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Welcome to the Covenant Podcast.
The Covenant Podcast exists to equip listeners with theological
content from a 1689 Baptist perspective. We are on the Man of God Network
brought to you by Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary. We thank
you for tuning into this conversation with Pastor Jim Sebastio on the
digital public square for Reformed Baptists. Throughout this conversation,
we were having internet connection problems. So there were a few
moments where Pastor Jim cut in and out of the live stream
and our recording, so we hope that isn't too distracting to
you. I tried to edit it in a few ways, but I hope that this conversation
on the digital public square with Pastor Jim Sevastio We'll
be helpful to you, especially as he gives some advice and wisdom
about how we can make use of this medium in our day to make
known the gospel of Christ and produce edifying content that
is useful to listeners in this day. Thank you for listening
today. God bless. Welcome to The Covenant
Podcast. The Covenant Podcast exists to
equip listeners with theological content from a 1689 Baptist perspective. We are on the Man of God Network
brought to you by Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary. And for
the first time in several months, probably a few years now, we
have the great privilege to welcome back Pastor Jim Sevastio to The
Covenant Podcast. Welcome back to the podcast,
Pastor Jim. Thanks, Austin. Good to see you and good to see
you doing. Yes, thank you for your willingness
to join us. For our listeners who are tuning
into this conversation, you see that the title of this episode
is The Virtual Public Square for Reformed Baptists. But before
we jump right into that conversation, I mentioned it has been a decent
period of time since the last time that you've been on, Pastor
Jim. So would you be willing to give our listeners just an
update about your current season of life and ministry? Yeah, uh,
I don't know. I have a whole lot to share.
Uh, it's been, I think probably two years or, uh, three years. Uh, so, uh, added, uh, a daughter-in-law
and, uh, a grandson and, uh, another grand and daughters and,
uh, one grandson. I've been doing a fair bit of
traveling and most recently traveling out to Sea-Tac with you, Austin,
to participate in the installation of Dewey there as a full-time
preaching elder at Emmanuel Reformed Baptist Church in Sea-Tac. Yeah. Pastor Jim. It is so great
to have you back on the program. Of course, I was not on the Covenant
podcast as a co-host when you were previously interviewed,
but by God's grace, I've been able to enjoy a great relationship
with you and Austin for several years now, even predating my
time on this program. I'm so grateful you're able to
be a part of that installation service, and I was so grateful
for the time that we had together just a couple of weeks ago now
with both of you. And as Pastor Jim will know,
our listeners may be intrigued by this, this particular conversation,
it's really coming out of a conversation that Pastor Jim and I had while
we were hiking a trail out here in the Pacific Northwest called
Little Si. And we were just talking about
how much the public square has shifted to virtual. It's now going away from so much
in-person marketplace dialogue to now a real social media virtual
context to have conversations about ideas, about worldview,
and things of those matters. So as we really think about the
virtual public square, and as we think about Reformed Baptists,
which all three of us are, and many of our listeners are, Pastor
Jim, why do you think it's important for Reformed Baptists to be able
to leverage virtual mediums to engage with ideologies, worldviews,
current events, and the things that are going on in our day?
Yeah, thanks, Dewey. I think there's at least two
things that we need to consider in our lives as Reformed Baptists. And one of them is, and you've
touched on this briefly, is that we have to understand the day
and age in which we live. And I think as Reformed Baptists,
sometimes we may have been a bit slow, and I understand that.
I've been slow in some of these areas to recognize that there
does need to be some accommodating or recognizing of the day and
age in which we live. I had understanding of the times.
They knew what Israel ought to do, et cetera. You find the reference
to David in the book of Acts, that he served God in his generation. And part of our understanding
our generation is to understand that today, when people are asking
questions, the big questions, is there a God? Is there such
a thing as truth? Do I have a soul? How does somebody
go to heaven? They're not calling a church. They're not emailing a church.
