Talking with Trey Fisher from Cultish!

Hey everybody, welcome to the Parish Reform Podcast, and I got two of my buddies here from Jonesboro, Arkansas, Jeremiah Nortier, is that right?

That is the French version. If I was French, and Nathan, Pastor Nathan Hargrave, Ph .D.,

we call him Dr. Nate, is that right? Don't misrepresent, man, I wish,

I would love that, but I can't claim it. I'm sure you could pass it, I'm sure you could do it. So you guys have a church, the 12 -5 church in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and y 'all just planted it not too long ago, correct?

Right, September of 2020, right in the middle of a crazy pandemic. We started in my living room, just literally me, my wife, and our four kids, and then this guy came along, what, a couple weeks later?

A couple weeks later. Me and my wife. How did you find out about it? So we used to do ministry together at a previous church, and a lot of things happened.

We looked to God's providence, and he had a hand in it, and I've loved

Nathan since the first time that I met him, and always wanted to do ministry with him, and God just opened up those doors to make it happen.

Nice. We've been so grateful for that, too, because you can imagine planting a church on your own.

Our supporting church is a thousand miles away. It's my home church from Ormond Beach, Florida, a riverbank community church, and they have nine elders, and they affirm us, and they're actually going to be coming up and establishing

Jeremiah as one of our elders soon. So a thousand miles away from your home church and your support, it's nice to have somebody like this guy in the trenches with you.

I bet. So we had a church just 15 miles, maybe, from where we came that pushed us out to go to this community, and so we're autonomous from them, but they gave us the blessing.

They encouraged us to go and plant the church here in this community, and so that's what we did. We did it. We're probably almost four years old, maybe, and yeah, went through the pandemic.

I was telling my wife, didn't have any classes in seminary on how to pastor through a global pandemic, but we worked our way through it.

So it was fun, interesting. So here's what I want to talk to you guys about. So I've been talking to Jeremiah quite a bit for probably how long,

Jeremiah, before your debate with Brock? Yeah, so the better part of three weeks, four weeks, for sure.

I think I bug him all the time. I call him pretty much every day. No. You guys talk every day, don't you?

Pretty much. He calls me in the morning. Yeah. I get the phone call from him after you guys have been on the phone for an hour.

But we got a text thread going, Dr. Nate. That's true. That's true. This is actually our first time talking in person, isn't it?

First time to meet, buddy. We've been communicating for a while now, but it's good to meet you.

Yeah, I call Jeremiah because I'm like, man, I thought of something because I got a little something coming up down the road

I cannot wait for. So here's what I want to know real quick. I want to know more about you,

Nate. But right now, from what I know about Jeremiah, he's done a lot of debates, debated

Mormons, Church of Christ, Roman Catholics. He was just on a podcast with somebody from Ireland.

Was it Conor McGregor? Because I would love to see Conor McGregor. I see in Robert Boylan, Conor McGregor memes all the time, though.

I love Conor McGregor because my thing is, if you're going to be a heathen, be one. Just do it.

Don't act like you're going to be a Christian and then be a heathen. Go all in. And so that's what I love and respect about Conor McGregor.

So of these debates that you've done, which one was, I don't know, which one stands out the most to you?

From Mormons, Roman Catholics, Church of Christ. Honestly, they're all unique in their own way.

So I enjoyed all of them for different reasons. And I think one of the most challenging was the

Roman Catholic trying to study and understand their doctrine of who Mary is as being sinless and perpetually a virgin and having to study the magisterium and how

Rome's tripartite structure differs with our understanding of sola scriptura, because it's a completely different worldview.

And they claim Christianity and they claim the scripture. And so really trying to understand their position well to correctly represent.

So then you can show how it's faulty. That was really challenging. And in the same respect, it was hard to learn the

Greek Orthodox position because I was defending sola fide with the Greek Orthodox. And I just found that very difficult.

But that time of study and preparation was very sanctifying. So and then the

Mormon debate was three and a half hours long, and we covered about six different topics. And it was just kind of comparing and contrasting different worldviews.

So we got to talk about the gospel of grace, as I see it and understand from the scripture of the Mormon was basically they believe in universalism.

There's some nuance there. All that was very good for different reasons. And with the church of Christ, that's this stands out more to me because our hometown is saturated with the church of Christ culture doctrine.

And we were able to do a public debate with Marlon Wilson, his channel, The Gospel Truth in person live.

That was his first live debate. So that was very special for those reasons. And we had a tray.

We had a ton of people show up and actually be there in person. We had over 200 people show up to the debate.

What would you say? What would you say is those 200 people that showed up percentage wise, you know, I would guess.

Oh, really? I would guess more church of Christ. Yeah. I think it was probably about half and half or possibly even 60, 40 church of Christ.

There was a ton because I'm standing on stage and to my right, I'm getting all those glares, you know, and I felt every one of them felt like more.

Yeah, maybe so. And, you know, when we watched the debate, I watched it and, you know, the sound,

I guess some things were off. And you said that, but I wish we could have heard the audience's questions. You know, like what was one of the questions that was stood out to you that they asked anybody, whether it be for or against?

There were two questions that stood out to me in a way that I really, really appreciate it because I really wanted to talk about James 2 in the debate and it really didn't happen.

And when I was asking Brock about Romans 8, 8, about those who are in the flesh cannot please

God, they have to wrestle with that. Every religious form that believes in the scripture has to realize that those in the flesh cannot please

God with their decisions, with their getting up and doing certain works of whatever. That's a tall order.

And we understand we are dependent on God regenerating us by the spirit. And then now we are regenerating.

