Accountability in Para Church Ministry

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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And welcome to The Dividing Line today, my name is Rich Pierce and I am sitting in for Dr.

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White again and I am doing my best at a one -man show today.

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I am normally the guy on the other side of the window and I am, as I say, doing this live.

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I'm watching all my meters and trying to make sure as I've got my monitors on the other side turned around so I can see what's going on.

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And as you can see from this angle, from this shot, I've got my keyboard here that operates the system on the other side.

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I've got some mics open over there and I hope that doesn't cause a problem, but well they're actually devices really, they're not microphones per se.

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But I can operate some of the systems from over here and even to the point of changing the shot and doing a few things like that.

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So it's a real fancy -dancy setup and I wanted to take a moment and come back with you and talk to you today about what happens at Alpha Omega Ministries that is along the lines of para -church ministry and accountability.

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Accountability in para -church ministry and every now and then, by the way, you're going to see me and I'm going to give you a little bit as I go along here, things

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I have to do while I'm doing the techie stuff here. And I'm every now and then going to look over in this direction and it's going to tell me whether or not the system's actually communicating with YouTube properly and that I'm getting a good solid signal.

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And fortunately, it looks like all those problems that we were having a few weeks ago where it just seemed like we'd just drop our connection right in the middle of the show, it looks like that is cleared up and of course

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I'm now watching a little bit of a hiccup in the feed here that should not be. So we'll see if I'm just going to have to record this thing and upload it later.

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But in the meantime, I'm doing the best I can, and we're going to just slog our way through this.

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And so, on the topic at hand, over the last few, several weeks, actually, on a number of fronts, we've had situations occur within the realm of the parish church apologetics organizations out there that are disconcerting, bothersome.

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I'm not going to name names. You probably know which ones I'm talking about. And I can tell you that I am talking about more than one organization.

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But we need to take a look from here and this organization before we can actually, without being hypocrites, examine what's going on over there and to do that fairly.

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And so I thought I would, as Pastor Dan from Tuesday's show described it for me, pull the curtain back, so to speak, and give you a glimpse of how it is

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Alpha and Omega Ministries functions. Some of this might explain to you why we're such a small ministry and why there's only two employees.

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And we're going to go through some of that. But ultimately, the question comes back to what is parachurch ministry?

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Alpha and Omega Ministries is a parachurch ministry. Now, those of you who may have viewpoints on this or have heard viewpoints on this may not have made that connection.

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You may be of the mindset that there's all these objections regarding parachurch ministry out there, but you like us and you like what we do, and how could we possibly actually be a parachurch organization?

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And so I've put up here for you, right here, here, there, the screen here is backwards.

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It's like looking in a mirror in a mirror. And so everything that is over here, from our perspective, looks like it's over here.

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It's really weird. But anyway, so I thought I'd put a PowerPoint presentation together for you with this so that you could follow along with what

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I'm having to say. But a parachurch organization is simply the idea that is an organization that is working alongside of the church.

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That is what it's supposed to be. The idea parachurch means alongside the church.

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And the problem is, is that we have, there are objections and there are many objectors to the idea of parachurch ministry in general.

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And I asked in our chat room yesterday, I'd already kind of formulated a number of these objections myself and asked in our chat room, guys, throw out some of the most common lines that are common objections to parachurch ministry and what goes on there.

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And I thought we'd start by going through that. First of all, the chief foremost objection towards parachurch ministries is lack of accountability.

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Lack of accountability. The idea that they function as an organization unto themselves.

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We're incorporated. We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization, and legally we are incorporated and organized for what the

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IRS recognizes as educational reasons. And it's kind of interesting because the state of Arizona looks at it slightly differently.

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But the point is that we're organized for nonprofit purposes and educational reasons.

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And we're going to get into how Alpha and Omega functions and is structured. But in a lot of cases, you've got parachurch organizations out there that don't actually have built into their founding documents what we would call accountability.

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There's no mechanism, there's no tool, and these organizations in a lot of cases can do whatever they want.

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And this is where the charge of loose cannon comes from. The idea that these organizations are out there and they're doing whatever they want, and there's no church, no pastor, no oversight involved that can rein them in, bring them back to orthodoxy, or if there's a moral failure or anything like that.

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They're just out there doing their own thing, and their board of directors is essentially no less than a circle of wagons, and that they're just out there doing their own thing and making their own rules, and whether that's theological, whether that's moral.

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Now, I want to stop a moment here and recognize that while we're an apologetics organization, there are parachurch ministries that are organized for all kinds of reasons.

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Most frankly, are benevolent reasons. Reasons like trying to help unwed mothers, keep them from turning to Planned Parenthood, and have a place for them to go.

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That simple, simple idea. Others may be organized to help the poor, to feed the poor, to clothe the poor.

