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 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 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 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.

That's what we all have to do now.

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

Absolutely, I just wanna say my son is in the air force and he's currently serving in Spangdellum, Germany

and I'm thankful for your service, thankful for his service and I always like to point that out if I have someone.

Thank him for his service.

For me, for sure.

That's awesome.

Amen, amen.

Well, you mentioned Protestia and I talked about this in my introduction that Protestia

is a polemical news site and basically that means you guys start arguments.

I'm just kidding.

Right, totally, no we do.

But can you tell us a little bit more of the history of how you guys got started?

Because this is something that I think people know exists but I

think sometimes people wonder, well, what got this going?

What got this motivated?

What was the reason why a group of guys got together and started pointing out errors?

What got you going?

Well, it pretty much, I mean, it takes its inspiration from, because 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, not as news focused, 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 Apprising, kensilvasapprising

.org, Chris Rosebrough's Fighting for the Faith, Pirate Christian Radio, even like Todd Friel and Wretched

Radio, some of these guys that introduced guys like me to polemics

and discernment ministry.

And I can say for me, it really, those kind 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.

That's kind of how I got started.

And I've always been sort of 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 sort of had volunteered to help, I had volunteered to help JD Hall

fix the audio quality and some of the issues on his podcast, the polemics report, I said, hey, I can

help you with this.

I can help make the sound look better.

And he's like, okay, you help make it sound look better and be the co -host, serve up the questions, be somebody to

knock the tennis ball back and forth with on the program.

And so that's how I really got involved.

And because I volunteered to do that, he let me write some articles and 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 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.

That's where we are now, but yeah, I'm kind of the visible face of it at this point.

And it's an honor and a privilege and I guess something that I like to do.

I like to argue.

Yeah, it's interesting because 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 my satirical, funny news program.

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

And it's certainly -.

Oh, we love it.

All I'm trying to do is, yeah, just trying to make people laugh.

But when I reached out and it was mentioned that you guys were connected at least

genetically connected to Pulpit and Pen because you guys were sort of birthed out of that.

I was interested in that because I don't know a lot about what happened and I'm not the kind of guy

who looks into those things.

It's sort of a not my circus, not my monkey's thing when it came to JD.

I read and saw things that happened or I'm sorry, I read and saw videos that he had made over the

years.

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 wanna get into all that.

But I'm thankful 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 one man steps away, you can step in and continue.

And you're continuing Pertestia as a discernment ministry.

And I wanna 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 okay.

But do you think that that is the right way to describe it?

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 other ministries that would be birthed out

of gifts of the spirit.

So as we know, the gift of the spirit to discern between spirits, to tell things

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 believe personally there's a supernatural, I mean, a spirit, a gift upon conversion, upon

regeneration, that is a gift of discernment, a gift of discerning

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 to train the powers of our discernment with constant practice and be skilled in the word of righteousness.

Because, I mean, as we know, Jesus said that, I mean, wide gate, narrow gate, wide is the gate that leads to

destruction.

And then 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 Christs out there, a lot of false

religious belief masquerading as Christianity.

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

And it's always funny because you'll find people that say, hey, 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 calling people false teachers?

And it's like, nobody ever says that about mercy ministry or helps ministry or any other specific

para -church ministry emphasis, except for discernment.

Discernment is like the black sheep of all of the different para -church ministries.

And what we've tried to do is basically say, and especially now that Protestia isn't officially a

ministry of a church specifically, we understand that that can potentially be an issue.

Like, where's your accountability?

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 it very clear, this is not a, this is a para -church 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 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 church.

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 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 the pulpit and it's a wonderful time of fellowship

and praise 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 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 wanna 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, is that the existence of discernment and polemics ministries are becoming more,

I don't wanna even say mainstream, because the truth is never gonna be mainstream.

And being biblically faithful to the point of being willing to divide if we have to, and

God knows we don't wanna 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'd 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 of 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 gonna say that it's something, I've kind of been in the middle of myself, as you might imagine,

because as a pew sitter, as I like to call myself, as a pew sitter who's still, you know,

very interested in theology and doctrine, and studies it regularly, and it's very important, you're bound to come across

things where you have an issue, you have a theological issue at your church, or something that

you're concerned about, and the way that you approach that, especially with your pastors, because 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 Protestia all the time, and they're ready to whack me over the head the first time that I don't

get something exactly right.

