NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - After Covid & Wokeness, We Need 1,000’s Of New Pastors w Michael Foster
Aired: 2022-11-15
Duration: 01:23:18


=== Fresh Start for Theology Applied (03:44) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey guys, real quick before we get started, I have a small request.
[00:00:03]  If you've been blessed by our content and you like this show, would you take just a brief moment and leave us a five star review?
[00:00:09]  This is quite possibly the most effective thing that you can do to ensure that this content gets out to as many people as possible.
[00:00:17]  Thanks.
[00:00:18]  All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.
[00:00:20]  I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
[00:00:22]  I'm excited about this episode.
[00:00:24]  This is with Michael Foster.
[00:00:26]  Michael Foster, along with his co author, Non Tenant, they wrote the book It's Good to Be.
[00:00:31]  A man, it's good to be a man.
[00:00:32]  It's been hovering in that number one spot off and on within the Christian manhood section on Amazon, so it's done really well.
[00:00:40]  It's also available on the Canon Plus app, I think it's published through Canon, so you get a hard copy through them if that's what you want.
[00:00:47]  But Michael has done a lot on patriarchy, on biblical masculinity, and just kind of helping the church navigate out of this feminized Christianity that we've been swimming in for decades now.
[00:01:01]  So we talk about.
[00:01:02]  In this episode, not just manhood, but we talk about masculinity, courageous leadership, but we really focus it on eldership and also the diaconate.
[00:01:12]  We talk a lot about the diaconate and how to actually define that biblically and why guys just kind of fell apart and folded like a cheap suit over the last two and a half years with COVID and how the deck is being reshuffled.
[00:01:24]  You know, it's all of a sudden things are getting mixed up.
[00:01:27]  It's a fresh start, a new opportunity in the providence of God for a lot of people.
[00:01:30]  And so, as we look to plant new churches and reorient it and Reform new churches, and we're looking for fresh, courageous, biblically faithful men to lead these churches.
[00:01:42]  What are some of the qualities, the benchmarks that men need to be aspiring towards?
[00:01:47]  That's the focus of our episode today.
[00:01:49]  I think you'll enjoy it.
[00:01:50]  Tune in now.
[00:01:51]  Houston, we have a problem.
[00:01:52]  I repeat, we have a problem.
[00:01:54]  Our conference is about to sell out.
[00:01:56]  I mean, about to sell out.
[00:01:58]  We probably have about 75 to 100 seats left.
[00:02:02]  Our venue holds about 525 to 550 seats, and we currently have.
[00:02:07]  450 people who are registered for this conference.
[00:02:10]  The excitement is tangible.
[00:02:12]  A lot of people registered because they wanted to hit the early bird rate.
[00:02:16]  We're now at our normal rate $130 for an adult, $50 for a kid who's 11 to 17 years old, and kids 10 and under get in free.
[00:02:24]  You can bring the whole family.
[00:02:25]  But the problem is not that we're going to raise the rate again.
[00:02:28]  The problem is we're going to run out of tickets and we're going to run out pretty fast.
[00:02:32]  Again, we've got about 100 seats or less.
[00:02:35]  450 people six months out are already registered for this conference.
[00:02:40]  We don't want you to miss it.
[00:02:41]  So, to ensure that you get to make it to this conference, you need to register not a month from now, not a week from now, not tomorrow, but today.
[00:02:50]  You want to be there for the Theonomy and Post Millennialism Conference, May 5th, 6th, and 7th, with James White, Joe Boot, Gary DeMar, Dale Partridge, and yours truly, Joel Webbin.
[00:03:02]  Go to RightResponseConference.com.
[00:03:05]  Again, that's RightResponseConference.com.
[00:03:08]  It will sell out very soon.
[00:03:11]  Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
[00:03:15]  This is Theology Applied.
[00:03:21]  All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.
[00:03:23]  I am your host, Pastor Joel Webben with Right Response Ministries.
[00:03:26]  And in this episode, I'm pleased to be joined with Michael Foster, who you probably know best as the author of It's Good to Be a Man.
[00:03:34]  Michael, thanks for coming on the show.
[00:03:36]  Yeah, thanks for having me again.
[00:03:37]  Absolutely.
[00:03:38]  All right, so last time you were with us, I think you, I told you offline we were talking, you were one of our first guests.
[00:03:43]  You didn't know me from Adam.

=== Redefining Godly Church Leadership (06:55) ===

[00:03:44]  And we had, I think on YouTube, we had probably at that time maybe.
[00:03:48]  1,500 subscribers, and now by God's grace, we have about 33,000.
[00:03:52]  And so, hopefully, some more people see this episode and find it beneficial and helpful in their walk with Christ.
[00:03:58]  But what we wanted to talk about in this episode is leadership, masculine, godly, Christ like leadership, especially in the ecclesiastical sphere, church leadership, eldership.
[00:04:11]  We could talk about the diaconate some, but you and I have both agreed in some of our conversations together that the game has changed in the last two and a half years.
[00:04:20]  There are things that we may not have considered when we were trying to pick elders, when we were looking at ordination, when we were thinking about church unity and potential.
[00:04:30]  Splits and division, and all those kinds of things.
[00:04:32]  It seems like, at least for me, and I know for you also, I'm looking for some things that I wasn't necessarily looking for, you know, three years ago when I'm thinking about eldership and those kinds of things.
[00:04:44]  So, what are some of your thoughts?
[00:04:46]  Help us get started.
[00:04:48]  Sure.
[00:04:48]  So, when we think about masculine leadership in the home, in the church, in society, you can kind of look at it through a triad of authority, responsibility, and ability.
[00:05:02]  Okay.
[00:05:03]  So authority is just the ability to exercise a God-given command, right?
[00:05:11]  God's told a guy, this is your job to lead your household.
[00:05:14]  Pastor, it's your job to preach and administer the sacraments.
[00:05:17]  A magistrate, here's how you punish evildoers and praise the good, whatever.
[00:05:22]  So you actually have the authority to do that.
[00:05:25]  It's within your realm.
[00:05:26]  And then responsibility means you have to do it.
[00:05:29]  So you have these responsibilities.
[00:05:30]  So we always want to keep authority and responsibility at parity.
[00:05:34]  So we've kind of me and my co-author, If It's Good to Be a Man, we've criticized servant leadership because a lot of times what we say is it gives men heavy responsibilities without authority.
[00:05:46]  Right?
[00:05:46]  Authority without responsibility leads to tyranny.
[00:05:50]  Responsibility without authority leads to slavery.
[00:05:56]  Right?
[00:05:57]  But that's kind of like, those are important categories to have.
[00:06:01]  But we've added a third one, which is ability.
[00:06:06]  And you can just think of it as leadership, but it's the actual ability to execute your responsibilities, right?
[00:06:13]  To get it done.
[00:06:14]  And so I think a lot of us have rethought through authority and responsibilities.
[00:06:22]  Thankfully, we have confessions.
[00:06:23]  We have all sorts of awesome church documents.
[00:06:26]  Like year 1689, I'm a Westminster guy.
[00:06:30]  We're very close on what the responsibilities of pastors, elders, and deacons are.
[00:06:37]  I think leadership, though, the ability question is what we've had to reevaluate.
[00:06:44]  A lot of these guys that were in the pastorate during the last couple of years with Black Lives Matter, the George Floyd nonsense, all the COVID shutdowns, the pandemic, a lot of these guys were, their ability was for existing systems.
[00:07:02]  For systems, they're really a managerial class.
[00:07:04]  And what managers, they're very important people in any organization.
[00:07:08]  What they do is manage a system that already exists.
[00:07:12]  They didn't build it.
[00:07:13]  They just execute.
[00:07:14]  They administrate it more than anything.
[00:07:16]  They oversee it.
[00:07:18]  Those guys play a very key role when there's a time of stability in a company.
[00:07:23]  A company grows, and then you add kind of this middle management role.
[00:07:30]  Well, a lot of our pastors had a sort of middle management approach to ministry and whatever.
[00:07:37]  And they're like super easy going.
[00:07:39]  They want to keep conflict at a low.
[00:07:41]  They deal with everything kind of through PR tactics.
[00:07:44]  And then suddenly, It all kind of blows up.
[00:07:48]  And people that they never thought would challenge them are challenging them.
[00:07:51]  People that have been in their churches for years, that's run the sound ministry, the children's ministry, founding members are saying, What's going on?
[00:07:57]  Why are we closing down worship?
[00:07:59]  Why are we enforcing masks on healthy people?
[00:08:03]  Why are we repenting of racism?
[00:08:06]  We're not racist.
[00:08:06]  Why are we apologizing for being white?
[00:08:10]  White's a secondary biological marker, it's not a sin.
[00:08:14]  So they're asking these questions, and these managers are only good when things are stable.
[00:08:20]  Things are suddenly unstable, and they kind of freak out.
[00:08:24]  And a lot of them became tyrants overnight because they weren't really prepared for it.
[00:08:30]  And they're not good at moving on their feet.
[00:08:32]  They're not good at dealing with crisis.
[00:08:35]  They really can say, when their authorities question, they say, hey, this is just how things are done around here or whatever.
[00:08:42]  And they can kind of cite the system.
[00:08:44]  Well, now the whole system's broken.
[00:08:46]  You've been telling people how important it is to attend church your entire ministry.
[00:08:50]  That's right.
[00:08:51]  And now you're telling them not to come to church.
[00:08:53]  And people are saying, wait a second, I thought we took membership vows.
[00:08:56]  Part of it is to prioritize the importance of the church.
[00:08:59]  And now you're telling us not to come.
[00:09:01]  And we want to worship God.
[00:09:03]  And, you know, on whose authority do you do this?
[00:09:06]  Well, the government told us we can't.
[00:09:08]  Well, what's the government?
[00:09:09]  We don't declare war.
[00:09:10]  The government doesn't tell us that we can't worship.
[00:09:13]  Well, Romans 13, like, what?
[00:09:15]  Come again?
[00:09:16]  And so it just got nuts.
[00:09:17]  That's been the last couple of years where, and also there's guys who are faithful men, but they got canceled.
[00:09:27]  They got canceled hard, right?
[00:09:29]  Their reputation got dragged through the mud.
[00:09:31]  It hurt their marriage, it hurt their kids, they lost their jobs.
[00:09:34]  They got fired and they spent their entire life being kind of seminary trained.
[00:09:40]  And now they're without churches and people called them authoritarian or rebellious or whatever.
[00:09:46]  And they're trying to figure out what to do.
[00:09:48]  So we're in this kind of new realm where managerial class of pastors is not going to work.
[00:09:58]  And for a while at least.
[00:09:59]  And we got guys that are good, bold risk takers, but they're risk taking in still a more stable time.
[00:10:05]  Where now, if you take that risk you really are, you might lose it all.
[00:10:10]  And so I think it's requiring us to think through uh, the pastoral ministry, uh like how our candidates um multiple streams of income anti-fragility, um how do we stay bold but not uh, wreck our household?
[00:10:26]  These are, this is the new world for us.
[00:10:29]  It's an awesome world because now it makes us rethink things.
[00:10:32]  We don't just we're allowed to question these things and come back at it again and say okay what's, what's the wise application of these biblical principles, Right.

