Is the Evangelical Free Church Recoverable?

Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast, I'm your host, John Harris, and we have a good episode for you today.

It's a little bit, perhaps, I don't want to say discouraging because that's not the word to use, but it's certainly, it's a little disheartening to know that there are denominations that are

Christian that are going in directions that are not positive or good, or frankly able to conserve

Christianity long -term. That's a big concern that I have, and it's the reason this podcast exists.

And we're going to talk about one of those denominations today, the evangelical free church in the United States, even the

EFCA. And to do that, I have two guests with me. I know

Jeff's been on the podcast before, but we have Jeff Clear and we also have David Whitney who are both, and I wish

I could say that you were still with the EFCA, but you're now former ministers, former EFCA ministers,

I suppose, still ministering, still pastoring. And both your churches, this makes it easy, are called

Cornerstone. Of course, you've just renamed yours, Pastor Whitney, to Cornerstone Free Church. So you're in Maryland, Jeff, I know you're just below me.

I'm in New York and you're down there in New Jersey, and both of you being faithful to the word of God, but you've both been essentially kicked out of the denomination and defrocked.

And so I want to give you both a chance to tell your side of things and really with the intent of helping people in the denomination who will see this understand what's going on, because I'm sure if they ask questions, they're going to get a certain narrative from those in charge.

And I know that there's also pastors probably thinking through whether they want to stay in a denomination that kicks people out for frankly, just trying to remain orthodox, which is what you've been trying to do.

So with that, thank you both of you for taking time out of your schedule. So maybe we'll start with you,

Jeff, since you've been on the podcast before and shared some of your story, maybe do a Paul Harvey rest of the story here.

You were in limbo for a little while, I'd say what, like a year and a half, two years you were going back and forth, traveling, trying to rectify things.

And you, of course, took a shot at social justice. And here we are. They didn't want to be receptive to what you were saying, and they decided to can you.

So I know you're gracious, but maybe tell us why they're wrong and what led to their wrong decision here.

Right. I think the same thing that caused them to discipline me came from the root of social justice in the first place.

It was a lack of biblical ethics, a lack of understanding justice from a biblical point of view.

So when in twenty eighteen they began to espouse social justice rhetoric.

Right. They had a number of teachers come to the theology conference. John, I know you've done some things on Jarvis Williams.

They had him come out and he talked about how all of our churches are built on the backs of black and brown, who were persecuted for the color of their skin.

And that was a charge against all of our churches. Well, that's a completely unjust charge to level and one that cannot be substantiated.

Right. And then after him was Doug Sweeney from Ted's, and he talked about Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown and Breonna Taylor and a list of them,

Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Eric Harris, Freddie Gray, Philandro Castile.

And they never waited for due process to determine was there an injustice or were they the ones who were slandering the police?

Right. Well, in the same way that they treated these cases that would have required due process to figure out what actually happened, they treated me when

I raised concern about it. So there was never an opportunity for me to sit down with them, although that was promised to me.

And then it was rescinded. And we did, as you mentioned, John, go back and forth with the number of events where I went out to California and was given three minutes to speak, but never a chance to defend myself in that way.

I still was hoping that the Lord was going to bring this around, that the Lord would bring correction, that the

EFCA would correct course. And I do think that there has been some course correction with regard to social justice.

It's no longer in vogue like it was in 2018. And I think that Woke Free Church and this group of pastors that stood against it did turn the tables back against wokeness.

However, I don't think that the leadership was corrected at the level of the heart. And so sadly, the update

I have to bring today, John, is that they not only defrocked me, but then shortly thereafter, they kicked our church out of the

Evangelical Free Church. And there again, they treated our elders the same way that they had treated me in the first place.

So they wrote a letter asking the elders to affirm the authority of the free church and the willingness of our elders to hold me as the pastor accountable for things that I say, to which our elders responded affirmatively that they would do that.

After which then the EFCA wrote another letter asking for them to take action against me in some way, shape or form.

But our elders simply ask for some substantiation of the charges. So if I'm being charged with misrepresentation, show me one example of anything that Jeff has misrepresented.

Give some substantiation, some due process to the charge or the charge of Christian nationalism or influence.

What does it mean that Jeff has influence and why is that a charge against him? So when our elders did not respond the way the free church leadership was looking for, they ended up kicking our whole church out.

And by God's grace, our church, 300 plus people have remained in lockstep, in unity, rallied around the truth.

And I think that actually surprises the free church leadership because it seemed to me that they were trying to drive a wedge between the elders and the pastor.

In order to, you know, try to, I don't know, get me out or something like that. But instead, the entire church has rallied around because the truth is we are a conservative church.

