Why has the Great Commission become the "great omission" in the church today?

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This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

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Well, surprise, surprise. Look who's here again tonight. Anthony Silvestro. So first of all,

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Pastor Justin Pierce is not feeling good. Let's actually, it's not him. One of his congregation members not feeling good.

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So let's pray for them. So he's spending some time with them tonight. Pastor Andrew will be on here in just a minute or two.

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He's gonna come on and he's got some advertisements he wants to share with everyone. And in the meantime, we have a really, really cool show planned that I know a lot of people are excited about tonight.

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And it's all about evangelism. And so without further ado, I want to bring in our guests.

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And so first is Pastor Chuck O 'Neill in the center there. Glad to be here.

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At times. And Pastor Casey, thanks for being here tonight as well. Yes, sir. Thanks for the invitation,

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Dr. Anthony. Oh, you're welcome. So you guys got a good chance to meet at Shepard's Conference for the first time.

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Yes, we did. Had a lot in common. So two guys in like polar opposites of the country.

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One's way up in the Pacific Northwest. The other one's way down south in Florida. But great to see guys that are similar minded and care about the ministry in the same way.

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So Pastor, sorry, not Pastor, Justin Peters was going to be on tonight with us as well.

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But he is sick last minute. So he's got to cut out. He's really sad.

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For those of you who don't know about Justin, you know, a lot of people think he's a pastor. He's not a pastor.

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A lot call him an evangelist. I'm sorry, an apologist, which doesn't mind being called an apologist.

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However, if you ask him what he likes to be called, he likes to be called an evangelist.

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Evangelist Justin Peters. That's how serious he takes evangelism. And you know what?

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That's why we have this show, right? Because we've got other brothers here who really care about evangelism, really serious about it.

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So on that, so Pastor Chuck, you want to just tell a little bit about yourself to everyone who doesn't know you already.

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And I'll do the same for Pastor Casey next. Yes, well, I was an atheist back in 1990 and I joined the

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Marine Corps and for the first time read the New Testament. They gave me a little Gideon New Testament.

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And while in the midst of boot camp, the Lord and his sovereign grace brought me from death to life just reading that Gideon New Testament.

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And I knew what it was to be a sinner. I knew what it was to be lost and damned under the wrath of God.

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And now I knew what it was to be saved. And that was glorious, good news to me.

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As Amazing Grace says, I knew what it was to be lost and now I knew what it was to be found. And I figured everyone needed to know about this.

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And so, you know, it seemed like incredibly good news to me. It ought to be shared better than the lotto, even.

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And so I immediately, by God's leading, began to share it with people. Less effective,

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I would guess, back then than I am today. But nevertheless, like that woman at the well,

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I think I found the Christ. Here he is. And from then until this day, the

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Lord has laid it upon my heart to call sinners to repentance and saving faith in Christ.

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Knowing God's grace upon my sinful soul, I know that other sinners, too, can come beneath the blood and be rescued.

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Amen. Thank you for that. Pastor Casey? I had the privilege of pastoring

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Beulah Baptist Church here on the west side of Orlando. And man, our congregation is filled with street evangelists, personal disciples, disciple makers, full of those who love to study

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God's word. They love hearing the preaching of God's word. They love worshiping through true worship songs, and they can spot one that's not

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God -centered from a mile away. And I love the discernment in our congregation and how much we've grown.

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And just a little bit about myself, I love studying God's word, preaching God's word, and just telling everybody about it.

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You know, I've been known as one who is always sharing the gospel at gas stations. I love to call it not a gas station, but an evangelist station.

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You know, you've got them captivated until they finish filling up their car. And so you can squeeze the gospel in and strike up a conversation.

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So I view all the gas stations as evangelist stations. So there's some encouragement for you.

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Amen. That is great. Well, can I jump in there? What's that? Can I jump in there?

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One of my favorite questions at the gas station is, how many gallons of gas are beneath us right now?

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And you know where I'm going. What would happen if that ignited?

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And they usually get this real sober look on their face and say, wow, we would just be gone. I mean, they wouldn't find anything.

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And then I ask in all seriousness, but what about your soul? What would happen to your soul? Would you go to heaven or would you go to hell?

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And suddenly they've gone from the horror of thinking about being consumed by the fire of this gas exploding to the fires of hell.

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And not once has it failed to open the door for the gospel. So jump in there.

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Wow, that is a great spiritual transition. Well, right off the bat, our listeners get to have a golden nugget there.

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Before we go any further, I did a terrible job of this last week. So here is my pillow.

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Oh, that's awesome. Which I love. And so SFE has a special deal with MyPillow that if you use promo code

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SFE, you too can get a MyPillow or MyPillow slippers or MyPillow sheets or blankets.

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I got all kinds of MyPillow stuff that Andrew has every one of them, probably doubles of them all and loves them all.

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So if Andrew says it's good, go out and buy some for yourself. OK, got that done.

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We'll go back to that later. So let me tell you why I really wanted to do this show tonight.

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This has been a this has been burdening me for for a while. You know,

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I'm somebody who who's been evangelizing for four years before I was even teaching in churches around the country.

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I was doing evangelism. And that's where God had led me first into ministry. And in what really happened was listening for the first time to Hell's Best Kept Secret, True and False Conversions from Ray Comfort when somebody handed that to me.

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And when I listened to when I listened to that for the first time, it it dropped me to my knees and recognized if I really love people, but I walk past them continuously and don't tell them the truth, that's a problem.

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And so that changed everything about me early on in my walk. But what's really disconcerting to me over the years is that you see churches in general don't evangelize,

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Christians in general don't evangelize. There's a variety of reasons for it. Andrew and I go out and train in churches all over the country to help people get over those fears.

