Pastor Tom Askell identifies pragmatism, godless ideologies like critical race theory, and a pervasive fear of man as the three greatest threats to the Southern Baptist Convention. He argues that prioritizing worldly empathy over biblical authority creates a "social gospel without liberalism," making leaders vulnerable to manipulation by movements such as intersectionality and Black Lives Matter. While acknowledging the relational pain caused by this divide among figures like David Platt and Matt Chandler, Askell urges a return to a robust fear of God and supports Mike Stone's leadership to repudiate resolutions like Resolution 9 at the Nashville conference, asserting that true love requires truth even when it necessitates parting ways with those who compromise the gospel. [Automatically generated summary]
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Pastor Tom and Founders Ministries00:03:35
In this episode of Theology Applied, I asked Pastor Tom Askell, President of Founders Ministries, to explain what he sees as the three biggest threats currently facing the Southern Baptist Convention, as well as the ensuing battle for biblical faithfulness.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
All right, so I'm privileged to have as a special guest.
On this particular episode, Pastor Tom Askell.
Pastor Tom Askell is a local pastor in Florida.
He's also the president of Founders Ministries.
He serves both at the local church level and with Founders Ministries alongside Jared Longshore, who's a guest that we've had on this show in the past.
And so today, Tom, I want to talk to you about the SBC and some of the looming threats that you see kind of down the pipeline with the SBC and maybe some that are already upon it.
But before we get into it, could you just take a moment and introduce yourself to our listeners?
Who you are, what your ministry is about, just so they get a sense of who we're interviewing tonight.
Sure.
Well, I'm a local church pastor.
I pastor the Grace Baptist Church of Cape Coral, Florida.
I've been doing that for 35 years.
And before that, I was a pastor of a church in College Station, Texas, and then an assistant pastor of a church in Dallas, Texas.
I went to school at Texas AM and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Moved here with two kids, a two year old and six month old.
And now we've got six kids and 14 grandkids.
And we're just having a wonderful time.
God's been very kind to me in this church.
I also was a part of the original seven men that started Founders Ministries back in 1982.
So I've been involved with that.
I've been the president of that for, I don't know, a long time 20, 25 years, something like that.
And then we just this last December, December of 2020, we announced the opening of the Institute of Public Theology, which will begin classes, God willing, in a couple of months in the fall of 2021.
And I'm serving as a professor, founding faculty there, along with Bodie Balkum and Tom Nettles, and my co pastor, our associate pastor, Jared Longshore.
And I'm the president of that as well.
So I've been involved in those kind of things, but it all stems out of my role as pastor at Grace Baptist Church here in Cape Coral.
That's great.
Is Tom Nettles still on the board with founders, or has he transitioned?
No, he resigned off of that board in late 2019, but he's still very much active with us, writing and speaking for us.
And of course, being a founding faculty at At the Institute.
I mean, I was delighted about that to see him and Vodi and Jared and myself be able to come together in a vision that we share in common to get this Institute launched.
And I'm expecting some wonderful things to come out of it under God's blessing.
Praise God.
So I saw a trailer recently that you guys did, and not the infamous trailer of By What Standard, which was a fantastic documentary, by the way, really helpful, very clear, and informative.
And I like that trailer and I like it.
Chalk Knox and some of those guys who were a part of it.
But that said, you know, I know not everybody was a fan of that particular trailer, although I hope that they at least gave the documentary a try because I think that that was really helpful.
But there's a new trailer that I haven't seen it, but I've been hearing it because I listened to the podcast platform of The Sword and the Trowel.
Sticking to the Biblical Script00:15:00
What is that new project that you guys are rolling out?
It was like somebody was interviewing, Do you think women should be pastors?
And it was like, I can't comment on that.
You know, Saundervan or whatever, or Crossway.
Yeah, a lot.
A lot of that was Lifeway, but a lot of that was taken out of the documentary we did in 2019 by What Standard, as you said.
And that's gone literally around the world.
But we did that along with some fresh footage in order to promote this conference that we have coming up in Nashville.
Because the Southern MAPS Convention in 2019, the last time the annual meeting met in Birmingham, adopted a resolution at the very last minute, I mean, literally in the last four or five minutes of the convention, on critical race theory and intersectionality, calling them useful analytical tools.
And I spoke against it.
Friend Tom Buck spoke against it.
I offered some amendments to try to take some of the sting out of it and to help people to understand when we adopted, if we did, which it looked like we were going to, that there's really some bad stuff embedded in CRT and intersectionality.
But nevertheless, my amendments were rejected, but the resolution itself passed.
And so everybody's been talking about Resolution 9 since then.
I mean, even the people that voted for it, many of the people I've talked to folks and Some have come out publicly and said, You know, I have one friend of mine, he said, I got a PhD.
He said, I just trusted the committee.
He said, But I didn't know, I wasn't familiar with critical race theory intersectionality when this debate erupts at the last minute.
He said, But I trusted the committee, so I voted for the committee's recommendation.
And that was the case of a lot of people.
I would say, conservatively, there couldn't have been 10 to 15% of the people in the room that had any understanding at all of critical race theory intersectionality in 2019.
Right.
And it was radically different than it.
Sorry to interrupt, but it was radically different.
What was proposed in that convention was radically different than the original resolution.
So, Vodi Bakum, I know that you guys are friends, and so I'm sure you're aware, but I'm about two thirds through Fault Lines, his newest book, and I've been blessed by it.
And I love the chapter.
I just finished the chapter where he actually kind of puts up side by side, comparing and contrasting the original resolution, which was just overtly against CRT, and then the way that it got amended.
But it wasn't an amendment.
It was an entirely different resolution that was pro CRT as an analytical tool, right?
Like, you know, that, you know, we can use, you know, socialism as an analytical tool and it has nothing to do with Marxism.
And, you know, the idea that you can completely separate or divorce a tool that only operates on the premise of that there are the oppressed and the oppressors and, you know, all these different things.
And so, anyways, it was just funny to me to see what the original.
Resolution was going to be.
And then, correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the ways it was a last minute effort, but it was also, they tried to wrap it in a block, right?
Resolutions 9 through 13 to just vote as a block.
And I think I remember the footage of you down on the floor saying, no, no.
Is that right?
That's correct.
I was pleading with them, I was begging with them to not do that.
And fortunately, they did unbundle those last four or five resolutions and we dealt with them one by one.
But the resolutions committee has the authority.
To do whatever they want to with any resolution that's submitted to them.
They don't have to bring it out.
They can edit it.
They can rewrite it.
But what I thought was disingenuous in the way they handled Resolution 9 is they kept the original recommenders, the original submitters' name on the resolution.
