The Value of the Local Church (Interview with Kris @Kdubtru)

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April 19, 2022

On this episode, Keith welcomes Kris (@Kdubtru) to the program to discuss his work in creating solid Gospel content. They also discuss the value of the local church and how the internet is no substitute for the assembly.

00:00: I'm super excited to have with me today, K-Dub.
00:03: He is married.
00:04: He is an apologist.
00:05: He is a rapper, and he is here to talk to us about Christ.
00:09: Stay tuned.
00:10: Conversations with a Calvinist begins right now.
00:32: Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.
00:34: My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist.
00:37: And today, as I mentioned in the introduction, I am joined by a new friend of mine.
00:42: He is a YouTuber.
00:44: He is, as I said, he is a married man, a rapper, and an apologist.
00:48: And I recently learned about his YouTube page through a mutual friend, Bobby McCreary.
00:53: Bobby, if you're listening, God bless you, brother.
00:55: I'm thankful for your ministry.
00:57: Bobby is an evangelist and a street preacher.
01:00: And Bobby posts things on his Facebook page, and I had the opportunity to see something that Bobby had posted.
01:06: And Bobby posted a video from K-Dub, and the video was on a sermon by Dave Ramsey, which was recently posted on the, or was recently preached at Elevation Church.
01:21: And I thought the commentary on the video was great.
01:23: I thought the way that it was handled was biblical and godly.
01:27: And I thought the response was worthy of being shared.
01:31: So I shared it all over my Facebook page, and I reached out to K-Dub, and I asked him if he'd be on the program, and he was willing to come and share with us today.
01:39: So K-Dub, thank you for being on the program.
01:42: I appreciate you being here, brother.
01:43: Yeah, thank you, man.
01:44: Thank you for having me.
01:45: I'm super blessed when people reached out and want little old me to come on their platform.
01:51: So I appreciate it.
01:52: Absolutely, absolutely.
01:54: And as I said, you know Bobby, that's correct? Yes, yes.
01:57: Well, good.
01:58: I'm glad he's a sweet brother, and I've known him for a long time.
02:01: How long have you been a Christian? How long have you been a believer? Oh, I've been a Christian for about 12, 13 years now.
02:09: So yeah, I became a believer.
02:13: Around 20 years old.
02:14: And so, yes, ever since then, man, just been interested in serving the Lord and walking with him as best as I can.
02:24: So yeah.
02:24: Absolutely.
02:25: Okay, so 12 or 13 years ago, you were 20.
02:28: So I'm bad at math, but I'm saying you're in your early 30s.
02:31: And you say you're married.
02:33: How long have you been married? Seven years.
02:35: It'll be seven years next week, yes.
02:38: Nice.
02:39: Now, when you met your wife, was she...
02:42: Because I know my wife and I met, we were unbelievers.
02:44: We both got married and then got saved in the same year that we got married.
02:49: How...
02:49: Was your wife already a believer? Did you meet her in the church? Yes, we met in the church.
02:53: She was a believer.
02:54: She was reformed.
02:55: And so a lot of those foundational things were already worked out even before we got married.
03:01: So that was great.
03:02: Wonderful.
03:03: Now, you mentioned reformed.
03:04: I didn't.
03:04: I know I'm wearing the Calvinist T-shirt.
03:06: I know the name of the program is Conversation with the Calvinist.
03:09: I don't hide who I am, but I know that not everybody I have on the program is a Calvinist, but you are.
03:16: You are reformed? Yes, I am.
03:18: I became reformed or Calvinistic pretty early in my conversion, probably two to three years after I became a believer.
03:27: I was just awakened to the sovereignty of God by listening to Shailen.
03:33: And yeah, his music really kind of...
03:37: I like the expositional preaching in the music.
03:40: And so I gravitated towards that.
03:43: And I remember hearing a song.
03:44: Funny enough, the first point of the TULIP system that I heard explained or articulated in a systematic way was actually limited atonement.
03:53: And I was just kind of like, I've never heard anyone say this.
03:58: So I started doing my own research and reading books.
04:01: And I was like, man, I think I agree with this.
04:03: And so that's kind of the journey for me, how it started.
04:07: On a personal note, talking about the limited atonement, that being the first one that you were introduced to, that tends to be the one that most people are opposed to.
04:16: The people who would call themselves four-point Calvinists, which I say, you guys are weak.
04:20: No, I'm just kidding.
04:22: And it's usually the L, but it's interesting.
04:26: That was the one that you first heard.
04:30: Now, I know for me, I was actually in seminary when I was first introduced to Calvinism, but it was in the negative.
04:38: I was introduced as Calvinism kills churches.
04:40: You don't want to be a Calvinist because that's going to destroy your church.
04:43: And so my initial taste was bad because it was sort of force-fed into me that this was a bad thing.
04:49: It took about two years of being sort of confronted with scripture and confronted with good, solid teachers like Dr.
04:58: Sproul and MacArthur and James White, men who really were found, for me were helping me see these foundations.
05:07: How long did it take from the moment that you first, cause you said you never heard it before.
05:10: How long did it take before you were willing to say, yeah, I'm a Calvinist? Well, when I first heard the L articulated, I really didn't have a response to it.
05:23: I was kind of like, man, this guy is bringing all this scripture.
05:26: I can't really argue with that.
05:27: I've always, when I first became a believer, I've always been, man, show me a scripture, I'll believe it.
05:32: Even if it's something that I'm like, maybe having an adverse reaction to initially.
05:39: And so when he said all these things, I'm like, well, though I've never heard it, I can't really go against all the scriptures he's bringing out.
05:47: And so I probably immediately accepted the L before I knew about all the other points.
05:53: I didn't know there was a tulip.
