Tom’s family background was plagued by heartache. Tom’s dad, as a young boy, witnessed his father being shot dead while the two sat together on a wagon. The state then awarded Tom’s father and his two siblings to become indentured servants — slaves, in effect — who were chained in a farmer’s field to pick various crops. The oldest of three, Tom’s dad grew up to be a womanizer who drank heavily, while also teaching Sunday School.

Tom grew up embarrassed by his own father. Embittered that his dad served as deacon in their church, while living a life of moral failure, he harbored an angry distrust for pastors. Despite these struggles, Tom confessed Christ at age 8, due in part to the earnest prayers of his godly mother. Then, at age 16, Tom felt called to the ministry. Still struggling with a dislike for pastors, God slowly softened his heart and, in time, propelled him to not only become pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida, but to launch Founders Ministries.

Well, welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of scripture. And so Jason Dome, here we go again. We got Tom Aschol on the line to talk to us. Hey, Tom.

Hey, good to see you guys. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So Tom, You're one of the pastors at Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida. Been doing it a long time.

Founders Ministries, tremendous blessing to the Church for many, many years. God putting you guys on the firing line even more lately. Thank the Lord for that. I really, really appreciate what you guys are doing. But you know, we're here to hear the story of your life and the power of the gospel And working in your life.

And so we just wanted you to tell us the story of your life Well, you know, there's there's really nothing interesting about my life apart from the grace of God I'm the most unlikely person to be a follower of Jesus Christ that you can imagine. I mean, God just rescued me. I'm the son, or the grandson of a Muslim immigrant from Syria. And he came to the United States looking for a better life and as a boy grew up here and had a rough life. My he married a woman who was the product of a rape and she was not, you know, she struggled a lot.

And so that's out of my family. Never talked a lot about our background. So I just got bits and pieces of it. But my dad, when he was, I think it was eight or nine years old, was sitting on a wagon next to my grandfather and a man murdered him. The man shot him with a rifle outside of a window.

And yeah, there's the reading the news reports about it happened in Arkansas and I've actually read the newspaper reports. There was some question probably my grandfather was messing with this man's wife or something. But anyway, there's my dad, you know, he's the oldest of three. His father dies at his side by murder. And the courts gave my dad and his younger brother and their younger sister, the youngest of all of them, to a farmer to kind of stand in place of the state.

So he took them and he turned them into basically slaves, indentured servants. They were chained in fields and cotton fields and other crops and just had to work from sunup to sundown. When my dad turned 18, then he was able to legally gain his own freedom from this man and took his younger brother and sister in and they just tried to make a life. My uncle went into the military and actually died in the first broken arrow situation the United States Air Force ever had. He went down over Alaska somewhere off the coast.

The youngest of them, the sister, they're all dead now, but she was able to get married and have a pretty nice life. My dad married my mom. My mom came from a very strict Baptist background. And the story is that she married my dad somewhat out of spite because her dad would not let her go to college. She had a really good mind and for math, she wanted to go into mathematics or accounting and he wouldn't let her do that.

And so she went and got married to my dad. My dad made a profession of faith and they raised six children, I'm the youngest of six, in Baptist churches. I'm actually named, my middle name is from one of their pastors, a man that they knew in Louisiana when they lived there for a while. So my middle name Kennedy comes from Brother Kennedy, That's what I was told growing up. Never met that man, but my dad just had a lot of struggles.

I mean, people would today they'd say, well, Tom, you come from a dysfunctional family, and that's certainly one way to put it. You know, my dad struggled with alcohol. He was a womanizer. He had just a hard life. And I used to have a lot of anger and bitterness toward him and really hatred toward him for a lot of my years growing up.

I would remember just being embarrassed to have that kind of guy for a father and What made me even? Struggle more was he was a deacon in the Southern Baptist Church And he was my Sunday school teacher when I was in high school. Oh, my. And, you know, I'd have to, some of our, you know, I'm the youngest and my older kids, my older siblings had it more difficult than I did because he began to kind of not be so abusive when I was in my teen years, though he still was. But you know, I mean, he'd come in drunk Saturday night, we'd have to drag him in the house and he'd go to church Sunday morning, and he'd teach my Sunday school class.

