Apologetics & the Local Church

Apologetics as the Foundation of Church Ministry

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and welcome to today's, or tonight's, episode. Just a couple of things before I introduce my guest. There are a couple of shows coming up, and there is a show that I'm going to be on as well, so I want you guys to be privy to that.

So I am going to be interviewing Brian Auten from Apologetics 315 on Monday. I'd have to check the time, but I'll be sharing the information on social media, so you guys will be up on that. I will also be interviewed on the Apologetics 315 podcast on Sunday.

Now, I don't know if they release it right away, but I'll let you guys know where you can find that when it is released. And then on Tuesday, I'm actually interviewing my former apologetics professor when I was in seminary at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary.

That is Dr. Khaldun Sweiss, and he is, I think, one of the editors to one of those apologetics textbooks that cover the history of apologetics from, like, the early church all the way up until the modern period.

So I'm super excited to have him on. He's an awesome dude, and so that's going to be a lot of fun. But tonight, I have with me Pastor Luke Pearson. He is the discipleship pastor at Apologia Church. I often—well, maybe we'll ask him how they pronounce it over there, but I can see him smiling.

I say Apologia when I teach apologetics and go through 1 Peter 3, verse 15, but they say Apologia. We'll see. Maybe tonight will be the definitive pronunciation. We'll know exactly how they pronounce it over there.

I'm sure Dr. White will take them to task on the proper improper pronunciation of the Greek there. So I'm happy to have Pastor Luke Pearson on with me tonight. Let me invite him on the screen with me.

Hey, how's it going, man? Good, man. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you so much for coming on, man. I know you guys are super busy, so I appreciate you taking the time. My pleasure, man. I appreciate it.

How Apologia Church Was Planted and Why Apologetics Matters

So I'll just start off. It's Apologia, although if you ask Dr. White, he would say Apologia. So before he came on staff here, he was always saying Apologia. Finally, we broke him, and he does say Apologia now.

Okay, so you've convinced him to say it improperly.

That's right. That's exactly right. All right. It's the English version of the Greek.

Okay, there we go. Okay, that makes sense. All right, well, why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself? How did you become a pastor and then get or how did you get connected with Apologia Church, Jeff Durbin, Dr. White, and how did you move into the position of discipleship pastor?

Yeah, I appreciate that.

Well, actually, I was my family and Jeff's family planted Apologia. So we had originally started it's a long story. I won't get into the details today, but we had started Apologia Christian Ministries strictly as an outreach ministry.

And we literally we have lots of Mormons here. We would literally drive around sometimes just to look for Mormon missionaries to talk to them. And so that's kind of how we started. And then the church we were at went through some changes.

Jeff was the chaplain at a rehab facility here in Phoenix. And through that, it was about a year and a half or two-year process or so. Again, a lot of details I won't get into today. But we God made it very clear we needed to plant Apologia Church.

Big reason being there was so many people coming to Christ out of addictions at the rehab. They didn't have a church to go to. And so through, again, a number of circumstances and situations and literally pastors that we knew around the nation saying, hey, if you don't plant this church, you're in sin.

That's what kind of led to that. So the church we were at sent us, laid hands on Jeff as the founding pastor, and then the first service he laid hands on me. I actually started as the youth pastor. So that was in February of 2010.

So we just did 12 years of that. And then slowly so when we planted it, like I said, it was his family and my family. My wife was pregnant with my oldest at the time. Jeff had his four kids. And I was originally doing the youth, and very quickly and I shouldn't say very quickly.

I think it was within a year or so it became clear that I needed to kind of transition into a different role, mainly because the majority of our church was brand-new baby Christians out of addictions.

And so they I needed to switch my focus more to discipleship, one-on-one stuff, and less with the youth. And so, yeah, that's kind of how I came into that role and been doing that ever since. That's my primary focus at the church.

We obviously do a lot of different things, but that's my primary role here. And then I think it was about three years ago. Forgive me if I don't have the timeline correct. But it was about three years ago when we brought Dr. White on as an elder.

He had been attending Apologia for a little while, about a year, I think, just because I mean, he's known Jeff since 96 or 97 and was just really excited about things we were doing here and wanted to be a part of that and wanted to help mentor us.

We also have Pastor Zach Morgan. He was our other pastor at the time still is, but it was myself, Jeff, and Zach. And then Dr. White, you know, he's so awesome. He just wanted to be able to pour into us and mentor us.

