Interview Pastor Kenny Roberts

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00:03
Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture and media from a Reformed perspective.
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Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
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Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
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Today we have a special program because today I am going to be interviewing a friend and fellow pastor, Kenny Roberts from Mission Way Church in Jacksonville, Florida.
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Hi Kenny, how are you? I am doing well.
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Thanks for having me on.
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I'm excited about it.
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I'm very excited to have you as well and I'm excited also to mention that you are also a person with a podcast.
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You have the Calford Catechism and tell us, you told me something I did not know.
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What is Calford? What's that about? Calford was, and I didn't know this until we started the podcast, Calford was the original name of Jacksonville.
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As a matter of fact, there is a steakhouse downtown called Calford Chop House and it comes from the original name for Jacksonville.
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So Calford Catechism.
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We just felt like it was kind of catchy, although I don't know that it's catching on.
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I really like it.
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I like your logo and I wanted to just right away let our listeners know that you do have a podcast and later on we're going to be talking a little bit about it because it's a catechism podcast.
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It talks a lot about theology, which our church motto is, and I know it's not unique to us, but our church motto is theology matters.
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So if people are interested in going deeper, learning more about theology, they certainly could go and look up your podcast and I would recommend it.
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But for now, I want to talk a little bit about you.
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Kenny, can you tell me one thing? I want to ask this right away.
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You're a younger man.
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I think you're younger than me.
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How old are you? I am 29.
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You're 29 years old.
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And how long have you been in the ministry full time? Close to 10 years now.
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So I started when I was 20, full time ministry.
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That's amazing.
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You know, I got saved when I was 19 and I entered into full time ministry when I was 25.
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So I was young as well, but that's even younger.
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That's amazing.
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It's wonderful to see God save somebody young and use somebody young.
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I know a lot of men who don't really get going until later in their years and there's, you know, some people say, well, you need more wisdom.
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Yeah, but it's great to see God using somebody their whole life.
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And on that note, I think people need to understand that for somebody like myself, I don't come into this.
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I didn't start into this at 20 because I thought I had it all figured out or that I had all the answers.
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I mean, I had a lot of pride and still do that I need to work through, but I came into this because of a calling.
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And so if God's going to call, then he's going to work through me.
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And I've got to trust that.
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I got to lean on him for that.
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Amen.
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Amen.
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Well, I'm glad to know you and glad that we have met and we met through a local pastors fellowship, Pastor Shane Waters.
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And I often like to remind people of his church as well, because his church hosts a pastors group that gets together at Sovereign Grace Baptist Church.
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And I'm grateful to be a part of that and grateful to have met you through that.
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Well, Kenny, if you started preaching when you were, or you started ministry at such a young age, how old were you when you got saved? I was either five or six.
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I couldn't tell you exactly.
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But my Sunday school teacher repented and got saved in the middle of a Sunday school class and in the middle of teaching.
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And so I went home with questions and my parents led me to saving knowledge of Christ and grew up in the church and started actually.
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So I started full time ministry at 20.
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But when I was 14, my youth pastor looked at me and said, I want you to preach.
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And so I've been preaching since I was 14, which probably was the worst idea he ever had.
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But I did it anyway.
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That's awesome.
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All right.
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So as a young boy, then you were your parents, essentially, from this situation that happened with the Sunday school teacher, your parents were the ones who were leading you.
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So your parents were both believers? Yes.
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And what kind of church was it that you grew up in? So I grew up in the Bahamas, as may be worth mentioning.
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And we had a church down there that was non-denominational, but I would say theologically Baptist for the most part.
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Most of those non-denominational, that's Baptist hidden.
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Yes.
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You're a closet Baptist most of the time.
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So yeah, there was three churches on the island.
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There was a Grace Brethren Church, a Methodist church, and then the church I grew up in, which was more non-denominational.
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My dad served as an elder for many years in the church and still leads the Sunday school ministry.
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My parents have been faithful Christians for a long time.
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So they still live in the Bahamas? Yeah, all my family's still back there.
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I'm the black sheep of the family in that I moved to the States.
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That's interesting.
