Philip Guay with Mark LaCour

(upbeat music)

- Greetings and welcome to the Here We Stand

podcast.

We're coming to you from Providence Baptist

Church

here deep in the heart of Central,

on the corner of Hooper and Lovett Road.

I'm joined today by my show's producer,

fellow elder, Roger Dale Peters.

And we have our special guest today,

Pastor Mark LaCour from Grace Bible Fellowship

,

our Here We Stand conference is gonna be this

year.

Again, in the fall, actually Mark,

it's hard to believe this is our fifth

conference,

our fifth annual conference started in 2021.

It's gonna be October the 24th.

It's gonna be a Friday night.

There'll be two messages.

And then Saturday, October the 25th,

there'll be three messages that day.

We're gonna be back at Riverside Baptist

Church in Watson,

Pastor Larry Hubbard, our sponsored churches.

We have eight churches from the Louisiana area

that come together to sponsor this conference.

We're gonna be all bringing some desserts for

Friday night

and some finger foods for Saturday

to enjoy a lunch fellowship.

It's gonna be a great conference this year.

Our theme is going to be our sovereign God.

And we're gonna talk about that a little bit

later.

But Mark, you and I have been friends

for somewhere close to around 25 years as I

counted it.

Now, I was wondering, do you remember

when we first met or how we first met?

- I've been straining myself to understand

that.

I can't really remember that.

I mean, I mean, either just jumped in the

middle

and all of a sudden, you know,

it's like, hey, I got a friend here

and he's a great friend.

- I'll tell you what, I would do remember

that this time period was around the year 2000

, 2001

when Rusty and I first started at Friendship.

And of course you preached my ordination

service,

but it was around that time where we had the

reform,

resurgent, the internet had been around

about five or six years.

And there weren't many of us that were reform

ed

in our soteriology in the Baton Rouge area.

And I just remember Brother Moak telling me,

"Hey, I know this guy, Pastor Mark McCourt."

And some kind of way we hooked up

and been friends ever since.

And it's really been great.

And what we're trying to do as we have been so

far

with this podcast is to take the pastors

of the sponsored churches of here we stand

and also those who preach at our conference

and do some biographical sketches of their

life

for the folks that come to our conference

to kind of get to know our pastors.

So Mark, if you could, I would love to hear

just kind of where you started out at

and where you were born and take us through

a little bio of Mark LaCour for now.

- I'll give you the bullet points

if I can of some of my history there.

Born in New Roads, Louisiana

and raised in North Baton Rouge, Brookstown

area.

- Okay, down the road for me.

- We, my parents moved to Sherwood Forest.

I think it was in '65.

I remember going to St. Thomas Moor for fifth

grade.

My sister went to Audubon Elementary.

And we were there for St. Thomas Moor,

graduated eighth grade, went to Sherwood

Junior from there,

went to Broadmoor High.

And in Broadmoor, at Broadmoor, it was around,

I was probably also sophomore

'cause I was on the JV football team.

And the reason why that stands out

is because these are little pivotal,

I call 'em Ebeneezers that stand up into your

history.

And I remember we took a trip.

There was all the JV football players

and some of the varsities.

We were invited to go hear a guy.

He used to play for Broadmoor,

I think on their championship team in 1966.

And he was given a Bible study.

And he was given a Bible study.

And I think it was in Stanford Place out there

by LSU.

And that's when I first heard the gospel.

And I couldn't even tell you all the ins and

outs.

- But before you go on, let me ask you,

so you were raised Roman Catholic?

- Roman Catholic, that's good.

- Were y'all like Mass every Sunday or was it

nominal?

- Nah, my parents weren't devout Catholics.

They would go on occasion or special days,

things of that sort.

But they weren't really pushing you

to always do those things.

Now, when I went to St. Thomas Moor,

just simply virtue of the fact that you went

there.

They had mass on this and mass on that, high

mass.

- How many years were you at Catholic school?

- I graduated from St. Thomas Moor in 1968

because that's as many graces they had.

- So you went up to like eighth grade?

- Eighth grade.

Then you would transition over to Catholic

high

if you wanted to continue with your Catholic

education.

But I didn't want to do that.

My parents didn't want to do that.

So the next step where we were located back

then

in districts was Sherwood Junior High.

- Right, so whenever you first heard the

gospel,

if you're like me having been raised Roman

Catholic,

the very concept of grace alone through faith

alone

was something I never heard of until I made it

to Grimless Ring Practice in Rusty Reed's

sunny school class.

Was that kind of how it was for you?

- That wasn't, it's kind of weird

because I just remember going to that Bible

study

with all these guys and leaving the study,

knowing that, wow, I want to know more about

this God,

this great God that this guy talked about.

He was a football player

and I think that's why they had us go listen

to this guy.

And I couldn't even remember the guy's name,

but it was at the home of Earl Carpenter.

Now Earl Carpenter was a pivotal figure

in the Campus Crusade for Christ movement

on the LSU campus.

And he was big with Don Tab, I think Don Tab

and those guys started the chapel on the

campus.

Don Tab was an affiliate with the Billy Graham

Crusade.

And so that's how I kind of, I got introduced

to Christ.

And that's the only reason why I say that.

And it's blurry, I gotta be honest with you

'cause I don't even know exactly,

oh yeah, I remember he said this

and I believe that like the statement or

whatever.

I just knew that from that day on,

I wanted to read my Bible, I wanted to study

more,

I wanted to learn about God.

