Interview with Janet Mefferd RE: Mark Driscoll Scandals

Fighting for the Faith

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Alright, on the line, I have Janet Mefford from the Janet Mefford Show, and I've invited her on Fighting for the

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Faith to come and talk about the latest Mark Driscoll controversy regarding his being a

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New York Times best -selling author and the wake of destruction that's happened as a result of how that is happening.

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So Janet, thanks for coming on Fighting for the Faith. Oh, Chris, it's my honor, thank you so much for having me.

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Okay, so this is the second major scandal regarding Mark Driscoll in just a few months, and let me ask you this question.

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As a journalist and as a Christian, so you might actually consider answering this question two different ways, why are the two latest

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Driscoll scandals important? I mean, the people I've talked to, and I get a lot of flack from people out on social media basically saying, you know, listen, this doesn't matter, it's not that big of a deal.

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Why do you think this is an important story? Well, I think both of the scandals are important stories primarily because this speaks to a terrific corruption in the ministry of Mark Driscoll.

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I mean, if you look at 1 Timothy chapter 3 and Titus chapter 1, which speaks to the qualifications of elders and pastors, one of those qualifications is being beyond reproach, above reproach.

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And so when we're looking at what's happening here, first of all, on the plagiarism issue, the fact that Mark Driscoll has now been shown to have plagiarized or improperly cited in I think it's up to seven books now,

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I had uncovered four, but there were three additional that I believe were Warren Throckmorton's uncovering, that is an incredible story in and of itself.

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It's also been shown that he has plagiarized in a Tim Keller sermon, and from what I understand there may be more of that coming out, but it speaks to a lot of issues.

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Primarily it speaks to an integrity issue. When I had Mark Driscoll on my show and I was talking to him about his plagiarism,

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I had pointed out, you know, Romans 2's admonitions that are you preaching to people not to steal and you steal?

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And that was exactly what he did. He has on his frequently asked questions portion of his website, he talks about the whole issue of plagiarism and if you use

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Mark's sermons and you don't cite it, that's plagiarism. So he's very tough on people who he thinks are plagiarizing him, even went after a church at one point that was using the

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Marshall logo and then subsequently dropped that. But he was being completely hypocritical, he was telling people not to plagiarize while he was doing it himself.

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He wasn't honest about it when he was on my show and doing the interview, he was not honest about it. And it's plagiarism, and a lot of people say that plagiarism, what's the big deal?

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Here's the big deal, it's lying, it's stealing, it's fraud, and for him it's also hypocrisy.

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And it speaks to an integrity issue and it also speaks to something that will get you fired if you're a journalist or if you're in academia for much, much less than this guy has done.

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So that's the first thing on the plagiarism issue. On the issue of spending $210 ,000 at least to put your plagiarized book,

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Real Marriage, on the New York Times bestseller list, again that's an integrity issue, it's a cover -up issue because most of his church didn't know what was going on, and it just speaks to pride, it speaks to arrogance, it speaks to,

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I want my book to be seen as a bestseller to make me look better, to be able to sell more books and continue the whole, you know, promoting myself thing.

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Fundamentally, Chris, I really think it comes down to a character issue, and is this man really qualified, biblically speaking, to be a pastor of a church that claims to preach

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Jesus Christ? That's what people and Marcel have got to decide for themselves, but from my vantage point it's pretty darn clear he's not qualified.

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Yeah, I'm not going to disagree with your opinion. Some of the criticism I've received, you know, people have come out of the woodwork and said, listen, why are you making such a big deal about the $210 ,000?

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It was a marketing expense, they were marketing the book. I mean, do you see this as just a marketing expense?

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And keep in mind, it was Mars Hill that actually paid this resource marketing company to make him a

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New York Times bestseller. And so the issue of, you know, where did the monies come from?

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Was it through tithes and offerings and stuff like this? Is this a legitimate marketing expense? No, it's completely unethical.

