147: The Confessional Baptist

To the Ruled Church podcast.

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king.

You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible, common place.

The Podcast Relaunch and Introduction of a Deacon

Welcome to the Ruled Church podcast. We have a first ever today, to my knowledge. I don't think that we've ever in our existence, goodness, how long have we been going? This has been, well, we're going on like four years.

So we had the podcast, and this is really, me and another brother, and now this is the Ruled Church podcast 2 .0, because we stopped for a while, then we came back on. And so now we've been going on for about four years.

He had to drop off last year to focus on his local church. But I think this is the first time ever that we've interviewed a deacon. So yeah, so play the ominous music in the background. Welcome to the Ruled Church podcast.

My name is Alan Nelson. I'm your host. I'm an elder at Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas. We are a 1689 confessional church, Second London Baptist Confession. And we are located almost a center part of the state.

And I'm thankful to have our guest today, Benjamin Allen. Do you go by Benjamin or Ben? Which would you prefer?

It is fine. I mean, whatever works. People call me a variety of things. My last name is like a first name. A lot of people call me Alan too. So I just roll with it.

Yeah, I like that you spell Alan correctly.

Yes, we do have that in common.

That's right.

Well, people joke with me. They say that my first name is spelled like a last name. So anyway, whatever. But we're grateful to have you on. You serve as a deacon of, remind me of the church name.

It's Redeeming Grace Church in Cartersville.

Redeeming Grace Church in Cartersville, Georgia. I wanna get into why I asked you on originally in just a minute. But before we get to that, why don't we just start out telling us about who you are, your family.

Let's all start with that.

The Calling and Practical Work of a Deacon

Yeah, sure. Yeah, so I live in Atlanta, Georgia. I've been here for about 10 years. I live in a suburb called Dallas, ironically, not Texas, it's called Dallas, Georgia. I've been married to my wife, Hannah, for almost 10 years.

I'm married to the pastor's daughter, so I have to behave. I have three kids. Heather is seven, Ethan is five, almost six, and my son Peter's almost three. The Lord's blessed me with those. And yeah, I'm very thankful.

I've been kind of a nomad growing up. My wife and I kind of opposite backgrounds. She's lived in Georgia her whole life. My family moved a lot, so I was born in Florida, but we lived in New Jersey, Iowa, Alabama.

I lived in New York for a while. And then I finally ended up in Georgia. So I've kind of been all over. I'm more of like, I guess when people ask which state I associate with, I'm like, I guess I'm an American, but I do love Georgia.

I mean, of all the states the Lord's placed me in, Georgia's my favorite. So I told my wife, I said, look, you've started off in the best state. But yeah, I'm a deacon, as you mentioned. I enjoy serving the church.

Really enjoy reading the Bible, and I love studying theology in my spare time. And that's one of the things where my page kind of grew out. It was just, I wanted to share some of the things that I've learned and stuff I was discovering online.

So that kind of just started from there about two years ago and took off.

Yeah, so just a few weeks ago, which actually I don't know when this is gonna come out. After we get done recording, I have to look and see when it's coming out. But not long ago this year, I had a brother from, well, you were at the G3 Conference, right?

The Unity in Christ, yes, the last one.

Did you get to meet Jeff Johnson or listen to?

I did, yeah.

Well, actually, hang on. I didn't talk to, I'm sorry. I didn't talk to Jeff this time around. I've talked with him. So Jeff's part of FIRE. Our church is part of two organizations, FIRE, the Fellowship of Independent Reforming Angelicals and RVNet.

I've met Jeff at FIRE events before and the bigger G3 events. I neglected to get to talk to him this time around. I always enjoy talking to him, but I just got busy and missed him. So he's also, I mean, he's a lot busier than me, so.

Well, one of his elders, one of his fellow elders, Danny Thursby, I don't know if you've met him or not.

But yeah, I've talked with Danny a couple of times, yep.

Danny was on the show recently and we talked about deacons. And that was a good episode. I thought it was really helpful. But so I'm not, I mean, this episode is not about you being a deacon, but since you are a deacon, I just thought I'd give you the floor for a few minutes and just say, okay, tell us what you see the role.

I'm gonna say a reformed Baptist church, but I mean, in any church, really, but you are a part of a reformed Baptist church. But what is a deacon's role in the church and how do you personally fulfill that role?

