Kofi is Burning Down the House

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Welcome to the Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, 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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All right, welcome to another Wrap Report. I am your host, Andrew Rapoport, and I have a guest with me that we're going to have some very similar conversation.

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A lot of similar things in our lives, but with it, we are going to do in this episode, some have been asking, where have

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I been? What has been taking up my time and what has been going on that I haven't been talking about?

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Because I've mentioned that a lot's been going on and this episode, I'm going to get into some of that.

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And I got with me, my friend, Kofi, who if you've a regular listener of this program, you have heard his voice.

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I'm hoping I don't need to provide some translation, but Kofi, how are you today? Some translation, huh?

01:07

Okay. Good to be with you, Andrew. Good to be with you. So you're from that country.

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What is it? Britain? UK? Something like that? Yeah. Something along those lines.

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Yeah. Yeah. What language do they speak over there? English in its pure form.

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Actually, Paul Taylor actually told me that his son who used to be here in the States was actually traveling and they asked where he's from, he said, the

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United Kingdom. And someone honestly asked, what language do they speak over there?

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And he looked and said, English. It's where you got it from. Oh, man.

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You gotta be kidding me. Hey, look, look, the American educational system is not what it used to be, all right?

02:04

That's so I hear. So first off, before we get into the topic we want,

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I do think I want to at least address this what happened yesterday with the passing of Judge Ruth Gator Binsburg.

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Now, I keep saying those two letters, I flip them. Bader Ginsburg. And, you know,

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I want to at least address a couple things from a Christian perspective here. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as a

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Supreme Court judge, has been instrumental in providing this country with horrible laws like abortion, promotion of homosexuality, and all kinds of things that we as Christians would be against.

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However, she has a family that whether we agree or disagree, they care for her and they are grieving her loss.

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Now is not a time, as I see with so many of these, so many

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Christians who are putting these memes out and things like this, that are almost celebrating her passing.

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Anytime someone, now I don't know her heart, I don't know if she is, if she somehow heard the gospel and repented in her last days.

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But as far as we could tell, and as far as we know, as of right now, she is in hell and will be there forever.

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And that is not something to be rejoicing over. That is something that would grieve our hearts.

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And I think that for any Christian that is celebrating the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, my question for you to think about, it's not one to give me the answer to, but it's something to think about.

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Are you more concerned with American politics than your Christianity?

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It may be a hard question for you, but I do challenge you to think about it, folks, because yeah, we do want to see

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Trump put in another very conservative constitutionalist in the

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Supreme Court. That would be great. However, that is separate from celebrating the death of someone who worked against Christianity and Christian values.

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She is in hell right now. That's not a thing to celebrate. That's a thing to be praying that her family will come to Christ because of her death, that somehow we wouldn't be seeing a

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Christian community being seen by the world as celebrating and rejoicing in her passing.

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And so just an encouragement to folks with that. I know, Kofi, you're very up on who she is and everything about her right here, all that America.

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I mean, I know the name and I know what she stands for, but again, I'm from the UK, folks. I know the name since I moved over here and people said how terrible she was in terms of Muslim, what have you.

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And coming from the UK, I get it, but I fully affirm everything you're saying. I think we have to take a step back in moments like this and remember that, first of all, this is somebody who is made in the image of God.

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And so regardless of their politics and how much you agree, there's a certain worth and dignity and value to that human life that we do need to consider.

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And yeah, she has a family. She has people who are grieving her at this time. You might not be grieving her and that's your right.

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But honestly, it's a little, in fact, it's not even a little early. I don't think it's appropriate to be doing the memes and what have you.

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Just stop with that. We can talk about her policies. We can talk about the stuff that we disagreed with as time allows.

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But right now, it might be good if we would just keep quiet for the time being and give the family some respect and give ourselves some respect as believers in terms of how we handle something like this.

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Yeah, because if we think about it, her policies are done, right? I mean, she's no longer making them. So there's no reason to bring them up at this moment in time.

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I think if we bring it up in light of who President Trump might nominate for that seat, that would be fair because that's not focused on her and her passing and focused on the future and who we might get in that seat and what it could mean for this country.

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But I think that it is, I almost want to say inappropriate to have

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Christians running around and hosting memes where it has the appearance of celebration.

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So I just wanted to start off the show with that because there's no way to avoid the fact that this is big news going on.

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And I do think that folks, if you haven't listened to Voice of Reason Radio, I think Chris Honhold's there said it very well.

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I posted it after I heard she died. I had posted online that she had passed and the election is going to get even crazier.

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I mean, we're going to have way more craziness going on. And I think Chris Honhold said it well when he said, everything you've seen, whether it's the

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COVID, the riots, you know, whatever, whatever it is you've been seeing, forget it.

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I mean, now every second of every news cycle is going to be on the Supreme Court justice and it's going to get even crazier.

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And the left is not, they're not waiting. I mean, AOC already came out and is calling for, you know, this is the reason we have to get

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Trump out. And, you know, we have to take it to the streets and, you know, so they're, I mean, they're calling, it's amazing.

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They're calling for riots to occur if Trump loses by the

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Electoral College. So in other words, or sorry, if he wins by the Electoral College. So in other words, if Trump actually wins legitimately, they want rioting.

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In other words, and they say Trump is the one that's not going to accept the outcome of the election. It's like, you won't even accept it and it hasn't happened yet.

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You don't accept the one from four years ago. So I think as believers, the right view, and this is what this show is about, is putting a, you know, having a biblical interpretations and applications and a biblical application to the passing of Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not to be celebrated.

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Whether we agree with her or not, she was put in that position by God.

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She was there and she was serving, whether we agree with her policies or not, and we honor her.

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And I know there's some Christians going, what in the world is wrong? How do you honor her? You honor the position. You honor her for the position she had, whether you agree or not.

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But the thing is for us as believers, I'm more concerned with her soul and the soul of those in her family.

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And maybe, maybe the reason that a Ruth Bader Ginsburg got to the

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Supreme Court is because there weren't enough Christians worried about people's souls. They're worried about people's morality.

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Just maybe, maybe we need to start focusing on people's souls and where they're going to spend eternity and less on their political views.

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Just a thought for us. You guys judge on your own hearts. But Kofi, let's get into,

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I want to get into some topics of what's been happening with you and I. There's a lot of similarities in our life in the last few months. I will state,

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I'll state at the end why, if you're listening, Kofi has a little bit of an echo.

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There's some noise in the background. He is not in an ideal recordings situation.

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We're going to explain why that is toward the end. But we do apologize. There's no way to help that.

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And we wanted to be able to record together. So Kofi, let's start, you know, for me, things started during Shepard's conference.

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I think you met at Shepard's conference, got together, had a nice conversation.

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We even sat down and laid out plans of, you know, getting together and doing some, you know, coming out there and doing some evangelism training.

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As two people who are serving in churches now, yours is a, is it a church plant or more revitalization?

10:37

I forget. I think the way I like to describe it is that we're a church plant that we've now had to kind of hit restart on.

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Yeah. So it's kind of both a plant that's revitalizing. Yeah. I know.

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I know it doesn't make any sense, but there we are. Maybe that's the case with us. I don't know. But you and I were at Shepard's conference, which now seems so far away.

