Nathan Nocchi (NN): Brother, I count this as a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with you. Can you introduce yourself to our readership?
Rob Golding (RG): It’s a pleasure, brother, to be sitting here with you via Zoom, though we are on opposite sides of the country. . . A little about me: I attended Biola University, a Christian liberal arts university in Southern California. I graduated in 2012, and then joined the US Army to be an officer in the Armor Corps. So I spent my time in tanks and other armored vehicles as a platoon leader, etc. I met my wife, Olivia, during this time. We now have three children, two biological and one adopted, with a fourth, biological, child on the way. After finishing my military service in 2018, I entered the Mdiv program at Westminster.
I graduated from Westminster in 2021 with a Mdiv, and I subsequently went straight into a solo pastorate in the Christian Reformed Church (CRC), which is essentially Dutch Presbyterian. The CRC broke off from the Reformed Church in America many years ago. I believe Cornelius Van Til and perhaps Geerhardus Vos were in the CRC for a time. Anyway, I have been at this church for a little over two years now. We have about 140 members; we are an older congregation with an average age of 59. We offer traditional Sunday morning service, a Sunday school for all ages, and then we return for evening service on the Lord’s Day. Our church is just next door to a senior living facility, which was started by the Christian Reformed churches in this area.
NN: This is the goal of seminary training, is it not: to prepare you to undertake gospel ministry for Christ and his church? Can you share about your transition from being an Mdiv student to a solo pastor?
RG: Absolutely! With regards to a full schedule, yes, the Lord has much for me to do. This is the first connection point with Westminster, namely that the curriculum is extremely rigorous. Anyone who has been at Westminster for longer than five minutes knows that the curriculum is both rigorous and well crafted. It is hard for me to describe how much of a benefit that course of study has been for me, especially in this solo pastor role. It trained me to think both deeply and quickly about God’s Word, which is essential to being a pastor in the world today. There’s always so much going on, and there are so many competing demands in a pastor’s schedule that if he doesn’t know how to think deeply about God’s word and engage it well, he’s going to flounder. One of the most helpful aspects of this curriculum has been the systematic theology classes. You and I had a lot of great conversations which usually revolved around systematic theology. There are many courses in systematic theology at Westminster, more than are offered at other seminaries. Let me put it this way. When I came to this church, I found myself preparing two sermons a week, in addition to all the other work a pastor does. And so, obviously, I didn’t have a whole lot of time. It is in this context that I found myself teaching through the Heidelberg Catechism in between our morning service and our evening service.
When I prepared to teach through the Heidelberg, everything that I read was incredibly familiar because it is systematic theology in nature and scope. Even though I did not have a lot of exposure to it, I did have deep training in the concepts that the catechism is describing. Because of that training at Westminster, I was able to teach a 30–45-minute class each Sunday without doing much preparatory work. This has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the seminary that trained me. They didn’t let me off easy, and now my ministry is made easier.
NN: Thinking about this principal activity of the pastor, namely the preaching and teaching ministry, let us think for a moment about the pulpit in our modern context. Our modern context is rife with worldviews and systems of thought that are diametrically opposed to the Christian worldview. Intellectual challenges are ultimately spiritual in nature. What are some of the recurring challenges that you are led to address in your preaching and teaching ministry?
RG: I believe the challenge that would come into the mind of 90% of people reading this is the LGBTQ+ movement. I have found that I have had to repeatedly address this. In fact, the sermon that I preached while a pastoral candidate attended to this challenge, at least in part. The LGBTQ+ challenge can be so divisive, and in my opinion, it’s much better to be upfront with your views on that rather than mislead people into thinking that you agree with them only to find out months later that you do not. This has been a topic that has been very relevant to our denomination, as most others. In 2022 an official report on sexuality was produced and voted on in the CRC. Thankfully, the conclusion was reached that the traditional view on human sexuality is, in fact, the biblical view.
The biblical view of human sexuality that society rails against is not strongly affirmed by cultural Christianity. In my area, God in his providence is eradicating this cultural Christianity to his glory. Pastors must preach that true Christianity is a demand to take up our crosses. Jesus Christ is not merely a supplement to our lives; he is our savior. This LGBTQ+ issue is actually very helpful in articulating this point. When a pastor preaches that we are born with original sin, and our only hope is in a Savior with whom we will be united, in such a way that he lives in us and we live in him, one can begin to glean that the transformation of the sinner is a total transformation. Like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5:17, we have been created anew. Of course, many will reject Christianity because of its rejection of current cultural norms regarding sexuality. But we must remember, this is the way Christianity works. We must be willing to sacrifice those things which culture deems to be central to our identity. Christianity teaches that we must die to ourselves and live to Christ.