We desire to do things like repent and believe the gospel, to be baptized, to please

God. That's the only way how it works. So I felt like Brock really didn't understand the question very well, but there was at least one person in the audience that was

Church of Christ that did understand it. So when he got up to the microphone, he said, okay, you mentioned Romans 8, 8, those who are in the flesh cannot please

God. He says, then how do you understand Romans 10, verse 9 about confessing

Jesus as Lord? How do you answer that? Well, I was so happy to get two minutes to explain, well, this is a huge predicament for all of us because all of us at some point in time were in the flesh.

So how did we come out of that? So in the audio, I think you can hear more of my answer to the question rather than him set up that question.

And then there was another guy that asked about James 2. He says, you say you don't see sanctification in the text, but how you get around that, how he was framing the question was, well, you say it's a justification before men.

And I absolutely do believe that. And he said, so what about in Genesis 22 with Abraham? And so I got two minutes just to explain the context in Genesis 22 there with Abraham and then go back to James 2 in the immediate context to show how this is a human to human interaction.

Nice. And so but they didn't have any chance to rebuttal that, did they? No, they only had up to 30 seconds to ask their question to me.

So then I get two minutes to respond. And then the interlocutor gets about a minute to give their input. Right.

All right, Nate, Dr. Nate, I'm sorry. I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. But seriously,

Dr. Nate, have you done any debates? Man, debate is not my thing.

I don't think quick on my feet like this guy does. Yeah. And like like yourself, that's not that's definitely not my gifting.

Nathan was eye candy up there with me. That's what I was up there with him, man. That was you.

Oh, yeah. So what are we doing? What are we doing? You know what? That was hilarious. I draw when he was pretty much that's exactly what

I was doing. I wanted to look I wanted to look important. So I was writing things. So so when he was meeting with with Brock, Brock was involving

Aaron, which was the other guy on on the other side. And and they were determined to have a second guy up there that didn't engage.

Right. What we kind of figured it was was kind of a silent debate partner, somebody maybe kind of bounce ideas off of maybe catch certain things.

And so, Jeremiah, you told them you were like, you guys can do that. And I'll just be up there by myself.

And they refused. They were like, that would that would look bad. And so they're like, could you get somebody up there?

And so he asked me to be up there. And I was like, well, heck, I would love to be up there. You know what

I felt like? I felt like the guy in the corner of the boxing ring when the bell goes off and I've got a towel and water, you know, and I put the little bench out there.

That's all I did. You know, now I will say I was I had my log off set up on my iPad. So I was like looking up Greek terms and like passing him some notes.

I don't know how useful any of those were. But one thing you did that really stood out to me because member Brock was mad that I didn't engage with the proposition the way that he wanted to.

Yeah. And so he time out real quick. Time out real quick, Jerry. So on he didn't like the way you didn't engage the proposition.

So explain that in more detail. Yeah. So do you remember if you go look at the video and the little show notes, it has the really lengthy proposition.

And it was something like the New Testament teaches that the liberty from the past sins is at the point of an external act of obedience.

And Trey, that's what I call a word salad. Word salad. And that's why we advertise it as a water baptism debate, because no one's going to read that proposition and be interested in it.

And he said, yeah, y 'all can advertise it however you want. And I'm thinking I'm going to make this about water baptism because that's the external act that he's talking about.

But I didn't want to say it, though. He didn't want to say it as a church of Christ, which was which was. Well, he didn't want to say it because I think they kind of know that they don't have any standing.

He wanted to fixate on those two passages there, and he did not want you to leave. He didn't want you to bring context.

He didn't want you to do anything but answer his question based upon two verses right out of context.

And that's why he didn't want to go to anything practical. And he kept saying that. He kept saying that that I don't have to define the works.

Right. We just know that it is an external act of obedience that, you know, you're you're delivered from past sins.

That's why he wanted to word it. Yeah. And I think but there's some people who will just come out and say, no, we're talking about water baptism.

You know, I think that most do. I think the dude I got coming up, he ain't scared to say it.

You know, and I appreciate that. I mean, I think like I appreciate it. Just come out and say it, because I promise you

I'll come out and say it. You know. Yeah. Yeah. I'll tell you what I believe. So go ahead,

Jeremiah. Yeah, I was going to say real quick. So after he was kind of mad in his rebuttal, he didn't use half his time and said he can use the rest of it.

I just want him to begin with these two verses. Nathan passed a note. He says, remind everybody that you were laying a foundation.

And that was the first thing I said. My opening statement was laying at a foundation. And then I read verses 17 and 18 in Romans six.

And I said, hey, let's keep going to verse 19 and see if this helps us with the context of sanctification.

Right. Right. And because he's given an example, right. That's what he says. He says I'm putting in human terms.

Right. Because you can't quite understand this. Exactly. I think a key key phrase. So tell me what you like about debating,

Jeremiah. Why do you think it's a good thing? Because, you know, let me let me let me preface that our culture today is not like those who came before us or biblically.

They say that's mean you shouldn't do it. Don't like there's no point in it. That's just let's all get along.

You know, so we get that all the time here. Yeah, we're getting so much pushback from even our, you know, more

Baptist leaning friends in the area. They kind of separate and distance themselves from us because of things like this debate.

So, yeah, we're with you. We know how that feels. Yeah. So what's your take on it, Jerry? Well, you already alluded to it's biblical, first and foremost, when you go to Acts 15.

And I'm so grateful for this. We have this apostolic witness of Paul and Barnabas.

They it was no small dissension, but they were debating with the Judaizers that were adding circumcision to the gospel.

They went to war over gospel issues. Yeah. And I try to remind people the apostle

Paul would have spoke the truth in love, Ephesians 415. And it has to be always grounded in love.

