155: Cody Torres Call to Evangelism

To the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it. The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy.

Christ is king. You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

Wow, it's been a while, brother.

Ha ha ha ha ha. What was that, like, in real time, in between episodes, 10 seconds? Yeah. Ha ha ha ha. I don't know when, I think they're gonna come out back-to-back, so it's been a week for the listener, but 10 seconds for us, because you're still there.

So, I gotta redo the intro. Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. I am your host, Alan Nelson, one of the pastors at Providence Baptist Church, and we are in Perryville, Arkansas, and with me again, whether it was last time or two weeks ago, however I'm gonna do it, it's Cody Torres, who is a member of By the Word Baptist Church in Azle, Texas.

You gonna say anything about your green shirt? I mean, you're still wearing the same green shirt, but even if we met 10 months down the road, you'd be wearing a green shirt.

You need to say anything about that? I mean, you're wearing the same shirt from episode one.

Yeah, that's true, but if we met in two weeks, I'd be wearing a different shirt, and you'd be wearing, maybe not the same shirt, but the same color shirt.

Yeah, it makes my life simple. My closet is full of the same pants, the same shirt. This is my fourth or fifth hat of this, my boots. I just buy the same boots over and over, find what I like and stick with it.

There's no thought process behind it. Just put clothes on and go. There you go, brother. Well, last time we ended hearing about your testimony, how you came to Christ, then you shared the gospel with us, amen.

Coming to the Doctrines of Grace

So now I want to move into, first, I guess I have this question for you. How did you come to the doctrines of grace? Oh, man, yeah.

Man, you ask these questions that are long stories. I got to find ways to Shorten it down. You read the Bible. Yeah, there you go. Well, that church I was talking about that I was a part of, obviously was not reformed at all.

They even believed you could lose your salvation. But from what I understand, that pastor doesn't hold that position anymore. And if that's true, praise God. But they were not reformed. And so there was a group of us guys who had gotten saved, most of which were out of jail, ex-drug addicts and all these different things.

We all got saved. We were zealous for God, zealous for His word, zealous to make Him known. And we would all hang out all the time and do Bible studies and just doing life together. And one of the brothers, I'm trying to remember which one it was first.

I think it was Joey McConnell. He's also a member of our church. I believe it was Joey McConnell, came to the doctrines of grace, him and Ronnie Barnes, who's a deacon in our church, and started talking about it.

And if I've got that correct, they started first getting into the doctrines of grace and then began to try and bring that into our group and show all of us. Well, at first I was highly against it. I called it, I'm thankful for God's grace because I called it doctrines of demons.

And I was very opposed to it. And little by little, long story short, little by little, the brothers just began to affirm it and to get on board with it. And I remember talking with my wife and I was like, man, we've got to pray for these guys.

They're deceived, they're being led astray. They just keep one after the next, one after the next. And so this was a long process of several months or whatever. I go to one brother's house and they're all talking, they got open Bibles and they're just happy and rejoicing in these doctrines of grace, election and predestination and how God chose us and saved us in spite of us.

And I remember coming in there and hearing some of the conversation and I'm just an angry Arminian, right? And I'm like, I said, that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says this right here. And I remember they would just respond with an answer or another verse that would bring clarity and completely take the wind out of my sail.

And I would just be like scratching my head and I didn't know what to say to that. But the Bible says this and it was just like, boom, boom, boom, one thing after the next. And I remember leaving that night and I was so intellectually frustrated because I didn't know how to answer what they were saying and I didn't know what to do with those verses.

And I was super confused. Now I had lived my life, like I said, in deception up until God saved me of being a false convert. And this was troubling to me because I thought I had a firm foundation and now everything that I thought I believed at least in these particulars was getting troubled, right?

And it was uncomfortable and I didn't like that. Made me feel unstable or insecure, right? And so I fought it for a while. They told me I should listen to Votie Bauckham's sermon on predestination and election.

And I put that off for a long time, but that particular night I went home and I was so frustrated. I didn't know what to believe anymore. And I remember I got down on my knees and I cried out to God and my prayer was basically, Lord, I've been deceived once in my life already.

Like my whole life I thought I was a Christian and I was not. I said, I don't want to be deceived. I just wanna know what's true. I just wanna serve you. I wanna live for you. I wanna know you. And I said, please.