They kept the original name of the resolution, but then they gutted it.
They completely changed it, as you said.
People on that committee and others who have asked us, I think it's disingenuous at best.
That's the best I can say.
It was a disingenuous move.
But as a result, Southern Baptists, along with everybody else in the nation now since 2020, have been talking about critical race theory and intersectionality, for which I'm very grateful.
You can hardly not have an opinion about these ideologies today.
So everybody's talking about Resolution 9, and I intend to work hard to see Resolution 9 rescinded at this convention and certainly a resolution adopted that will repudiate it.
But what we decided to do as founders is in the Monday before the Tuesday and Wednesday, which the SBC actually meets.
To hold a one day conference, which we've done in the past, but to build it around be it resolved.
And so our tagline is everybody's talking about resolution.
It's time to finally show some.
And so we've invited speakers to come in to address the issue of what does it mean to be a Christian with biblical resolve?
And we'll be looking at that from different angles.
So we got Tom Nettles and Mark Coppinger will be with us, James Pittman and Tom Buck, Jim Scott Orrick, who was dismissed from Southern Seminary last year.
Will be with us as well.
And James Pittman from Chicago, a pastor there, will be with us.
I think there's some others as well.
But anyway, it's going to be a great, great one day conference in Nashville.
So that's what that trailer was about the Be It Resolved conference coming up.
Got you.
And who is, I listened to, I know his first name's Mike, but the guy that you are with Founders endorsing as the potential next president of the SBC, what is his last name?
Yeah, Mike Stone.
And, you know, Founders isn't endorsing him.
We don't really do that, but I'm voting for him and I would encourage everybody to do it.
So, Well, it seemed like an endorsement.
You guys definitely seem very pro Mike Stone.
So, go ahead.
I think he's the best candidate.
I mean, you know, I don't know Randy Adams well, but I like the things Randy Adams says.
And if he became president, you know, I wouldn't be upset about it.
But he is a denominational servant.
And so, I don't think he's been a pastor.
If he hasn't been very long.
And then Al Moeller, you know, of course, Al's brilliant and he's been at Southern and done a good work there for a lot of years.
But he's not a pastor.
He had never really been a pastor except for a year or two when he was a liberal.
And, you know, he did what he did.
Advocated woman pastors when he was a pastor.
So I'm grateful he's not there anymore.
And then the other guy, Ed Litton, who is a pastor, I never met him, but he's a pastor who really promotes the woke agenda.
I mean, he's unashamed about that.
He came out and said he was against women preachers.
And then there's videos showing up about his wife and him preaching together.
And she says, This is our last sermon here at the church.
I mean, Mike Stone, on the other hand, is a straight shooter.
Mike and I disagree theologically on some things.
But man, we agree on so much and we agree on these issues that are confronting not just the convention, but the evangelical world and our nation and really the Western civilization right now.
And he sees them clearly and he's unapologetic in his repudiation of them.
And so I think we need a pastor like Mike Stone to step into the leadership of the convention today.
Well, yeah, I agree.
I like what you said on that particular podcast that it's, you know, it's, yes, he's got the courage, he's got the spine, he's going to be willing to stand up and actually say something.
But it's also, it is unique.
To the position of being a local pastor, that you have the experience of a pastor, the heart of a pastor, but also it's the fact that there's no hooks in you.
Right.
You know, that like that, because if you're making decisions as the president of the convention and you get your paycheck from that, you know, from one of those flagship seminaries or whatever it might be, let's attribute it, you know, charitably the best of intentions to those individuals.
But still, it just, I mean, I would be, I would have some temptation.
I would, you know, so no matter where you're at and how good of a man you are.
It's just you're still going to have an extra, an added measure of temptation to overcome, to not be biased, to not seek your long term security in your day job.
Because that, correct me if I'm wrong, but the presidency, it's two years, it's a short term.
Is that right?
Right.
Yeah, it's one year, but it's typically the second year is given kind of just pro forma.
And yeah, you're right about that.
But in addition, I want a man leading us who week by week is looking at people who are in the world.
And being chewed up and spit out if they're not being equipped to stand against the stuff that's coming in our churches today.
And I mean, we have it in our church.
I talked to Mike, he's got it in his church.
I mean, I don't know a pastor that's been involved very long in trying to address these issues that does not have people in their churches that are suffering because of these ideologies and people losing jobs, people losing promotions, people being kind of coerced out of positions.
And I want a man who has to shepherd a flock.
To stand before the SBC and say, brothers and sisters, this is the way we need to go.
This is the line that we cannot cross.
And we need a pastor to do that.
And I think Mike Stone is that pastor.
Great.
All right.
Well, let's just go ahead and get into that really kind of, you know, because we're already talking about looming threats and things that, you know, at least threat maybe, I don't know, maybe that's too big of a word, but at least concerns, things that you see here presently and things that could be coming in a fuller measure that would not be faithful to God's word for the SBC.
I'm so.
For myself, I'm Reformed Baptist.
We're Second London Baptist, 1689, to the T, Sabbatarian, all of that congregational and the congregational aspects and elder rule with the other things.
And so, like that elder led congregationalism.
And so, I know that, you know, I would get along great with founders, but I'm not actually a part of the SBC, but I care about the SBC because I care about Christianity and it makes up a massive portion of it.
So, I don't know how any evangelical couldn't be concerned about what God does with the SBC.
And so, that being said, this is an arbitrary number.
Three, it could be two, it could be four, it could be five, but what are the three biggest, give or take, threats that you see the SBC facing in the near future, the next two to five years?
Yeah, well, I do think that, let me start with what I think is the thing that got us into this mess, and it's pragmatism.
I think that we have operated pragmatically for so long that it's kind of become baked into the DNA.
Even with good people, even with people that affirm the inerrancy and sufficiency of scripture, even with people, I need to say that in many respects, some of them, they stand against CRT and intersectionality and these things.
They are opposed to what they see as this onslaught of neo Marxism and postmodernism in our culture and in our churches.
And yet, when you start engaging them and talking to them about practical theology and how the church should live and what Ministry should look like, and what true Christianity is, and what discipleship is,
and what pietism, true pietism is, you begin to find pretty quickly that underneath a lot of the things that they are proposing is a pragmatism that is not grounded in a world and life view that comes out of scripture.
And that is not taking the basics of the scripture seriously enough to apply them across the board.
Things like Genesis 1 1, that this is God's world, he rules the world.
Jesus Christ is king of everything.
He's Lord over all.
And we don't get to make it up as we go.
That's especially true in the church.
And I see that happening a lot.
I see brothers that love Jesus.
They love the Bible.
