?

I mean, I was trying to be nice at first with the pastors, but you're absolutely right. I mean, there is a sense in which you can look back and you can say, what have these men who came before as pastors done in these situations or not done in these situations to leave things kind of the way that they are right now?

That's one question you could ask, right? But there were two different groups of people who would reply to this tweet.

One, I'm just going to call the reformed crowd, and they would come along and they read this and they said, well, that's just an unhealthy church.

That's an unbiblical ecclesiology. And I'm thinking, yes, so what are you going to do about it, right?

So there are those who would kind of turn their nose up at this sort of situation and move on, and I think that's bad.

I do. I think that's bad. And then there are those who would come along and they read this and they thought, well, this is why

I'm going to go plant a church. Well, most church plants fail and they fail quickly. And it may be the case that one of the reasons that church plants fail and fail quickly is because you have men going into ministry who don't want to deal with any of the things on this list, which, frankly, most of these are fairly light.

This is again, this is what I would consider bare minimum. I'm not even talking about the types of challenges that we know are acute and face our churches, you know, every three to five years.

Right. I know that's not a law of the universe, but generally that holds to be true with regard to these churches.

So, yeah, no, I think you're right. And I think, too, it's interesting. You mentioned that the office of pastor is not held in the type of esteem that it once was.

And I think you're right about that. There are a lot of churches who want someone like them.

They want, you know, they want to go have the beer with Bill Clinton. Is that kind of, you know, which is there's there's a truth in that.

Right. I mean, I'm not any better than any of these folks. But on the other hand, like, yeah,

I'm not just your friend. I'm your pastor. That's good. That's good. Well, let the record show.

Chris says he's not any better than Bill Clinton. Well, you know what you were saying there,

Quatro, is really true. I know a lot of small rural churches that have self -consciously taken on the the role of they know that that no pastor is ever going to stay.

They know they're a stepping stone. My grandfather's church just outside of Quitman, Arkansas.

I would say it's a wonderful little church, but not ecclesiologically. It's a wonderful little church in the sense that you've got some real believers there who really do love.

But they're a little small church outside of a small town in Arkansas. They're a missionary

Baptist church. Well, there's a missionary Baptist college in Conway. So over the years, they have just rotated through the young guys pastoring, you know, out of that little college.

And they they don't even ever believe they're going to have a pastor stay more than three to five years.

They don't even think that way. They self -consciously think of themselves as we're a starter church.

Like a young couple might buy a starter home and they think they're of themselves that we're here to train this guy so they can go on to another church.

And so that's dangerous both for the pastor and for the church that they they actually think they're here to pastor the pastor till he's ready to go pastor a bigger church.

And so I think there's there's a lot of danger in that. But the question that I said was going to take us in a different direction.

Actually, Chris, you've already kind of hit on it, because what I was going to ask when we think about church planting,

I look at the last 20 or 30 years, there are a couple of different motivations. One, there's the pragmatist motivation, right?

Church plants grow. They grow faster than traditional churches or or established churches.

So we need to go into the cities. We need to go into the urban areas. We need to plant churches because they're going to grow real fast.

That's how you have a saddleback. That's how you have, you know, the those churches we've seen in the 80s and the 90s that blew up into a lot of the a lot of the the really big mega churches.

However, I would say in the last 10 or 15 years, we've also seen maybe among the more reformed crowd, the church planters who they don't want to deal with all these things in this tweet.

And so they really do think, well, I'll just plant a church and we'll do the

Lord's Supper every week from the beginning. And we'll we'll have plurality of elders from the beginning.

And we'll we'll be a 1689 church from the start. And we'll whatever your set of things that you think are really important.

We'll just do that from the beginning. And guys, I'll just admit, and I did not know about this.

I mean, Quatro had texted me about us talking to you, but I didn't know anything about what was in this. But this this very morning,

I was thinking as a pastor, I plan on staying here at Marshall a long time, Lord willing.

But I was having the thought this morning. I cannot I cannot imagine stepping into another.

If for some reason I wasn't the pastor here, I wouldn't want to go pastor and establish church again.

Yeah. Like, I don't feel like I have the fight in me. Start all over again.

Yeah. Yeah. Because because you're probably not going to find that church that's already doing everything the way you think.

Biblically, those things ought to be done. And that's the key. What you just said right there is the main point when

I'm trying to put a cross. And again, I'm not I take joy in these. Like I know that like there were there are obvious I think every pastor would say there are difficult seasons.

There are dark seasons, that sort of thing. But I love being a pastor. Right. I love the local church.

