One Christian Organization Not Going Woke

Welcome once again, everyone, to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, as always. And today

I have with me Pastor Richard Bargess from the

IFCA International, IFCA .org is the website. He is the executive director for the

IFCA. And I've invited him on to share a little bit about the IFCA because I know there's a lot of pastors right now who are in various denominations, associations, cooperations, all the other

Asians out there trying to do ministry with each other, get encouragement, pull resources, all that kind of thing, network.

And they're experiencing some challenges depending on the group that they're in, because of one of the big things is social justice and whether or not that particular group actually shares their convictions on that topic.

And the reason I wanted Pastor Bargess to come on is to just talk about the IFCA, because one of the things that has impressed me with the

IFCA is they have a magazine they put out. I actually have a copy here called Voice Magazine.

And a few issues ago, now I can't remember, it might've been last year, they had a whole thing on critical theory, social justice, and they really went after it.

And that's not something you see in the ordinary every day. And so Pastor Bargess, thank you so much for joining me and being willing to talk about this.

Appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. Glad to. Why don't you tell us a little bit about the IFCA and the history of it?

What is it? How was it formed? Why was it formed? And then on top of that, what can pastors today who are thinking about joining, what kind of benefits can they get from joining?

Yeah. So IFCA was officially started in 1930 in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois called

Cicero, right in the middle of gang lands. And it was started because of what was happening here in America with what were called modernists at the time, which were liberals, those within the church that were seeking to modernize

Christianity and make it more palatable for people. And so caught inside of a lot of denominations were these faithful biblical

Christians who didn't want to deny the virgin birth and the miracles and all the things that were being denied by liberalism at the time.

And so because of that, they said, we're not going to teach these things. We're going to remain faithful to the true doctrine of Christianity.

And when they did that, they found themselves being pushed out, pushed out of their churches, pushed out of their denominations, pushed out of their seminaries and missions agencies.

So all across the board, conservative Christianity was facing the choice of either staying within denominations and organizations that were becoming more and more apostate or try to stay in and change it.

Some over time stayed a little longer, but they all had to, by conscience, figure out when is the time that we need to leave.

And there's a whole history there about those moderates that thought, well, we can stay and slowly influence things and end up getting influenced themselves.

But those within the IFCA in 1930 realized there is no way we can do this anymore.

Fundamentalists had moved from trying to fight and win back the denominations and all these other parachurch organizations to realizing they're lost.

There's no way we can salvage what's going on in these denominations. And so they started to come out of it.

And now, because of what they had experienced in denominationalism, realized it's better that we follow our convictions led by the

Holy Spirit and not start a new denomination. We want to remain independent. But they recognized that being independent also has a lot of weaknesses.

It's pretty hard if you're a small church to plant other churches and send your own missionaries and be a mission agency, a church planting agency, an educational institution.

All these things rolled up in one. And they'd seen the benefits of working together in a denominational setting. And so instead of becoming a denomination, what they said is we will become an association of individuals, pastors and laymen, missionaries and other

Christian workers, along with organizations, churches, church planting organizations, missions agencies, educational institutes, all kinds of things like this.

And many of them had to be started all over again. Churches had to be restarted. Schools had to be restarted.

Missions agencies had to be restarted. Church planting agencies had to be restarted because they'd been lost to what happened in modernism.

And so there's a lot of founding of different things all over the country that can be based actually in that change that happened in American evangelicalism.

And many of it can be actually found rooted in our founding at IFCA. And so when you go to institutions, you can actually find that many of those institutions were founded by men who were in the

IFCA in those early days and would be well -known names around evangelicalism today as staunch biblical conservatives.

And so we have a great history, a proud history that we're so thankful to the Lord for. And since it was 1930, we're only almost eight years away from our 100th anniversary and we haven't moved.

We've obviously struggled and wrestled with things as every human institution does. But our founding documents in 1930 are the same founding documents that we have to this day.

And our doctrinal statements remain unchanged and our commitment to those documents remains unchanged.

And so we're firmly where we are and we're thankful to the Lord for that. So that's kind of a real quick overview of where we started and kind of where we're at today.

Well, I think that's great. And there's a whole probably host of questions pastors who might be listening and interested I think would have at this point.

One of them being, so it's not a denomination. It's more of an association. But can you be part of a denomination?

