Five Years of Cru Mismanagement

Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast, I'm your host, John Harris. This is a special episode today for those of you who are on crew staff or supporters of the organization called

Crew, formerly Campus Crusade for Christ. And over the last five years,

I've done a number of episodes. In fact, today I feel like I'm going to be just scratching the surface because I'm going to review the last five years and just some of the high points, things that I've covered in regards to Crew's adoption of certain social justice teachings.

I think this is important at this point because tomorrow there's an episode you're definitely not going to want to miss

I'm releasing in which I'm going to talk about the current controversy regarding LGBTQ plus normalization, or at least ideas associated with that ideology and normalizing them within the organization

Crew. And I think it's helpful to have a context moving into that. And that's one of the reasons

I wanted to do this. But the other reason is I want to focus on something I haven't given a lot of attention to, which is how people on the social justice side of things, see the organization

Crew. And I think this is a dynamic that actually is present within a lot of organizations. Crew's not the only one, a lot of ministries have this dynamic where you have a tension existing that the managers of the organization seek to somehow figure out a way to transcend.

They want to make both sides happy. And I've said this about the current debate over LGBTQ plus normalization, because there's this,

I think, motivation, especially on college campuses, to try to appeal to those who are thoroughly affected by social justice thinking, while at the same time, making the donors happy, who support biblical values and think that Crew is doing the same thing.

And so I saw this with even Southeastern, the seminary I went to, I knew at certain points, they were really pushing social justice stuff, but in their material, in the printed material that they would use to promote the organization, the seminary, it wouldn't say anything about that much of the time.

And so there was this, there were different messages going out. And I think the same thing's happening in Crew, but I haven't really focused on what the other side's saying.

And there's a few interesting points to take away from what the other side is saying. One is that some of the frustrations expressed by those on the theological left, if you want to call it that, are very similar to the concerns, if not the same, as some of the concerns that I've heard expressed from those who are more theologically orthodox in the organization, regarding mismanagement, attempts to control, and sometimes incompetence, but really this tendency to try to manage a situation and not treat people like people, and have a certain political outcome where there's smooth sailing, and the organization can go on like it was before without taking hard stands in either direction on a controversy.

And the other thing, of course, is I want to look at the attitude and the,

I don't know if aggression's the word or just the steadfastness, the ability to unite and be firm that the evangelical left seems to have, that it seems like on the evangelical right, the more orthodox wing of evangelicalism, we don't have this as much.

And so I want to also challenge you, if you're in CRU, if you're someone who's even former staff, and you've been really reluctant to share your story, you've thought about it, but it's just, it's too difficult.

And I understand it brings up a lot of painful things, but you are concerned for people in the organization.

But you know, if you open your mouth, it's not going to go well. What will people think of you? You also don't want to challenge authority, because that's been kind of ingrained.

You have been told that these are the people over you, and you're not supposed to challenge that.

And I want you to think through, I'm going to share some Bible verses too, but I want you to really think through what the best approach is.

And it might look different for different people, whether you're in the organization, out of the organization, what kind of authority you have in the organization.

And this goes beyond CRU, to be honest with you. But look at how the left operates.

I'm not saying you should copy the left and everything. Certainly not. But look at the things they believe and the extent to which they're willing to promote those ideas, sacrifice for those ideas, push for those ideas.

And there is something different. If there is a commitment level, it seems like they have, that goes beyond what many on the more orthodox side of the aisle seem to have for the truth.

And that shouldn't be. And so I want to, not as a guilt trip, I know it's coming across that way, and that's not what

I intend. I want it to be somewhat inspirational, but perhaps there is a convictional element to this as well.

So I'm going to share that with you as well. And it's going to be in the form of a few clips from a podcast recorded earlier this year by former

LENZES staff. LENZES was one of the entities within the CRU organization. And I'm going to show you just so you know what

LENZES is, a brief video they put out a few years ago before they were, they disbanded themselves to represent what they are.

So you know what they are. But let's just kind of do things in sequential order, shall we?

So the first thing that I want to point out, and this is really my introduction into CRU's whole going woke, if you want to call it that, is this.

This is a video that I put out now, it says four years ago, but it wasn't the first one that I did.

The first one that I actually did was before this, and it was one particular speaker at CRU 19.

CRU 19 is their big staff conference. And at CRU 19, there was a speaker,

Sandra Van Opstel, I believe was her name. And it was a horrible, in my opinion, speech, especially for a ministry occasion.

I just was shocked by it, where, I'm not going to, you can go watch it if you want, but it's incredibly woke.

And everything you would expect from 2020 was happening at CRU in 2019. And from what I understand, it was also at present at CRU's previous conferences that CRU has held, staff conferences.

And so that gained some attention. And from that,

I decided, you know what, I'm going to watch, and I pretty much watched the entire conference of CRU 19 before the videos were taken down from CRU's website.

