Pastor Brian Martin: Hey everyone, and welcome to the Calvary Callback, a podcast where we take a deeper dive into the weekly sermon at Calvary Evangelical Free Church in Rochester, Minnesota. I’m your host. Back again, Brian Martin. I’m here today with Kyle Busch, who did not, in fact, preach this weekend. But we are going to interact on a sermon with a title. Finally, God’s Permanent Answer to Our Greatest Need. Looking at Hebrews 915 through 28. And here’s the deal. Calvary family. You know, we had a guest speaker, of course, this weekend, Brian Ferrone, our district superintendent, and he did not feel like hanging around with us until Monday when we’re recording.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Strange. We said you could just sleep on my couch and you could come in and do the podcast. And he said, no, I don’t, I why not take one for the team? Brian.

Pastor Brian Martin: I don’t know.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: That’s what I’m saying.

Pastor Brian Martin: I, I, I have a love seat in my office.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: That would have curled up. He could have curled it.

Pastor Brian Martin: Oh.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, well.

Pastor Brian Martin: We’re gonna have to send this to Brian now.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: I think. Yeah, I think we’ll send it to him. Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. Yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: Well, a little bit different obviously, because you didn’t preach, I didn’t preach. We’re talking about somebody else’s sermon. But that’s okay because there was a lot of great stuff to dig into there. And I think we can look at that together. Sure. But you know, Brian started, um, obviously just talking about it sounds like I’m talking to myself in third person.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. You know, Brian Ferone.

Pastor Brian Martin: Brian Ferone, uh, started really just by connecting, of course, because of his role as our district superintendent, he connected with our congregation about, okay, who is the north central district? What is the FCA? What does that mean? And so I thought it might be interesting to start, um, just Kyle with your, you know, journey. How did you end up in the FCA?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. How did I end up in the EFCA? And I think you’ve got a similar take. You didn’t start off you weren’t born into the EFCA either. So yeah, uh, I, I discovered the EFCA, uh, through, uh, pastor named Brad Belcher, who was a church planter in Kalamazoo. Uh, I was in college. I was going to Cornerstone University. I was brand new Christian and I was trying to remember it was in the summer of 2020. No no no no no. Before that boy. How long ago was this? Long time back. This has been the summer of 1999 and I’m getting my dates wrong. Yeah, summer of 99. I was traveling with my team. I was a part of a traveling improv comedy team. And, uh, we, uh, we were the performers at a camp one week and I met this guy Brad. And just the week before, I was sitting with my then fiance, Rachel, on my parents back porch. And I said to her, you know, I hope I don’t really know what the Lord is going to do with my life. I don’t know where he’s going to lead me, but there’s something I’d really like to learn more about. And there’s something I would really like in my life. I would love to have a mentor in my life. I need someone who can guide me in pastoral ministry. And I would love to learn more about church planting And the very next week the Lord answered that prayer by giving me Brad, who was planting an EFCA church in Kalamazoo, and he was the speaker that week. We were the performers, so we were kind of administering together, and he got to know me a little bit and he just latched on to me.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: It’s almost like the Lord had told him, go find this guy. And I sort of became a bit of a Timothy to him. And he invited Rachel and I to be two of the first eight people to plant this EFCA church in Kalamazoo. And I got to tell you, I, I didn’t know anything about the EFCA. Then I started to research it a little bit. And I realized that this is very much a theological home for me. And that really is what, what caused me to, to latch onto the EFCA because it is so sound and so committed to the core doctrines of the gospel and as unwilling to compromise on any of those things. In fact, as as other denominations have begun to fall away or to compromise in areas and become more vanilla, or even trend toward the heretical in their sort of trajectory in the United States, the EFCA has done the opposite. It’s made changes, but it’s to be more clear, more orthodox, more committed to the gospel. And I just enjoyed being part of that so much because at the same time, they’re doing that, they’re also holding the secondary issues more lightly and allowing for an intramural discussion within the denomination. So I started discovering that as a, as a young man in a church plant in Kalamazoo, Cherry Creek Community Church, it still exists today, still going strong. And we got to be part of the first group to do that. So that’s kind of how I stumbled into it. The Lord just sort of opened the door for me to be part of it through a mentor. How about you? How’d you end up in this?

