Christian Responsibility: Andrew Rappaport, Aaron Brewster, Dan Kreft, Jay Miller, Dominick Grimaldi

Exploring theology, doctrine, and all of the fascinating subjects in between, broadcasting from an undisclosed location, Dead Men Walking starts now. Oh well, hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking podcast.

I'm your host Greg Moore. Thanks for coming along for the ride. You can find us at dmwpodcast .com. You can check out our snarky merch, help support the show there. We have the Why Don't You Just Shut Up and Let That Be Your Wisdom, Job's 13 -5.

Sometimes you got to just quote scripture to the pagans, you know. The Wynham Dynam Romans 9, that's a fun shirt as well. We've got, what do we got? We got theology, Presbyterian Thug over there with Doug Wills.

I mean we got a bunch of stuff. Just go check it out, help support the show. But at the top, we have to talk about our sponsors because these guys are brothers in the Lord. They're building things and we want to support them.

They help us get down to conferences and travel and bring you all the content that you guys love. Up top is Striving for Eternity. Look, we've said on this podcast for a long time we need less pastors and more disciples.

Now that may be a little tongue-in-cheek, but it holds true to how important discipleship is. Striving for Eternity is the discipleship ministry that will come to your church. They specialize in visiting churches all across the globe.

They offer weekend seminars that cover topics like evangelism, apologetics, sensationalism, and much, much more. They're also very purposeful about helping churches of all sizes take advantage of these seminars.

So no matter what size your church is, Striving for Eternity is a great choice for your congregation. Striving for Eternity also offers a free online academy, properly called the Striving for Eternity Academy.

This academy has courses that will teach you how to properly interpret the Bible, teach you about the world religions, help you walk through systematic theologies, as well on courses on discipleship. And you can always support the ministry by purchasing the syllabus online.

Striving for Eternity Ministries also supports believers through quality content like Andrew Rappaport's Rappaport podcast and Apologetics Live, a live stream on multiple social media platforms. Striving for Eternity also supports and disciples podcasters through the Christian podcast community.

So if you're a church leader, pastor, elder, podcaster, or just someone who wants to know God rightly, go to www .strivingforeternity .org or simply click the link in this episode. We love Andrew Rappaport in Striving for Eternity, and you're going to hear his voice a little bit later because he's on the podcast tonight.

But love that brother. Also Jacob Supply, he's here in Temperance, Michigan. It's that time of year, projects in full swing, and you know what that means. You got to take the trip up to Jacob Supply. We have guys coming from 12, 14, 16 hours away, although they do ship nationally as well, too.

What he does is he buys out wholesale. He's got building supplies, decking, name brand appliances, all 30, 40, 50 off. Don't go to Lowe's. Don't go to Menards. Don't go to Home Depot. Go to Jacob Supply.

He's a Reformed brother in the Lord. I go to church with him, too. He's a really nice guy. I just saw him last night. And he's got all kinds of stuff right now on sale this summer. Go to your projects there.

I built a chicken coop with some of his metal roofing and 2x4s out back. So JacobSupply .com or call him at 734 -224 -0978. Love that brother. Make sure you support him. Cool. Now that we got the business out of the way, we've got a fun one.

I love when we jam-pack the podcast. And we've got six, five other participants, six total right now, and maybe one more. And I might mess up some names. I might not. I don't know. You guys make sure you correct me if I do.

We have Pastor Jay Miller. We have Andrew Rappaport. Pastor Dominic. Uh-oh. This one, I'm up. Garmaldi. Did I get that, Dominic? There we go. Apologist Dan Kreft. I snuck the apologist in there. And Aaron Brewster.

Guys, how are you all doing? Great. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Yeah, it's always great when you ask everyone how they're doing and you got six people all that have to answer at the same time. But what I want to do is I want to go around the horn because we're talking about this conference that's coming up.

But I'm gonna throw it to Andrew Rappaport first since he gathered this motley crew of apologists and pastors and said, let's do this podcast. So Andrew, you've been on the podcast before. Everyone else, this is their first time.

