165: The Time it Takes to Build a Healthy Church

Christ Reigns Over His Church

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.

Have you ever been to Fort Smith, Arkansas? You should go. One of the things about Fort Smith that my wife and I have seen before is there was that hanging judge there, pretty famous. I think it was Isaac Parker.

But they have a little museum you can go to and look, and he was pretty notorious. You do not want to commit a crime in that area of the, maybe it was a territory, maybe Arkansas was already a state, when you had the hanging judge, Isaac Parker, because it probably meant that if your crime was serious enough, that you were gonna go ahead and be sentenced to the gallows.

So that's one thing to check in at Fort Smith. But here's something else, Chaffee Crossing Baptist Church. And this is the conversation, part two, with Blake Boylston, who's the pastor at Chaffee Crossing Baptist Church.

And last week, we just finished with him talking about membership interviews and reverse membership interviews. And so we go, we just pick up the conversation right there, right where he left off, and we get into more today about, just about the labors and work and pressing on.

Christ is worthy of a healthy church. And so I hope that you're edified by this episode and encouraged and motivated, challenged to pursue health in church, whether you're a pastor or a member. If you're a member and you're listening to this, pray for your pastors, help them, encourage them in this labor.

It's hard, but it's worth it. If you're a pastor, do what needs to be done in order to press on in seeing that Christ's church is taken care of rightly, and that she is growing spiritually, all for the glory of God in Christ.

So with that said, here we go. Part two, interview with Blake Boylston.

Raising Up Faithful Men for Ministry

You're looking for men to pour into 2 Timothy 2 .2, commit these things to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. That, to me, is a game changer. Being a former quarterback, I was a big fish in a small pond, so it was nothing to talk about.

But you could be a stellar quarterback, but if you don't have a good left tackle and a right tackle, you don't have any time to throw. You could have a quarterback with a great arm, but if you don't have anyone who knows how to catch a ball, you're just gonna be running the whole time.

So you've got to be able, as a pastor, to understand something. If you don't wanna burn out, and you don't wanna start a World War III against you, you need to be finding men as quickly as possible to come alongside you, that might be future elders.

And yeah, beyond those things, you're gonna repeat yourself probably hundreds of times, answering the same question hundreds of times. So doing open Q &A and asking for feedback and dealing with objections.

And then eventually, I mean, I have seen this, some of your church will catch onto this so much quicker that they're ministering to the rest of the members about these things. And it's not just coming from you.

And it almost kind of works itself out. The church becomes healthier because more sheep are being taught, more sheep are actually in the fold, and the goats get clearer and the wolves get clearer. And eventually they're gonna think, what are we gonna do with this problem or this unrepentant sin?

And then we're gonna say, well, we've been talking about meaningful membership. What does the Bible say about those? What we should do in love to those who seem to be loving sin more than Jesus. So it's really a natural implication, a logical implication, because these other things are becoming more healthy.

Wow, that was so good. You know, a couple of things I'm just thinking. Revitalization, that's more my experience, but it's hard. And I think I'm probably a bit naive when I started, but I think I would wanna say to pastors now that to my knowledge, this is anecdotal from my own experience, but also I haven't heard of anybody that's ever been able to see true revitalization happen in a church without some sort of conflict.

And the thing about it is we want, I know it and I get it, we don't want conflict. We're not chasing after conflict. We want this thing to turn around without conflict. But the reality is, is you're making these sort of decisions and transitions and things are changing.

If you just say, well, I'm gonna do everything I can to avoid all conflict always, you're never gonna see revitalization. I don't know if you wanna speak to that any or.

Pastors Must Shepherd and Confront Sin

I have a ton of opinions on that. So here's just an easy one. Titus chapter one. So if I went back to something I said earlier, I said, there's three questions every pastor needs to answer. I would add a fourth one, I think to me, it's just assumed, but what is a Christian?

What is the gospel? What is the local church? What is a pastor? You have to understand what a pastor is. And let me just, let me remove some misnomers really quick because I've seen it. This is not theory.

I get fired up about this because this really matters. I do not blame the vast majority of churches for their unhelp on the church members. I blame the vast majority of churches of the pastors of those churches.