Yeah, deacon's role in the Greek is diakonos or diakonai. The deacon's role is to be a servant. That's kind of the main, and it's funny when the Lord ordained this position through Paul, he just called it a servant.

And the main role of the deacon is to serve the church in any area. Well, what's interesting about the role of a deacon is the scripture, I could be wrong on this, but never explicitly lays down any specific duties for deacons other than serving, right?

So it's very open-ended. Practically in bigger churches, like I've seen, they'll have 10 or 20 deacons and they'll have very specific areas of responsibility. Usually in smaller churches like ours, we have two deacons, I do pretty much everything.

So I assist with that financial reports. I teach Sunday school. I teach the kids Sunday school. I purchase security cameras for the church, file our incorporation forms, work with our accountant on taxes.

So whatever the church needs, I'm there to serve and do. At our church, we have a man who's a very godly man who just became a deacon. He's very skilled as a contractor. I'm kind of more on like, I work in IT.

So the way we kind of divide stuff is like, we had a tree fall on one of our church fellowship halls. So he's handling all that. He's preparing the stuff and like, we go help him, but he plans that. And then I sort of lead like the digital side because since I work in IT, our Facebook, our Google Maps listing, the various things that I do online are more by me because since I'm more familiar with that.

So the Lord has gifted us, it's kind of like we've sort of settled into our natural sphere of serving. Part of it also though is more important than that is like looking out for the congregation, trying to see if someone falls into like, has financial problems, giving them, trying to support them.

If people come to our church and ask for money, like generally we don't always like to give money, but maybe like evaluate their need and maybe buy them some food. So there's a variety of things, but I mean, first and foremost, serving the flock and freeing up our pastor.

And in the case of a small church, it's more important because he's very busy. So freeing him up to just spend his time studying. He works, like our pastor works like 60 hours a week on his normal job.

And so he's, you know, and I do preach from time to time too. You know, I've preached a couple of different, I think maybe about 20-ish sermons. I've done one on holy violence and I preach through Naaman and I'm working through a series on Balaam now from Numbers.

So it's kind of a, you're kind of a jack-of-all-trades when you're a deacon of a small church. You're gonna do a little bit of everything most of the time.

Yeah, I love what you said about, you know, making sure that you're freeing up the pastor. We were talking about a book. Let's see, I thought I maybe had a quote, but we were talking about the book earlier that Nine Marks puts out, which, I mean, I don't know, I'm not trying to run anything down.

There's some issues I've had with Nine Marks. That's all, so I'm not like giving a blanket, a blanket endorsement of everything they put out, but here's what, here's a quote from that book on deacons from Matthew Smethurst I thought was great.

He said, a church without biblically functioning deacons will be perpetually distracted from its central mission of making disciples. So the whole, that's, you know, the whole point of the deacon ministry is to keep the pastors able to focus on the ministry of the word and prayer.

So I thought that's great, brother.

Yeah, and Alexander Strouk has a good version too on deacons, the New Testament deacon, that's an older version. You know, Smethurst's version's a little more modern, which it's got some good stuff. Alexander Strouk is good.

I also have, it's funny, I have it here at my desk. This is the, I'm sure as a Reformed Baptist, you're familiar with Albert Martin. This is the Diaconal Manual from his church.

And actually I have a brother,.

I don't know if you know Luke Peterson. He was part of RBNet. He recently became a missionary to Costa Rica. But he got his hands on this back in the day when he heard I was becoming a deacon, he sent it over to me.

So I've read through it. I don't think, now I don't think Albert Martin put it together. I think some of his elders or deacons did, but it's an excellent like 60 page, like just laying out everything biblically, like the roles, what they can do, what they shouldn't do, even some practical tips and finances.

So that's a resource too I've shared on my page before. And like, it's not, you know, they don't, you know, I've, I know I've talked with Pastor Dave Chansky, he's one of the pastors up there. You know, they're fine with it being published and stuff.

And it's very, very helpful. I mean, of all the resources on deacons, I think that's probably the best in my opinion, even over the two books that I've previously mentioned.

Confessional Standards, Church Polity, and Theological Boundaries

Yeah.

Al Martin's always, when I can, I try to give it a plug. He's pastoral theology, three volume. It's kind of underrated. I don't see a lot of people talking about it, but there is a niche group that like, they know it, you know, and it's, yeah, I mean, it's, it's heavy.

I've got the second volume on my desk right here.

