The Pipe and Pencil Podcast

#1 - Introduction to the Church History series

• Stephen Amos • Season 1 • Episode 1

Share episode

Send us a text

Can you trace the lineage of your church back to biblical origins, possibly even to Genesis? Join me, Stephen Amos, as we embark on the inaugural episode of the Pipe and Pencil podcast. With a rich background in Christian radio ministry, I'm geared up to make theology accessible and engaging for all believers. We aim to go beyond daily devotionals and dig deep into the Word of God for truths that can increase your faith and be applied to your unique situation.

In this episode, we kick off a fascinating series on church history, delving into its origins and exploring the evolution of various denominations. We'll dissect the unique distinctives that define Baptist beliefs, drawing from Pastor Dwayne Brown's famous "BAPTISTS" acronym. Whether you're a pastor, a layperson, or simply curious about the faith, this episode will deepen your understanding of how traditions align with scriptural foundations.

This series will start at the beginning in Genesis and end with the church today. Along the way, we will look at the histories of other denominations so there will be something here for everyone who wants to learn about church history.

Discover the continuous presence of the church and the Holy Spirit's work through imperfect people as we trace our spiritual heritage and seek to inspire you on your journey of faith.

As we get into the series, you can use the timeline on the website linked below to help you see where we are in the grand scheme of things.

https://www.thebiblicaltimeline.org/

It's free and I think it's one of the best.

Support the show

Stephen:

Hello and welcome to the Pipe and Pencil podcast. This is the very first recording that we're going to be doing on this channel. I'm really, really excited about this opportunity to talk about history, to talk about theology and to talk about the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's what this channel is all about and we have a lot to get to in this series, to get to in this series. This series is going to be about church history, but before we get into that, I just want to take a few minutes to talk about what is going to be happening with this channel, give you an idea of some of the things that are coming and, I think, also just tell you a little bit about what got this channel started, and I hope that some of this will be an encouragement to you. And then we'll start talking about what we're going to be doing in this particular series that we're going to be in for a little bit.

Stephen:

But my name is Stephen Amos and this is just a blessing for me. I would say for about 10 years I worked in Christian radio ministry and left that a long time ago. I guess that would have been just over 10 years ago. I guess that would have been just over 10 years ago about 11 now and really didn't see getting back into that. It seemed like radio was changing, local radio was going out and a lot of the networks were just picking up radio stations. But here we are and I'm just so excited to have a way to use some of the gifts and the skills that I picked up in radio and be able to move that to this format working online. It's just incredible what technology is allowing people to do today and I'm excited about that.

Stephen:

We'll be talking more about my story here and there, but basically what happened? What started all this was I was talking to a friend and I probably shouldn't name him, let's just say his name was Seth. I was talking to my friend, seth, and we were talking a little bit about Bible history, a little bit about Genesis, a little bit about Revelation, and he said you know, I'd love to hear more about this. Could you put this into a podcast? And to be honest, I have tried to do YouTube channels on some other topics, but I had never thought about just focusing in on a podcast and putting some of this material online. So I talked to my wife about it and she said you know what that actually might be a good idea. So we went ahead and just kind of threw this together and I promise we'll be doing our best to raise the quality of what we'll be putting out here. We might even be able to do videos at some point. I would love to do, you know, have some guests, maybe even do some debates. That would be interesting as well. I don't know what we'll do, but the purpose of this channel. You might be wondering why pipe and pencil? Where did you get that from? Well, we'll talk about that at the end of the podcast. But this podcast is going to be my attempt to make theology something that everybody in the body of Christ can understand.

Stephen:

Sometimes we tend to just lean into our inspirational devotional books. We read our few chapters for the day. Maybe we run across something we don't understand. We just say something we don't understand, we just say, hmm, it's interesting, and then we just keep reading and I think rightly so. We tend to leave the deeper waters of theology for our pastor and we tend to just say, well, whatever pastor says, that's good, it's good for me, and there is some I would say some nobleness in that we do need to. At the very least, we need to be ready to submit to the authority of our pastor and follow his lead. If you can't do that, then I don't know why you're in the church that you're in. That then I don't know why you're in the church that you're in. There's no perfect pastor, but he is able to put the time in to study the Word of God and we need to be ready to follow his lead.