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Pastor Chuck, you have conferences at your church do the same thing. Casey, you've done this recently as well.

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So so we're doing our best to help people. But I think what really disturbed me most was two years ago, last month, we had an unbelievable thing happen in this country.

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Government that that came down with numerous lies behind the scenes, cracked down on this country and told pastors to close churches, something they have no right to do both legally, but more importantly, biblically.

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They had they had caused a panic and fear among Christians, of which we're not supposed to have fear as Christians.

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Our days are numbered for the foundation of the world. So that shouldn't have stopped us. And the Christians, we had an unbelievable opportunity for the last two years to go out and share the gospel.

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Let's see God, God save people and the discipline. And instead, by and large, churches close their doors,

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Christians hidden their homes, kept face diapers on the whole time. And and we missed we missed a golden opportunity.

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And so the thing is, it's not even just bad churches, right? It's good gospel, believing gospel, teaching gospel, preaching churches, churches that any one of us would go sit under week in and week out to listen to.

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Who are preaching the word faithfully. But then, you know, I know all three of us have had this conversation at different times.

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There's this disconnect between preaching the word and then getting into the application side of it, both from a personal sin perspective, as you know, in the exhortation of people, as well as as well as telling them, go out and evangelize.

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Right. That's that's the big missing piece. And that's why I really want to do this show. And so for our listeners, the reason why

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I wanted Pastor Chuck and Pastor Dr. Casey specifically is because Chuck has a church where I had the privilege of going out and preaching at it several times last year for the first time and had an absolute wonderful time at your church.

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I mean, I cannot believe how dialed in your church is. And when I tell people about how dialed in it is, they think

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I'm bluffing. I mean, that the understanding that there's like I felt like there was this unwritten rule in your church,

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Chuck, where everybody was expected to evangelize at some point. And so whether they showed up with you on Saturday morning at the abortion mill at eight in the morning or they showed up a little bit later at one of the two farmers markets, it seemed like there was an unwritten rule, unwritten expectation that people would show up.

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And the thing is, is that they wanted to. They wanted to be there. And that was astounding to me, to be able to see the culture that you were able to create in the church.

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I think the way that God intended it to be, as we see in the scriptures, and then

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Pastor Casey, for those of you don't know, you know, for those that don't know, you know, we met three and a half years ago,

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I think now, in a God's providential appointment in Kentucky, you were there to see the

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Ark Encounter Creation Museum. Your church had sent you up there and you and your family, Mike Riddle and I were down there at that time as we were teaching in churches in that area.

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And so our paths crossed providentially. And next thing you know, we came down and visited you about two months later in Orlando and just kind of struck up a great friendship and everything since then, which was absolutely wonderful.

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But I'll never forget the first time I was down at your church to teach and you had brought me in your office and showed me what your plans were over the next several years about how you wanted to create a culture of evangelism, discipleship, training up teachers, training up elders, and just really work on the church that you were there at that point for only two years for.

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And I am amazed to see what has what the

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Lord has accomplished through your through your efforts there in your church, because the maturity that I've seen in your church in the growth of it over the last three years has been absolutely astounding.

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And to watch how you've just systematically planned these things out and as you've done this, obviously, the

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Lord's behind it all. He has softened hearts of everyone in your church and has brought them along.

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I just I can't say enough about it. So before I get in, though, to anything else, our fearless leader has joined us for a few minutes.

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So let me add him in. How is it,

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Pastor Andrew? How are you doing? Thank you for taking time for a few minutes. I know your family's in town celebrating somebody's birthday in a couple of days as well as Resurrection Day.

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And I don't think your sound's working, Andrew. So I guess

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I'm not the only one that has problems with unmuted. I came in unmuted. There we go.

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My family is actually not in town. 20 minutes before the kids left the house, someone got sick.

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And so, yeah, so we've we've been we've scrambled and now we're trying to read.

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It's been a mess. Oh, I'm sorry. But anyway, but I will say, hey,

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I do, you know, publicly thanks to Anthony and Justin. They've been giving me a break just for a couple of months so that I could get some things focused health wise.

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And just as you know, I think most already heard with the passing of my mom, it was just a lot going on.

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And so they've they've given me the privilege of being able to take some time off. So I appreciate that.

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I should be back in May. But I did want to just come in and and just mention a couple of quick things for folks.

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I know you guys have never heard about this, but you guys hear about this thing called COVID. Kind of interrupted a couple of things, you know, but we had a trip to Israel planned and we scheduled it.

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And then the COVID hit and then we rescheduled it and rescheduled it and rescheduled it. And then we found out that there'd be vaccinations required and then we just canceled it.

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And so, well, Israel lifted vaccinations. So it is back on. And so if you're interested, if you sign up for our newsletter, you probably already got the information on it.

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But if you go to twenty twenty three Israel trip dot com, that's twenty twenty three

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Israel trip dot com. It takes you to all the details. This trip is even longer than we were originally planned.

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This is going to be a 13, not a 10 day trip. But it's going to be February 7th.

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Wait, no, it's it's just before the conference. Yeah, it's right before Shepard's conference because it was like a 17th to March 4th or something.

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Yeah. You know what? Maybe there's an email. Yeah, there's the hold on the website.

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It is. Hold on. I'm going to check. I bet it's I did Israel trip and I was supposed to Israel. I'm checking it live.

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Israel tour. That's what it is. I bet. Let's see. But yeah,

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Israel tour, that's what it was. So it's so it's it's twenty twenty three Israel tour.

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Dot com, the other one was last year, so it's February 20th to March 4th, which means we can still make it to Shepard's conference.

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So you just come right back from Israel and go right out. So that's that's some news that we have.

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And so that's let you guys know. Another thing that we're doing is we have we're running a sale on this book right here.

