Christian Collaboration

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This is one of the things that I come up with in preparing for this conversation is how we want to usurp
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God, how we want to usurp the Trinity in our interactions with others. Even in my thinking on how can we promote unity in podcasting, and I'm trying to come up with ideas.
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I was counseling with one of my guys in the network, and he said one of my ideas was coming up with like an association that's even bigger than a network or community like you had.
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And he was like, you know, somebody else can come up with an association and somebody else can come up with an association. He called me there.
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I went back to the drawing board and I'm like, you know what? Am I just trying to control what God is in charge of?
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Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.
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This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.
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Welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I am your host, Andrew Rapaport, the
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Executive Director of Striving for Eternity Ministries and the Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a proud member.
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The Rap Report is here to give you biblical applications, interpretations for all things of Christianity.
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One of the things that, okay, folks, this may be a crazy idea.
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I get it. I get it. But what we're going to talk about, I think, might be absolutely novel.
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It doesn't happen in Christianity. It's just, it's foreign thought. Collaboration, working with other
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Christians and Christian ministries instead of trying to promote ourselves. I can't believe you said that.
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That goes completely against everything with social media. Yeah, exactly right.
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And so what we're going to talk about today is we're going to discuss, as many of you in my audience, you know,
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I am the Executive Director of the Christian Podcast Community. We have over 50 vetted podcasts. What we're going to do today is talk with someone who's doing the same thing.
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Wait, wait, Andrew, it's not competition. No, no, it shouldn't be.
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This is a big issue that those who are regular listeners for a long time, you know that I talk about the difference between ministry and platform, right?
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We should be doing ministry, not platforming ourselves or a ministry. Because when you're platforming, you're not actually ministering.
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And so what we want to do is, can Christians get together and collaborate and talk together?
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So I'm going to bring in Robert Kneipp. Did I get it right? Absolutely.
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Okay, good. So you're with the Truth Love Network. So for my audience first, introduce yourself.
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Let folks know a little bit about you. And then it would be really good to let folks know you had your own podcast, but then you turned it into a network, just like we have.
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Why? How did that happen? So I'm Robert Kneipp. I'm from North Carolina. And I've been in ministry in some area, 25 plus years.
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And this was right before COVID. It wasn't because of COVID. It was right before COVID. I saw on Facebook, as everybody does, they scroll through Facebook, and they see folks in groups and they were selling things.
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They were doing live videos and they were selling their products. I said to myself, why can't I do a video?
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I have a phone. Why can't I do a video and share Jesus, share scripture, do something on Facebook and share with other people?
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And so that's how it started. It went from a phone to a camera and a laptop. It went from there.
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And the Lord sent my direction, a gentleman who wanted to co -host with me.
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And then I began to meet other podcasters. And we talked about collaborating and doing a podcast together to talk about different subjects.
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And the Lord just continued to bring men together. We formed a network out of that to where we build each other up.
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I don't know if that's just another, that's a Christian way to say platform, but we want to build each other up.
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And that's the main reason that we network is to build each other up because there's people that they can reach that I can't reach.
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They have a different audience that I have. I want to build them up, encourage them in what they're doing.
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And I'll learn and grow from them when we collaborate together on the podcast. So the
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Lord has worked it all together and is continuing to work. And it happened really organically how we come together.
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I don't have the specific dates or anniversaries, but January 2020 is when
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I first started. And then it went on from there. That's a lot of the way, Robert, that we'd started the
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Christian podcast community. It was the same thing. It was, I had a podcast, someone else had a podcast. We knew we wanted to start a network.
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That was the thing, or a community, but for the same reason. Because one of the ways podcasters typically grow is by being on someone else's podcast or being heard on someone else's podcast.
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And we wanted Christians, I know, crazy idea, Christians to work together promoting others than ourself.
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Huh, almost sounds like what Christ says, love yourself before your neighbor, right? Oh, wait, no,
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I got that backwards. Oh, I'm sorry, right? We're to love others before self.
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By the way, total tangent. This is why I'm against the idea of I am second. You know that ministry?
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And I get what they're trying to say. Christ is first, God's first, I'm second, but it's not true.
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It's Christ and then everybody else. It should be, I am last, right?
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That would be more biblical of a view. And I think that's what we end up seeing is your social media drives us toward self -promotion.
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And what you're saying there is the idea of let's promote others. Let's work together for other people's benefit.
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I think that's great. And I think that it's not done enough. And that's why, like, I don't see what you guys are doing as competition to what we're doing.
