Wolves in Sheep's Clothing: Recognizing Toxic Church Dynamics

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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Have you been slandered, or maybe even hurt, within the church?

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Maybe even from leadership of the church, or a denomination, or maybe a

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Christian ministry. It's hard to believe that people could be hurt by those who claim to be

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Christian leaders, but it does happen. And that is what we're going to talk about on this week's

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Wrap Report. We're going to talk about how you can spot a pattern of behavior, and know that you're not alone.

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That's coming your way right now, on the Wrap Report. Welcome to the

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Wrap Report, with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

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This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content, or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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Welcome to another edition of the Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, the Executive Director of Striving for Eternity and the

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Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a proud member. We are here to give you biblical interpretations and applications for the

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Christian life. That's what we do here. If you want to check us out, as we said in the intro there, just go to strivingforeternity .org.

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We can come to your church, speak. That is how the guest that I have on today and I actually first met, when he had his first South Jersey Apologetics Conference, and I was invited.

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And I don't know, he must have banged his head or something, because he actually invited me back the next year as a keynote, and the year after, so like,

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I don't know what happened. He must have just hurt himself or something, but Pastor Jeff, welcome to the

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Wrap Report. Thanks for having me. I do remember it was fireworks, because we had Matt Slick one year, and the two of you were just characters together.

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The other year we had David Wood, and man, that guy, he is an interesting figure. David Wood, wow.

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His backstory and his testimony. So yeah, we had some good times back then. We need to do it again.

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Yeah, it was, so it started because a friend of mine, Eric Johnson, was out there for a temple opening, a

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Mormon temple opening, and he tries to, when he goes out to temple openings, he tries to get churches to speak at, and he was with a friend, and you were like, hey, let's do a conference, and he was like, well,

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I know a guy that's in Jersey, and you knew David Wood, so, and if I remember correctly,

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David and I both had something that Saturday, and so we spoke Friday night, which is not, you know, you put the guys that were better known on the

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Friday night, and the Saturday was all Mormonism, but. Oh, dude, it was like absolutely sold out

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Friday night. No place to sit, and then Saturday was like, you know, kind of half -empty, but we had fun going to the temple and evangelizing the

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Mormons and all. Yeah, and then the next year, it was Matt, David Wood, and myself, and we still have the debate, if folks ever have seen on Striving for Eternity, the debate with Matt Slick and I, the first public debate we did on charismatic gifts, it is at Pastor Jeff's church, and that is

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Pastor Jeff introducing us, having to let his audience know that, yes, they actually are good friends.

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Yes. They rip each other, but they're actually good friends. So let's start with this.

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Introduce yourself to the audience so that they know who you are, but let's go back to, in a sense, when we first met, you're a pastor of a church, that church has changed names, same church, but things have happened since then.

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So let's go back, because this is, folks, the reason I asked Pastor Jeff on is about his experience, what he went through with a church denomination and social justice.

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That's basically what we're going to cover today, and I'm going to just let you know up front.

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They say never to tell you up front what the goal of something is, but I'm going to.

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Our goal here is this, if you're going to see Pastor Jeff talk about what he has gone through with the denomination he was part of, and what

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I think you're going to see is some of you are struggling in a church, you're going, I can't put my finger on something, but something's just wrong, and you've gone to your leadership and it didn't go the way you expected, and there's patterns of behavior we see in churches, in church denominations, in church ministries, that people have a hard time believing these things would happen, because these are

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Christians. They'd file the Bible, and what I asked

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Jeff to do is come in so we could talk about what he went through for a couple reasons. One, so you can be praying for him in his church.

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That's going to be first and foremost, but I also want you guys to hear what he went through and see the pattern, because some of you may be going through what he's going through and not even notice.

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Jeff being a pastor was able to recognize things that maybe some people, you know, like us in the pew, might not realize is what's happening.

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And so, Pastor Jeff, introduce yourself to folks, let folks know who you are, and I will say also, you've got a couple books out there, so mention those as well.

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Okay, well thank you, Andrew. Thank you so much for having me on. We are a church in New Jersey that used to be called

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Mount Laurel Evangelical Free Church, and we are no longer part of the Evangelical Free Church of America because of interactions that we've had with the denomination.

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It really began in 2020 with the lockdowns and our church staying open during COVID and some of the messaging that was coming from the national office, but at that time also there was a large social justice push.

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There had been one going back, but it just kept growing and intensifying. They would have speakers like Jarvis Williams saying that all of our churches are built on the backs of black and brown people and that the structures are inherently racist.

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And let me cut in to say, for folks to recognize, because they wouldn't know this, when you say there was a social justice push, you were dealing with this before COVID, for folks to recognize.

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You had a conference I was at that we spoke at where, you know, three speakers, we all dealt with the issue of social justice, and this was in 2017, 2018,

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I believe. Yeah. Yeah, we were on it early. I would say I got on to it very early back in 2009 because I was an inner -city missionary.

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So I was living in the Kensington section of Philly, and there was this group called The Simple Way, headed up by Shane Claiborne, who was like a

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Tony Campolo guy, and they brought all of these leftist ideologies under the banner of evangelicalism, and they came right into the neighborhood of where we were living, half a mile away, inner -city

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Philadelphia. And so that's what alerted me to the fact that there was something wrong, something going on.

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And that used to be more of like Sojourner's Magazine, Jim Wallace, progressive

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Christianity, and not really regarded within evangelicalism, like our world.

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However, it really did come into our world through the Gospel Coalition, David Platt, and the whole 2018 shenanigans that happened there.

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So we began addressing it at that level, and I did write a book called

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Woke Free Church. Woke Free Church directly challenged our denomination for this diversity, equity, inclusion push, and some of the leftward ideology that it entertains.

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So that book ended up getting me into a lot of trouble with the denomination, and really what I would like to frame this conversation around is a lack of love for the truth.

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In Isaiah 59, verse 14, it says, "...justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away, for truth has stumbled in the public squares."

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I find that to be such an apt verse for what happened, because to love truth means that one has to engage in due process, biblical justice,

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Christian ethics, that if a matter is to be established or decided, all the facts have to be put on the table first.

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It's like Proverbs 18, 17. One person seems right until another one comes to examine him.

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And I found that in the case with the Evangelical Free Church dealing with me and how they dealt with me regarding my book, there was no due process.

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There was no desire to listen to two sides of a story, to engage in a truth war, to use

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John MacArthur's book title, to engage in a truth war before a justice war.

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So that's where I think that the conversation ought to go. Yeah, so let's just give a little bit about your experience with this, because what you went through with the denomination, you tried to do the right thing.

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Now folks may not be so familiar with your denomination, but part of the whole thing of Evangelical Free, it's built as a more loose denomination.

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It's not as loose as SBC, but they kind of want to get that way.

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In other words, they don't want to have where the denomination is having so much oversight in local churches.

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Right. It was supposed to be a bottom -up organization, not a top -down. It's congregational and in the churches, and so it's not looking for a hierarchical authoritarian structure, although I think that's how they've begun to function recently.

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And so that becomes important because of all this, because they came into your church to make demands, and this is where I think for folks to realize, to go through for us kind of the history.

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Okay, so you put this book out, they're saying, hey, you have to close down, you don't want to close the church.

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If I remember correctly, weren't you meeting outside to try to appease some of it?

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Well, okay, so they didn't actually come in and say we needed to close the church. That's not the case at all. What happened was one of their speakers began to talk about how we don't have any rights.

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We've relinquished all of our rights to Christ, therefore we shouldn't be claiming our rights before government.

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So it was a conflating of the horizontal and the vertical, and they were basically teaching us, hey, you should not be resisting the government who is shutting us down during COVID.

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They were assuming all good intentions, and we should just play nice and go with the lockdown orders.

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And part of my book was to say, this is not good and godly, this is government overreach to try to impose themselves over the church.

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So I do address that in Woke Free Church. But no, they never tried to control us. When they became controlling toward us in particular is just how they dealt with my book, ultimately censoring me without any due process, finally stripping my ordination and actually kicking our entire church out of the free church.

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So we are no longer an evangelical free church because they literally kicked us out in October of this year.

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Okay, so help folks understand how this process started. So how did this begin?

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What ended up? A group of five pastors came to visit me. These were respected leaders kind of out in the

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Eastern District here. There was no recording of the meeting. I wasn't allowed to have like a witness in there.

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They build it as a conversation. But later it turns out that this was presented as if it was a trial.