Can you be, say, Southern Baptist and also a member of the IFCA? Yeah, that's kind of tricky because first of all,

Southern Baptists don't have individual membership for pastors. And so the church would be committed to being a

Southern Baptist church. But the pastor himself, although he'd be a Southern Baptist church pastor, he wouldn't be a member of the

Southern Baptist as an individual. And so it's interesting because from its founding, we saw that the reality is that there were some men that didn't have a charge and there were some men that were going into churches that because of their hardship under denominational organizations were a little gun shy of joining anything.

And so they wanted to remain independent and not even have associations. So they said, well, the pastor can join.

He's committed to the doctrine. And then the church knows this is an IFCA man. We know what he believes and we know that it will line up with what we believe.

So the commitment could go either way. So if a gentleman that said, I'm a

Southern Baptist pastor in the sense of I'm pastoring a Southern Baptist church, we would say no, because we want to have that independence where we are separate from any, you have two allegiances when you do that.

Your allegiance is to the Southern Baptist or the General Association of Regular Baptists or the

Evangelical Free Church. Those are all associations of types, but most of them are not even pure.

They're actually a blending together of what really is denominational. And then churches are free to come and go in those denominational settings, which is undenominational.

And so we would say we want you to be free of any constraints that you do what you want to do as you're convicted by scripture and the spirit.

And that means you really need to be free from those kind of associations. If you want to join the

IFCA, it sounds like you were making, there's two tiers. There's individual memberships and then there's church memberships.

So your church can't be a member if it's part of another hierarchy or organization like that. So can an individual then?

I wasn't clear on that. So if you're an individual Southern Baptist pastor, you can join then even though your church can't be?

We want the church that you're a part of to be independent or IFCA, either one is fine.

If you're an individual and you want to join, we'd ask that you are independent as well in your ministry, but we recognize that some of our members can't be.

So we'll have some members that are committed to IFCA's doctrine, but they're retired pastors and their family maybe moves them in an area.

There's no IFCA churches and maybe it's a small town and all there is is a very conservative

Southern Baptist church. Well, they're joining those churches and they're serving in those churches as laymen, but they're good, solid churches.

So we don't say, oh, you can't be a part of that church. We don't want to put them in those situations.

But ideally, the spirit of what we've said is we'd like you to be free from denominational connections, if at all possible, that's the best scenario, or even have a track of where you're going to pull out.

So we do have some men that join and say, I want to become a member. They're in a Southern Baptist church.

We give them a period of two years and say, we'd rather that you move ministries or you move out of that denominational connection that you have with your church.

Give them some time to work that out if they really want to be part of IFCA. OK, now that leads to the second question, then why should a pastor or a church be part of IFCA?

What's the benefit to being part of IFCA and the difference between maybe being part of IFCA? And let's take the biggest

Protestant denomination, the SBC, what would be the difference between the two? Well, I think that for the obvious thing is that IFCA has a smaller doctrinal statement as far as commitments that we have.

It is tighter. And so if we're talking about tents, IFCA is a small tent,

Southern Baptist is a big tent. And that means that there can be a whole bunch of people in a big tent from Stephen Furtick and Greg Laurie to Al Mohler and everything in between.

And so the doctrinal commitments alone, even though everybody's supposed to sign on to the

Baptist faith and message, you look at what's there and you recognize there's a lot of finger crossing when those things are signed.

And so that would be the first thing is that we have an annual commitment. Every organization, every individual reaffirms every single year that they're still committed to the doctrinal statement that we hold to.

And that requires them to believe some things that you can't be in the Southern Baptist Convention and or you can be in the

Southern Baptist Convention, but you can't be an IFCA. So we are complementarians just across the board.

So there wouldn't be even a question about whether or not we would allow a woman pastor in an

IFCA church. This is not a question that we have. And as an offshoot of that is we don't have arguments about that.

We don't bring that to convention to discuss in business. It's not a discussion question.

It's already settled. We're also cessationists. I know historically Southern Baptists are cessationists, but we also know that there's a lot of people crossing their fingers about the truth of whether they're cessationists or not.

We're cessationists. We're also dispensationalists. Now, the big tent of Southern Baptist allows for you to be dispensationalist or covenantal or some other stripe in between, but we are dispensational.

So we have a very clear eschatology. We have a clear understanding of Israel's relationship to church and things like that.

And so, again, we don't have a lot of arguments and fights about those things. We don't believe those are necessary for salvation, but we do recognize they're incredibly important for how you interpret scripture.

So that means that we're smaller, but that also means that we don't have a lot of internal fighting.

We don't have arguments. We don't have debates because we all know what we believe. And that means that every organization, every church, every school, every missions agency, every individual knows what the other guy believes on these core issues.