05:54: I just knew there was a limited atonement.
05:57: Here I am affirming this.
05:58: And someone made it aware to me that there's no, there's a whole tulip system.
06:03: I was like, oh, okay, well.
06:04: And then that led me into the sovereignty of God by A.W.Pink.
06:09: And I mean, first, second chapter, I'm like, I agree with all this.
06:13: And the only problem I had initially was like, I don't know anybody else who believes this cause I had never heard this stuff.
06:21: And so I was just kind of like walking around eggshells initially, but I would say, man, right when I heard, right when I heard it, I believed it, you know, because I had some fundamental groundwork to understand these things.
06:36: I didn't know what total depravity was, but I had some pretty close form of that and perseverance of the saints.
06:42: I had a very close form of that stuff.
06:44: I just didn't know.
06:45: I didn't have a systematic to call it that.
06:47: You know what I mean? Didn't have a name for it.
06:49: Yeah, it didn't have the name or the language even to express a lot of this stuff.
06:53: And so, you know, when I heard all of it, I was like, so very shortly after, maybe a couple months after I initially heard, you know, that song to where I understood it, I was viewing myself in a Calvinistic way.
07:08: Awesome.
07:08: Now, did that change your church situation? You said you weren't hearing it.
07:13: So are you still in the same church you were in then? Well, so when, at that moment, I was, I did not have a good view of the local church.
07:21: And so I was not in a local church to my shame, right? The Lord has matured me and grown me in my ecclesiology where I have now not just a reformed soteriology, but a reformed ecclesiology now.
07:35: And so it has changed some relationships, right? Just with, you know, some people didn't like, you know, the expression of a sovereign God or, you know, and things like that.
07:45: But no, at that time I was unfortunately not in the local church.
07:49: Okay, all right.
07:49: How long have you been at the church you're in now? I have been at my church for, wow, eight, over eight years, nine years.
08:00: So yes.
08:01: Now is your apologetics ministry, is that an arm of the church? And let me back up.
08:08: Is that what you would call what you do online in apologetics ministry? Am I, am I? Yeah, absolutely.
08:12: Yeah.
08:13: Just with, yeah, apologetics ministry with different focuses, you know, essentially bad teaching, you know, with that encapsulates numerous, you know, theologies and things like that.
08:26: Yeah.
08:26: And real quick, before I go further, just for the audience, if you haven't seen any of his videos, you can go right now or don't go now, wait until the video is over.
08:34: But once this video is over, go to, it's K-D-U-B-T-R-U, K-D-U-B-T-R-U.
08:43: Just type that into YouTube.
08:44: And there are dozens of good videos.
08:48: I've been watching them in preparation for today, but also just for fun.
08:52: I mean, you've, just the one I was watching right before we started was the one you did on The Chosen, because I have a lot of people, I've never seen it.
09:01: I've never watched The Chosen, and I have a lot of church members.
09:04: Hey, what do you think? What do you think? And my only response so far has been, well, I think it has some ties to Mormonism.
09:10: I didn't know what those ties were.
09:11: I just heard about it.
09:13: And I say, well, here's your video.
09:15: Now I have something to point people to.
09:16: So that's great.
09:19: So yeah, so is your apologetics, then is it tied to your church or are you independent of the church or how does that function? Well, I would say I'm accountable to my church.
09:30: It's, I believe all Christian online ministries should be accountable to their local church.
09:37: I think that's one of the problems.
09:38: One of the problems today is that there are so many people putting out content and some of it, not all of it is bad, right? But there's no accountability to the local church.
09:48: And so my elders know exactly what I'm doing.
09:51: Some will drop in my videos, some will watch the live videos or watch the video.
09:56: So they know what I'm doing.
09:57: And so I never wanna have a ministry.
10:00: I never wanted to have a platform apart from the local church.
10:04: It's, I view my ministry as assisting local churches, not a replacement of the local church.
10:11: Absolutely.
10:12: And I hope people who make YouTube and online content heard what you just said clearly, especially people who are Christians.
10:21: And I wanna mention, I wanna ask you this question.
10:23: I recently heard the term Christian influencer.
10:27: And it was from a man who makes YouTube videos.
10:29: I don't remember his name, but he said, hey, I'm a Christian influencer and I'm talking to other Christian influencers.
10:35: And I got to thinking, I'm a YouTube creator.
10:39: Am I trying to be that? And in my mind, I was thinking, I don't know if I like that term, but it sort of, I didn't really sit well with me.
10:46: I don't know what your thoughts are.
10:47: What are your thoughts on that term? So it depends how you define it.
10:52: Because in one sense, even if you're not online, you're a Christian influencer, right? Like if you have people peeping and peering into your life, you're a Christian influencer.
11:02: But usually what people mean by Christian influencer is something where, oh, well, I'll put it like this.
11:11: I heard a Christian influencer once say that if you, that some people with, some Christians with big platforms should be viewed as pastors, online pastors.
11:19: And I was like, wait a second, wait a second.
11:21: No, that is not biblical.
11:23: Just because you are, this is not your sheep.
11:25: This is not your flock.
11:26: They're not accountable to you or vice versa.
11:29: And so I think that's what many people mean by Christian influencer, where they have a large following, hundreds of thousands of subscribers and they're just viewed almost as an authority by virtue of having a lot of subscribers, if that makes sense.
11:45: No, absolutely.
11:46: And as a pastor, it can be sometimes very difficult when you hear someone say, well, hey, this guy online said this.
11:54: And even if that person is a pastor, I mean, there are guys I respect like Jeff Durbin and James White, guys that I appreciate what they do, but people will come in and will say, well, Jeff Durbin said this.
12:04: Yeah, well, Jeff Durbin's not our pastor.