I love doing it. And I accept it as a challenge. But I think it's because at the end of the day, and you guys know this, when you're when you're going through a church difficulty, the one thing that sets you apart at the end of the day, you just look at yourself and you're thinking,

I'm I'm just as bad as whatever is going on in the church or these folks. And, you know, your calling is the one thing that sets you apart to keep on going.

Right. And so that's my point in this, because there are a lot of guys who get in there and they run into these sorts of things.

And they think, wait a minute, this is not what I learned in seminary. You know, I mean, the first fight that was in the church that I went to when

I was called out of seminary, it was it was literally over the color of the paint on the walls.

Now, there was a little bit more depth to it. But really, at the end of the day, that was the issue.

The color of the paint on the walls. You know, what do you what do you do with that? Right. And so there is a biblical response to it.

But I think that it's unbiblical and ungodly, frankly, for a pastor going into a situation like that to just throw up his hands and be like, oh, well, forget about that.

I mean, Jesus looked upon the people right as sheep having no shepherd. Yeah. And that's the distinction that goes right into something that's just on my mind.

Like and I've changed over the years in this because used to, you know, it just it frustrated me, made me mad.

And let's be clear, there are unregenerate people in these churches and there are wicked people in these churches.

And there are people, I'm sure, doing things that we we don't even know about is wicked, sinful things.

And we need to call them out and we need to deal with sin and we need to do those things. But what softened in me over the last few years is there's also actual legitimate, regenerate believers in these churches and they've just been taught wrong and they really do love the

Lord. They may not be sure about everything that you're saying and you're trying to teach healthy ecclesiology, but they really do love the

Lord. And so that's the thing, too, like so. So here's one thing. If you go out and you just plant the church and say everything is going to be the way

I want it from the beginning. Well, in a rule setting, you know, I don't know. I say good luck,

I guess. I mean, it's really hard. Like who's going to come to that? But if you go into a place and you're able to teach that genuine saints there and say, look, this is where we're at.

This is what we're doing. This is. And look, I'm showing you the scriptures and it's not going to be overnight.

It's not going to be in two weeks. You're you're right. You're not going to preach a sermon and they're going to be like, wow, you changed my entire view in that one amazing sermon.

That's just not going to happen. But if you'll stay, you know, and if you'll if you'll work.

And sometimes and we've both been on both sides of this or all three of us have been on both sides of this, where you've been successful, but also you've had to leave.

And one thing I know for the most recent situation happened here, it wasn't anything super noble within me.

It was just what I had within me was I can't leave this place. And I just and so I couldn't.

And I'm not saying that there's anything more noble than anyone else in that. It was just I was at the point in my ministry.

I was like, this is what we're doing and I can't leave. So help me, God, if that's if they get rid of me, so help me.

But I just can't leave. And so I think that we need to be very careful of looking at the rural church, looking at the like this tweet that you put out and disparaging people.

And so, well, everybody said that's just a church full of goats. Now, there are probably goats there for sure.

But that doesn't mean everybody there is not a believer. That's absolutely right. And you learn to love people through these things, just like the

Lord has loved you through all of your stuff. Right. Through all of your sin. Yeah. And, you know, the you're right.

I mean, you look at these churches and here's the thing. They're not church plants. They're not 10 years old. Like a good church plant, say, is 10 years old.

Let's just throw that out. There's a number of them. OK, these churches were were around back in the mid to late 1800s.

Right. Where they were planted in the 1920s during the revivals that took place or whatever.

Right. So they've been there a long time. I don't know about you guys. I had people in my churches who could not read, like literally did not know how to read.

And yet there is a gospel witness there. Like there are people there who are gospel believing people and who demonstrate it through their love for one another and for their pastor and everything else.

That's a testimony to the working of the Holy Spirit. I don't believe that the spirit works apart from his word.

He always works with his word. But still, it it it leaves you standing in all of the power of God when you see the

Lord's work among his people. So, yeah, writing writing this off, I just think it's a pride issue. I think it's a pride issue on the part of a lot of would be pastors.

And here again, like there's a way in pastoral ministry and training where you can train a guy to to just restate these pious platitudes.

And look, I need those like I need the word of God. I need the pious platitudes.

I'm not going to lie. Right. Like, oh, there's going to be fruitful ministry. You may not see it. You know, those sorts of words of encouragement.

We all need that. But there's also a place where the rubber meets the road, where you have to have some some practical, realistic understanding of the place you're going into.

I'm not trying to necessarily discourage people from the ministry with this tweet. Although if this tweet discourages you from the ministry, you probably should not be in it.