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And if you go back and you can Google this article, I know I've put it up on social media and others have as well, Forbes Magazine did an article on ResultSource, and on this issue of buying your way onto the

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New York Times bestseller list, they called it a laundering operation. This is not marketing.

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Marketing is, you put out press releases, you try to get interviews for your book, you try to get publicity for your book, so people will legitimately go out and be interested in the book and buy it organically.

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Marketing is not taking hundreds of thousands of dollars and secretly ensuring that people buy it to put you on the

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New York Times bestseller list. It speaks to the lameness of the book, not to the greatness of the book, because it's cheating.

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It's just completely unethical. Yeah, I don't see it as a valid marketing expense at all.

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I mean, I've actually, you know, been a marketing executive and, you know, you don't engage in underhanded, shady, you know, unethical means to market something, unless, of course, you have no conscience.

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Now, let me ask you this, okay? Yesterday, I've noticed on your Twitter feed, you've really kept up with a lot of the different news stories that have come out regarding this, as well as blog posts and things like that.

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Yesterday, the Christian Post reported that Driscoll had an apologetic tone, this is a

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Sunday sermon. Isn't that enough for him to have an apologetic tone? I mean, clearly, I mean, he's super sorry and he had an apologetic tone.

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What do you think of that particular post and the video that they linked to, you know, demonstrating that Mark Driscoll had an apologetic tone?

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I think the Christian Post is turning into Pravda, first of all. The sermon, it's just becoming a

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PR vehicle for Marshall Church. I mean, they were the same site that had run something about Marshall donating coats to the homeless during the whole plagiarism scandal.

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One of the things, it's true, I wish it weren't true, but it actually is true, this issue of him having an apologetic tone, first of all, from what

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I have been told, Mark Driscoll didn't even show up in his church on Sunday to preach in the wake of this scandal.

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So it wasn't that he had an apologetic tone on Sunday after the results for his scandal broke, it was a link to other sermons that he's done.

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They did not do any substantive coverage of the results for a scandal. They mentioned it, and then they just kind of went on and gave a one -sided, basically press release on behalf of Marshall Church, if you take out that one paragraph talking about the scandal itself.

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So there hasn't been coverage. And that, you know, Chris, that's another thing, a complaint that I've got.

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I think that the Christian media, except for World Magazine, and I'm speaking like some of these news sites that are supposed to be covering

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Christian news, I think they have done a lousy job on this story. I think the Christian media largely has dropped the ball on this story, both of these stories, and I think that that speaks to something that is maybe even more troubling than what we've been talking about, because every

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Christian ought to be outraged and scandalized by what Mark Driscoll has done, both with the plagiarism and with the results for a story.

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The fact that you're having to read about it after World broke it, God bless them, they did a fantastic job, but you have to read about it in the

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LA Times and the Seattle media. Where is the Christian media on this?

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We're doing it, you're doing it, Chris, and I'm doing it on my show, but where are the rest of them?

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That's what I want to know. Yeah, I mean, the thing that is troubling for me, and there's actually on a lot of different levels, this story and the repeated scandals with Driscoll, and I've been covering

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Driscoll for years now, and I just look at the plagiarism scandal and the New York Times scandal as just two of the latest scandals regarding Driscoll.

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I mean, as far as I'm concerned, he was disqualified from being a pastor years ago, and the nail in the coffin should have been the fact that he was driving the getaway car at Elephant Room 2 and trying to smuggle

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T .D. Jakes into the evangelical mainstream and declare his doctrine of God to be okay when it's not.

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I mean, Jakes was playing games, and he admitted that he believes in the doctrine of the

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Trinity, at least God in three persons, if by persons you mean manifestations, and anybody with theological training knows that he's playing games and is basically trying to have his cake and eat it too, and wasn't confessing the doctrine of the

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Trinity. He didn't repent of that, and then I think back to a few years ago when it was actually leaked to us, a link to the audio of him telling a group of pastors that there's a pile of bodies behind the

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Mars Hill bus, and with God's grace it'll be a mountain before he's done. I've never heard a pastor say anything like this, and yet I've never seen any repentance on his part.

