Truthscript Tuesday: Is It Possible to Reform the Mainline Denominations?

Everyone, welcome once again to the podcast. This is a special edition. This is TruthScript Tuesday, which is a very new podcast. As many of you know, I host the Conversations That Matter podcast and enjoy that greatly.

But one of the things that I want to do is bring everyone's attention to a new website, TruthScript, that has a lot of really great articles. Articles that are forward thinking, vision building, practical.

I don't want to just be complaining or not that that's all I do, but I don't want to just be talking about negative things happening and how should we rightly think about this. I want to talk about what can we do.

Part of the mission of TruthScript is to bring a positive vision as much as possible. We have been bereft of that for quite some time. This is the first podcast for TruthScript Tuesday, where we're going to start talking about positive things, positive vision for you as you live your life.

I have the privilege today of talking to someone who I know personally is a very fascinating individual. His name is Jacob Dell. He is a rector at St. Peter's Lithgow. You can go to stpeterslithgow .org if you want to find out more about his ministry.

He has a website, jwdell .com. I'm going to put all of these in the info section for the video. He is on the board also for the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion. What do they call you, reverend, I guess, for a vicar?

JACOB DELL, Ph .D.: Reverend, yeah, that's fine, yeah.

DAVE ELLIOTT, Ph .D.: They call you Vicar Dell?

JACOB DELL, Ph .D.: Yes.

DAVE ELLIOTT, Ph .D.: First time I've ever had a vicar on the podcast. Anyway, Reverend Dell, thank you so much for joining me and for writing this article for TruthScript on Reconquista and really talking about what you're doing in some ways, operating in a fairly liberal denomination.

I was just surprised to even find there were still people in that denomination trying to be salt and light. Tell us a little bit about yourself, how you came to be in the position you're in now, and what you can accomplish even in a denomination that doesn't share many of your theological beliefs anymore, at least on the, I guess, the local church level.

JACOB DELL, Ph .D.: Sure. Well, thanks, John. Thanks for having me on. Good to see you. Yes, so I am a priest in the Episcopal Church here in the Diocese of New York. My church is in Dutchess County, so north of the city, about 70, 80 miles, and I've been a priest for going—this will be my 10th year come November.

And this is the second church I've served. My last church was in the city of Parish in the northern tip of Manhattan. We used to call it upstate Manhattan, called Holy Trinity Inwood. And in both cases, I think I've had the chance to speak or preach to congregations that—well, I mean, the common reaction to my sermons, if people weren't immediately turned off by them, was, wow, why don't other preachers sound like this?

And my answer was, well, because I'm actually trying to go through the text here that we've just read and explain what it means to you and preach the gospel. And so that's sort of my story. I'm married.

I have children. They're mostly grown by now and had a desire to be a minister from a pretty young age. I was baptized when I was 14 in the Presbyterian Church USA. And life took its various turns, and I kind of was a late vocation, so I was ordained a priest when I was 40.

So how do you go from—with your theological convictions especially, and especially going from the PCUSA, that's interesting to me too. Walk me through how you got to the Episcopalian Church, because that just seems like not the natural course of events.

Yeah, there's a lot of people who say they're cradle Episcopalians, which means they've been born in the Episcopal Church. Most of us, I think, have come in through some other route. I may be an example of one of the earliest examples of a nun in the sense I was born in 1973.

I was Generation X. My parents—my mother was a former Roman Catholic, my dad an ex-Presbyterian. They decided not to have me baptized. They decided not really to raise me in anything. And then my parents got divorced.

My mother moved, and I moved out to Los Angeles, California, and she put me into a Catholic school. So I got some pretty early exposure to Christian community. We had Thursdays would be Scripture Day, and we'd get the readings for the following Sunday, and there were school masses and things like that.

When I was in eighth grade, all my friends were getting confirmed, and I thought, I want to get confirmed too. That's when my dad kind of got religion and said, well, you know, the family's Presbyterian.