They preach the Bible, but then they come up with all kinds of ideas about this is a better way to do church.
And they've got, they got limits, but the limits are not put on them by conscientious application of biblical theology.
The limits are usually by some kind of intuition or, you know, other things that are kind of governing them.
So I think pragmatism is massive.
It's been that way.
I mean, it's been that's, that's kind of like Americana, you know, Americans are pragmatic and there's some value.
In that, we want to be practical.
We don't want to just be theoretical.
But pragmatism, when it becomes the overarching paradigm and the overarching ideology that makes our decisions for us, then we're in real trouble because at that point, we're losing, we're leaving what the Bible says about this is God's way and this is the way he's told us not to go.
So that's one.
So, real quick, so pragmatism is your first one.
And that really gets into just for our listeners, for them to know that gets into the regular principle and the normative principle of worship.
The normative principle.
Of worship basically says that we can do anything that God doesn't forbid in His Word in Scripture.
But whereas the regular principle, it's not saying regulative, meaning regular principle, but regulated, that God's Word, we're only going to do that which God prescribes.
So rather than just avoiding things that God doesn't forbid, it's sticking to the script.
And I think that's part of what you're saying, you know, Americans are pragmatic.
And I would say, I would add to that, I would say they're pragmatic.
And part of it is Americans, they tend to be creative.
And there's some good elements of that.
But American, that is that entrepreneurial, you know, sea to shining sea, pioneer type, you know, The American experiment, even that I were when yes, it is the American experiment, but really the American experiment is really just sticking to the script.
And so, we need the regular principle, especially on the Lord's day for worship, because God prescribes his ordinary means of grace, very specific things that the church does.
But then, we also broader than that, we really need Christians to begin to submit to the regular principle for all of Christian life, Monday through Saturday, that we're living in accordance with what God says.
And there just seem to be a lot of Christians, I completely agree with you, and a lot of pastors in particular, that at the end of the day, I think they just I don't know.
It seems like they just think that they have a better idea of how to do things in God.
Back to you.
Yeah, yeah.
And I'm a regulative principle guy too in worship.
And I've got friends that are not pragmatic.
And so I want to make a distinction there.
We have some fun conversations about those things, but they're trying to be biblical.
And so whenever you say following the regulative principle in life, well, the scripture doesn't talk about all of life the way it does talk about the corporate worship of God's people.
So I'm sure what you mean by that's what I would mean by it is that we need to be biblical.
We're not free to make it up.
And so, one of the lost doctrines of evangelicalism and the Reformed community has it, we should, but even in the Reformed community, I find that this is so often sublimated.
Avoiding Unjust Offense in Worship00:05:47
It's not given pride or praise like it ought to, is law and gospel that God has commanded what is right, what is wrong, and he has provided salvation for those who have broken what is right and what is wrong.
So, the law guides us, governs us, rules us.
The gospel saves us.
And when we are saved by the gospel, the law no longer, or the law doesn't get jettisoned away from us.
No, this is still God's revealed will.
And what God has commanded, we must do.
What he's forbidden, we must not do.
But what he has not commanded and not forbidden, well, then that breaks open this area of Christian liberty that we are to seek to live in accordance with the general principles of God's word, always operating in light of what is best, what is wise, and then finally, what will most glorify God.
And so, to be regulated by the scripture in our daily lives is going to look differently than in worship because, in worship, God has given us pretty specific things that we must do in worship.
And I'm satisfied with those things.
And we see both Old and New Testament things going really badly whenever folks begin to kind of make it up in terms of how they're going to go about worship and like the strange fire kind of thing.
Right.
You're right.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's a helpful distinction.
So, you're saying that you could be a normative principle guy.
And yet, still not be a pragmatist.
And you wanted to make that distinction.
I think that's helpful.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
And I've got one friend, and he's neither regulative nor normative, at least in his own understanding, how he approaches it.
And I forget the exact term he uses, but we've had some good conversations.
And I listen to him and I think, okay, I mean, I probably wouldn't do it exactly that way, but he's trying to be biblical.
He's trying to tie what he sees ought to be done in worship to scripture.
And man, if we can just start there, if we can just have that conversation.
That'll be miles down the road of where we are today in a lot of circles.
So pragmatism is number one.
And then arising out of that, I think this is why we've been so easily played by the neo Marxist postmodern agenda that's just come in like a flood over the last five years, and especially the last two years of critical race theory, intersectionality, critical theory at large.
This idea that the world is best understood in terms of the oppressor.
Oppressed categories, and that the most important thing about you is which one of those you're in or how many of those you are in, and your intersectional score being dependent upon the number of oppressive classes that you can lay claim to.
And whenever you're not grounded in the Word of God with a kind of a rock ribbed solidity, then somebody comes and says, Well, this is unjust.
You know, you're not being just if you don't think this, you don't say this, you don't do this.
Well, Christians, we want to be just.
And when they say, Well, you're not being loving, If you don't do this, and this is unloving, if you don't do this, well, you know, we're set up because of our kind of default mechanism to be sympathetic.
We're called upon to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
When our neighbors start telling us, look, you have offended me, you're hurting me, you're literally killing me, your words are violence to me.
Well, if you're not grounded in God's word, then you can hear that and you go, oh man, I didn't mean to do that.
You know, I'm sorry, help me to figure it out.
And a lot of Christians have been duped.
And in the process of exposing just how superficial their grounding is in thinking biblically.
And I'll just say it this bluntly that when somebody says, hey, you offended me, therefore you must apologize to me, not necessarily, not necessarily.
I want to repent over real sin, but if I've not sinned against you, you might still be offended.
Jesus offended people, people were offended at Jesus.
He never sinned, he didn't need to repent.
And now that doesn't mean that we have a A blank check to go around acting like a jerk and dismissing anything anybody would ever say to us by way of criticism.
But it does mean that every criticism and every complaint and every accusation needs to be brought to the Word of God.
And what's going on today in this woke agenda, this woke culture, is that people are being intimidated by these words like you're a misogynist or you're a racist.
That's all you are.
You're a racist.
You participate, you're complicit in this racist, uh, Way of living that we have been brought up in in the Western civilization, especially America.
And nobody wants to be called a racist.
Nobody wants to be called a misogynist.
And if you're going to let that affect you, then you're going to be intimidated into thinking and doing things that will wind up lead you away from God's word.
And as I've got my mind around this stuff the last few years, my response to those people boils down to this: nah, not true.
And you can accuse me of white fragility, but I don't care.
I don't care what your judgments are if your judgments are not based on the word of God.
If you're wanting to open the Bible, come to me and talk to me about concerns you have with me.
With an open Bible, let's have that conversation.
