Steven Lawson and Why Men Fall examines the scandal involving Steve Lawson, linking his silence on social justice to a broader pattern of cowardice among celebrity pastors. The discussion critiques how congregations idolize distant teachers rather than local spiritual fathers, enabling power dynamics where older men exploit younger women's adoration. Ultimately, the episode argues that securing doctrinal purity and masculine leadership is essential for family stability, warning that compromising on sacraments or authority undermines the church's ability to disciple the next generation effectively. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Moral Failures in Modern Christianity00:09:53
Recently, we have witnessed a series of moral failures from prominent Christian leaders.
While it is true that we see examples of this throughout the scripture and Christian history, it is worth asking is there anything about modern Christianity that leads itself to moral compromise?
What can faithful Christians do to build their lives and their society in a way that prevents this sort of end?
Tune in now as we examine these questions.
All right, guys, we are going to hop to it.
We need to be a little bit shorter with our live stream today.
My daughter is sick and I need to help my wife take care of her.
But it's an important topic.
A lot of guys by this point have weighed in.
The news came in over the weekend.
It was Friday, I believe.
Thursday, I think.
Thursday or Friday.
So it's been a few days at this point.
Disclaimers up front.
Number one, I do think that in this case with the public leader, that the sin needs to be publicly presented.
However, in terms of who should do that, Primarily, the people who need to make that statement need to be the elders of Steve Lawson's local church.
And I do think that they're probably going to need to be a little bit more specific than simply inappropriate relationship.
And in part because if it's not terribly bad, then that leaves just an open door for people to think the absolute worst.
And number two, if it is terribly bad, then it's deceitful and makes people think that it was.
Maybe they're just getting coffee together every now and then.
So, there probably do need to be some more details with that, and in a way that protects the young woman, her identity.
She sinned.
She has to confess that and make that right in order to be restored in right relationship and right standing as a member in a local Bible preaching church.
But her name doesn't necessarily need to be made public.
And then, on behalf of Steve Lawson, his family, his wife, his children, So, you don't need to be unnecessarily detailed, but it does require some details.
But again, the point is in terms of the audience, who should provide those details?
The elders of Steve Lawson's church, and then an argument could also be made for TMS, the Master Seminary, and Ligonier, because Steve Lawson was representing both of those ministries as a teaching fellow with Ligonier, and I believe he was the dean of a doctoral program in ministry for TMS, the Master Seminary.
Those would be the three parties.
First and foremost is local church, and then TMS and Ligonier that would have the right to make statements.
And I do believe that there needs to be more clarity, but also tempering that with wisdom.
But more clarity than has been dropped now.
But that's not our live stream today.
So I just want to make that clear out the gate.
If you clicked on here because you thought you were going to get some kind of secret intel, even if we had it, It's, uh, we're just not the ministry, uh, to launch that.
It's not our position.
And, um, yeah, it's great to get clicks and views, uh, but not that way.
So, um, but what we are going to do is we're going to talk about this larger problem of why does this keep happening?
There's a lot of guys who've continued to fall.
Uh, we've got some thoughts on the matter.
I do believe there are some direct correlations and some of them will surprise you.
I'll just lead off with this, uh, to kind of hook you and keep you, uh, stay, you know, uh, keep you tuned in.
Um, I do think John Harris talked about this, and so I want to give him credit.
I think he did a good job with this particular insight.
But I do believe there is a direct correlation between cowardice and a lack of character.
Or to say it the other way, character and courage go hand in hand.
And when courage is absent, it doesn't definitively prove, but it does leave room to at least question.
When courage is absent, to cause room to question, Is there perhaps also character that is lacking as well?
I'll just be honest the correlation between cowards with COVID and moral failures remains undefeated.
Yeah.
And I thought maybe Wes, you could pick up there and then Michael, and then I've got some scripture that fits that that I'd like to read.
Yeah.
I might have shared this before, but so before we moved to Texas several years ago, we attended a church in New Jersey where I was finishing up school.
And we came to that church in 2019.
It was actually just when we first started going there, the pastor there had a little bit of a scandal where he got caught plagiarizing sermons.
And we did this whole thing.
He got caught, came out, gave the teary eyed confession, and we kind of thought everything was good.
Well, then COVID happened.
So the church shut down.
We were in New Jersey.
I mean, we were shut down for good for months on end.
Black Lives Matter happened.
And real quick, was your church meeting in somebody else's venue, or did it have its own church building?
Were you forced to shut down?
Not at all.
We had our own venue.
This is in New Jersey.
I mean, it was close to communist Russia out there.
But we had our own venue, and there weren't, I think California would probably be worse actually, as far as rules or laws or police enforcement.
So COVID happened.
And we were in California, but we didn't have, we were meeting in elementary school as a church plant.
So we had no choice in the matter.
But what we did was we quickly, within four weeks, started meeting just At another church outside.
They wouldn't let us in the building, but we were, and we were very grateful to that church.
And so having an outdoor service.
And at that point, when we started our outdoor service on the books, it was still technically illegal, thanks to Gavin Nusulimi.
It was still illegal at that time to have even a drive through service where you stay in your car, you know, and watch through the, like a drive in movie.
Yep.
So none of that going on.
Had our own building and Black Lives Matter happened.
It gives a terrible, terrible sermon.
He said, if you're white, you need to shut up and listen.
So he told his parishioners, About three to four months later, we finally, so this is September.
This is, the summer has passed.
People have been without the Lord's Supper, have been without teaching in person, without worshiping the saints for months.
And it comes out that he'd been having an affair for over a year.
So, all the way back when he was plagiarizing in 2019, he'd been having the affair then.
And then COVID happened.
And the theme that runs through all of that how is it that you could take a moral stand, that you could risk the state coming down on you, risk arrest when you know you're guilty?
That's the theme that runs through all of this.
So, the courage to stand up and fight is also correlated to, You really knowing what it is that you've been doing.
Doug Wilson said something during COVID, and it was really helpful.
He said, Many pastors will not open because their mortgage is too big, their wives are too worried, and their browser history is too scandalous.
So, firsthand, a man that I looked up to.
And yeah, turns out he was compromised for a long time.
And when the moment came, he didn't stand for anything.
Right.
Guilt, what I would say is that guilt is the foothold.
For fear.
And then fear, of course, completely just destroys courage.
And so guilt takes the wind right out of your sails.
And I understand that as Christians, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
That's true.
But living in secret sin and not being willing to confess it puts a lot of things into question.
For instance, are you in Christ Jesus?
I don't have an opinion on the matter in the case of Steve Lawson, and I'm not going to try to judge whether or not he's regenerate.
I'm not going to do that.
If you forced me to make a decision on the matter, I would say I think he probably is.
I think he probably is a Christian.
But the Puritans had a decent theological framework for this phenomenon, for lack of a better word, because it really is in the Christian life, or at least should be, a phenomenon, something strange and abnormal.
But the Puritans called it.
Prolonged, like sin that is prolonged and in secret, unconfessed, prolonged sin.
They would talk about it as one of two options either a sign that you're not a Christian at all or living underneath the fatherly displeasure of God.
They called it the fatherly displeasure.
That there was actually a way for someone to, one, for their character to prove in the final analysis, you know, Matthew chapter seven, depart from me, I never knew you, that you never actually belonged to Christ in the first place and that you were merely a professing Christian and not a true Christian.
That is a viable category for those who are living in prolonged unconfessed sin.
However, another category.
Was that it was possible to be living in a prolonged sense underneath the fatherly displeasure of God?
And what they meant by that was fatherly, so he is still your father by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
So if you're a Christian, there is no halfway house, there's no stepchild status for the Christian.
You are fully adopted as a beloved son of God.
But there's a way of sitting at the father's table where he is legitimately your father.
And yet, still having an overwhelming sense of his displeasure that he loves you, he receives you as a son, but he is displeased with you, living under a cloud.
Unconfessed Sin and Fatherly Displeasure00:04:45
And so that could be Steve Lawson or it could be the former.
It could be that he was never converted in the first place.
Again, if I had to guess, I would guess the latter.
But the point is again, back to Harris for just a moment, he did, I think, a pretty good job because John Harris, A.D. Robles, a few of these guys.
Um, early on, 2017, 18, and 19, uh, took you know, they kept meticulous receipts on the wokeness that was creeping in at you know, uh, with Southern Baptist and you know, in Southern Seminary.
And for John, it wasn't um, Southern but it was um, uh, Southeastern, Eastern.
Um, and so you know, John went to Southeastern, and so they're you know, they were keeping these you know, meticulous receipts of wokeness and compromising these kinds of things well before COVID, you know, years before, and then when COVID happened.
They were, you know, guys like AD Robles, guys like John Harris were very much taking clear receipts.
And so John has the receipts on Lawson.
And the reality is, as much as you may think that Steve Lawson was a lion in the pulpit in terms of his expository preaching, the dude was an absolute coward on COVID and social justice.
And social justice.
Like, so to put it into perspective, here would be an example, right?
So you work for the Master Seminary.
And our personal friends with John MacArthur, and as Steve Lawson himself, by his own admission, as he said, he named one of his kids John after John MacArthur, and another one Grace after Grace Community Church.
And so, I mean, there was nothing hidden in terms of this is John MacArthur's boy.
He was Sproul's boy, too, but also this is John MacArthur's boy.
And they're buds, they're friends.
And with the statement on social justice and the gospel, That John MacArthur was a big part of and promoting that and signing that.
Steve Lawson never signed it, which is kind of shocking.
When Harris told me that, I just assumed that all the Masters guys signed it.
And here's the thing even Ligonier, and Ligonier, I would say Ligonier is, I appreciate Ligonier.
I'm not trying to cast shade, but when it comes to cultural and political issues, Ligonier is pretty quiet.
