How Should Pastors Navigate A Polarized Political Environment?

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. We're live now.

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And we have a lot to talk about this morning because as many of you know, the former President Donald Trump had a attempted assassin try to take him out at a rally in Pennsylvania.

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And we were live streaming about this on Saturday night. Well, since then, of course, many, myself included, have taken to the internet to give our opinions and to give hot takes.

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And some of my takes have been considered, I suppose, somewhat spicy. But one of the things that I did yesterday, and I wanna do this to set this up because we're gonna talk about preachers and pastors and churches and what their responsibilities should be in this.

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So it'll be a worthwhile discussion. But one of the things I wanna talk about is the unfortunate response that I've seen in a lot of churches.

00:54

So yesterday, I'm just gonna set this up by saying someone very close to me,

01:00

I'll put it that way, gave me a call or shot me a text, I should say, and said essentially what their pastor told them on Sunday.

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And it was chiding them, chiding them for being too concerned about earthly matters, about the political matters surrounding this event.

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And they should be more in their Bible. Now, every pastor knows their congregation. Every congregation is a little bit different.

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And I understand that. I would just say a larger church where it's probably on a human scale level, impossible for the pastor to really know everyone in that church, but it really discouraged people that were at that church who were concerned about this.

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And I thought, well, surely that is probably an anomaly. That's not something that you're gonna find at most churches.

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So I started going online and just looking up some major churches. And not all the reactions were quite the same, but I wanna give you the broad overview.

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So I went to Epiphany Fellowship. That's where Eric Mason and Paul David Tripp go.

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And they did not mention at all, anything. Parkside Church where Alistair Begg pastors did not mention anything about what happened over the weekend.

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You have Village Church where Matt Chandler preaches, Hickory Grove Baptist Church where Clint Presley preaches.

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He's the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. They prayed for the families of both the shooter and Donald Trump's family.

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And that was pretty much it. Just praying for the families, their general wellbeing, which I say is better than not mentioning, right?

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But that's all they did. And then of course, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, and then of course,

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J .D. Greer's Church, Summit Church, both did the same thing, praying for the victims, praying for the shooter's family.

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But they also lamented this polarization that's happening in our country. And they didn't attribute it to one side more than any other.

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It was just this polarization that exists out there. And the shooter was,

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I guess, the manifestation of this polarization. And the solution, of course, there's really only one solution that they had, which is, well, churches need to preach the gospel and that's it.

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And I thought that felt so flat. And so I wanted to talk to a pastor who actually did address this from his pulpit yesterday.

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And that's Pastor Danny Steinmeier. He's the pastor of Truth Family Bible Church. He's also on the board for TruthScript.

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Welcome, Pastor Steinmeier. Good to have you on the podcast. Thanks, John. It's good to be with you. And we also have

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William Wolfe with us who has his camera turned off from the Center for Baptist Leadership. So William, I don't know if you had to take a break, but he'll be with us shortly.

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Pastor Steinmeier, I wanna ask you about how you navigated this. Well, first of all, I wanna say welcome.

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Is this your first time on the podcast? It is, yeah. First time on the Mothership there, yeah.

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Because we've talked so many times before, I just think I assume that you've been on and I didn't realize it just occurred to me. This is your first time.

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So welcome. Thank you for being here. What did you do? How did you, what was your thought process going into Sunday?

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And then how did that affect what you actually said to your congregation? Well, yeah, it started off, you know, obviously late on Saturday finding out about it.

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Actually, you were the one that tipped me off to it. I wasn't, it wasn't on my radar. We had a service day with a number of us at our church.

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We're building a house for a handicapped woman in our church. And so just really finding out late

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Saturday and just processing it, thinking through it, talking to a few people. Our church communication app was just lit up with a few things of just everybody kind of just getting the initial information.

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And so then really for me, it wasn't anything just out of the ordinary for me to address things that are applicable and where our people are.

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We really want to be a very applicational worldview minded church just by and large.

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And it's not unusual for us. And in fact, it's actually ordinary for us in our bulletins every week. We change through identifying by name, different levels of government and individuals in government that we pray for that week.

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And so it's, we don't shy away from any of that. At all, just as a matter of course.

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So for me, the way I did it, I didn't change my sermon. That was done. And by the way,

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I was preaching on the issue of polygamy. I'm doing a series on the seventh commandment at this point.

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So I'm touching all the elements that deal with marriage and sin related to marriage. And I give a nod to Christian nationalism that you can thank

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Christian nationalism or thank a Christian nationalist for the fact that polygamy is outlawed in every state in the union,

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Puerto Rico and Guam. I mean, and Western civilization has basically outlawed polygamy. So I'm already,

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I already find touch points to identify the practical applications of how our understanding of scripture and how our worldview leads to how we think about the world around us, including politics.

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Because politics is just an extension of the living out of our lives. And so for me,

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I didn't change anything message -wise. So what I did though, is I opened the service during our announcement period and then addressed it at that point.

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And so just had a few words. It wasn't particularly lengthy, but acknowledging it.

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Because one of the things as a pastor, I think is really important, is to...

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See, those that don't acknowledge it at all, I think just don't have enough of a recognition that the people in the pews have a significant, legitimate burden on their hearts and something that they need leadership in understanding.

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How do I think about it? How should I understand this as a Christian? How does this affect us in some way or another?

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And listen, we don't live by the newspaper every week in terms of how it affects the church or the message.

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So for me, it was just a matter of, hey, this is a significant national event. We are wanting

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President Trump to win and to take down. We want God to remove this particular leader and raise up a different one.

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So we already are, in a sense... We have chosen sides as a church.

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There's no getting around that. And then ultimately, it was praying for President Trump.

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I acknowledged, by the way, I acknowledged the providence of God in just by a couple of inches, maybe.

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Everything, the world would have been completely different. And yet providentially, God spared his life and just really made some comments regarding that.

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But to what end, I don't know. I didn't go further than that. Because was he spared for a week? Or was he spared for other greater purposes that God has?

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And I can't speak to that. But what I can speak to is the reality that... I like what

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Mike Rowe said. Donald Trump is not the only one that dodged a bullet on Saturday. America did too.

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And so it's really just acknowledging the reality and the sigh of relief that we could really have.

