Jen Wilkin Reveals Details of Her Pastorate at Matt Chandler's Church - Part 4

AD Robles

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September 14, 2023

Owen Strachan Claims He'll Debate - Part 5

00:00: All right, everybody, we are back. We are back, and we're gonna be covering the
00:05: Jen Wilkin thing on Gospel Coalition. Why honoring the gifts and abilities of women is relevant to de -churching.
00:12: This is a feminist presentation. She's presenting feminism to you and attempting to convince your women that they should be dissatisfied with the role that women have in the church.
00:24: And it's really, it's really something. And so if you remember where we left off, this guy asked her to describe the process that the village church took when they re -evaluated their theology and wrote a position paper allowing women teachers to exercise authority over a man.
00:42: And, you know, the whole presentation, the whole invitation for Jen Wilkin is really, it just, it's,
00:48: I've said already a number of times, she's assuming the role of a pastor, you know what
00:54: I mean? She's saying, I'm not a pastor, I'm not an elder, which, okay, by title, you're not. But everything she talks about doing is the role of a pastor.
01:04: And this guy just asked her to take us through the process of writing this paper. So let's just see how intimately involved
01:11: Pastor Wilkin was in changing the theology of the village church to allow women to exercise and teach, teach and exercise authority over men, because that's what they did.
01:25: Let's go. Well, the process of writing the paper was a process of two and a half years.
01:32: And it was a paper that was written in the elder room with the help of a couple of non -elders and two female staff.
01:40: I was one of those female staff members. And the first thing - So this is interesting.
01:46: So, and I had not watched this prior to what I was saying. But if you remember the very first episode,
01:52: I said, everything she's saying, we did this, we did that. If you ask someone who in the church re -evaluates theology, who re -evaluates their practice, who decides these things, it would be the elders, it would be the pastors.
02:07: That's what I said. And so she's assuming that role for herself in this presentation. Well, here she just comes out and says it.
02:13: We did this in the elder room. And guess who was there? Your girl,
02:18: Jen Wilkin was there. We were non -elders, but we were there. We were moving, we were shaking, we were leaders.
02:25: We were doing what elders do. I've said this many times in the channel and I will say it again.
02:31: There's more than one way to be an elder. You don't necessarily need to have the title to be usurping authority.
02:39: That's the point of what usurping is. It's you are taking authority that you actually do not officially have.
02:47: That's the point of usurping. Jen Wilkin is a usurper. And it doesn't matter that the men allowed her to do it.
02:55: She's usurping because the scripture definitively does not allow her to do the things that she's doing.
03:01: She decided to say, I'm doing it anyway. It's as simple as that. So that little, in seminary,
03:08: I heard that they teach men that women are usurpers. How can you believe it?
03:13: As she's explaining her usurping. And that we did when we realized that we had a problem and needed to rethink our practice certainly and go back and revisit our theology.
03:29: This other staff woman, Caroline and I asked for permission to go solicit anonymous feedback from the women on our staff about their experience of being employed at our church.
03:41: And we guaranteed those women that they would not, their names would not come out.
03:47: And this is not - Yeah, that's a great idea. Send Jen Wilkin over there to solicit feedback.
03:52: And definitely she won't be soliciting feedback, strongly implying you should be dissatisfied.
04:01: Definitely not. There'll be no shenanigans here. She's a scientist. She will do it in a scientific way.
04:10: Let me be straight up with you guys. If you're a pastor out there and you hire Jen Wilkin to help you decide how to be a better pastor, go ahead and quit right now.
04:21: I feel 100 % comfortable telling you that. If you bring in Jen Wilkin to consult with you on how to be a better pastor, go ahead and quit right now.
04:31: Because we had, we were dealing with bad men. Like I said, these were the good guys. Every single one of the guys in that elder room is a good man.
04:40: And so we sat with these women and they gave their feedback. And I'm not gonna share it here, but it was heartbreaking.
04:49: I mean, some, I will give you some examples. One was a woman overhearing another man saying he could never work with her because she was too attractive.