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And so this is sharing the good news with Mormons. This is going to be right in line with your topic tonight, Anthony, not because it's

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Mormons, but basically this is 20 some different authors.

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I think twenty four, twenty six authors. All of us are addressing a different way to share the gospel specifically to Mormons, but a lot of them work for everybody.

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And so we're running this at thirty five percent off. So if you go to striving for training or go to the store, get sharing the good news with Mormons, just use the coupon code

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LDS. That stands for Latter Day Saints. And you can get that discount. And so you you have that available.

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So those are two quick announcements I wanted to make. I want to thank you, Anthony, for running it. And I'm glad to see there was someone

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I see someone backstage who I was going to jokingly tell him he should get on the show. So I'm glad he's backstage there. Yeah, we're going to get him in a little bit.

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I want to get him rep his his his group. But, you know, here's the thing, guys, let me just give a quick thing about the two pastors that you have here.

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There are a lot of churches who they don't you don't see a lot of evangelism in the church because it doesn't start at the top.

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And this is why Anthony chose the people he chose. I mean, our church, we have a church plant started a year ago, and we have a team that goes out in South Philly every night to evangelize.

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And we get a list of everyone to be praying for. Everyone in church gets a list of who to pray for. And we'll get anywhere from six to 20 names every night to be praying for.

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If you want that in your church, you guys just start doing it. You encourage the pastor. But if you get a pastor that does it.

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So if there's any pastors that are listening, you want to see your church get on fire. You start evangelizing because your congregation will follow.

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Amen. And I'm going to go spend some time with my bride. Have a good night. That's good. If she falls asleep early, feel free to jump back on.

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Yeah. And I will try not to hit the end broadcast this time. Cool.

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Thank you for coming in, Andrew. So on all that, you know,

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Andrew just kind of started off with a bang right there is, you know, evangelism starts at the top.

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And so, Pastor Chuck, what does that mean? What does it mean that it starts at the top?

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It starts way, way, way above me. The top is the

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Lord Jesus Christ. The top is the King. The top is our creator.

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And the reason there is a creation is so the creator could come into it to save sinners.

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One of my favorite verses, I've shared it often on this very show, but if anyone knows me, they'll know this.

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First Timothy 115, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. In fact, it says this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance.

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So there's that opening tagline there to get our attention that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

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He didn't come into the world to start a religion. He didn't come into the world to start a system of sacraments.

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He didn't come into the world to, say, try harder. He came into the world to save sinners.

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And he's blessed to use each of us who have been bought by his blood and are dwelt by his spirit to that end.

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In his sovereignty, he condescends to use us. And it's our high privilege, the high privilege of our lives, that we could, as pastors and as all

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Christians, proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to be that earthly means by which the

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Holy Spirit works in regenerating the dead and opening their blind eyes to see the glory of Christ that's being proclaimed before them, whether it's by a pastor or a congregant or by that woman at the well so many years ago who went to her village and said,

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I think I have found the Christ. And so it starts at the top. It starts with Jesus Christ himself.

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And the Great Commission is called the Great Commission still by most, but it's not treated as the

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Great Commission. It's treated as the take it or leave it commission.

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You know, if you feel like it commission, the not so popular commission, anything but great.

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And commission is command. It's the command of the king. It's the command of Christ. He came into the world.

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He suffered for sinners. He took the fullness of the eternal wrath of the Almighty in their place. He said to tell us, die.

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He bowed his head. He gave up his spirit. He was laid in a tomb for three days. We're about to celebrate the resurrection.

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He conquered sin and Satan and death. And he ascended on high to sit at the right hand of the father to intercede on their behalf.

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And before he did that, he said, all authority, all authority. Here's the top. All authority in heaven and earth have been given unto me.

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Go, therefore, and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the father, the son of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.

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Lo, I'll be with you even to the end of the age. That is the Great Commission. That's the great mission that we have been given in Christ.

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And then we see how the church unpacked that, how the church went about obeying that.

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And it starts at the top. Before there were pastors, there were. Apostles and the apostles had been trained by the

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Lord Jesus, the top to go, therefore, and he sent them out two by two.

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And so the go, therefore, actually meant go, therefore, it didn't mean why you happen to be at the grocery or what you happen to be out doing this or that.

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It's a concerted effort to study toward, pray toward, stand up and walk out toward sinners who are perishing in their sins.

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And to proclaim the law of God, to be a tutor, to bring men to Christ, be justified by faith, to proclaim the gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation, to turn the world upside down, to fill our cities with the doctrine of Christ.

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That's what Jesus did. That's what Jesus' disciples did, his apostles.

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And then his apostles planted the church, Jesus the cornerstone, they the foundation, we're the church.

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And a pastor's job is simply to follow Jesus and the apostles walking in the light of the word, saying to the congregation, follow me as I follow

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Christ, dying to self, taking up the cross, filling the city with the doctrine of Christ, preaching

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Christ, of course, in the pulpit, absolutely, unashamedly, boldly in the pulpit and preaching

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Christ on the streets, wherever sinners are found. And that is how it starts at the top with Jesus and how it's trickled down to us today.

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But we don't believe that Great Commission anymore. We don't believe that it's great.

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We don't envision that typically as the Great Commission. We've got a lot of other ways of seeing the

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Great Commission and disciple making. And what does it mean to make disciples? And what did Jesus mean in the so -called

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Great Commission? But as you look at it contextually, how Jesus' ministry led up to it, and then how the early church, the apostles, the early church, even

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Pastor Timothy was exhorted to obey it, you see that it's really quite gloriously clear.

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And that's just my opening salvo. I've got much more to bring in support of that premise.

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It almost sounds like a John MacArthur intro to a sermon, right? You're like 30 minutes in and you're like, well,

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I'm going to get to the sermon. Thank you, Chuck. You always have great words.

