Episode 57: Happy October!

Rural Church Podcast 2.0

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Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom

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I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

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You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

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The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

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Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

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Jesus in a local, visible congregation. Okay, Eddie, I'm going to try to show this to you live as we record.

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Guy on the Christmas socks. You like it?

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I love them. That's great. We've already prepared him room twice in the last few weeks.

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We've sang a couple Christmas songs as well. How you doing, man? I'm doing good.

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Our listeners, they don't pick up on this, because something has come out every week, but you and I haven't spoke over the

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Zoom podcasting for about a month now. It's been a while.

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Look at my mug. Yeah, you got a jingle bell coffee mug.

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Yeah, brother. You've been globetrotting. You've been hot -footing it all over the place.

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Yeah, that's really what we're going to talk about in this episode, kind of an update on things that we've been doing.

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Sadly, we won't really be able to give an update on how the day of prayer and fasting went, because it hasn't happened yet.

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But in our next episode, we'll talk a little bit about that. But yeah, let's start with you.

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You and I have missed face -to -face discussions for four Wednesdays in a row, which, by the way, is pretty cool that we have things continuing to roll out.

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Yeah, that's really good. It started out with, I always take a week off during the

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National Championship truck wagon races, which takes place in Clinton. Tell us about that.

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Yeah, so it's like, it's kind of like drag racing or think like dirt track car racing, but you're racing wagons, horses and wagons instead of, and so it's pretty wild.

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This year, they had something special. They had some PBR, like professional bull riders and bulls, and they bucked them just out in the open.

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They used the wagons to make like a circle and turned them out there on the grass.

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Wow, did you see any crashes on the... There were lots of crashes, maybe the most

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I've ever seen. That's kind of what people like about the truck wagon races, right? Yeah, it was, it was probably the most crashes

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I've ever seen. Maybe not the biggest crashes, but probably the most. So that's a thing that you're able to do every year, hang out with your boys, your boys...

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Yeah, we like to ride our horses and pretend to be cowboys. Eddie's like a real life cowboy.

03:31

Yeah, not really. No, I'm from Arkansas. There really aren't any cowboys from Arkansas. No, I know some real cowboys, but I'm not one.

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I like to pretend. So let's move from that to how things have been going at your church. What have you been preaching?

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Any encouragements that you want to share with us? Yeah, man, things have been going real well.

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I'm continuing to preach through Philippians. However, this last week,

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I actually did step out and preach from James chapter two, dealing with the way that we ought to love one another and not fall prey to the sin of partiality, which may come up in a little bit when we have some of what we're going to talk about later.

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But really just dealing with the sin of partiality, which we know oftentimes in our culture can get talked about in terms of race or gender, those things.

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But the Bible was just dealing with even economic disparities, bringing out the sin of partiality and so we dealt with that this

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Sunday. But yeah, things have been going really good. The weather's gotten better.

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And so just continuing to see the Lord blessing our church.

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And we actually had two over that same week that I was off for the

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Chuckwagon races. We actually had two families in our church who had brand new babies born.

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They were born a day apart. And so we've got two brand new babies to add to all the other babies.

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Amen, yeah. I think when Margie's born, that we're going to have five babies that have been under a year old.

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Yeah, that's awesome. That's so good. Yeah, man, it's so encouraging. So we're doing a little cry room.

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So one of the things about our church is we're family integrated when it comes to the main gathering.

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Now, we do Sunday school and stuff like that. But when it comes to main gathering, we're family integrated. We like everybody to be together.

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But we're trying to coordinate something because it's just impractical. Sometimes babies cry. Yeah, they do that.

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And they just can't, you know, and it's easier for a mother to console them or change them or do something like that in a private area.

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So we're kind of working on a cry room, and that's going pretty good.

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So how are you guys doing that? Because we are actually dealing with the same issue right now.

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So I'd love to hear kind of what are you, where are you positioning the cry room?

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So I think ideally a cry room works in a sanctuary, ideally, where they can still kind of see and all that.

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We just feasibly couldn't pull that off. So we have a room that we are running.

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So we live stream on the sermon. We live stream anyway on YouTube. And so we're running cords from that into the attic, into this cry room, and onto a television.

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And then we'll use, so of course we're putting, you know, the typical kind of nursery style stuff you can think of, like a couple of rockers, changing tables, things like that.

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But it's not a nursery room, you know, to go drop off your three -year -old or whatever. It's specifically for, and we're making it for mothers to take their child, their babies, in case they need to feed or change or just console, those sorts of things.

