Five reasons why Protestants ministers should wear clerical collars

Open Air Theology on Clerical Collars and Protestant Identity

You can say what you want, but you won't around me. Sheep among misfits, a misfit in the trailer park at night. A misprint with the sixth sense, been sick ever since my brother died of an O .D. My two cents never made sense, either to me or anyone else inside of the sheep fence.

My 9th Smith on my right side. Why you staring at your cop dot sign and my John Hancock on the dotted line? Tell me what's the bottom line. The bottom line is I'm not right. I'm not left, but this elephant won't fight.

There's nothing left but the spotlight. Hold my beer, you can find me in the moonlight. You can say what you want, but you won't around me. I'm wits in the deep end and I can't find my assigned seat to sit in.

My theology don't fit in. Black sheep of the Reformation sheep pen. To the Reformed, I'm just another Baptist baptized again. The bastard child of Anabaptist. Host to child of Reformation society. We don't need your education.

Give me a Bible and a bookshelf of dead men. Cigars, bourbons, and beer cans. Bow ties, tattoos, and bearded men. Making Reformation great again. You can say what you want. You can say what you want, but you won't around me.

You can say what you want. You can say what you want, but you won't around me. No, you won't around me.

Conference Plans, Guests, and Upcoming Teaching

Ladies and gentlemen, we are live. Welcome to Open Earth Theology. My name is Jeff. I'm one of the pastors of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church. We meet here in Tallahoma, Tennessee. If you're ever in the area, we would love to have you come and be a part of us.

If you live in this area, please come and be a part of us. We would love nothing more than to fellowship with you, share life with you, experience life with you. So I'm here, and we got a short conversation, but I'm here with my good buddy, Brayden.

Are you able to speak right now?

Okay.

Yeah.

Thanks for having me tonight, Jeff. Yeah, Pastor Brayden of Valley Baptist Church in Hagerman, Idaho. Just blessed to be out there, blessed to worship God, blessed to preach Christ crucified. Very thankful to be a part of this podcast, Open Earth Theology.

Looking forward to February for the conference. If you ever need to be there or be square, like I said before, I don't think you're really Reformed or you're not even really a Baptist if you don't come.

I also have a YouTube channel called Reformed Ex-Mormon, which I'd love for people to go check out as well.

Yeah.

So let's talk about the conference for a second. So the conference, we changed the title, so it's not going to be on the Book of Hebrews. It's going to be more of a conference-style topical. We're going to be digging into shadows of the Old Testament and what they point to in the New Testament.

So it's going to be called From Shadows to Substance. And we got a bunch of great speakers. One very popular speaker, Dr. James White, and then a bunch of unknown people like myself and Brayden. And I tell people all the time, the majority of preachers that I listen to, no one knows really, right?

I don't listen to a lot of big-name men. I listen to Brayden. And I listen to John Crawford. There's Claude and Habs and all these other guys. I listen to them throughout the week. And I've been telling my congregation, like, listen, these guys are going to come, and they're going to preach me under the pulpit, right?

So the one thing I think of as Christian ministers is, you know, preaching is not a competition, right? It's not a competition. I have a lot of things against me. I have a stutter problem, as you all know, and I'm dyslexic.

I do what I can do, right? And I attempt to do so faithfully. But I am excited to have these wonderful brothers to come and get into a pulpit that I call home and to share that with them and for my congregation to experience them.

And we're also going to be having a debate. James White is going to be debating Thomas Ross, who is a worthy opponent. And Thomas Ross, the debate is going to be basically the LSB Bible. So the LSB is what I've switched to, the LSB versus the KJV.

And they're going to be talking about which Bible is superior. So that'll be fun. And what do you think?

Man, I'm so stoked. LSB versus King James Version. That's going to be I would just come to listen to that. And so it's going to be awesome. So this Sunday, actually, at church, I have Haps, who's not here with us tonight because he's visiting family, but he's visiting family in Idaho.

So he's going to come and preach for me on Sunday. And so I'm super excited to sit underneath his preaching this Sunday. And I'm super stoked to sit under yourself and other people preaching in February.

That truly is going to be a blessing for myself. Yeah, LSB versus King James Version, shadows leading to the substance.

And then Sunday, you're going to be teaching Sunday school on Mormonism. And then Dr. James White will be preaching the service. So we're going to have a lot of things going on that week, the week of February.

