The Mess

Michael Clary - On Christian Courage

In our seventh episode, Stephen Baker and Aaron Prelock sit down with Michael Clary to talk about the lesson eighteen years of ministry kept pressing on him: courage. The courage to preach Genesis 19 as it stands. The courage to father a congregation and preach the sharp truths of God's word rather than simply befriend it. The courage to keep a clean conscience while half his church walked out. They talk about the winsomeness he built a ministry on and later repented of, the liberalism that signs every formal confession but fights for the heartbeat of none of it, and why conscientious men bury their gifts for fear of a God they take to be a harsh taskmaster." Pastor Clary will be speaking at the Frontier Shepherds conference. Learn more at newgenevaacademy.com 00:08 — Introductions: Michael Clary, Cincinnati, and the Frontier Shepherds Conference 00:58 — Planting in 2010: inner-city Cincinnati to a building in Northern Kentucky 03:30 — Seminary at Southern, and a love for the Old Testament 05:37 — Crew, parachurch ministry, and learning the church is plan A 09:00 — Why Cincinnati, and meeting Michael Foster 12:42 — Three eras of ministry, and the turn from a neutral world to a negative one 16:16 — Preaching Genesis 19, and the backlash that followed 17:41 — Sitting with Tim Bayly: be the father of this congregation 19:20 — The 2022 split that cut the church in half 22:06 — Holding the church together with a clean conscience 24:58 — Courage as the one indispensable lesson 27:09 — The new liberalism: ethical, not doctrinal 28:57 — What Young, Restless, Reformed got right, and where it went off the rails 31:22 — Intellectual respectability, and Iain Murray's Evangelicalism Divided 36:56 — The September conference, and the problem of fragmentation 41:23 — Loser Theology: piety shrunk to inner-heart religion 47:00 — The parable of the talents and the buried gold 53:34 — The fear of a slave versus the fear of a son

Andy Constable - Ministry In The Schemes

In our sixth episode, Stephen Baker and Aaron Prelock sit down with Andy Constable, pastor of Niddrie Community Church in Edinburgh and a Frontier Shepherds speaker, to talk about the schemes, Scotland's poorest communities. Scotland has healthy churches in its richer areas, but in the schemes the churches are dead or dying, and Christians are too comfortable to move. Andy tells how a London student ended up under Mez McConnell at a church with, from a student's perspective, nothing to offer, and how Niddrie holds word and deed together without sliding into pietism or the social gospel. Fruit comes slowly there: a woman thrown out of the kids' club came back twenty years later and was saved. A line from Andy's new book on addiction surfaces near the end: behind every single smile is a story of wicked rebellion. Learn more about the Frontier Shepherds conference at newgenevaacademy.com 00:00 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng] - Introducing Andy Constable 00:46 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=46s] - Ministry this time of year: the church weekend away 02:05 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=125s] - Niddrie Community Church: a century of gospel presence in a scheme 03:11 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=191s] - The UK class system and working-class ministry 06:43 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=403s] - From London to Edinburgh 07:16 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=436s] - Meeting Mez McConnell and a church with nothing to offer 12:21 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=741s] - Word and deed: avoiding pietism and the social gospel 17:28 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=1048s] - The long game: a conversion twenty years in the making 19:55 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=1195s] - From intern to pastor: Mez's training model 22:45 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=1365s] - A training church: indigenous converts, three plants 26:50 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=1610s] - Christians too comfortable to move 27:46 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=1666s] - 20 Schemes: 18 churches in 13 years 31:30 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=1890s] - Whole-life discipleship at Niddrie 36:29 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=2189s] - Loving people, not just books 39:24 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=2364s] - Addiction and the Local Church 43:57 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=2637s] - "Behind every single smile": respectable and unrespectable sins 48:14 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=2894s] - The Ragged School of Theology 52:09 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=3129s] - Frontier Shepherds this September