They're typing these questions into Google, TikTok, even, and
YouTube. And even I'm finding increasingly
the testimonies of young people who are getting converted, very
often something like YouTube is playing a part in that. And
I think rather than just poo-pooing that or denigrating that, we
ought to We ought to recognize that and see that the Lord may
well be using these modern means to reach people. And so one of
them, as I said, so the first issue is because this is how
contemporary, at least in our country, contemporary Americans
are searching for answers and And so this leads into the second
thing, is that without sounding arrogant, hopefully we have good
answers to give to these questions. There's a lot of bad answers
out there. There are a lot of people answering
the questions, is there a God? What's God like? How can I know
God? Do I have a soul? Is there a
heaven? Is there a hell? How is somebody made right with
God? And they're answering these questions from all kinds of different
theological backgrounds, and if we have a confidence that
God has given to us a biblical and a historical faith with clear
answers to these questions, then if anybody's giving these answers,
it ought to be us. It ought to be people like us. That's very helpful to answer
our question about why we should consider engaging in the digital
virtual public square as Reformed Baptists. And one of the ways
in which you have tried to model a commitment to engaging in the
virtual public square is through your work with Trench Talk. It's very likely that our listeners
are aware of that resource in which you and Brian Croft have
produced for quite some time. Perhaps you can speak about how
long you guys have been doing that podcast, but would you be
willing to share what led you to get involved with that specific
medium of virtual ministry and how you've seen the Lord use
it over the years? Uh, yeah, sure. And also, and I may even
just real quickly go back, you know, further as far as just
even the recognition early on, uh, for us to be able to be adapters. And I, I'm, I'm not where I could
be, or maybe where we should be in this, but. Early on in
the day and age, recognizing when things were going from cassette
tapes when our ministry started, to CDs, to MP3, and utilizing
the internet, utilizing live stream, utilizing opportunities
like Sermon Audio that has an audience far beyond anything
that we were able to engender in our own little efforts. And so, you know, that leads
into practical shepherding getting started and utilizing the means
at first of blogs. That's how practical shepherding
got started. And then the space began to open
up for many ministries to begin to do podcasts. And I think we're
still kind of in that realm where many organizations, ministries
are utilizing a podcast to reach an audience and that it's become
kind of a convenient way to digest truth, hopefully in a relatively
quick and easy manner. And so once practical shepherding,
which is a ministry started by a friend of mine named Brian
Croft, who pastored for years in Louisville, Kentucky, he started
this practical ministry to pastors, dealing with a lot of the issues
you don't necessarily deal with in your seminary classes. And
having used the blog and books, started very early on in the
days of podcasting, and he'd recorded somewhere 10, 15 podcasts
before I started in with him. and tried different methods,
including being interviewed by somebody asking him a series
of questions. And then sometime ago, I can't
remember the exact time, I want to say it's somewhere around
2017, somewhere around then, we began to do the podcast together
and have recorded together somewhere together in the neighborhood
of 245 podcast. Brian has done an additional
20 or so that I've not been a part of, but this has been a means
of introducing people to the ministry. It seems from what
I am hearing, it's the primary way in which people are being
introduced to the ministry. We have 30 or more books associated
with the ministry, again, as well as the blogs and conferences
and other resource material to help men, particularly men starting
out in ministry, but the podcast in which we seek to answer various
questions related to a pastor's ministry, soul, family, has been
a means that many have been introduced to these truths. I can be the first to say that
Practical Shepherding and Trench Talk and the work that you're
doing in that ministry, Pastor Jim, it's been a huge blessing
to my life. I trust it's been a blessing
to many of our listeners' lives as well. In addition to the work
that you're doing with Trench Talk, and all of the ways that
you are engaging with listeners through the public square that's
virtual, it's digital in our day and age. You're also now
transitioning to do the same with your local church. Recently,
the Reformed Baptist Church of Louisville podcast has launched
and To our knowledge, this very well may be the first Reformed
Baptist Church podcast that plans to produce material on a recurring
basis. It's certainly the first prominent
Reformed Baptist Church that at least I'm aware of that has
such a ministry. So would you be willing just
to share with our listeners a little bit about what led your church
to create that podcast and maybe what your long-term vision is
for the ministry because it truly is a unique ministry when thinking
about how Reformed Baptists are engaging in the virtual public