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And then just praying for President Trump, the families involved. I think at that point, there was an idea that there was other people shot.

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And just praying for it. So just taking our time in the beginning of the service to acknowledge that and to pray for our country.

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And it sounds like, Pastor, you are in a church, as you said, that has already, in some ways, taken a side.

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At least your congregants would see you as someone who isn't playing this moral equivalency game

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I see so many pastors playing, that it's not so much the left and the media, and even

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Joe Biden's rhetoric, if everyone remembers the dark Brandon speech, that inspired this kind of thing.

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But you see it as like, this is more unique, or I would say characteristic of the enemies on the left.

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Political enemies, I'm saying. And also in some sense, I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but maybe a spiritual darkness, a spiritual enemy.

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Because I certainly see that. And I think a lot of people see that. But it seems like at any churches, the pastors don't wanna acknowledge that.

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They wanna act as if people like ourselves are just as much contributing to what happened on Saturday as the shooter was.

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Like the polarization belongs to us. I don't know if you wanna address that real quick, but maybe you didn't need to say any words like that because you have already, your church knows where you stand.

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Yeah, I don't think that it's just a matter of rhetoric or anything like that.

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I think it is, from a pastoral perspective, it is a matter of ordinary shepherding.

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And I think what we've done, the way I see it in terms of the way the church and a lot of pastors and leaders have gone this direction has been more in that pietistic direction and the dualism of separating the spiritual from the ordinary and the physical.

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But it's selective because what we typically will find is that there just tends to be more of a church reaction, depending on the church, right?

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There's gonna be a church reaction depending on and if their side has benefited or hasn't benefited in some way.

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And there hasn't been a strong, masculine, robust sense of what we are about and how the church influences and should be influencing the culture around us because of what we believe about God's word.

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And so, yeah, I don't see this just being about that equivalency issue of having, we're just as bad as the left, we're all just neutral here on this side.

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And what we've done is we've just separated out, we'll just keep our spiritual things to ourselves and we can just let a lot of this go or we'll then speak up when something really happens and it ends up being a lefty thing.

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We always want to punch right and signal left and that's unfortunate to a lot of places.

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And so that gets to a lot of people being concerned about the church. Another thing, by the way, just the way

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I approached it is and the way our congregation approaches it, we're praying for revival, reformation and awakening.

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And we do that, we did that yesterday, we do that just frequently because we recognize that we recognize our answers are not ultimately political, but they come often in, it affects and gets into politics, but it is a spiritual thing.

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And so we do need the gospel of Christ, we need the churches and leaders to be awakened to the need for our personal repentance and our national repentance.

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And so, yeah, it's not something that is to be just looked at as a rhetorical crackle that is, we have an obligation,

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I think, to call for truth. Yeah, what I hear you saying, I think it's so helpful because you're not over spiritualizing either.

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You're not doing what I saw some pastors do where the only category that we can approach this with is the gospel.

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You are saying this is an important category to talk about here. Someone almost died, our country was very close to having some serious possible civil unrest.

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And obviously when anyone dies or is close to death, the gospel is the answer, it's something we should be talking about.

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We are concerned for President Trump's eternal destiny, but at the same time, there's physical realities.

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We live in this world and the evil manifests itself in these ways. The evil wants to take our children and expose them to evil.

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The evil that exists on the left really is where I'm talking about, tends to promote more violence.

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And certainly when it comes to sexual ethics, we can see that playing itself out.

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And so you're able to address that with your congregation. And that's where I see a lot of hesitancy of like, well, the gay pride march, just a big one example that went down the street was that, what's the solution to that?

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Well, yeah, okay, the gospel. But at the same time, like, are there some things we can do to combat the spiritual reality that's right in front of us?

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There may be some votes that we could take at the election to elect some people, like even something like that.

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Is that a possibility as a pastor to talk about? And it sounds like you have that balance or maybe balance isn't the word.

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Really you're just accepting the reality of the situation. And guiding your people in the moral categories that they should be thinking in.

14:41

William, I wanna turn to you real quick. And you're not a pastor, but you are in seminary.

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And I know you have an MDiv. I know you're pursuing higher education, but you're also the, is it director of,

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I don't know what the name of your title is for the Center for Baptist Leadership? Yeah, founder and executive director. So as a layman, as someone who's not in the pulpit, but is concerned about what the pulpit is saying, what do you wanna hear as a layman?

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What are you seeing? Because I know you have your ear to the ground as far as what's going on, especially in the

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SBC. What do you think is lacking? Or maybe if there's a pastor you think that did it really well, all of that, go for it.

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Yeah, sure. As a lay member in a church, I want to know that my pastor lives in the same world that I live in.

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Now, I'm a political guy. I pay attention to a lot of political things. So I don't expect my pastor to be tracking everything that I think is of major political significance and working it into a pastoral prayer or a special comment from the pulpit.

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But you don't have to be a political to know what happened on Saturday in America.

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Everybody, I assume everybody who came to church on Sunday at any church across our country knew that there was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, that this was a major moment in American history.

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And that attack on a former president and a current presidential candidate is really an attack on America.

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And so I want and am looking for a pastor who is gonna stand up there and whether it's with a comment in a prayer or a brief note, say one to two minutes outside of the sermon,

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I wanna hear that that pastor lives in the same world that I live in and wants to care for my soul and to help shape my thinking.

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We look to pastors for spiritual guidance, yes, but we also look to them for guidance on how to apply the gospel to our lives in this world, how to apply the full counsel of God's word, not just the gospel message, but everything that the

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Bible has to say about rulers, about justice, about authority, about righteousness and evil in this world.

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And there's so much that could be said and added. And so, look, I'm a big fan of expositional preaching. So I don't think that a pastor necessarily needed to rework his sermon.

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But I do think that any pastor that stood up in the pulpit yesterday and failed to address this in some way, really failed to shepherd his sheep that God has put under his care.

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And I'll say this, John, if you're a conservative evangelical pastor, or you think you are, and you were able to say

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Michael Brown's name from the pulpit, you were able to say George Floyd's name from the pulpit, but you weren't able to bring yourself to say

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Donald Trump's actual name from the pulpit yesterday, but sort of hemmed and hawed and said, presidential candidate or something like that, then you really need to rethink your priorities.