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Pastor Casey, what are your thoughts on that same question? Yeah, to spin off of what

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Chuck said, it's not a suggestion. It's a commission, and it's to be done intentionally.

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And many today do not keep the main thing, the main thing. And that is the main thing.

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Making disciples is where it starts with evangelism.

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And we'll get to discipleship, because like you mentioned, pre -show, they're coupled together, and so evangelism...

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Uh -oh, it sounds like his camera's going out for a moment there. So we'll put him on pause until the camera catches up, comes back.

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Okay, so Pastor Chuck, you talked about it. Oh, you know what, Pastor Casey just got back on.

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Okay, Pastor Casey, your camera cut out about halfway through, so you were just getting into what you were saying.

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So we want to kind of go back to that. Sure, sure. You know, it's not the great suggestion, it's the great commission.

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And I'd like to emphasize as well that it's a co -mission. Lo, I will be with you always.

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So when you are obeying the great commission, the Holy Spirit of God is giving you the words that you need to say.

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He is filling you. He is helping you as you walk by faith and not by sight. And it is an act of faith, not just to step out and share the gospel, but to even share with someone that Jesus, whom died 2 ,000 plus years ago, has something to offer you today.

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That's an act of faith to share with someone that his substitutionary death applies to you and your sins today.

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And so we, by faith, go. And that's the only way to be able to please the Lord. So nevertheless, evangelism is intentional.

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And today, it seems that ecclesiology is just a matter of getting butts in the seat, getting them to give their bucks or their dollars so that churches can build bigger buildings.

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And that is not ecclesiology. Pastors have bought into this

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American worldview of church. And it is just gross. It is adultery.

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And so I'm sickened by the philosophy of most churches who have bought into a success model rather than a biblical model.

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And evangelism has been all the way around. And they've enabled their members and their attenders to just simply back away and not engage in evangelism and discipleship and feel comfortable because they're attending and giving.

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You know, so it's interesting. You bring something up, Pastor Casey, and I think your camera went out again for a moment there.

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So there must be some internet issues. But so I know that, you know, for people who might recognize

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Pastor Casey, he's been on the show before, but he was very recently on a very popular video with Justin Peters talking about First Baptist Orlando and all the bad stuff going on within the church and what they're doing with ordaining homosexuals and baptizing homosexuals.

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I'm sorry, not ordaining, baptizing homosexuals, putting them in positions of leadership, things like that, that have been really problematic.

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And I know one of the things we've talked about is, and what you're kind of alluding to, is the issue of pragmatism.

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And so churches are, in general, you have pastors who are soft on evangelism because they don't want to press their congregation to areas that are uncomfortable for them doing evangelism.

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And then also you don't want, you see churches that are, rather than evangelizing the way that we're called to, using the word of God, going out unashamedly, instead they are teaching pragmatic methods out there, church growth model stuff, rather than Bible church growth model.

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It's a great invite. Yeah. It's a great invite. The great invite. Exactly.

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That's right. Okay. I got to hold your feet to the fire, Pastor Casey, on this one. You said the only way to please the

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Lord through evangelism, did I catch that right? Say that again?

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About pleasing the Lord, that we can only please the Lord if we're evangelizing.

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Okay. I'll go with you on that. Can you explain that a little bit further on that? So I'm not sure that I intended to say it in that way.

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But, you know, we're commanded to let our light shine, period.

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And so to stifle that is to stifle Christ, whom is working through us.

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And how in the world can you be a Christian with God inside of you and not let it be real?

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The desire of our heart is not only to worship God, but to love others as well. And our loving of God, we are to love others.

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The most loving thing that we can possibly do is to be selfless and evangelize. So pleasing

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God starts with the very purpose for which He came. The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost,

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Luke 19 10 says. And so I would have to back it up and concur with you.

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That's exactly why I wanted you to explain that further. Good. I agree. I've often said, and then

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Pastor Chuck, I'll let you give your thoughts on this too, is I've often said that a Christian who knows they're supposed to be evangelizing and doesn't,

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I think they're in sin. I think it's an issue. And I know some people think

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I take that a little strong and whatnot, but I do wonder what somebody is thinking if the

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Holy Spirit is truly living within them, why they're not obeying that Holy Spirit.

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So having said that, Pastor Chuck, I'll let you continue. Sure. So let me back up to something you said in your opening statement.

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Regarding at our church, it seemed to be an unspoken rule that you must be evangelizing.

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That might be strong in the sense of, you know, there is no bylaw or statement on the wall when you walk in the church.

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And I always make it quite clear that no one has to be with me out there in the cutting, bleeding edge in downtown

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Portland. But as Pastor Casey and yourself have made quite clear,

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Christ Jesus is our Lord, and he commands us to go therefore and make disciples.

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He commands us to be his witnesses. And if we love the Lord, Jesus said, you will obey my commandments.

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And so out of love of God, we want to obey the commandments. Not to earn heaven, not to earn anything with God, but out of love for what he has done in sending witnesses to us, in sending the gospel to us.

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Oh, that we would love God by carrying the gospel to others. In Matthew 22, the

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Lord Jesus said that the first commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. The second is love your neighbor as yourself.

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And we haven't begun to love God or neighbor when we ignore the gospel. And I don't fear,

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I'm certain, tragically, that many Christians will on that day, they stand before the

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Lord, they're going to find that they're saved as through fire, as scripture speaks of. All the things they thought were righteous works will be burned up, for they were worthless.

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They were religious works. They were not the work of Jesus Christ in seeking to save the lost.

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And there are many good things we can do in our lives, and many ways we can spend our time that aren't overtly sinful, and yet they are not the reason that Christ created the heavens and the earth.