So I'm super excited. Andrew, tell us a little bit about yourself and give us a little overview of the conference. Not too much because then I want to go around and get everyone's introduction so the listeners can know who they are.

Yeah, my name is.

Andrew Rappaport, striving for eternity ministries, as you kind of mentioned in your intro there. And so I know that, you know, I'm really curious what you call your chickens. I mean, I know Ray Comfort has names for his chickens like dinner and lunch whenever they act up.

I don't know if you have the similar type names.

For yours. Fried, baked, broiled, extra crispy. Yeah, there you go. So the.

Conference that Pastor Jay, who I'm sure he's gonna talk soon, is the Christian responsibility in an unchristian world. And Greg, I know this doesn't shock you that we live in an unchristian world. What?

And it is hard for us to live that way, to act as Christians in the world and to understand what our responsibility is to the world. And so Pastor Jay put together a lot of great topics with a lot of great guys.

And I'm gonna say up front, for some of the listeners, you're gonna hear some names and go, I've never heard of any of these names. And that's probably a good thing. We need to get out of only going to conferences where there's celebrity pastors, celebrity preachers.

You know, we want to go to conferences where we have people that are really preaching well. And every one of the preachers here do a great job. I'm just gonna pause for a second. I don't know if someone's mute.

If someone's mute. Are you hearing a lot.

Of echo? I'm hearing background noise. There we go. It's gone. It was probably Dominic. It's always Dominic. All right. All right. So we have this conference. Let's throw it over to Pastor Jay Miller, who put this conference together.

Tell us a little bit about it, Pastor Jay. And about yourself.

My name's Jay Miller. I'm a pastor at Vail Valley Baptist Church here in Vail, Arizona, a little suburb south and east of Tucson. This conference is really born from a single sermon. Our Sanctity of Life sermon this year started in Ezekiel.

Ezekiel 3. We have a bill currently on our ballot for November called the Arizona Abortion Access Act, which will allow abortion up to nine months of age for any reason with the light, with the approval of anyone with a license.

Optometrist, dentist, massage therapist, you name it. And for any reason listed in a DSM -5 or any medical textbook. So if you go to your dentist and he diagnoses you with gingivitis, you can abort a viable fetus without any possible regulations against it.

And I started thinking about this and how quiet the churches in Tucson are. We work with a crisis pregnancy center here called Hands of Hope, and there are three churches that will let them in the door.

Nobody's willing to speak up. And it occurred to me of what God had told Ezekiel in chapter 3, that if he did not warn the people, they would die for their iniquity, but their blood would be on his hands.

I started talking with Andrew and it was like, this is the message we need to get out. There is a moral obligation and a moral culpability to the Christians in the pews who keep their mouths shut and say nothing while travesty and horror goes on in God's world.

So that's kind of where it was born out of. We're gonna get back to that, but let's go around the horn so we can get everyone else introduced as well. Pastor Dominic, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Yeah, again, thanks for.

Having me, Pastor Dominic Romaldi. I pastor a church here in Desert Sky Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona, originally from New York City. Did many years in prison. God saved me in prison. So other than that, just a normal, regular Christian that God saved by grace and hoping that this conference can bring clarity to what we're doing here today and just bringing the fruit of the gospel and showing that there is a lot of capitulation today.

So hopefully we.

Can iron that out through this conference. Amen. Apologies, Dan Kreft, can.

You give us a couple minutes there? Sure. Everybody's laughing. Yes, because of what.

Happened before we started recording, you're always going to be. Apologies.

Dan Kreft to me now. So Apologies, go ahead. I'm trying to shed the title, but I have nothing better, because that's what my website says, so I have to roll with it until I come up with something better.

Anyway, I'm Dan Kreft. I'm a seven-foot tall, former basketball player. I played in the Big Ten. I played overseas. I went to five NBA rookie camps and got real close with the Houston Rockets. Did that for about three years and then started a career in website development or software engineering.