But you have to go to war over truth. And so I'm a highly competitive person,

Trey. I've never been accused of that. And over time,

David Miller actually was the was the wonderful man I've had the pleasure of meeting and going to one of his conferences.

It was a conference on preaching. And he said, if you're going to go to war over anything, let it be truth.

And that resonated with me, Trey. I thought I will go to bat for the truth. Yeah. And that's what

I tell my kids, too. I mean, if you're going to fight for something, fight for that. And I mean, plant your feet and do not budge.

But I want to read this text because it's kind of interesting in the debate you were having and I'm coming up about debating.

So I'm just going to read it to you. Acts 15 must start with verse six. It says the apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter.

And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, brothers, you know that in the early days

God made a choice among you that by my mouth, the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe.

That just that's it. Like there's a period and it goes next. It says, and God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them by giving them the

Holy Spirit just as he did to us. And he made no distinction between us and them having cleansed their hearts by faith.

That just seems very clear. And that's something that that's that was his argument. Like Peter's like, look, we're having this debate here.

They're supposed to hear the word, believe it, and their hearts will be cleansed by faith. That's Peter.

That's his final closing hammer down. And some people just say, no, that doesn't mean that.

This is this is how the conversation goes. And you and I have talked about this a lot over the past number of weeks.

And just with my experience with Church Christ, what is a key component in all this is

Romans four. Right. And what Brock and Aaron would continue to say, even in their little podcast afterwards, they would say, like, this is talking about works of law.

And the whole context with Romans four, verse two is not with Abraham. He precedes the

Mosaic law when it says that if Abraham was justified by works, it would not be before God. What works would be in mind?

It would not be works of Mosaic law. It would have been the things that he has done early in Genesis about being circumcised, willing to sacrifice his son

Isaac or leaving the land of the Chaldeans. So the whole point is absolutely we're not going to be justified by works of law.

Right. Neither the people that lived under it, neither Christians that are afterwards, neither Abraham before.

But it's so much deeper than that. And I always want to drive the focus also back to Ephesians chapter two, verses eight, nine and ten.

It doesn't say works of law there. It's just saying your human accomplishment, the works that you do. And that's why

I know you know this. But defining obedience and works, they are not the same thing. You can be obedient from the heart.

And that is faith. And like that passage you just read, that is so clear. That's how we are cleansed.

That's how we have a clear conscience. And that's how we are saved and have our sins forgiven. When our faith is looking alone to the

Savior, Jesus Christ. Right. That's good stuff. But, you know, you say Romans four, I like it.

But see, so I'm not I'm not going to say anything, OK, because I think people watch these things and try to get some ideas of what is he going to say, right?

And all I really got out there is a cultish video. I do a cultish.

And man, I got a phone call today from somebody in Illinois. It's amazing. I get them all the time. And thank you,

God, for that. I got to do that and talk to these people. But that's all

I got. And all I did on there was just tell people what they believe and why they believed it.

I didn't really go into depth of how I would talk about that. So there's really not a lot out there. So I do like Romans four, but I real quick.

There there was more going on with that cultish episode. It was actually supposed you are supposed to have some guests.

Come on. Yeah, yeah. Cultish with y 'all. Yeah. For the second one. And we're still probably going to do another follow up later on.

But yeah, there's two pastors. Anyway, that reached out to me and they want me to come on their show, and I just we invited them to come on the cultish and do that, who disagree with me there from the church of Christ.

And they both declined have an email. I'm sure they would say that that never happened.

But that's why we keep everything on email so we can go back and make sure somebody said what they said, because things get twisted a lot with these guys or they'll take out a snippet of something and they'll put it on their

Facebook page or their YouTube channel and they'll piecemeal things together to make their points. And that's their basic hermeneutical scripture, isn't it?

Well, yeah, I mean, that's and that's what I tell people when they get upset when that happens, because it is wrong, right?

It's lying. It's not honest. It's not Christian. You know, when you take things out of context and piecemeal things together just to prove your point, it's not a

Christian thing to do. But I tell people, listen. Like, I don't believe they take the

Bible in context, so I don't assume they're going to take a conversation in context or a video in context.

They're going to take what they want, cut out the rest and try to prove their point, because what they care more about is their point, not the truth.

Right. And so but there's some very good scriptures in here. So I come at it like with this, this conversation

I'm going to have with this guy on May 10th. Right. Or debate. That's such a hard word for today.

People have a hard time with it. I'm coming at it from a different angle because I I know what he's going to say.

Right. I was in it for 18 years, taught it. I was probably more hard, hard than him, you know.

So I know he's going to say I know the arguments. I know, you know, you bring up Abraham and the law and all this stuff with.

It's just. Anyway, I'm coming up from a different perspective, I want to say so much right now, but I'm not sure because I want to I'm wanting to say a whole lot, too.

Like, who are you and what are your motives? Yes. Like, who are you? What are your motives? It's crazy.

So. Well, it's anyway, that's very similar to when he was building up to this.

Brock and Aaron, they they kept having conversations, they were hitting him with questions left and right until finally it got to the point to where we were both like, you know what?

You probably want to just kind of hold back now because you can only go so far.

What? And I think honestly, I think that's what led into the change of the proposition and why he didn't want to go into baptism.

Because I think after talking to Jeremiah, I think he realized I don't want to go down that route.

So I'm stuck in this debate. So let's make let's muddy the waters and then let's try and pinpoint him to something that I think might trap him.

And that's the way it went, because of the information that you were giving over to them. And then on top of that, stopping that information.

I then I then think that made them a little nervous, too. How do you like when they say, look, let's just look at these two verses and nothing else in all scripture.

