Episode 11 The Here I Stand Theology Podcast: Interview with Chris Rosebrough

Introduction to the Here I Stand Theology Podcast

Here we go. All right, here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. We are the Here I Stand Theology Podcast. We are a podcast focused on spirited and pointed defense of biblical doctrine with application to our day and to our time.

We are pumped. We have a special guest in the studio. Chris, I'm actually gonna move you to the middle between us.

Okay, sounds good.

We have Pastor Chris Roseborough. Pastor Chris Roseborough is a pastor at Kongsvinger Lutheran Church in Oslo, North Dakota. Don't you know?

No, it's Minnesota. I live in North Dakota, but it's Minnesota.

Minnesota. Oh, I apologize. My fault. Chris also is the captain at Pirate Christian Media. Is that correct?

Correct.

All right. Chris is a filmmaker, a photographer, a husband, a father. And again, sir, we just want to say thank you for taking the time to be with us today.

Very much so.

My pleasure. I'm glad to be here.

So we want our small audience, hopefully growing audience, to get to know you a little bit better because you have such wonderful insight into the teaching of heresy that goes on within the church, has gone on within the church.

We understand that you have come out of heretical movements from long years ago. We'll talk about that through the interview here. So, Matt, do you have anything that you want to say before we get going here?

No, let's get right into it, I guess.

All right. All right. So, Chris, we'll just shoot some questions.

OK.

Are you ready?

I'm ready. I don't have a cigarette and a blindfold, but I think I can use myself.

We're not going to shoot at you. Just shoot questions towards you.

OK.

They're really more like softballs. So the first question that we want to ask is a question that we ask anybody who's on here with us. It's a question that kind of really gets you thinking, really gets you to question whether you trust yourself or not.

So we'll ask this question about you and your son, Josh, right? So if you and Josh had to arm wrestle, who would win?

Oh, he would. No doubt. He towers over me. The man is huge. You know, he's got his mother's height and girth. Oh, forget it. And so I learned a long time ago that if I wanted to pick on him, I better be able to run faster than him.

So that was going to be my second part of the question. If you did notice he was winning, would you kick him in the shin underneath the table to get an advantage?

No, no, no. I would just flee the scene and taunt him from a distance.

All right. All right.

Ed Litton, Plagiarism, and the Integrity of Sermon Preparation

So we'll get into some current events here. So let's talk about the Ed Litton plagiarism scandal.

Yeah.

So, you know, so I've been on vacation for a couple of weeks, you know, went across the Michigan Peninsula, went to visit some people in New York and Pennsylvania when this whole thing was blowing up.

And my good friend Justin Peters, he just put out a video on this. And there's no doubt about it that Ed Litton, he straight up plagiarized some of J .D. Greer's stuff. And I don't know if you guys have ever heard of what's called the Streisand effect, but this is clearly in play here because they've gone and deleted 140 sermons.

That's what Matt was saying earlier.

140. I mean, there's nothing to see here. So the funny thing is, is that this particular practice is one that we've noted over the years of me doing the podcast of Fighting for the Faith. Plagiarism is alive and well in seeker driven and mega churches.

And so Ed Litton, this is a guy who has eight people on staff writing sermons for them. I'd fire them all, by the way. And of course, as a pastor, as busy as I am, I still have to research, read, translate, and the biblical texts that I'm preaching on every given weekend.

And so I got to put in the time just like everybody else. And the thing you can't, you cannot phone this stuff in. And it calls his integrity into question. It calls whether or not he is even taking his study of the scripture seriously.

This is something that is so ginormous as it relates to the character of the man that I personally consider this to be a ministry disqualifying type of thing. We've seen guys resign for less. But J .D. Greer has come to his rescue and they're working the spin machine now.

And it's really, this is quite a thing. And of course, Newsweek has covered the story yesterday. Newsweek magazine wrote an article about it. So let's just say the news media knows the ramifications regarding plagiarism and just how unethical it is.

So, I mean, if the world is having to say, you know, wait a second here, there's something wrong. Then there's something wrong.

That's what we talked about just before we came on. Yeah, that's the number one priority of a preach to pastor is the preaching and teaching of the word.

Yeah.

If the preacher is not doing that, what are they doing?

