AD Speaks to Conley Owens About False Teachers and Money (Dorean Principle)

The Problem of Commercialized Christianity

All right, we are live. Thank you, Fran, for reminding everyone to hit the like button, because I'm at the absolute worst at live streaming. I don't remind anyone to click the like button. I don't remind anyone to comment.

I don't remind anyone to share. So I appreciate that, Fran. Thank you very, very much. We will just wait just a few moments for people to watch. But I don't know if anyone watched my show today, but I went outside just a moment ago to see what my chickens were up to and stuff like that.

And I'm like looking over my shoulder to see if there's bobcats around here. Connelly, I don't know if you saw my video today. I went outside to go fishing, and I step outside, I look up, there's a bobcat six feet away from me, and I step back inside.

I'm like, nope, not doing that. And I actually snapped a picture of it. And, you know, bobcats aren't that big, but very unsettling. And he was not at all impressed with me. He just stood there looking at me.

So how long have you been in Vermont? I've been curious about this. Well, actually, so I'm not in Vermont anymore. I'm in New Hampshire now. Okay. But I've been in New England. I grew up in New England, but I moved from New York for probably like, at this point, six, seven years, something like that.

Is it a fairly liberal area? Like I imagine it to be? Yeah, yeah. So I live in New Hampshire. New Hampshire is kind of in between. A lot of libertarians and a lot of very progressive people. But the town I live in is very progressive because it's like a college town, you know?

So that usually influences things, you know, one way. Do you feel particularly called to that? Living in this kind of an area?

Yeah, yeah, I do. I personally feel called to live in a more liberal area.

Well, you're spoiling the whole thing. I got to introduce you first. Well, no, well, I will say though is I actually do. And I like it very much. I, you know, obviously there's things I wish were different, but I'm enjoying what I'm doing.

So anyway, so here's, let's introduce this. So that way they know where you're coming from and why you said that. So this is Conley Owens. And Conley Owens reached out to me, I don't remember how long ago, and he had this book that he was writing and he wanted to see if I would read it and maybe endorse it, which I did.

And Conley, he is an elder at a Reformed Baptist church in Silicon Valley, which is why he asked me that question. So I live in, I used to live in Vermont, which is like socialist paradise. And the only thing that would be, I think more socialist paradise would be Silicon Valley.

So that's why Or maybe D .C. Maybe D .C., maybe. Probably D .C., probably D .C. But anyway, so we're gonna talk about his book because I think you guys will be very intrigued by it. And I told Conley right before we went live that I sold this as how he called every person who's ever written a book that's about Christianity a false teacher in the book, which is only a little bit hyperbole.

Anyway, but we'll talk about that. And guys, if you have questions for Conley once he starts talking about it, feel free to comment them and I will try to get to as many as I can. Can't promise to get to all of them, but I will ask him anything.

He's not giving me any limitations of what I could ask him and what we could talk about here. But the book is called The Dorian Principle. Is that how you pronounce it?

I pronounce it Dorian, but it's obviously a transliteration. It's not Yeah, it's a Greek word, right?

Right, yes. Right, so Dorian Principle, that's what the book is called. It just came out pretty recently.

It was published recently, right? Right, yes. Yeah, September 30th, I think. That's awesome. Hold that up again.

Yeah, sure. So the copy I had was black and white and that's way better. And I like the black and white one too. It's kind of stylish. But the thing is, I actually don't have it to show you because I liked the book so much and I was so intrigued by what it said that I've given it to people to read because I was like, you need to read this.

Like, I wanna know what your take is. And I've given it to people that I respect their opinion because it's extremely controversial. Would you characterize it as extremely controversial?

It should be. I'm surprised at how little pushback I've gotten. There's just a lot of things that have really surprised me about this. That's great. So when I was asking for endorsements, I geared up for rejection and sent out 120 emails because I thought no one's gonna like this.

And I was surprised that I actually got a few people who were willing to give it their stamp of approval.

Yeah, well, what's so amazing about it is because I'm reading this book and we'll talk about it in a second, but I'm reading this book and I'm like, this all seems right to me, but what I'm doing, if it's right, then I need to repent of some things.

Yeah. Which is a weird place to be, you know what I mean? Because I do appreciate so much what we say. So let's just get into it, right? So let's not beat around the bush. So in a nutshell, Conley, if you can explain what this book is about or however you wanna start, just let everybody know what this book is.