12:06: And I don't mean that in any way to be disrespectful.
12:10: That's a great point.
12:12: I tell people, people ask me who's my favorite pastor.
12:16: My pastor, he's my only pastor, technically, realistically, because other elders alongside my other, we have three elders.
12:26: So those are my favorite pastors because they're the life I see.
12:31: I see their preaching.
12:32: I see their practice.
12:33: I see all this stuff.
12:34: I love John MacArthur, but I don't see that.
12:37: I love Votie Baucom.
12:38: I don't see any of that.
12:39: They're not my pastor.
12:41: They're not accountable.
12:42: I love their content.
12:43: I will continue to watch and support their content.
12:45: But if I had to listen to only one person, it should be your pastor.
12:50: He may not have the big name.
12:51: He may not have the big ministry, but I would argue your pastor should be the one you are listening to the most.
12:59: Hey, man, I'm gonna put that on a loop and I'm just gonna play that every Sunday morning.
13:04: That's for all the pastors out there.
13:05: That's an encouragement to all the pastors who maybe they have a small ministry, but the Lord is pleased in you supporting your local pastor.
13:14: I'm a huge proponent of that.
13:16: I'm a huge proponent of the local church.
13:18: Amen.
13:19: And what church are you with? I'm just curious.
13:22: I like for people to be able to promote their local church.
13:24: Where are you located and where's your? I'm located in North Dallas.
13:29: I attend a church called Heritage Grace Community Church in Frisco, Texas, where our elders are Emilio Ramos, Lynn Koehler and Landon Cozzini.
13:39: And so those are my elders right there.
13:42: So I always tell people, hey, if I'm not here acting a fool on YouTube or online, contact my elders.
13:48: You know what I mean? But that's why it's so important to know where people are at, because if they're just saying like, YouTube, there's no accountability.
13:57: There's just like, well, at best I can just make a video about you, but I think it's important to know what church you're going to, so you can have accountability.
14:05: If I have an issue with you, I can bring it to your elders.
14:08: That's right.
14:08: And a lot of guys who are doing YouTube, but also doing things like street evangelism and stuff like that, they're out there and they don't have any accountability.
14:17: They're an island to themselves.
14:19: And if there's, if you can't call them to account with their church, cause they don't have one, and they have that sort of what you said in your video, I am the church, that attitude.
14:30: And I remember one night, my wife and I was on her birthday.
14:34: We were in a restaurant and a young man came up and he was our server and he was great.
14:38: He has a very nice personality and he sang happy birthday to my wife with this really beautiful vibrato voice.
14:45: And when he was done, we began to talk about church.
14:48: And I introduced myself and I said, yeah, I said, I pastor a local church and do you attend church? And he says, no, I am the church.
14:56: And I said, no, you're not.
14:58: And he just stopped and looked at me.
15:00: I said, I'm really not trying to be rude or ugly.
15:03: You're very, you seem like a very sweet young man, but you can't be the assembly by yourself.
15:09: The church exists of many members, not one.
15:12: That's right.
15:13: You're a part of the local church.
15:14: You're a member, you know, but you are not the church.
15:18: I mean, I used to use that same unbiblical language until I started to read my Bible and have many godly men point these things out to me that no, you're not it.
15:27: You're not at the center of all what God's doing.
15:30: It's the whole bride, not just you.
15:32: That's right.
15:33: That's right.
15:34: Now, the first video that I saw outside of the Dave Ramsey, and by the way, the Dave Ramsey one was brilliant.
15:41: I thought the way you handled that was great.
15:43: And I am tempted though.
15:45: I don't have a lot of money, but I am tempted to see what happens if I go put $300 on the table at a Waffle House.
15:51: At a Waffle House.
15:53: I do, I can't imagine he's probably right that she probably would be very happy.
15:57: I mean, I would be happy if I walked in and somebody just laid $300 on the table, but he did have a lot of things that he said that were very pretentious and very presumptuous.
16:08: Like you notice, you know, by saying, well, you just reset her net worth.
16:11: You don't know that.
16:12: You don't know this lady.
16:13: Right.
16:14: And she could be retired from a, you know, a great department and now she's just working at Waffle House for, you know, the fun of it.
16:21: And it really devalued, you know, gospel preaching ministry and kind of replacing it with money.
16:28: That's my issue.
16:29: And I say this as a person who believes, look, if you're a Christian, you should tip well.
16:34: You know? Oh yeah, absolutely.
16:35: And so I don't, we're not saying don't tip.
16:37: And I made that very clear in the video, but he, in the other spectrum, he devalued leaving tracks, which I think is, you know, sad, you know? So yeah, there's a few problems in that video.
16:52: Yeah, we actually print, we print our own tracks at the church, but I did buy some tracks, their thank you cards.
17:00: I don't know if anybody's ever seen them.
17:01: Oh yes.
17:01: And on the back it's a track and it says, you know, if you've owed a tip, we're going to give you a tip, but we also want to give you this information.
17:09: Amen.
17:09: And we pass those out to our people and say, yes, please leave a good tip, but also leave the gospel because I heard years ago and it was actually at a conference, it was Bobby was at the conference with me.
17:20: One of the preachers teaching, he said, you know what, atheists hold doors.
17:25: Atheists do nice things.
17:27: And just doing nice things is not preaching the gospel.
17:30: Nope.
17:30: Yeah.
17:31: Nope, not at all.
17:33: Another thing on your channel as I was going through and I, and the very first day I was there, I was looking, I saw your Dave Ramsey video.
17:40: And then I saw your, at the time your featured video, which has recently changed, but your featured video at the time was a song.
17:45: It was a rap song called I'm Black.
17:48: Yeah.
17:49: And I mentioned this to you before the show, I wanted to mention it.
