Which Songs for Worship? (Pt2)

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00:03
Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture, and media from a Reformed perspective.
00:15
Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
00:21
Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
00:25
Thank you for tuning in to Coffee with a Calvinist.
00:28
On yesterday's program, I began a conversation about worship music, which I recently recorded with myself and my friend and former worship leader of our church, John Mercer.
00:38
Today is the conclusion of our conversation.
00:40
If you didn't hear the first half, I would encourage you to go back and listen to that first.
00:45
Now, on with the program.
00:48
I want to give you three arguments that I think keep coming up, and I just want to hear your thoughts on it.
00:57
Like I said, not trying to make this a debate, but I'm going to say these are the three that I've heard.
01:03
I find them somewhat compelling, and I just want to get your thoughts in response.
01:08
Does that sound good? Yeah, absolutely.
01:10
The first argument that I've heard opposing the use of Bethel Hillsong Elevation is that our people, by seeing the name, because when we put the name of the song up on the screen, you're supposed to put the name of the author or band or whatever.
01:33
It's supposed to be up there.
01:34
Usually it's so small, people can't read it.
01:36
Yeah, but that's not how people find music.
01:38
If they like a song, they walk out the door and they Google that one line that they can remember.
01:45
You're right.
01:46
You're very right about that.
01:47
But the idea is by playing it in the service, we are endorsing the church.
01:53
We are endorsing Bethel.
01:54
We are endorsing Hillsong.
01:55
We are endorsing Elevation if we play their songs in our worship.
02:00
I understand at least that from a position of, I wouldn't read out of the Message Bible personally.
02:10
Now, you might feel differently about that, but I have some real issues with studying or reading from the Message Bible because I think it takes some real liberties with the word.
02:21
I may find that differently than you.
02:24
I don't use the Message Bible because I don't really want my people to think that I think that's a good idea.
02:30
Okay.
02:30
Okay.
02:32
Again, the best- I didn't mean to switch the ...
02:34
I just switched the argument.
02:35
No, no.
02:35
This is great.
02:36
This is wonderful for people that are listening that don't know us.
02:41
This is the kind of conversations we have just like when we're hanging out.
02:45
So, if that was the case, would you not sing a hymn that was written by the Wesley Brothers? That's a good question.
02:59
I will say this.
03:01
I'm responding with Justin's response, not because I want to, but because I think it'd be fair because again, I'm looking at three arguments that I've heard people make.
03:11
He did respond to that, and I want to be fair to respond to what he would say.
03:17
He would say that the difference is what we have with, say, the Wesleys or even the writer of It Is Well, who we know after later in his life did, according to some historical records, fell away, but yet we all still sing It Is Well.
03:35
Nobody won't sing It Is Well.
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That's a good way to get run out of a church.
03:41
Yeah, if you won't sing It Is Well.
03:43
And so, that kind of goes to the same argument, right? Would you sing It Is Well? Well, that guy apostatized.
03:48
Would you sing the Wesley Brothers? Well, those guys were Armenians, and they believed in second blessing, and they believed in sinless perfection.
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They had some really bad theology.
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In fact, I would say a lot of the fruit of Pentecostalism is the fruit of that tree, but that's, again, another conversation.
04:03
But the point is, he would say, because of the time lapse, we are no longer endorsing that person, whereas Bethel and Elevation and Hillsong are all contemporary, leading people astray.
04:20
So, that's the argument he makes.
04:21
I'm not making his argument, just saying that.
04:25
When you ask to talk about this, I went and looked up a few things there, and the way it was expressed, the way I heard it expressed was, it's the difference between talking about people who are actively teaching something that is contrary to their understanding of the gospel versus someone that lived 200 years ago.
04:52
That's the argument that they're making.
04:54
So, the question that I would ask is, what makes something true, or what makes something truth? Well, I would say, from our perspective, what we're talking about, it would have to be agreeing with Scripture.
05:13
Okay.
05:13
Right.
05:14
And so, if someone agrees with Scripture, and they are to pin something or say something that is true about God, but they have this massive area either of sin in their life or what these individuals would classify as apostasy even, does that make their statements any less true? Yeah, and I would say it doesn't make their statements any less true.
05:44
I think the issue at that point, I don't think any of us would say that their statements are any less true.
05:50
I think it's sort of fruit of the poisonous tree kind of thing.