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All kinds of different activities and circumstances in these different organizations.

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We need to look much broader than just Alpha and Omega ministries and how our function in this realm.

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We need to see that there's a much bigger picture. The next objection is that the idea of parachurch ministry is not instituted in Scripture.

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It's not instituted in Scripture. Now, of all the objections that are out there, this perhaps is the hardest to deal with, and the hardest to answer, and it actually carries the most weight.

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It becomes a serious issue because we look in the New Testament, and the church is to be responsible in doing all these certain things.

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But we're going to come back to that. The next one I thought was really interesting, and that was the way the gentleman phrased it, it is the tail wagging the dog.

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The parachurch ministry becomes a circumstance where they're calling the shots rather than the church.

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I am mindful of a circumstance a few decades ago that I was aware of where you have a church that had founded a

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Christian school. That's another parachurch ministry. The church had founded this

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Christian school, and the school was instituted as a separate organization from the church, but the church was to have oversight, and that was built into the founding documents.

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The problem was during the recession back then, the church fell into financial difficulty, great financial difficulty.

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And the property and the oversight of the school, the school wasn't suffering as much as the church was.

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And the administrators of the school began to feel like, you know what? We can call our own shots.

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You guys aren't really in a position to tell us what to do, how to do it, what we're to teach or how we're to teach, let alone how we're to administrate things.

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And a conflict began to develop between the church and the school that eventually developed into a circumstance where the administrators of the school began calling the shots to the church and telling the church what they were and were not going to do.

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And that's the tail wagging the dog, really is a good example of that. By definition, a parachurch ministry is not under church authority.

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We're going to come back to that one, too, because I'm going to challenge that circumstance. I'm going to break all these down as we go through.

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And then, of course, my favorite is the long -distance pastor model.

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The long -distance pastor model, it's a huge problem. It is a circumstance where you have someone where they don't really want direct personal oversight.

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If they do go to church, it's in right after the service starts and out just before the service ends.

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And they don't know anybody in church. They don't want to know anybody in church. And they certainly don't want the pastor to get to know them.

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They don't want the elders to get to know them. They just want to hit and run. But then suddenly something comes up in their life, and they want to be able to call somebody up a long way away and throw out hypotheticals.

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The problem here is nobody really knows this individual. And that's the circumstance where they're looking for that long -distance pastor.

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Let's go back to the beginning. In the topic of lack of accountability, as I said, many parachurch organizations operate strictly through their board of directors.

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And I believe this is a problem, especially when you have a circumstance where sometimes the board has conflicts within.

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And these conflicts that happen can become political.

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And what begins to develop out of this is what I call follow the leader. So you can have, on the one hand, a circumstance where the board of directors has conflicts and you get factions developed, and there is the head of the organization.

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And the follow the leader is, we're just going to defend him. We're just going to defend him or her, whichever the case may be, and keep following the leader.

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No matter how right or wrong the leader may be in the circumstance. There's also situations that develop where there are genuine conflicts of interest.

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Genuine conflicts of interest. This, I'll flesh out a little bit more later on.

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But the problem in this circumstance is that when you have people, and I see this all the time, it drives me crazy.

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I just think, what are you guys thinking? Where an organization is, quote, doing business with another organization.

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And that organization may be providing a service for them. It may be providing materials for them, material support in some sort of way.

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But ultimately, the organization is paying that company or that organization for a service.

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And as such, it is rather common. Hey, you know, you're running this company over here and you're a pretty smart guy.

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And you're a really good Christian. And we'd like you to be on our board of directors.

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And now you have a situation to where you have someone you're doing business with that is on your board of directors.

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And that is an automatic conflict of interest. That individual shouldn't want to be on your board of directors.

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And you shouldn't want that individual on your board of directors. There's other ways you can reward that person for your relationship, and we'll get into that in a little bit.

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And then, of course, the politics. Probably the one thing that has kept

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James and I to be the only employees here at Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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Neither one of us like politics. We'll get in later on to how Alpha and Omega is structured and the division of resources or the division of responsibilities that goes on here.

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I don't want to do James's job. He doesn't want to do my job. And in that fact alone, we complement one another.

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And we don't have these power struggles that a lot of organizations have, especially apologetics organizations that suffer from power struggles and politics within the organization trying to get people on my side of the argument versus his side of the argument, et cetera.

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And we're going to cover more of this later on further as well. The loose cannons question.

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The loose cannons question centers on ego. It centers flat right on the usually the ego of the person in charge and the egos of the people just underneath the person in charge.

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This also splashes over into the circumstance with the relationship of the local

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New Testament church. And later on in this program, we're going to show how very, very important that relationship is.

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And the question does come up, and I've stated this bluntly on the screen.