Just look at these two verses. What does it say? So talking with you, my experience for about the past ten years,

I'm very familiar with that approach. And that's why I was so intentional about the debate being structured the way that it was.

I'm all for there being just ten minutes of somebody asking questions and it's kind of just we'll see what happens.

But if you're suspicious that someone's not going to be charitable or going to overtalk you and hog the time, you want to be very structured in those minutes.

And so I knew he could ask his set up yes or no question. Do you believe this verse? And he's going to take 15 seconds to do that.

And he can't do anything about it when I get two minutes to explain context, whether he likes it or not.

So I use those rules to my advantage in every way possible. And the thing is, he could have done the same thing.

But if you know context, that it gives you more time to develop. And if you don't know context, you're going to just say, well, the Bible says what it says.

And that's I think people understood the difference when they saw me up there by the grace of God and then saw him.

He's just reading it. I'm reading it in its context and trying to help explain its meaning.

That's what pastors, preachers and teachers do every Lord's Day in the pulpit. Right. Yeah. And yeah, there's

I'm not going to say much because there's so much I want to say right now. I know you do is the thing.

J -Lo, I'm calming down. Suppress it. Keep suppressing it.

I don't know if I can hold it till May 10th. I'm so excited. I should try to move the debate up a little bit. I'm sure Travis and Marlon can make that happen.

We'll see. Because I mean, I'm like, oh, May 10th. I'm not. I don't know.

We're getting texts from him like weekly of how how much he's suppressing it.

And he's about to explode. I am. I came to sleep at night. I'm just like, oh, I got to write this down, you know.

And so because I'm just trying to get back in that mindset. And I'll tell you what I do. And I tell people all the time.

You know. On one hand, I'm like, gosh. But on the other hand,

I thank God that that was there. And I don't ever want to forget, you know, what it's like to read something, and just not see it like for so long, just right there.

Then all of a sudden, when God opens your eyes, you're like, how did I miss this? You know, it's just such a great thing.

And helping disciple people through that who also go through that same experience. I'm like, look, don't forget. Don't ever forget that I was that dude once.

You were that person once, you know. And so God can still do miracles and open your eyes and humble you before the cross of Jesus Christ.

And it's an amazing, amazing thing. That's what I'm so thankful for. But. Well, we're grateful for our relationship with you.

We've been talking about it lately. Your background brings that insight that sometimes it's easy for us to forget.

Like we were just as blind as you before salvation, just like everybody. We're dead in our trespasses and sins.

We don't understand. But there's something unique about your circumstance when it comes to the

Church of Christ because of your background that you can then sympathize in a way that that maybe maybe the two of us can't.

So, you know, iron sharpening iron, we're able to gain some sympathy and some of those arenas because of your experience.

So we're grateful for that. Yeah. Oh, good. So, I mean, y 'all have a passion for the Church of Christ because there's so many around you.

I have it because I have like I was there for 18 years and then, you know, so many friends and stuff.

I mean, so that's where my passion comes from, obviously. So in Florida, where in Florida did you come from and how did you get to Jonesboro, Arkansas?

Yeah. So my dad was a pastor. He was a Southern Baptist preacher. Here we go, J -Lo, little church rat, raised perfect his whole life.

Yeah, that yeah, that wasn't that wasn't my story. I wasn't saved till I was 17, actually.

But we grew up Southern Baptist preacher. My dad was a pastor at a small

Southern Baptist church just north of town here in Jonesboro, Arkansas. OK. And this is his old stomping grounds.

He grew up just an hour north of here. And this is where my folks are from. We have so many roots in this area.

I still have my grandmother still here and aunts and uncles. Do y 'all have any hunting land? Well, we did.

I'm just we did. But I had some family family sold it. So unfortunately, we do not.

But if you ever want to come up here, we will make sure we have a place to go. What were they thinking? Selling hunting land. Now, duck hunting, we do have access for.

And this is the place. This is like duck hunting Mecca, right? Yeah, I grew up duck hunting my whole life and I just five kids.

I have time to take my five kids deer hunting and that's about it. I have no time for duck hunting. But anyway, it's time consuming for sure.

Well, I you know, so I grew up in this area. And when I was about 11, my dad ended up taking a position at a church down in Norman Beach, Florida, which is kind of like a small town right next to Daytona Beach.

And and so we were there from then on. And he he pastored there at River Bend Community Church and he pastored for 25 years.

And and we held a lot of the founders conferences there. So I got to grow up listening to guys like Tom Askle and James White.

They were always there, like preaching and teaching. And and and dad was involved in all of that stuff.

He would teach at a lot of the founders conferences and and but about 2014, we noticed something was going on.

My dad ended up having early onset Alzheimer's and it progressed very quickly.

And so he he actually passed away just a few a couple of years ago.

Twenty twenty, I believe, is the I think near the beginning of that. And he passed away.

And and so me and my wife, we had just decided that we wanted to change the scenery.

Florida is always hot. There's no seasons and there's no rolling hills. It's it's palm trees, sand and and humidity.

And so as much as we love the church, as much as we love the people, we felt

God leading up here to Jonesboro. And we came up here and my hope was to get engaged in a local church and and really kind of help kind of how

I did it. Riverbend, not in like a pastoral role, but in a support kind of staff position or, you know, even just not even being on staff, but just helping a church.

Right. And we found a church man. They were preaching the Bible expositionally, maybe didn't hold to all the doctrines we did.

But I thought that I think they're going that direction. And so I think we can tie on here and we can help in some way bring gifts here that can help this body.

And that didn't pan out. And we we ended up going to a small reformed

Baptist church where I met this guy who was on staff there. You you were the youth pastor at the time.