And So I just had some real bitterness toward the church. I didn't trust pastors, you know, I mean, there's a lot of it and I was just bitter. I was really bitter. Well, when I was 16 years old, I sensed that God was calling me to be a pastor and I hated that. I mean, I wanted to be a lawyer.

But within about a week, my older brother, the brother that's closest to me, four years older, Bill, God called us both into the ministry. And I really thought it was a cruel joke. I mean, I just thought this cannot be happening to me. So I got called into the ministry. I got it saved me years earlier and I really did love and trust Jesus.

But I was, I was not thinking right at all this bitterness, all this anger unresolved in my life. And How old are you at this time? I'm 15, 16 years old. And so, you know, I remember sitting down with my mom and talking to her. She was the godliest woman I've known.

She prayed for me every day. I remember when I was a young boy, probably about eight or nine years old, walking into the living room one time, and she's on her knees in her house dress, just weeping, pleading with God. And it struck me, I thought, she really thinks somebody's listening. She's really talking to somebody. And that was a deep impression on my life.

And she was praying, you know, we'd have enough food to eat, and God would take care of us. And He did. He was so abundantly kind. But anyway, God called me into the ministry. The church asked me to preach.

I preached. My best friend was converted. I did that sermon. There were just lots of things going on that seemed to be a confirmation this is what God had for my life. So I still wasn't resolved to be a pastor, though I was being asked to preach as a teenager in different churches for different events, youth events mostly, and went to Texas A&M.

I got a scholarship and so that that was a place that seemed right for me to go. I was looking at a Baptist college, Washtenaw Baptist in Arkansas, and it was close to going there but I couldn't really afford it. So when I got the scholarship to A&M I went there and decided to major in sociology. I thought well I could become a sociologist or a social worker. That's almost like being a pastor.

God will probably be okay with that, you know, and was charting my course to try to help people without having to really become a pastor because I just I didn't like pastors. But my senior year again, and another wonderful odd providence of God, a church there in the area asked me to preach for them. And so, I did that two or three weeks in a row during the fall semester of my senior year at A&M. And after the third or fourth time, the key guy, a little country church outside of College Station in Texas, and he said, hey, we want you to be our pastor. And I thought, oh, this is crazy.

You know, this is nuts. Well, they were having a big Halloween deal that week on the 31st of October. So it was that night that I really says, okay, God, I'll do this. I don't know what else to do. And I had a contract on my desk back in my dorm room from a counseling, a youth counseling group that wanted to hire me upon graduation to go and do what they were calling stress wilderness backpacking with troubled kids.

And I loved it. I thought this is for me. This is what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life. But I threw that away and became the pastor of this little church. Graduated from college at Texas A&M.

I didn't know what to do. So I went to seminary. You know, I figured that's what I'll do. I kept pasturing this church on the weekend and went to seminary, got married, and I was driving back and forth to seminary at that time. I'd saved up some money from the scholarship and other jobs that I'd held when I could work.

And I spent all that money driving back and forth to College Station of the Passionate Church. When I got married, I didn't have any money. I'd spent all my savings. So I had to talk to the deacons. I said, you know, I don't know what to do.

I want to keep pastoring, but I can't afford it. So they agreed to pay me, I think I was making $40 a week at that time, and they agreed to pay more than that. And so I did that for another year. And then God called me to be an assistant pastor at a large church in Dallas. And it was during that time, really before I got married, I started seminary.

Tom Nettles was my first professor. And I didn't like pastors. I was really struggling with being one, figuring out what to do. I remember praying, God, if you're going to make me a pastor, I don't want to be a regular pastor. I just don't want to be a normal guy, you know, and I don't know what even what that means.

