Interviews: Is the Entire American Church Guilty of Peddling the Gospel? An Interview with Conley...

Warning, the following message may be offensive to some audiences. These audiences may include, but are not limited to, professing Christians who never read their

Bible, sissies, sodomites, men with man buns, those who approve of men with man buns, man bun enablers, white knights for men with man buns, homemakers who have finished

Netflix but don't know how to meal plan, and people who refer to their pets as fur babies. Viewer discretion is advised. People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio.

The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject

Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty

God is hanging over our heads. They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended, and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the

Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us. Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Welcome to Bible Bashed, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

We're your hosts Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we are joined by special guest Pastor Conley Owens, author of The Dorian Principle, a biblical response to the commercialization of Christianity.

Today he's going to help us answer the age old question, is the entire American church guilty of peddling the gospel?

Now, Conley, why don't we start by you just taking a moment to introduce us to yourselves, tell us a little bit about yourself, and tell us a little bit about your motivation for wanting to write

The Dorian Principle. Sure. My name is Conley Owens. I'm a pastor at Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church.

I'm a bivocational pastor, so by day I'm a software engineer, and I live with my wife and seven kids here in Sunnyvale, California.

And as far as the book goes, what my motivation was, I spent a lot of time thinking about how the church tends to abuse copyright.

My day job involves copyright, and I've been interested in copyright for a long time. So that was really kind of the intro to beginning to think about these things.

And when I started seeing some things in the Bible that concerned money and ministry, I wanted to study this for a thesis.

I ended up writing a thesis, realizing just how much the Bible had to say, and I felt that it needed to be a book.

So, yeah, I just want to share that with others. Sure, and I know that we appreciated that you gave the book away for free, and it's always nice to have free books.

So we appreciate that. And I definitely enjoyed reading the book and profited from it a lot.

The first question I would have for you, Conley, is that you've basically written a book that argues that basically the entire evangelical church in America is in sin.

So not just the prosperity guys, or even our theological closer adversaries, but essentially everyone, every big -name theologian out there is essentially guilty of peddling the word in some way or another.

I know that that's a bit of a generality, but hopefully you'll forgive me that. But that's essentially what the book is arguing.

And then what's worse is that you have the audacity to name names, so you get pretty specific at certain points.

You commit the unpardonable sin of actually naming organizations like Tim Keller and Crew and Together for the

Gospel. So the first question I guess I have for you is, how dare you? And the follow -up is, who do you think you are?

Well, yeah, I consider myself friends with many of the people that I'm willing to name, maybe not all the people that I named.

But yeah, and then who am I? I'm just a guy. And I think there's a lot of things in Scripture where when you realize just how broad the commandment of God is, to use the phrase from Psalm 119, to point at something and say that everyone is guilty of this is not really an unusual thing.

There's not anything too profound about what I'm doing when you realize that really this is how it is with everything, and I'm just calling people to a deeper level of fidelity to the biblical text on this one specific matter.

Sure. Sure, I guess to ask the question in a little bit more of a serious way, I know that there's been plenty of times in my life where I've taken positions that are deeply unpopular, and sometimes

I know that it can be pretty lonely when you're reading a book and you're reading the

Bible and you're coming to conclusions that it seems like everyone around you just thinks that you're absolutely crazy for coming to.

And I would say that I know that it should be somewhat unsettling the thought of maybe coming up with something new or something that you're all out on your own.

It's one thing to praise guys like Athanasius or Martin Luther, but then it's another thing to conceive of yourself doing something similar.

I know that the reform motto is always reforming, but then it seems that we have little tolerance for individuals who are actually trying to push us towards that next step of faithfulness.

And so I guess one of the questions I would ask is how are you personally kind of processing the idea of coming to truths that you see that are being violated in a pretty comprehensive way?

Well, in the book, I tried to justify from a historical perspective that this isn't so new and yet at the same time why it is that we need a greater clarity today.

So I think I have some justification for that. But then additionally how

I'm processing that for myself, I'll have to think about that some, but I don't think

I'm... I wondered if I would be, you know, conly contramundum the way

Athanasius and Luther were. And I was uncertain about that because it... You're right.

That is a reason to be very concerned that maybe you are wrong. But I have been shocked at just how positive the feedback has been.

There's been... The ratio of positive feedback to negative feedback has been very high and that was not what

I was expecting. I was expecting a lot more pushback on this, at least initially. I think part of what's happening there is

I think that there is, from my perspective, for many people, I think that we're deeply troubled with...

I think... The way I would describe it is a celebrity culture that is happening within broader evangelicalism.

And I think there's a lot of things that are troubling to people. And I think at some point...

With some of it, I think it's hard to put your finger on quite specifically what the problem is.

I think that there's a lot of things that are deeply troubling. I mean, I went... I've been to all the major conferences.

I've been to the Gettler for the Gospel conference in particular or the G3 conference or I've been to your standard circus

Southern Baptist Conventions as far as that goes. I think there's so much in these kind of big events that are troubling to someone who is somewhat reflective.

So maybe part of the lack of significant hate mail or pipe bombs that you're being sent is related to the fact that maybe we all realize that there's some problems here that are long overdue for correcting.

So maybe there's something along that line. Well, yeah, I think you're right. A lot of the people I've encountered, they had concerns as well and they haven't necessarily put it all together.

But yeah, I've been surprised at how many people had similar concerns as to what I have. I've just tried to collect all the text and synthesize them together.

Sure. Yeah, and kind of turning to the book itself, it seems like the basic premise of the book, and you can correct me if I'm wrong or if I misrepresent anything, but the basic premise of the book is essentially that God does not condone profiting on the

Gospel. Now, that statement in and of itself, I'm sure most people, there would probably be virtually no pushback whatsoever, but then you get a lot more specific in what you mean and you try to define a lot of these terms in a way that I think is helpful.

It seems like the two basic premise, or the two terms that you refer to a lot in the book are reciprocity and co -labor.

And reciprocity would be basically charging for the

Gospel or charging to teach the Gospel and then co -labor would be more like people coming alongside you who want to help you further the

Gospel, who want to help you be able to go to other people and teach them the Gospel. So whether it's fundraising or whatever, they give you financial support so that you can go to other people and proclaim the

Gospel to them. Is that a fair sort of basic summary of the book?

I think part of it was. I think part of it, I might want to clarify some. Okay. Yeah, co -labor and reciprocity, that is the key distinction that I'm putting forward.

In Matthew 10, 8 through 10, Jesus says, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons you received without paying, give without pay.

And so there you have a statement that you shouldn't be giving in exchange for payment. And so there you have his forbidding of reciprocity.

And then right after that, he says, but take no bag for your journey or two sandals or a tunic or a staff for the laborer who deserves his food.

And so there he's saying, but you're supposed to expect others to support you. And Matthew and Luke, it calls them, that would support the disciples, a son of peace or a worthy household.

So you have these people who want to further the Gospel who are giving.

And so they are to receive that co -labor, what I'm calling co -labor. So that is the distinction.

Now, a couple of words that you used that I'd want to clarify. So one is profit, right?

This is what a lot of people, the word a lot of people use to describe this. Well, it's okay to take money as long as you're not profiting off of it.

I don't think the Bible ever, if we're using the word profit to mean getting more than you put into it,

I don't think the Bible ever uses the word profit to, or not just uses the word.

I don't think that's ever the concern is that you would get more than you put into it. The Lord willing, if a pastor does an excellent job in the congregation or whoever's working with him, wants to support him and honor him in such a way that he's financially receiving more than what a typical minimum wage would be, then praise

God for that. So I wouldn't, so in that sense, there's nothing wrong with profit. And a lot of people will use the word profit to say something like, well,

I can charge for this ministry just as long as I'm not making more than I put into it.

Well, once again, if you are engaged in reciprocity there and you're exchanging something for what you put into it, whatever you determine that amount to be, that would be forbidden.

So it really doesn't matter if we're using the word profit to define how much, if you're getting more than you put into it, profit's not the concern.

Another word you use was charging. So it depends on what we mean by charging because someone might get the impression that I'm saying that everyone should be so willing to labor for free that if someone does not, if a church is not willing to support them in the matter, they should still do it anyway.

I'm not saying that certainly. So if you want to call that kind of activity charging to be unwilling to work if you're not going to be supported for it,

I think that's perfectly reasonable. People don't have infinite capacity to do that. Maybe you can do us a favor and just go ahead and distinguish between reciprocity and ministerial co -labor.

Those are the two major concepts there. So maybe if you could give us a definition for them and maybe just contrast the two, however much time you want to take just doing that, just to make sure that we're all using the same words in the same way and understanding what you're saying.

Sure. So I mentioned the text in Matthew 10, 8 through 10. So the way

I define reciprocity is support material or otherwise given to a minister out of a sense of direct obligation for his ministry of the gospel.

And that phrase direct obligation. Like a pay -per -view kind of deal, right? Right, right.

So you gave to me, so I give to you. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a symmetric amount.

It could be even $1 for something very large and that would still be reciprocity. And then co -labor is support material or otherwise given by a man to a minister out of a sense of obligation to God to honor or to aid the proclamation of the gospel.

So when we are giving to a minister, ideally we're doing it out of an obligation to God that we have received this gospel ultimately from God, not from men.

And so in order to give back to God, the one that we ultimately receive this from, we give to his ministers.

So there is an obligation we have to ministers, but it is an indirect obligation. And you see this in 1

Corinthians 9 when Paul appeals to the priesthood that the people of Israel would give to the

Levites, but they would not be giving directly to the Levites. They would be making their sacrifices and their ties to God.

And then God would be supporting the Levites. So even though externally it might look like the

Levites and the Israelites are exchanging money and ministry, what's going on in terms of the thought process is that they are giving to God and they are giving worship to him.

And then God is giving to the Levites, him saying that he is their inheritance.

Sure. So in terms of reciprocity itself, could you maybe give some examples for the people who are listening in the context of the

American church? Could you give us some examples of what you would consider reciprocity that you see in the modern evangelical church as we know it today?

Sure. So the biggest one, in my opinion, is the whole Christian publishing industry.

So not every book operates like this. My own doesn't. But typically the way this works is that you want to read some minister's book, you have to give him money first before he will give you the book.

So that's very definitionally reciprocity. You can't even access that teaching unless you pay him for it.

And even if a minister does something like, well, here's a suggested donation, and then people are donating.

And so even if it's voluntary, if it's set up in that way where you're not colaboring, but because he did something for you, you feel a direct obligation to him, that would be reciprocity.

Now some other things would be, typically this is the way seminaries run. You give tuition, they give you teaching. And typically this is the way gospel conferences are run.

You pay for a ticket, and they give you a gospel teaching. Sure. I think me being a part of the biblical counseling movement, and I went to seminary, and I did my pay for my theological instruction, an ungodly amount of money in order to learn the

Bible. So I have some sort of experience with that. I think one of the areas that has been influential for me, as far as this idea of reciprocity goes, is within the biblical counseling movement.

So when I went to school, I originally went to school with the notion in my mind that I was going to be pursuing basically counseling, but then using the

Bible to counsel. And the thought process I had in mind was that I would open up some sort of biblical counseling practice somewhere in order to basically develop a clientele and charge them for counseling and everything else.

I think somewhere along the way, one of the things that happened for me was that I started to realize that what

I'm passionate about is teaching the Bible and helping people solve their problems with the

Bible. And it began to dawn on me over time that this doesn't need to be disconnected from the church, and what

I'm really wanting to do is be a pastor and everything else. But as those convictions started to clarify, one of the things that was really troubling to me personally was the idea of charging people for counseling.

That became pretty troubling to me, because it seemed like a very obvious example of peddling the gospel to me, and it's something that I didn't really want to go there with in my mind.

It's something that I've resisted over the course of my ministry, and I would say that that has affected the types of ministries that I would pursue and everything else, and so I certainly see that as a problem.

I remember early on when I was just in seminary,

Tim Keller was the kind of guy that everyone was promoting at that point, and there wasn't a whole lot of guys who were pushing back against anything he's saying during those years.