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It seems so long ago. Yeah. And I know for sure that you're missing the book tent, but we'll get to that later.

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But, but, you know, it was you and I and Brian, we were sitting down and did you think at that, at that time, could you have had any conceivable idea of everything that was going to happen in your life and my life since then?

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No. Yeah. None. So, so let's talk through that. Now, for me,

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I think that my situation started sooner than yours. I got back from Shepard's conference, literally.

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I came, I was flew in that Saturday night and came right from the airport straight to church because I didn't want to, to miss church.

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I'm out of my church so, so many weeks a year anyway with travel, I didn't want to miss church.

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And we had one of the, we have a retired pastor in our church and he was preaching cause the, the preaching pastor was at Shepard's conference.

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He wasn't going to be there for Sunday and I, it was the first opportunity I was going to get to hear him preach. So I wanted to, to be back.

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So I came back and after service, I got pulled aside by the three of the men in leadership and they let me know that our pastor had offered his resignation, that they needed to know if I could preach, you know, for like ongoing.

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And I was like, sure. And it was explained that there was a disqualification and they were quick to let me know that it wasn't anything immoral, you know, no, no sexual thing like that.

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But you know, I give a lot of credit to these guys because they didn't want to give me more information than I needed to have at that time.

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They needed to know if I could preach the next couple of weeks, but they didn't want to tell me any details.

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They had said to me, look, we'll let you know when we let the whole congregation know, just please keep it to yourself.

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And I think that was the appropriate way of handling it. And I gave them one piece of advice, as you know,

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I do a lot of travel, I counsel a lot of pastors. I gave them one piece of advice and that was,

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I don't know what the details are, but whatever they are, make sure you say everything. Tell the whole story.

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Don't try to cover it up or to protect someone's reputation if there's a disqualification, because it only makes it worse.

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So, that was what I had known. And it turned out that eventually it was expressed that, you know, there was a disqualification when it came with finances, both in his management of finances and in what he was doing about his finances.

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He was making very good money as a, I mean, we're a church plant, you know, there's,

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I think maybe at that time we were having 30 to 40 people and we started the church really with,

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I would say, if you include the pastor's family, you know, there were four or five core families that kind of started the church, there were three that started it.

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I came in about eight, nine months later and it took me a while to transition from my old church into this church.

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And so, you know, that's how it had started out. And now

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I'm in the position where I'm like, okay, I'm going to be preaching, you know, most weeks.

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And that was on Sunday. On Tuesday, as you know,

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I'm working with these guys to, you know, they said they're putting a letter together and, you know, I was trying to just offer what counsel

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I could and because I didn't have the details at that time. And I think it was

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Tuesday that we got the call that the center that we rent is shutting down because of this thing called

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COVID. I don't know if you ever heard of COVID. No, I never heard of it. Yeah, it's this really little thing that affects very few people, but they shut down the entire world economy for it.

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Crazy, right? That's kind of crazy. Wow. Yeah. So I went right from Shepard's Conference to finding out my pastor disqualified himself and offered his resignation to now being where, you know,

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COVID is happening. So it was like all within one week, we then had to figure out what are we going to do for services?

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In our church, I'm the techie guy. So I'm the one that does live streaming.

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So therefore, I guess fortunate for the church, it made it easier, harder for me because we had to figure out,

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I had to prepare a message, which I wasn't ready to start doing and then figure out how we're going to do this online.

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So that was really a struggle. You also, let's start with you when we'll go back and forth.

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How did things happen with you with COVID? And then what happened shortly after that?

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Okay. So I guess I'll start where you started. So we met in March at ShepCon.

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We get back and I won't go into too much detail, but we'd been having problems with a man who was, you know, pastoring our church plant for quite some time.

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I think by that point, it had been at least five months of just like continual problems.

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And let's be clear, it wasn't disqualifying on his part. But they were the kinds of problems where it became apparent us trying to work together was not going to work.

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Anyway, so he finally resigns, I want to say maybe a month into the lockdown.

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So when did lockdown start? Like end of March? It was, it would have been like the middle, beginning or middle of March, I think.

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I think we met one, that's right. I think it was the first week, right?

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The first week, I think we came back, I think we had two more services. And then we went to the live streaming.

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So yeah, about maybe a month, actually a couple of months in, he finally resigns and again,

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I'll put this out there because that's what happened. There was a conversation where it just became apparent that, okay, you are not the guy for this kind of work.

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And he actually agreed, which was surprising because it was the first time a month we agreed on anything. And that was the end of that.

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So that happens, we now go from, and I'm like, I'm the tech guy at our church.

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So I'm putting together the live stream, I'm trying to make it look as professional as it can on a budget, because I'm kind of a perfectionist like that.

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So I'm putting in all this time and effort, and then he leaves,

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I'm like, oh, great. So now I've got to do all that. Plus make sure our congregation doesn't implode.

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Oh, and prepare a sermon at some point. Yeah. A sermon. Yeah. Yeah.

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Just small detail about church life, this thing we do every week, something like, okay.

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So yeah, just kind of threw myself into that. And of course, there was a bunch of drama along the way, including the fact that since everything in the church was registered in the previous pastor's name,

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I won't go into my feelings about why. I have very strong opinions about that, but this isn't the forum for that.

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We had to shut everything down. So bank account had to go, we couldn't use the name.

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Everything just had to disappear at his request. So at that point,

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I'm like, yeah, okay. Oh, by the way, did I mention that I had a kid like a month and a half into this?

19:34

Yeah. I was going to say that that's another element to this. You're saying on a budget, that you're on a budget.

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And for the Patreons who have watched the video that we have here,

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I'm looking at you as you're speaking with your headphones on your head, and it looks like that's duct tape holding the phone.

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So as you talk about working on a budget here.

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This is actual duct tape. I like these headphones, and I wasn't going to throw them out, and they worked just fine.

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So I duct taped the headband. So that's the budget part. Yeah. Hey, look,

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I grew up broken and annoyed. We know how to hustle. You don't have to make it work.

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It's fine. But yeah, so now we've got to do that. I now have a son, end of May.

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Little Gareth, he's four months today, actually. By the time the day we're recording this, he's four months today. So that's your new parent.

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That's a whole other learning curve that I was not ready for, but there we are.

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So I mean, we're doing all of that. And yeah, I'm now the primary preacher. I'm not the pastor, but I'm doing the bulk of the pulpit work, doing that, and a midweek

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Bible study. It's like, okay, this is interesting. But yeah, that's kind of bringing you up to where you are in your story.

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Yeah. Yeah, so both of us at this point are unexpectedly filling the pulpit on a regular basis, teaching a midweek

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Bible study. Now, our church didn't, at the time that this all happened, we didn't really have a midweek

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Bible study. The men were meeting together once a week on Wednesdays. But there was a ladies'

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Bible study that had been shut down and a youth group that was shut down prior. And so during the

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COVID, we actually started. We actually were doing more ministry, I think, during COVID than we had in the year prior.

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We were having more people attend online. And we started a midweek

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Bible study. I started going through Genesis, the first 11 chapters of Genesis. To me, it seemed like a good foundational thing to, if we're going to start something new, that's going to be with all the families.

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We wanted to have something that would equip the youth, give them some training, preparedness for what they would come in contact with.

