Dead Men Walking Podcast with Josh Lofthus of the Reformatory Podcast: Why the local church matters

Dead Men Walking

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00:11

There it is, doctor, doctor.

00:18

Give me the news. Oh, we're not going right into the newsy news. I don't know why

00:23

I just said that. I don't know. It kind of feels like that though. When I heard the radio,

00:28

I was going to, yeah. Jason, how are you doing? Awesome. I am full of turkey and smashed potatoes already, dude.

00:36

We had, um, a weekend of Thanksgiving at my in -laws and we had some family in town,

00:44

Florida and decided to do the Thanksgiving thing this weekend. Nice. So yeah, man,

00:50

I'm getting, you know, the, the normal American way, you know, three, four different Thanksgivings.

00:56

Why not? 500 grams of carbs. Exactly, man. I'm floating on, uh, you know, stuffing and everything else right now.

01:05

I was hoping to come back with a little more food, but I didn't. I was up North hunting and up there for six days and just got skunked.

01:13

There was, we missed the rut by a couple of days. So that means all the, the, the, the deer that have just made it with the does the bucks they're laying down and, you know, lovey dovey with them and, you know, protecting them and they don't come out for anything.

01:26

And usually between the three neighbors, between the 120 acres that we have, we get 10 to 12 deer, one yearling between, but I was up there with my brother and my dad.

01:36

So it was a good family. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. You know, talk, talk in a theology and crypto and new world order.

01:43

And that would have been fun to be listening to. Yeah, exactly. You guys get into it, man. But it was, it was good, but it's cold.

01:54

It's Thanksgiving coming up. That's right, man. So it's good. Cool. Well, let's get into it tonight because we've got a special guest with us tonight.

02:02

He is one half of the reformatory podcast, which deals with the local church.

02:09

What is the local church? How, how do we grow it? How do we biblically live out the local church?

02:14

And he's going to be talking about the local church, Mr. Josh Loftus. How are you, sir?

02:21

I am doing well, gentlemen. How are you? It's awesome to be here. I'm glad we finally made it happen.

02:28

That's right. After much back and forth, we got it. That's right.

02:33

And we're happy to have you on support another brother in the Lord. We love bringing people on to have a passion for certain subjects.

02:39

And you definitely do. And we wanted to have you on to talk about that. But before we get into what you're all about, what your podcast is all about, we want to do a little newsy news.

02:49

Are you ready, Jay? Let's do it. News, the news, the news, the news, the news, the news, the news, the news, the news, the news, the news.

03:00

Oh, yeah, we do got some news. What do we got, Jason?

03:06

So I don't know if anyone knew this or not, but there was a case going on in Kenosha, Wisconsin, over the past few weeks.

03:16

And we have decided to go ahead and add it into the newsy news because it was an extremely important case and popular to extremely well -fought victory for the defense.

03:30

So you're talking about Kyle Rittenhouse. Kyle Rittenhouse. Yes. And I think we just we really wanted to just go back and forth about exactly what was not said on media and on social media, what not was not allowed to be said.

03:51

And I just I just have quite a few points about it. Sure. And if I could just read a few of those for you guys, just about what actually was going on during that.

04:03

Yeah, let's clear it up because there was a lot of misconception in the media. There's talks of some of the media outlets being sued because of the libel and slander.

04:12

Yeah. So what do we got? So just a few points. I didn't know that Kyle put out a dumpster fire that was being rolled down to a gas station to blow up with people all around.

04:23

Yeah. The police were told to stand down as businesses were destroyed. Interesting.

04:29

Kyle's dad, grandma and friends all lived in Kenosha 20 minutes from where he resided with his mom part time in Illinois, which

04:38

I think the narrative was he had no business being there. He didn't have any relatives. Why was he there? Why was he there to help his community that Joseph Rosenbaum knocked him down twice, then attempted to kick him with lethal lethal force to the head that Huber had hit him in the head two times with a skateboard.

04:57

Yeah. I mean, there's so many things that were being talked about while he was on the witness and misrepresented to misrepresented calling being called a mass murder, a white supremacist.

05:11

And this might be the show that gets us kicked off for good on social media. It's a shadow man.

05:17

But you know, I'm on the last one. Look at that. Back in my day,

05:25

I was I was on the last show of dead man. It was amazing. Yeah, that's right.

05:34

But yeah, man, this is this is something that was in the media that was being, you know, he was being ruined.

05:41

I mean, the things that even the president of the United States was saying. But actually, let's remember that Trump was the first one to actually not just get a verdict.

05:52

Believe it or not. Yeah. Yeah. The king of jumping to judging was like, hold on. Let's see what the facts are.

05:59

Right. But yeah, man, I don't know if you want to add anything to that, Greg. No, it's just it's just insane.