I said, I lay aside everything I think I know. Please just show me what's true. And that evening I started to kind of roll around some of the things I had heard and I was bouncing them off my wife. And she goes, oh, don't you start with this now.

And at that moment I was like, no, no, I'm just trying to think it through. I'm trying to understand. And the next morning I got up and I listened to Votie Bauckham, predestination and election. And it was like, boom, the lights came on and it all started to connect.

And I started to realize that a lot of what I was saying was just misconceptions. Right. And that I didn't actually understand what these brothers were communicating. And I was drawing things to false conclusions.

And I began to see that and it was, dude, it rocked me. I remember I went in the living room, classic Romans nine, right? I go in the living room and I got a bunch of family in there who are Christians and I go, have y 'all ever read Romans nine?

And that's when it started. My grandmother gets out the concordance, she gets her Bible out where it starts, this whole debate thing. My mom's telling me, don't tell Nick about this. Whatever you do, just don't tell Nick about this.

Which of course I immediately went and told my brother about. And now they've come far away from where they were now. So what year is this? Oh man, this would have been right at the end of 2017.

Wow, it's okay. So saved August of 2016. By the end of 2017, you're coming into the doctrines of grace. And were you already working? I guess the next question is like, how did you come to be an evangelist?

Like, were you already kind of like that already in your habits or is this later? So is it Calvinism then evangelism or which way did it go?

I don't know if it was my service or your service, but I think I still gathered your question. Yeah, so it was Calvinism before open air preaching. Though, when I got saved, like I said, I was going to family and friends and coworkers and I was preaching the gospel in that way.

And which is good, amen, commendable. Yeah, amen, amen.

Calvinism and the Burden for Evangelism

It started right there in my context, my family, my friends, my coworkers and just being a light. And I remember after that, I began to get this burden, especially after coming to the doctrines of grace.

The doctrines of grace, I think spurred me on evangelistically, just thrusted me all the more evangelistically, which is ironic, right? Because people, one of the first things they question about Calvinist is why evangelize.

Yeah, it's ironic, but I've got this quote pulled up by Tom Nettles. You listen to it. Why is Calvinism the only system that can maintain true evangelism without surrendering theological, biblical and philosophical consistency?

Two reasons surface for an answer. One, the glory of God is the goal of Calvinism and the system refuses to surrender any truth that heightens all in reverence for his holiness. Two, for the Calvinist, the message of the gospel is the only method of evangelism.

So it sounds counter intuitive that Calvinism promotes the gospel, but in reality, only Calvinism protects true evangelism. If you actually understand Calvinism, then you understand that only this system, because this is the biblical system, only this system promotes and protects true evangelism.

Yeah, amen.

I'm sorry, brother. I'm texting my wife to stop using wifi in the rest of the house because I'm getting a little bit of wifi issues here, but I gathered that.

Yeah, yeah, so that's okay. We can move on to your time in the beginning of proclaiming Christ Ministries. And a lot of that was focused on the stockyards there in Fort Worth.

From Street Preaching Burden to the First Open-Air Sermon

Yeah, if I can real quick, go back for just a moment. The Calvinism is what thrusted my evangelism. That next year, yeah, February 13th, 2019, is when I opened a preach for the first time. And it was that year after coming to Calvinism, 2018, right at the end of 17 to the beginning of 2019, that whole year of 2018, this burden to get the truth out and to preach the gospel was laid on me.

And it was troubling. I was like, I have to preach. I have to preach the gospel. I want people to know. I want to preach to masses of people and to point them to Christ. And I want, there's so many laws.

Everywhere I went, all I could think about was the person's soul. I mean, I'm buying food at McDonald's or checking out at this gas station or whatever. And all I could think about was the state of their soul.

And I wanted to preach the gospel. I'd have one-on-one conversations and stuff. But for like a year, brother, I would get in my car and I would just say, all right, I'm gonna go find a crowd of people.

I'm gonna preach to them. And I'd get in my car and I'd drive to the park or I'd drive wherever and I'd find a crowd of people. And then I would sit there forever trying to work myself up only to fail and then drive home disappointed and angry and upset with myself and just felt like just a coward.