I have no idea. We're called to study and show ourselves approved as a workman who need not blush with embarrassment, but who can rightly handle the word of truth. Which means that, you know, it is not a small part of the duties of the pastor.

It's one of the major pieces of being a pastor is the study of God's word and the faithful proclamation of God's word rightly divided between law and gospel. I mean, this is a clear command of scripture.

Yeah.

Yeah. Isn't there isn't there. Something in the scriptures about when you set something forth is true, but it's not. What is that called?

I think it's called lying.

You know, bingo.

Oh, I didn't know we were playing prophecy bingo. I got it suddenly. Way to go.

All right.

Yeah.

You happen to suddenly upon the lie of Ed Litton.

Right.

Right.

There we go.

I think the timing of this coming out is very interesting, too. So just who knew what and when did they know it kind of thing?

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, it's it's it's it's kind of I hate to invoke the you know, this this particular person, but it's very Clintonian. That's the way I could put it. You know, it just kind of harkens back to the the Clinton administration spin machine.

And the next thing you know, we're going to be getting press releases. We're going to have to be parsing words, you know, you'll be double meeting behind these things. And that's that's what's really coming out.

Double entendres right and left. Yes.

Yeah, that's right.

Sermon Preparation, Exegesis, and the Use of Cross References

So you mentioned the importance of a moment ago about sermon preparation. And that was actually our next question. So personally, how do you balance your sermon prep, your work with fighting for the faith, pirate media and the things that you do with family and friends?

How do you balance that?

Yeah, poorly is probably the best way to put it. So obviously, there's a lot on my plate and some weeks are worse than others. But I live and die by my routine. And so I have a very rigid routine that I follow week after week after week.

So my sermon prep begins the Saturday before, you know, Saturday and a half is like a week and a half. It begins. So so eight days before, you know, I actually teach a men's Bible study. Sermon prep begins by looking at those biblical texts and then in our men's Bible study, working through them and working out some of the themes.

So then by Tuesday morning, I translated the text that I'm going to be preaching on from either Greek or Hebrew. And and I've picked out what I would consider to be what what is a good exegetical theme here.

And then question is, what do the congregations I serve need to hear? So you not only have to exegete a text as a pastor, you have to exegete your congregations. So the idea then is that sometimes, you know, some years when I'm preaching through a particular text, my congregation is struggling with this particular thing.

That's and that's where we really need to emphasize. But, you know, but everything changes. And so I follow a three year lectionary, which is helpful because it makes it so that every every time the readings come around every three years, I can go back and look at what I preached on, you know, what my notes were, what I thought the congregation needed to hear.

And then and then really kind of dig a little bit deeper. So I find that the more I the more I'm a pastor and the more often I come back to certain passages, it I find more nuances and things that we can preach on and stuff.

So, you know, so altogether, sermon prep, probably anywhere from 16 to 24 hours per week. And, you know, so on a long week, I'm beating my head against the wall. But part of my prep also includes reading, reading sermons by the church fathers on how they have handled these biblical texts, because the one thing I want to do is I want to plagiarize the Scriptures, but I also want to make sure that my preaching is in accord with what Christians have been preaching for millennia.

You know, I want to make sure that I've got the most unoriginal take on these passages ever. You know, it's like, oh, you sound just like Christos. You sound just like Aaron is. You sound just like Augustine.

You just, you know, that's kind of the point, you know. So, you know, but but so there's a lot of different avenues. And then what I find is, is that, you know, a large portion of my sermon prep is just wandering down these bunny trails to see how other people handle these texts.

But my favorite book, by the way, in my preparation is a book that has like a comprehensive list of cross references. You know, I think it's called the Treasury of Scriptural Knowledge or something like that.

And so when I'm working through a text and I find the theme that I'm working from exegetically that I really want to highlight, then I'm in that resource looking at what other passages are saying. And always and again, I find it very helpful to be able to find an Old Testament text if I'm preaching on the gospel or an epistle and find a way to work old and new together, because a lot of people don't know how to work the Old Testament.

And and so to bring those stories to the pulpit and and give them, you know, kind of a fresh airing. It's this is just a joy. It's a lot of fun.

Hey, man. Hey, man, that was good insight. Appreciate that. So 16 to 24 hours a week. Yeah. Yeah. On top of your, of course, your family. But what about what about tell us a little bit about Pirate Christian Media, how that came about, how all that transpired.