And so I put out this particular video, kudos goes down the woke hole. And most of it, it's just clips.

And then there's my commentary at the end. But a lot of this is just clips from CRU 19, and it's astonishing.

I'm not going to play it all right now. You can go watch it if you want, but I don't want this video to be too long. It's astounding what kind of a woke fest

CRU 19 was. I mean, I think there was one presentation where I actually heard the gospel presented.

Like you could even try to parse a gospel message out of this presentation, only one.

Everything else was activism, was guilting white people, was let's go really join the

Black Lives Matter ideology. It was CRT. That was pretty much the conference. And so I did the work of going through, man,

I'm trying to remember now. It felt like 20 hours of video and just put it together, put certain clips together that seemed to be relevant into a shorter form.

So people could, we didn't have that time to just watch. This is what's happening at CRU. This is what staff are being taught to then go back to their areas of ministry, including college campuses with.

So that happened in 2019. And of course, this then raised some concern within the organization.

There were a lot of staff members who were upset. I had so many reaching out to me at that time with their stories, some of them horrifying in my opinion, but hardly anyone wanted to come out, especially immediately in the months and even the year after that, we really did not have staff members coming out to talk about their experience, but that began to change.

And actually, if you go on my YouTube channel, conversations that matter, you'll find that I've done three separate interviews with former crew staff, different former crew staff.

And I know of at least five former crew staff who have come out publicly. The most recent being the

Mundells who have talked about their experience and their disagreement with some of the

LGBTQ plus normalization. But we have, I have three former crew staff members on my channel who've come out and just talked about, this is my experience with crew.

This is what it was like. This is what we went through. This is the, I raised objections. I hit a brick wall.

I couldn't go any farther. I mean, so, so you find these things starting, but it really isn't until at least a year after the exposure to what was happening in crew.

And part of that is because there was a process in place that started within that year that was finally represented in this document called

Seeking Clarity and Unity. And I've done a whole podcast on this and gone through, and it's a document.

It's actually 179 pages, according to the PDF reader here.

And it just documents the woke agenda, if you want to call it that, or social justice normalization within the organization crew.

There's eyewitness testimonies. There's exact references to teaching materials and that kind of thing.

And I thought it was incredibly well done and put together well. I knew many of the people who were involved in helping research this and put this together, but there were many staff.

There was, as I understand it, over 300 staff at one point that were involved, not directly perhaps in this document, but involved in the effort to bring some accountability to crew.

And the whole time this process was happening, when I would talk to staff who were involved in this, our conversations were very similar.

It would be, there was always some hope that this would do something. And I was pretty cynical about it.

I thought, I don't think this is really going to get crew to, they're not going to do a biblical repentance thing.

They're not going to own what they've done and then say that they were wrong. They're likely not going to.

And of course, I don't want to be right on that. I'm always open. I would love that to happen, right?

Even now, I'd love that to happen in crew, but just watching how things were going in other organizations, including the

Southern Baptist Convention, it just did not seem likely to me. And a lot of the unfortunate impact of this particular document, and this was known only internally for a while, but then it was finally publicly released.

It was actually leaked by someone on the left. It wasn't even someone within, it wasn't someone in the conservative group there.

The impact of that was crew seemed to clamp down more.

This is according to a number of testimonies from people who were involved in this. Crew seemed to clamp down more on people who they considered to be bringing division.

And the people who produced this document were seen as divisive.

They were coming with a complaint that was ripping crew apart. And this wasn't a good, it wasn't looked on favorably.

Well, we're in, you know, fast forward 2021, and I have finally some firsthand knowledge that, and I knew people had been talking to the president of the organization and certain influential people within the organization.

But I find out for the first time that actually someone I know personally has met with the board and brought these issues up directly confronting the board.

And the response was essentially to disregard these issues, that they're really not that big of a deal, that crew doesn't really have this problem.

And if they ever did, it's been taken care of. It's not around anymore. And so this is the frustrating thing that many went through.

Some even telling me that they lost their positions within crew because they were, whether they had to leave the organization because it just became unbearable for them, or whether it was that there was pressure being applied to them from crew, being involved in an effort like this really challenged their status within the organization, their ability to work in the organization.

So this is happening. And then for future conferences at crew, what you find is if you listen to the recordings, you're not going to get a lot of the social justice stuff, not the stuff that you saw at crew 19.

And so I actually think the Seeking Clarity and Unity document did do something. It did make them aware that, hey, we're going to get burned with the donors if we, and it wasn't just that document.

I should say probably most of this work happened before that document was released, but through podcasts and blogs and so forth, a lot of the social justice stuff was exposed within crew.

And when certain donors said, I'm pulling out, this became an incentive for crew to let's not do that.

Let's not do it to that extent, at least. Now, they still have some of the same staff members who are pushing this stuff.

In fact, I'm sure if I went right now to crew's website, I'll just do this right now. Crew, let's see.