square, or the lack of us engaging in that particular way. Yeah,
well, thanks, Dewey. I imagine there are other churches
doing this, and I'm sure they're doing it much better than we
are. We're just getting started. But
this began some months ago and having some discussions with
some of the younger men in the church, two of the young men
in particular who have some interest in these matters of video, audio. Both have been very helpful in
our web design and That's something we're even talking about, trying
to improve, regularly trying to update, improve, to have a
good presence on our website, because that's, if not the front
door, it is the way in which a lot of people are first introduced
into your life and ministry. Initially, the question was,
do we want to put a series of welcoming videos onto our website,
things like just meeting your pastors, a little bit about the
history of the church, a little bit about the doctrine of the
church. And now that people can actually
see what I look like, you'd be interested to know that these
guys were hopeful to use our younger, more handsome, far more
handsome elder to do video. They were happy to have me do
all the video. They thought maybe one of the
other guys should be involved. But that being said, when we
actually have begun the material, and we've really only just begun,
I've been involved in that thus far. But these young men thought
that this would be a good way to introduce people to the church,
introduce people into what we're about as a church, but as we
began to discuss this, recognize that we could have a broader
impact, and that is to be able to release these on various platforms. Right now it's YouTube, And it
may sound funny to say maybe even that we would break this
down into little clips that could be put on something like Instagram
or even the dreaded TikTok. But again, the recognition is
there are billions of people that access this material. And
if you can find a way to say something about the gospel or
something about truth or encouraging an immature Christian to greater
maturity, And these platforms are available to you virtually
at no cost at all. And when there is so much out
there that's offensive and so much out there that is lacking
in good, solid, historical, confessional, and creedal Christianity, to
be able to speak to some of these matters in a rather, hopefully,
clear and simple and concise way. And part of that by, by
saying that, you know, we're looking at making these somewhere
between 7 minutes to 14 minutes, somewhere along those lines.
Some of them may be even, you know, more brief, 5 minutes long.
And we, right now, are doing it in an interview format. One
of our young men, who's in his early 30s, just has a series
of questions to ask, and I'm seeking the answer. We're just
recording at our church building. There's a nice little section
of our church building that's somewhat of an open—we call it
the living room—places where there's just nice couches and
chairs and bookshelves and books for people to look at. It's a
place where people at the church can gather and fellowship on
the Lord's day or after service or after, before prayer meeting.
And so just trying to utilize a relatively simple, but attractive
place. And so we're learning, we're
learning how to do the recording, learning things about lighting
and volume and all of those kinds of matters to make it as appealing
as possible, as simple as possible. But it's very simple, nothing
fancy at this point, but just trying to answer some simple
questions at this point about what is the history of the Reformed
Baptist Church? What do we mean by Reformed Baptist? And then the fellow that does
the interviewing, a young man named Sam, has asked me a bit
about my testimony and coming out of that testimony. because
I had something of an abusive background with my father, answering
some questions about how the gospel was healing and how the
fatherhood of God became a lifeline to me as a young Christian and
has continued to be as a pastor. That's excellent, brother. And
I hope that the Lord uses the resources that you guys are producing
there to affect much good. There is much garbage on the
internet and there needs to be more solid resources. And just
furthering that comment that there is much garbage on the
internet, I think that Several, when they think about some of
these online mediums, they do think of a lot of the negative
stuff that's associated with being involved in the digital
public square, like the online quabbles that there could possibly
be or a possible inordinate misuse of our time or focus and energy
as pastor ministry, or even the fact that this medium gives the
appearance that everyone has an equal voice or an equal opinion
on this medium because everyone has access to a smartphone. Everyone who does have access
to a smartphone has an opportunity to dialogue. And so there could
be a platform where people who shouldn't be teachers are putting
themselves in positions of public teaching authority. So I think
all of those negative things come to our mind whenever we
think about the digital public square. All that said, why would
you, I mean, you've talked about some of the positive benefits
of being involved in the public digital square as Reformed Baptists. Do you have any more that you
can think of and how do you think we can grow in being more positively
influential in the digital public square as Reformed Baptists?