For decades. There are some anomalies. There are some situations where churches run off a good brother. I understand that. And that does happen. But if those pastors don't even know what a pastor is, they are teaching an entire generation a false representation of what Jesus says Christians need in their life.

So I'll give you some misnomers. Pastors are not life coaches. They can be encouraging. They do give advice, but life coaches have no real binding covenant commitment or authority over your life because life coaches don't stand on the word of God.

Secondly, a pastor is not a therapist. He's not a paid listener and pastors should be good listeners. But pastors are not called to simply endorse affirm or coddle feelings. We're called to herald the voice of God into the pain and hurt of our lives.

So you can't just be a passive listener. The third thing is you're not an entrepreneur. I did work in business and there are gonna be business practices in the church at times accounting and maybe marketing your church name or something but your goal is not to make a profit.

So you're not looking every year. Our goal is to add 10 more members to the role, get five more baptisms every year and have more people in Awanas this year than we did last year. We're gonna have these charts that show how successful we are.

If that's your mindset as a pastor, you're gonna fall to pragmatism every time. So you're not a life coach, you're not a therapist, you're not an entrepreneur, you're a shepherd. And when I read about shepherds in the New Testament, here's what I find.

I'll go shepherds in the old. What did David do before he was the king? He was protecting his father's sheep and he was defending it against bears and lions. So number one, if you're gonna be a pastor, a biblical pastor, if you are going to run away from the first side of danger, the first side of threats and the first side of uncomfortable conversations, you need to resign now.

The fear of man is going to cripple you and it's going to kill your church. You cannot be a pastor and the fear of man literally rule your life. We all have sin. We all have to grow and mature. I'm not saying that.

But Titus 1 verse 9, he must hold firm to the trustworthy word is taught so that he may be able to what? Give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. It's not just preach nice sermons that everyone seems amen, hallelujah.

It's preaching not harsh sermons either, but it's preaching with authority because it's not your voice. It's God's voice through a fallible person that people are gonna be held accountable to. So number one, it's a part of the job description.

One brother years ago said, if you sign up for leadership, you sign up to be misunderstood. So if you get your feathers ruffled at every single criticism, slander, misrepresenting you, lying to you, frowns at the door, disappointments, if that's just going to crush you, you either need to have a season where you just sit under a seasoned pastor and learn, or you might need to get out of the ministry.

This is a part of the territory. There's just no sugarcoating it. Sheep are gonna bite you, wolves are gonna attack you. And if our Lord was betrayed by one of his own, denied by all of them, well, why would we expect any less at some point?

Peacemaking Requires Pursuing Reconciliation

I think the other thing about conflict is we need to reteach pastors and reteach church members. Christians are not conflict avoidant, but we're not argumentative and looking for conflict either. That's good.

Jesus says, blessed are the peacemakers, not peaceable people. That's very different. You can be a peaceable person, but be passive, aloof, and a compromiser. Peacemakers are noun and a verb. So we are people of peace because we serve the Prince of Peace, but maker means I'm initiating, I'm pursuing, I'm reconciling, I'm working through the conflict, I'm open to criticism and critique, but I'm not running for the hills.

That's not a peacemaker. That's cowardice. So I think there needs to be a reteaching that a part of our ministry of reconciliation with the gospel, bringing sinners in reconciliation with God is also helping Christians understand how to pursue reconciliation with each other.

And I think as a pastor, you just have to model that by not running away from conflict. You have to pursue people and love people even when it's hard. Wow.

So good, brother. So tell me about elders. It took us almost seven years before we were able to call another elder. I'm not saying that, I'm not trying to say that's like a great paradigm and everybody has to follow that model.

It just took time. I also know of brothers sometimes that they try to rush this and then the whole thing just blows up because people don't understand. So they want another elder within 10 months or something.

Patiently Raising Up a Plurality of Elders

So speak to that solo pastor right now. He's in that typical church, one pastor, multiple deacons. He's done step number one, like you said. We're working on the membership. We're shoring that up. Now, how are we thinking about elders?

Yeah. So you're kind of going to do this publicly and privately. So whether this is like a pastor secret or maybe your people just need to hear it. Number one, pastors are called of God and gifted of God and set apart, but they're not omnipresent.