Now, I'm not saying Sproul always was, but Ligonier as an organization, with Sproul having passed away before a lot of this stuff really came.
To the forefront, Sproul passed, I believe it was December 2017.
And since Sproul's passing, I mean, these guys, you know, like you can get a full biography of Jonathan Edwards, you know, or Knox or Calvin.
Romans commentary for $5.99.
For $5.99.
No, let's be fair.
For your gift of any amount, we'll give you as a special thank you.
Which is $5.99.
But the point is, these guys were not talking about BOM.
These guys were not talking about COVID, the Ligonier guys.
And yet, to their credit, I want to say that MacArthur is much more comfortable speaking to political issues of the day than Ligonier.
Ligonier is much more silent.
And even Ligonier came out and signed the statement on social justice and the gospel.
Because they agreed with it and because of MacArthur's influence.
And they probably thought about it and thought, like, what would Sproul do?
We want to honor his legacy.
Sproul would agree with MacArthur.
We know he would.
So, yeah, we're not going to necessarily do a 20 part series on why, you know, DEI and affirmative action and wokeness and these kinds of things are a cancer, you know, and neo Marxism and critical race theory.
But we'll at least come out and get MacArthur because MacArthur was getting a ton of flack.
You know, so it was Tom Askell and the G3 guys, Josh Weiss, these guys who were involved with the statement, they were getting a ton of flack because one of the things people were saying is no credible ministry.
No credible ministry or minister has signed your statement.
It's just a couple guys at the top who wrote the statement.
And then just all these hundreds of pastors, but it's just hundreds of nobodies.
Tom, Dick, and Nancy, I believe, one person once said, Nobodies that nobody cares of, and who pastor small churches of 100 people in rural Kansas or whatever.
But then Ligonier comes out and says, Well, we're going to get John MacArthur's back.
We're not going to talk about it much, but we will sign the statement.
So here's my point.
You've got Steve Lawson, who's a teaching fellow and was personal friends with Sproul, working as a leader, teaching fellow with Ligonier, and as the dean of the doctoral preaching ministry program at the Master Seminary with MacArthur.
So he's with both of these organizations, both, one writes the statement or is involved in it, and another signs the statement, and he doesn't.
The Devil's Power Over Death00:03:00
And you know, he probably got some pressure, you know, with those organizations, that network and those friendships.
But on COVID, we're talking like late 2021, not 2020.
Right.
So we're not talking weeks.
We're not talking months.
We're talking over a year.
And he's, they're still like, oh, we're going to, you know, like, I don't know what we're going to do about COVID.
You know, we're like, we're going to require a mask or we're going to, you know, social distancing.
Social distancing in the church.
And everybody who's new, Stephen Lawson, you know, said like, yeah, the dude is deathly afraid.
Of covet and on BLM, like a deafening silence on BLM, even though his whole like, what do you have to lose?
All the guys you work for, right?
You're not going to get fired for it.
You're not going to get fired for it.
Other guys actually had to risk loss, and it would be very little risk.
However, the connection between secret sin and cowardice, fear, remains undefeated.
Here's one verse to illustrate this point to use some Bible.
So, this is Hebrews chapter 2, starting in verse 14, and we'll also read 15.
It says this.
Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself, likewise, this is Christ, partook of the same things that through death, that is his death, he might destroy the one who has power of death, that is the devil, and, verse 15 now, deliver all those who through fear of death.
All those.
So the devil has power over death.
So by Jesus' death, he could conquer the devil who has power over death.
And the devil who had power over death, what did he use that power to do?
Jesus would be delivering all those who, through fear of death, were subject to lifelong slavery.
What is one of the key elements that subjects a person to lifelong slavery?
Slavery to sin?
Slavery to the devil, the fear of death.
He who has power over death, that was the devil, utilized that leverage, that power of death, to enslave and to take captive people to subject them to lifelong slavery because of their fear of death.
So the one who has power over death knew that people, image bearers of the living God, have a fear of death, and he utilizes and plays off of those strings, the fear of death, to subject people to lifelong slavery.
But what did Jesus do?
By his own death, He stripped and neutralized, disarmed the devil who has power over death by removing death's sting.
We still die.
If Jesus tarries, we still die.
But, oh, death, where is your sting?
The fear of death for the Christian has been neutralized.
Death still comes.
Even Sproul said this once famously.
He said, Am I afraid of death?
No.
No fear in death, right?
No, you know, it's what is the line?
No.
No guilt in life.
No guilt in life, no fear in death.
So he said, Am I afraid of death?
No.
He said, Am I afraid of dying?
Neutralizing the Sting of Death00:04:44
Yes.
Like that's still going to suck.
Dying is not going to be a picnic for most of us.
Maybe a few of us get lucky and peacefully, you know, just have a massive heart attack in our sleep and wake up and we're surprised.
We're like, Hey, I'm in heaven, you know.
But for most of us, dying is going to be immensely painful.
And so to have a fear of dying, sure.
But a fear of death is different.
And so, all that being said, the point is that.
There is something to be said for those who were deathly afraid.
I mean, you got John MacArthur, and I'm not saying Steve Lawson is a sprained chicken.
He's not.
I think he's 74, 73, something like that.
But by comparison, he's a sprained chicken with John MacArthur, who's like 170.
I mean, he's not.
But John MacArthur's well into his 80s, mid 80s at this point.
And here's Steve Lawson's in better health.
John MacArthur has had to wrestle with health issues these past couple of years.
He's in better health, he's a decade younger.
And MacArthur is saying, Yeah, let's bring 5,000 people in the room without social distancing.
Let's pick back up and do church.
And Steve Lawson, for like MacArthur's backup fully running.
And a year after MacArthur's, and MacArthur, honestly, frankly, I don't want to pick on him.
I've picked on him in the past, but he was late.
He was late.
I'll just say that.
He was late.
Now, granted, it is California.
Granted, it is a large church, but he was late.
But here's the point if MacArthur was late, then good night.
Steve Lawson, that guy, was, if MacArthur's late, Steve Lawson is a year plus after being late.
That's how late he was.
And then on BLM, he's not just late.
You know, they say better late than never.
He was never on that one, never came out.
And Harris's point, and it was incredibly insightful.
I'll say this and let you guys have it.
But that's not the whole point is that's not random.
That's not, it's not random that there's some huge political, cultural moments where the church has to take a stand.
And one of the guys who it actually would be easy to take a stand.
He's surrounded, his entire tribe, all his employers are actually rooting for him to take a stand.
Other Joe Blow blue collar Christians took a stand and lost their livelihoods over it, and they were still willing to take a stand.
Steve Lawson, like, it wouldn't have even taken that much courage, and yet he didn't do it.
And I think that there's a correlation to be drawn between, oh, come to find out.
Some massive deficiency with character.
And also, oh, is that maybe why you didn't have quite the zeal?
Is that maybe like great technical sermons and exposition?
Great.
Zero application.
Zero application.
Maybe applying a little bit to a marriage in the home, maybe applying to a church, ecclesiastical, ecclesiology, and maybe church polity.
But beyond that, speaking to the culture at large, speaking to politics at large, Lawson was not known.
He was not a Puritan in that sense.
He was not known for a lot of helpful, tangible, practical application.
For the cultural moment of the day, for the political moment of the day.
It was just here's the text.
I'm going to exquisitely exposit it for you in a very technical way that every preacher would envy, you know, and show that I am a technically polished, you know, ivory tower preacher.
And right now, you know, Marxism is destroying your home and inflation is stealing, you know, picking your wallet and you can't feed your kids.
I don't really have much to say about that.
But let me get into the technical analysis of this Greek word and blah, blah, blah.
Maybe, just maybe, his style of preaching, the neglect of application, his failure on COVID, his failure on BLM, and then this latest news, maybe they're not isolated.
Maybe those things are connected.
At a data point on the Statement of Social Justice, I'll turn it over to you, Michael.
The church we were at before, I remember when that came out.
I think I signed it, even though I'm a nobody.
And I sent it to him, and he looked at it, and he's like, well, I don't know.
I don't really feel the need to sign it.
He was from Westminster.
His dad was friends with Timothy Keller.
And then about six months later, this is, This is the evangelical church, scandal to scandal.
He was removed.
In this case, it wasn't for adultery or infidelity.
It was abusive behind doors, like yelling at your female intern staffers.
It was actually legitimate.
And so, again, catch the pairing.
Tough issue comes out.
Man, I could take a stand.
I could lose people.
And I think I remember as a young man thinking, like, oh, I'm sure he's got a reason or he sees something.
Lack of Zeal Among Leaders00:07:22
No, actually, he's probably just cowardly.
And cowardly because he was a domineering, hard man who, in many ways, was insecure.
I think of Occam's razor as kind of this principle that the simplest explanation is often the most likely.
You can get into all of this why he maybe had this reason, and this is what he saw, and this is how he used the text.
Yeah, okay, maybe, or maybe he was just compromised and wasn't willing to take the stand that needed to be taken.
Right.
I also heard what John Harris said about courage and vice, and immediately I thought of a couple of connected passages.
And the first is in 2 Samuel 11, where it talks about King David.
And it says, In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah.
But David remained at Jerusalem.
And then, of course, the very next story is David and Bathsheba, where David was not out where a king should be.
He was not out defending his people.
He was not out on the front line, protecting Israel, advancing the kingdom of God in the way that he should.
And so the question is, and I think it can go both ways.
The question is chicken or egg, but my point is it can go both ways.
I think so.
Because a lack of courage is sin.
A lack of defending your people as a king.
Or defending your congregation as a pastor out of fear is sin.
And that will only beget more sin.
Right.
Sin, we fool ourselves by thinking that we can somehow isolate individual sins.
Like, yeah, I really, you know, I stink in this area, but it's just this area.
