Are Discernment Ministries a Good Thing? (Interview with David Morrill of Protestia.Com)

Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist.

I recently began Church Soup, a satirical news show in the style reminiscent of Talk Soup and the SNL Weekend Update.

I noticed in my time collecting stories for Church Soup that I kept coming across protestia.com as a source, so I decided to reach out to the brothers there and ask if they were okay with me citing their material.

This led to a conversation which gave way to today's interview.

On the About page of their site, it says, Protestia is a polemical news site that dedicates itself to providing Christian news and discernment in an age of widespread censorship.

We document the downgrade of the church while being a resource for those wanting to know more about the figures and folks abusing the Bride of Christ and taking us further and further away from sound biblical orthodoxy.

So my guest today is David Morrill, one of the contributors for Protestia.

David, welcome to the show, and if you could, tell our audience a little bit about yourself.

Hey Keith, thanks for having me.

Yeah, my name is David Morrill and I publish a, they call it now the Rolex of polemics watch blogs, but a little website called protestia.com that is focused on polemics and discernment news and commentary and opinion and some fun stuff and satire and sort of we dabble in it all, but the purpose is to keep the body of Christ, the larger visible body of Christ, informed and apprised on the theological mischief makers is what we call them, but you know, false teachers, false doctrine, false movements out there just so folks can be equipped but also take it home to their churches and make sure that their churches are equipped for, you know, what's going on in the broader conversation.

Awesome.

And I was watching another video with you and I think I heard it said that you're also in the military, is that correct? Are you still in the military or is that, am I wrong? I am, I would say since, since you brought that up, I will offer the disclaimer.

Nothing I say on this podcast is the DOD's view or the army's view or anything like that.

You know, that's, that's what we all have to do now.

So just to be clear, this is not a DOD endorsed program.

Absolutely.

I just want to say my son is in the air force and he's currently serving in Spangdelum, Germany, and I'm thankful for your service, thankful for his service.

And I always like to point that out.

Thank him for his service for me, for sure.

That's awesome.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, you know, we were, you mentioned Protestia and I, and I talked about this in my, my, my introduction that Protestia is a, is a polemical news site.

And basically that means you guys start arguments.

I'm just kidding.

Right.

Totally.

But can you tell us a little bit more of the history of how you guys got started? Because this is, this is something that I think people know exists, but I think sometimes people wonder, well, what, what, what got this going? What got this motivated? What, what, what was the reason why a group of guys got together and started pointing out errors? What, what, what, what, what got you going? Well, it pretty much, I mean, it takes its inspiration from, cause Protestia and the website that came before Pulpit and Pen, which by the way is still a website, still has some great content, not as regular as Protestia and not as news focused, more, more opinion focused, but Protestia and Pulpit and Pen sort of followed in the footsteps of websites that had come before and online ministers who had come before.

And I can speak for me specifically ministries like Uprising, Ken Silva's Uprising.org, Chris Roseborough's Fighting for the Faith, Pirate Christian Radio, even like Todd Friel and Wretched Radio, some of, some of these guys that introduced guys like me to polemics and discernment ministry.

And I can say for me, it, it really, those kinds of ministries helped really helped me see the light in the church that my wife and I were attending being far too seeker sensitive, far too market driven, really following in that Rick Warren, that Rick Warren purpose driven mold helped sort of take the blinders off and helped us see, Hey, this isn't actually how Christianity is supposed to be practiced or expressed or how our worship is supposed to go.

But that's, that's kind of how I got started.

And I've always been sort of a, an argumentative guy and somebody who likes to debate the issues and debate the particulars, especially as a Christian, the particulars of theology and doctrine.

But I never was involved in it specifically until a few years ago.

And I, I sort of had volunteered to help, I had volunteered to help JD Hall fix the audio quality.

And some of the, some of the issues on, on his podcast, the polemics report, I say, Hey, I can help you with this.

I can help, you know, make this sound to look better.

And he's like, okay, you help make it sound look better and be the cohost, serve up the questions, be somebody to, to knock the tennis ball back and forth with on the program.

And so that's how I really got involved in, and because I volunteered to do that, he let me write some articles and, and, and sort of the, that was a few years ago now, and sort of the rest is history.

And after he stepped down the ball, I guess, landed in my lap.

And so now, now myself and then a handful of other faithful gentlemen run the site and write all this stuff and take the heat when people don't like it, which if we're doing it right is fairly often, you know, and that's how, that's where we are now.

But I'm, yeah, I'm kind of the visible face of it at this point.

And it's a, it's, it's an honor and a privilege.

And I guess something that I, I like to do, I like to argue.

Yeah, it's interesting.

Cause I, I honestly didn't know about the relationship that you had with JD or the relationship with Pulpit and Pen until I reached out to you guys asking about using some of your material for Church Soup, which is, which is my satirical, funny news program.

And I want to thank you again for allowing me to, to piggyback onto some of you guys stuff.

And, and it's, it's certainly, all I'm trying to do is yeah, just trying to make people laugh.

But when I, when I reached out and it was mentioned that you guys were connected, at least genetically connected to Pulpit and Pen, cause you guys were sort of birthed out of that.

I was, I was interested in that because I don't know a lot about what happened.

I, and I'm not, I'm not the kind of guy who looks into those things.

It's not my, it's sort of a not my circus, not my monkey's thing.

When it came with, when it came to JD, I was, I was, I read and saw things that happened, or I'm sorry, I read and saw videos that he had made over the years.

And but, but I didn't, so much negative comes out and people saying things that are untrue and things.

So I just sort of was like, I don't really want to get into all that.

And, and, but, but I'm thankful that what that, what you're doing is continuing and that it's not based on him.

It's based on the fact that there are issues that need to be pointed out.

There are things that need to be done.

And even if, if one man steps away, you can step in and continue and, and you're continuing Protestia as a discernment ministry.

And I want to ask you a question.

What do you think about that term discernment ministry? Do you think that that is, I mean, you've used it a few times, I'm assuming that's, it's okay, but do you, do you think that that is the right way to describe it? And, and, and, and what do you mean by that? When, if somebody says, well, I'm starting a discernment ministry or I'm looking into a discernment ministry, what is, how do you define that? Well, it exists alongside, you know, other, other ministries that would be birthed out of gifts of the Spirit, you know? So as, as we know, the gift of the Spirit to discern between spirits, to tell things, you know, what is true versus what is false is something that should be practiced by the church and it should be practiced by all believers.