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In fact, I'm going to recommend everyone go to Truth in Love, which is your podcast. Okay, and then the name, obviously,
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Truth in Love Network. Let me, from the get -go, let folks know that you want to go.
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And just because when we're recording, there's an issue that will get worked out,
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I'm sure, but it's www. you have to have that in there. I know most don't have that, but that's being worked.
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But www .truthinlovenetwork .com,
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okay? And you could see the different podcasts that are there so that you can go and search them on your podcast apps.
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Yours is Truth in Love. You have two that you actually kind of do, right? You have the Truth in Love podcast, so folks can go and listen to that.
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And I already saw you have a Defense of Cessationism series. Preparing my debate with Michael Brown on that topic.
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I'm like now in a mode where I'm reading and studying everything on that. So I'm going to go check that one out.
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But you also have the Laborer's Podcast, which is, it was so funny. You and I were talking on the phone. I heard you, and now I can't remember what podcast
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I heard you on. Dead Man Walking. Dead Man Walking, that's it, yeah. I heard you on there and I was like, as you were speaking, so much what you said resonated with me.
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And then you and I got on the phone and everything you were saying, what you were doing and how you got started, I'm like, so much of resonated.
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You, Christian Podcast, we have a Theology Throwdown podcast where we all get together. Anyone from the community can get together and we talk different topics.
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Well, you have a The Laborer's Podcast. And it's the same thing. Let's discuss theology.
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Let's show folks, not only teach people, but show how we can discuss things and have differences and have a lot of fun disagreeing.
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What, you can have fun disagreeing? What? That's a crazy talk. Iron cannot sharpen iron unless it touches one another.
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Yeah, that's a really good point. I don't mean the tip, by the way, of the blade.
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But no, that's a really good point because you're saying that it's causing me to think, we live in a generation of people who, they want to be in a monologue.
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They want to be in an echo chamber. They want to avoid everybody else. They don't want to say, hey,
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I don't want to rub with someone that's going to cause me to think a little bit or have to maybe defend what
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I believe. And that's an area where we're going to have to get outside of our boxes. That's one of the areas where you're describing one of my points, which is tribalism, where we want to stay in our bubble and it affects our conferences.
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It affects our podcasts. It affects who we associate with. It affects how we interact online. That's one of the things that hopefully we can talk about tonight, but you're describing tribalism, which we need to break free from that.
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Yeah. I mean, look, we could even be friends with a guy like Greg Moore from Dead Man Walking podcast.
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A Presbyterian. Oh, sorry, Greg. No, Greg and I get together at the
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Open Air Theology Conference. We'll get together again this year. Great. And basically, a lot of the guys are in the same camp except for Greg and I.
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And well, okay, there's some other secret dispensationalists that go to that conference, but they don't announce it, so I get all the attacks.
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But everyone picks on Greg and I, right? And then Greg and I pick on each other. But we do it in fun.
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We do it in love. But we disagree. Folks, it's not a bad thing to disagree. It's how we go about handling that disagreement,
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I think. I mean, everyone in your network, do you all guys, are you all the exact same theological bent?
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Absolutely not. I mean, even you're talking about Presbyterian, even my co -host for the Truth in Love podcast, he's a
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Presbyterian, RPCNA. I'm a Reformed Baptist, one of the pastors at a Southern Baptist church.
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And then we have a gentleman in our network who's a minister in the Church of God. We have a guy who's non -denominational,
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Reformed Baptist. So we have a plethora of views, but they hold a high view of Scripture, very high view of Scripture.
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That's one of the key things there. How we view Scripture is very important, but we have differences and we learn from one another.
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Okay, so just for the audience, because some people, you just triggered them. You have someone that is
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Church of God. Yeah, absolutely. So right away, some people are going, but that's a cult.
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Okay, so you just let anyone on? No, we do not. We have a statement of faith that we go by, and they have to agree to that.
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It's just for accountability and parameters so we can say, hey, you're not lining up here, or we may want to ask them to leave the network if they go outside those parameters.
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It's nothing too, too major, but it does help us with accountability and parameters. Yeah, and we have the same thing.
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There needs to be something that binds us together and someone to say, okay, like in ours, one of the things that, hey, if you believe in women preaching, women pastors, nope, we're not going to be right for you because we think that's the slippery slope to a whole lot of other things.
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So we just decide we're going to cut that and just say no to that. But you could be charismatic.
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You could be continuationist. And I think you even did a laborer's podcast, if I remember, or you're going to, on baptismal regeneration, right?