Worked at Amazon for nine to seventeen years, or sixteen years. And then somewhere in the middle of all that, God got me interested in apologetics, and so I started just reading everything I could find.

And then around, what was it, around 2003-ish or so, God called me to teach sixth graders at our church, and I did that for about seventeen years. And then moved on to a different church and started teaching seventh through ninth graders.

And I've also been teaching, I love teaching mixed-age groups. Anything from, you know, from little kids to old people. It's a lot of fun, so.

Okay, so a teacher at heart. I love it. Yeah. Aaron Brewster, how are you, sir? Good to see you again. I'm doing really well. Nice to see you as well. And welcome to the podcast for the first time. I know we've hung out a few times, but yeah, give us a few minutes.

Tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so I am kind of a doing two different things. I have the privilege of being the editor, or one of the editors, for Striving for Eternity, their blog, and I'm also one of their speakers.

So I got connected with this opportunity via Andrew, who was great enough to suggest to Jay that they bring me down. I'm from North Carolina, so it's gonna be a little bit of a jaunt heading over to Arizona, but I'm really excited about it, because this will be the first time I've ever been in Arizona.

So I'm thinking heading over there to Jay's church will probably be the highlight. Why go anywhere else? But I'm also the president of Evermind Ministries. I'm a biblical counselor, and I do a lot with parenting.

Parenting is a massive part of our ministry called Truth, Love, Family and the Truth, Love, Parent podcast. So I've been doing that now for a long time. I've been a biblical counselor probably back 2006.

That's really when I started that. I've been an educator on the Christian school system. I'm a homeschooling parent. I love all things family, and I love all things God's Word, especially as we're taking His Word, and we're helping the family and the church know how to worship God better.

Awesome. Well, welcome guys to the Dead Man Walking podcast. So happy to have you. What I wanted to do, and maybe this would be okay with you guys, is maybe kind of go around, and we'll start back with Andrew and talk a little bit without giving too much away, because we want people to show up to the conference.

Make sure you go buy those tickets. There's going to be a link at the bottom of this episode where you can go right there and get them. But maybe give us a little snippet idea of what you're going to be talking about and covering, why you think that was needed.

And if either one of you guys, anyone wants to jump in while the other one's talking, but we'll try to make it around to all five of you to round out the episode to kind of give listeners an idea of a taste of what they're going to get at this conference.

Andrew, what are you talking about? Yeah,.

And I will say this for a link. One link that we created it to make it easier is if you go to strivingfortory .org slash VAIL, V-A-I-L. Okay. And Dominic, do you need to mute again? I ain't even moving.

It doesn't require any movement. Your microphone is picking, trying to pick up sound around you. It's only when Andrew's talking. That's suspicious. I think he's doing it on purpose. Sorry for extra editing for you.

Listen, I got 20 years for not telling, so I'll take the weight. You got to keep that line in there. I'm taking it out. So, so yeah, so we're, if you're going to talk about Christian responsibility in an unchristian world, I think the number one thing you, we have to end up discussing is the fact that we live in a culture of, in America, of social justice.

Social justice is something that is, is probably the number one issue we're dealing with, and that'll be my first topic, is a warning on social justice. So the plan is to cover what social justice is.

A lot of people don't understand, Greg, still how dangerous social justice is to the gospel. I was just with someone that is part of the Southern Baptists. They're, they're planting, church planting board, and North America, I forget the full name of North American planters, church planting.

North American mission board. Mission board, there you go. And he totally doesn't understand the issues with social justice. Yeah. He doesn't see that there's any concern with that and the gospel, and I'm trying to explain to him these are, they're antithetical to one another.

They're mutually exclusive. The, the, the message of the social justice gospel condemns the Christian biblical message. And so we're gonna, we're gonna cover things like that. That's one talk that I'll have on Friday.

The talk that I have on Saturday is really, if we're gonna talk about Christian responsibility, we need to talk about the reality that we're gonna be under persecution. This is something I've been saying for going 20, 30 years now, that Christians will be, there will be another Holocaust.

