What NOT To Do - Jeff Durbin Example

All right, everybody. Welcome back to the channel. This is the thing. You guys know it.

I've said it many times and I'm going to say it again. I'm here to help. Yeah, that's as simple as that.

I'm here to help and I'm going to try to help today. I've seen this kind of idea expressed on Twitter a number of times in the past few weeks, maybe even months, by a lot of people, some of them that I like, some of them that I don't really know, some of them that I do know.

And so I wanted to just try to help here because it's easy to sort of point something like this out, but it's definitely not easy to do anything about it.

And I'm going to talk about two tweets here that I retweeted. So you may have seen that.

But this one was from Sunday. And so this is Honest Youth Pastor Theo Bro Extraordinaire.

Is that how you spell it? Extraordinaire? I don't know. Excuse me. I don't know.

But here's what Honest Youth Pastor says. He says, one of the issues with young Christian men is that they would rather be discipled by based ex -accounts rather than the elders in their own church.

They perceive strongly worded tweets as virtuous while ignoring the wisdom of the godly men in their local church.

That's the first one. And then the second one was from Tom Buck, who I like. And I've talked to Tom on the side occasionally.

And I said I agreed with this tweet, and I do. Here's what Tom says. Tom Buck says, the moral failure of long -trusted pastors causes some believers to feel deceived, become disillusioned, and start distrusting all pastors.

I think we're seeing the same effect with young Christians responding to the leadership failures of many evangelical leaders they once trusted.

That's very true. I think this is definitely true. Now the Honest Youth Pastor one, I'm not sure that this is, you know, that rampant of a problem, although he's definitely right in some instances.

In fact, if you look at the comments to this tweet, a lot of people are saying, they're admitting, yes, that's me.

That's definitely me. You know what I mean? I'm one of those kinds of guys that would rather be discipled by based ex -accounts rather than the elders in my own church.

And there are even some, I saw an Andrew Torba retweet about how a lot of right -wing people that this person knows, you know, they're not in church anymore because of various reasons, but they're very open to coming back to church.

And a lot of it has to do, maybe not, maybe they wouldn't say because my pastor's not based, but because their pastor doesn't get it.

That's what they would say. And so, you know, I think Honest Youth Pastor here is right when he says that, you know, some young Christian men have this issue with the church.

And it rings true, you know what I mean? Like I said, I don't know if this is as rampant as Honest Youth Pastor would want to say it is, but I think this is something that definitely does happen.

And it's easy to ask the question, it's easy to lament the situation, but the real question, the hard work has to come with, what do we do about it?

What do we do about it? And, you know, here's what I'm going to say. If the young men are not interested in being discipled by their pastor, and they'd rather be discipled by based ex -accounts, it actually doesn't matter whose fault that is.

It is the responsibility of the pastors to do something about it. Yeah, that's the hard truth, right?

You've got to come up with something that you can do to win the young men back.

And again, I'm going to work under the assumption here that this is a very rampant problem and all of that.

Again, I'm not sure I'm convinced that it's as bad as some people would want to say it is, but it is bad.

Because here's the thing, I mean, I know a lot of based ex -accounts, and I know the people behind the screen name.

Even a lot of the Anons out there, I actually know who they are, and I'm obviously not going to dox them.

But I know that they're men in churches. They go to church, right?

And some of them feel like their pastor doesn't get it, but they're still in church, and they're under their pastor's authority, and they have families, and they have children to provide for, and they've got all of the problems that every adult male has in this world.

They've got to consider keeping their jobs and providing for their family and all of those kinds of things, discipling their children, all of that kind of stuff.

And so I think that the reality is that this is not necessarily—every

Anon out there that you see saying based things is not in this position. But I think some people are. I think some people are.

What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it? That's the question. And the first step into figuring out what you're going to do about it is to figure out why it happened in the first place.

Because this is not necessarily the natural order, right? This is not the natural cause of things. Why are you doing—why are they doing this in the first place?