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Yeah, we just did that one last Thursday. Okay, so you have a guy that is Church of God, which some people, the reason it's triggered is because Church of God International, at least, and folks, there are different Church of Gods, by the way, but Church of God International would say you have to be baptized to be saved.
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Yeah. How'd that work out? Our gentleman found out that he is not baptismal regeneration. The one that caught the most flak was the
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Presbyterian, which has spurned the conversation into Westminster Covenantalism, Reformed Baptist 1689 or Covenantalism, the
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New Covenant theology. So it's spurned all kinds of other conversations. That's the fun of those podcasts, to be honest.
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It's why I like the theology throwdown we do. Yeah, it's fun to have some of those discussions that you disagree.
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So for you, what does it look like for Christians to work together? Why do you think
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Christians should be working together? What does it look like? How could Christians go about doing that? How do you do it, at least within your network?
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We have parameters. We agree on that. We recognize that we have to have parameters. No question. But we're all different.
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Even individually, we're all different. We have to recognize that as well. So why is it important? The reason for our parameters is because the content is important.
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The reason we want to work together is because how we discuss that content is just as important.
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When we speak about the how we discuss things, well, let's start with how we shouldn't discuss things.
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Well, go on Twitter. You guys said all that in your podcast last night.
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Folks being in cage stage, we elevate ourselves and our own theologies. This is one of the things that I come up with in preparing for this conversation is how we want to usurp
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God, how we want to usurp the Trinity in our interactions with the other. We want to, even in my thinking on how can we promote unity in podcasting?
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And I'm trying to come up with ideas. I was counseling with one of my guys in the network and he said one of my ideas was coming up with like an association that's even bigger than a network or community like you have.
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And he was like, you know, somebody else can come up with association and somebody else can come up with association. He caught me there.
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I went back to the drawing board and I'm like, you know what? Am I just trying to control what God is in charge of?
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Because this isn't one of the fears that I am responsible for. I have my family, I have my church and then with podcast,
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I have some fear of influence. But I'm not responsible for what God is doing in his global kingdom, in his global church.
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Am I trying to usurp that? Am I trying to usurp the Holy Spirit in my communication on Twitter or Facebook where somebody says something that I disagree with and I feel like I need to change them.
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They need to change their ways. So I come across harsh and face -to -face versus text or comments.
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It's so much different. You can have your motivation, you can have all the love that you can muster up but it could come across bad.
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So you have to be aware of even how you communicate just through words. So carefully, you ask how or things that we shouldn't do.
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Knee jerk reaction comments is probably a good no -no. Yeah. The first thing that you think is probably a big no.
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Unless you're really smart and know how to... That's true. And I should mention, so the podcast you referenced from last night, you were referring to the
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Apologetics Live podcast we did responding to the Remnant Radio. And we dealt with two big issues, right?
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We dealt with addressing Alistair Begg because part of the issue there is a lot of people are just dogpiling.
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They're just jumping on them. And we were discussing not just, okay, we could say what he said, the counsel we could disagree with.
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But at the same time, we could say, that doesn't mean we all dogpile the guy and just jump on him right away.
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Let's give time to see if this is... Is he really changing his views as everyone's trying to claim?
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That is, does he really need to be canceled? So we dealt with that. But then we also dealt with and just showed how a podcast, another podcast that we're responding to, the
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Remnant Radio podcast, they believe in continuation of gifts. I would hold to cessationism.
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We were interacting with things they're saying about the positions that we hold. So we're discussing it.
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There's ways we can go about that because I think when you said something, there's a difference between doing it online.
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And this is a new generation folks. Paul never had to deal with these things. Peter never had to deal with these things.
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This idea of doing stuff online and you all probably know it.
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People who are on social media are different than when you see them face -to -face. They can be so strong.
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I mean, the running joke on my Apologetics Live show, Robert, is the fact that we have people that challenge me all the time.
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And I have a platform for us to discuss it or debate it, whichever one you want to do. You want to do a formal debate?
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Fine. You want to just have a discussion? Fine. Let's have at it. Mm -hmm. The running joke is we get people that, okay, fine.
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And then they never show up. We've had countless times. It's like, okay, you're just a keyboard warrior.
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You just want a monologue. And social media allows for that. But I really think that what it also does is it kind of drives a wedge between people because instead of hearing someone and listening to someone, what we end up doing is we end up wanting to say what we believe.
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The day we're recording this, I didn't know this, but it's the National World Religion Day.