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Now, I have a question just on a personal level.
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How are they doing? I know a few years ago they were hit really hard with the storm.
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How are things down in the Bahamas? Yeah, so most of my family live on an island that wasn't greatly affected by the storm, but I do have my second cousin and his family.
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They lost their home.
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They came very close to losing their lives in the storm, and so they relocated to another island.
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A lot of the people that I know who are on Abaco, which is one of the islands majorly affected, I mean, their lives are still in ruin.
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They're either without electricity or running water.
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They're still trying to rebuild.
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They've got a long way to go.
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I remember sitting at night and watching the news and watching the storm just sit on that island, and it seemed to sit forever.
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I know the times that we have had brushes throughout my life, I've never had major impact from a hurricane, but we've had brushes here and there, but it's always been here today, gone tomorrow.
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It comes in.
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It hits us, and it goes, and it just was so horrible to watch, so they definitely continue to be in our prayers.
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Coming from the Bahamas, that's an interesting just side note, living the island life.
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Well, you told us how you got saved.
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You told us the call to ministry.
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Now, when was your first church, and what was the first church you served in? Ask that pastor.
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Yeah, yeah.
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The church I grew up in, so I was here in Jacksonville at Trinity Baptist College finishing up my bachelor's degree, and my former youth pastor left the church, and I just felt burdened for the youth ministry there, and reached out to the pastor to see if there was an opportunity for me to come back and serve.
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They brought me in, and I served there for two years alongside another guy in the youth ministry and pastored there for that time frame, and then God called us to move away and went to Sarasota, Florida, to South Shore Community Church for five years.
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For the last two years, I've been here at Mission Way, and I am praying and hoping that this is where God has me for the long haul.
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Love this church and love being here.
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We just bought a home, too, so I need to be here for at least a little bit longer.
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Amen.
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Some guys have the passion and desire to move from church to church, almost like trying to find the bigger, better deal, trying to find the, well, I'm in a 100-member church now.
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Maybe the next church will be 200 members, and then maybe the next church will be 500 members.
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But you're wanting to see this church be the church that you're in for as long as the Lord will have you.
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Well, and there were, you know, leaving the church in the Bahamas, there were a lot of factors in there that we wouldn't really have time to go into here.
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But leaving the church in Sarasota had to do with, I believe that the gifts that God's given me and the calling that He's given me is better suited in a teaching pastor or senior pastor role than a youth pastor.
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That's not to say, I wasn't trying to climb a ladder or get to a bigger, better church.
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I just know this is where God has me, and this is the role that I'm best suited for.
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Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely.
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That's what I'm saying.
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Some guys are always just thinking about what's next, but you're saying you're looking at this for the long haul, and, you know, the guys that I most admire in that regard, guys like Dr.
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MacArthur who've been in the same place for, you know, half a century almost, you know, and that's the kind of thing that I think we could, you can make a lot of wonderful and powerful changes if you're able to, because what you do is you develop an atmosphere of trust.
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You know, I know in some denominations, they move the pastor every two years, and can you imagine having to build trust like that? I think a side note here, not to kind of detract from where we were going, but a side note here is something that we've seen even in the midst of the pandemic.
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We've been seeing it anyway, but we're seeing people show their lack of value of truly being a part of a local church and considering themselves family, and I don't view myself as necessarily the pastor of Mission Way.
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I am a member of and a part of Mission Way Church, and God has called me to serve this church in this way, but wherever this church goes, wherever it takes me, I don't, this is not a job, this is a calling, and this is a specific church He's called me to, and so even one kind of side story from my own life on that was the church that I was a part of in Sarasota, they had a church split when I got there about a year into me being there, and the senior pastor left along with about 100 other people, and I remember being approached to consider stepping into the senior pastor role, and at first I said no, because I was like 25 at the time, and I knew I wasn't ready for that for many reasons, but then I started to believe God maybe called me to kind of be a part of that process.
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I put my name in, ended up, they called somebody else, and somebody said, are you disappointed? And I said no, because I'm called to South Shore Community Church.
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I'm not called to a role or a position or a status.