They're not omniscient. It's really good to remind your people, you can't do it all. You get tired. Your gifts are limited. You cannot shepherd every single individual in all the ways that are going to be needed.

You have limitations as a person, energy, even abilities. Some brothers are fantastic preachers. Like they can draw plenty of people to come listen to them preach, but man, they're not that great in the one-to-one counseling.

They're not that patient or maybe they give advice that's probably true, but they're not helpful in the long range. This is going to probably be a 10 month ordeal versus a 10 minute ordeal. So if a brother recognizes that about himself, I would strongly encourage that pastor to model humility before his church and say, would you please pray that God would raise up more elders among us, more godly qualified men to help me shepherd the flock of God.

Here's the tagline I always say at members meetings and on Sunday nights when I say, how can you pray for the church? Pray for God to raise up more godly qualified men to be elders because more qualified men serving as elders will serve you the better and will make me a better pastor.

So if the church has more elders who are truly eldering, they're going to be served and I'm going to be helped. And it's a win for everybody. They are loved and cared for. I am loved and cared for, and I'm not stretched too thin and the members don't feel like they can only come to me.

I'm not the voice of God. I'm not some Baptist Pope. I'm a part of a plurality. And so modeling that constantly. I mean, not every members meeting, but at least we'd have members meeting six times a year every other month.

I would easily say three times a year, I say, please pray for God to raise up more elders. And it's become so ingrained in people that even right now, a live conversation in our church, members take the initiative to tell me, we're not only praying for more elders, but we're praying that God would give you an associate pastor.

A paid, set apart, second preacher, counselor, give you some breaks, help you shepherd. We want to see Blake prosper for the next, not just 10 months, the next 10 years. So our church is already where it's the ethos.

There's no threat here, but they've heard me talk about this so much that you will be better cared for if I have more elders and I will be better cared for if we have more elders. And if you're full of the love of Christ, like how are you going to turn that down?

Yeah, amen. We've had those conversations. You know, it's like, why would you, you know, let's say you have an issue physically and you have the opportunity to have multiple doctors look at this issue or you can say, well, I just want one.

I mean, like what person would not want multiple doctors to look at every angle? Well, how about your soul? Do you want your soul cared for, you know? Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that you said something earlier and I should have picked up on it then, but we believe in the same thing as far as preaching the gospel in every sermon.

Preaching Christ from All of Scripture

And I don't know where I picked this up. I'm willing to attribute it to nine marks in my formative years, you know, reading some things back in probably the 09, 2010 era. Maybe some of it was just the way I grew up under the kind of pastoring that I had, but that's something that we're committed to, preaching the gospel in every sermon.

What, you know, you already kind of mentioned this. Why would you encourage pastors, you know, that that is so important, no matter what text you're preaching from that we're going to, at some point,.

We're going to find a road to the gospel? Yeah. Well, aside from the fact that I do believe in part, this is the role of the pastor. So 2 Timothy 4, 5, he basically, Paul tells Timothy, be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

Now, evangelist certainly involves and can include door-to-door or traveling to places where the gospel is not known, almost kind of like a local missionary, if you will. But I do believe at the very least, the evangel has to be modeled from the pulpit.

And so if you want your church to be excited about evangelism, they need to be excited about the gospel. I am not a good, I'm not a big fan of people starting way of the masterclasses or evangelism explosion, or let's get together and pass out tracts if we're not excited about Jesus, because you're going to turn into a Jehovah's witness.

You're just going out there doing this to tick off a box or make yourself feel better that you did something tough. No, what's going to persuade people, compel people, excite people about evangelism is the gospel, it's Christ.

And I'm a pastor and you are too. I live in this book as a Christian and as a pastor, and I can tell you there are days, there are moments where I am dry as a bone, I'm gospel forgetful, my identity is in other things other than Jesus.

So number one, it excites people for Jesus and evangelism. Number two, man, it protects your church from becoming a bunch of Pharisees. So in John chapter, I think it's John chapter five, this is one of those fascinating verses for me.

In John five, Jesus is again, getting opposed by the Jews, and they are just really ticked off by him because he's claiming to be one with his father. And it's interesting, Jesus says this in John 5 39, you search the scriptures because you think that in them, you have eternal life.