And it weighed on me for like a whole year.

And then one Let me just interject real quick as you said. I want to say, because it's kind of goes back to last episode. If you just think, well, I'll just live a holy life before people. And one day that will bring people asking me how to become a Christian.

Look, there are stories that that can happen. And like, praise God, you live like Christ in the workplace and someone comes to ask you about that. And I'm thinking about 1 Peter 3. People ask you for the hope that is within you.

Yes, that does happen. But you shouldn't think like in your situation, you're trying to live for the Lord and God's just going to bring a crowd to you. Teach us, tell us to be saved.

Okay, so, all right, so go on. Yeah, and our brother, Jeff Crago, he found the church and I had seen Pastor Randall do it because I had been in the church for a year at that point, right? So like there was one Halloween night that I saw Pastor Randall open air preach.

And I think that was kind of like, it was a little bit before that, that I started to have, like, I had the desire to do that. And then I saw my now new, or at that moment, new pastor do it. And I was like, wow, this is what it looks like.

And it just kind of whet my appetite even more, right? And, but I tried to get several other brothers to go out, like, let's do this, let's do this. I was too afraid to go by myself. And I was trying to get brothers to go and it was always like, yeah, let's do that sometime.

That never happened, right? And Jeff Crago came to the church and I remember we were hanging out at his house. He was visiting the church and was gonna be joining the church, interested in joining the church, or hanging out at his house one night.

And he was a part of Jeremiah Crime Ministries, 116 Bible Church. And so he used to do open air preaching. And he had done that before. And he was talking about, I don't remember how we got on the topic, but he was talking about it.

And I was like, brother, you used to do what? Like, how can we do that? Can we, like, we gotta go do that. Can we do that tonight? And I was trying to get all the guys, like, let's just go to Fort Worth now and do it.

And everybody was like, ah. And at the end of it, there was me, Justin, and Jeff Crago. And we actually went to the bar district in Fort Worth, Texas late at night. And that was, I preached to a whole line of people who were waiting in this long line to get into a bar.

I preached to them, and that was the first time I ever street preached. And it was just, it was on from there. But I say all that to encourage anyone who might be listening, who feels like you're afraid, or you feel like you can't do it.

Like, the fear is natural, but you have to lean upon the power of the Spirit and find, if you can, other brothers who are willing and have the same desire to go with you and to do it. When you step out in faith to actually proclaim God's message, He never leaves you hanging.

He will empower you, and He will help you, and He will carry you. You cannot allow fear to cripple you. You have to step out and trust that God will, by the power of His Spirit, enable you to faithfully communicate His gospel message.

I think about one particular story in the New Testament when He talks about when you go and speak, it's not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. We are God's messengers, and God speaks His message through us in the act of open-air preaching.

And so you can trust Him if your motive is right, and you're doing it for His glory, and you love Him, and you wanna get the gospel out. Crucify the flesh. Crucify the fear. Step out in faith, open your mouth, and preach the gospel.

God will be right there with you. Amen. Who's qualified to do that? Christians.

Open-air preaching, specifically? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, all Christians are qualified and called to evangelism. Right. But specifically, when we talk about this one method of evangelism, this one biblical, historical, Christ-exalting method of evangelism, who is called to straight preach?

Faithful men.

Yeah. Christian men. I would say any right evangelism that is happening is being done out of the context of a local church. Yeah. And men are called to speak and to preach the word of God. And so a born-again, baptized, faithful, male member of a local church who's burdened for souls, that's who's qualified.

If someone wants to preach,.

Qualifications for Joining Proclaiming Christ Ministries

And this is a little bit out of order, because they wanna go back to the stockyards, and I'm not gonna labor all the difficulty you've had through that. I just wanna kind of set the story of where you were, where you are now.

But we're a little bit out of order here, but that's okay. If someone wants to straight preach with you, they wanna be part of Proclaiming Christ Ministries, you have a whole packet. But explain what they, you don't have to go through the whole packet, just explain what do they have to do?

Like what do they have to be, what criteria do they have to meet?

So in the packet that I made, and yeah, obviously we're not gonna go through the whole thing, but in the packet that I made, it talks about, if I can pull this up real quick, I'll make this quick. I'll just give you the bullet points or whatever.