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And out of this conversation about social justice, I'll give you an example. Someone like Bill Kynes was there and he said, well, are you saying that I'm woke?

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And I said, Bill, you're supporting the and campaign financially and you're telling others to do that.

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This is a leftist social justice group. So yeah, I think that's woke.

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Well, he got really offended by that. And what ends up coming out of that meeting with the five pastors is a document that they produce that then gets circulated throughout the pastors of the free church.

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Four hundred and eleven or four hundred and forty delegates to the free church receive their document.

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But the document is not in any way cross examined to see if these things are so. They wrote things in that document that were absolutely bizarre, bizarre representations of the conversation that we had.

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For example, they said Jeff believes that any conversation about race is social justice and critical race theory.

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Wait, wait, say that again. Any any conversation about race is a catering to critical race theory.

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That's pretty sweeping. Yeah. Like why would I ever believe that? It's so if you're a delegate who gets that statement and and that's what's presented as my position, you're going to think this guy is is crazy.

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Yeah. Or this Jeff stubbornness over this issue indicates that there must be major problems in his marriage and in his church.

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Now, is it did they do it or did they do anything to get to that to that conclusion?

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I mean, because that's a pretty broad conclusion to say, OK, you're having problems with your marriage because marriage was great.

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The church, in fact, the irony of this whole thing is through the whole controversy of Woke Free Church, our church remained in lockstep to a man, to a woman, to a child.

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Every person remained in agreement on this issue. Our church was not divided in the least.

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And so it's just it's such an incredible kind of statement to send out.

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It's not just justice is turned back. Truth has stumbled in the public squares.

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So, yeah, this is what happened. And then this this group of men reported their these findings to the board of ministerial standing.

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The board of ministerial standing never sat down with me to hear point counterpoint, to listen to to my defense.

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Here's another example of a scripture that that's so relevant here. Acts 25, 16,

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Paul answered them. It was not the custom of the Romans to give up anyone before the accused met the accusers face to face and had opportunity to make his defense concerning the charge laid against him.

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So even the Romans, Paul says, know that if somebody is charged with something, they have a chance to sit down with the accuser face to face and answer any charges.

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Did you have that opportunity? No. So they actually extended it and then they rescinded it and because they said you can come out and meet with bombs in Minneapolis.

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And a couple of days later, they pulled that back and said, you can make a defense via Zoom for this little bit of time.

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But I wasn't able to hear what the charges are or how they substantiate the charges. There was no evidence provided for any of these charges.

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I was just charged with four things. Misrepresentation, Christian nationalism, attitude, and having influence.

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And so I guess part of my curious question is, like, so what do they call it?

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Were they considering Christian nationalism? No definition provided. OK. It's just an imputation of guilt because evidently

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I speak about, you know, the public square in my sermons or in my writings.

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Evidently, they deem that Christian nationalism and that's all that needs to be said about the matter. And so you're you you are a pastor in a local church, part of this denomination.

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What recourse did you have? Oh, that's where the story gets interesting. So I was looking through the bylaws of the denomination and it said the board of ministerial standing is accountable to the conference, which meets every other year as delegates from all the churches.

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So I thought I'm going to appeal to the conference. So I end up going out to Fullerton, California, in June of twenty twenty three.

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And my case is presented by appeal to the delegates of the free church.

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Only I was given literally three minutes to speak. And three minutes to explain all the details that happened over the course of several months to years.

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Three, three minutes to make my defense. And then there was an open mic session where anybody and everybody could stand up and lay into me.

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And you could not and you would not be able to respond to anything they say. No, nothing. So I noticed what a sham this was.

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One of the guys got up there. He was from Allentown, Pennsylvania. His name was Bill Hensler. Right.

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I thought a good guy. We had had some good interactions. I had asked his advice one time after he gave a conference speech and he gave me some advice.

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And I thought, OK, this is this is a good, good guy. Well, he stood up in front of the conference and said that he had to practice

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Titus three on me, meaning Jeff is a divisive person.

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Warn him once, warn him twice. After that, have nothing to do with him. So he had to basically excommunicate me and shun me because I was so bad.

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He saw it and he also presented it like we were these old college roommates, you know, like I know him so well.

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We had literally spoken twice. Once when I sat down in his office for three hours and we had this really interesting conversation that he thanked me for with follow up emails of how much he enjoyed it.

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Well, later he represents to the national conference that he had to Titus three me and shun me because I'm obstinate about my book, which he's looking at emails where I was holding to my integrity that the book was actually right.

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So evidently he regards that as being divisive and a reason for his shunning. So all that to say,

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Joe Hensler, others stand up to testify against me. It's part of this club that they're kind of circle circling the wagons, the leadership of the free church that felt threatened by my book.

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So they they get all this time to speak. So when I got my three minutes, I didn't give an apology. I actually stood up and shared more examples of the wokeness that was happening right at that conference.

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So to get into that. So, yeah, let me let me point out the sin that you guys are doing right here, right?

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Right here. So the leader of the group was rocking a Los Angeles Dodgers hat.

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He was inviting all the Dodgers. And this was literally a week after the

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Los Angeles Dodgers had given an award to the sister of perpetual indulgence.

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Remember that controversy? Yes, I remember. We were boycotting because these gay people were dancing on a cross to Christianity and the

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Dodgers then were were honoring them. And so there was a boycott of the

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Dodgers at that time. And so this guy gets up there during the conference and he's wearing his Dodgers hat and he's like, why are you doing this?

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Obviously, you're trying to say we're not the fundamentalists that boycott, you know, we're we're fine with just being in the culture, not of it.

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And this is he's making a statement with his hat. So I address that in my little speech, which by then my fate was already sealed anyway.

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Yeah. But but I want people to notice that this is the thing I think a lot of people get surprised at.

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And I don't know if you were at the time, but it sounds like you are. You go into this saying, all right, there there is a way

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I can make appeal. Let me make appeal. Here's some people that are standing up. Oh, I've spoken to this guy. I know.

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I know this guy a little bit. And all of a sudden he makes it sound like you guys go way back and your buddy, buddy.

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And it's like, wait, no, that's that's not the reality.

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And then then they use that to start attacking you and saying things.

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Now, now they've given themselves credibility to the people that don't know the situation.

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And it's like, well, look, we we've go all the way back and this is what I've had to do with him. And that's like, oh, he must be dangerous.

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This pattern, it doesn't matter whether it's you as a pastor of with a denomination or an individual in church that has a you know, because I've seen this even with the social justice and other issues where someone

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I know of a church where a guy just he had issue with the fact that the church wanted to stay closed if they opened, everyone had to have a mask on.

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And he was like, look, this this isn't like like we as a church to be open, we should be gathering.

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And they were like, you're just you got to calm down. And and people he thought were close to him all of a sudden, they're just siding with the pastor.

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And it's very similar what you're saying, because in his case, what shocked him was the fact that there were people he thought he knew well, that were all of a sudden just taking things that they had in their personal life and expanding it.

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And then taking that and being like, oh, no, it's look like and then totally going different and making up stories.

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But it's like they were taking a little bit of truth and making that into a bold faced lie, but tying it to a little bit of truth.

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So it's like, well, see, I feel like it's basically they feel like they're telling the truth because there is truth in there.

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But the pattern is the deception, right? You take something that may be true.

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You and this pastor did meet and have hours of conversation. But now we take it to deceive people into being like, well, yeah,

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I had to, you know, I I had to Timothy three him because he was just so, you know, divisive.

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Well, did he really do that or was it that you and him just didn't agree?

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And he said, I can't win an argument with the guy. So let me just drop it because that's often the case.

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Right. So let me drop it. But now in front of everyone else, I'm going to I'm going to put on the spiritual veil.

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I'm the spiritual one. He's the not spiritual one. You know, I'm the pastor.

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You're just a congregant. And then all the other people feel like I side with the pastor, in this case side with the denomination.

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And I think you're speaking to people right now. Like it is so shocking when you have spiritual people in positions of authority in churches.

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And maybe there's some kind of issue going on in a church. And it's shocking when someone that you respected and thought had a walk with the

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Lord has so little regard for the truth. So little regard for the truth.

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There's no cross -examination. There's no investigation to just learn the facts before making a judgment.

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Doesn't wisdom mean that you you take your time, you chase out matters, you get all the information on the table, you weigh it, you balance it, you figure out what actually happened and then begin to make some judgments.