17:53: First of all, my kids loved it.
17:55: But it is funny to see very white kids running around the house saying, I'm black, I'm black.
18:04: That's the chorus of the song.
18:06: I love it, I love it.
18:09: So I had to sort of explain to them, okay, we can sing this and it's fine.
18:13: But if we're out in public and you start singing this, nobody's going to understand because you are, your daddy is very British.
18:20: Your mother is very, we had a 23andMe test done.
18:24: Oh yeah.
18:24: Mine was like 99% British and then like 1% Scandinavian.
18:28: Like I'm as white as.
18:32: Anyway, I just thought that was.
18:33: That's funny.
18:34: Yeah.
18:34: No, I love it, man.
18:36: I've had a lot of white people singing it and encouraged by it.
18:40: So, hey, that was the point.
18:42: Hey, we can all get down with the message of what it's talking about that.
18:46: There is no monolithic ethics standard.
18:52: There's no, what it means for you to be white.
18:55: There's no standard for what it means to me to be black.
18:57: I mean, I'm who I am, by the grace of God.
19:00: And so, yeah.
19:01: And so the motivation for that song and then you have other ones, like you said, the more serious version, there's one that's a featured video now, which is the Wakanda video.
19:11: Your motivation behind that is to say that, that there's not a monolithic attitude of what it means to be a black person or a black Christian.
19:22: Yeah, I was.
19:23: So the motivation of those songs arose from like the same thing, like having a lot of social media interactions with people and explaining my view.
19:31: And a lot of the pushback was like, well, you're not black or you're a Uncle Tom or you're a sellout or all this, not really dealing with what I'm saying.
19:41: And so if you see, if you listen to those songs, that'll be a lot of the pushback for me saying, well, hey, I mean, that's not really responding to what I'm saying.
19:51: All you're doing is trying to put certain people in a monolithic framework of what you think it means to be black or white.
20:01: And then especially from a Christian standpoint, which Wakanda is more from, well, they both are from, but Wakanda is very explicit about it, is that this is not what the Bible teaches.
20:11: We are all one in Christ.
20:13: And that's what we should be striving for, right? Not what it means to be white or black, but what it means to be more of a Christian, right? What it means to look more like Christ.
20:21: And so that was the goal of that song.
20:24: Yeah, and it really is.
20:30: We have been placed in a very difficult context.
20:33: And when I say we, I mean, Christian pastors and leaders, because if you say one thing, a certain group hears it a certain way.
20:43: And just like you said, the response is, well, if you say that, you're a sellout.
20:46: If you say that, you're in the term Uncle Tom, which I know is a terrible thing to say about somebody, is that basically means you've sided with the oppressor.
20:55: You've taken the side of the people who you intend to hurt and intend to push down people and to oppress people.
21:04: And that is unfortunately, because I know that there have been times where I have been in conversations about race or the difficulties of racism and problems like that.
21:19: And I might quote someone like Thomas Sowell.
21:22: I don't know if you're familiar with Dr.
21:24: Sowell.
21:25: Who is not, I don't know.
21:26: Do you know if he's a Christian? He's not a Christian, no.
21:29: But I would quote him in regard to sociological or historical things, because he's written a lot on that.
21:36: In fact, his book, he wrote a cosmic justice was a strong critique against the whole idea of social justice and how that works and how everybody's basically seeking to provide a justice which only God can provide, that perfect cosmic justice.
21:53: But if I quote him and I say, well, Thomas Sowell said this, somebody will say, well, you're choosing, you're cherry picking the people that already agree with you.
22:03: Right.
22:04: And the same goes for Votie Bauckham.
22:07: If I say, well, Votie Bauckham said this in fault lines.
22:09: Well, Votie Bauckham is wrong because he's taken the side of the oppressor.
22:13: Right.
22:14: Yeah.
22:14: And I mean, I'm assuming you've had to deal with some of that, had to hear people say that.
22:19: Yeah, absolutely.
22:20: It's, a lot of the starting point, I think, I was just telling a brother the other day, when you talk about critical race theory and social justice stuff, it actually starts from the framework where I would actually argue is very racist because they start from the framework that the white man is superior.
22:40: To me, I actually think that's racist because white people aren't superior, but social justice, critical race theory assumes that to be the truth.
22:52: And now we're to work in harmony, right.
22:54: And all do the work right of social justice to seek to undo that.
23:01: So I would argue they start from a framework that's racist.
23:05: And so, but yeah, I've been blessed by the men you've mentioned.
23:08: And yeah, as soon as you mentioned those names, right, you can hear the, oh, well, those are already sellouts.
23:14: So yeah, you're just confirmation bias, right? Yeah, exactly, exactly.
23:19: And recently I had the opportunity, I sat down with a pastor who I am dear friends with and he and I, we get along so well.
23:28: And we were talking about an issue in his church.
23:31: And he said, and by the way, we're in Florida, I know you guys are in Texas, but we would all be considered, I guess, sort of, I don't know, it's Texas South.
23:40: Is that still considered the South? Yeah, it's the South.
23:42: I mean, I know it's South this way, but the Mason Dixon line sort of does like this sort of, you know, so, you know, we're almost Georgia because we're Jacksonville, Florida.
23:52: So we're literally one river away and we're in Georgia.
23:56: So we're in the South.
23:58: And what he said, he's a pastor of a local church and a very sweet godly brother.
24:06: He said in his church, what he is seeing is not so much a push for wokeness or a push for social justice, but rather a knee jerk reaction against it to the point that anybody who says anything about racism or anybody who says anything about society's injustices, which are true, there are injustices, that that person is automatically kicked out of the kingdom.
24:39: They're automatically considered to be just, you know, you can't listen to him anymore.