But it talks about who we are, and it explains who we are. It gives a biblical case. What does the Bible say about straight preaching? And there's several verses with just a sentence of commentary or so.

And then it's evaluating participants. So for this one, if you wanna join Proclaiming Christ Ministries and open air preaching, you must be a born again member in good standing of a local church to be active in and a part of this ministry.

If you are a believer and not a member of a local church, we have a church that we would love to have you be a part of. Proclaiming Christ Ministries also leads a house Bible study to talk about that.

The second qualification, you must have Christian orthodoxy. And then I give a list of some fundamentals of the Christian faith. I explain in this packet, you don't have to be a Calvinist to be a part of this ministry, but I tell them we're 1689.

I give them a copy of the 1689. I explain to them, this is what we believe. And if you're gonna join this ministry, at the very least, what you're not going to do is start causing division and controversy and debate over these points of doctrine, right?

You're gonna support what we believe and you don't have to believe Calvinism, but you do have to have Christian orthodoxy. I go on to explain to them how you can serve. I think a lot of times, this is why people don't go out.

They think street preaching is the thing. Like that's the main thing. That's what you have to do. And there's so much more than just standing on the box to preach. So I explain how you can serve. I explain that you can be ready to engage in conversation.

You can support and be a part of evangelism by intercessory prayer, praying for the preaching as it's going on, praying for the souls that are in front of your eyes, praying for people who need prayer.

Passing out gospel tracts is another way to serve. Holding signs with clear verses or gospel pointed messages is another way to serve. For standing on the box, to kind of go with what you were mentioning beforehand, I have a whole section on what's expected in order to stand on the box.

We take it serious that you, a street preacher must be a man approved by his church, know God's word, be able to teach and preach, have godly character, be led by love for God and people, be prepared for persecution and able to handle it, have right motives and have a Bible and a text to preach from.

A street preacher must be able to represent Christ well and walk in wisdom. And then I go through all these other points, a time of testing, scripture, able to teach, scripture, a man, scripture for that, must have wisdom, scripture for that, must have godly character, scripture for that, and so on and so forth, several different points.

So it's not just a scattered group of people or anybody, anything goes and unconnected to the local church, like this is all well thought out and biblical, you know, in Acts, when we see evangelism is tied to the church.

That's right. And so it's not that you can't do evangelism out, like if you're out on vacation or something and you don't even know of any churches in the, well, you can't do evangelism. That's not what we're saying.

Right. There is a connection. All right, go ahead. Yeah, and just summarizing it all up here, I do in the packet or towards the end of the packet, I talk about our mission to you. So like someone wants to join us, they're a member of another church.

I wanna know that their pastor supports them. I wanna know that they're a member of that local church. Again, right, I wanna make sure they have Christian orthodoxy, whether they're Calvinist or not, Christian orthodoxy.

And then my mission to them, I write here, says, if you are a member of another local church, we hope to be able to equip you in this work and to help you over time grow and be strengthened in evangelism so that you will be able to serve your own church in this capacity for the glory of God and the health of your own local church.

This does not mean we can never serve together once you take this to your own church, but that your primary effort eventually will be for the sake of the church that God has placed you in. This is right in God honoring.

Amen, yeah, amen. So we're gonna circle back probably to that really in the next episode, but now we're going backward in time and probably before this packet even exists, when you and Jeff and Justin and those guys start out preaching, you start out not exclusively, but taking a big chunk of the time of your preaching is at the Fort Worth Stockyards, is that right?

Why the Fort Worth Stockyards Became a Mission Field

Yeah, yeah. Why the Stockyards?

What's going on in your mind to say, I'm gonna go preach here? So it's a tourist attraction. They do this cattle drive. And I remember one day they were asking, who here's from Fort Worth? Who here's from Texas?

And they kind of do this whole polling of the crowd. And there was very, very few. It was tiny. You'd have to look for the hands of people who are actually from that area or from Texas. The majority of people not only were from other states, but even other countries, lots of other countries and other states.

And so I realized that I could kind of do in one sense, both missions and evangelism at the Fort Worth Stockyards. And so, because to go to the Stockyards and preach, you quite literally are preaching to the nations because there's people from all over.

