Is the Evangelical Free Church Going Woke?

The Evangelical Free Church, Ordination, and the Question of Wokeness

Welcome once again, everyone, to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, and we're going to talk about an organization that I haven't mentioned, at least often. I may have, in passing, mentioned the Evangelical Free Church before, but we're going to actually talk about the Evangelical Free Church today.

And I have had emails and questions about whether or not this particular organization or some considered a denomination has, whether it's gone woke, social justice, all of that. And I haven't known how to answer that because I haven't researched it deeply.

But today we have with us Pastor Craig Chambers, who is the pastor at the Peak Evangelical Free Church in Pueblo West, Colorado. And he recently returned his ordination. He's been in the Evangelical Free Church for about three decades.

And as a working in that particular organization. And so this is kind of a big deal. He has researched it and he has extensive notes and sources. If you want to reach out to him, his email is in the info section and you can do that and you can get a hold of all of those sources and notes.

But I just like to start off by thanking you, Pastor Chambers, for being brave enough to and gracious enough to answer the invitation that I extended to you to be on the show today. Thank you. I appreciate it, Tom.

So let's start with just your story a little bit. You just returned your ordination and after being in the church for decades, I would think that would be a difficult thing to do and probably not a decision that you took lightly, I would imagine.

No, it wasn't. In fact, it took me nine months from the time I really understood some things were going on with the evangelical church to the time I actually returned my ordination because I wanted to take my time.

I wanted to look at what the evidence was. I don't want to have any kind of false things said. And I will say from the outset, I consider the leadership of the EFCA to be brothers. And so, therefore, I deal with them as brothers.

But I, by necessity, had to be a strongly worded kind of document to say, here's what is wrong and what you need to repent of. And so this is something that just came about because I ran up into what was happening in our country, what was happening in the believing world.

And so I just finally figured out I needed to explore all these things. Yeah, I'm glad you did.

Man, there's so much information. And I'm sure there's even more than you uncover that could be talked about. And I'm sure we'll just hit the high points today. What was the first thing, though, for you that made you question whether or not the evangelical free church was going in the right direction?

It's been a long kind of process in terms of understanding what was happening with EFCA because I've always met with all my brothers in terms of pastors. And we have these meetings all the time. And I'm going to explain EFCA in a moment.

But just to kind of give you that story of what got me looking, we have a district superintendent with pastors. And we would meet in different locations. Ours is the southern part of Colorado. And so we have a meeting.

And in those meetings, there was a difficulty that I knew I was aware of. I could sense it between the district superintendent and I and maybe a couple pastors as well. I just didn't know what was wrong.

And so I usually look at myself first. And that's what I did. And this has been over a period of 17 years. And in doing so, I just kept recognizing there's pragmatism here. And finally, what turned on my light bulb was last fall or a year, whatever.

It was a period of time where it got me started probably in the spring of 21. And then that's where I finally came to my conclusions to look into it deeply around November. But in the spring of 21, he turned to me and said a disparaging remark about John MacArthur, because I really appreciate John MacArthur.

And he said, John MacArthur thinks the Bible is sufficient for everything. And of course, he was criticizing me for thinking that the Bible is sufficient for all things. And I think it is. And so I finally figured out it was the pragmatic view that he had that I wasn't going along with the program.

And he didn't like me for that reason. And not that he didn't like me personally, I suppose, but he just didn't like me for that reason. So that's what really got me. It just clicked. And that's when I began to start to study what was happening.

And so here I am.

Wow. So the light bulb went off and you thought, wait a minute, or went on. And you said, I need to look into this more, see what's going on. Pragmatism was kind of the first thing. But this has gotten into the social justice stuff.

I mean, that's where it's led you. And you've seen some evidence that the church is going in the social justice direction. I know you had said you wanted to explain, because it's relevant for this, kind of what the nature of the organization or denomination.

Or I don't know how exactly you categorize the FCA. But why don't you do that? And then maybe explain to us kind of where have they gone social justice? Kind of where's the beef here? You're not just saying that, obviously.

You have sources that are pointing this direction.

The EFCA’s History, Polity, and Claim of Biblical Sufficiency

And I have to say, social justice is not the main thing. But it is a big thing. And we'll get to those points. But starting with the Evangelical Free Church, the Evangelical Free Church, that's a short way of saying Evangelical Free Church of America, came about from a mixture of people who found it difficult to remain in Europe in their status churches.