31:25

They're not the reason that Christ came into the heavens and the earth through the womb of the Virgin Mary. They're not central to that main thing, as Pastor Casey said, and we need to be busy about keeping the main thing, the main thing so that we might actually hear, well done, good and faithful, do loss.

31:42

And we're deceiving ourselves if we think we're going to hear, well done, good and faithful, do loss, blood -bought slaves, if we ignore the great commission of Jesus Christ.

31:51

If we go to gas station after gas station and grocery after grocery and everywhere in between, the workplace and wherever we play, doing whatever we enjoy, and we do not lift up the name of Jesus.

32:04

We were so busy in all those things, catching the next catfish or catching the next wave or catching the next sporting event or catching the good price on the ground beef at the grocery, and yet we care not for perishing sinners who are going to spend forever under the wrath of the

32:23

Almighty, and we care not for the glory of God and the redemption of sinners to take their lips that use

32:29

His name as a curse word and change the heart so that those lips might be changed so they now use

32:35

His name in praise and worship. And so tragically, there are going to be a great many deceived thinking they're living wonderful Christian lives when they really are living far outside of the will of God.

32:48

Amen. And thank you for clarifying that. I did say that tongue -in -cheek, by the way, earlier in the show, but it's true, though.

32:56

Anybody who'd walk in and observe your church for even a short period of time could come to that conclusion that it was almost mandated.

33:04

And I know it wasn't, but people had a genuine love from top to bottom in your church for evangelism, for the lost.

33:11

It was just incredible to me. So, okay. So, Pastor Casey, you're looking to get this culture in your church, and it seems like a lot of it's going that way already, the power of the

33:25

Holy Spirit in your church. But what have you done as a pastor to say, hey, this is what

33:32

I believe the scriptures are teaching me in terms of what this congregation, my congregation, needs to do and how you're leading them.

33:39

How did you go about this in thinking through what you wanted to do and how you're going to do it?

33:45

Sure. Well, God initiating it has been a blessing.

33:51

He's sent us some men who love evangelizing in the streets, at abortion clinics, every single weekend.

34:00

And so that kind of coupled with my gift mix and what I love as well.

34:06

I love these dear men. And so in doing that, we've talked about some of the strengths that they have, some of the weaknesses that they've overcome.

34:17

And we do weekend seminars quite often here at the church.

34:23

And one seminar was when you and I taught on evangelism. And I just dove into how to witness to a

34:31

Jehovah's Witness. And that was phenomenal. And that entire seminar was spurred from one of our great men.

34:38

His name is Jack Wilburn. And he said, Casey, I'm just struggling, you know, being able to lead

34:44

Jehovah's Witnesses to Christ and help them to see that He really is our Lord and Savior. And so through God's providence,

34:53

I just went to the study and said, okay, well, let's figure this thing out and equip our people for being able to share

35:00

Christ with Jehovah's Witnesses because they're trained. And by and large, our people are not trained.

35:08

We have not taken a militant approach to ecclesiology, for which Paul took with Timothy, by the way.

35:14

He told him to be or to endure hardship as a good and faithful soldier. So nevertheless, training is essential, and training is fallen by the wayside.

35:23

And so our church is kind of recognizing some things and being intentional and placing these things back into what we do.

35:30

So in one of these seminars, it was about evangelism, and you were so kind to come down, and we tag teamed that weekend.

35:36

And I believe I asked for you to place that message in the inbox, by the way, if that's there below.

35:43

But nevertheless, I'll give a quick one -two on it. And that is we just simply went through and proved that Jesus claimed to be

35:53

God over and over and over in the scriptures. That's what the Jehovah's Witnesses need to see from the

35:59

Old Testament to the New Testament. But it's kind of hard to remember these obscure verses.

36:05

We're often good at memorizing a verse that has a good cadence to it or numbers that's easy to remember,

36:13

Matthew 6, 33, stuff like that is kind of easy and flowing. But nevertheless, where Jesus claimed to be

36:21

God, like John 10, 30 and such, and Father 1, that's an easier one. But what we did is we talked through what

36:28

I called a sticky note method. And so in the beginning of the Bibles, you just wrote down a sticky note, and it tells you exactly where to go and how to witness to a

36:39

Jehovah's Witness. And so by the time the Jehovah's Witnesses get back to the streets and start knocking on our doors, they're kind of sending letters and stuff right now instead of knocking.

36:51

But you can see right here in the beginning of my Bible, it's just a little sticky note, and it tells you the first verse to go to.

36:59

And if you turn to Isaiah 7, 14, it's a prophecy that leads right into it.

37:05

And then from that verse to the next verse to the next verse, within five minutes, you can share ten verses of Scripture to a

37:12

Jehovah's Witness about how the fact that Jesus claimed to be God. And by the way, their own translation would verify.

37:20

So if you ask them to read it in their translation, it's even more powerful.

37:26

So you say, turn to this verse and you read it, because they don't trust any other translation than the translation that they have.

37:33

But nevertheless, you could spend another hour just talking about how to witness to a

37:38

Jehovah's Witness, another hour like Andrew came on and said how to witness to a Mormon. But nevertheless, we're lacking in apologetics and training in evangelism.

37:47

And a lot of our folks really don't know how to have a good, solid conversation with someone who was ready to rebuke the standard quo from our

37:56

Christians. So nevertheless, I believe in the power of the gospel, and our people can certainly share the gospel with a

38:03

Jehovah's Witness at the very least and be faithful to that. But I think that if you've got the ear of someone who's listening and they're willing to come into your house and sit down at your table and talk about the

38:17

Word of God, you need to be a little bit more prepared to share what Christ has.

38:23

So nevertheless, we've developed these seminars on the weekends and a ministry team that's ready to pull together the tables and the decor and all the devices that are needed to do this.