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But it's not what happens in churches. And I think so many Christians have been hurt by this, this lack of love for the truth.

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And that's you just hit what the core issue is. It's a lack of love for truth. And let me let me bring it home for some in this way.

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And I'm going to name two names, Alistair Begg and Steve Lawson. And how many people canceled them?

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Yes, that is the proper term. It was it was a cancel culture, remove them from conferences, remove everything from.

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Look, even if they sinned, they still spoke truth. Like everyone's removing all of Lawson's books and sermons and everything.

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What he spoke was still true. So you don't remove that.

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But the issue being is what actually did Lawson do? We don't know.

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Right. And what we were told, it turned out was a lot like, oh, it was an inappropriate relationship.

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Everyone immediately thought sexual. And now we find out both sides say it was not sexual. The woman said it wasn't even physical.

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But then she changed on that. And now look at the pattern in what you were just saying,

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Jeff, and go, I don't know, did she really change or is it this case where the pressure is you got this guy's everyone's throwing this guy under the bus?

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I got to get on board and then it's like, OK, this is true. Let me let me expound that a little bit more to make it into to see, you know, not purposely deceiving,

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I don't think, but in deceiving people nonetheless to believe something that isn't true because it's easy.

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Wow. You know, you look at Alistair Begg and I still I still hold to the fact that I don't

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I I cannot conceive of why he gave the advice he gave. Granted, I cannot come up with a scenario that it makes sense to me.

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But the one thing I hold on to is the fact that he said I wouldn't give this advice to anyone else.

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Now, as a pastor counseling someone in his church, do I need to know the details of that?

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No, no, he actually can't give the details as a pastor. Right.

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But, you know, should he have said it publicly? That's where I would say he probably shouldn't have said it because he can't give because once you open that Pandora's box, if you can't explain.

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Then everyone jumps to conclusions, and so I've held off on Alistair Begg just to the point to say,

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I don't know why he gave that advice. He said he wouldn't give it to anyone else. So it's not like this is a blanket advice he'd give.

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And that's where everyone took it. But I go until I hear the other side,

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I just can't make a judgment. Same with Lawson. I mean, I'm not

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I was never a big Lawson fan anyway. I liked his books, but, you know, so and it turns out, you know,

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I'm selling my my print library. So, you know, I happen to sell all my almost all my

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Lawson books. I found I had a couple others. But, you know, so that happened before.

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Now, I guess no one would have bought them, so I would still have those. But but the thing is, like, people are just like, no, can't have anything with Lawson.

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And yet we haven't heard. And here's the thing. Everyone's assuming

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Lawson must be guilty because he's silent. And when we look at the pattern, you know, if you if you had stayed silent, say in your situation, you're a local pastor, your your primary mission is to your local congregation, not the denomination.

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Could you have just ignored the denomination and, you know, even you pull out what or not and just focus on your local church?

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Would that have been easier for you to do? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. If I had just been cruising along, things would have gone easier there.

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I don't regret it for a moment. I don't think that it was the wrong thing to do, because when when someone is pushing diversity, equity, inclusion to the level that was done at the

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Evangelical Free Church Conference of 2018 with Jarvis Williams and Carl Ellis and John Perkins and Doug Sweeney, you know, they're imputing guilt to police officers in the case of Michael Brown.

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Right. Someone needs to speak up for the truth and for the police and for justice.

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So I don't regret saying it at all, but it definitely made things more difficult when you were speaking about judgments and the harshness.

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I don't understand this about Christians. We should be better than the world. Right. But the courthouse actually, which is built on Christian jurisprudence.

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Right. They've had to think through through the writings of Blackstone and the founding of America, really going way back into English jurisprudence.

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The court system has worked out an entire process of due process and investigating things.

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You can't just make unsubstantiated charges. Charges can be thrown out of court because there's no basis for them.

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The court system is very careful about justice, although often it's perverted because you have leftist judges who don't have regard for the

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Constitution. Unless unless it's Donald Trump that you're looking for, you got a man looking for a crime.

30:26

Yeah, but at least the way laws are written, it was generally derivative from biblical jurisprudence in Christian circles.

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It's like people don't even care. Like they don't feel any need to do research.

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And this is not in the case all the time, but sometimes with leaders, leaders of denominations, those who who have these positions, they decide to circle the wagons and protect their organization rather than treat each individual the way that they ought to be treated.

30:59

Yeah, you know, treat people the way you would want to be treated. The golden rule. But so in John 7,

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Jesus says, stop judging by mere appearances, make a right judgment.

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And by the way, for folks, folks have to understand something with that text you just gave. This is

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A, it's Jesus speaking. So for you red letter Christians out there, it's it's red letters and and it's an imperative in the

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Greek. Jesus Christ himself is commanding us to judge. Yes.

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So for those people who say you shouldn't judge. Well, Jesus commanded it. So I'm just obeying him.

31:37

Right. And a judgment here does not mean condemnation. So with the Alistair Begg example,

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I think we can sit in judgment in the sense of making a judgment that the advice that Christians should not go to gay weddings is bad advice.

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That's a great pastoral. That's ungodly. Make that judgment because it's a matter of biblical ethics.

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And we were able to do that because we have the Bible. We have the claim. Now, there's a different issue with condemnation. That doesn't mean that we should completely cancel

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Alistair Begg and say that he is an unregenerate, lost sinner that we should never have anything to do with.

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That's the thing. People were surprised at me staying in the free church despite these behaviors that were done towards me.

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Right. Charges that were unsubstantiated misrepresentation. Okay. Who did I misrepresent?

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What page number? What speech? When when did this ever happen? You have to show me where I misrepresented.

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They utterly refused to do that. So I was mistreated with the free church, but I decided to stay in the free church and try to reform from within.

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The shocking thing is the free church eventually kicked me out, took my ordination and threw our whole church out.

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They treated the elders of our church the same way they treated me. Our elders were like, well, just give us one example of what you're talking about.

32:56

You know, you're making a charge here. Can you substantiate the charge? There was no concern for justice.

33:02

And there was this harsh separation that I was just condemned as being having a bad attitude or having somehow sin.

33:10

And they were willing to condemn and separate the brethren, causing division that way.

33:16

Whereas I was trying to continue to work these things through to see reform and a movement away from social justice.

33:22

Hey, hey, FCA, let's stand up against abortion. How about that? Let's fight the good fight to stop babies being slaughtered in the womb.

33:31

Let's not try to make everything about diversity, equity, inclusion. Let's stand up for real justice issues.

33:37

So I wanted to see the free church do that. But instead, there was this divisiveness of, hey, kick them out.

33:44

In the same way, that's what I hear you saying. There's this cancel culture. That's really the problem.

33:51

Yeah, and people are shocked when I word it that way because they think like, oh, cancel culture can't be in the church. Yes, it can.

33:57

But let me ask you a question in that situation. You have the denomination coming to the church.

34:05

Was there the sense of. The denomination coming to your elders and saying, well, we're the authority here, we're just take our word, do we did they come in this thing of here, let us present the arguments or did they come in the in the sense of we're the authority obey us?

34:25

100 percent the latter. It was an authoritarian response. And in fact, they asked four questions.

34:30

Do you accept the authority of bombs to administer discipline on your pastor?

34:36

Do you accept the authority of the conference to censure Jeff on that appeal? It was just it was authoritarian at root.

34:43

And the irony there is the elders actually answered yes. They said, sure, there is an authority there.

34:48

We recognize authority, but at the same time, we don't agree with decisions and censoring someone without substantiating any charges.

34:57

There is a such thing as injustice even where there is authority. So they recognize authority, but they didn't recognize it as absolute.

35:04

They didn't think that the free church should be a top down organization. At any point, did the denomination present to your elders the information that they were accusing?

35:17

Did they did they provide details or something to say, here's here's the issue?

35:23

Here's here's examples. Was that provided at all? Never. Not only was it not provided to the elders, because there's a short email correspondence, you can just look through it very, very easily.

35:36

It was never supplied to me in my trial. I objected to having to make a defense as if the innocent, you know, there's not a burden of proof on the one establishing a charge.

35:49

Ding dong, Jehovah's Witnesses. Ding dong, Mormons.

35:54

Christian, are you ready to defend the faith when false religions ring your doorbell?

36:00

Do you know what your Muslim and Jewish friends believe? You will if you get Andrew Rappaport's book,

36:06

What Do They Believe? When we witness to people, we need to present the truth. But it is very wise to know what they believe.

