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All right.
Welcome back to the channel.
I hope you had a good weekend, a good Lord's Day, a good everything.
I had a great weekend.
One of my sons had a birthday this weekend.
They're growing up so fast.
It's just a wonderful thing to see.
I had a good Lord's Day yesterday.
I had a chance to teach on the life of Samson, or at least a part of the life of Samson, which is awesome.
I love going back to stories that you remember from Sunday school when you were a kid and looking at them in a little bit
more depth.
There's always so much there that you don't remember.
There's some good stuff in the Bible.
I don't know.
I don't know about you, but I think there's some good stuff in there in any case.
Oh, yeah.
I also had a chance to play one of my favorite Star Wars tabletop games with my sons.
Really fun.
The Empire won yet again.
The Empire is just powerful.
I got to say, the more I think about the Empire versus the Rebellion, the more I sympathize with the Empire.
I mean, obviously, the Empire is not totally good.
We get that.
But I don't know, man.
Those rebels seem like a bunch of commies to me.
But in any case, especially the Jedi.
There's a lot of suspect things about the Jedi, in my opinion.
In any case, let's jump into it today.
Somebody reached out on my website and asked me about my take on RightNow
Media.
I didn't know a whole lot about it.
I'd heard the name before, but I didn't really know what it was.
Apparently, RightNow Media is sort of like a service that churches use to kind of
instead of like, you know, they figure out a curriculum to use for Sunday school or like their small groups or something like
that.
RightNow Media provides like a subscription service where you have like, you know, cloud access
and 24 -7 access to all these resources.
They're like kind of like small group resources, you know, Sunday school type resources, things like that.
It's videos and, you know, things of that nature.
And he wanted to get my take on it because to him, it looked like a who's who of woke church
personalities.
And so I did look into it a little bit.
Let me give you my take.
We're going to watch some of this.
I'm going to give you my take on it right as we watch it.
And it's not positive.
It's not a positive take, but it's not necessarily, you know, well, let's just let's just watch it.
So this is this is sort of like the introductory video that you get sent when your church is either bought this
or thinking about buying it.
All right, here we go.
The production value is high.
Very serious.
Welcome to our study.
Of the Gospel of John.
I have fallen in love with the work of Paul as I've studied the book of First.
Corinthians, and I believe you will too.
I'll bet this is where Jesus taught in Capernaum.
And you have to understand this scene.
The Lord is my shepherd.
And over the next six weeks,.
We're going to look deeply into the 23rd Psalm.
Right now, media.
It's for groups.
It's for personal devotion.
It's for parents.
The bullseye of parenting is to raise children who become like Jesus.
It's for kids.
Most of these are so big.
We're digging into the Bible, which, as we've mentioned, is more than just a book.
It's for tough times.
So when you recognize that you're trying to have a conversation with your spouse and they're not ready to
talk, it's not helpful to keep pressing.
It's for every phase of life.
If you've made mistakes with money,.
You know what that makes you?
Over 12.
That was a good one, Dave Ramsey.
And now, it's yours.
I like Dave Ramsey.
He's not perfect, but I like him.
We've purchased a right now media subscription for everyone in our church.
So check your inbox for the digital invitation and download the app for instant access to thousands of biblically.
Based videos.
Oh, that was Eric Mason.
Get equipped.
Get inspired.
Gross.
So when I watched that video, I kind of knew where this was.
You know, here's the thing.
I'm willing to bet that, you know, let's just say
all the teaching in this is, let's just say that it was a
pizza.
Like it's one big pizza.
This is all the teaching in right now media.
On this half of the pizza, it's just like great ingredients.
You know, bacon, onions, mushrooms, like the normal stuff, the stuff that everybody loves, and you could
get it anywhere.
Every restaurant has it.
There you go.
And then that's half the pizza.
I would say a quarter of the pizza, it's like, you know, questionable ingredients.
Maybe like anchovies.
You know, not everybody likes anchovies, but it's like a common ingredient that most people that enjoy pizza
or a lot of people that enjoy pizza like, you know, I remember as a kid watching Ninja Turtles, and Michelangelo was
very insistent.
You do not put anchovies on this pizza.
And I always thought that was so funny, because I'd never put anchovies on a pizza.
But then as an adult, I realized that people do put anchovies on pizza, a common ingredient.
And then in the top corner, you got things that people would never put on pizza, bugs and
just any nasty thing you can imagine is on that corner.
Quarter.
That's what I feel like is probably the case with the content here.
Probably half of it is pretty good.
It's nothing controversial.
It's probably helpful and all of that.