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, this.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Crazy.

Pastor Brian Martin: Thing. So growing up as a kid, I was a part of a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church. Little Lutheran church. And we had an awesome pastor. He’s a great guy. He still lives in town and my parents still interact with him. Oh, cool. Yeah. Which is fun. And then, um, but, uh, this amazing little part of my story is, um, my sister took confirmation. She’s four years older than me, three years older than me. And, um, just a confirmation. And at the end of it, they said, well, you know, the whole point of confirmation here is like, you get to own your faith now. And so she came home and said to my parents, well, they told me, I get to decide. So I don’t want to go here anymore.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, right. Wow.

Pastor Brian Martin: And my parents made a really shrewd move actually. They said, well, no, but how about you get involved in talking with us about where you would be interested in going to church.

Pastor Brian Martin: Smart looking. I mean, at the time I had no appreciation for it as a parent. Now I was like, that was a good move.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. How old was she when she did this?

Pastor Brian Martin: Eighth grader.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. So, um, so there was this new church in our town, and some of her friends went there and they were excited. So we started going there and it was called green Bay Community Church. It grew out of the Willow Creek movement and and that’s where I ended up and that’s where I got saved. And so I, I, uh, I was a part of sort of that early, you know, Willow movement. Um, that really did a lot to bring people into the kingdom, which is wonderful. Um, you know, indirectly, not directly at Willow, but in any case. And so that was kind of my background. That’s where I had my first job, um, and all these things. And so, uh, yeah, I didn’t hit the EFCA. Then I ended up working at a covenant church a little bit later down the line. And while I was there, I went to seminary. So I did not have, I kind of, you know, you did, you did school right away.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The normal I didn’t know, I don’t know how normal that is anymore, but I did it all up front, that’s for sure.

Pastor Brian Martin: So I had been working as a pastor for years and then went to seminary. And while I was in seminary, I was really kind of, you know, sharpening my beliefs and my theology and I didn’t try to end up as the EFCA, as my bullseye. I just did.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: It just happened.

Pastor Brian Martin: It just happened. I just felt like I was seeking truth. I was trying to figure out what do I actually believe about this? Um, and, uh, and I just kind of ended up in all of these sort of places that I didn’t know had a one location.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Sure.

Pastor Brian Martin: And then I needed to start looking for a job. And I was drawn to these three churches. And one of them was Calvary, which very clearly has Evangelical Free Church in its name.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Of course.

Pastor Brian Martin: The other two didn’t.

Pastor Brian Martin: And, um, but they were free churches and I didn’t know that initially. And I was like, well, this is something the, all three of the churches I’m interested in working with, all are the same denomination. That tells me something. And I realized I was, I was home basically, and that it lined up with my convictions better. So it was kind of a circuitous way to get there.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: But I think it’s really a good thing when a person, a follower of Jesus, finds their sort of theological home and the movement that they’re most comfortable in. There are good denominations, lots of them. Lots and lots of good denominations. But when you find that, I think it’s important to, uh, to, you know, to not resist that, but to pour yourself into it. I for a short time, my entire, uh, ministry path career, if you want to call it that, uh, my entire time in ministry from cornerstone forward has been in the EFCA with the exception of one five and a half year stretch. And, uh, it’s interesting because I mean, when I say that, I mean, I went to, I went to cornerstone, which is not a EFCA, but then I went to EFCA church planting. Then I went to Trinity, the seminary, the EFCA Seminary. Then I planted out of Trinity, uh, an EFCA church. Right. And then for five and a half years, I was outside the denomination and I realized, wow, you know, God is doing different things through these different denominations. But I realized that this wasn’t sort of the theological wave I wanted to ride in this other denomination.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: There was just there were so many differences, um, in my opinion, uh, and in my reading of Scripture, some weaknesses that I felt were compromises, things that I didn’t want to be part of. And I realized, you know, you don’t know what you got til it’s gone. I realized how strong the EFCA is by comparison with my other, uh, my other experience. And so when I, when the Lord blessed me to be able to come back into the EFCA and be a church planter in Detroit, it was like coming home. It had this feeling of, wow, now I don’t have to sort of question sort of the theological underpinnings of the movement I’m in. I can just stand on those and do great ministry. And, you know, it would be it would be very difficult, I think, at this point for me to make a change, um, to go outside of the EFCA because I do, I do believe it’s just that strong. By the way, the EFCA did not pay for this endorsement. Uh, we received no funding. None from the EFCA.