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And then they'll be able to actually watch the service fully on the screen, which, you know, it's just, it's really ideally you're only in there for a little bit until, you know, but it could be longer.

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Somebody put a PS5 in there, and I'm not sure. No, I'm just joking. I'd be like, why is everybody going back there now?

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So that's kind of the idea there. Well, I think what we're going to try, at least the first thing we're going to try, what has happened, and this is just kind of the culture that's developed among the young families in our church, it seems to be a lot of the dads will take the baby out, kind of let mom stay in the service.

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And they've got to where our nursery is not very well located.

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It's like down in the basement, kind of a dungeon. And so nobody wants to go there.

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So the guys have got to where they just kind of go out to the foyer. And we've got a lot of chairs out there and they can sit out there.

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So what we're going to do is we're just going to put a screen, a

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TV out there that they can, you know, and they'll be just on the other side of the wall from the rest of the congregation.

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And then it'll be, you know, the sermon will be going on the screen right there in front of them.

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And so we're hoping that, you know, and then if they still need to go change a diaper or something, they still might have to run to the nursery, but that seems to be where they're ended up anyway.

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And with our facility, that's kind of the only thing we can do at this point without them being really far away from everything that's going on and nobody wants to be very far away.

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Right. Yeah. Yeah. Ours is pretty close. Ours actually, you could cut a hole in our wall and it could, you could actually put like a mirror, you know, like the two way mirror or whatever.

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And years ago, the church that I pastored in Shirley, by the time that I pastored it, they had taken the room out to, for expansion.

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But when that sanctuary was first built, it had a cry room slash nursery with the two way, with the two way glass.

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And it was soundproof, but they could hear the sermon inside it, but you couldn't hear them.

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And it was great. I mean, that was wonderful. It was even connected to the women's bathroom so that the moms could, you know, and in that church, it was basically only the moms that took the kids in there, but that was a great setup.

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If I were ever to be building a new building, I would be like, that is a must.

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And I understand the concept of nursery and I'm certainly not gonna come down on, you know, any church that's doing nursery.

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We used to do nursery and it's, I totally understand. But if I could just offer another thought too, for 2000 years, the church has been meeting without that.

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That's right. You know, and so it's definitely, for someone to say, you know, it's for someone to say, hey, our church does nursery for these reasons.

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You know, that's one thing. For someone to be like, well, we have to have nursery or we can't even have church.

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Well, that's just not true, you know, and historically, but anyway, kind of got off subject, but just kind of talking about ketchup and those things.

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So what we did, you were gone that Wednesday when you went to the chuck wagon races and then we were gone the next two

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Wednesdays to Mexico. That's right. And that was a great time with me and my son, oldest son,

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Braden, and then also Gunner. And so we got to go down there and it was similar to what we did in June.

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In June, we went to the state of Veracruz and we did a pastors conference.

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This time we did two pastors conference. We went to the state of Chiapas. Where's Chiapas?

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That's the furthest South. Wow. So, my geography of Latin America is not the best.

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So what is the, what is immediately South of Chiapas? Then would that be

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Guatemala? So is there, is there a difference in, so where's

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Veracruz? Veracruz is on the East coast.

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So is there a difference in culture or anything between Veracruz and Chiapas?

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I'm saying the kind of difference that you might have between, say, Ohio and Georgia.

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Like we've got a difference even in our country because you're in different states. Is there that kind of difference in the areas of Mexico?

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Maybe, but for me, not very noticeable. Okay. You know. And then we also went to the state of Tabasco.

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And so that, that, so we did two different passages. It's hot. Yeah, but, but this time, this, oh,

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I see what you're saying. Yeah. This time of year, this time of year really wasn't that bad.

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And so, Eddie's making jokes over here. Yeah. Tabasco's hot, you know.

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Now, so, so basically went down there, teaching on the church.

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We're, we taught through first Timothy and then teaching in Tabasco on, you know, what, what is the power of the church and the gospel and teaching about leadership, had

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Q and A, met lots of pastors. There is a reformation happening. A lot of people don't know about it's happening in Mexico.

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And these are reformed Baptist churches. You know, it's not, so we're not going down there and say, who can we get saved or whatever?

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Like we're going down there to teach on the church and to preach on, on the glories of the gospel.

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They say, like, how do we have healthy churches? Like we're resolved that the mission of the church is to, is to be about churches.