You think that they're more discipled by anonymous accounts on X, or a lot of, you know, Big Eva used to say, oh, they're more discipled by Sean Hannity than the pastor and stuff like that.

And you need to ask yourself, well, why are they doing that? Because if you don't know why that they're doing that, it's going to be very difficult to address it.

It's going to be very difficult to come up with anything that you can do differently or better or in addition to or whatever.

It's going to be hard to set the treatment plan if you're not willing to look into the diagnosis, figure out what the situation is.

And the first thing that I'm going to suggest to you as a pastor is you need to talk to these men.

You need to have relationships with these men. You have to actually care about what's going on in their lives and things like that.

And it can't be as a pretense. This is the key to all of this, right? Because I happen to be—I'm a unique individual, right?

Everyone's a unique snowflake. I get it. But one thing that people have told me about myself that makes me weird is that, number one,

I'm willing to let a lot of things go. But number two, that I don't mind being in a contentious conversation.

I don't go seeking them out. I don't feel—I'll be honest, I don't feel perfectly comfortable with it, but I'm not going to shy away from it.

I'm not going to—I'm going to lean into it, you know what I mean? I'm not going to have a problem with it. But I will say one thing that's happened in my life, and I'm willing to have these conversations, but I don't like—and

I know a lot of people are really not willing to have these conversations—is when you get the invite.

This is what you can't do, in my opinion, pastors. You get the invite to a cup of coffee, or you get the invite to the cigar lounge, or let's go have dinner, or let's go have a drink, or something like that.

And you get the invite, and then you realize that the invite was just a pretense to talk about something else.

Not really wanting to get to know you, not really wanting to talk to you, but it was a pretense.

They want to reprimand you. They want to, you know, whatever it is. They've got something to talk to you about that's a problem, and they don't warn you, hey,

I want to meet about this topic. No, they meet with a friendly invitation. You think, hey, I'm just going to get to know this guy.

I'm going to make friends with this guy. And really, what turns out is now you're being confronted all of a sudden.

Now, I'm a weirdo. I've been told this many times. I'm a weirdo. I don't mind having that conversation, and I'm willing to sort of—my initial feeling of, oh, this is just ridiculous.

I'm willing to put that down and just have a normal conversation about it, as if I'm not offended that you decided to try to ambush me with a conversation that you've been thinking through for weeks, and now

I'm supposed to respond on the spot. Like, that is very disrespectful, and it does not make me happy, but I'm willing to put that aside and have that conversation, because at the end of the day,

I try to live my life in an open way so that I can have a conversation like that and not feel, like, ambushed.

You know what I mean? But that's what you can't do. If you're going to be a pastor and you're going to be having relationships with these young guys that you're really concerned about that are following these

BasedX accounts, you need to have relationships with them. And so it's not a quick fix. It's not a quick thing where you have a relationship, and in that first conversation, now you're talking about all the problems you have with their

Twitter feed. That's not going to work. That's not going to raise the level of trust, because ultimately, this issue is an issue of trust.

If this is how they're feeling, what honest youth pastor puts forward here, then they don't trust you.

And so it's an issue of trust, and trust is not something that you get like that. Trust doesn't happen overnight.

Trust happens over time. And so this is a long game. If you've got young people that you're worried about this kind of thing, then you need to have relationships with those young people, and again, you can't fake this.

This is tough work. It's tough sledding, and it takes time. I'll give you an example.

I'll give you an example. There are many men that I trust in some ways, and I don't in others.

And I'm willing to work with those men, and I'm willing to be friendly and warm to those kinds of men, but I won't receive certain criticisms from men that I don't trust in the areas that I don't trust them.

You know what I mean? And so I'll give you an example. And I'm going to do a video with this guy, but one day, a friend of mine came to me, and he said, hey,

I think you were being disrespectful in this video, and here's why I think you're being disrespectful. Let's talk about it.

