Sunday School 10:00-10:45
Worship 11:00
About Our Pastor
Rev. Austin Olive
Just some weirdo saved by Jesus
A little bit about me,
how I understand the Bible,
and why I think it's Good News.
About Me
It's amazing how God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
I am the proud husband of Jami, and father to two children: Kari and Benjamin. I am an 8th generation resident of Fayette County. I love this place, its people, and its history. Though I lived most of my life away from Fayette County, Fayette County has never been far from my heart. In 2020 we had the opportunity to come home, and giving thanks to God, we moved home and plan never to leave!
There's a lot of brokenness in my past, some of it my fault, some of it stuff that happened to me. My parents both died before I turned twenty, my father of HIV/AIDS from a bad blood transfusion and my mother from alcoholism three years later. Jesus found me as a college freshman at the University of Arizona in Tucson, majoring in History and Political Science. There I had the blessing to find a small, loving church there where I was discipled and taught to love the Lord. During my college years I was an active member in Campus Crusade for Christ, and was profoundly shaped by that as well. After college I trained for the ministry at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, MS, earning a Master of Divinity in 2001. I served churches in Colorado, Louisiana, Ohio, and Arizona.
But along the way I went through a lot of failure. I never adequately dealt with my unresolved brokenness from losing my parents, nor from the many wounds I suffered as a child. I thought that just getting saved and trying as hard as I could to be faithful to Jesus, to go into the ministry, and to serve others would somehow fix what was damaged in my heart. That misunderstanding led me to severe depression, overwork, developing PTSD, becoming an closeted alcoholic, to death (literally), and through a painful divorce.
I learned the hard way that true discipleship involves not only learning the Gospel and sound theology, but it also means taking that message back into the recesses of my heart and soul in order to address all of those broken places, no matter how painful that process might be. But by the grace of God, He never gave up on me. He gave me over to my sin, and then lifted me out of it. It was a hard, painful process, and it caused me to be out of active ministry for close to a decade. But along the way, He gave me more wonderful blessings that I could have ever asked or imagined. I've been given the most wonderful blessings: a wife who loves me and who is my best friend, two children of whom I am immensely proud and who are my other two best friends, a home in my favorite place on earth, and a career working as a Court Referral Officer, working with those struggling with drug and alcohol problems.
But I have also been given something I had very nearly despaired of having: the opportunity to once again serve the Lord and His people as a pastor. In what I can only describe as Divine Providence, the Lord led me to the Berry Methodist Church, and they asked me to serve as their minister. We weren't looking for each other, but the Lord led us together. Since accepting their call to serve this church, I have been so very thankful for these kind people who love Jesus and one another.
Today I can freely admit that I am a far, far worse sinner than I ever imagined. But in Christ, I am more loved, forgiven, and accepted than I ever dared hope. Thank You, Lord Jesus.
Where I'm Coming from Theologically
Full Disclosure:
Theologically, I'm "Reformed"
Why? Quite simply, I'm Reformed because I believe that it's Biblical. Over the last three decades of the study of Scripture, theology, history, and the human condition, I've grown ever more confident that Reformed theology, patterns of worship, and practices are true. But I've come to these conclusions not merely as a disinterested observer or as a student, but as a sinner desperately in need of the healing power of God. Having been through decades of sorrow, abandonment, addiction, and mental illness, I have found this old saying to be true:
It is not until Jesus is all that you have
that you know that Jesus is all that you need.
This is undoubtedly true. Were it not for the mercy and grace of God in Christ, I would have long since been dead – possibly at my own hand. And if I still lived, I would be a miserable, shattered shell of a man.
In the depths of my depression, sorrow, and brokenness, I found hope in Jesus. But because I am also intensely anxious and doubtful by nature, I had to have a theological structure, and pattern of life and worship, that could not merely act as a Band-Aid to my soul’s needs, but as a transformational renewal to give me life. I needed surety. I needed confidence. I needed a worldview – a holistic perspective that connected to and made sense of my life, my experiences, my insecurities, and my doubts. Above all, I needed the answer to these questions:
“How can a holy God love someone like me?”
And, “How can I be changed and made whole?”
As they say, you cannot give away what you don’t have. And as the old saying has it, spiritually we are at best one beggar showing other beggars where to find bread.
I'm Reformed because it is in this tradition I have found bread that satisfies my heart, mind, and soul. And I became a minister because I want nothing more than to share this bread with other beggars, that they too may be filled. The most important thing I can tell you is that it is through this way of living out the Christian life that I have found bread that satisfies. It is my hope that you too may share this banquet with me.
So what are the Nuts and Bolts?
If you had to boil all of the doctrines and positions of Reformed theology down to the nuts and bolts, a three-word sentence can define Reformed theology. Three words. Here they are:
God saves sinners.
That's it. All of the work of Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Knox, Owen, and all the rest can be boiled down to that. So what does that mean?
