David Morrill Opposed Normalizing Sin, Then This Happened

Evangelicalism’s Downgrade and the Problem of “Queering”

Welcome once again, everyone, to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, and I have a special episode with you today. You know, yesterday we had a guest on, and we did this whole thing on what's happening in evangelicalism more broadly, and some have called it queering.

Evangelicalism has become more and more accepting of homosexuality or at least same-sex attraction or at least the idea at the very basic level, I suppose, that heterosexual sin and homosexual sin are the same.

There's a parallel there, and we talked about all of that, and understandably, I think many orthodox believers are concerned. However, there are specific examples of this that are happening all over the place, and one of them is—this story is just insane.

I'm going to have David explain it to you, but one of them is in David Morrell's backyard. David Morrell has, of course, been on this podcast before. He is a publisher at Protestia, and David's been really following this downgrade stuff in evangelicalism, not just the queering issue but also issues pertaining to social justice more broadly.

I don't know, David, there's a lot of other issues I know you focus on, the kind of kooky word-faith stuff, right? There's a bunch of stuff. Anyway, I want to give you the floor because this is an example of what we were talking about yesterday, but it's been escalated to a point that I'm just kind of—my jaw is on the floor.

So it concerns Faith Christian Academy in Arvada, Colorado, and this is where your children go, and I'm just appreciative of your bravery in being willing to talk about this. I don't know that you need much of an introduction, but I've already mentioned that you publish with Protestia.

I know you're in the military. I don't know if there's anywhere else you want to send people to check out your material.

A Personal Disclaimer About Military Service

Yeah. I mean, first, since you mentioned I'm in the military, I should put this out there that nothing that I'm going to say on your podcast here is in any way an endorsement from the DoD. Nothing that I say here is representative of any of my military affiliation.

It's all personal opinion here. I'm off duty on personal time, and so I got to put that in there because I've gotten my hand caught in the cookie jar by that before. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you mentioned that.

Yeah. It's—I mean, first of all, thanks for having me on the podcast here, John. I know I sort of reached out to you. When all this was going down, I just reached out to friends I had and said, could you guys believe this any way that this is of interest or we want to talk about it?

And the issue really does—it really does connect to this larger, broader issue of a downgrade in evangelicalism with regard to the acceptance of what Orthodox Christian faith would indicate is very much a sin and very much something that we should be unapologetically standing up against.

The School, the Incoming Church, and the Sermon Review

And how this all started—my kids have been going to that school now for—like we started this year. So in thinking to ourselves, hey, this is a—and I still believe this in a lot of ways. This is a good school for them.

Their statement of faith is solid. It looks like it's a quality education. We found out that apparently the school and the church that owns the school have been in major financial straits, like major financial problems.

I mean, we're talking tens of million dollars in debt, and a balloon payment on this debt was coming due, and they couldn't cover it. And so they were going to have to sell the school, close the school.

At least that's what they said, that that was the only option. And then along comes another church in town that says, hey, we'll buy the school. We'll buy the school. We'll take it over. We're going to rename it, but it'll be our school, that the high school will be our school at that point.

And it just happened that it was the church that was buying the school is a church that my wife and I used to go to. We were married at the church. I mean, and we were committed. I was doing, you know, praise team five times a week, you know, five services a week.

We were pretty involved. And the church had, they had adopted purpose-driven methodology, purpose-driven church, Rick Warren style, attractional methodology. And we, at the time, because this was, I mean, this was 20 years ago.

At the time, we didn't know exactly what that was, but then through really the work that you and I try to do right now online, online discernment ministry, guys like Ken Silva at Uprising and Chris Rosebro during sermon reviews, we really were made aware of how dangerous this methodology truly is and where it leads.

And one of the places it's leading, especially now is, as you said, the querying of evangelicalism. So it's churches that adopt this, this idea of pleasing the culture and, and being appealing to the culture.

They end up adopting the culture itself into the church. So wherever the culture, whatever the culture wants, the church tries to build itself in that mold to be attractional. And we not only knew that that was happening at this church, but we found out that the parents at the school were actually passing around a 2020 sermon from this church that was basically full-blown LGBTQ affirming to the point where the pastor was recycling some of the most basic and, and ridiculous and immature arguments made against the, against Christian teaching on homosexuality.

I mean, he actually pulled out the shellfish argument. Well, you know, in Leviticus, it says shellfish is an abomination too. So what do you, you know, you can't say homosexuality is abomination because what are you going to give up your crab?

I kid you not. This was in his sermon. Um, yeah. So this has been passed around among parents and some of these parents, uh, that, that we know, and that even attend our church and, you know, just aware of what I do, um, ministry wise online brought this to my attention.

I already knew about the sermon, but I did not realize they were passing it around just yet. And they said, Hey, what do you think about this? And so, you know, is doing it, doing an online podcast and things I thought, well, we'll, we'll do what we probably should do.