It's like, think of a tree, you know, well, Jesus, you know, it's like, I just came up with this right now.
Obviously, this is, you know, Jesus' illustration, but, you know, a good tree cannot bear bad fruit.
Likewise, a bad tree can't bear.
Good fruit, or you know, a stream like it's going to have fresh water or salt water, it's not going to have both.
You're not going to have a fresh water stream pouring out salt water, or vice versa.
Well, what we do is we sometimes think that to take this analogy a little bit further, I don't think Jesus would mind.
I think it's fair to the text and the point that he's making.
But think of isolated branches on the tree.
We sometimes fool ourselves in thinking that we can have good roots.
You know, to say I have bad roots, but I'm going to have good branches, good fruit, that's foolish.
Or good roots and bad fruit, that's foolish.
But what we do is we think I can have one bad root.
And all the others be good, and that'll manifest with one bad branch, and all the others.
So, we think we can have a designated root and one designated root, and all the rest are healthy, and one designated branch, and all the rest are healthy, and that all these other branches will be producing perfectly poison free apples.
You know what I mean?
Like, I can give this fruit to my kids, and it's not going to harm them.
It's healthy, it's good, it's nutritious.
And over here, it's perfectly poisoned apples.
So, fully poisoned apples on one branch, but then Fully non poisoned, not a drop of poison, perfectly healthy fruit on it.
Sin doesn't work like that.
Well, but that branch branches out and begins to have, it may be one branch is particularly bad.
Or initially.
Initially.
And that's when you cut the branch off.
That's when you cut the branch.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Pluck out your eye, cut off your hand.
If it causes you to sin, better to miss a branch and go to heaven than to go into hell with all your branches.
And so the point is, you're right.
Initially, and that's why you best be killing sin.
Or sin will be killing you, John Owen.
So, incredibly difficult Puritan to read.
Everyone's like, I'm going to read the mortification of sin.
I've never read a single Puritan before.
It's like, please don't.
Start with the mortification of sin or something like that.
Yeah.
Because his sentences are like mine, but he puts them in written form.
But it's just a sentence will be like three pages long.
So, anyways, the point is we think that we can somehow isolate sin to where I'm only going to sin in this area and it's not going to affect any other area.
So, you're right.
So, it's chicken to the egg, it's a two way street.
In David's case, it's, I'm not going to go to war.
And maybe it's fear, but also apathy.
I think you could throw apathy in there as well.
So it could be a lack of courage, but it can also just be a lack of zeal.
And you can have a lack of zeal because you're cowardly.
You can have a lack of zeal because you're lazy.
Both are viable options.
So whether it be apathy or fear, there's that lack of zeal and courage where you withdraw from the battle.
I'm not going to fight the battle.
Like I'm going to continue to do technical, exegetical analysis.
And wow, all my doctoral students that I'm teaching, and just hit the conference circuit and blow everyone's mind with my exegetical prowess.
Meanwhile, there is on the books legitimate discrimination against white people, and our kids are going to have a really hard time growing up in this world.
But I'll leave that to the Daily Wire and Matt Walsh.
Right.
You know, like sometimes, you know, people are like, oh, you know, the Daily Wire, and hear me, I do think that the Daily Wire is pretty, like, it's pretty normie.
We are a good bit to the, wherever you would put the Daily Wire, we're a good bit to the right of the Daily Wire.
But the point is, part of the reason it's like the Daily Wire got so much success is because they, you know, I think even they were late to the game, but they talked about things way before the evangelical church did.
And I'm not just talking about your nominal evangelicals, but They talked about things before reform guys did.
They certainly talked about things before Lawson did.
So, the point is that when it's time to go to war, if you stay behind, be it fear or be it apathy, for either reason, you become, I think, uniquely susceptible to sin in other areas.
And likewise, if you're sinning in other areas, right?
Because which came first, the chicken or the egg?
In David's case, it's I'm not going to go to war, and then he falls.
In Lawson's case, it could have been the other way around.
He fell, right?
And had been falling for a while.
But then, you know, and so then the battle came and he didn't go to war.
Let me make one other quick point here.
So I'm going to read two verses.
This is 2 Corinthians 7 1.
Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.
So there is a sense where our fear of God leads us to personal piety, to holy living, and to integrity.
But also, and this is something that I think we need to just.
Really recognize is a failure of our time.
Acts 5 29, Peter and the apostles answered, This is the Jewish leaders, we must obey God rather than men.
And the fear of the Lord is not only for personal holiness, but it's for public battle and obedience.
And we can't separate the two.
And if you don't fear the Lord enough to obey him publicly, you have to question whether you fear the Lord enough to obey him, quote unquote, privately.
Public Obedience and Personal Holiness00:16:51
That's really good, Michael.
Yeah.
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Okay, welcome back.
So we're going to move on with this discussion, and really, we don't want this discussion to necessarily just be about Steve Lawson.
Right.
Right.
This is what can we learn about this?
Yeah.
We've made our point.
We've made our point.
We want to talk about just for us.
Yep.
Yeah.
The question is is this an epidemic?
Is this unusual in church history?
I mean, because we've seen a series of these, you know, back to Robbie Zacharias and Tony Evans.
Alistair Begg didn't compromise himself morally, but just a disappointing stance of courage in the culture.
One way or another, a lot of guys have fallen recently.
Weren't there some other names too?
T.D. Jakes, I mean, I don't know if we.
He's implicated with Diddy's, the whole lawsuit going on there.
So that's not just I met a woman.
It's like this man potentially, allegedly, was in very deep.
Trying to think of other ones.
We have Art Azurdia.
Oh, yeah, Art Azurdia.
He was the apologist.
He was a single man.
Yeah, who, you know, he's a good man.
He's repented.
I want to be clear about that.
He's repented.
It has been multiple years at this point.
And everybody who knows him, he's had accountability.
Everybody who knows him, he has repented and has been walking in repentance.
But you're thinking of Cy.
Yep.
I forget his last name.
Cy.
Cy Bruggenkate.
What is it?
That's not a name.
You just made that up.
What, Nathan?
That is.
Say it again.
Cy Bruggenkate.
Bruggant Gate.
Bruggant Gate.
That's not, that's not.
But he was a professional apologist, is the point.
That was his occupation, and he had to step down from that.
Yeah.
So, a lot of guys, is the point.
Yeah.
But, but here's the thing it's like, well, TD Jakes, he doesn't count.
You know, he's a prosperity gospel heretic.
And it's like, amen.
Tony Evans, you know, like, I don't know if he's as bad as TD Jakes, but he's bad.
I get it, you know, but, and then Ravi Zacharias wasn't publicly a heretic, but his theology sucked.
You know, like, I mean, Ravi was never, the craziest thing about Ravi, Isn't his fall?
The craziest thing to me about Ravi is the fact that people were so impressed with him in the first place.
I just, I don't get it.
Like, the dude was not a theologian by any stretch.
He was, he had a philosophy.
He had a command of philosophy and he could explain apologetics and philosophy.
Carl Lentz with Hillsong, too.
It's not just reform.
Yeah, you're right.
Well, that's my point.
But my point is so it's across the board and that's been for decades, for decades across the board.
If we're talking about T.D. Jakes and Carl Lentz and these kinds of things, that's been for decades for sure.
But, um, But I do think that it is notable that I could be wrong, but it seems like there has been an uptick within the reform board because it's not just like guys that we would disagree with, and some of the guys arguably not even Christian.
You look across the board over the last seven years, and you'd like to think that this phenomenon, this epidemic that you're going to talk about, that the angel of moral failure passed over the reformed house.
It did not.
It did not.
We've got the same stats.
Yep.
So this is.
Largely anecdotal, what I'm about to say.
I didn't have time to do a really, really deep dive into this.
It would be an interesting question to do some more research on.
But what I did do, and what surprised me was I didn't do a lot of research on this because I thought I would be able to do just a little bit of research and I would find tons of examples.
And then I would populate this.
I was going to make a different point today.
My point was going to be well, this has always been happening.
So what do we do about it?
So I started doing some historical research.
And I'm sure listeners who are well versed in church history, there are obviously some.
But I did not find.
Lists, long lists, and notable examples through church history of church fathers and major theologians, major public institutional figures in the church who were defrocked or disqualified from ministry because of sexual immorality.
Now, that's not to say it's not there.
There were popes, and, you know, Pope John XII had multiple children with multiple wives.
I mean, so it did happen.
But my point is In the Catholic Church, in the Catholic Church.
That's a classic.
You expect that.
This was 900.
So this is, you know, Okay, all right.
The better Catholic Church.
Yeah.
Okay, see.
But the point is, the research that I found, funny enough, people were mad at Luther for his anti Semitism, you know, or, you know, Calvin for condemning that guy to death.
Servetus.
Yeah, Servetus, yeah.
But as far as sexual immorality goes, there was not a long, long list.
There were some that were maybe some rumors and things like that.
And so.
Well, and that's still the way it is today.
It's so frustrating, but it's like, you know, for 40 years, people hated Doug Wilson.
Right.
Absolutely hated him.
Yeah.
And say what you will, like I would have disagreements with Doug Wilson.
I do have disagreements.
He's aware of those.
And probably, you know, he probably disagrees with me even more than I disagree with him.
But the point is this say what you will.
But for 40 years, he was blacklisted by even like Ligonier, for instance.
Right.
Right.
So, you know, Lawson, he's good.
He's good for Ligonier.
Doug Wilson's not.
Doug Wilson, back in the day, you know, shared a stage and panels and things like that at conferences with RC Sproul.
Right.
But then, eventually, Piper.
Yep.
But eventually, he was blacklisted.
Um, Piper actually was one of the few guys who actually would continue to minister from time to time with Doug Wilson, but everybody else wouldn't give him the time of day.