Yeah.

And I, I believe personally there's a supernatural, I mean, a spirit, you know, a gift upon conversion, upon regeneration, that is a gift of discernment, a gift of discerning and, and, and being able to distinguish between spirits, but it's also just a general practice that should be engaged in and practiced by all believers.

You know, we're, we're to train the powers of our discernment with constant practice and, and be skilled in the word of righteousness because, I mean, as we know, Jesus said that, that, that, I mean, wide gate, narrow gate, that wide is the gate that leads to destruction.

And the narrow is like the truth is exclusive of Christianity.

And so every believer has to be on the lookout because there's a lot of false Christ's out there, a lot of false religious belief masquerading as Christianity.

So that's, that's what we try to practice at, at Protestia.

And it's always funny because you'll find people that say, Hey, that's, that's not supposed to be a ministry.

Why do you make a ministry out of attacking people? Or why do you make a ministry out of refuting this or, or calling people false teachers? And it's like, nobody ever says that about mercy ministry or helps ministry or, you know, any, any other specific parachurch ministry in emphasis, except for discernment and discernment is like the black sheep of all of the different parachurch ministries.

And what we've tried to do is basically say, and especially now that Protestia isn't officially a, a ministry of a church specifically, we, we, we understand that that can potentially be an issue.

Like, where's your accountability? You know, who do we go to if we have a real issue with what you're doing? And so, because of that, we try to make, make it very clear.

This is not a, this is a parachurch ministry that exists to serve the church.

It's not something that people should focus on above or instead of their church.

It's something that they should take advantage of, or be blessed by, or be ministered to in order to turn around and serve their church, serve their family, serve their local, their, their, their local Christian community and say, Hey, have you noticed this? Oh, you're about to do that.

You're about to do that.

Beth Moore, Priscilla Shirer Bible study.

Do you know about this? Have you seen this? And we want to provide the information so that they're equipped to be able to you know, I suppose, protect their, their, their church.

And, and that goes for pastors as well.

Like none of us are pastors at this point, as far as the people that run the site, but we are brothers in Christ and we are doing our best to be ministers where God has placed us and, and God willing, support local pastors, support local churches, give them the resources that they need to be able to answer the questions that get brought in by their congregation.

You're at church on Sunday and you're preaching from, from the pulpit and it's a wonderful time of fellowship and, and, and praise and, and, and worship to God.

But those other six days, people are living on the internet.

I mean, half the time they're spending their time on social media.

They're spending their time listening to all sorts of stuff purporting to be in the name of Christ, purporting to be the truth.

And fortunately a good amount of it is, but there's a whole bunch of falsehood out there as well.

So that's what we're focused on.

And it's not the only thing that Christians should be paying attention to.

I try to say that on our programs, like, hey, you know, yeah, do your polemics, do your discernment, but there are a lot of other areas of doctrine and theology that need to be focused on.

This is just one of them.

Sure, sure.

Now, do you think that there is potential for harm? And this is my, the reason for my question is, I would imagine that there are times where church members will see something maybe on Protestia, or maybe even see something that I put out, and then maybe immediately try to bring division in their church as a result of, I think about specifically, you mentioned Priscilla Shire, so I'll tell a story, and my friend knows who I'm talking about, she's a dear friend of mine, who, she was in a church, they were doing a Priscilla Shire webcast, and she simply posted something online or something saying that she didn't think it was a good idea, and ended up getting a lot of pushback from people in her church.

And ultimately, she was, in one sense, sort of ousted, and she had, I don't want to get too much in her story, but the point is, she found herself introducing a discernment, and it was not received very well by the church.

So do you hear stories about that, and what do you think about that? I think that it seems to me, and maybe this is just my view of things, that the existence of discernment and polemics ministries are becoming more, I don't want to even say mainstream, because the truth is never going to be mainstream, and being biblically faithful to the point of being willing to divide if we have to, and God knows we don't want to do that, but it's becoming more accepted as a part of the ecosystem, I guess.

And before, when discernment and polemics ministries and watch blogs, as we call them, and things like that were first started, they had never been seen before, so it's like now you have these guys from the pews that nobody's ever heard of necessarily, basically building audiences of believers with an emphasis on refuting a lot of the industrial evangelical output.

So it was like, it didn't have to come from Zondervan or Thomas Nelson or something anymore, what Christians thought about things, now it's coming off the internet, and now we're, it basically democratized, to use, for lack of a better way to say it, the theological discussion and debate and working through these issues, it kind of brought it back to the pews a little bit, versus, and not even versus the pulpit, but versus the industry, versus the church industry.

Now all of a sudden it was, in the same way that social media sort of opened up a lot of content creation like this podcast that people can spend their time on versus watching regular TV or going to a movie or something, in the same way that technology has caused that to happen, it's also caused the theology and the debate and Christian discussion to come down to the level of regular people like me.

And I think generally that's a good thing, as long as we're humble and careful to stay true to the Word.

Yeah, and I think, I'll add, I think the word that you just used, that word humble, is important, because there is a sense in which, and I've seen it, and I've seen it, I know my own failures at this, sometimes, you know, the Bible says knowledge puffs up, and sometimes when we feel like we're right, or we feel like we know something, there can be a sense in which that can create pride, and pride of course creating a problem, which can lead to a lot of other problems.

And that's my fear for some people, is that they would take their, what they learned from a discernment ministry, and charge like a bull into their church and try to start fights where maybe a softer or more gracious hand might be, and maybe that's where I, maybe some people would say I'm too nice, but I do think sometimes we are a chainsaw to a blade of grass, is the expression my fellow elder uses that term a lot.

He says, you know, not everything requires a fist, you know, sometimes you can be a chainsaw to a blade of grass, and that's not always how we should do it.

And so when I was talking about how sometimes these things can be harmful, that's my biggest concern, is just when people come to me and they say, hey, my church is doing this, I say, you know, have you talked to your pastor? Have you gone to him and genuinely shared your concerns, rather than trying to start a coalition or something within the body, or bring division within the body? Have you really tried to do that? And so that's my point in bringing that up.