And let's do a sermon review. Let's open up the word of God. Let's walk through this sermon and see, is this as bad as everybody seems to think that it is. And yeah, it was just as bad as everybody thought that it was.

And so I, I put out a sermon review and started getting attacked online by family members who have kids at the school who go to the church that I was, you know, the church, uh, that I was reviewing the sermon from calling, calling me all sorts of things.

And, you know, okay. You know, but I said, I said fully, I'm not going to judge any parent for doing whatever they want to do. Here's the doctrine. Here's what the Bible says about this. Now, before you and the Lord pray about this and determine what your next steps are going to be, I won't judge what anybody else wants to do with their kids.

I, I still, you know, remain in that position. And, um, then weeks later, weeks later, the somebody at the school, and we still don't know who, um, uh, a student at the school, or perhaps their parents later that evening decided to file an anonymous report.

I'm claiming that my son had a weapon at school and claiming that he had made a threat against the school and was, um, threatening to come up and these were their words, come up and shoot up the place the next Tuesday, which was the day of finals this semester.

And we were, we found out about this when police were at our door, 11 o 'clock on a, on a Friday night, the Friday night before the Tuesday that would have been the finals. And we had a discussion like, you know, I was surprised.

I thought the police were coming to talk to me. That's how it usually is when you're an online troublemaker, I suppose. But, but, um, we invited him in because it was freezing outside, had a conversation, cleared things up and said, no, he was, you know, he, he said, he said the word gun because he was making a joke about a stick of gum that he had, um, been the police had determined, okay, this is, this isn't threatening.

They didn't file a police report. Um, and, and so we, we thought it was all good. The police shook both of our hands. He said, if you need any more questions for me or anything like that, please, please contact me, give me a call.

He told my son, if you need any, um, want to want any other help or need to say anything else, please contact me. And it was a very cordial interaction. They left. And then we got an email from the school, uh, the next day or the day after saying, he's not allowed to come to campus for finals.

He's, he's banned from the campus until we can, until we can talk to you about this, about the situation. Okay. We've, we figured, Hey, that's unfortunate, but now we can talk to the school and clear it up.

And they, they told us on that, on the meeting, this zoom meeting that, um, that he was being banned from the campus for the next six months, which is the entirety of the existence of that school, because it's going to be bought by this new church, you know, the next semester.

So we're just sort of flabbergasted by all this. And then, unfortunately, I find out later in a police incident report, because again, there's no police report. There's no police report indicating that there's evidence of a crime, but there is of course notes from the meeting, which there always are with, with the police.

I found out that the school, uh, one of their employees had told the police during this investigation that I had intimidated the school staff and all of my interactions with the school staff had been very, um, very above board, very helpful, very cordial, no, no animosity whatsoever.

Uh, and so that was the proof of what I suspected that they were coming after us because of my complaints about the incoming church and, and to defend the institution. And all I really had done was say, Hey, this is what the Bible says about homosexuality.

And this is what this church is teaching about homosexuality. And they're not the same. Right.

The Motive Behind the Accusation and Institutional Pressure

Wow. Um, so, so this all stems back to just a very fundamental basic issue. And this has now escalated to the point that you have the police showing up to investigate your son. And I mean, lawyers, uh, my understanding is they've, you know, they, they've gotten involved to some extent.

And I mean, I don't know where this is all going, but, um, I, I do find it curious that what do you think the motive here is? What do you, what, I mean, is it really that there's a willingness to fight on this issue that hard or are you a threat because you don't back down?

And I think the motive is this. And, and to be clear, after I determined that, that the school official had, and not only did he lie to the police and say that I had intimidated staff, which is an out and out lie, but he also had told my son in front of him in this meeting that the police told me that you said you were going to come back and shoot up the place.

Like my son just breaks down crying right in front of them as this, as the school official accuses him of being a would be school shooter.

He's just like the worst thing you can accuse someone of.

It's like the school version of being called a racist, you know, or something like that.

Um, I think it's worse. I mean, that's, that's pretty bad.

Yeah. Where does he go to get his reputation back? After someone says something like that in front of his parents and in front of other school administrators. Yeah. Uh, but once, once I found out that, Hey, that, and the school administration, by the way, had been telling me the whole time, this isn't, they had told me multiple times, this isn't related to your doctrinal concerns, which they were fully aware of very clearly, fully aware of these concerns.

I found out that the first informational meeting about this had armed security at it because they considered me a threat because I, I guess because I did a sermon review. Um, so it had already escalated sort of behind my back and I wasn't aware that they'd escalated this whole thing.

So, I mean, you're sure though, that this is rooted because I could just see the objection that no, it's unrelated. We're concerned about your son. That has nothing to do with your.