04:58: One was that if a woman was driving the car, the minivan in the parking lot on Sunday morning, then clearly she was unsubmissive to her husband if he was not driving.
05:11: There were all kinds, there were. And then we had a real culture where the men knew each other and loved each other deeply, but they would kind of like high -five us.
05:20: You know, it was like, oh, hey girl. They knew us only a tiny bit. And so - Yeah, because one of the things, and so many comments came in on this one, because I asked why is it so important to these feminists to have deep emotional relationships with people of the opposite sex?
05:36: And it's almost like what they're presenting is you can't possibly be doing the one another's.
05:41: You can't be loving your neighbor as yourself, loving one another, things like that, unless you have a deep emotional relationship with someone besides your wife, a female besides your wife.
05:50: That is so sick. That is so sick. That is a terrible idea. Do not listen to these crazy women.
05:58: They are, and I gotta be honest with you, there's a cynical part in me. I admit this is cynical.
06:04: I'm not saying this is correct, but what I'm saying is, then what ends up happening is there's some inappropriateness, and then it's like, see these men, he's out of control.
06:14: I'm not saying Jen's doing that, but it's interesting how it just all lines up to their narrative, the one that they wanna push.
06:21: You gotta have these very close emotional relationships with men that are not our husbands, and. Don't do that.
06:30: If you ever listen to any advice from your boy AD, this is my advice to listen to this one.
06:36: You can just ignore me for the rest of the time. Please hear me. If you are a man, do not have deep emotional relationships with a woman besides your wife.
06:48: Obviously, your mother, your sister's different. Don't do it. Don't do it.
06:55: That is a trap. Can a man hold fire close to him and not get burned?
07:00: And that's, I'm just telling you, your wife is all the female friend you need.
07:06: Your wife is all the female friend you need. Go out there and get some guy friends, do whatever you gotta do.
07:15: Do not have a deep emotional relationship with a woman. It is a trap.
07:23: And because they had been told that this was admirable, that this was something desirable, and it made them honorable if they maintained a safe distance between them and us.
07:33: And so we took that into the elder room and we just read these women's feedback and we grouped it according to categories.
07:42: If a woman doesn't feel like one of the guys, that's a good thing. Just because a woman is crying and upset about something doesn't mean the thing she's crying and upset about is something that you need to go and do.
08:02: Hey, I don't feel like one of the guys. You're not. You're not one of the guys. I just don't get it.
08:12: Am I missing something here? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. You might say, AD, you don't need any crazy pills.
08:19: Please don't take the crazy pills. You're crazy enough as it is. I can understand why you might say that. She just said,
08:28: I solicited anonymous feedback and I heard some off -color comments and the women were so sad and crying about it.
08:35: Oh, and then one of them said, they only give me high fives. They don't have deep emotional relationships like they do with each other with me.
08:43: Just because a woman's complaining about something doesn't mean that it's legitimate, that you need to go and do that.
08:49: You need to now have an emotional relationship with this woman. That is a stupid, stupid, stupid idea.
08:56: It is. It is. I don't know what else to say. If you're a woman and you're married and you're desiring a deep emotional relationship with another man, you need to examine yourself.
09:12: I'm serious. I'm serious. You need to examine yourself. A lot of guys out there are scared of you.
09:19: They're not gonna tell you that. They're gonna make it seem like you can't sin. You need to, if you're a girl out there and you're married and you desire a deep emotional relationship with the pastor, one of the leaders at the church,
09:30: I'm serious, you should examine yourself. That's a bad sign.
09:36: Oh, I need to be in leadership. I need to be close to leadership. Yeah, a lot of women think that.
09:44: A lot of women desire to be close to a powerful man. It's common.
09:52: It's common. I don't know what else to say.
09:57: I really don't. I mean, Chandler's probably not gonna tell you, but I'll tell you. You need to examine your heart if you're married, but you desire to be close to one of the leaders in your church.
10:06: You need to examine your heart. I'm being serious. Listen, this video is lighthearted, jokey, you know, la la la, you know,
10:12: I get it. I'm serious here. If you're a woman that's doing this, you need to examine your heart.