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Why did you think it would not be controversial to say George Floyd's name from the pulpit, but you do think it'd be too controversial to use

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Donald Trump's name? And yet I fear in conservative evangelicalism, that's a lot of the framework that pastors are still operating within.

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Now, in terms of pastors who did a good job, I'd say one of the main clips I've seen circulating was from Steve Gentry at the

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Village Church in Virginia. Steve Gentry is a pastor there along with Nate Schloman and Chris Bolt, and our good friend,

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Rhett Koppel goes there, and this is all public, so I'm not doxing anybody's church situation here. Steve is on the board of Center for Baptist Leadership, and I think

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Steve rightly addressed the situation. He called out the evil, particularly on the left, and he essentially said, the right must win.

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And I think that's right. I think the right does need to win peacefully in America if we are going to have peace again.

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And of course, as American Christians, we care about the well -being of our country.

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That's something that matters to us. The peace in our nation matters to us, and it should matter to us as Christians, and historically,

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Christians have understood this. I've mentioned this before in a variety of different writings and conversations, but I would just commend again

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Andrew Fuller's sermon, Christian Patriotism, which he preached when he thought there was going to be an invasion of Napoleon in England, and he lays out that Christians should be concerned about the well -being of their country, and that just because we have the hope of the gospel, that doesn't mean that what happens here and now in our lives doesn't matter.

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And so I would say that I'm concerned also that I've seen a little bit of what I'd call a spiritual short -circuiting of applying the full counsel of God's word to our lives by pivoting too quick to phrases like, well, our hope is in heaven and Jesus is the king.

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That's true, but we need to sit with and wrestle with what happens in our lives, what happens in political situations, and try to figure out how we should respond to them as Christians, but particularly as American Christians living here in 2024 today.

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And so I think there's still a little bit of a pietistic, dualistic hangover that sort of stalks conservative evangelicalism, and again, particularly when it comes to dealing with issues, so to speak, on the right.

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That dualism seems to evaporate very quickly when it comes to issues that are more center or to the left, and I would again commend

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Steve Gentry as a pastor who is showing the way of breaking out of that model and rightly living as a

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Christian in America today, and as a pastor in particular. And I did see that clip.

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Unfortunately, I don't have it queued up. I probably should have. It's a little bit longer than the clip I'm about to play for you.

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I wanna play a clip on the negative side, so a negative example in my mind of a less than helpful response to this from the pulpit, and then

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I want your reaction, Pastor Steinmeier, and then William, we can get your reaction to it as well.

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I do not know exactly where this is from. I understand it is a church in Arizona, but the person who posted online was trying to get

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Charlie Kirk to comment on this, and I don't know whether he will or not, so we may be the first here to public, but this is a pastor who did what

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I think many pastors across the United States did. In fact, in my own analysis of what

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I've looked at from these big influential churches, this is pretty much exactly what we saw, but this is a shorter clip demonstrating it, so here we go.

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What happened and what has been happening in our country and around the world,

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I'm just gonna pause and say, we've got to do better. With everything that happened yesterday, the divisiveness, the vitriol here in this country, and it doesn't matter if we're talking politics or the stinking

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WNBA, we can't get along, and the church should be different.

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We are called to, first of all, love God, and then we're called to love one another, and it doesn't matter what their belief system is in politics, it doesn't matter if they think that Angel Reese is better than Caitlin Clark, and I've got my own opinions as an

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Iowa guy, all right? We're called to be better, and so I wanna pause a moment,

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I wanna pray for us as a country, as a church, as a people, to just be better, so will you pray with me?

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God, we come to you this morning, and we know that we are in a broken, broken world.

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God, we know that the enemy wants nothing more than to divide us as people, to focus on what doesn't matter, and not focus on who you are, and the fact that you are still on the throne, and you still have a plan for us.

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God, I pray that we as a church, big

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C church, can love one another, can show those around us what it means to love you first, and love others second.

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God, we love you, it's in Jesus' name that we pray, amen. Okay, so that was the prayer and the mention of Donald Trump in one church, which

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I understand is somewhat of a big deal church, and so I wanna get first your comments, or thoughts on that,

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Pastor Steinmeier, what do you think as you heard that? I'm reminded, I'm old enough to remember the

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LA riots and the Rodney King era, can't we all just get along, is kind of the thing that comes to mind, and to me,

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I also noticed the element of things that don't matter, and really this idea of love is, it doesn't matter what your politics are, we just need to love each other, and so again, it's trying to drive the church down the middle, we don't want to offend the people on the left, ultimately, and so we're not going to really give any credence or acknowledgement, like you mentioned earlier,

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I think, William, the idea of, he wouldn't say the name, he'll say WNBA players' names, but he wasn't gonna say the name of Donald Trump, you kinda wanna do that whole left thing, say the name, say the name,

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I think that this is just very, just misguided, that's a church

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I would never attend, and I could pick that out before he even opened his mouth, okay, this is mainstream evangelicalism,

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I call that a big Eva church, that's basically what you have there, and it's gonna be very vanilla, very, and the whole,

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Jesus is on his throne, and it's gonna be garbage again, it's frustrating that you continue to have this element of a misunderstanding of love, you have a doctrinal issue running through that entire comment,

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I've been doing a series on the 10 commandments for over a year, and I haven't left

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Exodus 20, I'm preaching through the whole book of Exodus, and we haven't left Exodus 20 yet, and I've pointed out that we are talking about love, the entire year has been a series on love, because we're talking about God's law, and when it, but when it comes to being able to communicate what love is, it comes out in big

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Eva as just accepting one another, and let's not actually have a sense of truth, and what is right and wrong, it's let's just accept each other, because that's what it means to love, and while we do have a measure of tolerating one another within the body, we do have to contend for what is actually right and true, and the application of that in life and in the world, another element of what

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I was concerned with, I have two bites at the apple in our church, we have a morning and evening service, in the evening we're able to communicate that we have a concern for the future of our children and our grandchildren, and so our nation and our politics do matter, because this has obviously an effect on us here and now, but this has an effect well down the road, and I think we have to get this just real, very feeling oriented, accept one another, love one another stuff, that stuff needs to go the way of the dinosaurs, that needs to be extinguished and go extinct, and that's a problem of big