Ethnic diversity. I'll just type that in. And okay. So it's like the first hit oneness and ethnic diversity comes right up.

And I'm wondering who oversees this, if it actually gives you oneness and diversity resources.

I was hoping for staff. I'm just doing this kind of on the fly. Let's see, direct. Let me see if I can find the crew ethnic diversity director.

Let's try that and see who the director, our leadership at crew.

Okay. So some of these guys I actually recognize. So like Jake Abraham, executive director of Citi, I would say, yeah, social justice guy, definitely

Daryl Smith. So Daryl Smith is the, there it is, director of oneness and diversity. So he still has his position there.

So, I'm not like looking deeply into these things, but just looking at who they have over that particular,

I mean, that's a job, I guess, at crew being over that, there's no reason to believe that this hasn't stopped, even if it's not like it was before, like it was in 2019.

And this is what you'll find if you watch some of the like more recent conferences and stuff that crew puts on, you'll find sessions that aren't recorded, but are alluded to, well, at least one in this sense.

Cause I listened to, this is, I think this is from crew 2023. It's a winter conference.

And I listened to session after session. There were little things here or there, but then I got to this. Lunch tomorrow for everybody.

Yes. Free lunch. We all get free lunch tomorrow. Chick -fil -A. The Lord's chicken will be in the house.

The Lord's chicken will be here. So, okay. Seriously though, seriously. So we have one, we have lunch for everyone, but there's two different locations.

You can go to the lounge and grab it, or you can go to the Peacock Terrace, which is a fun thing to say as well. The Peacock Terrace, where we will have our oneness in diversity lunch.

Crew has been on a journey really intentionally since about 2015, exploring how we can experience more oneness and diversity throughout our organization.

And the reality is, is that has personally challenged me a lot. Like it has put me on my own journey to better understand who

I am and how I view my brothers and sisters in Christ. All my brothers and sisters in Christ.

And I bet a lot of you have been on similar journeys over the last few years. I know this has been such a big topic.

And so we are going to meet together in the Peacock Terrace. We will have lunch in there as well, provided, to discuss oneness and diversity in Crew tomorrow.

Yeah, we know that this topic may not be new to many of you. This is the topic that you live.

Issues of ethnic diversity and cultural diversity are things that don't go away for some of us. Some of you guys might be coming into the lunch though, and you feel super out of your depth.

We want to say, we want you guys to grab a chair, which you grab some Chick -fil -A. We want you to chat about your ethnic and cultural diversity or journeys and diversity while you're there.

But most importantly, your journeys. So the reality is though, truly that we do need one another to reach the world for Christ.

Amen. Yes. Okay. So this is the kind of thing that you're going to find now. Many organizations,

I think, have done similar things where, and I've said this before, we're in the institutional phase of social justice.

You're not going to find, sometimes you will, but not like you did in 2020. You're not going to find the recordings of professors at Christian colleges because at some colleges, you're not allowed to record.

They're not posting that stuff, but that stuff is still happening in certain places. It's just been pushed underground.

So this is the story of Crew. And no different than some of the other organizations that we talk about on this podcast.

Now, one of the organizations that was pushing social justice and CRT specifically within Crew hard was an organization called

Lenses. And the Lenses Institute, well, I'll just play for you a promo that they put out.

So you get a better idea of what the Lenses Institute was about. What are some of the forces that really help shape our perspectives?

Dinner table conversation, things that we witness on TV, experiences, relationships, all those things help shape the lenses through which we look at those elements of race, of ethnicity, of power, of culture.

The Lenses Institute is a cultural development platform designed to help Christian leaders see, understand, and act in this racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse world.

Over the course of five days, we enjoy a mixed media of education and communication styles that go everything from thought leaders, to film, to group exercises, to reflection pieces, to really move us in a meaningful way to move to action.

Hearing personal stories has been a significant thing for me. I've read books, I've watched sermons,

I've listened to podcasts. But when you sit face -to -face with someone and hear their experience, you just, you can't deny that things are not the way they should be.

People want to embrace ethnic diversity. We all do, but we're all at different points in the journey. And I think we need to move deeper.

I think we need to go farther. And I think as we do that, the Lord is going to show us what specific steps that we need to take.

I went with people that I work with. I went with my team. And it was just great to, after a long day of sessions, like having dinner together and processing what it is that we learned and thinking through, how does this change the way that we think, the way that we approach ministry?

Not because we think that we're a see -and -all -be -all, but because it affects people's hearts.

And it affects the way people view the world. And if we don't understand that, and if we don't understand people, then how are we going to reach them?

What could it look like? What could it look like if we really do see, understand, and then act in a gospel way, in a

Jesus way, for every person? Okay, I'll stop it there.

So this was a promo put out by the Lenz's Institute. Now, of course, they were recommending books by like Kendi that are overtly critical race theory books.