06:05

I mean, first of all, we don't believe this country, this culture doesn't believe in innocent until proven guilty.

06:11

We're we judge by the court of the media. We saw that in this case. Obviously, you don't want to see lives taken.

06:18

Yeah. But I'm a strong believer in the right to self -defense. Biblically, I see where Christ sent out his disciples with self -defense weapons.

06:26

We see in Proverbs where it talks about that. We see in Ecclesiastes where it touches on that.

06:32

So there's a biblical defense of being able to defend yourself against someone. Obviously, you'd like to always, always solve things peacefully.

06:40

And I'll tell you what, Kyle had a lot of maturity for a 17 year old because there was multiple times where people were calling him names.

06:47

There was some African -Americans calling him some racial names. And, you know, he had a gun in his hand and he kept walking, trying to help people.

06:55

You know, the thing that really hurt the prosecution, too, was them bringing in video evidence and just walking up and down going, hey, medic, does anyone need help?

07:01

I'm here to help. And being very peaceable. I'm glad the verdict did come out this way because it was something for self -defense and legally owning and using a firearm.

07:13

If it would have went the other way, I think it would have set a very, very bad precedent. And it's just so sad that I talk to so many people, especially in politics, that just watch headlines of mainstream media and then gather their information from that and then make an opinion or a theory off of that.

07:33

Yeah, well, that's the social media generation that we have.

07:39

I mean, I truly believe. I mean, you know, here's something else just to bring up during this time as well.

07:47

But not only were they calling Kyle Rittenhouse a white supremacist, which is not true.

07:53

The only white supremacist that kills white people, by the way. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, right. And then alongside of that.

07:59

It's the only time Black Lives Matter burned something down because a white guy got shot. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But yeah,

08:06

I mean, the media was saying what would happen if it was on the other side? Well, there was something that happened on the other side.

08:13

Andrew Coffey, the fourth, found not guilty of murder, attempted murder in Indian River County SWAT raid.

08:23

Now, this is a really interesting story. The SWAT team, this is an African -American man, but he was in his father's drug house.

08:34

The SWAT team was raiding the house. This kid, this guy, shoots an officer, shoots his girlfriend, and his dad ends up taking the fall for this whole situation.

08:49

But this kid ends up getting being, you know, freed, found not guilty by, you know, protecting his home.

09:01

Even though it was a drug house. Just to be clear, it was a drug house, but not guilty of murder.

09:14

I would just say my stance is I don't care who you are, what color you are. If you're doing it legally,

09:19

I don't care what your nation of origin is or anything like that. If you're using legal self -defense, then I will support you.

09:25

Right. Josh, what do you think about this? You everyone else? Yeah, right.

09:32

Might as well, right? So, I'll say a couple things. First, through this entire trial, my criminology degree was just going nuts because the type of arguments that were being made, primarily against Rittenhouse by the prosecution, was just completely and totally bonkers to me.

09:55

And I put something out, like one of the main ones that stuck out to me.

10:01

Now, some background on me. I'm an old farm kid. I grew up on a ranch out in eastern

10:06

Washington, horse ranch, like for, you know, until just 2016 or so. So, I grew up -

10:12

Domestic terrorist. Yeah, yeah. That's what you're saying. Yeah. Well, white supremacist domestic terrorist. Make sure to get it right.

10:21

Say my name. Okay. But what was really interesting to me, one of the arguments the prosecution made was you, and I'm going to try to quote it as verbatim as I can, but he said, you lose the right to self -defense if you're the one that brings the gun.

10:39

And I heard that comment and I just like, I about self imploded for one.

10:45

But the other thing, and I think I actually put this out on Twitter, that a very interesting observation that I had once the verdict came out, right.

10:56

And all of the hubbub and there's people angry, people cheering, you know, obviously on both sides.

11:02

I have found a very interesting observation that I think as Christians, like where you fall on the right to self -defense versus not right to self -defense, which is,

11:16

I mean, basically where you fall on this trial, I think has a lot to do with how you were raised. And I really think that because I've got a lot of friends, good brothers that love the

11:26

Lord and I believe are completely saved that are on the opposite end of this from me.

11:32

Right. And I'm just scratching my head thinking, man, like one, it still is innocent until proven guilty in this country, at least supposedly.

11:42

Right. And two, if you have to separate the different events, like, was he right for, you know, you can make all the arguments, well, should he have been there?

11:54

Should he have not? Yada, yada, yada, yada. None of that matters once someone is attempting to take his life.

12:01

Right. Right. Because you can't charge somebody for being stupid. Right. Right. Right.

12:08

So the minute lethal force was administered and attempted on Kyle, he had the right under constitutional law, under the laws of America that we live in right now to defend himself.

12:18

And in my my ultimate opinion over this whole thing, and it'll probably get me canceled again or whatever, but it should never have gone to trial in the first place.