But then everyone was recommending Tim Keller, and I remember going online and trying to get some of his sermons and seeing that he's charging $3 a sermon or whatever it was, and I just thought to myself, well, that's weird, right?

That's pretty weird. And I think, just to be frank, that was the type of thing for me that caused me to basically write him off as a guy that I would want to listen to.

It's like, hey, if you don't want me to learn from you without paying, I don't have any money. I'm broke. I eat ramen noodles every meal.

But that seemed wrong to me. But then I didn't really connect it to some of the other ideas that you're speaking of in the same sort of way, but those are examples of things that I saw.

And when I think about the distinction between reciprocity and co -labor, as you've described it, I think one of the strengths of the book, as I can tell, is that I think that's a good distinction to make, and I understand where you're coming from with that.

And those terms, they do make a lot of sense, and I think they do a good job of explaining a lot of data in the text as well.

And so I think you need some sort of word for the kind of scenario where you basically are walking up to someone and saying, hey, would you like to know how to be saved?

Well, pay me first, right? And so I think reciprocity is a fine word for that.

Now, one of the things that's been funny or humorous for me to watch is I listened to a couple of your interviews online related to this book and viewed the comment sections.

And as is the case with the Internet, people have a great capacity to jump to conclusions as far as that goes.

And so one of the things we were wondering if you could do for us would be to maybe put some jumpy people at ease as far as that goes.

And so one of the questions we had along those lines is, is it wrong to give pastors a salary in any way?

People seem to be repeatedly hearing you basically saying to pay a pastor in any way is wrong.

Do you want to comment on that? Right. No. And I think I've already said in this conversation that I think it's great if pastors are honored with even more than they put into it.

The Lord would richly reward them through congregations. No, pastors should be paid and they should be paid salaries.

And the word salary is kind of important, not because I think it necessarily has to be a salary, but many people who have studied the same texts

I have in the past couple of centuries have come to that conclusion that it is

OK to pay pastors as long as it's not a salary, as long as it's not regular, that they would live by faith and kind of hang on from one week to the next, not knowing whether or not they would have money.

I don't think that's healthy. We'll keep them broke. We'll keep them broke.

You keep them humble. Yeah, we'll keep them on their knees in prayer, hoping that next week they get a paycheck.

Well, what does that look like in terms of maybe you can just clarify? I don't know if you've done it in the course of this yet or not, but clarify how does that look?

What does that mechanism look like? And how does that not violate the principles you've laid forward?

I understand how to answer it, but go ahead and just spell it out for us. What does that look like in a way that isn't troubling?

Salaries, or what are you referring to? Yeah, yeah, just do the math. Show the math.

So with the math, how would that look? How is that not a violation of reciprocity? Oh, I see. How is that co -labor?

Yeah, yeah, just go ahead and just show your work. Yeah, so, right, if it's valid, it has to be co -labor, and it can't be reciprocity.

How is paying your pastor co -labor? Because, you know, isn't he this guy that stands up there each week, and then because of what he does for us, we give back to him.

I don't think that's the right way of thinking about it. You know, we as a people gather each week in our particular location.

You know, I'm here in Sunnyvale, so we gather in this church here in Sunnyvale, and somebody has to quit their job and do the work to dedicate themselves to the word of God and prayer, as it says in Acts 4.

And so who should do that? Who's going to, you know, be impoverished so that they won't be able to support their own family?

But instead what we can do is we can all pitch in, right, some of us by forgoing the fruit of our labor, and one of us by dedicating himself to the work, at least one of us, if not multiple of us at our church.

It is multiple of us. And so, yes, that's what we're doing.

We're co -laboring. And one thing to consider there is what Paul says about his persecutions.

When he lists, on numerous occasions, when he lists all the hardships he had to endure in order to serve the

Lord, in addition to being shipwrecked and beaten, he always lists that he worked with his hands.

And so he considers having to have manually labored and then foregone, not gotten to enjoy the fruit of his labor by spending it on himself, that that was one of the hardships that he endured.

And so when others do the same thing, when they work with their hands and don't enjoy the fruit of their labor, they are working alongside of Paul, you know, assuming that they're giving that money to Paul.

So I see that as what should be motivating the congregation each week as they pull their money together and support staff and fund ministry projects together.

Sure. And you know, one of the things that I thought was really convincing in the book that you had said is, basically co -labor is this idea that people basically, they take their money and they give it to God as a form of worship, essentially.

And then God, he gives at least some of that money to like a pastor, for example, in order to support them to do exactly what you're saying, so that they're able to study the

Bible in a deeper way that really no one can without quitting their typical nine to five type job.

And one of the arguments that was really pretty convincing for me as I was reading your book was,

I can't remember what chapter this was in. I think I wrote the page number down somewhere, but I don't have it in front of me right now.

But basically, you know, you argued that if a pastor, for example, was simply, was not co -laboring with the congregation, if they didn't view it that way, then essentially what's happening is you have this pastor who you could essentially view as like a soldier who's meant to be working for the king, which is

God. But instead, he's taking money directly from the citizens. And when that's happening, he's no longer operating under the authority of the king anymore.

He's operating under his own agency, taking money from whomever he sees fit.

He basically becomes a mercenary now. And that was really a pretty interesting way of putting it because it immediately made me think of a lot of megachurches

I've seen where they kind of over time become slaves to pragmatism because they've been operating probably in a similar way to the mercenary.

You know, the congregation, I think, probably sees giving more as like I'm giving directly to the pastor instead of giving to God as a form of worship.

And then God is giving to our pastor to support him in the work that he's doing. And because they view it in that type of way, eventually the pastor is kind of a slave to the congregation in a very bad way where he's got to really play this game where he tries to be as biblical as possible, but then he can't rock the boat too hard or say hard things very often because if he does, then all the money is going to dry up, essentially.

So I remember reading that, and I remember underlining all that and writing it down because I just thought it was a pretty strong point you were making and one that you can kind of see out in the real world right now.

Right, yeah, those implications that you're drawing out for the social pressures in a church, those were not things that I spelled out, but those are good observations.

You mentioned the analogy of the king and the soldier, right? And it's probably worth pointing out for listeners that what

I was referring to there is 1 Corinthians 9 because Paul uses a whole bunch of analogies in 1 Corinthians 9, and a lot of people just kind of glaze over them, and they think, okay, well, these are showing that ministers should be paid.

Well, yes, they are, but stop and think about what the payment dynamic looks like in each one of those analogies.

With the priests, they weren't paid directly by the Levites. They're paid as the Levites bring things to God, and God gives to the

Levites. What about the soldiers? The soldier, sure, he may collect taxes from people, but if he takes money directly from them and not as a representative of the king, that the king then pays him, yeah, he's committing extortion.

And each one of those analogies, Paul uses a whole bunch of them, each one, the source of money is not the employer in any of those circumstances.

I was just going to comment on that and basically just say that I'm sure that we can all imagine plenty of scenarios where the old, like in the old country church or whatever, where the big donor comes up to the pastor and essentially says, you know,

I pay your salary, therefore do what I say, kind of thing. And that's the kind of thing that happens when you mix up those kind of principles that you're talking about, for sure.

One thing that I was thinking about, Conley, and as I was working through the book, I wasn't clear on this, but then

I wanted to maybe get you to clarify this, or I think what

I was hearing you to be saying was that it, and I think many people might come to the conclusion, perhaps, as they read through the book, that it would be wrong to recoup any cost for books or CDs or conferences, but it seems like you're mitigating against that in your book in a significant way, essentially saying, let me see if I can just give you an example.

I remember Grace Church used to, I mean,

I listened to all my, all MacArthur sermons for free online at Grace Church, but then in a certain part where CDs used to exist, they would basically give you a digital copy for free, but if you wanted the

CD, then they would say, send us three bucks and we'll send one out kind of thing. It seems like you were, in your book, commenting on that kind of situation or some sort of situation with conferences in the church where, essentially, if you just recoup the building rental cost and you call it that, you didn't really see a problem with that.

Is that a fair summary? So I, as I was rounding out the book and finishing it up, those were the last parts that I was working on, and I wasn't,

I was kind of keeping it a little bit open, and I used phrases like, the problem would mostly be resolved by doing this, right?

And so I didn't quite say that it would be resolved. And as I've thought about it more, my thoughts are that if you're going to charge for those kinds of things, if you're going to charge for food, et cetera, you should be doing so, or you should be outsourcing that to an entity that's free to do so without undermining their sincerity.

Or, yeah, you should be co -laboring so that those are provided for.

There's just all kinds of solutions that don't involve the ministering entity charging for those.

And I would say that for a number of reasons. One, Jesus in Matthew 10, 8, when he's telling the disciples to heal the sick, et cetera, and then says give without payment, if they were to charge for the miracles and then not the gospel, that wouldn't have been sufficient.

And then similarly, Paul didn't charge for food and then say, you know, well, as long as you provide me room and board,

I'll minister for you, right? He didn't charge for anything. So I think that it's better just to outsource those things. You know, if you're running a conference and, you know, you want to say, well, there will be food trucks later, you know, and the food trucks are selling food, but you're not,

I think that would be the safest way to do it because the problem is that you still potentially are undermining your sincerity by offering these things along with the gospel and then charging for them.

Okay, all right. Well, yeah, this was the, you know, trying to put jumpy people at ease portion here. So I guess that was a misunderstanding as far as that goes.

Well, no, yeah. And it's fair because like I said, I was, you know, you were open things where, yeah.

And you're open to the possibility, but you closed it now. Yeah. As I've talked to more people and I've, I've gotten more positive feedback and I'm not so on edge about, you know, saying too much.

I feel more. Will you have a safe place to sleep? I feel more comfortable that I can make harder lines.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, Conley, I don't,

I don't know if we've covered quite everything that maybe you've heard typically when it comes to pushback from other people.

So if, what else is there that maybe we haven't asked you about yet when it comes to mistaken conclusions that you've seen people jump to when they either read your book or they hear one of your interviews or in other words, basically what are you not saying that people frequently hear you to be saying?

Sure. So for people who are opposed, who, you know, don't, don't like what

I'm saying, what a lot of times some misunderstandings I get are that I'm saying, I've got this brand new thing that's never been heard before in the history of the church, which

I don't believe I am. If you look at chapter 10, I try to justify some precursors in history and then and then on top of that, that I'm saying that we are in no way obligated to our pastors, which

I'm saying we are, it's just a mediated obligation where it is directly an obligation to God and then indirectly an obligation to ministers.

And then of course the idea that we shouldn't pay pastors, which I'm in no way saying we should absolutely pay pastors. Then on the, on the other end of that, those who are in favor of what

I'm saying, but misunderstand me, there is a tendency for people who already have some issue with the way church does the churches, excuse me, church entities or parachurch entities do things and they, they bring all those to the table and they see me as saying those things, which

I mean, you could just name any kind of thing that people get upset about and and put that in there.

A lot of people hear me saying these things when I'm not. So, you know, maybe maybe it has something to do with the opulence of what they spend their money on afterward, what pastors spend their money on.

I addressed nothing about that. I think once someone's been given money, they should, they should certainly avoid the appearance of sin, but they're free to spend their money how they would like.

That would just be one example. Yeah. You have any other quick ones you could. Yeah, sure.

Well, we were talking about profit earlier, you know, that it's okay to take money as long as it's not for profit. That's a, that's a common one that people think that I'm saying.

And then, um, uh, yeah, that people are, uh, paid too much.

Right. And I never, I never address amounts. Um, it's really not about amounts. It's about, uh, even though the amounts can sometimes expose sin issues, uh, more severely.

Uh, it's really just about whether or not it's co -labor or reciprocity. It's really just about those two categories.

Sure. Yeah. I think one of the things that was helpful about the book is that you also kind of push back against the notion that the motive matters and, uh, meaning it's about the source of, uh, the funds.

Essentially. It's not so much about, uh, a person's motivation and taking the money or something like that.

Um, right. And, and you had a lot of other qualifications along those lines. I, I almost want you to, you know, spell them all out, but this would go on forever.