But I'm also not trying to make it so that like I'm not slamming the church.

I'm not saying these churches need to just not exist. Read Corinthians. Right. Read Paul's letter to the

Corinthians. I mean, that church had problems that go way beyond any church I've ever been a member of, frankly.

And yet Paul is like expressing his gratitude for them. So which

I think goes to the point that you just made. But yeah, what I'm trying to say in this is don't come out of seminary and then be talking to these other guys five years later and you're like,

I didn't think it was going to be this way. This is what it's like. This is what it's like. And frankly, it makes me nervous when, again, guys who should know better, who have pastored for, say, 30 years in some context, when they say, well,

I can't relate to that at all. Really? Yeah, bro. Yeah, that worries me.

If you've pastored for 30 years or five years or two weeks and there's nothing, you know, maybe two weeks is a little hyperbolic.

But you understand if you've pastored that long and you can't relate to any of that at all, that's an issue.

I want to be careful with the analogy, but I liken it to, you know, you explaining to someone who is going to enter into the military and you're like, this is a noble thing.

Thank you for doing this, serving our country. I commend you. But it'd be rather silly if you're like if they're like, yeah, and the fighting, that part will be easy.

And you're like, now, listen, it won't. It'll be hard. It could cost you your life.

But what you're doing is is a noble thing, you know. So I want to be careful, because obviously that is a little more dangerous, but maybe just slightly than being a pastor.

But the idea is that it is a noble work. And Christ is worthy of faithful shepherds pulling up their sleeves and getting in the trenches and doing the hard work.

Christ is worthy of that. But it's important that you understand when you're getting into it, it's hard work.

And not only that, I don't know. Now, John MacArthur, he may be an exception, you know, because he's kind of impervious to all.

But but I don't know of anybody that's been a pastor for a long time that that even decades into it feels adequate or feels like, you know, they've conquered or feels like, you know, they're still not fighting, fighting sin and in their own sin and maybe sin in the church and still seeking reformation.

Like it never ends, but it's it's worth it, you know, for the glory of Christ, the good of the church.

I'm rambling. Eddie, you got anything you want to add in there? You know, I was in a meeting with some other pastors just this morning and and I was listening to a pastor that's been in his current church for 21 years.

And we were talking about things exactly like what's in this tweet. One of the pastors had probably been in his church at least 10 or 12 years.

And we're talking about staff issues and different things like that. And it's stuff exactly like what's being talked about in this tweet.

You know, one one thing that I might ask your opinion on, Chris, what do you think about the ministry retention rate?

We might say there's kind of a reality check when we look at how many guys leave the pulpit.

They leave the preaching and teaching ministry in the church, and they're not necessarily guys who deconstructed their faith or that left

Christ or that aren't believers. But they just get out of it because they enter.

Do you think they're entering the ministry with too much of a rose colored glasses kind of view of what it's going to be?

I do. I mean, that's that's that's precisely what I'm after right here. Is that it's very easy to go in with two.

I don't want to use the word high, but too unrealistic an expectation of oneself and of the church to which you will be called.

And again, that's not to put the church down. It's just and here's the other part of this.

OK, you know, one of my mentors told me, hey, you know, you want to make all these changes and everything.

Why do you want to make them? Well, the quickest response, of course, is, well, because they're biblical and I want to be, you know, this reformer and I want to you know,

I want it to be a healthy church and I'm working for their sake and they should care about these things that I'm preaching and teaching on and that that sort of thing.

But there's a lot of wisdom in what he said there. Right. Because I distinctly remember being at this this church event and there was a man in the in the church that I was like, you know,

I was like, I'm not too sure about that guy or whatever. Right. And I I'm list. I see some of the young adults in the church who had been invited to that event as well.

And I saw the way he interacted with them and how they interacted with him. And I mean, he had been teaching them

Sunday school and everything else since they were kids. And I realized in that moment, I'm the new guy.

I've been here like a year, maybe not even a year at that point. I don't remember. And and I'm thinking that I'm going to come in and like make big, you know, sweeping changes.

And by the way, I'm not the type who came in to make big sweeping changes. I'm just simply saying I was viewing my own impact on that church and the way that I might be able to lead them in a particular direction with, you know, way too high an estimation of myself and of what can be done with a culture and a thinking and everything else.

That's so deeply ingrained. And I'm not saying it was even a bad thing. My point is, I looked at him and realized he is this church, not just him.

All of them are like that. All the members of this church are the church. OK, but they're not going anywhere.