=== Deacons, Risk, and Sound Judgment (14:57) ===

[00:10:40]  Yeah, completely agree.
[00:10:41]  Well said.
[00:10:42]  You know, as you were talking about, you know, a lot of these guys in the pastorate are really, you know, managerial guys and not necessarily courageous Cromwell leadership kind of guys.
[00:10:53]  It makes me think, I think part of it's because we've gotten the diaconate wrong.
[00:10:57]  I've done a lot of study on, you know, what is a deacon?
[00:10:59]  Because for a lot of guys, even within the Reformed world, a deacon is basically you have areas of volunteer service, you know, primarily on the Lord's day.
[00:11:10]  You know, so you got somebody working in children's, and I know that you and I are both.
[00:11:14]  You know, we're both family and integrated with our worship.
[00:11:16]  But if you have a children's ministry, you got people volunteering there, people volunteering with setup, especially if it's a portable church.
[00:11:22]  You've got parking assistants and all that kind of stuff.
[00:11:24]  And then when you think of the diaconate, it's basically been defined as there are volunteers and those are members of the church.
[00:11:31]  And then there are heads of volunteers, like a lead volunteer, and that's a deacon, right?
[00:11:37]  So what is a deacon?
[00:11:39]  Well, a deacon is not just a parking assistant, but the lead parking assistant.
[00:11:43]  He's over the parking assistant team.
[00:11:45]  And, you know, when I think of like Acts chapter 6, where we kind of, you know, where the diaconate is coined for us, you know, still to this day, you'll see like a deacon's food drive, you know, at the Episcopalian church, you know, and what they've done is they've taken the principle that's provided for us in a descriptive text with a specific case study, and they've made that case study the headline, the principle.
[00:12:06]  So, deacons give food.
[00:12:08]  Whereas I would say, like, no, the principle is deacons alleviate the burden on the elders of the church so that they can dedicate their time chiefly to the Preaching and teaching of God's word and study and prayer, and prayer actually being first listed in that order.
[00:12:24]  So, prayer, preaching, and study.
[00:12:27]  And so, the deacons are doing a lot of stuff.
[00:12:29]  And one of the things, it's like when you think of the church in Jerusalem and just the number, the sheer number of people that were added to the faith at the day of Pentecost when Peter is preaching in Acts chapter 2, and you think about that church in Jerusalem, it was likely a very large church.
[00:12:44]  And this sharp dispute arises not between just two individuals.
[00:12:47]  It's not just like so and so needs food and we need someone to carry a bowl of soup.
[00:12:53]  It's not Seven men filled with the Holy Spirit and endowed with wisdom so that they can carry soup without spilling it, you know, or so that they can make really great sandwiches or they can get the right ratio of peanut butter and jelly.
[00:13:05]  No, these are guys who are handling conflict mediation.
[00:13:10]  It is what we often think of as pastoral ministry.
[00:13:14]  And it's not just between two families or two individuals, it's the Hellenistic Jews, you know, and the Hebraic Jews.
[00:13:19]  And so you have two whole sects of the church that are arguing, that are factious and divided because.
[00:13:27]  The Hellenistic Jews feel as though their widows are being overlooked in the daily distribution.
[00:13:31]  The people doing the daily distribution, preparing the food, serving the food, that's not Philip and Stephen, you know, and the other five.
[00:13:39]  These guys are going to solve this conflict, they're going to manage.
[00:13:43]  And so, what I'm getting at is I actually think that part of the problem is we've had a lot of people in the position of elder in the church that actually biblically should have just been deacons.
[00:13:56]  We've so lowered the bar of elder, and in order for that to logically make sense, we've also.
[00:14:01]  You know, necessarily lower the bar of deacon to where a deacon in the average, you know, and I'm talking about Reformed Presbyterian, Reformed Baptist, a lot of their deacons would just be faithful church members, I think, by a biblical definition.
[00:14:14]  And a lot of their elders actually should be deacons.
[00:14:17]  And I know you and I, both as confessional guys and patriarchal guys, we would hold to a male diaconate.
[00:14:22]  But these guys, my point is, when people think of the pastor, 1 Peter chapter 5, I charge the elders among you as a fellow elder, shepherd the flock of God.
[00:14:32]  People, All that I would say, yes and amen.
[00:14:34]  If I said, what is a pastor?
[00:14:35]  And people say, well, pastors should shepherd.
[00:14:37]  And I'd say, yes.
[00:14:39]  But here's what just happened.
[00:14:41]  We sound like we're on the same page.
[00:14:43]  We're not.
[00:14:43]  Because what you just did, very likely, is you isogeated into the word shepherding that shepherding exclusively equates to interpersonal pastoral counsel.
[00:14:54]  Whereas I would say, give me the verse in the Bible that says that a minister who's administering the ordinary means of grace on the Lord's day, preaching, teaching, administering the sacraments, Make me a biblical argument how that's something other than shepherding.
[00:15:10]  90% of the elders' shepherding, I think, is Lord's, yes, pastors' counsel interpersonally.
[00:15:16]  But a lot of those things, actually, those managerial, mediating conflict, marriage counseling, which that's pretty much what marriage counseling always is some kind of conflict and going in and providing counsel and mediating conflict and those kinds of things and seeking reconciliation and resolution.
[00:15:33]  I think that's what guys like Stephen and Philip were doing.
[00:15:37]  And not just between a marriage with two individuals.
[00:15:40]  But two whole groups, it could have represented hundreds, if not even perhaps thousands of people in this fairly large church in Jerusalem.
[00:15:48]  And so, my point is, I think we had a lot of guys that really, biblically, I would argue, measure up as deacons, but serving as elders.
[00:15:57]  And so, when there actually was a call for courageous leadership and wisdom and discernment, and like the sons of Issachar knowing the times and which direction to go, deacons don't do that.
[00:16:09]  And if you have a bunch of pastors that are actually really just deacons, then the church is in trouble.
[00:16:14]  What do you think about that?
[00:16:16]  Yeah, I mean, I think it's true.
[00:16:18]  I think we just basically had a lot of people who are officers in the church that shouldn't have been.
[00:16:24]  Yeah.
[00:16:24]  A ton of them.
[00:16:25]  I mean, one of the key things in any officer, whether it's a deacon or an elderslash pastor, is the ability to keep your nerve, to make sound judgments, and to make them on an important timeline, not an urgent.
[00:16:45]  Right, you deal with it in the right way, and uh, I feel like my job one of my biggest jobs as an elder is to stay cool and calm, be the calmest man in the room when it comes to these things, and not overreact.
[00:17:01]  That's what I saw a lot of people doing they um people were trying to put out fires instead of like, well, maybe let it burn for a little bit, let's figure out what's going on here.
[00:17:11]  Uh, so I to get to your point with deacons is that um.
[00:17:16]  So, deacons, they are not just the ones that hand out the bread, but they're the ones that were figuring out how to do this in such a way that it would not continue this division, but it would lead to real conflict solution.
[00:17:30]  And we look for a lot of things in our deacons.
[00:17:34]  We want them to love the friendless, we want them to be very wise.
[00:17:37]  But the thing is, a deacon has to be discerning and cool headed because what makes people more upset than dealing with money, right?
[00:17:45]  With benevolence, if you have someone that has some need, why do they have the need?
[00:17:49]  What's going on in their marriage?
[00:17:51]  You have to ask those questions because we're not just writing out checks.
[00:17:56]  And if we have people that come to our church and they ask for help, we'll ask them, why haven't you?
[00:18:03]  What is your home church doing about it?
[00:18:05]  Well, of course, they don't have a home church, right?
[00:18:06]  But this is part of the process.
[00:18:08]  And so we have to have guys that can make really good, calm decisions and not allow the sort of intense, I need help right now, emotional pressure and manipulation to cause them to make.
[00:18:23]  Bad decisions.
[00:18:23]  Same thing with pastors.
[00:18:26]  During 2020, we'd say, well, there's people that are really concerned about folks not wearing masks.
[00:18:32]  You mean five people?
[00:18:33]  A lot of times it was just like a small amount of the church.
[00:18:36]  Well, because there's some small amount of the church that's upset, now the pastor's going to enforce their desires on everybody.
[00:18:43]  And these are guys that just can't take any conflict.
[00:18:45]  They can't take any pressure.
[00:18:47]  They can't take any whining at all.
[00:18:49]  Just a little bit of whining.
[00:18:50]  And they're like, well, we have to.
[00:18:52]  I remember when I was a young minister.
[00:18:54]  And I was serving on a pastor.
[00:18:55]  I said, well, you know, there's some people concerned about this.
[00:18:58]  And he said, who?
[00:18:59]  What's their names?
[00:19:00]  That's what he said to me.
[00:19:02]  And then I said, well, this guy and that guy.
[00:19:05]  He said, that guy's concerned about everything.
[00:19:07]  And we can talk about the other one.
[00:19:09]  But it was just kind of funny.
[00:19:10]  There are some people that are concerned about this, is what I said.
[00:19:14]  Well, there's two people and one who complains about everything.
[00:19:17]  And you'll hear people talk this way in the ministry a lot like, oh, wow, we've got a divide in the church.
[00:19:23]  There's no divide in the church.
[00:19:25]  There's always some level of malcontents.
[00:19:27]  There's always some level of people that are going to be contrarian to whatever.
[00:19:32]  And we have these guys that can't live in tension, that can't make good decisions.
[00:19:38]  And then, of course, their career, the vocational aspect of ministry, which is good, but their career was tied up with whether they would be faithful or not.
[00:19:49]  Basically, don't be faithful, keep your job.
[00:19:51]  Be faithful, probably lose your job.
[00:19:54]  And so we saw failures on deacons and elders massively.
[00:19:59]  And now we're trying to get the right people on the bus, as they say, and find the right seat for them.
[00:20:04]  Right.
[00:20:04]  Right.
[00:20:05]  So I know a lot of pastors who really should have just been seminary professors or should have been authors, whatever.
[00:20:13]  Wonderful minds, but just not cut out for the pastoral ministry.
[00:20:19]  Like, if you're given to anxiety, don't go into the pastoral ministry.
[00:20:23]  It's not for you.
[00:20:25]  The pastoral ministry is being surrounded by conflict all the time and being able to whistle on your way home.
[00:20:31]  And I just close it out.
[00:20:33]  I don't think about it.
[00:20:34]  I keep my life segmented.
[00:20:35]  It's like, all right, it's time to deal with this thing.
[00:20:36]  I'll go deal with that.
[00:20:38]  And, but I'm not letting all those things control me.
[00:20:41]  And anymore, when I look, I look for three things I look for a man of character, a competent man in his skills.
[00:20:47]  And then I look for a guy that has the right chemistry when I'm trying to get him on my eldership.
[00:20:52]  So we all kind of gel.
[00:20:53]  And one thing I want is someone that stays calm under fire.
[00:20:58]  And I remember when East River was growing so quick and we went from like zero to 300 in 14 months or whatever it was.
[00:21:08]  There was one point where a guy was telling me, a good guy, he wasn't an elder, but he was telling me, All these balls are getting dropped, right?
[00:21:16]  All these balls are getting dropped.
[00:21:19]  And I'm picking them up and I'm getting them overwhelmed.
[00:21:21]  And I said, Dude, who told you to pick those balls up?
[00:21:24]  Right?
[00:21:24]  You can't drop a ball you didn't pick up.
[00:21:27]  We're 14 months old.
[00:21:28]  It's all right.
[00:21:28]  It's okay.
[00:21:29]  Like someone else will have to step up and do it.
[00:21:31]  We'll do the main thing.
[00:21:32]  We'll work our way down to get to those things, but we're going to prioritize and it's all good.
[00:21:37]  And, um, And what is more main than keeping your churches open?
[00:21:42]  What's more main than worshiping?
[00:21:44]  What's more main than calling out, you want to protect lives?
[00:21:46]  Well, people's livelihoods are being destroyed during that time.
[00:21:49]  And we saw a lot of pastors that rather just have an easy, cozy life than go to war for the people in their congregation that feed them and take care of them.
[00:21:57]  Right.
[00:21:58]  No, I completely agree.
[00:21:59]  And I think part of it, people don't think of it like this, but you're talking about not being given over to anxiety and fearfulness and having this composed.
[00:22:09]  Um, you know, demeanor in the midst of conflict, in the midst of stress and challenge and difficulty, and uh, that comes from faith and it's faith in Christ.
[00:22:18]  Um, but then by virtue of faith in Christ, um, faith in part of that is faith in the way that Christ works within his people, and one of the chief ways that Christ works within his people, uh, is on the Lord's day.
[00:22:32]  Um, and I think that was part of the problem is that, um, what we saw with COVID is, um, a lot of it's not just a lot of Christians, but a lot of pastors don't actually believe what the Bible says, they just don't.
[00:22:44]  We got to see what people actually believe by virtue of what actions they took.
[00:22:49]  Not what they said, but what they did.
[00:22:51]  That reflected for us their actual convictions, what they actually believe.
[00:22:56]  And so a lot of pastors shutting down their church, in a sense, saying that what happens on the Lord's day is not that significant.
[00:23:05]  And the arguments that I was making within about two weeks of COVID and writing articles about this and getting in trouble and talking to my church members, and about two thirds of them, I was in California at the time, about two thirds of them agreeing, one third of them disagreeing.
[00:23:19]  And this is before John MacArthur made it cool, you know, to open up your church.
[00:23:22]  And so, you know, guys were pointing at MacArthur to disagree with me, you know.
[00:23:27]  And little did I know that one of my chief allies in disagreeing with MacArthur would be future MacArthur.
[00:23:32]  Nobody disagrees with MacArthur better than MacArthur.
[00:23:34]  And so, you know, I just needed to wait a few weeks for him to do that.
[00:23:37]  But the point is, you know, one of the things that I was trying to use to persuade people in the Word of God is persuading them that Christ, who is always present, and this is the way that I word it Christ, who is always present with all believers by virtue of the indwelling ministry of the Holy Spirit, he promises us, even though he's always present, he promises to be uniquely present.
[00:23:58]  Present on the Lord's day when the church gathers together.
[00:24:02]  Then, on the first day of the week, when the church, the saints gather together for the ordinary means of grace to be administered in publicly preaching the word, praying the word, singing the word in hymns and psalms and spiritual songs, and seeing, S E E I N G, seeing the word in the only two images that we've been prescribed, being the Lord's Supper and baptism, Christ promises to be in our midst in a unique way.
[00:24:25]  So, Christ is always present.
[00:24:27]  And I think that's part of the reason why pastors and Christians.
[00:24:30]  They were way too comfortable with letting the Lord's Day gathering go because they're like, well, God's omnipresent.
[00:24:37]  Christ is always with us, you know, and we can record our sermons and live stream them on Sunday.
[00:24:42]  You know, the pastor's preaching behind the pulpit in an empty sanctuary, but everybody's in their living room, you know, listening and watching.
[00:24:49]  And we can select some songs that families can sing together and just thinking that, you know, what's the difference?
[00:24:56]  And then these same pastors, the hypocrisy is.
[00:25:00]  Overwhelming, you know.
[00:25:01]  Now, you know, writing articles, you know, and stuff about the importance of the gathering and why you need to be in church.
[00:25:06]  It's like, you just got done telling your church that they don't need to be in church.
[00:25:10]  What happens here is overall, it is absolutely insignificant.
[00:25:16]  It is absolutely unnecessary.
[00:25:18]  You told them that by your actions, and now by your words, you're trying to tell them otherwise.
[00:25:22]  They don't believe you.
[00:25:23]  I don't believe you.
[00:25:24]  You shouldn't believe you, you know, like you're a hypocrite.
[00:25:27]  And so, my point is, you know, if we actually believe, you know, you were saying give it time, be patient.
[00:25:33]  Who told you to?
[00:25:34]  Pick up all those balls.
[00:25:36]  You know, the church is, it's only been 14 months.