12:28

Right. Oh, no, you're absolutely right. Yeah. Those are my thoughts. What else do we have?

12:34

Let's see. Let's go down the line here. I have something for you. Little good news. So a few months ago, we reported that there were 17 missionaries kidnapped in Haiti by a gang.

12:44

They're about an hour and a half away from us in Ohio. Two got released. It says two of the 17 missionaries kidnapped in Haiti more than a month ago have been released.

12:52

The U .S.-based religious organization they worked for said Sunday in a statement on the website. The group, which included 16

12:58

Americans and a Canadian, was kidnapped on October 16th by a notorious gang east of Haiti's capital.

13:04

We've learned that two of the hostages in Haiti were released. We praise God for this. Only limited information can be provided, but we were able to report that the two hostages who were released are safe in good spirits and being cared for,

13:15

Christian aid ministry said. So praise God. We know we put out kind of a news blurb to all our listeners.

13:22

Be praying for that. You hate seeing that happen, but as Paul told us, we have to remember our brothers and sisters that are in prison for the faith, that are being kidnapped for the faith, that are being beheaded and killed and tortured and martyred for the faith.

13:36

Just because we've had it good for a long, long time here in America, doesn't mean that we can't forget what's going on in the world right now in other countries.

13:44

So true. So at least those two are safe. Let's keep praying for the return of the other 14. Definitely.

13:49

Amen. What else do we got? Yeah, we just wanted to do those two. I think the Kyle Rittenhouse story was kind of a little bit long, lengthier than we usually go, but that was a pretty serious case.

14:03

I mean, you know, that was something that was, you know, we had to talk about. Cool. That's the news.

14:08

What's going to get us canceled. There we go. Awesome. So Josh, I forgot about that drop.

14:15

Oh, you forgot the outro? Play it again. You can't give someone like me with ADD, all these buttons and I'm not going to push them now.

14:28

I was going to say, man, like he's hot on those triggers. I don't remember. I forget.

14:34

Yeah. That was the new thing. Sounds better when you do it live. We should just have you do it live. All right.

14:41

Get some effects on that mic. I think I had a cold that night. That's why it's even like, you know, deeper.

14:49

That was very white. So Josh, why don't you introduce us to the listeners?

14:55

Tell us a little bit about you, a little bit about Reformatory, how it got started, what you guys are all about. Sure, man.

15:01

Yeah. Well, my name is Josh Loftus and I live in Everett, Washington, which is about half hour north of Seattle.

15:10

So I've lived in Washington my whole life. Grew up in Eastern Washington on a horse ranch. My folks actually still reside there, ran and still run a residential, nuthetic, biblical counseling ministry for girls and women struggling from drug, alcohol addictions, eating disorders, things like that.

15:32

So grew up in the biblical counseling realm, if you will. So that's just kind of my background in ministry, if you will.

15:44

I'm not currently pastoring, but I have done my stint, if you will, in pastoral ministry, taking a sabbatical at the moment because this last year has been hard.

15:57

It's been a tough year for pastors. It's been a tough year for people in ministry.

16:03

And a lot of, you know, obviously a lot of factors run into that, but yeah, grew up in the church.

16:09

I'm just for the theology nerds that are listening. Oh, you know, they're listening.

16:14

I know they're out there. We got to give it to them. Yeah. I'm a 1689

16:20

Reformed Baptist through and through. Love me. Love me some 1689.

16:27

Yes, baby. Yes. I love it. Yeah. So yeah, that's who

16:34

I am. And doing the Reformatory, it's a podcast for the local church and by the local church and like you alluded to earlier, we talk about all things local church.

16:45

So basically the focus of the podcast is local church.

16:51

If it doesn't affect the local church in some way that we can actually make like a real tie to, we usually don't talk about it because we know there's tons of other awesome podcasts that talk about, you know, a whole bunch of other things.

17:03

So the love that I have and my cohost has Jack, we love the local church and it's something that we've just had a passion for for a while.

17:15

And Jack is actually my second cohost, my first cohost. Daniel, fantastic guy.

17:22

Still talk to him all the time. He's a pastor here in Kirkland, Washington. And once Jack came on board, we really kind of nailed in the focus of the local church and the podcast.

17:36

And yeah, that's what we talk about, man. All things local church. We love it. Awesome. So my first question is, and, you know,

17:44

I might have an answer to this, but I want to hear yours is why is the local church important? We, you know, we just went through COVID.

17:51

We have so many people either not attending church or saying, hey, look at, I can just watch online or I can just, you know, go to my

17:59

YouTube clips or sermon index or watch something for a half hour and I'm good to go. Why is the local physical church so important?

18:08

Yeah, I mean, fantastic question. And I mean, I think first and foremost, it's important because it's commanded.