Yeah, well, let's start off with the title, right? It's called the Dorian Principle and the subtitle is a biblical response to the commercialization of Christianity. So it is a responding to the commercialization of Christianity.

Dorian is the Greek adverb that means freely. Jesus said in Matthew 10, eight, freely you received, freely give. You know, in the ESV it says, you receive without paying, give without pay. And it's also the same word Paul uses in second Corinthians to talk about his preaching without pay.

So here you have Jesus and Paul using the same word to talk about freely offering the gospel. So, but right after that in Matthew 10, eight, right after in Matthew 10, nine through 10, that's where you get the phrase, workers worthy of his food, which in Luke is workers worthy of his wages.

And so how do you hold those two things together? How do you say, well, we should be giving the gospel without payment and yet a worker should also be worthy of his wages. You know, he should be supported.

How do you hold those two together? And a lot of people come up with these, frankly, very poor solutions that are these ethics of moderation, where they say, oh, you can receive as long as it's not too much or as long as the person can afford it, or as long as you're not profiting, you know, as long as you're not making more than what you put into it, or they come up with all these things that have nothing to do with the text.

And so I distinguish between reciprocity and co-labor where reciprocity is exchanging the gospel for money and co-labor is being supported by those who would like to push this ministry forward. And that comes out many, many times in Paul.

It comes out in that passage with Jesus. You know, Paul, a lot of topics, you know, the Lord's Supper, he's got half a chapter on that. Ministry fundraising is something that he talks about repeatedly, nonstop, whole chapters.

You know, he says a lot about this. And then even John in third John makes a statement along this lines, distinguishing co-labor from reciprocity. So yeah, I absolutely think that ministries should be supported financially, probably a lot more than they are, but at the same time, it should be by co-laborers, not by customers.

So let me stop you right there.

Because I've heard a lot of the lame kind of interpretations as well. I remember the one that struck a chord to me that like, I was like, oh, that makes sense. But like, it didn't make sense based on what was written.

It would just make sense to me, my own heart, which we understand is desperately wicked. Who could understand it? But what made sense to me was somebody said, oh, you know, a pastor should make like the average salary of like the people in his flock.

Like, so that's how much you should give him, like the average salary. So like, if he's in a blue collar area, he should only make this much. If he's in Silicon Valley, he should probably make 300K. Like, you know what I mean?

I'm just joking, but you know what I'm saying? Right. So the point is like, I heard that and I was like, oh yeah, yeah, well, that makes perfect sense. But like, you know, that doesn't actually come from the text though.

You know what I mean? Yeah, there's a lot of Christian prudence around how much a pastor should make, but in a way, my book's not even addressing that, right? It's not even addressing where the money comes from,.

Not how much it is. Right, but I remember hearing that and thinking like, well, you just made that up. I know you just made that up, obviously. So the whole idea here is that, yes, people that are doing ministry, you know, gospel ministry, they should of course have their food.

They should have their income, right? But, so this is the controversial part, where that income comes from and how it comes to them is very important according to the Dorian principle. Is that right?

Right, yeah. So if you're engaged in ministerial reciprocity, where you're exchanging the gospel for money, that's forbidden by scripture. And so you have all kinds of examples of that. The example that you're giving, you know, someone who sells a book, right?

Who is saying that, you know, in order to receive this teaching, this explanation of the gospel or some other part of the Bible that, you know, relates to the gospel, because it's all about Jesus, that you have to give me money in order to receive it.

You know, and you have this all over the place. You have it for seminary education, which once again, it's about the Bible. And you have it for, you know, I launched this book at G3. If you wanted to watch the live streaming at G3, it was $14 .99.

You know, it's just a lot of very commercial ways of supporting ministry. And I get it, ministry should be supported, but once again, not by customers. Yeah. Paul said, just one verse to throw out there.

Paul said in 2 Corinthians 2, 17, for we are not like so many peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God in the sight of God, we speak in Christ. And so, you know, a lot of people will use that verse to put down the peddlers of the word they don't like, but what about the peddlers of the word they do like?

You know, I've got tons of people I like, you know, even you, right?

This is what blew my mind about this whole book. So I just want to stop you because I want everyone to know here that he's talking about me, for example, because I sell a book right now. I'm still doing it right now.

