Dead Men Walking Podcast: What is Lutheranism with Pastor Alex Zenk

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00:11

Oh, yes, the fine, fine tunes of Jason Hamlin, my trusty co -host who is not here tonight.

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Actually, if you're watching this on YouTube or any of the places you watch our podcast, you'll see

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I'm sitting alone tonight. He had some work duties that called him away. So I am all by myself tonight outside of our host, which are our guest, which we'll get to here shortly.

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But it's going to be a different dynamic. I've been sitting next to someone for the last 21 months, 22 months, and now

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I'm here by myself. So there's no one to laugh at my non -funny jokes tonight and make me sound funnier than I am to you people.

00:49

But I think we're going to get through it because we have a great episode. Before we start that, though, did want to talk about the

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Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary. This episode is brought to you by them. They have a Rice Lecture Series out of Detroit, and they have

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Dr. Joel Beek speaking there, who is from the Puritan Reform Theological Seminary.

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This is a free seminary, guys. Now, I'm going to be headed up there on March 18th. It's in Allen Park, Michigan. If you live in Michigan, Ohio, even parts of Indiana, it's not a very long drive.

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I met Dr. Joel Beek down at G3 Conference last year, and I've got to tell you, he spoke at G3 and he was absolutely amazing.

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This is part of their Rice Lecture Series, like I was saying, and it's going to be phenomenal. Starts at 8 a .m.,

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goes into the early afternoon. It is a free event. So make sure you go check it out at dbts .edu

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forward slash rice. That's dbts .edu forward slash rice.

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We're going to link that up everywhere you see our podcast. So looking forward to that event.

01:55

But we have here with us, not in studio, but by the powers and magic of technology, as we've been doing the last few years, we have him on video through Zoom.

02:07

It's Alex Zink, and he is the host of Undying Light Podcast. How are you, Alex? I'm doing wonderful.

02:14

How are you? I am good. And this was a fun one. And I always like these types of conversations.

02:20

I've been following Alex on Instagram. He's going to give us his Instagram account here shortly.

02:27

And I loved what he was posting. And I listened to a few of his podcasts. And I said, we can have this guy on the podcast and just talk about Lutheranism.

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He's in seminary right now. His podcasts are just very concise and full, chock full of information, which if you've been a listener of this podcast for any time, you know,

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I love that kind of stuff. Fall asleep at night, reading legislative bills and theological books and all that kind of stuff.

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A little bit of a nerd there. But I thought, man, it would be great to have him on and talk about this for a little bit.

03:00

So Alex, we are very happy that you're here. Why don't you give us maybe just one or two minute introduction of yourself and tell the people a little bit about what you do?

03:10

Sure. Well, thank you for having me. It's always an honor to be on any show, especially this one.

03:16

And I was actually talking to a couple of people in my church today. I always kind of have this little kind of giddy schoolboy moment when

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I'm kind of, I don't want to say bragging about being on a guest on another show, but it is definitely a privilege to be on this show among the other stuff that I've done in the past.

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But a little bit about me. I'm pastor of a church in a small community in Iowa, about an hour north of Des Moines.

03:49

We're about 120 member congregation. Church is 165 years old. And we are

03:56

LCMC Lutheran Church. And I'll get into that as we dig into the show, why that is extremely significant.

04:06

But I come from a Calvinist background. And prior to even that,

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I attended a Lutheran church. So I've been kind of going all around the circle of faith.

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And so now I would venture to say I'm more of a confessional Lutheran. And we'll expound on what that means during the show.

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But I mean, that's really me. I've been running the Quorum Day of Life Instagram page for five years or so.

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And I've recently have kind of, I don't want to say slowly put the steps away, but I'm slowing down my posts, mostly because school's picking up and it's

04:52

Lent and I've got a lot of obligations in the church. So, you know, one post a day, where I was doing three and five and seven a day for many years.

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And so I got to slow that content down. But I do produce a lot of the podcast. So you get two episodes a week for me.

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And so that's a lot of time in the studio recording, prepping and digging into the content. So I do an episode

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Tuesday and episode Friday. But so yeah, so I'm always busy, always got something going on.

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Plus, I've got a married, we'll be celebrating 15 years in August. I got two wonderful kids.

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And so they keep us on our toes. And so yeah, that's me in a nutshell.

05:36

And yeah, so pretty excited to be here. I think it's a great honor. Oh, well, thank you.

05:41

And I know exactly what you're talking about, Alex, when we get called to other podcasts and you love talking about the

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Word of God, you get fired up and you get excited and you do get a little giddy. Like I like to, yeah, let's talk, you know, let's discuss, let's wrestle, let's iron, sharpen iron.

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So I totally understand that. Frankly, you're in seminary. I don't know how you're doing it with a wife, two kids, two podcasts a week and seven posts on Instagram, something had to give.

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And I think it was the Instagram was the right choice that had to give. So yeah, we are so happy to have you on.

06:15

Before we get into the old meat and potatoes of the show, as we like to call it, let's do a little newsy news.

06:21

That's where we take three news stories from the week. We talk about it for a few minutes and we'll get your input on it too,

06:29

Alex. So, yeah, let's go. Here we go. Yes.

06:42

And if any of you want to hire us to sing horrible falsetto for you, Jason and I are available.

06:49

That is a Tom Askell Newsy News approved segment. So I'm almost sad that I have to talk about this tweet in our first news story because we all know, all the listeners know what a big fan of Elon Musk Jason is.

07:02

But I just thought this was interesting with everything going on. I said about six months ago on the podcast after Elon Musk came out against the

07:11

Build Back Better plan, I said his days are limited in the mainstream media. He is going to fall out of favor.

07:18

He will not be that guy when we start bucking against the system that we have here in the United States.

07:23

The hate to say it, but we need to increase oil and gas output immediately.

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Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures. And then he followed that up with. Obviously, this would negatively affect

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Tesla, but sustainable energy solutions simply cannot react instantaneously to make up for Russian oil and gas exports.

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I saw that. That was from oh, let's see. That was from three four twenty two at six forty p .m.

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on the West Coast. And I said, oh, this guy just keeps digging himself a hole with the elites and the progressives and those who have one mantra, which is all green energy all the time at all costs.

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And then on top of that, do not want to have any, you know, want to have ties with Russian oil, but don't want to open up any local sources or they're shutting down like the

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Keystone Pipeline and things like that. You guys know we cover political things every once in a while here on the show.