And there's always huge crowds of people. There's the rodeo happening. There's bars, there's stores. There's this weird transitional period where in the daytime, it's very family oriented. And then you get to like six or seven, you start moving beyond that and it turns very dark, lots of drunkenness and immorality.

And things like that. But it's kind of like had everything right there. And one of the big driving factors for me, by the way, was because it wasn't Fort Worth. And it was a bunch, the ones who were more regular in that area, the more of the country kind of people.

What is it? God, country and Bible, right? And so these people, a lot of them were just like me. They thought they were right with God, but living in all kinds of sin. And so for me, it was a way to reach the people who were like me.

And I was burdened for that because, and I preach on it a lot about false conversion because there is a lot of people. It is a very serious. And Jesus says, many on that day will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, cast out demons in your name and perform many mighty works in your name?

And he will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. And so it is a very serious issue with people thinking that they have peace with God, when in reality, the wrath of God abides on them.

And so that was one of the big driving forces in preaching in that area was false conversion was a huge issue there. Beforehand, I was in Denton Square and it's all these different worldviews and ideologies and defending the faith and reaching the atheist and very intellectual and apologetic and things like that.

And then I went to Fort Worth for that reason.

But yeah. And also UNT, you still do that? Any UNT?

I've done it more in the past lately, not so much.

I know, I went to UNT with you once, yeah.

Yeah, several of the brothers still go out there and I definitely wanna go back to that. It's a good place to set up a heckler's mic. There's been days I've gone out there and I'll put a provoking thought or question on the whiteboard and you'll get crowds of people and a line of people behind the mic.

And that's always a really good opportunity to engage with them and answer questions and show them that what they're thinking and what they're...

You broke up, you're breaking up there. Again, we had sustained a pretty good connection. It's folly and get them to... Oops, I lost you again. Yeah, you're breaking up there. Oh, there you're back. Somebody's trying to watch Disney Plus or something.

No, they're not. So, okay. So I wanna land the plane on this episode with Fort Worth, with the Stockyards. We could do a whole episode on your arrest, which I think what I wanna say about that is this.

I've seen the videos and stuff. And like some people would be... Some people think when a street preacher gets arrested, they're just being unduly antagonistic. And I've seen you personally, really work to defuse situations.

But some of the things that you had to deal with in Fort Worth were, in my opinion, and I think the courts would have to decide some of this, but unconstitutional. They were wrong. And as Christians, we should...

As American Christians, especially, we should say this is... As Christians, we say this is not right no matter where it's happening. But even in our own nation to say, wow, to stifle our bill of rights as citizens is...

This is wicked, can't do that. So I don't know, like I said, you could spend a whole... We could do five episodes on that. Anything you wanna say about meeting with that hostility there?

God’s Sovereignty in Arrest, Jail, and the Psych Ward

Well, I think, yeah. I think I was really grown and I was encouraged and I was grown through all of that light persecution in Fort Worth because what it taught me, which I already knew, but now experienced, that God really is sovereign in all of the details of things even the things that we think are unjust and that aren't right.

Like this is not going the way that I thought it was gonna go. This is not how this is supposed to be. This is wrong, like this shouldn't be happening. Yet there's a sovereign God over the whole ordeal and there's a reason for it.

And if I can shortly say it, every single time that I've been arrested, I've had like nine citations, I've had three arrests and all three times that I've been arrested, God has impacted the police officer, transporting me to jail.

I open air preached in the jail to the jailors and God has used that. And I preached in the cell to other cell mates and God has done amazing things with that. There was even a guy who showed up at church one Sunday who I met in jail and ministered to.

And then that first time I got arrested, this is where God really like showed me how through all of this, I can face it not with despair and not dread. Because it bothered me the first time I got arrested, it bothered me initially.

I was like, what is happening? This isn't right. Like, how do I process this, right? And, but as I kind of went through that process, I put my eyes back on Christ and I preached to the officers in the car.

And when I got to the jail, when the officers separated, one took me in before we went through the second set of doors, he was kind of signing papers and turning in his gun and stuff like that. He said, can I just ask you an honest question just off the record?

And which threw me off. I was like, yeah, of course. And he goes, what motivates you to do this? I mean, and I just got to tell him that it was the love of Christ, that God saved me, gave me a new heart and that he's sufficient for all who would look to him.