So I joined the Presbyterian Church at that point. I actually went with him to church one day, and I fell in love with the hymns that they were singing. The Catholics were doing all this sort of guitar folk masses at the time, and so the Presbyterians were doing these old-fashioned hymns, and I really hadn't heard them before, and I loved them.

So I joined the Presbyterian Church in high school, freshman year of high school. But then when I got to college, I went to college in Connecticut, and there weren't a lot of Presbyterians around. It was more of a congregational place.

The Episcopal Church also was very well represented. I had this kind of experience in England the summer before, where I was staying at Oxford University, and I would go to the Church of England chapel services there during the summer and really kind of fell in love with the Church of England at that point, and so more or less kind of became, you know, it didn't turn my back on PCUSA for theological reasons.

It just, there was, you know, an opportunity to go to church in the Episcopal Church in college, and I found the liturgy and the prayer book very, something that drew me. Yeah, okay, so that's fascinating.

So when you.

Were at Yale, and you went to Yale Divinity, right? No, I went to Yale as an undergraduate,.

And then about 10 years later, I went to Neshoda, which is an Episcopal seminary in Wisconsin,.

Okay, and that's, you've been around. I've been around, yeah. Yeah, all right, so you go to an Episcopal seminary, and then you come out, you get your, where's your first church that you were.

Erected? Well, I actually worked for a little while at the denominational headquarter offices in New York City, which was interesting. That wasn't a pastoral ministry. I was working in their communications office, so it's fascinating to get to sort of see how a major, you know, international denomination really works, and then in 2015, my first pastorate was,.

That was when I took my first church as solo pastor. Interesting. Okay, so you're a solo pastor now, so you've been pastoring now, you said 2015, right? So you've been pastoring now for seven years at two different churches, three different churches?

Two different churches, yeah. Okay, and so now you live, actually, you're not far from me, just so the audience knows. That's how we met, actually, was in person, and you find yourself, though, in a position where, and this is the interesting thing that we want to talk about in this podcast, where you are in a denomination that, I don't know what the stats would be, but the most people in your position would not agree with you on some pretty fundamental things, I would.

Think. Yeah, certainly, that's something that's changed in the 30 years I've been sort of involved with this, because the Episcopal Church went, as is the whole Anglican communion at this point, on going through a schism, and so I think one of the things that this article talks about, and that you've talked about in other podcasts, and it's just sort of discussed is, you know, why do quote-unquote conservatives always have to leave and start something new?

Isn't that a fundamentally unconservative thing to do, right? I mean, and maybe the argument is that because they've been completely ineffective conserving anything in the places where they are, so, and there are a lot of reasons for that, and, you know, when I was in seminary, that was when the split was happening in the Episcopal Church, and so, you know, I'd go into chapel at the beginning of the semester, and we were all in the same church, and then by the end of it, half of us weren't, so it was an interesting time, so I think it's been kind of a, through attrition, that I'm left with, you know, a handful of others, but not as few as you would think, who are, you know,.

Trying to keep faith. Yeah, well, you say in your article here, which I'll pull up so everyone can see, you talk about, I guess, some others who are trying to be salt and light in various denominations and discussing this idea of taking back or restoring, really, these denominations that have gone off the rails, so you talk about this one individual, Redeemed Zoomer, a YouTube handle for someone who has the mission to restore, in this case, it's the PCUSA, so not the PCA.

We talk about the PCA sometimes on my other podcast, Conversations That Matter, but this is the more, much more liberal PCUSA, and he's saying, you know, there's something can be done here. What are the thoughts of, I guess, he's the main one that you're talking about in this article, but what's the strategy that he wants to employ and others like him for doing this, because it seems like such a daunting task.

It is a daunting task, and I think, you know,.

He sounds pretty young, and he reminds me a lot of myself when I was, you know, in high school and college and really wondering and thinking the same things that he was wondering about, so, you know, I'd go to my, at that time, Presbyterian church, and I'd be the only person under 30 there.