And so you know what I did? I talked with him about it, and I took it all to heart, and honestly, I felt like he was right, and I was able to hear that, right?

I was able to hear that. The reason I was able to hear that was because on that topic, I trusted him because what he wasn't was one of the guys that has a problem with every single piece of sharp rhetoric anyone's ever used.

He's not that way. And so when he said, hey, man, I need to point something out to you.

I think you were disrespectful in this video. I heard it because it's not like him to say something like that.

It was not just a kind of standard drumbeat that he always had, and so I trusted him to discern the difference between sharp rhetoric and disrespect.

I trusted him. There are other men who I think are smart guys, and I have respect for them in many areas, but they are constantly tone policing.

And if one of them said, hey, I think you were disrespectful in that same video, I probably wouldn't have heard it because I don't trust them in those areas.

That's the thing. And so you've got to build trust over time. That's the first piece of advice that I have for pastors that find themselves in this situation where they're concerned about the based ex -accounts and things like that.

My second piece of advice is that... Let me see how

I can put this. The second piece of advice that I have is that you can't be having these areas of conversation that are off limits, and especially when they're the areas of conversation that are off limits in general.

And I'm talking with the general discourse, you know, kind of the spirit of the world, things like that.

Like, you can't do that. You can't do that if this is a concern of yours.

Because here's what happens, right? If you're not willing to talk about, hey, man, why is it that a

Jewish guy owns Pornhub? Like, you know, why is it that they're so involved in XYZ, right?

If you can't even have that conversation with a level head and not willing to sort of have the guillotine of excommunication hanging over that conversation at any given time, if you're not willing to have that conversation, it's not that those conversations aren't going to be had.

They're going to be had. But they're going to be had with based ex -accounts.

They're going to be had with based ex -accounts. That's why I thought that that one video that I'll be straight up with you that Canon put out.

I mean, I love Canon. You guys know I love Canon. I mean, we're on the Fight, Laugh, Feast network right now. I love those guys, right?

And I love most of what they put out. But that one video where they were talking about, oh, yeah, we're not going to have that conversation about Jews.

People were calling it the Don't Say Jew episode of Canon. I think that's a losing strategy.

That's a losing strategy. It just is. It just is. Because what you do is you push people.

And I think this is what's happened with a lot of young Christian men that would rather be discipled by based ex -accounts than their own pastor.

They've been pushed to it because their pastor is not willing to have the conversation of why is it that a

Jewish man owns Pornhub? They're not willing to have that conversation.

And so if you're worried about them being discipled, because again, I don't think that they're being discipled by based ex -accounts, but they are having conversations that they want to have with people that they know are going to drop the guillotine on them.

It's as simple as that. It's an issue of trust. You've got to have these conversations.

You just have to. And if you're not willing to, they're going to find out from someone else. I'll tell you, I'll tell you, this is the thing, like early on in the initial woke wars, you know,

I said this many times in my content that ideally I would never have made a single video on any topic, ideally.

But the reality is that when I started doing the woke content, nobody was doing it. Nobody was talking about it.

A few people were, but very few. And so people that, you know, they revered

Matt Chandler, they revealed Russell Moore, they revered these guys, and they sort of hear them talking about white privilege?

What in the world is that? Diversity, kingdom diversity? What are you talking about?

They didn't have anyone to go to. They didn't have anyone that they could trust. And so my channel took off.

Ideally, there'd be no need for my channel. None. So you got to have, you got to be, you got to have, you can't have those untouchable conversations.

You got to have a relationship with these guys, but you also can't have these untouchable conversations. That's just a, that's just a, these are basic things.

And these things, they're not going to be quick fixes. That's the other thing. You're not going to fix this overnight. You can't fix trust issues overnight.

I think also too, you know, and I'm going to, I'm going to reveal something here. I'm going to reveal something here.

And, you know, I've kind of gone back and forth on this. And I talked to, I talked to Joel about it.

