What I Wish They'd Told Me

About What I Wish They'd Told Me

What if the most important things about pastoral ministry are the things nobody tells you? What I Wish They'd Told Me is a podcast from New Geneva Academy hosted by Stephen Baker and Aaron Prelock, with conversations from pastors, church planters, theologians, and Christian leaders tackling the unfiltered questions every man in the pew has wondered about — and every pastor wishes he'd heard sooner.

Publisher

New Geneva Academy

Category

religion & spirituality · religion & spirituality

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

5 May 2026

Latest episode

28 Jul 2026

Latest episodes

12 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   28 Jul 2026

   Training Pastors

   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

2. 

   23 Jul 2026

   On Conflict

   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

3. 

   14 Jul 2026

   The Care of Souls

   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

4. 

   2 Jul 2026

   Ryan Denton - Dead Orthodoxy

   In our ninth episode, Stephen Baker and Aaron Prelock sit down with Ryan Denton, an evangelist in Vanguard Presbytery who wrote Dead Orthodoxy and Its Cure, which is what this conversation is about. You can have the confession and catechism down cold and nothing in the soul. You can trade the musty building for smoke machines and a slick twenty-five minutes and be just as dead. Ryan talks about why so much Reformed preaching has become lecturing, what the redemptive historical method loses when it drops the imperative, and why the Puritans were called painful preachers, men who aimed the word at the backslider, the formalist, the worn-out mother. Halfway through, Stephen reads the post Ryan took heat for. It ends with a prayer: Lord, help us to preach a felt Christ. 00:00 — Welcome; Ryan Denton joins from Lubbock 01:00 — Family, and church plants in Lubbock, Clovis, and Roswell 02:18 — A year of filling pulpits; twenty sermons in twenty-four days 06:55 — Vanguard Presbytery and the office of evangelist 09:31 — Out of the PCA: Vanguard's origins and distinctives 16:37 — Dead Orthodoxy and Its Cure: why Ryan wrote it 19:42 — Where apathy and formalism come from 22:24 — One ditch into another: Ian Murray and Luther 24:57 — Head and heart fused: experimental Christianity 26:44 — Books: Alexander, Guthrie, Scougal, Edwards 32:00 — Stephen reads the Facebook post 33:53 — Redemptive historical preaching and the missing imperative 38:31 — Painful preachers 40:55 — Apply early and often 43:30 — Law and gospel, antinomianism, and the New Testament's imperatives 47:42 — Preaching to different hearers: real truth to real people 53:31 — Preaching to the conscience: Thomas Boston, Nathan and David 59:16 — Emotions, stepped-on toes, and the preacher's own conscience Learn more about the Frontier Shepherds conference at newgenevaacademy.com

5. 

   24 Jun 2026

   Brian Croft - Pastoring the Pastors

   In our eighth episode, Aaron Prelock sits down with Brian Croft of Practical Shepherding to talk about what no seminary can hand a man: staying. Staying when the church wants you gone. Staying when no one will mentor you. Staying long enough that your body breaks before the church turns. Brian and Aaron talk about why wolves in sheep's clothing and wounded sheep look alike until you stay long enough to tell them apart, the lonely nature of pastoral work, having no category for shepherding as its own work, and how the celebrity preaching conference circuit can overlook faithful, ordinary work. 00:00 — Brian Croft, Practical Shepherding, and thirty years in ministry 02:03 — From the Christian music world to a call to pastor 04:38 — Why eighty percent of pastors don't last ten years 06:13 — Four pastors who refused to mentor him 09:35 — Taking a dying church at twenty-nine 14:17 — Three firing attempts, threats, and a body that shut down at thirty-four 15:10 — Year six: the church turns 18:37 — Haunted by Hebrews 13:17 19:41 — Wolves in sheep's clothing and wounded sheep act alike 22:24 — Every pastor needs an older pastor and a younger one 24:47 — The isolation of the pastorate 26:50 — Lament versus complaining 31:20 — How Practical Shepherding began 37:54 — The lost art of pastoral theology 43:43 — Content to be an ordinary, faithful shepherd 49:43 — "Show me the army" 53:14 — Stop measuring ministry by numbers and money Learn more about the Frontier Shepherds conference at newgenevaacademy.com

6. 