Stephen:

But at the same time, the Bible talks about the Bereans, a group of people that when they heard the pastor say things, they would search the Word of God to see if they were so, and it was a way to help them dig deep into the Word of God. I believe the benefit of that is it allows us to be able to share these teachings with others. Right, that's a benefit of digging into the scriptures. But I think another thing is it helps us hold everybody accountable. If we find things we don't understand, we can take it to our pastor, and maybe it's something that we misunderstood, or maybe it's something you know. Maybe he'll be able to say you know what? Maybe I should clarify that, and it helps us all stay accountable.

Stephen:

One of the things I want to do here in this podcast is actually be an encouragement to pastors. You know you really should pray for your pastor. He's got a tough job. He spends his time as best he can studying the Word of God, trying to run a church, trying to visit people, trying to counsel people, and his job on Sundays is to preach the gospel, to encourage the saints and teach you from the Word of God. So sometimes that doesn't leave a lot of time to talk about some of these great figures in Bible history. It doesn't leave them a lot of time maybe to talk about the pilgrims and talk about the Christian founding of our country or to talk about some of the ways the dominations have formed since the time of Jesus Christ.

Stephen:

So you know me, I'm not an ordained minister, but my way to serve the Lord and to encourage pastors and encourage others is to take the time to do the things studying wise in history and put those things out there for people. I'm a semi-professional genealogist I like to say amateur historian. These are the things that I love researching and if I can put it out there and help somebody, well then that would just make my day to know that somebody can learn something from all this and then maybe that will encourage them in their faith. And you know, I think as Christians we get scared sometimes to go more than a mile wide and an inch deep. And in this podcast that's exactly what I want to help you do. I want to help you go a little bit more than just a mile wide and an inch deep. We can dig in the Word of God and get a firm foundation for our theology and our doctrines and learn quite a bit of history along the way as well. So again I have to thank my friend, who we'll call Seth, for giving me the idea to start this podcast, and just can't thank you enough for that.

Stephen:

So let's get into it. Our first series is actually going to be on church history and we are going to be starting in the Bible. A lot of people will start church history by looking to the book of Acts or looking to the Gospels. We're going to see if we can find the church maybe further back in the Bible, maybe even starting at Genesis. But I knew we were going to do an introduction today, do an introduction today, and I have some things that I want to lay out about what we're actually looking for as we go through church history. So I'm going to lay some of that out now and then we'll technically get into our first lesson on church history in the next podcast, in the next podcast.

Stephen:

But, as I said, I enjoy the study of genealogy and I was telling my friend that I've noticed that as we do church history, there's a tendency to start from the book of Acts and we kind of work our way forward in history and basically that leads to us noticing things that we believe. We look at groups in history and we say, oh, you know, okay, well, that guy's, that's John Calvin, and my preacher talks about him, I believe of a lot of his teachings. So you know, you have Calvin, and then that's where our church comes from, never mind that you're skipping several hundred years of history there. Same thing with the Baptist. I'm a Baptist and as Baptists look at their history, they look at these groups of people. They see them pop up. They see the Anabaptist and they say, okay, well, anabaptist, there it is. You drop the Anna, you've got Baptist. That's where we come from. But we're skipping some important characters, whether it be John Smith, roger Williams, schubel-stern, schubel-stern, many others.

Stephen:

In genealogy we have a saying you always start with you, and I think, as we're doing church history, we need to follow that same motto. And so I started with myself. I looked at some of the churches that I had been a member of. Started with myself, I looked at some of the churches that I had been a member of. I looked at who the pastors were, who had taught them, who had either led them to the Lord, or what Bible college they had gone to, and I started working my way back, and it has really opened my eyes to all of the different things that have happened to bring the Baptist churches to where they are today.

Stephen:

And so that's what this podcast, this first series, has been birthed out of this idea of starting from where you are and kind of working your way back and then looking at the scriptures and seeing. You know, looking, okay, these are the things we believe. Where can I find these things in scripture? You do realize that if there are things that you do in your church that you can't find in the Bible, there is a good chance that that thing is a tradition. One of the best ways to determine the difference between something that's actually in the Scripture and something that is a tradition is to A go to the scripture, but B know church history. You should know a little bit about the creeds and the confessions. You should know a little bit about the men that we talk about. There are traditions we have that are not exactly a bad thing Having a worship band, I don't think that's a bad thing. Having a bus route in the church, I don't think that's a bad thing. But we do understand that these are traditions, these are things that have been handed down, and there are many different churches and they operate in many, many, many different ways, and you're going to see that as we go throughout this series.

