Foskey & Everhard Talk About Worshiptainment

If anything, I am not saying that people should buy the book Worshiptainment so that they can pull out whatever chapter six or whatever and get gospel fellowships, liturgy, and then do that thing. That's not what I'm asking for.

What I'm asking for is that everybody who reads the book would evaluate their worship services and ask, why are we doing what we're doing here when we gather together to worship? And welcome back to Your Calvinist Podcast.

Introducing the Book and the Show

My name is Keith Foskey, and I am your Calvinist, and I'm thankful to have you on the show today. And I'm super excited to bring my guest in just a moment. Many of you know him, Matthew Everhard, Pastor Matthew Everhard, a good friend of the show, good friend of mine, someone who I've come to know over the last two years and have just continued to grow to love his ministry, all of the content that he puts out on YouTube.

And of course, just our relationship has grown, and I'm very thankful for that. And looking forward to talking about his book, Worshiptainment, which I had the opportunity to do a pre-read of and to do a review of, and I really loved it and look forward to sharing more about it with you when the time comes.

But before we do that, I do want to mention a few things about the show for those of you who are new. This show is a ministry of Sovereign Grace Family Church. Sovereign Grace Family Church is in Jacksonville, Florida.

So if you're in the Jacksonville area, we would love for you to come and visit with us. You can find out more about us at sgfcjacks .org. We're also a member of the Truth and Love Network. If you're looking for other podcasts like this one, you can go and find them at the Truth and Love Network.

Also, we are partners with a ministry called tinybibles .com. And right now they have their tiny Bible, which is the smallest printed Bible on the market, and it is available. But they also have a tiny Gospel of John, very easy to read, very easy to keep with you anywhere you go.

And it can be used for your own purposes or even as an heirloom or a gift. And right now, if you go to tinybibles .com, you can use my first name Keith as your coupon code and you will get a percentage off.

Finally, I want to remind everybody we're doing kind of a weird push right now on the podcast. I said last Friday night on Friday Night Live, we're getting close to 30 ,000 subscribers, and that's a huge milestone for us here on the show.

We got about 1400 or so to go. So if you have not subscribed to the show, we're trying to hit that 30 ,000 mark before Thanksgiving. That's our goal. I'm putting out some things. So if you would, please subscribe.

And if you like what you're seeing, if you like what you're hearing, please share it with someone. That would be a huge help for your Calvinist podcast and would just be a blessing to me to do that. All right, I'm going to bring in my friend now, Pastor Matthew Everhard, and we are going to talk about his book, Worship Tainment.

Cigars, Ties, and Church Banter

Hey, Matthew, it's good to see you, my friend. What's up, brother? I haven't seen you since you defeated me in the podcasting tournament of a couple of months ago. Are you still rejoicing in your kingship over all podcasts?

Yes, and let me say something about that. I actually have my first winnings. You do? Okay. I don't know if you remember, but that contest was if you won, you got a year supply of cigars. Oh, I remember.

Well, I got it and I got my first set in and I got my, I got a set of Pharisee cigars from 1689 cigars, which are the flavored cigars. Nice. Haven't smoked one yet, but they smell so good. And so, but I do, I do, I made you a promise and I'm going to hold my promise.

I'm going to send you a couple of cigars because I'm not, I don't smoke very much anyway. So I'm going to, I'm going to need to get your address. Remind me so that I can send, send some your way. Yeah, well, that's good.

That's kind of why I brought it up. I was hoping, I'd hoping you remember that. And I was wondering, has, have any of these 1689 cigars made it into your Presbyterian character and some of your denominational videos yet?

Have, have, have they been seen publicly at this point? Well, some of the ones I've used in the past, not the new ones, cause I just got them in. Right. Some of the ones I've used in the past were 1689 cigars.

I always take the wrappers off though, when I'm, you know, I don't, you can't tell that's what they are, but there's, there's a few of them. But I did get something really cool recently. Pastor Wade from Barrow Baptist Church.

I went up there to preach in Arkansas and he gave me a pipe. Wow. I've never owned a pipe. Yeah. That's legit now, man. Now you're legit. So what denomination do you think a pipe would be the most appropriate?

If I'm using a cigar for the conservative Presbyterian, you know, PCA is usually kind of that. What would a pipe would be? What about like a, what about like a CS Lewis type of character? Was he, was he not a pipe smoker?

Cause if you don't have an Anglican guy, then that might be your, your angle right there. That's what several people have said. I posted a picture of me with the pipe. I said, who do you think this would be?