Back in Europe, you have churches are sponsored or supported by the state in earlier days. After the Reformation, after the battles and the things that took place, everybody took sides. And so you have England with the Anglican.

You have Belgium and Germany and all the different countries there. You would divide up between Catholic and the Reformation folks. Well, in Sweden and in Norway, you had two different groups, just two different countries.

And the state supported the state religion. And of course, that would be the Lutheran Church there. And people who wanted to not be entangled with the state government through entanglement with the state church, left the state church and started what they called free churches.

And that's what's known in Europe is if you're a free church person, you're not attached to a church that is supported and entangled with the government or with the state church as well. So that's what it meant to be free.

So when you say Evangelical Free Church, they came over here. And by the time 1950 rolled about, the Norwegian folks and the Swedish folks joined together and decided to create this Evangelical Free Church of America.

And so when they did that, what they meant by free was that they were not going to take state supported funds or be part of a state religion. By religion means the religion of Christianity, but the state's version of it.

And so that's what made them free. And the second thing, though, that makes them free in their minds is the fact that they were congregational in every church so that the church was free to determine their own faith and practice and within certain boundaries.

So each church is autonomous in the Evangelical Free Church, but interdependent. And so to remain clear about this, they're a bigger tent in regards to both theology and practice. So each church can lean one way or another on many issues like baptism.

Some are pedo, some are credo. I would be credo, of course. And then having an Armenian or a Calvinist view, I'd be Calvinist. Each church can hold one view or practice, but every church has to allow for any other Evangelical Free Church that a person that's a member of one goes to somewhere else.

You have to allow that person to, of course, hold their views, which, OK, anybody does that anyway. But that doesn't necessarily have to change, of course, that church that they go to. Of course, then, well, anyway, that doesn't have to be.

Every church is autonomous. But we just have to remember that we accept those around and we accept them in graciousness and humility is the idea. And then, of course, bring them around to what the truth is as we meet together and go through the Word of God.

So the mantra of the free church is, where is it written? Which, of course, brings about the mind of sola scriptura, the scripture alone. Where is it written? So everything that you have, everything that you believe needs to come from, of course, the Word of God.

And that is what our authority is. I think, however, this biblical sufficiency has a different viewpoint that's developed among the Evangelical Free Church leadership and many of the pastors as well. And this is where I differ with them.

So my difference is, of course, the pragmatism that they're practicing and the biblical sufficiency that they will say they believe wholeheartedly. And yet by their actions, they show it's not that kind of biblical sufficiency.

At least my view is correct. So why have I left the ESEA? I will kind of get into that now. And I've just said it. It's biblical sufficiency and pragmatism. But it has to do with the source of what informs me and what informs them in their practice.

So I believe, as I think you realize, that biblical sufficiency, being biblical or going to the Word of God and believing the Word of God is sufficient for all of life practice. And I've come to believe that from the evidence, they do not.

And so I'm going to kind of go through that evidence. And when I say pragmatic, let me kind of define that too. I mean, a pragmatic approach is one that's intended to sort of woo people to Christ by making the gospel embraceable by the lost in answer to their needs.

It's to make Christ an attractive alternative. And on the face of it, it's not an issue of bringing the gospel or the good news of his death and resurrection, glory and return. That's there. There's the structure of the gospel.

It's there, of course. But it's a matter of acting as though it is by our efforts and that people are overcome with this attraction and that we're the ones that are being the architects and the enablers of the lost being brought into the kingdom.

And worse, this extends to disciples. While some may say all the right words of believing God for these things, the practice speaks to something different. It is what is practice that seems to make the gospel less than it is and to end up being the means to pollute the stream of believing disciples.

So what's my evidence? Well, I began with the social justice thing. Did you have any questions before we go on there, John? No, I think you're on a good roll here.

And I think the sequence you're choosing to go down is perfect. So, yeah, please keep going.

All right. So I began with the social justice system. And of course, it was fighting racism with racism. And then I went into the feminist system or what's become that. And we started to have now women pastors.

I've looked at the shameful silence of the leadership and that they've had other EFC pastors. And we'll go into that too. Who begged for answers in writing, but they were ignored to the point that they and their churches left.

And the cry from the EFC leaders against Christian nationalism, which actually is against certain people who are Christian nationalists. We'll get to that. But they would then be pushing their form of Christian nationalism, which would be from the leftward side.

