TS&TT: IOPT Launch | Christ Above All Earthly Powers

welcome to the sword in the trial a podcast of founders ministries founders ministries exists for the recovery of the gospel and the reformation of churches i'm jerry longshore and i'm tom askle well thank you so much for joining us here at the sword and the trial today we're glad to have you with us and we're very excited about the conference we have coming up in january we would love for you to come join us for that that's going to be january 20th through the 24th that's starting on a wednesday with a pre-conference we got a pre-conference with vody backham and very excited about that it's going to be a wonderful time together and then it runs a thursday friday saturday and then stay around on sunday morning come and worship the lord with us at grace baptist church you're also going to have voted preaching there sunday morning so we would love to have you with us you can still register for that conference at founders.org but you better do it quickly because it is filling up we've had to cap it once and then we're able to expand it and we're coming close to capping again so we hope to see you here sunny southwest florida january florida's been led by a wonderful governor so we have great freedoms here i encourage you to come and join with us we are also right amid our december sale here at founders and so you can go on to founders.org and go to our store and there's 25 off everything in there we actually have a new book you and i wrote a book strong and courageous following jesus amid the rise of america's new religion and so that is actually on a pre-pub sale you can go there purchase that book grab other resources that are there in the store during the month of december yeah well today we have a wonderful announcement that we've been looking forward to making public for many months and we have a couple of dear friends and brothers here to help us with that tom nettles is with us from louisville kentucky and vody balcom is with us from lusaka zambia so welcome brothers we're so glad that you are willing to and able to join us today on this podcast yeah thank you for inviting us it's a pleasure yeah definitely thank you yeah these are deer brothers and they don't need introduction to folks that are familiar with founders familiar with this podcast but let me just quickly say tom nettles is retired professor senior professor at the southern madison theological seminary in louisville just recently has finished a series of lectures on baptist in the bible which is a book that you and the late russ bush wrote early in the conservative resurgence in the southern baptist convention and so he did that at southwestern where he began his teaching career what was that tom 78 77 something like that january of 76 76 okay far enough yeah well okay well i i showed up in 79 so uh you know i got to see you at the season veteran by the end what's that that was a seasoned veteran yeah well you needed to be for the knuckleheads that were in the class in my class but uh so i got you at the early end and then jared you got to actually study under tom kind of in the latter years of his ministry at southern i was near about his last um last student to complete a dissertation with him but i think i rode a little too fast and there was one guy that got to actually be crowned the final student i'm a little bummed about that and then uh vody of course is over in lusaka and you've been there is it five years now brother yes sir we clocked five years in august and he's a founding dean of the african christian university and man you guys have made massive strides just had your first graduate right in the last month yeah it's crazy um we we got we got one through and um it was it was surreal i i've uh you know i've heard about institutions that you know they get started and you know then they bear fruit and but to see that happen man it's been incredible yeah well that's wonderful well that brings us to the announcement we want to make today vody and tom and jared and i are going to be the founding faculty of the institute of public theology which will begin to offer classes god willing in the fall of 2021. the institute of public theology is the latest expression of the vision and work of founders ministries and man we're excited about it there's been a lot of things that have happened this year to bring it to pass but it even goes back way beyond this year yeah yeah i remember reading david wells no place for truth and hearing him talk about pastors as marketers and managers and the new disablers and uh he just said you know you lose uh a sense of the transcendent and you just fall into the procedural and you have kind of this pragmatic way of approaching life and ministry and he was relating that to what happened in american society and i remember talking to you about that book years and years ago and you said when i was i think you were finishing your dissertation your phd dissertation you said that the book was sitting there as like my encouragement when i was done i was going to be able to read that book and i went back to it recently and said boy we we see what's going on right now in western civilization and it is a time for ministers to be trained to know how to be a pastor in the public square we really need to know what it means that christ is above all earthly powers that he is lord that he is king that he is savior and really have courage to go out and to speak the truth in love and so we're very excited about this institute it's amazing that uh these four men have come together to uh be the founding faculty and excited