The conference will be from the 16th to the 18th. But, of course, that Lord's Day, anyone that comes is welcome to stay for that as well. So before I got on here, Brayden told me he was going to debate me tonight on clerical collars.

He was supposed to be wearing his black robe.

Why Protestant Ministers Should Wear Clerical Collars

Yeah, yeah. I forgot it at home, though. So my position is if you're going to go partly that way, you need to go the full way and don't don't don't half step it.

So to to start tonight's conversation discussion, I wrote down five reasons why Protestant ministers should wear the clerical collar. And I would be interested in if you have other reasons, other views, other reasons.

Please contact me and let me know. Help me add to this list. That would be great. Maybe we can do another video about it in the future. We can say, hey, we got 20 reasons why. Right. But off the top of your head, I mean, what's your thoughts on it, Brayden?

Yeah. So just adds up my my am on my phone. I just got a little battery notification. So it's at 20 percent. So I'm also at work. So if I have to if I have to leave all of a sudden, it's because I'm up to up to stuff and whatnot.

So, you know, so my opinion on it is that, you know, I think we're going to dive into it a little bit more in a little bit. Is that I I personally would be more than happy and willing to wear a clerical collar to the hospital or in my workplace.

Even we're doing doing things that are identifiably in that way where in my congregation. I think it might be a little bit not not of a stumbling block by any means, because it's not causing someone to sin.

But I mean, even the word catechism and saying that we're catechizing our children. Some people take that just as Catholic right then and there. Right. Which they just don't know the definition and the meaning of that term.

Right. And so it's a little bit of of here issue, a little bit of of their problem for assuming those things. And so my my thing is, is that I. I, I feel like the amount of times I would have to talk to somebody to explain why I wear a clerical collar isn't.

It wouldn't it wouldn't be justifiable, in my opinion, to have that conversation every single Sunday, because I know I would have that conversation every single Sunday just because people would always be asking me about it.

Because I don't know if everybody that's watching this can tell. But right now, Jeff is wearing one. But it's because you've got a beard on. So you're only 10 percent of the time where people are going to see it, Jeff.

All the time. But but here's the thing. If I was standing up and this camera was a little higher, see the cameras kind of pointing in such a way where it doesn't show it good. If we were standing up in casual conversation, you would see it plainly.

I'm having to kind of like look down so that the cameras kind of it's kind of right here at my chin and I'm having to look down at you. So it's keeping it. I mean, if I was looking straight in front of me, I got you.

So that's straight in front of me. And I won't lie. I think that they they look like there's there's a look to them that I really, really like. And that's where I'm saying I wouldn't be opposed to like in my work, wearing it in in in that position, wearing it, even going and visiting somebody in the hospital.

I wouldn't have an issue with myself doing that. I just feel like the amount of times like like let me give you an example. Right. So I love and this might be because just I was raised. I love white collared shirts.

Love them. I think that a guy looks good wearing that in a suit. However, I probably won't wear that around people that either are very heavily influenced by LDS or are part of the LDS. Just because I I already have a hard enough issue right now where people think I'm LDS just because I look LDS and look LDS.

That's why I grow the mustache. That's why I grow the mustache.

And so part of it's just to avoid confusion. Part of it's to avoid just the continual questioning on that. And so I do wear a white collar and I wear it often, but I probably wouldn't go and wear it to the temple.

So are you saying you can take someone out of the LDS, but you can't take the look of the LDS on the person?

That's a fact. That's a fact. And I'm trying my dang hardest right now and it doesn't work.

Five Reasons for the Clerical Collar: Not Roman Catholic, Church History, and Ministerial Identity

All right. So I have five reasons. Again, five reasons why a Protestant minister should wear the clerical collar. Reason number one, it's not Roman Catholic. Now, each one of my reasons are going to have to do with identity.

That that would be the the connecting factor to each one of my reasons. And the identity here is, is that we have, you know, the uneducated us have identified it with Catholicism, but it wasn't always so.

Now, depending on who you read on this, they're going to say different things. But from what I understand is that the clerical collars were first worn by Presbyterians, Anglicans, also Catholics, but Lutherans and even Baptists in early church history.

OK, so it's not just Catholic. Now, the reason why a lot of people. Believe that it's it's Catholic priest is because a lot of movies have been done where of the Catholic Church and priests and they wear the collars.

