THE DOREAN PRINCIPLE Interview with Conley Owens

The Dorian Principle and the Gospel’s Free Advance

All right, so today on the Here I Stand Theology Podcast, we are going to be examining the Dorian Principle, a biblical response to the commercialization of Christianity written by Conley Owens. Today we have the pastor, the author, the man, the father, here on the Here I Stand Theology Podcast.

Hang tight, we'll be right back.

Will you recant or will you not?

Since your majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply, unless by scripture and by plain reason and not by popes and councils who have so often contradicted themselves, conscience is captive to the word of God.

Conscience is neither right nor safe.

Welcome to the Here I Stand Theology Podcast. You heard it, repent and believe the gospel. That is the message. If there's anything that we want you to get out of this podcast, it's this, that Christ died for our sins, that he was buried and that he arose again.

Repent and believe the gospel. We are so excited to have our guest on today. Well, as I mentioned in the intro, he is not only an author, but Conley Owens has his MDiv from the Logg College and Seminary.

He is pastor at Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church, as well a senior software engineer at Google. He is the husband to one wife, the father to seven children. Ladies and gentlemen, we want to bring him in now.

Welcome, Conley Owens. All right, Conley, so glad to have you today. I'm not hearing you.

There we go.

That's quite the intro. Thanks for having me.

You're welcome. You're welcome. Oh, man. You are a fellow pastor. I pastor here in Knoxville, Tennessee at Reformed Baptist Church. You pastor there in Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church. Let's go ahead and get this out right up front.

I know that my accent might be the worst accent that you have endured on an interview.

I'm from Virginia, and so a lot of my relatives are from far southwest Virginia. So you would be surprised. Their accents are really, really strong.

Awesome. Awesome. So it's not going to throw you off or anything. That's a good thing.

My mom, my mother's name is Lila, and she came here to visit one time, and she ordered food at KFC, and they were calling her name. They said, is Lala here? They had written her name down as Lala, L-A-L-A.

All right.

So let's begin here. I wanted to actually begin just by reading your conclusion, which, you know, it's only a page in a passage of scripture, but let's begin with this. What we'll do, we'll start at the end, and we'll pretend like we're in a movie, and we're just going to work our way back from the beginning back to the end here, because there is so much good content in this.

So in his conclusion to his book, a final word about the gospel, Conley writes this,. The prophet Isaiah describes salvation as water that is offered without money and without price. In the gospels, Jesus explains he is the source of that living water.

On the final pages of scripture, John records the repeated assertion that the Lord offers this water freely. As we consider the relationship between money and ministry, there is nothing less at stake than proper advancement of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

If the Dorian principle correctly summarizes the ministry fundraising ethic of the New Testament, the implications are far reaching. In regular church work and activity, this truth may round out some rough edges, but in other areas, it demands radical transformation.

Equipped with this one maxim, we may curb the commercialization of Christianity and usher in a new era of uncompromised ministry. In the context of gospel proclamation, accepting support as anything other than an act of co-labor compromises the sincerity of ministry.

The modern church has unintentionally gone astray, blindly following the model of the world. What blessings await if we will reform our practices, calling ministers and ministries to repentance? In Micah 3 .11, the scripture says, its heads give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets practice divination for money, yet they lean on the Lord and say, is not the Lord in the midst of us?

No disaster shall come upon us. So Conley, what led you to write the book?

Reciprocity and Co-Labor in Gospel Ministry

Yeah, well, this, I guess the medium length story would be that I had become kind of dissatisfied with the way I saw a lot of ministries using copyright in order to, in order to restrict the transmission of their teaching in order to gain funds.

It didn't seem ideal to me for a lot of reasons, a lot being that because I come from a software background, I'm used to a lot of creative or innovative thinking around copyright. So I felt like there were better solutions, but I didn't know if I could, you know, really require this of people or maybe it was just my own private opinion.

But then as I saw scripture addressed many times, money and ministry, it seemed that there was a lot there. And so as I began to study this more and more and just collect all the biblical data, I realized it wasn't just one or two verses, you know, Paul just is nonstop talking about money and ministry.