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You can see it. How can someone who specializes in theology submit to a lesser man?

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Oftentimes, the pastor of a church is seen as a general practitioner and the theologian as the specialist and or the apologist as the specialist.

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And sometimes our egos run away with us. And you have a circumstance where you may have a fancy title where you give answers about the

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Bible and you're that man.

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How does that man submit to a pastor of a church of 50 people or 30 people or 2 ,000 people?

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We're going to get into that some more, too. But that is a serious question in this circumstance.

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And it goes back to the loose cannon issue as well. And again, we have strong personalities within the organization competing for control.

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Again, the politics issue comes up. And we have seen all of this together be the cause of the demise of a number of good organizations over time, people that were talented.

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They were good at what they were doing. And unfortunately, they just, for whatever reason, couldn't work together because everyone had to be in charge.

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And next thing you know, the tug of war begins. The not instituted in Scripture objection, like I said before, this is perhaps the best argument out there.

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But the fact of the matter is, no matter how you want to break it down, needs exist on many fronts within the

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Christian church. And I'm sure you have, as well as I have, met pastors that are commonly overworked and just barely keeping up with the direct needs of the congregation.

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And if that manifests itself in hospital visitations, in counseling with marriages, on and on and on, the pastor oftentimes bears a burden that is a great one.

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And we need to respect the fact that that pastor is doing that job, probably could use two, three, maybe four more just like him, just to be able to keep up with the workload that he's got.

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This is often all too common. They're overworked and just barely keeping up.

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And so there is a need for a specialist who can assist the pastors of multiple churches.

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And it's just the way it is. And even with organizations like Alpha Omega Ministries, like so many others like it, the pastors are still overburdened.

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They still have to set the time aside to listen to the dividing line. They still have to set the time aside to keep their studies up.

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And they still have to set the time aside to prepare for next week's sermon. In all of these cases, we have a situation where these people need help.

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These men need help, and they need to be able to have organizations that they can turn to through common interests.

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Hence, there's a need for a cooperative effort. Hence, the need for parachurch ministry in apologetics.

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The tail wagging the dog objection. The tail wagging the dog. Calling the shots rather than the church.

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It's far too common a problem. We discussed it a little bit earlier, and we're going to get back to that a little bit later as we look at the other side of the proper role of how the parachurch ministry, remember, alongside, alongside, not in front.

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The point is, if you come alongside someone, you're there to assist them. You're there to assist them, and that means you're assisting them in their task and in their role.

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We'll get back to that. By definition, a parachurch ministry is not under church authority.

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By definition, a parachurch ministry is not under church authority. Well, I'm going to say yes and no to that right now, and we're going to get back to that one later.

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Because you have to understand it all comes down to the founding documents and the way in which the organization is constituted and structured as to whether or not the parachurch ministry is under church authority.

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But we'll get back to that more. And then, of course, like I said, my favorite, the long -distance pastor.

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It is far too common an occurrence, is far too common a mentality.

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The mentality is reflective of a lot of phone calls that I get.

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I answer the phones here at Alpha and Omega Ministries, and I get these calls, and the first thing

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I hear is, I need to talk to Dr. White or something along those lines.

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I need to talk to Dr. White. Well, that doesn't just happen.

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I don't just transfer that call to Dr. White. I start asking questions. Why do you need to talk to Dr.

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White? He doesn't normally take the phone calls. That's my job. That's why I'm here. How can

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I help you? I want to be of help, okay? But then comes back, but I need to talk to Dr.

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White. Okay. As I said, though, he's not normally available for calls.

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How can I help you? I'll just repeat that. As I press in and press in, it begins to come out.

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There's some circumstance in this individual's life that they need help with, and they've seen

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James in debates, or they've seen the dividing line, or whatever it is that's going on with them, and they, quote, need him to be their pastor right now.

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My next question is, every single time, do you have a pastor? That can go 10 different ways.

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Yeah, I've got a pastor. Then we go to press it further and find out, well, I've got a pastor, but I haven't been in church in three months.

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Does your pastor even know you? No. Or, yeah, I go to church every single week.

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My pastor knows me, but I can't bring this up to him. As it says on the screen there, we support the local

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New Testament church. Oftentimes, these conversations do not end well. They really don't.

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It's a circumstance where this individual believes that they need

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Dr. James White, or fill in the blank, they need R .C.

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Sproul, Dr. Sproul. They need Dr. John MacArthur, and they need to talk to that person now.

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They're not a member of their congregation at all. They're halfway across the country, but that's who they have to talk to.

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No. The answer you're going to get here every single time is going to be, you need to talk to your pastor.

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You need to talk to your pastor. You need to talk to your pastor, because that pastor, if he doesn't know you, he's supposed to know you.