And so they assume that this is where it started, but that was not always so. So. There's a great tradition out there. If you study that, it's not just a Roman Catholic, a Presbyterian minister started.

And from from my study now, I've read other things, too. But from what I can tell, Presbyterian, a Lutheran minister, he would even say a Presbyterian started it. Lutherans were Anglicans were Methodists, where even some Baptists back in the days wore them.

So it's not just Roman Catholic. We need to to lose that identity. We need to stop connecting these to Rome and connect these to church history. Reason number two, do you have anything you want to add to that?

I was just going to say, I think you just made an argument for why a Baptist should wear ties, because Presbyterians are just sprinkling a little bit on the neck. The Baptist is doing the full submerging of the tie that's draped down.

I'm just kidding. All right.

Reason number two, by doing so, by wearing the collar, we identify ourselves with Christian ministers throughout church history. Now, I'm really saying this to Baptists right now in Baptist culture. Now, right now I'm speaking to like the independent fundamental.

You see what I'm saying? Like me and Jesus got our own thing going. Me and Jesus got it all worked out. Right. They try so hard to separate themselves from church history. Reform Baptists don't. Reform Baptists want to identify ourselves with church history.

If you read through our Confession of Faith, the 1689, which was written in 1677, published in 1689. Like there's a whole lot of the other confessions, the Savoy, the Westminster and others that we look to to bring about our Confession of Faith.

We want it to agree and align with what we could that was already out there. Right. And then where we disagree, we definitely made mention when it comes to the confession. We would word things different.

We would say things more biblical. Right. And so but where we could identify ourselves with other denominations and brothers, we did. And I think that's how it should be now. I don't want to remove myself as a Reform Baptist from my Presbyterian brothers, from the Anglicans who hold to the 53rd article, from Christian history, church history.

And so by Protestant ministers wearing the clerical collar, we are identifying ourselves with ministers throughout church history. Anything you want to say about that one?

No, I've got some. I've got some thoughts on it that I'll bring up. I'll bring up towards the end and whatnot. So keep on going.

All right. Point number three, by wearing a clerical collar, you are identified as the minister of the church. Right. So, again, I'm going to pick on Baptists. They believe that the preacher should wear a shirt, tucked in shirt, tie and a suit jacket.

Well, what if every man in that church wore a tucked in shirt, tie and a suit jacket? Right. Everyone is dressed the same. There's nothing distinguishing about the minister. This was not so in church history.

Right. I mean, if you go back to Catholics, they would wear those brown robes. John Calvin, I mean, if you look at the Reformation wall, right, all these guys got these gowns. I can't remember exactly the word they used for that gown.

It starts with a C.

A Geneva robe, is that what you're talking about?

Yeah, it's something like that. But they wanted it to be different from the Catholics. So their robes were black. All right. And whenever you walked into a church and you saw someone wearing a black robe, you knew that this was the minister.

Right. All the clerical collar is, is it's that same idea. Right. When you see someone in the church wearing the clerical collar, you knew that this was the minister or a minister. Because a church can have more than one minister.

But it was a way to identify the ministers of that church.

I'm reading that to you right now. I just made that point to you.

He made that point. And I pointed out that I'm looking at the camera, the camera right here. It's right here. And so in order to see the video, I'm having to tilt my head down. If I look straight ahead.

So this is me looking. I'm straight ahead. You can see it if I look straight ahead. I cut my beard. Well, I didn't cut my beard for this purpose, but it was getting on my nerves. But if I'm just standing straight up talking to people, you can see it.

Now, if you're taller than me and you're looking down on me, you know, if I turn my head, you'll see it. But the beard is not going any shorter, OK? All right. So to add on to point number three. Brayden, you are a fireman, right?

Do you wear a uniform that identifies you as a fireman?

Yeah.

Well, why would you do that?

To show the public that we are people of trustworthiness.

Trustworthiness. OK. OK. Do cops wear uniforms?

And I hate looking like them.

Now, imagine if I was to make you pull over and I didn't have a cop car and I'm walking in regular clothes, you'd be a little skeptical, right?

Yep.

I'm telling you, get out your car, put your hands up. All right. Because, you know, one, there's no lights on my car. Two, I don't I'm not dressed like a police officer. Right. What about doctors? Do doctors dress in a way that identifies themselves when they're working?