I just have it.

You know how. Like, you see kids take a bunch of bites of apples and they leave them unfinished. That's me with all my people.

I think that's a problem with all Reformed Baptist brothers. Well, no, that's great. Like I said, I didn't want to take up too much time on deacons, but I thought it was cool that we'd had that conversation not long ago.

And then here we are, a real life deacon in the flesh. So our church doesn't have deacons presently. We had a situation. We had deacons several years ago. We had a situation where, well, I mean, long story short, they basically said, hey, you're out.

And by God's mercy, it didn't happen that way. And they ended up leaving. And so, so we don't have deacons at this point, but we are, I'm preaching through Acts right now. And so I've been walking through that.

And so, you know, Lord willing, maybe in a, end of this year, maybe first part of next year or so, we'll be able to select a few deacons or whoever, you know, we'll see, we'll see how it goes. So, unless you want to move to Arkansas, I saw you moved around.

So, you know. My wife and I do want to move back to rural areas.

Yeah, well.

We live in the suburbs now. Yeah, and that's something too, that is a problem. Even in some conservative churches, as you see kind of this tyrannical deacon, where the deacons kind of run the church. I've talked to a lot of pastors who, just in my, in Fire and RBNet, about like churches they've moved into, where the deacons kind of run the church.

And because the deacons have been there for so many years, they had this reputational capital that can't be overcome very easily.

Yeah.

And a lot of them had to sit down and say, you know, this is, you know, you have more power than you should, right? And that, and biblically, if you look at the model, like, you know, biblically, you know, deacons, they're servants, they're not overseers or bishops.

And so like, if you become, like if a deacon starts making spiritual decisions all the time, then it's like, well, you either, if people think you're an elder, make you an elder, but a deacon's not that.

Yeah.

What is an interesting thing, I think, about deacons in general, though, is some of them, you know, as we were talking about them, some of them were very noted preachers, obviously. Stephen was one. I think there's some discussion on whether Philip, the Philip of the evangelist was also the deacon or it was a different Philip.

I've seen different things from like commentators on that, but obviously you do see like a strongly evangelistic role. And that's not to say that like that's their primary task, but it is interesting.

Like, you know, you see them, you know, Philip being, and I do tend to think that the Philip that was a deacon was also the evangelist. So, but you do see like evangelism and you see Stephen being a powerful preacher as well.

So deacons, they can do a variety of things, but it shouldn't take away from their serving. I mean, if they're doing those things and they're not serving enough, then, you know, issues.

The Confessional Baptist Page and Its Ministry Goals

Yeah, yeah.

Well, the whole reason that I reached out to you, and I don't really remember how we got connected. I know that I had messaged you, because I do work for Free Grace Press.

Yeah.

I had messaged you, I think back when we were doing the sale on the, I think you were gonna like buy, oh, Sam Waldron's, the optimistic amillennialism. And I'd mentioned something like, hey, wait, if you'll wait like a week, it's gonna be on sale or something like that.

But

Yeah, I appreciate that, that's it. Yeah, I didn't end up, I think I didn't get that book yet. I have a couple of his. I mean, his books have really helped me. You know, my astrology was a seller for a while.

His books kind of helped me. I'm all mill, that's kind of the view, I think. There are things, I explained to my wife, I said, there are things that I think I can't explain with the all mill view. There's always that with every view, but I think the all mill view fits best than any other view, in my opinion, right?

I don't see the, to me, the millennial reign of Christ on earth, I've always, when Jesus says, my kingdom's not of this world, you know, and I'm just like, that seems sort of versatile. So, you know, we had disagreed, like our church, our pastor is historic pre-mill.

Yeah.

So, I mean, we just agreed to disagree there, but I mean, for the most part, most of them are fairly aligned, except for dispensationalism. That tends to be the one that's kind of far off the corner.

So, your church, do you guys, what is y 'all's official confession?

It's a 1689 confession, that's our official one. Yeah, we're more, you know, we realized that a lot of people come into the church from different backgrounds. We're more strict about elders and deacons holding to it.

Like people can take exceptions. I mean, even our church at the leadership level, we do have a few exceptions. I don't think the Pope's the antichrist, for one. I think he's an antichrist, and I've heard Rendahin's explanation of that, but like, I don't think that necessarily the Pope is the antichrist, I guess, and that probably is a little deviation from the omnipotent view.