And these are resources, the resources they used were consistent with that, even the ones that are from a more

Christian vantage point. And so they became the focal point for some of the channels that wanted to blame someone for what

Crew had done in adopting social justice teaching, kind of ran into Lenz's. Because Lenz's became one of the big examples of where that existed within the organization.

It was such an obvious example. It was low -hanging fruit. If you wanted to go after social justice in Crew, and you didn't want to go after people who had put together the conferences, you don't want to go after the oneness and diversity department, you were going to go after Lenz's.

That's how I see it. And so I'm going to play for you in a moment a clip from Lenz's where they talk about what happened in the organization, because when the

Lenz's Institute shut down in, I believe it was 2022, that was seen as like a really good step for Crew.

But here's what the Lenz's Institute has said about it. And I should back up and also say,

Marc Gauthier, when he, as the one in charge of this, of Crew at the time, when he made a statement about it, we talked about it on the podcast, he was so appreciative of Lenz's and everything.

And I thought, this is weird. There's no repentance. There's no, Lenz's was wrong. We're retracting our teaching where we realized this was bad.

And no, it was that Lenz's is great. And so it wasn't really even a step in the right direction.

Their move satisfied no one. But here's from the perspective of those who were staff at Lenz's.

Here's what two of them said about this. And we'll play that and then

I'll provide some more perspective on this. November of 2020, some of us find out about this group.

It's called the Seeking Clarity and Unity Group, SEU for short. And this group, we found out they had written a document.

And it was kind of initially like, not really sure what is all entailed in the document, but it went to the higher ups and the crew leadership.

And so some people were going to look at this document and talk to some of the people that were part of the group.

And so it was kind of like, okay, this is weird. It was like right before we were breaking for the holidays and whatnot.

And so we start to hear. Okay, so I should just say, they're talking about the document that I was just referencing, the

Seeking Clarity and Unity. And Lenz's shut down actually in 2021, I believe.

It was not 2022. So just want to get that right. But these are two former staff,

Alethea Lamberson and Matthew Meledrez, or Meledrez, I think is how you pronounce it.

And they're both talking about their experience with Lenz's. And so the story,

I thought the most significant point of the story really does start with this document. So they're saying, hey, this document, actually, this kind of put us in the crosshairs when this was released.

About this group. And conversation was had with some of the

BIPOC leadership and some members from this group. And it was very evident that, yeah, there's no, this is not going to be an easy thing to deal with.

What all is going on? And come to find out, this group started pretty small.

And it was after Crew 19. And they felt some type of way about how the last three conferences had gone. And so they went to Steve Sellers and said, hey, we feel some type of way that Crew's drifting or we're drifting from the mission of Crew.

And Sellers essentially told them, okay, you can, if you need to write something or kind of give me proof of what do you mean when you say that?

And they took that and ran with it. And what ended up happening over the year plus of that in secrecy was this group formed and blossomed to like 300 plus staff.

We were told, I heard a bunch of different numbers, but over 300 staff. And they had submitted in November 2020, a 179 page document called

Seeking Clarity and Unity, which in so many ways, it was none of those things. We were told,

Lenz's was told, hey, you guys are going to get audited. We're like, well, what does that mean? No one really knew.

But the first thing that we were told was take down your resources off your website. Because people didn't like some of the books we had up. We're like, okay, so we take them down and you have to like contact us, but we couldn't send them to anyone.

Okay, we take the resources down, but we're still finishing up our programming that we had already had scheduled for the spring of 2021.

So in February, that was happening. And also in February, a number of staff of color were, we had sent emails, same subject line, sent emails to Steve Sellers, now the global president of Crew and Mark Gothier.

And our desire was to have this collective voice to say, in the spirit of John 17, which was on as a foundational,

John 17, 20 to 23 foundational for Lenz's, in that spirit, we are coming to you as leadership to say, what is happening in the organization is evil and is wrong.

And we need to talk about it. Michael leading the charge for us, because he was the only one in the meetings, kept saying, hey, can we actually show you what we do?

Can we tell you our processes? Can we show you what our speakers on the first day of an institute or first day of ReFramed, we are doing

Bible and culture. We are leading from that. We are laying the foundation. Scripture is woven all throughout what we're doing.

Can we show you? Silence. Never having an opportunity to actually tell you for months to tell you what we do.

But yet you're going to now reimagine the work with people who are not a part of our leadership team, who are not facilitators.

Again, a lot of incredible people who I do, I want to make that clear, respect, who've had incredible experiences, but you weren't, they weren't internal to what we did with Lenz's.

And then you add on two people from the outside, one who, it was like, you never learned how to swim and you got thrown into the deep end.

Good luck. No context at all about what we did. And the other person that was added was a guy who was very antagonistic to our work.

We actually had a receipt in our email from him coming after us about having Ibram X.

Kendi, his book on our website. And when he, we responded to his email, that was one of the few people that did contact us.