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And I don't see any way in which the man is qualified to be a pastor, but it's worse than that. He's actually marketing himself for years now as a pastor to pastors.

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He's a leader to leaders. And so he's been busy over the past decade creating little

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Mark Driscolls who are church planters and pastors all across the country, and I don't see that that is a good thing at all.

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It really, really worries me. I mean, what do you think about the idea of having Mark Driscoll clones all over the country basically buying into his leadership methods and his accountability structure?

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It's scary. It's really scary. And you know what, Chris, what really is disturbing about it is it ends up changing what the world thinks

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Christianity is. And that may be the biggest scandal of all, because it's become so widespread.

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You know, I was watching a video last night with some celebrity pastors in it, and I just shook my head in absolute despair, because the way these people –

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I was really looking at how the people were acting in the audience, and I say audience explicitly, intentionally

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I say audience instead of congregation. There is such a worship mentality not of Jesus, but of the guy.

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And that's the disease of the age, and it is killing us. It is absolutely killing us.

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I'm old enough to remember the era before the celebrity pastor. And boy, you know, things have sure changed over the years, but not for the better.

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It's not about the Word of God and the supremacy and the sufficiency of the Word of God over us directing us what we ought to be doing to obey the

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Lord. It's about the celebrity, and the celebrity can do no wrong. That's the disease that we're all infected with, and those of us like you,

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Chris, who are standing up and saying this is wrong, often become the villains. It's not the guy doing the lying and the stealing and the fraud and the hypocrisy and the greed.

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He's not the problem, Chris. You're the problem. I'm the problem. We're the bad guys. We're the ones who need to be shut down, and we're the ones who are being ungodly.

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And everything is upside down. It's awful. It's really, really awful to behold.

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Yeah. And yet, Scripture is so clear on this. I mean, when it comes to the office of pastor, and biblically, it is described as an office.

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And God is the one who calls people to that office, and there's specific duties that go with that office.

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And what these guys have done is, on both counts regarding the qualifications to be a pastor, there are moral qualifications that speak to the character of the man, and there are doctrinal qualifications that speak to the message that's to be preached by the man in that office.

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And so many times with these celebrity pastors, number one, they do not meet the moral qualifications, or they morally disqualify themselves, and yet nothing is done.

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And doctrinally, nobody cares. It doesn't matter if they're scratching itching ears.

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It doesn't matter if they're twisting God's Word. All that matters is that they're able to draw a large crowd, and everybody points to that and say, see?

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They're building the kingdom of God. Look at your dinky little church of a hundred people. You guys are the problem.

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He's the solution, because he's able to draw a large crowd. And they don't understand that, number one, the people who are, the crowd that's showing up to hear this man, they're not hearing the gospel.

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Number two, the man who's preaching whatever it is that's being preached in those churches, he's not even morally qualified to be a pastor anyway, and it doesn't matter.

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And I'm convinced at this point with Mark Driscoll, that even if he were caught sleeping with a prostitute, he would blame it on somebody else, and his board of accountability advisors would find a way to spin it, you know, and basically say, oh, he had a momentary lapse of judgment, but we appreciate the way that he's conducted himself during our investigation, and we can see his heart, and we believe that there's going to be a great, you know, harvest of souls, you know, as a result of his apologetic tone or something like that.

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And I think we're to that point. Yeah. Well, and it speaks to the antinomianism of our day.

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I hear this all the time, if some big celebrity does something that is unbiblical, or as you said, morally disqualifies him from ministry, the first word out of the mouth of their followers is grace.

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Don't you believe in forgiveness? Don't you believe in restoration? I mean, now that he's done something wrong, God can really use him.

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And what I would say to that is, that's not biblical. First of all, yes, there's grace, yes, there's forgiveness, for the repentant, sorrowful sinner.

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There's repentance for the repentant sinner, not the sinner who says, I'm stonewalling,

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I'm not going to speak to it, I'm not going to apologize, I'm going to justify it, I'm going to hide behind the skirts, like Driscoll has done, of the publishing companies, and of my board of accountability, and I'm going to run away, like brave Sir Robin, when it's time to show up at my church on Sunday to preach.