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Eva today. Yeah, William, what do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, I've got a couple of thoughts, I mean, first of all,

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Christians are called to speak the truth, and unapologetically so, and the truth was profoundly lacking from that statement, the truth of what happened on Saturday in our country, is that somebody tried to assassinate

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Donald Trump, and somebody died, there was also an innocent victim of this act of political violence, other people were injured, and he spent more words, speaking more specifically about the

27:47

WNBA, than about what actually happened in our country tomorrow, I would say that that little clip, guys was a form of bearing false witness, about what actually happened in our country, and also it's unfortunate, when we have to deal with people who are misusing scripture too, talking about Jesus being on his throne, that's true, but then we have to say that that's not the right way to talk about Jesus being on his throne, and it reminds me of that quote,

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I think it's from Packer, it could be from somebody else, where he says, a half truth masquerading as the whole truth becomes an entire lie, and that's essentially what that clip was, that clip had a half truth in it,

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Jesus is on his throne, but masquerading as a whole truth, because Jesus is on his throne, nothing matters in terms of what happens in our country, or the fact that a former president was almost assassinated doesn't matter, that becomes a whole lie, it does matter, it has profound implications and ramifications for our lives together, as American Christians today, for us as fathers, for us as husbands for our future,

28:55

I mean, my wife is concerned about what happened, and what it means, and as somebody who's an outspoken advocate and supporter of Donald Trump, that gives concern to my wife, what does this mean?

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Is it open season on Trump supporters in America? And quite frankly, that's been the climate that the left and the media has been creating for us for many years now, and so that clip was,

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I'd say profound pastoral malpractice, that man did not handle the word of God rightly, he bore false witness about what actually happened to our country, and he talked about trivialities that don't matter at all, and if I didn't know that the context of this was an attempted assassination on Trump, I would actually have no idea what that guy is talking about.

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We have, for those just tuning in, we have Pastor Steinmeier of Truth Family Bible Church in Middleton, Idaho, we have

29:48

William Wolfe from the Center for Baptist Leadership, if you have questions or comments, please leave them in the chat box, and I will get to them,

29:57

I know there's a lot of opinions that are being put out there, I wanna acknowledge a few people,

30:02

Ray says, funny, I didn't feel that I, as a Christian, was responsible for Trump's assistant attempt,

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I think assassination attempt is what he meant to say, and I noticed that right away with that clip we just played, that for some reason pastors feel as though they can blame their own churches for the heated rhetoric and division, and the churches just take it, which is odd, because I can't think of any other institution where the people would just take it like that, but that's apparently a more,

30:35

I guess, moderate approach, blaming your own church than it is for acknowledging what actually happened, and it's funny, my family,

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I mentioned as many in my family, and I think many even at my church were expecting an incident like this to happen sooner because of some of the rhetoric that we've seen coming from the left,

30:53

Mike says, I led singing yesterday at church, I was the only one to mention it, not the preacher or elders, and I'm getting a lot of comments like this, a lot of discouragement because of this,

31:03

I think the pastor of our, our pastor mentioned yesterday, all that he mentioned,

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I should say, was in his opening prayer in regards to governing over the affairs of men, so he didn't mention the incident, there's a lot of other comments in this vein, in fact,

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I had personal text messages this morning because of some of my Twitter or X activity, people were thanking me that, who had pastors that didn't mention it and were very burdened by that, and I wanna ask a question about this, so I'm first,

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I'm gonna read a tweet that I put out there that went viral, I wasn't quite expecting that, and it is spicy,

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I read it to my wife, and I was like, you know, I kind of popped this off after my brother had told me some things about what he was hearing out there, and so I was getting like word reports from people in my life, friends and stuff, about what was going on at their churches and so forth, and I popped this off,

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I don't regret it, I did add an addendum to it though, so this is what I said, I said, my church prayed for President Trump, his family, the family of the supporter who died, and our country, the pastor thanked

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God for his mercy and blamed the left for destroying our country, why, because we don't have a pathetic excuse for a pastor, and of course that was the spicy take there, how many can say the same, there are wartime leaders, there are peacetime leaders, make sure your church has a wartime leader, and then

32:22

I had to follow this up because I got some pushback, overwhelming support, but I did get some pushback, and I just said lots of people misunderstanding this, no,

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I'm not saying a pastor must be a certain level of political as a qualification for being a pastor, no, I'm not saying that we were not in a spiritual wartime paradigm before the attempted assassination, since 2020, we've seen numerous opportunities for pastors to guide their people with needed moral clarity, encouragement and boldness, sadly, many have failed, and then

32:47

I said, I will address this in the podcast today, so I do wanna address that, and the first thing

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I wanna ask you guys is this, I don't believe that it is a requirement, you're not gonna look in Timothy or Titus and find that a pastor must be political, those words are not there, but as I think about this situation, and it's not just this situation,

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I think since 2020, we have realized there's been a massive failure in our churches, for years, pastors failed in their responsibility to morally guide their congregation, and also to provide encouragement when there was civil upheaval, and I'll just speak a little personally,

33:27

I remember when there were riots in the streets, and the

33:33

COVID stuff was starting, and I remember, I'm not gonna say names, but a massive failure in the churches by and large, where I was living at the time, to actually address these matters in a timely way and in a helpful way, and there was a sense of wanting to completely sidestep this, to not cause any controversies, to not address it, and the churches that did address it, by and large,

33:59

I'm not saying there weren't good examples, but the vast majority did it very poorly, and then if you were someone in the congregation, because I know many stories like this, where you wanted more, you were blamed, you were called the pariah, you were accused of causing the division, and I think so many

34:17

Christians sitting in the pews woke up to this stuff and realized, hey, wait a minute, pastor, you have a job to provide some moral clarity and direction on this, let's do better next time, well, this is next time,

34:29

I think, that's what's going on right now, this last weekend was next time, and so it's more of a shepherding thing, it's like a basic, if you had someone who came to your church and their life was in upheaval because they're experiencing a divorce and the kids are not following the

34:48

Lord, the typical things you wouldn't say to that person, well, it sounds like you have some division in your life, and we just gotta pray against this division and the gospel will solve it.