I'm for it every day, but don't come with all your presuppositions that are born out of a postmodern neo Marxist ideology and say, because of this, you need to own these accusations.
No, I don't.
I completely agree.
It reminds me, I think Doug Wilson has done some really good work on this and some great thoughts, but just the concept of establishing peace on a foundation of lies, using lies as the means towards the end of peace.
Peace Built on Lies00:15:15
And you know, he'll use as kind of like an illustration something that many people can associate with and understand.
He'll use a marriage and he'll talk about, you know, the proverbial husband who is tempted, um, to uh, with the nagging wife in this hypothetical situation.
Lots of wives are wonderful, but you know, in this hypothetical situation, a nagging wife and a really just kind of spineless, apathetic husband who's not washing his wife in the word, who's not leading her, and and so rather than.
Telling her the truth in the name of peacemaking, he tells her what she wants to hear, even though he knows that it is objectively untrue.
It's not in accordance with God's word, it's counter to God's word.
And so ultimately, what's happening is you're making peace by deception.
And, you know, it's a house of cards.
It's, you know, you can't build a house of peace on a foundation of deception.
And I think that's, I just saying this to say I agree with you.
I think that.
The goodwill of Christians is being preyed upon.
It's, you know, that sentiment of compassion.
And of course, the political left loves to use empathy, empathy, empathy, empathy.
But we do believe, regardless of where you're at with empathy and whether or not that's a Christian virtue or vice, we do believe in compassion.
Sympathy, sympathy comes from the word compassion in Scripture.
So we do believe in compassion.
It's a biblical principle.
Christians are commanded to exercise compassion.
Um, but we got to remember Proverbs, I think it's Proverbs 18 17.
The first person states his case, you know, and he's thought right until another one cross examines him.
And we've realized in our culture at large, and I've seen it play out in the church at local church levels, um, that the victim is determined by whoever gets there first in most cases, you know.
So it's whoever can run into the room first, whoever can run into the pastor's office first, whoever, I mean, and we can see this even in our homes as Christian men and fathers if we're not careful, you know.
Then, you know, whichever one of the kids comes in crying first, you know, and then if, you know, tears just, you know, you automatically win because you're upset, because you're crying without actually investigating the matter.
Because the reality is we're sinners.
I have cried tears of godly sorrow and I have cried tears of worldly sorrow, like Esau, who sought the blessing with tears, but not because he loved God.
And so just because someone's crying or because they're hurt doesn't mean that they should be hurt, doesn't mean that it's a righteous, Suffering or a righteous pain.
And that doesn't mean that we don't still love them and care for them, but the means of love, how we love, what kind of love that we offer.
Because sometimes the love that someone needs, even someone while hurting needs, is actually a loving correction.
And certainly, we want to be extra sympathetic and careful and gentle as we correct someone who's in pain.
But I think we've just truncated everything and oversimplified it so much to where if someone claims to be hurting, then we validate their feelings, whatever they are, in the name of peace.
But what we're doing is we're making peace by deception, and that's ultimately going to, that foundation is going to fracture.
And eventually, like Bodhi Bakken's book, Fault Lines, there's going to be a tectonic shift.
And I think that's.
Part of what we're seeing now.
Do you have any further thoughts on that?
Would you agree with that or push back?
No, absolutely.
No, yeah, you're exactly right about that.
And God, God is love, God defines love.
And so you don't get to define love and make it up.
And people can come and say, Well, you're not loving me or you, you were unloving to me.
Well, we need to, you know, not just laugh that off and dismiss it out of hand, but we need to make sure we're thinking biblically about it because love rejoices in the truth, 1 Corinthians 13 says.
So if If I say to you, hey, Joel, you know, man, you really hurt my feelings whenever you didn't wave at me the other day and you owe me an apology.
And if you want to apologize, you've created this great offense.
And so you need to repent and apologize to me or else we can't go forward and we're going to have this disruption in our relationship.
If you apologize to me and you can make peace, but as you said, it's peace built upon something that's not true or may not be true, or even if it is true, it's so.
Incidental for me to make an issue of it and to live that way, you're not helping me.
You're not helping me by just kind of patching it over.
It's, oh, you poor soul.
I'm so sorry.
I'll try not to do it again.
No, I mean, I'm a Christian.
My master was crucified.
I'm to take my cross every day.
And if I'm going to go around and let the fact that somebody doesn't wave at me offend me, or if I'm just going to go ahead and make the narrative in my head, see there, I knew Joel was a racist because, you know, and he didn't wave at me.
So that just proves it.
Well, there may be a thousand things that could explain all of that, even legitimate potential offenses.
And if you let me believe a lie and you then act on that, you're not loving me.
You're crippling me.
You're crippling me.
And I need to learn how to live by the grace of God in Jesus Christ.
And that's not it.
If I am operating with this type of attitude or narrative in my mind that just trumps everything, it's contrary to the way of Jesus.
I mean, love covers a multitude of sins.
And again, our Lord was crucified.
He was slaughtered, and we're to take up our cross and follow him.
And if I'm going to go around looking at everybody suspiciously and making sure everybody dots their I's and crosses their T's, or else I think that they're just misogynistic, racist, and they somehow have it in for me, or they don't love God, or they're unjust, yeah, I'm not going to play that game.
I'm just not.
We're doing something.
No, I completely agree.
And what we're doing is we're doing something the Bible strictly forbids us from doing.
What we're doing is we're imputing motives.
And at the end of the day, there is a sense in which we can look at the outward expressions of a man, both his words and deeds, and we can discern in a biblical fashion the heart, right?
Because out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
You'll know a tree by its fruit.
And so we don't know the heart.
God, you know, man looks to the outward appearance, but God looks to the heart.
There is, however, biblically speaking, a sense in which man can see the heart, as it were, through fruit, through the outward expressions, the fruit of the spirit, of the fruit of the flesh, both in word and in deed.
But even if we see bad fruit, because I love what you said.
So let's say in that hypothetical scenario, one of the bases that you covered, you said it might actually be a legitimate offense.
But then we go and we begin to impute the motives for that offense.
So let's say it is just undeniable, doesn't matter what excuse they have.
This actually was an offense.
It wasn't just an oversight or an honest mistake.
Like I didn't wave and say hi to you, or I cut in front of you in line at the coffee shop because I didn't know you were in line.
You were standing far back from the register.
It's not something like that.
Actual oversight, but this is a bona fide offense.
But even with that bona fide offense, to say immediately that it was racist, for example, is to because honestly, you can be a jerk without being a racist.
So it could still be an offense and it could still be a form of pride.