Uh, one of the motive motive is important, but I, I try to, I try to frame that in a very, uh, not a perfectly, but a very more objective way, because a lot of people would say, oh, well,

I can charge for my ministry as long as I'm not doing it in a greedy way. And I'm saying, definitionally, if you are, if you are engaging in reciprocity, we're exchanging ministry for money.

Um, uh, in a, in a way that's not co -labor where, you know, we're all working together and negotiating who's going to provide what resources to make this ministry happen.

Um, if you're, if you're engaged in reciprocity, I'm saying that is definitionally greedy, according to what scripture says.

Right. Right. And I thought that was, I thought that was a very helpful distinction. Uh, one of the questions

I had related to that was just, um, you know, part of how I try to approach moral problems in general is,

I try to group, um, you know, uh, group, group, um, whatever the moral problem is under a couple of headings.

And so I try to think through, well, in this scenario, what, what are the sin issues here?

Uh, you know, what is the black and white? What are the, what are the things that, um, essentially the Bible is, uh, clear on?

And, um, uh, I'm not trying to say that the Bible was unclear in any way. I'm just trying to say, what are the, what are the things the

Bible clearly teach that, uh, that applies to this scenario? And what are the things that are, you know, gray areas or wisdom issues as far as that goes?

And so, um, what, what's the difference between the two? So, um, often, you know, just in terms of marriage, in terms of counseling, in terms of, you know, any kind of scenario

I'm in, I, I try to, you know, I'm, I'm thinking about a moral problem. I list the commands, the principles that relate to it.

And then I try to say, well, these are the black and white. And then, you know, what's the gray? What's, you know, so example would be, you know, the

Bible tells us to read the Bible for instance, right? So that would be black and white. We need to read the scriptures, but then it might be a little bit gray on how many hours a day you read it, if that makes sense, right?

So I, I don't want to be the guy legislating how many hours a day people read the Bible. I would say, you know, how much time do you have?

And that may be, um, you know, related to a lot of factors as far as that goes. But then I, I want to be the guy who's saying, well, obviously we need to be reading it, right?

We need to be reading it on a regular basis. And, you know, if you, if you, uh, don't have a taste for it, then, you know,

I, that's a problem. And, uh, so I, I don't know that I'm going to, uh, you know, be the guy spelling out how frequent, but, you know,

I can tell you what I think is reasonable, uh, as far as that goes, but then you might, yeah, hold that a little bit, a little more loosely than the command itself.

And so in this kind of discussion, what would you see as the, you know, the black and white and what, what would you see as the gray, if that makes sense?

So the wisdom kind of things, uh, if, if that's something you thought about. Sure. Well, there's several difficulties, right?

One is establishing whether something is co -labor or it's reciprocity. And so there are, uh, there are a lot of fuzzier areas in this where something has the shape of reciprocity, but someone is claiming that they're doing it out of desire to co -labor.

uh, I think that, I think that, uh, we should be concerned about what it looks like externally. You know,

Paul didn't say when the Corinthians, uh, came to him with money that, oh, okay, well, you know, if we just call this co -labor,

I'll, I'll take it. You know, he said he'd never take their money, but, uh, I mean, you can play a game. Basically you can play a word game to where you're, um, you know, you call it something, but then functionally everyone knows that something else is happening.

Essentially. Right. Yeah. And that might be, that might get fuzzier around the edges, but another question, not just identifying something as co -labor reciprocity, but identifying something as ministry or not ministry.

You know, if I, if I, uh, give you a paper Bible, uh, paperback

Bible, um, that's typically ministry, right? I'm trying to give you the word of God. Now, if I give you a, a leather, really fancy, you know, gold edged, um, you know, embossed, et cetera, uh,

Bible. Now, at what point did that switch from being ministry to, you know, me providing a luxury good?

Uh, cause so I don't, I don't think that the Dorian principle needs to regulate, um, that it needs to regulate, uh, luxury

Bibles or, uh, t -shirts with, uh, Bible verses on them. But at what point, at what point, uh, does that happen?

Because for example, I think it should regulate worship music, uh, music designed to be, uh, sung in God's church.

But then if you have a band that's entertaining people with, uh, music with Christian themes, well, you know, how many, um, uh, you know, how many

Christian words do you have to have before this becomes a worship song? And now you're, now you're charging people for your services to, you know, come worship with them, et cetera.

Uh, it's, uh, I can't, I can't ferret all these things out for everyone. I'm just trying to establish the principle.

And one, one analogy that I've been using more lately, as I've thought about it is the analogy to the regulative principle of worship.

Uh, your audience might be familiar with that principle. Uh, it distinguishes between forms and elements and the elements are things that cannot be changed in the worship of God.

You always want prayer, singing, reading of the word, uh, but the forms, you know how many songs, whether you stand or sit, those things are allowed to change.

And so, uh, people debate about what's a form and what's an element, whether or not something is a form or an element, but, uh, by and large reform believers agree on the regulative principle itself.

So, uh, you know, we may differ. And I imagine that people will possibly forever differ on, you know, what constitutes co -labor, what constitutes reciprocity, uh, what constitutes ministry, what doesn't constitute ministry.

But, but I'm hoping that people can begin agreeing just on this principle. Yeah. Well, I, I think the principle is obvious.

I think the principle is there. I think it's, uh, you know, however you word it, I don't, you know, maybe there's a better way to word it.

I don't know. I, I, I, it may not be the final word on, you know, the best distinction between the two things, but I think it's a useful, useful way to word it.

And I, I, I, I think it's right. And I did have a line of questions along those lines, trying to, you know, just get a feel for how you're, you know, where you draw the line in terms of application.

And, uh, we'll get, why don't we get there in just a second. And I want to ask you, um, before we get there,

I'd like to ask you just some pragmatic kind of, uh, uh, concerns. And, and, uh, you know,

I, as I've said, uh, to you, when I, when I spoke to you on the phone, I, I'm not the kind of guy who likes to, um, this frequently happens to me where I'm, I'm trying to advocate for a principle that I see, see as black and white.

Here's a principle here. It's black and white. I can't do anything about it. It is what it is. We need to obey it. And inevitably,

I mean, I would say the standard mode of affairs, uh, particularly if it's unpopular or disputed in a certain way is, is to always try to, you know, basically argue from the bad case to, uh, no application, essentially.

Right. So tough guy, good laws. you, um, you make your laws on the basis of, of normal kind of things.

And, uh, you know, I have a couple like pragmatic kind of things that I want to throw your way, but then

I, and I have responses in myself. I just kind of like to hear what you're saying in there and I'm not throwing them out there essentially just to try to undermine the whole project.

I just, I just want to hear, um, you know, good. I just want to see how you're processing through some real pragmatic kind of things to think about.

Does that make sense? That makes sense. Yes. All right. So, uh, one of the things that, um, has been very obvious to me as a person who's gone into counseling and, and been unwilling to charge for it.

Okay. Is that there is a lot of opportunities that I've forfeited, uh, by not charging for counseling.

And I would say that I've had like many, many, you know, godly people coming up to me and saying,

Hey, you know, like, um, you might want to consider doing this. And I just, I just can't bring myself to charge for counseling.

It seems just obscene. Okay. Uh, but then, it, it just seems, I don't know a better way to describe peddling the word of God because I mean,

I, I'm the kind of guy when I do counseling who I'm going to tell him the gospel, I'm going to tell him to repent. I mean, Harrison sat in a counseling room with me as we counsel people.

And, you know, I, I go there, I go there probably does go there.

I go there quick, quicker than most people. Right. I don't even, Connelly, I don't even earn the right to be heard, you know, like I could just go there.

But, but, um, the thing is like, it just seems wrong to charge for it. But then, um, but the thing is like, uh, the pushback is always, well, you know, if you don't care, if you, if you don't charge for it, you're going to have to spend your time.

I mean, you only have so many hours a day doing, uh, you know, all these temp making stuff and, you're going to miss out on opportunities.

And there's a type of person who would want to go to counseling and who's going to distrust free counseling.

They're not going to want it. They're going to think that they're going to get higher quality counsel if it's paid for, and they're going to, you know, turn your nose at you and you're missing out on opportunities.

so if you don't, and, and I would say that, yeah, I mean, I, I believe God's sovereign and I'm, you know, uh,

I believe in all the five points of Calvinism and probably, you know, add a few more, you know, but, but, but then the reality is like, yes,

I, I would say that, um, there would be opportunities available to me if I would charge for it.

So how would you, how would you respond to that sort of thing? So the first part of that was about being sufficiently supported that you would, you would have more time for counseling if you did not have to labor in other ways to, to support your family.

And so, uh, with that, I think it would be good if churches started doing more, uh, recognizing these different kinds of ministries and helping people financially with them and funding them.

So at our own church, uh, we have several counselors and, uh, one of them is, uh, a full -time pastor.

And we understand this to be part of his ministry. And so part of what he's being paid for is to do this, this counseling work.

And then, uh, we have some other, uh, people who counsel, uh, two women, although one of them recently moved to another area.

So I guess only one. Um, and, uh, we have supported them financially as they've pursued certification and, and, uh, we'd be willing to also, um, provide some kind of reimbursement, maybe not to the level that's, uh, deserved.

Uh, but, uh, this is something that we're working toward is, is, uh, supporting people in these kinds of ministries.

So, uh, yeah, I think, I think churches should be working together. So the fact that you have to reject reciprocity does not mean you have to reject support, right?

Cause there's always co -labor. The question is, you know, can the church adapt and come up with these co -labor models once it recognizes that reciprocity is not the way to go now?

Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. No, no, continue. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Well, so the second part of your question though, was about, uh, if people will perceive the value if you don't charge for it and, uh, kind of funny story.

I sent a, a friend of mine was working in a, uh, church library or a church bookstore, um, in Southern California.

Uh, I, I won't mention the name of the church, but let the, let the hearer understand. And, uh, anyway,

I sent him, I sent him a box of these books and they were, they were going to distribute them in the bookstore, but they didn't want people to think that they were of no value.

So they, they slapped, uh, uh, price tags on them, even though, even though I'm offering the book for free.

So, yeah, that is, that is a mindset. A lot of people have, but consider that this is the exact same mindset that Paul was dealing with.

And first, uh, second Corinthians 11, right. The super apostles look great and they're charging for their money or excuse me, they're charging money for their, for their service, for their gospel.

And it seems like, Oh, they've got the, they've got the real deal. They've they're more valuable. Paul's sure.

He's got the gospel, but it's kind of, you know, piddly and weak. And Paul says that he will never take their money so that, or so that, uh, he would distinguish himself from those false apostles.

So, yeah, as far as the value goes, um, yeah, there's no way to avoid it.

Sometimes Paul even dealt with it, but in the end, if the church can move forward and really reforming on this issue, then maybe even the opposite can happen where we start to distinguish ourselves from those who are charging for these services.

You know, and I, I really appreciated that in the book. I think there is a chapter on the,

I think the chapter was mainly focusing on, um, para church organizations. But then

I think the, the principle that you, um, that you set in that chapter was really interesting.

Basically, uh, uh, what you said was what you're saying now, you know, if, if churches could really get to a point where they, uh, they prioritize supporting these types of people like biblical counselor, counselors, for example, or, um, and I think another one you brought up was, um, you know, authors, people who want to sit down and write down the knowledge that they have in their heads.

They want to put it on paper and then get it out to as many people as possible. One of the things you said, I think you said in the book was essentially,

Hey, churches should be, uh, at least the churches that can bear these types of burdens, they should be trying to get these guys, um, uh, supported through the, through the church itself.

So that's basically a ministry that frees up the authors to be able to invest the time necessary, uh, to write the book, get all the, gather all the materials to publish it and get it out into people's hands and then still not have to actually charge for the books themselves.

And I, I thought that was a really, uh, I really appreciated, uh, that idea.

And after reading it, I was, I was kind of wondering to myself, man, why, why don't more churches operate this way overall?

Right. I think part of it is just the expectation where you do have these really excelling counselors are really excelling authors.