It'll be here in America, and I've said for a long time, it won't be the Jewish people. It will be with Christians. And so I think that we really need to, to focus on the fact of how do we prepare and get ready for persecution.

I think the book of First Peter gives us some, some great steps to look at. And so the, another, the second topic I was assigned was to look at how do we get ready for, for persecution. So those are.

My topics. Wow, it's interesting. Pastor Jay, what do you got coming up for your topic? Oh, I think he muted himself. I was trying to silence the noise. I'm.

Actually kicking off the conference, kind of setting the tone, and looking at the moral culpability of Christians who don't follow the teachings of Christ are, we are obligated not only to preach the good news of the gospel, but also to the whole counsel of God.

That means that we warn people about the eternality of life after death. You are an eternal creature, whether you like it or not, either to the eternity at the foot of the throne, where we spend all eternity with Christ, or an eternity in hellfire and damnation.

Christians don't want to make people uncomfortable. We've somewhere along the lines got this idea that nice and kind are the exact same thing, and they're often opposites of one another. We're so willing to be nice, we're willing to be cruel by not speaking up.

That's a lot of what we're, I'm going to be looking at. Yeah. Isn't the 11th, isn't the 11th.

Commandment, thou shalt be nice? Well, you would think so in Western.

Christianity, yeah. Yeah, the Amplified Bible adds something about the tone of your voice or something, I can't remember. The Amplified, yeah. Well, you know the problem is, we are immersed in the Western Christian church with materialism, and we love our things.

It's made our life very comfortable. We love our boats and our cars, and going to the lake, and our deck, and grilling out, and our smoker, and all those things. And what happens when you become comfortable with materialism, is then you have to then stop preaching the gospel and change the gospel to, well, if I'm just nice to people, then I'm fulfilling the Great Commission, and I can still keep all my things.

And that's what I see in the Western Christian churches. Materialism has really made us into a feckless kind of, you know, sissy kind of Christianity of, well, let's not offend, let's be nice, because we don't want to be persecuted or underprivileged like we are now as Christians.

I would say we had a place of privilege maybe 50 or 60 years ago, and that's coming, you know, slowly, lower and lower, until we will come to a place of persecution like in Yemen, or China, or anywhere else where Christians are persecuted around the world physically.

But that's kind of how I've seen, I got to hold on to my stuff. My stuff is my God, and I can't lose that in the Western church. And so I think your topic, Pastor Jay, is going to be very, very interesting.

I'm looking forward to it. I know we are seeing a church in America that is withering on the vine, because it's cut itself off from its power source. If the Christians in America actually acted like Christians, America would not look like America.

We would be a totally different political, social, moral, material realm than we are today.

Yeah. You know, it's so interesting, Pastor Jay, because, you know, look, there are so many Christians, and maybe even some listening to this podcast, who would just love to see a more Christian-like nation, a nation that is more moral, and more based on biblical beliefs.

And yet, they won't attend a conference like this because, well, they may feel uncomfortable, or they might, you know, they want to put their weight in a guy like Donald Trump, like he's going to save them and save America, instead of looking to the one that actually has the power and authority to do that, and his word that we should be getting our information from.

Yeah, no, that's good. Dan, it looked like you wanted to say something there when Jay was talking. Can you give us what you're going to be talking about, or comment on what Jay said, if you wanted to?

Yeah, I don't remember what I was going to say to Jay's comments, probably something snarky, but the time has passed.

So tell us what you're going to be talking about, Dan.

Oh, well, I'm going to be, I think the biggest one is probably going to be the talk on abortion that I'm still putting together. Yeah, is right, this, I made the mistake of saying, hey, look, you're only going to, you're flying me down from Washington, and you're only going to have me speak once, like, well, don't you want to get your money's worth out of me?

He says, okay, how about doing a talk on abortion? I'm like, ah. So it's totally out of my wheelhouse. And honestly, it's been a gut-wrenching experience trying to, you know, wade through all the information and just being reminded, you know, what abortion really is, and the horrors of it all.