So go ahead, I'm sorry.

Well, I was, I was going to say that, that, um, it's something I've, I've kind of been in the middle of myself, as you might imagine, because as a, you know, a pew sitter, as I like to call myself as a pew sitter, who's still very interested in theology and doctrine and studies it regularly, and it's, it's very important.

You're bound to come across things where, uh, you know, you have an issue, you have a theological issue at your church or, or something that, you know, you're, you're concerned about and the way that you approach that, especially, especially with your pastors, because it's, it's a difficult job and it is hard on the spirit, it really is.

And the last thing that they need is to think I got guys in the pews reading protesto all the time, and they're ready to whack me over the head the first time that I, I don't get something exactly right.

So, so I mean, like I've told the pastors of my church, I said, I said, if I have an issue or a question or something that I'm concerned about, you will hear it from me in private, first and foremost, you will never find yourself on the front page of protestia, um, you know, unless we're talking about heresy, in which case we're, we're still going to work it through Matthew 18 first, you know, that would be the very last thing.

And, and, and because they're worried about it and rightfully so they should be, it's not, it's like you said, it's a, it's a weapon that it can be wielded, you know, wrongly.

And so to, as much as we can put our pastor's minds at ease, like this is, you know, as God is my witness, this is going to be something that benefits the church, um, but you got to hold me accountable and I got to, you know, we, we got to hold each other accountable here.

And if you see that I'm getting prideful, or I'm, I'm doing something that you, that, that you have a concern with, you got to bring it to me.

Don't just let me, don't just let me be out there thinking that everything's okay.

You know, we, we have to be willing to do that for each other.

Amen.

And I'm really very glad to hear you say that because being accountable in our local church is what we should be.

And even though you said protestia is not a ministry of the church, it's a parachurch ministry, you yourself are still accountable and you have men that you're accountable to.

And, and, and that, that's good.

I think they know, they know exactly what we're doing and I, and they don't want to do it.

I mean, it's not, it's not the, the, the spirit didn't put it on their hearts to do this work specifically, but I told them like, I want you to be fully aware of what we're doing.

I don't want, I don't want to ever feel like, and we say this by the way, on, on, on our programs, we say that the information provided is not so that somebody can go be a lone wolf Christian.

And, and hit their pastor over the head every time they don't like something it is for the edification of the church.

And if you're not willing to use the information for that purpose, humbly bring it to the church as, as, um, iron sharpening iron, turn the program off.

This isn't for you.

You know, we try it.

If you're not a loving, we say it this way.

If you're not a loving, giving, serving, faithful member of your local new Testament congregation, this is not your program.

This is not your website.

You know, go, go listen to the Christianity Today, uh, you know, Mark Driscoll podcast or something like that.

This is, you're in the wrong place.

Amen.

That, that, that's very encouraging.

So with, with all that being said, some of my favorite stuff that I've seen on Protesty, especially recently, you guys posted the, the Barbie sermon series that the lady's doing the past.

I, I, I, she had a Barbie doll.

I couldn't believe it.

She's like playing with dolls while trying to preach a sermon.

She said, wear pink men, wear pink.

And I, I make fun of Methodist.

I wear my pink polo.

So I was, I was right up my alley, but, but that's, you know, that it is interesting that that's, you know, when you, that's how I found you guys again, seeing these things on Twitter, seeing these things on Protestia, that there was the Star Wars church, there was, um, you know, the, the different crazy things.

And we know that those are problems.

We know that that's, that's indicative of, of, of a larger health problem in the church, the church, like so many, uh, you know, so many nutrition-wise are addicted to, to fast food and candy.

Well, the church is providing rather than nourishing spiritual food, it's, it's providing spiritual fast food, spiritual junk food, spiritual popcorn and candy as to connect with the movie theme, but what do you think? Do you think that's the greatest danger? Now I want, I want to get more into your mindset as you're putting these things together.

Do you think those things are the greatest danger in evangelicalism right now, or is there something more that's behind this, that's driving it? What do you think is the greatest dangers that are in evangelicalism right now? And I know that could be probably an hour of conversation, but yeah, there's a lot of potential, uh, potential places to fall into, but, but, and let me, let me ask you one other, are you reformed yourself? Yeah, I, I don't know.

I mean, I guess I, I, I'm a, you know, I, I'm not purely 1689, but I'm certainly a Calvinist in terms of my, my adherence to, and, and people, I mean, even people argue about that, right? Like when you were talking with Doug Wilson, I listened to that, you know, what did you, did you call yourself a, uh, uh, Harbor Freight, Doug Wilson? Yeah, that's me.

I'm, I'm the, I'm the, uh, I'm the great value Harbor Freight.

Yeah, like rarely do I laugh out loud listening to a podcast, but that was pretty good.

Uh, so I, I mean, I'm, I'm probably closer to, to a John MacArthur where, um, a pre-millennial, uh, Calvinist, uh, dispensational, but not like, I don't have charts on my walls and I'm not trying to predict the second coming, coming next week or something like that.

But, um, but in terms of there being a future for this, for the, for the ethnic Israel, I'm, I'm partial to that.

I'm still working through that, you know, for sure.

Let's put it this way.

Like John MacArthur makes an incredibly convincing case for a guy like me.

So that sounds good.

Well, the reason why I asked about reformed is, is I know that, that reformed Christians often are charged with being more rigid, more, more negative, more concerned with error, more, you know, more picky.

And so, uh, when I ask you, what are the greatest dangers, you know, somebody might say Arminianism, you know, is the greatest thing.

No, not, not, not particularly.

Yeah.

I would say, you know, to find a classic Arminian anymore is, is hard to do.

Uh, you know, most of the guys I run into are provisionists, not Arminians.

Um, you know, they're, they're latent flower, uh, uh, guys, you know, it's, it's, it's not a tulip there.

They got a different flower and it's, it's latent.

Yeah.

Latent doesn't like us very much.

Oh, does he, does he not? Well, he, he and I did some shows together, so we, we have a, we have a good, a good working relationship, but obviously it seems like a nice guy.