He was completely blacklisted, and say what you will, but the point is this all three of his kids and every single one of his grandchildren, which I believe is like 19 at this point, um, and I think he just had his first great grandchild, um, Beckham Merkel and Beckham Ben Merkel, their son, I think their son just had his first kid, so like four generations at this point.
Not a single one of them is not professing faith and love in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And all of them are members in good standing in the local church.
And Doug used to always say, I'm sure he still says, that a man's credentials, the most compelling, his true credentials, is the laughter at his dinner table.
Well, I thought it was interesting in the Tucker Carlson interview that they talked about some geopolitical things and theological things.
The thing that absolutely floored Tucker was that all of Doug's kids and grandchildren.
Grandchildren who are in the area come over every Saturday night.
Which is like all of them.
And I know.
Except for a couple in college.
And Lord Tucker.
Not his eloquence or theological reasoning or what.
It was that testimony.
Well, that's because Doug was speaking.
So the eloquence is not very.
If it was writing, then you could say, Doug has some eloquence.
He's a great writer.
Speaking, I never quite think of it.
But the point I wanted to make here is there were issues through history that.
Men were defrocked for, were removed from office for.
In the very early church, it was the pinch of incense to Caesar, right?
And so there was a cultural, political, theological issue of the time.
And there was a huge debate over whether or not Christians and ministers who had made a pinch of incense to Caesar could even be restored to the faith.
Wes, you mentioned the usury one.
Yeah, Nicaea, they had a big debate, and there was a ban on clerics that charged usury.
And if any cleric went on to charge usury, They were defrocked.
So early on, it was like if you were found out in the office of pastor to be loaning someone and being like, you got to give that back to me at 10%, that's any usury.
That's not just exorbitant.
That was any usury.
Any interest.
Any interest.
Nicaea said, no, you've lost the role of pastor, a resolution or a decree.
So it's not that the Christian church has never removed pastors from office, but just from a cursory reading of history, it seems like the reason why men are being removed from office in our generations.
Is higher on the sexual morality side.
And so we just have to be honest about that.
We have to be honest about the fact that we live in a hyper individualistic culture, which has hyper sexualized everything and made not only sex, but even the interaction between men and women.
Like human history has never seen men and women run in the same circles like they do now.
And even pastors and women running in the same circles like they do now.
Like we are really in uncharted waters here.
And so it doesn't surprise me, actually.
It saddens me, but it doesn't surprise me.
That we see so many pastors in the last few decades who have fallen specifically to sexual immorality.
I saw a woman on X today who retweeted somebody, might have been Gabriel Hughes, but retweeted some pastor who said something to the tune of, the Billy Graham rule is good and we should follow it.
And she retweeted him and said, the Billy Graham rule is misogynist.
And basically, on the one hand, it's like, you want to be in a room alone with me?
Like, you're a predator.
And then it's like, you won't be in a room alone with me.
Like, that's what women maybe would have said a few decades.
You're a predator.
A few decades ago, they would have said, You want to be in a room alone with me?
You're a predator.
And now it's, You won't be in a room alone with me?
You're a misogynist.
And so, anyway, so she retweeted this guy who's advocating for the Billy Graham rule as a positive thing.
And she retweeted.
Which, for the record, is don't be in a room alone with a woman.
Don't ever be alone with a woman.
And so, yeah, Mike Pence did the same thing.
But, but, You know what?
Kind of breaks the mold and ruins the whole episode because there's a guy with character, but zero courage.
I know.
Mike Pence.
The character point, the story's not done being written.
That's right.
The character might come out just like it did with Lawson.
That's true.
You're right.
But I just want to make sure the public record is clear that Mike Pence has zero courage.
That guy's a joke.
All right.
So that being said, and you know what?
If I had to bet, and I hate to root against him, but if I had to bet, we will find that the character was not quite there like we thought because you can't have.
An Iron Man character.
That's right.
Yeah.
And be that much of a loser coward.
That, like, your whole nation needs you.
And you are just a traitor coward.
I just don't believe the characters there.
I can't believe it because the correlation does exist.
The episode's back on.
Our point still stands.
Okay.
So we're back.
We are so back right now.
We are so back.
I just talked myself back from the ledge.
But the point is that, you know, this person's retweeting, you know, the Billy Graham rule is good and we should do it.
And she's saying, you know, again, if it was decades ago, it would have been like, Any man who wants to be in a room alone with me is a predator.
Now, it's like, this is misogynistic.
And said the Billy Graham rule is used by misogynists to make sure that women can never be.
It's not to keep women out of the bedroom, it's to keep them out of the boardroom.
And then I looked at that and I was like, dude, you already sold.
I was already sold on the Billy Graham rule to keep women out of the bedroom as a protection of fidelity and purity.
But you're telling me that it'll keep women out of the boardroom also?
I'm the biggest fan of the Billy Graham rule that you could possibly.
There's only upside.
You're telling me exactly it'll guard against adultery and feminism?
The Billy Graham rule is probably the greatest rule that I've ever heard of in my life.
It should be one of the Ten Commandments, and it is number seven do not commit adultery.
There we go.
Right, right.
The Westminster Exposition, for anyone wanting to get into the Ten Commandments, man, the larger catechism is so good.
Westminster Larger Catechism, because it goes into what is commanded, for example, in the Seventh Commandment, and then what is forbidden.
And it goes through all of those things, and some of those would even be.
Like the inclination or the pre sin or the spending time around or giving your heart in those early stages of sin.
So it's not just in the commandment, like, don't literally do this act.
It's saying, no, no, no, don't commit adultery is this broad thing to guard your heart against anything.
I think of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.
You've heard it said, I shall not commit adultery.
I'm telling you, when you look at a woman with lustful intent, you've committed it already in your heart.
One other aspect, an older man said this.
I'm not older, but he said this, and I think it rings true and it's good to hear.
Young men will win the battle of lust and they'll go on to become preachers and businessmen and everything like that.
And they think they've conquered sexual temptation.
Like, I'm not my 20s, I'm not my 30s, my testosterone's not over 1,000.
I've kind of beaten that.
But there's something that comes in, he said, on the latter half that a lot of men aren't prepared for.
And that's the dynamic of power.
Successful men, particularly.
Exactly.
That's the dynamic of power.
When you're powerful, when people listen to you, when the room kind of is drawn to your attention, men can find really easily, it's really accessible to them to really enjoy that.
And then when you have that type of power over a woman who's in your proximity, be it an intern, be it a church member, we see a lot of this happening.
That women are drawn to your personality, to what you say.
It's not hard to imagine that, you know, 50, 60 years old, you know, your wife's not particularly thrilled with your sermons.
But this young girl who is very, you know, you're a celebrity pastor, you're paying attention to her.
That dynamic of power, and we see people do this, and it can be an emotional affair.
So it's not even then sexual.
He's older and she's younger.
There's nothing going on in that sense.
But emotionally, he's feeding off of the adoration and, in a sense, the worship that she's giving him.
That he adores, that the type of adulation, the praise that he's getting, And feeds off of it and becomes this idolatrous worship of the power dynamic, not necessarily the lust and the sexual aspect, but the power that he holds.
And so that's a good reminder towards the second half of life, especially for those, like you said, they're successful, there's powerful people look up to them.
Be aware of, and sometimes it's probably genuine from young women, sometimes it is, probably sometimes flatterous, but be aware of the flattery and the praise and how that could take your heart to love it and to treasure it and really start to get an identity in it.
That's a great point.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, it's something that.
For young men, they want to face a battle, right?
And so, even though Lust is a formidable battle, it's something that a young man can get his mind around, like, okay, this is something that I kill, right?
Kind of instinctive.
The dragon.
Yeah, dragon, that sort of thing.
And what you're talking about, Wes, is a good warning because it's not really a dragon, right?
It's not some great beast.
And you don't dream about, as a young boy, you dream about slaying dragons.
You don't really dream about slaying the kind of cauliflower that comes up next to you.
Right, right.
Idolatry and Placing Men on Pedestals00:15:11
Um, and yet sin is deceitful in many, many forms.
It's not just strong and powerful, it's deceitful tricks and it appeals to our um desires.
I would, I would suppose that what you say is right, Wes.
As we mature and as men become more influential, they may have a greater desire to be um approved of or to receive accolades or to be recognized by even more and more people.
And right, um, and you had that off early because every sin there are sins committed ahead of time.
So if a man goes into adultery.
There's probably some type of pornography, if not at least mental fantasy.
So, first it was giving into those.
Then it was the lying about spending your time.
It's not like Steve Lawson, through the time that he had this inappropriate relationship, was able to be forthcoming, like, oh, honey, where were you?
Oh, I was with so and so.
So, it's the lies that accompany it, the mental thought that accompanies it.
Some of these probably given into years ago that laid the foundation, laid the groundwork.
Well, I'm okay to spend some time one on one with women that then eventually culminates in the sin.
And so, think about that the little compromises that litter the trail.
Often build up to then something further down the road if they're not cut off at the past with repentance.
Yeah.
Right.
Last thing that I think would be worth talking about is I was just thinking about.
Is this a big section?
Do we need to get another commercial break?
Yeah, well, it's not that big.
We'll come back because there's a couple of other maybe housekeeping items that I would like to address.
But I think we should talk a little bit just about the idea.
I've seen a lot of people say, well, this is just the problem of celebrity pastors.
That's a category that shouldn't exist.
And because it does, as long as you have celebrity pastors, you're going to continue to have affairs and adultery.
And I don't know.
I don't have to speak first.
What do you guys think about that?
I think I'm going to play the Uno Reverse card on people who raise that.
That may all well be.
But I would say the bigger problem with celebrity pastor is the fact that you are utterly devastated to find out this news about Steve Lawson.