And then the promotion of the godless teaching, of course, with non EFC conferences being offered and supported by them financially as well. And sending people there, these conferences that are not EFC conferences, but are just horrendous ones.

And therefore, through their support of it, they're acting in disregard of what they say they believe. So much of this is in my letter. That I wrote. There's my cover letter there. In which I tell them that I differ in sufficiency of scripture.

And then I explain it why in about seven pages. And then I have two pages of references to that. And so just to start, I was assured by many, that there were no woke people in the national leadership, nor in the district.

There's 17 districts that make up Evie Free. And remember, Evie Free is an autonomous kind of thing. So supposedly, the national does not have authority over the churches. But by their teaching, of course, they're exercising the authority of bending the wheel towards what their teaching is.

And so therefore, they're kind of growing in a certain kind of power. And they're pushing things through the national organization. And limiting others who would say, no, wait, this is not right. And so they're limited to people that they want to push along.

And so that has been a problem. And that's what brings us to this whole thing of them saying that they are not woke. And neither are any of the district superintendents. That's just simply flat out not true.

Our national leadership promotes things like this. The cross and racial reconciliation. Jarvis Williams, I'm sure you're familiar with Jarvis Williams. He's an SBA. Yeah, he's a false teacher.

Yeah, he's a false teacher. But that's interesting. So when you say that they were promoting it, was it in an official capacity? Was it posted on their Facebook? So that's on their website then?

This is on their website. Evangelicals more broadly. And EFC more specifically, are people of the book, where it is written. And then they promote him. So I'm not saying anything they're not saying.

You go to their website, you'll find this talk. You'll find this statement then.

That is an audio thing. You can listen to it. Download and listen to it. Here I just looked up Jarvis Williams. Things that he's written, right? Oh, yeah. Of course, he writes and says that, well, he redefines critical race theory to include all the groups of the others.

And the others being, it's not just people of color or something of that nature. It has to do with even if you're male or it's another group. And a female, Jew, Gentile, so forth. All these different things, slave or free.

He considers as a part of racial... Reconciliation. Reconciliation that we need to have. Now, our district superintendent stayed over, a district over in Kansas, writes this. And I'll just quote it on March 11th, 2021.

In his article, his name is Colby Kisner. The Midwest district superintendent of whom we're told none of it were woke. He writes an article about white privilege. And he says, quote, I think it's fair to say that the incarnate Jesus had all kinds of privilege, even if one doesn't care for the term itself.

That included an ethnic privilege in certain contexts, but also gender, lineage, righteousness, access to the Father and the Spirit, and of course, divinity. It's not a question of whether or not he had something called privilege, but what he did with it, he used his privilege to give privilege to others without guilt.

So then he put out other resources that are woke and passionate with the districts. And I'm just, I look at this and I'm going, okay, Jesus had a ethnic privilege. Did he communicate that to us? Was that given without guilt?

No. He didn't communicate his gender to us. I mean, we're male and female still. He didn't communicate his lineage to us. I'm not of the tribe of, you know, Judah. Righteousness, yes. Access to the Father by the Spirit, sure.

But he did not communicate his divinity to us. So to use the idea that he communicates things to us by his privileges means, of course, that we're communicating stuff, but we then have to delineate what he does and what he does not.

And so it's not a biblical approach. It's a pragmatic approach. Our EFCA president, Kevlin Copland, and he's the, he is our president, or was mine, but he's the president of EFCA. And he's representative, of course, of our leadership, and he has not publicly acknowledged his woke statements are his resources, or what he finds objectable and challenged on it by those who question him.

What they do do is they repeat, we're not woke. And it's a cover. That's not a resolution. So let's move on to then some other things concerning social justice. And here is where I'll follow mostly what I have in my letter.

But I will show you what's said here. We have Greg Strand. He's sort of like the resident theologian for the Evie Free. He also is over all the ordination aspects of the Evangelical Free Church, examining the doctrine of men and things of this nature for ordination.

He writes in his Juneteenth article here. He talks about, of course, listening, learning, loving. He goes into standpoint epistemology. And he talks about lamenting. He says in there, I'll just kind of quote this, we call our nation to lament, to repent.

And then my thing is, he's calling us to do this. But he's saying that these things as though we have not objectively done so. And I believe our nation has repented of the sin that they had in terms of slavery and.

Racial prejudice. Go ahead. Is there anything concrete that like when you repent, you're changing? You're diametrically opposed to the direction you were going. So you turn around and you go the opposite way.