=== Why Gathering Matters More Than Devotions (10:48) ===

[00:25:38]  And, you know, I've been having similar conversations.
[00:25:40]  So we planted in April, first Sunday of April last year, 2021.
[00:25:44]  And so our church is 18 months old, meaning the longest that anyone could be a member of Covenant Bible Church in Central Texas, north of Austin, where I pastor, the longest standing member we have is somebody who's been in the church for 18 months.
[00:25:59]  That's the max.
[00:26:00]  And, you know, and I'm preaching these, I'm preaching post millennialism, I'm preaching patriarchy, I'm preaching.
[00:26:06]  General equity theonomy.
[00:26:08]  I'm, you know, and I'm reforming, I'm preaching, you know, the doctrines of grace.
[00:26:11]  And guys are finding us, you know, through podcasts and YouTube and social media, and they're coming.
[00:26:17]  And I've had some members come to me and express their concerns.
[00:26:21]  And I think it's well intended, well meaning, and I don't even think they're wrong about the concerns they have.
[00:26:27]  But some of the more mature members in the church have come and said, Pastor, you know, I think some of these guys are attracted to biblical patriarchy, but they don't actually know what it looks like on the ground.
[00:26:37]  They don't know what that means.
[00:26:38]  Practically, and they're showing up and dragging their wife with them to your church because they're attractive, they're watching you on YouTube, they love it, and then, but then they show up, their wife's not loving it.
[00:26:48]  Um, and it's actually producing, you know, before things get better, they're actually getting worse.
[00:26:52]  And so it's producing some of your preaching and videos and stuff is producing conflict in some of these marriages.
[00:26:58]  And, you know, it's awesome to see the church grow in 18 months.
[00:27:01]  We've gone from 20 to about 130.
[00:27:03]  It's awesome to see the church grow overnight so quickly.
[00:27:07]  Um, but man, I'm really concerned that there's this, there's a storm brewing, you know, like there's a, And that's what anxiety is, right?
[00:27:13]  Even if it's not real, it's this constant sense of impending doom, even if there is no doom.
[00:27:19]  And so, what I've told these guys is like, okay, so what member, name them, right?
[00:27:23]  So, exactly what you said, that's the first question.
[00:27:25]  So, who are these people?
[00:27:26]  You know, can you put a name behind it?
[00:27:28]  And of course, without fail, it's like two or three couples, you know, not 20 or 30, but two or three couples.
[00:27:35]  And then those two or three couples, I can say, okay, so this is what we can do.
[00:27:38]  Logically, the longest that they could have been members in our church is 18 months.
[00:27:41]  That's the max.
[00:27:42]  Now, the couples you just listed have been members in our church from three to nine months.
[00:27:47]  So, this is what I want to say let's let the means of grace do their work.
[00:27:52]  Just wait.
[00:27:53]  Just give it time.
[00:27:54]  Like, do we actually believe that Christ is.
[00:27:57]  Is spiritually present when the church gathers together and that grace is being imputed, that people are receiving the grace of God through his word preached.
[00:28:07]  And as we charge and address one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, do we believe that Christ is uniquely present?
[00:28:14]  Is it a mere memorial, our view of the Lord's Supper, or is Christ spiritually present with the Lord's Supper?
[00:28:20]  And is he actually nourishing his sheep directly from his hand?
[00:28:23]  And these kinds of things, these guys, you know, some of these guys just got baptized six months ago.
[00:28:28]  Let's wait.
[00:28:29]  Let's see what happens here.
[00:28:31]  And yeah, we'll provide pastoral counseling, but not every five seconds, not every 15 minutes.
[00:28:36]  Let's wait.
[00:28:37]  Let's see what the Lord does.
[00:28:40]  And I think a lot of people have, they're coming around to that and saying, oh, yeah, we do believe in the Lord's day and the ordinary means of grace.
[00:28:48]  Because I've used that against people in a loving pastoral way, but just saying, look, part of why you're attracted to our church is because we're saying that the church, the way that it responded to COVID, was wrong.
[00:28:58]  Okay, so you're saying that the church gathering matters.
[00:29:01]  Okay, so act like it matters.
[00:29:03]  Why does it matter?
[00:29:04]  Because it does something.
[00:29:06]  God is doing something.
[00:29:07]  And if God is doing something, can we be patient?
[00:29:11]  Can we let Him do something?
[00:29:13]  So, yeah, I think what's happened is the Overton window, you know, this idea of what is and isn't acceptable to talk about has shifted.
[00:29:23]  And there's a lot of people, like a lot of folks in my church, probably thought the Gospel Coalition was really good just a couple of years ago.
[00:29:30]  Right.
[00:29:32]  And our church is mostly here by word of mouth.
[00:29:36]  It wasn't really directly connected to my online presence.
[00:29:39]  It was pretty impressive.
[00:29:41]  Folks didn't find out that I was doing all this other stuff until sometimes months into the church life.
[00:29:48]  And so, in other words, these are just kind of what you would call normies waking up.
[00:29:52]  And anytime you wake to something, there can be kind of a cage stage and finding a new balance.
[00:30:00]  So, we have a lot of people who are thinking about things they've never thought about before, right?
[00:30:04]  I mean, part of the problem is that most American churches have never really taken the time.
[00:30:08]  To develop a doctrine of the relationship between the church and the magistrate.
[00:30:12]  And it showed, right?
[00:30:14]  And so now folks are thinking, and we're seeing like a lot of like hard swings, you know, guys that weren't leading their house now are patriarchal, but they still haven't developed the ability.
[00:30:23]  They're just claiming their authority.
[00:30:26]  And they felt the responsibility.
[00:30:28]  Now they're claiming the authority.
[00:30:29]  And now it's like, well, okay, level out, develop the ability.
[00:30:32]  We have church members that always want to be in kind of outraged stage.
[00:30:38]  They're right to be outraged by all these abuses.
[00:30:40]  But now you have to kind of balance out, like you said, get into that normal rhythm of life.
[00:30:45]  You realize that your old rhythm of life was soothing you into a sort of sleep.
[00:30:51]  We're not trying to soothe you in sleep.
[00:30:52]  We're trying to stabilize you into church like week after week after week.
[00:30:58]  I think I've missed church 15 times since I've been saved in 1997.
[00:31:07]  And when I became a new believer, I just thought, I'm just never going to miss church because I figured no matter what, That would keep me accountable to God.
[00:31:15]  And it's kind of funny how people think that what will keep you accountable to God is your personal devotions.
[00:31:22]  Right.
[00:31:22]  And as if, like, back in the early days of the church, everyone has their own Bible and they're going out to read, you know, for 15 minutes.
[00:31:29]  Of course, they would memorize this stuff and they would sing it, they'd revise it in their head, they had it in their head, no doubt.
[00:31:36]  But mainly it was that public gathering where they're having the word preached.
[00:31:40]  What we need now is what we don't want is sycophants, that fanboys are coming to our church to hear us hit our same kind of points, like men should be leaders and.
[00:31:53]  The church shouldn't be weak or whatever.
[00:31:55]  All those things are true, but I'm going to preach to the sin of the people in front of me.
[00:32:00]  So I'm not there to beat up on them per se, but I am there to help them mortify their sin.
[00:32:06]  And I think some people come to churches of those of us that have an influence through the internet, and they come there, like people come to my church and think it's going to be the masculinity church.
[00:32:15]  That's all we talk about.
[00:32:17]  But it's not.
[00:32:17]  We exposit the entirety of scripture, and we think every word spoken out of the mouth of God is something that matters.
[00:32:24]  And needs to be given attention.
[00:32:26]  So when we don't hide from it, we speak to the issues of the day.
[00:32:30]  But a big part is a pastor having the guts.
[00:32:32]  Like, I called out QAnon from my pulpit.
[00:32:36]  I didn't even care about QAnon.
[00:32:38]  It didn't matter to me.
[00:32:38]  It seemed like this weird thing.
[00:32:40]  You know, it's rare that I want to talk about Gospel Coalition was acting like it was a really big deal.
[00:32:46]  I didn't buy that at all.
[00:32:48]  But I got to tell you, after Trump lost the election, I had some really sober friends.
[00:32:54]  Totally go down the QAnon rabbit hole.
[00:32:59]  And what bothered me about it was that it was starting to get into the prophetic realm, right?
[00:33:05]  Where it's basically like charismatic prophecies, but in political language.
[00:33:13]  And so, you know, really, Trump is really ruined and reigning.
[00:33:17]  This is all part of this.
[00:33:18]  He's going to like have these tribunals and all this stuff.
[00:33:22]  And what would remind me of is the prophets in Jeremiah 28.
[00:33:26]  And where they're like, look, you're not going to be in Babylon, you're not going to stay in exile.
[00:33:30]  Within a year we're going to break his yoke right, and does this, all this big show?
[00:33:34]  Jeremiah's like no no, you're staying in you're, you're doing your 70 years.
[00:33:39]  It's happening and these guys are kind of preaching this.
[00:33:43]  You know, Joe Biden's really not going to be a president and maybe he's not right, but right.
[00:33:49]  But but he is.
[00:33:51]  He's got the name um.
[00:33:53]  And so I called that out.
[00:33:54]  I called it out because I didn't want to be owned by anybody.
[00:33:56]  I don't want to be owned by the commies and I don't want to be owned by a bunch of nut jobs.
[00:34:00]  So we lost three or four families.
[00:34:02]  I didn't like, I didn't make it very personal, but I, you know, we're representatives of Jesus and our job is to call out sin and go after truth wherever it is.
[00:34:15]  And that's our job in the pulpit to deal with the sheep in front of us.
[00:34:18]  And so some of these guys are coming to these churches and they're kind of finding a new equilibrium.
[00:34:25]  And so everything's being reset right now.
[00:34:28]  Like there's not a single trustworthy denomination.
[00:34:32]  Right?
[00:34:32]  There's bad SBC churches.
[00:34:34]  There's bad PCA churches.
[00:34:36]  There's some pretty weak CREC churches out there, tons of bad Baptist churches, evangelical, free, whatever.
[00:34:42]  There's not like one true layup right now.
[00:34:45]  There's now, I would think, I'd say my denomination on whole really is broadly reformed and not woke at all.
[00:34:52]  But, you know, do they still really minister to the flock the way they should?
[00:35:00]  You know, I can't say for sure.
[00:35:02]  But it's a rough time and everything's being reset.
[00:35:05]  So we are, I think the great reset is a blessing from the Lord if we think about it the right way.
[00:35:11]  We're seeing our ecclesiological priorities and affiliations, friendship, allies, all that be reset right now.
[00:35:20]  The leadership's being reset.
[00:35:22]  They're like, you know, who cares about Matt Chandler anymore?
[00:35:25]  Very few people.
[00:35:26]  And think of he was a superstar in the evangelical world just until a couple of months ago, but he was really on the downside already.
[00:35:34]  You know, I remember when Russell Moore was patriarchal.
[00:35:37]  Right, right.
[00:35:38]  I remember him being on Nine Marks and pushing back on the word complementarian and saying how it was a bad word and he thought patriarchy was better.
[00:35:48]  It was crazy, man.
[00:35:49]  That was like Russell Moore.
[00:35:50]  I remember that.
[00:35:52]  And where's CJ Mahaney, Mark Dever?
[00:35:55]  Where's he at now?
[00:35:55]  They kind of went a little soft and weird on things.
[00:35:59]  Russell Moore is a snake.
[00:36:03]  And he's done such a flip flop.
[00:36:05]  You have to just question everything he's ever been involved with at this point.
[00:36:09]  It's so radical.
[00:36:10]  It makes no sense.
[00:36:12]  All those guys are gone or people have woke to them.
[00:36:16]  And there's kind of not been much in the middle.
[00:36:19]  There's not been.
[00:36:20]  So there's this huge vacuum that's being filled right now.
[00:36:22]  And so I think it's making us.
[00:36:24]  Rethink all this stuff, which is wonderful.