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One apple on a bad tree may not be bad, but then you've pointed people to that tree, and they're going to go to that tree and keep eating apples.
06:03
Eventually, they're going to find a poisonous fruit.
06:07
That sounded better in my head, the illustration.
06:10
I do think it simplifies the argument for a person who may not kind of live in this level of theological discussion, which is the vast majority of population.
06:24
Absolutely.
06:24
Most people only know these songs from either hearing them in church or hearing them on the radio.
06:28
Most people don't even know this is a conversation, because if it's about Jesus, it's good.
06:34
Right.
06:34
If you were to take this to the church that I'm currently serving, and you were to throw this out on a Sunday morning, you would get a lot of confused looks.
06:41
Sure.
06:42
We're not having this conversation because our church asked us to have this conversation.
06:46
No, not at all.
06:46
This is almost a conversation that's only being held within a small group within the church, because a lot of people don't even know this is a conversation.
06:57
I hope that it reaches more people.
06:58
I hope people realize why it is important to know what we're singing and know what we're worshiping.
07:03
Both of us are speaking as men who are in a church, but we're representing our own opinions on this.
07:08
Correct.
07:09
This is one of the things to make the point.
07:11
I'm the pastor of Sovereign Grace, but when it comes to this issue, this is just you and me sharing.
07:16
Exactly.
07:16
I'm hoping this will edify the listeners and help them to see some of the issues that we're dealing with.
07:23
So the first issue of, you don't think necessarily that by playing a song you are endorsing the church that you're playing it from, any more than you would be endorsing a heretic who wrote a good song 200 years ago.
07:36
No.
07:37
Any more than, you know, I was thinking about this today in Daniel when Nebuchadnezzar throws the boys in the furnace, and that doesn't go like he had planned.
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And this is a king that, man, he was just full of vitriol and rage and conquest.
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He saw this thing happen in front of him.
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And then Daniel 4 says, and I don't have my glasses, and this is not, it says it's a large print Bible, their version of large print, and my 49-year-old version of large print.
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I know.
08:15
Two different things.
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I just started wearing glasses.
08:16
So, Nebuchadnezzar the king to all the peoples, nations, and men of every language that live in all the earth, may your peace abound.
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It has seemed good to me to declare the signs and wonders which the Most High God has shown to me.
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How great are His signs, and how mighty are His wonders.
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His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and His dominion is from generation to generation.
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So that's true, and that's truth, and that's a great word, and I would have no problem taking that and inserting it within a song of worship that we would sing within the context of a worship service.
08:57
But it was stated by a heretical, or not heretical, a pagan.
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Who God was so displeased with that a few years later, He drove him mad.
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So this is a person who is actively in sin, but his declaration of God's truth is still a declaration of God's truth.
09:18
Would we avoid that within a worship service? And that is part of that just really rocky ground that church leaders have to walk through.
09:31
I don't think it's safe for us to say, for a lot of people, there's any hard limits on that.
09:39
But for some individuals, a particular teacher may veer so far in one direction that, you know, we've talked about three different groups.
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Some people are going to cut off one, but not the other two, or cut off two and not the other one.
09:55
Yeah, some people think Hillsong's okay, but not Bethel.
09:58
And some people think Elevation's okay.
09:59
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
10:00
Some people don't even know Elevation's an issue.
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Or why Elevation's an issue.
10:05
Sure.
10:06
Well, the second argument that is often made is that this music is actually their number one evangelism tool.
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And they pretty well make that known.
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They are known for being a musical people.
10:23
Their definition of evangelism versus the definition of evangelism that people who would be listening to this, those would probably be two different things.
10:32
Yeah, for us it would be proclaiming the gospel and seeing people come to know Christ by faith.
10:38
But in this context, what the argument is, is that that evangelism is a means to draw people to that particular church.
10:47
Absolutely.
10:47
And I will say there are churches that are around us that are, you know, they have bought into this music hook, line, and sinker.
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And they are full.
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And they are filling and, you know, they're building buildings and constructing new things because it does have a drawing effect, I think.
11:15
Maybe you disagree.
11:16
You look like you, perhaps.
11:18
Well, again...
11:21
I can't tell you how many people I've heard say, you have to come with me to church.
11:25
It's so, the music is so great.