08:20

But I thought that was an interesting tweet. Bring it to your attention. He is bucking the liberal system.

08:26

He's kind of bucking the Republican system. He's kind of doing his own thing, which Elon does. And I would say just keep an eye on that, because I would not be surprised if in the next few months, six months, maybe even a year, you see a real attack going on with Elon just because he is not falling into the line with what the mantra of mainstream secularism says it has to be right now.

08:48

Alex, what do you think? Are you an Elon Musk follower at all? Do you keep your head? I know you're in seminary, so your head's in a book in multiple books, but you peek out from over those books to take a look at what

08:58

Elon Musk is doing or no. Yeah, from time to time, I check in and I mean, he does make ripples on social media.

09:06

So it's kind of when he tweets, it goes, you know, everywhere. Yeah. And so whether I see it directly from him or shared by somebody else,

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I'll eventually bump into it. And, you know, wherever you fall in this whole debate with, you know, left versus rights, liberal versus conservative, green energy versus fossil fuel, the

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Russian oil usage, you know, I think Elon is really hammering something that needs to be explained better, because there's politicians and there's advocates for this concept that we should, as you mentioned, only do green energy all the time.

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The problem with that is, is there has to be something that fuels that, you know, to make a

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Tesla car or any battery operated car, it requires a lot of fossil fuel that goes into the plants to power those plants, to make these batteries, and then to keep them charged going on throughout the life of the car.

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And so you can't just abandon everything all at one time. I mean, eventually, you could probably get to a place where we're using renewable resources, you know, solar and wind and water, more so than we would be using fossil fuels.

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And I think what Elon is really driving at is, hey, we've got record inflation, we are seeing things that we haven't seen in a number of years.

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And we need to just go back to what we were doing a couple years ago. And continue that, you know, whether you're a proponent for opening the

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Keystone pipeline or not, with that in that with when that was in the works to be opened, it would have been opened probably by next spring, maybe because it was only about two years from completion when he when

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Joe Biden stopped it last year. Right. So, you know, I think he's really hammering something that needs to be said.

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And I think what this is, is a nonpartisan issue. And it needs to be, you know, advocated from both sides of the aisle with the politicians, because, you know, this is the everyday and this is a problem.

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And I think Elon sees the middle class American more vulnerable than any politician does.

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And he speaks heavily for that. And I think this tweet goes to show that this is the main focus is the middle class

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American are they're going to be the ones that pay for this for, you know, for the rising gas and the rising food costs.

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And they're the ones that are going to be hammered for the rich and the elites, the politicians, they don't have to worry about that.

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They don't care. Inflation could be up 100%. They wouldn't care. Gas could be $15 a gallon. They wouldn't care.

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But when it hits the middle class and the poor, it's devastating. And I would have to agree.

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You know, I think, you know, and I think Elon is well aware of the financial hit that his company would take if the focus kind of transitioned from, you know, the green narrative to more of a fossil fuel narrative.

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But he's a smart man. And he's going to adapt. He's got plenty of other businesses that he can pour money into and get a great return on.

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I think he's a well thought out, methodically planning individual. And it's not just something that he's looking, you know, within a couple of years,

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I think he's well planned for 25 or 50 years down the road for his company. Yeah, no,

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I agree. I just always think it's funny when we look in the last five years now, if you're pragmatic, you are now extreme and you're mocked by either one or other one or the other sides of the political aisle, which, you know, he says something very common sense like that.

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And then everyone lost their minds. But let's shift gears in the second news story.

13:06

I thought this was interesting how Christian overtook the Protestant label. This is from Christianity Today. I don't often pull from Christianity Today, but I got two articles tonight from them.

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I'm just going to read a little bit of it. Here's this. Over the past several decades, American evangelicalism has moved away from the religious label symbols and buildings that used to define church.

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Many newer churches don't contain stained glass crosses or traditional sanctuary setups. They tend to adopt contemporary names, leaving out denominational labels or other religious language.

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It goes on to say these trends have had a real impact on how younger people understand the religious identity.

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Evangelical Protestants have been debating for years over the definition and usefulness of the evangelical label.

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We've talked about that on this podcast. Now it appears Protestant may be losing its place to new research shows.

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A significant portion of Americans no longer attach to the word Protestant the way older Americans have for generations.

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A finding that has implications for those who study and measure religious affiliation, as well as for church communities themselves.

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The insight comes thanks to a weekly survey called the Nationscape, which Democracy Fund began in 2019. It stands as the largest public available survey data set in history, with nearly a half a million people surveyed.

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It goes on to say that less than 10 % of those under the age of 25 identify as Protestant, but yet they identify as Christian or evangelical.

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Those above 55, that jumps to almost 60, or I'm sorry, 50%. So it's a 50 % split for those 55 and above that either refer to themselves as Christian or Protestant.

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So we're seeing it as a, like the article said, a generational thing as well, to where I'm not even sure if you're under 25.

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If you, you know, I've talked to some younger people, I'm 40. So 25 is young to me. And you say the word

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Protestant and they go, what, what does that have to do with Catholics or what is that? No, you're claiming to be a

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Protestant. You don't even know, you know, when you say Christian or evangelical, which gosh,

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I hate that word too, but you know, listeners, you've heard me talk about that. We're not going to get into that tonight. Uh, yeah.

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So you have a generation where only 10 % are identifying themselves as Protestants. Um, what do you think,

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Alex, do you, you know, do you think that you're a pastor, you're in seminary, you're with the denomination. Do you think that's an issue or do you think that words don't matter?

15:26

No, I think it's a major issue. And, uh, in fact, I was a guest on another podcast a couple of weeks ago, uh, the pastor's voice where we dug into this concept a little bit, kind of the, the fallen away from the creeds and confessions of the church.

15:39

And, and I think what, I think there's a, there was a gap, um, maybe about 15, 20 years ago, it started to take place, uh, with this poll.

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And I think we could probably even date it back a little bit further to the beginning of the seeker friendly churches.

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And when those churches kind of became the prevalent thing in society, uh, we started to see this drifting away from the traditional non, uh, traditional denominational church.

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Uh, and whether that's Presbyterian Methodist Baptist or Lutheran, uh, we started to get this plethora of non -denominational churches.

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In fact, it's probably, you'd be hard -fetched to go into any town across the

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United States that has a decent sized population and not find one non -denominational church or probably find a handful of them.

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Uh, I mean, if I drive down to, uh, Ames, which is about 40 minutes South of me, I'm probably going to see, you know, 10 or 15 of them.