So yeah, it's not been fun. Every time I get done working on the presentation, I just kind of walk around like a zombie for a while around the house. My wife's like, you've been working on your presentation again, haven't you?

And I go, uh-huh. But the really interesting thing is that when I was asked to do this presentation, or before, you know, I was asked to do this presentation, and then several weeks later, my firstborn son applied for and was accepted as an intern with Tiny Heartbeat Ministries.

Okay. And so that's interesting, God's timing there. So I've been able to tap my son's, you know, ever-increasing knowledge base that he's been getting through his internship, and I actually spent an hour and a half on the phone with Tiny Heartbeat Ministries' president, and getting some tips and pointers from him.

So yeah, I'm looking forward to getting this one over, because it's not going to be a fun one to give. But I'm really hoping that it will wake people up, and get people motivated to actually do something, instead of just saying, you know, c 'est la vie, right?

My son just did a little gathering at our house just the other day, while he was making a short visit from college. And he had all of his, you know, a lot of his supporters, you know, came to our house, and we were sitting here, and he gave a presentation.

And he turned one guy, one guy said, you've just turned me from, I've always been kind of so-so, you know, whatever, middle-of-the-road on abortion. He says, you've just turned me into a single-issue voter.

So praise God, I hope to, you know, hope that God uses me to have much the same effect down in Arizona. So that's the first presentation, and the second one is one of my own, that I developed a few months ago.

It's called Apologetics Is Not What You Think. Because I, you know, like I said in the intro, I got involved in politics, in apologetics, rather, back in like 2003. And every single person I ever read or heard speaking at the many conferences that I went to, always had the same general, same general approach to apologetics.

You prove that God exists, and then prove the truth of His Word. And then I know, I just kind of bit into that, and just followed it, because that's what all the, you know, the giants who's on whose shoulders I was trying to stand were doing before me.

But I never stopped to ask, you know, is that, is that the biblical way to do it? And so when the Corona-pocalypse befell us, and my entire speaking schedule fell apart, and God put me on a wait program, W-A-I-T.

And I discovered a guy by the name of Saiten Brugenkait, with whom I had a long conversation. You know, I went back and forth for about three hours in private messages on Twitter. And then the next day, the next day we did a couple more hours, and then had a Zoom call.

And he really challenged me with the way that I was thinking about apologetics, and caused me to see that there's a better way to do apologetics. And so without giving away too much, yeah, it's apologetics, I think by and large, is done in an unbiblical way.

It is possible to get good results, and dishonor God in the process. And I go through that in my presentation. And my hope there is to get people to realize that, you know, just because you have a bunch of guys who, you know, with more degrees than Fahrenheit, and you know, they sound impressive, and they speak everywhere you go on YouTube, their videos are popping up.

Just because they're popular doesn't mean they're necessarily doing it God's way. And so I hope to demonstrate that, and to help people understand that, you know, you don't need a degree in apologetics.

You don't need a seminary degree. People need it, don't, you know, Peter, James, and John were untrained, you know, untrained fishermen. And God used them to turn the world upside down. So I hope to disabuse people of the notion that they need to have specialized degrees, or apologetics is for those other guys, you know, for the apologists.

Yeah, it's one of the reasons I hate the title apologist, is because it makes a distinction between one ordinary Joe and another ordinary Joe, just by slapping a fancy title on him. And you think, oh, I'm gonna abrogate all my responsibility to this guy over here, because he's the professional.

It's not the biblical.

Approach to it. I mean, that's what I do. Someone asked me a question, I just send him to Andrew. I said, he's got a podcast called Apologetics Live, why not, right? No, on your abortion talk, too, where you said it might be uncomfortable, though, I've noticed sometimes the uncomfortable talks are the ones we actually need as the body of Christ.

We need to feel a little uncomfortable in those chairs.

And pews sometimes. Yeah, the reason I accepted it was because the last time I was asked to step out of my wheelhouse, way out of my comfort zone, it was for a homeschooling conference. They wanted me to do the father-son breakfast, and the guy gave me a title.