about the other faculty that's coming and so in one sense founders has been doing this for a very long time that has had a founders online study center for some time but we've noticed more and more really coming out of the film by what standard seeing these ideologies that were coming upon the church and say okay what does it mean to stand right there and to extend for the truth in the public square right and we've had people who who literally have uh begged us if we would do something like this and that's been happening for years but especially in the last two years i just answered an email two days ago from a brother saying man what do i do i want this is i want to be trained i want to be helped to think about how to minister in this day in the united states and i just don't know what to do and you know can you help me with books or whatever institutions might be out there and man there are a lot of good institutions we're grateful for that but we just feel like god has positioned us with a particular point of view at a particular time based on some of the things that he's taught us and enabled us to do and put out there that brings this vision to fruition so one of the things that as we started developing it really began in earnest i think in in march and i'll spare details but we'll get in details down the road but from march until i don't know september october or so one of the things that kept coming to my mind is we need men who would teach in this kind of institution who are men of strong conviction and who have blood mixed with their conviction that is they have taken a stand and it has cost them to take a stand and so the the two names that immediately came to my mind were tom nettles and vody balcom and uh you know i talked to both of you guys about it about the same time votey i remember uh talking to you on the phone and kind of laid it out to you briefly i said what i said what do you think about this and you said man that's great i said would you be willing to be a founding faculty member and i've got your quote written down absolutely you know so delighted to have you here and brother you have uh you've tried to live your theological convictions in situations and circumstances where it made you odd man out and it has resulted in some some consequences that have not been uh painless for you so tell us a little bit about what your thinking is as we're launching this institute why people should be concerned about it why people should consider coming and taking classes with us you know there's been a struggle um for a long time between the academy and the church between the ivory tower and the pulpit and i think you know as baptist um we have a history of um you know really really fighting for the centrality of the pulpit um but i think one of the things that i've seen is that you know you can get along and be fine and not have any trouble um when you're fighting for you know the pulpit and you're fighting for preaching and so on and so forth but when you start addressing issues um that are not popular then there can be a price to pay and i think part of that comes from the fact that we have divorced um not necessarily the academy but theology uh from the pulpit and i i think in an effort to be um you know committed to evangelism and committed to preaching and committed to the local church um that that we kind of become anti-theological and so the result of that is that there are a lot of issues out there that we're not thinking about theologically and addressing theologically and even battling out you know from a theological perspective um and and i think that's that's that's cost us and so i'm excited about having the opportunity to be a part of something that isn't going to shy away from either one of those that is really going to look at the idea of the pastor theologian the fact that we do need to be fiercely biblical and fiercely practical and pastoral but at the same time that ideas have consequences and that our theology matters and that we have to be rooted and grounded in that so i mean that that's that's kind of where i've tried to live and where i've tried to to do my ministry and where i've gotten into the most trouble so when you asked me if i wanted to get in some more trouble i just sure you know that i was underscore that voting because watching you um say the things that you have i don't know how many years it is you know a long time you you've written stuff in the gospel coalition that just caused blow ups and um you did cultural marxism here at founders the founders conference a couple years ago i think and it's you know it's taking the word of god and applying it where it needs to be applied and when you do that that is the work of the pastor that's the work of the pastoral ministry because so many people have been helped because someone had the courage to to speak biblical truth where it needed to be spoken you know c.s lewis talks about this resistance thinking where he says you know if you emphasize the parts of basically the christian doctrine or the christian gospel or scripture that are in that are in harmony with the spirit of the age he says well then you're not going to have much conflict but he said if you emphasize the parts of christian truth that are contrary to the spirit of the age then you're going to be relevant in your day and in the days to come like the job of the minister is to actually speak the truth where it needs to be spoken and you've done that and you've paid a cost and there's been so much fruit testimony after testimony of people that have been helped to think rightly and live rightly because