It could even still be a form of prejudice without it being a race based or ethnic based prejudice.
There are other reasons for people to be prejudiced or for people to be arrogant or for someone not to consider the feelings of someone else.
So we're doing something.
I say that to say we're doing something.
Ultimately, the Bible forbids us.
From doing.
We can, even with a church, when it comes to church discipline and correcting our brothers and sisters, and if your brother sins against you, go to him privately, tell him his fault.
If he listens, you've won him over.
If not, take one or two along with you.
All of this church discipline, correcting all the one and others, what we're doing at the end of the day is we're addressing what's visible, what's outward, what's witnessable.
That's the idea of witnesses with biblical law.
We get it from the Old Testament, two or three witnesses.
Jesus includes that same language in Matthew 18.
But the idea of a witness is it's something outward.
We're not witnesses of the heart.
We don't have, you know, there are sins and crimes.
That's really a really helpful concept that's helped me a lot in the last couple of years.
And you and Jared have talked about it a lot.
But we want police for murder, but nobody wants the coveting police.
Coveting is a sin, but I don't want anybody, you know, trying to police coveting because it's not outward, it's not visible, it's not witnessable.
And I think as Christians, when we start imputing motives to people's hearts, Even if it's a legitimate offense, we say it was an offense because of this heart sin, this one, when it could have been a host of other ones, then we've really stepped outside of our bounds, our jurisdiction as finite creatures.
We're not God.
Anything you want to add to that?
Well, it just boils right back down to what we said at the beginning.
You know, God has given us a book and we are responsible, we're obligated to live according to it.
So, what God says is love, that's love.
What God says is righteous, that's righteous.
What God says is justice, that's justice.
What God says is wicked, that's wicked.
And we don't get to make it up.
And if you think that you have some category of crime or sin that is so important to you that you're building your life around it and it doesn't pass muster with Scripture, you're in a bad way.
You need help.
And I'm not going to pretend like you're thinking rightly.
If I do that, I am just patting you on the head while you're going down a road that, if you don't repent from it, might lead you straight to hell.
So, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like what you've said so far, you've listed two threats at this point.
The first is pragmatism.
The second, it sounds like really what you're naming is the fear of man.
It's misguided sympathy that's not rooted in the scripture and that is played upon easily because of an idol of the fear of man.
Maybe genuine sympathy will give the benefit of the doubt a genuine caring spirit.
Big heartedness of most Christians, I would argue, that want to care for the oppressed, care for the downtrodden, care for the hurting.
So, a genuine sympathy, but a sympathy that's not deeply rooted in scripture and that's coupled with the need for man's approval.
And so, it's just getting, it's just Satan's having a field day with that.
Yeah.
Is there another label that you would use to describe the second threat that we've been.
No, I mean, that bleeds into it.
There's no doubt.
It kind of goes into my third thought on this because I'm thinking.
Secondly, these ideologies, we're not prepared to stand against them, man.
I mean, we are being so quickly manipulated by worldly, godless, enlightenment thinking.
I mean, it's amazing.
It's amazing how deeply embedded enlightenment thinking is in the evangelical world today, as opposed to a rigorous, simple, God centered way of looking at the world, where we say, no, Jesus Christ is Lord of everything.
And the reason two plus two equals four is because God says so.
I mean, that sounds like some kind of wooded headed fundamentalist to make that statement, but no, it's true because God created math.
And we just, we're so far from that.
And we think, well, no, we're just, we're going to use our reasoning without any reference to God.
So, I mean, that's all part of that mix.
But the third one really is what you're talking on and leads into it.
And I, man, we don't fear God.
We do not fear God.
You look at what goes on in the name of Christianity.
And even with those that thump their Bibles, and so often there is no fear of God.
We fear people.
It's tragic.
I mean, you saw how quickly many evangelical leaders folded in 2020 and even thought they were doing the righteous thing and the loving thing because the emperor said, You shall not meet, or the emperor said, You must meet this way.
And whenever you start having civil authorities trying to dictate and tell churches, Better ways to meet.
And I heard it.
I heard governors saying, well, look, you know, you're reaching more people on Facebook than you are when you meet in your church.
I'm thinking, come on, what a guy ought to find a different job rather than call himself a pastor and take his cues on how to conduct himself in the household of God from the government authorities.
We just need to return to the fear of God.
Jesus said we should not fear those who can kill the body, but we should fear him who can kill the body and afterward cast the soul into hell.
Nobody wants to talk about God like that anymore, but our God kills people.
Our God has the authority to kill the body and cast the soul into hell.
And if we get a right sense of fearing Him, we're not going to fear people.
And we're not going to go around just trying to be man pleasers.
Life's too short, and the gospel's too important, and heaven and hell are too real.
So I think more than anything, and it's in my own life, I'm not causing and saying that I'm immune from this, but I think one thing that we desperately need is massive doses.
Of the fear of God.
I mean, we need God to come down among us and just manifest his glory to us in a way that will drive us to our knees and shut our mouths and cause us to repent in sackcloth and ashes, saying, Oh God, we are undone.
We are undone.
Do with us whatever you will.
Amen.
I, yeah, like Job, he said, Remember that I'm dust, you know, and I repent in sackcloth and ashes.
And I was profoundly touched.
I remember, I'll probably never forget, but when.
Jared Longshore was kind of reading a manuscript or a transcription of a conversation between you and him.
Was after you had gone to the hospital and that you had fallen over in mid sermon, from what I gathered.
And I remember he was talking about from the moment you fell over and started to regain some consciousness all the way up to him visiting you in the hospital.
And one of the scenes that he read from this transcription and what he had gathered from you and written down, he shared it on the podcast, The Sword and the Trowel.
One of the scenes was you were in the back of the ambulance and one of the workers was just cursing like a sailor and just.
That the old King James, you know, filthy lucre, you know, it was just kind of just a filthy mouth.
And he said that you, you know, you muttered, you could barely even talk, you know, your eyes were closed, and you just kind of feared God.
And I was just so touched by that.
The Widening Gap Between Us00:03:09
Just, you know, just that's what we're missing.
And I've said this in my preaching and my sermons at the local church level a lot, but I'm really convinced that we have a generation that does not appreciate the love of God because they've never been taught to fear God.
The love of God is lost, I think, on a generation that doesn't fear God because the reality is.
The love of God, the gospel is not a message of love, it is for God so loved the world, but it's a particular kind of love.
It's a love because we can love God, we do love God as Christians, but we can never have grace for God or mercy for God, right?
So, you can love a perfect being, God loves his angelic host that never sinned against him or betrayed him.
And, um, but, but the love that God has for us is it's a particular kind, it's mercy, it's grace, it's this unmerited favor that God has for us.