And it is they that bear witness about me. And then he goes on to say in verse 46, for if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?

In other words, Jesus is saying, if you're just reading your Bible, and he's talking to Jews, it would be the Old Testament. If you're reading your Bible and thinking that in them by themselves, you have salvation because you're keeping the law, you're from a certain family, you have a certain last name, you did more good deeds this week than last week, or you know the story about Jonah.

If you think that's what salvation is, and you're grounding your assurance in that, you still have the blindfold on. You are not seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of the blessed God in the face of Jesus Christ.

You're looking at a dimly lit lamp. And how do we see the lamp, the word of God as a lamp into our feet and a light in our path? Because Jesus is the light that sheds the true meaning of all this. And when Jesus says, you search the scriptures that you would have life, but they that bear witness about me.

Of course, the road to Anais, Luke 24, they're wondering, you know, where's the Christ? We don't know what's happened to him. And Jesus manifest himself, and they're talking about the scriptures. He opens them up and he says, it was they that bear witness about me.

So I think we do our people a disservice in how to, number one, be saved. It's not just the gospel of John. It's all of scripture. Secondly, we wanna help people see that God inspired all this by the Holy Spirit, and yet Jesus, the one we worship, obeys and love all of scripture.

So if we're gonna be followers of Jesus, we need to see that the scriptures bear witness about Jesus, and we need to love the scriptures like Jesus did. And yeah, I think at the end of the day, it's also what makes rational, logical, complete sense about the harmony, the one story of redemption that the Bible says.

If you don't, if Christ is not the centerpiece, he's not the climax, the Bible really does feel like a bunch of random, disconnected, sometimes super obscure and unrelatable things. But if we see the Old Testament pointing to, the New Testament looking back and looking forward, all about Jesus, then it makes reading the Bible super exciting and gives, yeah, better understanding of how the Bible fits together.

You know, in Acts 9, 20, it's after Saul's conversion, it talks about immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogue saying he is the son of God. And there's just an interesting grammatical and theological point to make there, but he proclaimed Jesus, proclaim being the verb and Jesus being the object grammatically.

But also there's just a theological point, what are we proclaiming if it's not Jesus? Yeah, it's who we proclaim. Yeah, amen. So it's like, yeah, and all that we're doing, and it's like, well, yeah, but you guys talk about being a church and membership, elders and disciples, it's like, amen, but all that flows out of proclaiming Christ.

Well, and I would make, so I'll be frank since you got people that may be listening to this and I'm fine if we go a few minutes over, one of the criticisms someone gave me about four years ago, they said, I don't think you're preaching the gospel anymore and that blew me away.

And I thought, why would you say that? And they said, well, you talk so much about the church, I wanna hear more about Jesus. Now I knew this person and I knew where that question was coming from. They're coming from a hyper individualistic, pietistic, me and Jesus got our own thing going kind of Christianity and this idea of church where there's accountability, structure, fellowship and a mutual one anothering with some teeth in it was a little bit of a turnoff to them.

And I just said this right back to this individual, I said, well, you can re-listen to all my sermons and you can tell me which sermon did you not hear the gospel loud and clear and that'll be a fair criticism.

But if you're telling me that I'm talking about the church too much, that would be the same as me walking into your home and you telling me, I talk too much about my wife. No, she is one flesh with me.

If you love me, you need to learn how to love my wife and if you really don't like my wife, you think she's kind of annoying or she's a distraction to our relationship, I'm gonna have to respectfully say, we're not gonna have much of a relationship because to get me, you get her and if you got a problem with her, you're gonna have a problem with me and you said Acts 9, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

Well, Jesus wasn't bodily on the earth anymore, he was in heaven, but Jesus so identifies with his church that we should love Jesus and in many ways, our test of loving Jesus is by loving his church. So I think deacons should smell like and look like the true servant, Jesus Christ.

I think elders and shepherds should smell like and look like and aspire to be like the true chief shepherd, Jesus Christ. We are members of his body, all these images are pointing us back to Christ. So it's not empty church structures, it's not just polity for a bunch of theological nerds, every aspect of the church, the Lord's Supper, do this in remembrance of me, baptism, we're identifying with him, being buried with him, everything in polity is pointing back to Christ again.