They're supporting their selves by reciprocity. And so the expectation is, well, that's generally how it works.

Um, but I think once people start treating that as less of an option, uh, these other options will become, uh, not only more obvious, but more normalized.

And that may be kind of the answer to the followup question I was going to have because I, I've obviously not found those kind of, um, uh, are,

I mean, I haven't found the pragmatic argument persuasive. If you don't charge you forfeit opportunities. It's like, well, yeah,

I'm sure I did. I have, but then there's a principle there that you can't move, right?

You can't, you can't, you can't do anything with it. So right. You can justify all kinds of secret sensitive nonsense with that line of thinking.

Yeah. Yeah. Now I would say though, like, um, you know, and maybe this is kind of what you're responding to as well.

I've been a part of different counseling organizations that have done fundraising and, you know, um, larger scale biblical counseling organizations.

And, and I mean, I think the reality is that churches, uh, they don't want to pay for it. They don't, they don't, you know, they're happy for you to come along.

um, now I'm, I'm obviously speaking in generalities in terms of my own experience, but, you know, in my own experience, my own personal experience, um, it's, it, it's, uh, it's like a nice idea to co -labor for something like biblical counseling.

But then on the ground, it's like, it, it doesn't seem like the church really is all that ready for it as far as that goes.

And so with, with the organization, I, I was, um, what I'm thinking of, you know, you basically have an organization with, uh, one person who's getting financially supported on that.

And then, you know, a bunch of people who are, and, you know, hoping one day that they can, you know, be supported in that sort of way.

But, uh, you know, after, you know, church after church, after church, after church, no one wants to pay for it. And, you know, the church is in the church with money or just more than happy to say, counsel our people for us.

But then, you know, free of charge essentially. But, uh, but then basically that all points to just, um, just, uh, kind of another pragmatic kind of reality that the, the church and,

I mean, acquiring fellow co -laborers is pretty hard, you know, would you acknowledge that?

Oh, yeah, definitely. And yeah, what you're describing, it sounds like there's several unhealthy things going on there because, uh, you know, if you've got these counselors operating outside of the church, or I'm not,

I'm not sure what, but why, you know, why can't the church, each church support their own counselors? oh, they just don't prioritize it.

I mean, they don't, I mean, I don't, I don't know any church. I mean, I don't, I know very few churches out there that wanna,

I mean, you have the bigger churches with the money and, you know, they have all the stuff that they're doing and, you know, they're focused on all the programs and all their events and everything else and all their salaries and, you know, and they don't see counseling as if it's a real, like, just give it to the psychologist, man, like we're not even qualified to do it anyways.

And so we're just trying to, you know, like essentially it's just like, oh, that's a nice idea, you know, uh, but they don't even prioritize shepherding for the vast majority of huge churches.

They don't, they don't even, they're not shepherding, you know? So, and I think, I think that's part of the problem, you know, is that, uh, the, the values aren't necessarily where they should be.

Now there, your question about it's hard to find co -labor, it's hard to get churches to band together and work towards a single project.

That's true too. But I think in this particular case of counseling that, uh, there's even more, um, issues involved because, uh, priorities are just not where they should be.

Sure. Yeah. And maybe that's, um, part of the deal. So, yeah, that, I think,

I think, um, it, yeah, and when, when you think about how comprehensive of, uh, a critique the book is making across the board, it does seem like in order to rectify things, you really do need, like, some sort of comprehensive level of commitment.

Because right now everyone, you know, it does seem like most people are more than happy to pay for their services, approach to ministry in the way that you described.

But then, um, like, that kind of takes all their money. So, or a lot of it.

And so then the idea of, I mean, if everyone were just to stop right now and take the co -labor point, it'd be like, how many

Patreon people can I support at once? You know, like, uh, you know, that kind of thing.

And so, uh, but those are just, um, I just wanted to hear your, I wanted to hear your thought process on those kind of, uh, objections that I've never found satisfactory myself and in terms of my own situation.

Uh, but then yeah, if, if more of it happened within the church, uh, that would be great. And things that need to be across multiple churches, ideally there'd be associations and you'd have these things promoted in associations in such a way that you could, you could band together and work towards them, you know, some larger, uh, maybe a software project that multiple churches want to get together and do or, or put together a seminary.

Uh, but things where we're talking about individual ministries like counseling, there's no reason that can't be, uh, funded just within a single church.

It seems like, um, you know, if, um, if we're just to speak in terms of denominations that are out there, it seems like a lot of the money that's going, you know, from the pew to, you know, your standard, um, denomination, um, is going to fund, you know, bureaucracy and conferences and all these kinds of things.

Whereas it seems like it, and then the standard church, you know, pew sitter feels like, okay, yeah, you know, we're doing something because our church has given 10 % to missions by giving to these organizations.

But it seems like that's being handled in a pretty inefficient way. And if we, if churches would just, um, you know, uh, uh, directly fund, uh, particular individuals or, uh, ministry opportunities that they were aware of, it may be that you cut out a lot of that and there's more opportunities available and you're not just out of sight, out of mind, hope it's all going to the best kind of thing.

But, uh, do you have any thoughts related to that? yeah, our church, uh, directly supports, uh, several missionaries.

And that does seem to be the best way of doing it. I suppose there's some value to these larger, um, missions boards that, uh, function across churches, but I'm, I'm not sure.

I think that each church should have its own, uh, mission, you know, and its own agenda for missions and work together with other churches for a particular, or with a particular missionary in mind, as opposed to, uh, something larger than that.

Yeah, no, I agree with that. That's pretty good. All right. Well, um, all right. So I think, you know, as I'm, as I'm reading the book,

I agree with the large principle. I'm, I'm there with you. I, you know, I've made decisions like that in my life that have, you know, affected how my life actually looks in a, in very, uh, practical ways.

I'm, I'm there. Uh, I, I think as I was reading it, um, there is a sense in which

I, I don't know that I, um, would draw the lines exactly where you draw it at various points, but then, you know,

I'm not the kind of person who just, um, thinks to himself like, if someone is more conservative than me, then they must be a kook, right?

I, I'm not that kind of person. I, I mean, I'm, I'm the kind of person who I want to hear the argument and one of the, and, and I want to,

I want to, I want to push on it a little bit and I want to see, uh, I want to test it a little bit and see what, see what, uh, uh, you know, how it stands up and see what's being communicated.

And, and part of that is just because I, I, um, I, I can see so many areas in the church right now where there's just massive blind spots across the board.

And they've been that way for years. I mean, I just see so many areas like that and I've seen them over the years. you know, in particular,

I mean, I, I, I saw like CRT through the church, you know, 15 years ago.

Yeah. 20 years ago. And no, I was talking about it and I'm just sitting there wondering why is no one talking about this, right?

No. Why does no one see this? Why am I the only one who's seen it? You know, as far as that goes and when the, you know, the, the same sex attraction, celibate gay

Christian movement stuff came along, I'm sitting there wondering who's, who's going to see this, you know, and I don't have a platform. I'm nobody.

I'm just a, you know, guy out in the middle of nowhere. But like, there's been plenty of moments like that where I'm just,

I've, you know, I'm reading the Bible and I'm seeing things that no one else is seeing. And I'm just wondering when is everyone going to comment on this kind of thing that, and your book has a way of talking about money in a way that I thought was pretty helpful, like in terms of just,

I've looked around at the celebrity culture in the church and then frankly, I've found it just gross and offensive.

I mean, we were at the G3 conference this time and Justin Peters is walking off the stage at some, as he's walking off the stage, trying, all right, you, you, yeah, all right, well, you ignore my figure of speech there.

Oh, goodness gracious. Okay. All right. It dawned on me what

I was saying in the middle of that one, but as he's, you know, yeah, leaving the stage, there's a kid that walked up to him and, you know, does a selfie, you know, as he's leaving the stage.

And, and so like this celebrity culture kind of thing, I think I've chalked a lot of what

I'm seeing up to the celebrity culture and like, and, and, and quite questionable, like things that are happening with money.

I mean, that, you know, we sold Beth Moore in the lifeway for years. And I mean, even a bookstore like Southern Baptist Theological Seminary's bookstore, the most careful theological bookstore in the world that you can imagine, you know, there's heresy in that, you know, and I'm going there.

And so like, we have money problems, like money, you know, money. I know we have money problems. And so I'm looking at a book like this and I'm just thinking, man, like we, maybe we have more money problems than we realize as far as that goes.

And so that's been my kind of reaction to the book. But then I think there's kind of a questions

I'm working through with myself as it relates to the application, if that makes sense. And so some, so some things that I don't,

I just want to hear what you have to say about it. Maybe you can resolve some difficulties in my mind.

And, you know, maybe, maybe they're significant, maybe they're not, I don't know, but I just, like, there's part of me that's just like,

I totally agree with the principle, but then I wonder, how does it relate to certain other areas?

Okay. Sure. Just one, just one comment on a celebrity culture quickly. I do think there's, and I don't think you would reject this, that there's some value with recognizing certain ministers is especially gifted.

And even, even of old, you know, there's something where when you, when you grab a

John Owen book, you know, you're about to get into something good. So there's, there's some value in that, but I think, and what would the

Dorian principle do? It wouldn't, it wouldn't strip money away from everyone who was otherwise funded.

I would hate for people to think that that would be what would happen, but I think what would happen is as these people would be supported, not by sales, but by willing co -labors, you'd find the, the meteor stuff supported more.

Hopefully you would find those things which are really taking a stand that people would really want to make a sacrifice for, as opposed to,

I think a lot of the higher links would disappear. So I do think it would redirect the funds in a better way.

If this were, if this were based on people getting excited about a ministry rather than just wanting to pay for something that they need at this moment, it would, it would, it would force people to look at what they're giving their money to and make decisions based on what they value and not just based on what the, who the powers that be tell you essentially are the right investments, right?

Right. Yeah, there's, there's definitely more accountability involved. And, you know, when I purchase books, the last thing on my mind is, oh,

I should stop and pray for this author, you know, but if, if people were giving, donating to these, to these authors to co -labor with them, you know, if I donate to a

Votie Bauckham or whoever, and I'm like, you know, I really like his ministry. I'm, I would want to support him. Yeah. I'm going to hold him accountable.

I'm going to care a little more about what he's doing with his life. I'm going to pray for him. You know, there's just a lot of things that are going to happen that wouldn't be happening when

I'm just purchasing his books. And that's just to pick a random name, but, but pick anybody.

And it's the same thing. There's, there's a lot more that's going on. And in addition to one more thing is just the joy involved with, with investing in something of eternal value.

And people are kind of robbed of that when they are paying off a bill so that they can learn and they're not able to invest in and enjoy the

Lord working through them as they would be with co -labor. Sure. All right. Well, I think you already mentioned this as far as I asked you the difference between the black and white and the gray and part of the black and white you said was the principle itself.

And then one of the gray areas might be how one defines gospel ministry in particular, if that's correct.

Is that a fair summary? Okay. All right. So, and that's where I think when there's a definition you gave in your book, you said, for our purposes, gospel ministry is any activity that proclaims the gospel or directly attends to its proclamation, though not immediately obvious.

This includes all religious instruction. So you gave that kind of definition of gospel ministry.

And I think that I wanted to kind of get a feel for where you're applying, how you're making certain applications as it relates to just a spectrum.

So I think the vast majority of people, you see a pagan, right? And the pagan comes up to you and say, hey, what must

I do to be saved? And you say, well, I will tell you if you give me these three easy payments of $19 .99

or whatever else. Everyone, everyone has been offended by that, you know, except for maybe the crass prosperity guys, right?

You agree with that? So, I mean, pretty much everyone is, has always kind of, except for the prosperity folks are basically in that kind of scenario saying, all right, that's weird, right?

Now, pastor charged for sermons. I, I would say, oh man, that's really strange, right?

Uh, that was enough for me to, and a lot of people, I think, uh, who be audience for the book really have a problem with that as well.