=== Questioning Pastoral Giants Like Keller (05:25) ===

[00:36:27]  Praise the Lord.
[00:36:27]  Yeah, I agree.
[00:36:30]  Yeah, no, I like what you said in terms of, you know, I think a lot of times people are attracted when it comes to, you know, guys who have some kind of social media presence and platform.
[00:36:38]  They've written a book like you, or so they're an author, they're a podcaster, YouTuber, whatever it might be, conference circuit speaker.
[00:36:45]  One of the things that Christians like, everybody likes this, but just something that, you know, that's innate to humanity is we like to decry the sins of others.
[00:36:55]  Right, like, and so we like a guy who's going to get up there and tell it like it is.
[00:36:59]  Um, but if we're honest, we like him to tell it like it is, uh, in regards to our opponents, um, in regards to their sin over there.
[00:37:07]  And I think that you know, sometimes, um, what people struggle with when they actually show up in flesh and blood to a church like yours, a church like mine, is, um, that you know, on Sunday morning, yeah, like, there is a prophetic function of the church where we cry out to kings and kingdoms and say, um, it is not lawful, like, John the Baptist, you know, it's like, it is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife when he calls out, you know.
[00:37:30]  When he calls out Herod and saying, you know, this is the law of God is eternal and it is binding on all people in all places and all times.
[00:37:37]  It's not just that God has his moral law for his people, but for all people.
[00:37:41]  And so King Jesus is king and he is your king, and you have a moral obligation to submit to his kingly rule.
[00:37:50]  And so that is a part of preaching.
[00:37:52]  That's a part of the church.
[00:37:53]  And I do that in my preaching quite regularly.
[00:37:57]  But that's not all of my preaching.
[00:37:58]  In fact, that can't even really be the bulk of my preaching.
[00:38:01]  The bulk of my preaching is I'm not preaching.
[00:38:03]  I'm not preaching to a bunch of goats, and I'm not even preaching to, you know, a bunch of wolves.
[00:38:08]  I'm preaching to God's sheep.
[00:38:10]  I'm feeding sheep.
[00:38:12]  That's, you know, 1 Peter 5 shepherd the flock of God among you, right?
[00:38:17]  Not just the flock of God that you'll never meet on the other side, you know, in New Zealand who, you know, subscribe to your YouTube channel.
[00:38:22]  I'm grateful for those people, but that's not, you know, as a local pastor, that's not somebody that I'm actually held accountable for their soul, keeping watch over their soul.
[00:38:32]  And so when people show up to our actual churches in the flesh, We're not just, they're not showing up to.
[00:38:40]  I think sometimes people think they're going to be showing up and we're going to be like a gladiator in the arena and we're going to have this showdown fighting Joe Biden and we're going to slit his throat or something, and they're going to get to just applaud.
[00:38:53]  And then they show up and we're using that double edged sword, the word of God, and exegeting it and heralding God's truths and actually cutting them to the heart.
[00:39:03]  And then all of a sudden they're upset about that.
[00:39:08]  You know, and so I think that, yeah, right now God is shaking things up.
[00:39:11]  And I think that, you know, one of the things that's so, so lacking is balance.
[00:39:17]  Pastors, you know, because a lot of these guys, I think, you know, there's a lot of, we lost like half of evangelicalism, maybe more than half of evangelicalism.
[00:39:25]  We lost them to civil tyranny and CRT, right?
[00:39:28]  Like wokeness and tyranny and all the.
[00:39:32]  And it just turns out they were just Democrats.
[00:39:34]  And then some of these guys, like, I'm not exaggerating.
[00:39:35]  I mean, Timothy Keller is a registered Democrat.
[00:39:37]  Mark Dever is a registered Democrat.
[00:39:40]  And an article just dropped, you know, just even a few weeks ago about.
[00:39:45]  This politician who's a member at Timothy Keller's church who got a perfect score from Planned Parenthood.
[00:39:52]  And the person, they interviewed him, and the person's talking about how much they love their church and they love their pastor, Timothy Keller.
[00:39:58]  And I'm thinking, like, somebody like that could never, like, they couldn't, they literally would not be able to stomach my preaching.
[00:40:04]  You know what I mean?
[00:40:05]  Like, they would be revolting.
[00:40:08]  They would be, like, trying to hold back vomit as I'm preaching.
[00:40:13]  And if they did somehow get through it and pulled the wool over my eyes and became a member, The moment that we became aware of that, they would be under church discipline.
[00:40:21]  And, you know, so, you know, but my point is that, like, you know, over half the church discredited itself and it really is disqualified.
[00:40:30]  And I'm talking about leaders, I'm talking about pastors.
[00:40:32]  And then the good guys, you know, if we could call them that, a lot of them are, they really are good guys, but a lot of these guys are one trick ponies.
[00:40:40]  You know, like they've got their little hobby horse, you know, they're marching to the beat of this one drum and it garnishes a ton of support.
[00:40:48]  Like people like it.
[00:40:50]  You know, and people will show up, um, but they're not well rounded, they're not confessional.
[00:40:54]  A lot of these guys, um, you know, they're they they don't, they're just lopsided, they're like, you know, in one area, maybe maybe they're really really sound, um, but then there's just so many weak spots.
[00:41:05]  And that's one of the like, in um, have you seen uh, The Lady in the Water by M. Night Shyamalan?
[00:41:10]  Yeah, that was the weirdest movie ever, but yeah, I saw it.
[00:41:13]  There's one guy for some reason, oh, yeah, he's just building this one really big arm, right?
[00:41:17]  Right, right, right, and um, and that is that's I've noticed this with pastors, but also with the members, where it's like.
[00:41:25]  The entrance right now into Christianity and into churches are very strange.
[00:41:32]  Where it's like someone will read Jordan Peterson and then they'll find me.
[00:41:36]  And now they really think through Christianity, primarily through kind of a sexuality lens, right?
[00:41:43]  Or you have someone that, you know, we've got a large Canadian population that comes to our church and visits, actually.
[00:41:51]  So do we, yeah.