And like nine, nine out of 10 people said, I look like CS Lewis. That's the one. That's cool. That's cool. Speaking of that, and this is totally off the subject. I just want to mention it. People who notice I've been wearing ties on the, on the show lately.

I don't, I don't, I didn't use to dress up for the podcast, but I do now. And the only reason why I do is because people have been sending me ties. I want some people to say, and it all started because there's these two ladies at our church who gave us, who gave me goofy ties that they find at thrift stores.

And I posted some pictures of them. So now people have been sending me ties as like, as just as a, as a thing. So this is a tie that I received from a, from a brother who watches the show from Winnipeg, Manitoba.

It came in the mail. And I want to thank that brother for sending me this. I know that seems like a weird thing to say, but I'm, I'm very grateful for, for people who appreciate the show and listen well enough to know the things that I, that I like.

I like, I like cigars and I like ties. That's awesome. My, my my habit is to wear traditional looking ties and then crazy socks. So I don't know how you go about that, but I have like crazy sushi socks and taco socks and cheese.

I have a lot of cheese socks. And then my ties are just like straight up Presbyterian. You know, what's funny is our worship team loves to do the sock thing. And sometimes the worship leader will, will, will buy them all socks that they can wear.

And, and we'll, they'll take pictures with their feet, like in a circle to where they see. And they've got some with like hot sauce and stuff, you know, different types of just really weird. What's your weirdest socks?

Um, well, I'll tell you this. I mentioned the sushi sock and that's like a thing for me. If ever I have a big day, like it's really going to be a good sermon or maybe, you know, something's going to happen.

We're going to baptize somebody. I get excited. I put on the sushi socks and then I'm ready to go for that day. See, that's the difference between you and me. You can baptize in socks. Yeah, that's right.

You don't have to get in the pool. That's right. Actually, you know what? I don't have to get in the pool either. We have one where I stand on the outside and I have to make sure I wear short sleeves, but I can.

Ah, so you don't even get in there. Okay, man. I don't know. I think John the Baptist was all the way in too, right? Wasn't he? That's right. That's how we know he was a good Baptist. He was, well, my friend, I am, uh, I want to say, you know, and I say this, not just because you are my friend.

I really appreciated the book. I really appreciated having the opportunity to pre-read it and to, to, to hear you saying a lot of the things that. I not only agree with, but many things that I've said, whether it's in the pulpit or whether it's in conversations with people.

And, you know, I did the show church soup where I point out a lot of the silliness that happens and I see you write this book and I'm like, this is exactly what I'm talking about. This is the crazy stuff.

This is the nonsense that has made its way into worship. It's made its way into the church, but what was the inspiration? What caused you to say, you know what, I want to sit down and write this, uh, write this book?

The Regulative Principle of Worship

Well, you know, worship is just so sacred and it's the center of what we do as Christians. And as a pastor, I spend a good amount of my time, not only preparing sermons, but also preparing worship services.

It's, uh, one of our greatest blessings and one of the, the most, um, amazing privileges that we have. And so of course there's part of me that really wants to safeguard what it is that we do in worship.

But honestly, um, there's been several times where I've just been downright provoked by experiences that I've had when I've gone to other, other worship services, even things in the past that I've observed, things that I see online.

And we're to this strange place in our culture right now where the ridiculous is only out done by the absolutely absurd. And I just thought it was the right time for me to introduce a concept or reintroduce a concept that in reform churches, we call the regulative principle of worship.

So if I could just define a couple of things here at the beginning, first, what do I mean by worship attainment? Well, worship attainment is, um, technically it's a word called a portmanteau, which is when you take two words and you jam them together and you create a new word, right?

So if I took a spoon and a fork and I smudged that together, I have a spork and worship attainment is the combination of the word worship and the word entertainment. But when you merge those things together, you really don't get either very good.

It's certainly not worshipful and the entertainment really falls short in a lot of regards too. So I consider worship attainment to be an ungodly amalgam of what we ought to be doing in worship mixed in with a heavy dose of worldliness, secularism, progressivism, and just downright Hollywood style entertainment.

So I don't think very fondly of worship attainment. And then the concept that I wanted to reintroduce to churches that I think might be helpful is the concept called the regulative principle in worship, which is very simple.

And basically it states that we should do in worship what God asks us to do after all commands us to do. I should say, after all, worship is about him. Worship is of and for the glory of the Lord. And he's the one who instructs us what it is that he wants, how it is that he wants us to worship him.