You know, the Lord's supper, he only talks about for half a chapter, but money and ministry, he's got whole chapters on that. And he just brings it up epistle after epistle.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree. So let's, let's just go with chapter one. So for our listeners, for our watchers today, our aim and our goal in this hour, by the way, Conley has requested that we not make this a Joe Rogan length podcast.

And by the way, a disclaimer, we are not threatening to pull our podcast from Spotify. Is that not the craziest thing?

It's, it's wild. Yeah. I can't tell if it's one of those things where, you know, Neil Young was planning on leaving Spotify already and decided to like make an act out of it or something, you know, I could see that.

Like maybe it wasn't producing enough revenue for him and he was already on his way out. I was like, well, let's, let's, let's make them kick me out first.

Yeah, that was, that was quite the story there. So beginning in chapter one, let's just start there at the beginning. So the, the, you, you, you use the terms reciprocity and co-labor. So how do we differentiate, how do we make practical distinction between reciprocity versus co-labor and basically what are those two?

Right, right.

So just to back it up a bit, Dorian is the Greek adverb that means freely. Jesus said in Matthew 10, eight freely, you received freely give. But then right after that, he says the worker's worthy of his food.

So this is a book about how do you put those two together? How can you say that the minister is not supposed to get paid and that the minister is supposed to get paid at the same time. And I believe the distinction that Jesus is making is the distinction between co-laboring with other believers, which he, which he encourages.

And reciprocity where you're exchanging religious instruction or the gospel for money and that he forbids. And this is, you see the same distinction in Paul. You see the same distinction in third John.

So, so yes, reciprocity is where one feels a direct obligation to a minister. And so gives out of a, out of a sense of direct obligation and co-labor is out of an indirect sense of obligation where one understands his primary obligation is to God.

And because of that gifts to the minister.

Amen.

So, I mean, well, first Corinthians talks about that, right? Or second, I'm sorry. Second Corinthians nine.

Correct.

Yeah.

First Corinthians nine.

Second Corinthians 11 are some of the biggest chapters.

Yeah.

I had those backwards there. That's true. So does it mean that selling anything that is gospel be very specific, specific as we go through this? I watched your, your interview with A .D. Robles. I watched a couple of, couple of others, but I don't know if that A .D. Robles video was a early interview or not, but is, is it that selling, selling quote unquote anything that is gospel related?

Is that considered reciprocity?

Yeah, it depends on what we mean by gospel related. Anything that attends to the proclamation of the gospel needs to be offered freely. You know, when Jesus said freely, you see freely give right before that.

He said, you know, raise the dead, heal lepers, cleanse, sorry, cleanse lepers, cast out demons, et cetera. So if they had given the, the, those miracles at a cost, but then the gospel freely, that wouldn't have been good enough.

Everything that attends to the gospel needs to be offered freely. Paul didn't charge for his food. He didn't charge for a ship ticket. You know, he, he gave everything that attended to gospel ministry freely.

Now take, if you flip it around and you say, well, let's say I've got this product I'm selling and then I slap Bible verse on it, or, you know, I put something gospel oriented around it, or I'm offering a, you know, a math education, but I frame it a biblical worldview.

I don't think any of those things yeah, that doesn't become gospel ministry at that point, just because you've, because you've, you know, acknowledged the creator in the process. Um, so I don't think that this, uh, that this ethic regulates things outside of ministry proper, but within ministry proper, it regulates everything that attends to that ministry.

Much, much like what we see in, we'll, we'll get to that late in the, in your later chapters, but what we see in the modern church, um, particularly in the prosperity gospel, uh, the faith, um, move the word of faith movement as well.

Pro Pimple and the Sending of Missionaries

So chapter two, would you care to explain what the meaning of the word pro pimple is?

Sure.

So pro pimple, uh, means to send forward.

Literally.

That's what it means. Uh, practically it means to financially support someone on their journey. At least it has a very heavy financial overtones. So this is used, um, often throughout scripture to describe, uh, sending out a missionary, but you see it.

Uh, the reason why I bring this up in, in chapter two is because you see Paul preparing to come to the Corinthians so that they will be able to pro pimple him. So they'll be able to send him on his way.