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And that town is not that big. Um, and it's interesting because in these non -denominational churches, they're not teaching creeds and confessions.

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In fact, most of these churches probably don't even have a creed or confession that they adhere to.

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They're just, uh, loosely pointing to some concepts that might come from like the

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Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed. And so when you have this massive pull away from, you know, the tradition, traditional non -denominational, it makes sense that these younger individuals wouldn't even understand what

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Protestant really means. Uh, and I think, you know, that just plays into this concept of, you know, the church losing its identity.

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Uh, it loses the fact that, uh, church history is kind of a thing of the, you know, teaching of it is a thing of the past or it's, uh, church history is only left for the theologians and the pastors and the podcasters.

17:39

It's not for the layman. It's not for those who sit in the pew. The people in the pew want to be entertained.

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They want, you know, good and, uh, fluffy, feel good messages. They don't care about doctrinal teaching.

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They don't care about the dry stuff of the text. They want to be uplifted and they want to feel good when they leave the church.

18:00

Yeah. And I think that's, um, yeah. And I think that's a huge, uh, issue.

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And, and I think that's the biggest difference. Like, you know, uh,

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I came from a non -denominational church, uh, when I, before I, uh, became a pastor and, and I love the pastor in that church.

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I'm still friends with him and, uh, he's probably got about 4 ,000 members in his church and he, you know, they, they teach from a very, um,

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I would probably say he's more of kind of a, a light Calvinistic Reformed preacher with a little bit of Arminianism sprinkled in there.

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I mean, it's kind of a blend of both. And I think his, but I think the approach that he takes is, uh, you know, he teaches through the

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Bible and, and I think people appreciate that, but there is no, uh,

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Lord's prayer being proclaimed. There's no creed or confession being proclaimed. And I think that hurts the image of the church at a large, because we're, we're losing our identity.

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And, and while we may be able to preach through the Bible, we, we have no association with church history because we're trying to essentially, uh, it almost feels like we're trying to do something new.

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And, and I think that's where the church is starting to greatly, uh, fail in entirety.

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And because, I mean, who knows what the church is going to do in 10 years? I know the church will never ultimately fail because Christ will sustain us, but we will have massive fallouts.

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And I think we're already seeing it from these big mega churches, uh, in the apostates that are coming from, uh, these big circles where they're just renouncing their faith.

19:49

Um, the deconstruction movement that is going on is massive. And I think that is heavily influenced by these non -denominational churches where, uh, there's no confession being taught.

20:00

There's no doctrinal teaching happening. Uh, and so I think this is going to lead to major implications over the next probably five, 10 years for us pastors to have to counteract this tidal wave that's coming.

20:15

Yeah, no, very well said. I agree. And I'm a very literal person and I think words have meanings.

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And like you said at the very beginning, uh, you know, not understanding those words or those labels also tells you that they're discarding church history, uh, and all those important events that, that happens.

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So, yeah, I think it is important, something, something to look at, something to watch. Um, but I just thought it was an interesting story.

20:38

All right, let's round it out here with the last one. You might know more about this than I do, but I, I saw it come across my desk a few days ago.

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Uh, this is once again from Christianity Today. Another UMC conference delay prompts conservative churches to leave.

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It's a very long article, but essentially we have the United Methodist Church has delayed its general conference meeting for a third time due to the continuing

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COVID -19 pandemic. In response, some conservative United Methodists have announced they will preemptively leave the denomination rather than wait for the long anticipated meeting.

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Delegates to the general conference were expected to take up a proposal to split the denomination over disagreements on the full inclusion of LGBTQ LMNOP members at the,

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I added that last part, meeting of the global decision -making body scheduled for August 29th to September 6th in Minneapolis.

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So essentially what we have is another delay, two more years for the United Methodist Church to make some type of decision at a delegation.

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And now we have a lot of more conservative and socially conservative, theologically conservative

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Methodists that are breaking off. And I think in the article, it says the global Methodist church is what they want to start.

21:48

And they said, no, we're not waiting another two years. And I don't know. I read the article and I went, is this an excuse?

21:54

They said, well, there's passports and there's travel and we are an international church. So we can't get them all here and we want to have full attendance.

22:02

Sounds good. But they've been waiting on this. I think now this is going on four years. So that'll be six years to just get to an assembly to make a decision on this

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LGBTQ issue that's going on in the United Methodist Church. So it looks like they're going to make a preemptive break here.

22:21

Some of these theologically conservative Methodists. What do you think about that, Alex? Well, I think this was something that's kind of long overdue for the

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Methodist church. This is very similar to what happened with the ELCA Lutherans back in 2008 and 2009.

22:40

A lot of lead up and build up to a big conference that essentially broke and saw the splitting of ELCA into smaller denominations or sentence, if you would call them that.

22:54

And what I've really kind of what I've heard in the scope of this entire time with the

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Methodist pressure is that this push from the

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Methodists to stay conservative in their doctrinal stance comes from the

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African Methodist churches. Those that are in Africa has very little acceptance by the

23:24

American Methodist. The Americans want to add this progressive ideology where they accept and allow

23:32

LGBTQ, as you said, elemental preachers and people and all that.

23:39

And I think the implications here in the West, we're seeing these pastors and these laymen coming up and being accepted in the church and then pastoring a church.

23:52

And we've got now radical sects of the Methodist church that have emerged.

23:58

And I think it's something that's overdue for the Methodist to deal with. And I think if this group is going to split, they need to do it and just take who wants to be with them and just essentially start their own set and move on.

24:12

Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't know why they would want to prolong that for two years, that internal turmoil. And it looks like someone's making a decision there.

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And they're, like I said, going to make a preemptive break. So we'll watch that closely. So that was all

24:23

I had for news, you guys. Let's get into the main subject.

24:29

That was the newsy news. Cool. So, Alex, let's get into Lutheranism. I would love for you to educate our listeners.

24:37

And like I said, guys, go check him out at Undying Light Podcast. Phenomenal podcast with a lot of information.

24:44

It's one of those ones where, you know, don't try to do two things at once.

24:49

Don't try to, you know, do the yard work and listen. Just sit down, listen as you're laying in bed, whatever it is, driving to work.

24:57

That way you can really chew on it. And I do appreciate a good, chewy podcast, which Alex has.

25:02

So why don't we start with what is the historical kind of let's go big picture.

25:08

The history of Lutheranism kind of, you know, we won't go too long here. I know we could probably do three, four hours on this.