Uh, would you agree with that? Yeah, I, I would, but, and then, and it's funny because the same people wouldn't have a problem with, uh, uh, that same pastor putting that, those sermons into writing in the form of book and then selling the book.

Um, and I don't know why, uh, they would see a difference between the two, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but,

And I listened to it on robotic text -to -speech, multiple times, at two times speed.

And there's been scenarios in my life where people walk in on me, you know, listening to some book or some sermon on two or three times speed or whatever it is, and they look at me as if I'm like some

Frankenstein kind of monster, like, what in the world are you doing? This is – I don't know how to even process what's going on here kind of thing.

But then, like, for me, I'm someone who's just like, just give me the information.

I just want the information. I don't care about the presentation, I don't care about the packaging, I don't care about any of that, right?

Like, just give me the information. So just give me the truth, I just want the truth, that's all I want, right?

And it can come in a robotic text -to -speech voice, and that's fine for me, it doesn't matter at all, it doesn't –

I'm not even looking for an experience, I'm not looking for anything like that, right? But then, my wife, on the other hand –

Well, for the benefit of your listeners, there is an audiobook, you don't have to listen to it as a robotic voice if you want to listen to it.

You told me about that, but it didn't even matter, Conley, it didn't even matter to me. I was fine with my robotic voice,

I've grown accustomed to her, you know? But it's fine. But no, but my wife, you know, she's the kind of person who just likes the feel of a book, and the smell of a book, and the sensation of turning pages, and likes to sit down, she likes the decoration of a book, she likes pretty artwork, she likes all that kind of stuff, and to me it's just like,

I need the content, you know? I just need the content. And so, you know, like a scenario that would come to my mind as it relates to this sort of thing is, like – you remember the

Reader Bible that came out recently? Oh, yes. There have been a lot of them, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so there's been – so, like, one of the things that they were pointing out is that there's so much more to a book than just – that you might not even realize, and so your standard

Bible is presented in kind of a reference format kind of thing, right? But then most people don't think to read the

Bible because it's not packaged as a book kind of thing, and so all the typesetting – you think about all the typesetting, the cover art, the, you know, the neat spacing of the words, all that kind of stuff, plus the feel of it, the texture of the paper, all that, is there – like, you know, if a person were to come along and just say, hey, you can have my raggedy manuscripts for free – now,

I don't even know if that would be allowed with current copyright law and everything else, but you can have my raggedy manuscripts for free, but if you want the work of art, then, like, would it – would you think that that would be a problem that – like, would there be any category of luxury that would apply to that kind of scenario in your mind to say that all those things

I described are kind of luxuries over and against just the, you know, the brute content as far as that goes?

Does that make sense what I'm saying? Yeah, it does. It does. And this was something that I wrestled with a lot when

I was wrapping up the book. But in the end, so when it comes to just the – you know, and this goes back to what you were talking about with Grace to You and the

CDs. When it comes to distributing this format in kind of a minimalistic way, even if it's material,

I don't think that the ministering entity should charge for anything, and I really think if you're going to sell some kind of luxury item that's for, you know, people who want a richer experience or something like that,

I think that it should be done by another entity so that you're not undermining the sincerity of ministry.

Now that – going back to your question about wisdom issues, I think this is more of a wisdom issue thing, but I think that there should be a nice, clear line so that you aren't – so that you aren't, yeah, selling something that attends to the gospel.

It's very clear that it's somebody else doing this in a very secular capacity. You know, they're making these

Puritan reprints or they're making, you know, whatever that's – you know, these leather -bound or cloth -bound

Bibles and works. And that way they – like the pagan could profit on it essentially, but then not them.

No, I don't think it'd be – I think it'd be fine for a – you know, and part of this is because we have all these –

I don't want to say commercial entities, but it's to put labels on things.

So it could be the same person behind each one, but it would be very clearly, you know, not the ministry that's trying to charge you because you would want to know that this ministry is – they have no ulterior motive in trying to provide you with this thing.

They're not trying to upsell you this other product, right? Like that would be the concern that I'd have.

So like a pastor – like, you know, the pastor just says, okay, you know, like all our sermons, you know, online for free, all our audio online for free.

You want the decorative artwork version, like, you know, Crossway does it. We get a royalty off of that.

Would you be saying that would be inherently compromising a wisdom issue? You know, I'm just trying to understand the position itself, if that makes sense.

Yeah, sorry, I didn't understand the scenario you just described. Okay, so like you have a scenario where – all right, you know, talk about something like Grace Church or something like that, where, you know, they put all their – just any church, any church, they – you know, all the sermons, you know, online for free, you can have it.

You know, all the book manuscripts online for free, you can have it. And then – so that's all for free. You can have the content, no problem.

Any of the content we ever produce that's yours, you can have it free. But then there is – you know, there are organizations,

Crossway, whatever, who sells books, and so they want to put some of these things in a book and give us some royalties off of it.

Would that be compromising, you think, if that same material is available for free in a, you know, cruder format kind of thing?

That's kind of the question I'm getting. Well, if you're getting royalties off of it, yes, I don't think the church should be in the business of commerce at all, even if it would be acceptable for someone else, because you're, once again, undermining the sincerity of ministry.

And this is – and yeah, these are some of the rough edges that I'm trying to work out. But yeah, you don't want to – yeah, you don't want to undermine the sincerity of ministry, which is what this is all about.

No, that's fair. I just kind of – I was just trying to see what you would think about that. Now, another funny pushback is this is – friendly pushback, but, you know, you have a lot of the

Kuyperian movement that's happened, essentially, right? And so, you know, a lot of your organizations like the

Gospel Coalition, Together for the Gospel, all that, they're, you know, they're pushing all the

Kuyperian stuff, every square inch kind of stuff, and trying to influence culture as far as that goes.

Now, I think you have, like, some organizations out there, and, you know, I'll just tell you my perspective of what's happening without you having to endorse my interpretation at all.

But my perspective of what's happening with the Kuyperian stuff is that a lot of it feels like it's just, you know, packaging worldliness, essentially.

And so, let's be like the world in order to win the world. And, you know, I think a lot of your Kuyperian, you know, people out there are essentially seems like, to me, like, in love with the world and the things of the world, and, you know, basically trying to do movie reviews about the

Christ -centered themes and 50 Shades of Gray or something horrendous like that. That's hyperbole, but you understand what

I'm saying. The kind of movie reviews and stuff out there, it just feels like strange, like it's just a kind of push towards worldliness.

But then you have other organizations, I would say, that are, like, just encouraging people in the main to, you know, create

Christian businesses. So, like, something like GAB is trying to encourage people to create Christian businesses. The Cross -Politic guys, you know,

Apologia, they're all out there trying to encourage people to fight secularism. Like, secularism is a bad thing, right?

So, let's fight secularism. Let's create Christian businesses. Let's do this. Now, if you have, like, a real strict – if you have a really loose definition of ministry to where a lot of things can come under it, does it encourage secularism is kind of the thought process in my mind.

So, like, just some scenarios. Like, if a Christian writes a Christian book on marriage, then that would be a violation, right?

Right, yes. Yeah, if you're talking about a Christian view of marriage, yes. Yeah, Christian view. So, Christian writes a

Christian fantasy book, right? So, like, Tolkien or C .S. Lewis. Are we in fuzzy territory or are we still there?

No, I think that's perfectly fine to entertain with Christian themes, sure, and to charge for it, yeah.

All right, so what would be the distinction you'd make there? Right, well, the essence of the thing is entertainment as opposed to the essence being to communicate the gospel and religious instruction, right?

What is the essence of what's being provided? Okay, okay, fair enough. So, the essence would be if basically any reasonable person who is looking at this, if they were to ask themself, what is the intention behind it?

Is it to teach gospel themes or word it the way you're wording it?

So, yeah, if the essence is to – I think one way of thinking about it, too, is when someone gives biblical instruction, they are, in a sense, imparting the

Holy Spirit in greater measure. That might be an odd way of saying it, but they want this person to have more

Spirit -filled life, and that is what Simonie was. When Simon wanted to pay to have the

Holy Spirit, that's why I phrase it that way. So, when you have a good value or a good theme or anything good in the world because there's a lot –

God created this world and it has goodness anywhere in it. Just the fact that you include those things doesn't make it something that now has to be regulated by the

Dorian principle because you're not trying to impart that kind of special revelation that transforms the soul.

Well, isn't that what C .S. Lewis was trying to do in Narnia? Over and against just a secular book, isn't he trying to form your worldview, teach you how to think, teach you about Aslan, who's

God, who's – but then you would say – Yeah, that's a good question. That's a good question.

I guess it could get fuzzier because you could always remove some of his words that were narrative and fill them in with words that are just direct biblical teaching, and then you remove some more, and then you add some more, and you remove some more, and you add some more, and at what point does this suddenly become just directly teaching?

Well, yeah. I mean, if I wrote a book – I mean, I've wanted to write many books, and I have all these ideas, and I just haven't had the time now – or the discipline.

The discipline probably more than the time. But then I would want to write more of a book like Narnia that is trying to form people's worldview in a

Christian sort of way. That would be my impulse, but then it seems like if we have a – the looser the definition of this is, the more it would lead me to think, well,

I go to school for writing or whatever else, and that's – it would lead me to a secular path, kind of – secular – it would lead me towards secularization, meaning try to keep

God out of it so that it won't be – don't make it intentionally

Christian in any way. Try to keep it more secular. So, like the Lecrae thing. I mean, like when Lecrae said he was an artist that happens to be a

Christian, I thought, man, fail, facepalm. You know, what in the world is going on here? Like, this is one step away from apostasy, but then under a certain logic, it's like, well, hey, he did the right thing then, right?

I can be – Yeah, yeah, I follow what you're saying. Yeah, if there's – right, if there's some point at which this becomes ministry, then suddenly it's regulated by the

Dorian principle, and so in order to avoid that, you want to make sure that there aren't too many biblical themes, et cetera.

There's not too many Bible verses sprinkled on this t -shirt. There's not too many – I see what –

I certainly see what you're saying. I think considering – and I did not use this language in the book, but I think considering just the term essence, you know, what is the essence of this?

Is the essence of this to proclaim the gospel or is it to entertain? And then secondarily, you know,

I'm going to decorate this with gospel themes. I think that helps us think through these things because, as I said, you know,

God created this world good, and so, you know, his thumbprint is on everything, and when you – and when you say good words, you know, you're going to include biblical ideas, even the pagan does that, whether he realizes it or not.

So, yeah, I think – No, that's fair. I think that kind of clarification, I would say, it puts me at ease significantly because I –

I mean, those are – that is the kind of feel that – you know, that's the kind of thing that I feel like, well, surely

Lecrae was wrong, you know, like – or surely that wasn't the – I mean, surely that wasn't the – like, we all know that that was one step away from apostasy and Lauren Daigle and everything else, but then, like, is that integrity, you know?

Is – you know, like, through another view. And so I think that kind of – the essence of it, what is the main thing of it is a helpful qualification that,

I would say, helps me to interact with the application in a helpful way.

So I appreciate that. Yeah, just to respond to a little more of what you were saying about, you know, every square inch. Certainly, you know,

I agree with some of those sentiments. Every square inch is the Lord's, absolutely. But yeah, if you have so embraced those ideas that you really cannot distinguish between what's holy and what's not holy and what's sacred and not sacred, yeah, you begin to – suddenly things like the regulative principle of worship has no meaning.

You know, suddenly, well, why would you worship God on Sunday if every day is the

Lord's day and no day is holy and, you know, and every day is equally holy? You know, there's just all kinds of odd questions you have to deal with if you can't make some distinction.

And here, you know, Jesus does give us this distinction between co -labor and reciprocity. It has to apply somewhere.

And so we have to be able to distinguish between something that's ministry and something that's not ministry. Well, I was definitely trying to provoke a response with all that just to see if I could get a reaction out of you.

So I appreciate it. And I guess it's safe.

Oh, sorry. Go ahead. If I could just add to that, and this is very tangential, but it's something I've seen a lot here in Silicon Valley.

And if I had the time, this is so far down on my list of priorities, but if I had the time, I'd study it.

