Stephen Baker and Aaron Prelock close out the first season on the thing NGA exists to do, which is train men for ministry inside a local church instead of sending them off to a school somewhere. Both of them were trained that way. They talk about what it gave them: sitting in on elders' meetings, hearing real pastoral situations talked through by the men handling them, preaching a first sermon to a congregation that would tell them afterward how it went. A man who has only been in a classroom, they say, is like a doctor who has never held a scalpel. They're also honest about what their model costs, and Aaron warns against assuming NGA is the only place doing this well. He calls that Tigger syndrome. The wonderful thing about Tiggers is I'm the only one.

00:00 — What Aaron wishes he'd been told about conflict
02:21 — The marriage with no fighting in it
05:22 — Machen's warrior children and the swing away from conflict
11:38 — Jew and Greek: the conflict the apostles insisted on working through
13:58 — Luther at Worms, and the night of prayer before it
15:29 — Defining conflict: friction, from mild to disintegrating
18:30 — Battle mode at the seminary, battle mode at home
21:34 — Triaging the conflicts that aren't your fault
24:43 — Recovering backbone without losing gentleness
28:33 — Mark Dever on church discipline you've just learned
32:28 — Titus 1: certain men must be silenced
34:02 — If there's never conflict in the church, you're failing
39:23 — Students in elders' meetings, watching the mess
41:44 — The elder who raised his head over the parapet
44:49 — The sacraments and the freedom to have it out Thursday night
49:27 — Unanimity, uniformity, and unity
1:00:54 — Conflict-averse men, and the homes that made them
1:06:23 — Timothy's timidity, and Owen on grace changing nature
1:10:18 — Short-circuit conflict, short-circuit sanctification

Learn more about the Frontier Shepherds conference at newgenevaacademy.com

In our 11th episode, Aaron Prelock says he was taught a good deal about conflict, but all of it was about conflict that had already gone badly wrong. What nobody covered was the ordinary kind that gets people to that point: conflict between pastors, between elders, between the leadership and the congregation, and in his own heart on a Monday morning when he doesn't feel like being godly. He and Stephen Baker talk about how the reaction against Machen's warrior children left pastors afraid of conflict altogether, why an eldership that always votes unanimously has uniformity rather than unity, and what a senior pastor who never loses a vote teaches the men under him. The last thing they say is that you shouldn't fear conflict and shouldn't run toward it. You should sanctify it.

00:00 — What Aaron wishes he'd been told about conflict
02:21 — The marriage with no fighting in it
05:22 — Machen's warrior children and the swing away from conflict
11:38 — Jew and Greek: the conflict the apostles insisted on working through
13:58 — Luther at Worms, and the night of prayer before it
15:29 — Defining conflict: friction, from mild to disintegrating
18:30 — Battle mode at the seminary, battle mode at home
21:34 — Triaging the conflicts that aren't your fault
24:43 — Recovering backbone without losing gentleness
28:33 — Mark Dever on church discipline you've just learned
32:28 — Titus 1: certain men must be silenced
34:02 — If there's never conflict in the church, you're failing
39:23 — Students in elders' meetings, watching the mess
41:44 — The elder who raised his head over the parapet
44:49 — The sacraments and the freedom to have it out Thursday night
49:27 — Unanimity, uniformity, and unity
1:00:54 — Conflict-averse men, and the homes that made them
1:06:23 — Timothy's timidity, and Owen on grace changing nature
1:10:18 — Short-circuit conflict, short-circuit sanctification

Learn more about the Frontier Shepherds conference at newgenevaacademy.com

In our tenth episode, Stephen Baker and Aaron Prelock sit down to talk about counseling and what happened to the care of souls. Pastors did that work for centuries, Gregory the Great to Baxter, until Freud arrived, the experts took over, and pastors learned to say we don't go there. In the seventies Jay Adams burst on the scene like Moses with thunder and flame and beard. They talk about why Adams had a first-generation reformer's zeal and defects, why his movement split into a world better at theology and a world better at practice, and why the counseling centers became the new medical model he set out to fight, a certified professional class you trust instead of your pastor. Aaron finished seminary convinced there was nothing me and my Bible could not fix. Ministry taught him otherwise: some bones do not get fully healed, and there is always going to be a limp.

00:08 — What I wish they'd told me about counseling
01:48 — Pastoral care before the word: the Reformation and the Puritans
05:05 — Freud arrives and the church outsources the care of souls
07:51 — We don't go there: pastors from the 1950s to the 70s
08:24 — Jay Adams bursts on the scene
12:02 — Psychologists, the sworn enemies of guilt
14:10 — Baxter's Christian Directory
18:29 — The second generation: Welch's critique of Adams, Powlison
22:23 — Two worlds: NANC/ACBC and CCEF
24:31 — The first rule of biblical counseling: stop feeling
30:38 — Keller, idolatry of the heart, and losing the imperative
37:12 — Do you do counseling? What the word means now
38:40 — The counseling center as emergency room
41:18 — Trust the professionals, not the pastor
45:01 — Exegeting the Bible, exegeting the sheep
47:40 — Lives that will not change; some bones don't get fully healed
51:18 — The place of medication; wine for a dying man
57:42 — The psychosomatic whole
60:24 — Sanctifying mind, will, and affections
61:27 — Next time: training pastors in the church