Honest Youth Pastor Michael Moore: Memeing for the Glory of God

Dead Men Walking

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Exploring Theology, Doctrine, and all of the Fascinating Subjects in Between, Broadcasting from an

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Undisclosed Location, Dead Men Walking starts now! Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast.

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Thanks for coming along on the ride, thanks for sharing with your friend, telling a friend, commenting on social media, and checking us out at dmwpodcast .com

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where you can find all kinds of information about the podcast as well as checking out the merch store where we have some snarky merch.

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I did that as a joke, but you guys seem to be buying them. So a lot of people from Florida, because I think that's where Askel's from down there in Sarasota and DeSantis.

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But yeah, check that out. It supports the show. We're not retiring off this podcast. As you guys know, it's a passion.

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And we like to have interesting people on every week. We like to talk about the Lord. We like to talk theology, culture, politics, all those things.

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And this gentleman is pretty well known on Instagram, has a large following, does response videos, does memes, does all these things.

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And I've been reading his stuff for, jeez, over a year probably. I think I've been following on Instagram, and I know he's been around longer than that.

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But I just really like his commentary on his videos and what he's saying. A lot of the things that we talk about on this podcast, he talks about on his

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Instagram account and on other social media accounts. So we want to have him on, just have a discussion. It's Michael Moore, the

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Honest Youth Pastor. How are you, sir? I'm good. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. And I just have to say right off the bat, if you guys are watching this, obviously you listen, but if you're watching on our

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YouTube channel, you can see right on his mic stand, exegesis over eisegesis.

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We're already best friends, but just that sticker alone, we're going to be good.

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Yeah, we're going to become good, good friends. So thanks for being on the podcast. So I started following you on your

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Instagram account at, correct me if I'm wrong, I think it's Honest Youth Pastor, correct? Correct.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and you have a good following there, a lot of response, a lot of people commenting. You put a lot of content up, which

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I absolutely love. You know, you like that fresh content. Get the scroll through and go. He's got something new up.

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I want to take a look at it. Tell me a little bit. Well, introduce yourself. Give us a little bio. We usually start out with that. So the listeners kind of know a little bit about you.

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Give us a personal bio and then tell us a little bit about how the Instagram account and the social media account started. Gotcha.

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Yeah. So as you already said, my name is Michael. I've been in ministry for going on almost, well, 18, 19 years in various forms or fashion right now.

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Currently, I just assist at my church. I'm not necessarily a pastor at my church. I just assist there, but I'm married, have two kids, work a 40 -50 hour a week normal job like everybody else does and then help out at the church as needed.

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And so that's what we're going to do now. Now the account started nearly 10 years ago.

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It'll actually be this 10 years this July is when it started and it came. Wow. Of a transition from a church actually.

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So I was a youth pastor at this church and we had a new minister come on and we tried to work it out for about a year.

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I'm not going to go into the whole story, but it ended with basically, I don't know, you know, being told to leave is the thing.

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It was like a it was kind of put as a mutual split, but it wasn't really a mutual split.

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And so it was a matter of. Mutual on one side, huh? Mutual on their side. Yeah, I wasn't very pleased about it.

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Anyway, there's stories of that elsewhere, but it's a long story. Point being, I needed a place to vent about the church and about ministry in general.

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I didn't have anything to do that with because 10 years ago, there was basically Facebook and everybody

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I knew that I was on Facebook went to the church that I had just left. And so there was no real place to do that.

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And I just hopped on Instagram. And at the same time, my wife had, you know,

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Reddit was a thing even back then. And she was, you know, I didn't know what a meme was, but she had she knew what memes were because they were online and on Reddit.

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And so I was just for whatever reason, the stores aligned and I was like, this will be a great way to get out all this pent up frustration.

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And so nobody I knew was on Instagram. It was fairly new at the time. So I just started posting memes, which none of them

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I've not deleted any of them. They're still back there if you want to scroll all the way to the end. But basically it was just me venting the frustrations of the transition that wasn't really a transition.

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It was just an annoyance. And I did that for probably a couple years.