11:26
Well, and that's good, but that's just, you know, that's one piece.
11:35
That's just one piece.
11:37
And I don't know, I've been in this long enough that my experience, I've heard people say that good music can make up for bad preaching.
11:46
That's never been my experience, because bad preaching will run me off quicker than anything in the world.
11:51
Sure.
11:51
But you think a lot differently than most people.
11:54
Yeah, yeah.
11:55
I'll agree with that.
11:58
But...
11:58
I mean that in a good way.
12:00
And I appreciate that.
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In case anybody took that as a shot, that was a compliment.
12:05
Because you and I, you know, we would care if the pastor's preaching from Scripture, but a lot of pastors are preaching, they're preaching stories, they're preaching feel good, they're, you know, ten ways to have a good marriage, five ways to have better sex, you know, all these things.
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And that's not an exaggeration.
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These are actual sermon titles that have come out.
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You know, which avenger is most like Jesus, you know? And they're not exegeting the Word of God.
12:31
And so that is appealing to the flesh too, I think.
12:36
Well, I would agree that those topics could be interpreted as being appealing to the flesh.
12:46
But if you throw a crazy title on a well-exegeted sermon, good on you.
12:55
I mean, you know, so I have nothing against the creative titles.
13:00
Where I lose interest is, are we articulating the gospel for the sake of the gospel? Or are we scrounging around like starving animals, looking for some little gospel nugget that we can just ever so loosely tie to something that's popular? I don't think that gains us any ground long term.
13:28
But even, you know, in the current climate that we're in, we're in an election cycle, you know, great time for prayer.
13:37
Sure, amen.
13:38
And I think it's healthy when churches speak of things of context and speak the gospel in the moment.
13:46
But just talking about things that are popular for the sake of popularity, I don't think that gets you anywhere long term.
13:54
Yeah.
13:55
Well, and that is probably very true.
13:59
But getting back to the issue of, since they are using, according to them, you know, this is a drawing card, you know, and however we define evangelism, they're using this to bring people to their church, i.e.
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to their teaching.
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That would be one of the arguments against using their music, is that this is the purpose of it.
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It's sort of like this is the carrot on the stick that's leading people to their false teaching.
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And therefore, if we provide the carrot to our people, we are basically guiding them to that.
14:40
And I guess this is just another form of the same argument that we talked about a minute ago.
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By playing this music, we're saying we're giving a road to that church.
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A road to that thinking.
14:54
I can definitely understand a person thinking that way, especially a highly objective thinker.
15:02
But it has been my experience that more often somebody finds a song they like, they look it up, they buy it.
15:12
You know, very rarely do people purchase albums anymore.
15:16
They purchase individual songs.
15:18
This—the way that we interact with music has definitely changed so much in the last 20 years.
15:24
And I won't argue necessarily against that argument.
15:29
And I can definitely see where people come from in that.
15:33
It's just not been my experience that somebody hears a song from Bethel, and then goes and buys every Bethel album.
15:45
Or goes and involves themselves in the teachings of Bethel.
15:48
Because that would be the more...
15:49
Even if they bought every Bethel song, it wouldn't be the issue.
15:53
The issue is that they're actually now going to start listening to the teaching.
15:56
That is, I think, the heart of the argument that is being made, is that it's an entry point.
16:04
Yeah, and I can see the concern from a pastoral perspective.
16:09
You know, I wouldn't—years ago, we had a...
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If I remember correctly, it was a person was teaching Sunday school, and they had brought in some Sunday school material that was Catholic.
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And they didn't know that it was Roman Catholic, but within the...
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When I got a copy of it to see it, within it there was the teaching of the rosary, how to pray the Hail Marys and the Our Fathers.
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And I said, no, we're not going to use this curriculum because it feels like a tacit endorsement of this theology.
16:50
And so I think that's the way that that argument sort of comes about, by singing these songs.
16:54
But I think you make a good point that most people aren't just getting the...
16:58
If they're a Christian listening to music, a lot of them are listening to the radio.
17:05
Right.
17:05
You know, Way Radio or whatever.
17:06
And a lot of them now get it from YouTube.
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If you just go into YouTube—YouTube has kind of destroyed the music industry because everybody can get all their songs for free.
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And they go on and talk.
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You know, if you just type in worship music, and it'd be the top 50 worship songs.