Like you in your heart have elevated that man to too high of a position.
So the celebrity pastor phenomenon that we see in scripture in 1 Corinthians, Paul says not to be of Apollos or of Peter or of himself, but to be of Christ.
Right.
And so the celebrity pastor phenomenon may be an issue, but it's in the hearts of us who it's good to have godly mentors.
It's good to have fathers in the faith.
All of that is good.
I remember years ago, I was probably in college and very, you know, reading a lot of John Piper at the time.
And there had been an earthquake in Minneapolis.
And I think this was in Facebook, it was around.
And one of my friends posted, And some people had died in the earthquake or a bridge had collapsed or something like that.
And one of my friends' first posts was Don't worry, everyone.
Piper was not on the bridge.
Not, we're praying for the people in Minneapolis.
We're praying for those who lost loved ones.
First thought, bridge collapse in Minneapolis, was it John Piper?
And this idea of celebrity pastors, I think, cuts the other direction.
People who are just like, it is very sad.
We're right to be upset.
The name of Christ has been defamed.
But if this has shaken your faith, if this has rocked you to your core, then also you might be guilty of this idolization of a celebrity pastor.
So I don't think that it's necessarily moral failure is necessarily inherent to speaking at conferences, I guess is my short answer.
That's good.
Do you have some thoughts?
Not too many.
I think of Paul when he says in Corinthians, you have many teachers, but you have not many fathers.
Unless you attended Steve Lawson's church and you were a member there, there's a real sense in which he wasn't your spiritual father.
He was a teacher, he was an instructor.
But the reverence and the honor and the holding up that is due to fathers, unless you attended his church, that might have been, like you said, misplaced.
What seemed like a solid teacher, many men have seemed like that.
But when they fall, it shouldn't be them falling from the status of father.
And that does happen.
But maybe from the status of this is a man I listen to.
But the message and his life and character didn't bear it out.
Right.
And I would just add to that that's a great passage to use.
I would say that, and playing off of both of you guys, what you're saying, Michael, is kind of like cutting the other way, you know, that.
There is a way of caring too much about vainglory and fame and those kinds of things and the fear of man, the praise of man.
Certainly, an individual celebrity type pastor could sin in that way, but there's also sin from the other side of the aisle in terms of people placing someone up on a pedestal and giving just far too much credibility and weight to a certain individual.
And then taking that with what you said, Wes, of like the weight should be placed with fathers.
But looking at that text, what Paul says is.
You know, you have many teachers, but few fathers.
I think one of the reasons why that father weight is given by spiritual sons and daughters, right?
Your average Joe Blow Christian needs a spiritual father.
Every Christian needs a spiritual father.
And so you've got all these spiritual sons and daughters.
They're going to attach father glory, father weight, or as back to Wilson again, like a father hunger.
Their father hunger is going to drive them to attaching a father glory to someone.
And if there aren't any father figures, then they're going to give a father weighted glory.
To someone who's not a father.
And I think the problem that the Apostle Paul states is it's just as prevalent today as it was back then.
I don't know if it's more prevalent, and I certainly wouldn't say it's less, but I think that's still the ratio.
The problem is this the ratio of teachers to fathers is not great.
Too dang high.
Yeah, there's way, way more teachers than there are fathers.
And so then what happens?
So here's my point.
Is you can say, well, shut it down, right?
Give the call, like, shut it down.
You know, like, shut down every podcast, shut down every conference, shut down every seminary, every large church.
John MacArthur, that's it.
It's time to go be with Jesus.
Somebody cut the brake lines.
Let's, you know, let's send the man home.
You could do that.
I'm being facetious, of course.
You can do that.
But the alternative is, what if we just had more fathers?
Yeah.
Right?
Like, so you can always, I think the impetus is always on less celebrity pastors, less.
Podcasts, less conferences, less this.
Well, part of the reason, just to be frank, part of the reason why people will drive or fly across not just countries, but the world, continents.
Yeah, continents to be a part of XYZ Conference and tune in and listen to all the podcasts from so and so is because the local pastors who should be the fathers aren't there.
So many of them have failed.
There's so many young men.
I mean, that's like one of the most frequent emails that I get on almost a daily basis is just saying, you know, I talked to my pastor the other day and I'm looking for counsel and help.
And, you know, I'm a young man in a new marriage or this, that, and the other.
And I'm struggling to pay the bills and I want to provide and buy a house, but, you know, but I don't know how to do this and how to do that.
Mortgages are through the roof.
And my wife, you know, she's constantly berating me, she's frustrated with me.
And this, that, and the other, and my pastor's counsel, it all sums up in this happy wife, happy life.
And these are reformed pastors, right?
Like, I'm not just saying that this isn't just the counsel that would come from TD Jakes.
This is like, this is your average reformed pastor who should know better, who is a feminist.
He is.
It's like, oh, no, he's not, Joel.
That's not fair.
He's a complementarian.
Uh huh.
Yeah.
A feminist, right?
Complementarian feminist is this, you know, corporate needs you to tell the difference between these two pictures.
It's the same picture.
Like he all he thinks is like, well, servant leadership, but here's the deal it's the tail wagging the dog.
It's always the other way around, it's the tail wagging the dog.
So, so, um, servant leadership, what does that mean?
It means that you lead by serving, right?
So, um, so if your leadership is being questioned in your marriage or with your children or with this or without, um, if there's if if no, you know, there's no respect, is well, serve harder, right?
Because, um, you lead by serving instead of saying no, servant leadership is, um, that you serve by leading, your leadership is a service.
My leadership in our church and in my home, that is the chief service that I provide.
Are there opportunities like Jesus who washes his disciples' feet?
Are there opportunities to actually serve, to go up to the church building that we don't have, but Lord willing, we'll have eventually, and nobody is able for whatever?
Then I'm going to wash the toilets this week?
Sure.
Should a pastor be willing to do that?
Sure.
But that's not his primary service.
If 90% of his pastoral time is scrubbing the toilets, that might sound noble, but that's not.
That means people are spiritually starved.
He needs to be studying.
He needs to be praying.
He needs to be preaching.
He needs to be leading.
He needs to be leading.
So it's not serve.
It's not lead by serving.
No, it's serve by leading.
But my point is that is not the counsel that most reformed pastors who allegedly believe in male headship and these kinds of things, that's not the counsel you're going to get.
Instead, you're going to get, oh, your wife is physically abusing you.
I get these emails.
You know, like she's punching you in the face because she knows that she can get away with it.
Because she's threatened to divorce you because she knows the entire law system, legal system in our country, she'll get the kids, she'll get the house, she'll get like, so she is threatening divorce or she's taking you to court, she's punching you in the face, she's cursing you out, and the counsel will be, you probably just didn't lead her well enough.
And when I say lead, aka serve her enough, but did you grovel enough?
Like, were you physically on your hands and knees 24 hours a day begging?
Like, did you really?
Really strive with a happy wife, happy life strategy.
This is the reformed pastor council that you'll get.
And so, my point is that's just one example, the exasperating of young men.
So, then what do these young men look for?
They're like, well, he's not going to be a father to me.
He's not going to be a father.
So, then they're listening to my podcast.
I don't have time to make thousands of phone calls every single week.
I can't counsel all these young men.
I do my best with the material that I put out by the grace of God, but I've got a wife, I've got kids, and I've got a church.
And so the point is, these guys, it's like, well, it's all the celebrities' fault because they just want praise and they just want to be on this.
Look, I'm going to shoot you straight.
In terms of money, cash, I'll just talk about that for a second.
Right Response is not making the bills.
We are at a deficit every single month.
And I don't know if Right Response is going to be able to continue to make it next year, just to be completely frank.
Because it turns out that all these young men, that all the older men have disparaged, they're the ones who follow my ministry.
And young men, you know, I love you, but I'm just going to shoot you straight.
A lot of you don't have jobs and are not.
Like, if you want to talk about markets that are not viable, the post millennial, patriarchal, young 20s and 30s male market, if you're looking for cash, stick to Ligonier.
Those guys have cornered the market both with women and men.
And a lot of times, the women are the ones who actually have control over the checkbook and are able to write that for your gift of any amount.
And so, if you want to get donations, then you, yeah, be soft, complimentarian.
And you need to be fluent in boomer theology.
Well, as you know, if you follow this channel, I'm not.
I do not speak boomer theology.
It's not a second language for me.
I'm not fluent in it, and I don't ever plan to be.
And so, yeah, a lot of our followers are young.
And I think the last time we looked at the metrics, it's like 87% male and 13% female.
13% females out there who are listening, and you're not hate watching, you actually are listening and appreciating.
God bless you.
We're super grateful for you.
Don't want to hate on our 13%, but let's just be frank.
87% is young men, and a lot of them financially are struggling because they entered a world, an economic world that the boomers shattered.
They absolutely destroyed it.
They exported all the jobs overseas, they brought in all the immigrants because love your neighbor meant somehow that we should love people in Ghana.
On the other side of the world, and not our literal neighbors, not even our own kids.
And so, you've got guys who are paying $4,000 for a mortgage.
They make $4,500.
The math doesn't matter.
The math doesn't matter.
And so, we're not Ligonier.
God bless Ligonier.
I'm sorry.
I'm not trying to hate on him.
But Ligonier takes in what is it, Nathan?
$6 million annually?
I think it's a massive amount of donations.
They've worked for it.
They spent a long time.
RC Sproul was great.
I've got nothing bad to say about him.
But the point is the point is that a lot of young people, young women, and especially young men, that's my heart.
And you know what?
Here's the deal.
It's like things are tight financially.
Okay, whatever.
But if you want to know who's going to win the war long term, whoever wins the hearts of the young men.
You lose the hearts of the young men and you lost.
I don't care how much you take in annually.
I don't know how many.