18:15

We are commanded in the word of God to gather with the saints, right? And when we talk about the church, we're talking about the people that have been bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ, his church, his elect, right?

18:27

The church is not some physical location that you go. We are the church. Now, however, people often use that as an excuse then, well,

18:36

I am the church. I don't need to go to church, right? We are commanded first and foremost in scripture to not forsake the gathering of believers.

18:44

And last I checked the gathering was more than a party of one, right? So we are commanded by our savior through the pen of, well,

18:56

I'm going to say Paul. I know that the author of Hebrews is hotly debated, but I'm going to say

19:02

Paul. We think it's

19:07

Paul too. You're in good company. Yeah, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. And then

19:13

I would also say that the local church, right? The gathering of believers that you make a covenant promise to be in membership with is where we get our community.

19:24

It's where we get our encouragement and it's where we get our accountability. Those are kind of the three things that we talk about on the podcast.

19:29

So we need community. There's no such thing as a lone wolf Christian. And if there is, he's super, super weak because none of us are meant to walk this

19:37

Christian life alone. We need the community of other believers around us. That's how we were designed.

19:44

And it's a huge blessing that God has given us. So we need the community. We need the encouragement, especially this last year.

19:51

We've seen what happens when people neglect the local church and neglect the gathering together, discouragement and walking away from the faith.

20:03

It's not a surprise to me that this whole quote unquote deconstruction movement is hot on the tails of COVID.

20:09

Oh, good point. Because we have gone through a year and for where I am up here near Seattle, we're like, we're still dealing with it.

20:20

Where church, the gathering has become something that you can just do. And I think we're jumping ahead a little bit, but it's something that you can just do online.

20:31

It's more of an event than a covenant relationship with somebody. Which is where the accountability comes in.

20:43

There is nobody and no group of people in my life that are and should be more in tune with the things that I struggle with in my local church.

20:54

My pastors, my elders, the people that I'm in community with in my local church, because I know that I need accountability.

21:01

I know that I need other Christians around me. I'm not designed to walk this alone. So I need encouragement.

21:08

I need community. I need accountability. There's a whole bunch more, but those are the three big picture reasons of why we need the is because one,

21:19

Christ commanded it. Two, it's ingrained in just who we are to need other people.

21:28

And God's people are the ones that we were designed to need as Christians. Amen. Yeah, we had Dale Partridge on a few months ago, and he was doing home churches, and he's started a, would you call it a school?

21:40

Did he call it a school to raise up pastors? Yeah, like a school or seminary kind of. Yeah, seminary type situation.

21:47

But him just talking about the home church was really interesting to me just because I feel like certain mega churches,

21:59

I can't stand whenever I do this. It's really hard sometimes to not just paint this big brush stroke, but there's things that you see within the church where it's like the mega church kind of loses people.

22:15

Intimacy too. It loses intimacy, accountability. Everything Josh just said. Exactly. But MacArthur, his church, he talks about how there are pastors in these different roles, the elders that are helping him with the church.

22:33

And I just see that as something that is just so important for any size church to have elders that are really helping the body along, that no one does get left behind.

22:49

Not to bring a - Easy, Kirk Cameron. Hold on, hold on, hold on.

22:54

Are we going to talk about Dispies real quick? I don't know if you guys knew, but in seven years, no,

23:01

I'm joking. Blood moons, red heifers. Yeah, right. But I think

23:07

I was just thinking about the home church and just how important small groups are. I mean,

23:13

Josh, are you seeing this as something that is growing?

23:18

Because I mean, over here, we're seeing that more and more. I mean, is that the same up in Seattle area?

23:25

Like specifically this small group? Kind of the small groups, the home churches,

23:32

I mean, rather than - Yeah, does it matter? Does it matter if you're a home church or a large church or a small church?

23:38

We want to touch on that too. I mean, is there biblical definition of the size of a church and where it meets?

23:46

Yeah, great topic. I would say that - Yeah, yeah, right. I'll do my best.

23:58

I'll pray and spray here. Sorry, I just had a lot of coffee.

24:03

I'm drinking coffee right now. That's okay. It's okay. I get it. It's all right.

24:09

Yeah, so I would say that although we don't have in scripture any indication of what size a church should or shouldn't be, but I do think that we have principles in scripture and things that we can fall back on to kind of decide definitely for us what kind of church we want to attend, but also to be able to gauge whether or not a church is healthy, right?

24:31

So I'm personally not a fan of huge churches. I think once you step over a certain number threshold, there's debate to what that is.

24:41

And I think it's different with every church and it's different with every community, right? But I do believe it's true.

24:47

Once you walk over a certain threshold of people, it becomes very easy to come into the church and disappear.

24:55

Sure. There goes the accountability you're talking about. A hundred percent, right? So we need to understand that these large churches, although by every standard of the world that we live in, they're super healthy because look at all the people that's there.