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Right. And then you guys were going out, the churches, you guys were going out and doing evangelism to some, because I know

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I talked to Gunner a little bit about that. Yeah. Well, we went out and passed out some tracks and our friend,

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Mike Stockwell was able to do some sharing of the gospel with, through a translator.

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And so it was good. Yeah. We, we did some of that. That was minimal, but yeah, it was good. It really just, again, going with the church, helping the church with these things.

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And so it was good. I'm glad my oldest son got to experience. I'm glad Gunner got to experience. It's, it's one of those things too, like last year, just kind of getting to know the church, but like this year we went and it was like family.

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Like they're like asking about my wife, you know, cause they're, we're connected on Facebook. It's hard with the language barrier, but man, there's just like a love for Christ that transcends that.

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Yeah. Yeah. So, of course, Braden's so mature, but how was it, you know, trying to get

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Gunner all the way down there and back, you know, without losing him or anything? Gunner's a great brother, you know,

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I publicly need to say that he's a great brother, grateful for him, his love for Christ, his love for the church, him and Braden, you know, they just kind of pick, pick, pick, pick, pick, but it was really beneficial for both of them.

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Yeah. And so it, it was beneficial for, you know, we're going to give a report on Sunday night to the, to the church and just kind of talk about it, have questions and answers.

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so there's that. So I was gone to two Wednesdays for that. I think we have a podcast episode about that, about the

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June event. So you can go back and, and listen to that, but, but pray for these churches in Tabasco, in Chiapas, in Veracruz, we got to meet or meet up with Pastor Christian again.

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We did a whole, we did two episodes with Pastor Christian, you know, last year, the

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Spurgeon of El Pachote, but what a great brother. That he is, he really helped drive us around and those things.

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I got to do some running down there with Pastor Randall and Pastor Jonathan. And really the sickness this time was really, really minimal.

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So Gunner kind of got queasy, like one day and another couple of guys got queasy, but it was just, you know,

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I mean, just the way that we eat and stuff, everything's just different, you know? And so just typically something happens to somebody when you go on one of these trips, but it was really, really minimal this time.

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Good. So, so praise God for that. The preaching was well received. Like I said, people are hungry for the word.

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The worship was sweet. It was just a sweet time together and, and very, very encouraging. And so last week you got, you were, you were in Georgia.

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Was there some, there was something going on. Yeah. A few people got together. Yeah. A few people like 8300,

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I think. Isn't that wild? G3 conference, which

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I'm a proponent of. Now I will say this. There are negatives. There is the fan boy type stuff.

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And that, that's just kind of stomach churning. You know, when people running up, interrupting speakers or like pushing their way, like, you know, there's, there's too much of that.

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Even at a solid, and G3, I think is one of the most solid conferences out there. It's too much of that.

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You know, we don't worship. You're going to have some of that at Chip Connor anywhere. That's right. We should honor these men, but we shouldn't, you know, gush over them or worship.

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And we're grateful for them, but goodness. So some of that has to, has to stop.

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Right. But the conference itself was on the sovereignty of God. What I liked about the conferences. I was,

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I went as a worker of the seminary. And so my wife and daughter got to our youngest daughter, technically not youngest middle daughter.

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So my youngest daughter is going to be born here in a couple of weeks, but my middle daughter

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Piper got to go. And so her and mom, they got to do a lot with the conference and they were really blessed, really, really enjoyed that.

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What a great topic on the sovereignty of God. And then as for. And the seminary had a pre -conference.

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Yeah. The seminary had a pre -conference on, on the gospel and the Christian in the states, the gospel in the state.

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And so, and that was good. And I know there's a lot of controversy surrounding these things today, but I'm, I'm really,

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I don't know. I was just, I had some good conversations with Jeff Johnson, some, even some good personal

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Bible reading while at the conference, just like, I want to be less controversial, more of a unifier in these days, if I can within reformed

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Baptist life, if I can, if I can be better at that. I think that, you know, we've talked about Christian nationalism.

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I'm, I'm not depending on the term definition. Now I would say I'm not a Christian nationalist, but on, in some ways it's defined.

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I am a Christian nationalist. You know, I love my country. I want to see revival. I want to see righteous leaders.

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I want to call magistrates to repentance. I do call magistrates to repentance, you know?

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So I think we need to find some more commonality between the two sides, if you will.

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But the conference really wasn't about that. You know, I mean, the pre -conference was, but I mean, even that's good.

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I would really encourage you to listen. So the one message I really got to listen to the whole thing is really encouraging.

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Did an excellent job was Jeff Moore. Jeff Moore is a professor at GBTS, and he just broke down the great commission.