Pastor Brian Martin: They don’t.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Have these. Yeah, that’s a good point. Actually, that’s a good point. Yeah. But no, I very much feel at home here.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. You know, and I, um, I get to talk to our graduating seniors each year about, uh, you know, a lot of them are going somewhere else. And so we talk about how to find a church. It’s one of the active conversations we have, which is really interesting. And we do talk about denominations. And I think, um, they’re important because they’re an anchor point. And yet I, one of the things we always talk about too is like, but every church is unique. Every leader is unique. Yes. And you need to go in and be thoughtful about, um, about those things, you know, it’s not, um, in any case, and that goes both ways, both in EFCA churches and non EFCA. You know, we’re not, we’re not anti every other kind of church. Of course not. We, we believe we have unity with anybody who follows Jesus. That’s right. At the end of the day. And so, um, what does that look like? You know, it gets played out in different ways, but that’s really the important piece.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yes, absolutely. And I think I do think it’s a good starting spot. You know, when I have a son that’s going to be going to college here very shortly, you know he’s got senior year and then we’re off and we’re looking at colleges now. When I go to these towns, I look to see what the churches are in that town. What do they have there? And they’ve got some great churches that are not part of our denomination. They’ve got some that are part of our denomination. I think it’s one of the pieces you might use to find a good church. Yeah, it could be a great starting spot, but not necessarily.

Pastor Brian Martin: It’s not the whole story.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, yeah, there’s more things to weigh in.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: For Sure.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. I this countercultural idea, but I’ve actually talked to our students before about, um, you know, what we tend to do, the American journey tends to be I find somewhere to work and then I hope to find a good church near there. Yeah. And there’s a part of me that thinks that’s backwards.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Maybe it’s opposite.