Cornerstone is not a house divided. We're not trying to cater to the progressives who think that abortion could be a needed option.

In the words of Bill Rydell, the chairman of the board of the EFCA and conservatives who are pro -life, we don't have these two competing visions in our church and therefore we have unity that's true unity that's built around truth.

And so by God's grace, our church has remained completely united through this whole controversy. They've been updated every step of the way.

And our elders were just as stalwart as David Whitney and so many other pastors around the free church have been who have spoken up against this.

You know, just this week, John, I got an email from a pastor in Hawaii and another one in Minnesota, somewhere in Minnesota, dealing with the same issues with the free church.

And just to circle it back around, it all comes down to a lack of understanding of biblical ethics, of justice.

How do you treat people? Are you OK with just slandering someone or misrepresenting or are you

OK with convicting someone without giving them a chance to sit and defend themselves and explain where they're coming from?

You've been exceptionally long suffering and gracious in the way you've dealt with this whole process.

And I mean, I've seen some of the videos of Bill Rydell. I've seen you try to ask questions and you've done you haven't been threatening in the way you've asked them.

You know, you've been even when we were at a conference earlier in the year, you were pretty optimistic about the future of the free church, which

I thought was interesting based on your experience. But, you know, what was it what was the final verdict?

I mean, I don't know how it works in the polity that you have, but, you know, obviously a determination was made that you don't belong in this denomination, that for all the talk about acceptance and diversity and inclusion, you're not to be accepted.

You don't diversify them. You shouldn't be included in this. What what led to them making that final call on you?

Yeah, we received a letter. It was because the elders didn't acquiesce to disciplining me or somehow agreeing with them.

But we received a letter one of the last days of September saying that on October 1st,

Cornerstone is no longer part of the free church. And the language that they gave us in that letter is that we don't fit the ethos of the free church.

So we're just not of that ethos, which is just so ironic because I think you've already hinted at that the free church is supposed to be all about.

We don't divide over non -essentials, but here's the free church that is supposed to be more of like the big umbrella that can accommodate differences.

And they are they're shunning me to the level of like the Amish, like the free church leadership is just as devoted to shunning as the

Amish are out in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I'll write an email like two weeks ago. And you mentioned this,

John, that in May I was trying to reach out and reconcile and see these things come back around.

Just two weeks ago, I wrote a letter to Greg Strand saying, hey, I probably did have

I saw a page in my book, Woke Free Church, that was probably too harsh. It was probably unfair.

I was hinting that there was an issue of cowardice with you. And that's looking at your heart motives. And that was that was too harsh.

I would I would own that. But also, I want to reconcile through the issues of truth, like, can we work this out?

Can we sit down together? And it was just radio silence, you know, and that's what it's been from the beginning, from 2020, 2021, when the book came out.

It was never an opportunity to sit down and talk about these things. I would I would I actually went to one of Greg Strand's theology refreshers in Pennsylvania and talked with him for five minutes after his presentation.

And as I was leaving, he said, I'll give you a call. And I was really encouraged by that, but he didn't.

And when I followed up with an email, he was on sabbatical. Next thing I know, I was sitting in the trial, the

Zoom trial with the national office. So all that to say, they're literally practicing shunning.

They're just unwilling to talk. They won't respond to emails. So it's it's just kind of for denomination to not cite anything particular to their statement of faith, but instead an ethos, which is a very wax nose.

Basically, it's subjective, is very disturbing. I think anyone in the denomination should be disturbed.

This is how things are being run. Meanwhile, you have someone like Jarvis Williams coming in.

And I would argue arguing against your statement of faith because he advocates for really a type of Galatian heresy that merges critical race theory and the works of anti -racism with the gospel.

He's fine. He can be in there. He can be promoted, but you're not. I want to get into I have a number of questions

I've written down, but I want to bring in Pastor Whitney in on this and maybe share with us your story, how it's similar to what we just heard from Jeff or and how it's maybe different.

Thank you, John. And that same phrase, you're not of the ethos, David, of the Evangelical Free Church was spoken to me early in the in the problems that I had.

The difficulties began when we as a church decided not to close our doors at all in 2020, regardless of what the governor of Maryland said about churches not being able to meet in person for public worship and county executive and other people, medical people threatening to find any church that did remain open.

We continued. We had to move because the place we were renting from would not allow us to meet. But we continued to meet every week.

And then there was a cluster meeting of the pastors that gather from this part of our district.

And they were going around on a Zoom meeting saying, how's your church doing and how are you handling the conflict and the difficulty of having your churches closed?

And I shared with the group, we did not close our doors for two reasons. The first reason being

Hebrews chapter 10, verses 24 and 25, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together.