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And maybe this is a circumstance where if you'd actually make an appointment with him, go in, sit down, and talk, he might get a chance to get to know you.

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I can't know you if I'm 3 ,000 miles away from you. I don't know what's going on in your life.

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I haven't observed you as an individual, haven't observed how you behave in church or around other churchgoers.

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I don't know anything about you, which means I don't know what you're holding back from me, information that you're not telling me, or how accurate the information that you are telling me is.

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I don't have the ability to look you square in the eye and question what it is that you're telling me.

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And in a lot of cases, when it comes to counseling, that needs to happen. That needs to happen.

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So what is the purpose of this program? It is my goal today to go through these things and show you this is how we do it here and why it is that we do this here.

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We're not perfect. It's not a perfect system. One size doesn't fit all. But the idea is to demonstrate structural accountability within the parachurch organization.

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There needs to be structural accountability. It needs to be written into your documents, and your members and your board need to be pressed on the issue that what's in those documents is important and must be enforced and followed through on.

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You can have, and this is again, we come back to this loose cannon thing, the politics, etc. You can have a situation that completely just violates your charter or your founding documents from head to toe.

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But if your board of directors doesn't take that seriously and doesn't do anything about it, who will?

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Who will? And what's the point of having the founding documents? You're in violation of them. But if you don't really care, that's a problem.

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We here impress upon our members and we impress upon our board of directors that these things are important.

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And I'm going to go into that as we let this unfold. But first, the church is a vital subject here.

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It's central to our function. We're not here to take the place of the local church.

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Let me repeat that. We are not here to take the place of the local New Testament church.

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However, it is our role to come alongside that church with assistance, and that's multiple churches around the country.

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We get calls from pastors. Sometimes those calls really bother me because the questions that are coming across,

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I just kind of sit back and go, wow, you're asking me this and you're the pastor? But that's a whole different subject, whole different program.

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But the point is, we're here doing Christian apologetics. We're specializing. And it is our place, it is our situation as an organization alongside the church.

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The pastor calls me up and starts asking me about King James -only -ism and how it's about to split his church because some people came in from the outside and they became friends with a whole lot of people and he didn't know it, but they were actually teaching these people inside their home, and now suddenly he's got half the church ready to walk out on him if he doesn't start teaching from a

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King James Bible and preaching that that's the only Bible you can use. That's just one example.

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And now we need to help that pastor through this circumstance, get the right materials in his hands, and help him give an answer so that he can keep his church from splitting and get these folks that have disrupted out.

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Counter -cult ministry. In the 1980s, when this organization was founded, the

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Mormon church was out evangelizing the

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Southern Baptists, 24 to 1. For every one individual convert to the

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Baptist church, if you will, the Mormon church was baptizing 24 people. The fact of the matter is the cults are out there, they're evangelizing, and they continue to press forward, and we need to be in a position to where not only do we can give the answer, but we can equip the church to give an answer and be able to do so with credibility.

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Unfortunately, over the years, James and I have seen a lot of false information circulated about Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Roman Catholicism.

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Oh, my goodness, there's a whole lot of bad books out there on this stuff. And the idea is, if we can give an accurate reflection, an accurate answer to what these people actually believe today, we're going to gain their respect.

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We're going to gain at least a hearing, hopefully.

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I remember time and time again where James could actually argue from the

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Mormon position better than any Mormon we'd ever encountered. And that helped us as, if you will, evangelists.

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We didn't really see ourselves as evangelists. We're just going up to Salt Lake City or out to Mesa, Arizona to pass out tracts and talk to people and share the gospel with them.

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But if you will, our ability to give an answer and it be a good answer and a right answer was vital, vital.

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And we wanted to be accurate so that we accurately represented what it was that they believe and why they believe it so that we can give an answer as to why it's wrong and show them from Scripture why it's wrong and how they need to repent of the idolatry on and on and on.

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I'll give you an example, and I've given it before. It was real commonplace in the 80s and 90s for other organizations who were evangelizing

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Mormons to be telling people that Mormons believe that Adam is

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God. And then they'd give you a citation from Brigham Young who believed that Adam was

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God. He wrote about it. But it is an idea that has quickly drifted away in Mormon history.

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Mormons don't believe that Adam is God. And 99 .9 % of them, I can guarantee you, have no idea that Brigham Young thought that.

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Now, if you want to take them to what Brigham Young had to say on these things and point that out to them and say, hey, look, did you know that Brigham Young, you know, the university that's named after him, and he's a great prophet, second guy in the church in all nine yards, you know, knew

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Joseph Smith personally, founding member, etc. Doesn't what he had to say matter to you?

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Isn't that kind of important? So who's right, Brigham Young or your leaders today who say he was wrong?