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So, I mean, every theological doctrine is rooted in the first 11 chapters of Genesis.

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It makes sense to start there. And so we had done that. And we ended up having, which was really awkward, was to have a congregational meeting in Zoom.

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And we're a grace -advanced church, so we had the grace -advanced pastors attend that to explain.

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Because really, it was their decision to say he was disqualified.

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And they're the ones that accepted his resignation. And so they came and explained what was going on and gave a lot of details.

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Wait, I'll put it this way. Our local leaders provided two letters that gave way more detail than I expected.

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Because typically, and I know you know this, people will try to protect the person who left and minimize it or not explain details.

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And for folks who are listening, if you're in a church, you know what it's like when something happens. And especially if you have a pastor that leaves, you want to understand why.

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And what our human minds end up doing, if we're not given the why, is we start letting our minds wander.

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And usually, typically, where people go in their minds is worse than where it really is.

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And then what ends up happening almost is people, when they find out what really happened, start to think that, oh, it's not so bad.

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Because they were thinking the worst. And I told the men in my church, I've probably counseled a hundred churches easy.

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Dealing with church discipline and issues of having a disqualified pastor and things like that.

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And I've given the same advice every time. Don't hide the details. You know, 1

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Timothy 520, especially in the case of a pastor, if he sins continuously, you present it in front of all so that all will fear.

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You don't cover it up. And these guys did a really good job of handling it. I gained a lot of respect for them in their handling this.

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Because remember, these three men at the time were not pastors of the church. They're leadership. They're the core families.

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They were elders in other churches. And I make no distinction between elder and pastor. They're not two different roles.

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But they were in leadership positions in other churches, but not in this church. And it was the first chance

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I got to see them handling a crisis. And, you know, it really endeared me to them to see them handling it well.

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You know, I know that you had a situation different because you didn't have to do a congregational meeting over Zoom.

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Oh, we did. We did. Oh, you did the first one on Zoom? So allow me to fill in a few details about what happened when the previous pastor left.

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So we had a meeting after a live stream on a Sunday where we're like, OK. But we had a meeting the week earlier where he had agreed to resign, but he hadn't put a date on it.

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We felt it would be good for the good of the church so we could actually move on. Let's actually just put a line in the sand and say this

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Sunday is the end. Again, he agreed. So I was like,

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OK, cool. Then what needs to happen is tomorrow we take the day and I'm going to mention his name.

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I'll just use the name Sir. Sir, you write an email expressing, you know, that you're resigning and blah, blah, blah.

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You mentioned my friend Brian Lassney, who was involved in leadership. Brian and I on the other side will write a statement as well, basically saying we're going to provide a time for some questions and what have you.

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That was its own drama. We finally got that out. And we had in the message we said,

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OK, we're going to have a essentially a congregational meeting via Zoom on Wednesday. Because that was our usual midweek

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Bible study. To say that that meeting was an unmitigated disaster would not do it kindness.

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It was bad. Like he basically, he threw us under the bus, myself and Brian under the bus without throwing us under the bus in my opinion.

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Kind of made out like I didn't want to do this. Meanwhile, there had been lots of threatenings for months about resigning and shutting the church down.

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That was, in my opinion, a lie. I will stand up on the court floor and say that was a lie, in my opinion.

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So, oh, I didn't want to do this, but it's for the peace of the church. And basically trying to get people to beg him to stay on.

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In other words, playing the victim. 100 % playing the victim. And I don't play a very good victim.

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I don't get visibly emotional like that. And so he's kind of tearing up and being weepy and what have you.

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And I'm just there kind of stone faced, looking like I don't care. Which isn't a great visual,

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I understand, but I'm not going to fake it either. And, you know, a few times made some accusations towards a congregation

27:40

I think were unfair. Yeah, we did a congregation meeting by Zoom. I don't recommend it.

27:48

Actually, folks, the reason, you know, look, people have been asking where I've been and what has been going on.

27:54

I wanted to share that. I figured this is a better way of doing it because, Kofi, you and I, there's going to be a lot of similarities in what's been happening in the last several months.

28:03

And with some differences, but the thing that is helpful for folks and the reason we decided we want to do this is to let you know that ministry is hard work.

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And it's not always what people, the idealistic view that people have of ministry.

28:23

But let me ask you a question. When you and I talked, you called me up. And what was the advice that I gave you when it came to how to handle the meeting and what to say to the congregation?

28:40

Oh, you gave me the same advice you gave to everyone else. Do not hide any of the details.

28:46

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to admit that first congregational meeting we didn't listen.

28:51

And I wish we had, because it did not go well. And in hindsight, I should have sang like a canary in that first meeting.

28:59

Like, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, people, there's some things you need to know. But we had another meeting the following week after the dust settled.

29:07

And that meeting, we were like, OK, look, this is why, this is why, this is why.

29:13

And that's kind of been our policy since. We've had one more meeting as a church where we kind of talked about the financial stuff, like having to lose our bank account, having to change our name as a result because the name was registered to him and he wanted the entity closed, having to do all of that stuff.

29:32

But yeah, ladies and gentlemen, when Andrew says he gives everyone that advice, he gave me that advice.

29:37

And I honestly should have listened the first time. I just made my life a lot harder by only listening the second time.

29:43

But there we are. But it's, you know, this is the thing, folks, understand that for people in leadership, it is hard to share or figure out what is the right amount of information to share.

30:00

It's a hard thing. You don't want to be gossiping. You don't want. And hence the reason you're not hearing us mention names.

30:06

I mean, we mentioned Brian's name, you know, because he's he's helping in the leadership there. We're not mentioning the pastor's names who left on purpose because it's not really about them.

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It's this is about us and our churches and ministry, because we want you to realize what in your church, this is what your leadership, what your pastors, this is what they go through.

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Think about what they've been going through with COVID in your church situation, what they have going on.

30:34

Ministry is difficult. It is something that constantly throws you a curveball.

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When it comes to ministry, you never know what is going to be happening. You know, it's it's a thing where it it's it's a joy.

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And yet at the same time, it is something where you always have to be ready.

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You always have to be prepared because, you know, I was you know, I had one week to prepare a sermon that I wasn't

31:06

I wasn't ready. And what we wanted to do is for the sake of the church. I don't know if you did this,

31:12

Kofi, I didn't ask you this, but for the sake of our church. You know, I remember talking with the men and I said, hey, guys, look,

31:19

I can do one of two things. I could preach through a book that I've preached before, you know, sound like Philippians or James or, you know, sound

31:27

I've preached in detail where I've done the study. But I think for the church, what would be better for the church, not for me, it was harder for me.

31:36

Better for the church is to continue the book of Mark. We had just started it. We were still in chapter one just to start right where the previous man had left off, pick it up from there and go.

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And that's what we decided to do. It meant more work for me. But I am it's we're trying to figure out covid.

31:54

We're trying to figure out, you know, I didn't have to be involved in what had to be announced because I didn't know at that time.

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But I was still trying to to work with them as far as, you know, how we're going to do services and prepare messages.

32:08

It was done. And this is what ministry is like. Now, you and I ended up having some other things.

32:15

So we're we're right now, both you and I are doing the majority of the pulpit ministry. We have in my church a retired pastor who, you know, 40 years pastoring.