Cruises that you have, you know, your suffering and persecution themed cruise.
That's like such an irony.
And that's a real thing, by the way.
Look it up.
I won't say the ministry.
I already said it 40 times.
But the point is like, it doesn't matter how big you are, how much you have, you lose the hearts of the next generation of men and you ultimately lose the war.
And so we're willing to be tight and play at a deficit and a disadvantage today because we want to win not just today's battle.
But tomorrow's war.
And that means we are going to not disparage, but rather we're going to be a ministry that loves young men.
And so the point is here's the deal.
Losing the Next Generation of Men00:13:41
All you guys complaining about celebrity pastors, they're looking for fathers.
And a lot of local pastors, you think it's like, well, they're looking for teachers and ignoring fathers.
Here's the sad reality.
Some of these guys, these young guys, Ogden is like, well, I don't like Brian Sylvain.
I don't like Eric Kahn.
I don't like Stephen Wolf.
I don't like Andrew Isker.
I don't like Joel Webbin.
I don't like.
Okay, well, let me just shoot you straight.
These 30 something year olds, and it's sad, this is pathetic.
We're not trying to brag.
This is not to say this is how awesome we are.
This is to say this is how pathetic you are.
Okay?
This is the lay of the land right now.
Guys are desperate for fathers.
And what it should be, you actually think this is how deceived you are.
You actually think the problem right now is that all these young men in their local churches are ignoring their local pastors who are great fathers and preferring the 35 year old teacher like Brian Sauvay or Eric Kahn or Joel Webbin.
It's the opposite.
The 60 year old man.
In the local church of 150 people who has the time and has that young man in his congregation and has the access and the availability to be a father to him, only berates him instead of fathering him.
Tells him, You're worthless, you're a neo Nazi, you're a racist, you're a misogynist, happy wife, happy life, serve harder.
And what does leadership mean?
Absolutely nothing.
What is it good for?
Nothing.
Serve.
Leadership just means serve.
Well, what about women in leadership?
Yeah, well, when it's women, it's real leadership.
But when it's men, just serve.
And that's your pastor.
And I'm talking about the Reformed Church right now.
I'm talking about Reformed pastors, spineless, feckless pastors.
When that's your pastor, it is not that all the young men are despising their fathers and calling teachers, going to teachers instead with New Christian Press and Right Response and yada, yada.
No, it's that the guys who are twice their age who should be fathers aren't.
And we, from a distance, with a podcast, are exercising more fatherly, spiritual, pastoral care.
And we are virtually, remotely, from a distance, spiritually fathering and pastoring.
Thousands of young men because you won't do it, local pastor.
So, we can hate on the conference circuit and we can hate on the celebrities and all that.
And there's something to be said for travel.
Just for the record, we host an annual conference.
One of the reasons I host a conference is because then I don't have to leave.
I travel extremely, I went to the church I planted in San Diego this last weekend.
What a blessing.
Precious people, they invited me back.
There's been some struggles in the past.
By God's grace, there's been reconciliation.
I got to go back and preach.
Probably scared a lot of the new guys.
The old guys who were there when I was there before, they knew what they were getting into.
But some of the new people are like, oh my goodness, I was fiery.
But here's the deal if you're going to preach hot, you better preach short.
I preached for 42 minutes.
It is possible.
It is possible.
Don't get any ideas.
That's for their church.
You preach an hour on Sunday too, Michael.
Only because Joel opens that door every week.
So I preach for 42 minutes, probably scared the daylights out of a lot of the new people.
But here's the point.
All the leadership, we had a great meal together.
They invited my wife and got to have Saturday night, got to have dinner together.
It was reconciliation, brotherly love, a lot of kindness.
I can't tell you how much I was blessed by it and reconciliation that I didn't know if God would bring in this life.
And He did, which is amazing.
So don't ever give up.
And a lot of the credit goes to them, their kindness and their willingness to welcome me and my wife back in.
But here's the point I got on a flight at 2 p.m. on Saturday with my wife.
So there's another thing.
Billy, like my wife came.
It wasn't just me.
2 p.m. on Saturday and then was getting on a flight at 2 p.m. on Sunday.
This is a 24 hour flight because we have young kids and we don't leave them.
We don't leave them.
They were with grandma and grandpa.
They were in good hands and they were with grandma and grandpa for a whopping 24 hours.
You know, a little bit longer because by the time the plane got home, but you get the point.
30 hours, whatever it was.
That's about it.
That and a couple augan trips where I either bring my family with me.
Or it's a short trip and I go right back home.
And it's not because I don't get invitations.
I am turning down invitations on the regular.
People all the time.
And it's not because I don't love the people who ask.
It's not because it wouldn't bless people.
It's because I have a six year old, five year old, four year old, two year old, and a baby on the way.
I am in the throes of the little years.
And we have a church that's three and a half years old.
And in the process of trying to get a building, which we cannot afford.
Send help, please pray.
I know you can't donate, we've already established that.
All you young dudes, you can't donate.
Maybe one day when you are able to remember, little right response that didn't beat you over the head every day.
Maybe 10 years from now, when you have a job, you repay the favor.
But the point is that we are in the throes of it as a family, as a ministry, as a church, all those kinds of things.
And also, I hate traveling, and so we don't travel.
So, there's a way of having like Charles Spurgeon.
Before the internet, before podcasts, there's a way of being a celebrity because somebody else is typing up your sermons and printing them out, you know, and, you know, in the London Times, you know, every week in the Monday newspaper.
There's a way of being a celebrity these days, especially with technological advances.
There is a way of being a celebrity and for relatively affordable ways to get your material out to thousands of people, if not even millions of people, but without necessarily being on the conference circuit.
There's a difference between having a podcast and I'm traveling every other weekend without my wife.
There's a difference.
So, one, there are different tiers of the celebrity minister kind of thing.
And then number two, C point A.
Yeah, maybe it's a love of glory.
Maybe it's a love of the praise of men.
Maybe there are some problems.
Not even maybe.
We know, Steve Lawson being case in point, we know there are some problems with the celebrities.
But if I can be frank, and I already have, but I'll just say it once more I don't think it's just these guys just want to have a podcast.
These guys just want to be famous.
These guys just love the glory that comes from men rather than the glory that comes from God.
I think it's also maybe not as many young men in your church, Pastor, would be listening to my podcast.
If you were a better father to them, you have many teachers, but few fathers.
Where's the impetus?
So we read that by the Apostle Paul.
You have many teachers, but few fathers, and we think the teachers need to take it upon themselves to be less.
The problem is too many teachers.
No, the point that Paul's making is the problem is too few fathers.
So Paul's not saying you have many teachers, and so the teachers need to take it upon themselves and say, You're fired, you're fired, I'll voluntarily quit.
That's not the point he's making.
He's saying the fathers need to step up.
We need more local spiritual fathers.
And until we get them, then yeah, you're going to have, pastor, reformed pastor, you're going to have a sizable portion of your church.
And you can preach sermons against us if you like.
That's fine.
And some of you do.
You know who I'm talking about.
You can do that.
And behind the scenes, you can whisper and gossip and slander.
That's all fine.
But whether you like it or not, no matter how hard you try, you will have a decent sized portion of the young men in your congregation continuing to listen to new Christendom.
And continuing to listen to the right response.
And it will not stop until you step up and become a masculine father.
And until you do, we will have the hearts and ears of your congregation, whether you like it or not.
And you will lose the war.
You could win a battle, you can get one of our conferences canceled by spreading a rumor, you can do this and that.
But in 10 years' time, if we win the hearts of the young men, and we will, and you lose them voluntarily because you said it, you don't care, your ministry ultimately will crash.
And ours, by the grace of God and by his grace alone, will continue to flourish.
And the option is yours.
I actually, here's the thing I actually don't want that to happen.
I don't want your ministry and your church to fail.
I would actually be happy if we, in the long run, got less and less views and less and less donations and less and less this and that because local churches like yours, Pastor, were flourishing because you repented and said, I'm going to stop disparaging men with courage.
And even more importantly, stop disparaging the men in my own church and I'm going to be a courageous father to them.
To where they don't have to go looking for fathers somewhere else.
That would be great.
Maybe we could consider that option.
So that's my thought on the celebrity thing.
Because right now, what you'll see is just like, well, this just is proof that we should have zero celebrity pastors.
Okay, I hear you.
But you're saying this as you're still, you know, have the Ligonier app on your phone.
You're saying this as you're still using your John MacArthur study Bible.
You're saying this as you're still quoting Charles Spurgeon, who was a celebrity in his day.
I don't think that that's the problem.
I really don't.
Charles Spurgeon, as far as we know, never committed adultery, didn't have an affair.
I don't think that Charles Spurgeon being popular, not just after the fact, but he was popular while he was alive in his day, known by thousands and thousands all over.
I don't think that's what makes men fail.
I think what makes men fail is the lack of courage, like we've already talked about, that Steve Lawson sadly seemed to possess.
That lack of courage that they, like David, they pull back.
It's the time when kings go to war, and at some point in their ministry, they stop going to war.
John MacArthur, God bless him.
I disagree theologically on plenty of things, but the dude is 80 something years old.
And every time it's a season for war, MacArthur's at war.
Yep.
Yep.
You got to give him props.
God bless him.
That is honorable.
And so I think guys stop going to war and they sin.
I think also guys hit the conference circuit.
There's a difference, again, between having notoriety from a podcast or a book versus I'm gone 20 weeks a year.
Out of the year.
And my wife isn't with me a lot of that time.
So that's another thing that we can hedge up.
And then everything else we've discussed on here.
But then another thing, the last thing that I've been saying in this whole segment is you want to guard against the celebrity culture, then be a father to the young men in your church in such a way that they don't possess the same degree of wonder lust looking for Brian Sauvay.