So, I mean, like I've told the pastors of my church, I said, if I have an issue, or a question,

or something 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, unless we're talking about heresy,

in which case, we're still gonna work it through Matthew 18 first, you know, that would be the very last thing,

and because they're worried about it, and rightfully so, they should be, it's not, like you said, it's a weapon,

it can be wielded, you know, wrongly, and so, 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,

but you gotta hold me accountable, and I gotta, you know, we gotta hold each other accountable here, and if you see that I'm getting prideful, or I'm

doing something that you have a concern with, you gotta 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 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 that's good, I think it's good.

They know exactly what we're doing,.

And they don't wanna do it, I mean, it's not, 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 wanna ever feel like, and we say this,

by the way, on our programs, we say that the information provided is not so that somebody can go be a lone

wolf Christian, 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 iron sharpening iron, turn the

program off, this isn't for you, you know?

We try, 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 listen to the Christianity Today,

you know, Mark Driscoll podcast, or something like that, you're in the wrong place.

Amen, that's very encouraging.

So, with all that being said, some of my favorite stuff that I've seen on Protesty, especially recently, you guys

posted the Barbie sermon series that the lady's doing, the past, I

meant.

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 make fun of Methodists, I wear my pink polo, so I was right up

my alley.

But that's, you know, it is interesting that that's, you know, that's how I

found you guys, again, seeing these things on Twitter, seeing these things on Protesty, that there was the Star Wars

church, there was, you know, the different crazy things.

And we know that those are problems, we know that that's indicative of a larger

health problem in the church.

The church, like so many, you know, so many nutrition -wise are addicted to fast

food and candy, well, the church is providing, rather than nourishing spiritual food, 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 wanna 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.

Yeah, there's a lot of potential places to fall into.

Yeah, but, and let me ask you one other, are you reformed yourself?

Yeah, I don't know, I mean, I guess I'm a, you know, I'm not purely 1689, but

I'm certainly a Calvinist in terms of my adherence to, and people, I mean, even people argue about that, right?

Like when you were talking with Doug Wilson, I listened to that, you know, did you call yourself a Harbor Freight

Doug Wilson?

Yeah, that's me, I'm the Great Value Harbor Freight knockoff.

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

So I mean, I'm probably closer to a John MacArthur where a premillennial

Calvinist, dispensational, but not like, I don't have charts on my walls

and I'm not trying to predict the second coming next week or something like that.

But in terms of there being a future for the ethnic Israel, 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.

That sounds good.

Well, the reason why I asked about reformed is I know that reformed Christians often are

charged with being more rigid, more negative, more

concerned with error, more, you know, more picky.

And so when I ask you, what are the greatest dangers?

You know, somebody might say, Arminianism, you know, is the greatest danger.

No, not particularly.

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

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

You know, they're Leighton Flower guys, you know.

It's not a tulip, they got a different flower.

And it's Leighton's.

Yeah, Leighton doesn't like us very much.

Oh, does he, does he not?

Well, he and I did some shows together, so we have a good working relationship, but obviously -.

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

You would say maybe it's more something deeper.

There's been such a postmodern infiltration into the evangelical church that

it's corrupted the thinking of Christians, you know, 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, everything is contextualized, and not contextualized by

necessarily, you know, like external cultural factors, but contextualized by my feelings about it.

So my feelings and my subjective view of something become not only the arbiter of

truth, but also the goal for Christian ministry.

And I mean, that's why we see crazy Mario sermons and Barbie sermons and Jurassic Park and

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 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 solemn duty.

Long ago, we've given that up, and now pastors are, they're CEOs, they're managers of large

organizations.

You know, half of the seminary degree is in leadership classes, rather than theology and doctrine.

And that's been a result of the postmodern, 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, the first thing I go to is, man, Christians can't think anymore.

Christians can't, 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 Barbie sermons, they're seeing the Jurassic Park, and

it's not just movie stuff, it's other stuff too, that's an obvious, you know, this

is something that's, man, I know that's not cool.

But what would you say are the things that are often overlooked?

And maybe 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 they're -.

Right, I mean, we generally would call those, that church a synagogue of Satan.

Yeah.

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 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 a church that's preaching Barbie, you need to leave.

Go find yourself a solid church, as an Orthodox Christian.

That should immediately set off about eight different red flags.

Yeah.

But you're right, there are churches in kind of a middling gray zone, where it's like, you're not very

clearly apostate, and you're not as, perhaps, as solid as you should

be, but you're sort of in the middle, and usually the sign that we see of that, and I mean, I hesitate

to broad brush, because, I mean, we really try to name names.