Yeah, thanks Austin. You know, the things that come
to my mind are primarily in regard to these matters of of setting
forth positive truth. So in the little epistle of Jude,
there's the exhortation that Jude has where he says that,
well, not an exhortation so much as an explanation that he was
writing, hoping to just speak about their common salvation,
but because some people had crept in, unaware people with ministries
that were not blatantly or obviously heretical to the common hearer,
that is, they had crept in unaware, and he exhorts that he felt the
need to write, to contend earnestly for the faith. And And I do think
there's a difference between contending positively for the
faith and being contentious in areas surrounding the faith.
And we have to recognize that contention sells, that the crazier
your soundbite is, whatever your take is on the home, husbands,
wives, sex, whatever, that you're going to get more clicks and
more people are going to follow you. Those who hold to our confession
have a reputation right now, largely through Twitter or X,
for being contentious and provocateurs. I think there's a way to be provocative. I think there's a way to gain
the ear I think there's a way to say things that are simple
and clear and compelling and honest and that cut a straight
line, that are unashamed to speak about truth, that are unashamed
to contend for the truth without being overly contentious or arrogant
or dismissive unnecessarily of other brethren and other camps
and other ideas. So we're not just trying to beat
a Reformed Baptist-only jingoistic drum and or say all knowledge
is ours, but to recognize that we do have something very clear
and something positive to say. There's a lot of bad news out
there. There's a lot of confusion out
there. There's a lot of fear out there
that, on the one hand, we can take advantage of in a wrong
way, and perhaps even sadly, as I think some have done, drawing
disciples after themselves. rather than seeking to encourage
people in the truth, reminding them again that we have an historic
faith, we are part of a church that has existed for 2,000 years
in a whole variety of nations and governments and times of
prosperity and times of ill and times of war and times of famine
and times of plague and times of persecution. And if we can
speak positively to a confusing generation where there's a lot
of hurt, a lot of fear, a lot of concern about the future,
and have something that's encouraging for God's people to recognize,
you're not the first one to face this, that we are part of a continuum. We're the baton holders for this
generation. But we want to pass it on faithfully
to another. I think there's a place for that. And I think that, you know, not
just older guys like me, you know, I've been at it for a long
time, been pastoring for over 30 years in the same congregation. But younger men who, again, can say something at least
to their congregation, and that's our primary goal. Peter says,
shepherd the flock that's among you. But if we can also do good
to others, I think that if it's in our hand to do that, we should
strive to do that. Again, where there's so much
out there that's bad, divisive, and confusing, to have something
out there that's clear and simple, truthful, and compelling is needed
in our generation. Just to follow up on that, How
do you believe, then, that our specific theological heritage
can improve in there being just overall involvement in the virtual
public square? I mean, I don't think you're
calling every Reformed Baptist pastor to sign up for an ex-account
or anything like that, that this is a must. No, it's certainly
not a must. Right, it's certainly not a must.
You know, maybe perhaps there are some who are too involved
in this and spending too much time and to the neglect of a
congregation that needs you. We have our primary calling,
which again is to shepherd the flock of God that's among us
and exercise oversight there. We have a people that we need
to take care of and that we need to feed and that we need to shepherd.
And that can't take a backseat to anything else that we do. This cannot be in any way our
primary life. And I think we also have to recognize
that many don't have the resources or maybe the skill. I wouldn't be able to do this
on my own. It would look pretty bad and sound bad if I just tried
to do this with my computer or my iPhone. But having some people
with some skill, IT skill and video and audio skill, it's helpful,
though, again, we're learning and growing in this. But again,
I think that the recognition that we may have something to
contribute, and I think to go back, Austin and Dewey, to something
I said earlier, hinted at, earlier, I think we need to be able to
be willing to consider ways to serve God in our generation,
utilizing the means that are at hand. I don't think that we should wear
it as a badge of honor that we're Luddites, or that we just use
a chisel and hammer and stone to convey our message. I think we hopefully have done,
many are trying to do a good job of adapting to the day and
age in which we live. Again, whether you consider even
the things of streaming, live streaming, whether audio or video
is to be utilized for your church, or for those who listen in on
your ministry. But thinking about things like
having good audio equipment, trying to be clear and concise
in how you convey the truth, to get caught up and you know,
packaging and, you know, all of those kinds of things that
many may think of when they think of trying to convey truth in
the modern age. But we are trying to convey truth,
and we do have to recognize this is where people are tuning in. This is how a lot of people are
getting their information. It's where unbelievers are turning.