And listen, calmly, let me just say this, like I'm wondering if I should continue. You know what I mean? Like this is, I'm at that razor's edge right now. And it's primarily because of your book. But what he's saying is that we all can make fun of like the prosperity preachers and they sell a book and it's a stupid book and it's awful, whatever.

Or maybe it's a decent book. Like some of these prosperity preachers, I don't know how well you know these guys, but like they put out a ton of material and some of it is very innocuous and pretty decent.

Like it's not all awful, right? But they're selling these books. And it's so obvious to us that they're false teachers and they're in it for the money or some other reason. Nobody really knows what they're in it for, but they're making a ton of money.

And it's like, okay, so we're easy to throw that under the bus. But what about the guy who's making a normal income or maybe just slightly upper-class income off of selling books as well? Like, why aren't we thinking, well, maybe that is along the same lines, not the same thing.

Maybe he's not as heretical as Benny Hinn, but what is it about, where's the distinction? Where's the line? I think is what the book was essentially attempting to answer.

Right, yeah, exactly. Yeah, and that's the text on the back gets at that, right? That it's easy to point fingers at the bad guys, but what about the good guys who are essentially doing the same thing, maybe at a different level of how much money they're making?

But one person who interviewed me about this, he was pointing out that he tells his friends, Joel Osteen's a false teacher. Look, he's just trying to get your money, et cetera. But then he was thinking about it.

He's like, well, what's the difference between him and R .C. Sproul? And he decided that, well, he's offering a better product. I'm like, I agree he's offering a better product, but the Bible doesn't say that you can be a peddler of the word as long as it's a good word.

As long as it's a good product, right? That's not enough. That's not the distinction the Bible makes. And I think people can tell from this conversation, maybe you can attest to it. The book is fairly charitable in its offering of this ethic.

Because, yeah, I get it. I'm not saying that everyone's gotten this wrong for 2000 years and I'm getting it right. I really think this is a modern issue that's come out of the evolution of digital media and modern copyright, which modern copyright has not existed for that long.

And so, yeah, I wanna offer people a chance to think for a second, have we just followed the model of the world? Do we need to look at this? And maybe I will be less charitable in 10 years after people have had a chance to think about this.

Yeah.

Well, I appreciate you being charitable with me because I think I told you, I called you, I think I insisted that I talk to you after I read the book. And I was like, this is like paradigm shifting stuff.

Like I'm very discombobulated. I don't remember exactly what I said, but it's like, your argument seems right to me. I'm not gonna lie. It seems very right to me. And I don't think that you're like the most cleverest argument tour.

Like it's just basic scripture stuff. Would you agree with that?

Like this is not a clever argument. Yeah, I had one church member as I was presenting this for the first time. He says, where's the line you would draw? And I didn't understand what he was saying for a long time, but he was basically saying like, this wasn't obvious to me beforehand.

But once you look at this text, like the relevant texts and you have to answer, what do they mean if they mean something? The answer is right there. When you ask yourself, what does it mean that we have to give without pay and the ministers worthy of his food?

How do you put those together? You have to have some kind of answer. And just to throw out one other verse where I think states this fairly clearly. Third John seven and eight says, for they have gone out for the sake of the name, not accepting anything from the Gentiles.

Therefore we ought to be supporter of people like these that we may be fellow workers for the truth. So there, John's even making this distinction between reciprocity and co-labor, right? These missionaries did not charge the people that they're going to, therefore they're very commendable.

We should be supporting them. We should be giving them money. So, okay, so let's just get super simple because we've been about 15 minutes at this right now. Like for someone who's just joining right now or people who've been listening and haven't quite caught it, what's the basic principle?

What is the argument? What is the basic principle in a step-by-step way that is as easy as understand as possible? Like what is this story in principle?

Yeah, I can try to find the definition that I wrote down here.

Yeah, that'd be helpful, I think, because, you know, listen, I gotta be honest. I feel like this will get pushback from key people at high levels, but I think that the people in the pews are ready for something like this, but they need to hear it in an easy to understand kind of way.

Does that make sense? Right, yeah. So, yeah, it's the distinction between reciprocity and co-labor, like I've said. So let me define both of those and then I'll define the Dorian principle. So ministerial

So reciprocity is the bad one. Right. Co-labor is the good one. Yeah, exactly. So ministerial reciprocity, support material or otherwise given to a minister out of a sense of direct obligation for his ministry of the gospel.

