Tim Pierce Interview

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. At 12 seconds, that's when I begin talking. My name is Mike Abendroth. You can always write us, info at nocompromiseradio .com. In studio today, is this a studio?

I don't know what this is. In this building today, in this room today, an old friend, an old acquaintance. He's been on No Compromise Radio before, Tim Pierce. Tim, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me.

Glad to be here. This is like an international show, so are you nervous?

Not yet. I'll get nervous.

Not yet. So, Tim, I could go a lot of different directions, but basically, let's start with this. How do we know each other, and why are you here?

Well, we know each other because my wife went to your church for years before coming down to college at Reformation Bible College, where my wife and I met, and then I wanted to be a pastor, and after graduating, I knew of no other pastor that discipled men like you.

You don't get out much. So I said, I'm coming up here, and if you'll have me, I'll learn from you, and I'll attend seminary.

Baptist and Presbyterian Preaching Styles

Now, I'm sure this is probably an exaggeration or just humorous. It's like, come on up here, let's teach you how to preach like a Baptist and not a Presbyterian.

Yes. Well, actually, I get different comments on my preaching. I've been able to do a lot of preaching this last year, and one of the comments I like the best is if somebody tells me, you preach like a Baptist, because that means I'm doing it right.

Well, in all honesty, what do you think the difference is in evangelicalism today, a Baptist preacher and a Presbyterian preacher? Is it just sermon length? I mean, typically, I think Presbyterians preach shorter sermons.

What's the difference?

Five minutes, 15 minutes, I don't know. I think that there's a lot of agreement, and so you have a lot more that you can agree on between the good Baptists and the good Presbyterians versus the liberal Presbyterians and the more liberal Baptists, so there's not going to be as much differences as one might think.

In the PCA in general, because you're—are you ordained in the PCA or just licensed?

I'm currently licensed, and so I'll be ordained, Lord willing, in November.

Okay. So, when you just think about PCA preaching, is it kind of like from my world, they're going through books of the Bible verse by verse, they take shorter, smaller sections, larger sections, kind of.

How would you gauge PCA preaching in general? I know it's a big denomination.

It's diverse, but the preaching I like the best is the ones that go verse by verse, and that's the preaching I sat under when we left BBC.

In my mind, Tim, the old days, and I very much could be wrong, I put PCA into kind of two categories in preaching. One was the Ligon Duncan style of preaching, verse by verse. By the way, his website, I don't know, LigonDuncan .com, something like that, has great—it has all his sermons transcribed.

And what I really want to understand, how does this truth seem to apply to people, or does it apply, because God's Word does apply, to show the relevancy of this relevant truth? I read Ligon Duncan. It is a great resource.

So, pick a book of the Bible when you go to the church that you're at that he's already preached through so you can look at his notes, because, seriously, he's so helpful. So, Ligon Duncan school, verse by verse, working our way through the Bible, kind of what does it say and mean, and how do we see Jesus in it if he's not explicit.

And then the other school was Tim Keller. It seemed like it was a little more—I don't know even how to describe it— softer, kinder, maybe more—I don't know. Does that make sense?

Yeah, Tim Keller wanted to avoid offending as many non-Christians as possible, I think. And in some ways, trying to be very winsome for the Gospel. But sometimes you need to be offensive, because the Gospel is offensive.

All right. Well, Tim, we've known each other for quite a while. I was thankful to officiate your wedding. Yes. And correct me if I'm wrong, because my memory seems to be so bad. We needed a couple permissions from St. Andrews for me to officiate.

One, that I could officiate, and two, that I could stand in the pulpit, R .C. and Burke's pulpit, to actually preach the Gospel during your wedding. Did I have that right?

You were right. Yeah, they kind of screened you a little bit to make sure they knew what they were getting into.

Maybe not enough. Well, I didn't have time to do it, but when you and I and the groomsmen were in the little changing room, I don't know what it's called, a vestry or a vestment area or something, Burke's Geneva gown was there, and it says on the back, you know, in the little inside label, you know, Parsons.