Yeah.

I don't think he likes us.

Yeah.

Well, we disagree on a lot, of course, but that being said, getting back to the question of the greatest dangers.

So, so you, you certainly wouldn't say the greatest dangers are a Calvinism, Arminianism thing.

You would say maybe it's more something, something deeper.

There's been such a postmodern infiltration into the evangelical church that it's, it's corrupted the thinking of Christians, you know, to the, to the, to the point where we can't even say there's an immovable truth about.

Name your issue.

There's an immovable scriptural truth about this that is timeless that we can hold to and is true and effective and applicable in every generation.

You know, instead it's, everything is, is, is contextualized and not contextualized by necessarily, you know, like external cultural factors, but contextualized by my feelings about it.

You know, so, so my feelings and my subjective view of something become not only the arbiter of truth, but also the, the, um, the goal for Christian ministry and, and that's what, I mean, that's why we see crazy Mario sermons and Barbie sermons and, and Jurassic park and all, all of this man pleasing going on, because that's become the definition of success in Christian ministry.

It's not fidelity to the word.

You know, pastors have in, in larger evangelicalism long ago, gave up this idea of being brokers of truth, which is what they have been historically.

The pastor is in a special seat of being a truth teller, a truth teacher, right? A preacher of the word of God, somebody with a, with a solemn duty long ago, we've given that up and now pastors are their CEOs, their managers of large organizations, um, you know, half of the seminary degrees in leadership classes rather than theology and doctrine.

And that's, that's been a result of the postmodern, um, really poisoning of thinking itself, infiltrating the church.

So, I mean, I think that's the largest, just if we were to talk about something that's all encompassing in terms of its danger to the church, that's, that's my, the first thing I go to is man, Christians can't think anymore.

Christians can't act, they're, they're not holding true to scripture like it never changes and it's always solid and always reliable, they're using themselves and their own emotions as a measuring stick for what they're going to accept and what they're going to practice.

So if a Christian is, let's say in their local church and they're seeing these things, they're seeing the, the Barbie sermons, they're seeing the Jurassic Park, and it's not just movie stuff, it's other stuff too.

That's, that's an obvious, you know, this is something that's, man, I know that's, that, that, that, that's not cool.

But what would you say are the things that are often overlooked? And maybe that's, that might be a hard question, but I'm kind of going in my mind, I'm thinking, you know, how do we warn people when it's not such a big, you know, to me, a Barbie sermon is a glowing blinking sign that says, this is not good, but I mean, we, we, we generally would call those, that church a synagogue of Satan, but by the time you're doing a Barbie sermon, you've long ago let go of what the Bible teaches church is supposed to be.

And you've decided to, to, to basically reinvent it in your own image and in the image of what the flesh desires.

And like, that's, we would say, if you're at a church that's preaching Barbie, you need to leave, get, go find yourself a solid church as an Orthodox Christian, that should, that should immediately set off about eight different red flags, but you're right.

There are, there are churches in the, in, in, in kind of a middling gray zone where it's like, you're not very clearly apostate apostate and you're, and you're not as perhaps as solid as you should be, but, but you're sort of in the middle.

And usually the sign that, that we see of that, and, and I mean, I hesitate to broad brush because I mean, we, we really try to name names.

I think the Bible teaches us to mark teachers, not just teaching or not, not groups of people, but actually say, Hey, this guy has taught this falsely at this church, you know, we, we try to get specific people don't like that, but I think that's the right thing to do.

Um, um, in terms of the way Christians are supposed to approach one another.

But if I was to generalize, there are, there are a fair number of churches who, um, they sort of go along to get along and they, they, they practice what I like to call normative discernment.

You know, we, we know like in, in worship theology, we talk about, um, normative, normative worship versus regulative worship, right? If we're, if we're reformed, we're, we're usually much more on the regulative side, go to scripture, see what it says to practice, and then emulate that versus the normative, you know, sort of a Lutheran idea of if the Bible doesn't specifically forbid it, we're, we're good to go, you know, do, do whatever you want.

As long as the Bible doesn't have a specific verse that says thou shalt not fly into the, to, to the service on a zip line, whatever, but, but there's a lot of Christians that practice normative discernment as well, where it's like, you see teachers out there basically coming up with novel concepts, novel terms.

And it really, when you get underneath them, they're not novel.

They're the same old false teachings they've always been, but they hide them under new terminology and hide them in a new framework.

Um, you know, new ideas and to the normative discerner, they would say, Hey, I don't see a, I don't see a verse in the Bible that specifically says critical race theory is a sinful philosophy.

I don't see it directly in there.

Therefore do as much as you can until you come to a verse that says thou shalt not do yada, yada, yada, yada normative discernment.

The, but the problem is that if you practice it that way, um, false teachers, they, they, they shift their, their terminology, they shift their framework.

They, they come up with new combinations of false teaching, hide them in Christian ease, and they sort of look like they might be legit and rather, rather than the normative side, we would say, no, you should be practicing regulative discernment where you go to scripture, you know what it teaches.

You form a solid worldview and a solid biblical and systematic theology for what you believe about all of these things.

So you can more easily recognize error, no matter how it's phrased or no matter what words they use, or no matter how many, how many Christian-y sounding terms they sort of, they, they, they, they sort of try to hide it in.

You'll still know, you'll still see that it isn't right.

And, and of course, you know, avail yourself of websites like Protestia where we're all doing that work on a regular basis.

You know, that always helps, I think.

Yeah.

And, and, and again, I think that's, that's, that's an important thing to say is what's going on in the world is hard for one person to, to, to know about.

You know, it's so funny because we're, we're so connected, you know, compared to where we were 50 years ago, the world is a absolutely different place and we know things faster than we've ever known them, we hear things faster, but we still, it's, it's almost impossible to know everything about what's going on.

And I bring this up because like, even with, with our interaction tonight, I, we don't know, we didn't know each other before we began this interview.

And so how did I learn about you? I went and looked up some of your videos and I learned that.

And I even talked to my friend, Jason Whitaker, who is a, who is a fellow podcaster and he, he spoke, he spoke highly of you, which was nice.

Dear, dear old Christian.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so, um, but he and I have been friends now for a while and, and, and I respect his opinion.