We responded to his email and said, Hey, we would love to talk to you. Can you share more? It was very, because it was very aggressive, a very angry email.

We'd love to talk with you. Can we set up a meeting? Never responded. Somehow this person was quote vetted and then added to a team to reimagine the work of Lenz's who was very antagonistic to our work.

And so this is also a very important thing. So one of the reasons I'm playing this is to show you some of these frustrations.

If you're in crew and you've just, you don't like the management, you don't like the, what seems like red tape and people who don't necessarily know what they're doing, who are in charge of things and the, the desire to really make sure that everything is, is smooth and is to cruise benefit.

And the concerns are the concerns of someone in a management position who wants success for the organization, but not necessarily someone who who's committed to truth.

You actually do share some of those frustrations with people, some of whom are on the other side of some of these issues.

And what they're describing is very similar to stories that I've heard from people who in crew who are more conservative, who have said, there's a problem here.

You're implementing teachings that are ripping apart our group and you're making us do activism we don't want to do.

And then they get the runaround and they, they're sometimes gaslit and made to think that they're complaining about nothing.

And it's the same kind of thing. It's this, this, these management techniques are deployed against, it seems like any threat that they want to neutralize any threat against the organization.

And because I think so much of the pressure comes from the left and that's, especially if you're on a college campus, you're going to bend to that pressure more often than not.

You're going to want to accommodate the left. And, and so the ship sails in that direction, but it doesn't mean if it sails too fast and you get in trouble with your donors and donors start pulling out and the money pulls out that you're not going to also lash out and blame those you think on the left who might be responsible for that and try to manage them.

And that's what, that's one of the common threads here. So I just wanted to point this out. I think it's an important point to make.

And to be clear about, because there's, this is one of the narratives and we've seen it in writing from different people, people from the campus exec team who honestly are talking in ways that they don't know.

The lenses executive team, the nine of us unanimously decided to close lenses.

Crew did not force us. Crew was acting abusively and trying to control us and listen to major donors because that was also very clear is that all our leadership bows down to money and not

God. We decided to close because we were being mistreated and we could not continue.

We posted that early afternoon and by the end of the afternoon,

Mark Gothier was making phone calls to members of our team and speaking in very inappropriate ways.

So just look at this just for a second here. And I think there might be some profane words coming up and I apologize for that.

Just to get kids in the car, you're driving, listening to this, just be aware there's some profanity coming up. As I remember listening to this whole podcast and it's called the roll down.

It's put out in February. That's the name of the podcast. February, though, of this year is when you have this episode about crew.

You didn't hear a lot of scripture at all in this. And it was it was surprising a little to me, some of the language they use.

But that aside, the way they reacted to this, this desire to control them from the top, to manage them, to re envision them, to to just make sure that they're not causing trouble with donors anymore, that kind of thing.

The way that they reacted is so different. They went public almost immediately. They and they really like they took some personal risks in a way.

Like, I mean, at least they now when you're on the left, sometimes I think there's greater resources, for example, let me let me just I'll show you real quick.

So there's a an organization out there right now called

Chasing Justice. And if you go to the about section, I think it is.

And you look at everyone who's on it. There's Sandra Maria van Opstel, who I mentioned before,

Mark Reddy. You got I know there I'm not seeing it now. I know there was a maybe it's in the speakers.

There was a whole list of like, this might be it. But it's like the who's who of like, there's

Matthew Melendez right there. There's Alethea Lamberson. There's Emma Tolo, who's also is with crew.

I mean, it's like a lot of the guys at lenses. It's the same people. It's the same people that are in this organization now.

And sometimes and I don't know where their funding's from or anything like that. I haven't looked into it, really. But I do know that it's it does tend to be,

I think, easier when you are on the left. There's more resources and safety nets for you to fall back on.

But still, despite that, it's kind of gutsy to do this kind of thing to say, you know what, we're going to stand on a principle here, even if it's the wrong one.

And we're going to stand up to this organization. And we're going to let people know publicly. We're going to raise a stink about it. And they kind of crew wasn't going to get rid of lenses.

They were just trying to make sure that it wasn't going to cause them a problem with donors. And they decided to just shut the shut it down.

That was their decision. That was internal. But then you're going to find crew steps in to try to even massage the messaging on on this.

And then further, he was he sent text messages, basically writing out a new tweet or a new statement that we he told he demanded us to put out under our name, walking our statement back saying that we're actually open.

And again, we had to make important point, guys, crew did not want lenses to shut down. Even after they announced that they're shutting down, they didn't want it to happen.

Crew wanted lenses there. So those of you who are really happy about this and thought crews turning a corner, it doesn't sound quite like it a decision as a team.

And we said, we're not going to do that. We said what we said. We didn't.

We said what we said. We weren't going to walk it back. And that pissed him off a lot. Someone who's in power, someone who's used to getting his way.

He lost control. He couldn't control the narrative. And that was that actually is a huge part of what was going on is that there was a narrative being shaped about us during this whole six month process.