I mean, there were some children, little young children, but where was my age group? And, you know, I went to, I did one year at a Presbyterian-affiliated prep school, but it had almost no, you know, visible identity as a Presbyterian school at all, so I would, you know, ask these questions as, what happened to these organizations?

The same thing at Yale, you know, when I was at Yale, there was still some vestigial Christianity left. The chaplain, I think, of the university had to be a Congregationalist minister. That changed even when I was there.

There were still hymns actually sung at the baccalaureate and the freshman assembly, and they, you know, one was, Oh God, beneath thy guiding hand, our exiled fathers crossed the waves, you know, and it was all about the Puritans coming to found the New Haven colony, which just sent chills down my spine, but I think other people either, you know, didn't care or didn't know what he was even referring to, so I, you know, have been on this sort of question, why, how do all these institutions lose their identity, and what was the explanation for that drift?

So he seems to be wondering, redeems Zuma the same thing, but so he, and what he thinks is very, it's intriguing and somewhat, I think, plausible, which is to say that, you know, if you are, if you can get four or five faithful believing Christians, biblical Christians, to walk into the downtown Protestant church, mainline Protestant church somewhere, whether it's Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist, Lutheran, whatever, you know, what are you going to find?

You're going to find a large, a big, large space with very few people in it, and it's ripe, he says, for just sort of colonizing it and going in and saying, okay, you know, bringing some fresh blood and some life to it and joining its committees and joining its leadership boards, whether those are sessions or vestries or board of elders or what, or what have you, and then really sort of, you know, grabbing the reins from an aging generation that's dying out.

I mean, the statistics for the mainline church are terrible at this point. We're looking at a demographic collapse over the next five to ten years that, you know, more than one study says that there will not be an Episcopal church, or there will not be a Methodist church, or maybe not a Methodist church, but some of these, you know, some of these churches simply will statistically not exist with, you know, 2030, 2040, whatever you want to say.

So his idea is that, you know, why go through the trouble of starting something new when you can come and reanimate something that's old? And what he also says is that with that goes all of these legacy connections, these legacy, you know, these churches are embedded in their communities.

They've often, you know, sponsored or developed a local hospital system or schools or, you know, there's, and he's right, there's 300 plus years of deep connection between these old Protestant denominations and the fabric of this country.

So his hope is to reactivate that where you can. I think the downside of where it's not really necessarily understanding is, you know, biblical Christians are in short supply to begin with, but, you know, these churches all have a lot of problems.

And my last church, you know, was, was, was lots of deferred maintenance, lots of capital issues, you know, million, millions of dollars, right. So to go in there and really fix it up is beyond the capacity of a handful of, you know, zoomers to, you know, they don't have the pocketbook for that.

Right. And maybe at some point you got to ask, is it worth throwing good money after bad as well?

Yeah. Okay. So these are all prudential things to weigh, but for those who, let's say are in the Southern Baptist convention or the PCA and they're watching things play out and they're saying, man, you know, we would have to, like, I've said this a lot of times with the Southern Baptist, they'd have to really bring their friends and a lot of them to a convention to win.

And that seems to never, at least the last few years, that has not happened. They're outnumbered every time. And you know, the, the line that they often give is, well, most of the churches are with us.

That could be, but if they don't show up for your annual meeting, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how many of them are for you. You have to be able to bring your crowd and the interesting thing, cause and outvote them.

But if you walked into a PC USA church or a Episcopalian church in your community, you could probably, I think what he's saying is that hurdle is, is much lower. You don't have to jump as high. You can bring in even, I don't know, 20 people and you might be able to control the church like because the population is so old and dying.

And I think also evangelical Lutherans might be in this. I went to an evangelical Lutheran church not long ago and same thing. I turned around and I thought, well, my wife and I are like the youngest here.

You know, it's everyone had gray hair. He's absolutely right. Yeah.