24:45: And an example, this is a bad example, but an example would be Tim Keller.
24:51: You know, there was a long time where Tim Keller was, you know, a lot of people liked him and a lot of people promoted his books and things like that.
24:58: But he now, a lot of people won't touch him with a 10 foot pole because the argument is he's gone woke.
25:04: Now, I would say there are some problematic things with Tim Keller.
25:08: In fact, one of my videos I did was on something that he said.
25:13: But what do you think about that? Do you think that the knee jerk reaction has been too much or do you think that it deserves it? Yeah, that's a tough question because I would argue it's contextually, but I understand the knee jerk reaction, but no, we don't wanna swing the pendulum the other way, right, and start arguing, well, there's no racism, there's no need to do justice, right? That shouldn't be our response either to social justice.
25:43: But I think some people have because they're tying or hearing about the presuppositions of what it means to do justice, right? Like, I'm not gonna lie, sometimes when I hear that phrase, we need to do justice.
25:55: Well, my ears stand up a little bit like a dog and like, well, to where at least I'm saying, what do you mean by that? But 15, 20 years ago, if someone would have said that statement, I'd be like, yeah, of course, because I knew that framework that the presuppositions didn't exist, just like when people say, hey, we just need to love our neighbor.
26:15: Well, 15, 20 years ago, no one would have questioned what that person meant, but now we know it all comes with that, LGBTQ plus, whatever alphabet after that.
26:28: So- I call them the letter people, I can't keep up anymore.
26:31: Yeah, the alphabet people, yeah.
26:33: Yes, but you know what I mean is certain language.
26:39: And when I first kind of had that kind of, when I was coming out of the word of faith theology, God wants to prosper you.
26:47: Okay, yes, but what do you mean by that? So certain language with certain audiences, for me, gives me like cause to pause.
26:56: I don't automatically reject it, but now I'm listening a lot more closely.
27:00: You know what I mean? Yeah, that's right.
27:02: Just this last week I preached on Joseph, I'm preaching through Genesis and I preached on Joseph in the house of Potiphar.
27:10: And it says the Lord was with him and he was a successful man.
27:14: And then of course he goes through being accused by Potiphar's wife and then he gets put into prison and it says, and the Lord was with him and he was a successful man.
27:23: And so I addressed in the sermon how, because you mentioned prosperity gospel, a lot of prosperity preachers would take that and say, see, if the Lord is with you, you're automatically gonna be successful in whatever you do.
27:38: And success is going to look like cars and parking spaces and, you know, cause that's what Joel Osteen said, you know, if you're doing what God wants you to do, then you're gonna have the best parking spot.
27:53: You're gonna have the best places in the restaurant at work or whatever.
27:59: And I said, that's not, first of all, this is an indicative, you know, this is saying something that happened to Joseph that God was with him and he was successful.
28:08: That's not necessarily the promise that we're always gonna have the same form of success.
28:14: You know, the only promise we have is that we will suffer.
28:18: Yes, yes, that's right.
28:20: And that doesn't mean that there aren't going to be successful Christians, but the prosperity gospel has contorted that to say, if you're not successful, it's because you lack faith.
28:29: You're not prospering, you know, with the Lamborghini or the Benz or whatever, then you're not a faith.
28:36: Right, absolutely.
28:38: Yeah.
28:38: So, yeah, I just say that too, you know, I think language is important in like, like if you were to say like what you just said, hey, the Lord, you know, cause, you know, Joseph to be prosperous, I would, you know, I wouldn't take any issue with that because I know your presupposition.
28:55: I know your framework.
28:56: I know you don't affirm the prosperity gospel, but now I'm listening to Creflo Dollar.
29:01: I'm like, I know what he means by that when he says it.
29:03: Same statement, but two backgrounds or ideologies, you know, so all I'm saying is like, when the social justice guys say all this stuff, it leads me to like, I know what they're saying when they say justice.
29:15: They're not, generally speaking, it's not God's holiness, justice, right? Every man's going to be judged by God.
29:21: It's justice now becomes code word for what you to put you as an oppressor to do to the oppressed, right? Or, you know, what we're to expect out of this.
29:31: And so, yes, obviously I would disagree with a lot of what they say with that, so yeah.
29:36: Yeah, and that's the thing.
29:39: Words have meanings, but they also have contexts.
29:42: And within a context, you know, it's a dangerous thing.
29:46: You know, even the word gospel, if you walk into a Mormon church and say gospel, they'll say, yeah, we affirm the gospel, but it's not the gospel.
29:53: It's not the one gospel that saves.
29:56: It's the, you know, the odd Mormon gospel, which is based on an entire pantheon of false teaching.
30:03: Right, so define your terms in conversations.
30:06: That's what I would encourage.
30:08: That's right, that's right, amen.
30:10: So with all the videos that you've made, it's obvious that you sort of have a keen eye to recognize error.
30:21: And that is, I think is in a way that's, not everybody has that.
30:28: A lot of people see things and they just don't even see that it's a problem.
30:32: What do you think, and maybe we could say the top three, but what do you think are some of the biggest issues in the church today, as opposed to maybe, you know, you said you got saved, what was it, 12 years ago? You know, do you think that the issues have changed? Because I know me, like I grew up in the nineties and the nineties were, yeah, I was born in the eighties.
30:58: I grew up in the nineties and the nineties were the time where the mega churches and the mega youth groups and the, you know, that sort of a commercialization of Christianity really took hold.
31:07: And there was, you ever see the movie Saved? Oh, I have not.
31:11: There's a movie with Macaulay Culkin.
31:14: And in the movie, you remember him from Home Alone? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
31:17: He was in a wheelchair in the movie.
31:19: And the movie is about a, it's about a town where everybody goes to the same mega church.