Right. And I was there for about a year and a half. And when you saw

Jeremiah, you're like, that dude's reformed. Oh, yeah. Well, no, no, no. You got to understand when

I first met him, he didn't have this monster reformed beard. Yeah. He had a glass of clean out of his mouth.

No, no. He was he was he looked he looked like your typical Armenian guy. The only thing that set it off was his doctrines of grace

T -shirts. OK, yes. Calvin is my homeboy T -shirt. That's it.

That's right. Yeah. So young, restless, reformed. And then the beard just popped out. Yeah, I like it.

I don't know. This could happen. That's funny. So we we were there. I think I think he mentioned earlier there were issues.

There were some sin issues that we had to call leadership to repentance. And and, you know, there wasn't repentance and we're still praying for restoration and repentance.

We pray for those guys. Our hearts go out to that body. We love those people dearly.

But God had had kind of guided our hearts elsewhere in the process.

And that's when God kind of led us over here to plant twelve five. And and that's just been a haven for for my family.

We've we've missed that kind of fellowship and and that kind of worship since we left Florida.

That's what we're used to. That's what we love, the people and the the the in -depth teaching.

You know, you're you're getting seminary level preaching from the pulpit on Sunday morning and, you know, you're just being fed and you walk out and you feel stuffed.

You know, you just felt like you drank from a fire hydrant. And and the guy that took my dad's place there,

Pastor Scott Menes, I mean, the guy the guy is amazing. I mean, he just he loves the word of God and he lays it out boldness every week.

So you can imagine I'm coming up here where there's a famine of the word of God and and just feeling like I'm starving.

My wife is starving. My children are starving. And and then the one church that we found that we thought we were going to get fed in, you know,

Satan creeps into those things. Yeah. You know, sin happens. And and when there's not repentance, you know, you just kind of have to knock the dust off your feet and move on.

Right. Yeah. And but man, God has been so faithful through the whole process.

So God is just gracious through it. This guy's been amazing. Oh, I couldn't imagine.

He is amazing. It's like a walk in theological book. Yeah. Systematic theology.

The guy that called me today from the church up in Illinois had some questions about should he leave this church?

You know, we're talking about different things. And I said, look, there's there's three reasons I believe that you should leave a church.

And I said, you're in southern Illinois. If you move to Texas, it would be ridiculous for you to drive back to Illinois every

Sunday. So you should probably leave. The other one is unrepentant leadership. When you have unrepentant leadership, get out.

And then the third one is theological, major theological differences. And if you can't get past that,

I think you're good to leave. Other than that, work things out. Fight through it. Yeah, 100 percent. I love that advice.

I love that you gave. That's very pastoral because it shows a love for the bride, the local church.

And that's what that's what I've I've loved watching about you as of late, seeing your love for your church, for your local body there.

And then we just that we have a passion for it. These types of things are great. These podcasts and and then the debates and all of that is great.

But but that's that's one thing I respect about Jeremiah is he has the gifting to go out and knock it out of the park in those types of settings.

But guess where his heart is? His heart is pastoring these people, the people that God's laid in front of him.

And that's what we're called to do. So that advice was so pastoral. And in the fact that it it it it points to the gravity, just the sheer weight of what it means to to be to covenant yourself to a body of believers and be in submission.

And so, you know, we might all have different lines where that theology starts and stops.

That's a that's a crossing point. But but overall, the premise is absolutely there.

So, yeah, it's it's it was hard in our culture today. I mean, there's so many.

I mean, it's just so Americanized. I mean, there's so many churches everywhere. Just leave and go. But if man, if you're going to be a member of Christ Church in his body, a certain spot and it's family, you're going to have differences, things that you're going to go through things.

But man, fight it out, work it out and love one another and grow together. I mean, because that's where roots really grow.

I don't care if it's a friendship, a church or anything. That's right. Roots dig deep when you go through some conflict, you know, and you work.

And I think many people in our culture hate conflicts. We run from it and it just makes it worse.

Now it's this awkwardness when you see each other, you know. Hey, Trey, something that has been such a blessing just in light of the debate and everything, we've actually had so many people reach out to us.

I mean, you you're one kind of even before the bait, reaching out, saying, hey, I'd love to help. I'd love to be a part. There have been a handful of people both that have come out of the

Church Christ movement, contact me, talk with me. And I'm just trying to encourage them the best way that I can and said, man,

I'm going to go back and listen to a lot of the angles that you took in approaching these things.

And those things are just answered prayer, because that's what I wanted to do. And there's a handful of people that have even realized that, man,

I need to be baptized for real because I was caught up in this movement. I can think of actually a number of people in light of the events surrounding the whole debate.

Praise God, they got baptized for real the way that the Bible shows us to be. And, you know, we're talking about the local church and the blessings that happen.

I mean, just last night we had we had a young girl in the youth talk about her love for Christ.

And she's like, I'm ready to be baptized. And it's those things I was telling Nathan earlier. I go home.

I'm just like, Lord, I feel sober and nude and ready to go. And I was ready to run through a brick wall last night.

Oh, she wanted to be baptized. Oh, man. Yes. And biblically, a love for Christ.

Y 'all don't believe in baptism. What are y 'all doing baptizing girls?

Oh, I'm like, we're Baptists, of course, you know, we believe in baptism. I've had some people be like, do y 'all even have a baptistry?

I'm like, of course we do. We actually have. It's a horse trough, but it is a baptistry. It's filled up with water and we heat it.

You know, honestly, what's crazy is I take baptism way more serious than I used to.

Yeah. Way more serious. You know, like now I'm like, you know, we've had quite a few at our church, you know, get baptized.