34:57

There's some truth in some of that, but that doesn't really get at what's happening in this person's life, and collectively, we just had something happen in our lives, and pastors who seem unable to approach this or respond to it, and obviously, every congregation's different, pastors are gonna tailor what they say, and I think of the

35:18

Anglican tradition is more about the sacraments, maybe less about the preaching than the Puritan tradition,

35:23

I go to a church that's Baptist, so it's more in the Puritan tradition in that sense, and I understand there's some pastors who don't see it as their job to address everything that's in the news headlines, but I'm talking about pastors need to be able to give some hope and some direction and some help to people who need it, and so I wanna,

35:43

I know I'm rambling here because I needed to kind of explain why I said what I said, but I wanna get your take on this.

35:49

First, you, Pastor Steinmeier, and then you, William, when it comes to being a shepherd in a church, where do you see those lines?

35:56

What is the requirement? And then in a situation like this, how do you identify whether a pastor is actually fulfilling his role as a pastor?

36:09

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I had you on mute there, Danny, I'm sorry, please start over. No problem, as a pastor,

36:16

I was gonna say that I think you have to recognize yourself as a leader and one who is looked to, and I think there is a little bit of a misunderstanding of part of what the role of a pastor is.

36:34

We just think, and this comes a little bit, I've heard some of this growing up, this comes from a little bit of the

36:40

MacArthur camp. As you know, John, I went to master's college and seminary, I went to the church there for a long time, and I would say that he wasn't exactly consistent with what often came out, and what that is is that we don't want to preach as there's sort of an emphasis that we are not to be individually or specifically applying stuff because the

37:02

Holy Spirit will apply individually to different people in their different situations, and MacArthur's talked about that, and I understand a little bit where he's coming from, but then 9 -11 happens and he's right there, and so important events, he's often way more applicational than a lot of people recognize or give him credit for, but what is taught is a little bit more of this, the pastor shouldn't be applying, the

37:29

Holy Spirit will just apply, and what happens then is you just wanna talk about the life and times of the original audience, we wanna talk about the history and what it meant to them back then, and I'm much more of a, that's important by the way, that's necessary to get into the context, the historical context of the scriptures, but the

37:56

Bible is also written to us and it is applicable for us in our lives today, and so when it comes to shepherding, when it comes to preaching,

38:06

I think it's very important that a shepherd be leading, I'm not the chief shepherd, but I am an under shepherd with responsibility for people, and in that there needs to be a sense of leadership for saying these are the ways we seek to apply correctly, properly

38:25

God's word to every area of life, and so I think that a world,

38:30

I refer to, I've tried to understand or express the way in which I view the pastoral responsibility and preaching, and it tends to be, yes, exposition, absolutely, but it's worldview, it's exposition with worldview and application in view, and so therefore you do have to have a sense of, and you mentioned even kind of a

38:54

Puritan view of things, when you look at a lot of the Puritan stuff, they're going to call out specific modes of life, the housewife, the students, the young men, the old men, and the way in which they are going to live out their

39:10

Christian life specifically in the day in which they live, and so I just think it's necessary as a shepherd, for us,

39:17

I think it just seems, for me, and the time that I've been at this church, it's just very ordinary that my people expect me to be spicy with the times and identify the things that we need to think about properly, whether it's taking them down from understanding them and the negative elements and the sin that's associated with it, or whether it's building up and providing hope and direction and leadership into the areas we need to be involved in, and so we have a church that is involved in businesses and building businesses, and we're gonna have a brand new state senator from our congregation.

39:56

We went to our pride, a local pride event, they got closer than Boise, right? And we went and did evangelism there.

40:03

We have to engage and stand in the day in which we live against the predominant evil culture, and whether or not we see a lot of converts, that's not ultimately the point, it's about us being faithful in the areas which we don't always wanna talk about.

40:19

I got up in front of our church and said, we all lament the issues of the pride month, but let's go do something about it.

40:29

Let's go engage that sort of thing. So to me, it's just about the ordinary element of being a shepherd is providing leadership with applying

40:37

God's word into everyday life, including politics. And I wanna say before we get to you,

40:42

William, there's a comment here, and I think Mae gets it. She says, I'm catching a common theme here.

40:48

I do think our pastor is very good at his biblical exposition, but I'm frustrated about his lack of speaking out on everything that is happening in our world.

40:57

And Danny, you wrote this great article. I just wanna plug it for, at TruthScript, you can find it. I think it was titled expository preaching is not necessarily good preaching.

41:05

If you go and you type that into a search engine and put TruthScript, you will come up with it. That was,

41:11

I still think that might be an article that got more attention than any of the other articles at TruthScript so far, because it really resonated with so many people.

41:20

And I think we've talked about this when I was out there a little bit, Danny, but I think you, and I know you agree with me that we don't wanna be in a church.

41:29

I think of many black churches, historically black, culturally black churches this way, where you're electioneering every sermon.

41:35

You know what I mean? It's a political rally every Sunday. That's not what the church is for. And when you hear

41:41

John MacArthur say those things, that's a fair critique of what's going on in some of these churches where they don't see the spiritual responsibility, really.

41:49

They've left that, and they're totally about setting, trying to make it so that there's equality on this earth or something like along those lines, some goal of that nature and getting people elected to pursue that.

42:04

We don't wanna do that. And I understand a reaction to that is what

42:10

I wanna acknowledge. But at the same time, when you have national tragedies or just on the podcast of the live stream

42:18

I did on Saturday night, someone just said, John, could you please pray with us before the end of the podcast? People don't usually do that.

42:25

And I was like, sure. I didn't even think to do that. And why not? Because I should be doing that.

42:31

We should be doing that. In fact, we'll end this praying about it because this is a real, this is a big thing.

42:37

This isn't something to intersperse your sports comments in. This is a real big deal. Everyone's navigating it.

42:43

And maybe there was a time in some areas in Western civilization where the institutions all functioned and you could go to the church and do the sacraments and you were getting encouragement everywhere.

42:55

We're not in those times. Like pastor, you are the leader. Where are they gonna get their encouragement from?

43:01

Either media, education, politicians? I don't see it coming from anywhere else.

43:06

So, William, what do you think? I don't know if you have anything to add to what

43:11

Pastor Steinmeier just said, but what's the responsibility, getting back to the original question here, of the pastor?