Pastor Brian Martin: You know, which isn’t to say there aren’t good churches in lots of places. Sure there are, but shouldn’t we maybe find a great church and then see if we can find employment?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Maybe it’s not a solid one two. Maybe it’s more of a like A1A1B kind of situation.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, that’s probably better said. Yeah. Well, um, interesting stuff for sure. Just to consider all of this, but let’s, let’s turn to what we heard from Brian this weekend. Um, we talked a good bit about covenants this weekend, which I think is a very interesting topic. So, um, every covenant in scripture has, uh, has blood. It’s a weird thing to talk about, but it’s true. There is some kind of death. You know, we look at the Abrahamic covenant and we see the, the animals cut in half that Abraham has to walk through, for example. But every single one has blood. So why is that, do you think? Why does a covenant have to have blood? What is it that God is trying to communicate? I mean, we have to be careful to speculate about what God is thinking. But yeah, there’s also a reason why it’s there, I think.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. You know, I, I’m not sure that I’m able to weigh in right now on all the reasons why that would be the case. It was the way you would. I mean, with Abraham walking through the pieces you would normally go through with the person you’re making a covenant with. And it was a way of communicating that. Uh, we have this contract together in a way. In a sense, we are committed to one another. And if we were to break this contract, we would be like these animals, right? And so there was an establishing of it. Um, uh, certainly the Hebrews writer is saying that the, the death has to take place before the will can be given, right? So the, the, the inheritance, um, he’s pointing to the death of Jesus, uh, as the, the step that is necessary for the sons and daughters to receive their inheritance. Uh, I think that the blood imagery probably has a little bit of a different, uh, view based on what it is you’re looking at in the sacrificial system in the Old Testament. Uh, it was clear death was necessary to cover sin in that covenant, right? For the forgiveness of sin.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: And that was then being taught over and over and over again. Your sin matters. Your sin is is not light. It requires death. Yeah. And of course, that’s the beauty of the Hebrews writers. He comes along and says, the death of bulls and goats could never cover human sins, and that we would need a human to, to step in place to be the, the embodied sacrifice for us, which is why we need Jesus blood in that in that covenant to establish this new, forgiven, established relationship with God again. Um, so I think the blood probably as you, as you look at different passages of Scripture takes on shades of meaning. Um, now I guess you could always ask the prior question. This is where getting into the mind of God, why does a covenant require death. Uh, this is in the mystery of God. But I would have to say, from what I. What I can tell, it’s because of the seriousness of of the relationship, the seriousness of the, of the relationship that’s being established by the covenant and the promises kept promises of that covenant. Yeah. Um, but yeah, it’s a great question.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. It’s solemn. It’s serious. Uh, there is a price to be paid. And we see all of these things played out in the gospel. And so it is pointing us toward that certainly. Um, as well. But yeah, I’m sure there’s a lot more to dive into into that subject, but it’s a fascinating idea.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: And how profound then that God would not only be the maker of the covenant, but the fulfiller of the covenant, right? That he would be the one who would pay the price for the violation of our covenant that we violated. But he he pays the price. He sheds his blood, not us. Yep. That’s where the that’s where the beauty of the grace of the forgiveness of the gospel comes in is that in the rectifying of this broken relationship, God re-establishes a covenant by taking the price himself.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. And you reminded me of a fascinating conversation I had with an angry atheist once who basically said, why would you follow the God of the Bible? He’s a monster. I said, well, why do you say that? He said, well, when there was a problem, according to your mythology, uh, when there was a problem, he sent his own kid and he sacrificed. That’s child sacrifice. We would condemn that in any other thing. And I’m like, ah, see, this is where you don’t understand Trinitarian theology, that it is obviously biblical and right to say God sent his son. We see that phrase used in the New Testament. That is accurate, but it’s also right to your point to say, God sent himself. It was self-sacrifice. That’s right. And so if you don’t understand that, they are one. Yeah, I was actually like, that’s a pretty interesting argument that that guy made to me. And yet problematic because he doesn’t understand the whole story.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. If you don’t understand the biblical storyline, right, the redemptive history of it all. And if you have unorthodox views of who God is, the the Trinity, the Godhead, if you don’t understand that, then you’re going to get this wrong. And that’s what happens a lot, is that people get these things wrong. They end up in weird places. Last week, Jimmy talked about the cosmic child abuse phrase that gets.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yes, that’s right, bandied about.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Thrown around as if somehow. That’s a great argument. All it tells me is that you don’t read your Bible or you don’t read it well. Yeah. And so it’s important to have a more robust biblical theology so that you understand when Hebrews says these things, it’s talking about a triune God, and it’s rooted in the imagery of the Old Testament sacrificial system and how God is both the creator of that system and the fulfiller of that system in Jesus.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yep. There was always a plan.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Always a Plan.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. And it’s a really good plan. Yeah. So. Well, let’s shift gears just a little. Brian talked about the current sort of cultural idea. Although I’d argue it’s not a new idea, but how? If you’re on my side, you’re a good guy. Oh, yeah. Right. And if you’re on the other side, you’re a bad guy. And that’s sort of how we see this. And he argued that this us and them idea is, you know, unbiblical. And the reason why, of course, is because biblically there aren’t any good people.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah, we’re all the bad guy, right?

Pastor Brian Martin: So, that leads to the question. So the question is, what’s the importance of the idea of total depravity for theological understanding, both of how to read the Bible well and how to understand humanity and culture? Like, why do we need to understand this idea of depravity in order to understand those things?