a man had the courage to say what needed to be said yeah so i mean god's been god's been gracious and um you know there there are so many areas where you know i am weak and and frail and inadequate um and i'm just grateful that in the midst of all of that um god's god's kept me um in places where he's needed me to be um and you know we we talk about you know there being a price to pay and all this and and and while that's true um i think we would all agree that for us we don't think about it like that and that's why i love each one of you men because i've seen in each one of you that same attitude that you know there is no woe is me there is no you know all the big bad people who say bad things about us or whatever um it's just kind of well of course that happens i mean that that's what we've been promised right um you know paul tells us in second timothy 3 12 all those who desire to live a godly life in christ jesus shall be persecuted um so yeah of of of course that happens it doesn't make us special um nor does it make us cry and quit amen amen you know tom the the counter side to what voting outlined is also true oftentimes pastors are not being as theological as we ought to be in trying to address the issues of the day but on the other side of that the theological work that is done in the academy very often doesn't get translated to the street and so it's easy to become theoretical and that's a danger i think always whenever we're trying to be as careful and as detailed as we can being should be with theological issues but that's something that that you have resisted and i've seen it in your life followed it in in your ministry of teaching i've experienced it personally in your classroom and as your friend and colleague in various ministry efforts and through founders over the years so you also have seen the same thing you've lived your life primarily from the lectern teaching but you've always been a churchman you've always been someone who has been very dedicated to the local church and you and margaret have a stellar testimony of your faithfulness wherever you have been teaching to be integral in serving the lord in the local church so talk to us a little bit about your own experience of that and then you're thinking about how this needs to be recaptured and asserted and we need to help folks to think practically theologically today as votey pointed out from the pulpit but also just from doing hard work biblically in order to to be accurate in our ministry yeah there's so many things about that that are far beyond our ability to comprehend and god is doing things in the world and in people's lives and in other schools and all that we don't have any idea about i think about how i grew up this uh in mississippi my pastor was not one in which we would say oh he's confessional he believes the doctrines of grace and so forth but he believed the bible he loved jesus he believed in substitutionary atonement uh he believed that there were things in the world that were counter to biblical truth and so when he uh preached he would preach just right out of the bible i didn't uh he was i was coming up in high school during the days of the the uh elliot controversy and then the adoption of the 1963 baptist faith and message and i can remember his preaching very strongly about the inspiration of scripture during those days and just something as elementary as becoming convinced that the bible is the word of god that the bible actually had you can defend it you can show that what it claims about itself you can show its prophecies you can show how it answers questions about life that nothing else answers and even as a as a junior high guy and a high school guy coming up there in a sense even before i was converted my mind became convinced that the bible was true and so there's just this fundamental level the the impact that the pulpit makes when you have a serious-minded person who understands that there are issues that are being that are challenging issues to the faith that are being set forth and he's willing to speak to those issues even if something is as fundamental and foundational as the inspiration of scripture that can have a tremendous impact on the persons who are hearing and then of course once you're convinced that the bible is such a book and you begin to study it and you see how pervasive its teachings are and that is we're talking about world view and this is one of the things that we want to emphasize in this institute that the bible is a book that carries you all the way from creation uh to consummation and it has a has a a history something that's just really rooted and grounded in history but by the spirit of god the events that are told sort of take you on a march a connected march through history all the way to the redeemer and then all the way to his judgment so that you begin to see that that god is the one who is at work in history god is doing history in such a way is will result in his glory god is the one doing history so that all of his attributes will be clearly seen and these are most clearly seen in the cross of christ and as as you begin to put that story together in the bible you develop more and more of a complete world view about you know what uh what is uh history for what is math for what is literature or for why should you learn to use words in the right way why should you see the entire world as something that is an expression of the intelligence and the power and the wonder of god so that when you study science you should study it with a way not to let it move you away from god but let you see the the wonders and the precision