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Did you know that? I did not. I did not either. But in light of that,
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I had a major Fortune 500 company that gave me an opportunity to speak on the different religions, having written,
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What Do We Believe? I was able to go in and teach about the differences between Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.
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Praise the Lord. And so I had an hour that I could sit with an audience that was open to their entire company.
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I mean, hundreds of thousands of employees. A great opportunity. But here's the thing.
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If I went in there bashing Judaism, bashing Islam and promoting Christianity, knowing that the members of the board from these different religions, in fact, one
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I know is a Muslim because he told me that. But the thing is that when they saw that I properly explained their belief systems, they were like, hey, this was really valuable.
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Hey, we learned a lot. Why did they trust it? Because they heard that I can properly explain what they believe.
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Now, they're going to then trust what I say about the other religions or my own religion, right? But that takes listening to somebody, hearing someone out.
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I think a big thing that we struggle with as Christians, Robert, is this fact that we're more interested to have people hear us than we are to hear them.
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Right. And you were talking about the don'ts. And I'm reflecting on this relationship that the
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Lord is forming between you and I and even other people. I reached out to a ministry that's going to be having a conference in the largest city that's closest to me this year.
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And I said, I'm passionate about the issue that the ministry is revolved around.
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And I want people to come to this conference that's close to my home. Can I have you on our podcast so that I can promote you?
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I can build you up and I can let people know that you're coming and having this ministry. And the question was, how many views do you get?
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And I'm like, I kind of see where you're coming from on this. And I haven't heard anything else from them when
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I told them. That's the platform. That's the difference between platform and ministry. Right, right.
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That's why I'm so thankful that you reached out to me and your kindness and your encouragement. And you were trying to help me with the website.
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It's just an amazing thing when brother comes to another brother and wants to help encourage and build each other up.
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We need to, instead of splintering ourselves, we need to build each other up and unite in this army.
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What good are we going to be if we remain splintered against the gates of hell? We need to build each other up and strengthen our army, strengthen this kingdom.
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You mentioned a key word earlier, control. I do think a big part of this is the fact that a lot of ministries want control.
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Look, folks, we get it. If you build something, you work on something, you want to have say in how it's going to go.
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Or we're afraid, okay, if I let someone do something and they start going a different way, or maybe start having a different teaching,
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I don't want to let them do that with something that's mine. Here's the focus change we have to have.
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Is Truth Love Network yours, Robert? No. No. Christian podcast community is not mine.
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It's God's. This is what we see. We have to have the mindset more of John the Baptist. His disciples come to him and they're like, hey, hey,
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John, look over there, this Jesus guy that you promoted there, he's getting more followers than you are.
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I think that in the way that's worded their expectation that they expected from John was, yeah, we got to do something about it.
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We need people following me. But what does he say? I must decrease and he must increase.
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Everything in social media and the way so many Christians work, it's not about us decreasing, it's about us increasing.
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But if we're trying to increase ourself or our ministry, podcast, whatever we're doing, we're not increasing
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Christ, we're decreasing Christ because it's going to be one or the other. I want to share something special with you that we would not know if we hadn't reached out to each other and you hadn't reached out to me and we didn't support and build up one another.
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I want to share something special with you. So I listened to your podcast yesterday and you had a gentleman on named
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Pastor Austin. He's with First Love Ministry, which is in Florida and they're having their second annual conference this year.
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On the Holy Spirit. We also are having our second annual conference this year at Reformed Model Baptist Church at the end of April.
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And as you said, their conference is going to be on the personal work of the Holy Spirit. Our conference is going to be empowered the work of the
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Holy Spirit in the local church. We would never know what the Holy Spirit was doing and is up to if we had not reached out to one another and stayed in our own corners.
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One more thing. I found out in your podcast yesterday that you were doing a series on what does it mean to be a pastor?
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My co -host and I, Dan, we are doing a series on pastoral ordination, what it looks like in different denominations.
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The Holy Spirit is working and we would never see what he was doing if we did not reach out to one another and build each other up.
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And this is the thing I've often said to podcasters, if you stop trying to promote yourself. OK, here's the thing with podcasting folks.
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For folks who are not podcasters, who listen to us, I have a group on Facebook for Christian podcast communities designed for podcasters.
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And so many people come in there and they just want to, hey, listen to my podcast, listen to my podcast, listen to my podcast.
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They're just looking to go on social media, spend all day telling everyone to listen to them, usually not giving a reason why.