Right. So, you know, if someone's in need, like if someone is in need and they need a cop. And if a cop's not wearing a uniform, they don't know they're a cop. Right. So uniforms are important. Again, in church history, the minister wore a uniform to identify himself as a minister.

To distinguish himself, not to raise himself above like the minister isn't condescending. Right. He wasn't raising himself above. But it was a way for people to know who the minister was. Everyone has a uniform.

When I was a roofer, I had a uniform. All right. Point number four, to be identified on the streets as a minister. So I do a lot of street preaching and I've been preaching in the same spot for over two years.

And there's sometimes where I go and I'll pull over to that spot. And as I'm getting everything set up, people will already stop and ask me for prayer. Right. Because they recognize me from being on that street week after week preaching.

Right. All right. They don't too much recognize me when I'm not on that corner. Like every once in a while, I'll go into a restaurant. I hear I see somebody whisper and they'll point at me. Or, you know, I'll get my oil change and someone will say, hey, are you that guy?

And I'm able to talk to them. Right. But I'm recognized as a street minister in my my area. All right. If you wore a clerical collar and you were, you know, let's say after church or something, you went to a store and, you know, maybe to get some groceries.

And there was someone there that needed prayer with the same idea. If they were in trouble and they needed a cop. If they're spiritually in trouble, they can see the clerical collar and know that they could trust you with spiritual matters.

Yes. What Justin said, that was another point. Yeah. It's also it's a part of this. It's a part of point number four of identity that it shows that we are slaves of Christ. Right. As a part of the identity on the streets around when you are among the people.

But of course, people of our generation, they don't know that. They don't know that this was a sign that you are a slave to Christ. But I believe if ministers were to start wearing them and having more conversations like you don't want to have, Brayden, I'm picking on you for a minute.

Yeah, go ahead.

That we could point that out, that this was a way to identify ourselves as a slave for Christ. Also, I do a lot of door to door evangelism. And you don't know how many times someone will mistake me as a Jehovah's Witness.

But if I was knocking and I had a clerical collar on, I wouldn't be mistaken as a Jehovah's Witness. They might mistake me as a Catholic out of ignorance, but they wouldn't mistake me for a Jehovah's Witness.

They definitely don't mistake me for a Mormon because I look nothing like you, Brayden.

Yeah, that's fact.

Clerical Collars, Accountability, and Public Witness

All right. My fifth reason, and if y 'all want to talk about them afterward, I'm up for that. If you have any questions, if people have any questions that are watching, want to pose a question, we can row with it.

My fifth reason, again, this one has to do with identity as well. Father of rights. Yeah, Reverend. It's for accountability.

Right?

So if people come into the church, they see the clerical collar, they know I'm a minister. I'm going to the store. People see me. They say, oh, that's the guy that's on the streets preaching. He's a minister.

It kind of works in the same way of the uses of the law, right? It keeps a minister from being as evil as he could be.

Right?

Because if everyone knows who you are by what you wear, right, it keeps you accountable. You have to be accountable before the people that you interact with, right? If someone says something, you can't just fly off the handle, right?

Because they're going to recognize that you're the minister. You're a minister. Or, you know, I mean, we don't have any of these in my area, but I know that, you know, I grew up in Nashville. And they would have like, I guess it would be some kind of like lounges or whatever where men could go in there and purchase pornography.

Right?

If everyone knows who you are, it's going to keep you from doing something stupid. It's going to keep you from falling into sin. It's going to keep you from walking into strip clubs. Right? It's accountability.

If everyone knows who you are because of what you wear, it works in the way that the uses of the law as a curb to keep you from being as evil as you could be. Right? And I think we all need that kind of accountability.

Right? Even if you don't struggle with stuff like that, whatever that struggle may be, you might be high tempered, right? You might, you know, someone can say something or you might be a guy that has, you know, someone can cut you off in traffic and you want to flip them off.

Right? If people know you as a minister, you'd be trying to throw that bird and all of a sudden you have to catch it. You have to catch the bird. Right?

Catch the bird and wave.

But the point is, is that it keeps us accountable. Right? And not to just our church family, not to just our immediate family, but to your community. And so those are my five reasons. Again, reason number one, it's not Catholic.

Reason number two, it identifies us with Christian ministers throughout church history. Reason number three, we're identified as a minister. Reason number four, so not only in our church, but on the streets, we're identified as a minister.