And we believe that means in -person worship needs to be available. Secondly, the governor of the state of Maryland has no authority vis -a -vis his oath that he swore to uphold the

Maryland state constitution. He has no authority to shut the doors of any church whatsoever.

And I was very surprised that these people were upset with me. These other pastors were upset with me for making such statements and for keeping our church open.

And so unbeknownst to me, a couple of the pastors began an investigation of me by listening to my sermons over, I don't know how many months they gathered the, you know, research, find out what

Whitney has been saying from the pulpit. And they demanded a meeting with me before Christmas. And that wasn't possible.

So it was probably February 2021 that I met with them by Zoom and they gave that same accusation that David, you are, you're not of the ethos of the evangelical free church.

Clearly, you are a Christian nationalist. And I asked for a definition, but they couldn't really give me a definition because, as you know, that's like the wax nose, the shape that any way you want to.

But I was trying to explain to them in our understanding of what it means to be a free church is that the church is not subject to commands of the civil government when the civil government steps outside of its

God ordained boundary. So if I were to just illustrate this as the North church from in Boston, you know, where the famous two lights were

Paul Revere and so on. But if you just represent that as the church and this is a ornament from the

White House. And so is the the state above the church?

Is that is that biblical? That the state is above the church or is it the other way around? The church is above the state. And we would deny both said, no, these are separate spheres that God has ordained.

And the church has its fear of influence and obedience to Christ. When Jesus had rendered a

Caesar the things that are Caesars, the church does not belong to Caesar. It is not this heresy, which is, by the way,

Erastianism was the heresy that was labeled putting the church under the thumb of the civil government.

And so when the civil government demands you do something that Jesus says, you know, you to do the opposite, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together.

I would assume that all pastors in the free church understood this, that it was like, wait a minute, that's the whole reason this denomination founded historically in the free churches in Sweden and Scandinavia, 150 odd years ago when there was a revival there at the state churches, because all of those countries had a state church, the

Lutheran church. And as people came to faith in Christ, they thought, let's have a home Bible study. And the state church said, no, no, you can't do that.

Well, let's have a prayer. No, you can't do that. And it can't, can't, can't. And so they finally opened the word of God and discovered, wait a minute, the civil government has no authority over the church regarding its ministry.

In fact, if you take one of the historic books that every pastor is supposed to read, what it means to be free, the history of the free church on page 19, there the author there,

Calvin, Calvin Hansen, he says this, that that the

Christian congregation, as in the early church, should remain completely free in its relationship with the state.

So historically, that's what the free church is all about. And so trying to explain this to pastors who wanted to say,

David, you're a Christian nationalist and you're not of the ethos of the free church and closing, not closing your church doors was the wrong thing to do.

You're a rebel, you're anti -government, they said. And I said, I'm not anti -government. I'm very pro -government, the government of Jesus.

And so they didn't get from me what they wanted. And I thought, OK, that conversation's done and don't need to worry about it any longer.

Well, come to pass another year or so later, I understood that when my ordination was to be renewed and this is usually a standard thing, you fill out the form, do you still believe these?

And I sent it in. They challenged that and said, we have some questions to ask you about your teaching and about your preaching.

And they admitted there was nothing in my preaching or teaching that is contrary to the 12 doctrinal statements of the evangelical free church.

So there's no heresy involved at all. But they hated the fact that, for example, I tell parents that if you have children in the public system called education, it's really indoctrination, please pull your children out.

That that's not a safe place for Christian children to be discipled by Karl Marx and by Freud and all these other, you know, just pull your kids.

And it's you're abusing the pulpit by telling parents to pull their kids from the public education system.

And you're abusing the pulpit by, you know, labeling things like BLM as clearly anti -Christian

Marxist as the founders of that organization admit. So they hated what I'm preaching because I'm connecting what's happening in the culture with what the word of God says.

And again, admitted there was nothing that I was saying that was actually against anything in the doctrinal statement.

But it's went on and ultimately brought before the board of ministerial standing, our representative, both

Jeff and I have had to deal with on that board of ministerial standing. Paulo Freire interviewed me.

He asked me a list of I think it was 11 or 12 questions about Christian nationalism. And I denied the whole thing.

I said, look, you have this thing that you can't define. And he admitted, yeah, we really can't define Christian nationalism.

But we went through the series of questions that I denied a number of his assertions.

And at the end, he said, David, I know you deny that you are a Christian nationalist, but I believe you are like,

OK, you've got your opinion. I've got my opinion. Then later, when I did appear before the entire board of ministerial standing there in Minnesota, this was also brought up, the

Christian nationalist question again. And I said that, you know, Paulo, you have said that I am a

Christian nationalist. I deny that I am. And you refuse to accept that denial. And he actually refused to admit that that is exactly what he said.