They've been here. They're not going anywhere in the future. And long after I'm gone, they will still be there.

And that that is the case, by the way, I left. So I was an associate at that church and I was gone after two years and nine months, not for anything like no bad reasons or anything like that.

I moved on to a elite, elite pastor role in another church near there. But, you know, that's not a bad thing.

That's you know, we could walk through if you guys wanted. I don't know the different lines that are in this tweet, but that's what

I would say about something like legacy families. Very rarely are you going to find a church that does not have those legacy families.

And by legacy families, I mean the families who have two, three generations in the church. They're usually notable pillars in the community.

And and yeah, they do. I mean, if you if you were to say in a business sense, who runs the church? They do.

And what are you going to do about it, Pastor? That's that's what I'm asking. Right. Here's one thing you can do about it.

You can recognize there might be a reason they're pillars in the community. You can recognize they've been there long before you were and and running them off.

It could be the godly thing, but it probably is not. And you got to realize, too, and people, you know, like in the nine mark sphere, they're going to they're not going to like this.

But if there's a fence up on the property line, you need to figure out why that fence was put up before you go and try to take it down.

There's a wisdom in that. That's that's not, you know, coming in gung ho, thinking you're going to change it overnight.

You need to question your own motives. Why do I want to do this thing? And am I actually hurting these people in this church more than I'm helping them by doing so?

That's good. But, you know, formally, you're the pastor functionally. They're the past. And and you've just got to get that in your mind.

And you have to. And Chris, we've said this a few times on the show, so you can you can push back if you want.

But I think I think we're right. And I want to, you know, put out the qualifiers. We absolutely believe in a strong pulpit ministry.

One of the most important things a pastor does is labor to preach the word of God. You must never take that lightly.

You must do that. You must be serious about it. But I think I'm talking about in the in the best of scenarios, the best of brothers that go into a church.

I think they put way too much stock in their pulpit ministry and not enough stock in the everyday shepherding.

They think because they've heard MacArthur say that he studies however many hours a week, they think when they walk into their church that they, too, are going to tell the people, don't leave me alone, because for 60 hours

I'll be in my study. And and I'm just saying that experientially,

I think it's biblical, but also experientially, I've developed very good pastoral relationships.

When a child is born, when when you have to make the hospital visit, when you have to preach the funeral, like all those things are part of the pastoral ministry and they are all part of the ministry of the word.

So the pulpit ministry, yes, it's central. It's you'll you'll not have a higher view of the pulpit than I do.

It is absolutely central and it is absolute priority. But word ministry extends beyond just preaching on Sunday and the danger.

One last thing I'll let you guys weigh in. The danger is with especially today with YouTube and sermon audio and all that, the danger is you might even unbeknownst to yourself because of because of the deception of your heart, you actually might be preaching not even for your church.

You're actually you're actually honing your skills. So you hope other people out there hear it.

And if you've forgotten, first Peter five, shepherd the flock of God among you.

So I'll let you guys chew on that, man. My pastor said almost that exact same thing.

And I mean, I'm not going to go into it either or name names or anything. But I think that that is a very real and present danger and that it's a rather fruitless endeavor, that there are guys out there now who are preaching and teaching.

Now, look, I got to be careful because my new role is to make podcast material. By the way, what

I'm doing is the work of discipleship within the church and also hopefully training up new pastors.

So we're working on developing a residency program and that sort of thing. But so that's what I've been called to do here as a pastor.

But primarily. But, yeah, there are guys who preach messages that are not even for their flock and there's no application.

There's it is a type of flash in the pan preaching. And the thing is, too, and this is a low view of preaching.

You were talking about, you know, these guys think they're just going to get in the pulpit and preach and it's going to reform the church or whatever.

And you and I, all three of us believe this. We do believe that. The word of God will not return void.

It will accomplish what God has set it forth to accomplish. But here's the thing. It will happen in God's time.

It doesn't happen overnight. It will happen exactly when and how God wants to use it.

And you guys, if you've been pastoring, you know that you see the providential hand of God in what you're preaching.

Like I planned my sermons a year in advance. And yet, I mean, it was every

Sunday. It would so evidently line up with exactly what our church needed to hear at the right time.

All of that. But yeah. So so it's actually a low, lower view of the word when you discount that and think that you're just going to get up there, give this great persuasive speech to turn this church.

It's not going to happen and it shouldn't happen. If it does, you should be a little bit concerned about how easily your church can be blown about.

The other thing, though, that you mentioned, you're talking about a ministry of presence, essentially. That's just love.