And he was controlling it. And so this is the moment that we actually said, we need to tell our narrative because it's important for people to know.

And he couldn't control it anymore. This is like so parallel to the people in the

Seeking Clarity and Unity group were more conservative of what happened to them. They felt the same way that you could almost like just switch the organizations.

And some of these same sentences could apply that they were, there was a dismissiveness that there was that they felt like they were being bullied, that they weren't being taken seriously, that they were trying to cruise trying to control them, this kind of thing.

Got here puts out a statement to say, you know, we're in agreement with lenses closing. And we're, you know,

I'm paraphrasing grateful for all that they did. And, you know, we still, we are still committed to oneness and diversity.

Made that very clear statement. I'm recalling this now. And I was like, this is bullshit. I'm sorry.

Especially this coming out 2024. Just saying just all that's happened in the organization since precisely. So, hey, we're in agreement with lenses, but we're still committed.

We want you guys to know that. And we're going to we're going to work on some stuff, right? To make sure we make it clear. So that was that was the start of the aftermath.

This is exactly what I said in 2021 when this all happened. Like it didn't please anyone, right?

It didn't please the people on the left. It didn't please the people on the right.

It just it kind of made everyone upset because they didn't take a stand. And that's how crude is to this day.

I believe because you're seeing the same dynamic come to the fore on this latest social justice issue, which is

LGBTQ plus normalization. It's like they just don't really want to take a stand. They don't want to repent.

They don't want to admit they were wrong. They want they'll respond somewhat to pressure from donors to say what they have.

You know, they're talking points down. I know this from multiple crew staff who have been given talking points of here's what you say when a donor calls and is concerned about things he saw on the

Internet about a crew. And you tell them that we believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.

We believe there are two. Tell them what they want to hear. And that way they really they won't we won't lose their money.

We won't lose their support. So the same thing's playing out where they're not taking a stand either direction on the issue.

They're just kind of barreling through and trying to maybe trim the edges and change some things around here and there.

But it's just not it's not adequate. So let's let's just finish this up.

And then some scripture. And well, in that second call to the how it ended, like, you know, he did all that.

And it was clear that we weren't having it like he was trying to have, even like there was a little bit of like trying to engage us in. Oh, anything you guys want to say?

The celebration. Yeah, anything celebration. And then basically started recasting vision of being on staff to us.

Like, it was like a pitch for us to stay on staff in this weird way. And but it was like, but he's like, okay, anyone else to say?

And he like made sure that, you know, everyone had anything else to say. Then he kind of was trying to close it by like, and we did have nothing to say.

And we didn't have anything to say, but then, you know, he's doing all this. And then, but then I did come off mute because he was trying to end the call on that note.

Like, you know, I just love for you to be on staff or friends or family. And then he was just like, you know, and I know

I've made some mistakes. And I just would ask that in time that you would trust me again.

I came off mute and I said, no. You there's so much has happened in this process.

You've lied. You've deceived us. I will not trust you. I just want to make sure that you understand that.

And then I went off mute and all right. I muted myself and left. I left the meeting because I was just like, this is, this is, this is so dirty.

This is dirty. All right. Well, it was vile.

It really was. This is their assessment of crew and the leadership there. And it's really the corruption that's getting to them.

And I've said this before about the SBC too. And I think when this became so clear to me, when Randy Adams ran, which was in 2021,

I believe that, you know, the woke stuff's a problem, but really the big issue in the SBC is corruption.

That's the big issue in a lot of these organizations and the social justice stuff that a lot of that is because you have corrupt people who want to be ingratiated to the world and the halls of power.

And so they end up going this direction, but it's, it's a character thing. And, and, you know, that would mean though, really that if,

Hey, it was popular to be in the clan or something, they, maybe some of these people would run around with hoods. Right.

Like that's, that is what I'm saying. Like that, it just is saying that some of these guys might not have principles, but they're institutionalists and they want the success of their organization.

That becomes kind of the big thing. And I've come to that conclusion more and more with many different organizations that these guys aren't always as principled as sometimes even

I thought previous that they were, I thought they were maybe some of them are they're believers in the woke stuff, but others are just, they're managers and they think this is the way you ought to go.

Now, this brings us to kind of where we are now. I, I, there is a boldness that you see in the examples that I just played for you.

Former lenses, staff willing to risk their jobs to leave their jobs, willing to shut down the organization, willing to go public, willing to stand up to the leadership there.

This is not something that I see typically from people on the more conservative side.

And, you know, even ones who do have more boldness, it is, there is a.

There's, there's something different about it. And I, I want to say when Rosaria Butterfield, now she was not on crew staff, but when she got up at Liberty university and she said what

I'm about to play for you, I played it before and she said, she talks about crew and it's compromised. I see this fighting spirit in her.