And it was kind of strange

because that was during football season in

1970.

And by the time the season ended everything,

most of those guys had no interest

in the Bible and the scriptures,

but I still did, which was weird.

And I wasn't around anybody to encourage me,

but yet here I was kind of fired up

wanting to read more about the Bible kind of

thing.

And so like a long story short,

coming that spring going into 71,

there was a guy who came in to the high school

ministry

called Gordon Ainsworth.

And it's funny because this guy was from

Campus Crusade

and he was trying to get to what they have

as a high school ministry, him and another guy

named,

I think his name was Larry Perkins.

Larry was dealing with the high school

ministry

at Lehigh during that time.

There was Lehigh over off of Perkins in our

lead drive.

And Gordon was working with Broadmoor, I think

maybe Tara.

And so anyway, he had gotten in touch

with a church and a church and knew some youth

and the youth got in touch with Gordon.

And one of the guys that talked to Gordon

was a guy named Kent Parsons.

Now Kent was a guy that I played football with

at Broadmoor.

But he told Gordon about me.

I think you need to go talk to this guy.

I think this guy's, I don't know if he's a

Christian

or he's interested, I just know that, you know

,

he seems to really want to follow the Lord.

I just don't think he's got nowhere to go, you

know?

So he got together with me.

And I remember they go through the four little

,

four spiritual laws and the little booklet and

everything.

And, you know, and I remember with that,

that I pretty much tell myself, no, I'm a

Christian,

pretty much I'm not one,

'cause what you're telling me, this is what I

believe, you know?

And so from that kind of magical moment,

he started a Bible study, had this hypership

group

kind of brought us underneath his wings.

And what's really interesting about me telling

you about this

is that we have a reunion with those guys

coming up on June 28th.

Come on, all right.

This guy's a pastor, Gordon,

still a pastor up in near Detroit, Michigan.

He's flying down and we're supposed to get

together.

And so it's gonna be, we haven't seen him.

I haven't seen him since high school.

So it's gonna be interesting to really see

this guy

after decades, you know?

But, and I guess he gets to see the fruit of

his labors.

- Right, right.

- In that sense, you know?

But so at that point, I became a Christian,

was really getting discipleship by him,

went through my high school years with him.

And he moved on in one of the study

at Dallas Theological Seminary.

I went on into LSU,

but I kept coming back to Broadmoor to

minister to people.

And so in that field of doing that

and gathering my own little discipleship group

.

- And how old were you about that time?

- Let's see.

I was probably, I was 18, 17, 18.

- You still living at home?

- Yeah, still living at home during college.

And so we had a Bible study.

I met a guy at LSU.

He became, he was the best man in my wedding,

Steve Birchfield.

And he had a Bible study at Lehigh.

And he was with the campus crusade

with the Larry Perkins guy.

And so we kind of teamed up

and we kind of became real close friends.

And to the point I was best man in his wedding

,

he was best man in my wedding.

He went to a place that campus crusade put out

.

You could either go on in the summertime,

you could go to something called a beach

project,

where you go to the beach like Myrtle Beach or

Panama City

and they would teach you how to evangelize on

the beach.

Or you could do something that would be more

inland,

which I did.

And I went to a place called King's Hours

Ranch

in 1975, I was around 20.

- And both of you were in LSU?

- Correct, we're both at LSU at the same time.

And so we could, you know, we studied together

.

We had classes together.

I was in a general education curriculum course

'cause I thought I was gonna go to seminary.

So I took Greek, I took whatever I could

that would prepare me for seminary.

And anyway, during that time,

we just kinda developed more of our Christian

walk.

We had Bible studies ourselves.

And so we had people from our past high

schools

that were joining our Bible studies and

meeting with us.

And so as we kinda grew and developed along

those lines,

we could tell that God was doing something

with our group.

We didn't know we were gonna become a church

one day,

but in the midst of all of that,

there was another serendipitous moment

where I met another guy and he was a good

Christian.

I was alternating going to church

at the chapel on the campus

in a community Bible in Jefferson.

- Yeah, I'm familiar with that church.

I went in Brother Baggett at the time.

- Brother Baggett at the time, yeah.

- I'm very familiar with Brother Baggett.

I'll tell you that story later.

- I remember going over there with Brother Bag

gett in them.

And there was a great guy over there,

his name was Steve Douglas.

And Steve's a great guy.

In fact, I think he was one of the first

coaches

for the Home School Association here in Baton

Rouge

with the Baton Rouge Patriots or whatever.

But anyway, hanging out with Steve some,

hanging out with Steve Birchfield,

the guy with the Bible studies I was having,

and then also with Steve Douglas.

It was interesting because,

and this is why it's important,

because where Steve was in his Christian walk,

he was really studying things about the

spiritual warfare

and about demons and fighting the devil

and things of the sort.

And so he had to gather a bunch of books that

he was reading

and him and another friend of his named Frank

Smith.

And we would get together

and we would talk about these things

and we'd read these different books

and learning about different things

concerning the spiritual warfare.

Where he had picked up a book,

I think by a guy named Rockstad

or Ernest Rockstad from Kansas.

And the guy gave a list of books

that he recommended for reading.

Well, one of the books that he suggested

reading

was a book called Practical Demonology.

I mean, almost sounds like a Wiccan occultic

kind of book.

But it was written by a guy named Conrad Merle

.

And so Steve picked it up,

ordered it from Ernest Rockstad and he got it

in.

He said, man, this book is really good.