And I wanted to put it on and get some pictures taken and stroll around and then send it to Burke to show him that I was wearing his special Geneva accoutrement.

That's funny. You know, what was interesting there is that R .C. Sproul never wore the gowns. Even while the other pastors were all in gowns, he'd still be up in a suit. I don't know why.

Well, because he was R .C.'s boy. When I took some DMIN classes there, I had already gotten my doctorate of ministry at Southern, but I wanted to take some classes there, and I registered and just audited.

I had Carson for Hebrews and Ferguson for worship. They said, would you guys come in to be part of the audience, because R .C.'s teaching there in the sanctuary, whatever you call it. And so, I finally got to see R .C. teach a Ligonier message and write on the chalkboard.

Nice. So, I got to see R .C. do that.

Yeah, I got to see him walk up the pulpit steps, but never write on a chalkboard. So, you're further along there. But I will tell you this about R .C. Sproul, because this is, I think, the one thing that sticks into my mind with him.

I may have said this before last time, but he is a—. I got to see him at the end of his ministry. They have a big pulpit there, as you know. You have to walk up the steps there. And we're in the choir loft most Sundays, because I was in the choir.

And watching him walk up the steps over the course of five years, where he goes from just walking up the pulpit steps, standing and preaching, to eventually walking up, sitting on a chair. Somebody's brought his oxygen tank with him, and he's speaking through that oxygen.

That, in my mind, just said, I want to be a pastor like that, where I'm going to preach until I can no longer preach. Hopefully, I'm not a pastor on oxygen, but at least I'm a pastor preaching faithfully till the end.

What a great story. I mean, I have seen those pictures of him sitting outside of pregnancy centers or Planned Parenthood or something. And he's got his oxygen, and he's there to try to proclaim the truth.

Tim Pierce's Call to Pastoral Ministry

Tim Pierce here in the studio today. Tim, tell us about your new opportunity to preach and pastorate and everything else. It's exciting.

Yeah, so I just graduated seminary in May, Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. And, Lord willing, by November, I will be the pastor at Faith Reform Church in Erie, Pennsylvania. The congregation has called me, and now we're just pending some review by the presbytery, some tests I have to take, and lots and lots of paperwork.

Speaking of tests, when your seminary wanted some information about me and what we believe here, because you were going to do an internship here, they kind of put me through the gauntlet, but I think I convinced them that I was confessional, so they allowed you to be an intern here.

What was that all about? Yes, but if memory serves, you did not pass the first time. I think they sent it back to you for more explanation. Yeah, because of your answer to creation in six days, and they were afraid you were just waffling, because you said, I believe that God created in six days, and they wanted to make sure you weren't just saying, it says days, I'm saying days, and I'll interpret days however I want to interpret days.

Tell me what you mean by days. You know what? I did not remember that. I'm glad I passed. I think probably over the years, over the last 30 years, while I still am six-day creation, I see more merits of other arguments, and I would be more prone to say the people that don't believe in six days if they show themselves faithful in other hermeneutical areas that I would consider them still brothers.

Right, yeah, yeah. You have to get past the six days, and do you hold to a historical Adam? Things like that are more important.

Absolutely, and for me, I think it boils down to, was Genesis 1 and 2 written as some kind of science thing, or why was it written, to whom, where, right, in the wilderness, etc.? And so, yeah, I definitely don't say, as some have said, it's poetry, and then when does the poetry not be poetry?

I mean, we need a literal Adam that God literally created out of the dust, breathed a soul into him, and it wasn't 10 ,000 hominids walking around, and then Adam was chosen by God. Right, yeah.

I know people who teach that. Otherwise, Romans 5 doesn't work.

I know. That was really the big thing for me when it comes to federal theology, i .e. covenant theology, federal foitus in the Latin, was Romans 5, and I was listening to S. Lewis Johnson doing federal headship, and then I read that little booklet by John Murray called The Imputation of Adam's Sin, one of my favorite books, talking about immediate crediting of that sin to all of Adam's posterity, and so that's kind of what put me on the road.

