Quick CWAC with The Honest Youth Pastor

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00:03

Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.

00:06

My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.

00:09

Today, we're going to be doing a Conversations with a Calvinist quick quack, which is a shorter than usual podcast where I'm going to be introducing you to my new friend, Michael, who's also known as Honest Youth Pastor on Instagram and on Twitter and on various other outlets, including TikTok.

00:29

I've watched several of his videos there.

00:30

Michael, thank you for being on the show with me today.

00:33

Well, thanks for having me.

00:35

I love the name quick quack.

00:36

I like that a lot.

00:38

Yeah, it's going to be shorter than normal, so we call it a quick quack, CWAC, Conversations with a Calvinist.

00:45

And as I was joking with you before the show, I said I was going to grill you because we are a family-integrated church, so having a youth pastor on the show is a pretty big deal for me.

00:54

I'm going to have to give you a hard time.

00:57

I appreciate you.

00:59

Well, you said a hard time.

01:00

I don't know why I say I appreciate you.

01:02

I'm already nervous, Keith.

01:04

I'm already nervous, yeah.

01:05

Oh, no, no reason to be nervous.

01:07

I'm just kidding.

01:08

But tell me how the name came about.

01:10

How did you become the Honest Youth Pastor? Yeah, so 10 years ago, this July, I was going through a transition at a church we were at.

01:20

There had been some pastoral changes at the top, and there's a long story that I will not get into, but we were transitioning out of that, and I had a lot that I needed to vent about.

01:31

And I thought, honest youth pastor sounds about right, and I'm just going to be really honest and just vomit online.

01:38

And that's why I ended up on Instagram first and not Facebook, because everybody I knew from that church was on Facebook.

01:45

And I thought, I don't want to do that over there.

01:48

And so we started making memes on Instagram, just kind of getting all the venting and the church hurt, if you want to call it that, out.

01:59

And then obviously, 10 years later, we've pretty much transitioned out of that, and we talk about a lot of other stuff now.

02:05

But that's where the name came from.

02:07

I was being incredibly honest.

02:09

Absolutely.

02:09

Well, honesty is good, but church hurt isn't.

02:13

And church hurt may be something I'll have you back on another day to talk about, because I've been very blessed to be in the same church since I was a kid.

02:22

I've never been a member of another church, and I'm pastoring the church I grew up in, but even then, even in a church that I've been in so long, I've been hurt many times, and I've experienced church hurt.

02:34

So it's not a good thing.

02:36

It's certainly something that's worthy to be considered and to have a conversation about.

02:41

So maybe we'll do that one day, have you back on.

02:45

But what are you doing now? I see a lot of videos, a lot of the things that I see come across, like TikTok and other places.

02:51

In fact, I saw you, I was watching, I don't watch a lot of TikTok, because I actually don't even have it on my phone.

02:57

I have an old burner phone that I use it for, because I don't want that Chinese spyware on my phone.

03:03

Smart plan, smart plan, yeah.

03:06

But I do upload my videos to TikTok, so I have an old phone that I put it on.

03:10

But I saw a video of yours, and it's been a little while, so I'm trying to remember what it was, but I think you were critiquing something that another pastor had said.

03:17

So what is the main, like you said, it's a discernment ministry, right? I don't know if I'd call it that.

03:25

It's been called that by a lot of people.

03:26

Basically what I do when I do the reaction videos is just taking a snippet of what somebody said.

03:33

Usually it's a real or TikTok that they've put up, so it's already in short form.

03:37

I'm assuming they've put as much context as they want into the video into it.

03:40

And so I basically just react to that.

03:42

Now, if you're talking about one where I was reacting to a pastor, that may have been a shorter clip from a longer series I do on YouTube, which is sermon reviews, where I sit down and I go through the entire sermon of someone and kind of just say, hey, this is good.

03:56

This is bad.

03:57

This is what we should look for.

03:58

Did they use the scripture correctly there? And so that might've been a clip from one of those sermon reviews.

04:03

But basically when I go through those shorter clips on Instagram or TikTok, the idea is to get people thinking.

04:12

There was a lot of stuff, I mean, just growing up, it wasn't really encouraged to be like, hey, maybe think about that a little bit more.

04:19

Maybe be a little critical of that, not in a super negative way, but just in a way to say like, hey, is that right or is it not right? Can we back that up scripturally or is that just something that somebody made up? And so the hope would be on all these TikToks and reels is to say, hey, is what's being said here accurate or not? And then just ask for everybody's thoughts below and try to get that conversation going a bit to get people thinking about things that sometimes they just don't think about.

04:48

Absolutely, absolutely.

04:49

Interesting, I was just noticing as I'm listening to you talk, your name is Michael Moore and you're aware that there's a very famous filmmaker named Michael Moore, who's known for being a bit of a, a bit outside of the conservative circle, for sure.

05:07

Much more liberal.