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It was quite therapeutic. I don't know if I'd recommend it to anybody, but it was very therapeutic for me.

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And so we did that and then I got there was quite a few people that could relate to that situation.

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Apparently, I didn't realize it was ministry issues where church issues were such a big thing for people because up until that point

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I had been involved in very healthy churches with the exception of one when I was really small.

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So I didn't really know that it was that big of a thing and people sort of following and there was at one point

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I thought, man, if there's going to be this many people here, I should probably do something a bit more productive than just vent.

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And so from the more constructive, yeah, it's a little bit more constructive and not just like and honestly two years in we had found another church.

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It's actually a church we go to now. It was a very healthy church. It was a very, you know, biblically centered church and I didn't really have anything to vent a whole lot about anymore.

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I'd kind of that kind of process to help me process through it. We were in a healthy church and I thought, you know, if I'm going to if there's going to be this many people, it's probably maybe 2000 3000 people follow and I thought this is a lot of people and if I'm going to have this many people listening to whatever for whatever reason,

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I should probably do something a bit more productive. So we sort of transitioned into more theological means at that point.

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So and then obviously there's been a lot of transitions up from that. But yeah, we're about 10 years in at this point, which is kind of crazy to me.

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So yeah, that is great. I mean, that's a long time to do anything, especially an Instagram account dedicated to one thing.

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I see a lot of these kind of fizzle out within a few years. A lot of podcasts don't last more than a year, you know, people go, where's my 10 million listeners per episode of my glory and fame.

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I'm out of here, right? They all want to be the next Joe Rogans or whatever. But what

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I really liked and I did I kept scrolling. I will admit I did not get to the first meme because I kept scrolling and I'm like, how long has this guy been posting?

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It was like five minutes of scrolling, but I did see and take this in the way that it's intended because I've done this myself too.

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I think we can all go, you know, many of us now, especially at my age, I've been in social media 15 plus years on some platform or another.

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You can kind of see how you grow through your posts, right? I even look back on some of the stuff

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I posted even 8, 10 years ago and I kind of cringe sometimes I go, gosh, I was a real jerk and my wife's like, yeah, you still are sometimes, but I'm bringing you along quite nicely and I go, okay, but I saw some years and there was like this kind of evolution of how memes start and especially when you have like church hurt or you have maybe denominational issue that you go.

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Why can't everyone else see this but I can see it and it's fun to poke at it snarky memes and kind of make fun.

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But then I think we kind of mature into this area of going. Okay, like you did. I have this huge following.

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Some of your videos have tens of thousands of comments and views and more than that even and you go.

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Okay. Do I have a responsibility here? I have a I have an audience, you know, is there something more than memes and this is a very long -winded question, but I'm kind of commenting too and I started to see that, you know, even your response videos started become like you said a little more theological and get

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I don't say give people leeway, but you give them a little more grace and then responding with truth, right?

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Look at it for all of those listening here. It's a reformed podcast. We have a saying called the cage stage, right?

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When you come to the doctors of grace and you go through this stage of just in your face. Let's debate.

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Let's argue. I'm right. You're wrong. Look what the Bible says and I found sometimes

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I can get that way across many subjects right and everything is in the debate. Now, I've just I've noticed in the last couple years of my life, probably five or six years that you get a lot more out of someone.

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If you stop ask questions give them a little grace, but still don't don't veer from the truth still speak the truth, which is why

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I was drawn over the last year and a half that I've been following you to kind of your response videos because you deal with some really wacky stuff within Christianity kind of like we do here on the podcast.

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When was that transition for you? How long ago where it was like you want to what like you said, maybe do something a little more constructive.

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Look at memes are fun and still keep posting memes. I love a good meme that has to do with theology or doctrine or denomination or whatever.

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We still want to do that. But when was that transition for you where you started doing those longer format response videos?

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Well, the response videos were actually more of just an evolution out of the meme part of it.