So if you feel like, oh, wow, this guy did something for me. I have to do something back for him. You know, you're not acknowledging that the gospel comes from God and that if you're giving to this person, it needs to be out of an obligation to God, not that individual.

You know, and you see this in Paul's metaphors, right? He goes to the priests. How did the priests make their money? In 1 Corinthians 9, when he says, you know, these people need to be, you know, ministers need to be supported.

When he appeals to the priests, he's not appealing to ones who are given to directly. They received of the sacrifice and of the tithes. These were things that were given to God, not, you know, the priests directly charging as though it was due to them.

You know, Hophni and Phinehas and 1 Samuel, that's what they try to do. They try to take the sacrifice before it's been given to God, and they're guilty for doing so. Now, Koleber, the good one, says, support material or otherwise given by man to a minister out of a sense of obligation to God to honor or aid in the proclamation of the gospel.

Okay, so that's what happens in the weekly life of the church, right? We all contribute. You know, when the preacher is preaching, we're not paying him because he did something for us. You know, one of us has got to quit our job and like really devote themselves to prayer and the ministry of the word.

And so we're all, you know, sharing in this task, some of us by giving of our labor.

That's right. So, okay, so let me just break this down in an easy to understand way. So if I'm selling a book called Social Justice Pharisees, Woke Church Tactics and How to Engage Them, hypothetically, if I was selling such a thing, I could say, hey, I'm giving you this book and you owe me $15 for the book.

That's reciprocity. That's the bad one. Or if I were to say, hey, you know, I have this YouTube channel that you really like. If you got value out of it, give me 10 bucks. That's reciprocity. That's also reciprocity, yeah.

Right, so that would be exchanging money for something that I'm doing. It's gospel ministry. It's teaching from the scripture. It's, you know, whatever kind of teaching it is, it's something I got freely from God and or maybe not because our culture is so jacked up.

I probably read a book that I bought from somebody. But anyway, the point is it should be from God's word. I should have gotten it freely, but I'm selling it now to somebody. But what's not reciprocity is tithes and offerings at church where you're giving money to God because you think that that's the right thing to do for God.

Like, you know, God has given you this ministry. He's given you this word and things like that. And you're paying to be a part of that ministry for other people, for your fellow, you know, congregations, for the people out there that maybe don't have the gospel.

You're gonna send missionaries out there. You're joining in the ministry.

Right, or to go back to you as an example, your Patreon supporters, right? So these are people who are coming alongside you, co-laboring. Now, I don't know if they get some special perk for doing that.

If you give them The perk would be reciprocity, but if there were no perks, it would be co-labor. Right, exactly. Got it.

Got it. And that one example you gave was very good. You were talking about, you know, you've seen this video, you like it, you should give me something. So a lot of people also think the biblical ethic is about whether or not it's voluntary.

That's also, once again, not the concern. If people in Corinth, you know, they were trying to give the Paul voluntarily and he was refusing it. So it has nothing to do with whether or not the giving is voluntary.

Right, right. So it's about what's exchanged because if something's exchanged, you know, ministry for money or food or whatever it is, that's reciprocity. And what you're saying is that that's not allowed according to scripture.

Right. But it's actually more than that.

But okay, good, good. So one more, I had mentioned before, you know, something that people think, they think it's, well, if, you know, this person can afford it, then it's okay. You know, in 2 Corinthians 11, Paul says that he was willing to rob from the Philippians, you know, rather than, or from Macedonia, which is the Philippians, he was willing to rob from them rather than take from Corinth.

Corinth was richer than Philippi for all, you know, for as much as we're able to account for it 2 ,000 years later. And he was willing to take from the Philippians because they were co-laboring with him.

That, you read the book of Philippians and the language of partnership is all throughout it. You know, he says, no other church was willing to partner with me in the gospel in giving and receiving. So yeah, you see partnership just come out really strongly there.

That's why he's willing to take from them.

Now Drew Smith says, Eddie Robles needs a haircut like Conley Owens. Drew, I am incapable of having a haircut like Conley Owens. Just FYI. Go ahead. Yeah.

Nice. So to pull those two together. So that was the definition of ministerial co-labor and ministerial reciprocity. So to put those together into the Dorian principle, in the context of gospel proclamation, accepting support as anything other than an act of co-labor compromises the sincerity of ministry.

Right. And this is what Paul

So this is the plus because it's not just that it's not allowed. It's actually much worse than that. So tell us how it's worse than being a sin.