25:15

But the Reader's Digest version, I'll show my age there. That used to be a saying, kids, where historically, what is

25:23

Lutheranism? And then maybe we get into like you were talking about the ELCA, the LCMC, stuff like that.

25:29

So historically, where does Lutheranism come from and how was it established? Sure. So I hope that your listeners would, you know, have a basic understanding of the

25:40

Reformation, but we don't have to go that deep. I think they get that. And so really you can assert that Luther was one of the original beginners of the

25:54

Reformation. Obviously, there's preemptive people, John Wycliffe, and so on before him.

26:02

John Huss, and what was John Huss, like 1400 or 1500s. So 102 years before the 95

26:09

Theses. Yeah, right. And so, you know, there's people prior to Luther, but Luther was the one that essentially sparked this controversy.

26:22

And what really happened in 1517 was kind of a combination of a few things. First, Luther sought out to not actually change anything in the church.

26:32

He didn't seek to reform the church. He didn't seek to start a revolution or anything like that.

26:38

His whole premise was, look, the Catholic Church is preaching this merit system that you have to buy tokens or pay to get out of purgatory ahead of time.

26:52

Or you have to buy a trinket to get your loved one out of purgatory. And so they were selling these indulgences and these merits.

27:02

And Luther was like, no, this is wrong. And so that's really where the 95 Theses come from, is it's an attack to the

27:09

Roman Catholic Church in most of that landscape. And so if you read the 95

27:15

Theses, probably take, I don't know, 30, 45 minutes to get through them all. I'm a slow reader, so it might take me a couple of days.

27:24

But this is just, that's the assertion that Luther was taking. And so he nails this on October 31st in 1517 at the door at Wittenberg, and that was the spark.

27:36

But the Reformation really didn't start picking up in Germany until the

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Diet of Worms in 1521, where Luther was summoned before this group of Roman Catholic bishops and priests and representatives and political high -standing people.

27:59

And basically, they brought all of his works to the table and said, do you renounce all these works?

28:06

And Luther, on the second day that he was at the Diet, comes in and basically gives them,

28:12

I can't. I can't renounce what I have written, because this is what the

28:18

Word of God says. And I am held to that standard, not to your standard.

28:24

I'm paraphrasing everything Luther says, of course. But he asserts himself to stand against the tides of the

28:32

Roman Catholic Church. And he says, I cannot go against any of my writings. And so the church essentially excommunicates him, kicks him out of the church.

28:43

And with the Roman Catholic Church in this time period, if you were excommunicated, chances are you would often be executed as well, if you kind of were found in some sort of violation, or they actually capture you.

28:55

And so the Roman Catholic Church was good at putting people to death. And so Luther kind of had that fear in his life.

29:04

That's why he actually didn't go to the Augsburg Diet in 1530, when the

29:10

Augsburg Confession was written. He just had influence on it, but he didn't actually, was not actually present.

29:17

Because if he had gone to Augsburg, chances are he would have been captured and executed.

29:23

So there's a lot of history to Luther and his life. And the book

29:29

I would probably read is by James Cattleston. If you really want to get into Luther's life,

29:34

James Cattleston, it's Luther the Reformer. And I think you can pick it up for a couple of bucks on Amazon.

29:41

And it really is a deep dive into kind of almost like a week by week or day by day snapshot of his life.

29:48

And it really breaks down all of the things that cultivated to the

29:54

Lutheran Reformation. And so there was early groups that would assert themselves as Lutherans, even though Luther himself despised that term, because he didn't want people to associate anything with him.

30:09

And he wanted people to just as simply address themselves as Christians. Towards the end of his life, he was much more accepting of that because of the bigger split that had occurred over the years between him and the

30:23

Roman Catholic Church. And then even towards the end of his life, you start to see the split from the

30:28

Lutherans and the other Reformed groups that were sparking throughout

30:33

Europe in that time period. And so Luther was essentially a pioneer in this.

30:41

But then we get people like Zwingli who comes along, and we got John Calvin and John Knox and many of the other prominent

30:49

Reformed preachers who carried the flag in their own context, and they had their own volition against the

30:59

Roman Catholic Church. And interestingly enough, they had their own debates against Lutheranism.

31:05

And so there was a lot of conflict in the 15 and 1600s.

31:10

But Lutheranism really is a focus on the teachings and preachings that Martin Luther gave.

31:16

And I've always kind of attested Luther not to be a systematic teacher. He wasn't a theologian that sat in a classroom and wrote systematic books and took doctrine and took a deep dive into it.

31:33

He was a preacher. And he was a man who would live with his congregation.

31:40

And so that's where we... It's a big difference, I think, than somebody like John Calvin, who was much more of a systematic preacher than just a preacher -preacher.

31:50

I don't know if there's really a good word for it. But so Luther really has this focus and drive to lead people to Christ.

32:02

And in fact, there's a book... I got it in my library. I can't even think of the name of it, but I think it's called like Preaching Under the

32:10

Cross or something like that. And anyway, it's a book that details how Luther approached his ministry in terms of times like conflict and emotional distress for his congregation and how everything he wrote, these letters that he wrote to people.

32:29

And there's hundreds of letters that he wrote to people over the years that we have. And each of these are detailing one central thing that's reoccurring in all of them is the fact that Christ forgives you of your sins.

32:40

Even though you feel like the world is against you, Christ is still for you. And so there's this theme that carries on through his preaching all throughout his ministry.

32:51

And I think that was a big segue. Now, you get into the Lutheran faith, we start to see softening of language with Philip Melanchthon.

33:02

That was his protege. This was essentially the second Lutheran, if you would, that comes on the scene. And Philip was a great theologian, and he brought a lot to the

33:12

Lutheran church. But there's this kind of a pullaway over time that starts to soften the language and starts to accept a little bit more of a synergistic approach to the doctrinal teachings versus a monergism approach.

33:30

And so I would say, and I actually even argued this in a term paper in seminary a while back, that Lutherans today aren't traditional

33:43

Lutherans. We can't go back in most circles and say that we are authentically

33:50

Lutheran, because we're not teaching what Luther taught. We're teaching what Melanchthon taught, or what other theologians down the line have taught, or what really kind of a collection of churches like in the

34:02

ELCA are teaching. And so we're not necessarily authentic Lutherans.

34:08

And that's one thing that my seminary is really big on, is calling us back to what Luther taught and equipping us with how he brought his ministry into the church.