But at that meeting, I tried to also bring back this issue of what is the free church and the issue of, you know, if the civil government is actually over the church and so the church is to be in submission to the civil government, you know, isn't there a connection then that happens that breaks what

Jesus said? And I ask questions like, you know, if a church closed their doors and then accepted the

PPP money, remember that was a paycheck protection program that knowing that businesses were going to lose money and knowing that churches, their ties and offerings would certainly go down if they closed their doors, they promised we will cover your paychecks for a certain period of time as a loan.

And I actually saw the paperwork. Somebody sent me the paperwork when all that came out. And I looked through it and was like, oh, it says right here that that loan can be transmuted into a grant from the government if you do what they tell you to do.

So isn't that the civil government controlling the church, telling the church what to do, telling the church when to close its doors, when it could open its doors?

Can it have communion when it opened its doors? Can it sing songs? All these things happen. And there were pastors like in Louisiana who actually went to prison, civil government put them in prison because they would not close the doors of their church.

And so I asked, you know, is it a free church any longer when they accept PPP money from the federal government to do what the federal government tells them to do?

And one of the members of the board of ministerial standing turned to me and said, David, we have no problem with that. We have many evangelical free churches who are accepting federal grant money to do their ministry.

And that's fine. And I'm thinking to myself, wait a minute, how in the world is this a free church?

You should rename it the Evangelical State Church of America because that's what you become, a state church, not a free church any longer.

But it clearly to me, in addition to what Jeff has identified with the social justice issues, the leadership have stepped away from the historical understanding and historical meaning of what it means to be a free church, that there is a separate jurisdiction for the church government and the civil government has no authority over those areas that are separate.

And the church should never put itself into a position where it's dependent financially on the civil government for its ministries.

And I know there's a book out, is it Basham who's written about pastors for sale?

And yeah, tragically, I think part of what's happening in the free church is what we see happening on the wider scale, that churches are allowing themselves to be co -opted and take it over.

And what we need is a real movement for churches to set themselves free from any government, federal government, state government, and civil government, and recognize that there is a jurisdictional boundary that we should never allow the civil government to cross and interfere with the ministry that we have of our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Yeah. Amen. Well, so it sounds like both of you are outside the ethos of the evangelical free church.

So, and maybe happily so at this point, because it sounds like from what you're saying, Pastor Whitney, this was an ethos you didn't even recognize was present.

You didn't know that there were churches getting money, grant money from the federal government for their ministries, and you're finding this out in the context of COVID.

I, one of the questions that I had was whether or not this is a convictional disagreement, or if this is a punishment for thinking independently of the hierarchy.

It could be both, but those are different things. And one is you have violated,

I guess it's this vague ethos thing, but you violated something that we stand for. The other is, it doesn't really matter what the issue is.

It's just the fact that you won't submit to what we're trying to do, which even if it's outside of our faith statement, this is the direction we want to take things.

And you need to kiss the ring and you're not kissing the ring. You're asking questions. We don't want people asking questions, which at that point,

I don't know how you're different than the Roman magisterium or any other strong hierarchical church. You don't sound like a church with an independent polity, that's for sure.

But what do you think? I mean, we'll start with you, David, and then maybe Jeff. What do you think is really behind this?

And I know to do this, we have to question motivations, but I don't really see a way around it. You have to make sense of what happened to you to translate, to help other people navigate similar situations.

Well, the interesting conversation I had with Paula, who again was a representative from our district on the board of ministerial standing, as he said,

David, I've communicated these things to Greg Strand that he is demanding. He says, David must learn to submit.

And I'm saying, hmm, submit what? And basically are making all kinds of demands for documentation and so forth.

And my congregation said, wait a minute, as Jeff's experienced, this is not a due process that follows the biblical structure at all.

They're violating left and right, the biblical process of how a conflict is handled. And instead of doing the right thing, they're continuing in the wrong thing, but demanding that I submit to whatever it is they demanded me.

So I think there is a flipping, and I explained this to the board of ministerial standing that originally the free churches, all the local churches are at the top.

And the only reason the structure beneath them exists, the pyramid beneath them is to support the local church.

And so the district is supposed to be there to help and support the local church, the national, all those things. Well, they've taken this now when they flipped it and they've actually given the board of ministerial standing absolute power to defrock anyone without question.

Jeff was able to actually try to step into the larger conference and have a defense of his position, which three minutes, that's ridiculous.

But at that same meeting that Jeff attempted to do that, they voted to change the structure of the free church such that now the board of ministerial standing can decide without any accountability to the larger conference of churches, without any accountability, who to get rid of as pastors and what churches to get rid of as well.