And that's a little surprising given that he says in first Corinthians nine and second Corinthians 11, that he would never take their money.

Right.

So how does he say that he's willing to come to them so that they can financially support them, but also saying that he'll never take their money and different contexts. One is in the context of reciprocity.

I believe in the others, in the context of co-labor, obviously to send someone on a missionary journey is co-laboring for the sake of the gospel. But the Corinthians having been a plant of Paul's, uh, they wanted to, they wanted to pay him back for his ministry.

And that becomes especially clear in second Corinthians 11. And even prior to that in 10, where it seems apparent that the super apostles were claiming to be the true fathers of Corinth and that they were receiving money.

So for our listeners, in case they're not aware, who, who were these super apostles or what was it that they assumed and why are they called super apostles?

Right.

So I suppose there are some theories that the, that Paul, when he speaks of the super apostles, he's speaking of the other true apostles and he's comparing himself to them. I'm, I don't think that, uh, idea is that popular and I don't find it very compelling, but the, the super apostles were essentially these other missionaries, not, not commissioned by Jesus Christ, but had elevated themselves to that level.

And they had, what seems very apparent to me in second Corinthians 11, or excuse me, 10, is that they were setting themselves up as though they were the true planters of Corinth. You know, it was because they were there that Corinth had their existence.

And so in this context, they were receiving money back for, for their ministry. And, uh, so they're exchanging the gospel for money, uh, for money in that context. And you see Paul refer to them as false teachers and yet he never, never predicts, picks a particular false doctrine.

Now it could be that any one of the things that he addresses with the Corinthians, he has that in mind that maybe they were supporting some of these things, but, but it's very surprising that Paul elsewhere, so willing to directly contradict false doctrine, doesn't do it with the super apostles.

And so I believe their falseness is primarily that they're boasting in self rather than boasting in Christ. And this is reflected in the way that they receive money as though they're the source of the gospel, instead of God being the source of the gospel, using his ministers as vessels.

That's right. They boasted in his labors as though they were their labors.

Right.

It would be, uh, I mean, a natural illustration, would you say. It would be a fair illustration for, for, for us to say that it would be akin to something like you going to work at, as a software engineer at Google and somebody coming in and saying, I'll, I'll pick up his check for this month.

Sure.

He's already done the work. I'll take the credit and I'll take the pay.

Right.

But then there's an added layer of irony in that Paul isn't claiming that he did this, you know, of his own accord and of his own strength. The, the super apostles are claiming work that they didn't even do.

Paul did the work, but he's acknowledging that ultimately his ability to do so was from God. So there's, there's an added layer of irony that not even Paul would claim credit for his own work in that way.

Amen.

He, he said that about preaching the gospel itself. Woe, woe unto me if I preach not the gospel.

Right. All right.

In on page 20 of chapter two, about midways down on the page, well, I'll just read the blessedness of shared suffering that the short section there, the apostle Paul has no qualms with others experiencing this hardship for the sake of the gospel, because while they suffer together, they receive comfort together.

He said in second Corinthians one seven, our hope for you is unshaken for. We know that you share in our sufferings. You will also share in our comfort. On the other hand, as Conley states here in the book, reciprocity lacks any similar spiritual benefit.

One who gives out of a sense of duty to man does not experience suffering in service to.

God.

That was a tremendous illustrate or analogy there or tremendous making that truth come come to life. I think for me, as I read that, that was so plain and so clear.

Right.

Yeah.

When when ministers engage in reciprocity and they charge for the ministry, they're really there's a lot that's going on there that's that's wrong. But one of the things they're doing is robbing Christians of the joy that they would have had if they had been giving this as support, you know, out of honor to God rather than, you know, paying someone for a service that they're directly providing.

Amen.

And something else worth mentioning that I found very impactful as I did this study about this whole idea of shared suffering. If you if you look at Paul's list of his persecutions and his hardships, where he's shipwrecked, beaten, et cetera, he always listed he worked with his hands.

And I when I discovered that, I found that so surprising manual labor. How does that sit with beatings and shipwrecks? But he really considers that one of his afflictions that he had to forego some of the fruit of his labor so that he could do this work.