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And he's he came to the church, you know, and he is he's been able to pick up the

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Sunday school. So he's now that we're doing Sunday school, he's teaching the Sunday school. We didn't we didn't stop any ministry.

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We continued right where we left off in Mark. We continue right where we left off in in the Sunday school material.

32:48

Just picked it up and kept going. And that makes it difficult for folks.

32:53

You know, here's a pastor. He wasn't prepared to teach. And that's what, you know, he was going to, you know, he stepped up and said, you know,

33:02

I can teach through, you know, some stuff that I have. And he's been teaching the Sunday school, you know, and all this through COVID when you're suddenly having to pick up the counseling ministry.

33:14

I had to pick that up. A lot of counseling and discipling that the previous pastor had been doing.

33:20

And I know you did the same. These are things that were unexpected. And, you know, people want to know, well, you know, why did

33:28

I, you know, if you've noticed with these podcasts, I kind of I put up to my sermons. I've put up the talks from the snatch from the flames.

33:37

And then I took a month off. And this is why I've been preparing sermons on a weekly basis.

33:44

We were we were still at that time I was teaching a midweek Bible study. There was a lot going on.

33:52

Meanwhile, through that, I was I had sold my house during COVID.

33:59

But the problem I had was I lived in New Jersey and our churches in Pennsylvania and I needed to move.

34:05

But I had the stress of not only everything we've been sharing, but I had a house that was sold.

34:12

And I couldn't even they wouldn't open real estate in Pennsylvania to start looking.

34:19

So I couldn't look for homes because all of a sudden, you know, my house is sold, but they're not open.

34:26

And I got into this position where once the housing market opened in Pennsylvania, there were a lot of people in my situation.

34:34

They had sold a home. They're in a contract. They had to buy another home. They needed somewhere to move into.

34:40

And people were buying things like crazy. Every house we were looking at, we were offering full price and being outbid by five to ten thousand dollars.

34:50

We would go in and every week we're watching. We put in five offers on homes and every week we put an offer in.

34:56

We're outbid. And the next week we'd see those same type of houses up by five, ten, fifteen thousand dollars.

35:03

It was just it was literally going up that quick. And we were watching houses were being listed on a

35:11

Friday and sold on Sunday. We had one house that we saw it went up on Sunday just after church is when it got listed.

35:21

Right after I got done preaching service closed that we saw it pop up just during our fellowship time on Zoom.

35:29

And we said, let's go over there. Let's check it out. So they didn't have lots of pictures up. They didn't had a bad write up up.

35:36

So we figured maybe there's a chance that not a lot of people look at it. We were one to 30. We were the first couple in there to 30 on a

35:43

Sunday afternoon. They had let us in for half an hour. Every person at half an hour. They had showings from two thirty to eight thirty and they had 10 offers on the house.

35:54

Ours was one of them. We were we were tied with someone on the offer.

36:00

We say same. The offer was the same across the line. They just put more money down as a down payment.

36:07

So they were given. And it got the pressure got to where we were like, you know, we literally had one weekend where we said, if we don't find something this weekend, we're going to have to rent and renting with putting stuff in storage was going to cost more than the mortgage.

36:24

And so we were not looking at a good scenario. It was so much stress that my blood pressure actually skyrocketed.

36:34

And I ended up in the urgent care because my blood pressure was hitting between 160, 170 over a hundred, hundred, ten or something like that.

36:45

And, you know, my sister was like, get to a hospital now because you're close to having a stroke.

36:51

And so we went and I got checked out. They gave me some medicine and basically told me you need to you need to relax.

37:00

So that was like July 4th weekend that that happened with the blood pressure.

37:05

And we had I think we saw this house the week before the house that we're now in.

37:12

And for those who are looking at the video on our patrons who are looking to be, you see, it's a different setup. I don't have all the books behind me.

37:19

I have two windows behind me and only one bookcase, though. You can see some commentaries down over here, but I still have books pretty much all around the room.

37:28

But the thing that happened is we were only given half an hour.

37:33

Now, just put yourself in this situation. We had half an hour to decide if we like the house enough to put money down.

37:41

And I mean, this is a huge decision. Half an hour. That's it. And the market was so hot that the realtor was saying, well, what you need to do is you need to you can't have your you can't.

37:54

You basically saying like don't have the inspections.

38:02

And so we were we were told don't don't look, you know, don't have inspections. So how do you know, like now you got to just trust that there's not going to be a problem with the house.

38:12

So what we did was we got into the house. We got there early. We got here early and they let us in for about 15 minutes before the people that had the appointment before us.

38:20

We went through quickly and said, OK, the house could work. We came in on our appointed time for half an hour.

38:27

We fortunately our realtor had her boyfriend is as a contractor. So he looked at the house to do like a quick inspection.

38:35

And then we asked if we can come back in one more time on Monday. And we came in on Monday and he just looked at structural things and examined whether it was well, you know, well taken care of.

38:46

And he had said it looked like it was very well taken care of. And, you know, Kofi, I did not when we first put the offer on the house,

38:54

I didn't really have I didn't like the house. It wasn't something that I thought that I was going to like.

39:01

And I felt that way really up until our furniture finally got in here. Now I'm starting to like it more than our old house.

39:08

But I really there were some things that it's very open, which is I thought can be a problem.

39:14

But it turns out that I really enjoy that. And so, you know, that's a thing where the thing I thought was

39:20

I wasn't going to like turns out to be what I do. And sometimes that happens. And we just, you know, before we got to this house, we sat outside before we came in to look at it.

39:29

We prayed and just asked for Lord's direction. And we felt that this was something that would work and we'd be able to use it to serve the

39:37

Lord in this area. And so we said, OK, we'll move forward and see what we've we lost four other ones.

39:44

So we'll see what happens with this one. And there were actually two offers above ours and they went with ours anyway.

39:51

And so which was which was good. You know, so but there was a lot of stress even in that because, you know, there's there was problems with the moving dates.

40:00

And we had to put our stuff in storage and find a place to stay for a week. And so all of that stress while preaching regularly, doing midweek

40:11

Bible study, having to deal with COVID and then coming out of COVID when we can now start meeting again in a building, but trying to figure out all the rules that the building was going to require of us because we rent a place.

40:24

You know, we don't have our own building or a church plant. So, you know, all that stuff. And, you know, for a lot of people, you know, think about when you're at your job.

40:36

There's usually, you know, a separation between what you do at work and what you do at church and your family.

40:44

But when you're, you know, when work and ministry is like ministry is your work, there's no separation there.

40:53

And when everything gets thrown at you like this, it really can stress you out quite a bit.

41:00

So I was in a position where I had to go looking for a home. It was, you know, we had sold the house.

41:08

We're looking for a place. It was a stressful situation. But you similarly, but for different reasons, more recently now have to be looking for a home, though that may be a little bit off way off and that this is going to get into why you're in a location that you're at and why this sound is what it is and why you can't help that.

41:31

So let's get into your life and what happened more recently. You know, and during all this,

41:37

I should also mention, we're doing all this while, you know, after Memorial Day, we have all these, you know, riots going on and looting.

41:44

You know, we're not all that far from, you know, a major city. And so we do have the case where, you know, we have people that live in the city and have seen some of the riots and things like that.