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That's not repentance at all. I mean, this guy, but for the plagiarism thing, he came out in December through Tyndale House.

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He didn't come out on his own and say, I'm sorry, he said mistakes were made, and I take responsibility for one book.

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There are six others he has said nothing about, his board has said nothing about. These people are not being accountable to the people.

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And the people, honestly, and I've had people say this, Chris, to me, which is, you wonder how much the celebrity pastor phenomenon really is a judgment on the church, rather than a sign of grace.

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And the reason people have said that is, you say, people who sit there and listen to this, and yet own

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Bibles, presumably, and have Google searches available on their internet, and sit there under somebody like that, and excuse away all the stuff you've mentioned before, and just go, oh, you know, he's a custom pastor, that's fine.

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Oh, he has porno visions, that's fine. Oh, he's just kind of edgy. He's irreverent. Isn't that cool?

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We're going to reach the culture. And eventually it comes to bite you, because if you overlook character issues, those things don't go away.

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They just ramp up. And I don't know, it's a difficult thing to speak to, but it is definitely something we need to grieve about.

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I really think so. Yeah, I, you know, my concern is, you know, as I read the Olivet Discourse, you know,

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Jesus talks about in the last days that because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of many would grow cold.

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And I think lawlessness is like the word that captures the zeitgeist of today's major, mainstream evangelicalism.

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There is absolutely no concept of sin, sorrow for it, repentance and Christ bleeding and dying for it.

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Everybody's so caught up in this, you know, that Jesus is your buddy and he's about ready to reveal your grand purpose for your life as if that's some, you know, making a decision to discover your purpose is somehow synonymous with repentance and the forgiveness of sins.

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We've lost sight of the of the true message of the gospel and we've lost sight of the real

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Jesus who really bled and died to save us from slavery to sin, death and the devil.

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And we're in all these celebrity churches are growing at the expense of the truth rather than because of it.

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Well, and what happens and I've said this about the church growth movement for a long time, when you have people raised in an environment who really don't know the word of God because they're not taught the word of God expositionally week to week in some of these churches, not all, but some of them, they're not doing expositional preaching.

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Then what happens is these people don't develop any biblical discernment. And it's kind of a catch 22.

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If you don't have a biblical discernment to discern when something is off because you don't know the word of God well enough, then it's a perpetuating cycle.

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And that's that's the tragedy of it all. It's a perpetuating cycle. People go, well, the guy in front of me is talking about Jesus.

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He's quoting from the Bible. What's your problem? He's talking about getting right with God. OK, well, but you got to go a little bit more deep than a millimeter, you know?

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Yeah. Yeah. Now, the Board of Accountability for Driscoll and Mars Hill regarding this

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New York Times scandal, they said that unwise decisions were made, that this was an unwise decision.

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And when I read their statement on Friday night, the thing that came to my mind and was the immediate parallel to Bill Clinton's administration.

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Do you remember? Yeah, I mean, I remember when the Lewinsky scandal broke. And I mean, I think it's hard for anybody who wasn't alive back then to kind of get the magnitude of just how big that scandal was at the time.

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And Bill Clinton, I mean, in a press conference, he comes out and the whole nation is watching him.

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And he said, I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. And the next day, everybody in the media is parsing this thing out because it was clear that he was playing word games and he was spinning, you know.

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And then when he finally had the, when it was finally cross -examined on all of this, his answer was classic.

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It all depends on what is, is. I mean, what exactly is an unwise decision when it comes to making a decision to spend tithes and offerings to make your pastor a

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New York Times bestseller? And I mean, does unwise decision, is that a good way to describe it?

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Or is this just a euphemism to cover the truth? I think it's an unwise strategy when you get caught, is what

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I think. You know, previously, and I've interviewed Warren Cole Smith, the reporter at World Magazine, who broke the story a couple of times.