And so he came started coming just for that role. And then kind of naturally over time, we had some situations we had to deal with where we were leaning on him for wisdom and input and advice. And he kind of just naturally fell into that elder role very organically.

And so, yeah, I think it's been about three years or so. And, yeah, so that's kind of that storyline there.

So two things. So you work youth ministry, okay? So I was a youth director. They didn't call me youth pastor because I wasn't ordained. So they didn't call me youth pastor. I was youth director. And so how was that for you?

What was the age group you worked with? How did that work? I want to hear your blood and tears story so that I can Oh, I have some. I have some.

It's hard work. Yeah. So, I mean, I had been working my wife and I had been doing youth ministry for years at that point. I don't even know how many years it was. It was a while. And that was back

I've been in Arizona for 15 years. So even going back to northwest Indiana where we moved from, we were doing youth ministry there. And so the church we were at where Jeff and I met was doing the same sort of thing.

And we both ended up kind of taking over the youth ministry there. That's, again, a long story. But the youth pastor left, and they needed someone to fill in. So Jeff was the main teacher, but we kind of tag-teamed it, took it over, and just had a blast.

It was really cool, and we were very serious about our theology, very serious about the teaching time. The kids loved that and appreciated that, but we were also very serious about having fun. So I'm talking like we would use youth group budget to get smoke machines and strobe lights and stuff like that and turn all the lights off and fill up the entire church with smoke and strobe and play capture the flag and zombies and stuff like that.

So I actually do have a scar. I'll tell you about. We had a lock-in once. And so we would play the capture the flag where the dividing line in the church was the back wall of the stage in the auditorium.

And then there's the hallways and all these classrooms and stuff. So we would turn all the lights off. It's pitch black. And I was cheating. I'll admit it. I was on the stage already crossed over the center line before we started.

And I'm like, I'm going to win this. I'm going to get this flag. And we started. And like 30 seconds in, I literally walk right into the butt end of the cross, of the cross, right? Bam, hit my eye. I have a scar.

I was like, I have a picture of bleeding. I have blood running down my face. So I was like, oh, timeout, timeout, timeout. And then like, what happened? And I'm like telling them. And like about 10 minutes later, someone's like, wait a minute.

What were you doing on the other side? I was like, oh, shoot. Busted. I was cheating. I was cheating. I was cheating. So anyways, yeah. So that's kind of, I just came out of that. So it was just a natural transition.

And we did have, you know, we had a few teens come with us when we planned the church. But not a lot. You know, and it just kind of, like I said, over about a year, it kind of just fizzled and kind of, I needed to be doing other things.

So, so yeah.

Okay. Well, not to compete with your story, but my first year in youth ministry, I went to a small church. It was a small reformed church. And it was very like old looking. Yeah. You could tell it's one of those old school, you know.

And we had a small youth group of like 15 kids. And we played manhunt in the church with all the lights off. Yeah. And it's old. It has like this creepy nursery in one wing of the church. It's got this little upstairs loft, which is also creepy.

And then there's this small little, you know, opening where you can go into the attic. And so kids would hide everywhere. And so I'm the one who's it. I have to like count in the fellowship hall. There's this big square room.

And as I'm counting, I hear a crash. And when I turn around, a kid's legs were hanging from the ceiling. He actually hid in the attic and fell through. Oh, man. His feet were hanging. We had to run up into the attic and pull him out.

And that was my first main youth event. I had to explain to his mom, hey, how'd the night go? I was like, it went great. Your son fell through the ceiling. You know, it's whatever. He's good. That's awesome.

Almost. That's the key word. Yeah. That's very cool. All right. Well, let's no longer talk about our past scars in youth ministry. That's definitely a challenge in and of itself. Our main topic for tonight is apologetics within the local church.

What does apologetics look like in your church? How do you guys navigate that specifically? And then we'll kind of get into the importance of doing apologetics under the covering and accountability of a church.

Yeah. I appreciate that a ton.

I mean, we could go a number of directions. But really, apologetics is the foundation of everything we do. So there's four pillars on which apology at church stands. Presupposition apologetics is one.

And then reform theology, theonomy, and post-millennialism. Those are our four pillars, our four theological pillars. Everything we do, it goes back to what our presuppositions are. So whether it's abortion ministry, whether it's counseling, whether it's youth ministry, whether it's street evangelism, you name it.

It's always going to go back to God's word as our objective standard and how we approach everything. And I know that's kind of a generic response, generic answer. But it's the honest truth that it affects everything that we do.