And reason number five, it's for accountability. If you have other reasons that you would like to add, please, you need to make that C in Catholic small, Haps. But if you have other reasons that you can think of, please, you know, leave them in a comment.

If you have any questions. Brady, do you have anything you want to add?

Well, there's a couple things I was just, and this is, again, I could see myself preaching from behind a pulpit with one of them on. Right? I'm not saying I am against them. I'm not saying that at all.

But this is just some things that I had that came to my mind as I'm processing this topic. Just four or five different things. With the clergical collar being historical, and this is just a legitimate question, so don't take it as me wanting to debate this topic in any way.

But why not wear something that's even more historical, like a Geneva robe, or even go back to looking, okay, well, I'm not trying to make this sound super legalistic or weird in any way.

No, go ahead. This is how we figure things out.

Yeah, but even thinking like, okay, what were the people in Paul's day wearing? Why not go back to that day? If the argument is that it's historical and it ties us to a confession, why not go back to historical Bible times and wear stuff there?

Someone put, why not camel hair?

I'm in for this. They just, tomorrow.

Well, I would say that, for one, if I'm just grabbing low-hanging fruit, if I was to wear camel hair, the people of our time would not recognize that as a minister.

Right. But that was also one of your arguments, though, about why we should be wearing it, is that people don't recognize it as Protestant Christian ministers.

But they recognize it as ministers.

Right, right, right, right.

So it's both and.

But couldn't the same argument be made, though, like if every preacher today wore what? And I'm talking about solid Christian brothers. If they wore, today, Paul robes, I don't know what you want to call them, Paul robes, that's a new brand, everybody.

Go get your Paul robes off of Amazon. If everybody was wearing Paul robes, why not start identifying everybody as servants of Christ following after the imitator Paul? Like, where I'm going with that is, is, is, is there a piece of it that's a little bit cultural, cultural ties to it?

Well, yeah, I mean, like I was trying to express, and I think Justin has, has, has, has, has pointed out, too, that the clerical collars are already established as a sign of a minister. So we don't have to start a new fad and get people, you know, along with the idea.

Right, right, right.

And as far as the robe, I have nothing against a robe. If someone wears a robe in the pulpit, I think it'd be hard to walk around in a robe.

It'd be so hot. It'd be so hot, dude. It'd be terrible.

But so, so another, so another thing that was, was talked about was distinguishing ministers. And, and I, I understand some of the purposes and the pros to identifying a minister as, as identifiably you walk into a church.

That's the pastor. That's the preacher. This is leadership. This is a, these are, these are the elders and the deacons or whatever, however you want to identify them. I understand that, that principle, but is there, is there anything in, in the, and, and this is not me, again, not, not trying to make a rude statement by any means.

But is there anything from a biblical perspective that would say ministers are supposed to be identifiably set apart and not more than just being set apart to be able to preach and teach, but are actually meant to appear differently than the sheep?

Well, I think that, you know, I mean, if you just take Jesus, right. As Jesus was walking around, do you picture him not wearing the tassels of a rabbi?

I always pictured as, as, as the hippie Jesus knocking on the door.

Listen, you're making this really hard.

I know I am. I know I am.

Yeah. I mean, all right. I had another, you had to bring up the hippie Jesus.

I did. I did.

I mean, I've seen that meme where he's all smiling and his thumbs are up, thumbs up, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got like the heart that's on fire and all that.

I mean, like, you know, like I'm preaching through the gospel of John right now. I'm at the woman at the well. I mean, my second message there, that woman knew that he was a Jew. Right. So there was something distinguished about his garment because it couldn't have been his skin color.

So something distinguished him about his garments that he was wearing that showed that he was a Jew. Would you agree or disagree with that?

Yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't go to the far point as that he appeared to be a Pharisee. Like, no, no. And I know that's not what you're saying.

Yeah. Yeah. There's different clothing for Pharisees versus rabbis, too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, the woman touched the hem of the garment, right? Like this could have been his tallit at the time, a prayer shawl.

Like it could have been something like that. Like there's a there's a lot of things that the Jews wore that we don't wear today. Right. Yeah. I had something that I wanted to point out and I can't remember.

I was just going to talk about the what was the first question that you pointed out?

About if clergy calls or if the argument goes that we should wear collars because it's historical. Why not look at something that's even more historical? Why not go even further back?