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It's usually like, hey, this is my latest episode. OK, who are you? Right? So we don't allow that in the group because the group is to help people improve their podcast.
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But I tell people, you really want more downloads? They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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OK, here's what you do. Ready? And they're like, OK, what? What do I got to do? What's the magic trick? Produce better content.
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Right? Because that's how you grow a podcast. You grow a podcast by having content that people can't get somewhere else or podcast that is succinct and gives people where every moment is good, rich truth, however you're going to do it.
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It's something that takes time in producing that content. Instead of being on social media, just going, look at me, look at me, look at me.
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But, you know, something you could do, and this is if you're familiar with the book, Cold Case Christianity, J.
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Warner Wallace, and he goes by J. Warner Wallace as an author because his name's Jim Wallace, but there's another
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Jim Wallace in Christianity that's bad. So if you say Jim Wallace, you're going to think, oh no, that guy.
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Jim has a philosophy of a 70 -30 rule. This guy has built a really big audience.
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He was a police officer, becomes a Christian, gets into Christian ministry, and has a really big following.
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How do you get a lot of that? He has a 70 -30 rule. He promotes 70 % of other people and 30 of himself.
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So he's constantly promoting what others are doing. You know what that does?
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People go, hey, this guy keeps promoting me. They want to promote him, right? For example, he'll sit, if I do a podcast with him, he'll air it on his show, even if he's on my show, so that he can promote what we're doing.
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That's the sort of thing, I think, as Christians, we need to do more of. The whole idea of, you had said, of being in self, we kind of isolate ourselves and we're not even knowing the person right down the street.
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And that goes back to part of tribalism. Is that isolation? If we lift the blinders of tribalism off of our eyes and examine it and look at it, yes, naturally, we are going to gravitate toward people who are like -minded.
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And that's fine. Geographically, I need to go to this church because I live close by. There's people who have things that come with me.
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I enjoy hanging out with them. That's natural. That's good. And that's wonderful. But when it comes to the negative side of tribalism, we want to isolate ourselves.
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And then we reflect on how that affects our podcast. And then our conferences. And we begin to call out a false teacher.
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Well, guess who I'm calling out a false teacher to? The people who already know they're a false teacher. Because I'm staying in my bubble of tribalism and I'm not reaching out beyond that.
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That affects our podcasts and it affects our conferences. Very much so. And you have a really good illustration of this with street preachers.
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I was thinking about podcasting and what it may look like, what an analogy would look like. And I thought about street preachers.
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And as a podcaster, let's take it out to the street. And I'm on this corner preaching. You're on this corner preaching.
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And I know you're over there. But I stay on my side. I stay in my corner. And I don't mingle. I don't interact.
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I don't see you as my neighbor. I just work on my ministry. And the Lord saves somebody from my preaching.
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Praise the Lord. He comes to me and he says, hey, do you know the other guy over there preaching? No, we don't interact.
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I just kind of do my own thing. Well, why do you do that? Well, he believes a little bit different than I do.
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So I just stay and do my own thing. You have a box and he has a
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PA system. Why don't you get together and collaborate? See if you can work together and utilize other people's resources and gifts and talents.
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And that's what we should do as podcasters is reach out, know your weaknesses, find somebody with strengths, take your strengths and use them for somebody else and build one another up.
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There's an array of levels. There's a spectrum of where we all are on this ministry of reaching out to people with podcasting or conference speaking, what it may be.
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I started out like so many other people as a youth pastor, took kids to conferences. And I feel like my motivations were pure.
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And I look up on stage and I could see how this gentleman was reaching hundreds and thousands of kids.
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And I would say to myself, I would love to be in that position where I could reach that many people. And then here comes the internet, here comes podcasting.
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So in our mind, just because I can use a phone, in my mind, I think to myself, oh,
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I have a platform now. So I dig into that platform, I use it. And then some of us get elevated.
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Some of us kind of stay where we are. Some people do get elevated. Those that get elevated,
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I feel like there's this green room mentality where I begin to shrink my circles and I start charging for my speaking.
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People who rely on that for their job, that's fine. I'm talking about the negative side of it. And the mentality that we have where we close people out, we begin to stop building other people up.
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We focus on ourselves. And then instead of becoming just one of the stones that the
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Bible describes that we are, and God builds up his kingdom with each individual stone, we begin to have this mentality that I'm carrying
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Christianity on my shoulders with this platform that God's given me. Instead of reminding myself, I'm just another stone in his kingdom and I need to support the other stones around me.
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As if God needs us. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that starts to work in people's head.