Stephen Wolfe and Andrew Isker.
The popularity of these kinds of men, in large part, not entirely, there are multi factors, but in large part, the popularity of these young men is directly correlated to the deficit to be found in the older men.
The lack of courage in older men and their immediate willingness to disparage the young men in their charge, there's a direct correlation between that and the rise of these young guys.
Boniface option, great book.
Andrew Isker did a great job.
But just again, just to put a head on it, why didn't the pastor in his 60s write that book?
Because there's only one of them named Douglas Wilson.
You can only write so many books, he's already written 50.
I mean, seriously, what do you do when your entire generation has one guy who can boast of being patriarchal and And speaking to politics and admitting that maybe America is not a racist country and that the Civil War, that the history with that maybe got a little bit revised because the victors get the spoils, including the right to write the history books.
Doug Wilson has been saying that for 40 years alone.
Alone.
For 40 years, saying, no, we're not a racist country.
And yes, men actually should lead as patriarchs.
Everybody else.
Was like, I'm soft complimentarian and I don't want to be a racist like the Confederates.
That has been, and I'm talking about the good guys, again, the conservative guys.
Doug Wilson stands alone.
Entire generation, one of the largest generations, the boomers, one dude.
One dude.
Maybe if there were more dudes like that, then one of them could have written the case for Christian nationalism.
And then all of you guys who are so mad at Stephen Wolf wouldn't have to worry about it.
Nobody would know his name.
But if there's a gutter or a crown lying in the gutter, and no boomer will pick it up, you can't get mad at the 30s and young 40s and 20 year olds who bend down and say, Well, I'll pick up that crown.
That's just, you made that decision by throwing the crown in the gutter.
We picked it up, you threw it down.
And so this is what you get.
Covenant Churches in Political Spaces00:16:05
This is what you get.
You get some young guys with some influence.
That you don't necessarily, you're not really excited about.
And then your young guys and your church are listening to us.
But the problem is not we need less teachers.
The problem is we need more local fathers.
You step up and maybe we'll step back.
You step up, we'll step back.
But you step down.
And so God exalted us.
It's a Saul and David situation.
Right?
God just keeps increasing David as Saul keeps shooting himself in the foot.
As A.D. Rodelis would say, didn't have to be this way.
Did not have to be this way.
And a lot of the young guys did not want it to be this way.
I'm one of them.
Didn't want it to be this way.
And believe it or not, you think, like, go off, King.
He's just, you know, telling it like it is.
No, I'm actually being, this entire time, I've been incredibly reserved with my speech.
And I'm not saying some of the names and I'm not giving some of the examples and I'm not, I'm being very reserved and very careful.
It's real easy to just say, well, this is the fault of celebrities.
And Joel, you have a podcast that makes you a celebrity too.
And so it's your fault.
And one day you'll be just like Lawson.
Maybe.
But as I've already said, maybe there's a few other things that you could consider as well.
All right, let's go to our last commercial break for the day.
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All right, we are back here.
This is our final segment.
And basically, I just wanted to talk a little bit about our church, Covenant Bible Church.
You can go to covenantbible.org, covenantbible.org, if you want to check out a little bit about the church.
But basically, we right now, the church is three and a half years old.
So, you know, my family and I, we moved in December of 2020, handed over the church there in California, and they're doing great, by the way.
But then moved to Central Texas.
We're in Georgetown, Texas, Williamson County, Georgetown, Texas, north of Austin.
It is a separate county by God's grace and has a little bit of a buffer.
So, some of the Austin, Degeneracy is not quite so bad in our neck of the woods.
But if you're looking for a church in that area, the first thing is come.
If you're willing, come and check it out.
You can, again, go to covenantbible.org to find times and address and join us for a Sunday service.
We'd love to have you.
But then, secondly, I just wanted to put it out there.
I don't always talk about the church.
I try to keep it somewhat separate, right?
Response and the local church ministry.
But I kind of want to.
They are two different organizations.
They're two different organizations, two different boards, two different, you know, all of it, two different, you know, finances.
The finances are completely separate, all of it.
But the church is, we're just kind of.
Facing a challenge.
The church is three and a half years old, right?
It's three and a half years old.
So it's a young church.
But because of right response ministries and the way that that's excelled, the church, you know, the church too, the church went from 20 people on the couch in my living room, 20 people, including kids, the families that came with me from California, and then my wife and kids.
So it's 20 of us, and then went to like, now we're like 230, 240 people on a Sunday, which is awesome.
And God has been immensely kind.
But the church has grown so, so quickly, and even more than that, right response has grown so quickly.
And because of the kinds of things that we address, and because it's especially right now an election year, and you've got all these leftist organizations with 1.2 million followers or 700,000 followers or whatever, clipping out 12 second clips of the hottest take you could possibly imagine from Joel Webbin and then putting it out for millions of people to see, our church is not even so much we need a bigger building, although we are kind of, we're full, physically full.
And so we would like, if God would be so kind, to have a larger space.
But more than that, we need.
Not just a larger space, we need a safer, more secure space.
In other words, we're currently just, we're renting and we're done with renting.
We have been informed that that ship has sailed.
We've got a few more months and then we got to be out.
And so we are trying to, and it's like, well, let's just go, you know, people say, we'll just go find a public school in the area.
It's like, have you met me?
Like, I mean, think about that.
You guys are allowed on public school grounds, to be clear.
It's just the things you said.
Yes, I am allowed on public school grounds.
Yes, that's not the point.
But the point is, there are a ton of people.
If Covenant Bible Church, Pastor Joel Webbins Church, started meeting at a school, let's just assume they say yes.
I'll probably say no, but my reputation will probably precede me.
But even if it didn't, somebody, some parent in that school district or somebody in the local community where the school is located, is going to see the next right wing watch campaign and blah, blah, blah, and like, oh, that's a misogynist or oh, that's the racist or oh, that's the whatever.
And then there's going to be an email and phone campaign on the superintendent with that school, and we will get booted.
We will.
This is not hyperbole or, oh, he's, you know, have some faith.
No, have some wisdom.
Let's, I mean, let's just be honest for a second.
There is no place that we can rent.
So we actually have to have a building that's ours.
And the problem is, you know, church plants that are three and a half years old tend to, you know, most churches don't plant in the living room and three and a half years later buy property.
Right.
Like that's just financially and especially in, you know, Joe Biden slash Kamala Harris's economy.
That's like, that's a tall task.
Three and a half years.
20 people on the couch in your living room to not just renting a bigger space, but actually having security.
This is your property.
And so that's where we're at right now with Covenant Bible Church, trying to figure out.
And by the grace of God, He's been incredibly kind.
We actually have a couple options, but we are having to raise some money and praying that God would be faithful to provide through the saints.
And part of it is, I think, right now, the plan is that we would put.
Right response studios in the church building to offset some of the cost, the monthly cost for the church.
But for right response to get a new studio, which we need.
And so I just wanted to put this out to you guys for your prayerful consideration.
But for right response to be able to have the studio that we need, basically, there's just our needs are continuing to expand as we grow.
We need more space.
Nathan, right now, our sound guy, most of you don't know this, but Nathan is currently in a closet.
A walk in closet.
A literal closet.
A little closet.
It's a walk in closet.
Nathan is like a living, breathing Harry Potter over there in a cupboard.
No, he's the house elf.
Yeah, he's the house elf.
Dobby, yeah, there you go.
And so Nathan is literally in a closet.
And we are in a small 340, I think I measured a couple because we're looking at like 340 square foot room.
And it's tight, and there's more stuff that we want to be able to do.
And we need also, we need an administrator.
There's so many emails that I can't ever respond to.
I want to, but I can't.
I have to be with my family.
I have to.
My kids are not going to grow up fatherless.
I'll tell you right now, I will disappoint all of you to make those five little people.
Happy, so that to me is it's not like ah, who I choose today, never even a question.
I got another email, my kids talking to me.
Sorry, your email doesn't get answered.
Like it's easy, easy decision.
Always will choose the kids, always will choose the wife, and I will always choose my local church.
So it's wife, kids, church, then you.
Um, that said, our church we need a building and we need more pastoral staff.
We need we and so that takes money.
The building takes money, the pastoral staff takes money.
And if we get more pastoral staff, then one of the things that I would like to do is continue to, I always, as long as the Lord would have me, I would always.
As long as the church would also have me, I always want to be a pastor with the church.
But I would love to be able to give some pastoral duties to a pastoral staff.
And then with Right Response, I would love to be able to not ignore every single one of your comments and emails and things and be able to get some help, some administrative help with Right Response.
So, all that being said, we're trying to use two organizations to be financially strategic to where we can accomplish this monumental task of taking two organizations that are barely over three years old and somehow get property.
That is really, really, really not affordable in our current economic position that we're in as a country.
And so, for the church to be able to afford property, Right Response is going to try to offset that cost and kill two birds with one stone.
That'll get us a bigger studio.
And then we can be like a subtenant for Covenant Bible Church and offset the monthly cost there.
And then, Right Response, also, we need the money for an administrator to get Nathan out of a closet.
And then, you know, we'd like to get some more equipment.
And then, with the church, with Covenant Bible Church, we need some more money for the property.
And then also pastoral staff.
And so everything is growing.
We're trying to be faithful.
We're doing our best to be faithful.
And I think we have.
We have operated on a shoestring budget.
We have.
You guys would be shocked if you know, as a local church and as a ministry, how much we do with very little.
New Christendom, don't want to pick on those guys.
Love the Ogden boys.
They're some of my closest friends.
But I'll just say this Ogden has, they've got some cash.
They're doing good, you know, and they need more too.
I'm not, you know, I don't want to.
I don't think we have to steal from Peter to pay Paul.
But the Ogden guys, by God's grace, their church owns a building and has for years and years and years.