and and virtually the uh sort of the indecipherable intelligence of god because as long as we've been studying uh the world as long as we've been studying all of these things we are just we still are perplexed about how it is that that we can do these things that we know that that i'm just kind of rambling on here but these yeah it's so powerful once you're committed to the infallibility of scripture and you see everything is coming under the sovereignty of god uh it transforms the way in which you study the way in which you preach the way in which you want to talk to other people and and fundamental to that is that we see that god is absolutely sovereign in the thing that is most important to him and that is the glory of his son and giving his life a sacrifice for sin and his absolute success in saving the people that god the father gave to him before the foundation of the world and if history is the story of how god is accomplishing that we can recognize that god is active in every single thing in history every single thing that he has created and it opens up the whole arena of academics and study into a study of the mind of god that is focused on the same thing he focused on and that is the gospel story of redemption everything else comes under that uh and to the degree that we try to raise something above this reality of the redemptive work of christ and we compromise the redemptive work of christ through defining of justice or anything else in terms less than that that are contained in the gospel then we're we're we're in to some degree forsaking the whole gospel story and so that's one reason i'm excited about this not because it's going to correct everything that's going on in other places we have tremendous schools and tremendous teachers and i like i said i just came back from southwestern and talking with people out there very impressed with what they want to do but we we know that there is always room for other places that are setting these things forth and that have the specific intent of showing how god's glory is manifest in every aspect of what he has made from material reality to the the the abstract realities of letters uh and words and all of it uh subdued to the glory of christ in the gospel dr knows that's a wonderful uh display of really what's underneath the this institute of public theology and the the timeliness of this just seems remarkable to me how god has worked i see something going on in the culture around us and then something going on in the christian community that both beg for some kind of institute like this the society is easy to see we call it a heart in secularism in the book that we just published but we're seeing this application of secular humanism in society and this kind of power politics at a whole new level boarded up buildings on election day and we're just seeing the chaos we're watching god really hand our our culture and our society over and then the problem is in the church you have some men who have the doctrine and they really do know but they're not engaging they're either see the cost of engaging and the courage isn't there to actually go out there and hold up that truth and say this is god's word this is god's world this is this is christ's gospel and then you have another group of people that do seem to want to engage but when they engage they're engaging without the truth when they're engaging sometimes that kind of uh the public discourse idea kind of turns into like a tea party like we all put on our best and we try to go and be liked and accepted by or a shouting match where you just try to be louder than the other voices in the room yeah but we need we need men that are going to say no we are we're confessional christians and then have the courage to go out and speak the truth and love and say this is this is it and this is you're that that involves a whole shaping you need good models so i'm thinking of all the young ministers out there this is we're shooting for a three-year program so you'll come and attend the institute of public theology for three years much of that will be online training but it will also involve coming down to cape coral and being part of uh classes that are taught here in person but men need to be shaped by the truth have good examples and raised up to say okay i'm not here to try to be liked by people right um we're looking for like a um book of acts kind of model right you go you stand up you you preach the truth doctrinally grounded and informed with courage some people hate the message hate you cost comes many believe many are added to their number and the word of god increases it's our hope that that is how the lord would bless the institute yeah and it's it shouldn't be lost on anyone who's listening to this watching this that all four of us signed the statement on social justice in the gospel and body and i were involved in actually writing framing that document uh part of the original group that met together that conceived the idea to have such a document and so here we are we are guys that early on at least in that effort saw the need of it the legitimacy of a statement like that and have been unafraid to put our names on it well that says something that that goes back now a little over two two and a half years or so but from that same impetus behind that statement that same impetus gave rise to by what standard that we produced as founders and so we did this documentary and tried to call attention to some of the things going on in our culture and in our churches and then from that the wield the sword project that we've got going on now we've got a couple