=== Rethinking Discipleship Foundations (07:49) ===

[00:41:52]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:41:53]  We're actually helping some of them plant a church down here in the States for.
[00:41:58]  Basically, Canadian refugees.
[00:42:00]  But they're interesting because they'll have this really developed doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate, but know almost nothing else of Reformed theology.
[00:42:09]  So they have like this crazy civil doctrine that's like good, crazy good, like it's well formed, but not know anything about ecclesiology or soteriology.
[00:42:20]  It's very fascinating.
[00:42:22]  And so people are really, they are really imbalanced right now.
[00:42:27]  A lot of them, real quick, aren't convinced that they need the reformed theology, like the foundation and covenant theology.
[00:42:33]  Because I would say, like, one of the what I've realized, one of the foundations for a good political theology, good, you know, theology of sex, good theology of all these other things is covenant theology.
[00:42:46]  I think that that's kind of like that's the foundation that all these things spring from.
[00:42:50]  Do you understand the covenant nature of God, the way that he works in the world through covenants?
[00:42:56]  And I don't personally think dispensationalism is.
[00:42:59]  Long term, like there's some outliers like John MacArthur, praise God for it.
[00:43:03]  He's done awesome stuff, but I personally would say as much respect as John MacArthur is worthy of, and I do believe he's worthy of respect, I think he's done some great stuff inconsistently.
[00:43:14]  And I'm grateful for that inconsistency.
[00:43:17]  But my point is long term, I don't think that's the theological framework that's going to be able to support these kinds of endeavors.
[00:43:23]  But my point is this I think one of the reasons why it's hard for me, I don't know about you, but it's hard for me to sell people on you can't just be anti woke or you can't just be patriarchal or you can't just be post mill.
[00:43:35]  Or you can't just have, you know, resistance to tyranny is, you know, obedience to God.
[00:43:41]  All these are good things, but we need to learn our ABCs.
[00:43:44]  We need to, you know, we actually need to learn, start with grammar, you know, and logic, and then we'll get to some of this rhetoric stuff at the top.
[00:43:52]  But one of the reasons I'm struggling to convince people is because they're looking at the fruit.
[00:43:57]  And so my point is they're saying, so you're telling me that it's imperative as a foundation to be confessionally, covenantally reformed.
[00:44:05]  Okay, but 75% of the confessionally reformed, You know, covenantally reformed guys were cowards when COVID hit.
[00:44:16]  And they shut down their churches, but you can see the Instagram photos of them at a BLM rally.
[00:44:20]  And then you're telling me these other guys that are anemic theologically, like these Calvary Chapel guys, they kept their churches open and told Caesar to take a hike.
[00:44:30]  So I'm just not seeing it, Joe.
[00:44:31]  I'm not convinced that you need this for this.
[00:44:35]  And part of that's because our own team sucked, like really, really sucked.
[00:44:40]  What do you think about that?
[00:44:42]  What do we do about that as local pastors?
[00:44:44]  Well, it's crazy, right?
[00:44:45]  Because we, so you find yourself in the trenches with people you never thought you'd be in the trenches with.
[00:44:55]  I know.
[00:44:55]  Yeah.
[00:44:57]  And then you find yourself like firing at people that you never thought you would fire at.
[00:45:01]  Like I watched some friends go directions that I just never thought they would go in a million years.
[00:45:09]  I mean, really, the churches, That fell apart, and some of these guys that really went for the hardcore, you have to do whatever the government agent tells you to do.
[00:45:19]  It was a little bit surprising.
[00:45:20]  And there was also, like you said, good surprises.
[00:45:23]  The folks that they basically just loved the church, right?
[00:45:27]  They just loved their people and they feared God and they took a strong stand.
[00:45:32]  And you found yourself, at times, with charismatics who are pretty much Arminians and you're fighting the same fight.
[00:45:44]  Well, what's interesting.
[00:45:46]  What I see happening is those guys, though, are what I would tell someone all right, so listen to the Calvary Chapel guys' argument for why they did it.
[00:46:00]  And what direction, what's the trajectory of their argument?
[00:46:03]  I guarantee it's more covenantal, it's more built around sphere sovereignty.
[00:46:09]  They might just be doing it in their own broken way, but they are moving towards a truth that they were forced to.
[00:46:16]  But they just knew, like, From the heart.
[00:46:19]  See, that's the thing that's so upsetting.
[00:46:22]  It's one thing to fail from ignorance, it's another thing to fail from knowledge.
[00:46:29]  And so these guys that didn't have the knowledge, but they knew enough and they worked from it and they came to the right place.
[00:46:38]  The Reformed guys have no excuse for it.
[00:46:41]  Our confessions lie these sort of things out.
[00:46:44]  The entire Reformation, especially those of us that descend from Puritans here in America.
[00:46:50]  Was on religious freedom and being able to worship the way we want to worship.
[00:46:54]  We want to worship, right?
[00:46:55]  The Black Civil Regiment, and then we've got the Scottish Reformers and John Knox and Protestant resistance theory.
[00:47:01]  Like, that's our heritage.
[00:47:02]  And these guys knew that and failed.
[00:47:05]  And they did.
[00:47:06]  So I think, but what's really fascinating is I've got so many friends turning covenantal, so many friends coming this direction.
[00:47:16]  And I've had to work really hard to think through my language and how I communicate in front of my church just to make sure they understand these concepts.
[00:47:24]  Like, I don't know, I don't think we're Facebook friends, but my Facebook comments are like the worst dumpster fires at all times.
[00:47:31]  And I'm like hiding, blocking, deleting.
[00:47:33]  Like, I hate, I don't like to play moderator, so I block a lot.
[00:47:38]  But a lot of people misunderstand things I'm saying because it requires, like, their reading comprehension is bad, but the theological reading comprehension is just terrible.
[00:47:50]  And they don't understand what these words mean.
[00:47:52]  They don't understand insider language.
[00:47:54]  They don't understand the allusions, the references that are being made.
[00:47:57]  And they're taking me to say something much more extreme than I am.
[00:48:00]  So it's not good because I've got my critics that are saying, see, he believes this.
[00:48:05]  And then I got people that, like, agree with my critics, except they think it's good.
[00:48:10]  Right?
[00:48:11]  They think my extreme position, which is not nearly as extreme as they think it is, is because they have not been discipled.
[00:48:18]  I mean, here's the indictment on the American church and on American pastors it's one of two things, and sometimes both.
[00:48:31]  We don't know, or we didn't follow what we knew, or our people didn't know, right?
[00:48:37]  And so people have not been discipled in America.
[00:48:39]  Me and my associate pastor were talking about how.
[00:48:43]  How mind blowing it is, and how little Christians know.
[00:48:48]  And what they do know is it's very surface level.
[00:48:50]  They've watched a couple YouTube streams, they've read some Wikipedia articles.
[00:48:54]  They're very good at kind of repeating factoids or whatever, but they haven't actually read the books.
[00:48:59]  They haven't had to write papers or study it or think about it or really have intense discipleship by anyone.
[00:49:06]  So they can't really defend their positions when under fire.
[00:49:09]  And they just kind of fall back to, you know, Inflammatory rhetoric, or whatever, they just shrink up and quit.
[00:49:17]  And so, that we're having to rethink how to even disciple people.
[00:49:21]  You know, there's like the whole knowledge of Christianity is being wiped away from our culture.
[00:49:29]  And it's because we've had pastors that weren't bold enough to speak the truth, didn't have enough time to disciple people.
[00:49:35]  And when things went crazy, it fell apart because of them.
[00:49:39]  And I think that's what we're seeing right now.