And I mean, I'm like, I'm trying to talk them out of it. I'm like, are you sure you want to do this? Because let me tell you what that means.

OK, you can tell me you have faith all day long. You can tell me you believe in Jesus and I believe you. I'm all in.

Let me tell you what happens here. When you do this, OK, what you're doing basically is saying

I'm changing my name to Christian and I'm part of this family now. And so what happens is you change your name.

Basically, you're saying, listen, I'm part of this family. I want you all to see that I'm a part of this family. I'm a I'm a part of Christ.

I put my faith in him and I want to be a part of his bride, the church. Here's what that looks like in two weeks when you want to go do something stupid and run off.

Here comes the family and we're going to serve you and we're going to hunt you down and we're going to encourage you to say, no, no, no, no, no.

Don't forget who you are. See, you might not admit it, but see, we believed it and we saw you do this and we believed your confession and we're here to pull you back.

Do you really want that? Do you really want us to come in and knock on your door or run into this wherever you're at and say, what are you doing?

Come on, let's go. You want that? I said, so think about that before you do this. But before somebody says you want to get baptized,

I'm like, yeah, let's do it right now. And then they're gone. Right. And it's like whatever.

But you got them baptized. There's no discipling past that. There's no, it's just dunk them.

And where's the next one? You know, so I'll take it way more serious now than I ever did, which is so good.

Well, I mean, when you understand the weight and the gravity of it, you know, of course, they would say that they put more weight and gravity on it, but there's nothing real there.

There's nothing of great value. I would even say, and we've talked about it before, there are there are people who are truly regenerated believers within the the church of Christ right now.

I'm glad you said that. But it's in spite of their theology. No doubt. And so I've talked to people that have have just come out and said it to me to where they like I'm part of the church of Christ.

And I know that they teach like that the baptism saved me. But I know that's not that that had nothing to do with it.

Like they say that they'll just come out and say it. They're like they taught it, but I don't really believe that. And I'm sitting there thinking, well, you know, of course, we want to bring them into a

Bible believing church and disciple them. But that goes to kind of what you were saying now within within the church of Christ.

You made the comment that that there's not really any discipleship after that. Well, I mean, I would.

So let me back that up, because this is one of those things where they cut the clip. They talk about it for an hour and they don't see anything else.

You know? Yeah. So it happens a lot where if you're just focused on baptizing people, a lot of people, that's what they focus on.

And then it's just on to the next. Right. And so are there people who are discipling people in the church of Christ?

Of course there are. There are people who are sitting down and meeting with them and talking and sharing with them and living life together.

Yes, that happens. But it happens a lot where and in my experience. Where you just get them dumped and they're on their way and you're looking for the next one, you know?

Right. And you look up and you never see them again. You know, what's really sad is if we if we contextualize that whole thought over into our sphere with Southern Baptist churches, more your traditional, more

Armenian leaning type of churches, are they really doing anything different now?

Now transfer the word baptism with the sinner's prayer, like just interchange those.

It's almost as if it's almost as if that's what a lot of these really pragmatic churches do is is they bring them in, they get them to say a prayer, they get them to to have a moment in time where they make a decision.

But then they never really disciple them much after that at all.

We've got a family that's coming from a huge church in this town after 15 years there and they're just eating up discipleship like they're here late all the time.

They just stay because they're just asking questions because they felt as though once they were in, then they were kind of pushed to the side.

And now it's like the next person that's in and then that person's pushed aside and the next person is in. So it sounds very similar with the

Church of Christ. It could be. So here's what I think when I hear about that, I'm thinking about my first 18 years in a

Baptist church. Right. Love these people, love my pastor, love my youth minister, love all these people.

And at the end of the day, who's really to blame? Me, really? Yeah, I'm the one to blame. But I look at this and I'm like,

I don't think anybody planned to start a Bible believing church for it to go that way.

I mean, I think when they planned a church, they were like, man, we're going to disciple people. We're going to have community. We're going to do these things. And somewhere along the way, something happens because I grew up and I believe

I think all the right stuff. I just wasn't discipled. I wasn't discipled. No one took me under their wing and said, man, let me explain this stuff to you.

Right. And then all of a sudden somebody presents you something and they're showing you scripture, scripture, scripture. Now, it's all piecemeal together, but I don't know that.

I don't know. It's taken out of context. It seems like to make rational sense to me. I'm like, wow. And that's how people get sucked in.

Right. And so not blaming where I came from, because at the end of the day, it's me and my my family origin of how we grew up, what happened and didn't happen there.

But it does happen in so many churches. And I just pray that here at our church, at the Parish of the Redeemer, that we have elders and people in place where we really stay focused.

We have other mentors not here, but like guys like you that if or whoever it may be, we have some good relationships with other churches that might point that out and say, hey, man,

I think I need to pull back here, focus here, whatever, because I don't think anybody plans to say like a like a preacher.

He goes to school. He goes to seminary and he's excited about being a pastor. Yeah, I don't think, you know, look at Stephen Furtick, right?

Stephen Furtick was supposed to be the genius in his seminary as a reformed seminary. And I just don't think in his heart he was like,

I can't wait to go out and be a heretic. Yeah, I think he really meant. But then all of a sudden something pulls him.

You know, I just it's that heart of pragmatism. It is. Michael Horton talks about that a lot and he does a really good job of talking about the pragmatism of America.

It's so bad. And it's just we got to do we got to make sure that we hold each other accountable.

We have other people in our churches to hold us accountable when we start even leaning that way. I think it's a slippery slope.

And it's just that's a scary thing to me, really, you know, because at the end of the day, we're going to have to answer for this.