This guy sounds like he's been through some

warfare.

And so, you know, we picked it up.

We looked at it and then one day, a few weeks

later,

he, Steve calls me and he says, look,

I think it was on a Friday.

He said, look, me and Frank, we're gonna go up

and we're gonna visit this author Conrad Merle

.

Do you wanna come?

And the reason why it's that's important

is because I said, yeah.

And so I went up to Bentley, Louisiana,

met Conrad Merle, Conrad gave us all of his

books for free.

But that started a relationship with us and

Conrad

and Conrad really became my mentor,

my father in the faith through that encounter.

And so he really took us underneath his wings.

He had conferences three times a year.

And we just hooked up.

A lot of us feel familiar,

the people that go to here were standing with

us.

Exactly, we hitched our wagon to his

and he pretty much took us under his wing

and sort of discipled us from there.

And so a lot of my history from that point on

took a big turn in the direction of,

and it's from him that I remember,

and this was kind of interesting

because I remember back in '75

when I was at King's Arrow Ranch,

one of the requirements that you had to do

being there

was that you had to bring,

you had to work on a message

and you had to bring a message.

And you had never done that before?

And I'd never really done that before.

I mean, I did Bible studies,

but I said, I wanna bring a message.

And so I remember everybody was bringing

all these little messages

and I don't wanna say that it'll feel good

messages

about how to overcome discouragement

or how to trust God for a ward

or something like this on your foot.

But mine was on Free Will versus Predest

ination.

Oh boy.

'Cause I was, I mean, 110% Jack Daniel-proof

Armenian

at that time.

And, but when I got in touch with Conrad,

Conrad had a book called "Salvation When."

And his, the title was,

and he was trying to address this whole idea

is when is a person saved?

Like when, salvation, when, when were you

saved?

And if you really couldn't pinpoint a date

in your past history and when you were saved,

well, then, hey, well, then you're not saved,

you know?

And so the book, I got that book and lashed

onto it

and God did a number on my head with that book

.

And it wasn't because of the logic of the book

.

It wasn't because somehow he just could,

I mean, spin a syllogism and an argument to

make it mean,

wow, I never saw that before.

It was how when we got together with him at

that interview

and I saw Steve and Frank, you know,

they started debating him on predestination

and the sovereignty of God and everything.

- 'Cause they're Armenian.

- 'Cause they're Armenian as well.

We were all Armenian to the core.

And so, and I watched him not defend the doctr

ines of grace,

but I watched him defend the grace of the

doctrines.

And I just saw in his demeanor and the way he

handled it

and the way he responded in love and what that

did,

it opened a door for me to be open to hear the

other side.

- Right.

- And so I said, I want that book.

I want to read that one.

And so God did a number, kind of like it

reminds me

of C.S. Lewis.

He remembered a conversion of C.S. Lewis.

He got on the train or the subway or whatever,

lost.

And by the time it got off, he was saved.

And I felt the same way.

I got in the car and Bentley to go home.

By the time I got to Baton Rouge, I was

solving grace.

- Yeah.

- 'Cause I was reading the book in the back

seat

and I was like, oh man.

I remember the guy, the grace he showed and it

's like.

- Well, it says a lot about how you present

the doctrines of grace.

- Right.

It really shows you how in second Timothy two,

he says the Lord's bond servant must not be

quarrelsome,

but patient, gentle, you know?

And he was all of that.

And so God used him in that book

to really change my way of thinking.

Well, I introduced that to Steve Birchfield

with the Bible study.

Well, he last on to it.

Our Bible study.

So we started teaching our Bible study.

Then we started going back up there

'cause we were on fire at that point.

- Yeah.

Then you're seeing it on every page of the

Bible.

- Oh my gosh.

And every Armenian seems to be in the crossh

airs

or something, which isn't fair to them,

but that's the same.

- Cage stage, James White, yeah.

- Exactly right.

So, and at that point, we were kind of off to

the races.

You know, got married in '79.

Had my first born in '82 and Megan '84 had

Ashley in '90.

And all during those times, we were going to

Bentley

and Conrad was kind of mentoring us and

bringing us.

- Are y'all still going to church at campus?

- No, no, no, no.

What had happened during that time, me and

Steve,

we, when so much broke off from the chapel on

the campus,

it was that we saw the people really wanted to

commit

to one another and they wanted a local church.

- The Bible study group.

- The Bible study group.

And so we did that.

And in the process of doing that,

we had to come up with a name.

We came up with the name Grace Bible Fellows

hip,

not because we were part of the denomination

that's Bible.

And I found that out the hard way.

I had people visiting our church thinking

they were visiting a Bible church.

- Right, which is traditionally.

- Traditionally.

- Y'all weren't even thinking about it.

- We weren't even thinking about it.

We just put the names in the title of our

church

at the things that we really wanted to stress.

Grace.

- Were you all meeting in your apartment or?

- That's another story.

We met everywhere.

We first started meeting at-

- And what year was this?

This was '79 or?

- During the Bible study days before you were

in church.

This was like, got married in '79.

We were meeting in '78 and '77.

We were meeting at the Plantation Broadmoor

Apartments.

We moved from there to a house church

on the corner of Sherwood and Old Hammond.

There was a big area.

We met there for a long time.

We had a good brother that joined us.

He would, I practically married everybody in

our church

'cause everybody got together.

They were single and everybody started pairing

up

after a while and started dating and saying,

okay.

- So you're officially a Grace Bible Fellows

hip

at this point.