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So like I remember I don't know how many years ago it was. It was probably four or five years ago that I had made a meme about Bethel and somebody reached out to me and they're like, hey, you're going to stand before God one day and hold you know be held accountable for what you say and they're like,

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I don't necessarily disagree with you, but the way you say it isn't really helpful and I have the initial reaction that I probably had a lot back then which was you're an idiot and I'm right.

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I don't even care and whatever reason that bugged me all day long. I remember that bugging me all day long that they said that and I thought man, they're right though.

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Like it's not my point here is to try to help people see why it's wrong.

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Not just that, you know, hey, you know, I'm right about this and so that really got me thinking about like, okay, maybe the approach here needs to be not necessarily softer, but just better worded and so that was happening and then

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I have always loved I mean, I'm an oddball in this probably or in a minority at least, but I love listening to sermons and like kind of picking it apart and being like, okay, what was good here?

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What was bad here? What can I learn from this? Because I want to be the best preacher I can be and so like what can

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I learn from all these variety of sermons and so that kind of that thinking from that message kind of started its way into the memes, but then it also whenever I started doing those sermon reviews, some of the first ones are a little rough and I got some good feedback from there.

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Basically the same kind of feedback that I got from that memes like, hey, you're assuming too much. You're going after the person and not the message and so that's why we have whenever we do sermon reviews now, we ask three questions across the board so that I can't it at least helps me not be as biased as my initial response is going to be toward somebody that I have to at least ask, you know, you know, are they reading the scriptures?

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Are they you know exegeting them correctly? Are they mentioning the gospel like I have to be fair and so like that helps a lot in regards to being like, all right, well, what's really communicating the message of all right, let's look at this and then just take it at face value and see regardless of who this is, is this good or bad or what's right or what's wrong here based on what we know from theology and scriptures so that really calmed me down quite a bit plus I'm just I'm getting older.

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So I've got two kids. I've got to be chiller. I'm just old. I don't have that energy anymore. So all of those things all of those things coming together really help because even

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I think to just to throw this and I think having kids has really helped me think a bit more through this than normal because I mean obviously

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I'm coming at something and I understand what I'm looking for but really teaching people through it understanding like they don't they don't have that in their head already.

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So you're going to have to explain it to them. You're going to have to teach it to them. And so obviously honestly, it's one of those things that I really wish

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I could go back and tell myself, you know, when I was in, you know, youth ministry all the time, which is like, hey, I mean, you have to explain this stuff.

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And so yeah, a lot of that all of that together in the same pot mixed together makes me sometimes according to some people far too charitable, but my point is just to demonstrate like hey, this is what it is.

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This is why it's wrong. I'm not I have no interest in attacking the person the person themselves is wrong.

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Maybe they're unrepentant and I'm not going to do anything about that. God's going to have to be the one that does something about that, but just pointing it out.

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So we see the air. So yeah, Bethel is a tough one for me because you talk to any

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Christian that's defending it and you go, I just don't see how you can defend some of those doctrines and some of those things the grave soaking and and you know, the leg pulling and you know, spiritual tarot cards and the

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Bill Johnson saying, you know, Kenosis with Christ and he was fully man and not fully

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God while on Earth and you just go and he says it in his books and I've had theologians on that defend him, you know,

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Dr. Sam Storms. We kind of got in a push back and forth. It was respectful, but he was defending him and he said, oh, well, he's not a theologian.

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He's a pastor. You got to give him a break. I just went, you know, mind blown. What are we what are we talking about? Right, but but at the so those are low hanging fruit to where I do.

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I kind of get worked up on some of those things that seem so blatantly anti -gospel, anti -Bible, anti -God, but I think also too, like you said and I agree with you even children are like a common grace of God that kind of takes men and molds them into the more mature men that we're supposed to be right even

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Proverbs talks about children having different type of blessings one of them being the crown of our glory, but also maturing us in a way even if even if we missed the discernment boat, we missed the wisdom boat.

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God has a preset in there that goes. Oh, you have kids. You're going to view the world a little bit differently and they help calm you down a little bit.