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If this is who God has, then that's who He has, and this is where He has me for now, and He's calling me, and so I think that's missing in the church.
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So as a pastor, that's missing, but even as church members, that's missing, because people just jump ship to the next church that has something that they want or they feel like the church can offer them versus how can I plug in, how can I serve, how can I be a part of using my gifts to further the gospel and to love one another here in this congregation.
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Amen, and I hope people were really listening to that, because one of the things that I have said with a saddened heart over the years is how unfortunate it is that the back door of the church swings as wide as the front door, and as encouraged as we are often to see visitors, and we are always encouraged to see a new face and to shake a new hand and to be visited, you know that there are people on the other side that are just ready to step out the door, because as you said, the church isn't meeting whatever they think the church should be doing in their life, or they're dissatisfied with something, and so they want to go somewhere else, and like you said, they don't treat it like a family.
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When we renamed our church, we used to be Forest Christian Church, and then in 2010, we changed the name to Sovereign Grace Family Church, and we added Family Church because we believed, just as you have said, that the church is a family.
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Now out of that, we sort of got into family integration and stuff.
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That actually was secondary.
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The family in the title, the reason for the name was because we all said we weren't Baptist by denomination.
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It was honestly, it was either going to be Bible Church or Family Church, because both of those were important, and we settled on Family Church because of what you just said.
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This is not just the community.
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It's huge, and I think one thing that a lot of people don't recognize, even in the New Testament, is take a church like the church Corinth that had all the problems that it had.
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Paul never told a single person in that church, you should probably find another community of believers.
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He said, you need to be there.
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You need to work it out.
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You need to seek Scripture and truth here and work out these issues, call it out, but you don't fix this by jumping ship.
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You fix this by going deeper in community, going deeper into the Word together, and so I would even say maybe you're part of a church that's not quite there with some of the things that you want or even see in Scripture.
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Then be a part of helping to call your pastors to the Scriptures.
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Be a part of seeing your church become more biblical.
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The other thing that, I love church planting, and I love the fact that people want to plant churches, but I wish more people had a heart for church revitalization and taking churches that are dying and seeing them come back to the truth, come back to the Scriptures, and watching them grow and flourish.
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Amen, amen, and like you said, church planting has its place, but doesn't it seem like there's enough churches, as far as by number, that we could see, like you said, revitalized versus we're going to put up a church across the street from a church that's already there, and unfortunately, that's what we see in a lot of places, and not that that's always wrong, and I hope nobody hears that and thinks that I'm challenging all church planting.
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I think that it's, I think there's a place for both, but I think you're absolutely right, and again, you know, by identifying the church as a family, and what's interesting, you mentioned First Corinthians.
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I preached through First Corinthians, and I entitled the series A Church with Problems, because that's what the church at Corinth was.
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It was a church with just one problem after the other.
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You know, I have heard these things about you.
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They're bad, and don't pack up and go over to Thessalonica.
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Don't pack up and go over to Ephesus, you know, which obviously wasn't an option, and there wasn't the second church at Corinth, you know, or the second Presbyterian Corinthian church.
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They didn't have the options that people have today, and that's the, I think that's the real scary thing today, is the options are, one, plentiful, and two, bad.
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There's a lot of bad churches, and people are willing to leave a solid teaching church for oftentimes reasons that are not biblical, are not good, and to find a church that isn't solid, but they somehow are meeting some kind of a felt need, and there's a lot of that.
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So again, we go down a rabbit hole.
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Well, your ministry then, you know, you spent years in youth ministry.
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I did, too.
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What are your feelings, and this is, you know, I mentioned us being family integrated, but I'm not a, you know, I do believe that what we're doing is best for us, but I certainly don't condemn churches that do things necessarily different ways.
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Do you guys have a youth group at the church that you're in now, or are you guys more integrated? How do y'all, how do you do? Yeah, so we're a smaller church with not a ton of middle and high school students, but we are during the Sunday service, so I have the philosophy that especially teenagers need to be involved in Sunday services.
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I don't want programs going on for teenagers during our gathering, and we have children's church, and I would say that, you know, that's a whole other conversation, but I would say that if you're going to do that, then make sure that's biblical, and make sure what you're pursuing is family discipleship.