He says, I want you to do a topic called, or a talk called, Winning at Fatherhood. And I just kind of looked at it, I'm like, I'm not James Dobson. You got the wrong guy. I still got four kids at home.

I'm not sure most days if I'm winning at fatherhood, or if I'm losing at fatherhood. He's like, ah, you'll be fine. Go for it. And it wound up being a huge blessing for me after much stressing out, and weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth.

It was a tremendous experience, and I learned a lot from that presentation. So there you go. I'm hoping I get the same one at this one.

So Pastor Dominic, what are you talking about at this conference? Give us a little preview, a little sneak peek, so we can get excited about it. You see, I.

Knew how to mute my mic. See that? I just figured it out, Andrew. I'm getting smart with this stuff. Yeah, you know, for me, Satan sometimes likes to supplement the good for the best, and I want to look at some, I'm going to look at Hosea, probably some spiritual adultery, and see how sometimes there's things in people's lives that we can put before the Lord.

Sometimes our children, our spouses, and things like that. So I want to look at spiritual adultery, but not in the fact that you may be, you know, worshipping an idol, but just the little things in life that sometimes come before our Christianity.

I think that's challenging when you, people may put their marriage before the Lord, or children, or grandchildren, and things of that nature. I'm going to start in Hosea, and I think I might end with the parable in the Wheats and the Tares, because in that parable, there's a distinction between the wheat and the darnel, what looks just like wheat, and they grow together, and you can't tell the difference until the end.

So it's a cultural thing that we kind of don't get here, you know, in our society. But, you know, in fact, they say, you know, should we cut it down? No, let them grow together, and then at the end, there'll be a separation.

So I think we want to be careful as Christians in what we worship. Sometimes we think that these things are good, but sometimes we put them before the Lord. So I want to look at spiritual adultery, and how that plays out, and, you know, you might not have a little Buddha in your bedroom, but, you know, that little three-year-old might be your God, you know.

So I know that's tough stuff, but that's just the way we're wired in America.

Anyway, but that's about it. Yeah, no, that's really interesting. I like what you said up top, where you said, did you say, supplanting best for good, right? Yeah, I.

Think the enemy supplants the good for the best. The best meaning Christ, and the good.

Meaning all those little, you know. No, absolutely, because we've talked about that a lot on this podcast, where the Christian Church, we've really, instead of desiring discernment, we desire knowledge, and we think that is discernment, right?

We go, well, we know a lot of facts, we know a lot of things, but like Spurgeons famously said, too, discernment isn't knowing right from wrong, it's knowing right from almost right, and I think Satan is really good at getting in that wedge of right and almost right, and then also best and good, right?

Let's not forget it was the tree of good and evil, right? There's a lot of good things that aren't godly, but go ahead. You know, Calvin said our minds are.

Idol-maker, the factories of idol-makers, you know? I mean, so, you know, we.

Are professional idol-makers. Yeah. Me first, Andrew second. Right, yeah, I mean, that's the depraved man, right? Aaron Brewster, my man, my friend. Yes, sir. What are we talking about at the conference?

Well, I was actually looking at the agenda, and I think it's great, just in God's providence, that Dominic's message is gonna be following mine, my first one, because originally we were calling it true worship, but I think, Andrew, I'm gonna, I'm not sure if all the flowers have been printed or whatever else by now, it's too late, but I want to call it your responsibility in your worship, and obviously the topic here has to do with true worship and what Dominic is gonna talk about.

I think he's gonna really be able to just take the springboard from where I go and dig into that even deeper, because we're gonna look at this idea of what is worship. We're going to understand the fact that worship is not just the song service that comes right before the preaching.

Worship is not just praying. Worship is not just reading the Bible. All of those things are part of worship, but there are so many more things. When we see worship the way that God sees worship, the way he communicates it in the Bible, it really is gonna hopefully just kind of grab us by the neck and demand that we sit down and really look at our worship from a new lens.