And you know, mine is a small country church right now. So, you know, we probably only hold 90 people in it. And so we're, you know, we're averaging 45, 50 people on a Sunday and the church feels full, but there are churches that are, you know, five to 10 people is what the average Sunday attendance is.

And they're five times the size. So yes, if you could walk in with 20 people who had, you know, some, you know, stability in their lives by, you know, that, I mean, they've got local jobs, they have incomes, they maybe own homes and they're willing to make a multi-year commitment.

No reason not to think you couldn't turn an individual congregation around.

Yeah. It's such an interesting thought because I think the hurdle would be in the minds of people who would normally be the ones to do that, that, well, if we, if we do that, what kind of grief are we going to go through?

What kind of battles are we going to have to fight? Most people want to avoid those kinds of things, but if you, I don't know what it is in every case, but in some of these cases, I mean, the churches are big, beautiful buildings with lots of assets with, or they're endowed, you know, they have just, I don't know.

I think the art alone is worth worthy of preservation and it won't be preserved. I know, well, you know, because you live in the same area that I do, roughly speaking, some of these churches that are old and beautiful with stained glass are now bars.

Yeah. Condominiums or yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I remember someone I knew years ago moved into an apartment in Kingston and I went to visit her and I walk in and I'm like, this seems like a church. It's like, oh yeah, cause it was, they just took the pews out and I'm like, oh my goodness.

You know, it looks like it would have been a beautiful church at one time. So, so there is something of value there and that's something I guess each person has to weigh and they have to assess what kind of level of commitment they have, what situation they're going to be getting into.

It might be worth, if you're someone considering this, just maybe visiting your local PCUSA church or something and just, you know, I don't know how that would.

All work, but maybe doing your homework. Well, and the other thing too is, and I don't know if this is as true in the evangelical churches, but in the main line, in the Episcopal, speaking for the Episcopal church, at least there's a, there's a clergy shortage, right?

So you're, you're going to, you know, you, you are looking at you can, the church you might walk into on a given Sunday may not even have a regular minister. They might get somebody once a month or twice a month.

And so, you know, there, there is an opportunity there as well, I think too, you know, because you're not necessarily going to run into opposition from an established authority figure.

Now, how does it work? I'm just curious. I know every denomination is different, but in the Episcopal church, let's say it's a very liberal left-leaning church, but it's got five people and you know, it doesn't have a pastor who's there often.

It's like a circuit riding situation where once a month they have a pastor and you go in there with 20 friends, let's say you want to plan a church in that area. And you figure, well, this is better. It is easier.

We have a building and all of that. If you join the church and then you start voting, right, for the reforms and changes and all of that, what, who, who controls the church? The denomination still has the church, right?

Right. I mean, the polity is going to vary from church to church. I mean, I think there are actually congregational churches a couple of miles from us here in Connecticut that, you know, you and I would both be happy to be in because their polity is such that the congregation still holds all the cards, whether it's the deed to the property or who they call as a minister.

Right. So, you know, and, and in the Episcopal church has been more hierarchical and sort of a trust model where property is held in trust. So, you know, you're not, you're not, you know, you can't just walk in and sort of take it over.

And I mean, there are going to be checks and balances along the way. But by and large, you know, if a church is in good standing and paying its sort of assessment, which is the sort of fee to be a part of the domination and it's, it's canonically the rules allow that church to, to function and exist.

And, you know, the doctrine and discipline of the, of the Protestant Episcopal church is such that, you know, the, it, I would say this, it's still a church, right? It's not the rotary. It's not a Kiwanis or a lodge or anything like that.

It's, it's, and this is where I would take issue with the word Reconquista, which I think what we're talking about here is just reformation. It's, I mean, it's, it's, it's the, you know, it's going in and recalling, you know, calling a church back to what it is, not it, which is, you know, if you went into the lodge or the, you know, the road, the rotary and said, we got to start doing Bible study.

