One Christian Organization Not Going Woke

The IFCA’s Origins in Fundamentalist Resistance to Modernism

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 have 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, you know, what can pastors today who are thinking about joining, what kind of benefits can they get from joining? Yeah.

Why the IFCA Remains Independent From Denominational Control

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's 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. There's, you know, 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 the 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, you know, we're only almost eight years away from our 100th anniversary and we haven't moved.

You know, 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.

Membership, Denominational Ties, and the IFCA Small Tent

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 really 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 are some men that were going into churches that because of their 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 Baptists 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're 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 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 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 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 there 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.

Why the IFCA’s Doctrinal Tents Are Smaller Than the SBC’s

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 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, you know, as an offshoot of that is we don't have arguments about that.

We don't 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. And 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 cessationist or not.

We're cessation. We're also dispensationalists. Now, the big tent of Southern Baptists 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 the 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 a Southern, I mean, excuse me, an IFCA church and recognize that that's that woman that's about to step in the pulpit.

She's not going to preach. I know she's not going to preach. You 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 with, you know, 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 know, 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, you know, in the we keep bringing up Southern Baptist, so I keep going back to it.

But in the Southern Baptist Convention, that's a 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 we enjoy that.

Social Justice, Critical Race Theory, and the IFCA’s Public Stand

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 then 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.

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

What about 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 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, you know, 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 are hearing it.

It really started to break out when it was more in the 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, you know, 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 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 recognize that when we wrote this resolution, we have a resolution committee that worked on it, including Gary Gilley, who's well known outside of IFC 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 and 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 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 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, the Sunday school teacher, his elders.

They could read it and get through it. And so what we wanted to clarify was here, here are some of the historical roots that are 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 IFC 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 were 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. It's 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 are 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 liberals, 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, it wasn't really bad. It was just, they didn't agree. They felt like we didn't understand the situation and, um, you know, that was it.

And so that's usually the objection.

Yeah. You just don't understand that 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, uh, 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, uh, 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 evangelical denominations, either way you go, there's going to be a consequence perhaps.

So, um, so voice magazine, the IFCA has taken a stand on, on this particular issue and, um, and this is an organization that people can join for cooperation, for finding out, uh, missions agencies to get behind.

I know, um, we, we, you know, Southern Baptist conventions, obviously one of the big denominations kind of bleeding members over this issue, but, uh, 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, um, chaplains as well.

I'm assuming, I think it doesn't, the IFCA sponsored chaplains. Yeah, we have military chaplains.

Chaplaincy, Missions, and a Shared Theological Base

So we endorse military chaplains. They have to have an endorsing agency. And so, um, actually our, um, uh, director of chaplaincy, his name is Bill Dickens. Dr. Dickens is a former Southern Baptist. He beats it.

It wasn't over issues. It was more, he felt like IFCA was a better fit for him. And so he came over, he is a brigadier general retired from a U S air force. And, um, you know, he's a great asset to us.

He's, he's a wonderful man. And, you know, 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, healthcare chaplains, all of them, and they, 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, 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, you know, that's the wonderful thing is you start with a good solid theological base and then whatever form it look takes, you know, whether it's youth, we have a youth convention. Uh, 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 does this, 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, to be, you know, we're the hub and then you move out in whatever form it might take.

We know it's grounded on the scriptures.

Calvinism, Arminianism, and the Limits of the Doctrinal Statement

Yeah, that's no, it's really good. Um, I just, uh, a question about the doctrine, cause I think, um, that this will sort of what you just explained about cessationism and complementarianism and, 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 ain't, I'm covenantal.

I can't join the ICA or whatever, which, which is that that's the conviction that's been there for now, what, over eight years in the ICA, uh, what other things though, should people be aware of? I mean, Calvinism, Arminianism, where, where, where does the IFCA stand on other.

Um, doctrinal, uh, issues just so people who might be interested or aware, whether or not this is a good fit for them.

Yeah. Well, I would, I mean, it's, it's going to be a little hard to cover all the nuances that people might have, would be our doctrinal statement and read it for yourself. But I would say that we are, um, I've regarding Calvinism, Arminianism.

I said, you can be a, a, you can be a, uh, Bad Arminian or a, you know, uh, 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 backer name, it doesn't hit all the points of Calvinism, which means that some of those spaces in between it's left for, uh, um, 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, um, you have to believe in total depravity. So, you know, 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 you, again, you're going to be a bad Arminian, uh, you know, poor Wesleyan, but you would be within the IFCA doctrinal statement.

So you can, at that point, uh, 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, uh, classically, uh, IFCA from its very beginning, just made a generic statement that we, 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, uh, 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. So when you're talking about the limited atonement, uh, not allowable in IFCA because of our doctrine is a strict limited atonement, Christ only died for the world, uh, 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. Um, what I do when I talk to people, oftentimes I'm not, 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.

If 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, 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 universalists.

There's none of them are universalists. 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 overwrite our own doctrinal statement. That's what our doctrinal statement says.

It might be that they're Almeridian. It might be that they hold to a different form that is not Almeridianism, you know, 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. It 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 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.

Ecclesiology, Worship Style, and Local Church Freedom

Well, it sounds like it's I don't want to say vague, but it's, it's a, cause, cause 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 world 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, so 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. Um, but there's a lot of guys, you know, um, I would say the vast majority, I went to master's seminary, the vast majority of old professors and 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, uh, would consider themselves faithful biblical Calvinists.

Um, and, and so, and there would be out those outside of. IFCA that would say they're Calvinists and yet, um, 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. Um, 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.

Um, 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. Uh, 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, he's aware of time.

Well, that's a local church issue. We don't, we don't bother with that. Um, 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, um, we recognize the place for, uh, IFCA in our association for those things.

How to Join the IFCA and What the Convention Is Like

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

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

Uh, if you're a male, he's going to ask for your spouse, um, 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.

Um, but as they fill that out, they're going to also be required to have references, um, 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, we've got 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, um, questions, yes and no questions about where they stand according to our doctrine. Some of those key points about, um, you know, to, to kind of vet, are they word of faith?