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See, those are examples. These are things that we need to be able to study out and provide the pastor with so that he can use it as an apologetic, as well as our going out and doing that evangelism as well.

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And then, of course, Premier, we're here as a theological resource for pastors and church members alike,

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Christians in general. The fact of the matter is, if we can build up and edify the saints to be better theologians, this is why

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James always says theology matters, if we can help you do that, when you go out on that mission field, whether that's sharing with your brother's new girlfriend or your sister's new boyfriend or on down the line and just simply sharing the gospel with somebody, you're equipped to do that.

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If you have a family member who's turned to some sort of moral issue and still thinks they're a

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Christian or thinks that's fine because liberalism has gotten a foothold in their life, this is why we do programs like Dan did on Tuesday or drugs like Jeff and Luke did last

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Thursday on down the line. The fact of the matter is, there's a whole big picture of issues out there.

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You can't possibly expect one person who happens to be in charge of your church and is leading your congregation and trying to do so from the pages of Scripture to know everything about.

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In a lot of cases, he has to have somewhere to turn. So, theological resource. Now, about our members.

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Our members. While they are on the same page, they come, a lot of people who may not realize this, our members, the actual official members of the

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Alpha and Omega Ministries Corporation, there's such a thing, come from various churches, most of them around the valley here in Phoenix, in the valley.

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But our founding documents have guidelines as to what they're required to do. And one of the things, we have a statement of faith online you can look at.

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They're required to affirm at least our statement of faith, okay? But if you look at that statement of faith, you can quickly realize that our members don't even have to be reformed.

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No, that's right. Our members don't even have to be reformed. When I became a member of Alpha and Omega Ministries in the 1980s,

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I was not reformed. Not by a long shot. And eventually, I think I may have told this before, but eventually,

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I'm sitting in a classroom with James White, who's probably 23,

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I'm maybe 25, and he's going through something called the Five Points of Calvinism.

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Never heard of it before. And I'm objecting to four out of five points, strenuously, even to the point to where about halfway through, he had to ask me to be quiet so that he could actually finish the lesson.

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Before the night was over. And I had absolutely no reason to embrace the fifth point where I was at.

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But the point is, is that God didn't leave me there. And the members of Alpha and Omega Ministries at the time saw that I had a thirst for theology and apologetics and wanted to be a part of it.

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And I was invited to become a member, and I wasn't even reformed. So, there.

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And that's the point coming up next. And that is, we are independent thinkers. We are not, as some seem to have characterized us as, a group of people who are all sharing the same brain.

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That's right, folks. I have actually been known to have thoughts that were my own. And so do all of our members, and they are encouraged to do so.

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It's just that simple. And our members speak their own minds accordingly. There are differing viewpoints, and yet we come together with a common goal.

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But this organization doesn't function over them in an authoritative or dogmatic manner.

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It doesn't function over them in an authoritative or dogmatic manner. Look, we have the central

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Christian doctrines, okay? And it's awful hard to be in our midst if you're not reformed.

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So, I think we are to a point where we can honestly say the vast majority, if not all of our members, are reformed.

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But like I said, we don't all go to the same churches. And we're not going to dogmatically pound that table.

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At the same time, there are things that are not negotiable. They are what—that's the orb in which we call the local

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New Testament church. And that New Testament church has a certain amount of minimums in it.

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A belief in the Trinity, the five solas, on and on.

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The idea of scriptural authority, those are all within the broad definition of New Testament church.

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And so, even with that concept in mind, we're all of a like mind on that point.

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You may still hear or see our members taking various viewpoints. I've got a

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Facebook page feed going on right now, and I've got members of this organization taking an absolutely 180 -degree diametrically opposed position than I'm taking on how

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Facebook should work. Now, that's just an example. It's not theological, but it's just an example, okay?

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And how Christians should function or conduct themselves on Facebook. And you know what?

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They're entitled to do that. They're allowed to do that. They have minds of their own, and they're encouraged to do so.

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Now, we're about halfway through our time here, and it's probably going to speed up here a little bit. But I want to go through our structure, the structure of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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Alpha and Omega Ministries is incorporated in a structure that is three tiers, three levels of participation officially in this organization.

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The very first level of participation is membership. In order to be a member, you have to have actually been voted in as a member of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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And in order to be removed as a member, it takes a two -thirds majority vote of all of the members in order to do that.

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We have a board of directors on top of that, and we have corporate officers, which that's

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James, myself, a gentleman by the name of Mike Porter. And that's kind of the constitution of the officers in itself, or the construction of it.

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But let's break down the membership issue for starters. I need to take myself a little water here.

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It does seem that the YouTube feed is kind of bouncing around. Pardon me a moment.

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I don't know how he does it. But let's press on. So the issue of membership.

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For our membership, we have annual meetings. And this is instituted in our bylaws that we are to at least have annual meetings.