And he's not going to tell me what to do. But I talked to Joel and I'm going to, Joel Webben.

There's a few Joel's out there, but I talked to Joel about this and I'm going to, I'm going to talk about it.

I am. And a lot of you have already picked up some hints of this in my most recent content. But I want to,

I want to show you, cause this is such a good, this is such a good illustration of the behavior you really, you can't have if this is a concern of yours.

And even if it isn't a concern of yours, this behavior is just not going to work to your benefit ever. It's never going to work to your benefit.

So a lot of you guys have picked up on the fact that I'm, I've been talking about, you can't have this attitude where I won't share the stage with that man,

Stephen Wolf. I won't share. So you've been asking me is, has James White said that? Has James White said that?

Who said that? And no, it's not Dr. White. In fact, I answered a few of you. I said, no,

I don't think Dr. White has necessarily said that. But someone has.

And I'm going to reveal to you, I'm going to dox myself because this is something that I said in a private chat.

And it was my kind of like initial reaction. And I want to tell you about this initial reaction, because listen,

I'm not, I'm not one of these young men, you know, I'm 42 years old. I've got four sons. You know what

I mean? I've, I've, I'm not the oldest guy out there, but I've seen a thing or two. And I'm level headed most of the time.

And I think my reputation is that I, you know, I, I bend over backwards to, to encourage people.

I'm encouraging to people. And I've, anyone who's honest will, will, will know that I've emailed people numerous times that aren't,

I'm not seeing eye to eye on, but I see them say some good things. I see them, see them have some good instincts. And I say, Hey man,

I know we're not in agreement on everything, but I just wanted to encourage you in this. Honest men would tell you that I do that.

So anyway, so Joel Webb and we have a conference coming up at Right Response Ministries.

And full disclosure, I'm on the board of Right Response Ministries. So we're all very excited about it. I'll be at the conference.

I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be really good. And the lineup includes Stephen Wolf, the people that are going to be there.

And it included Jeff Durbin, Pastor Jeff Durbin. I love Pastor Jeff Durbin and, and I, I've loved his content for years.

And in fact, I'll never forget the one that had the most impact on me. Maybe it didn't age so well, but it's, it's a pretty good episode.

I'll never forget where I was. I was walking from the train station to my apartment. There's like a half mile walk that I had to do all the way to the shore of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

I lived on Shore Road and there was like a half mile. And I was listening to their episode with Bojidar Marinov, Bo Marinov.

It maybe didn't age so well, but I had never heard anyone like Bo before.

And it was really good. I remember thinking, man, this is, this is good stuff. And I used to just listen to every episode Apologia put out.

I've got nothing bad to say about Apologia. I mean, maybe I could think of something if I tried, but nothing but positivity towards a lot of the content that they put out there.

It's so encouraging. I love Pastor Jeff's style in general. You know,

I've, I think I've shaken, shaken his hand before. Never really talked to him, but, but I've got no, no, nothing negative really to say.

There's some, oh yeah, there, there is one weird thing, but we're not going to get into that. We're not going to get into that. Anyway.

So Pastor Joel's or Pastor Jeff's assistant emails a letter that Pastor Jeff wrote to Joel Webben.

And here's what it says. Well, I'm not going to read it. That's not nice. I'm not going to read it.

That's not nice. But basically it's a very kind email. And it says, hey, you know,

God's using your ministry. You know, I'm grateful for you and all of that. I respect you.

I love you. Things like that. Here's what the letter's about. He's backing out of the conference.

He agreed to come to this conference. He's backing out of the conference. And the reason he's backing out of the conference, let me just make sure

I get my words correct here. He's backing out of the conference because of the lack of godly wisdom and interaction displayed by Stephen Wolf primarily.

And there are other concerns that he won't get into right now. And so he agreed to come to this conference.

Everyone's within the right to not come to a conference. He agreed to come, but now he's not going to come.

He cannot share a stage with Stephen Wolf. He's got some concerns about his behavior.