   16 Jun 2026

   Michael Clary - On Christian Courage

   In our seventh episode, Stephen Baker and Aaron Prelock sit down with Michael Clary to talk about the lesson eighteen years of ministry kept pressing on him: courage. The courage to preach Genesis 19 as it stands. The courage to father a congregation and preach the sharp truths of God's word rather than simply befriend it. The courage to keep a clean conscience while half his church walked out. They talk about the winsomeness he built a ministry on and later repented of, the liberalism that signs every formal confession but fights for the heartbeat of none of it, and why conscientious men bury their gifts for fear of a God they take to be a harsh taskmaster." Pastor Clary will be speaking at the Frontier Shepherds conference. Learn more at newgenevaacademy.com 00:08 — Introductions: Michael Clary, Cincinnati, and the Frontier Shepherds Conference 00:58 — Planting in 2010: inner-city Cincinnati to a building in Northern Kentucky 03:30 — Seminary at Southern, and a love for the Old Testament 05:37 — Crew, parachurch ministry, and learning the church is plan A 09:00 — Why Cincinnati, and meeting Michael Foster 12:42 — Three eras of ministry, and the turn from a neutral world to a negative one 16:16 — Preaching Genesis 19, and the backlash that followed 17:41 — Sitting with Tim Bayly: be the father of this congregation 19:20 — The 2022 split that cut the church in half 22:06 — Holding the church together with a clean conscience 24:58 — Courage as the one indispensable lesson 27:09 — The new liberalism: ethical, not doctrinal 28:57 — What Young, Restless, Reformed got right, and where it went off the rails 31:22 — Intellectual respectability, and Iain Murray's Evangelicalism Divided 36:56 — The September conference, and the problem of fragmentation 41:23 — Loser Theology: piety shrunk to inner-heart religion 47:00 — The parable of the talents and the buried gold 53:34 — The fear of a slave versus the fear of a son

7. 

   11 Jun 2026

   Andy Constable - Ministry In The Schemes

   In our sixth episode, Stephen Baker and Aaron Prelock sit down with Andy Constable, pastor of Niddrie Community Church in Edinburgh and a Frontier Shepherds speaker, to talk about the schemes, Scotland's poorest communities. Scotland has healthy churches in its richer areas, but in the schemes the churches are dead or dying, and Christians are too comfortable to move. Andy tells how a London student ended up under Mez McConnell at a church with, from a student's perspective, nothing to offer, and how Niddrie holds word and deed together without sliding into pietism or the social gospel. Fruit comes slowly there: a woman thrown out of the kids' club came back twenty years later and was saved. A line from Andy's new book on addiction surfaces near the end: behind every single smile is a story of wicked rebellion. Learn more about the Frontier Shepherds conference at newgenevaacademy.com 00:00 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng) - Introducing Andy Constable 00:46 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=46s) - Ministry this time of year: the church weekend away 02:05 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=125s) - Niddrie Community Church: a century of gospel presence in a scheme 03:11 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=191s) - The UK class system and working-class ministry 06:43 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=403s) - From London to Edinburgh 07:16 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=436s) - Meeting Mez McConnell and a church with nothing to offer 12:21 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=741s) - Word and deed: avoiding pietism and the social gospel 17:28 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=1048s) - The long game: a conversion twenty years in the making 19:55 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=1195s) - From intern to pastor: Mez's training model 22:45 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=1365s) - A training church: indigenous converts, three plants 26:50 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=1610s) - Christians too comfortable to move 27:46 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=1666s) - 20 Schemes: 18 churches in 13 years 31:30 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=1890s) - Whole-life discipleship at Niddrie 36:29 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=2189s) - Loving people, not just books 39:24 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=2364s) - Addiction and the Local Church 43:57 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=2637s) - "Behind every single smile": respectable and unrespectable sins 48:14 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=2894s) - The Ragged School of Theology 52:09 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V50uexSwHng&t=3129s) - Frontier Shepherds this September

8. 

   2 Jun 2026

   Jake Mentzel - Church Planting & Godly Ambition

   In our fifth episode, Stephen Baker and Aaron Prelock sit down with Jake Menzel of Church of the King in Evansville to talk about the word Reformed men are afraid of: ambition. Ambition they've been trained to distrust. Ambition that draws on the Father's pleasure instead of earning it. Ambition for a man's sons and grandsons, and the church he's been given. Jake, Stephen, and Aaron talk through why a man who won't believe his sanctification has not believed his justification, why Reformed devotion becomes a contest over who feels worst about himself, and why feeling bad is not the same as repenting. Or, as Jake puts it: before you die, let the world see the best you that you knew how to become. 00:00 — Meet Jake Menzel and the Frontier Shepherds conference 01:46 — Why Evansville is a hard place to plant a church 07:10 — Why plant here at all: "God was calling me home to my people" 09:24 — Coming back to the Lord at 17, then off to IU 12:04 — Trial by fire at a secular university; charisma that outruns character 14:55 — Three years at NGA and seven years of campus ministry 16:51 — Godly ambition and how young men have changed in twenty years 22:24 — Bloomington vs. Evansville; when a church never grows past campus ministry 28:46 — A hard demographic shift and the cost of defining who you are 32:46 — How do you fuel ambition without burning out? 34:32 — The baptism of Jesus: the Father pleased before the Son has done a thing 36:22 — Haddon and the center-field fence 39:39 — If you don't believe in sanctification, you don't believe in justification 42:03 — The feedback loop of self-loathing — and why it isn't the gospel 45:39 — Godly ambition rooted in the fatherhood of God 49:43 — The little-league coach who can't let his son fail 53:47 — Better or bitter 56:41 — The smallest, most fearless kid on the team 1:00:36 — Ambition for growth, not greatness

9. 