From Countercult Ministry to Pirate Christian Radio

OK, so that's a that's a that's a little bit of a longer story. And then the current iteration of what we're doing, you know, I I kind of hit the hit the wall as far as what I can handle every week as far as heresy.

So let's kind of back up in history. So middle 2000s. So, you know, you know, I began blogging. I had been formerly trained as a Christian apologist in countercult ministry. And and that's really where I cut my teeth, you know, you know, kind of, you know, a street apologist talking to Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons and working with ministries reaching out to them.

And in the middle of the 2000s, about 2006 ish, I changed focus from the cults to what was going on in evangelicalism as a result of the the Bible twisting of Rick Warren. And the fad that was the purpose driven life and the travesty that the book The Purpose Driven Church was and all of the radical changes that were taking place in the church as a result of this man's innovations.

But he was building off of, you know, Peter Drucker and Robert Shuler and guys who preceded him. But he kind of took it into a whole other thing. And the thing that alerted me to this was, you know, somebody said, you know, you just need to read like the first couple chapters of The Purpose Driven Life.

I remember when it came out. So I got a copy of it and I applied the same kind of exegetical rigor that I would if I were reading the Book of Mormon or something. The Watchtower and Bible Track Society came out with.

And when I got to chapter two and started looking, just doing the comparative work, OK, here's what he says the Bible says and here's what the Bible says in context. I went, whoa, something's really off.

And so I began blogging against the purpose driven movement and became really good friends with Ken Silva as a result of that. And then in 2000, oh, I want to say 2007, I had the idea for what would become Pirate Christian Radio.

And I noticed that in Christian broadcasting, there was a notable move away from sound theological doctrinal program and a move towards stuff that was just kind of, I don't know, like advice on how to raise kids and stuff, you know.

Positive and encouraging?

Yeah.

So I at that point, I was really kind of distraught at what was happening to Christian Radio. So I, you know, I actually called and spoke with a guy who was an executive with Salem Broadcasting in Southern California, took him to lunch.

We sat down and we were talking about kind of the general trends that were going on in Christian broadcasting. And I pitched the idea for what would eventually become the Fighting for the Faith podcast.

And after pitching the idea, he said to me, you know, no, that would never work. Becky wouldn't go for that. And I said, Becky, who's Becky? Now, I think that's the name he used. But I said, who's Becky?

He said, oh, Becky's our target market. And I go, what? And so he said, yeah, Becky's, you know, she's married. She's in her late 20s. She's got, you know, 2 .4 kids. You know, she spends a lot of time in her minivan taking her kids to soccer.

And she's not into anything that's like really theologically heady and stuff like that. And she would never go for a program like that. And he basically said, you know, we'd be happy to take your money, but your program would never take off.

And I was really mad. It's like, Christian broadcasting has been brought to its knees because of Becky. So it was at that point that I began working on the business plan for what would become Pirate Christian Radio.

And I named it Pirate Radio, Pirate Christian Radio, with the idea that, you know, that a pirate radio station is something that broadcasts from outside of the normal system. My mother, when she was growing up, she spent some time in Oxford in the United Kingdom because her stepfather was in the military.

He was an Air Force fellow. And so she told me when she was growing up, she used to listen to a pirate radio station that broadcasts from a Liberty ship in the Channel. So that's where we got the name Pirate Christian Radio.

And so back in, is it 2008 or 2009? I'm forgetting now. But back in June of, I want to say 08, June of 08, we launched Pirate Christian Radio. The Issues Etc. Radio program was canceled by the Missouri Synod.

And I vetoed their cancellation and brought Issues Etc. onto Pirate. And so when we launched it, we actually had a pretty good audience to begin with. And so I did the Fighting for the Faith podcast five days a week for more than a decade.

And then, you know, a couple of years ago, I just couldn't motivate myself to do it. Listening to all that heresy, my son calls it the swamp of sadness. You know, it's so dark all the time that I just, I had to find a way to pull back from the quantity of heresy that I was listening to.

And I found that being a pastor and being able to preach positively, you know, from the word was what I really desired to do. And I knew that warning people like I had done in the past is still an important thing.