But we think it's very, to us, the 1689 is very, very important for leadership because it sort of gates the leadership in from going down weird rabbit holes, right? I mean, for the people of the church, we teach the Bible.

We do teach the 1689 in the Sunday school class, but for the leadership, it's important because it's like, we're saying the congregation, we're not gonna go outside the bounds of this.

Yeah, so we, you know, so.

That's good, we're very similar. So we don't say like, now, yeah, we don't, we're not like, hey, we'll just believe whatever, but we are like, look, this is our confession. This is what's gonna be taught.

This is what our church believes. If you disagree, that's okay, as long as, you know, we're not gonna, to an extent, obviously, if you're like, well, you know, I don't think Jesus is the son of God. Okay, whoa, whoa, whoa.

But if there's something that, you know, that you disagree on, we're gonna take that into consideration, like, okay. And something else, I think it's like, do you want like, so I think the 1689 is a robust, mature confession.

Do you think that only people can join your church if they're robust, mature believers? Or do you have room in your church for immaturity so that they can grow, you know, and learn?

Yeah, exactly.

So, yeah.

And you may have people, I know people come from backgrounds, it's not on the reform side much, but some people come from backgrounds that are kind of wary of creeds and confessions, and they say, oh, they're man-made, and they don't understand it.

Like, you have to come around and realize, you know, you know, that like, you know, these are formulated. I forget who said this, and he said, well, creeds and confessions don't have more authority than the Bible, but they do have more authority than you.

Right, I mean, we shouldn't lightly, you know, with, you know, our church also, of course, you know, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, the Christology part of it, of course, Calisthenics and Christology, all that's important to affirm, because you do have stuff like process theology and annihilationism, and just random stuff that tries to sneak back in the church.

And if you hold to the creeds and confessions, it says, no, we're not gonna go that route. But like you said, it's a process. I mean, we're first trying to raise up people that are, you know, mature Christians, and then once they're mature, they can kind of see, like, they can understand that.

Like, we've told people, like, we teach through this, this is our doctrinal statement. Rather than making a whole doctrinal statement ourself, which is tough, it's just easy to say the 69th Confession is our statement.

Take a look at it, right?

Yeah.

And I mean, I can't improve on that. I mean, I'd be prideful to say I could.

The Confessional Baptist Project, Resources, and Church Promotion

No, that's good. Well, the whole reason I asked you on, and just talk a little bit about it, so you have, which you're also on X and Instagram, but where I see you the most and interact the most is the Facebook page, the Confessional Baptist, so it's just the Confessional Baptist, pretty easy to find.

You have, I'm looking right now, 8 .6 thousand followers. That's pretty good. You have, thus says the Lord, walking the old path, Jeremiah 6. I have a story about that from my church. I preached on that in 2022 about some directions that we needed to take.

And anyway, that's kind of led to the whole situation I referenced earlier, so I like that. Your most recent post, I shared it, it's a John Gill quote. Christ's church is a kingdom, and he is king in it.

Pastors of churches are subordinate governors who rule well when they rule not in an arbitrary way, according to their own wills, but according to the laws of Christ, with all faithfulness, prudence, and diligence.

That's John Gill, and then that's the kind of stuff you share. And other things, multiple sort of streams of things that you share. So why don't you tell us a little bit about how did this come about, that you started this little page?

You've got quite the following. Obviously not the biggest ever, but I mean, it's a notable following, you know? So what, how did the page come about, and what are you trying to do with it?

Yeah, so I started, I think it'll be around two or three years in April. I started a couple of years ago. Like I shared a lot of theological content on my personal Facebook page, and I still do from time to time.

But what I kind of realized is like, you know, I have a variety of interests. Like a lot of people, you know, don't want to hear about immediate versus immediate revelation.

Personal Facebook page.

I wanted something where I could share kind of like more like theological things that are more in depth, and then like have a select group. So like on my personal page, I'll share Bible verses and quotes sometimes, but it kind of grew out of the desire to do that.

And then, you know, I read a lot. Reading is my favorite hobby. I just, I read all the time. And I come across a lot of things when I read. I'm thinking, hey, that's a good quote. I want to share that.

You know, I love church history, especially. I've almost finished Philip Schaaf's eight or nine volume on church history. And so it just kind of, it kind of, I've started the page, you know, three or four years ago.