And I love people and I want them to have peace with God and to know Christ. And I want you to know Christ, officer. And you could see it in his eyes and in his face that he was really impacted by that.

Then the doors opened, the jailers grabbed me and I started to preach to them. And I don't know what happened to that officer. That night they sent me to a psych ward. Yeah, so before I was released from jail, they sent me to the psych ward.

And I went into the psych ward and there was a guy who was in there who as soon as I walked in, he comes up to me. There's a lot of other cool details in this story, but I'm just leaving them out for the sake of time.

But I get to the psych ward and this guy walks right up to me. He just asked who I am. And he's like shaking. He's like, you could tell he was just like having these physiological responses or whatever, just anxiety.

And he was in there because he wanted to kill himself. He had been in the foster care system his whole life, never knew his father, in and out of jail, suicidal ideations and attempts. And he's just, was just a very troubled soul.

And he came up to me and just starts unloading all of that on me when I asked why he was in there. And I just got to, I began to be able to explain to him a perfect father in heaven, who would never leave him or forsake him, who has accomplished everything in order to redeem his soul, to give him a peace that surpasses all understanding, joy that is inexpressible, how his sins could be forgiven and he could know this God and this God could be his father.

And I start to tell him all of this in the gospel and this whole like calmness came over him and he began to smile and we just spent the next, oh man, several hours or whatever that I was in there, at least a couple hours, just encouraging him with the gospel and pointing him to Christ.

And there was this whole change over his demeanor by the end of this. And I don't know what happened to that guy afterwards, but I know this, that God cares, God cared about him. And that there was no way that anybody or myself could have ever been in that psych ward, face to face with that man, to be able to show him the love of Christ and to explain to him a heavenly father, unless God had me arrested in the streets, taken to jail and then transported to the psych ward so that I could go into a place I otherwise could not have gone to meet a man I didn't even know existed in order to communicate the gospel.

God is sovereign through all the details and that heavily encouraged me.

Man, what others meant for evil, God meant for good. Yeah, amen. I know people talk about fruit, fruit, fruit. Well, a couple of things I would say. One, Christ is proclaimed and that's always fruit. That's always fruitful.

That's always wonderful to have the glory of Christ proclaimed, the very rocks will cry out if we don't. Two, you never know people who are converted right now because of God saving them through your time in the Fort Worth stockyards or even in the police, with the police and the psych ward.

Three, is there any particular story you wanna share from stockyards? And we'll close it here and get back in the next episode about the word.

The Stockyards, Local Church Priorities, and Paul’s Example of Endurance

Yeah, I'm sure we're gonna get into some other details moving forward that will kind of connect the stockyards and why I left, but I don't wanna get off the, I don't wanna get a left field here, but I believe God used the stockyards in those times to grow me in my faith and to equip me, to shape me, to mold me, right?

I don't think that it was just a waste of time per se. I don't know what all God did with people. There's people from all over who came through the stockyards and heard the gospel and received traction.

We, I know I can think of all kinds of fruitful conversations we've had with people, the ability to pray with people, the ability to defend the faith. There's been all kinds of good fruitful things that have happened in the Fort Worth stockyards.

So I'm not saying it was a waste of time or it was fruitless, but in one sense, I don't think I was entirely right in what I was doing. I believe that where I should have been focusing my primary effort should have been the community of my own local church.

And yes, like the scripture says, starting with Jerusalem and the Samaritan and the ends of the earth, right? And I preached in Azel from time to time, and lots of times I've preached in Azel over the last seven years, but it was always a last minute thing.

Sporadic. A sporadic, a secondary place. My primary effort was always in Fort Worth, Texas. Now, like I said, I'm sure God has used that. I know God has used that, but I think a lot of the things that happened were kind of twofold.

God used a lot of that to grow me, to mature me, to help equip me. And then He used all of that to move me. And He started to put on my heart a desire for my own local community. I wanted our church to impact our community, to be a light to them and to minister to the souls that God has put around us in our own community, right?

And so my trouble was, okay, I'm going through this persecution and these issues in Fort Worth. What do I do? Do I run or do I stand? And I didn't want to stay because I'm just being hard-headed and prideful.