   26 May 2026

   Books That Shaped Us

   In our fourth episode, Stephen Baker and Aaron Prelock take turns naming the five books each of them would call life-changing. Books worn through. Books read more than once. Books given away, replaced, and underlined cover to cover. Aaron and Stephen talk about why the relationship between justification and sanctification keeps surfacing in the books that mattered most to them, why good fiction belongs on a pastor's nightstand, and why the man who only reads what was assigned to him in seminary has already stopped growing. Reading is good for the soul. 0:00 — Introduction 2:50 — The format: five books each 3:00 — Aaron: Eugene Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor 7:10 — Stephen: John Piper, Desiring God 11:30 — Aaron: Mark Dever and Paul Alexander, The Deliberate Church 16:30 — Stephen: Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life 22:30 — Stephen: Horatius Bonar, God's Way of Peace and God's Way of Holiness 25:30 — A cheat: Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment 27:30 — Stephen: C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength 34:45 — Aaron: J.C. Ryle, Holiness 38:30 — Stephen: Ian Murray, Revival and Revivalism and Evangelicalism Divided 46:10 — Aaron: Edward Fisher and Thomas Boston, The Marrow of Modern Divinity 49:00 — Stephen: Edith Schaeffer, L'Abri 56:30 — Aaron: Harold Senkbeil, The Care of Souls 1:00:00 — An exhortation to read 1:02:30 — Refuge or retreat

10. 

    19 May 2026

    The Mess

    In our third episode, Stephen Baker and Aaron Prelock sit down to talk about the part of ministry that many traditional seminary programs simply cannot simulate: the mess. Theological mess. Historical mess. The mess of sinners and the mess we ourselves bring to the work. Aaron and Stephen talk about why so many young men set out to be the pastor whose church will not have these problems, why preaching and pastoral care cannot be split apart, and why the "clean machine" expectation — that Christians do not sin and good pastors do not either — quietly shuts down the work of sanctification it claims to protect. An old line surfaces near the end: a pastor should smell like his sheep. 0:00 — Introduction 1:30 — What do we mean by "the mess"? 4:15 — Church history is not historical reenactment 7:00 — The young pastor with stars in his eyes 10:45 — Theoretical theology vs. practical theology 13:30 — Leviticus 16 and the linen robe 17:00 — Hospital waiting rooms and Job's counselors 22:00 — Preaching is pastoral care 27:30 — Over-correcting and damned with faint praise 33:00 — Where do you go when you realize you need to grow? 37:00 — Owen, self-knowledge, and the wounded healer 41:30 — The expectation that Christians do not sin 46:00 — Sexual sin, abuse, and the "clean machine" church 51:00 — The hazmat suit: justification before sanctification 56:00 — A pastor should smell like his sheep 1:00:00 — Hospitality, marriage, and the witness of small mercies

11. 

    12 May 2026

    Meet Stephen Baker

    In our second episode, Aaron Prelock turns the tables on Stephen Baker, Dean of New Geneva Academy and associate pastor at Trinity Reformed Church in Bloomington, Indiana. Stephen shares how he went from a small-town Indiana home to a dramatic high school conversion, from a teepee in the woods to a pastors college in Bloomington. Along the way: marriage, ministry under Ted Tripp, a failed church plant in Milwaukee, a closed door to the mission field, and what led him to Trinity Reformed Church. This conversation covers how he got here, what shaped him, and what he wishes someone had told him before he ever stepped into pastoring. 0:00 — Introduction 1:24 — Growing up in Indiana 4:24 — Conversion in high school 11:26 — Becoming Reformed 14:53 — Bible college 16:55 — Meeting Sebra 18:49 — Pennsylvania and Ted Tripp 24:36 — Marriage and early family life 28:15 — Seminary 30:47 — The Milwaukee church plant 36:54 — A closed door to the mission field 39:13 — The move to Bloomington 43:48 — New Geneva Academy is born 46:33 — Reconciliation 54:35 — On being Dean 1:01:27 — What I wish they'd told me

12. 

    5 May 2026

    Meet Aaron Prelock

    In our first episode, Stephen Baker sits down with Aaron Prelock, pastor of Bloomington Bible Church and the new president of New Geneva Academy. Aaron shares how he went from a big dispensational Baptist church to studying John Owen under a Norwegian Lutheran, from a Subaru factory floor to ten years of pastoral ministry in central London, and back to Bloomington, Indiana. This conversation covers how he got here, what shaped him, and what he wishes someone had told him before he ever stepped into a pastorate — especially about what it means for a pastor to be a shepherd and not just a counselor. https://www.newgenevaacademy.com/ 0:00 — Introduction 2:30 — Growing up in Lafayette, early faith 5:45 — The biblical counseling world: Adams, Powlison, Tripp 10:00 — Bible college and the church in Cedar Rapids 14:30 — Seminary and the shift toward Reformed theology 18:00 — The factory year 22:00 — Discovering John Owen 25:00 — Westminster London, PhD in Norway 30:00 — Ten years pastoring in London 35:00 — Coming back to Indiana, his father's death 38:00 — Becoming senior pastor at Bloomington Bible Church 42:00 — What brings joy in pastoral ministry 48:00 — What I wish they'd told me: shepherding vs. crisis counseling 55:00 — Getting involved with New Geneva Academy

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

4 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.