You're just meeting in different locations

at different times.

- Officially, when you talk about Secretary of

State

and all of that and doctrines of incorporation

and stuff,

we had a guy, I can kind of go back a little

bit.

I can backtrack back in '74.

I graduated high school in May of '73.

In '74, I was selected with two other people,

a girl named Beth Parsons at the time.

Ken Parsons' sister, the guy who led me to

Gordon.

She and me and a guy named, a lawyer named

Steve McAllister.

Steve McAllister's brother, Rolf McAllister

would run the business inside her.

Yep, exactly.

But Steve and me and Beth were sent as emiss

aries

from Baton Rouge to Korea for Explo 74.

I don't even remember the Explo things where

Billy Graham

and Larry Norman had, in Dallas in '72,

then they had another one in '74 in Seoul,

Korea.

We went there.

- I was in first grade in '74.

- Not to say, so yeah.

Yeah, he would have remembered.

Yeah, I'm a grandpa to you guys.

And anyway, we went over there about a million

people.

It was amazing.

But that was '74 and I bring that all up to

date

because in '82, Rolf, I mean, Steve McAllister

,

the lawyer, he kind of got our incorporation

papers

together and we officially became

Grace Bible Fellowship, technically.

And from '82, we had people come in,

Steve had moved on, Steve Birchfield had moved

on

to, he had different plans for ministry

that he wanted to pursue.

And so I was there with the group, with the

church,

and there was another guy who was there also

and he had some friends that came in from

South Florida

and his name was Rusty.

And he came in and he became a fellow elder

with me.

And we pastored the church there through the '

80s.

And he moved on to South Florida at the end of

the '80s,

I think until the '90s, if I got my dates

correct.

And he passed away in the '90s.

I mean, he had a heart issue that no one

really knew about.

He married a girl, one of the girls in our

church.

But, and I'm trying to think what else that we

,

after that, we were pretty much going to

Bentley

Congress conferences three times a year

on a pretty regular basis.

And we just grew the church as a result of

that

and watched our kids grow up.

And my wife homeschooled the kids

and the kids started going to Hosanna

Christian Assembly.

And here we are.

- Yeah, so at what point did y'all move to the

building?

Whenever I met you, you guys were meeting

at South Choctaw and that building was South

Choctaw.

- Yeah, let's see, we were,

we moved from the house on Old Hammond and

Sherwood

to the Warwick apartments on Jefferson

because there was a guy in our church,

David Hatcher, his dad owned the Warwick

apartment.

So we would get these provisions,

for a song and a dance, many times free.

And so we moved there and used their

facilities

for church there.

We moved from there and we met in a kinder

care

off of Old Jefferson for a long time.

They let us use it on Sundays.

And so we'd have to, you know, all the things

that,

we had to move all the stuff for the kids and

everything.

And when we was set up there and we moved

there

and we stayed there, the dates are escaping me

,

but the experience isn't.

I think we moved from there

and that's when we moved to the Choctaw

location.

We were trying to find a place a little bit

more central

for us all.

And so the place, and the place on Choctaw

was the front building section of Mano's

Electric.

Now, wow, that's important

because Mano's Electric was the uncle

of one of the guys in our church.

There's always somebody in the church,

there's a connection to something, you know?

And so Frank Fasula's uncle was Mr. Mano

and he rented it out to us pretty cheap.

And so we stayed there until 2016 when the

flood came,

got flooded out.

And then First Baptist Church of Florida,

of Florida Street, Florida Boulevard Baptist

Church.

They took us in.

In fact, they were taking in a couple of the

churches.

And so they gave us a place.

We had the old fellowship hall where they,

it's a, I think a welcoming center now

for the churches renew and we were still there

.

And it's just, it's just a central location

for a lot of our folks.

Even though we have a good contingency in

central,

we have some, that's on Bayou Manchuk.

We have some that's in Maranguan, Louisiana.

I have some over at Walker.

And so trying to help facilitate their drive

and where we're at.

We said, you know, we're gonna probably need

to stay here.

And so that's kind of where we've been parked

for a while, as a cell.

- But you were the longest time on, on some

chalk talk

for the longest period.

- Correct, yeah.

So wow, how many years then would you say

you've been pastor of Grace Bible Fellowship?

- I guess, 45 years.

- Well, being a sense, being a leader of a

Bible study

that transitioned into a church would probably

say

around 81, 82, 1982.

- Wow, wow.

So that's been a long time.

- Being a pastor, yeah, officially in that

role.

Rusty being a fellow elder with me before he

left.

And then no one's really kind of come along

board.

It's not because we don't believe in the

plurality of elders.

It's just that no one's either desired it

or met the qualifications of it.

So it's like, well, we're still praying for it

.

And we're still looking at that possibility

even this year of looking at a few people

that might qualify for the office.

- Wow, that's great.

Yeah, 'cause that is so important.

Well, I'm like you, I can't remember exactly

when we met,

but you did preach my ordination servants

at Friendship Baptist Church.

And we've been friends for a long time.

And to talk a little bit about our conference,

and really incredible to me that we're already

tomorrow

or no Monday, we'll be in the sixth month of

2025

at how fast time is going by.

And we actually started the Here We Stand

conference in 2021.

So this will be our fifth conference.

It doesn't seem real.

But you're familiar and a lot of our folks

that are online, that are on Twitter,

especially are familiar with the latest sad

controversy

concerning Josh Beis from three G3 ministries

and all of the stuff.