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I thought he did an excellent job on that message. So when that comes out, maybe by the time this podcast comes out, that will have come out.

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So when Jeff Moore's message from the pre -conference on the gospel in the state, when that comes out, definitely

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I would encourage folks to listen to that. Well, I think so much.

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So I haven't heard Jeff's message yet, but I did see a couple of things that you shared from it.

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And it looks to me like, I think one of the key issues when it comes to understanding our view of the law in the state and even theonomy, even maybe to some degree, how that affects all millennium, post -millennium, all that millennialism, all that kind of stuff.

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Jeff really dealt with one of the key issues. And that is really, do you see

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Jesus commission there as to make the individual people, disciples who are members of all the nations, or are you trying to make the political nation be discipled?

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And it seems like he dealt with that in his message. And I think that's really important to understand the distinction between the two sides.

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And I thought he did a great job, you know, and the thing is like, you can disagree with his position, but he was just dealing with the text, you know, and the grammatical construction and the intent and syntax.

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And so anyway, it was good. It was really helpful. We had a, you know, I was working at the

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GBTS booth, had a ton of, of visitors stopped by their people who were interested in the seminary.

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And also just people stopping by and saying, hi, that was great. That was, that was encouragement.

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Maybe next time we need to have a rural church podcast booth. Yeah. Really great connected.

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So one of the things about those conferences. So here's the deal. Are there negatives to conferences?

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Of course. Okay. And I'll make a, let me just make a defense of conferences that even that you have to pay for people pay for a lot of things.

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We don't know anybody that would be against that. There are people. And, and, and in a lot of agreement that I have on, on some of these things, but if I can make a defense, it's like you pay a lot of money for things, you know, you probably just the money that you pay for your television subscriptions, you know, which we canceled all that kind of stuff.

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But the, the, just the money that you pay for that in a year, you could probably go to a conference or the money you spent on sporting events.

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Like, so why not pay for a car? Now I understand like, yes, I think it's good to have conferences.

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You don't charge for praise God. We do that. I do that. But there's also something beautiful about $8 ,000.

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We get 8 ,000 people together and we get 8 ,000 people together in a world that hates you in a lot, in a world that, that hates you.

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And you have 8 ,000 people gathering together. You have to have somewhere big enough to, to do that. It just costs.

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These things just cost. So, I mean, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm grateful for the opportunity to have conferences, even like this, even the ones that you have to, to pay for.

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I think there's still a benefit. And, and, and here's, here's my curtain. Like, if you don't like that and you don't want to do that, just don't, you know, that's,

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I think that's, I think that's the best way to handle it. We, even what we've talked about in podcasts today, you know, it's $40 a day to go to the chuck wagon races.

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That's admission a day or nine days. If you go every day, the last days, $20,

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I think. So for the people that travel, some, a lot of people travel from States away.

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They haul horses and mules. They spend, they spend thousands and thousands of dollars to spend this week, playing cowboy and, and all that.

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And that's great. There's nothing wrong with that, but why would it be? Why is that?

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Okay. And would it be wrong for Christians to say, we want to get together and spend a few hundred dollars to be able to listen to preaching and have a good bookstore.

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And, and, and visit all these different booths that are sharing about these different missions organizations or, or schools or ministries.

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I just, I don't know why it would be a bad thing. You know, it'd be different if you're forced to pay that.

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If you're like, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody is saying you've got to pay this so that you can get the gospel or, or, or, or they're, they're also not.

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It's not like you've got to, it's not even the same thing as the prosperity teachers that are promising some kind of blessing.

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If you just show up at their, at whatever meeting that they're trying to sell you. Yeah. Rather, this is just saying we're, we're having this meeting where we're going to talk about this topic and it's going to be explained biblically.

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And if you want to be a part of that, this, this is, this is just what it takes for us to have this venue and have this kind of meeting.

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And if you don't, don't, and a lot of people use their vacation to, to do this kind of stuff. That's, you know, that's what they want to pay for.

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Some, some people go to the beach. Some people, you know, go on this big hunting adventure or whatever.

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Some people pay to go to a conference. Now this doesn't replace and by any means, the local church.

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Now, now I understand the dangers. Okay. I do. There are conference junkies.

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They need to repent. They need to be part of the local church. But you know, if you want to take your family and do something like this and meet up with people, you know,

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I don't think that we should throw cold water on that. You know, people it's just seeing people's faces and talking with people and encouragement, man, it was really, really a blessing.