Of the half truth. Let me give you some examples. Have you ever heard that same sex attraction is a sinless temptation and only a sin if you act on it or that people who experience same sex attraction are actually gay

Christians called to lifelong celibacy or that people who experience same sex attraction rarely have ever changed and therefore should never pursue heterosexual marriage or that sex and gender are different and that God doesn't care about whether men live as men and women live as women because all you need to do is grow in the fruit of the spirit as though the

Holy Spirit can grow from sin. I have heard all of these lies and just in the last year from Christian ministries.

And this is where I name names and I'm an English professor so I call this citing my sources. Revoice, Preston Sprinkle's Exiles in Babylon conference sponsored by his heretical center for faith, sexuality, and gender and crew.

I got three seats people and I have believed these lies too and not only as a

Christian and I have repented publicly as a Christian in my book to you in articles and these people can do the same.

This is I still love watching that clip. It's one of the most encouraging clips that I've seen in like really since I started doing this podcast to see someone who believes some of these things to come out and say

I was wrong and then to then say and these people can repent too. If I can do it, they can do it, but not mincing any words and that's the kind of boldness frankly we need from everyone.

And if you're still staff in crew, you're still in that organization, we need that kind of boldness from you and it's obviously in the cause of righteousness.

So I just think that if you're on the other side of these issues and you can have boldness, why not in the in support of the truth?

Why can't we have boldness, right? And so there's just a few Bible verses I wanted to share just food for thought here.

Ephesians 511 do not participate in the useless deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them. There are times to expose.

I've done a lot of that on this podcast. There are times to expose darkness and wickedness and you need to between yourself and God figure out if, because I know there's many of you and you have, you know, you know what's going on and many of you are not exposing it because you want to, well, self -preservation, you feel like it would be against the authority structures that you respect, whatever it may be.

You don't want to undermine them, but there are times to expose these things and people do get hurt by heresy, false teaching, and also by corruption by people who want to take advantage of others and are mismanaging the funds that belong to Jesus Christ and his ministry for, uh, for things that aren't even ministry.

Romans 16, 17 says, now I urge you brothers and sisters, keep your eye on those who caused dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching, which you learned and turn away from them.

Notice the hindrances, the dissensions. Who are those caused by? They're caused by people who bring in false teaching.

You need to keep on, keep an eye out. And this doesn't mean you just watch them without saying anything. The obvious reason for keeping an eye out is to warn, it's to avoid, it's to make sure that those people are, they're quartered off.

They're, they're, they're identified for what they're doing, who they are. And this is why the concerned group of Orthodox believers within crew who saw the social justice stuff coming in are not the ones causing division.

They never were. They're the ones actually trying to bring about a theological unity. The ones causing division right now in crew are the people who are, don't want to repent over these, the false.

Sexual, uh, deviancy, uh, sexually deviant, um, patterns that have been normalized within the organization.

Those are people who are bringing real division. They're not held to account though. And part of the reason is that there are people in the organization who, they don't want to lose their job.

They're afraid. And so pray, you know, really seek the Lord and, and, you know, your members of local churches, if you're a crew staff, or at least you should be, you know, seek also some biblical and solid and reasonable advice from your pastor and from the people who have spiritual authority in your life who are outside the organization.

Get a fresh perspective. Is this my advice? First Timothy five 20, those who continue in sin rebuke in the presence of all so that the rest also will be fearful of sinning.

This is instructions for a pastor, but, uh, you know, in crew, and this is maybe harder in a sense there there's ministry leaders there.

There are pastors who are in crew as well, especially if you're one of them, this is something you should really think about that when you rebuke it, sometimes this needs to be in the presence of all so that there will be a disincentive from following their bad example.

When you just keep things quiet, when everything is behind closed doors, when you don't come out and talk about what's happening, then people continue what they're doing.

And this is the story with crew over five years. How long do we let this kind of stuff go on? Crew hasn't learned its lesson.

It's back. It's in the same place it was in 2019. It's a, oh,

John is on the same place. Lenses isn't there. They're not as big on the woke stuff. Yes, it's still happening and it's taking on different forms.

They're, they have an immune system incapable of defending themselves against heresies.

How much longer is, will that kind of thing continue until some solid leadership gets in place? That's why this stuff needs to be exposed.

And it's kind of a pity to me that it takes someone like Rosario Butterfield, who's not even in the organization to be bold and to use the platform that she was given at Liberty university to say it.

If she hadn't have said that, you know, I don't know what would have happened, you know, and I think world magazine did their first article on this controversy with crew.

This controversy has been around for a while. World magazine got involved though. Last year at end of last year, or maybe it was no, it was this year.

Actually, I think when they ran their first article on this. But you've had a few other podcasts starting to pick this stuff up.

Um, and you know, bigger podcasts that we're not saying a thing about any of this in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023, but this stuff has been going on for that many years.

Finally, there's some momentum. And I really credit Rosario Butterfield for bringing a lot of that. She, she has a name.