There you go. The broad road that leads to covenant theology. So, you're going to go there, Lord willing, in November. What will be your strategy in terms of preaching? What book will you preach or series to start?

What do you think you're going to do?

I'll probably start with skinny jeans and a tattoo.

Well, you're one of the skinniest guys I know, so you can eat whatever you want. I hate that about you. We're going to go have lunch after this, and I'm going to have no carbs, and he's just going to have, like, waffle fries.

Nice. Well, I'll start preaching straight through a book of the Bible, probably Mark, although I'm going to work with the elders a bit first before settling on one, see what would help the church, and then I really want to get to know the people of the church.

I think that is great wisdom, so good for you. I, unfortunately, in 1997 came here. I think I started with a five-week series on the attributes of God. It's kind of more of a topical thing, but textually based out of one main passage, and then I did James because I thought— James, in the day, I thought it was a book of test of saving faith, and this is either going to run the unbelievers out or make them run to the cross, and so I was going to try to clean the church up right away.

Of course, I don't think it's test of saving faith. I think it's in light of the Resurrected Jesus, a first book written in the New Testament. Well, you can count it all joy. You can be a doer of the Word, etc., but now I tell people, why don't you pick a gospel?

You're a new guy. Just start preaching through, showing them who Jesus is, and so, good for you. I don't know if I taught you that in the past, but if I didn't, you're wise. There we go. I'll take it.

Seminary Professors and the Pastoral Use of Theology

So, let's go back to seminary, Greenville, and tell me about some of your favorite professors.

Well, I think my favorite professor is Dr. Piper, partially because he's my pastor, as well, and just a man who is incredibly experienced, once you're preaching for 50-plus years, and he's such a hard worker, as well, so one of the things that the heroes that I have tend to be hard workers because I want to get rid of all that laziness inside of me, so I just watch them work and try to model that.

But he retired from president of the seminary a few years ago, and in his retirement, took on an associate pastorate and full-time professorship at the seminary, so he's got lots of spare time.

Hey, that is great. What, Tim, do you think you— what theological topic did you really— did you change anything when you went there? You had certain beliefs, and then when you went there and studied more and learned from the professors, you changed, or maybe it was more of a maturation.

What's one or two big takeaways of things that you learned there that maybe you didn't fully know or you had a different opinion when you arrived?

Yeah, a lot of it was maturing. I came from a dispensational background. It was not dispensational by the time I got to the seminary.

You want answers? I think I'm entitled to them. You want answers! I want the truth! You can't handle the truth!

Oh, that was for my dispensational friends.

Thank you. I sure did appreciate it. But I came from that background, and so sometimes it's like a rock that's dropped into a lake and the ripple effect slowly comes out, and so sometimes I recognize—.

Sometimes it was with eschatology or things like that that I was still misinterpreting Scripture. One of the things that changed is Revelation became a useful book for me, as opposed to a book of stuff that's all going to happen in the future that I don't really understand and we're not sure exactly what to do with it and why are these Apache helicopters in the form of locusts and all of that.

So Revelation became very much a book that I can appreciate seeing God's sovereignty and all of that. And then the model of how they do theology is the other thing there, where we don't have any classes that will just leave you with intellectual knowledge and walk away.

Even when we're getting into the weeds with some of these theological topics, we always bring it back to, how does this help us? Or how does this not just help me personally, but how does this help me understand God more or worship God better?

So there's piety involved with your doctrine.

I think that's super important because I see people in the evangelical world and they are professors and scholars and intellects and they don't think pastorally. I guess it's fair if I say it online since I believe that, but I wrote Matthew Barrett, I don't know, a couple years ago and he had some liberal person on and they were talking about something that wasn't liberal and I just said, Matthew, I appreciate your ministry so much, this is before Anglicanism and everything else, but could you kind of think like a pastor?