episodes released we got more in the uh can that we're trying to get post production done on so we can get them released as well to try to teach here's how you actually use the word of god in your life in your daily life in your public life in the church and so this idea of an institute of public theology arises from those same concerns confessionalism certainly the authority inerrancy of scripture the sufficiency of scripture and the recognition as tom you pointed out this is god's world and what is central to god in the world that he created is the gospel of the lord jesus christ and we shouldn't be afraid to affirm that gospel to proclaim that gospel and to make disciples of the lord jesus in any context and in the west we're facing the shifting context and we're you know it's a lot of discomfort for people right now and so again some of the folks that have come to us and asked us for some resources and guidance uh they they're disoriented and we've had to work through this with our own eldership here at grace baptist church and so man we're practitioners of the very things that we're advocating and to to be able to work together the four of us with other men i'll mention some of them in a moment to try to provide a mechanism a vehicle this institute whereby others can be trained challenged to think helped in thinking practically about life and ministry from a god-centered perspective man i am incredibly excited about this and delighted to have both you brothers on board voting you've been doing this in zambia for the last five years but you you've got to build a plat a foundation so you've actually been laying foundation for a lot of what you hope to see happen over the generations to come lord willing we've got this foundation we're trying to build on it here in this more specific direct way that is very consistent with what founders has always done and especially these last few years tell me just some of the things that you envision what do you think we can do we can offer and again why folks should be interested in coming to take courses here you know i think one of the most unique and significant things about this from our perspective and from my perspective is working with brothers who are confessional um and and and operating um you know from that kind of standpoint and having students really see what that means um and how that impacts um the way we think and and and and do theology and you know and and our ecclesiology and and our practical you know uh outgrowths of that that's been one of the things that's been interesting for us here uh in zambia is operating from that kind of a perspective and recognizing that although there's some limitations that come with that uh there are also some tremendous blessings um that that come with that as well and i think that's another thing that people are really um yearning for amen amen jared uh tell us a couple of the courses that we already have in development that we anticipate uh being a part of the curriculum yeah when it comes to like shop talk about the courses about what what i don't know how many years ago now it's been that i went through my masters of divinity program but i remember going through and getting the sense that it's somewhere between 90 to 110 hours depending on which institution you're at and there's a really good two-thirds of that that's that's really good and then some of them just turn into church-growthy kind of things which i think are just influenced more by the spirit of the age honestly i just do there's no offense to the people that's just the way the organization works let me tell you i actually made a deal this is a long time ago my aim did i had to take a course and i made a deal with the professor after the first couple of weeks i said look i will write the papers i'll turn in the assignments do i not if i don't have to come and if you accept them would you just give me a grade for that and he did that took the deal because i mean it was one of those courses yeah it was a church growth course and i just said i'm just not going to do this yeah yeah so what we want to do is basically cut out all of that fat out of the mdiv and we're going to be shooting for like a 60 plus rebel what's that well look i feel more so that today tom because now i'm much older and i'm thinking life is too short i don't have many minutes left dr nettles understands he understands so you know 60 something hours and what we want to do is take all of that all of that meat we're going to take your systematic theologies you're going to get all that you need your old testament your new testament you're going to be getting your historical theology your church history stuff you're getting all of the meat hermeneutics um you know in that sense i'm thinking you take like a bovink and you take like a calvin and you take some of these heavy hitters from the reformation you can go back and get a little aquinas and we're gonna it's gonna be that kind of um detailed heavy lifting theological work we're not gonna lose any of the theology but then there's going to be the public part of things and so what we cut out of a traditional mdiv we're going to put in things like cultural apologetics and vodi's done great work on that political theology what is it going to look like to to do that without becoming like make america great again god and country nonsense or the other thing you know this soft liberalism and evangelicalism that's unwilling to just stand on the truth of conservative principles logic rhetoric public discourse those kinds of classes that's going to equip a man to know how to deal when it comes he's