17:21
And you know, sometimes when I'm cleaning the house or when I'm working at home, and I just put on YouTube because we have it on the TV, and it just plays.
17:28
I don't know who's playing what.
17:30
Right.
17:30
I remember recently there was a song that came on, and I really liked it.
17:36
And I can't remember the name of it right now, but I also realized it was really easy to play on the guitar, which makes it very, very encouraging for a not-so-good guitar player when you find out it only has three chords, and they're the three easy ones.
17:51
So I was like, wow, this is a good song.
17:54
And then as I researched a little further, I did find out that the song itself was written...
18:00
I don't remember if it was a Bethel or Hill song.
18:02
And so I sort of set it aside because of this argument.
18:05
Because of this issue.
18:07
But if I didn't know where it came from, if I didn't have any of that history, I would have had no qualms at all about leading it, you know? And so, yes, a lot of people don't know where the song came from, would never research like I did to find out where it came from.
18:26
Well, you're not the average person, Keith.
18:28
Let's just be honest.
18:30
But I understand the argument.
18:32
Exactly.
18:33
The third one, this is one I really want you to speak to, because you're going to know more about this probably than most people.
18:39
And this is the song, this is the issue of financing.
18:43
And I'll read the question as I have it written.
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When we sing the songs of these churches in our church, they are receiving the financial benefit of us singing their songs.
18:56
This is the argument made, and the argument sort of goes like this.
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If Planned Parenthood wrote a song that was theologically accurate, and you knew that every time you sang that song, a dollar was going to Planned Parenthood, you wouldn't sing the song because you don't want to support Planned Parenthood.
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And Justin Peters goes even further to say, and I think that the danger to men's souls is even more dangerous than the danger to infants in the womb, because you're not only murdering babies, you're killing souls.
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And so he makes it very, again, it's a pretty solid argument if it's true.
19:33
But is it true that when we sing, let's say we sang a song from Bethel, are they going to get a dollar or 10 cents or something from the song? Is that how it really works? Well, that's a complicated answer, Keith.
19:49
Well, I got a professional worship leader here.
19:52
I could ask the tough question.
19:54
Okay, so again, back to words.
19:56
Let's clarify what it means to be professional.
19:58
It means that you're paid.
20:00
It doesn't mean that you're good.
20:02
Praise God, I've been in a lot of professions.
20:06
Exactly.
20:08
So how CCLI works, and who...
20:12
Oh, stop real quick, because nobody knows what CCLI is, probably.
20:15
Yes, so let me finish that.
20:17
How CCLI works, which is at the center of this argument, is they license Christian music to be used in churches.
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So there's this wonderful thing that Christians have struggled with for decades called copyright law and royalty, and basically what that says is when a human being is actually bearing the image of God that is within them, and they are being creative.
20:49
That was a sarcastic remark.
20:50
Amen.
20:51
I'm with you.
20:53
That that creation belongs to them in a way that they should be able to monetize.
20:59
And so we have a service, CCLI, Christian Copyright Licensing, I don't know what it is, Institute, and basically you have a subscription to them.
21:13
You pay them a flat rate based upon the size of your church, and for a year's period you can display the lyrics in your church services on the screens, if that's what you do, if you still print bulletins.
21:27
Do people still print bulletins? We still print a bulletin.
21:30
Don't you walk back on that, my friend.
21:32
However it is, you get the lyrics out, and however you would print music for your team, whether that's actually printed or whether they would view it on the tablets and things like that.
21:43
And so what they do is they ensure that the copyright owners, who may not be the people who wrote the songs, they may just be the people who have bought the rights to the songs, they are paid very minimally, by the way, but they are paid for that.
22:02
So the way CCLI determines how much a song has been used is as a customer of theirs, because that's what churches are, you are in a reporting period, and you usually get that every five years.
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They say, and that may have changed now, but back in the day, about every five years you could expect it to come around.
22:29
And they send you this notice and it says, hey, you're in a reporting period, and during that reporting period, six months or so, you have to record every time you print a song, every time you use it in worship, how many copies you made, and then at the end of six months you send them this massive report.
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They aggregate that across their organization.
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That determines how much money goes to whom.
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The key to understanding how this works is it is a sampling.
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It is not a 100% accurate representation of what every church who is paying CCLI on any given Sunday is singing.