10:19: You do. And they were heartbroken. They were devastated because they were the good guys.
10:28: And how could this be the case in their church? And this was not even addressing whether we were handling issues of abuse correctly.
10:35: You know, when women were coming in and reporting they had a troubled marriage, it was actually an abusive situation. And we've had to work through all of that as well.
10:42: And what resulted from this paper was also a revision of our care philosophy around people coming in in situations where they needed care for abuse.
10:54: So it was a huge thing, but until the elder room knew it wasn't someone else's problem, that it was our problem, they weren't ready to do the hard work of changing.
11:04: And so then we worked through a process of re -evaluating all of the typical passages that you would think of when you think about this discussion and trying as much as we could to get out of the echo chamber that we so often find ourselves in.
11:18: All the men in that room were operating as women. And what I mean by that is that women often feel through issues, like serious issues.
11:31: Because I'm assuming they had serious issues at this church. She said there was some kind of care issue, whatever. Women have a tendency of feeling through that stuff.
11:38: And I'm not saying that women can't overcome that and think logically about things, because of course they can. But they have a tendency of getting real emotional about it first.
11:47: There's nothing wrong with emotions. Men can be emotional and men should be emotional. But men need to move past that.
11:55: This is so standard in the woke church stuff. They get you all emotional, feeling glad for black people and Puerto Ricans and Chinese and whatever.
12:04: And then they say, now you gotta change. Now you gotta do something. What a man needs to do is say, maybe, but maybe not.
12:15: Maybe I do need to change, but maybe not. Because the woke church stuff, a lot of it's really sad.
12:24: I remember I did a video about this girl who said that her church was racist because none of the white guys wanted to date her, right?
12:30: And none of the white guys, she felt ugly because none of the white guys would date her. And that's a genuinely sad situation.
12:40: That makes me sad in my heart. It really does. But not because the church is racist and needs to change, because that woman has found her worth in all the wrong places.
12:53: To her, she's not beautiful unless a white man will date her. And that is jacked up.
12:59: She's messed up. And she needs to be discipled and taught and nurtured and cared for by people.
13:06: You don't find your value in whether or not a white guy will date you. That's not the thing. But in this example, they were using, oh, that's an example of the church needs to change.
13:15: The church be racist. It's like, no, no, no, no. Maybe I need to change, but maybe I don't.
13:22: And you see this often with the LGBT issue. It's like, I used to think that those passages where it says that you shall not lie with the male, as with a woman, it is an abomination.
13:33: I used to think that was clear. It is clear. But I used to think it was clear and then my son came out as gay. And now I realized that I was misinterpreting it the entire time.
13:41: Everyone can see what you're doing. You're just allowing your emotions to get in the way. Something that women have a tendency of doing.
13:53: You need to watch out in your church because usurpers often come in that way. They come with emotional stories.
14:00: They come with tears. And it's all a manipulation. It's all because they want you to change and they've learned over time that the way to get their way is to cry.
14:14: I'm serious. And to say my little heart is broken and it's worked again and again and again for them.
14:24: And so they keep doing it. Men, I'm sorry to say this, but you need to cultivate the ability to see a crying woman before you and to keep your wits about you.
14:38: You can cry with her if you want. I'd recommend maybe trying to hold that back too if you want, depending on the situation, of course.
14:47: But you need to collect yourself at some point. You need to collect yourself at some point. And you can empathize with that black lady who thinks that she's not pretty because white guys won't date her.
14:56: And you can feel really sad. I remember when I heard that story, I was really sad. You know what I mean? But I was sad for that woman because of how twisted up she was on the inside.
15:11: That's not a good place to be because I know I've been twisted up on the inside, getting my value from all the wrong places.
15:19: That's happened to me. And I know how I felt. Can imagine how that woman felt. So men, when someone comes to you crying, you need to empathize and sympathize, whatever it is, whatever's the one you want to do.
15:34: But you need to keep your wits about you. One of the things people don't like to hear in this conversation is that when you start to seriously evaluate your position, you will have to do a little bit of promiscuous reading.