Stephen:

Now I will say something about this again, even though this is going to be leaning towards Baptist history, if you are not a Baptist, I hope that you will enjoy this course. I believe it will be a blessing to you. So, you know, stick around, you might like what you hear and maybe we can be an encouragement to each other. As far as the goals for this series. As far as the goals for this series, honestly, it's just five things. We're going to be looking for Jesus.

Stephen:

After all, history is his story. It is encouraging, as we go through the Bible, to see Jesus and to see the gospel on every page. What is also encouraging is, as we leave the time of the apostles and as we leave the time of the church fathers and we move into the Middle Ages and into the Industrial Age and to the modern age where we are now, what's encouraging is to still see Jesus, to see him working. The church is the body of Christ. We are his hands and feet and as we work, that is Jesus, that is the Holy Spirit working in this world. It's encouraging, as we go through time, to see the gospel working. I can't tell you what an encouragement is to read a piece of writing, be it from 500 AD or 1000 AD, and to listen to a saint who is struggling with the same concerns. You are praying the same prayers. You are thinking on the same things that you are turning to God for, the same things that you have to turn to God for. You see people getting saved, the same way that you got saved. We look for Jesus as we go through history, we look for the gospel.

Stephen:

As we do this history, obviously we'll also be looking for the church. Do this history. Obviously we'll also be looking for the church. The church has always, always been around in some form since Jesus gave us the Great Commission. There's always been a church following him, maybe not as perfectly as we would like, but none of us are perfect. We do the best we can. I think the fact that God's church has always been filled with non-perfect people and the fact that the church has had its many struggles, I think, proves that it's not the people in the church that are doing the great things of bringing the gospel around the world. It's the Holy Spirit working through these imperfect people. There's no other way around it.

Stephen:

Most specifically, in the series we're going to be looking for the Baptist series. We're going to be looking for the Baptist and then, in kind of a similar way to what Bruce Gore did in his series who, by the way, bruce Gore has just been an inspiration to me and really enjoyed his YouTube channel. You should check that out but he did a church history and brought it all the way down to his particular church, and I'm wanting to do the same thing. The other thing that we're going to be looking at in this series is where can we find Sherwood? Where do we find Sherwood starting? Maybe not the church, but we can find the family tree of the Sherwood Baptist Church. So that's the church that I go to. I'm somebody who attends there and I'm really excited about trying to trace from the Bible all the way through all of the people that have had a part in bringing people into the kingdom, one after another through the years, leading all the way down to Sherwood Baptist Church. So I really am intending to have the last episode be about the Sherwood Baptist Church, and that's where I attend.

Stephen:

Now you say well, what about my church? Well, you know, honestly, if you are a church member in America, even if you're not, we are distantly related in some way. If you're a Bible believer, if you've been saved by the grace of God, we're already family and I can tell you it all goes back to the church of the Bible. So, as we're going through this, whether you're a Presbyterian or a Methodist, whatever you may be, you're going to see all of the steps that have led to your particular denomination.

Stephen:

We may not focus on it as much, but maybe this series will encourage you to do some of your own research. Maybe you could talk to your pastor, find out some of the origins of your church. Maybe your church was started as a mission. Maybe it's an old church, maybe it's a newer church, but you can find out about some of the people who were involved in that. You can find out who led them to the Lord. Maybe you can find out who their influences were and what Bible college they went to, and I hope you will. I hope you'll put some thought into that and as you go back through history you can say, okay, well, wow, so this is why I believe what I believe, and then you can follow it all the way back to the Bible and maybe you will do some reevaluating and it will either affirm your faith and increase your ability to defend what you believe about certain doctrines, or maybe you'll say, wow, I thought this was in the Bible. Maybe this is more of a tradition. I don't know. We'll have to see what happens. But the last thing that I believe we're going to be looking for in the series is we're going to look at where other traditions have started in the church, and not just traditions.