Because what you say affects the people in the pew and I don't care if you interview anyone, but if I interviewed a liberal or a Roman Catholic, I would say to the people, because I think this is a ministry, pastoral ministry extension of the church, I would say, well, we certainly don't believe on how to get to heaven and that's a major issue, but today we're talking about simplicity and we can both agree on that, etc.

So I just want to give the warning. So I appreciate a higher education when it is very practical. Yeah, warnings are necessary.

Because people will assume, oh, you brought on a Presbyterian, therefore you're sliding into infant baptism. So you might need a warning right now.

Well, you attended worship service here last Sunday and I was glad to see you. I think you're in town for your brother-in-law's wedding. Is that true? I had you come up to give a little update because people here love you and I think I said you're my favorite Presbyterian.

I'm not even my own favorite Presbyterian. So that's high praise.

I think Sinclair Ferguson is really my favorite Presbyterian, but in terms of somebody that I know on a closer basis. Yeah. Now, I had just talked to Austin about this and had you tell the story. You have written some hymns and you said you aren't really writing hymns these days, but just tell me about your hymn writing.

I don't meet too many hymn writers.

Yeah, so my hymn writing is done because of things that I learn or too much coffee that I've had and I can't sleep. One of the two. Sometimes when you're studying God's Word you need to be able to express it and express it in praise.

So I've written a few hymns. We've recorded them, Stephanie, my wife, and I and they're online at hymnsforthechurch .com. But we haven't done it recently, but we've made them available with PDFs so if a church wants to print them off and use them.

I tend to avoid using them in churches where I'm at because I don't want to be the Tim Peirce show. But I hope they're useful.

Scripture, Family Life, and Protecting a Pastor's Ministry

I think about your wife, Stephanie, and of course I've known her for quite some time. Matter of fact, Stephanie came here with her three siblings, mom and dad. I think they came from kind of a fundamentalist background, and they showed up, and the first Sunday that they were here, I was in a sequential exposition of 1 Corinthians, and I was preaching 1 Corinthians 7 1 to 5 about husbands and wives giving due benevolence in a physical area, realm, that is the bedroom, if you're married, and April.

I thought to myself, here's this homeschool family, four kids, they're never going to make it, and so they kept coming back, and I said to Bob, the dad, you know, why'd you keep coming back? He said, well, the Scriptures teach it, and we need to learn, and we need to hear it, and so I was very thankful for that.

But thinking about Stephanie, does this church that you're going to, Lord willing, in November, know what kind of asset they have in one of my favorite piano players of all time? She just attacks. She is just with verve and enthusiasm plays that piano.

Do they know what they're getting?

They know what they're getting, but they also know that they're getting a mom, and that's been one of the things I appreciated so much with this church, that as we were interviewing, they were helping us set boundaries as to what Stephanie would do so that they don't wear her out, recognizing that her main.

Job right now is to our four little kids. I think that's very, very wise. You won't regret that. On the other side of me kind of landing the plane in the next who knows, five years or something, and you're just starting up, you'll never say, you know what, I went to too many committee meetings.

I mean, I should have gone to more committee meetings. I should have gone to more change-the-carpet-color meetings and all that stuff. I regularly had nights, Tim, that I would just X out, short of an emergency if somebody's, you know, whatever suicidal.

And people would say, could you do this or could you do that? And I simply would say to them, oh, thanks for the invite. That just won't work out for us. And I didn't explain. I didn't need to. I mean, I felt like I needed to, but it just won't work out for us.

And what I meant was, tonight we're all watching Swiss Family Robinson, and I would always, on movie nights at our house, we would get all the family together, and I would serve them first popcorn, and then I'd serve them ice cream.

I wanted to be the one that got it and served it, and I can just see Hanny Luke, my son, ice cream, and he can't take his eyes off Swiss Family Robinson. And he says, thank you, Dad, and just keeps eating as he stares at the TV.

So, you want to protect your ministry. And you, I think, also, Tim, and you know this already, want to model what it's like for the men who work 50, 60 hours, and then they're busy doing all kinds of other things, and they need to be family men, and so you model that as the pastor that I want to be with family.