They've given themselves kind of papal authority at the top of the pyramid. Appears to me that even though there's a national board, the board of ministerial standing seems to be at the top of this pyramid, holding all the power over every pastor in the denomination, as well as over every church in the denomination.

So you're saying that, yes, this is a hierarchy thing. This is a lack of submission to what they see as their authority.

Jeff, I mean, where do you want to weigh in on this? Do you think there's principal disagreements here? Do you think it's both?

It's definitely both and they're connected. So the ideological commitment that they had to diversity, equity, inclusion was very important to the leadership direction of the so -called movement, right?

Well, it probably started with the previous president before Kevin Kompelein, but there was a kind of a diversity, equity, inclusion officer that the denomination hired named

Alvin Sanders. And when they hired him, they sent his book, Bridging the Diversity Gap, to every free church pastor in the

United States. Everybody got a copy of it. And the idea was, it's not okay to just be a white church.

You need to diversify or to just be a church that is open to anybody and everybody.

Let the Lord sort that out and bring who it is. No, they were pushing diversity as something that you have to impose on your congregation.

I don't know how that's supposed to be done. Maybe it has to do with musical song choices or elevating

Black voices and things like that. But Alvin Sanders was the representative of that. And then after him, because it only lasts a short while.

These guys burn out quickly. They went on to Alejandro Mondez, and he had a similar diversity push until he was also out.

But all along, this was very dear to them. So when they had Jarvis Williams and Doug Sweeney and John Perkins, the next one they brought in was

Carl Ellis. And he was all about reading while Black, right? So at standpoint epistemology, this concept was very important to the movement, the ethos of the free church.

Now, couple that with the good old boy club, the guys who have been pushing this, who have been for that.

These are the ones that kind of, I call it my diet of worms, where five of them came together.

I asked for a witness to be there, my associate pastor, John Laskin. And they say, no, no, this is just talking. Can't be recorded.

Anyway, that turns out to have been my quote unquote trial. And one of the interactions was with the guy named

Bill Kynes. And he said, well, do you think I'm woke? And I said, yeah, you're woke.

I mean, you're recommending that we all do the and campaign with Justin Giboney, who supports, you know,

Warnock down in Georgia. That's pretty woke. And the Creek Collective, all these things that you're supporting, that's social justice oriented and it's woke.

So they got very offended at me saying that to him in the meeting. Well, lo and behold, then these very men write a document to the entire free church.

It turns out the four hundred and forty delegates get this internal document that I had never seen in which they put words in my mouth.

Like they'll say, Jeff claims to be a Christian nationalist. They say any discussion, according to Jeff, any discussion about race is critical race theory.

I would never say that. That's a bizarre statement. Right. But they put that as as if it's my own words.

So they're falsifying evidence. It was Paulo Freire who produced this document. Same guy that David Whitney mentioned.

But it had just a list of things that I never said that then becomes their way of painting me as irrational and not compassionate or maybe just just out of bounds and just out in left field.

So the ideological commitment to diversity is then supported by that good old boys club.

And they're trying to make the Bill Kynes leadership or Paulo's leadership or Mendes his leadership look good, whereas my book is very much discrediting that.

It's saying, look, this whole direction, the whole diversity, equity, inclusion movement is the wrong direction.

We need to change course. I don't I'm not mad at you guys. I don't hate you guys. I want to be part of this movement.

Let's just move in the right direction. Let's go in a biblical way. But they couldn't do that. That was the impossible thing, because it would make certain people who need the support of the denomination, the churches, they need the credibility.

It would make them look bad. And how are they going to recover that and lead if all the while the diversity, equity, inclusion agenda was a loser?

They were leading us in the wrong way. So it was either throw me under the bus or actually repent. And the structure just it they they kind of circled the wagons.

That's what they did to protect Greg Strand, who I criticize in my book, maybe too harshly.

But I think legitimately, David, I think the thing that set me off to write Woke Free Church was when he came out to the east and said that these pastors who are asserting their individual rights, we don't have any individual rights there.

They all belong to Christ. He was conflating our submission to the Lordship of Christ with disobeying the government and asserting our rights, because here we are in New Jersey.

We're staying open when Phil Murphy was rattling the cage and threatening that we're going to go to jail.

So these are intense times, you know, so we're making this kind of stand. Dave, you're doing the same thing in Maryland.

So I was really offended when he's teaching that because it weakens our hand.

When I was trying to rally churches in New Jersey to stand together in this so that we don't all go to jail, so that the churches open up and the gospel is preached and we sing hymns together in person, one to another.