But I had to find a way to strike a balance so that I wouldn't lose my mind, you know, in the process. Because, you know, even though I'm the guy who invented prophecy, bingo, this is dark humor. And what we're dealing with are people who are listening to people who are going to be sending them to hell if they persist in this stuff.

And so striking a balance between good biblical content. And so I pulled back and decided that what I was going to do is work on quality rather than quantity. And cover only the heretical teachings or the false teachings that gave me the opportunity to springboard and spend a lot of time in the biblical text.

So that people would come away feeling like they had, they didn't just get, you know, like a news report on the latest heresy. But that they had received something biblical to help them work through these things that they could share with others.

And then they can sort out what's going on in their own faith. So and then along the way, you know, I, you know, photography is something I've been doing since I was in seventh grade. And I've recently kind of upped my photography games because when I'm doing photography, I'm turning off the heresy altogether.

And finding something that is, you know, I think is meaningful and beautiful and bringing it into the world. Art is one of these things that a lot of people do not recognize how important it is. But it really is.

Good art really is. So I think the pursuit of finding things that are beautiful and sharing them with the world. I kind of consider that to be an act of defiance or civil disobedience against the others that's in the world.

Well, that was actually going to be our next question about have you talked about your photography and you've done that. So that's good. And if if folks follow you on Facebook, they see you post in the pictures.

And they never can tell if you're in. If you're in their neck of the woods, you might be hanging around outside their house taking a picture.

I generally so when I'm traveling, I don't like to broadcast it because I don't want somebody to walk into my house and take my stuff. Because they always tell you, you know, it's like, you know, if you're ever traveling, don't announce it.

Don't let everybody. Hey, we're away from the house for three weeks. Come on in.

But from time to time, I'll post photos while I'm traveling and people say, are you where I am? Like, no, I was there last week.

A Short Film, Humor, and the Range of Chris Rosebrough's Work

So not only are you a photographer, a pastor, a husband, a father, a photographer, you're a filmmaker. Many folks probably don't realize this. And how would you feel about us sharing your award winning film from 2020?

Go ahead. Would you like that? Sure. I've got that. And it would be good for our watchers to see this. So let's take let's take a five minute. Don't don't take a don't don't run away from your phone or your computer screen.

Stay here. We're going to show the award winning video that Chris Roseboro and Joshua Roseboro made in 2020. Here we go.

What is the current temperature outside?

Fifteen degrees colder than Anchorage, Alaska.

Was that last part really necessary?

Yes.

Swine phone. I need an upgrade.

Yellow.

Hey, James, we still go for 1130?

Yeah, I'll see you in about 10 minutes. I'll call you when I'm on my way.

Sure thing. Bye.

Bye.

See who can identify with this?

Crap.

The best part.

The drama.

Is not working.

And is there any man watching this who who would not admit to the fact that they've made a toilet paper bandana on their head?

I've protected part of my life on this territory.

You all right, man?

How did you get in here?

I just came in here walking around looking for you.

How did you do that?

The back door is unlocked. Oh, man.

Yeah. Yeah, we actually, you know, we won some awards from the North Dakota Film Festival for that. So, yeah, that was fun.

Yeah, that was that was awesome. I think there's probably there may not be many of your watchers and listeners who realize that that's out there.

Yeah, it's on our channel. You know, and so, yeah, we even on our title screen for it, we have the awards that we want. I think we.

Yeah. Yeah.

Film dash. So, yeah. But yeah, I'm looking at a poster up here.

So, yes.

Heresy, False Teaching, and the Role of Creeds, Confessions, and Catechisms

So I was going back to kind of the pirate Christian radio. You talked a lot about just covering a lot of heresy for our listeners. I think we hear that word a lot. How would you define that? And how would you compare that to false teaching?

Are they the same? Would you differentiate between the two terms?

Yeah, you do need to you do you do need to differentiate between the two terms. So false teaching or erroneous teaching is going to be on doctrines that you don't want to say they don't matter. But they're secondary or tertiary in the levels of as far as doctrine is concerned.

So, for instance, I'm a confessional Lutheran and we have a different view of the sacraments than the reformed do or evangelicals. And so we recognize that they're brothers and sisters in Christ. And so we take the sacraments and we say there's a secondary and tertiary issues to err on.