That's a bit contrary to what that organization is. But if you go into a church and you say, you have a Bible here, you read out of it, you know, a lot of it, you, you sing hymns that are completely Trinitarian and Orthodox and, and, and, and talk about the atonement and, you know, and that's one of the things I found is that when I start to open this stuff up, yeah, people will be like, we haven't heard this before.

And some people don't like it, but a lot of people think this is, this is what's been missing. One, one woman said, and you know, one woman said before I started preaching at this church, Christ was missing.

And, and, and I thought, well, that's, that's, you know, what preacher doesn't want to hear that. Right. But it does, but that's, I think all we have to do. And I'm speaking more as a pastor and a preacher is, is be faithful to what's, what's there.

These are, these are, you know, the first few chapters of the book of Revelation are helpful here in the sense that, you know, these churches Jesus is speaking to and addressing them are, are in trouble and are backsliding in some cases, but he doesn't speak to them as anything but churches.

He simply calls them back to repentance. And so there's power in that either, whether you're going in as a pastor or you're going in as a, as a group of committed Christians to simply call these organs, these institutions, these congregations back to what they are.

And I think we can't forget that. Yeah. And field, right. You know, we don't need to go looking for it. It's right here.

Yeah. Yeah. The, some of the issues, the theological issues you brought up, I'm sure are definitely in play in a denomination like the Episcopal church, but there's also these social issues that are causing, I would say more strife now than those theological issues.

In other words, being the only church in town without a rainbow flag, let's say if you're in a blue area, which I think you, maybe that describes your situation. I don't know. That will gain more attention and more pushback than let's say you embrace the divinity of Christ.

Whereas perhaps other priests don't. Right. Like that's a lesser issue to people in these blue areas. Then where's the rainbow flag? Why don't you do gay marriages? That kind of thing. So, you know, how has that been?

Cause, cause there's, I'm not saying, I don't want to say it's a political element, but it is, I guess it's a social element that you have to be aware of when you go into these situations that the ground you're fighting on might not be the ground you want to fight on.

I'd much rather fight about whether Christ is divine or not. Right. But this, you have a lot to lose. And so you're going into a situation where some of those people in your congregation probably don't agree with your biblical views of sexual ethics.

Right. Has that been a cause of friction or to get you.

Removed or anything like that? Well, that's where I think you have to really just decide and discern carefully. Like, are you called here? Is this, is this your calling? Right. So the calling of a preacher, the calling of a pastor is going to be different than the calling of a family that is looking for a place to go to church.

Right. So, um, I think, you know, spend some time in discerning this. Right. And again, I think this is where language of reformation and biblical faithfulness is better than Reconquista. Right. Cause it's Reconquista is a little bit like, okay, we're going to go play, replant the flag and take it back.

Right. So that, you know, you're already setting up sort of confrontational, um, you know, uh, language, language there. So what I have found is that two things, you know, and I was thinking about this before the podcast started, what, what did I want to say about it?

And then just looking back on my own sort of how did, how did I navigate all of this, all of the, uh, you know, all these years, because this has been developing for 30 years, it's really come to a head in the last few.

Um, and it's a process of at least for me of finding my voice, right. Of being able to simply say, this is what I believe. Um, once I found that I found people immediately starting to try to draw me into an argument about why, and I'm able to give reasons why, but here's another thing I've discovered is that the people who want to engage you in that kind of argument really don't care what you, what the biblical reason is or what the reason is.

They just want to use it as a gotcha, as something to get you with. Uh, and so that's where I think, you know, where Jesus, the temptation, I think for someone like me is to, do you know the word casuistry, which basically means to always come up with a really clever argument for that, that is true.

Um, it's, it's, it's very, it's wrapped in so much, you know, um, so much language that you don't really know what the guy is, is trying to say or not. Maybe, maybe I'm being casuistic right now, but the point is that the point is, is that, um, there's a lot of power in simply witnessing to the, to the word of God, to opening the Bible and saying, I don't, I don't do same sex marriages because this proportion of this chapter in scripture, Genesis one and two, Leviticus 18, Romans one.