So what is exactly? I mean, is there anything he puts in there as far as his recommendation to two churches on what they should be doing in order to repent?

Or is it just listening? And of course, it is to call us to a repentance of lament. He called us all together to lament.

So just get together, feel bad about it.

Well, there's that. And they're saying that we have not objectively repented of this ever. And he's wrong.

Well, if it's Juneteenth, he's talking about slavery. I mean, that's what that's about. So what do you I mean, is there a guy in your congregation that owns slaves? I don't think so. Like, so I find this a lot.

It's not just him, but it's like a lot of denominations where they make these statements. Jarvis Williams, to his credit, will tell you what you ought to do. And it's he has a whole list of things that he expects churches to do.

But most of the time, it's just lament. Listen, there's really nothing concrete you can do except just feel really guilty about it, apparently. And I guess Jesus doesn't come into it anywhere to absolve you of this guilt.

So it ends up being just a manipulative tool that's wielded to for political purposes, really, to neutralize anyone who would stand against BLM or CRT or any of that. And that's so it sounds to me like that's what's going on in the free church as well.

The same thing that's going on in so many other denominations. It's just it's rhetoric without any actual biblical grounded action, actions that can be taken. And it's just an accusation. And it's what the devil does.

Accuser of the brother, just an accusation, but without any way of getting rid of that accusation or the guilt that comes along with it.

So we do move in. If I go past Greg Strand now, we do move into another TNT article that they have.

Social Justice, Racial Reconciliation, and Christian Nationalism

Oh, more than one is. Yes.

In fact, this is a repeated kind of thing. But this is Alexandro Mendes. He goes by Alex Mendes, and he is a actual director. He's on staff at our national office, the national office for the USDA. And I think it's in church planting.

And so he writes these things. And I'll tell you that he does give some specifics here. He says, even today, we see the ramifications of the injustice that follow the Emancipation Proclamation and Juneteenth.

Systems of injustice continue to limit the freedoms of minorities. Our present cultural realities have revealed with greater clarity how unjust practices are still embedded deep within the fabric of American society.

So this is something that we are just told. There's no counter argument that's allowed here that goes on within the national setup. So racism in the past, as white and Black, is still an offensive thing that's going on today.

And that's without offering the evidence or proof of that. So then here he gets to some actions. He says, under, we believe that God created Adam and Eve in his image. He said, this should cause us to hurt when we see life wasted.

Sure. Who disagrees with that? Then he says, slavery inherently devalued the image of God present in every human life. Even today, so now he goes from that time to now, we do not value the image of God as seen in the lives of people of color.

I'm sorry, I do. And all the pastors that I know do. All the Evie Free churches that I've ever been in, seen in, heard of, or had rough shoulders with, do. They see the image of God in everyone. But he says we don't.

He says, when police take the lives and dignity of Black men and women, we should grieve and lament. He doesn't point out, well, in the lives of Black women and men who weren't criminals, or hadn't done something wrong, or weren't threatening the lives of the police officers, or any of the circumstances that surround these kinds of things.

That's left off. It's all that, no matter if it's just that the person is Black, the officer's guilty. That's a problem, as you well know. And then he says this, and this is a socialist goal that we get out of this.

Remember not to exploit laborers. So he tells us, work for better jobs, for better housing for all. Call and or email your local representatives and tell them to fight for housing and wages. And then he goes on to more of a Christian narrative from there.

So it's not like, and I just kind of point this out, this also bleeds into the Christian nationalist idea that the EV Free Church leadership seems to have, and even in writing, is that if you have sort of a leftist socialist view, that's the right view to have.

But when they talk about Christian nationalism, they have for years now been just saying, disparaging Christian nationalists. And then when you go, what's a Christian nationalist? I think basically what they mean by Christian nationalism is someone who is maybe a conservative, are on the right, whatever they want to call it.

Trump would actually be a Christian nationalist from their perspective. And there's lots of downness on that. But the side that would be more conservative and say, hey, you know, blessed is the nation as God is the Lord.

That would be Christian nationalism from their perspective, and is very much disparaged. While their form of Christian nationalism is uplifted. So it's just like racism to fight racism. There's Christian nationalism to fight Christian nationalism.

It just doesn't, it never works. There's another article by Alejandro Mendez, the same guy, called Owning America's History of Injustice. And of course, what he says in there is that we are to own up to the sins of our grandparents and our parents.