It's like we know the gospel. We know our commitments. And so I'm not going to show up at an IFCA church and recognize that that woman that's about to step in the pulpit, she's not going to preach.

I know she's not going to preach. She may sing a special, but she's not going to preach the message because that's just not allowable.

If that happens, then we would definitely need to deal with it because it's just not allowable within us.

Same thing if they broke out in tongues and it was an IFCA church. That would be shocking and not acceptable.

And there would be discussions on does that church need to separate from us? Do they want to stay with us? Then they need to deal with this theological difference with the doctrine that we hold to.

So those are and if you want to be a part of that kind of a church, if you're dispensational, cessationist, complementarian, dispensational, and you hold to the fundamentals of the faith, then that would probably be a good fit for you because we keep bringing up Southern Baptist, so I keep going back to it.

But in the Southern Baptist Convention, that's a smaller pool of people and you're less likely to run into a whole bunch of them depending on the circles you run in.

Whereas if you came to IFC, that would be everybody that you're a part of. That would be all the people that you're fellowshipping with and meeting together with, planning together with, planting churches, sending missionaries, going to school with, sending your students to.

All of those things would be in alignment with you and there's a whole bunch of benefits to that and we're thankful to the

Lord that we enjoy that. So the benefits, it sounds like, well, there's the convention every year, right, where people can network and get together, hear speakers, all of that, and that's where you're going to find someone who might be a missions agency that's connected or a school maybe for people in your church that would be a good fit.

To me, I think that's a huge thing today because so many in the PCA, the SBC, some other denominations are struggling too with trust issues, really.

They don't know if that person that they're talking to shares their theology and it was once,

I think, a lot more clear. I think one of the big things today that's pushed that is the social justice movement and you mentioned the complementarian issue.

I know that there's critical race theory and the Black Lives Matter movement. There's now whether or not a church should even be open if the government tells the church, especially in Canada, not to be open with the

COVID stuff. There's all these other issues coming upon us partially because of totalitarianism and government overreach.

Where's the IFCA on social justice more broadly speaking? I know, again, you mentioned complementarianism.

I know voice did a whole thing on critical race theory and all that. Are there any official positions or is it just,

I mean, have you had any issues in the IFCA with divisions over this at all? Well, no, we haven't had any divisions and one of the key reasons why we put together that voice issue, it was also a resolution that was from last year and it happened just before our convention last year.

We put together a resolution that was passed at our convention. We also had a panel of some of the authors of those articles that spoke and answered questions, gave back and forth.

And the main reason for us to address it was because we wanted to inform our pastors and churches of the issue.

Some of them weren't very informed about it and some of them listen to podcasts like yours and read books and things like that and so they're more informed.

But then there's a lot of pastors that are in rural areas and they're hearing it.

It really started to break out when it was more in the governmental circles and it was getting on news.

But inside of churches, if you're like a little Bible church out in the middle of some rural area, you might not have heard it directly.

Although when students come back on breaks to their churches and they've been taught that in a state school and they start bringing it into the church, it sounds good.

It uses a lot of language that is familiar and to the pastor who's just simply trying to be faithful to the

Lord, it doesn't sound objectionable. And so we knew that there was a few that hadn't heard of it and that they might have some questions and we wanted to flesh that out for them.

We also recognized that when we wrote this resolution, we have a resolution committee that worked on it, including

Gary Gilley, who's well known outside of IFCA circles. So Gary was one of the men that wrote it.

We also had an ad hoc committee that put together all the work for that. And many of them were the authors in that issue of the voice.

We recognize that resolutions are limited. They don't have a lot of space to say a lot of things and not be misunderstood.

And in this issue, there's a whole lot of talking past each other amongst people that agree as well as people that don't agree.

And so what we said is we need to have two venues to do this. We'll put the resolution together and then we will also deal with the broader issues in still short format, which is a magazine, but it's easier and faster than somebody writing a whole book.

We knew there were men that were coming out with books shortly and there were several books that came pretty quickly on the heels of our magazine.

So we knew that that would be filled, but we needed something short form that could get in the hands of a pastor and his layman, his

Sunday school teacher, his elders, they could read it and get through it. And so what we wanted to clarify was here are some of the historical roots that are a part of this issue that go back to what we've dealt with in the civil rights movement and the outcomes of this.

I found a 1969 issue of the voice magazine where there was a resolution from that year's convention dealing with the reality of reparations being demanded by some radical groups that churches pay reparations.

Wow. And the IFCA in 1969 stood against it. They said, we believe that all men are created in the image of God and that we are one people and that we need to love each other.