I think the Bible teaches us to mark teachers, not just teaching, or not groups of people, but actually

say, hey, this guy has taught this falsely at this church.

You know, we try to get specific.

People don't like that, but I think that's the right thing to do, in terms of the way Christians are supposed to approach one

another, but if I was to generalize, there are a fair number of churches who,

they sort of go along to get along, and they practice what I like to call normative

discernment.

You know, we know, like, in worship theology, we talk about normative worship versus

regulative worship, right?

If we're Reformed, 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 the

Lutheran idea of, if the Bible doesn't specifically forbid it, we're good to go, you know?

Do whatever you want, as long as the Bible doesn't have a specific verse that says, thou shalt not fly into the service

on a zip line, or whatever, right?

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 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 under new framework,

you know, new ideas, and to the normative discerner, they would say, hey, 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.

But the problem is that if you practice it that way, false teachers, they shift their

terminology.

They shift their framework.

They come up with new combinations of false teaching, hide them in Christianese, and they sort of look like they might be

legit, and 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 Christianese -sounding terms they sort of try to hide it in, you'll still know.

You'll still see that it isn't right.

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

That always helps, I think.

Yeah, and again, I think that's an important thing to say

is what's going on in the world is hard for one person to

know about.

It's so funny because we're so connected, compared to where we were 50 years ago, the world is an

absolutely different place, and we know things faster than we've ever known them, we hear things faster, but we still,

it's almost impossible to know everything about what's going on.

And I bring this up because even with our interaction tonight, 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

fellow podcaster, and he spoke highly of you, which was nice.

Dear old Christian.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

Love Jason.

Yeah, and so, but he and I have been friends now for a while, 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 when it comes to, 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, because I can't read everything.

I can't study everything.

So there is a value to you guys, and I don't know if you know Steadfast Women,

which is a ministry, I had them on the show, and they do this on behalf of women,

and trying to help them discern good and bad, and things like that.

And so, yeah, I think there's value in it, but 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.

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

I mean, for all the time that you could be reading a discernment website or something like that, there's also time you could

be studying Christology, studying soteriology, just

doing helps work in the local churches, lots of things Christians can spend their time on.

And what we try to do is hopefully, because we have a specific focus here, take a little bit of that

load off of the regular, and even like with pastors.

I mean, like I said, pastors can't, they can't know about everything.

And so to provide a resource that's, and not just a resource, but

also real people behind it that want to be held accountable, that want to, you

know, like me, I want to learn more.

I want to know more.

I want to really solidify what I believe and what the Bible teaches about

all these different things.

And I mean, there have been times, I mean, like guys at my church have called me and talked 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, you don't know what you're talking about.

You know, you're just being judgmental or something.

But like me in my 40s, I'm like, did he have a point?

You might have had a point.

Maybe I shouldn't have said it that way.

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

And 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, 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 fixing to video

something, I'll hear one of my elders or I'll hear my, I'll hear one of my good

friends, you know, Richard or Matthew or Jake, one of the guys I have on the program a lot of times,

they're, we call them the CWAC crew.

CWAC is Conversation With a Calvinist.

So that's our little thing.

And my group of guys that I trust, I'll hear their voice in my head.

And I'll like, ah, maybe I shouldn't do that.

And so.

If there's something that I'm concerned about, like maybe I shouldn't say it this way, I'll send it to the, like the private chat group that I have with, you know, some of

the pulp and pen guys and all that.

I'm like, what do you guys think about this?

I'm like, dude, no.

Or just rephrase it.

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 rely on each other for that, like any brothers would, 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 that's something people have to realize 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.

You know, we have a brotherhood that extends beyond any technological limitations in Christ.

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

still find amazing.

You know, it is very much a blessing.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so within that group, how many are actually active contributors to

Protestia?

How many people do you have that actually write for you guys?

It's, we got a couple that are heavily active, myself, of course, being one of them.

Then we have kind of a stable of contributors as well that will post

things on there.

They'll usually send that stuff through an editor to make sure that 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, which drives me up a wall.

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

And it's very much a labor of love.

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

And we like it to be that way because there are gonna 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,

whatever it is, somebody who I respect 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 gotta take issue with it and not being connected to, you know, like a

larger parachurch ministry or even a church specifically, it helps in that

we don't get tribal with it.

We're gonna publish this or not publish that based off of the tribe that we wanna see advancing here.