It's like Ezekiel 18 doesn't exist.

And most of the time, I'll note that they, I mean, even talking about like how we deny the image of God today and that that was just making a broad brush that like that was like everyone who was a slaveholder must have done that.

I mean, I get nervous about that kind of thing, because if you go back into your New Testament and you start doing that, you're going to be, and even the Old Testament, actually, you start doing that to men who were called faithful and who were even how, you know, letting the early church meet at their home and stuff.

And it's like, it's not like the Bible hasn't spoken on some of the topics that they're addressing, but it's like they don't really, that it never enters into it. It seems like it's just whatever the current thing is that you see going on in the world, they just want to like strap their caboose to it.

And how can we be part of this as well? And that probably fits into the critique you're making of the pragmatism. There's just not a lot of biblical thinking behind this. And so that is disturbing. Actually, as you were doing that, I went to their website and they have a whole blog section and you're right.

Like I didn't even realize that the evangelical free church had this section, but there's a lot of different ethical issues that they've weighed in on. And it's discouraging to see that the same thing that's affecting so many of the other large Christian denominations, organizations is happening there as well.

And so you're talking about it. You're concerned about it. I mean, have you had any positive interactions or has it mostly been just a denial that, oh, no, we're not doing any of this. We're not going that direction you're saying we are.

There's some positive interactions. The latest blog that came out, for example, was Kevin Capillon, the president, who was I'm trying to remember the name of the pastor who did this blog. I can't recall his name offhand.

It's the latest one that I read. But he made a lot of good statements in there, very positive things. And so Kevin attached his comments on the front, you know, how we're supportive of this. And it actually was a very good blog.

But I will say that, not but, I will say also that there's a lot of good in the EFCA. I don't want to disparage the EFCA like it's black. It's wholly dark. It is not. There's light in the EFCA. There's a lot of good things.

And I could say a lot of good things about them. And I have. But that's not what this part is about. It's just to address the things that are so dangerous as to undercut both discipling people and even evangelizing folks.

So if we can move on from social justice, I'll go to... Sure. Yeah, please. Yeah. Because I don't want to carry this on for too long. But nonetheless, we have here another light bulb that went off for me.

And that is that we, well, women in leadership. We have now women pastors in the EFCA. And it is a very crafty thing that took place to get them to this point. And it is a crafty thing that's going to continue to go on.

And this one is, they are very much so entrenched into. You said that was a big tent.

But that was something that wasn't from the ground floor. They weren't allowing women pastors than it sounds like. This is a new thing.

They'll point to an earlier history of Meet Me Free. They'll point to some gals that were ordained. I think it used the word very loosely so many years ago, back in the 1800s, early 1900s. And they would use that.

They have one or two examples doing some sort of missions work. And yet when the 1950, when we came... And it's not a denomination. They'll get mad if you say that. So you got to say movement. Denomination, there's less autonomy.

But people say it's just a movement. Although I think it's moved into being a denomination. But nonetheless, this is what is going on, is using certain examples. And causing that to be overshadowing what EB Free actually believed.

By 1988, we had a conference which very clearly delineated that we were complementarian in our practice in the EB Free Church. Because that is what the Bible taught in the practice of the church. And it is what the scripture is taught.

However, the doors started being open. Saying, well, yes, this is what the scripture teaches. And we're complementarian. But you know what we could do? We're a big tent. So therefore, let's let people who don't agree with that.

Egalitarian pastors be ordained in the EB Free Church. As long as they don't promote egalitarian issues. Well, what could go wrong? So this is what happened. And I will go through that now with this woman in leadership.

And another one that will come about after that. If I can find my place here in what I wrote. And if I can't, I can just do it all from memory anyway. Okay, this woman in leadership article that you can have.

And I'll set that one to the side. It's from January of 2020. And he progresses us in our obedience to the Word of God in a certain manner. What has gone on is, to me, in this craftiness. Is we have flipped where we were into a completely different thought pattern.

Which is a pragmatic thought pattern. And is against what I would see as biblical belief sufficient. We're well past that line, I think. When we depart from the Word. And we start entering into, well, the oxymoronic issue of women as pastors.

When was this line crossed? I've already talked about that. But we really did cross it even further in 2012 with another conference. And when we did then authorize these egalitarian men to become pastors.

And it was crafty then. It was a pathway to lead towards what we're going towards. And so the progression of this craftiness has been brought to us now in the article I just showed you. And I'm going to actually simply use his words.