Stephen:

I really would like to kind of along the way. As we're talking about church history, maybe we can talk about the history of the Bible itself. God's word is forever settled in heaven, but it has had an interesting journey of writing the inspiration of Scripture right through to the preservation of Scripture through the different copies that have been made and translations. And, whether you know it or not, whether you know it or not, there's a great work going on right now to preserve digitally all of these manuscripts that we have. And if you are one who maybe is not sure about the authenticity of God's Word, you should do some study into textual criticism and study a little bit about how the Bible has come down to us. I believe it'd be encouraging to you.

Stephen:

So our method is going to be pretty simple. I love how, when Bruce Gore does classes, he will end with some kind of scripture verse usually and give a lesson. I think we'll try to do that and again, be aware this is going to be a very narrow focus class. As we get to the Baptists, we're going to focus mainly on them, and then, as we wind down and get to the Southern Baptists, we're going to be focusing mainly on them, mainly on the Independent Fundamental Baptist, and kind of trace my roots to some extent, because I'm the one teaching the class, and then, lastly, we'll be focusing on Sherwood. So, while this will be narrow, especially through the I would say at least the first two-thirds, three-quarters of this series should be an encouragement to anybody who loves the Lord. So we will start today by going over what we call the Baptist distinctives. That's going to be our first part of the series and then our method will be to look for those distinctives as we wander through church history. So, with all that being said, we'll go ahead and move into this lesson and again, thank you for hearing me out on all that and I hope the rest of this class will be a blessing to you.

Stephen:

All right, so let's start this church history class by talking about what it means to be a Baptist. You will find that there are many similarities between the Baptist and other groups. If you look at the Methodists, there's many similarities. If you look to the Presbyterian faith, you'll see a lot of similarities, especially among the Reformed Baptists. So you know like well what I just said. There's many different types of Baptists. You have your Reformed Baptist, there's Free Will Baptist, primitive Baptist, more of the Missionary Baptist groups, southern Baptist, american Baptist.

Stephen:

What are all the differences and what is it that brings us together? Obviously, like most any group in Christendom, we believe in what is in the Nicene Creed or the Apostles' Creed. But then there are some things that tie us more to the Protestant faith. In a sense we do believe in certain fundamentals, but then there are some things that set us apart and we call these things the Baptist distinctives. In fact, if you have been a Baptist for any length of time, you've probably seen an acrostic that lists the Baptist distinctives using the word Baptist, and most people don't know this, but Pastor Dwayne Brown of the Pine Valley Baptist Church was the guy who put that acrostic together, and that was back in the 1960s. Again, most people don't know this, but if you ever do use this acrostic, it is good to give this guy credit for bringing that together. I'll read you a portion of what he said about it. He said, quote while pastoring at Pine Valley Baptist Church I prepared a systematic lesson plan about the Baptist distinctives, designed for 13 lessons.

Stephen:

One of the dear ladies in the church, esther Munson, suggested I set up these Baptist distinctives in an acrostic of the word Baptist. I eventually set the acrostic on the plural Baptist as I settled on eight distinctives that historically all Baptists held. A teacher at Baptist Bible Seminary requested copies for his class. Soon requests came from all over, end quote. So there you have it. That is actually from the book my Cup Runneth Over, a book that Pastor Dwayne Brown wrote.

Stephen:

And so what are these Baptist distinctives? Well, in short, they are biblical authority, autonomy of the local church, priesthood of the believer, two ordinances, individual soul, liberty, saved church membership, two officers, two officers and separation of church and state. So there may be other groups that believe some of those things and there may be some churches that believe all of those and they don't even call themselves a Baptist church. I don't know if that would make them Baptistic or I don't know how that works, but these are the beliefs of a Baptist church. You say well, wait a minute, I thought Baptists believed that you can't lose your salvation. Yes, we do, but we don't necessarily need to put that in the Baptist distinctives. That is actually a firm Calvinistic belief. So that's not something that Baptists alone would believe, okay. Well, what about being saved by grace through faith? Well, again, that's not unique totally to Baptists. Presbyterians, methodists will also share that, and others. The basic things, okay, and if we find some other things, we'll bring them up, but the basic tenets of being a Baptist is these things that we've just mentioned. So we'll go over them in brief right now, and I don't know if we'll be able to do it on this podcast, but as we start to put out more episodes maybe we will be able to do it on this podcast. But, you know, as we start to put out more episodes maybe we will be able to put out some documents that will have all this information. So be sure to check in the podcast info and they're hoping to have some printouts ready for people who want to have these things to study as we go through this series.