It kind of became an outlet just for me to share various things. I also try to do stuff. Like I feature different churches every week, Reform Baptist churches. I also feature, you know, sermons from past.

I think I've featured one of your sermons before. And I think in, hopefully in the, maybe the next couple of weeks, I'm going to feature your church as well. But trying to like, you know, most Reform Baptist churches are smaller.

I mean, there's not, most of them are not, you know, two, 300 people. They're mostly a hundred or less. And so trying to like, you know, direct people to Reform Baptist churches in their area where they can find good, solid preaching and not have to worry about like, you know, you know, fluffy preaching, you know, man-centered evangelism, all that stuff.

So that's kind of my thing. And like I have, you know, you know, just kind of like a sort of like a central hub. I've recently, I think about last, maybe last eight months I've been writing tracks because I'm very, I love evangelism.

That's one of my, you know, one of my favorite things to do. Our church evangelize quite frequently. And I get a lot of tracks from the chapel library. They're good tracks, don't get me wrong. But there are certain things like that are more niche that I'm like, I want to address.

And so I decided to write a few tracks to them. So I wrote a track on, if you remember the Titan sub going down and blowing up, going to see the Titanic. I wrote a track about that called the Titan's Descent into Eternity, right?

Because that's something that's more of a recent event. I want to use it in the same way that the Lord, our Lord and Savior used the, I think the Tower of Siloam fell, right?

And he said it wasn't those people.

So he used that to steer people to the gospel. I want to use that to steer people to the gospel. And then I've written a few more. I've written one called Cosmic Treason and Eternal Love. I wrote one, since Pokemon's all the rage, I wrote one on, I wrote like a Pokemon theme track so I can leave it on Pokemon machines.

And, you know, so I'm trying to like, just write various tracks that fill certain issues. I did one recently called Eyes of Faith as well on what's the most important thing. So that's one of my things.

I'm also, I love Thomas Watson. He's by far my favorite Bible teacher. I'm writing a study. My favorite verse in the Bible is Matthew 11, 12. The king of heaven suffers violent and violent taken by force.

So I'm currently, I'm trying to write a study guide to go with his book. I'm about, so far I have 8 ,000 words in, about another 2 ,000 to go. So I'm working on that. That's one of my other projects I peck at here and there.

So, you know, kind of a variety of things I do on the page, like some, you know, writing some tracks, you know, writing a book and, you know, hopefully making some good resources available to people for free, you know, that's my plan, so.

Reformed Baptist Unity, Confessional Boundaries, and Charity in Disagreement

No, amen. Yeah, that's great. I was just scrolling through here and looking at some of the churches featuring and just the idea of getting the, not just rural churches, but, so rural doesn't have to mean small.

And by the way, the rural church podcast, I say this a lot, but like, we're not just for rural churches. I just feel like the smaller sort of rural area church is underrepresented on a.

Yeah, it is.

So I just kind of like to give from that perspective.

Yeah, go ahead.

Well, and I tell people this too, because sometimes people get on my page.

Will get mad at me.

I say, I am a confessional Baptist. That doesn't mean I only share quotes from confessional Baptists. Sometimes they're from Baptists. Sometimes they're from people that are like Presbyterian. So it's like the confessional Baptist is who I am, but I had people say, well, that guy's a Presbyterian or Tozer wasn't necessarily fully Calvinist.

I'm like, well, I share good quotes.

From a variety of sources. You know, I do.

Go ahead.

Just tell them, brother, if they've gone to be with the Lord, they're confessional Baptists now.

That's right.

Yep.

I've told people, I say,.

Hey, R .C. Sproul's a Reformed Baptist now.

You know, I think, and you know, every Reformed Baptist surely has benefited from, you know, Owen, Sproul, Edwards.

Yeah.

Covenant theology comes, I've told multiple Presbyterians this, like Reformed Baptist covenant theology comes a lot from Owen, but like his work is very, his work on the discontinuity between the covenants and the very major differences.

When you start following that line of covenantal thinking, that's what makes you a Baptist, not a Presbyterian. And like, I am convinced that if Owen was alive in our days, he probably would be Reformed Baptist just because of his thinking.

Like when you start, because I agree biblically with what he's saying. I think there is, you know, Presbyterians talk about the continuity between the covenants. They try to want to flatten them out, but there is a strong discontinuity as well.