And so when others forego the fruit of their labor so that they can so that Paul can do his ministry, they are co-laboring beside Paul, sharing his suffering, taking that affliction on themselves. And we can do the same thing as we work with pastors and ministers.

Amen. Amen.

The Triangle of Obligation

Moving forward, the chapter three, you titled it The Triangle of Obligation. So in this chapter, you use the terms immediacy and indirection. What do you mean by those terms and how are they contrasted?

Right.

So earlier I said reciprocity is when someone feels a direct obligation to someone else, right, or to a minister, and then it gives out of that sense of obligation and co-labor. There's still a sense of obligation, but it's indirect because it is primarily to God.

You know, the Bible does speak of us being obligated to our pastors, et cetera. But it's not a direct obligation. It is because of our obligation to the Lord, who is the true source of the gospel, that we ought to give to his ministers and honor them.

Amen.

So yeah, and Paul goes through in 1 Corinthians 9, a lot of analogies that reveal this. And a lot of people, when they're reading 1 Corinthians 9, you know, they see him talk about the right to receive support.

And I think they just zero in on that. And they think that Paul is justifying that he has a perfect license to receive anything, which is at odds with, you know, the direct point of the text, which is that he would never take this money.

You know, there's something wrong about taking the money that they've offered him. And so anyway, what those illustrations show, and the best of them being to the priesthood, right, he talks about even the Levites received of the offerings.

The sacrifice and the offerings were made by the Israelites, but they weren't made to the Levites. They were made to God. It would be idolatry to make sacrifices to the Levites, but the Levites were still able to take that.

And so it's that same triangle of the people giving to God, and then God giving to his ministers that needs to characterize giving. And you see that very same thing in Matthew 10, where Jesus talks about it.

That's exactly what's going on there, too.

Amen.

So you wrote this for your MDiv, correct?

Correct, yes.

Yeah, and I know there's several other things that you talked about. Most folks don't read the appendix of books. And I'll be honest, this is the first appendix of a book that I've read of the books that I've read.

But I love what you included here in the bibliography, basically, in some of the further things that you discuss in the thesis that you wrote. You've got even a deeper analysis of 1 Corinthians and Paul's concern over matters of conscience, a dedicated treatment of each of the four apparent discrepancies in Paul's financial policy—you vaguely mentioned that a few minutes ago there—a biblical theology of co-labor, which, I mean, I think you include that well here, an analysis of objection.

Yeah, if I could interrupt. What I mean by biblical theology—so I don't know how familiar your audience would be with this—but systematic theology is where you have a question and you come to the Bible to get an answer for that question, right?

Like, what should we believe about the Trinity? Something like that, you know? Is Jesus God? Biblical theology is where you consider the Bible as literature and you ask, how does God reveal this to us?

You know, it's not necessarily about whether or not it's true. It's like, how did he decide to reveal it to us? What books of the Bible did he do this? What narratives? What, you know? And so the biblical theology of co-labor is like, let's start in the Garden of Eden where Adam is working alongside of Eve, supposedly, to form the Garden.

He's walking with God in the Garden, and then that fellowship is lost. Let's see, other ways that it's abused with Babel and so on, and just look at all these different examples of people working together, building the temple with Bezalel, right?

And all these statements about volunteers and times when help was rejected from the outside. So there's this very longitudinal biblical theology that can be built out of co-labor.

Praise the Lord. And by the way, we'll mention this again a couple of more times, but the thesis itself is at thedorianprinciple .org, correct?

Right, yes.

Right, thedorianprinciple .org. So make sure and go there for that. Another thing is an analysis of objections to pastoral salaries during the time of the Reformation and in the modern era. So just very quickly, how did you cover that in your thesis?

I'm sorry, I missed it. What was the question?

The analysis of objections to pastoral salaries during the time of the Reformation.

Oh, right, in the thesis.

Yes.

Yeah, in your thesis.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Because I didn't bring that into the book, but that was definitely one of the more interesting things that I covered. Yeah, so there were, well, during the time of the Reformation in particular, Anabaptists, a lot of Anabaptists rejected salaries.