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So I'm I'm 100 % on board with you there because I'm the same way when I start having kids, but so you so you have this and you're looking at different different things theologically are doing response videos one thing that I'll say that I agree with you and I tend to do here on the podcast.

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That's why I said I really relate to you because I think we kind of have a little bit of the same style. I was watching a baptism response video on Instagram with a gentleman named

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Zach Lambert. I believe and I had been I responded to a few of his tweets. We just got on back on Twitter last year and he followed us and I said some stuff and I think he blocked me or something and I was nice but essentially he was doing a baptism comparison of baptism being inclusion and then the in then and then kind of is a

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Jesus like you would say or like your tag says there on your microphone stamp into the LGBTQ community.

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So he's very he's a progressive leftist Christian air quotes on that side of of those things theologically.

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But what I liked what you did is if you you know in your younger years or my younger years, we just come out and go that's absolute heresy that right right, but you stop the video and you go.

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Oh no now hold on there is truth in that baptism is based on inclusion. Absolutely.

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So let's see where he takes this and I think that's what we need more of online is dissecting that and saying look at you are hearing 70 % truth or 60 % truth or whatever that percentage is but but the 30 or 40 % here where it's twisted and then we're putting stuff into it that isn't in the text.

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That's what we need to focus on and I think that helps people. I think you and I have that discerning eye and I'm not saying that to puff us up or say we're extra smart or anything, but there's a lot of people out there that don't have that that will listen to a video by Zack Lambert and go wow that that makes sense.

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Yeah baptisms and inclusion and we should include certain people living certain lifestyles. Yeah, let's go and he has a whole church of people that do that and hurrah and and amen him yet.

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There's a very clear distinction between truth and almost truth, right? So I like that you do do that in those videos and wouldn't you agree?

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I think we need more of that from what pastors ministers people like us that do podcasts and in social media.

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I think a lot of this and this is what I found. I mean, it's something you see a lot.

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Anyway, anytime you're doing discipleship anytime you're teaching anyone, but what I've really seen this for for sure is

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I've been probably for the last three four months. We've been going through church history on Wednesday night.

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I've been teaching through church history to just you know, our Wednesday night Bible study people and these are people that have been in church their whole lives and what's been really fascinating to me is to see that there's a lot of things that I assume they knew or I know

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I know where you're going with this. I know we're doing this. I don't mean to interrupt you but we say this all the time on the podcast.

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Go ahead. And so it's one of those things where I think it's what I think a lot of times especially as just this is giving me an eye not only the sermon reviews, but just teaching through this class for sure is that there's things that I have in my head that I assume, you know, so I don't even mention them.

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I just go into and assuming that you you are on the same page as me. You have the same definition as me of whatever this word

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I'm about to use is and so I just shoot it out without even thinking about it. And so as we just recently went through, you know, the canonization of the

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Old Testament what that look like and all of that and the questions they had I was like, wow, okay, you've been in church your whole life and no one's told you this and it's not been it's not that maybe it hasn't been mentioned here or there or elsewhere.

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It's just it's not really it's not it's like been a side thought somewhere in the message they've heard and they haven't been taught through it.

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And I think a lot of what I tell people all the time like I'm not doing anything groundbreaking with these sermon reviews.

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I'm literally just sitting there kind of going through and just double -checking theology is all

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I'm doing and hopefully and we've got a lot of very encouraging messages where people have said that like them doing that now has helped them see some things that they didn't see before.

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And so I just don't think we train people to do that. Well, we assume that they know basic like you said with the whole

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Bill Johnson thing. There's people that don't know that you know, they don't have the clue what the

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Nicene Council was about and so you talk about the same substance or a similar substance and they don't even have a clue how to process that.

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They've never heard that before. Yeah, even if they've you know, even if they do repeat the creed every week and so it's one of those things that I think really taking time and not undervaluing discipleship not like hey guys, we're going to dig into this, you know, we're going to read through all the works of Augustine, but just just basic theology and just being like hey, this is what the church believes.