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So what I used to tell parents all the time as a youth pastor is, I am not God's gift to you and your children.
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I get to see them for an hour a week at best, and you are with them all the time.
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You need to be pouring into them.
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This is just a supplement for me to come alongside of you and help support what you are already doing, and so that's the mindset that I have here in seeing families disciple their children.
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That's crucial.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Again, family church, you know, I remember somebody asked us years ago, well, do you have a youth director or do you have a youth leader? I said, yeah, we have 40 of them.
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We call them fathers.
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All of the dads here are ordained to their families as youth leaders, and some of them are, you know, really motivated and dedicated, you know, and that's our goal is to try to get all of them in that direction, but like I said, I was a youth director for years, and, you know, I made a lot of mistakes.
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I would say probably my biggest mistake was I was saved when I was 20, or I was saved when I was 19.
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I started really working in the church about two years later because I felt God drawing me to it, and I started going to seminary, and but, you know, I only knew what other people were doing, so I learned a lot by watching and making a lot of the program-driven mistakes like you said earlier, but if I had it to do differently, I certainly would have been more gospel-focused, more gospel-centered, and those are things that just came with time learning and understanding that it's not about the hot dog parties or the whatever, but what we're, you know, looking back at that time, what were some things that helped create in you something that you knew you were going to go on to ministry? Let me make sure I'm asking this correctly.
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I want to set you up with a good question.
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When you were in youth ministry, what was it that during that time you looked at this and you said, I know that I am being called to teach everybody, not just the kids? Do you remember that? Do you remember that moment? I wouldn't say that it was a moment.
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It was definitely a process.
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I think that maybe one of the biggest factors is actually what we just talked about and the need for family discipleship and the need for pastors who don't just hire a youth minister and say, hey, it's you as the youth pastor's job to make sure these kids are out of trouble and pursuing Christ.
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That's one factor, but also I just believe that God's gifted me to teach and preach.
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I always felt like there's just this pull in full-time youth ministry to have to entertain and fill the schedules and plan the missions trips.
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None of those things are wrong in and of themselves, but I wanted to make sure that I was spending my days pointing people to the truths of God's word and helping steer the direction of a church towards that.
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That's not to lessen the influence of youth pastors.
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I always used to get the comment, when are you going to be a real pastor? I think that that's a misunderstanding of the role of a pastor in general, but I think for me, it was just a realization that I wanted to be a part of, like you said in your question, honestly, steering everybody in the church toward the scriptures and steering them towards family discipleship and making sure that I wasn't just limited to only being with the students a few times throughout the month.
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I don't know if that kind of answers the question.
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It does, and again, getting to help the fathers understand their role, the mothers understand their role, that this isn't one guy who is responsible to do this.
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This is the family.
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I want to move to talking a little bit.
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I'm going to go back to talking about the Calford Catechism.
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Just in case there is someone in our listening audience who doesn't know what a catechism is or maybe thinks that that is something that is Catholic, because I know some people hear the word catechism and they think that it's Catholic.
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What is a catechism just for the sake of definition? I mean, maybe the simplest definition is it's a question and answer, and so it's asking a question about who God is or what is the gospel and then providing an answer.
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I kind of think of it as a simple, easy-to-use, systematic theology book in a lot of ways.
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A catechism just moves you through the important foundational points of Christianity.
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So what is our hope in life and death? The answer is that we are not our own, but we belong to God.
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So it's simply a question and answer dealing with theological issues about God and the gospel and who we are in Christ and things like that.
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Amen.
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And with the Calford Catechism, are you using a specific—because what you just noted there, that's from the Orthodox Catechism, right? The Baptist Catechism? Yes.
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Because normally I can tell when somebody will say, what is the chief end of man? I'm like, oh, Westminster, right? So depending on what the first question is, do you guys go through a specific catechism, or is it just that your goal in the program is to talk theology? Yeah, our goal is essentially to take questions and answer them.
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And so one of our programs, for example, was Am I Once Saved Always Saved? And so we don't necessarily have a traditional catechism that we're walking through, but we want to take theological questions and help provide some clarity and answers to them.