34:19

And so the seminary I'm a part, Sioux Falls Seminary, is really cultivating the lifestyle of a preacher and influence that Luther had in the life of a preacher.

34:30

So again, you know, we could talk on this topic for hours. There's so much history to all of the

34:38

Reformation across all of these various denominations. So fast forward 500 years, you're part of the

34:45

LCMC. What are some main doctrinal stances that you take as someone as part of the

34:53

LCMC? What are some of those orthodox, you know, I'm thinking communion, baptism, you know, sabbatarian or not, some of those things that might separate you from a non -denominational evangelical church that calls themselves a

35:08

Christian, or even some of those within my Reformed community that love the doctrines of grace, but when you start talking about communion or baptism, they don't know where they land on it.

35:20

They just have this kind of general evangelical view of those things. Where's the LCMC different in your view as you've progressed now 500 years after Luther?

35:32

Yeah. So the LCMC is a newer formation of Lutherans.

35:38

I think we're only like 25 or so years old, and we really have only about 1 ,000 churches in our senate entirely around the world.

35:49

So we're not an old senate by any means. Now the ELCA is an old senate. They've been around for a long time, and the

35:55

LCMC is a split, a branch that broke away from them because of the radical teachings that they had.

36:02

So the LCMC is kind of unique in its framework because they don't put emphasis in a hierarchy of power, and within the church, in denominational churches, this is for Methodist and some

36:17

Baptist circles, heavy Lutherans, Presbyterians as well, experiences.

36:25

What they do is they take a senate or an area, a geographical area, and they sum up all of the churches that are part of this senate, and then they put a bishop over that.

36:39

And then they take a bigger area, and they put a bishop over that. And then they took a massive area and put a bishop over that.

36:46

And so there's this hierarchy of bishops all the way up to somebody like in the SBC where there's a president of the

36:53

SBC that oversees all the everyday doings of the district. LCMC doesn't have a hierarchy.

37:01

I don't have a bishop to report to. I have essentially just a small support team if I have needs of anything, and I have an area group that I meet with that are local pastors, and there's a few people who are in kind of like a council for the state of Iowa.

37:23

And they just kind of help regulate things. They don't make decisions that impact the church. They just essentially assert, you know, what is the

37:31

LCMC standing for ultimately. And the one thing that I really appreciate with this senate is the fact that the church is given the power to, you know, have its own governing system.

37:47

So for instance, like my church that I'm a part of, the pastor previously here was here for 20 years.

37:54

He's since retired in November of 2020.

38:00

And instead of the church having to go to a bishop and say, we need a new pastor, can you find us one?

38:05

You know, we'll wait until you, you know, shop around the market and see what we got. They went out on their own and called me.

38:13

I applied, but they, you know, ended up after interviews and that, called me as their pastor. And we moved down here in December of 2020.

38:21

And they were very quick. Many churches across all denominations have to wait multiple years because of the shortage of pastors.

38:30

And so the power and the beauty of this is that there's not anything that we have to wait on.

38:39

We don't have to wait for decisions to be made. The church makes the decision. Church votes on it. And it's the church's move, which can also be a downfall because it's not completely sound, unified,

38:54

I guess is a good word, across all of the LCMC churches. So you can get a little bit of a variety in how the teaching is done, whether you stand for or accept female pastors.

39:09

The LCMC is kind of not for nor against it. It's, again, left to the individual congregation to make that decision, whether the congregation has allowed a female pastor.

39:23

They obviously take a stand against the LGBTQ inclusion into ministry.

39:30

That's one thing that they are opposed to. But you'll get that kind of a little bit of a leniency where we're not quite unified in all aspects across the churches.

39:42

So essentially, maybe in secondary doctrinal issues or things that aren't primary? Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

39:49

And you'll get more confessional Lutherans in the LCMC. You'll get more people who would adhere to the

39:56

Book of Concord. You can probably say we're more like a Missouri Senate in terms of that ballpark, or a little bit more,

40:04

I don't want to say legalistic, but we hold to a particular confession.

40:11

And the LCMC is confessional in its roots, but there is some disunification, or however you want to frame it, between some of the churches.

40:20

For instance, there's 15 churches in my area, geographical area.

40:25

I think there's one or two female pastors in that. And so that's on the congregation to draw that.

40:33

It's not necessarily the Senate. My congregation would never have a female pastor, and I've been told that. So it's just, again, it's power given, which

40:42

I think is rightly so. And if the congregation, in my opinion, wants to condemn themselves, they can hire whoever they want.

40:51

But I think it goes to the extent that, you know, men need to be stepping up and being the pastors in this group.

40:59

Sure. So let me loop back to something you alluded to earlier about the ELCA, the split from that.

41:04

And I've heard you say that in a few of your podcast episodes too. So can you just explain for the listeners what that split was about?

41:13

And when you say, I think you said earlier on the podcast, some of their more extreme views, I'm assuming in your view, you're saying those were unbiblical views.

41:23

Could you maybe, you know, with being as gracious as you want or not want to be, explain that for the listeners, the difference in that and maybe what you might disagree with with the

41:31

ELCA? Sure, absolutely. So back in 09, the ELCA voted to allow

41:38

LGBTQ clergy into the church. And this was an allowance that was global because the

41:47

ELCA is a global senate. And it really was something that really stepped on the toes of a lot of conservative churches, kind of those, you know, small town country churches in the middle of rural

42:01

America that experienced this kind of impact upon them.

42:08

And they were the ones that really pushed back pretty heavily when you saw that split happen.

42:15

So the 09 movement was mostly the LGBTQ inclusion of clergy and where they would have, you know, potentially a gay pastor or a gay bishop, you know, and obviously the

42:33

ELCA is very heavy on allowing women to be pastors because you can't get men to be pastors.

42:40

So we have to open the doors to everybody because nobody wants to join us. And so there's that, that's a really big pull.

42:49

But in recent years, they've really started to kind of shoot themselves in the foot where they have made just massive doctrinal errors.

42:59

And one of the biggest things I think that affected my in -laws church who had recently just left the

43:05

ELCA for LCMC is the moving away from proper biblical language and the

43:13

ELCA starting to try and replace or essentially neuter

43:19

God's gender. And they're not saying, they're trying to say that God is not necessarily a male, but that he's above the sexes.

43:30

And so we can refer to him as, you know, maybe in a female sense.

43:35

And they try to use a text from Luke 19 where Jesus says he acts like a hen to collect her brood.