=== Escaping Ecclesiastical Tyranny (12:02) ===

[00:49:41]  So, we have to find guys that love the truth and love people.
[00:49:48]  It has communication skills to, you know, it's like we're teaching people who should know, like my kids.
[00:49:56]  Let's take my kids.
[00:49:57]  My kids all have to memorize the shorter catechism.
[00:50:01]  So, you know, all, what, 107 questions, whatever it is.
[00:50:07]  And so they've been taught first OPC's children's catechism since they're like two, two or three.
[00:50:15]  We start.
[00:50:16]  Who made you?
[00:50:16]  God.
[00:50:17]  What else did he make?
[00:50:17]  All things.
[00:50:18]  Why did he make you?
[00:50:19]  For his glory.
[00:50:20]  Right.
[00:50:20]  So, All our kids have to learn that, and then we transition them over to the shorter catechism.
[00:50:26]  My kids know more theology by the time they're 10 than almost all Americans do.
[00:50:33]  And that's not because I'm an awesome dad, that's because that's how SADB is right now.
[00:50:40]  And so, how do we bring confessionalism back to people in a way that's accessible and still engages culture?
[00:50:47]  Those are the three things I'm looking for confessionalism, right?
[00:50:51]  Doctrinal standards.
[00:50:52]  So, a confession is simply a summary of biblical.
[00:50:55]  Doctrine that we've agreed upon.
[00:50:57]  Why I like the Westminster 689 would follow this is Westminster was Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Anglicans came together and were able to put together a consensus document on these main things.
[00:51:10]  They all didn't, that wasn't the full flavor of all those guys, but that was the flavor they could agree to.
[00:51:16]  And I feel like you get that many people of those different persuasions in one room, they come up with that doctrine.
[00:51:23]  You know, one that's really funny, I heard George Glepsy, though.
[00:51:27]  Who, when he opened his prayer as they're about to write the definition of God, he actually prayed for the definition of God.
[00:51:36]  What is God?
[00:51:36]  He's the Spirit.
[00:51:37]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:51:38]  And so then it's like, that's it.
[00:51:40]  But these guys are uncommon men.
[00:51:43]  So helping people see the value of these really tried and tested summary documents, consensus statements, and how it relates to their life that they're not dusty, but they're good.
[00:51:55]  I mean, when I first read the Westminster, I was blown away.
[00:51:58]  By how full of life it was.
[00:52:00]  I thought it was going to be a very dry document.
[00:52:02]  It's very devotional.
[00:52:04]  It moves you.
[00:52:05]  Then to communicate this in a way that's accessible to folks that know something that's wrong, they've been awakened, but they don't have the background.
[00:52:17]  And then to do that also where it motivates them to build holy culture, right?
[00:52:22]  To be involved.
[00:52:24]  And that I think is really.
[00:52:28]  What we have to do, and that's a high order right now.
[00:52:31]  Where do we find these men that can do that?
[00:52:33]  Yep, I completely agree.
[00:52:34]  One of the things that's been helpful for me is just helping people see that it's not a matter of weather, but a matter of which.
[00:52:40]  So, like confessionalism.
[00:52:41]  One of the things that sold me, and then the Lord's used me to persuade others, is helping them see that every Christian is confessional.
[00:52:49]  It's not a matter of weather, it's just a matter of which.
[00:52:51]  You either have the confession that you're writing in your own head as you go along, right?
[00:52:56]  The confession that's constantly evolving, that it's radically incomplete, you know.
[00:53:02]  Or you can have a confession that's historical, that's been written not by one individual, but multiple individuals, all your theological superiors, and tested and tried and true over centuries.
[00:53:14]  And that's one of the things that sold me on, like, when I was like, all right, man, I've got to have a confession, 1689 or Westminster.
[00:53:22]  These are my options.
[00:53:23]  I've got to be able to get behind one of them.
[00:53:25]  One of the things that sold me was exhaustion.
[00:53:28]  I was so tired in my pastoral ministry at that point of doing theology a la carte.
[00:53:35]  Right, new issue rises up, or I, you know, I'd just be preaching through books of the Bible.
[00:53:38]  But expositional preaching kept getting me in trouble because as I'm going through books of the Bible, we'd come to a new topic.
[00:53:45]  And then all of a sudden, you know, the elders and I, we have to, you know, have a seven hour conversation and hash it out.
[00:53:53]  And then we're looking to all these individuals what does MacArthur say?
[00:53:55]  What did Sproul say?
[00:53:56]  What did this guy say?
[00:53:57]  You know, and then we're debating it because we don't agree.
[00:53:59]  And it takes us forever, you know, and then we're like, all right, we have our position on this and we write it down, you know.
[00:54:05]  And then, you know, like two months later, there's, you know, we come to another text, or it was either by coming to issues by just simply preaching through text.
[00:54:13]  That was one of the ways.
[00:54:14]  But the other was just issues arising in the church.
[00:54:18]  Somebody would ask a question, or somebody in the church would go around and be talking about this particular doctrine that they held to with other people, and it'd be upsetting them.
[00:54:27]  And then, you know, it'd be like, what is the elder's position?
[00:54:29]  We hadn't gotten there yet.
[00:54:30]  And it's like, well, we don't have a position.
[00:54:32]  And so for me, a lot of it was literally just exhaustion.
[00:54:34]  I was like, Do I have to do theology a la carte for 85 years over the course of my entire life?
[00:54:42]  Is that my only option?
[00:54:44]  And then, you know, it's like, I just like, well, duh, you know, wait a second.
[00:54:47]  Like, we come from a tradition.
[00:54:49]  Like, I have this available to me.
[00:54:52]  Why don't we make use of it?
[00:54:54]  And do I really?
[00:54:55]  I mean, the only reason I wouldn't make use of it is if I actually thought that over the course of my life, me and my elders were going to do a better job, which is pretty arrogant.
[00:55:04]  You know, it's like we're not going to do a better job.
[00:55:05]  And so being able to lean back and rest on, you know, a historic, tried and true document that has scripture citations for every single position, all these kinds of things, like was incredibly helpful.
[00:55:17]  But another thing I wanted to say is you were talking, I just, I was thinking about tyranny.
[00:55:21]  And we talk about civil tyranny and state tyranny, those kinds of things a lot.
[00:55:24]  But, um, One of the things I think people experience over the last two and a half years is ecclesiastical tyranny, tyranny from pastors.
[00:55:31]  And I think that might be the common denominator because we talk about, like, well, you know, the theological framework for resistance to tyranny or good theology on sex or resisting, you know, woke ideology and neo Marxism and all that, you know, the common denominator theologically is the reformed confessional, you know, covenantal position.
[00:55:54]  But then when that got tested in God's providence, You know, over the last two and a half years, a ton of confessional guys, reformed guys that we thought would do really well just radically failed the test.
[00:56:05]  And then other guys that we thought wouldn't do so hot that didn't have as deep of doctrine as we would like, their doctrine is shallower, more anemic.
[00:56:13]  They actually did really well.
[00:56:14]  And so I was trying to find like a common denominator.
[00:56:18]  And one of the things that I found is, you know, like so a lot of Calvary Chapel guys did really well.
[00:56:23]  They did really like surprisingly well.
[00:56:26]  And I was thinking about that.
[00:56:27]  I was thinking about like, Calvary Chapel and some of the hallmarks of what it is to be Calvary Chapel.
[00:56:31]  And it's like, all right, well, some of these things don't work at all, right?
[00:56:34]  Like dispensational pre mill guys, you know, they're Arminian guys, you know.
[00:56:40]  But then I was thinking, you know, but one thing that a lot of Calvary Chapel pastors are like, because I'm friends with some Calvary Chapel guys.
[00:56:46]  And I remember thinking, well, Calvary Chapel is like notorious for no church membership.
[00:56:51]  I was thinking, how would that be a benefit?
[00:56:53]  But then I was thinking about that for a second.
[00:56:55]  And I'm a church membership guy.
[00:56:57]  I think they're wrong about that.
[00:56:58]  But my point is, A lot of these Calvary Chapel pastors don't have a tyrannical bone in their body.
[00:57:05]  And then some of these Reformed guys are so used to controlling the church and controlling the membership of the church and controlling this and controlling that.
[00:57:15]  What I started thinking is because I was surprised by some guys.
[00:57:18]  And if we want to name those guys, I'll let you name them.
[00:57:20]  I'll let you make that call.
[00:57:22]  But there are some guys I was like, dude, you are one of the most conservative.
[00:57:25]  When I think of a conservative, Reformed confessional pastor, I think of so and so.
[00:57:32]  And you were a tyrant.
[00:57:34]  I mean, like, literally, like, I, to the point where I thought, like, he's got to be on the payroll for the Democrat Party.
[00:57:39]  Like, this guy's like, are they paying you?
[00:57:41]  Like, I hope they are.
[00:57:43]  I hope you're making some money out of this because, I mean, you're, you're, you are doing more water carrying for, for the progressive left than Kamala Harris.
[00:57:50]  Like, you, like, you should, seriously, like, you should be getting some kind of compensation.
[00:57:54]  It's like, how in the world did this happen?
[00:57:55]  It's like, oh, I know the common denominator.
[00:57:58]  You're okay with civil tyranny because, because you're a tyrant.
[00:58:01]  The people who like tyranny are tyrants.
[00:58:03]  And you're just an ecclesiastical tyrant, and you've always been a tyrant.
[00:58:07]  You've always pushed and prodded.
[00:58:10]  And I can go back and I can listen to your podcast and I can read some of your, like, where, for instance, when it comes to the three sovereign spheres the home, the church, and the state, where it's like you and your elders were constantly overriding the authority of a father in his home.
[00:58:23]  Right?
[00:58:24]  So if the wife disagreed with her husband and they couldn't reconcile that and they went to the elders, the elders would actually, their authority would trump the husband's.
[00:58:33]  So you've always been okay with tyranny.
[00:58:35]  So that's why you were so comfortable, and without even skipping a beat, you know, without losing stride, you were able to just, oh, yeah, this is what authority says, and we do what authority says no matter what.
[00:58:45]  And so, my point is, I think, you know, long term, like we're going to need good, you know, Protestant political theology.
[00:58:52]  And I don't think that's going to come from any other seed but the Reformed confessional covenantal faith.
[00:58:58]  So I think that that is absolutely necessary.
[00:59:03]  But in the moment, that's a long term solution.
[00:59:05]  But in the moment, it seems like.
[00:59:09]  The guys who had more appreciation for the liberty of conscience of individual believers, those guys tested a lot better over the last two and a half years than the guys who even had the better theology, but in their character, in their personal philosophy of ministry, not so much historic theology, but their philosophy of ministry, were already tyrannical.
[00:59:32]  The guys who were tyrannical were okay with the ecclesiastical tyrants, were okay with civil tyrants.
[00:59:40]  But what do you think about that?
[00:59:41]  Well, I think it's, I think you're absolutely right.
[00:59:43]  That was, that's how I wrecked my mind around some of those guys who I care not to name, to be honest.
[00:59:48]  Yeah, that's fine.
[00:59:48]  That's, I love it.
[00:59:49]  But as, I watched them go that way, I was like, you know what this is?
[00:59:55]  This, they, they are projecting their, they're reflecting the way they think about authority onto the government.
[01:00:03]  Right.
[01:00:04]  And, you know, I, I know pastors who, I can think of a pretty well known pastor who, um, Who told me once, well, I'm going to go find out what your wife thinks about that.
[01:00:16]  Right.
[01:00:17]  Like when I disagreed with him.
[01:00:19]  And I was like, like, he's going to go talk to your wife?
[01:00:22]  Go around me.
[01:00:23]  Yeah.
[01:00:24]  Yeah.
[01:00:24]  That's insane.
[01:00:26]  And so I was just thinking, like, me and my wife agree on everything.
[01:00:32]  We're like, we move in lockstep, right?
[01:00:34]  We have actual marriage.
[01:00:35]  We talk through all these issues.
[01:00:37]  We got on the same page together.
[01:00:38]  And so part of me was like, go ahead.
[01:00:40]  And, um, And so, and of course, she agreed with me.
[01:00:47]  And so we saw that sort of attitude.
[01:00:49]  And so I started messing with those guys' heads because they're always, it's funny how they think fathers are always these abusive tyrants.
[01:00:58]  These kind of guys from speaking so carefully here, but here's what I noticed.
[01:01:05]  Let me put it this way I asked them, would you be okay with a man telling his wife that she has to wear the same clothes?
[01:01:16]  Yellow polka dotted dress every day.
[01:01:22]  And they all agreed no.
[01:01:24]  And I agree with them.
[01:01:25]  I was like, yeah, it's crazy.
[01:01:27]  That's an abuse of authority.
[01:01:30]  That's not the purpose of his authority, to control every single part of her life, but to lead the mission of the household.
[01:01:35]  She's a submit and follow him.
[01:01:37]  She has a basic level of autonomy as a human.
[01:01:40]  She doesn't like it's weird to force her to do that.