And I really don't want to get too much into

that.

I've read about it.

I've understood it.

It's a sad, sad thing.

But it was interesting.

Here We Stand started as when I got back

from the G3 conference that year,

and I started thinking about man,

you know, it'd be great to have a local

conference.

It costs a lot of money to go to a conference

out of town

and somebody like Atlanta, you gotta get a

hotel,

you gotta eat and all the rest.

So we started talking about having that.

And now with this controversy that's come up,

there's been a lot of things discussion online

about celebrity pastors and these big giant

conferences

and do we need them?

I think we still need conferences for sure.

And I think that God especially gives certain

men

in special ways and gives them a lot of really

responsibility,

I would say, with large platforms and things

like that.

And we see some do good and some don't.

But talk to me a little bit about what do you

think

about the importance of having a local

conference

with like-minded believers like we have,

we have the five souls, the doctrines of grace

,

things that we have in common for local

pastors in an area.

What do you think about the importance of that

,

especially with this as of late coming about?

- Honestly, I think it's very important

and because I kind of cut my teeth on

conferences

with Conrad, but one of the things I learned

in the Conrad conferences, I really appreciate

it.

And I can't really put this mantle on other

people

and how they put together conferences.

And I get it if you go to a G3

and you bring in these big names, we'll call

them,

from across the country, I mean,

there's a lot of expense with that.

I mean, you've got airfare, you've got hotels,

you've got food and things of this sort

where I remember Conrad's conference

was in the Cassachi National Forest outside of

Bentley,

the proverbial blinking light.

But they had built cabins there, men had come

in,

free labor, free supplies and built these cab

ins.

And the way he did his conferences,

which always was a headscratcher for me,

everything was free.

You show up, we'll feed you, my books are free

,

tapes are free, we got bunk beds that are free

,

everything's free.

So in other words, you couldn't say,

well, I like to go, but I can't afford it.

He took that off the table.

You could, there's just a good matter of

getting up there.

And I learned from that and watched through

the years

where, I mean, I remember seeing the line go

out the door

to feed people.

We must head over close to 200 some people.

And there would be, you know, people in the

kitchen,

they would work the kitchen's free.

You wouldn't pay workers, they came to,

the wives would come and they would get in the

kitchen

and they would plan for these conferences way

in advance.

And I remember Conrad saying, you know,

the hardest warfare mark for us throughout the

year

is the week before the conference.

I said, well, 'cause there's a lot of things

to do.

He goes, not really, it's just, it's demonic.

I mean, they know that people come here

and God does work and people get saved.

And so I learned something about, you know,

the conference, while you gotta check boxes

and cross teas,

you gotta commit it to prayer.

And I guess George Mueller is kind of one of

my heroes

where you watch this guy trust God for those

needs.

And if there was money that needed to be put

out,

it was absorbed by the church there.

It was absorbed by the top people.

It wasn't absorbed by the bottom people.

So in other words, you really could tell

this is their ministry and when it's their

ministry,

they sacrifice to get you there instead of,

well, how can I sacrifice to get to that

conference?

It was kind of the other way around.

So, I mean, I like conferences

'cause the dynamic is great.

You meet Christians from different stripes

and there's good, it's always good to

fellowship

with the different folks in your church

'cause it'll give you a different perspective.

You hear different preachers in your own.

God can use those men to actually forge,

maybe a listening ear that you didn't have

before

'cause you hear the same kind of guy

on a weekend and week out basis.

But at the same time, what we try to do,

I know, and I've kind of learned this from Con

rad,

is that when there are conferences,

I think of the one up in,

we go to, there's one in the spring

in the fall with Jeff Mercer's church.

And it's just by where they have it.

I mean, it's out of his hands.

The place there that they have it charges.

And so we put that before the people,

we say, look, we have,

but if you wanna go to that conference,

you just let us know all expenses paid.

No questions asked.

That's just how it's gonna be.

So that I don't want money to be an issue

and you not going to the conference,

because, well, they said it was gonna cost

this and that.

You just tell me you wanna go.

I'll put your name in the hat

and we'll take care of the rest.

And so for us, and for me,

and so not so much to roll it up to the church

,

I'll roll it up to me if we have to.

It's like, I think the leaders in a church,

and I've said this before,

if you're gonna become an elder in the church,

you're gonna have to take the mantra

of the men on the Titanic.

Women and children first.

If you're gonna sacrifice,

you're gonna have to sacrifice.

Don't expect them to sacrifice.

They're following you as a leader

and you're gonna have to show that leadership

in what you sacrifice, time, energy, money,

whatever it might take.

You've got a vested interest in their souls.

You show them how to sacrifice, you know?

And so we learned that with conferences.

I kinda learned that with maybe,

I'm not saying other conferences need to do

the same thing

or follow the same model.

I'm just saying it's always a good thing

for when people who are in the spotlight

and they're known to be in the spotlight,

and they got great messages and they got great

theology.

And I'm not saying they have to be seen this

way,

but many times when you see behind the scenes

and you realize, you know, this guy,

he took out of his own savings account

to make this conference go.

Or you know, this guy had to sell his car

to make these things so that these people

could go.

I mean, that kind of testimony to me is like,

now that guy, I'll go hear what he has to say.

He's putting his resources on the line to say,

"I want you to come here when I have to say it

."

Not just mean something to me, but I'm on to

spend money.

Not you spend it on me, but I spend it on you

for you to come hear me.

You don't find that.