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So I was like, I'm not going to be like, Hey, if you're doing that, you're saying, or whatever, you know,

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I was like, I'll tell you the value I've always found.

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When I've went to these kinds of conferences. And actually me and some brothers in our church, we're planning on going, uh, in February, we're going to go to Columbus, Ohio to a

26:06

Ligonier conference. Yeah. And, and, but I'll just tell you, and I've told you this before privately, but I've, the real value is trial is, is, is the time you get to spend with other brothers.

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Yeah. So like you and I've traveled to G3 before together, we've traveled to together for the gospel service.

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Several years ago together, I traveled with some other guys to together for the gospel several years ago.

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And those were all great. And what I came back from those conferences saying was the biggest blessing was getting to spend this time with these brothers.

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And I, I even several years ago kind of decided I wasn't going to go to any more of the big conferences because the real blessing was being with the brothers.

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But here's what I've realized. If we're not going to the conference, or if we've not got something we're going to do, we don't get together.

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Yeah. Yeah. So like if it takes the conference to give us a reason to spend three days together, that's okay.

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Or, or if it's a Bible intensive, that's okay too. I don't care which thing we do, but I'm saying a lot of times the blessing is just being with brothers.

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Yeah, that's right. And sharing that time, you know, talking over the things of the

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Lord, sharing true Christian fellowship. Yeah. So let me ask you one thing. And, and I don't know how much time we got, but, but I will bring up one thing

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I heard and you were talking about not wanting to be controversial. I don't mind being controversial.

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I don't mind. I just, I just, I want to be a unifier too. Right. Last night

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I was, I was listening to a podcast put out by Keith Foskey.

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The Conversations with the Countess, brother. And they played a clip of Owen Strand from the conference.

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And they said this clip had brought a lot of controversy. And I'll be honest, I couldn't believe it because it seemed so non -controversial to me.

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The clip of what Owen said, I didn't get why anybody would think it was controversial.

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But what I really wanted to ask is, I think they, they, they were kind of, they were kind of responding like, like they put this out and now like G3 had released the clip.

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And so they were saying, you know, G3 has released this clip and now they're wondering why the, why it's got all this dust up.

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And I thought, well, no, they're not wondering that they released the clip because they wanted that. Like you, you release a clip.

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You want everybody to start sharing it. And, and not necessarily that you want it to be controversial, but you do want it to be, you want it to, the term used to be viral, but you want everybody to be sharing it and saying stuff about it.

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Good, bad or indifferent. You want to, the reason why they put those clips out is so that people will share them.

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They don't put them out not to be shared. Sure. And not to be reacted to.

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They put them out to be reacted to. That's my point. Not, not, not to be reacted to.

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I mean, it's hard. I mean, I don't know. I mean, yeah, it's really hard to, I mean, yeah, sure. I agree with you, but it's hard to really know whoever was behind that account and their intention with that.

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But I mean, like I'm with you, I thought it was pretty easy for us to agree with. Now, if you want to accuse

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Dr. Strand of misreading Steven Wolf. Okay. But I can't speak to that because I haven't read

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Steven Wolf and I refused to buy the book, but someone told me they were going to send it to me. So if someone sends it to me,

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I plan to read it, you know, but speak to that. But I mean, what Dr. Strand said is not controversial and we should all agree with that.

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You know? Yeah. He just, he just said the Lord loves the global church. Yeah. And, but you know, that's all he said.

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Yeah. And press picked up on that. And I was just a lot of silly stuff, you know, but we can,

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I guess, take shots going back and forth at each other. But I mean, I don't know. I just think,

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I think our historical context demands and the situations we're dealing with now in our country to just demand a lot more unity between very close minded brothers, you know?

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So, but I don't know. Lord willing, though, we're going to be getting back into our regular routine of meeting.

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I know our, our, we're expecting our baby soon. So hopefully in a few podcasts, we'll, we'll get to talk about that.

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And if you've got thoughts for us or questions, things that we can address, feel free to do that.

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But we just wanted to have an episode here today where we could kind of catch up. Eddie and I could catch up.

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You could catch up. This is what's going on. Happy October. We're rolling closer and closer to Christmas.

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Happy Reformation month. You got anything else? Eddie? Nope. I'm all good, man.

31:08

Good to talk to you. Good to see you, brother. Your new brother. How about you sign us off?

31:16

We'll see you guys next week. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house.

31:24

The church is what God's doing. This, this is his work. If we really believe what

31:31

Ephesians says, we are the Hohe Mosque, the masterpiece of God. How are you going to respond?