41:59

But all of this, all the nonsense we've had between COVID and riots and all that. And for the record, because folks who aren't on Patreon don't see the video, you have a lot of melanin in your skin, don't you?

42:15

So I'm told. Yes. So Black Lives Matter has been caring about black lives.

42:22

And in one way of showing their support for black lives has been starting wildfires.

42:28

So why are you looking for a home,

42:33

Kofi? Because as of last week, Tuesday, my family doesn't have one anymore.

42:41

We lost our home in the wildfires that, we'll just say started up.

42:46

We won't talk about who started them, but started up here in Southern Oregon last week, Tuesday and Wednesday.

42:52

So we lost our home and we're currently staying with a wonderful Christian lady who's put us up in her house in the meantime.

43:01

But yeah, we lost our home. Yeah. So you, and let's talk about how that ended up happening.

43:08

Actually, let's talk about that after a commercial break. What I want to do after this break is I would like to, because when you and I were talking about this, you kind of knew the fires were getting closer.

43:19

Walk us through that whole scenario of what was going on with that after this break.

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45:30

He wrote that short little book, What Does It Mean to Me? Teaching, well, harmoneutics in a short form.

45:37

I saw you chuckle at my comment of sinos. You know, it should probably be pronounced chinos, but sinos just sounds so much more the sin, oh, you know.

45:48

You know, it's like the rhinos, the Republicans in name only. So walk us through, you knew the fires were coming.

45:57

You knew that they were somewhat close to your house. What was your thought process?

46:03

What did you end up doing? What did you get, you know, what did you start preparing for? I am naturally very pessimistic.

46:14

And so I thought, if these fires are coming, this house is not going to remain. I had no reason to believe that.

46:21

I mean, they could have stopped short of us. But for me, I naturally just go to like the worst case scenario.

46:27

Okay. Okay. It's not pessimistic. No, no, no. It's called realistic. Yeah. I've been told I'm pessimistic.

46:33

And I say, no, no, no. I'm just being a realist. I know how life works for me. And it never seems to work the way

46:39

I expect. The worst case scenario. Yeah. Okay.

46:44

That's about it. And I've used that line too. So yeah, I'd actually agree with that. So I was like, okay.

46:52

Let's just get essentials, get some stuff to tie it over. And we just need to get out of here.

46:59

And of course, grabbing some stuff is made complicated by the fact that it's not just my wife and I.

47:06

We've got almost four month old at that point who can't look after themselves and gets kind of touchy when they're left alone.

47:14

So I was like, okay, I'll hold him. You go pass him stuff. Okay. You go yourself. Okay. I'm going to go ahead, pack some stuff.

47:22

But I think in that moment, my number one priority at that point was I need to get my family out of here and get them somewhere safe.

47:31

The loss of a house. Okay. That's going to be frustrating. That's going to be all the problems that come with that.

47:38

Fine. We just need to be safe. And, you know, the whole time, at least internally, just praying.

47:46

You know, I don't know what's going to happen here. But this does not sound good. And we could see smoke just wafting in from all over the place.

47:56

Neighbor comes, knocks on our door, says, my husband is on the roof. He can see the flames. So it's like, oh, this is real.

48:04

Like, this is happening. I won't say I wasn't scared, which sounds really weird, knowing that there's a fire not too far from where you are.

48:15

I mean, I wasn't scared. Just knowing us, just like, okay, my wife and I are both very level -headed people.

48:22

We're just keeping a sense of calm. It's just, let's get what we need, especially for the baby. And let's get out of here.

48:29

And really, that was my thought process that entire time. You know, just take care of the family, make sure they're fine.

48:35

If we lose the house, we lose the house. I'd rather that than be, you know, you hear these stories of folks who are like,

48:41

I'm not leaving my house. Nah, sorry. I will go ahead and leave the house. No problem.

48:48

Sometimes it's good to run to see another day, you know? Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things that I think a lot of people think about, but, you know, in more of an academic way is, okay, if there was a fire, if I had to leave my house really quick, what would

49:05

I grab? Right? I mean, we don't often think about that, like, in a realistic way.

49:11

I know that, you know, I've had friends who will sit around and, you know, talk about different things and, okay, if you had to evacuate your house right now, what do you grab?

49:23

You know, and I've often said, I'll grab my nice calfskin MacArthur study Bible. So, I have one good

49:29

Bible with good notes, right? I mean, like, now, in hindsight, like, you know, would that really be the thing to grab?

49:39

So, when you're thinking through this, Brandon, now you have a newborn. So, what do you grab?

49:46

What do you take with you? What do you prepare? What do you pack? You know, it was, basically, it was bundles of clothes into a bag.

49:55

The vast majority of the stuff we took was stuff for the baby. So, like, his bassinet, diapers, wipes, some food.

50:05

Diapers, wipes, food, his little playpen thing. And also, we've got two cars. They're not big cars, either.

50:11

I don't drive a truck. So, like, I've got limited room in my car, as it is.

50:17

So, I was like, okay, let's grab the stuff that, really, we just came down to, what do we need for the baby to not be out of sorts?

50:28

And what do we need so that we could just be tidied over for a few days? And it ended up being just a bunch of clothes.

50:33

Like, I was wearing, I was in the house that day. I didn't go anywhere. So, I was just wearing some, like, flip flops.

50:39

Like, those are my shoes for, like, three, four days. Like, I don't like flip flops.

50:46

So, that was already a frustration. I was like, great, I have, like, three pairs of shoes. Like, you guys say sneakers.

50:52

I say trainers, coming from the UK. I've got three pairs of, like, tennis shoes. I couldn't grab any of those.

50:58

I didn't. I was like, okay. Like, now all you might say is, what do we need? What would

51:03

I like? Get out. Like, I grabbed, like, three Bibles that were in the living room.

51:10

Didn't have time to grab anything else. Grabbed my computer. And that was because we had enough time that I was like, okay,

51:16

I can go back into my office, unplug my computer, and get out. But, yeah,

51:22

I mean, in that moment, I think it's, you're right, it's a very academic question you can ask sometimes of, you know, what would I take?

51:27

Like, oh, I take this. I take this. But when you don't have the time to, like, sit there and rationally think about how can

51:34

I pack this? How can I pack this? It's get what you need, you know? And, yeah, it was very strange.

51:40

I've not had to think like that ever that I can think of. Yeah, and, you know, I joked earlier that you were missing the book tent at Shepard's Conference because one of the things that you lost was your entire library.

51:52

And any pastor knows what that feels like or the cringing feeling of what that would feel like.

52:01

I mean, when I moved in here, I had to get rid of two bookcases. They're in the basement.

52:07

But I have two bookcases in the basement and one bookcase I just had to get rid of. There's not that much space as I had in my old place.

52:15

And so just for me, just getting rid of books, just trying to go through books that I've read and enjoyed.

52:24

And, well, okay, some I haven't. But, you know, I mean, I do have a heresy section. Actually, before I moved,

52:31

I tossed my heresy section. My Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagen, you know,

52:37

Joel Olsteen, they just went in the trash. They went in the trash or they became, you know, fire material, you know.

52:48

It gave a new meaning to burning in the bosom, you know. Joel Olsteen never made me feel so warm before.