Well, I guess that's not true, but you know what I'm saying. Right. So Paul makes it clear that, you know, his sincerity is on the line. That verse that I quoted from 2 Corinthians 2 .17. You know, we are men of sincerity, not peddlers of the word.

I don't have an ulterior motive. You know, he says in 1 Corinthians 9, no one can rob me of this boast, you know, so that I'm doing this for this reason and not for Christ, essentially. You know, this is not God working in me, but me working for myself.

There's a lot of other times where this comes out. First and second Thessalonians both talk about this, that basically his sincerity is on the line. And for someone who reads the book, I've heard a number of people have skipped ahead and read the conclusion.

And I think that's kind of a helpful thing to do because I do bring this point out really strongly. I did this as well, by the way. So go ahead. Yeah. So basically Isaiah, and then later in Revelation talks about salvation as being the water that's offered without money and without price.

Right? And Jesus is that living water. He has to be offered without money and without price. And so the whole message of the gospel is built into its delivery as well, that this is being offered without money and without price.

And the one who does not do that compromises the message by compromising their own sincerity of it. And just to quote the last thing that's in this book, I quote Micah 3 .11. Its heads give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets practice divination for money, yet they lean on the Lord and say, is not the Lord in the midst of us?

No disaster shall come upon us. It's a very clear verse. You know, the people who would exchange their ministry, whether it be priest, prophet, or judge. It's a contrast. Yeah.

So, okay. So calmly, like, let me just get this straight. So you're a pastor from, Silicon Valley. And what you're saying is that if the people that are selling books about the word of God, you know, what God says about Christianity, you know, things like that, like this is something they ought not do.

Like this is actually something that's the sign of potentially insincere hearts. Is that what you're saying, Conley?

Yes. Yeah, I am. And like I said, you know, I'm saying this in what I think to be a very charitable way, that I understand that, you know, they haven't heard otherwise, et cetera. But I'm hoping that, you know, as they read this book, as they see, there's some very clear verses about this.

This isn't an option. And one thing that came out in my studies is when I look at what the Bible says about false teachers, you know, we usually think of this Venn diagram of false teachers, you know, being, well, there's greedy teachers and false teachers.

And sometimes there's this overlap, but well, you know, there's certainly a spectrum. The biblical view seems to be that a greedy teacher is a false teacher and a false teacher is a greedy teacher. And this is supposed to be the mechanism by which we discern these things, right?

In second Corinthians, Paul says that he will continue never receiving money from the Corinthians in this context of reciprocity because he needs to distinguish himself from the false teachers. And you have verses like in first Timothy six, first Timothy six, three, it says if anyone teaches different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, you know, it says he has puffed up a conceit, understands nothing, he has a healthy craving, et cetera.

And then it says, he imagines that godliness is a means of gain. And then later, you know, the love of money is the root of all kinds of evils. Paul says that if anyone, if anyone teaches other than Jesus, you know, they're a lover of money.

And you look at Jesus and the Pharisees, right? The Pharisees were not the worst of false teachers, right? They had great doctrine.

Very good doctrine in general, yeah. In fact, Jesus says, do what they say. Yeah. Do what they say, that's how good it was.

He's like, do what they say. Right, but they're the falsest of teachers because, you know, they're the truest in terms of doctrine, but they were the falsest in terms of, you know, their status before the Lord because of their approach to finances.

Well, right, he said, do what they say, don't do what they do. Because what they do is gather a bunch of money for themselves, is what they do.

Right, yeah, they had that ulterior motive in everything they did.

So this is the Venn diagram. So he's saying that the G, that represents the greedy teachers. The F represents the false teachers. This is how we normally think of it. So there's some greedy teachers and some false teachers.

And then there's some that are greedy and false. What Conley is saying here, guys, and listen.

I can use the one in the book, that helps. No, no, this one's better, dude. What are you talking about?

What he's saying is that actually it's one in the same. The greedy teachers are the false teachers according to the Bible. And listen, guys, you don't have to take his word for it. Like he's got the scriptures in there and he's quoted a few here.

And I think you need to get this book. By the way, you can't buy it. In case you were wondering, because as I read it, I was wondering the same thing. You can't buy this book, but you can get it for free.

And anyway, so the point is like, he's saying that this is a matter. This is why I sold it the way I did. I sold it as he's talking about everyone who sold the book as a false teacher. And he's a lot more charitable than that because he's a charitable guy.