29:55
When you told me that illustration, it was just so interesting because I remember on the anniversary of 9 -11, a whole bunch of us, we had like 50 preachers, 50 guys that went out to evangelize at the area because we weren't allowed close to where the towers came down.
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But we went out to evangelize there because we knew they were having these big Muslim protests and gatherings and we wanted to share the gospel.
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We had a huge PA system and a permit of 50 different people. We were all taking turns, sharing the gospel.
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We were out there for hours while I go and I leave and I walked no more than two or three blocks and I see two women standing on the corner handing out gospel tracts.
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And I did what I like to do because I want to see what they are. So I usually, I do what I call my gospel track exchange. I give them one of mine, they give me one of theirs so I can see who they are.
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I'm walking up to them. I have my track in my hand, ready to do an exchange and they go, Pastor Andrew Rappaport.
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And I went, uh, okay, who are you? Right, you don't figure in New York City, you know, these two women are going to recognize me.
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I was a keynote at a conference and they had been at that conference. They were so encouraged to see me and they were like, oh, it's so encouraging to see another brother out here.
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We're out here and there's no one else out here evangelizing. And I said, did you know, there were like 50 of us right around that corner.
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Like you had to have heard us on the PA system because it was so loud because we were trying to be louder than the
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Muslims PA system. I mean, I'm talking like a four foot PA system that they brought in.
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It was huge. And she's like, no, we're the only ones out here. They were isolated from where there was a huge team of people and it would have been so encouraging for them to have been over with us and be able to evangelize together.
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They just didn't know. But even worse, it's not that they didn't know, they convinced themselves they were the only ones.
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Actually sounds a lot like someone in the Bible, Elijah, right? God, I'm the only prophet out here.
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No, I have 700 prophets that are covered that we'll be able to work with.
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It's not just you. And that's why I think that's so good, what you had said. So it is something we need to recognize that we're not alone in this because it's not our work.
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If we're thinking it's our work and really what you had said is so true, people get in this mindset that they see
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God using them for something and then it's like, well, now it's my ministry and I have to do something.
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God needs me and I'm the only one who could do it. And when you see in scripture and Ephesians, I often think about this.
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And I think it's also in John where he kind of describes these kind of seasons of life as a
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Christian. You first become a Christian and it's like, oh, I just want to learn everything about God. Then you go through that time as in the
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Bible, describes as where you want to just attack Satan. And you get that critical time where everyone's wrong, but I'm right.
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Like you got a little bit of knowledge and man, you know, first you just love learning.
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You were amazed at the fact that God saved you and then you're critical of everybody. And then if you mature past that stage, you get to a stage where you just love the
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Lord. You just love the Father. You're not caring about these little petty arguments. It's what's
33:18
God doing? I had a pastor, Robert, who my first pastor, every time something went wrong in church, we go to church, there's no electric or there's a flood.
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And I would be the first one there. So I'd call him and be like, hey, the bathroom was overflowing all night and there's water everywhere.
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And his response would always be, oh, it's going to be a great day. God's obviously going to do something because the enemy is at work, right?
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And I'd always sit there and be like, okay, I'll see you in a bit. And I'm like, okay, I'm calling complaining.
33:48
Like, what are we going to do? We got this problem. And he's just like, oh, I can't wait to get to church now. And I'm like, what?
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He had a better attitude than me. Yeah. And you're exactly right. For a group of people who champion the sovereignty of God, we've got to practice it.
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We've got to live it. Yeah. And let him be in control of our views, our platform, our ministry, because it's his ministry.
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That's right. And let him be in control of it. And if the Lord has given you a large platform, praise the
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Lord. We do need you, but you need us as well. And the Lord used somebody else to help give you that platform.
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So it's not about us. It's about him and what he's doing. And we need each other. And we need to remember that.
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If we don't work together, I love the illustration that people talk about with church, where you put coals in a fire and if you separate the coals, they burn out.
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The idea of it is, we should be joining together at church so that we join together and burn brighter and keep each other going, keep that fire burning.
34:55
That illustration does work well. And even in a case like this, where you and I don't live in the same state, we're nowhere near each other, we've never met each other in person.
35:05
And yet we have the technology to be able to collaborate, to work together, to say, hey, here's some things we could do to help you that doesn't benefit me.
35:15
Crazy idea. I think Christians need to understand this a lot more and be willing to say, you know what?
35:22
Maybe, just maybe, I put myself aside and see if I could help someone else grow.