But I'd met with three different seminary professors to try to talk through my struggle. You know, God's calling me to be a pastor, I think, and I don't like pastors. And two of them just dismissed me outright. But the third one I talked to was Tom Nettles. And Tom said, Well, you know, there are a lot of pastors that are real problems.

They shouldn't be in the ministry. And I understand. I thought, wow, really? You get what I'm saying? And of course, I mean, he liked the other two.

They showed me that I was just full of arrogance and pride too, and I didn't see that for years, but God did humble me and I looked back with shame, how I judged men that I shouldn't have judged the way I did. The problem was my own. But Tom challenged my theology, and I began to realize I didn't know what I believed. And so I had to go back to Scripture, became assistant pastor at this church in Dallas, and that gave me time. I wasn't pressured to preach every week, and so I could study, you know, really dig in.

And Donna and I were engaged, and I began to tell her, you know what, I'm thinking God's sovereign and salvator. I think there's this doctrine of unconditional election might be true. And she thought I was crazy, so we almost called off our wedding. She thought, you know, this guy that I was engaged to is changed, he's a heretic. But the Lord resolved that.

And so we got married and I began to just grow more. How old are you? How old are you when that happened? I'm 22 now. 22, 23.

So we got married. I'm assistant pastor at this church, doing my MDiv at Southwestern. I'm growing the knowledge of Christ more and more. I'm loving the gospel, loving to preach now that I understand what I should be preaching, and just thanking God for all the opportunities He's given me. That's when Founders Ministry started.

It was 1982, 83. Ernie Reisinger came to campus at Southwestern. He's given away James Boyce's abstract systematic theology. Tom Nettles is my professor and he says, Hey, go go ask him to give you one. He's giving them to graduating students.

I'm a first year student. He said, well, just go tell him, you know, tell him your story. He might give you one. So I went, Ernie gave me one and he'd asked for some feedback on the book, so I wrote him a letter, and that letter endeared me to him. So when he decided to try to start a conference, he put me on the short list of men to invite.

And so seven of us met in a hotel in Ulysses, Texas, on a Saturday, spent the morning in prayer, crying out to God, what should we do? What do we do? We all believe these doctrines, but we don't know what to do. And then the afternoon we spent planning the first Founders Conference. That was 1983 when that conference was held.

So from there Founders Ministries emerged. And then the church where I was assistant pastor went through some challenges. And as a matter of integrity, I just felt compelled to resign, which I did. And I'm in my last, when I finished my MDiv, I didn't have anything else to do. So I applied for the PhD program and got accepted, which is amazing to me.

And so I started that. Well now, you know, fast forward a few years later, I'm 1986. I'm finishing up my last semester of seminar work and I resigned the church where I'd been full-time assistant pastor, and I don't have any, you know, source of income, and I'm thinking God's finished with me. I'm thinking, you know, all right, I'm just done with the ministry. I tried and it didn't work, And through some odd providences again, God connected me with His church in Florida.

They were three years old. They'd had two splits. The pastor that had founded them, they fired when he was out on vacation, and they couldn't get anybody to be their pastor. Imagine that. Yeah, imagine that.

Right. So, such a deal. Yeah. So I wound up just coming out here to visit Ernie. Ernie had retired here and I preached while I was just here visiting him.

And that night, the chairman of Deacon said, we want you to be our pastor. And I said, I don't know if I can be your member, much less pastor. So I read their documents on the way home. Ernie and I had worked on founder stuff when I was out here. And I read their documents and I wrote them a letter.

I said, look, I can't even be a member of your church. Thank you, but You require people to be a dispensationalist. I'm not. I've got dispensationalist friends, but I'm not one. And then the mechanism you have in place to fire pastors, I would never submit myself to.

It's not biblical. I just wouldn't live that way. So they had a business meeting, and they voted both of those things out. They decided that they weren't going to require you to be a dispensationalist, and they weren't going to do this to get rid of a pastor. They said, we've removed the obstacles.