25:14

It's not necessarily true, right? The vast majority, at least out here in the

25:19

Seattle area of huge mega churches are not ones that I would recommend people going to.

25:27

The vast majority of churches that I have attended where I have really seen the most amount of fruit and health trickle down right from the leadership through the pulpit into the people is our smaller churches, right?

25:41

Most of them under 200, under 300, which depending on where you're at in the country, that can either be large or small.

25:48

Out here, that's small, right? If you have a church of 200, it's like, what are you doing? I mean, you need more programs and bouncy houses, obviously, right?

25:56

And coffee. And coffee. Yeah. Your coffee must be horrible. Right. But yeah, no, no,

26:05

I really do think that although it's not true across the board, I think that the larger the church is, the harder it is for it to be healthy.

26:14

It's not impossible, but the larger it is, the harder it is. And I think if you're going to have a large church,

26:20

I think that you, in order for it to be healthy, I think you need to do a couple of things. I think you need a biblical membership.

26:27

You need to know who's part of the flock and who's not. Right. Right. You need enough elders to be able to lead that church.

26:35

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And especially in larger churches, this is why

26:41

I am a fan of small groups. I think small groups, you need small groups in a large church if you're going to be healthy, because small groups are how you keep one, how the elders can keep the thumb on the health of the church.

26:54

Yeah. Is through these smaller gatherings. Right. And two, your people need a place where they can get in close knit community with other people in their church.

27:06

And if you don't have small group ministry, it is so difficult to do that on simply a Sunday morning in a church of 2000 people.

27:13

And that's all your interaction with the body throughout the week. Yeah. Yeah. And just to just to tag onto this,

27:19

I wasn't saying that MacArthur's not doing anything. Yeah. Yeah. Right. You know,

27:24

I'm sure for sure. Yeah. Lots of elders all trained very well and doing their doing their role biblically in the way it should be done.

27:34

Yeah. And I would just add to that, you know, my only my only caveat with small groups is if they're if they're ran properly and with accountability.

27:43

Unfortunately, when I see some of the evangelical circles, it's like it's like Oprah giving away cards.

27:48

It's like you get a small group, you get a small boy. You just came to the Lord. So go out of drug rehab. Yes. Start a small group for drug.

27:54

You're a leader. You're a leader. You're God wants you. And they look at it. Oh, you got a Bible. Perfect.

28:00

Well, as long as people are meeting and like at least talking about God, it's like, well, there still has to you can't really be like a para ministry.

28:07

It still has to be under the structure of eldership and shepherdship. Right. So that would be my caveat is

28:13

I'm OK with small groups. That's why, like you were saying, Jason, when Dale was on, it was so interesting where he sets up these home churches where they actually have.

28:22

I mean, they have a you know, it's just like church, but it's no more than 50 people. Right. You got more than 50 people.

28:27

You start another home church, not a small group, a home. It's a church. Yeah. You know, so there was there was an idea introduced to us just a few months ago of going, oh, there's this whole movement of it's almost like a small group, but it's actually a church.

28:40

It's they came together, broke bread. They sang songs together. Yeah. The whole thing.

28:46

And I think if small groups are set up that way, I'm good with them. I'm just not good with, you know, you know, someone that either isn't founded or sanctified or, you know, mature in Christ and then trying to lead others without any accountability from the elders or pastors.

29:01

Right. That's the only caveat I'd put on that. Yeah. But yeah. So, I mean, like you were saying, Josh, the you know, the local church can it can look like anything.

29:10

It can be big and small. And I totally agree with you on the larger the church, the harder it really is, because then you can just slip in and slip out.

29:17

And I think the accountability out of those out of that three legged stool that you gave us, for me, accountability is probably the most important.

29:26

I'm a self starter. I think I think I can encourage myself if I need to. I can get in the word and be encouraged. But I don't know anyone can be accountable by themselves or online.

29:36

And unfortunately, yeah, we've seen we've seen a big falling away through COVID and stuff where people just haven't returned to church.

29:42

And there's going to just watch it. I'll watch it like I watch TV. Right. And it's just exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

29:48

And that that has been one of the things that has broke my heart through this is is seeing especially coming out.

29:54

So so I was in pastoral ministry for a good a part of COVID. And that was one of the hardest things that I saw was, one, the lack of understanding of a true ecclesiology.

30:09

People just don't know what the church is. Yeah. And they don't know why the church is important. They don't know what makes a good church and they don't know why they need to go there.

30:18

Right. So just because it is it's super easy and convenient to be able to you know, watch, quote, unquote, watch church right online in your pajamas, eating waffles.

30:28

Right. It doesn't mean that it's real. Right. You know, and I got in trouble with saying it like and look,

30:36

I'm I understand there are extenuating circumstances. Sometimes you got the flu. Please stay home and don't give us the flu.