And the gospel is for the world and all these things. But we do not believe these things are biblical. And it took a firm stand in 1969 because this was the outcome of some of the radicalization in the civil rights movement.

And so what we wanted to do is stay committed to who we are, which we are Bible churches. We're Bible teaching people.

We're a Bible movement and say, this is what the Bible says. Now, to give background, we had to go into the history.

We had to show the way that what liberalism normally does is it masks itself and never presents itself in its full wickedness and demonic truthfulness.

What it does is it uses a skin, usually of language, to cover up what it really means and what it really says.

Satan loves to hide in the shadows. He doesn't like to come out in the full light. And so we wanted to give definitions.

We wanted to give some historical underpinning and background. And then we wanted to look at what the Bible says, because really, that's the authority for us.

So we're going to go out into the church and we're going to say, thus says the Lord. We can say it with great confidence because we know

God has said it. And so we had several of our writers said, this is what scripture says, that we are all sinners, that there is a thing as racism.

And that does sometimes exist in the church. And it exists in all colors of people.

And they need to repent that God is working in us. He's renewing us and changing us.

So it wasn't really a hard issue for us to decide. It was making sure that we covered the issue biblically.

We weren't going to be political because it's not an issue of politics for us. I mean, it does show itself in politics because it's trying to do things, including church politics, denominational politics, and things like that.

It shows itself there, but it's not really a political issue. It's a moral issue because there's all kinds of moral issues tied into it.

And we wanted to speak to the biblical aspects of it. And that did require us to go into some background about some of the writings in history and not just past writings, but also current writings of some evangelicals have dragged that into the church.

Some liberal, truly liberals, but masking themselves as evangelicals. And then some that are just straight up liberals and that are clearly unashamedly liberals, and yet they're being touted amongst evangelicals as innocent, not really something we should be afraid of, and that we can use these tools to somehow help us in reaching people.

And we reject that. We recognize that's not true. So it wasn't controversial at all.

I received only one. I'm the editor of The Voice. So I usually receive the fan mail of different stripes.

And so I only got one response from one person. It wasn't one of our pastors. I don't know how they got

The Voice. That was somewhat negative about it. It wasn't really bad.

It was just they didn't agree. They felt like we didn't understand the situation. And that was it.

And so that's usually the objection. Yeah. You just don't understand. You could have a PhD in it, but you still don't understand.

Right. Yeah. So that's a breath of fresh air. That's, I think, what a lot of pastors are looking for and wanting is someone who will take a stand on it.

And that's what we've seen so far from most evangelical outlets is just an unwillingness or an apprehension about even approaching the issue, because let's face it, there are political consequences.

And in evangelical denominations, either way you go, there's going to be a consequence, perhaps. So Voice Magazine, the

IFCA, has taken a stand on this particular issue. And this is an organization that people can join for cooperation, for finding out missions agencies to get behind.

I know Southern Baptist Convention is obviously one of the big denominations kind of leading members over this issue.

But people have asked me, how can I support missionaries now? I mean, my church has always just given to NAM, the

North American Mission Board. We don't know where to go. And so IFCA can be a place where people can get connected with missionaries to support.

Chaplains as well, I'm assuming. I think, doesn't the IFCA sponsor chaplains? Yeah, we have military chaplains.

So we endorse military chaplains. They have to have an endorsing agency. And so actually, our director of chaplaincy, his name is

Bill Dickens. Dr. Dickens is a former Southern Baptist. He wasn't over issues.

He felt like the IFCA was a better fit for him. And so he came over. He is a brigadier general, retired from US Air Force.

And he's a great asset to us. He's a wonderful man. And we have fights on that front where we're trying to hold our ground with commitments to the

LGBTQ movement against our military. So we've written strong letters and things like that.

So we stand firm. Bill Dickens is a great asset and great help to us in that aspect.

We have hospital, fire, police, all those types of things, health care chaplains, all of them. And they fall under our umbrella as well.

All committed. So we know when they go into a hospital room, they're going to give the gospel. We want to help them feel peace.

But we know that peace comes through Christ. And that's where people will find their hope. And so that's the wonderful thing is you start with a good solid theological base.

And then whatever form it takes, whether it's youth, we have a youth convention. We have about 300 teens that meet for our youth convention annually.

Or whether it's our women's ministries or whatever it is, it's all based off that doctrinal statement where we all agree.

And therefore, we understand how do we function off of that doctrine. So we start with the orthodoxy and then move out to orthopraxy.