36:14

And you will get Andrew Rappaport's book at WhatDoTheyBelieve .com. Innocent until proven guilty is a biblical idea, right?

36:21

I should have been able to listen to what their charges were and give me some page number from Woke Free Church that you say is a misrepresentation.

36:30

One page number will do, right? Show me something that you say is an example of this.

36:36

And they flatly refused to do that. So yeah, they did not do that.

36:41

I mean, this is behavior we see in the world. Yes. In the the error of the

36:48

Me Too movement, I knew a guy that worked in a hospital that a woman accused him of just making her, the way it was worded, sexually uncomfortable.

37:02

Now, the hospital took the position of saying, well, they can't give the woman's name to protect her.

37:09

They can't give him any details of what he did that supposedly made her sexually uncomfortable.

37:16

And he was saying, what, like what? Did I give her a hug? Did I, you know, did I try to kiss her?

37:22

Did I smile at her? Like, what is it? And they said to protect her, we can't tell you.

37:28

But they gave him three days to defend himself. And when he could not defend himself against unknown charges from an unknown person, they fired him.

37:40

And he's not allowed to know who did it. Now, the problem is he was then blackballed in every hospital because he had sexually abused someone is how, you know, and it was like, how do you defend yourself against unknown claims by unknown people?

38:00

But that is what happens even within the church. And if you as a listener are listening to this and maybe you're going through this in your church where you went and talked to your pastor about something.

38:14

And this was the response, I'm your pastor, you submit to me. Or all of a sudden, as Jeff is saying, you start seeing them, they're circling the wagons, getting everyone around to to look at what, hey, here's here's what this person is doing.

38:31

And then what happens is people have, well, prior to COVID, Christians had a respect for authority even within the church.

38:41

But I think I think COVID kind of changed that a bit. People have no don't like question all authority now.

38:49

It used to be only the left that did that. But but as Christians, we want to obey our pastors.

38:55

Right. And when you all of a sudden your pastor is telling you that bringing you in and saying, hey, this is what happened.

39:04

Right. It was really fun. I was once in a situation many years ago, and I had

39:10

I had a pastor that made an accusation against me. And he had his assistant pastor and the pastor of the church

39:17

I was attending. We got together with this one deacon of the church, who is the one that supposedly had proof that I was gossiping about the pastor.

39:28

And so we're sitting there and I turned to this person. I said, let me ask you a question. In this case that you're talking, this time we were together, was it true or not true that you started bringing up something about the pastor and I had to stop you three different times in the conversation for gossip?

39:46

And he looks and goes, oh, you know what? You're right. Now, I'm I'm there because I supposedly gossiped about the pastor.

39:55

And this deacon is the one that I supposedly gossiped to him. And he's admitting to the assistant pastor that, you know, actually, no,

40:04

Andrew's right. I was the one doing it. Andrew was trying to stop me. And so my pastor was like, well, where is the pastor?

40:12

He should be here in this meeting. Like, why is he not here? Like, he's the one that needs to be corrected on this because Andrew was the one doing what was right.

40:22

It's this deacon. Like, if Andrew's so wrong, like, you know, like, how is this deacon still a deacon? Right. Well, how did that play out?

40:29

Did they ever pursue truth? Did they ever? No, what they actually did, they never reached out to the pastor.

40:35

In fact, it was really kind of funny. The assistant pastor came up with a contract between me and that church and it agreed.

40:44

It had things like, you know, that we wouldn't, neither side would would speak negative about the each other and a couple different things.

40:52

Well, it turns out that that pastor broke all three of the agreements. He was upset that the assistant pastor actually signed an agreement because part of the thing is

41:01

I wanted an agreement that said that they would not continue saying that I was gossiping when we just proved, you know, and since, you know, and I have the audio recording of that whole five hour discussion.

41:12

So, but, you know, he did not like that the guy signed this agreement and that assistant pastor left shortly after.

41:23

You know, I think what it was was like, hey, I told you this. I didn't give you the authority to sign this contract, but, you know, it was a reasonable thing to do at the time.

41:33

And the assistant pastor, I don't think, thought that there was anything wrong in doing it. But, you know, because he thought, hey, this makes sense.

41:41

This, you know, we now know that Andrew wasn't the one doing it. Right. And so it's never a clearing of the name of the name.

41:49

And that's the thing that I think for a lot of people, it's hard for them to see that. As you're saying, here's the denomination that you're part of, that you had respect for, and all of a sudden you're seeing people turn.

42:02

And that is, it's heartbreaking for people to see people you respect. There's, there are,

42:07

I mean, there's ministries that you and I could name that people would know that this stuff happens in.

42:14

There's denominations. I mean, people in our circles know about the SBC and you're bringing up the evangelical free and there's other denominations where these things happen.

42:23

It happens within our local church. And it's shocking to people to think this person that I put up on a pedestal, pastor, denomination, ministry leader, whatever, you know,

42:36

Steve Lawson, Alistair Begg, those names are now out there. Right. And we go, oh, how could they have done this?

42:44

And there's two things. One, we have a tendency to believe the person making the accusation because they're an authority.

42:52

The other thing is we're so hurt and shocked to hear that this person did wrong.

42:59

And I'm putting air quotes here because we just, we believe it without hearing.

43:06

Steve Lawson is an example. I can't make a judgment there because I don't know what actually happened.

43:12

I don't know what the sin is. They've never announced what the sin is. Right. Exactly. And there's so many people listening to this podcast right now that have experienced something similar to this in churches.

43:23

And the word that I would give to them is actually the very next verse from Isaiah 59, 14, verse 15 says, truth is lacking.

43:34

And he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. Hmm. Where this pursuit of truth is so lacking, those who actually do right and depart from evil and stand upon the truth will fall prey for doing it.

43:53

That's why it's a truth war. There will be wolves among you. There will be even Christians who are who haven't spent enough time in the

44:02

Old Testament. Maybe they've unhitched themselves from the Old Testament. This kind of thing is going to happen in churches, immature

44:11

Christians who you thought were mature. And my encouragement to someone facing that comes from first Peter 3, 16, having a good conscience so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.

44:31

All that you can control is yourself. Romans 12, live at peace with everyone as far as it depends on you.

44:37

Continue to speak the truth. Hold to the truth. Walk with integrity. Be kind even when people are being harsh and mean towards you.

44:47

Right. So it's Proverbs 15. One, I think it is a gentle answer. Turns away wrath. Your good behavior will speak for itself over time.

44:56

These things will sort out over time. And if not in this world, at least in the one to come.

45:02

Yeah. And I mean, the thing is, this is an issue of integrity.

45:10

I always liked what my pastor used to say that he was a carpenter. So he referred to integrity as the strength when you put up a wall.

45:20

It supports the rest of the house. That's integrity. And if you're actually needing some integrity, folks, if you're saying, you know,

45:29

I don't know if I have enough integrity. Well, I'll tell you what, maybe what you do is go out to Squirrelly Joe's Coffee and get yourself a bag of integrity, which is a nice medium roast coffee.

45:39

It has the cashews, honey, molasses, milk chocolate type of flavor. But you could do that.

45:45

One of our sponsors here at Striving for Eternity, Squirrelly Joe's Coffee. Go to strivingforeternity .org slash coffee and get yourself a bag of integrity.

45:54

It is well, it's one of my two favorite coffees there at Squirrelly Joe's. Integrity is a

46:01

Brazilian one. The one I actually like the best is Honor. And that is an

46:06

Ethiopian medium dark. I love the names he's got. Kindness is pretty good.

46:12

I don't know if it's because I don't know if I drink kindness, Jeff, because I need more kindness or because of the fact that I have it.

46:19

If I ask my wife, I think she might say I need more compassion. So she may be buying it.

46:25

Yeah. You need another cup of compassion, dear. Grab that one. That nice Brazilian blend.

46:31

But I love his name. We have at conferences, Squirrelly Joe's will donate coffee to conferences in case you're planning another conference, put you in touch with them.

46:40

And not only does he provide the coffee for the conference, but he he provides a bag of coffee for each of the speakers.

46:46

That's how I actually got introduced to Squirrelly Joe's Coffee and switched to Squirrelly Joe's and then said, hey, you want to be a sponsor?

46:52

I reached out to him because I love the coffee so much. And it is kind of funny. Joe and I've talked about this is that the speakers get around and we all we're all we have these bags of coffee that they give speakers and you just have the names of him.