And when you talk about that, that's when you see the sign change and the focus is on adult membership and the regenerate and not on just the, you know, totally nations or families. And so, you know, I've told people, I said, look, Reformed Baptist covenant theology, John Owen, he's one of the main people that started, like that's where we get a lot of our stuff from.

So we do have a strong base in the Puritans.

Like we're not,.

Because I remember when I was growing up, I asked my dad once, I said, are we from, are we descended from the Anabaptists? And he corrected me and said, no. He said, we're not. We do have the same sign as Anabaptists, but our heritage comes from the Reformers and the Puritans.

It's just, we held onto that theology, but we just went back to the biblical practice of believer's baptism.

So that's what I was going to ask you that. So now that brings it, so one thing I was going to say, and then I'll ask you this question, but I was going to say that, you know, as especially as Reformed Baptist, oh brother, I don't know how you feel about it, but sometimes we can get really, really niche and really, really narrow and, you know, and there's even, you know, even right now, people who are listening to this, they'll know, I don't have to say everything, but like, there's even conflicts between, you know, Reformed Baptist, you know, and it's like, we're a small group of people.

We're too Reformed for the Baptist and we're too Baptist for the Reform. So we're a small group of people. And then we decide to point the guns at each other as it were and have some infighting. So I get, not that discussions over theology are unimportant.

I don't mean to say that at all. I'm just trying to say that sometimes we can try to gatekeep one another.

We can, and I think it's, you know, I just came back from the G3 Conference on Union Christ and Joel Beakey was talking there about having an ironic spirit. And I think that's so important because so many people today are so quick to have a polemic spirit or even an apologetic spirit, which is not bad.

But I thought about going through or maybe having Chad GPT going through and categorizing Jesus' statements. Like he was a very peaceful person. I mean, he did push back against the Pharisees and he did defend the truth, but I do see the same thing.

Sometimes I see a lot of fractiousness in Reformed Baptist circles. And it kind of grieves me because we're already like 4%. And then it's like a split down to 8%. And I tell people like, there are things, godly men are going to differ on, you know, I mean, I'll give you a classic example, impassibility, qualified versus classical.

That's split some Reformed Baptist denominations in the past. Tend to be the classical side myself, but I understand, you know, there are godly men that will be qualified. I'm not going to make it like a huge fight and start fighting like a war over that, you know?

I mean, to me, it's like, I do think, God is, you know, the concept of God, and, you know, it's a mystery. So some, you know, on one side, I think I would hold to Malachi 3 .6, I'm the Lord, I change not, therefore you're not consumed.

Some men might say, well, trying to say, well, we are made in God's image. So therefore there's something about him that's analogous to us. Like those types of debates have really driven Reformed Baptist circles.

And like, to me, it's like, I, you know, I like to, it's nice to disagree about them, but understand like we can still be brothers in Christ and not tear each other down over it, you know?

And we can even have, say, look, you know, this brother, you know, he may not, because of our church's position, he may not be able to be an elder at our church, but we still, you know, like, for example, Joe, I'll just give you an example, Joe Beeky, and this is an extreme example, but Joe Beeky, he couldn't be an elder at our church, obviously, because of our differences on baptism, but he certainly could preach, you know?

And we can respect him and love him and have, you know, benefit from him. Obviously, that's a credo, pedo situation, but even within the credo Baptist, Reformed Baptist world, I wish there was some more unity.

And I've tried to try to kind of, I feel like I've befriended brothers on multiple sides of various debates, you know, like impassibility and such. So I hope I can be a force of unity and encourage that, even without, you know, like you say, it's like, these things are not unimportant.

We want, absolutely, they're important, but are we, should we divide over some of these things?

You know, no.

And I'd even point out, too, like even Calvinistic or Dispensational Baptists,.

Like, you know, we wouldn't,.

We've had them in the past preach at our church. We would tell them, like, you know, there's no, please don't preach on anything that related to Dispensationalism. But I mean, one of my favorite pastors is John MacArthur.

I mean, he's a faithful and sponsored preacher. And like, there are times he says stuff on Israel, I'm kind of like, eh, I kind of wince a little bit. I'm like, I don't, that's not how the Bible says it.

And I strongly disagree with him on Sunday, because of course he believes Sunday's abolished, which I don't think that's a creation ordinance. But as long as he's not preaching on those two topics, if he's just preaching through the Gospels, I'm going to agree with him 99 of the time, you know?