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Yeah. Well, if you get your anthropology wrong, if you get your understanding of what a human being is wrong, you’re going to end up in a wrong spot when it comes to what you think salvation ought to look like. Uh, I often I enjoy saying that. What I find in culture when I consider the the the anthropology of culture, what I hear people talking about, what a human being is, that we tend not to have a high enough or low enough view of ourselves that when you listen to the culture, you say they don’t have a high enough view of a human being. They also don’t have a low enough view of a human being. Yeah. If you talk to people, uh, outside of a biblical worldview, oftentimes what they’ll give you is some form of the argument that we are highly developed animals, right? That that’s what humans are. We’re sentient, highly developed animals who need to relate to our creation and to each other in ways that bring about flourishing in some way. But we’re really not more than that. Uh, there’s a yes, there’s a morality, but the morality is really just there to, uh, try to keep the order. We create laws that we think are the best, but may not be the best to just try to keep order and sort of encourage human flourishing. But we’re really just it’s just human beings in a creation that’s really all that we are. Or human beings in a, in a natural world, I won’t say creation that would imply a creator.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Uh, so, but, but that’s really what we are. And you go, oh, you mean in that context of just random, chaotic, uh, humanity, I have to somehow conjure up a purpose and reason for living and going on. I have to give myself value or try to find my value in other people, giving me value and happiness. Well you misunderstand. See, if you understood that there was a Creator God, you’d realize that he made you for a purpose, that he made you for worship. That there is a way to have true joy, and that true joy is found in worshiping your Creator God, and that he made you for that. Yep, that’s the high view of the biblical humanity. But at the same time, culture doesn’t have a low enough view of itself because at the same time that it’s saying that we’re all just sort of, uh, highly developed sentient animals. It also says, and we’re basically good people, you know, we’re all basically good humans are, you know, you know, we should get back to our humanity. My hope or my trust in humanity. Sometimes what people say is broken because they see something wrong, but then they reestablish it, right? Because we’re all pretty good. There’s some bad apples out there, but if we could just weed out those people, we could somehow have a better society. Right? And and to your question, uh, they don’t understand just how broken everyone is.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: I mean, we are all very, very broken and lost. And most of that brokenness is because we have rejected our creator. Back to the first part, right? The fall into sin is I take the purpose for which God made me. I reject that purpose. I give myself another purpose to serve another God. And everything in my life is affected by that. And this is where this is. This is where we end up in the theology of total depravity that we are completely, uh, skewed, marred in every way that we think about everything. Not that we are as bad as we could possibly be, because certainly that’s not the case, but that everything we do is an attempt to serve ourselves and to serve the gods that we make in our own image, as opposed to the God who created us. And so if we embrace the fact that we were made for this incredible purpose, we have this value, this image of God stamped on us. We are incredibly valuable, but at the same time, we are hopelessly lost and broken in every aspect of our lives because we rejected that God. Now we have the right biblical anthropology to understand what salvation really is. Yeah. And, uh, and that’s, that’s one of the most beautiful things about being a follower of Jesus with a biblical worldview is it makes sense of of the world around us in a way that I haven’t found any place else.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Totally agree. Yeah. It’s an interesting it’s an interesting tension that I completely agree with what you said, that culture both has too high and too low of a view of itself.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: It’s, I would say not, not a high enough view and not a low enough. That’s where the culture is.

Pastor Brian Martin: Right.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Way to say it. And then we would say, yeah, hey, you know, fix it by placing it very you, you, you need to have a much higher view of yourself as this incredible creation and a much lower view of yourself as somehow this morally good thing. You’re not without the redemption that comes through Jesus.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. And that’s why we have to anchor ourselves in Scripture, because none of us are smart enough to figure that kind of stuff out on our own.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Nope, nope, nope. We never would. Never would. And frankly, even followers of Jesus, when we mess up, generally speaking, it’s because we’re forgetting this. We’re forgetting who we really are and how desperately we need Jesus. Um, because I can easily slip back into the. Most people are pretty good people. Some bad apples out there. Yeah, mostly pretty good. And, uh. Yeah. And then also, my life is for me. And I don’t have to necessarily live for Jesus. Like, when I’m sinning, it’s usually I’m failing in one of those two points.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. The idea of primary identity and where that comes from really matters.

Pastor Kyle Bushre: Absolutely.

Pastor Brian Martin: It really matters. Wow. I feel like that flew by. But we’re there. Wow. We’re there on time. All right. Uh, I appreciate it, Kyle. Thanks. Thanks for your time and perspective. And thanks everybody for listening. Um, yeah, thanks for joining us again on the Calvary callback. We hope this time was an encouragement to you and whether you are a part of our Calvary family or if you’re listening from somewhere else in the world, we invite you to join us on our mission to pursue passion for Christ and compassion for people. On behalf of Brian Ferrone and Kyle Buschre, I’m Brian Martin. We’ll see you next time on the Calvary Callback.