- Right, it's unusable, absolutely.

- Exactly, so.

- That's why we made one of the changes that

we made

was that with the food and everything that we

have

and here we stand, we get the sponsored

churches

to kinda everybody bring dessert,

everybody bring a lunch, finger food on the

Saturday.

And it really, there's no expense

and none of the speakers charge anything.

And there's no charge to come to our

conference.

I hope we get to keep it that way.

I like it that way, I like the fact it's local

.

One of the other things in kind of in line

with the whole,

right now, especially, there's a fever pitch

within what I'll call the reformed wing of

Twitter

with these guys going at one another.

And they're battling with one another.

A lot of times it's over secondary issues

and things like that.

And one of the things I hope we've been able

to model

with our churches and our pastors in this

conference

is the fact that we have these distinctives

that we put in place, the solas, the doctrines

of grace.

We're all believers baptism, we're all cess

ationists

and the like, but that we have secondary

and third level disagreements maybe the

ologically.

But on those main points, we agree

and we come together in spite of maybe those

differences

that no problem, sit down, debate and talk

about,

but modeling the fact that, hey, we are

Christians,

we believe the gospel, we believe

justification

by faith alone, we believe the doctrines of

grace

and we're coming together to give the people

an opportunity to sit under sound expositional

preaching.

And not only that, one of the biggest things I

hear

after our conference is how much the people

love

the fellowship at the conferences.

When we sit down from one another and eat,

it's kind of like a reunion with some people.

They haven't seen the person since last year

at the conference and different folks

that have moved different places.

Maybe they used to go to church together.

So there's a whole lot of benefit that I see

with the here we stand conference

and the local pastors and things like that.

- I agree.

- Now, this year's theme is going to be our

sovereign God.

And I wanted to give a little outline

and I think it was actually you,

we get together once a year as pastors

to kind of plan this conference and plan the

messages.

And I wish people could be in to hear how all

of that develops.

I just kind of sit back and let you smart guys

go.

And I listened and you came up with some

interesting questions

as the titles of the message.

Because when we talk about the sovereignty of

God,

one of the big issues that people have,

especially if they've never been seeing the

doctrines of grace

or understood it or been exposed to it,

is the issue of sovereignty and responsibility

, right?

And so this year, our sovereign God,

you're going to start out with the message,

how sovereign is God?

That's going to be like the foundation.

And then brother Larry Hubbard is going to

come along

and give us a message from, he's from Rivers

ide Baptist.

If God is sovereign, why pray?

What's the point of us praying if he's already

sovereign

over everything that happens?

And then Rusty Reed is going to come with a

message

from Reformation Church, Pastor Reformation

Church.

If God is sovereign, why press on?

Why continue on in obedience in the Christian

faith?

If God is controlling everything?

And then Brian Gunnar from First Livingston

is going to address why vote?

Why do we go to the polls?

If God has already ordained all the leaders

as we see in Romans and he sets them in there,

what's the point of us going to vote?

And then Rusty Grant from Grace Covenant

is going to come and finish the conference

with if God is sovereign, why tell?

Why give the gospel?

If he's already elected all those

from before the foundation of the world,

what is the point of us going out and evangel

izing?

So I thought that was great to categorize it

that way with those questions.

'Cause those are questions that people will

ask

when it comes to the topic of the sovereignty

of God.

So if you could talk a little bit about your

message

kind of setting the table for those messages

with how sovereign is God.

- Sure, yeah.

And I love this topic because this is the one

that got me from an Armenian to a sovereign

grace.

And it was the Congress Book on Salvation Wind

that really did a lot of that.

One of the things you have to do

when you're the first guy and you're going to

set the table

for the conference when it comes to the

sovereignty of God

is what you don't want to do is preach

everybody else's sermon.

You kind of lay in the foundation of

what does it mean for God to be sovereign,

the extent of the sovereignty of God.

One of the big

Charlie horses between the ears

that people have with God's sovereignty,

I'll probably address a little bit

'cause it's not in the other questions

is if God is sovereign over all things,

is he sovereign over evil?

And when it comes to the devil,

when it comes to specific evils,

whether it's catastrophic, you know,

hurricanes

or moral evil, you know, God pulls a trigger

and kills somebody.

And so, and that's a real, real practical

theological issue

because as pastors, many times we're put into

positions

to comfort people when there's evil,

when there's trials and there's difficulty.

So we'll be looking at things like that,

going into the text of the Old Testament,

looking at, I like Nebuchadnezzar's answer

in Daniel chapter four of how he bows

the needs of the sovereign God.

And this guy was like potentate over the whole

world

at the time.

And just, once again, the different flavors,

kind of like the 31 flavors of basket and rob

in,

31 flavors of the sovereignty of God

that you can see throughout the scriptures

and without that foundation, I really,

I'm gonna press this,

I really don't see how you can live your

Christian life.

- Right.

- So many promises, Romans 8, 28, I mean, one

of the favorite,

is built on the foundation of the sovereignty

of God.

And if you don't have it and you're going

through a trial

and you're trying to hang onto a promise,

it's like, man, bro, you've just thrown away

the promise

because you threw away God's throne and his

authority

to be able to control these things

and bring it to a good end.

The lost man doesn't have that personal flavor

and touch

of God being in control of all things for your

good.

It's one thing if the devil's in control,

it's for your, you know, demise.

But I got a God, he's my heavenly father

and he's gonna work this thing out for my good

.

How in the world can I despair?