Those doesn't put you outside of the faith. Heresy, though, on the other hand, is a is a teaching that contradicts one of the primary doctrines of the Christian faith. These are non-negotiables. And as a result of it, when somebody is heretical, they're believing in a false God or a false Jesus or a false spirit or a false gospel.

And that's how Scripture defines these terms. And so you think of Apollos. Apollos was a fellow who his baptismal theology was incorrect and he needed to be corrected by Aquila and Priscilla. And and he took that correction.

Well, but it doesn't say that he was a heretic. But then you look at the Judaizers who who Paul writes against, who had come into the churches of Galatia and said that unless you're circumcised, you cannot be saved.

Well, they they were guilty of preaching a different gospel altogether. And Paul gives and invokes anathemas twice against them. He says you he says even if we are an angel from heaven should preach to a gospel other than the one already preached.

Let him be damned anathema twice. And so Scripture itself gives us these distinctions. So heresy puts you outside of the Christian faith error. You're still a brother, but you're an erring brother. And you need to be called to repent and submit to what the Scriptures say.

Amen.

I think that's a that's a good explanation, because I think what I see more and more, you hear people throw out the term heresy quite a bit. I think it's an overreach. And you got people out there looking for, like I told Claude, looking for a heretic under every bush.

Right.

So, yeah.

So Justin Peters and I, we have different view of baptism. He's not a heretic. Stephen Furtick claims he's God Almighty. He's a heretic. So Furtick, what a miserable deity that is too. I mean, seriously.

I mean, you know, Kenneth Copeland, heretic. Stephen Furtick, heretic on steroids. You know, so you get the idea.

Literally.

We agree 100 percent there. And so in our last episode we did with last week or week before last, we we focused on Creed's Confessions and Catechisms and the importance of Creed's Confessions and Catechisms in the local church.

So, I mean, would you care to talk a little bit about how the church historically has benefited from Creed's Catechisms and Confessions throughout history?

Oh, my goodness. Yes.

Okay.

So we'll start with the lesser known, the one that sounds painful, catechisms. I mean, you ask somebody, have you been catechized? They go, I don't know. But, you know, I've got a lower back problem. Do you think it'll help?

But when you talk about catechism, a catechism is basically an instruction booklet that teaches you the basics of the Christian faith in a question and answer format. That's really kind of what a catechism is.

And I got to tell you that as somebody who teaches the catechism, and I've got several classes that I teach. I teach youth. I teach adults. I teach adults and youth. So I'm in the catechism teaching classes probably three times a week now.

That's awesome.

And I never tire of it. It's the best thing ever. And the more I teach the basics of the faith, the deeper my understanding of the Scripture goes. And so the idea then is that Christianity, we're disciples and we're lifelong learners.

And so the catechism, a really well put together catechism, will drive you into the basics of the Christian faith and give a pastor the opportunity to kind of unpack certain things. And so when I teach, when I catechize folks, it takes two years.

It takes two years to work through the basics of the Christian faith. There's no way you can, in a 10-week intro course, walk someone through something. It just doesn't work that way. So, you know, I'm a firm believer that, you know, you take your time, slow down and really help equip people to be able to read their Bibles for themselves, you know.

I mean, that's a big part of this. Now, creeds have always played a role within the Christian church. And I would go back. If you look at Aaron Neis's Contra Heresies, he wrote a multi-volume set in the ancient world against the Valentinian Gnostics.

And the doctrines that these folks were putting out, I mean, it sounds like sci-fi kind of stuff. It sounds like Scientology, weird kind of things. But early on in one of his books, Against Heresies, he talks about what's called the rule of faith.

And the rule of faith was something he learned from the man who discipled him, who was Polycarp. And Polycarp was discipled by the apostle John when John was living in Ephesus. And when you read the rule of faith, in fact, you can Google this, Aaron Neis rule of faith, okay?

You can find a place where it's laid out. When you read this thing, it sounds like an early prototype of the Nicene Creed. And that's the best way I can describe this thing. And Aaron Neis makes the claim in Contra Heresies that if you believe contrary to the rule of faith, then you're not a Christian.

And so the role that creeds play, and this is where we have to make a distinction, a creed is not the scriptures. The creeds are normed by the scriptures. And so we make a difference between two categories, norma normans and norma normata.