31:25: And if you're not saved in the mega church, then you're sort of an outcast.
31:29: And the movie promotes sort of that outcast being, you know, not part of the church and how, but there's a point where the guy walks out, he's a youth pastor and he goes, who's down with G-O-D? And like, everybody like, you know, explodes.
31:43: And it's the most cringe thing.
31:47: But if you watch that, that's what the nineties were like.
31:50: That was the issue, was the big youth group, the big promotion of like this sort of, this sort of make Christianity cool.
31:59: And so that was 25 years ago, as I consider how old I am and starting to cry.
32:07: You know, as I see my white is coming in very nicely.
32:11: But what do you think are the top issues of today? If you, if I were to say, you know, K-Dub, what, you know, you made tons of videos.
32:20: What are the things that are consistent within those videos? So I would, just with the topic we talked about, I think critical theory, social justice is something new.
32:30: The church really, elements of this, we've kind of exploded on the church that wasn't there 20 years ago.
32:37: You know, even 10 years ago, I would argue in large with the church, but so that LG alphabet, right, community is definitely something that's new in some sense.
32:51: But I think also we're living in the age of the children of word of faith or children of like the pastors that, you know, that desire to make Christianity cool is still, I would say plaguing, plaguing the, you know, the church.
33:13: And I use that lowercase C church, but the church in large, I mean, I just did videos on Mike Todd where, I mean, I don't know if you've met the pastor who spit on the face of the guy and rubbed it in his face.
33:27: I don't know if you saw that large, you didn't see, oh man, I don't know where you were.
33:32: No, I didn't see that at all.
33:34: So he's in Oklahoma, right, right under the Tulsaville stuff.
33:38: But, you know, you just listen to him and it just sounds like he's just doing a comedy show, you know, where the temptation to make Christianity relatable, right? We just wanna make it so relatable to the common man.
33:52: And there's a sense in that, right, where we do wanna make Christianity relevant or relatable, but only as far as the scriptures tell us to, right? Not something new where I just have to break a pinata, right, during the church service, right, to get everybody or fly down the raptors, right? We see that with certain pastors.
34:09: So I think that still is very problematic in the church.
34:14: You know, I mean, I just see that, that probably will always be an issue in this modern age.
34:20: Yeah, now the second one you mentioned, I do wanna take a step back, because I think you're right.
34:25: I think the constant desire to make the church relevant, you know, every summer they have summer at the movies and we're gonna exegete the Avengers rather than exegeting first John.
34:36: Yeah, that's what I was gonna bring up.
34:37: Like anytime a new movie comes out, right, the Will Smith slap, right? Like people got to preach a sermon related to that.
34:44: Any, it shows you.
34:45: So maybe that's the third point.
34:47: It shows you like the world, the church wants to be so much like the world, responding to the world so much.
34:54: You know, and I respect men that just like verse by verse, book by book, you wouldn't even know really what's happening to the culture.
35:00: They're just preaching the text and then making application to that, you know? And so, yeah.
35:05: Yeah, I have to, every year I have to fight a battle as to whether or not I'm gonna get out of the book I'm in and do an Easter message, a resurrection, because this is resurrection week, you know, even though this won't hit until Tuesday.
35:17: So those of you who are watching, you may wonder if we went back in time.
35:20: We did, but you know, this year just so happens, I am gonna step out of Genesis and preach a resurrection message.
35:27: But that's really the only time, you know, that I struggle with that because I do preach book by book and verse by verse, but I, you know, when you're preaching the headlines, whatever's the last thing, you know, whether Chris Rock getting slapped by Will Smith, you know, that's the modern day David Goliath or whatever, you know, whatever, you know, how foolish and everything that comes about that.
35:52: But going back to the second thing you mentioned, because you mentioned social justice, then you mentioned the LGBTQ movement.
36:01: One of the things that I have recognized, and I haven't seen any of your videos on this, I don't know if you've done any, so feel free to mention them, is to the question of how do we address this as it becomes more and more of an issue within the church? For instance, I'll give you an example.
36:22: Recently, I made a post about the swimmer who is obviously a man who is transgender according to himself.
36:37: He is a woman and he's swimming against other women and he's beating them by, you know, record times, of course, because, you know.
36:45: He's a male.
36:46: He's a man, yeah.
36:48: And I made a post about that simply to say that this is damaging to our culture.
36:57: And a person in my life messaged me privately, and I appreciate that he messaged me privately, he didn't send me anything, you know, publicly, but he messaged me, he said, you know, well, you don't know what it's like to go through that.
37:09: I have a family member and it's a close family member who is in this.
37:14: And so, you know, you should watch what you say because, you know, you're not having to go through it personally.
37:22: And that same argument is used, like if you're standing at an abortion mill and you're preaching against abortion and somebody says, well, if you're not willing to adopt the child, then you can't say abortion's wrong.
37:30: And so when, like, for instance, if you were in a context where someone demanded to be called a woman and they were a man, and this is a personal question, you know, what would be K-dubs, would you acquiesce to that? Or would you say that's the wrong thing to do? No, I personally would not acquiesce to it because it's fundamentally asking them, they're asking me to fundamentally deny God's creative order, you know, and who God has made them and who we all know God has made them to be, right? You know? And so no, I would not acquiesce to it.
38:12: Now, some people are like, well, what about their name that they adopted? So to me, the gender, I would not accept, but okay, you want to be called Tom now, whatever.
38:23: I'll call you Tom just for, you know, that sake.
38:26: To me, that's not a big of a deal because there's guys and girls named Alex, right? And so for me, I know some people may disagree with that, but that's fine, we can have those discussions.
38:37: But with names, that doesn't matter to me, but no, I'm not calling you male when you're a female or female when you're a male.