Stephen:

Let's talk about these one by one Biblical authority. Some people would find this odd to be even listed as a distinctive. Other people actually would argue with this, actually would argue with this. For the Baptist, whatever the Bible says, that's true, that's it. That's all there is. There isn't any more. We don't really put a lot of faith in different creeds or councils or anything written by men.

Stephen:

Now don't get me wrong. We don't mind writing books and selling books that we write. That's not what we're talking about here. What we mean is we're not going to send you home to read and study the Bible and get your set of doctrines from the Bible in another book. We may suggest a book to help you, but the final say-so is going to be the scriptures. There is no man who can just declare something to be the word of God. There is nothing written by man that can do that. We follow the scriptures. If you go to 2 Timothy 3, 15 through 17, it's one verse in particular where you will find that, in fact, if you go online, you can actually go to the High Point Baptist Church, highpointbaptistcom. They have a list of these distinctives and that's where we're pulling some of these verses and information about it from. So be sure to check that out.

Stephen:

So B is for biblical authority, a is for autonomy of the local church. What does that mean? Well, that means, as Baptists, we believe that each church should be an independent body accountable to the Lord, jesus Christ and him alone. The church is his body and him alone. The church is his body. We answer to him. It has been a struggle, I think, for Baptists. We struggle sometimes to find the line between trying to fellowship with other churches, trying to work with other churches and stay accountable, while at the same time making sure that each church is independent, and you will see that as we move forward in Baptist history. But it is important to us that the church stay autonomous.

Stephen:

We believe in the priesthood of the believer. You do not need to repent to another person of your sin Now. If you've wronged somebody, you need to go to them and ask their forgiveness. That is true, but when it comes time to confess your sins, there is one mediator between God and men the man, christ Jesus. We find that in the scriptures, in 1 Timothy, 2.15, I believe. Every believer is authorized to study God's word on his own. He is able to pray for other people, to intercede for them. All of these things are what makes us the priesthood of the believer, and that is something that, when you put it with some of these other things, is what makes us Baptist.

Stephen:

Now, the next one is probably one of the most important ones. We believe in two ordinances, and that would be the Lord's Supper and baptism. Now, as if that weren't enough to get us into trouble, there's some other things that you should know. We believe in believer's baptism. For you to be baptized, you must be saved. That is the proper order. You repent, then you're baptized. We do not believe that baptism is what saves you, is what saves you, but we certainly believe it comes after salvation. You will not find Baptist sprinkling babies. That's not what we do. Many Baptists will not necessarily part fellowship with a Presbyterian or a Methodist who does those things, especially if we agree that baptism is not what saves. But when we do the baptism first, we get it out of order. Now Presbyterian will tell you well, one day they'll get saved and that they will affirm that baptism and so they won't have to get baptized again. And so they won't have to get baptized again. The Baptist belief is the baptism comes after and, by the way, we also believe that baptism means immersion. And so as we go through this series if you don't believe that, that's fine, but I hope you'll keep an open mind as we go through the Word of God, we will be looking even in the Old Testament, I think maybe we can find baptism. We'll be looking for that and then, as we go through church history, we'll continue to see how that tradition of baptizing babies came along. We'll talk about it. Give it some thought.

Stephen:

The I is for individual soul liberty. Every person has the liberty to choose what he believes. You can't be forced to repent against your will. You can't be forced to believe against your will. If somebody is forced to do something, they can say whatever they want. You can't be forced to believe against your will. If somebody is forced to do something, they can say whatever they want. That doesn't mean they really believe it.

Stephen:

That's why Baptists were really the original fighter for freedom of religion. And I know some people will say well, the Presbyterians were too, and so were the Lutherans. Well, they didn't mind having freedom of religion as long as you were a Trinitarian and a Protestant. If you were a Baptist, a Jew or a Catholic, well, you were out of luck. Baptists were the first ones to say you know what? No, even if they're an atheist. Baptists were the first ones to say you know what? No, even if they're an atheist, we cannot force them to be a member of a church. Which brings me to the next thing.