And so I got a chance to talk to him.

And the fact that he spoke highly of you was encouraging to me.

But, you know, when it comes to like, people will ask me all the time, they'll say, well, pastor, what do you think about John Doe, this Bible teacher? And I'm like, I don't know.

I've never read anything by them.

I don't know who they are.

So I can't tell you whether or not their books are good.

I can't tell you, cause I can't read everything.

I can't study everything.

So there is a value to, uh, you guys.

And I don't know if you know, Steadfast Women, uh, which is a ministry.

I've, I've, I've, I had them on the show and they, they do, they do this on behalf of women and, and, and trying to help them discern, you know, good and bad and things like that.

And, and so, yeah, I think there's, there's value in it, but I, I think it's a, um, I think it's like anything.

It has its place and its value.

And like you said, as long as people put it in its right place.

Then it's good.

And it's just one of the things that, that any faithful Christian should be focused on.

Um, it's not, I mean, for, for all the time that you could be reading a discernment, you know, website or something like that, there's also time you could be spending, um, you know, studying, studying Christology, studying soteriology, um, you know, just doing helps work in the local churches.

Lots of things Christians can spend their time on.

And, and what we try to do is hopefully, because we have a specific focus here, take a little bit of that load off of, of the regular, and even like, like with, with pastors, I mean, like I said, pastors can't, they can't know about everything.

And so to, to provide a resource that's, that's, um, you know, and, and, and not just the resource, but also real people behind it that are, that want to be held accountable, that want to, you know, like, like me, I want to learn more.

I want to know more.

I want to, uh, you know, really solidify what I believe in what, you know, what the Bible teaches about all of these different things.

And, um, and, and I mean, there, there have been times, I mean, I like guys at my church have called me and, you know, talk to me for an hour about, dude, are you sure you should have said it that way? And that's a valuable conversation, you know, probably 20 years younger.

Me would have been like, Oh, you're talking about, you know, you're just being judgmental or something.

But like in the, me in my forties, I'm like, did he have a point? You might've had a point.

Maybe I shouldn't have said it that way.

You know, that's, that's, that's all we try to do.

And it's, it's, you know, we don't always get it right.

We're still human beings.

No, absolutely.

And I think those, having those voices in your life are important.

You know, I, what's funny is I'm at a point now where the voices of those people often comes in while I'm doing something like while I'm writing an article or while I'm, I'm fixing to video something, I, I, I I'll hear one of my elders or I'll hear my, I'll hear one of my good friends, you know, Richard or, or, or Matthew or Jake, one of the guys I have on the program.

A lot of times they're there, we call them the CWAC crew.

CWAC is conversation with the Calvinist.

So that's our, that's our little thing.

And my, my, my group of guys that I trust, I'll hear their voice in my head and I'll like, uh, maybe I shouldn't do that.

And so if there's something that I'm, that I'm, that I'm concerned about, like maybe I shouldn't say this way, I'll send it to the, like the private chat group that I have with, you know, some of the pulpit and pen guys and all of them.

Like, what do you guys think about this? I'm like, dude, no.

Or just rephrase it.

I like, I get your point.

I know what you're trying to say, but it would be more effective and less controversial and people wouldn't get distracted if you said it this way instead.

And so, I mean, we, we rely on each other for that.

Like, like any brothers would, but, but it is weird to do it like online over the internet.

I mean, you know, some of these guys, like guys I've never met in person.

Yeah.

And, and that's something people have to realize about, about something like Protestia is, you know, like we got guys, I mean, I'm in Colorado, but we got guys in Canada.

We got guys in the East coast.

We got guys all over the country doing this work together.

And the only reason that that's possible, I mean, aside from the gift of technology that we take, that we of course take full advantage of is because we have a common faith and we have a brotherhood that extends beyond any technological limitations in Christ.

And because we have that unity, it's, it's able to work, you know, somehow, which, which I, I still find amazing.

You know, it's, it's, it is very much a blessing.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so within, within that group, how many are actually active contributors to Protestia? How many, how many people do you have that, that actually write for you guys? Um, it's, we got a couple that are, that are heavily active myself, of course, being one of them.

Then we have, um, uh, kind of a stable of contributors as well, that, that, um, that will post things on there though.

They'll usually send that stuff through an editor to make sure that it's, it's kind of worded the way and we double check it.

Although we have a bad, we have a bad habit of publishing stuff with like misspellings drives me up a wall.

So I'm like chasing down, you know, spelling errors on, on articles that are already up there.

And it's very much a labor of love.

It's very much a city, you know, citizen or, or Pew level journalism for sure.

Um, and, and we, we like it to be that way because they're going to be those times when it's somebody that we really like and we really respect and still, we need to say something.

It's rare.

Fortunately, it's rare, but every once in a while I have to publish an article, you know, take an issue with, you know, something Doug Wilson said or whatever, who, whatever it is, somebody who I, who I respect and I, and I'm, you know, I think I'm blessed by and I consider a brother in Christ, but there's an issue.

And so we got to take issue with it and not being connected to, um, you know, like a larger para-church ministry or even a church specifically, it, it helps in that we don't, we don't get tribal with it.

We don't say we're going to, we're going to publish this or not publish that based off of the tribe that we want to see advancing here.

You're like with the, with the debate on Christian nationalism.

That's a big deal.

I got buddies of mine and people I respect and I'm blessed by, and I, and I really, um, like what they do on both sides of the debate, you know, I mean, I got guys who are very much anti-Christian nationalism and guys that are very much pro-Christian nationalism and I'm sitting in the middle, like, but both of you guys do great work.

Can we not figure this out? Like, and we're still very much in the middle of that, you know? Oh, sure.

We're still very much praying for that common ground because I think it exists.

I just don't know if, if we can set aside the tribalism long enough to find it.

Hey, it's funny that you mentioned that.

And I may get, I may get a little pushback for saying this, but I'm, well, I'm friends with, I'm friends with Joel Webben and I'm friends with Nathaniel Jolly, and I don't know if you know, those guys, they had a, they had a thing and I think they still have a thing.

I think both of them are brothers in the Lord.

I think they disagree.