05:08

When he was more popular, as soon as I said my name, I knew exactly where you were on the political, like I didn't even have to ask any more questions.

05:16

I knew right away, yeah.

05:18

Yeah, that's funny.

05:19

Well, I like what you said though, in that you don't go and clip videos out of people.

05:25

You just take whatever clips they put out.

05:27

You're not seeking to take people out of context.

05:29

You're not seeking to have a gotcha moment for somebody.

05:33

And that's important.

05:34

And listening to and responding to entire sermons is a lot of an investment of your time.

05:40

So that's very valuable too.

05:42

And I wanna point people to that.

05:44

And that's part of what this Quick Quack is about, is I'm wanting to introduce you to my audience, because you were just kind enough to have me on your program.

05:53

We talked about church history.

05:55

We talked about my having taught church history, you having taught church history, and some of the importance of that and gleanings from that.

06:03

So I wanna encourage everybody who's listening to this, if you're listening to this, please go down into the show notes, and you're gonna find a link to Michael's video that we did together.

06:16

And it's an entire hour of us talking about the importance of church history.

06:21

And so I wanted to introduce you to him.

06:23

I wanted to tell you about his ministry, tell you about his page.

06:27

And in a moment, I'm gonna have him tell us all about how to find him and where we can find him.

06:31

But that's what this was about, to let you guys know that he and I have recently met each other.

06:37

We've appreciate each other's work and are brothers in Christ.

06:40

And we wanna support one another and encourage people to go and check out his channel.

06:46

Like I said, whole sermons that you can hear him respond to, give feedback on.

06:50

I mean, that's a wonderfully, that's a blessing to have you do that.

06:55

Yeah, you're gonna need some long endurance, and sometimes some Tylenol.

07:02

We did a three-hour long one of Kenneth Copeland, and believe me, my mental state was not good afterwards.

07:08

So.

07:09

You did a Kenneth Copeland sermon? An entire Kenneth Copeland sermon, and I regretted it a good hour and a half in, but I was like, no.

07:19

You said you're gonna do the whole thing.

07:21

You gotta do the whole, you can see if you like, you don't even have to watch the whole thing, just skip through it, and you can see just my mental state just go down.

07:30

Did you see Christmas where Jesse Duplantis had himself dressed as a present with a big red bow? I did, yes.

07:37

I, sometimes I wish I had the confidence just to be like, hey, here you go, guys.

07:44

I can wear a bow because I'm God's gift.

07:47

Yeah, literally no one will call me on it, and I can say amen, and you will 100% reply, yes.

07:54

Absolutely.

07:55

Well, Michael, like I said, this was just gonna be a short introduction for our audience.

07:59

I know you and I have been doing this for over an hour now, so I wanna thank you for coming onto my program and introducing yourself, but would you please, just for a moment, tell everybody how they can find your video as well as your online presence, where you are and what you're doing.

08:14

Also, tell us where you're at, what church you're at.

08:16

I would think that's interesting for people too.

08:18

Oh, so you can find me online at honestyouthpastor.

08:22

Honestly, if you Google that, you're gonna find YouTube, and you're going to find, you're also gonna find the Instagram page, either one of those, and Twitter will probably come up too.

08:32

So that's how you can find all of that.

08:33

And then I go to a small church in Southern Indiana.

08:38

I'll tell you what, I don't say the name purposefully because I've already told my pastor I don't want him to get all of that hate that comes through online, but I will tell you, it's a small church in Southern Indiana.

08:48

There is a way to find that out and get ahold of him, but for his sanity currently, we just don't talk about the exact name because of how much hate I get, so.

08:58

I appreciate that.

08:59

I didn't mean.

09:00

No, you're fine.

09:01

Not a big deal.

09:02

I didn't know a good way to transfer through that, but yeah, just so that that's the reason why.

09:06

There's so much backlash that comes through online that he would be fielding calls all day long, so.

09:12

Yeah, absolutely.

09:13

Well, brother, thank you again for having me on your show.

09:16

Thank you for coming and being a part of this short interview.

09:19

And I look forward to our people not only seeing this, but also going over and seeing the video that we did just a little while ago.

09:26

So thank you again for being a part of the show.

09:28

Very good.

09:29

I appreciate it.

09:29

Thank you for having me.

09:30

Absolutely.

09:31

And thank you all for being a part of Conversations with a Calvinist for this quick quack.

09:35

Again, remember, if you want to get ahold of me, you can find me at conversationswithacalvinist.org.

09:45

I forgot my own website.

09:47

And you can also find me through email at calvinistpodcasts at gmail.com, at Twitter at your Calvinist.

09:55

And again, if you're interested in the Sovereign Grace Academy, which we do at Sovereign Grace Family Church, you can find that at sgfcjacks.org slash academy.

10:06

Thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.

10:08

My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.

10:11

May God bless you.