And I mean I can get into more specifics if you want. But that's my immediate response to that question.

So how does the apologetic instruction go on your church? Do you guys just have small groups where you meet? Are you going to break off into groups during your services? How do you incorporate apologetics in the equipping of people who are interested in it?

Or is it just part of your preaching and part of the things you do every time you meet? Sure.

Yeah, well, I think both. I know you'll appreciate this. I mean good exegetical preaching should involve some aspect of apologetics anyways because, again, God is our objective standard in everything that we do.

But kind of on a week-to-week basis, I mean, you know, we don't have a lot of inward-focused ministries. A lot of our stuff is outward-focused. So, you know, we're at the abortion meal. We have teams that go to the strip clubs that preach the gospel.

We got, you know, different areas throughout the Valley where there's a lot of people on Friday nights and stuff. They go preach the gospel. And that's, you know, so that's a lot of our local actual, like, apologetic-minded, intentionally apologetically-minded ministries.

But then we have, you know, we do have small groups throughout the week. We have a Thursday night Bible study that we call our advanced theological training, which is nothing more than we've put together a curriculum that represents apologia well.

And we have guys that we are intentionally pouring into and trying to raise up to be future elders. They're on rotation, essentially, so they have opportunities to teach and to hone their skills. You know, so apologetics comes to play a lot in that, a lot of the curriculum we go through.

You know, and then our small groups, we have, I think, eight now throughout the Valley here. You know, and so some of those groups intentionally go through, you know, things like books like Always Ready by Greg Bonson.

You know, it varies, but there's going to be intentionally, like we're intentionally studying apologetics right now. You know, it's going to come up a lot just in our everyday conversations and things that we're doing.

Right. Excellent. I was just waving this book up in front of the camera here. This is a Bonson classic. Yep. Always ready. I don't know if you saw me sipping real quick, but I have a Bonson.

Oh, nice. That's awesome. The Preconditions for Indeligibility. That's great.

I teach an online presuppositional apologetics course where people from all around the world sign up and I get to meet with them weekly through Zoom. And so one of the students kind of made this for me and sent it my way.

And this is literally my my favorite mug and my favorite picture of Dr. Bonson.

Yeah, that's a classic. That's a great that's a great mug. That's pretty cool.

And I always brag. I always brag to people. I believe I said this to Dr. White. I don't know if I did or not, but I have a friend who was sort of a mentor to me. He actually debated Dr. White over the issue of baptism, infant baptism.

So my friend was a OPC guy and his name was Pastor Pastor Bill Shishko. And Dr. White had debated him. And one of the few debates where I actually thought the other guy gave Dr. White a run for his money.

But ultimately, I think Dr. White came out on top. But he definitely knew his stuff. But I would go to this guy's house and he would never let me leave his house without grabbing a book from his library.

And he actually knew both Dr. Bonson and Van Till. And I was able, through multiple visits, to con him out of his signed copy. Van Till signed a copy of The Defense of the Faith. So I was able to nab it.

So I have little trinkets here and there, you know, nerdy presuppositional trinkets.

So Shishko, that's your that's your presuppositional pedigree then? That's where you learned that from?

That's not where I learned it from. I learned it through Bonson and just reading his books. I was introduced to Greg Bonson on accident and I changed my whole perspective. And I know you're familiar with stories like that where people listen to the debate between him and Dr. Stein.

But when I got connected to Pastor Shishko through a friend who knew that I was into presuppositional apologetics. And so was he. And so like, man, you guys would be great together. And so we actually developed a really good friendship and he became a mentor to me for some time.

So I got some free books out of it, which is nice. That's awesome.

Well, if you if you don't mind, I love to tell the story. So I kind of my pedigree, that line of thinking for me. It's really cool. I've actually done a couple Apology Radio episodes on tooth and nail records and the sovereignty of God.

I don't know if you've caught any of those or not, but or if you even know what tooth and nail records is. But so do you know, do you remember the the band, the O .C. Supertones?

You're like a Scott. I grew up in a super strict Spanish Pentecostal church.

OK, a lot of music outside of my small bubble. I grew up pretty, pretty legalistic myself. But I was able to kind of break out of that at the end of.

Well, you try to capture the flag. So we know you have a little rebellious.

That's true. That's true. I always tell people I'm in my rebellious state because I've rebelled against the legalism I was raised in. But so there was a band in, you know, late, late 90s, 2000s called the O .C. Supertones.