Understandable. Understandable. But then, of course, he throws out the nebulous other concerns I don't really want to get into right now.

I mean, we can only be left to imagine what those are. I mean, if I had to guess, oh, he's racist, he's anti -Semite, he's a white nationalist.

Who knows? Who knows? Just throw it out there. Just throw the shade. Just whatever.

Can't share this platform with that guy. So he's backing out.

He's going back on his word to come to the conference. Now, everybody's within their right to do that. Everyone's within their right to do that.

And I got to be honest with you, whether he comes to the conference or not, I really don't care. I have positive feelings towards Jeff Durbin.

I'm confident that he would deliver something very helpful to the people that come to the Right Response Conference.

I have no doubts over any of that kind of stuff. None. But he's not needed.

He isn't needed, and I mean that in the cosmic sense. Like, none of us are needed. That's what

I mean. We don't need you. It's not like that. But I mean in the cosmic sense. He's not needed to have a great conference, but he would have delivered something great.

But he can't share this. He can't share the platform with Stephen Wolfe. He can't lend his credibility to Stephen Wolfe.

Now, I'm sure that his camp, he's going to get a lot of purity points with his camp.

Oh, this man of integrity. Look at that. He's going to get all those kinds of accolades. He'll get a lot of pats on the back.

But this is not what we need right now. I mean, I've made this point clear in both of the previous two videos.

This is not what we need right now. We need unity. We need to be able to work with people that maybe they're not our cup of tea.

We don't have a lot of numbers. We don't really have the luxury to be doing this kind of thing, to be causing divisions.

You want to talk about causing divisions and lament the divisions? Look at yourself in the mirror.

Look at yourself in the mirror. Because I got to be honest, I could easily see someone saying,

I don't really appreciate James White's online behavior, lack of wisdom and interaction. I could easily see someone saying that.

But what I can't easily see is someone from our side of this debate saying, and because of that,

I will not share a platform with him. I will not lend my credibility to him.

I can't. I could see Anons on Twitter saying that. I couldn't see one of the leaders, one of the figureheads, one of the people that are talking.

Where's the grace? Where's the grace? So anyway, that's it.

That's the story. That's what's happening in Reformed Inc. That's the kind of stuff that we're dealing with.

Still, after all these years, it's mind boggling to me how much we insist on hobbling ourselves.

How much we insist on running the race with 500 pounds on our back when it's not necessary.

It's frustrating. Why am I telling you this story? Well, I'll tell you why. Because when

I heard about this, my response on my private signal chat,

I'll dox myself here. Anyone who's in that chat will tell you this is what my response was. My response was,

I think it was first, that's pathetic. I said, that's pathetic. This legitimately makes me angry.

And it's true. And it does. And then I said, there's only one proper response here.

And that proper response is to get worse. That's what I said. That's what

I said. And I said to Joel, the only proper response is to get worse, if you know what I mean.

Let me tell you what Joel said. That's what I said. And what

I meant by that was get someone that's 10 times more offensive to them and their sensibilities, 10 times more offensive, lean into it.

That's what my response was. And I got to be honest, that's how

I felt in the moment. I felt this is how you're going to behave.

Okay. Wait, wait, wait till you see what we do next. That's what my response was.

And this is, this is, I think I have a pretty good kind of, I can evaluate myself pretty well.

I've lived with myself for long enough. And I think I'm pretty honest with myself. Of course, there's always blind spots.

I think for the most part, I'm pretty level -headed. I try to think clearly.

I try to think rationally. But in that moment, my emotions got the better of me.

And I said, this is how you want to, this is how you want to treat, you know, just brothers in the

Lord. You don't see eye to eye with him. You don't like how he chooses to say things.

And he's, maybe he's shown a few lacks of wisdom here and there so much so that you can't share a stage with him.

I mean, whatever happened to you share a stage with him and you rebuke him. That old fashioned thing that we used to do.