52:59

So, but yeah, I mean, I tossed those. But when I moved in, it's like I had to go through and taper down and taper down and taper down.

53:06

And I've actually done three or four different taperings down to get my books to fit in the shelves that I have.

53:14

And I'm almost done. I have one more pass through. And, you know, but there's two young men in my church, one that is looking to go into ministry and one that wants to do apologetics.

53:28

And they were very thankful that I tapered my books down because they picked them up. There you go. The other, as you know, right,

53:37

I've gathered a large number of them, went through with you everything that I had. And we picked quite a bit and I'm packing them up and shipping them to you.

53:44

But you've lost your entire library. And even though you and I know that I've kind of rubbed, ribbed on you quite a bit on your library as you would try to set it up.

53:58

And, you know, you're, you're starting out with the building of your library and I've got, you know, maybe 30 years on you and building of mine.

54:08

So, so I have the more time I've kind of rubbed on you for that. Right.

54:13

Because your library was small at the time, but now it's gone. You know, these are things we, we, we read as, as guys who love to read and, and, you know, people love to preach.

54:26

We love our books and yet that that's just left behind. It's, it's actually in hindsight was nowhere near as important.

54:35

You love it, but it goes up in smoke. Right. It's, I mean, it's, it's, it's really, they're, they're valuable, but not worth it.

54:46

You know, that was my thought process with it. It was like, yeah,

54:51

I've been building some of those books I've owned since I was 18. I'm 29 now. Like, you know, some of those were like the

54:58

Bible that the man who mentored me preached from, like that sat on my shelf with my other

55:04

Bibles. Like that's gone. I'm not going to get that back. I can replace a lot of those Bibles. That one

55:10

I can't. But, you know, stuff like that, you know, in, in that, in the moment it stings, but you know, again, it's like,

55:18

I could, I could have sat there and said, you know, I'm going to take 20 extra minutes.

55:24

And like take the most precious stuff, stick it in a suitcase and get, I didn't have 20 extra minutes.

55:30

Not that I knew. You know, it was like, do what we can and just leave.

55:36

And, you know, I think it teaches you, for me, one thing I think I've learned in the last week, for those of you listening, it's been a week since it happened here in Southern Oregon.

55:47

You know, the thing that I've learned in the last week is that stuff is just stuff. Like it's, you know, if you have the option of preserving life and preserving stuff, it's a no brainer for us as Christians.

55:59

You preserve life. You know, my books are replaceable. You know, we, we kind of joked,

56:06

Andrew and I the other day on Facebook, like I'm planning on going to Shepherd's Conference 2021.

56:13

Oh, I'm buying a bunch of books. Probably more than ever, like the poor shipping guys at ShipCon are going to hate me this year because it's like, here's box number whatever, just ship it.

56:26

Again, I'm going to rebuild my library from scratch. But again, I'm in a position, thankfully, where I can do that.

56:33

I'll be okay. You know, it's not like I've lost everything and there's no hope for rebuilding.

56:38

So again, it doesn't minimize the pain of that, but it does put it in perspective.

56:45

Yeah. And that's the thing, you know, when we think about, and really the focus of this program today is a lot more personal.

56:54

This is more personal, I think, than I've ever gotten on any of the Rap Report podcasts.

57:00

Sharing a little bit more of what's been going on in my life. I've had somewhere, I've been on other programs sharing my testimony, and I air them on here, but I don't really get personal with you guys very often like this.

57:12

Because I wanted this to be a teaching platform, but this is teaching. This is something for you guys to realize a couple things.

57:20

I mean, one, this is, I mean, ministry is hard work. It's, you know, what people go through.

57:25

You know, a lot of people don't realize, you know, you get your pastor that gets up in your church.

57:30

If he's a good pastor, if he's a good preacher, if he's doing what he should be doing.

57:37

You know, every time he's getting up to preach, that's at least 20 hours of work just for a sermon. Yeah, that's how long it takes.

57:44

I work about 20 to 30 hours on a sermon. You know, it's not something you just throw out there.

57:53

It's a lot of effort. And then you have the counseling, and then you have the other Bible studies and prayer meetings.

57:58

And, you know, think about what your pastor goes through. Maybe what this podcast will do is encourage you to be praying for your pastor.

58:07

You know, Kofi and I now are both in a position where we got to, while still preaching, we got to help our churches to look for a future pastor.

58:18

And, you know, that's something that we're working on. So it's, you know, and then, you know, my case was moving into a home, and Kofi's is even harder because he lost everything, has to rebuy everything, but doesn't have a place to put it yet.

58:31

So fortunately for him, he's had someone that had a large house that kids moved out and able to bring his family in and not kind of interrupt her life, but, you know, kind of live in the same place and have somewhere where they could be.

58:50

But there was a lot of up in the air. And yet ministry still happens. I always love,

58:56

Kofi, what my first pastor always used to say, you know, whenever something would happen, you know, unexpected funeral, unexpected counseling appointment that takes a lot of work.

59:07

You know, he used to take me with him a lot at different things to train me for ministry.

59:15

One of the things he'd always say is, you know, because I'd be struggling with how do you get, I'd be trying to fit everything in during a week.

59:23

And I know he's still got to go work in a sermon. He goes, Sunday always comes.

59:28

In other words, it doesn't matter what's happening, like during the week, you still have to be ready for Sunday.

59:34

You still have a message. You don't, as a pastor, you don't get a chance to just go,

59:39

I'm going to hang back and take a vacation unless you're not preaching that week. And we're kind of in that because we're kind of like filling in is almost in terms of, you know, in that role in both of our churches right now.

59:53

And so it's, you know, besides doing everything that we still do, and you have even more because you have all the insurance you got to deal with.

01:00:02

You have things you have to replace. I mean, folks, think about what it's like to lose all your clothes, lose all your material possessions, your books, in Kofi's case.

01:00:12

To lose, you know, all your pictures, you know, everything.

01:00:18

I mean, I know, Kofi, you did run in to make sure you grabbed important documents, you know, because they're hard to go to the government and get replaced.

01:00:26

So, okay, those are things that you grab the things that are really difficult to replace or are irreplaceable that are super important.

01:00:35

Like your Bible's irreplaceable, but it's not as important as your child, right? So you grab the things you need for the child.

01:00:42

And all of a sudden, at a time like this, the importance of certain things,

01:00:48

I mean, the priority just changes really quick in a split second. And for folks who are listening, and I'll just, you know,

01:00:57

Kofi already knows this. He did not put me up to this, but… Nobody puts

01:01:02

Andrew Rapoport up to anything. Andrew just likes to find ways to get lots of people to bless other people.

01:01:13

So here's what, you know, someone has created a GoFundMe for Kofi and his family.

01:01:20

And, you know, there's some people going, oh, well, they got enough. Well, think about what it would be cost you to replace everything and to have to deal with everything, having nothing and trying to start over with stuff.

01:01:33

There's a GoFundMe, and to make it easier for you, just go to bit .ly.

01:01:40

That's bit .ly, bit .ly slash

01:01:46

Kofi Fund. And the F in fund is capital. So bit .ly

01:01:52

slash Kofi Fund. So bit .ly slash

01:01:58

K -O -F -I, capital F -U -N -D.