They were a scabby and a lot of people that are into like punk music and Scott and stuff will know who they are. But their lead singer, his name is Matt Morgenski. And so I the this was back in Indiana.

I think my wife and I, we got married. We were 21, but we had just graduated high school. I think we were like 19 or so. At that point, we're youth leaders. We, you know, graduate out of the youth group.

Now we're youth leaders. And funny story, my our youth pastor had bumped into Matt Morgenski playing basketball somewhere, suckered him in to come and teaching this winter camp that we were at. And Matt Morgenski is a reformed presuppositionalist, and he taught presuppositional apologetics that weekend.

I never heard it before. It was really blown away by it. It really, really impacted me pretty heavily. And, you know, so that was the end of that. And then, you know, another 10 years or so after that is when I meet Jeff.

And, you know, and where I really start to own, you know, that that line of thinking and stuff. And just recently, like in the last couple of years, I've I've I went down this rabbit hole one day and learned that the Matt Morgenski learned presuppositional apologetics directly from David Bonson.

David Bonson. OK. Yes. So David Bonson was doing. That's Greg's son, if you don't know, he he was doing contracts or something for bands for the Tooth and Nail Records back in the day. And yeah, and he he learned it directly from him and then come to find out here.

I learned directly from Matt. And so it's kind of cool. Just, yeah, full circle. Now we like do stuff with David and, you know, he's given us his dad's library. Bonson, you and all that. So it's kind of a cool, just full circle story.

Well, that's pretty cool, because the people who wanted to who started the Bonson project, that was actually part of their promotional committee. So the first time I ever had somewhat of not I would not an interaction with him, but I was ended up being part of the email stream where he actually said, hey, I'm going to purchase the whole thing.

And everyone was like, so I was cool because they were saying that they were going to put it on sermon audio. And then they were also going to be sending the audio to Apologia Church. That's so cool. So.

So, yeah, we have kind of an in and out weird connections there. Yeah, very cool. That's very awesome. Well, you did say something where you when you're doing apologetics within the context of your church, you try to pour into certain individuals that you see can kind of be used in that capacity and teach others.

What do you think about this weird thing? I notice this a lot in larger churches that when when new pastors are hired, they're often hired from like out of state. I don't know if you if you know that this is like a trend.

Yeah, speak to that, because I really liked how you said we're trying to raise up and pour into the people in and within your church. Why is that important and what and what's the deal with people looking for leaders outside the confines of their own local congregation?

Yeah, well, I don't like it. You know, from our perspective, we think it's just biblical. And, you know, hopefully I don't offend someone saying that, but you'll I've said this a lot, but you'll never see us hire someone or bring someone in from without.

It's it's we believe it's a biblical practice to raise men up from within and send raise up and send raise up and send. And and that's yeah, I think that's the way to do it. And the reason we do that, there's a couple of reasons.

But one, if we're going to make someone an elder at Apologia, like they need to, like, understand our culture. They need to understand and agree wholeheartedly with what we teach. You know, and and and I've told the guys that we send out, I've said, like, I need to I need to trust you with my life.

That's how serious I take that. And so there's actually four. We actually have kind of a well written out process for this, but not a specific timeline. But there's four things that we look for in raising men up to be elders.

Number one, obviously, they need to be gifted in teaching. And so, you know, we see guys like that. And, you know, we've talked to guys in the past like, hey, you know, you're really gifted. You know, if you thought more about potentially, you know, expanding your role, we're doing more with that.

And so, like, that's one of the first things we do is put them in that rotation on Thursday night so that they can practice more and hone their skills. So that's one. Number two, I want to I want to make sure that they're scared to death to step in the pulpit.

And I mean that, you know, there's been too many times where we've had guys come and like literally it's like the first Sunday we just meet them. They're like, hey, I just graduated seminary. Let me know if you need some pulpit.

Are you going to fill the pulpit? You know, right away, we're like red flag number one. And those guys never work out because they're not scared to be in the pulpit. They're not scared to mess things up.

They just want the honor and the glory, you know, of being in front of everyone. So that's two. Number three, like I tell my guys, I should never have to ask you to do anything. You should be the first one there, the last one to leave.

You're serving, you're getting your hands dirty, you're bleeding, you're sweating, you're crying like you're in the in the mix. Sure. And you're asking me like, hey, what can I do? And the guys that are really good at that, they they rise to the top very quickly.