going to have the theology and then he's going to have the apologetics so it's like i've said if you take like bob inc and calvin and schaefer and kuiper you know at least those guys throw them all in a blender throw the throw the reformers in there who actually you know suffered for their convictions and then what would that come maybe we'd throw billy graham in there in one sense you know get all those guys thrown in blend them up and then you're gonna have the um institute of public theology so so time and put in there roger williams and isaac backless too because they believed all the things the reformers believed but they also recognized that this whole idea of seeking to force the conscience of a person and having a church sponsored by the state was in itself a perversion and a compromise of the gospel so you have to have that that strong worldview reformation view but you also have to have the reality that the gospel is the power of god and the salvation it's not the state it's not the sword of the steel it is the sword of the spirit that does that and there's no one that had explored that more powerfully than than those particular persons so that's uh that's a part of what has to be in there too a confidence in the power of the gospel even in the face of hostility not only from the ecclesiological realm but from the political realm right yeah tom tell us about that i mean um one of the things you and i have talked about is of course i think would be great or just you speaking as god has taught you these things and you've studied these issues for your life now of scenarios and people who have had to stand when they were very alone athanasius the men you just mentioned some of the reformers i mean to teach history and to understand that okay what we're facing today that might feel a little bit uncomfortable as the the winds shift in our culture it's really moving us closer to what has been normal for most christians in most situations throughout the history of the world so speak on that a little bit if you would that's a that's a really an interesting statement and i think that we are coming closer to understanding what has been true about the the church and true believers for centuries and in america we've had a unique situation of separation of church and state and liberty of conscience in which we have gloried and and there have been some things that have caused the church simply to become melded into the society in that but also it's allowed a flourishing of evangelism and of teaching and all of that and soul liberty and we we love it we don't want to throw it away and we don't want to just say hey come on let's have persecution but we need to be ready if persecution does come because that is exactly as voting started off those who live godly in christ jesus shall suffer persecution and so it may come in various forms but it will come and it is in the study of theology and history that we can be prepared to see how people in the past have actually worked toward glorifying god in a hostile world realizing that the glory of christ was far above anything that was a personal interest to them in their own comfort or on their own esteem they were willing to forsake all you know we think of polycarp 80 and six years have i served him and he has never failed me how can i deny my lord who has been so good to me as he's facing the flames there and all he had to say was uh caesar's is lord and and look at the christians and say away with the atheists well he looked up at the romans that were looking at him and pointed to him and said away with the atheists and this just that kind of courage built upon an existentially sort of embraced reality of the lordship of christ and his truth that has caused people to be able to do that one of the things that i was studying this past week was the the liberals and how uh they thought that the apostles and others around them sort of um adorned the work and the person of christ with something uh more gaudy and and uh more glamorous than he actually was and if he came back and looked at those words and looked at the nicene creed and looked at the calcidonian formula he would be appalled at what people were saying about him and so i just he said that athanasius he said athanasius i don't think this is rauschenberg said i don't think athanasius even understood jesus christ as a person he was more of just a theological concept concept and a person upon which uh the intellect could be sort of exercised to ridiculous portions and i'm thinking do you even know what you're talking about the nicene creed is not just an intellectual exercise it is a statement in the face of controversy it is a statement in the face of the preaching of the gospel that will save sinners uh that cost athanasius exile five times his life was under threat throughout his his uh virtually his his whole ministry and you're saying that he didn't consider jesus as a person he was willing to die for that person that he talked about was of the same essence as the father who for us men and for our salvation came down it was made flesh and was made man and so a history of the development of the confessions is something that arises out of the sacrificial devotion of these persons in the church to the person of christ and to the truthfulness of the word of god and to the gospel another thing they said was that that the person of christ seems to have been developed around this this idea of some sort of a salvation from sin and and looking at heaven and eternal life more than justice in in the world and so this driving force in the person of christ is what kind of