Amen, amen. Well, brother, I mean, I'm so grateful. I hope that this episode, or I don't know, I might wind up, I might split into two episodes, we'll just see, but I'm so grateful. I don't see how there's not tons of things that are helpful as we just wind down here, but like, you know, this is just a podcast.

Where are you gonna point brothers to, you know, they're liking what they're hearing. Okay, is there a book or is there a sermon or is there something beyond this that you might say, hey, you like what you hear here, here's where you can keep going.

And getting this kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, of course, behind me, I've got a bunch of books, there's a bunch of books over there. I pass out books to my church every Sunday night. I give out, we have an internship and an intensive here for women, but also men, of course.

There's scores of books. I mean, you know, I commend Nine Marks for ecclesiology because that's kind of their wheelhouse, but you don't have to. There's other ministries and other writers out there, you know, plenty of authors out of Grace Community Church with the late John MacArthur's ministry.

You've got Founders Press, you've got, was it Heritage, Reformation Heritage, Joel Beeky with, I mean, there's so many different ones. So to even just recommend one book or here and there, I just want to talk to the brother to see how I could be of help with him.

Because, you know, one book's not gonna solve all his problems, but a lot of those ministries are very helpful. Paul Washer's got wonderful stuff with the gospel and conversion. And you've written some books and maybe they can come get your books.

Well, I'll tell you what,.

I actually, you know, you said something, it's like, I really think that this kind of stuff is some of the best things that guys can have. And that's these kind of relationships. Oh yeah. And, you know, and we owe our connection to a mutual friend, a great brother, Jared Links.

And it's like, you know, one way that you can learn and be edified and grow is like, hey, have a conference, you know, talk to your church, say, hey, we're gonna have a Saturday morning with a couple of guys come preach.

And then, you know, don't worry, you know, you don't, people immediately begin thinking about money and cost and all that. You can do these things for incredibly inexpensive. Oh yeah. Yeah, just networking with guys, getting to know guys.

Yeah. Having someone that can encourage you, challenge you, give you wisdom.

Yeah, all that's excellent. So, I mean, one thing that I started, I don't know, about three years ago, this is not, this is historically founded. There's plenty of brothers that do this all over the place.

We're in friendly cooperation still with the SBC. We're part of a network called Acme, but even locally, I just privately started a small group of pastors fellowship at our church. We meet once a month and the basic things are you're friendly to Nine Marks, Baptist Ecclesiology, you're friendly to Reformed Theology, the Doctrines of Grace.

That has been such a wonderful place for encouragement, fellowship, sharing of resources, sharing pulpits, coming up with different ideas, almost being kind of a unofficial outside elder board to bounce off some things in a safe environment where we're caring about each other's churches, but there's no binding authority.

We're just cooperating. And so God's blessed that over the last three to four years, there's about six or seven of us that meet every month. And that's been really fruitful. And we'll read books together that largely we agree with, but there might be some different ways we apply it or maybe things we emphasize differently.

And that's great. So I think, yeah, the relationships, the organic approach, I think opens up a lot of avenues for further education, further growth.

Amen. Well, if they wanna know more about Blake Bolston, what's just easiest way? Church website?

Yeah, I guess. I don't ever really get on the website, but I think it's chaffeecrossingbaptistchurch .com. We have Facebook and Instagram, but I don't run all that. Some of our members do that. Yeah, you can call the church.

I don't know if they can call you and connect with me, but yeah, I'm just a pastor in a sweet church. And yeah, I'd love to get to know anybody that wants to.

Amen. If you know someone in that area, in the Oklahoma area, Eastern Oklahoma area, that area, yeah, we would certainly recommend Chaffee Crossing Baptist Church. It's great to be connected. Look forward to in the future.

I'm gonna get to be with you in November. So very encouraged by that opportunity and just look forward to continuing to spur one another on as a iron sharpens iron. Amen. Well, thank you, brother, for being with us.

Thank you guys for joining us on this episode or maybe turning to a couple of episodes. We'll just see when it comes out and we'll put you guys next week on The Rural Church Podcast. Thank you.

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.

How are you gonna respond?