They don't have a mortgage.
And they've got the basement, and Lord willing, I'd like to see them get better space in the future.
But New Christendom doesn't have to pay rent.
They can use the church's basement.
So you've got no mortgage with the church, no rent with New Christendom.
And so they've been able to spend that money instead of on property on a team.
And so it's like you've got four guys.
And everything we've done, you guys, we brought you on this year.
Right.
But before this year, and you guys talk about paying people peanuts, you know, like you guys, it's like it's peanuts, as you know.
But the point is, but we wanted to try to give you something, and I'd like to be able to give you guys more next year.
And as we've talked about that privately and blah, blah, blah.
And, you know, but the point is this we, before you guys coming on this year, it's me and Nathan.
Yep.
That's it.
That's all it's ever been.
It's me and Nathan.
And the first goal was always pay Nathan.
And so that's what we did, we worked really hard.
And by God's grace, we were able to get Nathan finally.
A livable wage this year.
This was his first year to get a livable wage.
And, but now it's like we need Nathan.
We'd like to give you guys a little bit more because I want to use you more.
We want to do multiple live streams.
We'd like to do this.
Here's our goal.
So I'm kind of revealing, you know, showing our hand a little bit.
But the goal is we'd like to do Monday, Wednesday, Friday live stream three times a week.
Right now we do Monday and I do an interview.
And then Friday is the Friday special.
We want to do the Monday, Wednesday, Friday live stream because there's things happening all the time that we want to be able to have a quick turnaround and address.
Yep.
And, but I can't ask Michael and Wes to triple their time.
Like, you can't do that without them pulling back from their jobs, their day jobs.
And if they pull back from their jobs, they take a cut.
And if they take a cut, then they need a raise over here.
Like, I can't ask them, hey, you know, your kids will eat ramen noodle for the next three years and take one for the team.
That's not how we're going to do it.
So, we need, I hate that ministry involves money.
I do, but it does.
It's just, it's unavoidable.
It's a part of life.
And so we want to do more as a ministry.
And for the record, the Friday special, we want to continue that, but we're probably going to make it the Saturday special or something like that.
But three live streams, Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
That's the goal for next year.
We need a bigger studio.
We need an administrator.
We need to be able to better compensate.
These guys would never say it.
I'll say it for them.
Better compensate Michael and Wes.
And then as a church, Covenant Bible Church, we need property because we have been politely, warmly invited out of our space, invited to come in, no, invited to go out.
We've been kicked out of our space, and the renting strategy of this school or this coffee shop, or when it fits in the coffee shop, but this school or whatever, this art studio, I'm telling you, no, no.
And well, what about another church?
Honestly, I hate to say this, but I have more faith that the public school district would be slower to kick us out if they got a campaign about these Bible thumper misogynists, you know, what are fuddy duddies.
If there was a campaign on the local school, public school, mind you, I think the public school would cave slower to kicking us out than the average evangelical church.
Because people have said that too.
Why don't you meet at an evangelical church?
You know, you could have an afternoon service or an early morning service.
Well, one, we've asked.
They've all told us no.
And we've asked dozens.
And two, even if one said yes, they would be saying yes before getting the campaign.
Once they start getting the calls, shut it down.
Shut Joel down.
Once they start getting the calls, I honestly, the superintendent at a public school versus the average pastor at an evangelical church, I really don't know which one.
I mean, corporate needs you to see the difference.
That's right.
It's the same picture.
So that's where we're at.
And we need your help.
So, you guys want to say anything?
That's all I got.
It's just we need help.
Come visit if you're looking for a church.
Just in general, like young men.
Like, I moved our family.
We're down.
We're from the Northeast.
We moved down here a couple of years ago.
And it's not easy.
And we have grandparents that are back and everything.
But, But being in a church where you actually agree with what's going on, where your children, if you stay there by God's grace, could have other children that they could marry, families you know, there's not a price tag that you could put on it.
Like, well, there's pros and there's cons.
Like, no, especially in a time like ours.
Like, if Donald Trump gets elected November 5th and we wake up and it's been a landslide, do you think the left takes their bag and goes home?
No, they don't.
But I was talking to my wife.
I don't think, I don't feel in danger here.
If I was in New Jersey, if I was in New York, if I was in California, honey, we might be away for that week.
We need to get farther out into the country.
This is a great place to be just with everything that's going on politically and the advantage of loving your pastor.
There's a lot of great people here.
So you're on the fence.
It doesn't hurt to visit.
A couple hundred bucks, spend the day.
Fall is beautiful weather, but you are warmly welcome.
I want to tell a quick story because, Wes, what you said, I mean, in a church that we are so, I mean, not that I don't have disagreements with Joel, but there are mine, and they're few.
But where I'm confident about what my kids are being taught.
The Importance of Agreeing with Your Church00:04:57
And so, my mom, wonderful Christian lady, but not happy that we use real wine.
Right, right, right.
So, it was so funny because my mom was having a conversation with my kids and my 11 year old.
He goes, but abuela, that's what we call our grandma.
But abuela, when we drink the wine, Pastor Joel says we taste a little bit of the white hot wrath of God in our throats.
And that's what Jesus felt on the cross.
You're not swaying abuela.
Yeah, that's not going to sway abuela.
No, it's not.
But my point is, he picked that up from the preaching.
That's cool.
There is an argument to be, like, Wes, you did a good job.
I haven't checked my reform calendar, but I think we're probably due for the wine insufferable.
Debate that happens on Reformed Acts.
I think it's David of Bathsheba next.
Oh, okay.
And then grape juice versus wine.
But last time that one came up on the calendar, you argued, and I thought you made a really good point about the one, like the warmth with the.
Of love.
Yeah, the warmth that is in the.
A lot of it, yeah.
Affection, yeah.
Like there's a reason that wine is prescribed.
The warmth, but then also the bite and the sting of death that Christ took on our behalf so that the sting of death no longer is for us, but we're remembering the sting that he faced in our place.
And there's a lot of.
And that wasn't just things that you or I have come up with.
The Puritans made James B. Jordan.
Yeah, James B. Jordan.
Guys have made great biblical arguments for that.
Since you use that example, I don't know people will lose their minds.
You use wine in the Lord's Supper.
Yeah, and we have it every week.
But juice?
That's what the Lord intended.
This is why agreeing with your church matters so much.
How many evangelical churches take juice, but have also robbed in their preaching the love of God and the wrath of God?
You can't disassociate the sacraments that we've been given.
And so, when you neuter one to not be offensive, oh, what a surprise.
Also, the preaching that comes from the pulpit is also not offensive.
It also doesn't contain the wrath of God.
And then, because it doesn't contain the wrath, which is tied up with the love, you use the love of God for sinners in Christ.
So, you neutered it down.
And it actually literally physically did that when you substituted juice for wine.
And so, many of you are taking juice on Sunday.
I did it for many years at other churches we were in.
But you're being taught through that.
It's a discipleship means, and it matters.
It's not literally the only thing.
Right.
It's not the only.
I wouldn't leave a church over it.
It's a good church in many other regards, but it does matter.
There is a right answer.
We have the right answer.
Like I said, whoa, that's so arrogant.
Like, yeah, the positions that I currently hold are the positions that I think are right.
Like, find me the dude who's like, I know this is the wrong position and I'm still going to hold it.
Everybody thinks they're right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we think we're right.
Like everyone in the entire world thinks they're right.
That could be arrogance, but not inherently so.
So, yeah, but it matters.
There is a right answer.
We think that we're taking.
We think we have the right answer on that.
And then, you know, since we're on it with wine, one more reason that we have wine is with the Lord's Supper is because we're not feminist.
And seriously, do your homework, go get the history.
But prohibition, the temperance movement, the whole idea of, especially among Baptists, sadly, and I am one, but this whole idea of it's got to be grape juice and we don't want to offend with alcohol, that's directly correlated and tied to the feminist movement and the temperance movement and pushing.
It was honorary women rebelling against their husbands.
Yeah, so we like our church, we're not feminist.
And honestly, that's usually who it offends.
It's not a coincidence that it's Abuela.
That's true.
It's grandma.
Well, my dad's not too happy about it either.
Okay.
But he probably is less bothered than mom.
And so, yeah, so it's like, I can't believe that they have wine.
It's like, well, that's okay because your husband, he's not going to leave the church over it.
And he is going to bring you to church with him.
And you can look into the statistics.
I mean, you guys know this, but like when a woman takes the kids to church.
Right.
The husband rarely comes, and when the kids grow up, they stop.
When the husband takes the family to church, the kids grow up and they keep going to church.
We're in it for first and foremost the glory of God, and secondly, the hearts of men, particularly young men.
We want to win the next generation of men.
And that's not because we don't love women.
The most loving thing I believe that we can do as a ministry, as a church, and with right response for women is win the hearts of young men.
Because if we can win their hearts, they'll win your heart, and they'll love you, provide, protect.
And you'll be a whole lot happier.
Women being liberated from traditional marriage and traditional biblical principles has only led towards women suffering and being miserable.
And the statistics bear it out again and again.
So, all right, that's all we got.
Winning Hearts Through Prayer00:00:46
If you want to help out financially, pray about it.
If all you can do is pray, we appreciate your prayers.
Prayer works, prayer is real.
But for those of you who are able to, if you would like to make a donation to Write Response, helping Write Response does help the local church.
Because we're looking at teaming up with the property and those kinds of things, you can go to writeresponseministries.com forward slash donate.
Writeresponseministries.com forward slash donate.
And if you want to specifically help out with the church, you could go to covenantbible.org, covenantbible.org, click on give, and it's self explanatory.
And then, of course, if you can't give, please pray.
And then, lastly, if you're in the area or even if you want to make a trip, come and visit us.