You know, like 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 really

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?

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 we can set aside the tribalism long enough to find it.

Hey, it's funny that you mentioned that.

And I may get a little pushback for saying this, but 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 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've had them both on my show and I hate that they

have this sort of, seems to be an impassable disagreement, sort of like the whole thing right now

with the guys at G3 seem to be having an issue with the Christian nationalist

guys.

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

Right.

Yeah.

Well, 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 I'll tell you as the resident evangelical troublemaker, you're both wrong.

And here's where you're both wrong.

Here's where you're wrong.

Here's where you're wrong.

Of course, then we get the food thrown at us, but kind of where, you know, that's sort of

the area that we're most comfortable in.

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 as I'm thinking, 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 specifically personally that you feel like, man, I

have to do it because it's true, but I hate hitting send, you know, hitting publish.

It's really, it's kind of two articles, but about the same situation.

So about the time that I was like coming across, you know, online discernment ministries and things,

we were at a church that was doing 40 days of purpose, like purpose -driven life.

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

And like, we didn't, I didn't see the error in that until I started reading,

you know, apprising, you know, Ken Silva's website and started seeing 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 so I wrote an article a couple of years ago that was basically chronicled

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 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 didn't see it and that you were that wrong.

And granted, I mean, this was a long time ago now.

This was 20 years ago at this point.

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

And by God's grace, he, you know, put really these discernment ministries into

my life to help me see that I was being false there.

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 I kind of got to the end of it and I said that, you know, am I publishing this so I can get back

at them?

So I can, like an emotional catharsis?

Or am I publishing this because I want other people to, you know, to understand that they're

not alone 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.

But 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 Protesty, it's called Purpose -Driven Wreckage.

That's the title of the article.

So if you look that up, you'll see 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, you know, why didn't we name names?

And just sort of wrestling with, you know, did I pull my punches too much on this?

But at that point, you give it over to the Lord and he'll use it as he sees fit.

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

And a lot of people saying, well, 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 -believism, you

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

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

It was a familiar story.

Amen, amen.

Is there an article that, and I'm just, at this point, I'm really just

interested in your publishing and your protesting and what you guys do.

Is there ever been an article that you've had to retract that you said you found out the information was maybe

you put something out and you said, you know what, that's, you got better information.

And this is a, the reason why I'm asking is more of the question of you 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 about it.

Yeah, definitely.

Took an L very, like, not that long ago.

Oh, okay.

Like, you came across information.

It was in, it was related to, and like, I don't want to necessarily like rehash all the specifics,

but basically it was related to, I did a lot of reporting and a lot

of analysis and things on the issues with Grace Community Church last year and

the Eileen Gray thing.

I mean, 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

real solid, I mean, nobody's poked a hole in any of the work we did last year, but then

the follow -up, when Christianity Today decided they were gonna publish an article about it this year, and I did a

follow -up sort of exposing what was wrong with that article, came across additional information, came to wrong

conclusions about that information, published a follow -up article with my wrong conclusions, and

about 10 minutes after I published it, 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 pulled it down and we wrote a retraction.

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

forgiveness, and yeah, that was a difficult moment.

That was a difficult week or so, because 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 that giant

slice of humble pie is not easy to swallow.

Sure, 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 asking people to come

and look at the website and take the fact that

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 gonna be willing

to say, I got it wrong.

I think that says, again, speaks to the integrity.

We have a retractions page up on the website, and for the specific scenario I was talking

about, there was further stuff that we were gonna say about it, not to put too fine a point

on it, but there were lawyers involved, and so as soon as that happens, it's like, okay, we gotta 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,

and not the whole article, but enough of the article was wrong,

and 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 ask for forgiveness.

That's all we can do at that point, and that's consistent with, I mean, we have, it's not

just that retractions page, but we have on the About page on the website not only an

explanation of what the ministry is about, but also what I called an open letter to believers who have

concerns about online polemics and discernment where I walk through, hey, this is the scriptural case

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

It answers a lot of the questions that we get all the time, you know, and sometimes people just come across it, they haven't seen

that, and they ask the same questions, like, you know, this is my favorite one.

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?

Because if you think you're wrong, you're just gonna change your view.

I mean, it's just sort of a silly, 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

Protestia, but any online polemics or discernment kind of ministry, the kind of questions they get asked and

answer them from a biblical perspective.

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

from people, you know, over the years at the church, obviously.