But a lot of the Christianity here is very much embracing a sort of reconstructionism, but it's a weird, charismatic one.

And I think that the path a lot of people take is they come out to this area in order to, you know, change the world.

I don't know if you've ever seen any of the clips from the show Silicon Valley, the HBO show, but that's one of the jokes is that all these companies are claiming to change the world.

And so, you know, young people come out here to do these, you know, very creative jobs where they're going to change the world.

And then they realize that their work becomes an idol. And if they discover the faith or maybe they've been in the faith for a long time and they realize that their work has become an idol, they don't know how to deal with that.

They don't know if they should go become missionaries. And so they discover this theology of work that's common out here where people basically end up making the work a new idol, but one that's honoring to God because by doing this good work, you're furthering the gospel.

And yeah, it's an odd thing where I think people turn the work into a new idol.

And this is so pervaded, the charismatic circles around here. Are you familiar with Bethel Redding? Yeah, Bill Johnson, etc.

So they now not only have a school of prophecy, but even a school of technology. So this is like a real thing that's happening out here.

And I can't quite put my finger on where it's all coming from or why it's here. Do they have a school of gravesacking yet?

I think for right now, that's just one of the classes they offer. Okay, fair enough.

Now, going back to your comments on essentially essence,

I'm assuming it's pretty safe to say that's basically part of what's guiding your understanding when it comes to,

I guess, maybe not your definition of ministry, but then whether or not certain things fall under the definition of ministry.

So for example, not just the person writing a book saying, hey,

I want to write this book to teach people whatever it is I know about the

Bible. In the same way, you would say, hey, if a group sat down and wrote songs and said, hey, we want to write these to be worship songs, essentially the essence of whatever they come up with is meant to worship

God and meant to direct others to worship God. And so whether it's played at some random church on a

Sunday and that group gets paid because of the way that copyright licenses work in our country, or they're playing it, someone individually is deciding to play it on Spotify.

Is it safe to say that you would say both of those are violations of the Dorian principle in a way that if a

Christian, a group of people who were all Christians and decided to write something that was inspired by biblical themes, but then wasn't directly meant to be worship, that would not be in violation of the

Dorian principle? Is that fair? That's correct. Yeah. And just one caveat to that, in Appendix C, I don't think many people read the appendices, but in Appendix C, I disclosed -

I actually did read those. I was really interested in all of that stuff, and I was wanting to ask about some of that if we had time.

So this is good that you're going there. Yeah. So I disclosed a little more of my theological thoughts on copyright.

So in the body of the book, I claim that to leverage the power of copyright, and to use the violent power of government basically to enforce your copyright, violates the

Dorian principle if you're doing it over ministry. And then in Appendix C, I go further, and this is outside of the context of the

Dorian principle, and I make a very short argument there that in general, I don't think copyright is a real right, nor should governments enforce it or create such categories.

So I do generally have a problem with the way people use copyright outside of ministry.

But barring that, no, I don't - so let's just say we were talking about performance, right? You were paying these musicians to come and to do something for you.

I don't think there'd be any problem with that if they're entertaining. However, yeah, if they're writing a worship song, and it's designed to be sung in a worship service,

I think one of the worst examples of the commercialization of Christianity right now is the whole marketplace that exists in the

CCLI. This worship tax that you have to pay in order to sing the songs that Christians want to sing in order to worship

God, that's a real shame and a real - I think it reflects very poorly on Christ that we're charging each other in this way.

And not only charging each other, but essentially threatening legal repercussions if you don't pay up.

That's a violation of 1 Corinthians 6 as well. I had a couple questions related to that.

Harrison, do you have anything you want to follow up with? I have two questions I have left that are curiosities, but I really want to pick

Conley's brain about. But do you have any follow -up on that, Harrison? Well, really the first one's just kind of a comment, and really it's just an agreement in the sense that it's always felt weird to me that worship music is handled the way that it is in our country.

And I don't really know the history of it and how we really got where we are right now, but yeah, it's essentially what you're saying where, hey, all right, so you want to play whatever the most popular, well -known worship song is during a

Sunday, then essentially what you need to do is you've got to pay money to a bunch of people.

So it's not just like, hey, acknowledge that they wrote this, give them credit for authoring the song.

It's actually, no, pay them money to be able to show the words on a screen or to print it on a page.

And that just feels really icky, doesn't it? Right. Yeah, and I explain in the book that there is provision in U .S.

copyright law for worship services. So I think a lot of people are tricked into paying the

CCLI when the CCLI is actually not providing them anything they don't already have the right to do.

Now, I'm not a lawyer, so none of that is legal advice, but you can go read the sections that I quote there.

Okay. Well, yeah, so I was really glad that you commented on that because it's always felt weird to me.

I think the part that I was really torn on after reading your few sections on copyright, the thing that I was really torn on was,

I guess, this idea. And I'm in a weird spot right now where it's hard for me to push back on what you're saying because I think you present some really, really good arguments against copyright in general.

But then there's a part of me that I can't exactly put my finger on what it is, but there's a part of me that still wants to say, well, hang on, maybe there's still some sort of usefulness to a copyright that isn't for some sort of financial gain or whatever.

And I think it probably does center around this idea of authorship.

So not necessarily trying to profit in application when it comes to copyright, but just this idea of like, hey,

I don't necessarily like the idea of saying, hey, there's this thing that I've labored over and over for hours and days, weeks, whatever.

And then say someone just came and took it and slapped their name on it or something.

And I don't really know what the motivation behind that is. I was basically wanting to ask you, all right, so I've read what you said.

You already have some really strong arguments that it feels difficult to push back on, but I'm still not quite there.

So what would you say exactly to push me over the edge and just agree with you wholeheartedly?

Sure. Well, I would say that this is all up to you. Yeah. Well, when I wrote my thesis, this was one of the things the board pushed back on my thesis committee.

And then also some of the feedback I got on some of the first drafts of my book.

So I tried to harden it up a little. But part of what I'm saying there is there aren't really... So you're pointing out the issue of plagiarism, right?

Someone slapping your name on something. And that is a real issue. And some people take me as saying plagiarism is all right, that's not a problem.

That's definitely not what I'm saying. I do think plagiarism is a problem. But the problem is that copyright is this law that's designed to address a supposed

Eighth Commandment violation, right? Thou shall not steal. And people are co -opting it to address this

Ninth Commandment violation issue. You shall not bear false witness, right?

And you lie and you say this is yours, you present it as your own material. And so that's plagiarism. And copyright doesn't really do a perfect job of preventing plagiarism because I could quote

Charles Spurgeon as though it were me speaking and copyright wouldn't deal with that since all his works are out of copyright.

Or I could quote President Biden and since he's working for the government, all his words that are done in a governmental capacity are public domain.

So there's all kinds of people I could plagiarize without copyright restricting me. So really what this comes down to is issues like trademark, where you pretend like you're representing an entity or not.

Or another issue would be defamation. So there are other laws that are designed to address these things and they might not be perfect because people have been relying on plagiarism for so long.

But I would be, excuse me, relying on copyright to deal with it for so long. But I would be fine with some other law that deals with plagiarism so that we wouldn't have to co -opt copyright in this way.

But now, yeah, practically what should the church do? I don't know. But my thought is that it has been good for, for example, the

King James to be proliferated so much that even though there was the Thomas Jefferson translation or the

Joseph Smith translation, I don't think that those in the end make it worse that the

King James was freely available. I think it was by far better for it to be freely available. Right.

Yeah. And for people listening who are interested in reading the book, I know Conley made a comment that basically most people probably won't read those last few sections that I guess almost like an epilogue really to the rest of the book.

I would really recommend going and reading those because I was really interested by those sections and I think they really pushed me in a way that I wasn't expecting to.

So I would encourage you guys to go and read that if you haven't. Yeah. Part of why I kept that in a different section is because that's not part of the principle itself and I wouldn't want someone to get hung up on my very extreme views about copyright, which have been developing for a long time and think that they would have to affirm those if they were to affirm the

Dorian principle. That'd be more gray. Those would be more gray. Yeah.

Well, not necessarily more gray, just a different issue. And I'm really trying to sell people on the Dorian principle, not necessarily my libertarian ideals or whatever my views on copyright are.

One other thing before we move on that I want to mention, Harrison, you had said something about you don't know what the history is that led to things as they are now.

I wanted to comment a little bit on that because even though I don't know exactly how worship music has changed,

I think a lot of Christians don't think too much about how copyright has changed. But for a long time, there was no modern copyright law.

Modern copyright law came about in 1710 with the Statute of Anne. And prior to this, authors were not paid directly for their work.

There was no royalties. If they added a dedication in the beginning of a book, they might get reimbursed for this as the person they made a dedication to was rich and wanted to support them.

But generally, authors really wanted to get their word out and so they would take their manuscripts to a publisher who would then want to do the secular work of printing something to make money.

And so you have the work of the author producing the content, you have the work of the publisher who's producing the product that gets sold, are two separate works.

And in 1710, when you have the advent of copyright law, you then have the ability of authors to capitalize on their work this way.

And you have the church, of course, following along in that pattern. But prior to that, you don't have

Christian ministers selling books or, you know, it's publishers, but not

Christian ministers that are selling books. Pair enough. Well, I had two questions related to the copyright discussion, and then just curiosities of mine in general.

These are just curiosities. So there's things I'm curious about. But if Harrison has anything after that, then you can ask whatever you want,

Harrison, within reason. And then we'll wrap it up after that.

But here's one of the things that related to that discussion that I want to hear your impulse behind your thought process.

And so at a certain point, you seem to possibly encourage black market acquisition of pastors who violate the

Dorian principles teaching, although it seems like you're essentially saying it may not be wise, but that may be an open possibility kind of thing.

And at certain points in the book, you can correct that if you're wrong, if I'm mistaken.

But basically, that's an open idea, because copyright is essentially not.

The way we do copyright today is essentially a very strange thing due to your libertarian readings and all that.

Is that a fair statement of what you're open to the idea of possibly something along those lines?

Have I misrepresented you? I'm not sure. Yeah. So I do. I do address. I think you're talking about like piracy, like just downloading somebody's words that they're trying to sell.

And so I say that, yeah, I pretty directly say that we shouldn't do that. But I guess, yeah, you're right that I'm saying not out of an absolute necessity should we not do that, but out of wisdom, we should not do that.

So the thing I appeal to is what Jesus said about the temple tax. Peter asks him about the temple tax.

And he says, what do you think, Simon, from whom do the kings of the earth take toll or tax from their sons or from others?

And he said, from others, Jesus said to him, then the sons are free. However, not to give offense to them, go to the sea and cast a hook and take the first fish that comes up.

And when you open its mouth, you will find a shekel. Take that and give it to them for me and for yourself.

So what he's saying is you do not you are not bound to pay the temple tax in some sort of absolute way.

However, given these other considerations, you should. And so that's essentially what I'm saying about piracy.

I do not think that there's some overarching copyright that truly exists in such a way that we must absolutely obey it.

However, I think that out of wisdom we should. And I find it funny because I get in these discussions about copyright with other people who feel very differently than me.

But when it comes to practice, I respect copyright law and they whenever it's convenient, don't break it.

Yeah. And it's it's just very hypocritical because you would you would think that I'd be like violating it all the time since I don't think it's some kind of absolute rule written in the sky.

But it turns out, you know, I really do respect the government and try to avoid this.

Um, you know, as much as I can and and other people who who claim that this is a real right violated all the time.

So sure, sure. I find I find that's odd how that ends up working out. Well, yeah,

I think when we we both read that section and we read it together and I was like, I don't know if he's

I don't know if he's putting this in the language of wisdom or Harrison came away thinking that it was more like, no, don't do it.

And I was like, I think he's it sounds more like he's open to it. Maybe it's a wisdom thing, but you probably shouldn't do it.

But I couldn't tell. But I related to that. There's a certain kind of question

I have. I have a certain kind of impulse. I want to know if you share this impulse or if there's like it feels like at times my my impulse is a little different than yours.