And so this book is a simple call for all kinds of churches, not just Presbyterian churches, not just even Reformed churches more broadly, including our Reformed Baptist friends, but pretty much every church out there, look at what you do and ask yourself, is this in fact what the Lord requires of us in worship?

Regulative Versus Normative Principles

Absolutely. And I want to, for just a moment, for you to talk about how you would understand the difference between the regulative principle, which tends to find its home mainly in the Reformed camp and what is sometimes referred to as the normative principle.

And I know that that is within some Lutheran camps and other things. And I know you know the difference, but just for the sake of the audience, can you describe those two things and how those might be different ways of producing a worship service?

Okay, so there might even be a third option too. So the regulative principle would be the most conservative way to regulate our worship services. And the regulative principle, we only do in worship what God expressly commands us to do by way of requirements or precept or example.

So in the regulative principle, our worship services would be largely taken up in things that are ubiquitous in scripture. Things like prayer, singing, preaching the word, the administration of the sacraments.

We think too of like blessings and doxologies and benedictions and all of those things we find plenty of precedent for in scripture. So the regulative principle would be the most conservative way to organize a worship service.

The normative principle, which is used in some other churches, like you mentioned the Lutherans or perhaps the Anglicans would be to say that anything is permissible as long as it's not precluded in scripture.

In other words, you can do fairly much what you want to do as long as the scripture says don't do that, then you're okay. And so to a lesser extent, I can agree with that principle, though I prefer the regulative principle.

But then the third way, the third category would be to have no regard at all. And this is where I think worshiptainment falls in as much as people are inventing things that honestly God is not pleased with, but really they're for our own pleasure, our own entertainment, possibly even to draw and attract pagans and secular people into worship.

So that category, I really would strongly caution against inventing forms of worship because they might be attractive to human beings rather than glorifying to God. Have you heard people who would be opposed to the regulative principle say things like, well, the Bible never commands us to have hymnals or the Bible never commands us to have air conditioning?

I know it sounds ridiculous, but these are some of the things that I have run into when discussing the regulative principle in conversation with other pastors and sometimes with people who are trying to say, well, I'm really not a regulative principle person, and here's why.

Elements and Circumstances in Worship

I'll sometimes point to these things, and I've heard different ways that people would respond, but I want to kind of hear your thought on that. If somebody were to say that to you, well, you're wearing a robe in the Bible.

I guess the Bible doesn't mention robes, but do you wear a robe when you preach? I do not, but I understand exactly what the question is, and here's how the Reformed have typically answered that question in the past.

So we would draw a distinction in the regulative principle between what we call elements of the worship service and then the circumstances of worship. So elements would be the things that we actually do in the worship service, such as we have a time of prayer.

We sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. We preach the word of God. We celebrate the Lord's supper. We do a benediction at the end of the service. Now, all of those would be the actual elements, and here's where we're a little bit particular.

We would say, yes, the elements themselves should be prescribed for us in the scriptures. Otherwise, we shouldn't do them, but then the circumstances are those other things that attend worship that, of course, are not particularly commanded in the scriptures, such as the time that we're going to meet.

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that you need to meet at 1030 versus 930 versus 11 o 'clock, whether the service should include five hymns or seven hymns or 12 hymns, how fast a person should move through a book of the Bible as they're preaching through books of the Bible, who should pray, whether it be the elders that pray or the pastor that prays, and then things like the meeting place itself.

Where are we going to gather? How long is the meeting going to last and such? So to that question, we would say, well, sure, there has to be some circumstances to worship. We got to pick a place and a time, but there's where the freedom comes in.

But as far as the elements themselves, we should be pretty careful to be doing what God expressly desires us to do. I know you may be able to just rattle these off off the top of your head, but I would be curious how close we would be on what elements are necessary as part of worship.

And I think this is an interesting thing. The audience may say, OK, well, I'm looking at my church service. I'm looking at what we do. What are the regulated elements of worship? What are the things that must be done or are necessary to be done because they are commanded by God?

So what would you say those things are? And I want to see if our list is basically the same. Sure. Well, first of all, let's just say this, that the New Testament does not give us an exact order of worship that we're supposed to have in our churches.

If it did, then that would make most of this conversation a moot point, because I would assume we would all just try to follow that pattern. So there's no particular passage in the scriptures where we can turn to and say, here is the New Testament order of worship that Christian churches ought to follow precisely.