And I'll be honest, we have guys that are incredibly gifted teachers, but they don't really serve. And that's not something that, you know, that they and I want to say take seriously. But that's not something that maybe they're gifted in or they have a desire to do.

And so they're going to be very good teachers and praise God for that. But they're not they're not quite meeting the the mark for us when it comes to being an elder. The fourth thing is courage. I want to know that you're courageous.

I want to know that you're out at the abortion mill, that you're, you know, you could do street evangelism, whatever, like you're not a coward. Because at Apologia, we lead from the pulpit and it starts at the top.

And so, you know, that's the fourth thing. And so we take that very serious and we're very intentional about that. And yeah, like it's I mean, I don't even know how. I don't I couldn't even possibly hire someone, bring someone in from out unless I'm able to watch them.

And we actually have a document online I wrote a few years ago. I think it's called a ministry request procedures or something like that. And, you know, I tell people like because we get requests all the time from people like, hey, you know, I would like to be an elder one day.

You know, I'd love to do it through Apologia. Would you ever plant here, you know, or whatever, whatever, some version of that. And we're like, OK, first thing you need to do is come visit Apologia. Come in the summer because you're going to hate it.

You're going to hate it. Don't come in the winter because you'll love it in the winter. That's good. And to like the second thing is, you know, if you really feel like you want to be a part of what we're doing, you need to move here.

You need to be committed to that. You need to come under our care so we get to know you. You get to get to know us. We get to watch your life, you know. And so I like in that document, I'm like a minimum of two years or we were just getting to know you.

Sure. You know, and then we'll talk. Then we'll say, hey, you know what? Yeah, I think you maybe you are qualified to be an elder, you know. So, you know, you're given that they obviously got to have an internal and external call.

So a lot of guys have an internal call, but they don't have an external call, you know. And so, honestly, we made it very, very, I don't want to say harsh, but very direct in from the beginning because it immediately, I would say, knocks off 90 percent of those people requesting that because they don't want to move here.

They just want they literally just want us to come to Rhode Island or wherever they're at and plant a church. You know, and I'm like, well, it's not really how this works. Sure. Yeah. So I think I just completely gave you a long winded answer, but hopefully that's actually that's actually perfect.

I mean, maybe he's a mutual friend. Are you friends with at all with with Matt Slick from Karm .org?

Yeah. Yeah. Matt's a good friend.

And he he says that when people ask if they can work for Karm or write for Karm or to get involved in apologetics, he always tells them that you need to count the cost. Right. So you need to be ready to be ridiculed.

You need to be ready to be made fun of. You need to be ready to be attacked. You need to be ready to undergo difficulties. Right. Because it's a commitment and you do definitely need to be called to do those things in that specific capacity.

Of course, we're all called to do apologetics, but if you're going to do it in certain capacities, it does take a certain calling, especially when you're doing work as an elder or a pastor or anything like that.

It's not all glam. You know, you're not going to be the next John MacArthur or, you know, the R .C. Sproul or whatever. It's people see that glamorous side, but they don't see the hours and hours. Oh, yeah.

Playing and controversy that happens behind the scenes.

So, yeah. Well, I'll tell you, the first thing we tell people, we actually stole this from from Dr. White. But the first thing I tell a guy is like, if you could do anything else in life and be remotely happy, do that.

You know, and, you know, because it's, you know, being a pastor has glorious moments. I'm not going to I'm not going to lie about that or deny that, you know, it's all to God's glory, of course. But, you know, you can have you can have glorious moments in the next moment.

It's awful. Someone dies or you're dealing with someone going through marital, you know, strife or addictions or whatever. And it's it's hard. And one thing we always say is like, I would say that being a pastor is not a nine to five job.

It's it's it's a lifestyle. Yeah. You have to live it. You know, you in order to know your sheep and properly shepherd them, you have to know that you have to live with them. You can't just turn it off.

And, you know, unfortunately, I've had pastors. We've all had pastors like that. Men that I love and respect a ton. But like, you know, I've been I've been in pastor's office with them like at like four o 'clock and they're like, oh, I'm just hanging out till five.

And then I and then I can go home, you know, and they're literally just sitting there like just chilling, talking it up, doing nothing. It's like, well, it's only four o 'clock, you know, and it's but that's the that's and they kind of go back into like why we don't hire from without.

Like that's the whole CEO like modern business model that has been brought into the church. And there's really no biblical grounding for that. Again, presupposition. Like there's no there's no standard for that in God's word.