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This is why we believe it. This is what you should kind of look for. This is just basic doctrinal stuff because people like Zach, not to pick on Zach, but people like Zach will say things and maybe quote an early church father like a sentence from them and people will be like, oh, you're smart.

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You've read all this stuff. So you must be right and and then just follow along behind and because they've never read any of the early church fathers.

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They don't have a clue who that person is you just named but they know you named him. So you must know what you're talking about. And so just really helping people be like, hey, maybe you should turn off the

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Netflix and maybe you should read this book and just helping them disciple just just basic discipleship to give some sort of discernment because there's so much stuff that is really easy to spot if you know basic theology, but you and you don't yeah, you just I mean, that's how you got pastors like Mike Todd up on stage saying

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I don't have a clue about homosexual marriage and you're like, bro. What and everybody's just like, yeah, like do you guys need anything?

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Do you know right at all? Yeah at all. And so I think again,

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I feel I used to be like you guys are stupid. But at this point, I just feel really bad for people because they

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I assume that a lot of people had been discipled. Well, and I was really wrong about that. So so that's key.

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No, you're absolutely right with everything. You just said Michael and we've talked about it a lot on this podcast to where I had the same example to where I've met someone many people 10 20 30 years in church every

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Sunday every Wednesday and outside of their maybe six or seven talking points of what their denomination has taught them you start talking about canonization or you start, you know talking about different eschatologies or things like that and they just look at you and go what there's there's only there's only one eschatology.

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I got to get my rapture hatch ready. I'm getting getting raptured out of here any moment. You're like, well, no, there's quite a few and they're pretty old in church history.

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And you know, people are talking about thousands of years ago and it's just really sad because what one

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I think maybe you and I might Align we enjoy right? I can imagine you enjoy opening up a book or getting into a sermon or getting into the

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Bible or getting into a concordance or whatever and going. Okay, let's figure this out. Some people are wired that way and it's more of a challenge and I get that but at the bare minimum, like you said, shouldn't we have some type of bare minimum standard of some type of knowledge of God, especially if you're in a church for generations.

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If you're in a church for 20 years and you can't rightly defend the faith against a couple extracurricular questions from those secularists and atheists and pagans and leftist progressives and everyone else who now from inside the church, even within modern conservative, conservative churches, you're going to get those questions and you know,

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I'm not blaming the people because you know, we had Tom Askell on the podcast and he goes look at it's 50 plus years of just watered -down horrible non -biblical preaching in the churches.

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So what do you expect the sheep to do which is a lot of it? And then you see and here's the reason

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I'm saying all this too is because you'll have a church that might have a couple hundred people in it and they're struggling to keep membership yet.

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You'll have 10 ,000 people come listen to you break down a sermon on your Instagram account every single week and they go well, what's going on?

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Everyone's just going online that no people go to where truth is people will go to where biblical truth is being preached at that has to be a podcast and I'm looking

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I'm not advocating for replacing your pastor in your church for a pastor on a podcast right or a or an

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Instagram account, but I'm saying people want biblical truth and it's total opposite right now right now.

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We're just kind of telling them what they want to hear very emotional things like that, but people deep down want biblical truth that they've been exposed to God in any way shape or form.

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And unfortunately, I don't know if the pulpits are really giving people that especially in the Western Christian Church and I think your account kind of exposes that as well because you do you you have some people on there that are very very popular yet what comes out of their mouth from the pulpit couldn't be farther from biblical truth and I would even say

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Orthodox truth. We're in this thing now to where you can call yourself a pastor get up in the pulpit and you're saying things that for thousands of years have been

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Christian Orthodoxy and now we're going know this is up for grabs and we can redefine it or change what it means.

23:43

Yeah. Well, I think a lot of that and I've probably within the last year seen this a lot had a lot more conversations with people about this.

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It's just really basic Church just understanding what the church is for and how the church is supposed to be ran and when you lose that you lose a lot.

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So like you talk about member like I know not every church has membership class or denomination or whatever. But I mean at the very minimum in your membership class, you should be covering at least the basic doctrines.