Yeah, especially for men, we have a tendency to make our identity our work, and in part, that's a good thing, because God created us to work. But we can then leave our family on the side, and I even, I struggle with that in seminary, even to the point where one time, I ended up quitting my full-time job, because I just needed to wrap up seminary, start applications, and I actually felt guilty while sitting at the dinner table with my family, because it had been about an hour, and I felt this burning need to go back to studying or jump back into something, because I was so used to just go, go, go, work, work, work.

And so, Stephanie has been really great, but there's definitely times where my family suffered. Sometimes you have to do that, but if you do it your whole life, that is.

Bad. That's exactly right. One of the things I appreciate about you is you, I mean, I'm sure you struggle with pride like everyone else, but when you're walking in the Spirit, and you're thinking about humility, you told me a while ago that you got a particular kind of job—I know the job, but I'm just setting you up—you got a particular kind of job because it was going to be helpful for you to do something that you weren't normally good at.

Tell us about that. Yes. I got a job in insurance and started liking it, which shows you how boring of a person I am, which actually, so sidetrack, in God's providence, Erie, the Fortune 500 company that's in Erie, Pennsylvania, where I'll be pastoring, is Erie Insurance.

So if we get people coming from that background, I understand it well. That's cool. So it's cool to see how God works all things. So I took an insurance job because I knew I would have upset customers, and I figured I ought to have a spine if I'm going to be a pastor.

That is so classic. I just read the other day that at any time in the life of a church, at least 15 of the congregation is going to be.

Having some kind of issue with the pastor. Not yet. They voted unanimously to take me. But starting November, we'll get that 15 done. I'm sure I.

Told you when I got voted in, I think February 1997, here, there were 42 members that voted that came to the meeting. 40 voted, yes, we'd like Mike and Kim. More Kim than Mike, but they said it's fine.

Luke was only five months old. I don't even think we brought him at the time. Haley was five years old. And then zero against and two abstentions. And so I said to the guy, the chairman of the board of the elders at the time, who were these two that abstained?

I mean, what a bunch of idiots they must have been. What is going on? And he said, well, I know the handwriting, and I've talked to them before. They were going to vote, and it's Charlie and Elaine Crane.

And I said, who are these people? Come on, Charlie and Elaine Crane? Don't they know anything? I mean, aren't they going to vote for me? And years later, when I talked to Charlie about it, he said, I didn't really know you, right?

You came in for a weekend. We listened to a couple sermons. How do you vote on a pastor that you barely know? And so, it wasn't like I was against you, but I really wasn't for you. And I thought, out of the 42 voters, only two were wise, Charlie and Elaine.

42 abstained. Yeah. So it actually.

Vetting Pastors and Evaluating a New Church

Was a good thing for me, as I help other churches and pastors who want to go be—. People that want to go be pastors, just make sure you vet each other as much as possible. Spend more time doing that.

Yeah. Yeah, we had a good weekend up there after several conversations via Zoom before we ended up taking the job.

Actually, one of the things that I would suggest that you do, or anybody else looking to be a pastor, whether it's PCA, OPC, Reformed Baptist, I was trying to think of some—. Pentecostal. Well, you just ask God.

He'll tell you. Is to survey the local evangelical church—for lack of a better word, I know it's not the right word—. Scene. What are the other churches like? And if I was going to candidate at another church, and I would say to the search committee, do you mind if I call a couple other pastors in the area and just ask them what they think about this local church, that type of thing?

Yeah. I did not do that. But I did sit down with the retired pastor and had a good conversation about the church. And he was pastor there for five years because it's his third job, Air Force, DC consultant, then a pastor.

Now he's one church but five years because he's ready to retire. And he took the church and he put it— it's a really sound church now. They're ready to grow, but they're ready— they've got a solid base.

So I was able to talk with him, and that was good. And he's there, not at the church, but he's there, so we'll be meeting regularly and having some discipleship so they don't get stuck with this young, wet-behind-the-ears guy who has no idea what he's doing.