We take communion in person. We hear the preaching of the word in the power of the Holy Spirit, which is different in person than it is online.

For these reasons, we need to be open. And we were making that stand. And yet National came in to criticize us as if we're not submitting to the headship of Christ.

So that was a big reason why I wrote Woke Free Church in the first place. And Jeff, you ought to, let me just interrupt it for a second, but you ought to include the statement that Polo slandered you, implied that your relationship with your wife was horrible.

Your relationship as a pastor, I mean, in that document that went to 400 plus delegates, he literally slandered you.

And my knowledge, you could tell me, by the way, has he come and repented? Has he's asked for forgiveness? No. So, John, what he's referring to is in that document that they ended up sending to the 440 delegates when

I was on trial at the National Conference. This is something that Paolo wrote, but the other men signed it too.

Bill Kines and whoever else was there, they signed their names to it.

And they put words in my mouth that I claim to be a Christian nationalist. But then they said, this kind of stubbornness is indicative.

It betrays that there's something horribly wrong in Jeff's marriage and in his church, this style of leadership.

So they impugned my marriage and my church. So that was just completely ridiculous.

So, and again, where's the due process? Why don't you call and talk to my wife? Why don't you see my kids and see how they walk with the

Lord and actually investigate those things if you actually have a concern about that? But the idea was to,

I think David is right to say it's slander, to slander me to make my character in question.

Why do you think they were sensitive to being called woke? Because that's an interesting dynamic.

I've noticed this across other denominations as well who've done the same thing. And even

Jarvis Williams doesn't want to be called that, I'm sure. No one wants to be labeled this way.

They don't want to transcend the political binary.

They don't think that they're on the left at all. It's just an interesting thing because they clearly are. They're clearly pushing the needle that way, but they deny it.

They would probably say you're denying being a Christian nationalist or something. But there's very definitive things that you can point to that you've done in your book.

For example, the standpoint of epistemology, the ideological component to their metaphysics, the goal of this equitable society, this

DEI society. These are all very quantifiable things that they have bought into, but they don't want to admit that they bought into them.

I don't know if you have an answer for that. Yeah, definitely. In fact, Jarvis Williams said that you can have systemic racism without any individual racists involved.

So he's teaching systematic racism. But in that same talk, 2018 Theology Conference, he complained, not all black folk are woke.

You can tweet that, he said. And at that point in time, in 2018, he's claiming woke as a good title because the book

Woke Church had just come out. Fault Lines by Vodie Wacom had not come out.

Woke Free Church did not come out. We hadn't pushed back yet. But what happened was in 2020, with the

Summer of Love and the whole George Floyd riots and all that nonsense, people started turning against wokeness.

They realized that Black Lives Matter was a fraud. It was founded on the fraud of Michael Brown, hands up, don't shoot, a lie.

That was always a lie. And then it started to become ridiculous in 2020.

And by 2021, 2022, the tables had turned. And these woke churches who had been pushing this so hard on their congregation, they were bleeding members.

I've seen it all over the country, even around us in New Jersey. Churches that were once thriving could lose half their church because the conservatives finally got fed up.

And now the free church is losing money. They're losing members. And they're especially sensitive.

Meanwhile, these conservative churches were growing. And we can't create enough services and fit the people in the building.

And they're coming from liberal churches that don't know they've become liberal. So yeah, that's why woke became unpopular.

And now it's like, don't call us woke. Well, you called yourself woke in 2018. Yeah. And I think also there's a sense in which those who didn't catch on to the lie that woke was, they wanted to persuade them that they were not woke so that they would continue believing the lie.

In other words, just repackage it. That is what the left always does. They repackage it when something becomes unpopular, put it out again in a new form.

And they know a number of people will fall for the new package, even though it's just the old one with a different wrapping on it.

Yeah. Well, I wanted to ask you this. I know I mentioned it before we started recording. But do you think the fact that Pastor Whitney, you're in Maryland, and Pastor Clear, you're in New Jersey, has something to do with the ability you had to stand alone on this issue?

Because I imagine in certain Midwestern areas where the evangelical free church is popular, you are losing all your connections and relationships when you decide to buck the system, so to speak.

But for you, I'm sure, I don't know when the next closest evangelical free church is, but it's probably a ways off.

You already were operating pretty independently. I'm just wondering to what extent...

I know in the SBC, this is a factor, but I'm wondering to what extent in the evangelical free church, there's kind of like a reward system the closer you get to the center.

And I don't know what that would look like, maybe publishing and conferences and just recognition and maybe money,

I don't know, that maybe flows your way. And you don't want to jeopardize that.