Right. And that's the one thing for sure that seminary cannot teach a man. That's right. It is to to love his flock.

You know, there's a professor I had at Southern Seminary and he

I'm not mentioning his name because I'll just go ahead and say it is David Prince.

And you can think what you want about David Prince. He was involved with the ERLC and all of that.

But I will say that David Prince taught me some things that have changed. They have saved my bacon in the pulpit.

And, you know, his his mantra was love and lead on overdrive. And that's exactly right.

You can't merely just lead the people. You have to love them and show them that you love them.

Mark Coppinger, who you're aware of, you know, he was my advisor at Southern.

And I remember him preaching a sermon, Macedonian Fun. I think it's been pulled off Southern's website.

I'm not sure of that, though. But, yeah, it's called Macedonian Fun. And he he makes that point.

He what you were just talking about, Alan, about, you know, you make this hospital visit and you're only there.

Let's say I mean, this wasn't true. I was usually there for quite a while. Yeah. Let's say you're there for two minutes.

OK. And you've had those visits, too. Right. And like from then on, that person will crawl over broken glass for you.

It's like, why? It's because there is a respect for the office there. They understand that you're a man of the cloth, that you're a man of the of the word.

And it shows your love for them in genuine care, especially when you're not faking it. You're doing it because you're a shepherd and God has called you that way.

He has given you that desire. He's given you that aspiration. And so, yeah, the last thing I'll say on that point,

I was blessed because I came out of seminary and I went immediately under a guy who had been in pastoral ministry for over 20 years.

And he had no patience whatsoever for the fake stuff, for different contexts where these guys get into this other context and try to tell you how to pastor in a rural traditional

Southern Baptist church. There's a lot of the things they'll tell you will get you fired. But anyway, he he told me when

I came in and I was, you know, I was teaching students primarily at that point. And he said, look, man, you've got to earn your right to teach.

And that's not something that someone like me wants to hear. Right. Because I'm like, no, they need to they need to know the

Bible and they need to care about it. And the things I'm saying are important because they're based on the word of God. And it's like, yes, but they're playing video games and disc golf and doing their sports and they're going to public school.

So like, what are you going to do about it? You've got to earn the right to teach them the Bible. And so that's what

I set forth to do. You know what I did? I went to their games. I played disc golf with them. I did those sorts of things.

And guess what? They saw just in the way that and I know I understand your hesitancy with what you were saying earlier, because I understand we don't want it like we're not liberals.

But but there is certainly that aspect of ministry that it's face to face, it's in the flesh.

And I don't mean in the negative way. It's in the flesh. Like Paul longs to be with the people to whom he was writing.

That's a real thing. And it does. It establishes that that place where then you have earned, as it were, that right to teach and to preach the word of God to them.

And they see it lived out in your life. That's different from what you get from celebrity pastors and preachers.

Right. You know, you can't go to YouTube and get your entire spiritual discipline diet there.

You just can't, because that's not how God set things up. We really learned that during the covid stuff.

Like that's just not what the Bible teaches. MacArthur real quick. Sorry. Two things on MacArthur.

You know, one thing is consider the context. Right. Sure. I mean, what are there? Twenty four elders.

Right. Yeah. And so you have the leeway for one man to predominantly be the preaching and teaching elder, you know, and focus just on that.

But we also know that MacArthur does not only focus on so many stories of doing pastoral ministry, hands on pastoral ministry and all of that.

But the other thing is, how long has MacArthur been at that one church?

He talked about earning the right to teach and preach to your people. Yeah. And and let's be honest, you would have some you'd have different expectations of, you know,

MacArthur's in his late 70s. Is that right? What? I mean, he's MacArthur's like eighty four.

Oh, is he eighty four? I couldn't. But the point is, you don't have the same expectations of your eighty four year old pastor to show up at the at the hospital.

He may be going to hospital for himself, but maybe you don't have the same expectation on him that you have on the forty four year old pastor or even.

Come on, guy. Not just, you know, what Chris said is not just the hospital, maybe the kids ballgame, the kids graduation, you know, that kind of stuff.

I kind of think a twofold application. One is for church members. If you happen to be listening to this and you have a pastor that, you know, maybe you wish he could preach better, but but he's he's there for you.

You know, I have no problem with church members to listen to other guys, you know, listen to the sermons of the of the guys on Sermon Auto.

That's great. But remember, those guys aren't your pastor and they're they're never going to be. Not that they're not good men, but they're never going to be there for you.

They can't. They have their own. So support and love and encourage the pastor that you do have.