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It is just that, it is a sampling.
23:16
So as Sovereign Grace, if you decided, well, we don't want any of our money going to fill in the blank church, because I'd prefer to get away, when we're talking about ideas and concepts, I would prefer to get away from attaching names to those.
23:36
So I don't want any particular person or organization to receive funding from our church, and that's what we're after.
23:46
Then CCLI is not your answer, because they are paying their monies off of the aggregate of the churches that are actively in a reporting period, even though yours is not.
24:00
So if you are giving money to CCLI, you are giving money to these churches by default, because that's kind of the way it works.
24:10
At least, that's my minimal understanding of it.
24:13
So there is a little difficulty within that financial argument.
24:17
Now, there is a way around that, because as a church, you are free to use their some other up-and-coming services, but they kind of work the same way.
24:30
You are free to contact copyright owners directly.
24:35
And so let's say that you did a lot of Getty Music, you did a lot of Shane and Shane, you did just anything.
24:44
You can contact those copyright owners directly, and you can work out a per-service agreement.
24:52
You're free to do that.
24:54
But that is, at least as I see it, and I may be missing something, that would be the only way to really be free of the financial attachment to CCLI.
25:04
And that would be almost impossible.
25:07
Well...
25:08
Let me back that up.
25:10
You're right, it could be done.
25:12
Oh, it could be done.
25:13
But you would have to for every song you do, or at least for every group that you do.
25:21
We do a lot of Sovereign Grace Music, we do a lot of...
25:23
We don't do as much Getty's.
25:25
They're not as easy to play.
25:27
I would say the truth is truth.
25:32
But I like Shane and Shane, they tend to...
25:36
That's good taste right there, buddy.
25:37
Well, praise the Lord.
25:39
So there are those...
25:41
So I could call up the production manager for Shane and Shane or whoever, and I could get that.
25:46
But with CCLI, we have that.
25:47
Our church does have a CCLI license.
25:50
We pay for it every year.
25:51
It's not much, it's a very minimum amount.
25:54
But they also provide us another benefit.
25:57
Not only can we put the words on the screen, but we also...
26:00
We have an entire database to look up songs.
26:03
If I need a song in a different key, people don't understand how valuable that is.
26:08
But sometimes if a key...
26:09
If it's written in F sharp, and I'd rather play it in G, all I gotta do is go into CCLI and switch it to G, and it changes the song and prints it out for me in two seconds.
26:21
I don't have to sit there...
26:21
So let me translate that for the non-musicians in the room.
26:26
For incredibly skilled and very well-trained musicians, keys are practically irrelevant.
26:33
They just move things all over the place, and it's no big deal.
26:35
For people who are in the learning process, making things simple and accessible is massive.
26:44
Absolutely.
26:45
Massive.
26:45
Absolutely.
26:46
And what it does is it allows you to build the team and actually put the church into ministry.
26:51
And someone might say, well, you know what? We just need to play out of the hymn books.
26:55
And I'll speak to that, because we do have hymn books.
26:58
We have a hymn book that was created by Lifeway Ministries.
27:01
About 12 years ago, they came out with something called the Worship Hymnal, and it included songs that were both hymns and contemporary songs.
27:11
So it's got right next to maybe Amazing Grace, you'll have God of Wonders.
27:15
And people are like, wow, this is a strange hymn book, but it's a hybrid hymn book.
27:20
But even that hymn book is not always written in the keys that are easiest for people to sing or for people to play.
27:27
Or for churches whose music is based on guitar, not on piano, because pianists tend to like keys that are flats, and guitarists don't.
27:42
No, we like either straight or minors, you know, majors and minors.
27:48
Right, and so there is a difficulty for people to bridge those gaps musically.
27:53
Yeah, absolutely.
27:55
And this is one of those conversations that if you've never done it, you wouldn't even know what is being said.
28:01
Right.
28:01
And I remember when I was a kid, and this is gonna seem like I'm going off track here, but I promise I'm not.
28:06
We do got to finish up soon.
28:09
So when I was a kid, I used to go down to my mom's church, and my mom was in a holiness church.
28:15
And it was vastly different, because when I was at Forrest as a child, it was high church, the preacher wore a robe, there was an organ, and she played directly from the hymn book.
28:25
And you could literally, you could read the hymn.