Those moments were epic. We've seen some big moments like that in the church and they were always impactful.

What about you don't do that and you pull them aside and say, brother, we agree on so much, man.

We agree on so much, but what is the deal with your rhetoric? Talk to the man.

And I gotta be honest, like, like I've said this many times. I don't see eye to eye with Stephen on everything, but the man,

Stephen, I've talked to him. The man, Stephen has been treated so poorly. Like, like, and he, he knew, he knew

I was a friend. Right. And let me tell you what our first interaction was like when I met him. Firm handshake up, you know, look you right in the eye and we're just talking.

He, and he was, he's great. He's, he thanked me for my content. He thanked me for some side things that have happened over the years and, and stuff like that.

He, he knew I was a friendly, he knew I was a friend and I'm a recruiter, right?

You know, that's, that's my job. That's, that's how I make money. And so as a recruiter, I often ask people just naturally, what do they do?

Right. Cause it's, you know, that's part of the job. You're networking, you're, you're finding candidates for companies and you never know when you're going to be able to place someone.

So I asked him, I said, Hey man, what do you do for a living? Just that's standard thing.

If you've ever talked to me, I ask that question. And he kind of chuckled and he, and he said,

Oh, you want to know if I'm a fed? You want to know if I'm a fed, what do you do for a living? And, and he was joking, but, but that made that, honestly,

I thought about that later in the day and it made me sad because, because that's the thing, like, that's how people have treated him.

And so he thought I was treating him that way. And he kind of joked about it. He was really nice about it. You know, he explained what exactly what he did.

And you know, we, at the time I didn't feel sad about it. We just had, we just continued our conversation, but I thought about that later.

And I'm like, imagine living your life that way. I'm not saying,

I'm not trying to get you to feel sorry for Steven, but this is how many people have treated him. Like, like as if, you know, his, his, his confession, his membership in the church, you know, his relationships with other people in the church doesn't mean a thing.

He's claims to be a Christian. Absolutely shameful.

Can't even stay, share a stage with him. I mean, you gotta be embarrassed. Pastor Jeff Durbin should, you should be embarrassed about this.

It's such a shame. And in the moment I said, the only response, this is what I said. The only response is to get someone to replace

Jeff. That's 10 times worse. You want to push people away.

You want people to get more discipled by, by in your opinion, the worst elements among us, keep on doing that kind of thing.

Instead of trying to work with people, I mean, how impactful would it have been? I mean, honestly, I don't know Steven, but how, how, how impactful would it have been for Jeff to come to the conference and give his speech and maybe had nothing to do with, with anything

Steven related, or maybe it did, maybe it, maybe, maybe he could expose and wax poetic about the dangers of sacralism and how the reformers were wrong on that, but they were great and everything else.

That would be so impactful. And then in a sidebar, because when you go to a conference, you meet these people, you talk to people in a sidebar, say,

Steven, I love you, man. I'm concerned about some of the things I see. I don't know

Steven that well, but I know him well enough that he would receive that. And would he take it to heart?

I don't know, but he would receive it and be gracious. And he would talk to you about that.

You talk to people like Steven, especially people like Steven. I mean, I, in my opinion, you talk to a lot of these

Anons too. These are people you can work with. These Anons that you're so worried that these based

Anon accounts that you're all always criticizing and concerned about. You can work with these people.

You can talk to these people. In fact, I love John Harris, man. John Harris. I mean, I just love John Harris, but I love

John Harris's style. I mean, this is, he's been saying this for years. In fact, one, one episode he did years ago was about an alt -right guy that was not a believer that he, he talked to like a human being, gave the gospel to and converted it.

Guys, it really doesn't have to be this. This is not complicated. You want to know what to do? This is not complicated.

You work with these people. You talk to these people. You treat them like human freaking beans. You don't shun them.

I mean, what, what, what is this? You're shunning them. Yeah. Can't even share a stage with them.