person oops we got a little technical difficulty there exactly what it is and if you throw away that then you throw away everything you think you're gaining by the way of of social power if you don't have a person who is willing to die to everything in this life then you're not going to have someone who will work strong for justice also in this life uh the person who is too uh they say people can be too heavily minded to do any earthly good in one sense if it's just a just a pure sort of superficial uh devotionalism that may be the case but the ones who do the most earthly good are the ones who are most heavily minded who are looking for the the glorified christ who want to serve him and are willing to to die for him and in the history of the church that we see how these theological ideas take root in ministry and take root in the willingness to to sacrifice so there's a anyway i i just i think that the approach that we want to take in this institute is uh to show the uh the the change that comes in a person's mind and the investment that a person gives to his energy once he really embraces these fundamental christian realities that god has spoken good gracious what a grace god has spoken we have a book in which he has spoken god has sent his son to die for sinners what could be more gracious than that what could be more compelling than that and if we try to think that there is something that is greater and something that is that is uh more demanding of our energies in the reality that god has spoken and god has sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins then we simply haven't grasped the basic fundamentals of of of what should motivate our lives amen tom that's uh that's at the heart of what we're talking about voting as he was talking i was thinking of a gresham machine's a statement about liberalism as he was fighting in the early 20th century that it's not a different kind of christianity it's a different religion altogether and so much of what we're seeing in the critical social justice movement as it is being taken up and given religious talk i'm saying this is a different religion altogether and you've got a book coming out on this as well so i mean how would you how would you respond to that and again it just shows the need for us to try to clarify and teach in accordance with this you can't say that what roush and bush and shaler matthews and those guys were advocating in diminishing jesus christ is the religion of the bible yeah yeah or harry anderson fosdick um you're absolutely right but i think this goes back to what we were talking about before because ultimately this is a a theological issue this is a worldview issue and if we if we gut theology and uh from our christianity and if we are simply governed by our emotions and um you know the the prevailing ideologies of the day then we will go astray and there are a lot of people who are being carried off by everyone right now um you know because it's this social justice movement and i think part of the problem is that that phrase is sinister right uh against justice right uh so you divide the world up into people who are for justice and people who are against justice and you know good guys bad guys so on and so forth and and miss uh the important theological questions that that lay behind these things so yeah i think that that is one of the eventually practical issues but i think there's there's there's another practical issue about this that that attracts me to it and that is that that not only is this relevant but it's portable and what i mean by that is what we're doing you know if you look at the the seminary what has become the traditional seminary it's a behemoth and nobody can afford to do that i mean it just you can't you can't just go out tomorrow and say i want to start southwestern you know here in fort myers you just nobody can afford to do that right but what we're talking about here is something that is very uh practical and it's it's it's doable and i think it's very important that people get that we've been talking for a while now and i think in some good ways about the fact that the local church is the place where ministers need to be trained and mentored and that the seminary is good and it's helpful and there's some things that it can do but the idea that we've sort of separated the training of ministers and turned it into this sort of you know professionalism that we see today is problematic and a lot of people talk about that but there's very little being done about that and so i think that from a practical standpoint this is something that that is doable and that people can replicate which means also it is something that is very appropriate from a missiological perspective because it's much easier to do this in different parts of the world as well as in different parts of the country so that's one of the things that really attracts me to it because you know i'm here in a place where we're trying to think about you know how do we do uh quality theological education without compromise world-class theological education without compromise in a location where it's really hard to get resources and to get access um you know to the kinds of of personnel and human resources that you need to do that um and so you know you you've you've been very helpful to us in being part of our permanent adjunct you know faculty here as we're trying to do a similar thing here and so i'm excited about this from um a practical standpoint because it is something that can be replicated and and i think it's going to be revolutionary that's my prayer is that not only uh that this bears