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During an annual meeting, we will give reports. James will give a ministry update to all the members present, et cetera.

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And all members must affirm something. That's right, annually.

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We didn't do this in the beginning, but we had some circumstances that cropped up over the years, and we learned we've got to do this every single year and make sure that everybody understands this.

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And they affirm before the rest of the members every year that they are members in good standing, presently members in good standing of a local

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New Testament church. They must affirm that. Now, there are circumstances where, you know, the pastor in the church has gone off into la -la land, and we can't in good conscience stay there anymore.

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And so we're looking for a new church. They're instructed to simply communicate with me.

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Let me know what's going on. We call this a time of pilgrimage, a pilgrimage where you're searching for a new place to be.

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And it very well may also be a circumstance as simple as we're moving from one side of the town to the other side of the town, or we're moving to another city altogether.

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And before we get our feet on the ground, we need to find a new church. And in the meantime, we're no longer a member of the church that we were at.

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Simple as that. But they're told annually, you need to communicate with me as the president and let me know what's going on with you.

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Keep me apprised of what's going on with you. And when you do put roots down somewhere, you need to let me know and have that pastor call me.

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It's just that simple. Let me know you're a member in good standing. Okay. And there's also that emphasis on that last part too, in good standing, you're required.

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Now, the membership also elects the board members annually. That's right, annually.

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A lot of organizations out there will put four -year terms or a two -year terms on an office of the board of directors.

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We don't do that. Our board members are either reaffirmed annually through a new vote or new board members are moved in and board members who don't want to be, or maybe we don't want them to be a board member anymore, are moved out.

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But the point is, is that every year we take a vote on our board membership and that is done by the actual general membership.

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Again, we are churchmen and the idea of accountability comes through the church.

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Accountability comes through the church. If you are a member in good standing of a local

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New Testament church, then there is a pastoral role in your life. There also needs to be a pastoral role and that's every single member.

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I'm a member, James is a member, and we have a number of other members. In that place, we're all on the same level.

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And we all are required to be churchmen. Whatever the role, there needs to be a pastoral role in the life of the apologist.

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And in theory, you don't really join this organization or become a part of it unless you are an apologist on whatever level you are.

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And then lastly, member candidates must be recommended by an existing member, somebody who's a part of our organization, who's been vouched for and is on the inside already, needs to be willing to vouch for that new member in order to bring them into the fold.

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So it's not a circumstance where you can walk an aisle or you can raise your hand or you can just knock on the door and say, I want to be a member.

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Or, you know, I get a kick out of this one, the one where you can go online and simply sign up and be a member.

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No, we don't work that way. Not here. No. We need to know you. And if we don't know you real well, but we want to get to know you, we need to know that somebody else does, somebody that we can trust their word.

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And if you're a member here, that means you're a member in good standing in your local church. And we're going to take your word for it as you vouch for this individual.

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Our board of directors. The board of directors at Alpha Omega Ministries is, as I said, voted annually into office by the membership.

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And the chief responsibility of the board of directors really is the appointment of officers.

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And guess what? Not four -year terms, not life terms, not two -year terms or 10 -year terms annually.

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Every single year, the officers of the corporation must be affirmed or someone else elected to that office every year.

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The board of directors is also responsible to hear and approve of the annual financial report as well as last year's minutes.

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And of course, the membership meeting does that as well. These are separate meetings, by the way. Now, the membership is allowed to observe the open board meeting.

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And there are circumstances where sometimes we have to take up a matter that's sensitive. And just like any other,

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Robert's Rules of Orders, we go into executive session. We rarely do that. But that's one of those circumstances.

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And the board of directors, each individual is subject to a conflict of interest statement.

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We have a conflict of interest statement. And if you're going to accept the office of a director here at Alpha Omega Ministries on the board, you have to affirm that you do not represent nor have been doing business with Alpha Omega Ministries.

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You can't do it. So now you can be a member and be someone who, and this is what

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I meant earlier, you know, that guy who's running that business and we look and we go, you know what?

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You know, one of our members goes, this guy's really great. This guy's a solid believer. This guy's apologetically minded, on and on and on.

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But we do business with him. But we want them on board. We want them to be a part of our organization officially in an official capacity to where they can tell others they are an official member of Alpha Omega Ministries.

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And that means something. It really does. And so that person isn't subject to the conflict of interest statement because they're not in a participatory role in the decision making processes that go on in the operation of the ministry.

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So there are two layers removed from that. And so in that circumstance, that's fine.

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And that's how we would bring that individual in as a member. But that person could not be a member of the board of directors because they have a conflict of interest.

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The officers of the corporation, the officers of the corporation are responsible for the day -to -day operations of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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And there is a division of responsibilities, twofold, two layers of responsibilities.