38:45: But I want to go back to something you talked about with your friend who messaged you and he has fundamentally bought into the culture.
38:54: And what do I mean? It's this, experience is everything.
38:59: That's right.
38:59: Experience and emotions are everything.
39:02: And once you start making that your standard, I mean, you'll go wherever the culture goes because that's their standard, right? They have, the culture doesn't care about God or the God of the Bible, at least.
39:13: Their God is themselves, you know, it's subjective.
39:16: There's no objective standard by which you are to view these things.
39:20: So guess what? In 10 years, when the culture goes right back to what we were saying, they'll go right back.
39:25: And then when the culture goes to something even crazier, they'll go to that, you know? It's always this shifting sand as the Bible talks about.
39:32: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
39:35: So when we look at all of these issues that are happening, and like I said, you gave me three.
39:45: You said, you know, social justice and the LGBT.
39:50: And then the third one was, I forget.
39:53: Cultural Christianity.
39:55: Yeah, cultural Christianity.
39:56: So within those three, it's easy for someone, especially someone who is maybe reform-minded to step back and say, all the churches in my area are bad, therefore I'm not gonna go to church.
40:10: And I've heard that from some guys that, you know, otherwise I would respect, and these are not pastors or teachers, but these are just Christian brothers that I'm friends with online or whatever.
40:19: One in particular that comes to mind, he said recently, he said, I just can't find a church within a hundred miles that I can support.
40:28: And I thought to myself, I mean, a hundred miles is a long way.
40:33: I mean, you know, it's funny, the difference between, I always joke, I say the difference between Europeans and Americans is Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way, and Americans think a hundred years is a long time.
40:45: That's good.
40:46: So, you know, for us, a hundred miles is nothing.
40:49: You know, people drive, you know, a hundred miles around trip to work every day, and they don't think anything of it.
40:54: But when he said, I can't find a church within a hundred miles, it's good.
40:58: I got to thinking, and then I thought really hard.
41:00: I said, wait a minute, my church is within a hundred miles of the guy who said this.
41:06: I was like, okay, that hurts a little bit.
41:11: And so, it leads me back to what we discussed a little earlier, and I wanna start, you know, as we start to draw to a close, I wanna finish on this subject, and that's the value of the local church.
41:24: Do you think that, well, let me ask it in a different way.
41:29: How do you think a person should be, when they're looking for a church, how narrow of the scope, or are there things that you say, okay, as long as the church is focused on these things, if they have this out here, this out here, what are the essentials if you say you're looking for a church? Let's say you moved here, and for some reason, you didn't wanna come to my church.
41:54: What would be the thing, or even if you did visit our church, what would be the things that you would say, this needs to be, and if I see this, that's gonna be a red flag, and I need to move on? Yeah, man, that's a very good question, and a question I've thought about, and I think a question that many of your Reformed listeners should, maybe if they're not in church, should hopefully heed to this practical wisdom, but the first thing and foremost, gospel, right? If a church does not have a gospel, I don't care what else they got right, I cannot go there in good conscience.
42:31: They have a right view of God, that means understanding the nature of Christ, who the Father is, the Spirit, so that as well, Christology, theology proper, and also I would argue, does this church take sin serious, right? Or is sin able to just be walked around in the church so easy, and you got people sleeping together in the same church, and nothing's done about it, does the church take sin serious? Not perfectly, but do they at least address it? Is it preach from the pool pit? And so off the top of my head, without thinking about other issues, if a church does those things, I would argue it's a biblical church.
43:19: People say, well, what if it's not Calvinist? You know what? If this church preaches the gospel, preach a right view of God, take sin serious, I could go there.
43:29: Would I have my struggles? Sure, but I would faithfully submit to the leadership.
43:33: I would not try to, I would challenge, right? But I would not try to cause the vision in the church.
43:39: And I think, I tell people this, find the best biblical church you can.
43:44: Guess what? It might be a little more seeker-sensitive than you would like it, you know? It might be, hey, it might not be Baptist, it might not be Presbyterian, but if they do those three things, I think some people, especially in our circles, right? They set the standards so high to where nobody can meet it, you know? We say things like there's no perfect church, but yet we keep looking for them, you know? We draw the circle so tight that we're the only one standing, we're on one foot.
44:14: Exactly, yeah, exactly.
44:16: And so I would tell people, like, look, I have no problem, seek to find the best biblical church you can.
44:24: Hopefully it checks all your boxes, but I think you should have a central box and then a box that's like, okay, if it doesn't have this, we can still go there.
44:33: And, you know, will we like all the things there? Sure, but you may not.
44:38: I mean, I attended a Presbyterian church for a year, year and a half.
44:42: I'm Baptist, you know? But hey, I faithfully served there, submitted to the leadership, became a member, and didn't cause any division by God's grace.
44:51: And so you need a church, man.
44:55: I'll give this advice as well, because people have moved for less serious things, right? They moved for jobs, they've moved for relationships, they've moved to be closer to the city, whatever.
45:08: Move to your local church.
45:09: If you believe that they're, you know, some people think it's a little harsh, but look, if you cannot find a church in a hundred miles, I would argue, hey, maybe it's time to move.
45:19: That's right, move a hundred miles away.
45:21: Yeah, move a hundred miles away, 150 if you need to, right? Yeah.
45:25: I will say it's never too serious for that.
45:28: And maybe the church is 30 miles away.
45:30: I heard it first when I became a member of a local church.
45:33: A church alive is worth a drive.
45:35: Hey, it may be a little inconvenient for you on your Sundays, but guess what? It's more worth your spiritual maturity to drive a little farther to church.
45:46: I'm gonna take a second and write that down.