And if you wish you wish that he could be a better preacher, then, hey, why don't you help send him to a conference, you know, stuff like that, like invest in him.

And then to the pastor, I'd say, like, if you if you're wanting to get into this and based on, you know,

Chris's tweet and all that we've talked about, if you want to get into this and you don't have a love for the people like your things, like I just want to preach, man, you're you're in the you're you're going into it wrong.

I'm not saying that you're not qualified, but I am saying you may not be qualified. You may you may need to look for something else to do with your life, because if you're really going to get in to the trenches of the church and you're really going to roll up your sleeves and love people and love

Christ and and actually be a good shepherd, then these are the kind of things that you're going to have to navigate.

It's unavoidable. Well, and I also think, you know, I think sometimes we we get this idea that whether it's church members or pastors themselves, that every sermon is supposed to be the big conference sermon.

No, it's not. Every Sunday is not supposed to be that. Yeah. Let yourself off the hook, pastor, because that's not true.

I mean, I heard Paul Washer one time. He said the sermons that everybody hears, he said,

I don't speak like that all the time. Those are just the ones that get posted, you know, that's not real life.

You know, that's not real life. Yeah. So that's the analogy about the, you know, you don't remember the meal you had like three days ago, but you know that you ate.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so there's going to be a lot of Sundays, pastor, that that's what they needed to hear.

But it really was beans and rice. It really was.

That's what it was. Let's just be honest. It was that it wasn't steak that day. It was beans and rice.

But they'll live. And so it's so will you. Chris, let me let me ask you,

I'm hoping what will be a practical question. How do we guard ourselves as pastors from not in discouragement, just going, well, then this is all the church is ever going to be, you know, they're never going to grow.

They've got these entrenched families and and they're going to be here when I'm gone. So I'm just going to I'm going to put my head down.

I'm going to preach. Hopefully we'll see some people get saved, but I'm never going to see any real change here.

I don't want to fall into that ditch. Yeah. I mean, how to also not fall into the ditch of I've got to change everything, even if it even if it takes this church.

Yeah. And praise God. I was standing on the Bible. Yeah. And how do I how do I not do either one of those?

I realistically make change, but I don't tear everything down while I'm doing it.

Yeah. I think I think that one word from my mentor is good, you know, as a starting place that I mentioned earlier about like ask yourself, why do

I want to try? I think that a lot of guys idolize those changes. They want to be the guy who came in and did the reform work.

And here's the thing. Like when you get there, then what? Like they realize, oh,

I was grasping for wind. I'm not saying the church is worse off or that it's the same. It's probably better.

But if you did it out of some sort of selfish motivation, it's just it's just a form of idolatry. Like it's you're still a pastor.

Right. I mean, the work of revitalization and reform is just the work of pastoring. There's no difference.

So anyway, I mean, if you're going to approach it biblically, you strengthen what remains. Right. So, yeah.

How do you do this and not just get discouraged and all that sort of thing? I think that there are personality differences in this.

I really do. But my thing is, OK, so so when you when you start out and you think

I'm going to die on every hill, it's like that person should be doing.

I'll give you an example of one, by the way. I've got a lot in here. Your children will be taught heresy. People lost their minds over that line.

All I had in mind with that that line was, say, an 80 year old Sunday school teacher, sweet little old lady who teaches your children salvation by works like should she be doing that?

No. Should she be in that role? No. Are you going to go in and remove the 80 year old lady on day one?

Because your kids came home and said something about. Yeah. Miss, so and so told us that we should do good things and we can go to heaven.

Well, one thing is disciple your kids. Right. And there are going to be I mean,

I have guys all the time who ask me, Chris, should I be pastoring a church that I would not normally go to and be an attendee or a member?

You know, and they say, what about my kids? Like, what are my kids going to be taught? You can do all the pastoral work you want, but at the end of the day, you're going to have people in your church who are influencing your children.

Right. And so that's that's what I was after there. Like, yeah, you are going to have that.

So hold your nose when you need to hold your nose, confront the issue or the person when you need to. Right.

But you've got to have grace and you've got to disciple those people, too. It's not just about you and about your children.

You should be discipling them at home so they know how to spot those things on their own. But anyway,

I forgot how I got off on that. But yeah, you've got to take you've got to be optimistic in this sense.

You have to take joy in not only the challenges of pastoral ministry, because that's the work, man.

That's what you've been called to do. Like, you know, there's nothing else to do. It's raining outside. You know, like what else are you going to do?

But the other thing is you've got to take joy in the smallest or seemingly smallest of victory.

And when you learn to do that, that's when you're going to start to actually see the fruit.