So to some extent, we are inferring how we're going to go ahead and organize those elements in a worship service and what time we're going to devote to them. So, for instance, should the prayers be longer than the sermon or should it be the other way?

Well, there's some Christian freedom there. But in the book Worship Tainment, I do actually give a list of the elements of worship. And I do actually even give our full service that we have at Gospel Fellowship in the order in which we do things.

Although the order can, of course, be modified, because again, there's no particular liturgy that's prescribed. Yet nevertheless, our worship service kind of follows a general pattern. We have a call to worship, which is where the ordained minister calls the people to worship the Lord.

We have a time of confession of sin, which we think is very important, and every worship service should have some sort of confession of sin. We do have a time of singing, in fact, several times of singing, and we sing both traditional hymns as well as the Psalms, which we can talk a little bit more about in a bit, because that's kind of a nuanced item there.

We have an offering. We have the giving of a tithe and an offering. And then we have a preaching unit, which is usually one of the longer portions of our service, usually about 40 to 45 minutes. Some days we might have one of the two sacraments, either baptism or the Lord's Supper with more singing and then probably a benediction at the end.

So with that in mind, and a little bit of variation, perhaps depending on the Lord's day, that's pretty much the order of our service. I might have skipped one or two things there, but how about you guys?

How similar is that to what you do? Very, very similar. We have certain prayers that we do that are listed, as you said. We have prayers for confession. We have prayers for the prayer that precedes the preaching of the word, the prayer that follows the preaching of the word.

We have the prayer at the beginning of the service, a benediction at the end of the service. And so all of those things are certainly present, and certainly we also sing. Now, our church is, I think, probably different in that we do the Lord's Supper every week, which is young Baptists, but it is something that we practice.

And thankfully, I'm very glad that we are able to do that. Is that something that is common in PCA churches or not? It's some do and some don't. So for instance, there are a number of churches that would have the Lord's Supper every single Sunday, every single Lord's day.

Perhaps in the morning or perhaps in the evening service. There's some variation there. Our church actually celebrates the Lord's Supper once a month, and that actually goes back to a controversy that Calvin had with the Genevan Council in those days.

Calvin was actually arguing for the position of wanting to have the Lord's Service more regularly, but he was getting some pushback from the Genevan Council, and it ended up something of a compromise.

I think they ended up doing it quarterly or monthly, and that sort of set the tone for what a lot of Reformed churches still do today, which is to have the Lord's Supper just but once a month. But in the Scottish tradition, there are other churches that celebrate the Lord's Supper only once a year, and so sometimes they would even spend a long time in preparing for the Lord's Supper, and then they would treat it as more of a momentous occasion.

So you see quite a bit of variance in the Reformed tradition as to frequency of the Lord's Supper. Yeah, that's interesting. It would certainly be an event if you only did it once a year, and I've been challenged by people who say that doing it more frequently causes it to lose its importance.

I push back against that, and I say, well, things only lose their importance when we allow them to. Things such as kissing my wife, it only loses its value when I cease to recognize how valuable it is.

I do it every day, and it still should be valuable each time I have that opportunity, not to compare communion with kissing. No, I take your point. I think that's exactly right, and I don't buy that argument at all for the same reason that I still preach every single Sunday.

If somebody told me that I should preach less frequently to make it more special, again, I would reject that argument. Amen. That's a great point. When it comes to the subject of worship tainment, I don't want to overstep, but I do think that one of the biggest areas of conflict that I can see, and you talk about it a lot in the book, is the area of music.

It seems like this is an area where if there's any place in the service where entertainment has taken a real foothold, it is in the music portion of the service. We're going to talk a little bit later about sermons and how they've become somewhat entertainment.

I think the title of your—in fact, I have the title here—you call it a concert and a TED Talk, which is very indicative of what is happening in a lot of churches. But before we get to the preaching, let's talk a little bit about the music portion, because you tell a story in the book.

And again, I don't want to give the whole book away. I want people to go get the book. But you do tell a story of you standing in a worship service and hearing—you know what I'm talking about? The story I'm talking about where you said you were there and you were experiencing it and it seemed like a rock concert.

Maybe I'm misremembering. Yeah, you're right. And I think by this point, a lot of us, most of us have probably seen Christian worship, quote-unquote, that has taken on the entire ethos of essentially what a concert is.

One of my biggest gripes here is not necessarily the style, okay? So I actually acknowledge that there are preferences when it comes to style. What really bothers me is when a set of professional musicians usurps the congregation's role in what is supposed to be the singing of the glory and praise to God.