43:42

And so they use that as kind of a stepping point, but that's a really poor misinterpretation of the text.

43:50

And, you know, and my father -in -law always kind of states this, you know, it's one thing when you're raised to say

43:58

God, the father, you know, all of the creeds in the church history say God, the father, the

44:04

Bible states it very explicitly. He's like, you know, if we, if the Bible says God, our mother,

44:10

God, the mother, however they frame it, I would be, you know, it wouldn't be a big deal because that's what the

44:17

Bible tells us. But because it's one specific thing and the ELCA is trying to de -gender this concept and make it more, again, open and inclusive for all people who might be troubled with specific language, it causes doctrinal issues.

44:37

And so, again, the ELCA has got a lot of problems. There's issues with social justice that is placating them.

44:44

They really, I would venture to say this is, the gospel they preach in a majority of their churches is exactly what

44:53

Paul preached against in Galatians chapters 1 and 5 and 2.

45:01

And I think Paul nails it pretty heavy. And I actually had this conversation with my confirmands this morning that at the end or about the middle of chapter 5, where he says, if anybody preaches a different gospel, let them demasculinize themselves.

45:16

So like, it's just blunt. It's very, yeah.

45:22

And so this is what the ELCA is essentially doing to themselves. Okay. So it sounds like there's some, you know, this is something, a running theme on this podcast too, where we constantly see churches and denominations allowing the gospel to bow to the secular culture, instead of the culture, bowing to the culture of the gospel, which is what is actually biblical.

45:47

And we, as we move along here, we just keep seeing more and more concessions made. And sometimes it seems innocent enough to some people like a gender change or a name change.

45:57

I think it's a pretty major issue, but like you said, it leads to all kinds of doctrinal issues as well.

46:02

Um, here's a fun question. I always like to ask, uh, people is what led you to Lutheranism or to the

46:10

LCMC? What, what, what attracted you to that or what, what made you go, this is the denomination that I think most clearly and closely aligns with the, with the

46:22

Bible. Yeah. So I'll give a bit of a, uh, I'll give the reader's reader digest of my, of my background.

46:31

I grew up in a semi grew up in a Lutheran church. So small community, 500 people, three

46:40

Lutheran churches, one Missouri Senate and two ELCA. There's still three Lutheran churches in this town today.

46:48

And so I got baptized confirmed and did some youth work. I was actually married in this

46:55

Lutheran church in my hometown, but then my wife and I kind of stopped going. And I would never classified myself at the time as being a

47:02

Lutheran. I just kind of went, I went, I didn't really know doctrinally anything about the Lutherans.

47:08

Um, in fact, I really didn't know anything about Martin Luther. And, uh, so fast forward to my mid twenties, my wife is like,

47:17

Hey, let's start going back to church. And so, um, my wife grew up in the Lutheran church and had a lot more faith than I did and a lot more understanding of faith and, uh, theology than I did.

47:28

And so we started going to a non -denominational church, which I had said earlier. And, uh, you know, it was a big church, but I got to know the pastor pretty well.

47:36

And I was heavily influenced by his preaching. And as I kind of, uh, had that spark, uh, from the

47:45

Holy spirit in my soul to call that, to call me back from the dead. Um, you know,

47:51

I really can't tell you if there's a, uh, one specific day that was like, that was the day that it just happened.

47:57

I think it was kind of a gradual, you know, over time of the softening of the heart each week was, you know, chiseling away of it.

48:06

And that spark, uh, ignited this concept for me to just, uh, dig in and really appreciate, uh, just theology at a whole.

48:18

And so I started reading all of these theologians. I read Calvin and I read some of the other reformers.

48:25

I read, you know, modern preachers and, uh, I was heavily influenced by the

48:31

Calvinistic view. And so for many years, I would probably, I would have classified, classified myself as a five point

48:38

Calvinist. And I was cage stagey for a lot of those years. And it was, it was mine still flares up every once in a while.

48:48

I, you know, even not being a Calvinist now, I, I, I still have that problem. I think it's kind of just rooted in our, uh, in our minds.

48:57

But, um, I, I was a Calvinist and, uh,

49:04

I just, I didn't know what I wanted to do with preaching. And it was a

49:09

January of 19 and my mother -in -law's talking to my wife on the phone. And she's like,

49:16

Oh, has Alex found a school that he wants to go to? Cause I had been talking about going to seminary and I'd been talking about looking and I'd kind of was settling on going to Liberty university.

49:26

It was non -denominational costs was, you know, acceptable. It was a little more expensive, but we could pay for it.

49:33

And, um, as you know, I, that was, you know, what I was thinking, you know, go and do my couple of years, get my master's and go on and lead a non -denominational church.

49:44

And so she, she is talking to my wife and my mother -in -law goes, well, has

49:49

Alex ever considered being a Lutheran pastor? I mean, uh, the ELCA really needs Lutheran pastors.

49:55

And so my wife presented that to me and, uh, we did a little research and, uh, that took me on this really wacky trip, uh, over the course of the next couple of months.

50:09

And we ended up, uh, speaking to a local Bishop who was just like, didn't give a hoot about me wanting to become a

50:18

Lutheran pastor, uh, because I wasn't rooted in a church for a number of years, their requirements.

50:25

It's just, you had to be active in a church for two plus years and you had to be doing all these things in order to even be considered for candidacy, which

50:33

I think is absolutely ridiculous to begin with. Um, and so they have this premise, if you would, of, uh, you know, regulations before you can even begin.

50:43

So, uh, he wouldn't give me the approval to become a candidate, but in the meantime,

50:49

I got accepted to Columbia or Lutheran theological seminary in Columbia, South Carolina. I got a full ride offer.

50:56

So my wife and I fly down there in March. We tour the campus. We spent some time at the campus and realized, uh, get this does not line up with our doctrinal statement of faith.

51:06

We are, this is not us. And are you still holding to doctrines of grace kind of Calvinistic view at that time?

51:12

Okay. Oh yeah. I was still, you know, heavy five point Calvinist. And I made that known to a lot of the people who were in the school and we had some good conversations, but we had some, you know, there's a couple of, uh, you know, intense conversations.

51:27

Like I even had a really, you know, deep conversation with the campus pastor. Um, and it was just, it was a really unusual experience.

51:38

And sadly, uh, it led me away.

51:43

It really drove me away from teaching altogether. And so, uh, on the way back to the airport, we had actually left early.

51:52

We just packed our stuff. And after like, I think day two, we were like, yeah, we're gone. We're not going to stay until like the closing.