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Now, you've heard James introduced as the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries. His actual title is director of ministries.

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We shorten that up officially, and we just call him the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries. But his role is director of ministries.

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And my role here is president. I'm responsible for the administration of the organization, and he is responsible for the theological direction of the organization.

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So he sets the tone, he sets the pace, and I make sure it happens.

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It's that simple. I make sure that the bills get paid. I make sure that the lights stay on.

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I make sure that the YouTube feed goes on and off as it apparently is doing today.

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So I'll have to upload this later, I guess, and put a new deal up there. You know,

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I just, I spoke too soon, I guess. I don't know. Anyway, so the president is responsible for the administration to make things,

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I make things go. That's right. I'm the ministry paclet. But anyway, moving along.

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So I've thrown all this out in this structure, and all of this comes back to one simple question.

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What if? What if? Thinking forward, because we need to be doing that.

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We may not be in the circumstances right now, and we're not, where we have an internal issue.

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But the fact of the matter is, in 1983, two guys went to a lawyer's office in the summer of 1983, and said, we would like to start up a ministry, and we want it to be a non -profit organization, and we want it to have accountability.

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And in so doing, these two young men, one by the name of Mike Beliveau, and the other by the name of James White, drafted wisdom in their founding documents.

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I've already gone through those things for you as to how that works. But that wisdom in the founding documents was all about a just -in -case, a just -in -case so that there would be integrity in the organization in perpetuity.

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The idea that if there was moral or theological failure within the organization, there was a process of accountability in that organization that actually mattered.

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In point of fact, when I was made a member, I believe it was in 1988, in that very session, a matter of accountability had to take place, where the membership had to remove someone in an unfortunate situation.

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I'm not going to go into any more details. But that was my very first meeting with Alpha Omega Ministries, was watching them talk about someone

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I didn't even know, and vote them right out of the organization.

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Every person in the room took this dead serious, and they took my being brought in dead serious.

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It mattered, and it still does today. In a situation of moral and theological failure, once again, the role of the

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New Testament Church is paramount. It is vital. Should we learn of a situation where there is a moral failure on the part of one of our members, or a theological failure on the part of one of our members, and I'll break these down here in a little bit, we have a method by which we can do something about.

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In the situation of moral failure, there is first a confrontation. We bring the matter to the individual.

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It is not for us to sort it out. It is not for us to adjudicate it in any way, shape, or form.

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The bottom line is the charge is there, and we're confronting this individual with the charge, and we've seen legitimate evidence to back it up that we need to say something.

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But it's not for us to go any further. The confrontation is you are to present yourself to your elders.

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You are to tell your elders what the situation is, and we must hear from the elders with a phone call or an email, some level of communication that lets us know that you've done this, that you have presented yourself to them to put yourself under their authority.

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If we don't hear from the elders, oh my, what will we do? No, if we don't hear from the elders, we're going to make a call to the elders.

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How are we going to do that? Because we know where you go to church, because we require you to affirm that and communicate with that, that you are presently, every single year, a member in good standing of a local

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New Testament church. And so we know these things, okay? So we must hear from the elders.

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And then, of course, theoretically, the elders are either going to tell us, hey, this is not right, this is garbage, and this person is being smeared.

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And accordingly, you need to stand by them, and we're going to stand by them. It hasn't happened yet.

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What usually happens is discipline follows. That church then brings that church member under church discipline.

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And that can present itself in a number of different forms, one of which is most common, and you hope for, and that is that that person is now going to meet with one of the elders, and the elders are going to come alongside that person and work their way through whatever that matter is.

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But while this time is ongoing, the person is considered not in good standing, even though that person is still a member of that church.

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Now you see why the good standing clause is there. They must be both a member and in good standing.

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Wisdom on the part of a couple of young men in 1983. Therefore, being not in good standing, they are in violation of their membership of this corporation.

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And accordingly, we require their immediate resignation, or we will convene the membership and remove them.

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Now, this may be a permanent move, or it may be a temporary one until a restoration has occurred on the part of the elders.

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But even so, that person's place in this circumstance is right back at square one.

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Someone must vouch for them, and the membership body must vote them in, must accept them.

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This is a hard path to take after this, because the membership body knows what's happened, and they're going to have a whole lot of questions for this individual before they're going to vote for them.

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But restoration can happen, and the person can be brought back in through that process as a member in good standing of a local

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New Testament church. And so that would be the moral failure route in this circumstance.

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In the event of theological failure, theological failure requires a suspension of church membership.

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In theory, if you're a member of a local New Testament church, you've been going to a

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Trinitarian church that believes in the five solas, that has a minimum level of orthodoxy, that meets the standards of our statement of faith.