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Yeah.
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So if somebody wants to know if Once Saved Always Saved is true, they can go get on Apple iTunes, and they can listen to your program, and they'll know for sure when they're done whether or not they're Once Saved Always Saved.
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That's the goal.
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That's the goal.
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That's obviously a big one as far as questions go.
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What is it that made you think this is what was needed, this theology podcast? Was this something you wanted to do for your church, or this is something you think is needed in the larger evangelical community? What led you to this? It is needed.
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I would say that I believe one of the main—one of, not the only—one of the main reasons we're seeing all of the issues that we're seeing within the church—I'm not even necessarily talking within the world, but within the church is a lack of understanding of theology and a lack of an ability to study and read through the Word of God.
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I believe that theology matters because what you believe dictates what you will do and how you will live.
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And so if you've got problems in your life and you've got sin in your life, it can always be traced back to what you believe about God and the Scriptures.
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And so to get a better understanding of theology is absolutely essential.
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You don't have to be—you don't have to be able to systematically write an entire book on theology, but you have to be able to know the essential foundations of our faith and even know what it is that God has asked us to do.
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So everybody just wants to boil it down to, well, God said—you know, Jesus said, love God with everything you have and then love your neighbor, and that's all I need to know.
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But that's not true because He said, on these hang all the law and the prophets.
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So every other command that He gave is how you do that.
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You can't just say, well, love everybody.
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Well, what does it mean to love them? What does it mean to love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength? What does it mean to love my neighbor as myself? You can't just pull it out and say, oh, I'm just going to love everybody.
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If you don't know what that looks like, if you don't know what truth is, then you can't know what love is either.
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Yeah, yeah.
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It's like what you said just a minute ago.
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What you believe affects how you—what I say is what you believe affects how you behave.
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Yep, absolutely.
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Belief and behavior are not independent of one another.
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Nope.
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And so, absolutely.
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Now, when it comes to theology, would you consider yourself—and this may not be a big deal to you, but I do find it interesting to ask this question, and some people may think this is sort of a silly question, but I hope not—would you consider yourself more in line with someone who says, well, I focus on biblical theology or systematics, or do you think it matters? I think it matters to a degree.
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I would say that I probably—I used to be dogmatic that I would have said biblical theology.
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I've shifted slightly towards systematic theology because I've seen the value of seeing how everything fits together, that you can't—it's not always helpful to take a passage of Scripture and interpret that passage this way, not in light of the rest of Scripture.
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So, systematic theology is important because it takes into account the whole counsel of God's Word, and those who focus on biblical theology are trying to do that, and I'm not saying they don't do that, but when you understand that systematic—and a systematic understanding of God's Word consistency, I think it's really helpful.
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The danger there sometimes is we feel we're back to our system instead of God's Word, and so you have to be careful of that, but I would lean a little bit more towards the systematic side of things.
26:07
Yeah, me as well.
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I tell people on Sunday morning when I'm—because I preach verse by verse on Sunday morning, I say that's when we're doing it—biblical theology.
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I'm preaching to Genesis, and essentially I'm preaching the doctrines that are in the text as we go, but when we arrive at a doctrine, whatever it is, we're going to look at this doctrine systematically because we're—and I think, again, like you said, even distinguishing the two is somewhat hard, but what I've found recently—maybe you would disagree, I don't know—but what I found recently is it seems like there's almost like a downplaying of systematics, and the biblical theologians are the heroes and the systematicians are the, you know, these guys are the guys who are caught up in their systems and they're bad, and it's like—but I look at it and I say, wait a minute, you know, guys like R.C.
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Sproul, he was the consummate systematician, and I mean, who can say this guy didn't make a huge impact and make a huge difference, you know, and so I consider myself on the systematic side, just like you said.
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I think there's a value of both, and one leads to the other.
27:21
Well, yeah, and sometimes we're creating false dichotomies and assuming that because you're a systematic theologian, you're not pursuing the scriptures.
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If there's something in my system of theology that I believe the Word of God is confronting and correcting, then I'm going to go with what the Word says, so let's be clear about that.