And so and I want to see what you comment on. This is just a curiosity for me. But, you know, when

I when I went to I went to Masters College and when I was there, MacArthur basically told all of us that, you know, we can use any of his stuff anytime we want without attribution.

Like it, you know, it's about getting the truth out. If I said something that was helpful, get it out there.

You know, I don't want to be quoted. Don't have to quote me, whatever. Right. That was kind of his thing.

Just get it out there. And we need to get it out there and, you know, use whatever. If I've ever said anything helpful, go with it.

And I had a professor at Southern who essentially he we were in one of his classes and he looked at all of us and in like in a very serious tone of voice is kind of like, you know,

I I better never come visit one of your churches one day and find my seminar, these class notes being taught in your

Sunday school class that is a serious like breach of, you know, intellectual theft.

You know, this is intellectual property that belongs to me and I better never see it. And I will tell you, my one of my best days of seminary, one of my it was it was one of the best days of seminary that I had was when

I finished that class and I walked directly from my final exam and I took my notes and I tossed them in the trash that day.

I mean, and I had a smile on my face and, you know, the sun was shining and the birds were chirping and it was wonderful. You know, it's just like and then

I prayed calmly. I prayed. I said, Lord, help me forget everything by this man and help me learn it in another way.

It blotted out from my memory, you know, bring, you know, give me someone else to tell me this stuff, you know.

I went along my way, you know, and I felt entirely good about it.

But then like with the idea of like CCLI charging and everything else, like there's this impulse in me, like with Tim Keller, you know, when

I saw Tim Keller charging for a service, I mean, I read him. I wrote him off. I wrote him off. I don't have I don't want anything to do with him at all.

Like, I don't care. Like, you know, there's other people I'll learn from. Like, I don't know.

I don't know what to do with that. Right. And so I'm kind of an extreme personality and those kind of things make sense to me to where like,

I look at this discussion and I'm not like, like when I see what seems to me to be gross violations of it that everyone should understand kind of things, like my reaction to that is, hey,

I don't want to sing your stupid songs and I don't want to sing I don't want your stupid class notes.

And, you know, I want to listen to the guys who were, you know, have more of the

MacArthur attitude now, whether or not you agree with his application to every point, whatever. I mean, but that's I'm more like drawn to like that kind of attitude is like I want to learn from that guy.

The other kind of attitude, I'm not at all. But what like maybe you can comment on that.

Like, do you share that impulse? Do you? Are you far more gracious than me? And, you know, it wouldn't throw throw the, you know, because it is true.

And, you know, that kind of thing. So how do you respond to that kind of thing?

Yeah, well, I certainly wouldn't. I'm pretty understanding about the fact that we live in a certain period of time where this matter is very poorly understood and it will be a while before I think people can be held accountable the way they need to be held accountable on the matter.

And so in part, I'm understanding about that. However, it does it does direct some of my decisions.

You know, there's a reason I don't use logos, and it's not necessarily because it's not really excellent software.

It's you know, I kind of cringe a little thinking about buying into that racket because, you know, it is a way of charging a lot for material that is otherwise free.

You know, a lot of the things they they tag and they they make a new version of it. And yes, that has value, but then they, you know, will sell you

Calvin's Institutes for 60 or 70 dollars or so on and so forth. It's really it's really disturbing some of the things that they'll do.

So you have an impulse to basically say the same kind of impulse at times is what you're saying.

At times. Yeah. And it's pretty and it might be inconsistent, but generally I would love to support someone who who has a better attitude about these things.

Someone in there's a Facebook group we've got called Money and Ministry. Someone posted a photograph of the inside flap of an

Ernie Reisinger book. I might be pronouncing his last name wrong. Ernie Reisinger. And it has this author's note on the inside that says, anyone is at liberty to use material from this book with or without credit.

In preparing this book, the writer has received help from many sources, some acknowledged, many unacknowledged.

He believes the material herein set forth to be a true statement of Scripture teaching, and his desire is to further not restrict its use.

You know, you see something like that. It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's that's great. I want to support someone who who has that mindset about his work.

It is there is something very attractive about that kind of posture over and against the other kind of like whack knuckle grip.

This is mine. You know, my precious kind of thing. And so the last question

I had, just curiosity wise, is related to the copyright and the plagiarism kind of discussion is,

I was thinking through some of these things. One of the things that's been really strange to watch for me is like how a lot of famous pastors seem to be going down for plagiarism in a way that someone like Mark Driscoll, I mean, you just look at his ministry for years and you're like, plagiarism, that's the thing, you know, like he like he loosely quoted, like, in his

Bible study material, he forgot to cite some sources or something like that. And we're treating it. This is like, this is what we're seeing.

This is the thing that's bringing down Mars Hill and not all the other things, you know, like, what's going on?

You know, have we lost our mind? Like, what's going on? And then you have like the Ed Litton and the J .D. Greer stuff.

Like, I mean, I can't imagine. I can't imagine. Yeah, some of these are definitely more culpable than others. You know, some some of the great commentaries that were written and that now are, you know, two hundred dollars a pop because the rest were destroyed or whatever and taken off the market.

It was just, you know, bad note taking. And so there was not enough attribution. It's a real shame because none of these people really meant to pass it off on their own as their own.

And the people that they're quoting probably aren't that offended. So it's a there's certainly a reason to be concerned.

And there's certainly there should be accountability for for academic integrity.

However, I don't understand why it's treated as such a cardinal sin as it is. Well, I can see, like, there's a big difference between Mark Driscoll and his scenario.

Like, well, there's a bunch of different there's a bunch of different plagiarism things going on.

But one of the charges was like the Bible stuff, the Litton stuff. I mean, where you're sitting there like,

I don't know, telling someone else's personal story. I mean, like the thing with that is this integrity, like this integrity.

And it's just like, do you even know how to study a Bible on your own, man? Like, what are you doing? So I get that.

But then at the same time, it's just like you're quoting like the Bible whispers about like sexual.

That's not the bigger offense. The bigger offense is not like what you're quoting, you know, is it's the fact.

And so like, I'm just wondering, though, like related to the like, just talk a little bit about like how you like, it seems like we there's some scenarios where you just wonder, like, that's the thing that got everyone riled up was the plagiarism.

But then there's so many other things that are just so like, yeah, big, you know, it's like, why are you see that, you know, so do you have any comments like related to your copyright discussion and those related to those kind of matters and how, you know, we should think about some of those things?

No, yeah, I, I don't think I have too much to add to that other than, boy, it's it's humbling to see how, how much people have had to pay for making mistakes in this area.

But yeah, it is. Is that good or bad? Well, I guess it's good and bad.

I mean, there should be academic integrity, but at the same time, I don't know why it's elevated so much higher than than other scandals like like you're pointing out.

That one hasn't I haven't totally figured that one out. I think a lot of it has to do with the with the conflation of the eighth and ninth commandment.

As I as I mentioned before, you know, people see this as more than just a poor representation of the truth that they see it as stealing.

And and I think that that makes them see it as a far greater sin than I've been.

I would necessarily see it as even if I still see it as a as a problem. Sure. We got anything,

Harrison? Yeah, I just had a few questions and they might kind of be all over the place just trying to cover some things that some are

I'm just wondering about specifically, but then some are maybe trying to cover some of the stuff that that we missed earlier in the episode or something.

But the first one is basically and maybe you did talk about this. I can't quite remember right now, but it's easy to it's easy to kind of point out, as you say in the book, a few different times.

It's easy to point out the the obvious offenders to the

Dorian principle. Right. So the clear prosperity gospel guys, the guys that are praying for the next jet.

Right. Everyone no one has an issue with pointing out any of those guys as false teachers and and, you know, who are consumed with financial with greed for financial gain and and whatnot.

But then it seems like in your book, your basic your your claim is essentially that the

Bible teaches it's not just those guys. It's it's everyone or not everyone.

It's anyone who is who is charging for the proclamation of the gospel, who is who is ministering to people and charging for it.

And the Bible is actually telling us that that's part of how we identify false teachers as we we look around and we say, hey, who is actively trying to make money off the gospel directly from the people that they're trying to minister to?

Is that fair to say? Yeah, it is. And yeah, I think a lot of people have the idea that it's

OK to peddle the word as long as it's a good word. But when you say it like that, it becomes obvious, wait, that's not what

Scripture is saying. It's really saying that peddling the word is wrong. OK, so so just to take that a little step further and put you kind of on the spot in a way that I'm sure you're perfectly fine with it.

So like I said, it's not just the the obvious offenders. Technically, according to the

Dorian principle and what Scripture teaches, it's even the Vody Bokums, the

John MacArthur's, the John Piper's, you know, all of those guys.

Are they are they in violation of this as well? I would say yes, but I would definitely want to throw a caveat out there for for John Piper, because John Piper somewhere along the line became fairly convicted about a lot of the things that I'm talking about.

And he decided from one certain point on that he would always offer digital copies of his books for free, that he would no longer have the content be sold like that and that he would donate any royalties from his book to to,

I forget, either desiring God or some other charity, something like that.

Now, I do think that's a problem to still be making royalties off these books, even if you end up donating it.

But there is a clear conviction there that I think he's taking a huge step forward in the right direction, especially in offering digitally his books for free.

OK, but yeah, this this applies to this applies to all kinds of modern people and not to not to every single one.

I think there's a lot of people who offer their teaching freely and most pastors, you know, aren't engaged in this kind of commerce because, you know, they're just they're just about the regular ministry of the word.

But yeah, I think it's a I think it's an appropriate time for reformation. And as I look at the history of the church,

I think this is this is the general pattern. You see a problem develop in the church over a few hundred years and then and then some clarity is found that that fixes it.

Right. How long were people selling indulgences before Martin Luther comes up and say, hey, there's a problem here?

And, you know, you have the advent of copyright in 1710. And since then, people begin to capitalize on intellectual property and including gospel ministry.

And that problem develops over the last 300 years. I think that now is the appropriate time, especially with the advent of digital content.

Now is the appropriate time for the church to gain clarity and reformation on the matter? OK, yeah.

So so while the Bible is saying, hey, this is a way that we identify false teachers, you're essentially saying there should be in our context, considering the fact that this is not something that is really talked about very much and there's probably not as much clarity on the subject as maybe there should be.

That means we should look at a lot of these guys who are in all other aspects, you know, pursuing faithfulness to the gospel and and trying to share the gospel and minister to others as well as they can.

We should look we should look on those guys with some grace and not just throw out everything that they've done because they you know, they are violating this one aspect in the context of where we are right now.

Is that fair? Right. Yes. And you're you're touching on something else, which maybe I missed you say this before.

But yet the book, the book points out that the Bible talks about the heart of false teachers. And if you either serve

God or money, then someone who's not serving God is serving money. And so the Bible paints this picture that the fruit you should expect to see from a false teacher is that they're going to be they're going to be greedy and they're going to essentially be for ministry like this.

So one of the things I argue is this this ideally would be the the way that we discern the matter.

However, just like other cultural things, you know, if you think about slavery, go ahead, like slavery, for instance, it you might have a scenario is just kind of where you're going with it, like where you have like a scenario where something really bad is happening, but then history with a little more understanding because they were subject to different sets of temptations with it without saying that they have nothing good to say ever, you know, whatsoever, or that they're all unregenerate and lost, but that there may be significant blind spots at different points in history that we probably have here.

And we'll probably have in a hundred years, they'll be different kind of thing at the same time, acknowledging the heinousness of their sin.

And so likewise, even today, I mean, you take something like church discipline and you think about how church discipline can be applied today compared to how it could be applied a hundred years ago.

You know, how much does someone have to miss church before they're so in violation of Hebrews 1025 that you, you know, that you bring them under church discipline?

You know, that kind of standard is going to be very different today than it was at different time because people, there's just a different cultural expectation and level of clarity that we don't have that maybe previous generations did.

That's just one example that comes to mind. And I think, I think it's the same thing here. You know, if I saw a

Reformed pastor charged for prayers, I would, you know, they should know that that's wrong.