47:08

And so every speaker gets one of the bags to take home. And it's really kind of funny because in each conference

47:14

I've been at, the discussion is between the speakers, you know, I want I want the wisdom. And, you know, someone grabs the wisdom and it's like, oh, yeah, you need that.

47:23

You know, OK, like, so is it that I need the wisdom or I have the wisdom? It becomes a fun discussion.

47:30

It's fun. I don't know. He came up with the names and like they are a lot of fun. But the coffee is really good.

47:37

It's a Christian based company. He's he's working with his family to do all the work.

47:43

He's training his his children. It's part of it started, I think, during COVID. I mean, they just really liked coffee.

47:49

But during COVID to start a business and it wanted their children to learn how to run a business and they would they would do it.

47:59

And but they got everything down and they they do the roasting themselves. And then they they have the whole family, aunts, their cousins and relatives all come over.

48:11

So his like his sisters are involved and they all bag everything and ship everything.

48:17

So it's a great company. But it's a woke free coffee. I know there's other there's others out there saying they're woke free coffee and they're going to be supporting, you know,

48:29

Second Amendment and things like that, which is all good. But here you're doing that with a Christian based company.

48:34

So not only are you getting some woke free coffee, you're also getting it and supporting a fellow

48:40

Christian family. So go to strivingforeternity .org slash coffee, strivingforeternity .org

48:47

slash coffee. And do remember when you when you go there to use the promo code SFE.

48:54

I'm not I think he changed it up to that your first bag is free. I don't know if that includes a five pound bag versus a 20 ounce bag, but I would try the five pound just to see.

49:06

But I know that coupon code used to give us 20 percent off. So it's one of the the other that he's doing right now.

49:12

So make sure you use the promo code SFE and please do go to strivingforeternity .org slash coffee every time you reorder just so that they know that you came through us so they continue sponsoring us here.

49:26

So but integrity is an issue. And I think that's at the core of, you know, what you're talking about.

49:34

You know, if we want to be woke free, right, have a woke free church, it it takes integrity because you stood up for biblical justice in the light of a social justice error.

49:49

You ended up feeling the pressure of this social justice mentality where it's, hey, let's all just get along.

49:57

Let's just go with the flow. It's easier to jump on Jeff. And even if we say things that aren't true about Jeff or kind of make it sound like it's not true, like take some truth and put it in such a way that it can pile on to him.

50:14

It keeps us out of the limelight. It keeps us out of the crosshairs.

50:20

It's easier for people to do that. Can you answer the following questions for your children or for the person to whom you are witnessing?

50:30

Number one, is the New Testament reliable? Two, can you explain the Trinity to me?

50:35

Three, how is Jesus both God and man? And a slew of other questions you will be able to answer if you get

50:42

Andrew Rappaport's new book, What Do We Believe? It will help you a ton.

50:48

Get your copy at whatdowebelievebook .com, whatdowebelievebook .com.

50:54

So I want to ask you this question, two sided question, deal with both sides is for one, you know, how do we deal with the fact that there's people who they're just going to take the easy route and pile on to you?

51:06

The second thing for the person who is experiencing this, like you experienced, how do they deal with the fact that people they thought were their friends or people they barely even know, but are pretending like they know them really well, piling on and making accusations that just aren't even true.

51:27

How do they deal with that? Well, the easy route that people take will result in major disappointment.

51:38

People will let you down in churches, you will, you will see people that you thought were friends that five minutes later you got a knife in your back and you never saw it coming.

51:50

So how do you how do you deal with that? A lot of people will deconstruct their faith.

51:55

They'll run away from church. Maybe they continue to believe, but they just refuse to go to church anymore. Or others will go to church, but they stay so distant.

52:04

They're not going to put themselves out there anymore. They'll never serve as a deacon or an elder or put themselves in a position where they could be hurt again.

52:13

And I would just say to that person, Christ Church, the Bride of Christ is worth your suffering.

52:22

You're not if we need to make up for what is lacking in the suffering of Christ and what

52:27

Paul meant by that was not that there was anything deficient in the substitution or atonement, of course, but the fact that the building of the church will also require the suffering of the saints, that the apostles will lose their heads and there will be martyrs throughout church history.

52:44

But even within the church, there will be pain. And the question is, is

52:49

Christ so valuable to you that you're willing to suffer for the sake of the name? And the answer better be yes, because he died for us.

52:57

Right. So first of all, deal with that, knowing that he is worth it. The church is worth it because that's the

53:04

Bride of Christ. Now, a second thing to the second question there, I think developing thick skin.

53:10

Somebody said that sanctification is going from having a hard heart and thin skin.

53:19

To having a soft heart and thick skin. I think we have to have thick skin as Christians.

53:26

We've got to grow and become so mature in the faith that our skin is thick, that people can say what they want about you, but you're not going to have a meltdown every time.

53:36

You're not going to become breathless and call everybody and do this, that and the other to try to, you know, win your cause and create a political party within the church to resist that movement.

53:48

And then it becomes a big church split or something. Just have thick skin. People will say what they'll say, love them anyway, and be willing to endure it and keep your mindset on what's to come, on Christ, on what you're doing, the mission that you're accomplishing.

54:04

So, yeah, learn to have thicker skin. Be mature. You know, you're raising a very good point because of the fact that it's hard for people to,

54:15

I think, recognize just the reality that when we're wronged, someone says something that's not true, or even if they say things that are true, but, you know, expand it or, you know, we want to defend ourselves.

54:39

The big part of church splits, I mean, there's a history to church splits, a pattern, right?

54:45

The first people to leave, if the problem is in the leadership, the mature leave first, and they leave quietly.

54:55

They go to the leadership, they try to talk to the leadership, but when the leadership is resisting and acting unbiblically, the mature don't want to split a church, so what do they do?

55:07

They leave. And I always felt bad, like, when you see mature people leaving, you better be concerned because the second group, they don't leave because they're immature, okay?

55:21

So when they're hurt and now the leadership treats them poorly, they fight, but they don't fight biblically.

55:31

Because their concern is not for Christ's bride, the church, but for their rights and their reputation and things like that.

55:40

And so they don't often recognize what they're doing, right? So the mature are concerned about the unity of the body, the name of Christ, and so they're willing to be wronged for the sake of the bride, right?

55:58

You stood up, you did what you felt was right, you were wronged, but you did what was right for the church, for your local church, and for the church broader.

56:09

But see, what ends up happening is they have this sense of, well, this person's saying something that's not true about me,

56:17

I've got to correct that. If I tried to correct all the wrong things said about me,

56:23

I would be on social media all day long trying to correct, because there are some really wild accusations, especially from atheists, but not just atheists.

56:36

I mean, you and I were talking before the show that I have a pastor who made the accusation against me that I split my first church, that I left and I caused a split in leaving.

56:48

And now, did I leave that first church? Yes. Was there a split? Yes, 10 years later, three pastors later.

56:56

Yes, there was. I don't think I had anything to do, and I even said this, but like,

57:02

I resigned from that church at a meeting. I said to the guys, I think I need to step down, and they rejected my resignation.

57:08

So I put it in writing. I'm resigning as the pastor. And I actually have a letter from them rejecting, in writing, since I gave it in writing, they wrote me a letter of all the deacons rejecting my, well, deacons and elders,

57:23

I should say, because by then we moved one of them to be an elder, but the leadership rejected my resignation.

57:29

Does that sound like a guy that was splitting a church? I then eventually, I left. I installed the guy that filled in for me, right?

57:36

I've preached there many times. Does that sound like I was the cause of the split? No. In fact, I'm going to be working with them now that, you know, after the split has happened to try to restore the church.

57:49

Would that be the case if I, right? But could I, do I need to go correcting all that? No. God can figure that out, right?

57:57

But there is a sense in every one of us, if you have gone through this, if you're listening to this and any of this sounds familiar, you have a sense that you just, you want to stand up and be like,

58:09

I want to be heard. I want to be correct. I want this to be corrected. I don't want this being out there. God is greater than all of us.

58:17

If he wants it corrected, he can correct it. He can do that. And he may give you opportunity.

58:24

You may have an opportunity come about and you should take it. It's, Paul certainly defended himself when he stood on the trial, but he wasn't breathless.

58:35

He didn't think that his world was crumbling if he didn't get justice in this world.

58:41

He was trusting God in the midst of that. And what you described is just so common.