=== Authority in the Two Kingdoms (12:21) ===

[01:01:44]  So we would say, yeah, it's not right.
[01:01:45]  Would I discipline him for it?
[01:01:47]  I don't know.
[01:01:48]  It's so outlandish.
[01:01:50]  But apparently, the government can tell us to, that guy can't do that.
[01:01:54]  You'd be against that, thank goodness.
[01:01:56]  But they can tell us to put a mask on, right?
[01:02:00]  And so, where's the discontinuity coming from?
[01:02:05]  Well, discontinuity is coming because you just want to be the guy to give the command.
[01:02:10]  You want to be in control of everything, right?
[01:02:12]  And these authoritarian ministers came out of the woodwork from everywhere.
[01:02:18]  But they showed their true colors, which is they really don't.
[01:02:23]  I like my congregation being involved.
[01:02:26]  You said something on the phone the other day that I thought was really catchy that in your church, it's a view of all things.
[01:02:33]  View on all things, voice on some things, and a vote on some things.
[01:02:37]  A few things.
[01:02:37]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:02:38]  I thought that was really good.
[01:02:39]  And we want the congregation involved because that's strong.
[01:02:43]  It's just like that picture of that there's a beat up dog.
[01:02:47]  He's kind of like a shepherd dog.
[01:02:48]  He's bleeding.
[01:02:49]  This sheep is like leaning on him, caring for him.
[01:02:52]  Well, when you go, it's awesome to have a church that's got your back.
[01:02:56]  You know, it's weird to be able to go preach.
[01:02:58]  And I have actually not had anyone complain about my sermons yet.
[01:03:03]  Wow.
[01:03:04]  And I'm not like, I'm not super edgy all the time, but I'll go there sometimes.
[01:03:08]  I preached an Easter sermon on transgenderism.
[01:03:10]  I thought that was funny.
[01:03:12]  But probably the weirdest Easter sermon anyone's ever heard at the church.
[01:03:18]  But these guys, yeah, I think that is, I think you're right.
[01:03:23]  And the Calvary Chapel guys really view the church as a community moving together.
[01:03:27]  I mean, I was discipled in Calvary Chapel.
[01:03:30]  It's a wonderful starter church because they love people and they love the Bible.
[01:03:33]  They just got bad theology.
[01:03:36]  But a great place to start.
[01:03:38]  And what we need now is pastors that, here's how you know someone loves authority.
[01:03:46]  They love its limits as well, they respect it.
[01:03:49]  Like the guy that Jesus comes and says, Yeah, I'll go help you heal your survey.
[01:03:55]  He says, No, you don't have to come.
[01:03:56]  I'm a man of authority.
[01:03:57]  I know how authority works.
[01:03:58]  If you say it, it'll be done.
[01:04:00]  And he was right.
[01:04:01]  But people that have been under authority before understand the extent and limits of authority.
[01:04:07]  And they don't abuse it, they measure it.
[01:04:09]  And so I will demand that everyone in our church marry as a Christian.
[01:04:18]  Demand.
[01:04:19]  I will command them to in the name of God.
[01:04:21]  I will be like Moses was to Pharaoh.
[01:04:22]  I'll be as God to them.
[01:04:24]  Yeah, that's right.
[01:04:26]  I will not tell them who to marry.
[01:04:27]  That's not my job.
[01:04:29]  Even as a pastor, you've got to be really careful when you play matchmaker.
[01:04:33]  Right, that's like a dangerous role to be in as a pastor.
[01:04:36]  Uh, so do I have authority?
[01:04:38]  Heck yeah, do I have authority over people's marriage?
[01:04:40]  I do, I do have real authority.
[01:04:43]  Um, but it's limited authority, all authority is limited.
[01:04:46]  Authority exists like um, energy, so energy conservation of energy is neither created nor destroyed, is the idea.
[01:04:55]  This changes forms.
[01:04:56]  So you basically have these three institutions that are all headed by men, which is uh, church, family, state.
[01:05:03]  And if the family abdicates.
[01:05:07]  That creates a vacuum of authority that someone's going to take up.
[01:05:10]  Well, that's what's happened in the government.
[01:05:12]  The government gobbled up that authority, and now they're daddy government, right?
[01:05:16]  If the church abdicates, it goes somewhere.
[01:05:19]  So, what's been going on is that there's been this huge shift in authority.
[01:05:25]  And what we have to do is return authority back to the household.
[01:05:29]  Yes.
[01:05:31]  And then we also have to return authority, take back authority from the government, and distribute it both to the household and the church.
[01:05:37]  Right.
[01:05:38]  And everything right now is out of whack.
[01:05:40]  But in a sense, the same amount of authority exists.
[01:05:43]  It's just, it's not distributed correctly.
[01:05:45]  And you've got to get it back to where we're at.
[01:05:47]  And that's where we're at right now.
[01:05:49]  And so that's the problem we have.
[01:05:51]  It's like we're trying to get guys that are fearless in their authority, but also understand our job is as pastors to call men to rule in their households, to call the governors to rule in a righteous way.
[01:06:09]  And to do the same in our church, we're trying to reset the flow of authority where things are rightly, you know, the rod belongs to the family, the keys belong to the church, and the sword belongs to the magistrate, right?
[01:06:26]  We all have different disciplined powers.
[01:06:28]  We all, like, I can excommunicate someone, I can call it the government, I have real power.
[01:06:37]  I cannot punish crime.
[01:06:39]  I can.
[01:06:40]  Deal with the sinful aspects of crime.
[01:06:44]  And so we all have powers and limits.
[01:06:46]  So, what these guys had never really thought through that or don't care.
[01:06:53]  And now, what we need is to rise up a generation of fearless pastors that are absolutely committed to spirit of sovereignty and reestablishing it, helping these kind of blowhard patriarchal types.
[01:07:07]  There are some guys that get into it and they're like, they really are abusive with their authority.
[01:07:11]  They're over.
[01:07:11]  And so we have to correct them, but we don't want.
[01:07:14]  Like, I always tell people it's a strong-willed kid.
[01:07:17]  People, how do you break a strong-willed kid?
[01:07:20]  Don't break his will.
[01:07:22]  Like, life takes a strong will.
[01:07:24]  Right?
[01:07:26]  Life requires a strong will.
[01:07:29]  And so what you really need is to learn how to bend and aim it and channel the right way.
[01:07:35]  So as these people are coming to our churches, they've been awakened.
[01:07:39]  Well, we don't want to just put out their fire, but we want to contain it so it's productive and going somewhere.
[01:07:44]  That's the challenge we have right now.
[01:07:46]  Amen.
[01:07:47]  Yeah, you said, you know, we need guys who are wholly committed to sphere sovereignty.
[01:07:52]  What I've been using, the language I've been using to, you know, for our listeners and with my local church as I'm discipling people saying, you know, we need three spheres, two kingdoms, one king.
[01:08:01]  Because there's so much teaching on, like, you know, radical two kingdom theology versus, you know, Kyperianism and then, you know, and then understanding Jesus and pressing his crown rights and his kingly authority on earth and in heaven.
[01:08:13]  What does that mean?
[01:08:14]  You know, and how does that work with eschatology, you know, between pre mill and all mill?
[01:08:19]  Post mill, you know, I always tease the all mill guys and say, you know, like pre mill is not yet but soon, you know, and post mill is not yet but, but, but, I'm sorry.
[01:08:30]  They already been already but not yet.
[01:08:32]  Yeah.
[01:08:32]  And with post mill, I would say, so pre mill is like not yet but soon.
[01:08:36]  Post mill is already but not fully.
[01:08:39]  And then all mill is already but not really.
[01:08:42]  Yeah.
[01:08:42]  Yeah.
[01:08:43]  That's right.
[01:08:44]  You know, and obviously there's a sliding scale, you know, because some all mill guys would really do believe in some, Serious, tangible aspects of Christ's rule and reign.
[01:08:52]  But some of them, though, are just, you know, I mean, Christ is just reigning spiritually, ethereally.
[01:08:57]  It's all spiritual drama in the heavenlies, right?
[01:09:00]  Exactly.
[01:09:01]  So, my point is, there's so much doctrine between, you know, eschatology comes into play, your understanding of kingdoms comes into play, sphere sovereignty, Christ's lordship rights.
[01:09:12]  But what's been helpful in trying to be as clear and concise as possible is telling people three spheres, two kingdoms, one king.
[01:09:18]  Three spheres, this is speaking, there are a million different spheres.
[01:09:23]  I have an HOA.
[01:09:24]  That's a sphere.
[01:09:25]  That's a real institution that has some real authority, but it's not a divinely instituted institution.
[01:09:34]  So that doesn't mean there aren't any other groups.
[01:09:36]  You can have a swim team, you can have whatever.
[01:09:39]  And there's medical institutions and the arts and markets and economy and all these different things.
[01:09:46]  But in terms of divine spheres, we have the home, the church, and the state.
[01:09:50]  And this is not a hierarchy of it's the state over the church that's over families in the home.
[01:09:55]  These are three parallel spheres.
[01:09:57]  That are autonomous with their own authority.
[01:10:01]  And there are moments where there's overlap, like a Venn diagram.
[01:10:03]  Like a Venn diagram.
[01:10:04]  One is not over the other.
[01:10:05]  So, three spheres, there are two kingdoms.
[01:10:08]  And what I'm trying to help people see is it's not the kingdom of common and sacred.
[01:10:13]  I think that that's a bad dualism.
[01:10:16]  That's a bad distinction.
[01:10:17]  And it's also not this two kingdoms of church and state, but it's the two kingdoms of light and darkness.
[01:10:25]  And there can be light.
[01:10:27]  So, the kingdom of light, the church doesn't have a monopoly on that.
[01:10:31]  Whenever you have a godly, righteous, Christian civil magistrate, you have light in the sphere of the state.
[01:10:38]  And the Bible says false teachers will arise from among you, speaking about the sphere of the church.
[01:10:42]  Whenever you have a false church with false prophets and false teachers, you have dark in the sphere of the church.
[01:10:48]  And so you have three spheres the kingdom of light and dark that are distinct from one another but overlapping.
[01:10:54]  And then one king who's over all of it, who's Christ Jesus.
[01:10:57]  And I think if you can get guys to understand that basic concept and then understanding, having confidence in the authority that they have as husbands, as fathers, if they're elders, if they're deacons.
[01:11:10]  If they're on the city council, you know, and having guys actually get involved in local politics and understanding how much authority they have, but also knowing exactly, precisely where it stops that all human authority is vested authority.
[01:11:22]  There's no such thing as inherent human authority.
[01:11:25]  No man has authority in and of himself.
[01:11:28]  It's all stewardship, it's all given, vested by God for a particular end.
[01:11:34]  And the moment you get past those ends, and so, you know, the last thing I was going to say is just that, you know, the state was a tyrant.
[01:11:41]  But I think the church has been a tyrant too.
[01:11:43]  And it seems like out of those three spheres, the one that has suffered the most, right?
[01:11:47]  As pastors, you know, we think about the church and like the state has, you know, encroached over the church.
[01:11:51]  And especially the last two and a half years, you know, with lockdowns, shut down your church.
[01:11:55]  That's true.
[01:11:56]  There's something there.
[01:11:57]  But out of the three spheres of the home, the church, and the state, no sphere has had its authority gobbled up, like you said earlier, more than the home.
[01:12:08]  The state has gobbled up a ton of familial fathers' responsibilities.
[01:12:13]  But so I think the church has too.
[01:12:15]  And again, that common denominator, like trying to find a correlation with pastors who are willing to shut down their churches or started not just saying, hey, masks are optional or even recommending, but actually requiring masks.
[01:12:27]  Like when they did open, you have to wear a mask to attend.
[01:12:31]  I would say that that's tyranny, that's a binding of the conscience.
[01:12:34]  Even the reason why I wanted our church to open was because it's like, if our church is open, guess what?
[01:12:43]  That allows for both consciences.
[01:12:45]  Nobody has to come, but people can come.
[01:12:48]  But if we close the church, what we're saying is anybody whose conscience is saying we should gather, we're saying, sorry, your conscience is now bound.
[01:12:55]  You cannot submit to your own conscience.
[01:12:59]  If the church is open and somebody's 85 years old with comorbidities and autoimmune disorder and stuff, we're not mandating that they attend church, but the church being open, just from a logical standpoint, apart from theology, just logically, The church open position is the more accommodating position.
[01:13:20]  The mask, you know, like saying we're not requiring masks, we're also not banning masks.
[01:13:24]  If somebody came with a mask, I wasn't going to take it off of their face, you know, or pull it back and slap them in the face and say, you're a libtard, you know what?
[01:13:31]  Like, I wasn't going to mock them for it.
[01:13:33]  Maybe, you know, two years in, maybe a little bit of loving mocking.
[01:13:37]  Like, what are you doing?
[01:13:38]  But, you know, like you're allowing for both.
[01:13:40]  But what pastors didn't consider is it's like when you, anytime you use the word require or mandatory or any, And especially with the church, the house of God, what you're essentially saying is that the one thing that Christ says is necessary for somebody to come to his table, faith, right?
[01:13:59]  You're saying, well, in this case, it's faith plus a mask.
[01:14:03]  Faith plus, like that.