And, and the beauty of that kind of love, a gracious love.
Is that it actually grows the more we fear God?
Because in the fear of God, what we're doing is we're recognizing the holiness, this thrice holy God, and we're recognizing that I'm a worm, you know, our own sinfulness, and not in a self degrading way, but in an objective, true way, that I've committed cosmic treason against this thrice holy God, my maker.
And the more I come into awareness of my own sin, and the more I come into awareness through the word of God and the conviction of the Holy Spirit of God's holiness, the gap doesn't get smaller.
Wider.
And I mean that in subjective terms.
In objective terms, by God's grace, not positional righteousness, which we have in full by justification through faith and not works, but in progressive righteousness and sanctification, we're getting better as Christians.
We're getting holier, not worse.
But as we're getting holier in an objective sense, in progressive holiness through sanctification, it seems like the gap in a subjective sense is getting wider because we're becoming more aware.
We're more greatly grieved by the sin which still remains.
And so We're gaining a greater awareness of the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man.
And so, in a subjective sense, this infinite gap that, in an objective sense, is infinite.
So it really can't get any bigger.
But subjectively, in our perception, the gap between us and God, sinful man and holy God, is getting wider.
And that's good because that's what it is to fear God.
And that gap, the fear of the Lord, and the gap between holiness of God and sinfulness of man, what bridges that gap is.
Is the love of God for sinners?
It's the gospel, it's Jesus.
And so, if you have a little gap, right, if you don't really see the holiness of God and you don't really see your own sinfulness, then ultimately what you have is a little gap.
And if you have a little gap, you have a little savior.
You have a God who didn't so love the world, he just kind of loved the world, you know.
And so, I really feel like there's so many churches that preach love, but I think it's being lost on a generation that has only ever been told.
About the love of God, but never been told the magnitude of the love of God on the framework, the backdrop of the fear of God that has to do with His holiness and our sin.
Counsel for a Young Southern Baptist00:03:18
And so I'm with you 100%.
So it sounds like what you're saying, if I could summarize, is number one was pragmatism and just really just not sticking to the script, especially with the Lord's Day service.
And then number two was I kind of said the fear of God, but really that's more number three.
Number two is just the ideologies themselves, these demonic, you know, they have their origin in the pit of hell, these counterintuitive, they're anti scripture, anti Christianity ideologies like critical race theory, neo Marxism, all those kinds of things.
And then communism is really, it seems like we're.
Where we're headed.
And then the third one is part of the reason we're being played by these ideologies isn't just because they're so intellectually robust and we're so impressed because we're, you know, just simpletons, but it's really playing on not just our intellect, the church's intellect, but our emotions.
Because at the end of the day, we love people, yeah, but we also really want to be loved by people.
We want to be liked, we want approval, the fear of man.
So pragmatism, godless ideologies, fear of man.
Is that a good summary?
Yeah, I think so.
I think so.
Okay.
So let me do this with you.
If you got a little bit more time, I just wanted to pick your brain with this.
So I wrote this down, so I'll read it so I don't lose my thoughts.
But I wrote, Vodi Bakum recently published his newest book called Fault Lines, where he explicitly names specific evangelical leaders such as David Platt, Matt Chandler, Mark Dever, Ligan Duncan, who wrote the forward to Woke Church.
And so, how serious of an issue is this rising divide?
For instance, so kind of really getting to the ideologies and this.
Chasm that seems to be forming within the evangelical church and even reformed churches.
For instance, I personally, I was previously, I don't know if you know this about me, but I was previously an Acts 29 pastor a few years ago, and I was a part of the Acts 29 movement for a while.
But I chose to leave Acts 29 about three years ago after Eric Mason, who continues to be an integral part of the leadership of Acts 29, he was on the board, the International Global Board for a while.
I'm not sure if he is any longer, but integral leader and personal friend of Matt Chandler, he published his infamous book, Woke Church.
So, what counsel, I guess, is my question?
How serious of an issue are these things?
But also, what counsel would you give to other pastors, especially younger pastors like myself, who are presently wrestling with a decision?
So, for me, it was Acts 29, but in your neck of the woods with the SBC, what counsel would you give to that young pastor who says to you, he comes to you and he says, I'm thinking about joining the SBC?
Or the guy who's already in the SBC and says, I'm thinking about leaving the SBC.
What would you say, and even making it broader than SBC, but SBC, Acts 29, whatever it might be?
Denominations and networks affiliation at this time in this heated moment with the evangelical church.
How serious do these ideologies play into?
Is it dangerous to be a part of?
Is there a point when you would leave the SBC?
And what counsel do you give to young guys who are impressionable and can easily be influenced?
Do you tell them, hey, just be that independent Baptist church?
Or what counsel do you give?
Picked up on maybe two or three questions in what you're asking there.
Navigating Liberalism and Inerrancy00:02:58
No, that's okay because it is complicated.
One is, what are your associational connections going to be?
And, you know, I've been Southern Baptist my whole life.
Founders Ministries was born in the context of the SBC.
We're not a Southern Baptist entity at all, but all the men that were involved in the beginning were Southern Baptists.
We've certainly branched out from that.
From the beginning, we wanted to be genuinely Catholic, we wanted to have a true ecumenical spirit.
Among us, but recognizing their boundaries to that, not the way that Catholic and ecumenism is so often portrayed and played out today.
So, we've never been just SBC, but we've always argued that there's reasons to stay in.
And I've been able to say, up until the last few years, look at the trajectory.
The trajectory is good.
It's better than what it was in the 60s and 70s with the inerrancy movement, the conservative resurgence, and there began to be these recovery of good confessional statements and people teaching in our institutions who say, yes, we believe these confessions.
We are inerrantists, we're not ashamed.
To be known as an errantist.
And so that's always been good.
But the last few years, one of the things that is so pernicious about this new stuff that's flown in under critical social justice that Bodie writes about in his book is that many of the, if not most of the leaders of the social justice movement are self professed inerrantists and even some confessional people.
It breaks my heart.
I mean, the guys on the other side of that fault line for me, many of them, Have been friends of mine for years and years and years, and we're just not walking together anymore.
It's so it's more pernicious than just going against the neo orthodox or the liberals.
These are not liberals.
My friend Tom Nettles has talked about this a lot, and some people today say, This is just liberalism.
This is just liberalism.
Well, you know, I get what they're saying, but it is not if you're going to unpack it doctrinally.
But Tom came up with this phrase, and I've not found one better.
He says, What we're facing today is the social gospel without the liberalism.
It's a social gospel movement, but these guys all believe in substitutionary atonement.