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We wouldn't have brought you in otherwise. So that's already a given. But let's say we have a circumstance where we have a member who's been a member in good standing of a

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Bible -believing, Scripture -based Trinitarian church and begins teasing with the idea of oneness

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Pentecostalism. We would consider that to be a theological failure.

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Number one, our relationship with you is based on your being a part of this church in good standing.

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And if you're going to drift off to this church over here and give it any kind of serious consideration, it's an automatic suspension of membership because it's a violation of the clause that requires you to be a member of a local

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New Testament church, which is, again, part and parcel of our statement of faith.

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But these things get drilled down a little bit further within the confines of the membership's process.

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So if you have a circumstance where someone is engaging in theological failure and they're teasing with the idea of maybe going to Rome, and I find out about that, or James finds out, or any other member of this corporation finds out about that, we're right back to that confrontation issue.

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And I'm going to demand repentance on the part of this person, going right back to the same process we had with moral failure, that they present themselves to their elders and this theological crisis that they may be going through, whatever it is, be addressed.

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And while it's addressed, they're no longer a member in good standing and need to either resign or be removed.

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And this issue is to be addressed by the local New Testament church. And eventually, if repentance occurs to the satisfaction of the elders and they are restored, that person is brought back to us for the consideration of membership.

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And yes, we're going to begin asking a bunch of questions about, okay, where are you at now?

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What is the chance of you going back in or teasing with this idea again?

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Maybe, maybe this isn't the right environment for you, and we're going to go down that road too.

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And I see my time is fleeting here, but we're going to continue on and press forward. I decided when

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I set this up, I'm going to go as long as I possibly can, or as long as it takes to complete the slideshow.

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So we have just a few more slides left, and let's continue on. So in theological failure, what does not, and I should have probably broken this out a little bit better, it does not include the idea of just moving, they're on a pilgrimage, changes in the church itself, forcing the need to find a new church to go to.

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They just need to communicate with me and let me know what's going on, and we can keep tabs as they go and find a new church, a solid church, a

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Bible -believing church, and bring their family there and get grounded and rooted there as well.

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So then again, there is the issue of what I call theological drifting. We just kind of covered that a moment ago.

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And then ultimately, accountability matters.

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Accountability matters. And in the circumstance of this organization, and I need to make a little adjustment here.

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One moment, please stand by. So we'll deal with this here in a little bit, so that I have that set up.

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Okay, so back to the general idea of accountability in parachurch ministry.

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Now, you may have a circumstance in mind and wonder how in the world this happened.

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Either founding documents did not include these kinds of things that I've just gone through with Alpha Omega Ministries and how we are constituted in such a way that you look at Dr.

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White. Not only is he a member in good standing of his church, he is an elder in his church, and that is taken seriously.

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Our members are members of their churches, and they take that seriously, and they take their role here seriously, because we impress that upon them.

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We want them to be serious churchmen, understanding that we take it dead serious too.

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And so all of that together finds the ministry in a circumstance where if accountability has to be exercised, if a circumstance presents itself where even as high as myself or Dr.

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White's position becomes jeopardized, our membership will not fear, and they won't shrink back.

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They'll do what it takes. There's actually pastors of churches in the valley here that I've already talked to.

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I've talked about this all the time, drive people crazy. But the point is that if we had a circumstance where the board of directors had to face a theological crisis with myself or Dr.

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White or another officer, and they needed advice, I mean, these are folks from all kinds of walks of life.

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There are pastors who would come in and advise them, even if they brought in their own pastors that would come in and give advice.

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The point is that if you don't have the accountability that is rooted in the local

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New Testament church, recognizing that if we're biblical men and women, then the very first thing that comes to our mind, no matter how high up on the theological scale our brain may be, the

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Bible tells us first and foremost to be humble. And that means our desire is to submit to the man of God in that church.

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And we see in Dr. White's circumstance, he is an elder. I'm not an elder in my church, but I belong to King's church,

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John Samson's church. He's my elder, so is Doug Bruner. We have a plurality of elders, okay?

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Only about 25 of us right now, and we're still trying to grow. But I teach Sunday school, and Doug is sitting there every single

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Sunday, participating as an elder, as well as someone in the

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Sunday school. It's accountability. It's just built in.

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It's part of who we are. And if the organization that you're looking at doesn't have those values as they do

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Christian ministry, trying to come alongside the church and help, there's something wrong.

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There's something wrong. The bottom line is, these guys need to have that relationship all of the time.

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So, with that, I have gone over my time. I thank you for being a part of this.

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And as I send us out, let's use that program.

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I want to thank you for joining me today. It's been a joy to be a part of this, and pray for Dr.

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White as he travels back home this Saturday, and pray that we will be able to have a new program with him on board, back in, telling us about his very long trip to Europe on Tuesday.