=== Foundational Commitments Beyond Lord's Day (06:11) ===

[01:14:05]  And I think pastors, one of the reasons they were content to pull that trigger and make those kinds of decisions so quickly and so haphazardly is because they didn't realize how big of a decision it actually was.
[01:14:16]  They didn't realize that what they were saying was, you cannot come to the Lord's table unless you have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and a mask on.
[01:14:26]  Or, you know, we're just going to take the Lord's table away from his people for four months.
[01:14:30]  You know, or we're just like, they didn't realize.
[01:14:34]  It's almost like a puppy.
[01:14:36]  Some of these pastors, it goes all the way back to the beginning of our conversation.
[01:14:39]  They were managerial leaders.
[01:14:41]  They were like a puppy, but a great Dane, right?
[01:14:44]  Like a nine month old puppy that still thinks it weighs like seven pounds, but it's actually like 65 pounds.
[01:14:52]  And just making these decisions, not realizing how much power and how the far reaching implications and theological implications were of what they were deciding.
[01:15:04]  And so, guys were.
[01:15:06]  They were tyrants and without even realizing.
[01:15:09]  The last thing I was going to say, I forgot about this, but one way I think the church has encroached on the family in a form of tyranny is by having too many midweek programs.
[01:15:18]  Like, we're telling dads, like, dude, you need to be doing family worship.
[01:15:21]  You're the pastor of your home.
[01:15:23]  And then there's Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night.
[01:15:25]  And then the state with public schools, you know, with this sports and that, you know, and all.
[01:15:29]  And then it's just like families, like, you know, you talk about doing the Westminster Shorter Catechism.
[01:15:33]  And I think there's a lot of men who really do want to do something like that.
[01:15:37]  And they're like, when?
[01:15:39]  The church took all of our time, whatever the state left over.
[01:15:42]  And so I just feel like the state is the major tyrant, but then whatever they don't gobble up, the church often gobbles up.
[01:15:49]  It does.
[01:15:49]  And then the family.
[01:15:50]  Because the people ask too, though.
[01:15:52]  And that's where this is a corrective time where, like, you know, what do people judge a church by a lot of times?
[01:15:57]  Well, basically your music and your children's program.
[01:16:00]  That's right.
[01:16:00]  And so part of it we have to, like, so we have eight foundational commitments.
[01:16:03]  One of our foundational commitments is we are committed to a streamlined form of ministry.
[01:16:08]  And so any decision we make in our eldership, we have to, we, We run them by our foundational commitments.
[01:16:13]  They're our philosophy of ministry.
[01:16:15]  And I was feeling the pressure to disciple people and almost added a midweek service.
[01:16:19]  And we're like, you know what?
[01:16:20]  The thing is, when you add these services, they don't go away a lot of times.
[01:16:23]  That's right.
[01:16:24]  Right.
[01:16:24]  So church programs are kind of like government programs.
[01:16:27]  Once you start one, they never go away.
[01:16:29]  And even though there's like five people going to it and it's like should have been killed forever ago, but it means a lot to this elder's wife and therefore it keeps on going.
[01:16:38]  Right.
[01:16:40]  But now I think you're right is that what we're, it's that's the difficulty.
[01:16:45]  Like, what happens when everything's broken down, when everything's chaotic?
[01:16:49]  Where do you rebuild?
[01:16:50]  And we're rebuilding, we're starting new churches, we're making new disciples, correcting imbalances, we're creating new informal, formal networks, denominations.
[01:17:04]  It's an exciting time because we get to rebuild.
[01:17:09]  And this idea of neutral world versus negative world, positive world, that comes from Aaron Rennes, really starting to take off.
[01:17:16]  And we don't live in a neutral world anymore.
[01:17:18]  Like, it is not seen as a good thing to be a Christian.
[01:17:22]  It's not break.
[01:17:23]  We are increasingly enemies of the state, certainly enemies of the zeitgeist.
[01:17:28]  And so now we're building churches for the so called negative world, for when it's a negative to be a Christian.
[01:17:35]  And that's what we have to do.
[01:17:36]  So it's exciting to be part of it, man.
[01:17:38]  Yep.
[01:17:38]  I completely agree.
[01:17:39]  You know, we're trying to focus on just the Lord's day.
[01:17:42]  We had, you know, Sunday morning, and we just recently added, you know, Sunday evening.
[01:17:46]  If we, you know, in the future, as the Lord provides, like, we're trying.
[01:17:50]  Next thing would probably be Sunday school, you know, like an optional 9 a.m. before church at 10 a.m.
[01:17:55]  Eventually, maybe like a Sunday prayer meeting.
[01:17:57]  We have our evening service at five.
[01:17:58]  Maybe there's a four o'clock prayer meeting.
[01:18:00]  Like, I want to have not just a Lord's hour, but a Lord's day.
[01:18:03]  But that's all I want to have is a Lord's day.
[01:18:05]  Because I just, when I look at church history, God has sustained his people in virtually every nation, every culture, every century by having a robust Lord's day.
[01:18:15]  And then the rest of the time, it's like, well, what are we doing?
[01:18:18]  How is the church ministering?
[01:18:20]  You're being the church.
[01:18:21]  Like, I want fathers to be in their home with their wives, with their children.
[01:18:25]  But also, I'm telling the guys all the time, like, preaching this all the Christ for all of life, Kyperianism, you know, not one single square inch, you know, of all God's creation that Christ doesn't cry out mine, then they need time to start that business.
[01:18:38]  That business isn't going to start itself, which means that what that looks like is not having a Wednesday night service.
[01:18:45]  Because Wednesday night, after working 40, 50 hours already that week, you need to be able to come home and be working on plans for starting your own business so that you're economically bulletproof and cancel proof, you know.
[01:18:56]  And so, like, we want these parallel Christian economies and businesses and all this kind of stuff.
[01:19:00]  And that stuff takes time.
[01:19:02]  And one of the reasons Christians don't have time is because the church takes all their time.
[01:19:05]  So, yeah, I love what you're saying, that streamline of ministry.
[01:19:09]  And I just, but the thing is, we're only 18 months in, and I'm already, like, as a pastor, having to remind our people of that when they're like, well, what if we had like a women's kind of, and I'm like, but remember, remember what we're trying to do?
[01:19:20]  Restore Christendom in every sphere of life.
[01:19:23]  This, you know, it's not just the ecclesiastical sphere.
[01:19:26]  Like, we want the Lord's day to be, like, the Puritans view the market day for the soul.
[01:19:30]  You come and you just get loaded up with all these goodies, you know, it's the delectable.
[01:19:35]  Mountains, you know, Pilgrim's Progress, you get a glimpse of the celestial city, but then you go home and we say goodbye for the next six days.
[01:19:44]  We do one men's meeting, one women's meeting, one youth gathering.
[01:19:49]  And we do women's.
[01:19:51]  Weekly or monthly?
[01:19:52]  Monthly.
[01:19:53]  One woman.
[01:19:54]  So we do women's on Tuesday, youth on Wednesday, and men on Thursday on staggered weeks.
[01:20:02]  There's one week where nothing happens.
[01:20:04]  And that way we don't steal Tuesday from someone always or Wednesday always.
[01:20:09]  I love it.
[01:20:10]  And we do it.
[01:20:11]  We try to do high quality.
[01:20:12]  They all start and end at the same time.

=== Small Groups and Men's Meetings (03:01) ===

[01:20:16]  With the exception of the women's ministry, they're all elder led.
[01:20:21]  And we find you can get a lot accomplished.
[01:20:25]  And people say, well, where are people going to fellowship?
[01:20:26]  Well, they're adults.
[01:20:29]  They can share phone numbers.
[01:20:31]  We don't have small groups right now.
[01:20:33]  We don't need them.
[01:20:35]  I'm not 100% against them.
[01:20:37]  I'm not a fan on the whole.
[01:20:39]  But yeah, anyway.
[01:20:41]  Yep, I'm with you, man.
[01:20:42]  Cool.
[01:20:42]  Well, thanks for coming on the show.
[01:20:43]  I really appreciate it.
[01:20:44]  We don't have small groups either.
[01:20:45]  And it's exactly, I'd be hypocritical if I said, like, and therefore we command no small groups, right?
[01:20:51]  That's tyranny, just the other direction.
[01:20:53]  So we're not making a rule about it, but I'm the same as you.
[01:20:56]  It's like, man, I just think less is more right now because there's so much to do.
[01:20:59]  There's just so much to do.
[01:21:01]  All right.
[01:21:01]  Well, thanks for coming on the show, Michael.
[01:21:03]  How can people follow you?
[01:21:05]  I'm mostly, don't follow me on Facebook.
[01:21:08]  I'll probably just block you.
[01:21:10]  But I'm so close to being done with Facebook.
[01:21:13]  But mainly on Twitter.
[01:21:15]  This is Foster.
[01:21:16]  And I've got a.
[01:21:18]  This is Foster is turning into a podcast that'll actually record the first episode tomorrow morning.
[01:21:25]  And got you getting you scheduled on that.
[01:21:27]  Yep.
[01:21:28]  And so that'll be on YouTube.
[01:21:29]  You can go to my YouTube channel, which is this M. Scott Foster.
[01:21:32]  So if you have my middle name, Scott.
[01:21:34]  But it'll be coming out there in the next couple of weeks.
[01:21:37]  Cool.
[01:21:37]  And your book's on Canon, right?
[01:21:39]  It is.
[01:21:40]  It's on Canon.
[01:21:41]  So it's good to be a man's on Amazon, Canon, anywhere you want to get it.
[01:21:45]  It's there.
[01:21:46]  You've got Kindle Unlimited.
[01:21:47]  It's free, it's on Audible.
[01:21:49]  It's.
[01:21:50]  Been awesome.
[01:21:51]  It's been hovering around number one again.
[01:21:52]  It gets popped up to number one every time critics get mad at me.
[01:21:55]  I love it.
[01:21:56]  What category is it in on Amazon?
[01:21:59]  Like number one in what?
[01:22:00]  Well, it's been number one in Presbyterian Christianity, which is super small.
[01:22:04]  Yeah.
[01:22:05]  But it was number one in Lutheran Christianity for a while.
[01:22:07]  It was hilarious.
[01:22:08]  But men's Christian living is a pretty huge category.
[01:22:11]  And that's the category.
[01:22:13]  It's been in the top 10 most days since it came out in November of last year.
[01:22:18]  That's the thing.
[01:22:19]  Which is, it's been really cool, right?
[01:22:20]  It's been nuts.
[01:22:21]  We've been number one.
[01:22:23]  We were number one for like four or five months there.
[01:22:26]  And I think.
[01:22:28]  I think our book, our goal with that book was to be a catalyst.
[01:22:33]  What we, you know, Nan and I wanted to write a systematic theology of manhood.
[01:22:37]  And then we realized, like, that's not going to happen right now.
[01:22:39]  We're too busy.
[01:22:41]  And then we said, what do men need to get jump started?
[01:22:45]  And so it's good to be a man's, a jump start.
[01:22:47]  That's what it is.
[01:22:48]  It's a boost to get you moving.
[01:22:49]  It's not going to answer all your questions, solve everything, but it can give you a topographical map and a compass.
[01:22:55]  Cool.
[01:22:56]  Amen.
[01:22:57]  All right.
[01:22:57]  Well, thanks for tuning in to all our listeners, and we'll see you next time.
[01:23:00]  God bless.
[01:23:01]  Thanks so much for listening.
[01:23:02]  But, real quick, before you go, do us a small favor take a moment and leave us a five star review if you enjoyed the show.
[01:23:10]  This is undoubtedly the best way that you can help us get this biblically faithful content to as many people as possible.
[01:23:17]  Thanks so much.