So we've somehow found ourselves in a position where many churches today have essentially, let's just be honest, a rock band that veritably entertains the congregation. The congregation may stand there.

They may sway. They may have their hands up. But when you look around, they're not always singing. In fact, there's a lot of times where they're not singing at all because it's that rock band that is leading the drive of the worship.

And the people are merely becoming passive recipients of the worship, and that's completely wrong. Any style that basically cuts the congregational singing out or makes it negligible, in my view, is liable to the charge of worship tainment.

The reason that we sing is that the congregation itself would sing out to the Lord. And so even in the volume of the cranking up of the speakers and the guitars and the amps and all these things, so as to overpower the congregation.

It's almost like the point is that you can't hear the congregation singing because all of the momentum, the drive, the power is taken up in the performance. And you see this even as cameras are often panning on the faces of the worship leaders and their faces are emblazoned on the jumbotron, the ubiquitous jumbotron, which every big megachurch has nowadays.

So my real gripe is that performance has usurped the role of the congregation. And we can certainly talk about the singing of Psalms, which I think are important. But again, my real problem is that the congregational singing, the congregational participation has become passive and muted rather than forefront and crucial.

Sure. And I 100 agree with you. I'll tell you something that our church did. I don't get your thoughts on this because this is somewhat, it was somewhat of a big deal. But when I became the pastor in 2006, our previous minister was a professionally gifted.

I don't know if that's the right way of saying that. He was a professional and gifted musician. And he was a concert pianist. And so he led the choir and he led the choir in much of a way that any choir that is a church choir would have.

I mean, they had books and music and parts and the choir did a great job under him. Well, I didn't have that skill set coming in. I couldn't take his place as choir director. I didn't play the piano. I barely play the guitar.

You know, I just didn't have that skill set. But I bring this up only to say one of the things that was done under him, there was a lot of special music where it was one person singing, or it was the choir singing to the congregation where the choir was sitting and passively listening rather than participating in the music.

One of the early things that I did was I sort of moved us away from that rather than having a solo on Sunday or rather than having the choir sing on Sunday. I tried to move us toward a more congregational style.

And people would say, why are we doing that? Why aren't we doing a special anymore? And I said, well, because I want us to all sing. And again, I'm not saying that having a special is wrong or having a person sing because I think there can be a devotional value in a person who has a gift of singing to sing to the congregation.

But I want to get your thoughts on that. Does your church have a choir that sings and do you guys do special music and how is that incorporated into worship? We typically do not do that. We do have a choir that sings occasionally.

And I would say at this point seasonally, but we have to be a little bit careful here because on one hand, would it be wrong to have one person praying out loud and to have everybody else praying along in their hearts?

Well, I think most people would say, yes, that's totally acceptable. And so you could reason that it's fine to have one person singing aloud while everybody else sings or praise in their heart. Okay. So I don't want to draw a hard and a fast line there.

And that's a good point. And that's why I clarify, I'm not condemning. I'm just saying that was our moving away from that. I'm certainly not saying that that's condemning that, but go ahead. Yeah, totally agree.

But largely, I would say that that can become the emphasis on the wrong syllable, if you know what I mean, that these sort of performative oriented things where everybody is thrilled and enthralled with the performer skill and technique.

I think that could become problematic writ large. So one example that I gave is I was at a worship service at a reformed congregation, a reformed church, and they had a seven minute saxophone solo of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, which I found myself sitting there wondering, what are we doing here?

The skill of the saxophonist was amazing. But what in the world does Somewhere Over the Rainbow have to do with the worship of the true and living God? Ostensibly, it was while the ushers could take the offering.

That was sort of the point. It was almost like filler. But again, I was wondering, are the people here awed by the skill of this musician, or are they awed by the goodness and the beauty and the glory of God?

And I had my doubts as to whether the latter could be true, given the way that it was presented. So I would take those up cautiously. I have a friend. He's a professional music teacher and a wonderfully gifted singer and musician.

And he is actually hired by some churches. And these are very progressive, very liberal churches. And he does this because it's his job. I don't want to get into his motivations or why he does this, but he does this.

They hire him to come in and sing for them on occasion, and they have had him come to sing literally Broadway show music, like from Oklahoma, or if you just think of Broadway show tunes, and it's for the purpose of entertaining.