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And he said yesterday, well, when he initially got this statement from Justin Dean, the spokesman at Marcel, it was kind of a different tenor to that.

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It was, well, we were trying to reach more people for Jesus and, you know, nothing was really wrong with it.

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And by the time the board statement came out, the wording had changed. It's an unwise strategy. But a lot more than an unwise strategy.

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It's an unethical strategy. It's an immoral strategy. And, you know, again, it's back to the issue of true repentance, true owning up.

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If they really wanted to say, boy, we really blew it, they could have used much more straightforward language to convey that.

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It really, it was Clinton -esque. Chris, you've nailed it. I think it was absolutely Clinton -esque. And at the very end of the statement, as you note, they talk about unreservedly backing

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Mark Driscoll and some of the other executive elders for their humility. You know, like, wow, that's, you're living in some kind of an alternate universe, because if there's humility and all kinds of wonderful godliness going on,

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I haven't seen it. Also the issue of, you know, bearing up under false accusations.

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They don't define their terms. That's the other problem with this statement. False accusations. What false accusations? We don't know.

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They don't say. Then they talk about, we embarked on this strategy because outside counsel advised us to do it.

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Well, who is the outside counsel? Thomas Nelson came back and said, it wasn't us. We're not the ones who advised them to do it.

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They're the publisher of the book. So they throw in all of these references and they also talk about it didn't cost as much as has been reported.

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Well, then how much did it cost? How much did it cost? And where did you get the money? Did you get it from tithes? Did you get it from offerings?

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Did your congregation know anything about this? Was it in the budget? Was the budget handed out to every single person in the church?

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You actually learn a lot more by what is not said. Then by what actually was said, in my opinion.

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Yeah. And it's just full of euphemism and kind of misdirection and obfuscation.

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But what I don't see from Mars Hill, and I've never seen it ever in the years that I've been covering them,

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I've never seen Driscoll say, listen, I sinned.

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I blew it. Here's what I did wrong. I own my sin. I confess my sin and I ask that you forgive me.

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I've never heard him say that. And yet yesterday you sent a link out on Twitter to a video where Driscoll in a sermon talked about the fact that Christians never confess their sin and own it.

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And it's bizarre. It's hypocritical beyond belief.

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And the sad part is, and this kind of brings up a point that you brought up a little earlier, is that the world easily sees this for what it is.

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And unfortunately, Christianity, the church, and Jesus have taken a pretty severe hit, you know,

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PR hit as a result of this man's behavior. But his continued refusal to not confess his sin,

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I think ultimately sends a message to the world. What do you think that his unrepentance and euphemism and misdirection, you know, what message does that send to the world regarding Christianity at this point?

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Oh, brother. Well, I think the message it sends to the world is that Christianity is just full of scam artists and con men and snake oil salesmen and the people who put up with it are morons.

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People have actually told me that. And, you know, one of the ways that we can glorify

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God is by those of us who are Christians, who do have a sense of what is typical, need to speak up against it and publicly speak up against it and say, this is not the way it ought to be.

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But you're right. That is how the world regards us. When I, and I, you know, I was a journalist for a number of years.

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I was an editor for seven years. I was a reporter. I went on to be a writer for about 20 years in total.

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When I was an editor sitting down and reading stories that were going to be published in the newspaper, the two biggest issues for you as an editor are plagiarism and libel.

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Those are the two biggest things that you look for because those things will kill you. If they get into a newspaper, you can get sued for libel for millions of dollars.

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If you really had shown malice and plagiarism, the same, same story.

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So when my friends who are in the journalism world still, and I've talked to a number of them who've come out since this story broke and they're like, how in the world can people in the church not see that this is plagiarism?

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This is absolute plagiarism. What is wrong with you guys? And I have to answer back and go, got me.

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I have no idea. And also people in academia, this is clearly plagiarism. If anybody in my class,

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I teach a college class. If anybody in my class had done something like this, a 10th or a 100th of what he did, it would bear, it would be an

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F on the paper and he'd probably get kicked out of the university. It would end you. And the fact that it ends you in the world, look at Shia LaBeouf.