One hundred percent. What? Yeah, I don't want that. I don't want to answer for death, you know, but that's just where we're at.

That's our role. And so, I don't know, it's a scary thing. It is.

Well, we that's why we have the, you know, the supporting church, those elders. Like I was saying, these are nine men that are far more seasoned than us.

As a matter of fact, one of them, Brian Shealy, used to teach at Master's Seminary. Like some of these guys are just they're hardcore.

And I look up to them greatly and and both of us do. And we have voluntarily placed ourselves under some level of authority so that they can call us to action when we're going down that slippery slope.

Because you're so right. That's the propensity of man. And that's why the church is so important.

And not to mention, I know I'm about to chase a rabbit trail, but I think this is a huge, a huge part of it is this paradigm of a senior pastor model.

Puts puts a lot of the weight on one broken, sinful person. And so instead of you're talking that way about plurality, elders and stuff, right?

You have support staff, but they're really the senior pastors, the CEO, you know, and they're and they're all running different departments as opposed to a plurality of eldership of men that have such different like like I think of Jeremiah here,

Jeremiah has a mind that I don't have. He just does. Like you said, he's a he's a systematic theology on on feet.

Right. And I love it. But but he has different gifts and different callings and different even different weaknesses than I do.

And so the more as we grow, that's why we want those other nine men to kind of hold us to accountable. But the more we grow with that plurality, then that's the way

God is designed. It's so it's so otherworldly because the world can only function if there's a

CEO. There's no such thing as like getting along all together. Well, think about this. This is how a lot of churches do it.

They might have elders, but the elders are not going to be necessarily qualified here. I mean, I think the number one qualifications that they're all all the qualifications are number one.

But one of the major ones is able to teach. Right. Yes. But instead of doing that, they get people who can run a company who are wealthy.

I mean, they're wealthy guys, so we need to make them an elder, you know, and he's my buddy. So, hey, I'm the wealthy guy.

I'm an elder. I'm gonna make you an elder, too, because you're my buddy. And they don't teach. They don't have no understanding of theology or doctrine or anything like that.

They might know a few verses. And that's just that's the slippery slope. You know, they become a board of directors instead of elders.

And then they they bear down on you. They right. You know, it's not a coming up underneath you serving.

It's like a shepherd. Yeah, like a shepherd. That's good. That's good. Well, we we love that that you guys have that same heart because it's a bit of an anomaly up here where we're at.

So we're kind of lone wolfing it up here. Are you really? We've got quite a few good churches around here, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we got some, you know, some we would totally disagree with as well.

But I mean, we got some good ones and some good people around here. A lot of people. I need to back that up a little bit.

We have some great people. No, you don't. No, you don't. Yes, we do. We got great people.

We've got some great people up here and we're going to cut that. They're going to cut that out. I don't know what

I said earlier. Yeah, they're going to keep that going. But I got to say it. There are churches like we make.

We've made a habit lately of before we go into our call to worship, we pray for one specific local church.

And so we pray together for them before we jump into our corporate worship every Sunday, because there are there are churches in this area that maybe aren't going to be structured the way that we think

Scripture teaches the way. But they are gospel centered churches, even some big ones, even some really pragmatic ones.

The gospel is still intact. And in that we glory, right? We can have fellowship there.

Where we're kind of lone wolf in it in one sense is we really we've really adopted a term called deep discipleship.

And what that really goes into is saying we need to have great fellowship and build relationships on the

Lord's Day throughout the week and rub shoulders with one another, sharpen each other fellowship, but then also have a heart for deep doctrine, right?

Sound doctrine, theology, and to live in a place where both of those can be together and a lot of churches seem to gravitate towards one side or the other.

You got these kind of inch deep, but, you know, mile wide church where they have all the fellowship potlucks and, you know, the cookie sheets, the cookie sheets, right?

Wide but deep. Yep. And they preach the right gospel, but there's no discipleship, there's no depth.

Right. And then you got the reclusive churches that there's really no outreach. There's really no discipleship going on.

There's maybe that doctrine once a week on Sunday, but then there's nothing else. And we read a book together by J .T.

English called Deep Discipleship, and it sets this paradigm of saying, look, the ecclesia, this should be a place where people can learn.

So it kind of sets up like try to have those doctrinal theological courses along with those those wonderful discipleship groups where you're breaking bread with one another throughout the week and doesn't even have to be on a

Wednesday. But it's possible and it's not a competition. You grow together. So that's that's what we're kind of lone wolf in it.

Think about this fellowship, right? What is fellowship? It's fellows on a ship and they're all heading in the same direction.

Right. And so your elders, your elders, your leaders, your pastors are not people who are better than you. They're just the guys that crawl up on the crow's nest and look around and say, look, there's a rock over here.

Let's move this way. And I'm going to come back down and paddle with you because we're all fellows on a ship going in one direction.

And so that's why I think, you know, leadership, true leadership should be. And I'll tell you this, what you're saying,

Jeremiah, is we're playing our church, you know, pastors and stuff that were mentoring us through this was asking us how we want to look.

You know, I might let me tell you something. I might totally disagree with the doctrines, which there's not any real doctrines in the

Church of Christ, but their teachings. I might totally disagree with the teachings of the Church of Christ. But let me tell you one thing they do, which every fundamentalist group does well, is community, right?

Community. And so I want to take that aspect of having community, but also bring theology and doctrine and depth of God's word.

And then you got something, because I think a lot of people are really good on community, really good here. And again, let me say this before they cut, snip, talk about it for an hour.

I think every church really does start out with that mindset. They want to do that.

Yeah. I know y 'all want to do that. That's what we want to do. And I think we're doing a really good job right now. And I think y 'all are probably doing a really great job at that right now.