43:17

What should a pastor be qualified to do? Is it legalistic to start saying, well, a pastor should be, broadly speaking, addressing some of these things and morally guiding their congregations?

43:29

Yeah, that's a tough question. I mean, I agree with your tweet that you read,

43:34

John. You know, would a pastor be in sin for failing to address this at all yesterday?

43:43

I don't know if I wanna make a judgment on that, but I do think it would be a failure. It would be a failure of his duties and his responsibilities to shepherd the flock.

43:54

And you're right. Look, we don't want to turn our churches into political rallies, but how often do we have an assassination attempt on a former president and a presidential candidate?

44:04

This is a historic moment that is causing people a great deal of concern about the wellbeing of their future in this country, about the future of this country just in general.

44:19

And so it's something that I think that pastors have a responsibility to address and to try to address in a thoughtful, scriptural, and realistic fashion.

44:29

I think what's going on here is that too many evangelical pastors in particular, they don't want to conflate politics and the church.

44:38

And so instead they completely divorce them. And they think somehow that politics stops at the edge of the church door, at the edge of the sanctuary.

44:49

But that's also a failure to understand the difference between the church as an institution or a local church as an institution and the church comprised of individual

45:00

Christians who live in this world. They go out and about their days in this world.

45:06

It's also a misunderstanding of politics. And here's what I mean by that. I think too many just generic evangelical pastors think of politics as a partisan debate that you witness on Fox News or CNN or an election cycle.

45:21

That is a very short -sighted and arguably, and quite frankly, false understanding of what politics is.

45:29

Politics is how we order our lives together in this world that God has put us in.

45:35

It's an extension of the family life. It's the communal family life of a nation, so to speak.

45:42

And God's word addresses many things about the nature of politics together, about the role of civil government, about our role as Christians in society.

45:54

The encouragement that we should make petitions for kings and all those in high places, that we may live a peaceful and quiet life, well, that didn't happen

46:04

Saturday, right? Whoever's in charge around here, which quite frankly, we know who it is, right?

46:10

President Biden is the one in charge. The secret service answers to him and to his appointee.

46:16

And there seems to have been a catastrophic failure of the quote -unquote king in our country to ensure that we can all live a peaceful and quiet life together.

46:27

And we were all dealing with that as we went into church on Sunday. And so to think of politics as just some sort of partisan exercise of talking heads on the

46:37

TV and not as an integral part of our lives in this fallen world and the way that we live and order ourselves together as a society,

46:45

I think it just shows how sloppy evangelical thinking on politics is. I mean, that was even seen recently in that Matt Chandler clip where he's quoting

46:54

N .T. Wright and Michael Byrd, guys I would never go to for political advice, talking about how the left wants the kingdom without the king and the right wants the king without the kingdom.

47:04

I mean, that didn't even make any sense at all and just shows how shallow this thinking is. And so pastors really need to,

47:11

I'd say, reground themselves in the world that we live in and stop, don't conflate the two, don't do

47:18

Ephesians 6 .1, bullets at 6 .11, that's nonsense, don't do that, but then don't completely divorce them such that your members think that God's word and your role as a pastor has no bearing on the lives they live every day and this country that God has sovereignly put us in.

47:38

Good word. I wanna ask you both a short answer reply, I think would be fine here, unless you have more to say, which is fine, but we're getting to that time of the podcast where I'm asking for questions from the audience and I'm gonna give you a few questions as well.

47:53

So Donald Trump, not a perfect man. I don't know if you've noticed that about him. He is not perfect and he is certainly has his shortcomings.

48:02

And one of the pushbacks I'm seeing online by some Christians who are admittedly,

48:09

I would say on the right, they'd be with us somewhat, is they are looking at this and they're saying, he's got shortcomings,

48:22

Biden has shortcomings, and then the moral equivalency things comes right in.

48:28

How can you as a pastor, quote unquote, side with Trump by blaming the left, which I just think you might not be looking at reality when you do that, but I wanna hear your take.

48:38

So Pastor Steinmeier, Trump, good, bad, you voting for him? Good, bad, yes.

48:45

And yes, I am voting for him. And obviously even the recent stuff with the concerns about the shift in the

48:53

Republican Party led by Trump to minimize and diminish a strong stance on abortion.

49:00

So those are concerning elements, absolutely. And I think we can be honest about our political figures and candidates.

49:07

We don't have to whitewash everything that they do. However, as I've been thinking about this for years, even since his first election in 2016,

49:17

I find Trump to be a kind of a Samson type figure. I think it's applicable in our day of when things are not good in our nation, things were not good in Israel at that time as well.

49:30

And one of the things I find interesting though, is that when you have a deliverer, when you have a judge, again,

49:37

Trump is no qualified pastor. He is not a spiritual leader in that sense. But when you have a judge type figure, his job is to take

49:46

Philistine scalps and to beat back the enemy. And they're the enemy of God's people.

49:52

And you have to acknowledge the left is the enemy of God's people. They're enemy of all people, but especially of God's people.

49:59

And so when you have a Samson type figure with hair and all, like a Donald Trump who has his shortcomings and who has, he's a man of passions.

50:10

He doesn't have all of the right elements of morality that we would all like to see. And his actions are a bit uncouth, but he is the guy that's in the position now.

50:21

We don't have another candidate to oppose the left at this point. And so one of the things

50:27

I found interesting in studying through that portion of judges and the Samson account is how the leaders of Israel, the leaders of Israel were embarrassed of Samson and they wanted to turn him in.

50:41

They're like, hey, you're making us odious. You're making, you're embarrassing us in the eyes of the

50:48

Philistines? Yeah, so again, the elite in Israel, the leaders in Israel said, hey, you know what?

50:56

We're gonna arrest you and we're gonna turn you over to them. And of course, it was, they missed, right?

51:04

Samson could snap those cords and take out the Philistines anyway.

51:10

I don't know if what God is gonna do with Donald Trump, but I do know that if he's gonna take

51:15

Philistine scalps, then the church needs to not be like the leaders of Israel who are embarrassed of him and now gonna just turn him in.

51:23

We need to be honest and truthful about who he is and the problems and try to influence him and hold him accountable, but he does need to be supported because he is the one who stands to protect in terms of physical elements and is one whose

51:37

God has been providentially allowing to be one who's more on our side than anybody else.