I mean, I get it, it's hard, tough.

It's painful, I mean, I don't like losing

anything

or gaining something like cancer or something.

But when I know there's a design behind it,

and it's gonna be for my good,

it's like, man, bro, you can take that to the

bank.

I mean, you can really get some mileage

and your Christian walk off of it.

And I gotta tell you, Christians are looking

for those kinds of testimonies from people

who are trusting God in the midst of that kind

of affliction.

I mean, I can give a thousand messages

on dealing with trials and the sovereignty of

God,

but I throw 'em all away and go listen to

Johnny Erickson

talk from a wheelchair about how she's trustin

' the psalm

when she's in the middle of it.

- Right, right, exactly.

You know, you use that phrase trusting God,

it reminds me of, again, I go back to Brother

Hugh E. Mote

'cause my mentor and he, every year, once a

year, every year,

he read Jerry Bridge's book, Trusting God,

Even When Life Hurts.

That book was a game changer.

I had already come to the Doctrine of Grace,

but what Bridge's does in that book

is he gets you to see from the exposition of

scripture

how God is purposeful in bringing the trials.

And man, when I got the hold of that,

the purposalness of trials, man,

it was an absolute game changer for me.

And you know, really what this conference is

addressing,

though, with these questions is our role

in understanding at the same time God's

sovereignty

and man's responsibility.

And now we know with human reasoning,

you can't make those two things reconcile.

We understand that because we believe that

because that's what scripture teaches.

And it's interesting, just so happens that

tomorrow,

I'm preaching going into John chapter seven.

And this is when, and John chapter six is

incredible.

- It's incredible.

- It's just an incredible chapter.

But in seven, this is where Jesus is leaving

his Galilean ministry to come down to Judea.

He's fixing to be in that transition.

But before he transitions his brothers, actual

brothers,

his brothers, there's no question about that

because it says even some of his brothers were

not believing.

Why would it say that if we look at it any

other way?

But that's enough, we'll put that to the side.

But anyway, so Jesus, they're saying to Jesus,

"Hey, the feast of booths is coming up.

All Jewish men were required to go to the

feast of booths."

Why don't, you know, if you are who you say

you are,

basically, why don't you come down there

and do this publicly and instead of being out

here

in a meet doing miracles, you need to go to

New York, you know?

And so you've got this deal where he says,

"Hey, it's not yet my time."

You go down to the feast.

And then later, he sneaks up.

He goes actually through Samaria,

so he doesn't go with the caravans

because he doesn't want anybody to see him.

And so what I get out of that is that how

interesting,

who knew more about the sovereignty of God

than God and human flesh?

And yet in responsibility land,

he was being very careful and very precise

in what he did in his actions to go along

with the flow of responsibility down here.

And when you can kind of grasp those two

things together,

it keeps you from, you know,

"Well, God's sovereign, I guess, whatever."

You know, you can really turn into error like

that.

And that's what I really hope our conference

will bring out,

is to get that balance between sovereignty

and responsibility.

Well, there's another thing I wanna hit

and that's gonna be, we have had an

interesting development

with our men's meeting that we've had over the

last year.

This men's meeting started out at Reformation

Church.

It was their regular men's meeting.

I live like two minutes from Reformation

Church.

And I went to one of the meetings and long

story short,

a lot of you know that watch this podcast

or come to our conferences

that there was a terrible fire at Reformation

Church.

They're meeting now at Foster Road Baptist

Church.

So Matthew Rehm, who kind of heads up the men

's meeting

at Reformation Church, asked if we could start

having it

at Providence here at Providence Baptist.

And I said, "Absolutely."

And so what's kind of developed over time

is we've had in these meetings, these monthly

men's meetings,

as many as five different churches represented

in our men's meetings at different times.

And then a further development is they had the

idea

to bring in young men who are interested

in either possibly going into the preaching

ministry

or possibly going into the teaching ministry.

And so kind of a place for the young guys to

come.

And it's not the pressure of Sunday morning

with us guys.

We get together, we eat, we eat a lot of

protein.

Sometimes there's only protein at this event

that we have,

which is fine with us, you know,

it's kind of get away from the wives and we go

hog while.

But I want to tell you that June 20th

is our next men's meeting here at Providence

Baptist Church,

10440 Hooper Road and Tracy West

from Reformation Church is gonna bring a

message

from James 4.7, "Resist the Devil."

So men, if you're out there,

you're looking for a hearty, robust Christian

men's meeting,

guys who love to talk theology,

guys who are living their life

for the purpose of the glory of God.

June the 20th, Friday night, 6 p.m.

here at Providence Baptist Church.

We love men for you to come out.

We all bring a plate of food, we put it on the

table,

we eat, we fellowship, and we encourage that

brother

in their messages.

Well, Mark, I just have a two-part question

before we close out here for today.

This, I found out, I think a couple of weeks

or months ago,

we were hanging out and I found out

that there is a Hallmark birthday coming up

this year.

You turned the big seven O.

And that is a marker right there for everybody

in life.

So I'd like to hear a little bit about your

future plans.

Do you, is there, are you gonna go to,

you can't go no more, are you gonna retire?

What kind of are you thinking right now?

- Well, I think you kind of look up

the Bible three score and 10, I think that's

70.

And when you hit that, it's kind of a reminder

of, you know, you kind of look back

and, you know, what about accomplished, you

know?

And looking forward, and you look at in church

history,

you see some people are packing up their tent

when they hit 70.