I cannot reconcile that with these, with these passages and then read them and then ask them, can you reconcile this with these passages? And the answer is almost always no. Or the answer is, well, you know, that's just a book or that's just what some men wrote down.

Or, you know, we don't really, you know, of interpretation, whatever they want to come back at it with. And then, then I think the, the next move there is not so much to go to drill down into an argument of, uh, whether something is right or wrong, but to really use that to expose someone's unbelief and say, okay, we could have that conversation, but your, your approach is you're not a believer.

And then, then that's sort of, well, how can you say that? And I, and I've had people say that they, you know, in writing, they've denied the virgin birth. They've denied the resurrection. They don't believe in sin.

They don't believe in heaven or hell, but they still consider themselves a good Christian. And, and I just sort of say, you know, let's walk, if they'll even want to, in a lot of people don't ever want to talk to me again.

Right. But if they do want to talk to me, I say, well, just let's walk through all of that. How can you call yourself a Christian when you every single tenant of, of what, you know, your faith is. And right, right, right.

Yeah. Why are you saying the apostle's creed? You know, why are you volunteering to read out of, you know, cause we have volunteer lectures or whatever. Why, you know, why are you volunteering to read out of this book when you, when you hate what it says?

Right. You know, it's like, you're the one reading out of the book and you're, you're, you're accusing me or blaming me for, for trying to follow what it says or teach what it says in clear language. And so do you see what I'm getting at there?

It's not so much arguing the point because they don't want to argue the point. It's more about let the word of God do, you know, work its power, which is of conviction. It'll either convict someone to unto judgment or I'll convict someone unto repentance.

And I love.

That. Yeah. Examples of both. Yeah. You're putting the word of God back into the church. It was, it left if someone took it and now you're putting it back and it was there, the big Bible. Yeah. Left turn was always there.

And that's yeah. But, but you're putting the, the T you're actually opening it up, reading it, teaching it and applying it. And people are going to fall on, on one side or the other. It's a sword and it cuts.

And, um, and so you're just, you're going in there with the sword, uh, drawn. And so that's, um, that that's important. I mean, I have a lot of respect for you to, to do that. I think most people wouldn't want to be in a situation where the, I mean, most pastors want a lot of respect.

I mean, if anything is I've learned over the last few years is that pastors, it doesn't matter what side of the woke debate they're on. Um, a lot of them, especially the higher levels you get in, you know, conferences and organizations, the denominations, missions agencies, they really want respect.

They, they love, uh, the, when people like what they have to say. And of course, if you spend most of your time talking and producing materials, you want people to appreciate it. And you have to be prepared to go into a situation where you have a long-term view of, I'm not going to get instant respect here probably.

Or if I do, that's just God's grace. I'm not expecting it. I have to, I have to be in here for the long haul to let the word of God do its work. So it's, it, instead of reaping that harvest, it's churning the soil.

And, um, and, and so, you know, that's to me, that's the hard part. I think for a lot of people with this is, is it worth it? Is it possible? Is it, will we even get fruit? Like, well, those plants even come up, you know, yeah.

And you.

Might not. And like, is it still worth it? Well, I mean, I, I feel like it's a spiritual battle every Sunday morning. Um, you know, the, you sometimes on your podcast, you say something like, you know, have a happy or blessed Lord's day and, and, and you're looking forward to it.

And, but I'm sometimes wake up on Sunday with dread because I've got to go back into the ring. Right. And so it's, it's, so I was praying in the, in the church yesterday morning before the service, um, really just asking God to use the word and convict people.

Right. And, and what, you know, someone came up after the service yesterday and again, and I hear this, this is one of the rewards of doing this in a mainline church, an older gentleman, right. And church goer for most of his life said to me, I never have heard this.