51:43

Then we need to be supportive of him and not be those leaders of Israel. That's a really good parallel,

51:49

I think, that you're tapping into there. And I think I mentioned to you before that I hear him compared to Nebuchadnezzar so often and not

51:56

Samson. Samson's a better comparison, I think, in some ways. William, Trump, good, bad, you voting for him?

52:01

Well, look, I think the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and Donald Trump is absolutely the enemy of my enemy in American political life today, which is the radical left that is destroying our country, weaponizing the government against hardworking, honest

52:20

Americans, Christians, and otherwise, but particularly Christians. John, I talk about this pretty regularly, but I don't think this generation understands really how close we are to serious persecution of Christians in America, particularly if the left continues to get their way.

52:37

That's what the rhetoric has been leading to. And they view Trump, right? It's funny, the left, I don't know if the left thinks of Trump as a

52:44

Christian or not, but they certainly recognize him as the avatar of white evangelical Christians in America, particularly with how much of our vote he's received in the last two elections.

52:54

And so when Donald Trump says, they're not coming after me, they're coming after you, and I'm just in the way,

53:00

I think that is absolutely true. And so I do think that Donald Trump right now, when it comes to the

53:06

American political system and this particular presidential election is the only show in town for Christians.

53:13

And in terms of us being able to proactively exercise stewardship to push back on the left and continue to fight for freedom of religion, freedom to raise our children, how we want to raise them, to protect them from insidious ideology and indoctrination from the left at best and actually being removed from our homes and chemically castrated and put through transgender treatments at worst, which is something that is happening to families in America today.

53:43

And so, yeah, Trump is absolutely a mixed bag, but I will give a shout out to our friend Joseph Spurgeon, who we will be speaking at a conference with later this year,

53:52

John. He replied to you and he said, in my sermon, I talked about how one man's act of courage can encourage others and use

54:00

Trump as an example. And I think that's great because evangelical leaders love to talk about Trump's moral failings, but they never talk about the moral virtues that he displays and Trump's presence of mind and his physical courage literally under fire that he displayed on Saturday should be remarkable to all of us.

54:21

And that I would say is a virtue and it's a good thing. It's something we want in a leader. Trump is many things, he has many failings, but the man is a patriot, he loves

54:30

America, and that man has courage and determination to fight for what he believes is the good of the

54:36

American people. It might not be everything we want as Christians, but it's our best option right now. I'm planning to vote for him for a third time and I'm going to do so enthusiastically.

54:48

All right, well, we know where both of you come down. I think very clearly we have some more questions coming in.

54:55

Big Yehuda says he wants to know how to deal, or she, I'm not sure, how to deal with pastors of a diverse conservative congregation who are mildly pro -Trump but refuse to deal with serious issues of,

55:08

I think that's feminism they're talking about there, issues of men unmarried. So I'm trying to translate this a little bit.

55:15

So moral failures, economic issues, not being able to get good jobs, anti -white racism, they say.

55:23

So the, I guess, enthusiasm we see to prohibit young white males from climbing up the corporate ladder and that kind of thing.

55:32

So what do you say to Big Yehuda? What if you are a pastor in a typical evangelical congregation, which we know from statistics is gonna lean conservative, but they're just unwilling to ever address some of these issues.

55:47

Do you, I guess the question would be, do you leave the church? Do you confront the pastor? What's the thing you do?

55:54

Pastor Steinmeier. Well, yeah, the first thing you need to do is you need to go have a conversation with your pastor if you have clarity on what you think is missing or what an emphasis that needs to be addressed and to try to let your pastor know with respect and with great care what it is that you're concerned with.

56:12

Look, pastors do need to know and hear from their people where the concerns are and what is needed among them.

56:20

I don't think it's just simply of a matter of just leaving your church. I think you need to do much more great care about how to do that.

56:28

I actually just recorded a podcast we'll be releasing it next week, from a pastor's perspective, how to leave a church.

56:37

And because so many people just leave so poorly. I'd rather hear from my people about what their concerns are and what they would like to see and how they need to be shepherded than they either just keep it to themselves, grumble amongst the rest of the congregation, or just slide out the back quietly.

56:58

Respectfully and graciously and prayerfully, talk to your pastor about what is going on and what you see as being needful and see what kind of care and shepherding comes from that.

57:09

That's a good answer. And T. Roland basically has the same questions. Do we acknowledge current events?

57:14

Do we go find another church? A lot of people talking about that this morning, leaving their church. And I would just say, don't be too hasty.

57:22

Maybe have a conversation, at least start there with your pastor. But I know some people, they've been going through this since 2020.

57:30

And they're just thinking like, again, really? So - John, if I could just for a sec.

57:36

Look, if you've been in that church since 2020, you should have a track record at this point.

57:43

So you should have a sense of where they've been and have they changed or have they needed to change?

57:50

Or is it just more of the same? Are they continuing to get their news from the AP and from CNN and so forth?

57:56

Are they just continuing to be that chiding of the congregation as we heard in that clip earlier for all of their failings and how it's all of our fault and all this sort of stuff.

58:08

At some point, whether it's, I don't think it's in sort of COVID 2 .0, but in measure of disruption.

58:15

And this obviously was a disrupting event and it could have been a couple of inches from being significantly world altering sort of thing.

58:26

If it's just business as usual, next verse, please. And you've been there since COVID and that didn't go very well either, then there may be a need to leave, but to leave well, to leave properly, respectfully.

58:40

You have to have conversations with your elders. You can't just let slide out the back. That's not appropriate.

58:45

You need to address it, seek to, and be prayerful for them, respectful of them and speak to them.

58:51

But you may need to leave your church. I think there's a legitimacy to that. But we just need to make sure that we do so properly and not as a knee jerk.

58:59

I've often told husbands with families who have these questions, consider what the world would look like if you were gone.

59:06

If you died in a car accident or something and your family is continuing to go to that church, would you trust them?

59:12

Would you trust the elders to give your family, including your children, moral direction at that point?

59:18

If you can't say yes to that, then you probably have a good indication. That's my standard I use.

59:25

There's one other question I wanna get to, but William, you look like you have a thought. Yeah, just briefly.