30:42

Right. You know, we have you know, we have the the sermon posted up here. You can watch it. Great.

30:47

You know, that's fine. In those types of circumstances, obviously, you take it by case by case. But but we

30:54

I think something that should have been stated at the beginning of COVID and it wasn't stated it by and large is that online church is not church.

31:04

Yeah. It's not. Yeah. It's the exception, not the rule. Right. Right. Right.

31:10

It's like it's like going to I mean, this is a horrible illustration, but but it's like it's like going to it's like having front row seats to like a a

31:19

Tyson fight and watching it on your phone. Right. Right. It's like like, what are you doing?

31:26

Yeah. Right. Like everything that makes it real. You have just taken away for the convenience of being able to watch it, you know, on a on a six by four screen or however large your phones are.

31:37

Right. I guess six by four would be a like an iPad dimensions came out of my mouth and I was like, wait a second, that doesn't sound right.

31:49

One of those little 18 by 24 inch phones, just the tiny ones, the new yard sign eight.

31:57

Yes, exactly. This this might lead into a little bit different discussion.

32:02

But this is a question I was going to ask both of you. Now that I'm interviewing you guys.

32:08

Oh, here we go. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Like, why? Why do you guys think so many people are leaving the church?

32:17

Like what is what is causing this deconstruction? You know, movement?

32:23

What is what is causing people to just say, man, you know, I don't I believe in God.

32:28

I'm going to heaven. You know, I'm good. Yeah. Like what? Like what? What is that? I think what do you guys think?

32:35

I think Josh gets to go. This is a really hard question. You're going to throw that at me first. I understand. I mean, it's yeah.

32:44

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a hard it's a hard question. And I think I think there's there are so many reasons people will give for why they're leaving the church.

32:55

Right. And a lot of it, a lot of it is, you know, they've been treated badly or, you know, the there's there's a myriad of reasons that people will give.

33:07

But I think that overarchingly and I and I do think I do think that that there is a small percentage.

33:14

I don't know what the percentage is, but I do think there is a there is a percentage of these individuals that were truly sinned against by the church.

33:21

Right. Churches aren't perfect. Leaders aren't perfect. We mess up all the time. And there are legitimate issues that should and and need to addressed when it comes to the local church.

33:32

Right. However, my personal take on it is that we up until this point, and I think we're starting to see it change.

33:46

We have been introduced and swimming in this lake that is American Christianity. Amen. That's where I was.

33:52

And it's now becoming very uncool and uncomfortable to be a

33:58

Christian. Right. The way is narrow and few that be there find it.

34:04

Yeah. And I think we are beginning to make the switch. And I think it's good.

34:09

I'm all for the switch. Yeah. Because fire produces purity.

34:15

Right. Yeah. And God will purify his church through the fires of adversity. And we see that in churches in Korea, in China, Afghanistan, like we hear the stories about it all the time.

34:29

And we as Americans sit back in our armchair and be like, oh, that's horrible. That's horrible. That's horrible. Right. And we are just now,

34:36

I think, beginning to understand a little bit of why it's risky to be a

34:43

Christian in those countries. Yeah. And so far, it's it's just, you know, it's it's mean it's mean for the most part, for the most part, it's mean comments on Facebook and people unfollowing people getting canceled and things like that.

34:54

But I don't think it's going to stop there. Right. And I think we're starting to see a lot of people. We're starting to see the fruit of a very incorrect understanding of who

35:05

God is and who the gospel is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we just saw quite a few things happen to Canada as well.

35:13

And then even down here, I mean, I brought up MacArthur earlier, but the government, the governor went after MacArthur's church, tried to shut him down, you know, like,

35:22

I mean, it's it's it's it's coming, you know, like those things are definitely coming to America.

35:28

But yeah, sorry. Go ahead. No, go ahead. Great. I was going to call you, Jason. Go ahead,

35:33

Jason. That's a give me back for calling you, Josh, for the first three episodes. Let's all just go by different names.

35:39

Come on. I call him Josh in an episode. Greg, you've known me 25 years. Sorry, man.

35:45

I think it's twofold. You want to what I like? I'm an equal opportunity blamer, so I don't

35:51

I think there's blame on both sides for this. The reason why we're seeing people leaving churches once the church's fault and and the person's fault.

35:58

And I think on the church, it lands on you've been feeding them a cold oatmeal gospel for 50 plus years.

36:07

You've been bowing to the secular culture as Christ's church. You've made it all about the person and not about Christ.

36:13

You've made worship a show instead of to come and bless and glorify a king. And you've pumped that out for 50 years as the church, as the person.

36:22

I think it's exactly what you said, Josh, is most Christians. And I will say most when I say most generally 51 percent or more.