35:29
I mean, this is what we do at Striving Fraternity, is we disciple other people in ministry. Folks who follow the
35:36
Christian podcast community or Striving Fraternity, you probably know that, but we have speakers and we have speakers that have other ministries.
35:43
And you go, well, why would you do that? To give them a, well, we'll say platform, but give them an audience using the audience we have so they can get an audience and then they go out on their own.
35:57
And I had someone say, but by doing that, don't you think that, what are you going to do when that person that you trained up goes off and gets to be a bigger name than you?
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I rejoice. Yeah. What do you think Paul was doing with Timothy the whole time?
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I mean, this is how I look at it with kind of looking at similarly as I do as an elder, as a pastor in a church.
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And I've expressed this to my fellow elders. I said, I want to stay away from apathy, from being lethargic, from being passive, because I want to leave this ministry, this area of service better than how
36:32
I found it. The Lord graciously allowed me to grow up in a Christian home. I've observed Christianity for many years and I don't want to be a part of just recycling the same old, same old.
36:44
I want to leave it better than how I found it. I think some Christians are just all wet. In fact, if they are, here's the thing.
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Theirs are not so heavy, but super absorbent. I love that in a towel. So what did I do?
37:31
I made sure my daughter has those towels so when I go and visit her, which towels do I get?
37:36
Yes. Okay. So if you want to support this ministry, you can do that.
37:43
One of the ways is by going out to our sponsors at mypillow .com. Use the promo code
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37:57
So just one of the many ways you could support us. So as we think about it, Robert, there's a lot of pressure,
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I'll say, for tribalism. And I think it's more so now than ever before.
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I mean, like, I think a lot of Christians, a lot in this audience and probably in your audience would stand back and look at, say,
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Black Lives Matter and go, oh, well, that's so wrong what they're doing. They're dividing by color of skin.
38:23
Or they look at all these D -E -I, sorry, D -I -E. Let's call it what it should be because that's what it leads to, die, right?
38:34
But all of this critical racism training, because that's what CRT stands for. Actually, it stands for cultural racism training because they're trying to train the culture.
38:42
But what is it? It's all about division, division, division. And we could look at that and complain about that and say, well, that's wrong.
38:49
And we could recognize the division that they're doing in CRT. But Robert, do we often recognize the division within Christianity where we have the same tribalism?
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How easy is it for us to fall into that? Oh, it's super easy. And I think conversations like this are gonna be key to helping out our army and continuing this conversation because we're not
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God, we can't control it. We're not their Holy Spirit. We can't change their heart, only He can.
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So conversations like this, having a conversation with you who is seasoned, who's been in a while, who's a veteran, who's mature in the faith, having these conversations, getting this word out and continuing to have these conversations, doing the discipleship, the mentoring, the training that you're doing on your network is key because as I stated earlier, everybody has a phone now.
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Anybody with a phone can make a video. And scripture warns us when it comes to ordaining a minister, we don't wanna do it too quickly, but anybody can get on the phone and start a podcast, anybody.
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And we can't control that. We can't be their Holy Spirit. We can't be God and control that. But what we can do is have the conversation, have the conversation.
40:02
There's probably been many, many people like me who's followed the same path that I have. I was a Southern Baptist who was not
40:09
Armenian, definitely wasn't Calvinist. I don't know where I was, but I began to hear about Calvinism.
40:16
So I went to John Piper's website. I printed off his thick book on TULIP and I went through that thing to try to discount
40:26
Calvinism. That book didn't lead me to Calvinism, but it was a verse of God that led me to Calvinism.
40:33
I went from there, then I began to find other ministries, other pastors that believe the same thing who led me to other pastors and ministries, led me to John MacArthur, began to love
40:45
John MacArthur, listen to his sermons, and then learn that he's a cessationist. Yay, cessationism.
40:51
Yay, strange fire. Love that. I'm all for it. Later on down the road, as the Holy Spirit grows me, and of course you will probably disagree with this as growth, but I've now formed a belief in post -millennialism.
41:04
Yeah, but you won't hold that for long. Right, right. But you've seen it too.
41:12
Those that have went from, or didn't have an eschatological view to let's say post -millennialism, who loved
41:19
John MacArthur, now all of a sudden you listen to John MacArthur, the same people that loved him before, and that's,
41:26
I think, from a lot of immaturity in the faith. And that's why your ministries of mentoring, discipleship, these conversations that we have of unity and how to build each other up are so important because there's so many young in the faith, even some maybe with theological and seminary training.