38:37

And so when we find a need, we'll strike while the iron's hot, and we'll do a seminar as led by the

38:46

Lord. It's not something that we plan years in advance, but the need of our congregation, the need of the day is kind of what we respond to and then equip our saints to be able to continue to serve the

39:00

Lord Jesus Christ in whatever way that there is a need. So that would just be one way that I could respond in regards to equipping our people to evangelize.

39:12

And obviously, like Ray Comfort's always encouraging, if the pastor will do it, then the people will do it.

39:19

And so anytime I get an opportunity to take some guys to lunch or be with someone,

39:25

I'm going to be sharing the gospel as the Lord opens the opportunity and then at the same time being intentional about it.

39:32

So being a good example is really, really important for our people to be able to develop that kind of culture.

39:39

Yeah. You said a lot there. I'm going to just pick on one of them, and then we'll kind of circle around some of the others in a little bit.

39:46

But you knew what you needed to do according to the scriptures in your church. And so you said, hey,

39:52

I'm going to start leading them in training. And you're going to find ways to train them. And the thing is that your people show up.

40:00

They go to these extra trainings because they want to be there. And God's certainly given them the love, but he's also given them a pastor who is leading them in this, which is amazing.

40:12

So, okay, Pastor Chuck, you're a little further down the line, right? You got people showing up all the time for your evangelism events.

40:18

How did you develop this culture within the church? Obviously, it starts with the vision.

40:25

Not that type of vision, but, you know, a scriptural vision. And otherwise,

40:31

Justin Peters might be calling in while he's – Let's start there. Let's start there. I think that's a good place to start, brother, because a lot of churches and pastors are looking for a vision.

40:42

What is our vision for our church? So they go on a personal pseudo -Christian vision quest, just short of a sweat lodge, where they're looking for their, you know, niche as a church, their niche as a pastor.

40:58

And I was asked years ago when I was candidating for the pastorate here by some

41:05

Bible college students and some others, you know, what is my vision for the church? And I said, well, my vision for the church is

41:13

Christ's vision for the church. And yeah, it's summed up. It's all in here, but it's summed up in Matthew 28, 18 through 20.

41:24

You mean the Great Commission, not the Great Suggestion? The Great Commission. That's what I gave them.

41:29

And that is my vision for the church because it's Christ's vision for the church. That is the mission in a nutshell.

41:35

And there's much more we can add to it, but that's the tip of the spear. And they said, well, no, we know that.

41:41

We know that. But what's your vision for the church? And I smiled and I said, well, you know,

41:48

I'm going to have to be stubborn here and say my vision for the church is Christ's vision for the church, the

41:54

Great Commission. So it starts there. That's Christ, not vision, Christ's command, Christ's plan for his church.

42:02

And so we start there. And then as pastors, we keep the main thing, the main thing.

42:07

And we train that way. And God bless Pastor Casey for a specific training on Jehovah's Witnesses, very much needed.

42:15

How tragic that the average Jehovah's Witness can run laps around the average

42:20

Christian, abusing the word of God instead of rightly dividing the scriptures.

42:27

And most Christians would be afraid of a Jehovah's Witness. They don't want to get in a sword battle with a Jehovah's Witness. They want to go the other way.

42:33

And we need to change that as pastors. We need to graciously shame that shame.

42:39

They're ashamed of Christ in the sense that they don't want to step up and enter into that fray.

42:45

They want to run the other way. And they need to be ashamed of their shame and instead of run toward the battle and be equipped by us as pastors, as elders to do that through instruction and through example.

42:58

And what we do is here in Portland, Oregon, there's an annual Jehovah's Witness conference.

43:05

And 10 ,000 plus, I don't know, 15 ,000, 20 ,000 Jehovah's Witnesses gather all at once. And it's hard to find the

43:11

Jehovah's Witnesses out in the community, right? Except when they're going door to door. And that's a good opportunity. You see them out door to door, you pull the car over and you engage them and stop them from dragging your neighbors to hell, right?

43:22

Go to them and try to rescue them from hell by proclaiming the true Christ and the true gospel to them.

43:29

So that's one good way to engage them is when you see them. But they gather everywhere across the nation.

43:36

And you can get online on their website and find their conferences and go to their conference and show up and preach the true

43:43

Christ. So I take the largest amplifier that I've got and I show up at their conference. So we have tracks, but they won't take the tracks.

43:50

Bring them anyway on the off chance that somebody might take them. But they're trained not to take literature because cults are afraid of the truth.

43:57

And so they cut their people off from the truth. And so we go and we engage them conversationally as much as they are willing.

44:05

But they have what we call watchdogs who will often step in between us and them and back them away from us to keep them, again, from being exposed to the truth.

44:14

But the entire time they're coming, they have to stop at crosswalks and wait for traffic and such. And we're preaching the truth to them.

44:22

And then as they walk from there across the expanse before they can get inside this coliseum, we're preaching the truth.

44:28

And then at noon, they come out for lunch. And for over an hour, they're outside, thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses.

44:35

And I'm preaching the glory of Jesus Christ, fully God, fully man, crucified for sinners, not the

44:43

Archangel Michael, and expounding all that from the Scriptures. And we've got teams all across this expanse to engage anyone who wants to talk.

44:53

And, you know, that kind of experience for a church, it strengthens their faith.

44:59

It sharpens the sword of the Spirit in them. And it gives them a boldness to see their pastor.

45:06

And there's no good thing in me. I'm a wretched sinner saved by grace. But to see their pastor standing up to a cult that normally they would pull back from, maybe be afraid of, but standing up to 10 ,000 people and saying, bring me your

45:21

Goliath, bring your Goliath. You know, I just come as a little David here. And I've got some stones versus I'm going to fling out there.