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Those who are advocating for systematic theology are trying to uphold the Word of God.
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We're not trying to say biblical theology isn't important.
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We're saying this is, we think, the best way to do it.
27:48
Yeah, absolutely, and I sometimes think systematic theology almost falls in the realm of topical theology, and that can be another reason why, because we become so—I don't know if it's like this in your circles, but I know in guys I know, you hear somebody say they're preaching a topical sermon, and it's like, oh, wait, that's terrible.
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That's bad, and if you—it's like the one guy said, I forget.
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It was one of the big preachers.
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He said, you should only preach one topical sermon a year, and then afterwards, you should repent, you know, and it's like, but wait a minute.
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Systematics is topical theology.
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Well, didn't Jesus kind of preach topical sermons when you think about it? Yeah, yeah, and again, I love preaching verse by verse, but I also engage topics, and sometimes I see people wince when I say, okay, today, we're going to step away from our exposition of whatever, and we're going to deal with this topic, and they're, oh, that's not good, but it's because we've been conditioned, right? Everybody's, you know, we all come from a culture, and again, we—going back to—I mentioned R.C.
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Sproul, looking back at, you know, somebody like MacArthur, you know, he's driven home that you preach verse by verse.
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You preach through whole books.
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You take three years to get through the book of Jude because that's what you're supposed to do, and certainly, there's value in digging deep and digging long, but let me ask you this.
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In regards to systematics, in regards to—because you are a man who loves theology, and that means we can be friends—what is your favorite, if you look at it topically, you know, the major branches of systematic theology, what's your favorite to teach on that you'd say, I could go right now.
29:38
I could teach a whole class on this, and then I'm going to ask you which is your least favorite, but go ahead.
29:45
Oh, gosh.
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The doctrine of the Word of God is my absolute favorite thing to drive home.
29:52
Amen.
29:53
Because I think that is—that's where we have to start.
29:58
I mean, that's where all everything comes from.
29:59
That might sound like a cop-out answer, but I light up when I get to talk about the importance of God's Word, the sufficiency of God's Word.
30:07
That is my sweet spot for sure.
30:10
Amen.
30:10
Amen.
30:11
All right.
30:11
Well, that would lead me to another question that might could take us into another program, but that would be your view on the history and transmission of the text and maybe things like textual criticism.
30:22
Do you ever get into stuff like that? More than I used to.
30:26
I would not claim to be an expert in that area by any means.
30:30
I would focus more in the area of the doctrine of the Word on, like I said, the authority of God's Word, the sufficiency of God's Word, how it plays out in the life of the believer.
30:42
That's my focus.
30:44
Gotcha.
30:44
Gotcha.
30:45
All right.
30:45
So, I'm curious to ask, which is your least favorite? Because I know what mine is, and I always like to see if it's the same as someone else.
30:53
Which category of theology would you say you would want least to do? Oh, man.
31:01
I have a hard time with that question.
31:03
The one that's coming to mind—I don't know if it's the right answer for me, actually—would be angels and demons, because I think that people get so caught up in that stuff.
31:13
It's like a sensational thing to talk about, and people want more answers than the Bible actually gives in regards to that section.
31:21
But what's yours, then? You might answer it for me.
31:23
Well, eschatology would be— Yeah, yeah.
31:26
And my reason is, like right now I'm teaching on—I'm at the end of a two-year series on systematics in our Wednesday night service.
31:38
I only get 30 minutes on Wednesday night, so that's why it's taken two years.
31:42
Right.
31:42
And I haven't gone quickly on purpose, because no reason to.
31:48
But I'm in the middle of eschatology, and even though I feel confident in what I—in where I am, I'm at the same time very willing to say, I don't know for certain.
32:01
Yeah.
32:02
That I'm right.
32:03
Right.
32:03
I'm confident that this is where God has me right now, and I take a kind of a weird position.
32:08
I'm a partial preterist amillennialist, which means nobody has ever heard most of the things that I'm saying, and especially folks who are coming out of a dispensational premillennial background.
32:21
Yes, I came out of a dispensational background, premillennial.