58:46

It's amazing. There's a fact you left a church and another fact that it's split.

58:54

So those are those are true. Those are true. Andrew left the church and it's split.

59:00

They don't mention that there were three pastors in between when you were there, which is very relevant information.

59:06

And there is just a sad tendency within the church for people to take bits and pieces, string together a narrative to paint somebody as a villain.

59:17

And that happens. It happens in every church because people have agendas, they have opinions.

59:24

And then once they get a cause like this, this justice cause, which often is a social justice cause, or it could be some other matter.

59:33

They will latch on to things and paint things in such a way as to further their cause.

59:38

And here's the thing in in churches, Christians don't think that they're the bad guy.

59:46

It's not like cops and robbers, like I'm going to choose the robber team and you be the cop team. And now I'm going to go be on the robber team.

59:52

They start these justice crusades because they think they're the good guy. Yes. The problem is they haven't loved truth to the extent that's necessary.

01:00:02

They haven't done due process before they start crusading. So I always say a truth war has to be fought before a justice war, truth before justice, truth before justice.

01:00:12

And people don't do that. They don't love truth enough. They don't understand biblical ethics, biblical justice.

01:00:19

They just start crusading for what they think is just because they've had a feeling that it is or they've heard a report about somebody.

01:00:28

And so they're on a justice crusade and truth gets trampled under their feet. You know, you started with a proverb about hearing, you know, people believe what they first hear until, oh, they hear the other side.

01:00:42

So often what we see, especially on social media, but it happens very often within the church, that people just, once they hear something, they assume it's true, and when you're in the position, if you're listening, you're in the position where someone has said something about you and you're shocked that people would believe it, you're shocked that people won't stand up and correct it.

01:01:09

They should know you better. They were good friends. How could they believe such a thing?

01:01:15

Because it's just easier. But part of the thing is, and maybe you've experienced this yourself. That's why

01:01:21

I mentioned like the Steve Lawson or the, you know, Alistair Begg, because a lot of people experience this. They're believing it because they're like,

01:01:28

I'm so shocked that this happened. So they feel let down and they feel, well, this person did wrong, and therefore they don't want to even hear from the other side because, well, this person hurt me because he let me down, and that happens.

01:01:46

So if you're on the receiving end of it, just recognize it's not that the person has like ill intent toward you.

01:01:52

It's that they, I think more often than not is that friend that you thought was a friend just felt so hurt because they heard an account, and our immediate tendency is to believe the account.

01:02:05

That's why that proverb is there, by the way, is to let you know, yeah, when you hear something, you believe it.

01:02:10

That's the generalization of that proverb. People believe the first account they hear until they hear the other side.

01:02:20

But the whole reason for that proverb is to say, like, don't just listen to one side of the argument because there's another side, but because we have that tendency to just want to believe that, and then we feel let down, and then there's a feeling like, well,

01:02:33

I can't believe what this person is saying, because that gets into the other thing where no matter how, the reason that I end up counseling people so often to just remain quiet in situations, kind of like what you were going through.

01:02:49

Now, you took a different tact where you had opportunity to defend because it was part of the rules, so you took advantage, just like Paul did.

01:02:57

There's nothing wrong in doing that. Now, did you go to social media? No, right?

01:03:04

You weren't blasting them. You were still part of them. You were trying to correct from within, and for the record, you didn't come to me to say, hey, let's talk about what happened with me in the evangelical free church.

01:03:17

No, I came to you because I know you, and actually, someone else came to you, a friend of mine,

01:03:22

John Harris, and he had you on, and I was like, you know, that's what got me to reach out to you and say, look,

01:03:29

I knew you were going through some things. I didn't know all the details of it, and then you and I talked on the phone, and I realized, oh yeah, no, come on, let's talk about this.

01:03:36

So people see, because it's very easy, like when you're on John's program, it's more focused on specifically your situation with the evangelical free church, but what

01:03:49

I wanted to do is focus on the listener here who's going through the same thing that you went through, but in a different way, not maybe with a denomination, but within the church, because many of you listening have gone through this.

01:04:01

I'm not saying that because you've contacted me. I'm saying that because I know, because this is what happens in churches.

01:04:08

This is not, unfortunately, this pattern of behavior is not new with Pastor Jeff. Okay? We wish it was, but it's not, and that's the reason we wanted to do this is because there is this thing where,

01:04:22

I'll tell you, you sit there and go, I thought this person knew me better than this. How are they believing this story?

01:04:30

And what it is, is the same as you may have had with a Steve Lawson or an Alistair Begg, where you hear it and go, huh,

01:04:38

I feel so let down. I got to get rid of all my books from these guys, or I can't recommend these guys because, and yet we never heard the other side of the story.

01:04:47

Right? Wow. That is so good, Andrew. What you said is important. Now, I did speak publicly on a number of occasions, but it was always within the sovereign plan of God where I wasn't seeking out these opportunities.

01:04:59

I was praying for vindication because Isaiah 54, the end of the chapter,

01:05:04

Isaiah 54, is about how the Lord will give you an opportunity to be vindicated, to refute those who come against you in judgment, and no weapon formed against you will prosper, so I would just pray.

01:05:16

John Harris came to me. You came to me. There was a guy in Wisconsin named Seth Brickley. Oh man, this brother, he is a truth lover.

01:05:24

He actually had, if anything, reason to side with the EFCA because of his deep roots, and he had a very close friendship with somebody on the board of ministerial standing, but he started investigating everything, laid it all out on the table, and then made a right judgment.

01:05:39

Stop judging by mere appearances, make a right judgment. He did that, and then he had me come out to Wisconsin to speak about these issues.

01:05:46

So when given invitations, I take them because I take them as being from the Lord. The Lord wants truth to triumph.

01:05:54

He gives us opportunities, but here's what I would say to the person kind of going through something like this, wait on the

01:06:01

Lord, trust him, believe in sovereignty, have a very high view of God's sovereignty over these matters, and know truth and time walk hand in hand.

01:06:13

They go together. Over time, everything comes out, you can believe that God will give opportunity for those things to come out, and so you don't have to be afraid when your side is not being given a representation.

01:06:24

I've learned that over the years. And that's an important thing for folks to recognize because this is just,

01:06:35

I can't emphasize this enough, is the fact that we have to be trusting in the Lord.

01:06:42

When you're going through this, to the person who feels, well, you know, this has got to,

01:06:48

I got to address this, I got to go public with this, this has got to, you know, I just want to encourage you to think about who are you trusting in that situation?

01:06:58

Are you trusting self or are you trusting God? I know you want to say you're trusting

01:07:04

God. I get it. But I want you to think about it because it's a matter of recognizing that we say we trust

01:07:16

God, we're out there defending self. And that is the issue that we have to recognize.

01:07:26

And that's the issue that I want us to think through is we got to be willing to say the

01:07:32

Lord is sovereign, the Lord is in control. He may not give us the justice this side of heaven.

01:07:41

He may, but he may not. For whatever reason, he may not.

01:07:50

We may go to our grave having people believe things that are complete and utter lies about us, and if that's the case, let me put it this way.

01:08:01

This is when people are slandering me, saying things that are untrue about me, spreading the falsehoods wide to where others and people are believing it.

01:08:13

And sometimes it even affects the ministry where people believe things. And it's like, yeah, that's not true. I got the receipts if anyone wants to see them, but I don't go trying to correct it.

01:08:24

And now may there be opportunities to correct some of those things? Sure. But here's the reality. What is the worst that these people are doing to you, to me, to Pastor Jeff?

01:08:35

They're saying something that's not true. They're hurting our reputation. Okay. What have we done to Christ?

01:08:45

What did Christ do on our behalf? What do we, if Christ did not die in our place and take our sin, the punishment of our sin upon himself, what would we rightly deserve?

01:08:57

The answer, we rightly deserve eternity in a lake of fire to burn forever and ever and ever for our sin against an infinitely holy, infinitely just God.

01:09:10

So if all we receive is on earth, people slander us, people say some things that are untrue, people we thought our friends have turned their back on us.

01:09:22

Is that anything as compared to eternity in the lake of fire forever and ever and ever, if the answer is no, there's no comparison there, it is far less.

01:09:33

Then please view it in that light. Amen. Psalm 118 verse six, the

01:09:40

Lord is on my side. Whom shall I fear? Actually it says, I will not fear.

01:09:46

Then it says, what can man do to me? What can man do to me? That that's the attitude we have to have of just absolute trust.