51:58

Cause they had this like ceremony welcoming new students and all that stuff. And I'm like, I'm not going to deal with this.

52:04

Right. On the way back to the airport, my wife and I are going back and forth talking about what to do next.

52:09

And her grandmother's talking to her on the phone. And she's like, oh, have you considered LCMC? And I'm like,

52:14

I don't know anything about this. So I'm sitting in the airport. I download all these documents. I read it on the flight home.

52:20

And before I land, I have a draft written to the LCMC board requesting candidacy through them.

52:29

Because I figured, well, you know, doctrinally they line up with where I'm at conservatively, you know, and I had this in the back of my head.

52:37

I'm like, well, I'm still Calvinist, but I can, I can, I could be a Lutheran, you know, or I can play a

52:43

Lutheran if I tried close enough. Right. Right. Yeah. There's some, there's some doctrinal differences, but, you know,

52:50

I'm like, I could probably pull it off. And fast forward to August of 19, where I finally got accepted into seminary, started in at Sioux Falls seminary.

53:03

And I took my first class in the Reformation history and my professor just kicked my butt.

53:10

I mean, every single thing that I thought I knew, I was challenged and had dismantled and I had to rebuild a lot of my, my theological premise.

53:22

And, and I'm very thankful for that because it, it allowed me to kind of change my ability and actually gave me a different hermeneutical approach to the scripture.

53:34

And, and I, to this day, I would say, you know, whether you're Calvinist or a

53:39

Reformed or, you know, a Lutheran, there's going to be differences.

53:45

There's going to be different interpretations, but at a core, if we all agree upon the constants of who

53:51

Christ is and agree on what the Bible states, we can, we can have these great conversations on doctrinal differences.

53:59

But like we are now. Right. Exactly. But as a core, there's massive agreements.

54:05

And, and so it, it, for me, it was just kind of an eye -opening experience to go through the school and to really be exposed.

54:15

And I think that's the best way to explain it. You know, being exposed to authentic Lutheran preaching.

54:22

And as I said earlier, it was really the school's taking you back to saying, this is what Luther actually taught.

54:29

Not any of this, you know, new fluffy junk that you see in the ELCA or in the modern mainstream secular

54:35

Lutheran churches. This is what Luther taught. And this is how you take that preaching forward. And, and to me, it just, you know,

54:43

I was kind of already, you know, prior to school kind of shifting myself softly away from the

54:49

Calvinistic view. And I was challenging myself on some views with, you know, baptism in the

54:56

Lord's supper, the sacraments and, and some other doctrinal issues. And I found that most of my concerns in terms of like being challenged in doctrine were easily overcome within the first, probably six months of being in seminary.

55:15

Obviously today, I'm would probably consider myself to be a full confessional

55:20

Lutheran, just because of the depth of study that I've taken on in the last two years in seminary.

55:27

And a lot of that could be demonstrated on the podcast that I host, because I'm taking people now through this concept of what

55:35

Lutherans actually believe and trying to articulate and make it easy for people to understand.

55:40

Because I'll tell you, there's a lot of misconceptions about Lutherans. And people, people discard us because they think we're heretics and they think we're, you know, they instantly they're drawn to the

55:52

ELCA. And my, my whole kind of approach is, is

55:59

I'm not a part of the ELCA. If you look at my bio on Instagram, it's like that.

56:05

Yeah. Not ELCA. Cause you know, it's funny. I had, um,

56:11

I changed my, my bio stack and I put Lutheran pastor, uh, shortly after I got called here and I lost hundreds of people.

56:21

And so I'm like, I gotta do this. I'm like, I'm bleeding followers. I'm like, what's going on here? And so I put it in parentheses, not

56:28

ELCA instantly gained like 200 followers. Oh, that's hilarious. All right.

56:33

So as we wrap this up here, we've almost been going an hour. The time's just been flying and I appreciate your time. Uh, I want to ask a fun one.

56:39

So what was, uh, so what are some of the, uh, theological or doctrinal issues that you've left behind as a

56:48

Calvinist that you, that you, uh, when you crossed over to confessional Lutheranism, what, what are some of those things that you went?

56:56

Yeah. I don't see it that way anymore. I mean, it was at any of any parts of Tulip, any parts of doctrines of grace, any, any teachings in particular.

57:05

And, um, I'll, uh, I'll give you discretion to talk about as little or as much as you want on that. Uh, yeah.

57:11

So that's a, that's an hour long conversation. I think right there. Yeah. We could have probably made the whole show.

57:18

Just that question. We'll have you back and we'll do that next time. Awesome. Um, but I think the biggest things, uh, the sacraments were one.

57:27

Um, and, and I had had some soft leanings and I, I mean, I really wrestled with like baptism, uh, whether it was pedo -baptism or credo -baptism.

57:35

I wrestled with that for years, even pre Calvinist and during my Calvinist years and, and into my

57:42

Lutheran time, I wrestled with that. And that was a hard thing for me to really kind of just find, uh, validity and solidarity from scripture.

57:51

Uh, and one person that really kind of helped me come to that is actually somebody I've never really even met was Chris Roseboro, uh, who's, uh, you know, obviously runs fighting for the faith and he's, you know,

58:02

I had a little bit of email correspondence with him and he sent me this nice little, uh, 30 some page document that he wrote, uh, for, uh, baptism and, uh, from a

58:12

Lutheran perspective. And I read that, I'm like, Oh, this just gives me every insight that I need. This is exactly what

58:18

I, I believe. This is what my conscience is telling me is acceptable. Um, I didn't necessarily struggle with the

58:26

Lord's supper, but, uh, the articulation of it was one thing I left. But the biggest thing I think, um,

58:32

I've really, I didn't struggle to let go, but it really was kind of interesting was the concept of limited atonement.

58:39

And, uh, that I think kind of, uh, might anger some Reformed people because, uh, there's, there's this, you know, really kind of a legalistic rigid view that, you know,

58:53

Christ only died for, you know, so many people. There's no way he could have died for all people. While the

58:59

Lutherans don't necessarily believe in, in the universalism that, you know, every person is going to eventually be in heaven.

59:06

The Lutheran perspective on the atonement is simply that this, the death of Christ on the cross was sufficient to cover all the sins of all the man of all time.

59:17

But we also accept the fact that not all men are going to come to him. And we have a different application of, of faith, which changes our hermeneutic, which changes the application of atonement.