But man, where are we going to be in 10, 15, 20 years like some of these churches around us? Like, this is why you can't forget those things.

And we have to talk about them and not just let them go by the wayside, because I think everybody starts out with that hope.

Something that's been a huge blessing for us every Lord's Day, we've talked about this trade before, is we actually have a time of Koinonia Fellowship Feast, where every

Sunday we have lunch for free at the church. We have wonderful ladies that bring food.

We have even men that are able to bring just awesome food. And we have so many guests that come that will stay afterwards.

We can build relationships. And what did someone say to you one time? Oh, you're kind of small and you can do that now.

What do you tell them? Well, I get that a lot, actually. They're like, man, I'm so glad that since you guys.

Yeah. He just pointed at me. I'm kind of small, but I got a big head. My head's bigger than his. Now, a lot of people say that to us now that you're small as a church, like you're a small church plant.

You can you can get away with doing the meal after church every single week. And every time

I just look at him, I'm like, I don't care if we're running a thousand. We're going to have a meal after church every week because the early church did it.

Now, of course, the early church, they called it the love feast. So we thought that would be a little weird in our context.

So we called it the corn in the feast. And the whole church of Corinthians, of course, was probably about fifty five people anyway.

So they didn't have a thousand. I'll tell you what, you know, remind me when I was growing up at the Baptist Church, I grew up with every

Wednesday they had. A meal, you know, you pay five bucks and you go up there and eat with everybody.

It was awesome. I'm telling you, I was talking to Jeremiah about this the other day. He was telling me that y 'all did this. And I'm going to bring this up to our church because I pray that we can do that on Sundays.

You know, when we get our building and everything, be amazing, be so good. I can't get over just how fast community was catapulted because of it.

Yeah, instead of just showing up at church and then like maybe going out to eat with a random family here and there.

But everyone to get I don't know about you, but I feel like twelve five church, even though we're only, what, 18 months old now,

I feel like we've been doing this for five, five to ten years with some of these people like they are they're our closest friends now.

They it's and it's that sharing a meal together. It's always it's sharing a meal together. You know, that's why so many friendships and stuff are made.

And I really am not convinced that you're the twelve five church and I'm not convinced your name is Nathan. I think you're

Joby Martin at the church of ten twenty two. To you, you look a little

Jobyish. Now, hey, I did before I had a totally shaved head. He kept talking, telling me to grow my hair out because I look too aggressive.

Same theology, same doctrine, everything. And then all of a sudden it's a joke.

You know what? I always thought that their church name came from a Bible passage. And so I looked

I looked at every single Bible passage that lined up and I was like, none of these fit. And so I had to do a little bit more research to find out that they actually named that because they met in someone else's building.

So I had to meet at a weird time and they were meeting at that time. And so that's what they became known as.

And they they named their church that. So I was like, well, and then that's what gave me the idea to name it after a

Bible passage. Yeah, that's awesome, isn't it? Yeah, they were always late. So they had a I said, let's just do it.

Was it ten twenty two? Eleven, I think eleven twenty two. I actually have a have a good buddy that I grew up with that goes there and he loves it.

I mean, he just loves that. A good friend of mine who's one of my mentors over in Jacksonville, not

Jacksonville. Where is it at? I don't know where church is. What church is it?

It's called the District Church. I can't remember where it's at. Boyd, I'm sorry. Triple B, Brother Boyd Bettis, if you're listening to this,

I'm sorry I forget your town because it's a big one. I want to say Jacksonville. But that's not it. But anyway, he's good friends with Joby Martin.

And so they kind of done some things together. But I think there is a district church in Jacksonville.

It's Jacksonville. OK, that's it. OK, I'm right. I think I don't know if I listen to this, Boyd. I got it right.

You're in Jacksonville. But it's called the District Church. He's a great guy. And he likes me just simply because I have him up here to hunt every year.

And so he puts up with me. But he really is here just for the deer hunting. So I send him to y 'all to go duck hunting.

There you go. So, well, guys, thank you for doing this. We're coming up on an hour and I know we'll be doing a lot more in the future together.

Oh, yeah. And so, man, I appreciate you guys doing this with us. It's our first time on this little two screen thing.

It only took us about, you know what, three hours to get it set up. It felt like. So I think it's all right.

But I hope you guys, you enjoyed it. I enjoyed having you all and talking to you and getting to know you, Nathan.

Yeah, man, it's great. This is a perfect opportunity. Us meeting in person, getting to talk for the first time is presented for everyone to see.

Yes. And I want to point out that they're the same age. We're the same age. He keeps he keeps pointing this.

I think he's wanting I think he's wanting to to really drive the knife into the back with the age thing.

I mean, I really I don't feel old, but you say 44, that's old. I mean, I'm like, that's crazy, right now.

I hear I hear you have a teenage daughter, right? Oh, I've got what are you talking about? I've got five kids.

Yeah. OK, I've got four. So but you have you have you have a daughter that's like 16, 17, 17.

Yeah. Yeah. Mine is almost 17, 13, 10 and three. Three. Did you sound like me?

I got my oldest daughter Delaney is is just about 17. And then I have a 14 year old son, which is a handful.

Oh, and then and then a 10 year old daughter and then a six year old daughter. I'm actually when I shut this down,

I've got a date with my 17 year old daughter tonight. So nice. We do date nights with our kids. We like them and everything.

So tonight's my 17 year olds. She loves it. We'll have fun, man. Hey, it was good to be on here with you.

Yeah, I enjoyed it immensely. I look forward to doing this more in the future. Yeah.

And I'll be talking to you guys getting ready for this May 10th discussion. And so, yeah, I'm excited.