41:54
Let me tell you how dangerous having a phone that you can record a video can be.
42:00
You have an off -duty firefighter. She sees something. Now she knows something about what firefighters would do, and she sees someone who is being arrested, knowing that that person is saying they have a medical need, and knowing that the fire department is only three blocks down the road.
42:22
She doesn't see the fire department, which would come in an emergency like that, to come to a call.
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And so she makes an assumption that there was no call to EMS because the fire department's right there and they would have someone here.
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So she takes out her phone and starts recording and starts yelling at the police officers that what they're doing is wrong.
42:49
And she's filming at a specific angle where she's trying to show that the officers are hurting the individual.
42:56
And then later, that individual died. What was discovered was the
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EMS did come. They came late. They were called immediately. But the fire department went to the wrong address.
43:10
They actually went to the address where the call was given, where the individual was trying to pass off fake money.
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And so they went to that store, not realizing the need was around the corner. Why is that so dangerous?
43:25
Because the individual who had a medical need because he swallowed the fentanyl that he didn't want the police to catch him with, his name is
43:35
George Floyd. And for two years and $2 billion of insurable damage was done across the country because one woman with a phone didn't have all the information, made assumptions, and many people paid the price of that.
43:53
So it's something where what I think is good about being with people that you disagree with is you can get some correction.
44:02
You can get people that is that iron sharpening iron that you talked about, Robert, to say, hey, let me give you a different way of thinking about this.
44:09
Be a little bit careful. And see, when you have someone that's just going, no, I know better because I'm an off -duty firefighter and I know they would be here.
44:16
I'm not listening to the police officer. So I'm going to make accusations. And because of my authority, others are now piping up and listening in and all of a sudden there becomes a narrative that could be used, right?
44:30
Well, the same thing happens within Christianity. We've got to listen to one another, hear one another out. Let me give you the floor just with any other things you'd want to share, either about this topic or even promoting your podcast, your conference or anything else.
44:43
Well, I want to say how humbled and honored I am to get a phone call from you, have a conversation with you.
44:49
And I'm humbled by what the Lord is doing and that he would connect this and connect me with anybody because I'm not a talented orator.
44:56
I'm not all that gifted. I just love the Lord and I love you and I love all my brothers and I want to build you guys up.
45:03
All the guys on the network, Here I Stand Theology, Podcast, Bread of the Word, Providence Perspective, Bible Theory, Faith Reformed Church, Vertical Life Church, Real Talk with Big John, True Love Podcast, Your Calvinist and Reform Berean.
45:16
I'm here to glorify God and to build them up and to build my brothers up and to build you up,
45:22
Andrew. And because we don't need to do anything to weaken the army, we need to rely on the
45:29
Holy Spirit and God's sovereignty and trust in him. One of the things that we always do is end with the gospel because that's what it's all about.
45:39
I couldn't be here. I couldn't do the things I do. Apart from Christ, I can do nothing. So I need a righteousness outside of myself because I've broken his law.
45:50
I have sinned against an eternally holy God and I need his forgiveness and I need a righteousness that's not my own.
45:56
So he sent forth his son, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died, buried, rose again and ascended to heaven where he sits at the right hand of the father and he forgives sins and he calls his enemy now his friends, inherit the kingdom.
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We are fellow heirs with him and he intercedes for us daily if we come to him in repentance and faith and that's what it's all about.
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And I'm thankful that I have an opportunity to share that anytime. And again,
46:25
I'm thankful to you, brother, for having me on and I hope that the Lord will lift this negative side of tribalism even in conferences because we can elevate our numbers and feel good about ourselves but we are just a sounding board if we stay within our bubble of tribalism and we're not reaching out.
46:44
We're just preaching to the choir, people who already believe the same thing that we do and there's formulas and methods on how to build your podcast, build your conferences but let's trust the
46:54
Lord. Let's reach out to one another and link arms, build each other up and point to Jesus.
47:00
Yeah, you know, it's interesting because you read through that and Bible theory is on both of ours. There isn't the competition.
47:07
It's got to be one or the other, right? So that's really the thing that I hope people get out of this is the fact that we as Christians can work together in love, serving
47:19
Christ. Well, Robert, thanks for coming on, folks. It is www .truthinlovenetwork
47:27
.com. Go check it out. Listen to the podcasts that are on there and I'm sure you're going to find something you can enjoy and get more teaching out of, so go check them out.
47:38
Robert, thanks for coming on. Thank you, brother. And with that, folks, that's a wrap. I'm done letting
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