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This is a perfect example. Here's this actor who is plagiarized and then apologizes with another plagiarized apology.

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He has a joke now. He had to show up at this recent film festival with a bag over his head and say that he's not, he's not going to be in Hollywood anymore.

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I mean, he is a laughing stock in the world, but Driscoll does way more than that.

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And we honor him and throw around the word grace and act as if it pleases Jesus to have somebody who's obviously somebody who has lied and committed fraud and stolen from other people.

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And that's another issue, too. Where are the men he stole from standing up and saying this is wrong? Yeah, that's another question.

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Yeah, that's kind of the other angle of all of this is that the people he's plagiarized have not publicly come out and and rebuke him for what he's done.

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They've they've remained silent in their silence, unfortunately, is interpreted as a tacit approval or winking at his behavior.

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And it's it's it's beyond me. I'm worried at this point for the church. The reason

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I'm worried for the church is because the the world the world has more ethics and better values than Christians in the church.

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And this cannot end well. This is this things do not go well for a society when the world people who are dead and trespasses and sins have more morals, more scruples ethically than the people in the church.

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This is I don't know what this is. Historically, I can't find a parallel in the 2000 year history of the church, and I've looked for one.

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I don't know what this is. But I can tell you this, you know, people keep talking about how they're hoping for revival, you know, that there's going to be this great outpouring of the spirit.

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It's a bunch of nonsense. You want to see revival? It begins in the church with people saying we have sinned against God by tolerating evil men who are publicly sinning, who are not qualified to be pastors.

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We've not only tolerated them, we've defended them and we've attacked those who have brought who've raised the biblical issue regarding these men and we've repent until that happens.

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There's not going to be revival. It's only going to get worse. And Christianity is going to continue to become more of a moral joke as it slips into just a complete laughingstock of morassness based upon celebrity cults.

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I mean, it's sorry. I go go go, Chris. Go. I'm with you.

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Amen. And this is the thing. It was funny. I was reading an article not too long ago on the life of Athanasius.

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The great defender of biblical orthodoxy at a time when Arius was coming out and convincing everybody that Jesus was the first being that God created, which was absolutely heresy.

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Athanasius, and I didn't even realize until I started reading a little bit more, he endured unbelievable personal attacks from people inside the church.

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One of the things that they did was they called him divisive. Doesn't that sound familiar, Chris? It's my it's on my job description now.

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You know, the duties of pirate Christian, be divisive. Yeah, I know.

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Well, and that's the thing. I had somebody tell me that they were on a radio show and the radio host was saying, oh,

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I don't like that Channa Mefford, she's so divisive. And I said, well, yeah, I do. I try to divide between truth and error.

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So I don't see anything wrong with that. But but the point is that God is great and he is sovereign and he always has his people.

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No matter how dark the times are. I think it's important as we you and I, Chris, are kind of despairing, like, oh,

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Lord, this is so bad. We need to remember that God is not surprised by any of this. And frankly, one of the things

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I've been able to be excited about in the midst of it all is the fact that God is exposing it. He's exposing it.

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That is something to rejoice over because it's something I've been praying for significantly in the last several months, especially,

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Lord, bring hidden sin to light. Now, the issue will be how will the church deal with it?

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Will this result source issue end the ministry of Mark Driscoll or will he go on supported by other people who want to see him continue on simply because he's

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Mark? This is a test. I really think it's a test. But I think we can't lose hope when we look at Luther and the darkness and the corruption of the

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Catholic Church at the time. Sometimes things have to get bad enough that people will come out and say,

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God, help us. This is wrong. We've sinned. We need to repent as a church that we have tolerated this and we have put up with that.

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And, you know, I just keep praying that the Lord is going to be glorified in all this and that the truth will continue to come out, but also that the church is going to respond correctly, at least hopefully some of us will.