45:31

And if God is in it, you will be slain and you will bend your knee and you will confess Christ as Lord.

45:38

And we've had professions through that, which the results are not the issue.

45:46

Ultimately, faithfulness and faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God. And so we trust that explicitly. But any day you can preach the true gospel to 10 ,000 or 1 ,000 or 100

45:55

Jehovah's Witnesses all at once. What an awesome opportunity. And then have those precious conversations before and after and on the sides.

46:03

But one last story out of that. After doing that all day one day, and at that time, there wasn't a lot of evident fruit.

46:10

But at the end of the day, this man comes out and he says, you know, I prayed before I came here. I was raised

46:16

Jehovah's Witness. My parents have been after me to get back in it. I haven't been in it. And I prayed, Lord, if this is of you, show me.

46:23

If it's not of you, show me. I'm going to go today to this conference and just see what happens.

46:28

Anyway, he said, I don't know what else has gone on here today, but I want you to know God sent you here for me.

46:35

I'm done with the Jehovah's Witnesses. I repent. That's not Christ. That's not God. I'm done with it.

46:41

And so praise God. But that's just one specific example. When you go out door to door, when you go to the city center, you meet

46:49

Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, atheists, Catholics, Muslims. It's all there.

46:56

And so it's the greatest training ground for evangelism is evangelism. And that's what

47:01

Jesus did. Jesus said, hey, you disciples, come with me. It wasn't an endless series of seminars, which, by the way, we tend to like as Christians.

47:11

We like apologetic seminars. We like evangelism seminars even, as long as no one says, OK, now let's go.

47:17

As long as no one says, OK, we're going to open the door up and we're all going to go. Everyone's cool.

47:23

Give us your books. Give us your lectures. Give us your notes. Give us some fancy overheads.

47:29

That's great. Amen. Theoretical evangelism is awesome. Love it.

47:35

But the real deal, feet on the street, that terrifies most

47:41

Christians. And understandably, I don't want to lack compassion. I get it.

47:46

We love ourselves. And we don't want to look the fool not having the answer. We don't want to be stumped by the atheist or stumped by the

47:53

Mormon. I get it. But here's the thing. It's not whether or not you're stumped. It's whether or not we believe in the power of the gospel to save souls, whether we believe in the sovereignty of God, that one little word, one truth from Scripture can rescue and will rescue those whom the

48:14

Lord is calling to himself. And so we just need to faithfully go. And if all we know is what that woman at the well knew, hey,

48:20

I think this is the Christ. Well, that's a starting place. Start there. Go. And going will actually drive you into the scriptures that you might learn more.

48:29

Be ready next time with a sharper sword. And so just start going and proclaiming.

48:35

If all you've got is John 3 16, proclaim it and then add on and add on. So you got one stone.

48:41

Now you got two stones. Now you got three stones. Now you came back with Goliath's sword and you're ready to wield that thing.

48:47

Right. You've got a trophy from battle. But just to start going and as pastors to start leading.

48:55

And again, I've been talking a while, but let me back up. Years ago, I started door to door. Grab one saint.

49:01

Come with me. Knock on the door. They open the door. We're here to talk with you about Jesus Christ.

49:08

We're here to talk with you about heaven. Whatever. Jump right into it. That's where we started.

49:13

But then it was downtown city square talking to people. And then it was. And then it was quite naturally preaching and his crowds would gather.

49:25

We need more than a conversation here. We need to preach. The Lord has brought a crowd. We can't talk to them all one on one.

49:30

We got to preach the gospel. And so one step led to another. And then the abortion clinic.

49:37

You know, how can we combat the slaughter of the unborn? We bring the law and the gospel to it.

49:44

With the primary mission of saving souls. And the secondary mission of rescuing babies.

49:49

But all of this, whether it's Jehovah's Witness conference, whether it's city center, whether it's an abortion clinic, it's all elder -led, pastor -led opportunity to train people on the street.

50:01

Not that I don't train in Sunday school, that I don't train from the pulpit, that we don't have conferences and seminars.

50:07

We have all that. But it becomes very real on the street.

50:13

And when they see their pastor leading in that way and fighting that fight, they are emboldened and strengthened and encouraged to stand up themselves, whether it's alongside the pastor or in their normal sphere of influence in their daily life.

50:28

And I think what I've heard from both of you, thank you for that, is that if it doesn't start at the top, right?

50:34

We've seen this in the comments section. We've listened to Andrew and both of you say this, and I've heard this from numerous other pastors.

50:40

If it doesn't start at the top, if the pastor isn't preaching it, isn't continually exhorting his congregation to do it, and if he's not doing it himself on occasion, they're not going to follow.

50:53

Okay, so a couple of things I wanted to kind of go back on, because you guys have a lot of information you kind of threw at us for a quick moment.

51:03

Number one, the gospel is the power of God and salvation, right? Romans 1 .16, God unveils through Paul the beauty of an unbelievable gospel presentation throughout

51:14

Romans, right? Many, many chapters of this. And he starts off with the gospel is the power of God and salvation and then walks into the rest of it.

51:23

And I think that it really says something, is that, as you said, Pastor Chuck, if we evangelize and we continue to grow, none of us starts off as a seasoned evangelist.

51:33

What we start off is, is we get ourselves out of the comfort zone, as Ray Comfort says, and have to force ourselves to do it.

51:40

Take somebody who's more experienced with you, but get out and do it. And don't worry if you don't have all the answers, because the reality is, is

51:48

God is sovereign, God is the one who changes the hearts, and that the gospel is the power of God and salvation, right?

51:54

As long as we understand the gospels, we understand that it's Christ's death, burial, and resurrection that pay the penalty for sinners, for those who repent and believe, everything else is gravy on top of that.

52:04

And so that's what we have to get understood and go, and then we grow after that.

