Some Clarifications and Comments on Yesterday's Video

I just wanted to record a quick video to provide a little bit of clarifications from yesterday's video just to kind of be sure everybody is on the same page. First off, thank you everybody who's reached out and sent me messages of encouragement.

I cannot tell you how much they've meant to me. It's just really, really a blessing to get as much encouragement as I have gotten. And so thank you so much. There's been a couple of themes of some of these messages and I wanted to just kind of address them all at once because probably other people that haven't messaged me have the same questions.

Financial Clarifications and Support

And so the first one is a lot of people have asked me if there's anything that they can do for me from a financial perspective. And providentially, I did not take a salary from my church, neither does my co-elder either.

He didn't take a salary either from the church. We both earn our income from other means. And so luckily, the good news in this whole situation is that I did not, I'm not financially ruined or financially affected by this, at least in the short term, because I have a side business that I do and I earn money other ways.

So thank you for the offer. It's definitely very much appreciated, but it's not needed at this point. So I don't want to pretend like it is and all of that. So that's the first thing. The second thing is a lot of people have, you know, kind of, I don't know if it's, I don't think it's misinterpreting, but maybe just maybe just misunderstanding what I'm saying.

And that's, you know, that's on me. I should be much more clear, I guess. But I want to make sure this is very clear. Nobody pressured me to resign. And I don't have any evidence that the SPC leader, so to speak, who managed to convince my co-elder that, you know, criticizing other people is a sin, breaks the 11th commandment.

I have no evidence that he pressured anyone to fire me or anything like that. I don't have any evidence of that. I have some assumptions and I have some theories of what went down, but I don't really know because, you know, I was really left out of this, the loop of these conversations for the most part, which is a problem in itself, obviously.

But, so nobody pressured me to resign. In fact, what was going to happen was that my co-elder was going to resign. And it was my idea for me to resign because from my perspective, that was the only way their church would continue to meet.

Because if my co-elder resigned, that would leave a gap. I was not willing to pastor the church on my own. That's just something I wasn't willing to do. And so that would have been the end of the church.

And so me resigning, this wasn't like, I mean, look, the reality is it is absolutely related. And I guess if you want to say there was pressure put on by this person because of this person's actions. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, my resigning was directly related to the public and private actions of this individual. This individual made it an impossible situation to move forward. It's just that simple. But I don't know that he wanted to do that.

He wanted me to resign or anything like that. I don't know. I honestly don't know. I wish I did know because that would be sort of the right thing to do. But unfortunately, again, I've been left out of these conversations.

So the point is, though, that I wasn't told to resign. As far as I know, no one pressured anybody to have me resign. That was completely, when I said it was of my own volition, I meant that it was actually my idea.

Because in my mind, that was the only thing that could continue the church going forward. Except for the other thing that would have let the church go forward is if I just said, oh my goodness, my videos have been sinned.

You cannot criticize other members of the church. If I agreed with that perspective, which is completely, you can't defend it scripturally, obviously. I mean, Jesus calls Peter Satan at one point. I mean, you know what I mean?

Paul tells some people to cut their testicles off at one point. Paul confronts Peter to his face when he's acting out of step with God. I mean, there's so many things in the scripture. I mean, those are just the three that come to the top of my head every single time I think about this.

But there's so many reasons why, so many examples of why saying that you cannot criticize the words or the ideologies of a brother is, there's no way you could defend that biblically, at least in my mind.

And so, you know, I could have stopped doing it and then the church could have continued. But I think that calling out false teaching and defending the flock and things like that, I think that's a requirement for a pastor.

So I said I couldn't do that. If you said I couldn't make these videos and I couldn't have these opinions, then I couldn't do my job as a pastor. I don't know if that's clear or not, but, but yeah, no pressure was put on me, at least directly.

I mean, look, this story will come out. I'm sure it will. I'm sure it will. And so that's the other thing. The other thing is a lot of people keep asking me, you know, who's this person that did this stuff?

Protecting the Person Involved

And, you know, to this point, I've pretty much rebuffed every request for that information. Some of you know, some of you do know, I mean, because, you know, and the reality is if you follow me very closely, you could probably figure it out.

But the reality is I don't want anything to happen to this guy. I don't, you know, I, you know, as far as I'm concerned, I'm very upset with this person because of a variety of different things, but I don't want him to have a hard time.

I don't want him to be hurt. I don't want, you know, I'm not like that. You know what I mean? I want him to be forced to resign or anything like that. That's not what I want. I don't want any of that kind of stuff.

I don't have any ill will towards this person and the rest of his life. I would like him to repent of his sin against me, but, you know, that's, that's how it is. So, so those are, those are some of the clarifications I wanted to provide.

Ongoing Support and Prayer for My Wife

Thank you so much for the offers of support. It's not needed at this point and all of that. And a number of you have reached out and asked if there's anything you can do. And I'm going to, I'm planning on getting back to everybody today.

I, you know, obviously I have another job, so I have to do that stuff too. But, but I am planning on reaching out to everybody and there might be something that you could do for me in the future. But for right now, I think we're good.

And I've been, this has been kind of in the background for a couple of weeks now. So I've kind of come to terms with it. The one thing I will say, and this is something that I have no problem saying publicly, a lot of you have reached out to me specifically about my wife.

And it's very, this whole situation is very difficult on my wife. Prayers for her would be very much appreciated. Absolutely. Anyway, I hope this video was helpful. God bless.