And that's a good way to be. We're the hub. And then you move out in whatever form it might take.

We know it's grounded on the scriptures. Yeah, that's really good. Just a question about the doctrine.

Because I think that this will sort of what you just explained about cessationism and complementarianism and all the rest.

That's going to weed out some people who might be even against the social justice stuff. And they might not like where their denominations headed.

But they'll say, well, I'm covenantal. I can't join the IFC or whatever. Which is that's the conviction that's been there for now, what, over eight years in the

IFCA. What other things, though, should people be aware of? I mean, Calvinism, Arminianism, where does the

IFCA stand on other doctrinal issues? Just so people who might be interested are aware whether or not this is a good fit for them.

Yeah, well, I mean, it's going to be a little hard to cover all the nuances that people might have.

Sure, sure. Yeah, that would be our doctrinal statement and read it for yourself. But I would say that we are.

Regarding Calvinism, Arminianism, I said you can be a bad

Arminian or a more soft

Calvinist because our doctrinal statement doesn't really hit all of the points.

If you're going to go by the tool of acronym, it doesn't hit all the points Calvinism, which means that some of those spaces in between, it's left for the individual to take a position biblically if they want to defend that position biblically where they stand.

So we do have in our doctrinal statement the necessity of believing in total depravity.

So you have to believe in total depravity. So that kind of throws out the Wesleyan Arminian. But we probably have some that are more

Arminian leaning in their doctrine because they accept now they may be inconsistent, but they accept total depravity.

Okay. On the other end of the tool of acronym, perseverance of the saints, we have a very clear statement that we do not believe that you can lose your salvation in any way.

So again, you're going to be a bad Arminian, poor Wesleyan, but you would be within the

IFCA doctrinal statement. So you can at that point, those two positions, you could be a really strong Calvinist, but we don't make a judgment on the middle ground except for one area, which is the issue of limited atonement.

Classically, IFCA from its very beginning just made a generic statement that we believed in the atoning work of Jesus Christ, the power of the atoning work of Christ.

Later on, there was some fine tuning on the issue of the atonement where we had a rejection in our statement of strict, limited atonement.

That Christ did not die for the world in any way, but we do have members that believe that Christ died for the world, but his death is sufficient only for the elect.

So it's a limited, unlimited view. And then we have some that believe in a full unlimited view, which would be more consistent with our

Arminian brothers. Okay. So when you're talking about the limited atonement, not allowable in IFCA because of our doctrine is a strict, limited atonement.

Christ only died for the elect and nobody else, only died for the elect. That would be more of a, it would tend to be hyper -Calvinists.

It would be scholastic Calvinists. What I do when I talk to people oftentimes and I ask them if they're confused about where they stand, do you see those texts that speak about Christ dying for the world exegetically as speaking that Christ died for the whole world, not rereading it in some other fashion, that that world doesn't mean the world, that it means just the elect.

Now, I know that there are some contextually that can be argued in that way, but normally I'll find guys who say, no, there are some ways in which

Christ died for the world. Christ died for the world. And they explain it in different ways. And there are a lot of different exegetical explanations for how you can come up with Christ died for the world.

And I don't mean crossing your fingers and acting like you don't really commit to what we believe, but you're truly convinced that Christ died for the world in some sense.

And then there are those that say, well, no, I don't believe that Christ died for the world at all. We'd say that's going farther than our doctrinal statement.

We're holding, you're pulling that thing to beyond tensile strength that it can't hold that. But if you believe that Christ died for the world in some senses and Christ died for the elect, you're still allowable.

There are guys that would say, I believe in limited atonement. And what they mean is Christ died for the world, but the world will only produce those that come to Christ as the elect.

And therefore it's only a small portion. They're not universalist. There's none of them are universalist.

So it's a little bit of a tricky thing for us at times, because we're trying to be fair, but not, we don't want to override our own doctrinal statement.

That's what our doctrinal statement says. It might be that they're Al -Meridian. It might be that they hold to a different form that is not

Al -Meridianism formally, but it is some other form that's, some would say, no, that's a, that's five point

Calvinism. Some would say four and a half point Calvinism. Some would say limited, unlimited goes by a lot of different names.

And it, it's understanding is a lot of different. We just want to make sure that if you're, you're holding to a strictly limited atonement, that's really outside of our doctrinal standard.

And although we wouldn't part with you as far as fellowship and things like that, we would say, this is what our statement is.

This is like, if you said I I'm open, but cautious on the whole charismatic speaking in tongues thing.