And then a quarter of it is like, there's like some, maybe some like, things that are like, you know,
not for everybody.
You know, some people agree with it, some people don't, kind of controversial.
And then there's a quarter that's just putrid poison, right?
A quarter that's putrid poison.
So you're really not getting much of anything here, except for really two things.
You're getting poison mixed with, you know, good teaching from teachers that are
very questionable, in my opinion.
If you saw that, it really is a who's who of the woke church, you know, kind of liberal,
normalizing church.
Like, like a guy like Matt Chandler, right?
I don't, I don't think Matt Chandler is like an uber liberal necessarily, but he's definitely there
normalizing liberal Christianity.
And I mean, politically liberal, but also to a certain degree, some theological liberalism as well.
He's there normalizing that kind of stuff.
Guys like Phil Vischer, like that, like these are alarm bells.
This, this kind of thing, if I got this, if my church sent me this video and said, look, we're going to be using this material.
Number one, I would never watch any of this stuff.
There's just no way.
It's not worth it to me.
The stuff that's good, the half of the pizza that's good with the onions, pepper, uh, uh, bacon and, and, and, and
mushrooms.
I can get that anywhere.
Like, I mean, like I can get that kind of pizza anywhere.
So I'm not even, it's not gonna, it's not worth my time to watch this nonsense and try to have to pick apart all the, all
the nonsense out of the good stuff, right?
This is the thing people will be like, well, why don't you just eat, swallow the meat and spit out the bones?
And it's like, yeah, but it's so bony that it's not even worth it.
It's not worth the time.
Why don't I just get some meat?
Why don't I just get some good meat that has a little bit of bones for flavor?
Why do I got to get bones with a little bit of meat for nourishment?
Like that's it.
Like, you know what I mean?
This is so bony.
Why do it?
So that's kind of what I, I would never watch any of this stuff that it's just, I don't like this kind of production value.
Some people do.
And I'm not saying that that's objectively wrong where it's like, kind of like overly serious.
And like, you got that weird, like cringy B roll where somebody's walking slowly on the ruins and
stuff like that.
You know, it's all intended to make it seem very serious.
And I think that's corny to be perfectly honest, but not everybody thinks that's corny.
So that's just a personal, personal taste kind of thing.
But it's a who's who.
I mean, you got Eric Mason on the subway train, you know, with his little leprechaun hat and all that kind of stuff.
And the thing is, like I said, half of this is going to probably going to be good teaching.
It's going to be good teaching.
But then like the other half of the pizza, it's split between poison and then like very questionable
teaching.
It's like, why go through the effort?
Like, is Eric Mason bringing you this like amazing take that it's so good that it's worth
wading through the garbage to get to it?
Like, is it really that good?
Is Matt Chandler's teaching in certain areas like so awesome and so amazing that it's worth
getting past his affirmative action schemes that he recommends?
Like, is that really worth it to you?
It's not worth it to me because whatever Matt Chandler's bringing the table that's good, somebody else is bringing it a lot better.
It's just that simple.
And so that's my take on this.
Like, I would never ever watch this.
Now, you know, I looked into this a little bit more and, you know, there's some stuff here about, there's just a
lot of materials here.
Look, a streaming library of 20 ,000 Bible study videos for leaders to share with their people.
Now, here's the thing too, like your pastor might be picking out the good
stuff here, right?
Again, your pastor, like, he doesn't have to give you every lesson here and stuff like that.
Your leaders can pick and choose it.
I looked into the documents here and it seems like you don't have
to give your congregation access to every video.
I could be wrong about that because I haven't talked to anybody at RightNow Media, but that's what it looked like.
It looked like you could pick and choose certain things to give them access to just in case there's anything that you wouldn't want them
to listen to.
So I guess that's okay.
Like, again, this is not like a deal breaker for me necessarily.
I would never watch RightNow Media, but, you know, if my church somehow did this, I have a
solid pastor.
My pastor is pretty based.
He would never ever send me this stuff unless it was to just kind of joke about it.
But if he did, like in some alternate universe where he did, I would never watch it
because this is just not my thing.
But would I leave the church over this?
That's another thing because I think that's kind of the question behind the question.
And I don't know.
I mean, this is a huge red flag in my opinion.
Thinking that this kind of content is like it's a must have for you.
You get teaching by J .D. Greer to tell you that, you know, pronoun hospitality is like a good thing
or whatever, or Matt Chandler who's singing the praises of Barack Obama
or Francis Chan crying while he sells you something woke.
If my pastor thinks this is like so beneficial, that's a red flag for me.
That's a red flag for me.
It's not like an instant leave, but it's like, I don't know.