And I, I, you know, I I've had them both on my show and I, you know, I, I, I hate that they, you know, that they have this, this sort of seems to be an impassable disagreement, sort of like the whole thing right now with the, the, the guys at G3 seem to be having an issue with the, this, the, the, the Christian nationalist guys.

So it's just like, it's like you said, there's tribes everywhere.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, and anyway, we've been in positions where I like sort of looked at both sides and I said, okay, yes, there's common ground, but, but I'll tell you as the, as the resident evangelical troublemaker, you're both wrong.

And here's where you're both wrong.

Yeah.

Here's where you're wrong.

Here's where you're wrong.

Of course, then, then we get the food thrown at us, but kind of where, you know, we, that's, that's sort of the, the, the, the area that we're most comfortable in, you know, can you all throw some food at us? Cause that's, you know, we're okay with that.

Well, this might be a weird question, but it's just, it's one of those ones that just popped into my head.

And, and as I'm thinking, um, what would you say was your most difficult to publish article because of the person that you were publishing about, you mentioned Doug Wilson earlier, but I don't know, is it, has there been one that you were, you specifically personally, that you feel like, man, I have to do it because it's true, but I hate hitting send, you know, whatever publish it's, it's really, it's, it's kind of two articles, but about the same situation.

So, um, about the time that I was like coming across, you know, online discernment ministries and things, we were at a church that was doing a 40 days of purpose, like purpose-driven life.

And they were really big into the Saddleback and Rick Warren and all that.

And, and, and like, we didn't, I didn't see the error in that until I started reading, um, you know, a prizing, you know, Ken Silva's website and started seeing, um, some of these guys really take it apart theologically and demonstrate like, Hey, did you notice that Rick Warren didn't actually preach the gospel in this book? That's not the gospel.

Oh, no, I didn't notice.

But now that it's one of those things that once you see it, you can't unsee it.

And, and, um, so, so I wrote an article a couple of years ago that was basically chronicled, um, my family's exit from that world, from that, because, I mean, we went to a church that was one of the first churches to do the program.

And like, they flew out the ministry staff out to, uh, out to, out to Lake Forest to study with Rick Warren directly and all this.

And so we were big into it and sort of getting out of that was pretty painful.

And it was painful because, I mean, obviously you lose a lot of friends and you lose a lot of people and you lose your church, you know, basically, but also because it's just, it's embarrassing.

It's embarrassing to know you, you didn't see it and that you were that wrong.

Um, and, and granted, I mean, this was a long time ago.

Now this was, this was 20 years ago at this point.

But, but just, just to know that it was right in front of me and I didn't see it.

And by God's grace, uh, he, you know, put these really, really these discernment ministries into my life to help me see that I was, I was being false there.

Um, that article was really difficult to write.

The first draft that I had named names.

It was this person at the church and this person at the church.

And, and I kind of got to the end of it.

And I said that, that, you know, am I, am I publishing this so I can get back at them so I can like a, like an emotional catharsis or am I publishing this because I want other people to, you know, to, to understand that they're not alone in, in sort of escaping this market driven, you know, seeker sensitive world.

And the latter was really the purpose.

So I did change the names in the article to not point them out specifically.

Um, but that was really, that was really difficult because then you publish it.

And at the end, you're like, I said the truth here.

It's called, by the way, if anybody wants to see it, it's on protest.

He has called purpose driven wreckage.

That's the title of the article.

So if you look that up, you'll, you'll see, you know, me kind of walk through it.

But of course, you know, being the kind of ministry we are, I got to the end of it.

And I was like, man, I should have named names.

So now I'm kicking myself like saying, we, you know, why didn't we name names and just sort of wrestling with, you know, did, did we, did I pull my punches too much on this? And, and, but at that point you, you, you, you give it over to the Lord and he'll use it as he sees fit.

And, and, and I, and he did, we got very good feedback from that.

And a lot of people saying, this is what, this was my story too.

I didn't see it either.

I didn't see that we were in this sort of market driven, easy believe ism.

Um, you know, mold, what we're doing as a church to please, uh, the lost world kind of, kind of environment.

I didn't, I didn't realize it either, but your article really spoke to me in that way.

It, it, it, it was a familiar story.

Amen.

Amen.

Is there, um, is there an article that, and I'm just, at this point, I'm, I'm really just interested in, in your publishing and your, your protesting and what you guys do is there is, is there an ever been an article that you've had to retract that you said you found out the information was maybe you, you put something out and you said, you know what, that's, yeah, you gotta, you got better information.

And, and, and, and, and this is a, the reason why I'm asking is more of the question of, of you as a, as a God seeking to be a godly man, if you put something out there and you found out that you were wrong, you'd be willing to do something.

Yeah, definitely.

It took an L very like, like not that long ago, like, like, like you came across information.

It was in, in, it was related to, and like, I don't necessarily like rehash all the specifics, but, but basically it was related to, um, I did a lot of reporting and a lot of analysis and things on the issues with a grace community church last year and the Eileen gray thing.

I mean, a lot of, a lot of discernment ministries, a lot of online ministries have discussed this.

Like I discussed it.

I know John Harris at conversations that matter.

He discussed it and he used a lot of our information and, and you know, real, real solid.

I mean, nobody's poked a hole in anything, any of the work we did, um, last year, but then the followup when Christianity today decided they were going to put, they were, they were going to publish an article about it this year.

And I did a followup sort of exposing what was wrong with that article came across additional information, came to wrong conclusions about that information, published a followup article with my wrong conclusions.

And about 10 minutes after I published, I'm like, wait, wait, hang on a second.

That's not what this says.

Like I misunderstood some of what I, and so, yeah.

Like I, you know, I, I pulled it down and we wrote a retraction.

I contacted the person that I, that I had, uh, said false things about just to apologize and ask his forgiveness.

And yeah, that was, that was, that was a difficult moment.

It was a, that was a difficult week or so, you know, cause it's just like, you don't want to do that.

You want to be solid.

You want to be truthful.

And if you get it wrong, I mean, just, you know, that, that giant slice of humble pie is not easy to swallow.

Sure.

But, but it says something about you and about what you're trying to accomplish.