01:02:05

Okay, I'll have it in the show notes so that you can just click on it. If you can help out his family through this time, it would be a blessing.

01:02:15

To have to replace everything in your household, think about what that would cost.

01:02:21

And people might say, well, yeah, insurance will kick in. It will eventually, but it doesn't kick in today when you need to, like, not wear the same clothes for four weeks, you know.

01:02:34

So insurance is not going to be quick, especially when you have many homes that were destroyed by the fire, okay.

01:02:41

If you could consider to go into Kofi's, to his page there, the page.

01:02:48

He didn't create it. Someone created it for him. And I'll let you know. I have donated. I have many friends that I've encouraged.

01:02:55

They've donated. It's nothing that I'm asking you to do that I haven't done myself. So I'll encourage you, if you could help them out to do that and be a blessing to them in this time.

01:03:08

This is where I think Kofi and I, you and I talked, you and I both have a love -hate or would it be a love -hate -hate -hate -hate relationship with social media?

01:03:19

Pretty much. Not a lot of positive that we see on social media, but this is a time where social media actually comes through in bringing

01:03:28

Christians from around the world. And I can say from around the world because I know that friends of mine in other countries have donated.

01:03:36

And so, you know, to have people around the world to be able to help a fellow brother in Christ when he's lost everything.

01:03:45

Absolutely. And, you know, I do want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has up to this point.

01:03:54

A massive thank you to you, Andrew, for coordinating a lot of the efforts to encourage people to do that.

01:04:00

So many people to shout out, so I'm going to not do everyone because that will get me in trouble because I will forget someone. But, you know, for me, it's not about a dollar amount.

01:04:12

It's about being able to... Andrew, I'm sure you know this as a husband and a father.

01:04:17

You know, there's that added responsibility that you feel that I need to take care of my family.

01:04:24

And there's not much you can do to take care of them in a moment like this. It's just like, you know,

01:04:30

I can't build you a house with my bare hands. I wish I could, but I can't. You know, there's so much you can't do in a moment like this.

01:04:37

And so everybody's help, I really appreciate it. And, you know, I have to give a massive thank... Again, Andrew didn't put me up to this, but I do want to give a massive shout out to Andrew.

01:04:46

Andrew's a good guy. People... Andrew, I kid you not, there are people who genuinely think

01:04:51

I don't like you. Because, like, I read your social media so much.

01:04:59

Well, I return the favor at times, too. You know, but, you know, people don't...

01:05:07

I told somebody this week, you know, like, what is it with you and Andrew Rappaport? Are you guys OK? I was like, no, wait, trust me, we talk all the time.

01:05:13

And it's been great. Like, we just banter to each other. It's fine. Like, it's no big deal. But, you know,

01:05:20

Andrew's a good guy. And, you know, he's been great. Like, we've spoken... How many times have we spoken in the last week?

01:05:26

That must count. Yeah. Yeah, and just... Whether it's being kind of just commiserating with me, he's telling me stuff happening in his life and I've been able to pray for him and stuff.

01:05:38

That's a blessing. You know, social media is a pain in the neck sometimes. I mean, I did beat my wife on this, so I don't complain too much.

01:05:45

But it's still generally frustrating at times. But moments like this, when people from around the world have reached out and said, how can we help?

01:05:53

What are your needs? What do you want? How can we help? What can we do for you? Or even just something as simple as we're praying for you.

01:06:00

Like, that's an encouragement I can't put into words. So thank you, everyone. Yeah, you know, it's a thing where, you know, for folks who are listening, ministry is something that throws us curveballs.

01:06:16

And these are the curveballs. I mean, you know, this show, we're trying to explain some of the curveballs that have been going on in our life.

01:06:24

There's a lot of similarity. And this is what ministry is like.

01:06:31

You know, I have to try doing all this stuff while running a ministry.

01:06:37

It's not an easy thing. You know, life is, it can be very difficult. And so, you know, it's something where we want, you know,

01:06:47

I owed it to you guys who listen, who are, you know, the audience here at The Wrap Report, also those who follow

01:06:55

Striving for Eternity. I owe it to you to explain where I've been, because I know that, you know,

01:07:02

I've said on the different podcasts, whether, you know, many of you know my Apologetics Live podcast, Anthony Silvestro and Justin Pierce have been filling in and, you know, they've been mentioning

01:07:14

I'm gone, I've been busy and not explaining why. And some people have been asking them, you know, where's

01:07:20

Andrew been? You know, I'm starting to return to that. I'm not going to be teaching, you know, I'm not teaching midweek studies anymore.

01:07:26

So it's one less thing, still doing the preaching, but the guys that I work with at the church have recognized that, you know,

01:07:33

I need to be freed up a little bit more and have been great in helping with that.

01:07:39

And so I'm going to start picking things back up, but it's still a thing where I'm trying to balance all of the things that I have to do.

01:07:48

We still want to make sure we give you guys, the audience here, we want you to have good content.

01:07:54

And we don't want to cut that short. And so that's why, you know, we didn't want to just stop

01:08:00

Apologetics Live and stop the rap report. We want to pick up the daily rap reports.

01:08:05

We've been replaying some old ones, but we were going to start those up again, hopefully soon. But we want to provide for you guys good teaching.

01:08:16

And if we're not going to do that, then we don't want to do something. We don't want to just do it to do something. We want to provide you with something that's going to be helpful.

01:08:24

And I just didn't have time. And, but I do feel that I owe it to you, my audience to explain why, to let you in on what's been happening and why

01:08:37

I've been so busy. So you don't think that I know there's there, there was a

01:08:42

Kofi. I don't know what you might've heard, but there have been people that thought that we actually got an email.

01:08:49

Someone thought that I was dying of cancer. And, and this is what I mean when I say, if you don't say things, people's minds start to wander.

01:08:59

We were getting some, some emails and people were contacting Dr. Silvestro and others just, you know, trying to figure out what was going on with me.

01:09:09

Was there something some thought that, you know, because I was, I hadn't been on the apologetics live and my rap report was, was off for a month.

01:09:18

People thought there was something going on that somehow disqualified myself. Like, I don't know why it is our human nature.

01:09:24

We always go for the worst possible thing. Like we don't think something good. The reason for my absence has been a good thing.

01:09:30

We we've told people that the move was just, the move was too much. I couldn't,

01:09:35

I literally, you know, Kofi, you know, I, I work nonstop. I don't sleep.

01:09:41

I go and go and go. But with everything that I was doing and the move,

01:09:46

I actually hit a limit. I told my wife I can't do anymore. And, and that's when I, my stress levels hit the roof, literally in the blood pressure.

01:09:55

And, you know, we have to recognize our limitations. And so I hit my limitation during that time and said, okay,

01:10:01

I need, I needed help. I needed to cut some things down for a while. And I did that.

01:10:07

But you know, now I'm back. We're going to, we're going to keep doing what we've always been doing here.

01:10:13

Now that some of the travel restrictions have lifted, we're we're traveling again. I'll be at the cruciform conference next month

01:10:21

October, I think 23rd to the 25th out in Indianapolis.

01:10:28

I'll put a link to that conference in the show notes, if you want to go to that. But I was,

01:10:33

I was a late addition because I really, my focus was really on my church. My church had a need until we kind of got established that the church had a need.