I don't get the appeal here.
Why is this so helpful to you?
Why is this something that we need?
You know what I mean?
Why don't we just do, I don't know, a Ligonier Bible study?
I mean, Ligonier is not perfect, but at least it's not going to be trendy for
trendiness sake.
A lot of this is trendy for trendiness sake, in my opinion.
It's not all bad, but it's not good either.
How we select content.
Like here's the thing, like, you know, they give you a whole list of the things that they, you know, how they select
content.
Here's the primary content themes.
Like this is, these are huge red flags in my opinion, right?
Like there's all sorts of stuff here and some of this is good, you know, consumer culture, you know, things like
that, missionary, how churches, you know, train their people, but then you get to number nine and it's like, you
know what this means?
Like, obviously like the sentence itself, you can't disagree with, but you know what this means in
2023, unless you're being uber specific.
Number nine, this is how their content is chosen.
Many people see the world as a hopeless and dark place, but scripture teaches us to hate injustice
and provide the hope found in Jesus.
Now the sentence is fine.
It's a fine sentence, but you know, this is about diversity, equity, and inclusion.
You know, this is about things like pronoun hospitality.
That's why the people that they choose are all the people that are promoting liberalism in the church.
This is all gospel coalition people.
This is all woke church people.
You are not going to find a based pastor in this list of people here.
It's just not going to happen.
You're going to find the people that are either woke themselves or they're making room for a woke church.
And so, yeah, this is not something that I would be happy about.
If it was my church and they sent me this email and they were so excited to introduce RightNow Media with all this
production value and Tim Tebow and, you know, Beth Moore and Phil Vischer and Eric Mason and Matt
Chandler and J .D. Greer and Francis Chan and all these, it's a who's who.
The guy who messaged me is so right.
This is a who's who of woke church, you know, diversity, equity, and inclusion, liberal church,
the liberal side of the conservative wing.
This is gospel coalition stuff.
This is Big Eva.
This is like a Big Eva propaganda serving program.
It's an app that serves your congregation.
Big Eva takes 24 -7, anytime, any device, in the cloud, you know,
on demand, high definition, 4K, all that kind of stuff.
And that's not good.
To say the least, that's not a good thing.
If it were me and I was going to a church, I can't even put myself in the mindset where my current pastor would do
this.
So let me just pretend I was in a different city in a different church and my pastors, you know, sent this email out.
Like I said, number one, there's just no way I would ever watch any of this stuff.
It's just not worth it to me unless I was doing a video about it.
Number two, I would talk to my pastors about it.
Like, this is not like an instant.
And I would be honest with them.
I'd say, hey, pastor, I'd send an email.
This is how I would do it.
I'd tell him exactly what I want to talk about.
So that way it's not like a, you're not like, you know, ambushing him or anything like that.
I'd say, hey, pastor, I'd like to set up a meeting with you.
I want to talk about this right now media thing, because I'm going to be honest with you.
I'm very concerned about what we're going to be, you know, kind of going over in terms of this, what
this says about the direction of the church, because this certainly seems to me to be like the woke
church perspective.
It's all, it's a who's who of woke church, you know, teachers, and I know you're not woke pastor, or
at least I don't think you are, but I want to talk about this because this is a problem.
This is a problem in my opinion, and I'd like to get your take on it.
And, you know, something like that, like not accusatory, but just like, I want to talk about this.
I don't understand, you know, I want to, maybe you can help me understand, because I think that the woke church
movement is very damaging in evangelicalism, and I just want to, I want to hear where you're coming from, pastor.
Let's talk it out.
I'll buy you lunch.
I'll buy you dinner.
That's what I would do.
That's what I would do, and it'd be a red flag.
Chances are, if your church is doing something like this, chances are they've done a lot of other things, too.
Chances are that they closed down during COVID.
Chances are that they did social distancing.
Chances are that, you know, I got other stuff I could say, but,
you know, that's my thing, right?
Like, this is probably in a long line of other stuff, and I probably, at this
point, could not attend a church that did all that stuff, and then now they're doing write -down media with Francis Chan crying
about, you know, who knows, he's crying about everything.
Yeah, so anyway, I hope that was helpful.
If there's anything I missed, the person who sent me this email, if there's something in particular about this website that you wanted
me to check out that I missed, please let me know, but I think you're dead on.
I think you're exactly right.
This is not, this is no bueno.
Any church that's, like, super excited to provide this kind of content to you from these people,
it's no bueno.
That's for sure.
This is not going to be a good thing in the grand scheme of the life of the
church.
This is bad stuff.
In any case, I hope you found this video helpful.
God bless.