Well, that's fine. We wouldn't necessarily part ways with you. We believe you're a brother in Christ, but we are a non -charismatic.

We're a complete cessationist fellowship. And therefore there isn't really room.

There's probably other fellowships you'd better be a better fit in. And we want to point you in that direction. Yeah. Well, it sounds like it's

I don't want to say vague, but it's, it's because, because your doctrinal statement is actually pretty specific, but on, on some, like an issue, like limited atonement it's broad enough, general enough would be the word,

I guess that you can have someone who sounds like you could have a five -point

Calvinist in the organization who just you know, defines worlds or, or thinks in their minds their conception of world is cosmos.

And then just not, they don't have to, as long as they don't go the extra step of, of denying that Christ died for the world, in some sense, they're okay.

That's what I hear you saying is that, which would be, I think the vast majority of Calvinists probably. Right.

Yeah. And there, and there would be some that would say, no, it doesn't, it doesn't mean that. But there's a lot of guys, you know

I would say the vast majority, I went to master's seminary, the vast majority of old professors in master's seminary.

And many of them were, were IFCA members that, you know, since passed away. But we have lots of guys that are connected to masters that are in IFCA and would consider themselves faithful biblical

Calvinists. And, and so, and there would be those outside of IFCA that would say they're

Calvinists. And yet they don't hold to a strict limited atonement. They would say it's limited, unlimited, and they would be fine.

And so, you know, if that's an issue we can talk through individual guys and understandings of how they come to their conclusions and whether or not that would be pushing it.

But then there are people that, you know, they, they believe in total depravity and perseverance of the saints, but they really are functionally in some ways, probably closer to a classic

Arminian in some things. And, and they probably, it depends on certain things, but they probably would find a home at IFCA as well, because those are some of the issues that there's a friendly disagreements on that we can talk about and we can, we can discuss them, but we still would fit underneath that tent.

Same thing with ecclesiology issues. We don't demand a certain type of government, even though most of our churches have elders and deacons.

If a church had trustees and deacons, then that doesn't even come up in the process.

We don't care about, you know, whether you wear a tie or a coat on a Sunday morning.

We don't care how long your sermons are. We don't care if you've got a drum set or if all you sing is traditional hymns.

None of those things really relate to IFCA membership because we're biblical fundamentalists.

We're not cultural fundamentalists. So the length of your hair and the length of the skirts don't have an issue with us.

That's a local church issue. And if a local church says, you know, anybody that's up on our platform on a

Sunday morning needs to wear a tie. Well, that's a local church issue. We don't, we don't bother with that. And we let everybody deal with modesty issues or whatever else that might be within your church on a local church level, because we're, we're not the church.

And we recognize the place for IFCA and our association for those things.

So what can people, what's the process if someone's interested, if they want to become a member and then what can they expect if they come to a convention then?

Yeah. So the, on, on our website, it says, join IFCA, and then it goes through the process for you, but it's basically you fill out the application, which is going to require basic information about you.

If you're a male, he's going to ask for your spouse. Women can join, but women join by virtue of their husbands joining or individually joining, usually because they're looking at healthcare chaplaincy or something like that.

But as they fill that out, they're going to also be required to have references. They need to have four references that are

IFCA members. If they don't have four, then they'll have six references. We try to get them somewhere around ministry.

So whether it's a professor in seminary or Bible college, or whether it's some fellow pastors, we want six references so that we can get to know you.

And it's just a, you know, two page form that they're going to fill out on how well they know them.

There's going to be some questions, yes and no questions about where they stand according to our doctrine.

Some of those key points about, you know, to kind of vet, are they word of faith?

Are they charismatic? Things like that. And then it'll ask some specifics about theology where it's kind of a right in short answer question to what's their view of, you know, the church in Israel, dispensationalism, things like that.

Separation. What do you believe about separation? We believe in biblical separation from apostates and things like that.

So they're going to write their answers out. So that's the application process. They're going to fill all of that out and send it in for an individual.

The church individual application or church or organization, it's a little more of a lengthy process because they have to have articles of incorporation, you know, all the specific governmental numbers that are necessary.

It's going to ask for financial records, I think for a year or something like that, who all of their officers are, their names and things like that.

And then there's a little bit deeper dive into the organization itself to make sure that their theology lines up with ours to make sure that they have, like I said, we don't look at government issues, theological issues, as far as do you have deacons and elders.

But if you had elders and there were women, then that's not just an ecclesiological issue, that's a theological issue in addition to that.

So we want to find out who's leading your church and things like that. When it was established, why it was established, why do you want to join all that?