And I will quote from him. And maybe that'll be helpful for you. He indicates that many women in the EFCA feel their gifts are not used well. And that they often struggle to find their place. They long for the recognition of their gifts and abilities.

And what is it that they desire? We are assured that it's not ordination. Because we still don't ordain women. But they desire to use their leadership and teaching gifts to build up the church. But without distinction.

They want to advance the mission of the EFCA. As they live in obedience to the teaching of the scriptures. Obedience to the teaching of the scriptures sound good. But sounding good and being good. These are my words here.

Differ. So now quoting him, quote. Many women in the free church across the country have significant leadership positions in the workplace. In other words, in the world. Yet feel their leadership gifts have limited value and application in the local church.

Certainly there are opportunities within the ministries where women have traditionally led. Such as women's and children's ministries. Unquote. They have been able to lead and teach, of course, other women and children.

But that's not good enough. He says that all is well with that. But, quote. Not all women have an interest in or an aptitude for these ministries. In other words, unquote. They don't really care to teach other women only or our children.

They want to broaden. Well, there's only one place to go, right? And that is to prove that they can exercise authority and teach over men as well. So that's where he goes. That's what they want. And so we're looking into how can we transform the EFCA churches in order to skirt what we apparently affirm to be the teaching of the Word of God and complementarianism.

But now cross the line and affirm women can preach and teach and eventually get obtained. So here's how they're working that out. They're doing the same thing that the Southern Baptist Convention has really come up against with Rick Warren.

Not yet in ordination. But what he started it out with. And that is differentiating the function and the office of being pastor as though you can make that different. And so he does that too. Quote. There is both a prescriptive and descriptive dimensions to this within the evangelical church.

Prescriptively, we are complementarian based on the 1988 EFCA conference decision on ordination outlined in, quote, ministerial credentialing in Evangelical Free Church of America, unquote. Still quoting him, though.

The conference specified ordination in EFCA as being available only to men and primarily, although not exclusively, focused on the role of senior pastor in the local churches and those in the pastoral ministry whose primary responsibility is preaching and teaching the Word.

Now, unquote. He said, if you listen to it, I read it, but if you listen to it, he is saying this role for ordination is only for senior pastor and those in pastoral ministry. So both in the office and the function here.

And then he goes on, and I'll quote him, says, thus, quote, the role of senior pastor in the EFCA is a role reserved for men, unquote. Well, he just snipped out the other pastors on his own. And so now, all of a sudden, it's not for all pastors and elders.

It's for just the senior ones. Just the senior, yeah. It's the senior. As is written here, for those in pastoral ministry preaching and teaching the Word, that's no longer the case. So he writes prescriptive and descriptive.

He divides them as though we can have a function, a difference between, of course, the office and its function. We have to say that shepherding is now open to women as a function. And of course, when you do that, even though the office is not open to them, you now open them up to be pastors.

And what did come on as a light bulb moment for me as well is when I opened up my, let's call them the Pulse, that's our district quarterly letter that goes out. It has all the churches in there, and you can pray for them.

So it lists all the staff. And on the staff of one of our churches, of course, now we have a pastor. It could be any name, Barbara, my wife's name, Denise, Cindy, whatever it is. But it's a gal. And this is the first time in our district, but it's been in eastern and western districts already.

And so now it's just kind of spreading out. So, of course, what eugalitarians will do is push this until the large churches with large budgets either have to be tossed from the EFCA when they eventually do or bring women vis-a-vis Rick Warren and the SBC.

But will they get tossed? And I didn't see him get tossed.

Well, the question I was going to ask is the doctrine. I mean, is there anything in their doctrinal statement that can really, are they directly contradicting it or are they going to have to change it somehow?

Because this hasn't taken place on that kind of a level yet, but it's just kind of. I mean, where are they at? It sounds like it's in transition and it could go that direction, but it's kind of.

Subversive at this point. To complicate things, they have a statement of faith. A statement of faith is a creed, is a systematic theology, is a confession, Westminster Confession, 1689, London Baptists.

All these things are systematic theologies, right? There are statements where we reduce down in a systematic way what we believe the scripture is teaching. They have a short statement or creed or whatever you want to call it of what you have to believe to be an evangelical free person.

It's very vanilla. It's just typical, you know, Trinity, cross, things of this nature, Holy Spirit. But we have this separate statements that are not the same as what you have to believe, the things that are recognized as true within the EB3.