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That's about all we can hope for at this point, I think. Yeah. And I think pointing to Athanasius' story does at least give us a strategy moving forward, because not only was he accused of being divisive, he was basically told by the

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Arius' followers that he needed to give up because the whole world was against him.

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And Athanasius gave his great reply back. He said, no, the whole world isn't against Athanasius.

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It's Athanasius contra mundum. It's Athanasius against the world. And I feel that's kind of where we're at right now.

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And I'll pray that the Lord gives us the endurance and the ability to do our jobs without losing our love, which is what the

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Ephesian church lost in their fight for truth, and Christ had to rebuke them for that.

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Yeah, good point. And that's it. And I think we continually need to be on our knees, and I do mean literally on our knees, that the

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Lord would clean up His church. You know, we talk, for example, about the famine in the land, and we go back to that Old Testament passage where the hearing of the word of the

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Lord was hard to find. And I think it would be difficult for us to say that we're not in a similar time right now.

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Only the Lord can turn it around. Only He can do it. And you're right, we can't lose our love, we can't lose our hope, we can't lose our faith.

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We just have to obey the Lord and have the integrity and have the morality and have the honesty that Jesus requires us to have as His disciples.

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What is your hope in all of this? You know, the last question is, you know, what would you ideally like to see happen moving forward with the scandals regarding Driscoll?

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What would you really, if God answered your prayer, what prayer would you really like to see answered and play out in front of the whole church at this point regarding all of this?

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I think Mark Driscoll should step down. I think he should leave the ministry. And I think that it would be a wonderful thing for the people at Mars Hill to reexamine what they've put up with, what they've endured.

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There have been a lot of staff issues and leadership issues. And we have, what, six or seven elders and staff who have come forward now,

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Dave Kraft, Jeff Bettenger, some other people who have talked about a lot of the crud that's been going on there for a long, long time.

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I pray for those people. I pray that the people in that church would return to the word of God and would learn the lesson that if you are a

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Christian, you're only a celebrity. And I hate to even use that word. Your only admired person ultimately should be the

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Lord Jesus himself. Right. And you should put yourself under the word of God first and foremost and be

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Bereans. This is something that is so significant. Everybody is under the word of God.

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The disciples didn't have a problem with the Bereans were examining what they were preaching daily to see whether or not it was so.

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They were commended for it. That's what we need. So my prayer would be he would step down from the ministry and that that church could heal and that church could come back into compliance with the word of God.

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And that's where I am right now, because I think it's really necessary. And I think it would speak volumes to where we really come down as a church on the issue of ethics.

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I really do. What will happen from here will tell you where American Christianity or at least the

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American evangelical movement is going to go. That's just my opinion. Yeah. And that's what

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I'm hoping and praying for as well. And if that doesn't happen, oh man, the next shoe that drops is going to be worse than this.

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And yeah. So, Janet, thank you so much for taking some time today to come on fighting for the faith.

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I really appreciate the work that you're doing and keep up the fight. Well, likewise,

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Chris, and I pray for you and I'm very thankful for how the Lord is using you to stand for truth.

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We need each other. We're a family and I'm just thankful. I just want to say thank you to all the listeners of your show as well.

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You guys are great. And, you know, continue to pray for Chris because he's doing some great work here and really trying to honor the

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Lord. And do the right thing in the midst of a very difficult time in which we're living. So thank you very much,

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Chris. Thank you. You're very gracious. And that was my interview recorded earlier today with Janet Mefford.

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What did you think? Love to get your feedback. If you'd like to email me regarding anything you've heard on this edition or any previous editions of Fighting for the

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Faith, you can do so. My email address is talkbackatfightingforthefaith .com or you can subscribe on Facebook, facebook .com

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forward slash Piotr Khristian. Follow me on Twitter. My name there at Piotr Khristian. Quick break. When we come back, we will play part one of my interview earlier today with Pastor Matt Richard regarding divisiveness and sound doctrine.

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Is it divisive to stand up for sound doctrine? Stay tuned. Don't want to miss it. We'll be right back. We don't need to rethink