36:29

You can look at national polling from Ligonier and some other places. They don't know who God is. They don't know who

36:35

Christ is. They once again, that could go back to the church's fault, but it's pride and self -selfishness.

36:41

They go to church so they can be blessed, so they can be entertained, so they can feel good when they walk away.

36:47

They don't introspect. They feel bad when their flesh is cut, which is actually biblical. They get upset when the pastor says something that does offend their flesh, which is good and godly.

36:58

We should be offending our flesh every day, the Bible says. And it's been this way for two and a half, three generations.

37:04

And what do you think is going to happen? We've said it before on the podcast. When you have a church and pastors and leaders that aren't preaching the gospel, and then you have generations growing up under that, and then thinking that church is somewhere to go to receive a blessing, get a blessing, get ahead in life, feel good about myself, balance my mental health, extend my wealth, whatever it is, those are all wrong reasons for going to church.

37:29

It is to bless and glorify and uplift a holy king who is righteous and just, and who will rule and reign forever here on earth.

37:37

And I think when we get those backwards, then we see people walking away from church and going, oh, it didn't hit my expectations.

37:43

I don't feel good. They were mean to me. And oh, now we have a fancy word called deconstructing, and now we can sit here and complain about all the things we didn't like about church.

37:53

Well, guess what? You don't get to do that. Just like Paul said, why does he still find fault? Sorry, buddy, you don't get to ask why you're a mere man.

38:01

God is God and you need to respect him and have a holy and sovereign fear of who he is. And that's where I get a little upset when we start going, oh, well, you know, we just need more programs or like you were alluding to Josh earlier, we need more programs.

38:15

We need more this. It's like, no more pizza. All we need is Christ. More, more pizza and warm Mountain Dew.

38:22

Yeah, no, no, no. That's exactly correct. Look, look, we live in a consumeristic society. We live in a society that says everything is about you, right?

38:30

That's what social media is. That's Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever it is. It's about you.

38:37

It is self -gratification. That's the society we live in because we are God. Yep. Right.

38:42

So we are going to naturally, unless our souls are changed by the truth of the gospel, are going to naturally take that mentality into every aspect of life, our work, our relationships, our marriage, our church.

38:58

Yeah. Right. And what we have now is a society of people that have been unchanged by the gospel, are living in ways that only please themselves and do what they want.

39:12

And we view church the same way. So like, well, I didn't get much out of the music or I didn't really like the preaching.

39:19

They don't have a lot of programs for me. And as graciously as I can, look, church isn't about you.

39:26

It's not about you at all. You are there to bend the knee prostrate to a holy

39:32

God who you are sitting before. And the only thing that is going to make your worship pleasing to him and not a filthy rag to be caught on fire is the blood of Jesus Christ.

39:44

And we need to understand that whether we're Christians or not. Right. So I think the non -Christians and those that have tasted of the heavenly fruits and then leave, that's what the vast majority that we are seeing in this deconstruction movement.

39:59

Right. But even those that have been actually changed by the gospel, we're not like we don't escape that mentality either.

40:05

Right. We have to understand that when you are there on the

40:10

Lord's day, surrounded by your brothers and sisters in Christ, you are there to worship.

40:17

You are there to worship God. You are not there to be to be to be pleased.

40:23

And but but we need to understand is that through that worship and through that service to our local church, we are then edified.

40:31

Amen. Yeah. Amen. Amen. And that that is a great word right there.

40:36

And I don't know. Oh, let's as we put we put bookends on this and wrap it up,

40:44

Josh, why don't you just throw out some places where listeners might be able to get a hold of your podcast, get a hold of you on social media, and maybe give us the final word on local church.

40:56

Sure. Yeah. Well, Reformatory is up pretty much everywhere you can get your podcasts.

41:01

We're on all all the all the large ones, Google, Amazon, Stitcher, Spotify, Apple. Right.

41:07

So and then everywhere that that those sources send out to. We're on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter at Reformatory Pod.

41:16

It's all the same tag for all three branding. I like it. Yeah. You know what?

41:22

Yeah. We worked hard for that. Yeah. Yeah. It was a hard it was a hard fight, but but we won.

41:30

Yeah. So at Reformatory Pod on all those, give us a like, give us a follow. We love interacting with folks.

41:35

So you will be replied to if you if you reach out and talk. I will give a little a little of this that we gave our listeners.

41:44

Actually, this hasn't released yet. So your listeners are getting this before our listeners. Nice. All right.

41:50

Yeah, that's right. That's right. So give it to us. Exactly. Exactly. So come the new year, the

41:56

Reformatory will be launching with a brand new custom intro, which is, I have to say, people listen to the

42:03

Reformatory for our intro. And I think this one's even better.

42:10

And come the new year, new intro. And then we will be introducing a brand new website with shop. You can get a whole bunch of local church merch and stuff like that, too.