15:47: You will have to read counter -arguments if you're going to make sure that your argument is one that you are feeling a deep conviction about.
15:55: So we did that when we had conversations. There were a lot of very heated conversations. People did not all agree.
16:02: And I will say that even when we got to the end of the paper, not everyone was in the same place on every single aspect of it.
16:08: But it got to a point that they could live with and that we felt like we could operate under. And then we did something that I think was really important for our church in particular.
16:20: One of the things I appreciated most was that my lead pastors,
16:25: Matt and Josh said, we are not writing a paper for everyone else. We are writing a paper for us.
16:30: It is for our church. We will stand before the Lord and give an account for this church. So we're not worried about what everyone's going to think.
16:39: And so we decided rather than put it out with a big, you know, like, hey, we wrote this paper, everybody come jump on it.
16:45: We decided to just quietly implement it so that by the time people were aware that the paper existed, we would have a beautiful practice that illustrated what the paper was pointing to.
16:57: Nice spin, Jen. That's a nice spin, but I'm from Brooklyn.
17:10: You can't get that one by me. It reminds me of a quote.
17:17: You know what I should have said there? There's a quote from Sopranos where Johnny Sack invites him over to his house after a very contentious situation.
17:27: And Tony thinks he's going to whack him there. And he goes, no offense, John, but I got an IQ of 136.
17:33: It's been tested. No offense,
17:40: Jen. But I have an IQ. What's funny about that scene too is he ends up going to his house anyway.
17:51: And the way that Johnny Sack is able to convince him to go there is he says, I'm not going to kill you with my wife upstairs.
17:58: And he's like, all right, I'll go. But that's not really a high IQ move because what if he's lying that his wife was there?
18:06: And by the way, he's a mobster, he's a mass murderer. Like, what's he going to care if his wife's up there?
18:15: No offense, Jen. I've got an IQ of 136. It's been tested. What actually that's about is we didn't want anyone to know.
18:26: We didn't want to be criticized. We didn't want to be pushed, any pushback. We just wanted to do it.
18:34: And then it's already done. And then we're already doing it. And then we can claim, oh, the practice is beautiful. This is beautiful.
18:39: God honoring. Don't criticize me. Sounded like he couldn't stand the heat.
18:46: Oh my goodness gracious. God, that's a good spin, man. Oh, Jen.
18:53: Oh, Jen. Let's continue.
19:00: And we did it. We have it. We went through the whole org chart. I mean, the number of things that we did to try to ensure that we had not marginalized women just out of force of habit, because we're better connected.
19:14: You know, so much of this is just like the men on our staff, if they have an open role on staff, they know more men.
19:22: They have trust with men. Those are the first candidates they're going to think of. And so the work that we had to do just around even filling positions that we said, no, this could be a man or a woman.
19:30: So it's interesting. And I'll stop it here. This will be the end of the video. But she had mentioned how they don't assume that like the elders are enough for all the needs of their church.
19:41: Their church is too big. And she was using that to say, well, we see we need a lot. We need women. We're just too big. We need women.
19:49: But, you know, to a guy like me, what that sounds like is that you're just too big. Like you don't go to God and be like, hey
19:55: God, you know, our church is too big for what you've provided. I know you've given us the elders as a gift, but our church is too big, our elders can't handle it.
20:04: I mean, it sounds to me like it's just that your church is too big. Your church is too big.
20:10: You need to shrink it. You need to break it up. You need to do something where the elders can be enough.
20:17: The elders and deacons, those are the offices. That's what God has given us. If you're too big for that to be enough, don't shake your fist at God.
20:27: Don't start adding all kinds of nonsense. Don't start trying to bend the rules and things like that, different titles and stuff.
20:32: I'm the director of evangelism. I'm the director of this. Just do what you, you change to fit
20:40: God's prescription. It's not God doesn't have to change to fit your prescription. You change to fit God's prescription.
20:46: I hope you found this video helpful. We will be back as I'm still enjoying this. We're three quarters of the way through and I'm still enjoying it.