You're not that young. How old are you?

34, 32. Well, that is young. Wow, you act so much older. What's going on? Yeah. I became a pastor at 36. I thought that was too young, although Luke, my son, became the pastor at 29, I think.

I was in marriage counseling because Stephanie and I have a six-years difference. I won't tell you who's older, but it's not me. We had a six-years difference, and the pastor says, not you. We did double counseling because we wanted to get married at St. Andrews.

I think we did some Zoom things. Did we? Yeah.

So you wouldn't marry us without counseling us, which is a good idea. St. Andrews wouldn't let us use St. Andrews without counseling us, so we got subjected to two counselors. There's wisdom in that. Anyway, the other pastor says, I think this will work, because Tim, you're mature for your age, and Stephanie—and then he got stuck because he was basically saying we have roughly the same maturity level, and he just emphasized the fact that I was so much younger than her.

Well, biting your lip, I guess, even though awkward, might be better than saying something you regret. Exactly. Tim, I'm glad to have you on the show today. We've just got a few minutes to go. Any ways that the congregation, the audience here, can get a hold of you?

What's the website? How can they pray for you? Just random thoughts at the end here. Yeah, if they want to get a hold.

Of me, hymnsforthechurch .com has a contact page. At this point, it's almost only used for people trying to sell me stuff. But as long as you're not selling me something, I'll respond to you. Okay, good.

Reformed and Baptist Practices of Baptism

This is just a funny question, a dumb question, but I want to ask it. When you're at seminary, of course, you would baptize a believer, right? If they have not been baptized before and they're Hindu or something like that.

So there's believer's baptism, but by immersion is what we do as Baptists. Do you sprinkle? Do they teach you what to do? Do they show you? I mean, I've been very convicted these days. I'm training guys here now.

Let's work through communion, not just watching me do it, but let's stand there and you actually do it. So that's what I did with Austin. And let's do the hands-on stuff, get in the water, show people what we do exactly, not just demonstrate and show, but this is why, and get in the water to show how to baptize people and what to do and don't knock their head into the side of the thing and, you know, hold them in appropriate areas, and all this kind of stuff.

What do they do? What have you been taught for how to sprinkle? Mostly just good luck.

We've not been taught that. In part because part of our theology means that until you're ordained, you can't actually do it. So they're not going to put an intern up there helping with communion or anything.

I would assume if you get a job as an associate pastor or something like that, then you're going to be walked through it. I'm just terrified I'll drop the baby. That's the one thing. Don't drop the baby when you're baptizing.

I'll become a Baptist.

If I start dropping babies. Well, I want you to know that early on we did baby dedications just out of, I don't know, tradition or something, but I don't do those anymore. But I have held the children up, you know, in 1997, and they're grabbing your microphone.

It's very endearing and stuff like that. Will you sprinkle, infuse, immerse? What would you do to the baby?

We're not Greek Orthodox, so we're not immersing. Have you seen those videos online?

But no, we'll sprinkle. We're good with the environment that way. Like how many drops? I mean, do you put your hand in? What do you sprinkle with? Your hand goes in.

Because it's a sign, you want it to be seen. So you don't want to do it so little that nobody knows the baby even got wet. This is a sign of washing, of regeneration, even though the baby isn't regenerate yet.

They need to grasp those promises in faith. We just put our order a little differently than you do. They need to see it. It's one of these sensible signs. So you do it with enough water, the congregation can see the baby get wet, the baby starts crying because the baby doesn't want to be wet, and.

That's how you do it. Well, you know what? I learned something new today, and I'm glad for that because that makes sense. It's a sign. I get that. I'd always tell people when I did the baptisms here that if I take you up out of the water and you start speaking in tongues, I'm knocking you back.

It didn't work. Jim Pearce, thanks for being on No Compromised Radio Ministry. I appreciate you, your life, your ministry. May God bless you in Erie, Pennsylvania. Thank you.