So that's the first message. It's gonna be your responsibility in your worship, but the second message is one that for me, I mean both of these truths have just wrecked me over the coals so many times, but the second one really, I think, it's easy for me to use terms like revolutionize my life.

We talk that way, you know, just revolutionize my life, but this did send me on a completely different trajectory in how I looked at my responsibility to God, my responsibility to my friends in this life, because the second message is your responsibility in our worship.

And in America, you know, we talked about that materialistic bent that we have that kind of makes us just want to be nice, and I was thinking about how during the during the lockdowns, even people who didn't believe that they needed to get vaccinated and didn't believe you needed to wear a mask and didn't believe you needed to stand six feet apart, those people were willing to do some of those things simply because they wanted to avoid the difficulties that would come if they didn't, right?

And so it's easy for us to be islands unto ourselves, and over here in our little neck of the woods and say, well, I'm doing it the right way for me. If everyone else is just going to make the decisions they're going to make, and that's on them, we say, right?

They're going to go to hell in a handbasket, that's on them. But the scriptures don't allow that. They absolutely don't allow that. You have a responsibility in my worship. I have a responsibility in your worship.

And if we are not understanding what that is, and we're not taking it seriously, we're failing. And I'm going to kind of jump off of just an Old Testament illustration, and then dig into the New Testament commands for the church today.

But there's, you know, when you look at the Old Testament kings of Israel and Judah, they were all judged by how they interacted with these things called high places. And I'll just tell you, the ones who worshiped God, God was pleased with them.

But he still judged them about how they interacted with the people's worship, whether or not they stepped into the nation's worship and stood up and said, no, I'm not going to allow this. You're not going to do this.

You're going to worship God like I'm worshiping God. So that's kind of the bend, I should say, the trajectory of my two messages. Your responsibility in your worship and your responsibility in our worship.

Wow, I think that's going to be very interesting, because I think, you know, there's a lot of Christianese out there. And especially if you grow up in the church, you just say little phrases, and then they get locked in your head, and you don't grasp the meaning of them.

And one of them for me was, oh, you worship in spirit and truth, and spirit and truth, right? We've all heard that. And then when you really start thinking about it, and you go, well, what is in spirit?

And what is truth? And spirit would, I would say the first thing I think of is the fruits of the spirit. And then truth is God, the character of God is truth. And you start to really think about those words, you go, oh, there's a lot of, I don't want to say requirements, but there's a lot of prerequisites to how we worship, what is right worship, what is true worship.

And I think it sounds like you're going to be exploring some of those things in that talk, which I think is much needed for the for the Christian church in the United States. Yeah, it's just too easy for us to compartmentalize our lives.

And we've known this, every person listening to your podcast knows that we have a tendency to compartmentalize. But how many of us are actively fighting that compartmentalization? You know, we know that when we're in church, we're there, and we're singing to God's honor and glory, and we're praying, and we're listening to the message, and maybe we're even taking notes, and we're talking about it with our kids on the way home.

But then something magical, mystical happens on Monday, and it stops. And we're not thinking about God with the same intentionality. We're not talking about Him with the same gusto until maybe, you know, Wednesday night, if we have that midweek service or something like that, until the following Sunday, because we have compartmentalized it, and we didn't realize it.

And we're not worshiping Him in spirit and truth at work and at home, the way we do on Sunday. Yeah, that's good. Okay, guys, as we kind of put bookends on this too, maybe, Pastor Jay, you could answer this, or Andrew, if you want to jump in.

Who's our target audience for this conference? Is it just anyone, any believer, non-believer, or is it someone you're specifically looking for? Who would benefit the most?

I think, in different ways, both the believer and the non-believer. To the believer, it's a wake up call. Christians should be, as one of my elders has said, men with dirty hands and sore backs. It's time to get to work.

You aren't saved for salvation's sake, you're saved for purpose. Everybody loves Ephesians 2, 8, 9, but then they get to 2, 10, and they go, wait a minute, you mean I'm saved for good works prepared before time began?