Yeah. And they, they would still take that position. They've still taken that position, but the, the, the smoking gun, no pun intended, the smoking gun evidence was the comment in the police log that said that their security guy accused me of intimidating their staff.

That was the, that was the indication. Okay.

They, they have a beef with me. That's beyond whatever's happening this evening. Yeah. So, I mean, what can, I don't even know if there's anything people really can do. Um, no, just, just pray, I guess.

And, and, and I really, you know, I wanted to come talk about it just to make people aware that there is a, there is a push right now in, in evangelical institutions to both try to please the world and be attractional to the world.

And at the same time, uh, squash any dissent, you know, squash anybody that, that tries to say, Hey, maybe we should examine this biblically, maybe we should step back. What I suspect is happening, honestly, is I think that.

There are, uh, there are, I know that there are parents that send their kids to this school that also attend the church that I have this, you know, that where the sermon came from, that I worked on who are, um, I, but what I think is happening, I can't guarantee this.

I don't have direct evidence, but I think that they're pressuring the school. Like you need to get rid of this guy. You need to get rid of this guy. He's making it difficult. Um, other parents are concerned because they don't want their kids going to LGBTQ high school next semester.

And so we're, we're worried that this is going to have a detrimental effect on enrollment at the school and any, so any and all strategy is on the table as far as getting rid of this, um, this, this guy that did the sermon review.

Institutionalism, Market-Driven Ministry, and “Spiritual Steroids”

Yeah. Well, yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I can think of parallels in like the SBC, um, where, you know, Greer had his deplorables moment, uh, kind of similar to what Hillary Clinton said about Trump supporters.

And he said, you know, in the SBC, we, we have all these racists and terrorists and he had this whole list of all these deplorables. And yet, you know, this is the same guy who was, uh, involved in, in soft peddling.

He wanted to use preferred pronouns at the time. I think he's, he's retracted that, but he was soft peddling since the world finds, uh, to be protected, I suppose. And it's a posture that I'm seeing all over the place.

And this is just one more example of it at a smaller level, but it just, it, it makes me, um, it's, I don't know what to make of it. It's just, it's, it's like, it reminds me even of what happened with, uh, yesterday.

It was a yesterday with, uh, Dan Crenshaw accusing the conservatives of who didn't want to support McCarthy as being enemies, right? He used the word enemies. And I'm just like, what is it? It's, it's in Christian institutions.

It's with, it's in politics and politics right now, where those who are more traditional, more conservative, more, let's just say they're supposed to be on the right side of a lot of these moral issues are more threatened by and willing to oppose those who are to their right a little bit than those who are way to their left.

I don't get it. It's, it's, is it fear? You know, I mean, like you just said, maybe there's a fear that you're going to create a stir and enrollment will drop as a result, but there seems to be like, I'm certain that's their problem.

That's the, that's their concern, but there seems, I think it's, it's institutionalism. Yeah. It's the, they, they have convinced themselves because this is in their self-interest that the maintenance of the institution is part and partial of ministry itself.

So it's not God that gives the increase. It's not God that gives and takes away anymore. It's how clever can we be with how we set this up? How we, how we say things. And this is, I mean, like you and I are the age where we've never seen an evangelicalism that hasn't been full of market driven methodology and, and basically grafting, you know, business strategy onto the visible church.

That's all, you know, in a lot of ways, that's all we've ever known, at least for these big mega churches and these, these big influential ministries, they've all adopted some version of, of what I, what I term spiritual steroids.

Where, where we're going to modify the plain truth of the gospel, the offensive truth of the gospel in order to be attractional and numerically grow the size of our influence and our institution. And it just happens to be that, and then they can pat themselves on the back and say, look at what we've done.

And of course they'll sort of humble brag, right? They'll say that they'll say, look what God has done as they sneak in about how many, you know, decisions for Christ they've had that week or whatever.

It's, it's, it's a, it's marketing strategy. It's, it's used car salesman kind of stuff grafted onto the church.

Pastoral Identity Versus Brand-Building

Yeah. And then maybe that's what's going on. There's, uh, I was talking to Judd Saul, the filmmaker the other day, and, uh, we were just talking about, you know, pastors and what pastors now, what a lot of them who are graduating today aspire to be and what, what their conception of being a pastor is.

And, um, we were just kind of coming to the conclusion together that a lot of what we see is more business driven kind of, uh, like we have businessmen really. Um, and, and, and we're talking more on the conservative side, I suppose.

I mean, you have activists and community organizer types on the left. But, uh, there's wanting to build your own kind of, uh, brands and, and, uh, institution, make it very successful, make a name for yourself.

Uh, I mean, these are all pretty popular things right now. And building God's kingdom, being an under shepherd, right. Which really isn't that glamorous of a position. If you think about it traditionally, no, no, you're, you're dealing with sheep.

Um, that is not viewed as very glamorous and, and it's, I don't think it's the position. Um, and I don't know where the numbers are, but I would say the majority of those exiting seminary, I don't know that they have that mindset.