After those applications have been turned in, for the individual, we wait on the references to come in.

And then that packet shows up on my desk, and I've got about seven of them behind me there. I review them and make sure that there's nothing that sets off any red flags.

We look at education. So where did you go to school? Where did you receive your training, your answers to your questions and things like that?

If I look at it, and it looks like it's probably fine, I might have some further questions on it, but I leave it to a committee.

So once a month, we have a committee that meets here in the office, a credentials committee, where several of them in get packets.

It has all the references, the application. It also includes an interview. So an individual is going to be interviewed by somebody local.

IFC is broken up into 40 regions in the United States. And so the regional president, if he's available, will interview you either on phone or Zoom or maybe in person.

He'll sit down with you, and he'll go through a whole panel of questions and get to know you a little bit better, ask you how you feel about things like seeker -sensitive movements or what do you know about IFCA and our theology or history and things like that, just to find out how familiar you are, to see if you are a good fit.

And then he recommends you or doesn't recommend you or writes notes and says, here's some concerns

I might have. All of that in the packet goes to the credentials committee. Three men look at that. They read through the whole file, read everything that you've submitted to us, and then they sign it.

And then they have a meeting afterwards, after everybody has read through all the packets three times, then they go ahead and discuss any issues that they might have.

Some people, there's no issues at all. Some people, there's a few questions. And then they vote. And so sometimes they'll vote and say, absolutely, we'll accept this person or this church in.

Sometimes they'll vote and say, we've got some questions, so we're going to give them membership, but it's only provisional.

They need to fix this thing or answer these questions because we're not sure. Or they'll say, no, they're just not a good fit.

They come from a different background. It's clear that they're Pentecostal, and we just need to let them know that they're just not a good fit for us.

And so it depends on how fast that the references come in, but it could take as little as a month for that process to happen.

Sometimes references are slow, and so it could take maybe a couple months for those things to come in and for us to get it processed.

But that's usually, it's somewhat quick. Got it. So they come to their first convention, and they meet people.

And so what can they expect what's going to happen there as far as networking and just speakers and all of that?

Yeah. So if they come to the convention, we highly recommend it. You don't have to be a member to come to convention, by the way.

This coming year, we just had ours. So this coming next year will be in Covington, Kentucky, right on the

Ohio and Kentucky border, right on the Ohio River. By Noah's Ark, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's nearby there. It's nearby there. Yeah. So what they'll see is there's a huge camaraderie.

It really is almost like being in heaven, because there's just a lot of happiness and friendship and love and seeing people you haven't seen, some of them maybe in a year if they hadn't been in convention, maybe a couple of years.

People cross paths a lot in IFCA. We're talking about 1 ,500 members.

That's churches and individuals. And so you're talking about that small of a group. There's a lot of camaraderie there.

So they're getting to see each other together, having meals and stuff together. All our meals are together for lunch and dinner normally.

So it's Monday through Friday. So it's lunch and dinner together, four of those days. And then each night, starting with Monday night, there's a general session speaker.

And we've had all kinds of general session speakers, some of them within our fellowship. Many of them, we have a lot of really good, solid biblical teachers in our fellowship, but a few outside of our fellowship as well that we appreciate and can teach us a lot of things.

And so they'll go to a general session, which is basically like a big church service. So we have wonderful worship music.

We will have all kinds of introductions of different people giving reports and things like that.

And then we'll have a great message from the word of God. Friday or Thursday night, we close because Friday, we only have morning sessions and then we dismiss.

But Thursday night, because we're all together, it's almost like we're all getting ready to say goodbye. So we actually have, along with our regular service, we'll have communion together as well.

And although we recognize we're not a church, there's a lot of pastors in our fellowship. And so they rarely get to sit with their wife and children and have communion.

So this is a special time for us, for us to just come before the Lord and be refreshed and to worship.

And in between there, we'll have theological panels. So this past year, we had a panel on evangelism because we were in New Mexico.

And so we had Mike Gendron. We had a guy named Jesse Randolph, who was out in California and now in Nebraska.

And that guy named Justin Gort, who was out in Utah with Mormons. And now he's in Kansas.

And so we had those three guys and myself talking about evangelism and the importance of it. And then just kind of different aspects of ministering amongst different groups of people.

We had a theological panel that was just our speakers talking about our hope in Christ and life and death.

That was our theme. And so Tony Wood, who's Kosti Hinn's former pastor.

Tony's the IFCA pastor out in California. And then Alex Montoya, who's a longtime

IFCA pastor, as well as a longtime Master Seminary professor. He was one of our speakers.