It's hard when you don't see the fruit. But when you start to take joy over the smallest victories,

I mean, the smallest of a person did something that, as far as you can see, was actually like altruistic.

It wasn't guided by any selfish motivations, anything like that. A person surprises you in that regard.

Right. Or that person who has not been to church in three years suddenly comes back and becomes a part of your core.

Like that can happen. That happened at the church I pastored and they were legit. It was real.

You know, hallelujah. Like that's the Lord at work. That's a supernatural work of God through the preaching and the teaching of his word and through the effective, effectual work of his

Holy Spirit. And that is something you can look at and go, I didn't do that. Like that's

God using me for his glory and for the good of his people and praise

God in those smaller victories. And then what you do is you look over time and see all these small victories start adding up into growth and maturity and a healthier church.

The people learn to love you as you love them. And then you're able to more effectively lead.

The other thing with that, though, you know, this was going to say you go into pastoral ministry and you think,

OK, I'm going to die on every hill. That's where I was going with Sunday school teacher thing. You think you're going to die on every hill.

OK, we all know that. We're going to need a lot of resurrection.

We're going to die on every hill. Yeah, oh, absolutely. Yeah, that's that's exactly right. You just can't. You can't do it.

You shouldn't be in the past. If you go into it, you know, if you stay in it that way, I'll put it that way, because any church you go to is going to have something that needs to be done.

But then you come out of seminary or wherever. Right. And you think, OK, I understand. I'm going to have the wisdom to choose the hills that I die on.

Well, I think that's wrong, too. I think that once you're in pastoral ministry, what you realize is the hills come to you.

That's right. You get to choose which hills you die on. And when that hill comes to you, you better be ready to die.

Yeah. So with that, though, the the positive aspect of that is this.

You have a list of things as a pastor that are biblically based that you want to accomplish, that the

Lord has called you to and gifted you to accomplish in the life of the local church. There are things that are for God's glory, for for their good.

And yeah, sure. For your good as their pastor as well and their shepherd. OK, you may not be able to do all of those things on your list even in 20 years or whatever.

OK, but there will come an opportunity in God's providence where something shifts in the church on one of those points.

And at that, that is the time that that's the opportunity that you need to move and you need to move decisively.

And that's how you reform a church. You grab a hold of those things that remain and you work to strengthen.

You make them honor their lip service to the authority of Scripture.

That's the place you start at. Right. And then you start teaching that and then you teach toward the change that you want.

And when those opportunities present themselves, somebody passes away. That's a horrible thing to say, but hey, you know what?

It happens. Somebody passes away. Somebody moves on. Somebody is ready to drop a ministry.

Perhaps an entire ministry is about to quit working. OK, those can be super negative things for the church, especially for people who are wedded to tradition and they've been there forever and all that sort of thing.

But those are also great opportunities to say, now, look at the Bible and how it addresses this thing.

Look at how we could do this in a more simple fashion, in a more biblical fashion, in a way that's more glorifying to God and then more effective.

Right. Ministerially. And I'm speaking in like these broad generalizations because there's not this one size fits all sort of thing.

That's the other issue that I wanted to say is, you know, podcasts like this are great. Like when pastors can talk to one another like you do, you need to have a guy that you're talking to who's preferably much more seasoned than you are.

That saved me time and time again. But then you also need to be passing this on to other guys.

And so I think that's a big one. And you guys know that. I mean, you've got to have those buddies in pastoral ministry who understand this because, yes, is the secular workplace hard?

Absolutely. Hey, I'm blessed. I'm I'm from a long line of blue collar workers. And I did that type of work myself.

And I've also done you know, I was an insurance agent for a while. I've worked in retail. I've done all of those things.

And all of that was a blessing to me to see the challenges and difficulties in those. Like your flock has a lot of problems going on, too.

OK, but there are things that are unique to the pastorate, not because it's some sort of like, you know, oh, we're high and lofty or something like that.

It's just unique to the pastorate because it's a different category. It's a it's a it's a hard emotional type work.

And there's not really a way to describe it, even if you're a pastor's kid or if you're an associate or if you're a youth guy, until you sit behind that desk and you're the lead, you don't know yet.

I'm just telling you, and that offends guys, but you don't know until you get behind that desk. And then you get behind that sacred desk and you have to stand up there and you have to preach and not do it out of anger and not target people that you want to target.

And you need to get up there and you need to minister in a gracious way, in a loving way, while also being firm.

And the people there are under formative church discipline as you're doing it. You've got to recognize the weightiness of God and the weightiness of the task that you've been given as you do that.