I've preached in the same church for 16 years and I've come across different types of folks, some people love our ministry, some

people do not, but 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.

Right, right.

And that kind of gets back to what we were talking about earlier where it's like, 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 challenge of thinking clearly and applying the brains God has

given us to come to solid truth, unfalsifiable conclusions, you know, things that we

can actually adjudicate.

That's so missing on social media.

And instead, it's emotionality rules the day.

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

and somebody who opposes it could come along with a sob story and get more support because people,

they want to respond emotionally.

That's a big problem.

We're not taught to, you know, we're 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 a postmodern society.

Sure, sure.

Well, David, I've really enjoyed our conversation, and I'm sure that there's a lot of things that we

could probably continue to talk about, but I do want to respect your time.

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 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 a Calvinist, you're a dispensational Calvinist, so we'll give you a half

-reformed card.

No, no, no.

Trust me, 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 thing that I hear the most.

People will say, well, you're a Calvinist, and you Calvinists 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 think of that term, giving people the benefit of the doubt, what does that look like from a

discernment ministry?

When you're looking at something, you know, the Barbie situation or whatever, 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 hit publish on this guy?

Where's that line?

Well, I think there's a difference between publishing something that is verifiably true, because people think that we

dig up dirt, or that it's just some sort of attack blog, but believe it or not, almost

everything that's published at Protestia is available out there, if you want to go find it for yourself.

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 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 at that point, I mean, we feel safe to say, yeah, that's dangerous, or that's, but yeah, for, I mean,

people always accuse Calvinists of saying, well, you guys think you're the king of the doctrinal hill, and

nobody is as biblical as you are, and you never give any space for anybody else to

practice what they practice.

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

So it's like, there's one true way to God, and there's almost limitless false ways

to God, so exclusivity in and of itself isn't a bad thing, it's actually what the truth is, the truth is exclusive.

But yeah, we have to, for protestia, we have to try

to spend the time wisely, like for every one movement or pass or something that's being

identified and exposed 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 idea is A, to identify maybe the big players and the big influential movements that are

unorthodox and practicing things 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, oh, Andy Stanley already made that error, this guy is

preaching what Andy Stanley preached, and this is why it's wrong biblically, that's the goal.

I don't know if that answers the question or not, but in relationship to being reformed,

yeah, I wouldn't even shy away from saying that we're kind of that way, 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 gonna 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 gonna 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'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 gonna begin to

draw this thing to a close.

Yeah, I'm glad you asked.

We actually, at the beginning of Protestant Eve tonight, we share the gospel at the top of every protest here tonight because, like you said, I mean, you

don't know how people come across it, but I tend to share it in this way, I tend to say

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, and that bad news is that you and I, and every person born

on this earth except for Christ was born into sin, born wicked, born with a rebellious nature,

and incapable of saving ourselves, we're 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, again, like you mentioned the elevator here, or the random person, what that means,

and I actually shared it this way with a coworker of mine a little while ago, I said, look at your

hearts, look very closely at your heart, 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,

salvation is a free gift.

Jesus earned that gift for you by dying on the cross in your place, earning righteousness by his perfect life,

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

The Bible says he was the firstborn of many brethren.

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

and that's, you place your faith, hope, and trust in Jesus, salvation can be yours.

Now that's what we present on Protestantia tonight, 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 about Calvinism versus Arminianism any day to talk about Christ.

That's why we all do what we do.

Amen.

Well, tell us how, if we want to see Protestantia tonight, and if we wanna get to the website, what's the

easiest ways?

And if somebody wanted to contact you, I don't know how you put your contact information out there, just promote yourself for a

minute.

Before we close out the program.

Well, so we're easy.

I mean, it's just, it's protestantia .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 work with.

I'm pretty easy.

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 it's like where we all are, apparently.

But I'm at coconservative7 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 cross streams a lot as far as that goes, but 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

weekly Protestia Tonight show.

And then, yeah, we're on Twitter and Facebook and 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 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 Christian version of the Drudge Report, just dropped in their email three days a week.

And it's free.

Yeah, if they sign up with us on Patreon, then they get it for, then send me a message, they can get it six days, all six days without

paying any extra, so 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 of the information yourself.

Absolutely.

Well, David, again, I wanna thank you so much for 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

not just being people who are out there 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 wanna thank you, audience, for being a part of Conversations with a Calvinist again this week, and I wanna remind you that you can find all of

our videos at calvinispodcast .com.

You can follow me on Twitter, at your Calvinist, 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.