These are the Latin phrase, norma normans, the scriptures are the norming norm, norma normans. The creeds are norma normata, they're normed by the scriptures. And the reason they're true is because they say the same thing as the scriptures.

So the three ecumenical creeds that we would point to, the Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed, the reason they're true is because they say the exact same thing as the scriptures. And the thing is, is no heretic can confess these.

The Aryans couldn't confess the Nicene Creed. And they wept bitterly about the fact that they couldn't. And I remember years ago, I'll tell you a little story. So do you remember Elephant Room 2? You may not have remembered this thing.

Was that Furtick or T .D. Jakes?

T .D. Jakes, Mark Driscoll, and James McDonald. I think Furtick was there for both 1 and 2. So when James McDonald announced that he was inviting T .D. Jakes to Elephant Room 2, you can find this in my broadcast archives.

I went on air and on social media. And I basically said, unless T .D. Jakes is willing to confess the Athanasian Creed, I will not believe that he's a Trinitarian because he's a modalist. And so that got out to James McDonald.

And James McDonald publicly said that me insisting that T .D. Jakes confess the Athanasian Creed, he said it was outrageous. That was the word he used. It was outrageous of me to demand that of him. And I stuck to my guns.

And so I actually purchased a ticket to attend Elephant Room 2 at the primary campus where everybody was. I paid $110 to go to this thing. And when I showed up, I was there with another researcher. When the two of us showed up, the security guards met us at the door, escorted us out into the parking lot, said that you're not allowed to come here.

And if you come back, we will have you arrested for trespassing. So anyway, but I did, by the way, get to talk privately with James McDonald before Elephant Room 2 and told him that T .D. Jakes is a heretic.

He's a modalist. He'll never repent of it. And so what did Driscoll do? If you go back and you watch the video, Driscoll is the guy who's walking him through the Apostles Creed. And so you're saying one God, three persons.

And T .D. Jakes said, yeah, I think I can say that. And Driscoll goes, ta-da, ta-da, ta-da. And then no sooner did they stop celebrating, Jakes goes, well, by persons you mean manifestations. Well, then, yeah, you know.

Failed coaching. He failed the coaching exercise.

Right, right.

And I would note that, of course, Mark Driscoll had a spectacular failing. And Mars Hill imploded as a result of his control freakiness. And James McDonald long ago got drubbed out of ministry for good reasons.

And the stories that have been coming out about him are just horrifying. But it doesn't surprise me.

So this might be a good confession that we can promote and have the heretics say. Here we go.

I'm stupid. You're smart. I was wrong. You were right. You're the best. I'm the worst. You're very good looking. I'm not attractive.

All right.

As long as you're willing to admit that now.

That's all we ask. That's all we ask.

I don't think. I do think that they might consider that to be an ad hominem type of.

Yeah.

Yeah. You're right. You're right.

But it was funny. No, we agree there. I think there's a lot of a lot within Christianity today of so many Christians that truly just they don't. They don't know what the gospel is. They don't know who God is.

They don't know the doctrine of God, the doctrine of Christ, the doctrine of creation, the doctrine of the scriptures. They don't they don't understand biblical doctrines. And therefore, they're not able to defend when they are.

And they are literally sneak attacked by so many within the church today.

No.

And the thing is, is that they're complicit in their own deception because of their unwillingness to actually obey the scriptures. You know that that we are. You know, scripture tells us to test teachers, to test prophecies, test these things.

And the only thing the only thing we have to test them with is the actual word of God, which requires you to be in in in in dialogue with God in his word. And then I would note that Christians for years, for centuries, millennia have been called what disciples, a disciples, a learner.

You know, it's like, don't tell me you're a disciple when you haven't read Matthew, Mark, John or actually read the epistles of Paul or the Catholic epistles. And don't tell me this, you know, seriously, you know, and Walter Martin, who was who had a profound influence on me early on, I only had one conversation with him.

But, you know, he used to talk about the fact that that, you know, Christians in scripture are described as actually being in in warfare. And our warfare is against the devil. And he said that so many people do not know their Bibles and they're and they're sticking their heads in the sand and the flaming darts of the evil one are sticking out of their posteriors as a result.