Wow. That's really good, brother. I just three things

I was going to say, which hopefully it's not too trite now. But it's like one, I was going to say, you know, guarding against these ditches.

One, I was I was going to say that you're kind of like, you know, sometimes you feed rice and beans.

But if you feed rice and beans to your kids over the years and then you got some good meals over the years, but you're going to watch them grow.

You're going to see them grow. You might not see them grow from day one to day three or whatever. But as you observe them year after year, you see they grow, you know, and when you're 18 years in, they've definitely grown.

And and another thing I was going to say is really there has to be this motivation that no matter what happens, the

Lord Jesus really is worthy to continue on and to press on and to do this right.

And then the last thing I was just going to say, I've summarized these really quick, was is a text

I preached the other night. But Psalm 119, 65, it just says, you have done well to your servant.

And we need to remember how good God has been to us. Chris already mentioned that earlier, but how gracious the

Lord has been. Like you, you weren't saved knowing everything, you know, now God has been patient with you.

There's enough sin in your life as a Christian that would warrant God to just take you out.

But he doesn't. He's patient with you. He's gracious. And we need to remember that as we as we press on.

But I think it's really been wonderful, Chris. I really appreciate you giving us your your time. Eddie, do you have anything else that you want to ask or mention?

You know, providentially in the Lord's timing, as I was saying, you know, conversations

I was having this morning, thoughts I was having this morning. This is just really come at a beneficial time to me.

I've been practically helped by this discussion. And I hope that everyone who listens also will, because I think

I don't ever listen to our podcast. But I'm going to go back and re -listen.

I've been making notes because so much of what you've said, Chris, has been helpful to me. And I'm going to go back and re -listen because this has been so practically helpful.

Just thinking about the real life ministry that we're facing in our churches. The stuff that's happening today here in Marshall, Arkansas, at First Baptist Marshall.

I've been really helped. So thanks a lot, brother. I've appreciated the conversation. Good to meet you. And I'm not real active on Twitter, so I'll give you a follow, but I probably won't say anything because I don't get on it.

But no, this has been great. Well, man, I really appreciate you guys having me on. And to provide a little context to that and everything.

Again, I don't think at all that the overwhelming response was not a negative one at all.

There were a few folks who tried to take advantage of it in different ways that I thought were unhelpful. But I mean,

I think I've said what I need to say to explain it. If anyone listening to this wants to reach out to me and be like, well, what do you mean by this line?

We can go through. I mean, I would go through line by line and give you story after story. Not just in my ministry experiences, but the experiences of others.

I've been teaching pastors and missionaries and elders and others for 10 years in seminary settings.

So in addition to the local church. But anyway, no, there is there is fruit.

There is fruit in the ministry. You know, you read the Apostle Paul and he boasts in his weaknesses.

He lines out his suffering. And let me tell you, this list doesn't even close to compare to what the

Apostle Paul says there. And no one should say that the Apostle Paul is lying. He actually clarifies,

I'm not lying. And no one should say that the Apostle Paul was just complaining. He had a woe is me attitude or something to that effect.

No, he's just stating the reality of it. And as you do it, what you realize yourself is, you know what?

The Lord has done a work in my heart because only a crazy person would be doing this right now.

God is real and his word is true. And Jesus Christ has really come and given his life for us and was raised again for our justification.

Hey, man, before we get off here, why don't you just mention, because I know I've seen some clips and some of the things that all the clips

I've seen. They've been really good, but just mention like how folks can listen to some of the things that you're doing.

Yeah, sure. So you can go to YouTube for Village Church RVA. That stands for Richmond, Virginia.

So Village Church RVA. There's a lot going on at this church. It's a large church.

Again, we're trying to develop some material for discipleship. We do have a pastoral focus in all of the things we do, including my podcast, which has been fairly heavily focused upon apologetics here as of late, trying to provide some resources regarding things like evolution and cults.

These are issues that people in our church have have asked about. Not every church has the resources or the opportunity or even the vision for being able to set something forth like that, a resource for God's people.

But this one does, and so it was a good fit as far as bringing me in because that's part of my passion as well.

But yeah, you can go there and you can see some of my sermons if you want. But then also I've got a podcast called

Christ or Chaos. It's available on any of your podcast platforms that you listen to.

It is on X or Twitter or whatever it's called now, and it is also on YouTube there.

Well, thank you, brother. Thanks for joining us today. Eddie, why don't you sign us off here,

I guess. See you guys next week. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

God's doing. This is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poemos, the masterpiece of God.