I mean, you kind of have to be when you're presenting something like this.

When I'm condemning every single person in the church, yeah.

Yes, and I'm laughing here, but it's me too. Like I'm laughing, but I don't know why I'm laughing. I mean, he's talking about me. Stop clapping. That's right, that's right. Glad you got that. I appreciate that.

That was my test to see if you were really a Christian. Anyway, but the point is though, that this is serious. It's like, it's not, he's not like giving like this halfway argument here. It's like a total argument.

What he's saying is that if you're charging money for the gospel, this is you. And so you need to correct that. Anyway, Conley, sorry to interrupt you, but were you saying something? I don't think so.

Yeah, so let me ask you a question. So there's a few things that I do that I know are off limits. So like the selling of the book, that's a no-no according to this principle. So what about having this YouTube channel, right?

So I do monetize my channel and I don't need to. I just do it because why not? Is that Dorian principle kosher or not kosher?

Yeah, that's a good question. So there are a lot of finer points that, if I had all the time in the world, I would get to those. There's a lot that I have trouble wrestling with myself and I don't have all the answers.

That is one where, if you have a page where you're saying, you give me views and then I give you this thing, it does feel like it fits more into the reciprocity. Now on YouTube, now I was thinking about that this morning on YouTube because I was listening to a podcast that was talking about what YouTube has stated about its algorithms and whether or not they might be true on whether or not that gives you less views because they wanna show the ones that will be monetized, right?

And I don't know whether or not that's the case. YouTube says it's not, but if you suspect that's the case and you're doing it so that more people have a chance to see it, then like, I don't know, things get really confusing at that point.

And I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do claim to have a principle that hopefully someone else can be more consistent in applying.

Well, I mean, you don't have to have all the answers because, you know, and people often will try to get me because I'm a theonomist. Some people think I'm not a theonomist and that's fine. I don't care about the term, theonomist not, I care about God's law, right?

I care about God's law. I care about the general equity of God's law, like a confession say. So people will ask me, well, what about this situation? And like, I don't really know the answer to that situation.

And they somehow think that that like means like the principle is wrong. Like, well, no, I mean, you know, there are smarter people than me that need to figure that stuff out. I have a principle here, right?

I defer to God's law. I wanna apply the general equity of God's law. That's what I wanna do. Does that mean I know how it applies in every situation? No, I don't, I don't. That doesn't mean the principle is wrong though.

All right, cool. So let me ask you a question. So, and you might not have the answer to this either, but like, there's a lot of people out there, including myself, but I'm a small potatoes kind of guy.

Like I don't, I don't sell many books. Like I don't have a whole thing. So like, there are people out there that I love and probably you love too, that have, you know, ministries that sell tons of books.

They sell, you know, conference speaking gigs, you know, things they sell all kinds of stuff, right? So like, what, how do they, what do they do? How do they, how they live? How do they, you know, earn an income?

Like what, what should they do?

Right, well, first of all, if that's, if that is valued by Christians and hopefully you can find ways of supporting it, you know, there are churches who value these things, you know, partner together, work with them.

And maybe it's something like a Kickstarter or Patreon where you're funding things beforehand instead of after the fact. That's another thing too, is, you know, everybody is so used to this supply and demand model.

If you've got this thing that has a limited supply and you give it to someone and they give you money back. But if you have something with an infinite supply, you know, like digital media, then what do we do?

So we just slap the same supply and demand model on it and expect the economy of it to work the exact same way. I think that's pretty problematic, but you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of benefits you get when you start engaging in co-labor rather than reciprocity, right?

If you had discerning Christians who had skin in the game, you know, giving to ministries, they would feel the obligation to pray for those ministries. They'd feel the obligation to hold these ministries accountable and you just don't have that in the model that currently exists.

So the health of these ministries, even if financially it were to diminish some, and I don't think it would completely diminish, even if it were to diminish some, the spiritual health would grow.

Yeah, amen. So what you're saying is that the spiritual health and the, well, and frankly, the faithfulness would increase and that ought to be a much better indicator than, you know, revenues. Right.

And there's nothing wrong with making revenues. Like guys, you guys know I'm a capitalist. You know, I try to make as much money as I can in an ethical way and I don't apologize for it. But like what you're saying is that when it comes to gospel ministry though, faithfulness, and actually in your whole lives, faithfulness is more important than revenues.