Will you come be our pastor? So I'm thinking, well, that's good news, bad news, you know? I mean, good news, they want me. Bad news, you vote to change your doctoral statement at a business meeting. You just met a modern version of Pliable.

Pretty much, you know. So anyway, I have in my files a letter from one of the men they tried to get to be their pastor and he said, no self-respecting man will ever become pastor of this church. And of course, I did become their pastor. So what I tell people is they were a church nobody wanted. I was a pastor nobody wanted.

And it was just like a marriage made in heaven. So I've been here now, It's going on 35 years. Oh my, oh that's great. That's great. Yeah.

So when you were converted, tell us how that happened. Yeah, well, I was a young guy. I mean, my mom, again, she convinced me there's a God in heaven. She prayed for me every day. She read her Bible.

She was a Bible teacher of ladies. And I was just overwhelmed. One Sunday in church, I knew I was a sinner. I was eight years old and I just didn't know what to do about it. And so the church had an altar call process.

And so at the end of the sermon, and I'm weeping, and my mom says, you want to go down front and talk to the pastor? And I said, sure. So I went down, the pastor talked to me about being unconverted, needing to be converted, being lost, needing to be saved. And the best I knew how. And I just trusted Jesus right there.

And, you know, I've had doubts about that or I did early on. I actually, when I was in my early twenties, my theology is getting straightened out. I'm thinking, was I really converted then or not? Because I wasn't a disciple. Nobody stole my Bible, so it's nobody's fault but mine.

But I look back, and I could have wished for better help as a young convert. And I went back and taught Sunday school teachers and adults that knew me in the church. I said, you know, I'm really struggling. Do you think I was converted back then? And finally just resolved it to, you know, God, you know, you can save people and they're not as sanctified as we might wish we were, you know, at certain times.

To the best of my understanding, God saved me when I was eight, just convicting me of my own wickedness as a young boy. I mean, I was self-righteous, that was my deal. I didn't go out and murder anybody, but I was a self-righteous prig. And struggle with that, still do today, obviously, but during my teenage years, especially growing up, I just it was easy for me to look down on others while thinking myself better than others and yet going out and doing the same things everybody was doing, you know, I would just try to be slick about it and hide it. And God broke me over time and just humbled me, and you know, I look back and I mean, self-righteousness is just something that I will fight to the day I die, I'm sure.

Hey, let's go back to this. You're eight years old, and then you're 22 years old, and you're looking back and you're trying to figure this out. I can't tell you how many times I've been in this situation with people in our own church. Kids have grown up, and their hearts are toward the Lord, and things like that, and then they get older, and they say, well, was that real? That's what they say.

It's so proverbial. So talk to that kid. What would you tell them? The kid, you know, they think they became a Christian when they were young, but they're not sure. Yeah, well, the first thing I say, and I've had those conversations too, Scott, you know, and having to live through it myself, I think God did that to help prepare me.

Some of them is, number one, it doesn't, It's not nearly as important when you cross the river as it is to know what side you're on right now. Yeah, amen. So if you're trusting Christ right now, your opinion of your sin right now, praise God, because that's how we live. That's what Christianity is. We are repenters and believers.

So make sure that that's fundamental and no matter what you sort out as you look back over your experience, this is most important. Now, it's not completely unimportant, especially for those of us who are Baptists and think rightly about baptism for believers only, because that was the real struggle for me was, okay, was I baptized as a believer or was I, you know, something other than a believer? And I want to know. And where I resolved it is, okay, I want to understand. I investigated it probably for three or four years.

This was a struggle for me. And I finally just came down to, Lord, to the best of my knowledge, my understanding of how your grace works in sinners, and my understanding of what happened to me as a sinner, as a young boy, is that you very well could have saved me, and I believe you did. But if you show me that that's not true, I'm happy. I'm willing to be baptized as a believer now, at my old age even. This is still my testimony.