And there's a lot of people today who feel the same way, that basically if there's any irregularity to support, that you're not trusting in God. And so a lot of people have seen the same verses I have and come to very different answers about how to resolve them.

And I honestly don't feel like they have a lot of merit. So I didn't necessarily spend a lot of time in the book trying to respond to them. But yeah, you have Minnow Simons and others who basically said that, well, it's okay if someone wants to give to a minister, but you shouldn't ever set up a salary or something like that where they'd be able to rely on people and not be relying on the Lord for the next meal.

Yeah, and you see that carried on through people like Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, and even people like George Mueller. You know, a lot of people really think highly of his approach to the faith, and there is a lot of good there.

But I think some of it was a little misguided about money because he didn't think that it was okay to ever be able to rely on some kind of salary.

So would you say that that is due to, and let's just look at ministers, pastors, preachers, that would you say that it would be fair to say that this view is due to an imbalance in a proper theological understanding of the scriptures on the part of pastors, preachers, teachers, elders?

Right.

Well, I think that those who would reject salaries would still say that the people are obligated to support the minister. They just are opposed to any kind of formal mechanism to accomplish that, that they would say, you know, decrease one's faith because they wouldn't be relying on the Lord to make sure that it gets accomplished.

It's kind of hard to understand what a lot of the motivations are because these are all disparate people kind of coming to the same conclusions. It's not really a certain stream of people working off of each other's writings.

Right.

Well, and I'll be honest, I think one of the reasons that your book resonated so much with me is that's basically how I've came up as it, well, I'll be 49 years old this year. I announced my call to preach when I was 17 years old, didn't pastor my first church until I was 30.

And I pastored my first church for five years. They gave us a salary. You know, they were a Southern Baptist church, so they were, you know, established somewhat. And when I left the church there, a period of time passed, and I planted Reformation Baptist Church.

And since the beginning of the plant, I have refused salary, right? We're still a very small congregation, but let me brag on the Lord and the people. The people are faithful. The people love the Lord, and they are genuinely hungry and thirsty for the truth of God's.

Word.

And there have been times where they have said, we want to give you, you know, we want to pay you. And I've been that what you just described there. That's me. I've said no, but I've always followed that with no, because just as the Apostle Paul had stated, he didn't want to be a burden to the people.

He didn't want to be a weight to them, right? He didn't want everything to hang in the balance or for them to feel obligated, because in the ministry, I don't think there's any man who's pastored for any period of time who hasn't wrestled with the idea that, well, if I continue to preach sound doctrine, it's inevitable that I'm going to lose some folks, right?

And what happens if I lose folks, right? And this is the only way I know how to say this. For me, personally, it is freeing not to be tethered to the congregation with as though they have their hands on a leash saying, oh, you've done this.

We're choking you out, right?

Sure.

How can ministers, preachers balance that? How can I balance that?

Right.

Yeah, I mean, that is the hard part of trusting the Lord, right? Like, you know, a lot of people, like I said, think that they're trusting the Lord so that they have to wonder where their next meal is coming from.

But yeah, another part of trusting the Lord is being faithful, knowing that it could have financial impact on you. So, yeah, I don't know all the answers to that, how to steel yourself for those kinds of changes.

But yeah, I mean, but again, that's why it resonated because I've grown it. That's what I've heard, right? That's what I've always came up under as far as church and ministry. You know, if you travel to another state and preach, the common practice was for one of the old people to walk up to you after church to shake your hand in their palm on a $20 bill, right?

And the response is always, you know, especially as a young man, but I've learned as I'm older that if they're doing that freely, right, it's an act of co-labor. My responsibility is not to say, no, you don't have to do that.

My responsibility is to say, praise the Lord. Thank God for your gift to hug them and to make my way back across the mountain.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you for this opportunity to work with you together here. You know, a church is a group of believers who are trying to proclaim the gospel in this one area. So yeah, if you were, you know, selling courses and going and, you know, teaching that group, that would be a problem.

But, you know, they need help. You're coming to help them and you're all working together. You know, they're providing the money, you're providing the labor and skills. So it's yeah, that's an act of co-labor.