And even if you agree that the direction of the denomination is wrong. Yeah, I would definitely say there's kind of a lockstep that people who have committed themselves to the agenda and they're willing to push that agenda on their local church are the ones that are advanced in the hierarchy, whether the hierarchy first in the local district, but then also in the national hierarchy.

Those are the ones that get a position and often those positions pay. So the pastor receives his salary from his church, but he's also getting this other payment coming in and sure, he's not going to do anything to jeopardize that.

I think in my case, and probably in Jeff's case as well, it's why the board of ministerial standing closed ranks.

Not one person voted in favor of me or in favor of Jeff. They were unanimous.

That's what they told me. And I think it was your case as well, Jeff. They were unanimous in their decision to defrock us first to, what was it?

To put our ordination under discipline was the language and later basically remove our ordination altogether and kick our churches out.

All those decisions were unanimous. And when you have a unanimous decision about such things as these, you have to wonder, wait a minute, why is nobody questioning?

Why is nobody questioning the slander that was done against Jeff where the lies told about me? Nobody questioned any of that.

And why did nobody go back to the pastors who originally investigated my sermons and declared me to be a

Christian? Why did nobody go question what they were doing? Why were they doing that? Why did they even bother to investigate me when the only thing they had to go on is that we kept the doors of our church open?

Why was keeping the doors of our church open a cause for anybody to investigate any pastor? And no, they're not going to ask those questions because that would upset the apple cart.

They just close ranks and those who are rewarded are those who comply.

Who were maybe some other names of people in the denomination who were in a similar position to you?

They tried to do something about the direction and they were shut down or are you free to share names?

I don't know. Yeah. You know, Craig Chambers has been on your podcast. Yeah, yeah. He made a good stand. There's another name that I'd bring up that he was actually a

Free Church associate pastor and that's Seth Brickley. He sat under Dave Abernethy as an associate pastor.

And if anything, he would have a partiality toward his friend and mentor, Dave Abernethy. But when

Woke Free Church came out, Dave Abernethy gave it a four -star review on Amazon and said, you know, very kind things about it.

And then he started to get pressure from that good old boys club out in the Midwest. And Dave was also rising in the ranks there.

And now he's part of the board of ministerial standing. But he took his review down and made it a three -star review and said a seat at the table.

Jeff should have a seat at the table, but his book is a little harsh. And then he finally took the entire review down altogether.

Then he becomes part of the board and he's ultimately sitting across that very table that he said

I should have a seat at to discipline me. And I wasn't at the table. It was a Zoom call.

But here's the thing. Seth Brickley was, if anything, would have had a motive to, you know, just a partiality to try to give the benefit of the doubt towards his friend.

But instead, he simply looked at the evidence and he made a very courageous stand to begin speaking out about what he saw happening in free church leadership.

So what to me, he is just such an incredible brother because he's just been stalwart for the truth.

And he was willing to read the evidence, read all the email trains that went back and forth and be willing to look at it impartially.

And I think like a good investigative journalist would. He read it all. He balanced it.

He weighed it. And in the end, he very clearly saw what was happening.

It was, yeah, it was internal. I'm out here in New Jersey, John. I think that is part of it. And I was also an inner city missionary in Philadelphia.

That was my ministry. And then I got called into this pulpit that happened to be a free church pulpit.

So I don't have deep roots with the free church or connections out in Minneapolis. So I just tried to tell the truth.

And yeah, I think it probably did help that I didn't have so many relationships.

Although the ones that I had formed were very close and those remain. There's a pastor in Philadelphia, Mike Jarrell, and other ones here in New Jersey that have been great.

Jason from that church as well. So tons of guys that have made good stands. Andy Strobel was here at the time.

Phil Brainerd up in Teaneck, New Jersey. This guy named Pete from out down the shore in New Jersey.

Literally everybody who really knew me, every single one remained close and supportive.

You didn't really lose anything then. Who didn't know us that just demonized us. Yeah. Well, who cares what they think?

I mean, that could be construed as a cocky thing to say.

But I mean, really, life is short and you only have so much time.

And your scale is a human scale. You can't know everyone or do everything. And if some people from a distance don't like what you're doing, who don't know you, then maybe it's a better...

I mean, do you think it's better for you and your ministry to not be associated with the denomination? I do at this point.

Yeah. I'm so excited about what God is going to do. I think God's going to create new things that are truly conservative.

And maybe it's a lot like the free church. I love so much about the free church. The statement of faith, I think is amazing.

I do like the broad openness of the tent. You know, you can be a little more continuationist or a little more cessationist,

Calvinist, Arminian and have differences over eschatology. I think that's important that you allow some difference that way.