59:30

And that I think was probably the hardest thing for me, um, to really, uh, overcome because there's just, there's so much depth to it.

59:39

And there's a lot of different means to articulate the atonement.

59:45

And, and I just find that reading scripture over and over again, I'm really comforted with this knowledge that if, if Christ died for all people, then that includes me.

59:58

And I don't have to worry about whether I'm one of the elect. I don't have to do a fruit check.

01:00:04

I don't have to look inward. Um, I look extra nose. I look outward. I look to the cross.

01:00:10

And I see that promise that in his death and resurrection, as Paul states in chapter five, that we will experience that same death and resurrection.

01:00:18

Uh, first, first and second Thessalonians, as he writes to the church there that, uh, we will experience that same resurrection when

01:00:26

Christ returns, uh, all of that's promised to all believers. And, and I, I find it just to be very comforting to say, uh, that, you know, this is where I stand.

01:00:37

And so I think limited atonement was probably the biggest thing. And again, like I said, it's probably the most shocking and controversial one, because everybody wants to be, you know, very rigid on it, but I've always said, uh, for a long time that no matter what side of the aisle per se, you are unlimited atonement.

01:00:55

We all believe in some type of limited atonement. Some believe in a limited scope and unlimited power and others believe in limited power and unlimited scope.

01:01:04

So as where the Calvinist might say it's unlimited in its power, it is effectual for, uh, you know, it's limited in its scope and who it's applied to, to where the non

01:01:13

Calvinist might say it's unlimited, uh, in its scope, but it's limited in its power.

01:01:19

So it's like, we, it's like, which one do you want? So it's funny that you mentioned that because when

01:01:24

I talk to people who are either on the Calvinistic or reform side or, or, or looking at the doctrines of grace and things like that, that's the, they have the hardest time with that one with limited atonement.

01:01:34

That was one of the easiest ones for me, which you and I would, uh, and maybe you can be, uh, you know, empathize with me because you used to be from that camp, but that was one of the easier ones for me.

01:01:44

Um, I find that when you talk to most non -denominational, uh, evangelicals, okay.

01:01:51

Uh, usually the eternal security is the easiest one for them. That's, that's where I see most of them jumping on and going,

01:01:58

I can believe that once you're saved, uh, you really, you know, the, the, the work of, of Christ on the cross and the atonement can't be undone.

01:02:07

Uh, still many don't believe that way, uh, opposite of me, but I feel like that's usually the easy one, but limited atonement is the hardest one for most non -Calvinist non -reformed to really grasp onto.

01:02:19

And that's why I think it's, uh, you know, it's kind of telling when you say that's the one that was the most divisive, you know, divisive for you too, because I can only imagine if you had some brothers in the

01:02:29

Calvinist camp, uh, that you knew they're going, what are you doing, man? Come on. You know, that's the one that, that we, that we really, uh, really like now

01:02:37

I would argue that I, you know, and we won't get into it here, but we could both argue that we have biblical reasons for why we believe that.

01:02:45

Um, I've always said, look at when I was going through my, uh, whatever you want to call it, transformation or kind of my journey.

01:02:51

Uh, I always took everything back to the Bible. Uh, it was very hard for me to just take one person's word to two, three theologians and go,

01:02:59

Oh, well, I like that. So that's what I'm going to go with. Probably like I would assume you do as well too.

01:03:04

And you say, look, you're in seminary, you're reading theologians, you're reading pastors, you're, uh, listening and watching.

01:03:11

But ultimately I think we would both agree. It has to be measured against the word of God. And, uh, on that,

01:03:18

I think we, we both do agree. Um, wow. We went an hour and three minutes. I told you 40 minutes when

01:03:23

I first messaged you, but you want to know what? I love it. I don't mind it at all. The time just flew by. We'll have to have you on again, but before we leave, why don't you throw out social media plugs, all that stuff where people can find you.

01:03:35

And we'll make sure we link you up, uh, when the episode goes live. So you can, uh, find me on Instagram coral quorum .dale

01:03:44

.life. And, uh, I'm also on Instagram under undying light ministries.

01:03:51

And you can just, you know, obviously search either one of those and I'll come up. Um, I'm on, uh,

01:03:57

I've got a undying light website. So it's undying light .org. I've got that podcast, which you can find on all major platforms.

01:04:05

I'm also co -host of a matter of truth, which is the second podcast that I do. We release essentially one episode a month.

01:04:13

I'm a co -host with Anthony from speak gospel truth. And, uh, we do more of a question and answer type, you know, setup.

01:04:20

And, and I really enjoy that show. So, uh, in fact, I got to put a plug in for this one because we just did an episode on Jonah, where we spent about an hour digging into, uh, the biblical and historical construct behind the book of Jonah.

01:04:34

And I thought it was a phenomenal episode. It's probably the best one I think I've ever done with him. And so, uh,

01:04:41

I'm very, very pleased with how it turned out. So I hope your listeners go and check that out. Um, beyond that,

01:04:47

I mean, I don't really have much else, just the podcast and my Instagram page.

01:04:52

I'm, I mean, I'm on Facebook, Alex zinc, uh, A L E X Z E N K. You can find me anywhere.

01:04:58

Uh, send me a friend request or follow me on whatever page you want. I don't care. I'm pretty open to anything and everything, but, uh, most of my scope is done, uh, within the podcast room.

01:05:09

So. Awesome. Alex, we thank you so much for being on the podcast. Keep up the good work online to love your posts on your

01:05:15

Instagram account. And, uh, I know that we are brothers in the Lord. You're now a past guest of the, uh, dead man walking podcast.

01:05:23

So now your family, we might have to have you back on in the future. Uh, Alex zinc, everyone, what the heck was that?

01:05:31

Alex zinc, everyone. Oh, wow. He got laughter instead of applause.

01:05:37

Um, but guys, thank you so much for listening to, uh, another episode of dead man walking podcast. As always, you can find us at dmwpodcast .com.

01:05:44

We have all kinds of fun merch there for you. Some of it's a little snarky, get you talking to your neighbors, bring out a little bit of that cage stage in you.

01:05:52

Like Alex and I were talking about help support the show. Uh, you can get all our past episodes there as well.

01:05:58

We appreciate you telling a friend, leaving us comments. You can leave us a email, voicemail, all that good stuff at the website and be sure to tell a friend guys, thanks so much for listening.

01:06:07

And as always, God bless. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at dead men walking podcast for full video podcast episodes and clips, or email us at dead men, walking podcast at gmail .com.