It's like, I've never heard this passage before or, and I've never had it explained before. Could I meet with you to talk about it? Like, yes. I mean, that is why you're paying me a salary. I mean, it's, it's, it's, is, is to sit here and, and, and work through the word with you in this.

Um, and, and, and, and I thought, so there's, there's, you know, there's fruit, right. Um, and this is, like I said, you know, you look at the, uh, the ministry of the apostles, right. They, Paul, where'd he go?

First stop in every town is the synagogue. Right. He, and they really, I was just been reading, rereading acts this morning. They're really somewhat surprised that both the Samaritans and then the Gentiles, Cornelius and all of them get the word, right.

They're shocked by this. They, they don't expect the Gentiles to get the word. Um, and so I wonder sometimes if evangelicals, I speak, I mean, I speak as an evangelical theologically, but not from the, you know, the SPC or the PCA or even the Anglican church in North America tradition.

I, I, um, I, I wonder if sometimes those in the evangelical movement are not understanding that the, the, the Gentiles can be brought in, right. They're, they're preaching to, you know, I, I don't know what it's like to go to church with a hundred or 200 or 300 believers, right.

I don't know what that's like. Um, uh, it, it, it's, it's, it's so, you know, when evangelicals, um, their vision of a church is that, oh, we all got, we all have to be kind of, uh, uh, you know, believe it, you know, born again, and that is what you want.

But, um, you know, when you, when you have existing churches out there that need revival and need reformation, um, it may be a little bit like what the apostles discovered when the Samaritans and the, and the Gentiles actually were given the word.

Um,.

Does that make sense? Yeah. Well, it's the distinction between the visible and the invisible church. There's churches that don't have a lot of people who are part of the invisible church or the kingdom of God yet or ever.

And they have a number who are part of the visible church, the temporal body, uh, that, uh, meets there. And as Jesus said, you, you, you tell at the harvest the difference between the wheat and the tares.

So it's, every church has this dynamic. Baptist church have this dynamic. They try to get, I mean, they, they want to keep a purity by making sure that you're baptized when you profess faith instead of automatically before that time.

But even in that setting, um, you're going to have children coming to church who have not been baptized yet, or if they have, they have done it for the wrong motives or something. And there's no way to make that foolproof.

You're never going to have a church where 100%. I shouldn't say never, but it's, it's rare to have a church where 100 of everyone attending there is absolutely saved. Um, as soon as someone has a baby and they, you know, it's like that percentage is off.

So, um, so what you're talking about going into church is that it's a visible church, but in, they are lacking that invisible part. They don't have, maybe they have a few members who are saved, but they're starving sheep, whatever the case is.

And, you know, I, I guess, I mean, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it would seem to me that if you're going to be in that situation, you, for your own sanity would need some sort of fellowship beyond right.

That local congregate, if that's all you're getting, then you're going to be starving for those spiritual gifts that you need. So it's not an ideal situation in every way, but um, you have a vision you're, you're going somewhere.

You're a missionary. How do you do that? How do you have, um, fellowship in the, in the midst of that with.

Actual believers? So I think in every one of these denominations, old line denominations, there's still going to be probably some organizations that, uh, have formed around, um, faithful biblical, uh, witness.

So for instance, in the Anglican, um, communion in the, in the Episcopal church right here, just in the United States, you've got the evangelical fellowship in the Anglican communion. Uh, uh, you've got something called communion partners, which is a handful of bishops in the Episcopal church who are left to maintain a biblical understanding of marriage.

Um, you have something called the prayer book society, which, which promotes the traditional book of common prayer. Um, so I would say that, you know, for the first few years of my parish ministry, I, I really just kind of kept my shoulder to the wheel and, and threw myself into the parish.

And then four or five years into it, I thought, man, I'm missing something. Right. And, and it turned out to be exactly what you're saying. So, you know, good old Google led me to a couple of these, these sites and some of them I had known about, or, you know, had heard about.