She had a platform at a big institution. And I think this provided some of the courage, but we should have the courage already.

We should have the concern already because the Lord Jesus Christ, his word, his doctrine, the purity of that doctrine, the gospel message, all these things should be inspirations for us.

And those are the things that the gates of hell is not going to prevail against that. The church is going to continue. Crew may not, but the church will.

And the question for you, if you are in an organization like crew is. What, what do you want your life to be?

Your short little breath that God gives you here on this earth and the ministry and the people and all the tax tasks he gives for you that he's predestined for you beforehand.

Do you really want to be frustrated in organizations that are compromised, that muzzle you, that see to control you if you color outside the lines, even if outside the lines is the territory, the

Bible endorses and is fine with, and, you know, maybe even it's necessary to promote biblical teaching.

Do you want to contend with that just to, I don't know, go along to get along, or do you want to make your stand with the eternal institution, the eternal truth that God has established forever?

I said this before. I've never known the righteous to go hungry. I've seen people who have left crew and other organizations because they've taken in stands, mostly from other organizations that.

They're fine. They, the Lord's protected them in ways that you would not expect. I actually just talked to Russell Fuller the other day and I'm just, you know, like the economy, the way it is,

I was kind of like, Hey, you're doing all right. The Lord's still blessing him. Even after he came out against Southern seminary for what they were doing, you can do this.

You, you are capable. You, you have the Holy spirit. You have Christ. You have the word. You have the church to fall back on.

If the lenses Institute people can form their own organization. Then there's no reason that Orthodox Bible believing

Christians can't do the same. And I said it that way on purpose. Cause I don't think the lenses guys really are that some of them may have good intentions, but what they're promoting is much of it is false teaching.

And that goes for the people who have promoted all the LGBTQ plus normalization within crew.

I wouldn't want to be in their shoes on judgment day. I would rather be the one who was willing to sacrifice for the truth and let, let the chips fall where they may let the word of God do its work and let

God provide for you. So tomorrow's an important episode. I said all of what

I said today because of what I'm going to say tomorrow. And I wouldn't just encourage you stick around, stick around tomorrow.

You're going to, you're not going to want to miss the episode. It's going to be a longer one, but it's going to be one that if you are on crew staff, you're going to want to share, you're going to want to share this around with other people, people, you know, who are attached to crew in any way support crew.

I think they need to see it and they need to think through what their support is doing and what kinds of things it's funding.

And most of all, what kind of discernment level the leaders in the theological development department at crew, what kind of discernment level they have?

Cause I'll tell you what, if I were coming into crew, I'd probably have to fire everyone who approved of what

I'm going to talk about tomorrow. So with that, let me just end the podcast with a word from a sponsor.

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We've talked about Ridge Runner before. RidgeRunnerUSA .com is the website. These are some beautiful properties in Kentucky, right along the

Cumberland River is where we are right now. And I'm with Josh Abbatoid, who we've had on the program to talk about this.

Josh, are we on a plot? Where are we right now? Right now, we're at the boat ramp that this whole neighborhood will share.

So anybody who buys into the neighborhood can use it. It's not available to the public generally, but anybody that lives here can just put a boat in the water right here.

And the cool thing about this stretch of the river is it's still relatively small.

You can own property right up to the boundary of the river, but at the same time, you can put a boat in that water and sail down to Nashville, sail down to the

Mississippi River or the ocean, whatever you want. Cancun. If you want to go to Cancun, you can start here. For those who want to go to Cancun, yeah.

So tell me a little bit about the plot size. How many plots are here in this community? What size are they?

I don't know if you have prices yet in general for people to know. Yeah, so we have 50 lots available.

Most of them are about three quarters of an acre and they cost about $40 ,000.

And those are riverfront lots. And so you can build a house about 40 feet above the water, build a back deck, like literally where you can throw a line into the water and fish if you want to while you have your morning coffee.

So that's most of the lots. And then we do have some bigger lots that are not on the river, but they're bigger and they're more flexible so you can have little livestock on them and things like that.

And a lot of them have really good views, just not directly on the river. And those vary in pricing.

They're $50 ,000, $60 ,000. Now being out here in the country, people probably wonder, can

I get on the internet? Can I go to the grocery store? Do I still have some amenities? So what do you have?

What's around here? Yeah, so we're actually getting fiber optics installed right now. They're digging the trenches for the fiber optics lines to come in.

So there'll be one gig internet. Working will not be an issue. You know, your grocery stores be about 20, 25 minutes, you know, get to a decent grocery store from here.

There's also a lot of like, there's a lot of farms, you know, that are closer. There's actually a big

Amish community down the river. So there's options if you're kind of into the crunchier stuff, you want to get organic.

And then there's good options in the area. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you. Yeah. All right.

Well, Ridge Runner USA and tell them we sent you. God bless. Don't forget more coming tomorrow.