01:09:54

You know what I found though, Andrew, that when I take that perspective, and for some reason, that's one of the graces on my life that I really don't get phased.

01:10:02

I don't lose sleep at night. I don't, um, I have thick skin, I guess, with regard to this kind of thing.

01:10:09

When I, when I do that, people will say, oh, see, he's calloused. That thick skin means he's, he doesn't love enough.

01:10:17

Chasing down the person who's saying all these slanderous things and to take the attitude, what can man do to me?

01:10:24

Makes it look like, oh, you don't even care. You don't love. That's not the case. The indication of whether you care is how much you pray for that person in secret between you and the

01:10:34

Lord, how much you, you, um, do what's right and speak the truth wherever you have opportunity.

01:10:40

So this is what we have to do. We have to have such a high view of sovereignty that we're trusting that God will work it out for good, for our good.

01:10:48

It actually says Romans 8, 28 in time. So, but like you said, I think so many of these, these slanderous things that are said against Christian leaders don't get worked out in our lifetimes.

01:11:01

Our reputations get tarred and feathered all the time. I mean, Charles Spurgeon, the downgrade controversy, he said that, um, in our, in our lifetime, you know,

01:11:11

I'm, I'm going to be, you know, I don't know what his words were exactly, but tarred and feathered. He said, but 50 years from now, everybody will know.

01:11:19

And he was right. So that's the case. Everybody looks back on the downgrade controversy and Spurgeon was a hero for the truth, but the entire

01:11:27

Baptist union censured him. Everybody hated him in his day. They thought he was the villain at that time.

01:11:35

He died that way. And probably his gout and all of the problems he suffered in his fifties were largely caused probably by the stress of all this.

01:11:43

So he was carrying it in his body. He always had an anxiety issue that really got severe when the fire happened and the people were trampled and died.

01:11:53

Um, when they had their first meeting in that giant, um, Surrey gardens place, he really struggled with depression and anxiety after the death of those

01:12:02

Christians because he sort of blamed himself to some level. But, um, yeah, in time he's vindicated.

01:12:09

We don't look back on Spurgeon and, um, think that, that he erred in that way.

01:12:14

He always stood for the truth and that was his strength. And this is the thing. He had a view beyond his life.

01:12:22

He knew he would be corrected years after he was dead, but did it affect him?

01:12:28

You're absolutely right. I do agree with you. When you look at the downgrade controversy and the effects of it. Um, I believe that he even had family members who, who were against him.

01:12:38

And that crushed him. And so I think that we have to recognize the fact that will there be pain in this life?

01:12:48

Yes. Um, and, and so listener, if, if, if you're struggling, you're trying to do the right thing.

01:12:55

Now, if you're just trying to justify yourself and the leadership's trying to correct you, then you need to repent.

01:13:01

Okay. Cause guess what? It might be you, maybe, maybe you're listening to this and you unknowingly you're the one that's, that's the one trying to put pressure on people to submit to you.

01:13:14

Maybe you're a pastor, maybe you're not, but maybe you're just trying to be a power broker within the church and you want everyone to be listening to you.

01:13:21

And you don't like what your pastor is saying. And you're the one trying to get everyone to believe a story you're telling about the pastor.

01:13:27

It could be either way. If you're the one doing that, then the simple thing I have for you is repent, because you know, that's not, if you're not standing on truth, not what you think is true, but what the

01:13:41

Bible thinks is true, and that's a big difference that Pastor Jeff has made here. We can't, you're not going to have integrity if you don't have truth.

01:13:48

You're not going to have justice if you don't have truth. So we have to start there, but starting there does require that we know what truth is, not what we think it is.

01:14:00

Because I think a big thing, and I think you and I talked about this at the conference years ago when we did the one on social justice,

01:14:08

I remember you were talking on social justice and there was one family that came to the conference. You were like first up speaking and a family got up and left, right?

01:14:16

And we were like, okay, they never came back. It seemed real nice, but you know, we were,

01:14:23

I remember talking back then that there's people that think they're standing for truth and justice, but what they defined as truth and justice is not what the

01:14:34

Bible defined as truth and justice, and that was one of the things that you mentioned in your talk back then was the fact that we have to stand on biblical truth, and it seems that it's been a consistent message for you.

01:14:48

So, but we need to make sure we're in line with scripture first, and if we are, you know, the encouragement we have is if you're the one being wrongly attacked,

01:15:02

I want you to see that you're not alone, unfortunately. This is common.

01:15:10

Pastor Jeff, was this easy for you to go through and try to do the right thing? It was made a lot easier by the fact that my church was 100 % with me.

01:15:20

All of our elders would encourage me and only gave support, and my family, that I have this glorious family that we love each other and things are tight.

01:15:29

So when things are good with your wife, good with your kids, and they're thriving, and your church is thriving and growing, it did feel a bit like out there, you know, like the evangelical free church felt like Minneapolis to me, because what was my world was here, and everything was unified and together in that.

01:15:49

So, no, I wouldn't say it was particularly personally painful because I had a category.

01:15:55

I was compartmentalizing in some way. Now, that's not to say it didn't hurt at times, especially when you would hear things or when

01:16:02

I first read that report, which I never saw these crazy accusations about me until after I had been tried and then tarred and feathered in Fullerton, California.

01:16:12

I never even saw them because for some reason it wouldn't open on my device. It was some weird application they used to send it to everybody.

01:16:21

But that was just God's providence. So I read it afterwards. I'm like, Oh, I can see why they voted against me.

01:16:27

This is what they read about me, which is utter nonsense, which is all they heard. Yeah. Yeah. You kind of have this like indignant response where you just feel like, is there no truth?

01:16:37

Is there no justice? How could they let this stand and not even where is the person pushing back against it to say, wait a minute, is that true?

01:16:46

Has Jeff been asked about that? Or is, you know, the Proverbs 18, 17 that we've mentioned so many times, one man seems right until another comes to question him.

01:16:55

And folks that might live in Minneapolis, he's got nothing against Minneapolis. He's just from a little communist country known as New Jersey.

01:17:01

So, you know, don't, don't hold it against them. He, you know, if you decide to stay in New Jersey, I mean, just, you know, sorry.

01:17:08

Well, that, that reference was to the free church headquarters. Yeah. That's why I chose Minneapolis in particular.

01:17:14

They were all sending me these emails from. So, you know, let's switch gears if we could and talk about your book.

01:17:22

Right. So, so we do want to, I mean, the purpose we wanted to do was to encourage folks who may be going through similar situations to what you went through, that they could realize that they're not alone, that this has gone through.

01:17:32

And let me, at this point, just ask if folks wanted to reach out to you, maybe they're dealing with some situations.

01:17:39

Is there a way people can reach out to you? Yeah. Get in touch with my email. So it is jeff .cleaveratcornerstoneSJ .org.

01:17:48

I better spell my last name. Yeah. I was going to say that and I'll put it, I'll put it in the show notes. And it's not with the

01:17:55

G E O F F. No, no. It is J E F F dot

01:18:00

K L I E W E R at cornerstone.

01:18:06

S J .org. So that's as in southJersey .org. And I'm going to include that.

01:18:13

Also, if anybody's interested in coming to a conference, we're hosting May 2nd, 3rd and 4th in Mount Laurel, New Jersey.

01:18:20

We've got pastors coming from Colorado, Wisconsin. We have John Harris as, as the keynote speaker there, um, for the truth conference, it will be

01:18:29

May 2nd, 3rd and 4th. You can just email me for more information or to sign up. The registration will just be through email.

01:18:36

And I will have that email in the show notes for, for folks listening. So just go into the show notes and check that out.

01:18:43

I'll, I'll get the, uh, the details for the conference. Uh, and I will have that in the show notes as well.

01:18:50

So, um, so let's talk about your book. Um, because this is the book that caused all the controversy, uh, woke free church, um, and, uh, so it's, it now, first of all, folks realize it is available on Amazon, I will have a link in the show notes.

01:19:15

Um, and so since, since it's on Amazon, I have to, I have to, you know, just say that it will be a affiliate link.

01:19:23

That's that's in the show notes. So Striving for Freedom will make a little bit of money. Not very much off of if you get it through the link in the show notes versus just getting his book, which

01:19:33

Amazon gets most of the money. Just the way that they do it. Jeff does all the work.

01:19:39

Amazon makes all the money. Um, but, uh, so yeah, but if, uh, let, let's talk about the book.