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I mean obviously denominational doctrines, but further back than that just basic doctrines of the faith and most of the time if you go to a church and ask them what they cover their membership class, it's maybe the bare minimum of what they have to with their denominational doctrine and that's about it and it's usually like one day for like four hours.

24:29

Yeah, and that's a joke to be frank with you. That's a joke. I get that not everybody's got a bunch of time and you have you're struggling with all these other activities people have but you're either going to take it seriously or you're not.

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I mean, that's just as simple as it is and one of the things that I think to that happens and I think some of the things that we've really seen value in that we keep pursuing at my church is like this

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Wednesday night thing. We're like look we could we could have Bible study or we could you know, go through something a little bit deeper connected to the scriptures in the same way anyway, and then people are able to learn that and then see how all of this does connect to the

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Bible. They read every week and then the same thing with Sunday mornings. I've me and my pastor have had this conversation a few times.

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I mean just how important it is to lay out some sort of context for people whenever you get up to the pulpit because they have had preaching for so long that is so much like just applicable so 99 % application driven for you and nothing else.

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So all the Bible is is just really good application, but you don't know why so we had this discussion just this last week actually so you have you have people that come to church, but they don't know why the

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Old Testament is important. They know that for example, you know, they get a lot of New Testament application, which is great, but all of these

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New Testament authors are pointing back to what God has already done in the Old Testament and the fulfillment of that and how

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I mean God's law and all of this thing is brought into and it's foundational for what we're writing in the

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New Testament and you don't have a lot of people that can make that connection because you know, they've they've had a lot of application forever or culture war preaching forever or some, you know, it's just been all this variety, but not anything base and then you have you're gonna have to tell me to shut up here in a minute, but then you have people again that are in that have positions within the church that aren't qualified to be there.

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They just simply aren't they don't meet the qualifications. They were a convenient person to have somebody had to be there and this was the person that would do it.

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I the horror stories of horror stories. I have is I was guest preaching somewhere because I do a lot of that in the area as well and somebody asked me to come by this church.

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I you know, it's the cool whatever I'll come by and I had before when they were doing the announcements. They were like, hey, if you want to be on our they called it a board, but it was essentially that denominations version of elders.

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There's a signup sheet in the back and I just looked at my wife. I was like what is happening? There's just a signup sheet.

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There's just as whoever just whoever you want to do it. They're like they're like the Oprah of churches.

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You can be an elder. You can be a pastor. You can be an elder. Just giving them out. Huh? Just sign up like is there is there no nothing just I could just go back there for my name,

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I guess and so it was just so strange that you're just like, you know, there are there are qualifications for this.

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There are reasons that there's qualifications for this and whenever you don't run the church the way that God has put forth for the church to be ran all you're going to have downstream is terribleness.

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You're going to have you're going to have application driven because that's what people. Yes, that is what gets people there and they're going to be there for that.

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You're going to have charismatic people, but no quality or character behind them. You're going to have all sorts of things every time

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I post anything about pastors on Twitter, which is a vile cesspit of nonsense. I get so I mean

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I just reply after reply of all these unqualified pastors that have been arrested for variety of things and that's what you're going to get when you have people that are in positions that aren't qualified that have simply been put there because of spot needed field.

28:04

And so I'm not surprised so much anymore that people don't know basic doctrinal stuff that they can't tell you any sort of Trinitarian doctrine or what or even tell you what the

28:14

Nicene Creed is because they've never been taught and they've been led by people that weren't supposed to be there.

28:19

So yeah, in 2022 Ligonier did a national survey 45 ,000 people that self -identify as Christian 65 % of them either didn't believe in or couldn't explain the

28:34

Trinity a little more than that like 68 or 70 % did not believe Christ was deity.

28:40

So you have the majority of people self -identifying as Christian. That's why I think it's kind of when we say the word

28:46

Christian. It's almost like saying evangelical now. Like what does that mean? There's so much that encompasses evangelical that even now when we say

28:54

Christian, you know, you have such a wide range of belief there.

29:00

Unfortunately, that's why you know when I say I'm Reformed Presbyterian. I have to say Presbyterian not lesbiterian.