Chad DeYoung, who's a local pastor here in Grand Rapids.

So we had them on one panel as well. They're all general assessment speakers. And then I mentioned

Gary Gilley before. Gary Gilley every year does a theological panel where he spends almost two hours. And they usually talk about some current subject, the

Enneagram, social justice, whatever. He studies and reads constantly.

And he's always putting out book reviews. As he does that, usually there's some topic that catches his interest.

And he does deeper studies, deeper dives. This year, he did the whole on the whole issue of eternal sonship, the subordination of the sun,

Trinitarian. So his topic was surrounding that whole Trinitarian subject, which he always draws a lot of guys and they're very interested.

These are Bible guys. They love the Bible. They love theology. They love the word. So they're always kind of flocking to those kinds of opportunities.

Giving up golf. There's a golf outing during that time. And there's guys that will not go to golf because they want to sit and they wanted to soak it up.

And then we have seminars. We have usually about 22 seminars during the middle of the day.

So speakers from all their professors, their pastors, their missionaries, their church planters, or just a whole gamut of different subjects going throughout the day.

We have a women's conference that runs during that conference. And it's just for women. So wonderful, godly

Bible teaching speakers that will go and present to the women. Susan Heck was this year's speaker.

Susan Heck has memorized massive portions of the New Testament. Her husband, who passed away very recently, memorized the whole

Bible. I mean, this is incredible. And so she didn't just talk about Bible memorization, but actually put the word in really good, solid

Bible teaching. And so they have good, solid Bible teachers, and then they have a few seminars themselves. But generally, they come to all of the other things.

So we don't produce a whole bunch only for women, but a good portion. There's training for military chaplains, training for church planters.

We had a couple of podcasters there that were doing their thing. So you're going to get a mix of that. And then there's all kinds of displayers.

We have displayers all over the place with member organizations, as well as partner organizations that work with us because they know our commitment to the

Bible. And so they want to be there. They want to represent because they know that the people in our churches, as well as our members, are great assets to the movement of conservative

Christianity. So they want to expose us to their ministry so they can find interest in working together in some way.

Yeah, well, excellent. Thank you for that description. That was very helpful. And if people want to find out more, they can go to ifca .org,

and they can sign up there or just look through the doctrinal statement. I'm sure there's other links.

Actually, ifca .org is one of the places that I'll send people, one of the search engines for people who are looking for a church.

Most often, it's, you know, my church has gone woke or something. Where can you tell me? And I'll say, well, here's one website that you can look at, and maybe there's something in your area and check it out.

But yeah, Pastor Bargus, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Is there anything that I left out that you want to mention in our final thoughts here?

Yeah, I mean, because you mentioned the convention, which only happens once a year. But, you know, we serve tirelessly as pastors.

I was a pastor in California for 17 years before I left to come to Grand Rapids for this position.

And one of the best things I think of IFCA is our regionals. So California is such a large state that we have two regionals.

There's a Southern California and Northern California regional. And, you know, we get together. Each regional is independent.

There's 40 of them. And so because they're independent, they plan when they meet, how they meet, what they do at their meetings, how frequently they meet, all of that.

But in Southern California, all the pastors that were IFCA pastors were brothers in arms. We all got together to encourage each other to keep fighting the good fight.

And that's helpful because being independent, you can just get insulated and you forget and you feel like Elijah, you know, and you think

I'm the last one that hasn't bowed the knee to bail. And when you get together with other pastors and other members, our churches were all involved as well.

So you had all kinds of Christians, not just pastors, all stirring each other up to love and good deeds and just helping each other, encouraging each other and even provoking each other.

Sometimes we need to be pushed because we're not doing what we should be doing. And then you hear other guys, maybe smaller churches that are struggling even more than you are.

You were kind of down and you thought it was the worst. And then you found out, well, here's a brother that just keeps at it.

And he's in a worse situation than I am. And yet the Lord is continuing to show grace to him.

Those are helpful. And so, you know, sometimes a regional is really stretched out because of geography and it's hard for them to get together.

But even organizing Zoom calls so you can pray together and reach out and love each other, help each other, encourage each other, bounce questions off each other, all kinds of stuff.

There's a lot of networking that happens in IFCA, some official, some unofficial. That's a huge benefit as well, because we have work to do, but we need to remember we're not doing it by ourselves and we need each other.

And so I believe in being independent, but not being alone. And that's something that IFCA definitely offers.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, like I said, IFCA .org and Pastor Barkus, thank you so much once again.