28:28
If you knew how to read music, which I did very early on, I learned how to read music by being in church, by following the hymn book, and seeing how the notes went up and down, and that's how you knew.
28:37
But when I went to my mom's church, all they had was words and letters.
28:41
Right.
28:42
And that's what we call lead sheet, or not even a lead sheet, it's a chord chart.
28:45
You know, it was just songs, and every third or fourth word, there'd be a new key.
28:49
And if it was G, it was G, C, D, E minor, maybe an E minor.
28:52
Right.
28:53
And, but everybody was playing guitars.
28:57
Right.
28:57
Nobody was playing the organ.
28:59
And if they did play a piano, it was somebody just hitting the chords on the piano.
29:04
And like I said, now we've kind of gone off topic, but the point is, there is a sense in which CCLI benefits a church like ours, where we don't have an entire array of talented musicians.
29:19
You know, we have one lady who's a very gifted piano player, Lori, who is wonderful, and she's classically trained, so she could do anything in the hymn book.
29:28
Right.
29:28
Give her 10 minutes, and give her the song, and she can play it.
29:31
And some people might say, well, the best thing to do would just be throw the guitars away, and just let her do it, and just do it like the book says.
29:37
And if we did it like the book says, we would not have to have the CCLI license, theoretically, right? If we just did that.
29:45
And some people may think that's the way to go.
29:47
Right.
29:47
But I personally- But you also wouldn't be able to live stream your music without CCLI's other license, which is the streaming license.
29:56
Yeah.
29:56
And that's the other issue too, right? Since COVID, people want to be able to see the whole service.
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They don't want to just be able to see the preaching part.
30:06
Well, Keith, I think the important thing to do in this portion of the conversation is to acknowledge that for most people that don't live in this space, they just got really confused by the things that we talked about.
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So let me bring this back in to give you context.
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As pastors and as shepherds of a church, this is the minutiae that is on the back end of any argument like this where really what we normally see is just the front end of the argument.
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We should or we shouldn't.
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We should or we shouldn't.
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And there is this discussion that is the back and forth.
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But then where the rubber meets the road is once a church, once Sovereign Grace makes a decision on this issue, what are the implementation issues? What are the implications of those decisions? And I'll say this.
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When I checked my driver's license this morning, it still had my name on it.
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It still doesn't say Holy Spirit.
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Amen.
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And so I don't claim to be the voice of God for anyone, and I don't claim to tell a pastor what they should or should not believe.
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But I do sit in a place of incredible empathy knowing what it means for me to have to wrestle this down multiplied by thousands and thousands and thousands of church leaders who are wrestling with this same issue.
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And if you listen to this today and you walk away and you say, man, I am no more confused than I was when I was started.
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Or I'm more confused.
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Or I'm more confused, which could be great.
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And you are a church leader.
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Just know this.
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My heart bleeds for you because shepherding the flock of God is hard.
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Peter said, shepherd the flock of God which is among you.
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So that flock that is among you is not only the people that he has sent to Keith Foskey to pastor, but it is the time and place in which God sent those people to Keith Foskey to pastor.
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And as he is shepherding them, the pastor, the context that we're in is always changing.
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And 20 years from now, this argument around Bethel, Elevation, Hillsong, any other thing that you would want to turn in, we're going to find something else to be contentious about.
32:38
Sure.
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And in every generation, at every time, pastors are having to make these weighty decisions that the rest of the world would just shrug it off and go on like it's no big deal.
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But I know as a pastor, this issue weighs heavy on your heart because of your people.
32:57
Absolutely.
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And as the pastor of this church, just a year ago, I took over the duties of leading our worship team.
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And this has become more important because now I am the one who is standing up and leading God's people in singing.
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I was at a pastor's forum.
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I go to a pastor's forum every month.
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I meet with a group of pastors, and we pray for each other and talk, and one of the things I asked them, I said, do you think it's wrong for the pastor to also be the worship leader? And they said, no, as long as you're not stretching yourself too thin.
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They brought up the point that Spurgeon was the one who led the singing in his church, and he preached, so it's not as if it's...
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And his sermons, they're still with us, so they were pretty solid.
33:41
So that's not a huge problem, but I do have to make decisions that are, one, in line with the other elders that I serve with, because these men...
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If I'm questionable about whether or not we should do a song or buy a certain group or whatever, these are questions that I go to Brother Mike and Brother Andy and Brother Jack about because these are important questions.