And that's what I was trying to point out is I think that that is helpful because you're, you're asking people to come and look at the website and, and, and, and, and, and take the fact that you, you're, you're, you're putting research and you're trying to find out the information and you're trying to do this.

And if you get it wrong, you're going to be willing to say, I got it wrong.

I think that says, again, just speaks to the We have a retractions page up on the website.

Um, and, and for the specific scenario I was talking about, there was further, you know, um, stuff that we were going to say about it, but like not to put too fine a point on it, but there were, uh, there were lawyers involved.

And so as soon as that happens, it's like, okay, we got to be real careful about this just to protect what we're doing.

But yeah, I mean, we pulled the article down and I said, yeah, totally blew that, totally got that wrong.

You know, it's, it's, and, and, and not the whole article, but, but enough of the article was like wrong.

And, and, and I had, I had come to the wrong conclusions.

I'm like, no, I can't in good conscience do this.

And like I said, I mean, I reached out to the individual and said, dude, I'm sorry.

I said stuff about you that wasn't right.

And I apologize.

And, you know, ask for forgiveness.

That's, that's all we can do at that point.

Um, and that's consistent with, I mean, we have, uh, it's not, not just that retractions page, but we have, um, on our, on the about page on the website.

Um, not only an explanation of what the ministry is about, but also, uh, what I called an open letter to believers who have concerns about online polemics and discernment, where I walk through, Hey, this is, this is the scriptural case.

For why we're doing this, how we're doing it.

Uh, it answers a lot of the questions that we get all the time, you know? And, and sometimes people just come across it.

They haven't seen that.

And they ask the same questions.

Like, you know, this, this is my favorite one.

Yeah, honestly, my favorite one is you guys always think that you're right.

It's not a question, but they'll say, you guys always think you're right.

And to which I'm like, doesn't everybody always think they're right? Cause if you think you're wrong, you're just going to change your view.

I mean, it's just, it's just sort of a silly, like illogic that I always find funny, but it goes through, the article goes through this open letter, goes through like an FAQ of trying to answer all the questions that aren't, and not just for protest you, but any online polemics or discernment kind of ministry, uh, the kind of questions they get asked and, and, and answer them from a biblical perspective.

It's funny the way that you responded to that, because I have, I have heard the same accusation.

Uh, actually from people, you know, over the years at the church, obviously I've, I've preached in the same church for 16 years and I've, I've come across different types of folks.

Some people love our ministry.

Some people do not.

But the, one of the things I hear people say, you think you're always right.

And I say, well, if I thought I was wrong, I'd change.

And that's kind of gets back to what we were talking about earlier, where it's like, it's, it's a big danger in the evangelical church, not only the danger of having wrong doctrine or something that's been, that is really a wrong teaching, but also just the, the, the challenge of thinking clearly and applying the brains God has given us to come to a solid truth, unfalsifiable conclusions, you know, things that we can actually adjudicate.

That's, that's, that's so missing on social media and instead it's emotionality rules the day.

And, and if I can, you know, I could point out as many logical facts about something as I want to.

And somebody who opposed it could come along with a, with a sob story and get more support because people just, they, they want to respond emotionally.

That's a big problem.

We're, we're not taught to, you know, we, we were supposed to do things in worship of God, which is all of our ministry and spirit and truth.

So a true desire for the Lord by the truth of the word, you know, always, always subjugated to the truth of God's word.

And that's difficult in, in postmodern and in a postmodern society.

Sure.

Sure.

Well, David, I've really enjoyed our conversation and, and I, I'm sure that there's a lot of things that, that, that we could probably continue to talk about, but I do want to respect your time.

I'm going to, I'm going to ask one final question as we begin to draw this to a close, and then I'm going to ask you to share with everyone a little bit about how they can get, find your website, things like that.

I want you to promote yourself a little at the end of the show here, but you mentioned earlier, you're Calvinist, you're dispensational Calvinist, so we'll give you, we'll give you a half reformed card.

Now, but trust me, Jay, Jay isn't like that very much either.

Well, do you think that there is in the reformed world and particularly, you know, however you want to define Calvinistic, you know, reformed, do you think there's a tendency towards negativity, specifically among us in general, and that we are unwilling to give people the benefit of the doubt who we disagree with? That's the, that's the thing that I hear the most.

People will say, well, you're Calvinist and you Calvinist think you're one, you think you're always right, number one.

You think you're the only people who know the truth and you never give people the benefit of the doubt.

So when we, when we think of that term, giving people the benefit of the doubt, what does that look like from a discernment ministry? When you're, when you're looking at something, you know, the Barbie situation or whatever, it doesn't have to be that ridiculous.

When do you say, you know what, I'm going to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, or when do you say, you know what, it's time to, it's time to hit publish on this guy.

Where, where's that line? Well, it's there's, I think there's a difference between publishing something that is verifiably true.

Cause like people think that we dig up dirt or, or that it's just some sort of attack blog, but believe it or not, almost, almost everything that's published at Protestia is available out there if you want to go find it for yourself.

We're, we're basically more like we're curating, we're bringing the information to a central location.

We're not, you know, like finding things that other people can't find or that, you know, it's mostly republishing stuff that's already public.

And so, so for us, you know, like if we put up an article about, you know, so and so preached this, and then here's a clip of it, it's like, you can go, you know, adjudicate that yourself.

And we're not necessarily making a claim about that person overall.

We usually wait to see, you know, is there a repeated pattern here? Is there an associational pattern? Are they coming out of a movement whose doctrine and practices we can rightly identify? Are they coming out of what we know to be a false movement? And, and at that point, I mean, we, we feel safe to say, yeah, that's, that's dangerous or that's, but yeah, for, I mean, people always accuse Calvinists of saying, well, you guys would think you're the, you're, you're the, you're the king of the doctrinal hill and nobody is as biblical as you are and you never, you never give any space for anybody else to, to practice what they practice.

And there might be some truth to that, but I, but the truth of God's word is exclusive.

So it's like, there's, there's one true, true way to God.

And there's, there's almost limitless false ways to God.

So exclusivity in and of itself, isn't a bad thing.

It's actually what, what the truth is.

The truth is exclusive.

But yeah, we, it's, we have to, we have to, for Protestia, we have to try to, to spend the time wisely.