Now, I don't know. We haven't really talked about it. Me and Joel, how we're going to replace, you know, Jeff Durbin, who we're going to replace him with or whatever it is.

There's, there's, there's, there's some people you could replace him with. That would be fantastic. But that was my thought.

I'm telling on myself here. I was like, yeah, that's how you want to behave.

Wait till you get a load of me. Wait till you get a load of the next guy. That's, that's basically what

I thought. That's basically what I thought. Joel Webbin didn't tell me to make this video.

Joel Webbin's not, you know, trying to get Jeff back. And I'll be honest, like, like if, if Jeff saw this video and it's like, oh, you know, man,

I changed my mind. Like, like honestly, there'd be, there would be, I'm being straight up with you, man.

Keep it at a hundred. There'd be a part of me that would just say, no, thanks. Have fun doing whatever you're doing.

You know what I mean? That wouldn't be right though. That wouldn't be the Christian thing to do, but there, there would be a part of me that would just be like, no, he didn't tell me to make this video, but, but, but this is, we, we, we have, we have to stop crippling ourselves in this way.

We just have to, we can't treat each other this way. We can't, this is not the way.

I don't know. I don't know. There's a lot more I could say about this. And I kind of joked with Joel earlier because he said

I should do a video on this youth pastor tweet. He's like, yeah, make it a multi -parter. And I kind of joke with him.

Yeah, it'll be eight parter, you know, but these are just some basic thoughts that I've had just off the top of my head, guys, we can do so much better.

And if ever you have this thought in your head, man, kids these days, you know, they're, they're more influenced by Stephen Wolf than they are their own pastors before you even think about going on Twitter to talk about how concerned you are.

Look yourself in the mirror and it may or may not be your fault.

I happen to think it's often your fault. If you're, if you're young ones are doing this kind of thing, as opposed to coming to you,

I think it is your fault, probably. But even if it isn't, it is your responsibility to figure out what to do about it because you can't brow beat them into respecting you.

That's the beaten into submission to respect somebody. They can be beaten into submission to do what you want them to do.

Right? We all know that you, any, anyone can be beaten to the point where they just do whatever they're told anyone can be, but they won't respect you.

You've got to earn that. You've got to earn that. And it takes time, not a quick fix.

This is a, if this is a problem for you, this is going to be a problem for quite some time. You've got to earn their respect.

This doesn't mean you have to be perfect. That's the other thing. You don't have to be perfect. You know, the COVID stuff, you know, people always talk about it.

And that's a very big thing to talk about in this issue. Cause a lot of respect was lost in COVID. That's the thing about respect.

You can lose it like that, but you can't really gain it back in the same way.

But there are people that I respect and I would even respect them in these issues that failed on COVID, but you know what they did?

They did the hard work of number one, admitting they failed number two, repenting of their failure.

And number three, it took time. It took months. It took years of them, you know, with, with better instincts, having learned the lessons from COVID and then you respect them again.

That's how it is, man. That's how it is. Perfection isn't required, but there are a lot of things that are required that you're just not doing.

You're just not doing. Look, nobody cares if you were duped by the first, you know, three or four racial gun shootings, whatever, police shootings.

But, but the thing is eventually you, you have to start changing your, your, your, your, your ways.

You need to start taking a deep breath and you need to start, you know, that's the thing. Anyway, I hope this was helpful.

This was kind of off the cuff. Maybe I'll organize my thoughts better for some, some extra parts to this.

Cause there's, there's a lot more practical things that I think you can do about this. If you find yourself in this situation where the honest youth pastor, he's just being honest.

I think he's being honest and I think he's right in some cases that this is a problem. But, but I think,

I think regardless of whose fault it is, it is the responsibility, the duty, the job.

This is the job of a pastor to figure this thing out. I don't,

I don't like that. Their jobs are harder because of this situation. If that's the case, but tough luck, that's the job.

It's a heavy crown. You chose to wear it, do it, do it.