NN: Anthropology, indeed, is at the center of these sorts of challenges. And, as I think about biblical anthropology, I am reminded of this issue’s theme: J. Gresham Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism. Have you found Machen particularly helpful as you think about this current challenge?
RG: Absolutely. I first read Christianity and Liberalism while I was in a Reformed Baptist church around 2016. The pastor of that church gave me a copy and told me that this work was written almost 100 years ago, but it is as relevant today as it ever was. I remember thinking that there was just no way. How could something about liberal theology written 100 years ago be relevant today? So many things have changed. When I sat down to read the book, I was just astounded by how prescient Machen was and how applicable it is today. You could note a number of ways in which that book is relevant today, but I think that the notion of a modified Christianity is the most relevant point.
Machen said that there is Christianity, and there is Liberalism. There is no Liberal Christianity. You are either a Christian or you are not. . . Taking this paradigm of clearly drawn lines of demarcation has really equipped me to do a lot. The first would be to recognize that fake Christianity is so prevalent in our country. I think of “public speakers” such as Joel Osteen or Stephen Furtick. These so-called representatives of Christianity are proclaiming something very different from Christianity. And Machen helps us see this clearly. The second thing is that Christianity and Liberalism has encouraged me to speak boldly about these salient differences. Consider, just for a moment, how bold Machen was when he penned this work . . . at that time! I know many have used this phrase as a pejorative, but I embrace it: “Machen’s warrior children.” I am burdened—as Jeremiah says, “there is this fire shut up in my bones”—to communicate that these false versions of Christianity, the health and wealth “gospels,” are simply not Christianity. You cannot put an adjective before Christianity. At the risk of being tautologous, Christianity is Christianity. These are at least two ways in which Christianity and Liberalism has been profoundly helpful to me.
NN: To borrow a quote from Samuel Rutherford: “Your heart is not the compass that Christ sails by.” Let us be Christians who, with renewed minds, seek those things which are above, measuring all our thoughts and our actions by God’s infallible word. As an alumnus, is there anything that you would like to say to the Westminster community?
RG: I would like to encourage the Westminster community to invest deeply in the seminary. I have taken classes at other seminaries, and I am genuinely concerned by the weak curricula. It is frightening to me, truly. They are supposed to be training the next generation of pastors, but the trends I see are in terms of being more “relevant” and how to empathize. As with many things, the pendulum often swings too far in the opposite direction. The church has had Bible-thumping fundamentalist (in the negative sense of the word) strains, and we need to recall Christ’s gentle and lowly demeanor. But today, I think we have the opposite problem. Most pastors are so gentle and lowly, they don’t know how to breathe out the fire of the gospel. When a seminary, as is the case with almost all of them, save Westminster, tells its Mdiv. students that learning the original languages is optional, it is focusing on being relational but at the cost of being scriptural. Tim Brindle was my admissions counselor in 2017, and he put it this way: “If your wife had to have brain surgery, would you want her going to the surgeon who went to a fly-by-night med school, or the one who went to the most rigorous school? How much more so when eternal souls are on the line?”
Our modern context needs pastors who are men of conviction, as John Currie would say, men with convictions, competencies, and character. So, I would encourage the community to keep investing in Westminster. I cannot even begin to articulate how much Westminster has blessed me and prepared me for the pastorate. Jesus Christ is the hope of the world, and I believe that Christ is using Westminster in a special way to bring the hope of his gospel to the world. When I look at American life and American Christianity, I feel very distressed. But when I think about what God’s doing at Westminster, it always encourages me because I know that there are men and women being trained to teach and proclaim the gospel in various contexts, and men who are being taught how to preach God’s word robustly, without capitulation. If America is going to repent of its ways, turning from its downward spiral into the abyss, it will be through men who fill pulpits with tears in their eyes and fire in their bones to preach the word of God, no matter the cost.
NN: Amen!
If you’d like to learn more about what Rob Golding is up to, you can check out his podcast for nominal Christians. “The Pastor and the Prodigal” is available on YouTube and wherever podcasts are distributed.