Amen. Amen.

Thank you for taking time on that. I know that wasn't on our list, but no worries. So let's talk about chapter four, the burden of support. You open this chapter in a very interesting way by sharing your affinity for riddles.

So let's get to know Conley just a little bit here. So were you the three-year-old that came up questioning the adults with riddles?

I think I like to ask jokes a lot, but they were not good jokes, you know, very, very bad puns. And I would make them up and I would think they were funny, but I didn't understand. Now my kids do that to me and I see it, you know.

And then we laugh at them because they're so absurd, the things that they ask and the answers they come up with, that it encourages them more and they think it's really funny.

Oh, man. So let's talk about the difficulty versus obligation in this, the burden of support. What were you aiming at in making this contrast, difficulty versus obligation?

Right.

So a lot of people identify all different kinds of motives for Paul not receiving money,.

Right?

And he gives a lot of different motivations, at least to me. It appears on the surface that it's a lot of different motivations and doesn't have a real center to it. And one of those is that he doesn't want to burden anybody.

And so this is a handling of that particular one before I go into a lot of the others is what does he mean when he says he doesn't want to burden anybody? And this primarily comes out in 2 Corinthians 11.

But he says that he doesn't burden anyone. And then he goes on to say that he robbed from the Philippians. So of course, he didn't literally steal, but he was willing to place great burdens on them if burden means difficulty, right?

If it means hardship. Paul was never concerned about burden as difficulty. He calls Christians to all kinds of difficult things. He calls them to all kinds of hardship, and he engages in all kinds of hardship that he wants them to follow him into.

Burden in this context, and other times when he uses that word or similar words, refers to obligation that he does not place a direct obligation on someone else. Once again, going back to that triangle that he wants them to be obligated to the Lord, not directly to him.

Amen.

So from the churches to God, to the Jerusalem church. That's your illustration there in the book, right? From the church to God, to God, to the widow, from the church to God, to the elder. You did a very good job there.

Appreciate it.

And that's actually a great example, the widow. In 1 Timothy 5, where you have that, a lot of people say, well, look right here, it says you've got to honor your elders. Therefore, you've got this real direct, and it is financial.

I suppose there are some people who say that it's not financial. It is financial, saying they ought to be worthy of double honor. And a lot of people read that to say that those who labor in preaching and teaching are worthy of double honor, and the other elders are worthy of single honor.

But it says all the elders are worthy of double honor. And the comparison there is to the widows. So whatever sense that you feel that the widows are paid is the same sense in which the pastors are paid.

It's not out of, oh, you did this thing for me. We're going to do this thing for you. It is God has called us to honor these particular people. If you look up forward in that chapter, you see that honor was used to speak of the widows.

And so the double honor is not comparing elders to elders. It's comparing the widows to elders.

Yes, very good. Very good.

Freedom, Duty, and the Right of Stewardship

All right.

The next chapter, the prerogative of servanthood, your contrast here is freedom versus duty. So freedom, liberty versus duty, responsibility. You must, you must, you must versus I can't help it. Here you go.

Right.

Right.

So, yeah, the question here is when Paul talks about his rights, you know, what really is he, what really is he talking about? Is he saying that he has a perfect license to take as much money as he wants or from whoever he wants?

And he has chosen just out of, you know, kind of subjective wisdom that he's going to not take it in this particular circumstance. And he, you know, he carries this with him all the way through second Corinthians, where he says he doesn't matter how many people it upsets, he's not going to do it.

So this is more than just a, you know, a small subjective wisdom thing. This is an absolute rule that he's putting forward. So when he talks about his right to receive it, I believe it's best understood as a right of stewardship.

Like he has stewardship over the matter. So he has the, you know, prerogative to make his decisions. But that doesn't mean he has a perfect license from God and how to use that stewardship. Adam had a stewardship over the whole garden, but there were ways he could violate that stewardship.

So that's, and just as one proof of that real quickly, in chapter 10, so first Corinthians nine sits in the middle of chapters eight and 10, it's an illustration for how we should think about eating meat sacrifice to idols.