01:19:47

This was written back. Uh, I think you were writing it in 2020. Right.

01:19:53

If I remember correctly. So let's talk about what's, what's in the book. You kind of touched a little bit on the motivation for the book, but, uh, a needed book, especially, you know, in light of COVID, it was really needed at the time.

01:20:08

There weren't a lot of people there. There were a lot of people writing on, you know, wokeness and things like that.

01:20:15

And a lot, there's a lot of people that made big names or got lots of sales on books about wokeness, but weren't really,

01:20:24

I think, I think a one book that everyone was like, Oh, this is the one to define what wokeness is. And really all they did was tackle the issues within the

01:20:31

SBC and what, and not really what social justice was.

01:20:37

And so it was kind of reading going on. It's kind of disappointing. Um, so what was the purpose of your book?

01:20:42

And I know that you approach things from a more, like very historical, biblical view, uh, just the way you are.

01:20:50

Uh, folks haven't figured that out in just even the discussion of the downgrade controversy and the history there.

01:20:56

Um, but let folks know what, you know, give them some reasons to get this book and why they should read it.

01:21:04

Well, I appreciate that brother. And, um, we, I actually did write it in 2021. I started in May of 2021 and then published it in August.

01:21:13

Um, but yeah, Woke Free Church was for the deliverance of the body of Christ from social justice captivity.

01:21:20

So it was written to the broader church, but it does take particular emphasis, um, within the evangelical free church of America.

01:21:29

So my book might actually be a little bit more like the one you mentioned with the SBC. It does have quite a bit of, um, things that are

01:21:37

E -free related, but it is also broader. Um, and the issues that face the free church faced all the churches, especially at that time with the social justice intrusion that came into it.

01:21:47

So yeah, there's definitions. Um, I tell my story in chapter two, I tell about, um, my history in inner city,

01:21:55

Philadelphia, and how that helped me to think about social justice, because I could see that the real problems were not systemic racism, you know, in society, but rather the breakdown of family and sin issues, sexual immorality, and a number of things that result in, um, disparities of outcome in different parts of the country and in different, um, situations.

01:22:19

So yeah, woke free church talks about my story, then it does get into the essence of what critical race theory is.

01:22:25

We talk about, um, ethics, Christian ethics versus social justice ethics, which are really upside down ethics.

01:22:33

It's like Isaiah, uh, talks about up is down and darkness is light and light is darkness.

01:22:39

Everything is twisted. Sweet is bitter. Bitter is sweet. Um, social justice basically perverts justice.

01:22:45

So we talk about that and then we, we go into some of the refutations of what people will say like, oh, you're just getting political.

01:22:53

And the truth is politics do play into this, this problem that we're having politics actually are part of our

01:23:02

Christian work. Meaning when Isaiah says truth has, has fallen in the public square.

01:23:08

The problem is Christians have not spoken into the public square. So this is not a pietistic book saying that we need to just, you know, just preach the gospel.

01:23:18

That's not the problem with social justice. The problem is their definitions of justice are unbiblical and unjust.

01:23:26

And so the questions such as, can a Christian vote for a Democrat? My answer in the book is no, not as long as Democrats are promotion, promoting the slaughter of babies in the womb.

01:23:40

Right? So understanding biblical ethics and we need to stand on the word of God in the public square, just as we do in our private lives.

01:23:50

So those are the kinds of things that are covered in Woke Free Church. So even if they're not, well, if they are even juggle free, definitely get the book.

01:24:00

In fact, may I encourage you to order like a case for your church. But if you, even if they're not,

01:24:07

I think there's still a lot of value here in just seeing, look, even if you get the one that dealt with the social justice within SBC, you get this one, social justice within evangelical free, there's still the patterns you are going to see on how they approach these things.

01:24:26

And that is still going to be valuable. You're hearing me say this a lot about the patterns.

01:24:33

I think what we saw with social justice, especially, we saw this veil of spirituality from people that were quote unquote leaders in Christianity.

01:24:49

And that's all it was. It's a veil of spirituality, a veil of righteousness that quite frankly needs to be torn apart.

01:24:57

It needs to be ripped asunder because the veil they're wearing is just that.

01:25:02

It's not a genuine integrity. It's not based on truth.

01:25:09

It's based on platforming. It's based on getting ahead, just taking easy road.

01:25:17

Look, you want an example. Donald Trump was supposedly out.

01:25:23

I mean, he was never going to be able to be elected after January 6th, 2020. That was the claim. He's done his political career over and he's going to be, well, at the time of this recording, by the time this comes out, who knows what might've happened, but we are days away from his inauguration when we're recording this, by the time you're listening to this, he, we hope has been inaugurated and, you know, we'll see what happens, but the reality is, is that you look at what did he do?

01:25:55

He fought for what's right. He fought and fought and he just, he didn't just give up and take the easy road.

01:26:04

I get that it's hard to do what's right. Sometimes doing what's right means saying nothing when you're being attacked.

01:26:11

Sometimes doing what's right means to stand up and say, look, this is true and it doesn't matter what's not, but a lot of these guys who we, people look up to and they'll get upset if we were to name some names because like, oh, that's my favorite preacher, that's this, you know, well, there's a lot of these people who are just taking a path to build a platform, to take the easy road, to get along because, hey, why, why stir this up?

01:26:44

When, when all the churches were closing, it was just easier to do what the government said and yet you had guys like MacArthur saying, no,

01:26:54

I mean, they did shut down for a while and they tried as best they could, but guess what? They stood for truth and the truth won in the end.

01:27:06

The truth may not win this side of heaven. Just recognize that, but the truth will win in the end.

01:27:15

Amen. So Jeff, any closing things that you have, anything you'd like to, you mentioned the conference, you mentioned your book, but anything else, how, you know, if people want to come visit your church, if they're, you know, maybe they're in the communist country of New Jersey, I fled that country, not too far, but close enough to come back and visit, which

01:27:36

I've, I've done on occasions when you've had me speak. So but, but how can folks get ahold of you?

01:27:42

Anything else you want to share with folks? Thank you, Andrew. Keep giving me these opportunities. Hey, we have a podcast too.

01:27:47

It's called Tearing Down High Places. You can find it on YouTube, but it's actually part of our website.

01:27:54

Um, cornerstone s j .org. So that would be another one I would plug, but yeah, just to reiterate what you're saying, my brother is that in this world.

01:28:03

You will have trouble, but take heart. I have overcome the world. That's what the Lord Jesus tells us.

01:28:09

We're to expect these kinds of troubles, even within the church, the church is not immune from it.

01:28:15

So when you see a lack of love for truth in the church, don't be disheartened.

01:28:21

Although it's very easy to become disheartened. Rather trust the Lord through the process.

01:28:26

Trust the process. The Lord is working it all together for good. Don't give up. Don't lose heart. Keep trusting

01:28:32

Christ. Don't withdraw from the church. Don't say, I'm not going to serve as an elder.

01:28:37

I'm not going to serve as a deacon. Don't insulate yourself. Have thick skin. Um, based on your trust, trust, trust, trust in the

01:28:46

Lord Jesus Christ. That that's the message. That is a great final point because that's the tendency people have is to say,

01:28:53

I been hurt in church. Let me just go sit in a pew. And let me just end with that and say, maybe, maybe you're listening to this and that's you.

01:29:01

You don't, you don't serve in church. I've seen this as a, as a pastor and as an attendee of church, so many people that got hurt in some previous church and they know they should be in church.

01:29:09

So they go to church. They just don't serve. They take up space in a pew because they don't want to be hurt.

01:29:16

Christian, let me just encourage you. You're going to be hurt. Get over it. Okay. You're going to be hurt, but that hurt only lasts this side of heaven.

01:29:27

So go and serve the Lord. Expect it. Don't be surprised by it, but don't look for it, but try to do what's right.

01:29:37

And if you get hurt, you pick up and you move forward and continue again.

01:29:43

So with that, I want to encourage you to consider that, consider how God could use you in what he wants to do in your life.

01:29:53

And it may take getting hurt. Many of the great preachers that we think about, that we read about, we mentioned

01:30:00

Spurgeon and how hurt he was. Is it okay for us to be hurt in the name of Christ?

01:30:08

For Christ took on far more for our salvation than we will ever suffer by the hands of men.

01:30:16

May that encourage you, believer today. And with that, Jeff, I want to thank you very much for coming on, for all the information you gave.