And this isn't on a Friday night where they're doing something like an ode to Broadway or something. This is during worship on a Sunday morning. He tells me these stories, and I'm like, why are you doing this?

But that's a whole other story. But that would certainly fall under the category of worship tainment. Would it? Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. And just to throw out an alternative here, worship tainment is not the way that Christians have worshiped throughout the ages.

One of the things that I think Christians should recover is the beauty of acapella Psalm singing. Now, aside from my role as the pastor of Gospel Fellowship PCA, I'm also an adjunct professor at RPTS.

I know it's a lot of acronyms here. The Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, which traces its roots back to the Covenanter movement in Scotland, the Reformed Presbyterian movement of Scotland. These are your churches that exclusively sing the Psalms and always acapella without any instrumental accompaniment whatsoever.

If you've never worshiped with the Covenanters before, you really should try it just because you'll be blown away by the sweetness, the authenticity, and the sincerity of simply the voices of the people of God singing back to the Lord the inspired word of God in the Psalter.

It's an extraordinary way to worship. And I wish people could recover the beauty of that because there truly is something powerful. And this is something that God's people have done throughout the ages.

You don't need any technology. You don't need any skilled musicians. You're certainly not trying to entertain anybody because there's nobody up there doing the entertaining. It's the congregation singing itself.

And what more beautiful thing could be sung than the Psalms themselves? And if anybody read my book, Worshiptainment, and they got even one practical application out of the book, I would hope it would be that they might try singing the Psalms and their worship services with or without instrumentation.

My RP friends would say no, but just singing the Psalms would be a wonderful improvement on your worship services for sure. I want to get to the Psalm singing conversation because I have a few questions about that.

And before we get there, I'll say what you just said, I 100 agree with. I think the more we can sing the Psalms and the more we can incorporate them, that's a wonderful truth. I want to talk a little bit about exclusive psalmody in just a moment.

But before we do that, my question about the use of instruments, I have heard it argued that the regulative principle would demand the not using of instruments. And I have my issue with that. I preached on this when I was preaching through Colossians, when Paul talks about Psalm, Psalms, and spiritual songs.

I actually addressed this in a sermon. If anybody wants to hear it, they can go back and find it. But I want to hear your thoughts on that. Do you tend to agree with those who would say instruments violate the regulative principle, or do you see them more as a circumstance rather than an element, an allowable circumstance of worship?

Instruments, Psalms, and the Lord’s Day in Hard Places

Well, you can feel my tension here, Keith, because I teach for a seminary that is RP and they do not use instruments. And so I have to honor that. And yet at the same time, I'm the pastor of a church that does use instruments.

So my personal conviction on this matter is that instruments are permissible, but I understand the argument that the RPs and the Covenanters make on this. They would suggest that the instruments that are described in, ironically, the Psalms were actually for the use of the temple and the tabernacle time.

And that those instruments are actually typological of the praises that God's people will bring to the Lord either now or in heaven. And so since the instruments are not described as being used in the New Testament, the RPs or the Covenanters take a conservative position saying that we should cautiously not use instruments because it seems to have been a mode in the old covenant times specifically for temple or tabernacle worship.

So that's the position that they hold. And I disagree with that in as much as I think that the instruments are permissible for believers. But one thing I would say is that if you did worship without instruments, you might be surprised at how boldly your people do sing.

It is a really beautiful thing to hear acapella singing because it's hard to argue that there's any more beautiful sound than the natural human voice coming together to sing. So I do use instruments at Gospel Fellowship, and I honor and respect the position of the Covenanters on that matter, too.

Sure. And I think that's very fair. And I've had this conversation with many people, and I truly do appreciate where I differ. I appreciate the arguments that are being made. And I love my brothers. And even in our disagreements, I would never say, you know, they're all they're totally out to lunch or anything like that.

I see where they're coming from. I just don't I don't share the same conviction. But it is funny when you look at the history of the church, men who we really respect generally across the board, men like Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who held that position that instruments were not at no place in the church.

And I think he said something to the effect of, you know, I would just as soon use an organ to worship God as I would use some kind of machine to worship him, right? He compared using an instrument to a machine as a negative.

And again, I'm not agreeing or disagree. I'm just it's interesting people that we would hold up in the past on many other areas. But yet we may disagree on that. But he was very convicted about that. And he led his congregation in singing.

Here's a practical consideration, Keith. Let's suppose that a hurricane comes through a pretty realistic scenario for you down there in Florida, right? Suppose you did not have power for a particular Sunday.