I'm willing to be baptized as a believer now. But to the best of my understanding, I believe I was converted because I know that God saves Christians, and Christians, of course, are not fully sanctified. We grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ, and Christians can be real Christians and backslide and commit all kind of sin. And that's one side of the complication in thinking through this. The other side is, unbelievers can go a long way looking like believers and yet not really be converted.

And so because of both of those things, we constantly have to be willing to open up our lives to the examination of God's Spirit by His Word and resolve, today I'm going to turn to sin and trust Jesus. I'm going to live like that the rest of my life. So it's not ultimately important. It's not completely unimportant, but make sure that you don't get just so hung up in trying to figure out when you cross the river, that that becomes more important than what side you're on right now. And make sure you're trusting Jesus right now, and just keep going forward.

Amen. Yeah, that's an ongoing discussion that I have with kids in our church. You know, their hearts are toward the Lord. They wonder if they were really saved when they were eight and you know So yeah, and I yeah You don't want them to base their salvation on an experience or the intensity of an emotion that they had at a moment You know salvation is not based on that. It's not based on your passion.

Right. Boy, if salvation was based on my passion, I'd be in big trouble. Yeah, I've never had a good passion. Yeah, but one of the things we do, it's helped me as a pastor, is to try to be really sensitive and intentional and careful in discipleship of children. Because I fully believe God can save children.

And we've got them in our congregation, those that have professed faith in Christ as children, that have grown up and they're flourishing believers today. But we wanna be careful with them, just like we wanna be with adults. But you have to deal with them as children. I mean, God doesn't put a 30-year-old head on a 10-year-old body. And so you gotta deal with them on the basis of which they understand the world and what they can take in, and yet still calling them to repentance and faith every day, and this is what a Christian's like, and this is how you must live.

So, yeah, but, you know, those are, on the one hand, It's a blessing to grow up in the church rather than to grow up in the world. On the other hand, there are challenges that go with that because there are some that they never know a time when they weren't trusting Jesus. That doesn't mean they came into the world trusting Jesus. I don't believe that. But praise God that they never knew a time when Jesus wasn't known and worshipped in their home and when they weren't Desiring Christ.

Well, praise the Lord. So our theology understands that too. That's my wife She can't remember a time where she didn't want to follow the Lord, you know Amen. Yeah So Tom, I read a lot of authors. I learned from them all, but a couple of them really refresh my soul.

Who do you read who refreshes your soul? Yeah. Well, man, I mean, that varies depending on what state my soul's in, because I love Lloyd-Jones. Lloyd-Jones would be at the top. Spurgeon would be at the top without any doubt.

I love J.C. Ryle. Octavius Winslow in terms of devotion is good. I'm reading through Newton's letters right now with my wife, and that's been really good for me. But having said all that, you know, I need a lot of Luther.

So I read Luther to get some steel in my backbone. You just want to be made to laugh. Is that what you need to laugh more? Be made to laugh. And I want to be made to feel not so bad about some of the hard thoughts that I have about people in these situations.

That's the trick. Okay. Yeah. Augustine, I love Augustine's confessions. That was very formative in my life as well.

Well Tom, what a blessing it is to hear your story and I pray the Lord uses it to warm people's hearts toward the beauty of his kingdom, how he rescues sinners in different ways and he brings them along the way. Isn't it wonderful that your family background is not the final determining factor of your life? It is. I mean, what a testimony of God's grace. I'm the youngest of six, and Two of them are with the Lord already, but all six of us are We walked with Christ, you know, my brothers are alive today.

They walk with Christ and That's that's God's grace. I mean the grandchildren of a Muslim an immigrant who was murdered with our father at his side as a boy. You know, I mean, it's just God's grace. And a praying mama. Amen.

Amen. Well, Tom, thank you so much. I'm really looking forward to being with you at our conference coming up here. That should be a real treat. And so we really, really appreciate your time.

Yeah. Thanks so much. Joy to be with you. Thank you. And thanks for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast.

We'll see you next time. God bless. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up. Hope you can join us.

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