45:49: Church alive is worth the drive, because I don't know if you've ever been to Jacksonville.
45:56: I have not.
45:57: It is big, it is by landmass.
46:00: At one point it was the largest city in the United States, just by landmass.
46:04: Now I don't know if that's still the case, because I think we divided with Jacksonville Beach and that's sort of created two sections.
46:11: But you can start at the top.
46:13: We're at the very top of Jacksonville and you can drive around.
46:16: And it takes more than an hour just to get all the way around just the city limits.
46:20: It's so big.
46:22: And so, yeah.
46:22: And that's probably without traffic, huh? Oh yeah, oh yeah, absolutely.
46:26: And so the idea is we have people who drive 45 minutes.
46:29: One of our elders lives at the beach and he drives 45 minutes to get here.
46:33: I drive 30 minutes to get here.
46:34: And I love that the church alive is worth the drive.
46:38: That's going on our billboard.
46:39: Hey, preach it, man.
46:41: Hey, I am all for it, man.
46:42: Just because I've seen what happens when people neglect their church and their spiritual life.
46:50: I've seen it locally, you know, where people...
46:54: Now I would argue, I would like, if you're just one of those people that know, hey, look, if I start drifting away from the church, like mile-wise, I'm probably gonna stop going.
47:02: I would say, well, get as close as you can, right? But if you're gonna make that commitment, hey, it is to your spiritual, you know, importance to go because I've seen what happens.
47:16: I'm a firm believer when you neglect the local church, man, apostasy is just like hanging on, hanging right in front of your eyes because you start neglecting the church, man, other things are gonna get neglected.
47:27: You're gonna stop reading the Bible.
47:28: Guess what? All the, there's no, you know, you need brothers and sisters who are gonna encourage you in the faith.
47:35: That's what Hebrews 10, 25 is all about, right? That the whole section, being encouraged, doing the one another's.
47:42: Bro, I'm convicted when I go to church, I'm like, you know, like it encourages me for that week, you know? And obviously I would argue being involved in each other's lives throughout the week, but man, we could go on and on about the importance of the local church because it's so neglected today.
48:00: We need the local church and then I believe there needs to be revival on the doctrine of ecclesiology today, more than probably any subject.
48:08: Amen.
48:09: And a little bit of a shameless plug.
48:13: One of the things that God did in our church is early on, I've been a pastor here for 16 years and early on we had a big struggle over theology and what we realized was it wasn't really the theology that was the issue, it was the ecclesiology.
48:30: It was understanding the role of elders and deacons and I ended up doing a series of sermons that was almost a whole year of sermons on the subject and it became a book and I wrote a book called A Biblically Functioning Church, which talks about the role of deacons and elders and the ministry of the body, using their gifts within the body to minister to one another.
48:52: And so, yeah, I firmly believe that and I'm glad to hear another brother echo back to me those things that are so important.
49:01: Amen.
49:02: You know, like I said, it's needed today and hopefully there'll be some, you know, there's all kinds of conferences on a lot of stuff and, you know, you got your reform, they love those reform conferences but let's do one on ecclesiology and see how many people come to those conferences.
49:17: You know, I would argue it'd be probably more beneficial for their spiritual growth and maturity than, you know, other things.
49:26: Well, let's set it up.
49:27: We'll do something.
49:28: Yeah.
49:28: What's between Texas and Florida? We'll meet in Mississippi.
49:33: That's right.
49:36: I'm not even sure that's right.
49:37: I'm so bad with geography.
49:38: I know the states that touch Florida.
49:41: Right, that's all you need to know.
49:44: Okay, brother.
49:45: Well, I'm so grateful that you've given your time to talk with me today and I've enjoyed it and I hope to maybe be able to do this again one day.
49:53: Absolutely.
49:53: I do want to ask one final question and that is, do you have any projects in the work that you'd like to share with our folks? Maybe new songs or stuff coming out that they need to be looking for on your page? Yeah, I would encourage you just to follow the YouTube page youtube.com slash K-D-U-B-T-R-U, just to be aware of that.
50:11: But yeah, I've always got something in the sleeves.
50:14: It seems like new music coming, working on some stuff that I think will be very encouraging to a lot of people and also just always working on content because I believe a lot of people just, they just don't know, some people just don't know until they hear it and they're like, wow, yeah, that makes total sense.
50:32: And so I try to explain things in a simple way.
50:37: Man, I'm just, the reason why I even started the YouTube ministry was just to share what I was learning, you know? And that's, all people here is this a product of the, I tell people I am a product of a good local church.
50:49: That's it.
50:50: Amen.
50:50: You know, there's nothing super genius about me.
50:55: I didn't go to Bible school, seminary, nothing to that.
50:58: This is what happens.
50:59: If you think, if you like my content, if you think, man, this guy is great, well, hey, get a part of a local church then, you know? Amen.
51:07: Amen.
51:08: And that's such, so refreshing to hear you say that.
51:11: Amen.
51:11: Very encouraging.
51:12: Well, again, I want to thank you for being with me today.
51:16: And listener, viewer, I want to thank you for being with us today.
51:19: I hope you've been edified and encouraged by the content.
51:22: And if you like what you're seeing, I want to, again, encourage you to go to K-Dub's page and like and subscribe over there, but also you can like and subscribe to our page and you can continue to get content.
51:33: I have this podcast, which is Conversations with a Calvinist.
51:36: I also have a show.
51:37: If you are a young pastor or a new pastor, I have a show called Not Only Water, and it's practical advice for young pastors, teaching you how to do things like outline sermons, produce sermon calendars and things like that.
51:50: So if you have any interest or if you have questions, feel free to email me at calvinistpodcastatgmail.com.
51:58: And again, thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.
52:02: My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.
52:05: May God bless you.