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But also, I have to think about the fact that we as a church, we have people within our church that have certain convictions, and I do think this issue of the Bethel thing, I think there are some that are convicted about it, and so I don't want to...
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Even if I'm not sending money to Bethel, even if that's not the way it works, I don't want to go kick those people in the teeth either.
34:29
Well, isn't that the issue out of Corinthians, the meat-sacrificed idols? Yeah, absolutely.
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Once again, we see a biblical principle in a modern-day context, and it is no less true, that as shepherds, we have to shepherd the people that are among us without just being offensive for the nature of being offensive.
34:54
Sometimes we have to make a, here's a bad word, compromise on something that we would not necessarily be as convicted about, because some people that we care about are.
35:06
Yes, amen, yeah.
35:08
Well, Brother, I am so grateful that we have had this conversation, and it has gone a little long, which means that by this time, it will either have been two or three episodes, and I'm grateful.
35:19
I knew it was going to happen, and I'm thankful for it.
35:21
John, thank you for giving us your time today and your wisdom.
35:24
I appreciate it.
35:25
And can we just do two things before we jump off of here? One, can I just look you in the eye and tell you how much I love you and respect you as a person, as a father, as a husband, and as a pastor and a shepherd? There's no finer Bible teacher in Jacksonville, and I don't think there's any finer shepherd.
35:48
So let me just put that on record.
35:50
And two, can we just take a minute and pray over this issue? Because this is divisive for a lot of people.
35:58
Well, I appreciate your kind words, and I'm very thankful for them.
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Brother, pray for us, and then when you finish your prayer, I'm going to close with our closing.
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God, thank you so much.
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First of all, that you have given us a love relationship with you, that you, by your grace and by your calling, chose to draw us to yourself.
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We thank you that your word teaches us that it is your kindness that leads us to repentance.
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So God, we thank you for initiating that action within our lives.
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We thank you not only that the gospel was available, but you made us aware that you convicted us of who you are and your holiness.
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You convicted us of our sin, and you convicted us of our need for a Savior.
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But moreover, you made us aware of who that Savior was.
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God, without you moving on our hearts, we wouldn't even have that minimalistic understanding of what the gospel is.
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And so God, we thank you for moving in our lives.
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We thank you for an honest conversation today.
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Lord, your word tells us how can two walk together unless they agree.
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And I've often wondered how two can walk together in agreement unless they have honest conversations.
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Amen.
37:20
So Lord, I thank you for somebody that I love and that loves me, and that we can just have honest conversations.
37:27
And Lord, I pray that in the coming days for pastors and church leaders who may hear this and agree, who may hear this and disagree, Lord, I pray that you would open discourse and dialogue.
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I pray that it would be seasoned with grace and love.
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And God, I pray that your Spirit would move on the heart of your church and your individual congregations of churches.
37:53
And as church leaders all over are just trying to wrestle this thing to the ground, Lord, I pray, knowing by faith that your word is true, that your Holy Spirit would do exactly what you said he would do, that it's better that he comes, that Christ goes away, because the Holy Spirit will teach us about Jesus.
38:18
And so Lord, I pray that you, by your Spirit, would teach pastors, church leaders, guide them through this process, give them comfort knowing that your word is still true, that man plans his days, but in all things, even this, that the Lord, he sets those steps out in front of us.
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And to the pastors listening, struggling, going, man, I don't have this thing down, you planned your path to this point, pastor, and God is still ordering your steps, and he's still going to do it.
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So God, I pray for those leaders.
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I pray that they would walk by faith, walking in faith of who you are and walking in faith of the word that you have given us.
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Ask all of this in Christ's name.
39:14
Amen.
39:15
Amen.
39:16
Brother John, thank you so much for being with me today and having an honest conversation about a difficult topic.
39:22
And listener, thank you for being with us over the last couple days as we have had this conversation.
39:28
I want to thank you again for being a part of our listening audience and to know that we are here for you every weekday at 630 with Coffee with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey and I have been your Calvinist.
39:40
May God bless you.
39:42
Thank you for listening to today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist.
39:46
If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe and provide us feedback.
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We love to receive your comments and questions and may even engage with them in a future episode.
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As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
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All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior.
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He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
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May God be with you.