59:31

I do say, if there's any pastors listening to this, that you need to make yourself approachable on these issues.

59:38

You need to make it clear that the members of your congregation are welcome to come to you with concerns about issues in the political realm, in life in general.

59:50

But then also as members, yeah, I mean, there was an interchange between Todd Starnes and James White, where I think

59:55

Todd actually was making some good points, but kind of pushed a little too far, saying like, leave tomorrow.

01:00:01

And I don't know that that's the right thing to do. I will say, you know, 1 Corinthians reminds us that love hopes all things, right?

01:00:07

Like hope, you know, have hope and engage your pastor. When I think on that particular subject, and this is what

01:00:12

I wanna say, on like anti -white sentiment and racism, well, there's now some good books coming out.

01:00:17

Jeremy Carls, for example, the unprotected class, how anti -white racism is tearing our country apart.

01:00:23

If you feel like that's something your pastor's not addressing, buy a book for him, meet with him, give him the book and ask him if he'd be willing to read it.

01:00:31

And your pastor's reaction to that, I'd say very initially will tell you quite a bit if he just sort of scoffs and says,

01:00:37

I'd never read that. That kind of gives you an answer, but you gotta at least have the hope, you gotta make the effort, and then to get the information that you can process with as to whether or not you can stay there or you need to find a different church.

01:00:49

Okay, good word. There's a question, I guess it's for me, $10 and on reviewer asks, based on your research into social justice in the church, did social justice come into the church because men dropped out of the church after then,

01:01:02

I guess after the 1950s, or did men drop out because social justice came into the churches? And I'll be honest,

01:01:09

I don't know the full explanation for that. That's a good question. I haven't looked at that angle.

01:01:15

My understanding is that this has been a gradual thing for about a century, men dropping out of churches, and it started with the mainline churches.

01:01:23

And now, of course, if you go into a mainline church, which I have, and you look around, you're going to see mostly women, more so than even evangelical churches in my experience.

01:01:34

So that's a good question. I think it's probably a bit of both, men probably dropping out as churches became more affected by feminism and the pastors.

01:01:45

And I'll just say this, I noticed that even in my seminary experience, pastors were more to be therapists in a maternal setting, or they were at Southeastern to be activists.

01:01:57

Those are the two roles that I saw for a pastor, not really to be shepherds as much, unfortunately.

01:02:03

There's some of that, but this therapist role, I think men do not resonate with at all when the pastor tries to handle everything in an all too gentle,

01:02:14

Jesus loves you kind of manner. And pastors need some of that, lambs need comfort, but you also need to be shooting wolves.

01:02:21

They also need to be hitting the backside sometimes with the staff. So that's what

01:02:26

I'd say. Do either of you have any thoughts on that? I know that was directed at me, but maybe you have a better thought than I do.

01:02:33

Yeah, I don't know what came first, the chicken or the egg there. I think the issue is that, you're already hitting on it, it's the feminization of the church.

01:02:43

And this goes to, look, we've turned to style, we wanted to be cool. Look, that clip we saw earlier,

01:02:50

I said, I knew that what was gonna happen before that guy opened his mouth, because there was an element of the style is about being cool.

01:03:00

It is about everybody being comfortable. And so there is a resurgence of men and it's not always good right now, but because there is a sense of a strength and a masculinity that has been lacking in the churches.

01:03:14

And it comes often from the front, it comes from the leadership. And so when you're constantly being chided or just kind of beat down from any measure of strength or conviction, and you said that the therapeutic sort of element of what a pastor has become, that is going to be a reason why men are going to, not rightfully, but they end up abdicating a lot of what they were designed to do.

01:03:41

So yeah, that's the feminization of the church overall. I just don't know exactly the genesis of all of that.

01:03:48

Yeah, yeah. I know neo -evangelicalism, you think Carl Henry, 1947, that's kind of the launching date.

01:03:54

He argues that we need these great world leaders who are going to be essentially not like the pastors before them, because now people are listening to experts.

01:04:02

They're listening to the psychologists. They're not going to the pastor. So what do we need to do? We gotta make the pastors good at psychology.

01:04:08

And I think that might be the genesis of this, where pastors decided they needed to be something other than a pastor.

01:04:15

And that's where the therapy comes in and men don't really... How many men do you know, when their wives say that they need to go get checked out, like even if it's just the doctor, let alone a therapist, do men generally want to do that?

01:04:27

My experience, not as much as women, but... I've not been to a primary care physician in like 15 years.

01:04:36

I wasn't gonna... I'm probably in a similar boat, but maybe not quite 15, but a bunch of leftists in the threads now, or who are watching are gonna say, thank you,

01:04:46

Lord, for that. They're really glad, William, you're not seeing a doctor. You should probably go see a doctor at some point.

01:04:54

Well, if I could just wrap up this whole thing, since we've been going over an hour. No, none of us are advocating a legalistic standard, that a pastor has to say a certain thing after what happened last weekend.

01:05:07

What we're saying, I think, and I think all the men here would agree with this, is that pastors have a responsibility to their flocks, to provide moral direction and encouragement when in the face of evil.

01:05:18

And that's what we saw over the weekend. And really, that's what we're talking about. This is kind of, I would say, part of the role of being a pastor.

01:05:27

It's intrinsic to it. And being able to be just a leader, whether you're a pastor or not, really includes those things as well.

01:05:35

And we have so many pastors out there who just simply fail a basic leadership test. And I think many are sensing that.

01:05:43

And praise God, Pastor Danny Steinmeier is not one of those people. If you live near Middleton, Idaho, which is just outside of Boise, please check out his church,

01:05:52

Truth Family Bible Church. And find a pastor who is like him though. Find a pastor who's masculine, who's not afraid to take on some of these challenges.

01:06:01

If you are interested in reforming the Southern Baptist Convention, if your church is a Southern Baptist church, check out the

01:06:07

Center for Baptist Leadership. Anything else either of you wanna plug? Or did

01:06:13

I cover it? Hopefully I covered it. All right, sounds good. All right, well, thank you, Pastor Steinmeier.

01:06:19

Thank you, William Wolfe. I appreciate you both being on the podcast. Thank you, John. Thanks, John, appreciate it.