01:10:43

And I was saying no to speaking events. I wasn't taking any because this is the way ministry sometimes happens.

01:10:50

You know, there are times when you have to make decisions may not be what you want to do, but it's what you do do because it's what's needed.

01:10:57

And at the time my church needed me more than, than the ministry did to be traveling and speaking with COVID that kind of made it easier.

01:11:05

There were most of my speaking events got canceled anyway. I had about a half a dozen or so speaking events that got canceled because of COVID.

01:11:14

But we're going to, we'll start hitting the road and we're going to start going to churches. So if your church wants to have a seminar, we're going to start booking them again.

01:11:24

If you're interested, just email speaker at striving for eternity dot O -R -G speaker at striving for eternity dot

01:11:32

O -R -G. We could put on one of our seminars. We got many between Bible interpretation, made easy how to interpret the

01:11:38

Bible, whether it's our ambassador, evangelism, presuppositional apologetics, creation science.

01:11:44

We have a series of different seminars. We have one that Justin Peters, Anthony special, and I do called snatch them from the flames.

01:11:53

You may have seen that the, the, the live one that Justin and I did over the you know, over the in may, but we have an extra component that Anthony comes in and does when social justice, we're working on a, a weekend seminar on social justice and critical race theory, why it's important, how it affects the gospel.

01:12:13

If that's something you want to bring into your church, contact us, Dr. Sebastian and I'll come out and we'll, we'll teach the, the, you know, your congregation, what are the issues with critical race theory and what is what's really behind the black lives matter and Antifa, because it's people are wondering what is really going on with all this.

01:12:34

And we will come in and do that. One last thing I know, typically Kofi, we do our spiritual transition game, which, you know, you, you, you get to play and I get to take, you know, whatever hard thing you give me to transition, but we've got one.

01:12:48

So, and since you like to stump me, I'm going to, I'm going to just avoid it. Now, no, we've gone a little bit longer and I, you know,

01:12:55

I don't want to go too long for Cheryl, but let me just encourage you folks. For those who, who are listening, you know, striving fraternity is listener supported.

01:13:08

If you have gotten value out of the ministry, whether it's the rap report, apologetics live, whether it's, so you want to be a podcaster, whether it's the theology throwdown podcast, you know, any of the other podcasts and the

01:13:20

Christian podcast, meaning whether it's our striving fraternity Academy, whether it's our seminars as you're hearing, we do a lot of different things and we do that based on what people donate.

01:13:30

One of the things we do that's different than any other ministry is we target smaller churches that can't afford to have people come in and do seminars.

01:13:37

We, we look for those churches that want to have that, that conference and be able to be energized, to have their church energized with a weekend conference, but they can't afford it.

01:13:47

Well, that's where our donors come in and help out. Our donors provide that. And if you would be so kind, if you find value in what we offer to you, if you see value in your life from this, would you be willing to, to come alongside us?

01:14:02

You're due to COVID. We have lost a lot of donors. People have been losing their jobs and things like that. If you can help out, just go to striving for eternity dot

01:14:10

O R G slash donate, striving for attorney dot O R G slash donate.

01:14:17

That'll be in the show notes as well. But if you can help us out, that would be a great blessing to us. We will want to get back on the road and get into some churches that are struggling, train them up and equip them for eternity.

01:14:30

So with that, Kofi, let's, let's just wrap up. You know, we have no idea what the future holds.

01:14:38

And 2020 is wrapped up so far to be a year that nobody can predict. I think that, you know, people are thinking,

01:14:47

Oh, after the elections, everything's going to return to normal. No, I don't. I don't

01:14:52

Trump wins, Biden wins. You know, it's just, it's going to be crazy. It'll be a different kind of crazy, but I don't think it's going to end.

01:15:01

And we need to train churches really to be prepared for persecution. Cause I think it's coming and to think biblically, to think with an eternal mindset, not be worried about what's going to happen on the streets.

01:15:15

You know what, you know, what's going to happen on the streets, sin. That's what's going to happen on the streets. And how do we counteract it?

01:15:22

Counteract that with the gospel. That's how we counteract it. And that's what we have to be doing.

01:15:28

That's what we have to be about. So Kofi, anything that I want to give you a chance to give last words, anything you want to share, what, you know, either what's going on ministry wise or any way anyone can help you.

01:15:42

Well, definitely appreciate that. Like Anthony said, if there's a goal for me, again, please don't feel pressured to give, but anything you do give is incredibly helpful.

01:15:51

And we are so, so thankful. I want to take a personal privilege and say that, as Andrew said,

01:15:58

I don't have a library that needs replacing. So there's a spreadsheet floating around.

01:16:04

I'm sure Andrew can find it and post a link to it. Any help with that would be appreciated.

01:16:09

And of course, press for our church. So the name of our, I'll say the name of our church, so I can get away with that at least.

01:16:17

Our name of our church is Redeemer Bible Fellowship here in Medford, Oregon. RedeemerMedford .org. Be praying for us.

01:16:24

Like I said, we're in this process now. It feels like it's been a lot longer. I mean, Andrew, I think you should do a podcast about just stress in the ministry because where do

01:16:34

I feel it at times? You know, it's a lot happening in a short space of time, but there's a lot to be encouraged about as well.

01:16:42

And even if it's just continuing to remember us in prayer, as we kind of get organized, see what the will of the

01:16:49

Lord is in terms of our future leadership. Yeah, those are things that are close to my heart.

01:16:55

So thank you for everyone who's given, for those who feel led to do so, thank you.

01:17:00

Just be praying for our local church here in Medford, Oregon, as we seek to equip the believers and just reach our area with the gospel.

01:17:12

And that's the thing that we should be. It's about the gospel. That's the thing that we need to focus on as believers.

01:17:18

Whether it's the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as we started with, whether it be everything you and I have gone through these last several months and our churches have gone through, and whether it's what's going on in the streets, the gospel is the answer.

01:17:36

You know, it really is. Yeah. And, you know,

01:17:41

I hope for you as a listener that this encourages your heart to realize that, you know, we all struggle.

01:17:48

Now, my struggle is different than your struggle. You know, Kofi and I have had a lot of similar struggle, but yet it's different because we're different people and we're going to address it differently.

01:17:57

And we deal with it differently. The struggles may be similar, but guess what? I can't honestly say

01:18:03

I know exactly what it feels like for what Kofi's going through. I know what it feels like for how

01:18:09

I deal with it, even with similar situations. And that's the thing. We all struggle.

01:18:16

We all have stress. We all have things going on in life. And it's something where we just need to recognize that God is in control, first and foremost.

01:18:29

You know, the second thing is think about maybe you're saying, hey, I'm not struggling that much. I'm doing all right.

01:18:35

But, you know, I hope that maybe going through this, you have a greater appreciation for those who are in the leadership of your church, those who are serving as pastors, because this is what ministry is like.

01:18:47

This is not unusual for ministry. It's an unusual time and it's been even busier, but this is kind of a pulling back of the veil of what ministry is like because a lot of people don't know what ministry is often like.

01:19:03

So, you know, just want to encourage you guys with that. And we'll be back next week with another episode of The Wrap Report.

01:19:12

And until then, that's a wrap. This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.