By what standard do you conduct your ministry? Right. The more that you do. That's excellent.

Right. Exactly. Exactly. Like I said, it bleeds. It bleeds into everything you do, really.

Accountability, Local Church Oversight, and the Dangers of Rogue Apologetics

Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. Now, OK, so you equip certain individuals to to teach in various capacities, obviously apologetics being one of them. How do you reinforce the importance of doing apologetics within the context of the church?

And I know Dr. White has spoken about this. Pastor Jeff has spoken about it. Why don't you kind of go into some of the dangers of being a rogue apologist in which you're kind of just doing this on your own and maybe kind of go through how you guys do it at your church?

And what does that whole accountability structure look like? So people kind of get a glimpse into what it looks like to do it biblically.

Yeah. Yeah. That's such such a good question. I really appreciate that because there's there's just so much of that out there. You know, and I'll be honest, I think a lot a lot of that happens because there's weak pastors.

Right. So men men have a desire to to to to, you know, fulfill the Great Commission, to do apologetics, to preach the gospel. And and but they're not getting the support from their local church. And so they end up on their own.

And, you know, nine times out of 10, I'm just I just made that up. That's a completely subjective. Don't quote him on this presented. Completely subjective. But, you know, I mean, majority of the time it doesn't go well.

At some point, those guys end up like just falling off the rails or getting themselves into trouble. And so it's so important. I mean, even like so Pastor Zach is our he's the pastor over local outreach.

So he, you know, his he manages like the abortion ministry in the strip club ministry, stuff like that. And like we always tell people like, you know, you have to be under somebody's umbrella, somebody's authority.

You know, if it's not ours, because we have people that come that aren't members of the apology of the different things we do. And we're like, yeah, we welcome that. But you need to be under someone's accountability.

You know, and what a lot of guys I think a lot of guys are so alpha. Right. And they're so like gung ho about this that they hear that and they're like, oh, no one's going to tell me what to do sort of a thing.

And it's like, look, it's for your own protection, not just spiritually speaking. You know, obviously, you want protection to make sure you you're not saying things you shouldn't say that you're not acting a certain way that you shouldn't act.

But it's for your own protection to what if something happens to you? Like the abortion ministry is an awful ministry. It could be dangerous at times. You know, what if something happens to you? What if someone attacks you?

You know, what if you got to go to what if someone calls the cops on you and you are arrested and you go to jail and all you're doing is preaching the gospel? Like, do you have some some protection for you?

And so there's really a you know, there's a twofold protection there. But yeah, that's a that's a must for us. And I'm not going to get too far off the rails here. But when it comes to like ending abortion, you know, unfortunately, there's been some considerable rogue groups of of men that have have faithfully fought this fight.

But they've done it outside the church or to the point where they've it's become idolatry, where they form little abolitionist churches, where they, you know, attack the bride of Christ and just act very un-Christlike in their desire to do something righteous.

Can you give an example of that? That's it. That's interesting. So you're saying these people, they they're they're working against abortion. They kind of see it as their ministry, but they're not doing it under the covering of a church.

Yeah. What are you saying? Kind of what happens to groups like that?

Yeah. No, I appreciate that. So there was a group and I'm not going to mention the name right now, but they got pretty big a few years ago. And, you know, across the nation and literally this group started out of a group of men that were kicked out of their churches because they were causing division over this issue.

So they were so, so intent on ending abortion that it became an idol. It led to them causing division in their churches because they weren't getting, like I mentioned a minute ago, they weren't getting the support from their pastor.

They weren't getting the covering from their local church. They were actually kicked out of their churches. And they ended up essentially starting their own little abolitionist churches all over where they would meet on Sundays so that they could say they weren't neglecting the fellowship.

But it was all about abortion. And they were literally going to local churches, good, solid gospel preachers, some reformed churches even, and like protesting outside these good churches because they weren't at their local abortion mills.

And, you know, we've had our own issues with some of those people where they've attacked us. You know, we're like, hey, we're on the same team. We're doing the same thing. But that's where that leads.

You said rogue. Rogue's a perfect word for that. You get these lone wolves, they become rogue, no authority, and they become loose cannons. And the same goes, like I said, for apologetics, for street preachers.

And believe me, I know my street preachers, we call them, that, you know, have done similar things. And Reuben Israel comes to mind. I don't know if you know that name at all. You got guys like Westboro Baptist, same sort of thing where there's no real accountability.