But where you make your stand, it's on the things that matter. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, the lives of babies in the womb and not transing children and COVID shots, things like that, like imposing that on us.

We need to stand for the truth and stand together on what matters. And I love the freedom of being able to preach what the

Lord's calling me to preach, to take what I'm reading in the news and say, okay, how does this relate?

How's what's going on with this trans agenda relate to what the word of God teaches us about? Well, God created a male and female, every single one of them from the moment of conception, it's either male or female.

So taking the word of God and applying it to the issues of the day may get a little uncomfortable sometimes for people in the pews, but at least in my congregation, they appreciate that.

They want that. They want to see how does the word of God intersect with the issues going on all around us?

Rather than being silent or being on the wrong side of the trans issue or the abortion issue, we need to stand on what the word of God says and not kowtow to the culture in which we live.

My sense is that not only evangelical free churches, but Southern Baptist to some extent, and many other denominations are softening the message of the

Bible in order to get along, to go along in the culture around us, rather than saying, you know, the truth of God's word isn't always pleasant, but it needs to be proclaimed, especially when it's being rejected and denied in the culture.

Yeah, that's good. What advice do you have for pastors who are in their denomination still and have seen this and perhaps you might be connected with some of them?

I don't know, but they're considering whether they want to remain. What would you tell them? If they're going to remain, they need to speak out more forcefully.

I don't understand how guys can allow this kind of leadership and not say anything, make a phone call to national or, you know, just write a letter or possibly stop giving money.

The denomination sits back and soaks that in while it's these churches and these pastors who are laboring and making disciples and baptizing, building churches.

And then these churches are sending money to leaders who are acting like this. Hold them accountable.

If you're going to stay in the free church, say, what about Pastor Witten? We have a group that meets monthly over Zoom and there's a bunch of guys.

Like I mentioned earlier, two more this week, a guy from Hawaii and one from Minnesota somewhere.

Just emailing with them. They're having the same issues. So what if all of the faithful pastors said, look, we need change.

We don't want to just throw out the Cleavers and the Whitneys and the Chambers and whoever else.

Let's see what the Lord might do. But it may be time to come out as well. What do you think, David? And I would invite any one of those pastors who's questioning or wondering to join our

Woke Free Pastors group. You know, they can contact you, Jeff, or me and we'll send them a link. We meet monthly at the beginning of the month because we talk about the issues, what's going on and what we can do.

And by the way, one of the things we're going to do is have a conference there at your church, Jeff, in May. And we're gonna talk about the issues of what can we do, particularly as myself and yourself, you know, currently kind of we've been defrocked and what process can we do by which pastors at our position can be ordained, rightly ordained by their church, as well as other pastors coming in can be trained to avoid the dangers of the woke trap and, you know, avoid the kind of things that are pushing people in the wrong direction in our culture.

So I think there's a movement happening and I'm glad that we're part of this because pastors need other pastors who understand these issues and willing to take a stand against them.

So any pastors listening, contact us for our Woke Free Pastors meeting. Yes, and that conference, the first weekend in May, that's gonna be free.

Anybody can come. So make your plans now, the first weekend in May. So yeah,

I'm really excited about it. And I already know of a lot of pastors that are gonna be there. I'm not sure what's gonna come of it, but it's gonna be more than a conference.

It's gonna be a chance to pray together and have tons of time to sit and talk. Do we start our own denomination?

Do we start, you know, like a council, you know, that can do ordinations or help churches ordain their own pastors, right?

To know the kind of questions. My first question that I would ask if I was sitting on an ordination council with a young guy across the table,

I would say, appraise Tim Keller's ministry. Right there, it'll show so much.

Oh, goodness. Yeah, that would be a very revealing answer. Well, I appreciate both of you guys and your bravery in this.

And it's rare to find, there's not a lot of people who are willing to stand up to those in authority, those they want to think well of them.

And so it takes an amount of courage. And so thank you for that. And for your advice to those who are still in the denomination, who are perhaps seeing this and wondering what to do.

I know there was an evangelical free church a few years ago that they've left the denomination and it was over these kinds of things.

And they've asked me, I had a relationship with the church, it's out in the Midwest. And they were just saying, should we remain?

We don't seem like we get anything from the denomination. They've taken all the wrong stands on the COVID question.

And we just don't know where it's going. And so they left. And unfortunately, that is the last step, right?

You guys don't seem to take this lightly. You're not jumping to leave a denomination.

You were actually kicked out. But it becomes obvious at that point.

You can't really stay in that. It's a toxic environment. So unless there's some way to take it over, which you haven't mentioned, and it doesn't sound like there really is.

So currently, yeah. So anyway, all right. Well, thank you very much. God bless. Have a