32:24
I always questioned it, and I am slowly but surely moving towards the amill side of things.
32:32
That has become my loose-leaning position at the moment.
32:37
Do you think that's going to be something that people are surprised by, people in your church, or do you think people hold—do people come to you with hard, strong positions on eschatology? They don't come to me with them, partly because I haven't really—I mean, I've been here for two years.
32:56
I haven't really talked about it yet here, but I'm sure that if you're well-versed enough, you can probably pick up on some of that in a few of my sermons, but there'd be a lot of people that wouldn't have a clue where I stand as of yet, not because I'm afraid to say it, but we just haven't gotten there.
33:13
Gotcha.
33:14
Gotcha.
33:14
Well, I've been—this is 15 years that I've been in this church, and this is the first time I'm really addressing it, so you're definitely not wrong.
33:24
And for me, because the first few years of preaching was really focusing on exposition on Sunday mornings and focusing on things like understanding the Trinity, understanding justification by faith alone, understanding these very foundational and non-debatable things.
33:46
Not that people can't debate the Trinity, not that people can't debate these things, but really, when it comes to Orthodoxy, these things are firm.
33:52
These are things that we must stand upon, and if I had to say what was my favorite to teach on, I love to teach on justification by faith alone.
34:01
Martin Luther is my— with all of his failures, I think probably the Reformer I relate to the most.
34:12
He was boisterous, loudmouthed, said a lot of things he shouldn't have, got himself into trouble a lot, and I kind of feel like we're—yeah.
34:24
Well, I'm appreciating Luther in a new light this week because I'm preaching from 1 Peter 3, 18 through 22, and Luther said of that passage, he said, it's a beautiful passage, but I have no idea what it means.
34:35
I love it.
34:36
I'm thankful to Luther for saying that because I'm a little stuck this week.
34:40
Well, it's difficult.
34:43
You know, just this past week, I was in Genesis 6.
34:46
You mentioned you'd listened to the program about the angels, and that's one, you know, the sons of God and the daughters of men, and as I said in my sermon, I don't know for certain what it means, but I know where I'm convicted, where I think it's saying based on the context.
35:05
For me, it's all about context, but I was willing to say I could be wrong, and I think our people benefit from that.
35:16
I'll give you a quick story about that.
35:18
This might be something that encourages you.
35:22
Years ago, Dr.
35:23
James White was telling a story.
35:25
He said that he had gone to a church, and when he got to the church to hear the sermon, the pastor stood up, and he had been preaching verse by verse through a passage of Scripture, and he said, I know today I was supposed to preach verses 12 through 15, but I can't because I haven't yet come to a conclusion about how I understand it.
35:51
So today, I'm going to preach Psalm 95 or whatever psalm.
35:54
It was his favorite psalm.
35:55
He said, today, I'm to give myself an extra week to focus on the text, and James White said, I left having a great respect for that man because he wasn't willing to just because it was the hour for the message, I got to say something.
36:13
He was willing to say, I'm not ready yet, and it wasn't because of a lack of trying, and I think our people do need to hear that we don't always know for certain, and if somebody like Martin Luther could say, I don't know.
36:30
I'm certain you shouldn't just stand up Sunday and say, okay, everybody, I don't have a clue.
36:34
I've got it figured out.
36:36
That's the other extreme, right? I know this to be true.
36:38
Don't debate me on this.
36:40
There's some passages that we have to come open-handed and say, this is where I lean because of the context and my theology, but at the end of the day, I could be wrong about this, but what we can't be wrong about and what we can't debate on are the foundational issues, and that's kind of part of my point even in this sermon on Sunday is Peter addresses some things that we aren't certain what he means, but we are certain that he's declaring our victory in Christ, that Christ's death and resurrection has given us victory over the authorities and rulers of this world and over our sin, and that's the point.
37:12
No matter where you land on this, this is the driving point, and this is what God wants us to see in this passage.
37:19
That's great.
37:20
That's great.
37:21
It reminded me of something I heard one of my teachers say years ago.
37:25
He said, believe your beliefs and doubt your doubts.