fruit um you know amongst us but that it is replicated and begins to bear fruit in other places and in other parts of the world as well amen amen you know voda and we've got we've already talked about partnership with acu and man we're excited about that and and other institutions as well that we might be able to link up with and do certain things together with let's talk for just a minute we've got some other guys that have already signed on board as adjunct faculty to teach in their areas of expertise as is needed so uh jared why don't we talk about a couple of these uh and just introduce them to folks uh dr mark coppinger yeah so he's retired uh a professor from philosophy and ethics yeah from president retired president midwestern president so he's wonderful he's also a part of the wheel the sword project uh he deals with aesthetics there but it's going to be wonderful to have him and then we've got dr james dolezal yeah who is just brilliant when it comes to the doctrine of god he'll be here with us for our conference in january philosophical theology yeah his wheelhouse yeah it's gonna be um fantastic to have him with us particularly as he deals into the doctrine of god and then we see what he's dealing with there in the way that it maps on to other problems that we're having on other doctrines and on other even societal issues so yeah dr jim orc who has uh recently taught at boyce bible college for i think about 20 years or so and now as a pastor jim's excited about this teaches world worldview and he's just got a world of background in biblical languages as well as the english language and uh jim's a verbal artist jim's a writer jim's a poet jim is someone who can come and say how the english language or other languages but particularly the english language can be captured to the glory of god he just he really understands uh the nature of the of the beauty of of language yeah he does he also communicates to owls to owls that's right i was at a men's conference with him once and he started like talking to an owl and they all started talking back it was that's a hunting trick so you know and look if everything goes south and you just have to survive get me to jim work okay because i will be able to survive with jim that's right also we've got chad vegas you know she has no stranger to the folks that follow founders and man he's a wonderful missiologist pastor out in california um church planter yeah family no nonsense no nonsense missions guy i appreciate the work that they're doing with radius international and the way they're just going after unreached people groups yeah and then we also have travis allen who is a pastor out in colorado and i've just gotten to know travis last three four five years or so he worked with john mcarthur out at grace to you he's a former navy seal and he has taken that kind of mentality to the pastorate and man has just done a great job in this church that had a lot of needs he went into it and eldership that's been raised up there is doing a fantastic job i've been able to be with them preach there a couple of times so these are the men that are on board right now there are others that are in the pipeline that want to be on board but have to work through some logistics uh to make that announce before we make that announcement but again it's the kind of men who i would want to study under it's men of conviction and men who have blood mixed in with their conviction so we're going to be announcing more about this we want to make the formal announcement today you can go to the website founders.org and you'll see a link that'll tell you a little bit more about the vision the mission and what it is that we are anticipating doing you can sign up to be kept in the loop as information develops on this we hope to open registration in the spring and have our first courses then begin in the fall these will be both modular and semester courses and so we'll be glad to work with anyone that wants to move down here to take the semester courses and we're going to make this available so that students can go through the whole scope and sequence of what we have lined out so far by coming to cape coral twice a year yeah is that right yeah amen we're so excited about this institute and the launch of it and we thank you for your support encouragement we do ask you to pray and pray that we would have great wisdom as this thing gets off the ground that we would be clear as we articulate the vision for it and then can communicate with us as tom has said feel free to send us a message of encouragement or any kind of inquiry you have as we begin yes and let me say too if you if this uh fits with your thinking and god has supplied you with financial means if you would like to support this partner with us in this financially we would welcome that love to talk to you more about what that might look like amen the institute of public theology soon to launch and our motto is christ above all earthly powers

Channel: Founders Ministries

Views: 3,234

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Founders Ministries, Tom Ascol, Jared Longshore, Founders, Reformed Theology, Theology, Reformed Baptist, Calvinism, Historic Baptist, Confessional Baptist, 1689 Confession, Church, Christianity, Christian Ministry, Reformed, Educational, IOPT, Institute of public theology, Pastoral Ministry, Tom Nettles, Voddie Baucham, founders ministries voddie baucham, voddie baucham sermons, Pastoral theology, pastoral training, public theology, by what standard

Id: uY7i7-pLbAw

Length: 46min 42sec (2802 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 15 2020