29:07

I mean, I literally have a whole denomination of Presbyterians that are just so wacky and so out there and still identify with the denomination of Presbyterian, but I'm you know,

29:18

I'm a Westminster Presbyterian there, you know, it's like you really have to start defining terms when we talk about these things being yeah.

29:27

Well every time so so just so everybody knows so I always get called a

29:32

Baptist online. Okay, so I definitely have Baptist leanings. Okay, I get it. Okay, anytime

29:37

I have the same sort of thing. So I'm actually ordained in the Wesleyan Holiness denomination, but anytime

29:43

I say Wesleyan the same thing happens where they're like, oh, you're like the East Northeastern Wesleyans like no, no.

29:50

Yeah, I don't really even call those people brothers and sisters most of the time and so yeah, that's the thing where you have to you know, drill down a bit on that because they don't know

29:59

I do want to maybe this the podcast will go this way, but I do want to kind of put an upside to that all that downer.

30:05

I just gave as well. There are people even though there's a lot of people that don't know and I'm not surprised that they have terrible theology.

30:12

There are people like you said that are looking that are concerned and there's a lot of really good ministries that are you know out there sort of putting that content out some of them yeah out there specifically so pastors have resources that maybe they don't have access to with the denominations to then use so there is a silver lining to this terrible rain cloud that people do recognize that now and then they're starting to think about it.

30:38

So would you say okay, so let's kind of end on that note to then as we wrap this up. So would you say what because we could

30:45

I feel like you and I could sit here and I'm you know, I'm very pragmatic. I'm a realist. I want to say I'm cynical but I look at things and like to focus on the things that could be fixed, right?

30:55

So let's not make the whole podcast that but as we finish here so you on your Instagram site page, excuse me account and in all of your social media.

31:03

What are some positive things that have come out of that then is it seeing people waking up and going? Yeah, I want to know

31:09

God. I want to know this truth. I appreciate you doing this brother. Like what are some of the things over those 10 years to where you said, this is a positive aspect.

31:18

Well, there are two things specifically. The first is we do get a lot of messages that of people that say, hey, look,

31:23

I don't agree with you on hardly anything, but I do appreciate that you're having these conversations which which is way better than most messages

31:30

I get. So like I appreciate those that are like, hey, I think you're dumb but I appreciate you at least talking about this stuff.

31:37

And so that that to me is encouraging because there's a lot of people that simply just won't have those conversations and there have been a number of emails or DMS.

31:46

We've got where people have said, hey, I had never considered something before you said that and then

31:52

I looked into it and I have changed my mind on it, which is like a weight that I don't really like having on my shoulders, but I'm glad that I got them thinking about it and something very similar has happened and this honestly,

32:06

I don't like it, but I'm glad that at least people are thinking about it. We've had people DMS and be like, hey,

32:12

I went to a church for six, seven years. I, you know, watch your videos. I started listening to the sermons closer and now we go somewhere else, which is like a okay good,

32:21

I guess, but also a oh, I don't I don't like that. But I'm glad.

32:27

I mean, I'm glad that people are getting at least thinking through things. That's the whole thing. I tell my kids that all the time like I do not want to be the one that does the thinking for you because eventually you're going to be outside of this house and you're going to have to think yourself and I'd rather you not rely on me because if you do when you get out there, you're just going to pick somebody else.

32:45

So I'd rather you use the brain. God gave you and think through these things so that you can form an opinion.

32:51

You can you can argue back in an intelligent way and you know, this stuff you're talking about one of the rules.

32:57

We have my son's younger. So he doesn't I mean what he argues about is like if you want nuggets or or you know pasta, but my daughter is older and one of the things

33:06

I tell her all the time is like I just don't like it isn't a reason like you I need you to I don't want to just contend with you all the time to do that.

33:14

But I need you to just know that I don't like it's not a good intelligible reason to to say, you know,

33:21

I don't agree with that or this well, why why don't you then and to think through it and that's one of the really good things that I think have come from this account.