Well, the way to look at this is to read it to yourself aloud, each time emphasizing one of the words. That is: "God saves sinners." "God saves sinners." "God saves sinners."
What Does It Mean To Be Reformed?
Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms
But what does it mean to be "Reformed."
At the most basic level, the goal of the Reformed faith is to be as consistent with the Bible as possible. What we call the Reformed faith has roots in Christianity that go back to the very earliest days of the Church. St. Augustine (AD 354-430) is often cited as being the first to systematically explain what we today call the cardinal points our view of Scripture. Over the centuries, the Christian church began to drift from the foundational truths that are contained in Scripture; replacing some with traditions and with the wisdom of men. Beginning with a German monk named Martin Luther in 1517, a small number of Godly men began an effort to “reform” the church … to bring her back to where God wanted her to be all along! Beginning in the early 1500’s, a movement within the Western Christian Church began to grow that has been labeled “the Reformation”.
The central issue of the Reformation was this: On what basis are we saved from our sins? Who is it that saves us? Do we save ourselves? Do we work together with God to save ourselves? Does God wait for us to come to Him, and then help us along the way to reach a point of salvation? Can we lose our salvation? (Remember, if it is up to us, then this is a serious possibility!) What part does Jesus play in saving me, and what part (if any) do I play?
These questions and their answers led to a deep and fundamental split in the Western Christian Church. Those who fell on one side became known as the Reformers (out of which began to grow the various Protestant denominations). The others, who stayed with the Pope's views, form what we call today the Roman Catholic Church.
As the history of the Reformation unfolded, the leaders of that movement began to explore other questions and sought to think through and understand what God in the Bible has to say about other important and central themes of Christian knowledge such as: Who is God? Who is Christ? Who is man? What is man's problem? How did God in Christ resolve man's problem? How does Christ's work get applied to men and women? For whom did Christ die? What does God call His people to be? How shall we then live? These questions and others were addressed by these men in an attempt to explain to God's people (who had long been living in spiritual darkness in the Middle Ages) what the Bible actually said to them … and says to us as well!
The fruit of their work, along with the subsequent half-millennium of Bible study and reflection, is what we call the Reformed faith today.
First, we believe that the Bible shows that from first to last the work of salvation is up to God. He is the one who began the work of creation in the Garden, and He is the one who began the work of Re-creation in Christ. As we will see in a moment, because of the fundamental problem that men, women, boys, and girls all have, there is nothing that we can do to save ourselves. What's more, there is no reason why we would want to. And that is because deep down, we like our sins and we want to hold on to them.
But, because of the great love of God for us (why He loves us no one knows!), He sent His one and only Son, the man Jesus Christ, to be born like one of us, to die in the place of His people, and to rise again from the dead to prove that He had been victorious. As Jesus said as He died on that cross in Jerusalem, "It is finished" (Jn. 19:30). The work was done.
Now, that work was completed around the year 30 AD. This means that Jesus said, "It is finished," before you or I was ever born. Almost 2000 years ago He did it, once and for all, so that we could be sure that God had done it, and that there was nothing else left to do for us to fret over.
Second, we believe that the Bible reveals that God actually saves people, and that He saves them all the way. Some people think that God just made salvation possible for everybody while actually saving no one. They think that God made a way for us to be saved, but that you have to do the last little bit to bridge the gap that He left open—as though He did 99.99% of the work, and you just have to do the last 0.01% yourself. Usually people of this persuasion say that the 0.01% is your decision for God.
But the problem with that is that, as we saw above, Jesus said, "It is finished." He did it. He actually saved people when He died for them!
Now, some will pick at this and point out the bad news, saying that if He actually saved people, and not everyone is saved, then He didn’t save some. They will often then point out that this seems awfully neglectful or mean-spirited … or just plain unfair.
But this is actually Good News! And it is so because of this fact: if it is up to you or me, even a little bit, even 0.01%—heck, even 0.000000001%—then we will blow it. Plain and simple: we will blow it. So, if Jesus actually saved us, then we have just been told really good news, because He has done what we could never do!
Third, we believe that the Scriptures teach that God saves sinful people who can in no way save themselves. Jesus said that a tree yields fruit according to its nature (Matthew 7:17-20). A good tree gives good fruit, and an evil tree gives evil fruit. Similarly, we sin because we are sinners. We do the things that people like us do: we sin. And the Apostle Paul said that we sin because we are spiritually dead. Like the stench that a corpse gives off, we sin because we are dead in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1-2).
And because we are dead in our sins, we can't do anything to make ourselves better. A dead man can't heal himself of what caused his death, nor can he raise himself back up to life. If either of those things is to happen, someone else has to do it for him.
And that is what Jesus does for us. He is both God and the Son of God. And God saves sinners!
(For further study, we suggest spending some time reading Romans chapters 1-3 and Ephesians chapters 1-2.)