It's where immature believers are are turning to try to get
help, trying to understand better. And again, there's many willing
to give them all kinds of things. And if we believe that we have,
by God's grace, given our historical and confessional and have some
more solid truth to be able to convey, then I think we ought
to consider whether or not we have an obligation to do this.
Again, maybe not every single pastor in every single church,
but there may be some who ought to consider it who have not considered
it. Well, I do praise God for those
who have taken up the mantle to get engaged in the virtual
public square, whether that be social media, whether it be producing
quality podcast resources, or even just putting their sermons
online. I mean, every week I listen to
a handful of podcasts and sermons. It's a huge way the Lord has
worked in my life for my own sanctification and allowing me
to ask more questions about how to be a better father, a better
husband, a better pastor, a better friend. So God is certainly using
virtual resources at the individual level. And of course, even broadly
speaking, I believe the church as a whole has been blessed as
churches and as ministries have found ways to creatively leverage
virtual mediums for the edification of God's people. And as we draw
this conversation to a close, Pastor Jim, this has been a wonderful
discussion. We really appreciate you coming
on today. We would be curious to hear from you if there's any
specific virtual resources that you would recommend to our listeners,
maybe some that you found edifying, or if there are just any final
words of encouragement that you'd provide our listeners to. Maybe
there's a pastor listening who's thinking about following in RBC
Louisville's footsteps with a church podcast, or maybe they listen
to Trench Talk, or they're They're wondering how they can maybe
implement something like that into their own respective ministries. What final words would you say
of advice or encouragement to our listeners who may fall into
those categories? I just encourage you to find
solid guys and one of the ways to maybe do that even is through
Covenant Podcast and the teachers and preachers that they have
on here and that they interview and see if and when they have
podcasts. So there's a lot again today,
there's an amazing variety and amount of Confessional Baptist,
London Lyceum, IRBS, they're producing good stuff, Broken
Wharf and others that I may not be able to think of off the top
of my head, but who I consistently see are having good interviews
with good men about good things. And so sample around, find things
that you find helpful. Again, I'd be curious to know
other that are using these means and perhaps when this is up,
some of them, if they feel free and it's okay with you, if they
link to what they're doing as well to try to get other eyes
and ears on the truths we're trying to convey. Amen. Pastor
Jim, thank you so much for joining us again today on the Covenant
Podcast. It's been too long since we've
had you on the program, but we certainly enjoyed the time with
you today, and of course, the time that we had together a couple
of weeks ago. So blessings to you and Becky
and your church family, and we look forward to getting you back
to the Pacific Northwest in the next couple of months. Yeah,
great. I'll be out there, Lord willing,
at the beginning of September. We'll do another hike, Lord willing,
Dewey. Yes, but maybe not Little Cy. It's going to be hot in September. I've got an idea. I think I know
where we're going. Okay, very good. Lawson, good
to see you, brother. We'll see you, Lord willing,
shortly. Good to see you as well, Pastor Jim. Yes, sir. And to
our listeners, we want to thank you again for your continued
support of The Covenant Podcast. Until next time, we wish you
grace and peace. God bless.
The Virtual Public Square with Jim Savastio
Series Covenant Podcast Episodes
A conversation between Dewey Dovel, Austin McCormick, and Jim Savastio on the value of Reformed Baptists engaging in the virtual public square. This discussion was originally featured on the Covenant Podcast.
| Sermon ID | 7424009882 |
| Duration | 32:00 |
| Date | |
| Category | Podcast |
| Language | English |
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