At least I didn't see it when I was in seminary. There are some who do, but, um, but it's concerning to me. And, you know, I just feel so terrible for your family, for your son, especially. And, you know, I grew up in a pastor's household.

So I know a little bit about what it's like when someone wants to go after your dad and they use you to do it. And, um, it's one of the lowest things. It's just a terrible. So, yeah, we're praying for you.

And I just encourage those who are listening, please pray for the morals and, um, and for repentance. Yeah. For repentance, I guess. I mean, what, what are you hoping for as far as a good outcome?

Seeking Retraction, Reconciliation, and a Final School Decision

It seems, it seems like the school, cause is what happened was basically when I found out that they were, that they had taken this tact and that they had said, I mean, manifestly false and harmful and defamatory statements.

When I found out that, oh, they're, they're, they're targeting us predated this, uh, even the night of this incident. Um, I S I sent, and it was very specific, but I sent a cease and desist letter and I said, Hey, we, I need you to retract these things, retract these harmful statements, nothing about the school or the curriculum or anybody there, but Hey, just retract these statements and making it very clear in my email that we're seeking reconciliation.

We're Christians here. So if you, you, you come back and say, Hey, you know, we shouldn't have said that about your son. We shouldn't have said these false things. We'll forgive and forget. We're going to try to move on here.

And that doesn't mean necessarily that we're going to be enrolling our kids after the school is purchased by this new church, but we had no plans to, to pull them out of the school before that. And so I, I sent this information.

I get a, you know, what we call around here, a nasty gram back from, from their law firm. Not only saying, Hey, we, we, we're not going to change anything about what we've said, but also saying, we're kicking your son and your other son out of school.

We are disenrolling them. And so they, they kicked my, my younger son out of school. He wasn't even involved in this. He didn't have a stick again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Neither one of them, I believe did anything wrong, but the second son was not even involved in this situation.

They kick him out. I sent a letter back saying, you guys haven't followed any of your disciplinary processes. You have a bunch of discipline processes set up for this. You've completely ignored. And then I got a letter back actually just a few hours ago before, before recording this saying, yeah, we're not changing it.

Our decision is final. And you know, it's, it's because of you and your harmful activity on social media. Like I haven't said anything. Literally. I've said nothing about the school on social media.

Zero. Well, wait, but you did, this is before the story that you ran. Right.

This is, this is before protest. You wrote an article about the situation. Gotcha. Um, but they had, they had alluded to this. My supposed, I mean, and the, the, uh, the gentleman at the school is saying I'm intimidating staff.

That's what they're, that's what they're trying to claim that me, uh, that I had somehow engaged in online activity to somehow intimidate staff at their school, which is, it's just manifestly untrue.

Yeah. Uh, so yeah, the boys are out of school.

We got to figure out something else to do for the, you know, we're going to figure out something else for this semester. But I think, um, yeah, good thing.

I guess it's at the beginning of the semester. That's the one silver lining here, I suppose. But, uh, no, that's a big inconvenience for your family. Um, and it sounds like you've tried to follow the Matthew 18 process to the best of your ability.

And I very much did try to handle this before going public. I mean, there are multiple emails back and forth, just pleading our case saying, Hey, you know, we don't have to do this. You know, this doesn't have to be this way, but.

The Fallout for Families at Faith Christian Academy

Well, if you are someone listening from Faith Christian Academy in, uh, Arvada, Colorado, then this might be something you want to take up with the school officials there. And, uh, this, ironically, David, this, what you described as being the threat, you know, complaining about, um, the, this homosexuality issue, uh, is now probably going to be worse because there's going to be parents who are probably more concerned now, not just about that, but they're going to be concerned.

You know, in addition, it's boosted that, uh, because, uh, of how the situation has escalated. They're going to be concerned about, am I, are my kids going to be accused of something? Um, am I going to have problems if we object to something?

And so, uh, it's a lose lose here, but, um, I appreciate your bravery and your willingness to stick a stand, which is what happened initially that led to all this. And I am convinced the Lord rewards those who stand firm for him.

And so, uh, we're looking forward to good things for your family. Please keep me informed, let me know what happens and, uh, we'll be praying for you. Thanks, John. I appreciate it very much. Yeah. My pleasure, brother.

If people want to find out more than go to, uh, protestia .com and, uh, and then I think you're also on Twitter and Facebook and, uh, I'll put the social media links.

We're around. It's never hard for anybody to figure out what I've said about this. You know, for, so if there's any, he said, she said we've been a hundred percent transparent. I've tried to publish, especially once all this happened, I tried to just put everything out there and said, Hey, we're going to be totally open about where we are in this and what we believe and what we're committed to.

And you know, let the spirit do his work. Sounds good, brother. God bless. Have a good day.