33:28

I'm I am by nature a confrontational introvert. So this the online thing works perfect for me and so the idea just drop your tooth bombs and then get out and just walk away.

33:41

Yeah, and so one of the things is just kind of like hey boom here. It is. I don't care like I think people get caught up in this thing that I want them to agree with me.

33:49

I don't care if you agree with me. I do want you to think about like that's what I want you to do think about it.

33:56

I don't even engage in the comments anymore for that reason. I'm not trying to argue with you into my way. I don't care like you you'll come to your conclusion by the grace of God.

34:03

However, you get there, but I do want you to think about it. And so to get you sort of into that and what

34:09

I the positives that I have seen from that are people have had to engage their thoughts that's happened to me 10 years ago.

34:17

Some of the theological positions. I held have changed by interactions. I've had on this account and so to the better or worse of some people's opinions, but the idea that it has and so my hope is that I at least provoke you into thinking that way again.

34:34

I don't be mad at me. Don't don't agree. I don't care. It's no difference. If I have been on this 10 years, if you turn down tomorrow and I don't care, but the point is

34:41

I want to get you thinking about it. And as long as you're thinking about it, I trust that God will use that to bring you to himself.

34:50

So yeah, no, that's so good. And I would even say look at you don't want like you said you preference it with I don't want people jumping there leaving their church or whatever.

34:59

That's not your intent. But I would say in that 10 years, if one person God allowed,

35:04

God used you to influence one person to rightly see who he is and not either sit under a false gospel or or a false doctrine or false theology, then that 10 years is worth it.

35:17

I mean, because because you consistently speak truth. So all right, as we end here,

35:22

I do have to ask. I've been looking at your background the whole time. I see a guitar neck there.

35:28

I do. I don't play guitar, but I play piano and drums. What do we got going on, Michael? Are we a musician? Are you a collector?

35:34

Give us the give us the lowdown. Funny story about that. So when me and my wife were dating, I I said something so innocuous when

35:42

I was like, hey, I'd like to learn how to play guitar. So this at the time when we were dating, this girl saves up two months worth of paychecks, surprises me on my birthday with this

35:52

Fender Stratocaster. I have yet to learn how to play it, but I can't get rid of it. So now it's about my call.

36:03

Eventually, your wife saved up all that money. Yes. I was like, baby, I'm never getting rid of it ever, but I can't.

36:11

I've tried. I legitimately have tried a few times, but I am not. I'm apparently not coordinated enough to do that or don't have the patience to learn.

36:20

But the point is it's going to sit back there and be a good I don't know if you would call it. It's a great background.

36:26

I'm loving it. Yeah. Yeah. I knew what I knew was a fender. I go. I wonder why he's doing that thing. I like it. Well, we learned something fun about Michael before we closed here.

36:34

That's great. Obviously have great content as we close out here. Tell everyone where they can find you on all your social media accounts if they want to follow along and check it out.

36:42

Yeah, if you just search honest youth pastor on Google, it'll basically pull up everything you want to find or just honest youth pastor on Instagram.

36:49

Also, we linked everything else from there as well. So very cool. Michael, thanks so much for being on the podcast, sitting down with us for a little bit, talking anytime you want to come back on.

36:58

Talk about some controversial. Got to get it off your chest. We can yell and scream and rant and rave and then by the grace of God, hopefully help some people through some issues.

37:07

You're more than welcome to come back on. I appreciate you having here today, brother. Oh, thank you. Thanks for having me. All right. I can talk all day.

37:14

Yeah, me too. That's what I said. We want to try to keep it to 3540 minutes. I felt like you and I, we could probably go a couple hours, but we all have things to do.

37:21

We got families and wives and jobs and stuff. So guys, thanks so much for listening to another episode of dead men walking podcast.

37:27

We appreciate you sharing the podcast, listening, commenting, all those good things. And remember the chief end of man is to glorify

37:34

God. Enjoy him forever. God bless. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at dead men walking podcast for full video podcast episodes and clips or email us at dead men walking podcast at gmail .com.