They all believe in the authority of scripture, but they're still buying into that unmoored social agenda that is not arising from law and gospel.
So, denominationally or associationally or connectionally, those are tough calls.
And I, you know, a man's got to stand before God with his own conscience and decide how he's going to associate.
The reality is that if you, however, you draw the lines, you're going to find differences between you and others.
The question is, what differences can you stand and maintain some fellowship?
The SBC is a loose knit group of churches.
Tough Calls on Denominational Lines00:04:28
The Baptist faith and message is kind of the main statement of faith.
You don't have to sign the Baptist faith and message to be SBC.
We're 1689 in our church and we can affiliate freely with the SBC.
It's a voluntary type of association.
And as you said at the beginning, if the SBC matters, and it doesn't matter the way a lot of people in the SBC think it matters, you know, a lot of people are.
For saying there's a guy who wrote a book years ago, the SBC is God's last best or last greatest hope.
You know, and what an almost blasphemous title that is.
God doesn't need the SBC, but the SBC matters.
And if all the good churches leave the SBC tomorrow, the SBC is not going to die the next day.
It's going to go on.
It's just going to be in the hands now more fully of bad churches and bad thinking leaders.
And it's going to do more damage than it could do right now.
But if it can be recovered, Then it can work as it has in previous two or three decades for great good.
And that's my hope.
And so I think it's worth fighting for.
It's worth looking at my fellow Southern Baptists in the eye and say, you know what?
I think you're wrong.
And I don't want to go where you're taking us.
And if you're going to try to take us there, I'm going to stand against you.
I'm going to oppose you.
I'm going to do it as a brother.
I'm not going to use the world's tactics, but I'm not going to play games with you either.
And I think the path you're going down is wrong.
And I don't think we can cooperate unless you repent or I repent, God shows me something or God shows you something.
And if he doesn't, then we just need to come to a parting of the ways.
But right now, we're having that debate inside.
And so, you know, maybe I think coming out of Nashville, we'll have a good indication of where we are.
A lot of people are saying, well, if it doesn't go my way in Nashville, I'm leaving.
And quite honestly, you know, there are people who have said that if we repudiate Resolution 19 or Resolution 9 from 2019, or if we repudiate CRTI, that they're leaving.
And I hope they will.
I hope we repudiate it.
And I hope they leave.
I mean, I don't mean that in an ugly way.
They just need to go find people they agree with.
You know, they go find people you agree with, cooperate with, and do your thing.
But there are other people who say, man, if we don't rescind Resolution 19, we're out.
Well, look, we didn't get in this fix overnight.
We're not going to get out of it overnight.
I mean, under the best of circumstances, if God were to show us great mercy, we're looking at five to 10 years to try to get things back on a better track.
And even then, once we do it, we're going to have to deal with that first issue I talked about.
How did we get here?
How did we get here?
This happened on the conservative, evangelical, inerrantist, and in many respects, reformed watch.
I mean, there are reformed Southern Baptists that are driving this train, so called reformed Southern Baptists.
And it breaks my heart.
So we're going to have to do more than just say, hey, look, we got the confession, or hey, look, we signed the Nashville statement or the Danvers statement.
So what?
We're going to have to drill down and look at what this text says and what is your attitude toward it.
We don't want to just have you mouth words of affirmation.
So that's one issue.
But the other issue is these ideologies.
Yeah, I think it's the greatest threat to the.
Advance of the gospel in my generation, my day, I haven't seen anything like it.
It's pernicious and it's pernicious because it's captivating good guys.
You don't, I mean, these are good guys.
They're being sucked into this stuff.
And again, I've lost friends.
You know, I'm leave it with God.
It's heartbreaking to me.
But there are men that I've esteemed, men whose books we've used in our church for years, we don't use anymore.
Not because the books have changed, the books are still good, but I don't want any of our people to get this book and then get the guy's latest teaching.
Because what he's saying today is contrary to what he was saying 10 years ago.
And the fault lines are there.
And I cannot, I cannot walk together with anybody who thinks that critical race theory, intersectionality are good, useful analytical tools.
And they're saying that these tools can be employed in kind of a neutral way.
I cannot go along with anybody who says that, oh, yeah, Black Lives Matter is a good movement and we ought to be affirming Black Lives Matter.
I mean, that is naive at best, but it's that's the very best I can say about it.
So, anyone that's going to be duped by that and is going to buy into that agenda is on the other side of the fault for me.
Fault Lines in Christian Leadership00:10:57
And I can, I love you.
And, you know, I know I got my blind spots.
If I'm wrong, please help me.
I've said this to more Christian leaders than I can remember.
Look, you know, we need you in this fight and we need you to man up right now and deal with this.
And if you're not willing to because you don't think it's right, then I need your help.
I need you to help me.
Would you please help me?
Because I think that I'm seeing something here that's really serious.
And, you know, we're going to have to leave it with God and he'll sort it out on the day of judgment.
We'll all be praising his grace on that day because none of us will get in on our own merits or righteousness or having seen things just right.
But we're all stewards while we live.
Amen.
Yeah.
That last thing you said, you know, one day we'll all be, all those who are in Christ will be celebrating with the risen Lord and, you know, we'll see him as he is.
We'll be like him, 1 John says.
I can't, you know, I think about being fully sanctified.
I think about it, you know, glorified physical body, but I also, I so look forward to, and I can't imagine, I'm sure that you've experienced substantially, exponentially more loss of friendship than I have, but I keep thinking over these last couple of years, I can't wait for glorified friendships.
You know, it's just, it's not just me as an individual that needs to be further sanctified and needs to see Christ as he is sinless and be sinless like him on that final day, but I can't wait for sinless friendships, glorified friendships.
And I just feel like the last two years, I think, Um, there's just been so much, um, with so much false teaching and heresy and all these godless ideologies, there's been so much, um, relational, uh, pain.
It's just been, you know, a relationally hard season where I've experienced it, you know, at a smaller level, at a local level, with you know, even you know, members in the church and a couple elders, and uh, where you just, um, I don't know, you just, yeah, it's difficult, and uh, and I think you're right.
The hardest part about it is, um, it just seemed like I wasn't around for these things, and so you know, but.
But I feel like you've said it enough, and I could take your word for it, and other guys who were around and fought those battles of inerrancy and those kinds of things.
And just seems like this present battle part of what makes it so dangerous is it's so subtle.
It's just some of those things, they were just clear.
I think it was Packer, J.I. Packer, who said, You'll be able to help me with this, but what's the Hebrew word that one particular group of people wasn't able to pronounce?
Shibboleth or Shibboleth.
Do you know what?
Shibboleth, yeah.
Yeah.