Like for every one movement or pastor or something that's being identified and, and, and exposed and, and discussed on the website, there's hundreds out there that probably are teaching the same thing or something similar that we don't have time for, or we can't get to, or we just don't see.

It's out there.

So the, the idea is a, to, to identify the, maybe the big players and the big influential movements that are, that are unorthodox and practicing things in, in that are contrary to God's word with the idea that readers can also understand why it's wrong, why it's doctrinally wrong, where the error is so that if they see it in their own neck of the woods, they're like, Oh, I saw, you know, Oh, Andy Stanley already made that error that he, this guy's preaching what Andy Stanley preached.

This is why it's wrong biblically.

That's, that's the goal.

I don't know if that's answers the question or not, but in, in, in, in relationship to reform being, being reformed, like, you know, yeah, I, I wouldn't even shy away from saying that we're kind of that way, you know, but I think it's appropriate to be that way.

There's a lot of danger out there.

A big portion of the new Testament is warning about those kinds of dangers.

Sure.

Now, I didn't tell you, I was going to ask you to do this, but you mentioned the one way, and as an opportunity that we have, because we don't know who's going to watch this, we don't know whether it's believers or unbelievers.

If you could take 30 seconds to a minute and pretend that you are, you're in an elevator with someone, you have just a minute to share about that one way and tell people about Christ, your savior and how to be saved, and then we're going to begin to, to draw this thing to a close.

Yeah.

I'm glad you asked.

We actually, at the beginning of Protestia tonight, we share the gospel at the top of every Protestia tonight, because like you said, I mean, you don't know how people come across it, but, but we, we, I tend to share it in this way, I tend to say, um, the gospel means good news, the word means good news, but that good news starts with bad news.

It's good news because the alternative is bad news.

That bad news is that you and I, and, and every person born, um, on this earth, except for Christ was born into sin, born wicked, born with a rebellious nature and, um, and, and incapable of, uh, of saving ourselves were born into sin and yet God loved us enough.

He sent Christ, his only son born of a virgin, living a perfect life so that he could die a death in our place.

And what that means, you know, again, you, like you mentioned the elevator here or the random person, what that means, like, and I, and I actually shared it this way with a, with a, a coworker of mine a little while ago.

I said, look at your hearts, look very closely at your heart.

Um, you know, if you're honest with yourself that you do not meet God's perfect, holy, righteous standard, neither do I, none of us do.

And that renders us incapable of being reconciled to God and deserving of eternal punishment and separation in hell.

That's what's coming for us, except that God loved us enough that he sent Jesus to die in our place.

If you place your faith, hope, and trust in Jesus Christ, repent of your sins, turn from your wicked ways and trust him for salvation.

Um, salvation is a free gift.

Jesus, Jesus earned that gift for you by dying on the cross in your place.

He, um, earning righteousness by his perfect life.

Um, and then on the third day raised from the dead, conquering death.

The Bible says he became the first, he was the first born of many brethren.

Jesus raised from the dead.

So now you and I are raised from the dead, born a new creation in Christ.

Um, and that that's, you know, you place your faith, hope, and trust in Jesus.

Salvation can be yours.

No, that's, that's, that's what we present on Protestia tonight.

And, and we always say this.

If anybody ever wants to talk about Christ or the gospel or how they can come to be saved and know the real Jesus versus the litany of false ones that are out there, we'll drop everything.

We'll stop arguing.

We'll stop arguing about Calvinism versus Arminianism any day to talk about Christ.

That's why, that's why we all do what we do.

Amen.

Well, tell us how, if we want to see Protestia tonight, and if we want to get to the website, what's the easiest ways? And if somebody wanted to contact you, I don't know if you, how you put your contact information out there.

Just promote yourself for a minute before we, before we close out the program.

Well, so we're easy.

I mean, it's just, it's protestia.com, and we have links on the website to contact.

We have links for our live stream and podcasts.

We have a whole bunch of podcasts and partner ministries and things that we, that we work with.

I'm pretty easy.

You can, you can find me.

It's actually most, I hate to say it this way, because I mean, this is such a reformed Christian thing.

I'm on Twitter a lot.

So that's like where we all are apparently, but I'm, I'm at CO conservative seven at Twitter.

So people can find me there.

Or of course at Protestia is our official Twitter account that posts all the videos and all that kind of stuff.

And that's run by our staff writer, not me.

But obviously we, we, we cross streams a lot as far as that goes with it.

That's the easiest way to get ahold of us.

We have a YouTube, you know, Protestia YouTube channel, a Protestia Tonight YouTube channel, which is specifically for the, the weekly Protestia Tonight show.

And then, yeah, we're on Twitter and Facebook and all the, all the usual places and yeah, easy to get ahold of.

We also have, this is worth mentioning for those of us.

I don't know, Keith, if you're in this category, but I'm a big, like politico, like I follow politics a lot.

It's just the argument, argumentative guy in me, but we have an insurgency news blast that people can sign up for for free and three days a week.

They'll get emails with curated news links, kind of like a, like a Christian version of the drudge report just dropped in their email three days a week.

Oh, and it's free.

Yeah.

If, if they sign up with us on Patreon, then they get it for, then send me a message and get it six days, all six days without paying any extra.

So that's a, that's a good little deal, but that helps support the ministry here.

And hopefully we also give something that's, you know, a time saver versus having to go read all the, all of the information yourself.

Absolutely.

Well, David, again, I want to thank you so much for giving our, uh, giving time to our audience tonight, letting us know more about Protestia, more about you.

I feel so much better just getting to know you, knowing the face behind the ministry and also the heart behind the ministry that you guys are seeking to glorify Christ in, uh, in, and not just being, not just being people who are out there, uh, picking on people, but actually trying to point people to the truth and point people to the word of God.

So thank you, David, for what you're doing and for being a part of the program tonight.

Thanks, Keith.

Appreciate it.

Absolutely.

And I want to thank you audience for being a part of Conversations with a Calvinist again this week.

And I want to remind you that you can find all of our videos at calvinispodcast.com.

You can follow me on Twitter at YourCalvinist, and if you have a question that you'd like for me to address in a future episode, you can send me an email at calvinispodcast at gmail.com.

Thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.

May God bless you.