42:17

So that's coming up in the new year. A lot of cool stuff. Yeah. Um, yeah. Let's see.

42:23

Final word on local church. Don't forsake the gathering that you you may think no matter where you find yourself in life, whether things are going great, praise the

42:32

Lord, or more than often, you find yourself in a place of hurting, whether it's depression, anxiety, pain, whatever, whatever storm you're going through.

42:41

I will say that the best thing that you can do as a

42:46

Christian is to gather with God's people on the Lord's day and to be in community with God's people because it is the local church that God uses as one of the primary ways to sanctify his people.

43:01

Amen. And you will be surely, surely blessed. Do not neglect the local church.

43:07

Amen. Awesome. Josh, stick with us as we go out here, guys, as always, too. We do appreciate

43:13

Josh and the Reformatory coming on and talking to us. We're going to do as we kind of head out here, we're going to do just one little segment called the mailbag.

43:23

We've been getting some of your comments. We're going to read it and then we're going to wrap up the show. Here we go. Mailbag. All right.

43:31

This one is from Matthew and Alyssa Burgess contacted us and they said,

43:37

Hey guys, thanks for the great podcast. Funny, informative, and edifying at its best. Wow.

43:42

What's he listening to? Is he listening to our podcast? He's listening to Josh. Is he listening to the

43:48

Reformatory? No. But here he is. Wait, wait, wait. It gets better. He's getting to his real question.

43:54

I had a quick question. On April 14th episode, the intro song was out of this world.

43:59

I really need to know who it is and what the song's called. I need whoever that is ministering to my ears often.

44:05

If you could help, it would be great. And then of course, Jason responded and we did give them that.

44:12

It's thanks so much, Matthew. Solely Deo Gloria. The tune is by Vision. The album is called Terrible Gods. And that particular song is

44:18

Area 51. Some great reformed hip hop out there. So guys, we like supporting EC Holmes.

44:24

He's been on the podcast before. He's got Terrible Gods, his album out. But guys, we thank you for the constructive criticism, for the comments, for the compliments.

44:35

We do this for the glory of God. We don't do it so you guys can tell us how great we are.

44:40

But it is encouraging. When we put out, geez, now we're up to putting out three different segments a week for the last year and a half.

44:50

Getting guests, getting advertising. I mean, Josh, you know how it is running a podcast. Same with that.

44:55

It's a lot of work behind the scenes. We do it so Christ can be glorified, so God can be glorified.

45:01

So we do appreciate that. So guys, oh, go ahead. I was going to throw something out there. You remember how

45:07

I always have been up to a place whenever we have a guest? Now this is your thing, yeah.

45:14

Why am I nervous right now? No, no, no, no. You got to set the table. So real quick,

45:20

I'll give you 30 seconds and then you do it. Go ahead, go ahead. So Jason is an internationally touring musician. Every single guest that we've had on, every single person we've met at a

45:27

Fight Laugh Feast, at our G3, whatever it is, they say where he's from and he'll go, oh, that little piggly wiggly right down the road, around the corner from me.

45:34

And they're like, what? I live in rural Oklahoma, you know, and he knows every place. So bring it on. It's so funny.

45:40

I've been up and down the five, right? So Everett, I want to say we played somewhere in that area, but we also played up in Bellingham.

45:52

So I've been through your neck of the woods, man. It is absolutely gorgeous out there in Washington, Oregon. I mean, just a beautiful place, but I think we need to start sending missionaries over there.

46:03

That's what I've been hearing. You're in the mission field, baby. I just need to get some, some support.

46:14

It's beautiful, but they charge you. They charge you. Right. Exactly. Cool guys.

46:19

We wind this down. Also, we wanted to remind you, go check us out at dmwpodcast .com. You click on the merch tab.

46:27

We've got, jeez, 15, 20 new designs up for you, including our Wynham Dynam, Romans 9, which is very popular.

46:34

We've got the Mari Povich, the Bible determined that was a lie.

46:41

We've got our teach CRT in school, Christian reform theology. We've got more, less pastors, more disciples.

46:49

We've got all kinds of, all Huss, no, no fuss, all Huss with John Huss. We got all kinds of new stuff up there for you guys.

46:56

Go check it out at www .dmwpodcast .com. Click on the merch tab and that will take you right there.

47:02

It supports the show. It's a fun shirt to wear. It's a conversation starter and maybe make some people, you know, think, think, think while you're wearing a shirt.

47:13

Josh, we appreciate you being here. You're a friend of the show now.

47:18

Anything you ever need, you'll let us know. Jason, you got any final words? No, no, man. Good to go. All right, guys. Josh.

47:23

Thanks, Josh. And as always, guys, God bless. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at dead men walking podcast for full video podcast episodes and clips or email us at dead men walking podcast at gmail .com.