(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 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.
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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