Like, you know, culturally you can, you can point out that there is something very wrong with this, but because they're in this environment where everyone's charging for books, even though really what's the difference between religious instruction and prayers in terms of, you know, trying to give someone the spiritual benefit?

I don't think there is a real difference, but there's just a different cultural expectation.

So that has to be taken in to account when we're trying to exercise understanding. Okay. Another kind of follow -up question to that is one thing

I noticed while I was reading the book is like Tim said earlier in the episode, you weren't afraid to name names.

And I appreciated that. One of the things

I noticed was it seemed like, I can't remember everyone that you've named now.

I know, I know you talked about Tim Keller a little bit and I think his charging for sermons, but what

I remember kind of taken away is, you know, it seems like a lot of the guys that you're calling out by name were the kind of guys that are not as favorably perceived in certain

Christian circles, if you understand what I mean. Yeah, I think that's a fair point because I did point out

Joel Osteen, of course, and then Rick Warren. And the reason

I did that was because I could find data on these larger guys than I could on some of the

Reformed authors I wanted to find data on. And particularly those two, what

I was pointing out about them is that they take no salary from their church and they only make money by their publishing ministry.

And a lot of people consider that very generous, but I would argue that's the exact opposite of what the

Bible is saying to do. Now I have heard, I'm willing to name names, but I don't have good citations.

I recall at one point James White on the dividing line saying that he does this, and this is when he was at his previous church and I could not find the dividing line, but I would have been willing to speak of him as well.

And I mean, I consider myself a personal friend of his. I'm saying these things largely about some of these people as friends.

And some of them, I'm trying not to really make it about whether or not this person is icky or not icky.

It's really, yeah, I'm coming at this. And what I hope people will recognize as a humble way, not trying to say that everything needs to be thrown out because everyone is in sin, but that we just need clarity on this.

And yeah, it's the case that most people just don't have clarity on this. And I totally get that. Yeah. Yeah.

And I didn't want to imply that you were afraid to, or that you didn't think certain guys were in violation of this just because of their name alone or something.

I just remembered reading that and wondering what was the reasoning behind who you talked about.

It was the availability of the data. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I would have liked to have brought in more from our camps.

Okay. Now another question, this is kind of changing gears a little bit, but a lot of the is focused on Paul and his sort of methodology, the example that he set.

I know the book admits that, hey, look, Jesus did this too. The Old Testament prophets did this too.

It wasn't just Paul, but then we have a lot of really clear and helpful examples of Paul, what he did and his reasoning behind what he did.

So he's really helpful when it comes to this kind of conversation. One of the, and I'm not going to ask you to explain everything about Paul's reasoning behind who he took money from and who he didn't take money from.

There's a few chapters in the book that are on that, that people can go read. And I think you talk about it fairly, like pretty in depth for just like trying to start, get the conversation going and everything.

I won't ask you to explain all that. But one, one aspect that I was wanting to hear a little more from you on was this

Paul's interaction with the Maltese in Acts 28, where essentially he heals

Publius's father, right? His father. And so he begins ministering to all the

Maltese through that healing. And then they provide him with,

I think, resources for his travels, essentially.

I don't know that it's necessarily money, but they at least give him, I assume, the stuff to meet his physical needs.

And I was a little confused reading this part. Maybe I just wasn't as clear as I should have been on the passage itself, but it seemed like this was actually a really similar, if not identical situation to the

Corinthian church. But then Paul obviously doesn't, he refuses help from the

Corinthians. But then he doesn't refuse it from the Maltese.

And so I was wondering if maybe you could help me, help me understand what made those two different for Paul, where one with the

Maltese was co -labor, even though he had just shared, he had just ministered to them, presumably shared the gospel with them and they repented and believed.

But then with the Corinthians, it would have been reciprocity. So could you maybe clarify that for me a little bit?

Sure. So why I talk about Malta at all is because I just want to look at every example and make sure we're not missing something and make sure we have some kind of accounting for it.

And so with Malta, it could almost seem like, well, they're paying him back for having given them the gospel.

And so I wanted to have some kind of accounting for that. The first thing I point out is that it's a very abbreviated passage.

I don't know if this is at this point in Acts, Luke is just getting tired of writing or what.

It definitely feels very truncated or telescoped because you have them addressing

Paul as a God, and then there's never any refutation of that. He never denies it or anything, but we can only assume that he would have because he's done that before.

So to answer your question directly, what I think the difference here between the

Maltese giving him honor, what it says, which most likely implies material gifts, and the

Corinthians is that the Maltese are doing this as Paul is going on. They're supporting him in his journey and his travel.

And Paul in 1 and 2 Corinthians expresses a willingness to do that with the Corinthians. In 1

Corinthians 16 and in 2 Corinthians 1, he says that he hopes to come to them so that they can support him on his way using the

Greek word propempo, which implies financially sending him on his way. So he actually expresses a willingness to do that for the

Corinthians or to have them do that for him. What he's rejecting in 1 and 2 Corinthians is instead a repayment for having planted the church that has nothing to do with his further travels.

And so that's how I see what's going on in Malta, is that this has to do with Paul's travel, not with his ministry there.

Maybe we can go ahead and just transition into just some final thoughts about the book in general.

Maybe you could start us, Harrison, just tell us what you thought was really helpful about it. Can I say one thing before you all give your thoughts?

One impression a listener might have listening to this two -hour conversation where you all have given me some compliments about how in -depth and stuff it was.

I don't want someone to come away from this conversation and think that it's a really hard, deep read.

I tried to keep it pretty light and concise, and I think most people find that it's fairly quick to get through.

So I just want to throw that out there so that no one's intimidated to read it. I really tried to make it accessible.

Yeah, I felt personally like it was, I felt like it was, I think

I was more indicating along the lines of it's comprehensive in the sense of you're dealing with the passage, which

I thought was helpful. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate the compliment. I just, yeah, just want to make sure no one gets the wrong impression.

A Greek word every few seconds, you know? A Greek word every other minute, it's just a different language, you know?

Well, you know, overall, it's funny because Conley, I actually think you and I might have met in person before.

I'm not entirely sure because I can't remember. It would have been such a brief interaction. We said we were at G3, and I remember someone was there handing out your book, and I can't remember if it was you.

I remember it was a guy who handed it to me. I just, I can't remember what he looked like or anything. I was pretty aggressively handing out my books, yeah.

I was there with a team, and they were doing it too, but it was probably me. Right. Yeah, and so we probably have met in person, and we just didn't really realize it.

And I remember I walked away, and I kind of read the front and the back, and I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I kind of briefly looked at it, and I was like, ah, you know, maybe

I'll read this one day. And then I just, I really didn't think much more about it.

But then when you reached out to us and asked if we would be willing to have you on and talk about this, obviously,

I wanted to go back and read what you had said so that I could at least have some idea of what we're going to talk about.

And as I was reading it, you know, I think one of the thoughts I had is, you know, and again, this is to my shame, but, oh, this actually isn't crazy, right?

And that's not meant to be an insult towards you. That's just more meant to kind of expose my own unwillingness to really hear someone talk about this.

But as I read the book more and more, I think you just present a lot of ideas that I've never really thought about as much as I think you have.

And I don't think I've created categories in my mind in the same way you have.

And so reading your book, it was helpful in starting to form some of those categories that I think

I'm still wrestling through in a lot of ways. And I'm sure you probably hear that a lot when people tell you that they've read your book is that they're still trying to figure out what exactly does this mean for me in terms of my trying to obey

God and everything that He's commanded so that I can give Him the glory that He deserves. And so I think it's been very helpful in providing at least categories for a beginner when it comes to this aspect of trying to remain faithful.

And so I was really appreciative of that. And like I said earlier in the episode, I was really intrigued by your comments on copyright.

And I think that part I'm less sure about than everything else.

But then I also admit at the same time, I really don't know what my argument against your view of copyright would even be.

Sure. Well, that's why it's in the appendix. Well, I was really appreciative of it overall.

And so thanks for writing it. And it helps too that you didn't charge anything for it.

That definitely would have hampered the message of the book a little bit, I think. I said you glad it wasn't something that was crazy.

We kind of thought it might be crazy at first. I was honestly worried before I started getting feedback from this.

I was worried someone was going to read it at G3 and we were going to get kicked out. Because if the reception of it's poor, and it really is challenging, calling a lot of people to repentance, a lot of people who were there present at G3 to repentance.

One of the examples - Yeah, I mean, you're handing the book out right in the middle of everyone profiting off their book sales.

You pulled a Mark Driscoll there on the Strange Fire Conference. I had this elevator pitch down where I would tell people some examples of how this is violated.

And I'd say, I know some people want to charge you $14 .99 to listen to their gospel conference that's happening right now, for example.

How did you get away with pulling a Mark Driscoll? How did you do it? Yeah, if the conference had been in New York, maybe

I'd have been found out. Oh, man. Well, no,

I appreciated the book. My first exposure to it was listening to you speak with AD.

And I came away from that conversation thinking, man, I have a lot of questions. And then that I agree with the main premise, but I have,

I just ended up, he's definitely pushing me to think further than, and it's the issue

I've thought about over the years a lot. But then it's just, I've never written a thesis on it or anything else.

But the thing is, I thought to myself, man, there's some questions

I'd like to ask Conley about that, just to see what he thinks about it when I listen to that interview.

And having no idea that we'd have a podcast with you, that wasn't even on the radar as far as that goes.

But we got a few of them out. We tried to give you the easiest ones we could, Conley. But...

I'll take the hard ones. I might not be able to give you the answers. No, no, I appreciate the answers.

And I appreciate, it's always encouraging to me when you see a person, they take a controversial stand, but they're willing to put their money where their mouth is, no pun intended, as far as that goes.

And so, I appreciate you giving your book out for free.

And I was encouraged by AD, what he did with that as well. And I thought, well, we need more of that, period.

Just simple childlike obedience, even when it's unpopular. We need more of that, regardless of if everyone would draw the lines in the same place.

And as it relates to what constitutes ministry and what is those kinds of questions, and related to very specific application, we need more people that will just say, hey, whatever

God says, I'll do it, even if it's cost me something. And there's something that's very attractive about that. So, I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes. And while I am taking, in a sense, a radical stand on something,

I don't generally consider myself too much of a provocateur. So, yeah, that's not the goal here.

And hopefully, people who read it will realize the heart with which it's written. So, Conley, you've been a really good sport.

You've answered all our questions for two hours. The least we can do is let you shamelessly plug, where can people get the book, and how much does it cost?

Sure. So, yeah, you can get it in just about any format. I have a webpage where it's all displayed on a single page, so you can control

F, which is one of the best features. And then, yeah, you can get a PDF, EPUB, Kindle, and that's all linked from the website, which is thedorianprinciple .org.

Dorian is spelled D -O -R -E -A -N. There's also an audiobook, which you can just subscribe to with any podcatcher that you have.

Just search for The Dorian Principle, and you can listen to it that way. And if you want the paperback, you can also order it from the website, and that is free.

In addition to the shipping, the publisher even covers the shipping. And the publisher, First Love Publications, they've been doing free book distribution since 2006.

So, this is not something new to them. They've been doing this kind of ministry for a long time, and, yeah, they were happy to partner with me, and I'm happy to partner with them so that we can formalize this a bit better and get other ministries working in the same way.

So, yeah, you should also check out their part of a larger ministry called First Love Missions, and it's just a bunch of churches banding together to co -labor and fund things free of charge.

– Okay, yeah, that's awesome. Well, Conley, we want to thank you again for coming on and answering all our questions, and we want to thank our listeners for listening through.

And we encourage you guys to go out and get this book and read it for yourselves, and we'll see you guys on the next episode of Bible Bashed.

Thank you. This has been another episode of Bible Bashed. We hope you've been encouraged and blessed through our discussion.

We thank you for all your support and ask you to continue to like and subscribe to Bible Bashed and share our podcast with your friends and on social media.

Please reach out to us with your questions, pushback, and potential topics for us to discuss in future episodes at BibleBashedPodcast at gmail .com.

Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.