Jake Mentzel - Church Planting & Godly Ambition

In our fifth episode, Stephen Baker and Aaron Prelock sit down with Jake Menzel of Church of the King in Evansville to talk about the word Reformed men are afraid of: ambition.  Ambition they've been trained to distrust. Ambition that draws on the Father's pleasure instead of earning it. Ambition for a man's sons and grandsons, and the church he's been given. Jake, Stephen, and Aaron talk through why a man who won't believe his sanctification has not believed his justification, why Reformed devotion becomes a contest over who feels worst about himself, and why feeling bad is not the same as repenting. Or, as Jake puts it: before you die, let the world see the best you that you knew how to become. 00:00 — Meet Jake Menzel and the Frontier Shepherds conference 01:46 — Why Evansville is a hard place to plant a church 07:10 — Why plant here at all: "God was calling me home to my people" 09:24 — Coming back to the Lord at 17, then off to IU 12:04 — Trial by fire at a secular university; charisma that outruns character 14:55 — Three years at NGA and seven years of campus ministry 16:51 — Godly ambition and how young men have changed in twenty years 22:24 — Bloomington vs. Evansville; when a church never grows past campus ministry 28:46 — A hard demographic shift and the cost of defining who you are 32:46 — How do you fuel ambition without burning out? 34:32 — The baptism of Jesus: the Father pleased before the Son has done a thing 36:22 — Haddon and the center-field fence 39:39 — If you don't believe in sanctification, you don't believe in justification 42:03 — The feedback loop of self-loathing — and why it isn't the gospel 45:39 — Godly ambition rooted in the fatherhood of God 49:43 — The little-league coach who can't let his son fail 53:47 — Better or bitter 56:41 — The smallest, most fearless kid on the team 1:00:36 — Ambition for growth, not greatness

Books That Shaped Us

In our fourth episode, Stephen Baker and Aaron Prelock take turns naming the five books each of them would call life-changing.  Books worn through. Books read more than once. Books given away, replaced, and underlined cover to cover. Aaron and Stephen talk about why the relationship between justification and sanctification keeps surfacing in the books that mattered most to them, why good fiction belongs on a pastor's nightstand, and why the man who only reads what was assigned to him in seminary has already stopped growing. Reading is good for the soul. 0:00 — Introduction 2:50 — The format: five books each 3:00 — Aaron: Eugene Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor 7:10 — Stephen: John Piper, Desiring God 11:30 — Aaron: Mark Dever and Paul Alexander, The Deliberate Church 16:30 — Stephen: Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life 22:30 — Stephen: Horatius Bonar, God's Way of Peace and God's Way of Holiness 25:30 — A cheat: Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment 27:30 — Stephen: C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength 34:45 — Aaron: J.C. Ryle, Holiness 38:30 — Stephen: Ian Murray, Revival and Revivalism and Evangelicalism Divided 46:10 — Aaron: Edward Fisher and Thomas Boston, The Marrow of Modern Divinity 49:00 — Stephen: Edith Schaeffer, L'Abri 56:30 — Aaron: Harold Senkbeil, The Care of Souls 1:00:00 — An exhortation to read 1:02:30 — Refuge or retreat

The Mess

In our third episode, Stephen Baker and Aaron Prelock sit down to talk about the part of ministry that many traditional seminary programs simply cannot simulate: the mess. Theological mess. Historical mess. The mess of sinners and the mess we ourselves bring to the work. Aaron and Stephen talk about why so many young men set out to be the pastor whose church will not have these problems, why preaching and pastoral care cannot be split apart, and why the "clean machine" expectation — that Christians do not sin and good pastors do not either — quietly shuts down the work of sanctification it claims to protect. An old line surfaces near the end: a pastor should smell like his sheep. 0:00 — Introduction 1:30 — What do we mean by "the mess"? 4:15 — Church history is not historical reenactment 7:00 — The young pastor with stars in his eyes 10:45 — Theoretical theology vs. practical theology 13:30 — Leviticus 16 and the linen robe 17:00 — Hospital waiting rooms and Job's counselors 22:00 — Preaching is pastoral care 27:30 — Over-correcting and damned with faint praise 33:00 — Where do you go when you realize you need to grow? 37:00 — Owen, self-knowledge, and the wounded healer 41:30 — The expectation that Christians do not sin 46:00 — Sexual sin, abuse, and the "clean machine" church 51:00 — The hazmat suit: justification before sanctification 56:00 — A pastor should smell like his sheep 1:00:00 — Hospitality, marriage, and the witness of small mercies