And I think it was Packer who, you know, like, because some guys wanted to use a different word than inerrancy, and he was like, No, sometimes we just need to have that word that.
You either can pronounce or you can't, you know, to know, you know, as the dividing line.
So it's visible.
So people have to wear the jersey.
You can see if they're on my team or not.
And right now, man, it's just, it's gotten blurry.
But I think you said this earlier in the episode.
I'm glad you did.
It's getting clearer because that's the beauty of the church and 2,000 years of church history is that when we're confronted with false ideologies and things that are counter to scripture, the church comes together and it sharpens its doctrine, it sharpens its theology.
And, um, And I feel like today, a lot of guys like me, who are learning from guys like you, we can spot it in a way that just even two years ago, we're like, what is that?
Critical what theory again?
You know what I mean?
And now, I mean, I felt for the longest time, I felt like there was like two years I'm watching YouTube videos of critical race theory, and I didn't hear one of you guys even be able to define it.
And now it's like there's just more and more clarity, and you guys are putting out much better, sharper, and clearer and simpler.
You know, because when you understand something, when you really understand something, I think of Dr. Sproul, you know, not only do you know it, but you can communicate it at a lower level, even to a child.
That's when you know you're really starting.
And I feel like the church is starting to get there.
The Lord always reserves for himself, you know, when the enemy comes in like a flood, he raises a standard up against it and he reserves a remnant for himself.
And with that remnant, I think there's this clarifying of doctrine and theology to the point where now you really equip the saints with simple, I mean, it's a big issue, so people should care.
They need to do thorough study, but simpler definitions, simpler explanations of things that were really intellectually intimidating when it first started coming on the scene.
And now I think guys like me are an example of starting to find some handles on it and to where now I can spot it and preach against it and address it and apply the scripture rightly.
And so I feel encouraged with what God's doing, but it's been painful, and the relational piece has been part of it.
All that being said, let's go ahead and end our episode.
We do this, Tom.
I feel like you should be sympathetic because we kind of got it from you, but you guys have the armory.
And so we do a similar thing.
We call our club members our responders, and we ask our guests with our show, Theology Applied, if they just stick around for five minutes and address kind of a bonus question.
And so I always kind of read the bonus question to kind of whet the appetite of our listeners, a little incentive.
So our bonus question is this, all right?
So we have critical theory, that's the big banner.
And then we have critical race theory as it pertains to ethnicity.
I feel like somebody, and maybe you're the guy for it, but somebody's got to write a book one of these days called Critical Church Theory.
And so, this is where I'm going with it.
There's, you know, we always were categorizing, you know, intersections.
The more oppressed groups that you can claim, you know, identity with, and, you know, the more intersection points that you gain, and the more that, you know, the more you've been oppressed, and therefore the more power and those things you should be given.
Well, in a church setting, I can't help but think aside from all the other different ways that we could identify, whether it be ethnicity or social class or economics, one of the clearest is leaders and church leaders and church members.
And so, I guess my question is not necessarily if this has happened in your specific local church, but with other pastors that you counsel and that you do life with and disciple and that you have friendships with, have you noticed a critical church theory in the sense of have you noticed pastors today being more in danger of being accused of being abusive or being accused of being domineering than in previous times?
And I'm not talking about the accusations that are true, objectively true, where that guy needs to be removed from ministry.
But have you noticed a growing unhealthy sensitivity among church members as critical theory has kind of become the air that people are breathing in?
And as this is just this dominant idea in the culture, have you noticed that seeping into the church where pastors, by virtue of having power in church dynamics, by being in leadership, are more likely to be accused or more susceptible to being accused of being abusive when they're actually really just being faithful to the scripture?
So I know that's a long way of saying it, but.
That's the bonus question.
I'm going to have Tom come back on here for five minutes, but let's go ahead and close by giving Tom the final word.
Would you just tell our listeners how they can follow you, keep up with you, and maybe something they could be praying for you for?
Yeah, well, appreciate that.
Certainly, you can find out just about everything you want to know at founders.org, www.founders.org.
That's our website.
We have a YouTube channel that's very active and it's got tons of material on there as well.
We do have the Founders Alliance membership.
So we've got a lot of material that we're producing for those that.
Have come on board to support us.
We're grateful for that.
The Institute of Public Theology.org is where you can go to find out about IOPT, and our classes begin this fall.
Tom Nettles will teach one, I'll teach one.
Our convocation is August the 28th, 2021.
It'll be in Cape Coral, Florida.
I'm really looking forward to this.
We're going to have Dr. Everett Piper, who will be our convocation speaker.
Everett was most recently the pastor, the president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, and he is a fireball.
He sees these things.
He stood against them long before most other public intellectuals have.
So you can follow us there.
I'm on Twitter, Tom Haskell, and Twitter.
I think I'm on Facebook that same way, too, and Instagram.
So you can find founders on all of those social media outlets.
But if you go to founders.org, you can learn everything you want to about us.
Okay, great.
Anything that we could be praying for you?
Yeah, do pray for this conference, be it resolved, June 14th in Nashville.
We're almost sold out.
I'm excited about that.
But man, we would love to be able to.
Accommodate a thousand people that the room won't hold quite that many, but it looks like we're going to fill up what it will hold, and it'll be a pivotal time.
And then the SBC that follows on the 15th and 16th.
Let's pray that God will give us wisdom and that everyone who shows up, the pastors there especially, would be wise and bold, courageous, and humble to speak clearly.
Our 2022 conference in January in Cape Coral, Florida, Southwest Florida, is going to be on the doctrine of the church, militant and triumphant.
If you'd pray for that, we still have some details to work out on that.
But man, Southwest Florida in January is a great place to be.
The weather is usually very great.
And we had a great time this year.
And so those conferences coming up.
The Wield the Sword project you mentioned earlier.
We've just completed the first season.
So the fifth episode is about ready to drop on Education.
We've got the first four episodes on YouTube.
We started out on Amazon Prime and they've now invited us not to be part of that anymore.
Oh, they invited you not to be.
Okay.
How hospitable of them.
Yeah, it was.
And so we're going to be on YouTube now, making that all available.
And we've got two more seasons.
We've got one season we've already shot a lot.
Of the footage for, but it takes a lot of money to do that.
And quite honestly, right now, we don't have all the resources for season two.
So we're just praying that God will raise up resources for that as well as the Institute.
And, you know, we believe whatever God wants done, He's going to finance.
So we're confident in that.
But just pray for us that God will not let us stray and that He'll keep us humble and give us boldness.
Yes, sir.
Thanks, Pastor Tom.
I really appreciate you coming on the show.
Sure, my joy.
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