And they got some people, they just starting

out.

And it's like, they have a brand new ministry

that going to the mission field at 75.

It's like, who does that?

I don't know.

The short answer is I'm just gonna keep on

going

what I'm doing, 'cause I love it.

And God hadn't told me to do anything

different.

And as long as there's a ministry there before

me

and God, you know, gives me the ability to do

those things,

I just wanna keep on plugging away

and do the things that he has called me to do.

I do find myself getting called out a little

bit more

to different churches to preach.

And so that's fine.

I got a good brother, Mac Tomlinson and Denton

.

We're kind of known as the M&M boys, Mac and

Mark,

when they come and they usually go together

to different conferences and we'll preach

or something along those lines.

And I think he wants me to come up to New

England

with him next year.

And so I'm getting out a little bit more,

which is kind of open up the doors at church

for other men to step in,

which is the need for the Friday night, you

know,

trying to get younger men kind of stepping up

to these things.

One of the things you begin to realize is that

I'm not gonna be around here forever.

If this church is gonna continue,

someone needs to step into my shoes number one

,

but they're not gonna fill my shoes.

No one can, and my shoes are kind of small

anyway,

they're tight fit.

There's trust me, they're not big shoes.

But at the same time, you need to begin

to start training people that are going to

move in that position, elders.

And so trying to help our church realize,

like don't try to compare this guy to me.

He's not me, but at the same time,

God gives him these gifts, we need to

recognize them.

So I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing

and just whenever God pulls the plug, okay.

- Yeah, yeah, that's kind of, you know,

I remember, I think it was John MacArthur said

,

"Look, you know, I'm gonna go as long as I can

until I stop making sense or I die."

And you know, as soon as I stop making sense,

somebody pulled me down and sent me where I

need to be.

And I think that's fantastic.

Well, with over 40 years of ministry,

if you go back to those Bible studies,

you're probably talking about close to 50.

- To the same church too.

I didn't have five different churches.

I passed it, it was that church.

- This church, all the way through all those

years, you know,

and I think about young guys coming up,

if they're, and you know, man,

America is such a different place.

You know, both you and I together,

both our childhood and our teenage years,

there were no internet.

And America is such a different place now

since the internet for those young guys coming

up

with those type of pressures.

Is there any kind of advice that you would

give

to a young pastor coming up?

- Good question.

There's a lot that technology can help you in

the ministry.

There's a lot that it can hinder you,

especially within Advent of AI,

where you see people abuse this,

they write their own sermons at AI, does it

now.

It's like, no, you're gonna have to follow the

old paths

and put in the work and put in the grind

if you're gonna be, you know, the pastor,

you're gonna have to go down the very road

and deal with people and their problems.

One of the things I would probably tell you

out of my years of experience,

and we talked about this a little bit,

when I brought up our church,

I said, we're called Grace Bible Fellowship.

What is Grace Bible Fellowship?

I said, you know, somebody asked me that

back in the early 80s.

The clientele here was totally different than

it is now.

I said, I've been the staple all the way

through since 82,

and 95% of the people are not the same people

from 1982.

And I said, if you don't have a strong stomach

to watch people walk out of the door

and maybe go, maybe because they don't like

you

or maybe for a good reason,

I think God's calling me someplace else.

Okay, but you gotta be able to take that

because it can be an emotional rollercoaster

if you're not careful.

Well, you're gonna need to have stable men

to be able to do that, as Paul tells Timothy,

you know,

I want you, I'm giving second Timothy two

to faithful men who can pass these on to other

faithful men.

And I think a lot of times,

especially what I have people in our church

who are looking to become an elder,

I try to spend special time with them

in the sense of maybe talk to them

individually

or maybe get together with them.

I don't do that as much as I should,

but doing that more, if we have a church

controversy,

I'll make sure I bring them to the table and

they hear it.

Maybe I might have any part of it,

but you need to see how to deal with this.

You need to see how to be patient,

how to be not coralsome,

and you need to kind of learn from this.

'Cause watching someone go through that

is a whole lot more instructive

than just reading a book about it.

Right, right.

And you know, thick skin.

Thick skin.

You gotta be thick skinned.

Ministry, especially by vocational ministry,

as you know as well as I do, that's not for s

issies.

That's right.

So yeah, that's great advice.

I really appreciate that.

One of the things that I've always loved

about your ministry and your teaching,

and I marvel at it, is that Mark is always,

no matter what discussion is going on the

topic,

he can just pull a scripture out from memory

and say, oh, this scripture here, da, da, da,

da, da.

And you know, I took way too much LSD back in

the 80s

and 90s to pull anything up.

So, you know, people know my story,

but you retain information like nobody I've

ever met.

And so I just love that about your teaching.

I'm looking very forward to your message

for our conference, our fifth conference

that we're gonna have for you out there.

If you could go to herewestandbr.com,

that is the website for Here We Stand.

We have previous messages from other

conferences on there.

Also, we have a Facebook group Here We Stand

conference.

Just put that in the search bar.

Go join our group as I say all the time to our

church

and to the folks whenever we gather.

The only way that this conference continues to

happen

is by your attendance at the conference.

So if you like this podcast that we did today

and you wanna get more word out about Here We

Stand,

like and share it on Facebook

and get the word out there.

And Mark, I really appreciate being with you

today.

I always enjoy spending time with you,

looking forward to our conference.

And folks, we pray for you.

You pray for us and we look forward

to seeing you in October.

God bless. - Amen, amen.

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