37:28
Don't doubt your beliefs and don't believe your doubts, and so you stand up and you say, I know that this is what this is ultimately saying is that we have victory in Christ, and that I can say with utmost confidence, but I don't know that I know everything that it's saying, but I know it says that, and so we're going to believe our beliefs and doubt our doubts and not believe our doubts.
37:49
Well, and really quickly, so one, sorry, one last sentence on that would be back to systematic versus biblical theology.
37:56
I think the theology advocate would be more prone to say, I've got to figure this out, and I've got to have a position where the systematic theologian would say, no, but what I know to be true in this passage is it's declaring our victory in Christ, and we can talk about all these views.
38:10
We can land somewhere, but, and honestly, my system helps me land somewhere, but what's the point here is what's the truth being communicated, so.
38:19
Absolutely, and sometimes it does make for a difficult thinking about, and again, I could take us off on a rabbit trail, and I know we're getting close to the end of the program, so I don't want to do this, but something like Hebrews 6, right, or another warning passage.
38:36
I do think sometimes our system doesn't allow us to see the passage in its fullness, but it does keep us from going past the line that we shouldn't go.
38:44
Okay, this is a genuine warning, but this means somebody can be genuinely saved and then genuinely lost again.
38:51
I think that would be the danger, right, and so, you know, there's such a balance that has to be taken.
38:56
You can't let the system so constrain the text, but you have to allow the whole of Scripture to speak to the text, so you're not just saying, okay, you know, because I've had people fight with me on Hebrews 6, you know, people who are otherwise Reformed, but this has to mean that they're saved.
39:16
They tasted of the Holy Spirit.
39:18
They've done this.
39:18
They've done this.
39:19
They've done this, you know, but at the end of the day, okay, so is your conclusion then that someone can be born of the Spirit and then not? Yeah, we'll know that with a whole lot of text at that point.
39:32
Yeah, exactly.
39:34
Exactly.
39:34
Well, Brother Kenny, I am so thankful that we had a chance to talk today and to introduce you to my audience, to introduce your catechism program, Calford Catechism, your podcast to the audience, and I am looking forward to hopefully having you on again, and next time maybe we can dig into one of these theological conversations.
39:52
Maybe we could even find something that we could debate and banter back and forth about.
39:55
That'd be a lot of fun.
39:57
I'm down for it.
39:58
Great, great.
39:59
Well, thank you again for being with us today, and before I go, I want you to do two quick things.
40:05
One, I want you to tell us where your church is because it's on the other side of town for us, so I know folks may be near you and be interested, and also give folks your web address in case they want to try to get in contact.
40:19
So we're at missionwaychurch.org, missionwaychurch.org, and we are located at 14985 Old St.
40:28
Augustine Road.
40:28
It is at the intersection of Phillips Highway and Old St.
40:32
Augustine Road in the Bay Yard close to Bartram Park area, and we are in a shopping strip mall center up in there, but we would love to have you.
40:41
There's room here for you if you are in the area and looking for a church home.
40:45
Amen, and you guys are meeting regularly on Sunday mornings? You're not taking a break for COVID or anything? No, 1030 on Sunday mornings, online as well for those who aren't able to make it out, but we're in person on Sunday mornings.
40:58
Amen, amen.
40:59
Well, the same goes for anyone who just happens to be on the other side of the world.
41:03
Jacksonville is almost as big as a small country.
41:07
If you're on the north side of Jacksonville and you're interested in visiting with us, we're at Sovereign Grace Family Church, sgfcjacks.org, and if you have a question for the program, please feel free to contact us at calvinistpodcasts at gmail.com.
41:20
If you have a question for Pastor Kenny and you email that question to Calvinist Podcasts, I'll make sure it makes it to him, calvinistpodcasts at gmail.com.
41:31
Thank you again for listening to Coffee with a Calvinist.
41:34
My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.
41:36
May God bless you.
41:38
Thank you for listening to today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist.
41:42
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41:48
We love to receive your comments and questions and may even engage with them in a future episode.
41:55
As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
42:02
All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior.
42:08
He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
42:14
May God be with you.