Stephen:

Baptists do believe in a saved membership. You cannot become a member of a church just through baptism. You need to be a born-again Bible believer, and we'll see some reasons that this is actually a good thing. You do get baptized to become a member of a church, but that comes after salvation. The other T is for two offices. The Baptists are really not very heavy on church government, unless you're a Reformed Baptist, I believe some of them do the church government a little bit differently, but for the most part Baptists have pastors and deacons. Those are the two offices and then the last S, I believe we'll really start to see the importance of.

Stephen:

As we get towards the more modern Baptist history, we will see the importance of the separation of church and state. What do we mean by that? I want to be real clear before we even get to that lesson. What that means is that there are two spheres, two institutions that God has ordained. There is the government and there is the church. The people who run the church really shouldn't be running the government. The people who are running the government definitely shouldn't be running the church. We are to pray for our government. Our government has the responsibility to keep us safe and they need to be willing to listen to the advice of spiritual leaders, I believe. But when it comes down to it, we really need a nice, neat dividing line of separation and we will see that in the scriptures as we go through this series. So those are the Baptist distinctives and as we come across them in the Bible and in church history. We'll be pointing them out, because when we see churches that are following all of these things, we're going to see very shall we say Baptistic churches.

Stephen:

Now, I really believe that there's never been a time in history where there has not been a church somewhere who believed these doctrines, because there's always been a church that is following the Bible and trying to worship God. I don't believe they've always been called Baptist. Originally they were called Christians, right. So there's been many names and, like I said, we won't find perfect churches and we certainly won't find a church that you would agree with everything on or I would agree with everything on. But we will see God working and I know there's always been a church somewhere following the Word of God. There are some Baptists who believe we have a direct line of Baptists, some kind of succession, if you will. I don't know about that. I have no problem with seeing how some of our Baptist churches were birthed out of the Puritan movement. That's okay with me, but we'll get into that as we go along.

Stephen:

So I want to thank again you know, bruce Gore, my unnamed friend Seth, and again my wife Donna, for just really being the inspiration behind this podcast. There again are so many Christians, we again spend our life just kind of going a mile wide and an inch deep. And I think in our lives, I think for all of us, there's a point where we want to go a little deeper and we get a little nervous about it. But we know, we know that we need to be digging into the scriptures. We know we need to be able to defend our faith and defend our beliefs and know what the word of God says and why we believe what we believe. You know CS Lewis was talking about this in an introduction that he did to a book and it was great.

Stephen:

It was the introduction to a book by Athanasius. It was called On the Incarnation, and in the introduction CS Lewis was talking about the difference between older books and newer books. The newer books were great and really inspirational, but the older ones were really hard to read. But they were deep. There was a lot of doctrine, a lot of theology in them and he did admit that it was kind of a conundrum. But I want to read you a part of what he said. This is CS Lewis.

Stephen:

Now the layman or amateur needs to be instructed as well as to be exhorted In this age, his need for knowledge is particularly pressing. Nor would I admit any sharp division between the two kinds of book. For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that nothing happens when they sit down or kneel down to a book of devotion would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand. Again, that's CS Lewis, and maybe you don't have the pipe, but I want to encourage you to at least get the pencil. I know there are some of us that have a pencil in our hand and sometimes it's in our teeth.

Stephen:

But listen, I hope this podcast will spur you on to get that theology book, to get that Bible history book, to get out that pencil and to sit down and really, really dig and find this encouragement. And find this encouragement, this heart singing unbidden, that we find as we learn more about the Word of God. Can I tell you one thing that you'll never outgrow? My pastor, pastor Paul, says it all the time you never outgrow the gospel, you grow into it. Can I tell you, grace will get more amazing the more you learn about it, the more you see everything that came the day that you got saved. So I hope that this podcast will be part of that catalyst that will spur you on to really, really dig into the depths of the Word of God and learn some of this theology for yourself. To that end, we'll sign off for this podcast episode. Thanks for joining me and I hope you'll come back listen to another episode of the pipe and pencil podcast. Thank you.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Stephen Amos

Host