Yeah. OK. Yeah. I thought that was the one before that, though. I was going to talk about the alternative, but now I can't remember what what I had in mind.

Man, when you said the hippie Jesus, it just I know how to debate, Jeff. I just got you off your railroad track. No, no, no, no.

I mean, like, like, like Justin pointed out, it's already established as a minister. And again, yeah, we don't have to tell, you know, try to get people to to to to go along with with the new fab. We're just taking what's already established.

So and I'm not saying that people, you know, I don't you know, I'm not saying, hey, you better. But I'm just saying that it's a good way. And at heart, which I know you are, too. I'm an evangelist. Yeah.

And I want to take every opportunity that I get to be able to witness to someone, to minister to them. And if and if we're in a clerical color would help me in that way, it would help. It would help them know that I'm not a Jehovah witness, which I am a witness for Jehovah.

Just not a part of the Jehovah's Witnesses. Just I mean, Paul Washer said that. Oh, yeah. Come on in. I'm a witness for Jehovah. Problem is, is they don't know Jehovah.

So, yeah, that is a fact. Yeah, they don't know Yahweh. So another another another question for you. So and I appreciate you bringing this up because this is something I didn't even think about until you brought it up.

So me, me being a fireman. So there's there's there's an internal fight that actually takes place between this subject right here. The fire department as a whole and across the United States has shifted its uniform to be more an appearance with cops.

And I can't stand that. There's actually been firemen that have gotten killed because they look like a cop. I look like a cop besides a gun. That is literally and I hate it. I don't like it. I think I should be identifiably different than the cop because people don't.

Some people like cops, but typically everybody likes firefighters, right? I don't want to be associated with it because there's a cultural tie to it. Not to say that they first were the ones to have the uniforms, but there's a cultural tie to them having that uniform.

And you don't know how many times during a day when I work as a fireman, when I go into a grocery stop and the kid says, hey, mom, it's a cop. Or the person says, oh, I didn't know cops drove big red fire engines like things like that all the time.

And so there's always seemingly like a barrier that I have to even to span even at work. And that's where I'm saying with culturally. Yes, I'm not saying clergical colors started with the Catholic Church.

I would agree with you. I think it did start with the Presbyterians. But culturally, if there's been a shift to view that as a Catholic, like, to be honest with you, that's what I think everybody when they hear Catholic thinks of is is either the pope or the the the clergical color.

I mean, we can start just like the pope, but I don't know how.

Let's take it back from him. Let's just take it back. But where does it where does it that line get drawn? Because I at work will not. I do not. I'm a vocal and advocate that I should be a firefighter because of how I behave, not because of how I dressed.

People should trust me when I put on medical gloves and I'm coming in to do CPR on their little one.

Would you trust me if I was pulling you over without a cop car and had a gun drawn without a bag?

No, no, no, no, no, no. But there's a and that's where that's where it's difficult, right? Because even even getting off the fire engine, I think wearing a T-shirt should be identifiable enough to the fire department, a fire department T-shirt.

Like, I don't want to wear a badge. I don't want to wear dark clothing. I don't want to look anything like the police officer. And so where I'm going with that is that.

I would be.

That's where I'm just saying, like, I think that you can end up running into the issue that you are putting up more barriers to sometimes even get to the gospel conversation because you're battling what the perception already is.

Again, let me ask you this.

I wouldn't be.

You saw me.

One.

Listen, if you saw me, you didn't know me. I'm trying to make it like really obvious. Like, if you saw me and then you saw a caller, would you think that I was a Catholic priest?

Yes. Yes.

No, I would. I absolutely would. I know. I would. I would think that. Let me get my or I would think that you were some sort of I would think you're either Catholic or that you were some sort of Orthodox Eastern Orthodox church that wears robes that I know of that.

That's literally where we go.

Maybe I would think you're a Lutheran or something like that.

But I remember at my church, I remember at my church with the other elders wife. She said, Jeff, have you always wore necklaces? As I cut my beard and you couldn't see my necklaces from my beard. And I said, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I always wear necklaces.

I always wear necklaces. I mean, I cut over 12 inches off my beard.

Yeah, it's just an interesting topic. It's one that, like I said, I want it. So in my workplace, I get viewed as a chaplain. There's still some stuff that goes on with that. But I if if that position in my department was was was legitimately made, I would be one that would want to have collar brass or or a collar of some kind to show that I am distinguished in that role.