52:11

So I love that. There's one thing I wanted to bring up too, because you guys both talked about Jehovah's Witnesses.

52:17

These are scary stats. I know in one of the trainings we did at your church, Pastor Casey, I mentioned these.

52:23

I don't think we did this at yours, Pastor Chuck, because we focused on some different topics, but Jehovah's Witnesses throughout the world, there are what they call 8 .5

52:33

million publishers. That's their word for evangelists or just church members, because they consider every single church member an evangelist.

52:42

They're synonymous in their church. So much so that Jehovah's Witnesses are under mandatory continuous training.

52:50

Jehovah's Witnesses, do you know what the average amount of time every Jehovah's Witness spends?

52:55

The average in a month? Over 20 hours a month in evangelism.

53:01

Can you imagine? 20 hours a month, which means when you multiply this out, 20 hours per month times 12 months a year over the year, 8 .5

53:11

million people, it's over 2 billion collective hours spent in evangelism per year by Jehovah's Witnesses.

53:21

Unbelievable. Unbelievable. They trounce Christianity, and their numbers are a fraction of what

53:27

Christians are. The Mormons, males, in order to be able to be eligible for what they believe to be the highest level of heaven, they have to wear their special holy underwear and all kinds of other stuff.

53:39

But they also, before that, they have to go on a missions trip. 24 -month mission for males, 18 -month mission for females.

53:48

And this is a mission that is self -funded. So that means they have to work in high school to save up the money, 10, 12 grand on average per Mormon.

53:57

They can't have the money given to them by family members, or at least not in the past, they couldn't. They had to raise it themselves.

54:03

And then they had to spend a few weeks to a few months in training. They were assigned where they're going to go.

54:09

And if they were going to a foreign country, that training included learning the foreign language fluently enough to share the gospel.

54:15

Well, their false gospel with everybody. So their training is intensive. We see

54:21

Muslims getting intensive training now. We see Catholics starting to get training now. I mean, all the cults are out there in full force.

54:29

And yet the ones that have the truth? Yeah. Largely, we're missing.

54:35

It's amazing to me. Okay, let's dive into some of these topics a little bit more because you guys are avoiding a couple of my questions here.

54:43

So let's – and I don't think you're doing it intentionally. So let's dive in a little bit.

54:49

How do we change the culture in our church and get people to want to evangelize?

54:54

Because oftentimes people are either scared or a common one is, well, you know what? Some people are gifted in evangelism, right?

55:03

I mean you said it about one of your congregants, Pastor Casey, that he's gifted. Everyone knows he's gifted, right?

55:08

So it seems like a lot of pastors and congregations say, well, he's the one that's gifted.

55:14

He's the one who should be doing it. I'll just sit in the background. I'll use my giftings elsewhere, right?

55:20

Yeah, we've got some great guys, Malcolm, Frank, and plus Jack and others that love to evangelize.

55:27

And around here we talk about the things and the fact that, yes, we have those who have a gift.

55:33

But at the same time, the Great Commission is for Christians. It's not just for pastors. It's not just for evangelists.

55:39

It's for Christians. So all Christians are called to evangelize. But pastors as well, like we've been talking about, are called to evangelize as well.

55:48

You know, Paul told Timothy to do that, and he was very specific in to fulfill his calling in 2

55:54

Timothy 4 or 5. He said, Endure hardship, do the work of the evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

56:02

So that is one thing that pastors have to do, not only to be an example and evangelize and fulfill their ministry, but according to Ephesians 4, 11, and 12, to equip the saints for service.

56:15

And then if you take seriously what the Scriptures say, 1 Timothy 4, 7 says to discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness, or I believe the

56:23

ESV may say train yourself for the purpose of godliness. Nevertheless, it's the same root word there.

56:30

We need to be working on ourselves so that we are able to evangelize.

56:35

And Chuck, you mentioned earlier, it's not the great invitation. Most churches have been given to just asking their people to invite people to church.

56:44

That's not evangelism. No. But if people are going to do the

56:50

Great Commission, it seems like that is what they feel like is the first step in order to reach their friends and neighbors for Christ, is to invite them to church, which is a total perversion of ecclesiology.

57:04

If you think about the church, not the building, the body, the people are the saved people, blood -bought

57:11

Christians. They're believers. They come to church to worship the Lord and to hear the

57:16

Word, to exercise their gift, to be obedient in the ordinances, to teach, to learn.

57:23

This is what Christians do. This is what the church is. It's not an evangelism station.

57:30

It is an equipping and a worshiping station. And so evangelism is not getting people to church.

57:37

Evangelism is taking people in the church to go out into the world. But our

57:43

American worldview has perverted ecclesiology. There are so many different types of templates and systems and methods that have perverted true bibliology and ecclesiology.

57:57

And so how do we develop a culture, to answer your question, inside of our churches, we as pastors must identify the problems and keep teaching and showing and revealing where we are and why we've gotten to the place to where we are so that conviction sets in.

58:18

And then when our people understand this, see, Hosea 4, 6 says, for the lack of knowledge, my people are destroyed.

58:24

And so we're going to continue to go down this same path where 9 out of 10 children that grow up in the church don't come back to the church or stay in the church after the university level.

58:36

And so we're simply training them to go away from the church in children's ministry, youth ministry, adult ministry, whatever, and they never come back to the church.

58:45

This is an issue. This is a paradigm problem. This is a preaching problem.

58:52

This is an expectation problem. And so it starts with the people truly studying

58:57

God's Word. And even if they're in a church to where maybe the preaching is not addressing some of the issues that we're facing, it would take some spiritual saints to come up beside of their pastor and lovingly say, we need some apologetics driven into this message.

59:17

We need to know the why behind the what. We appreciate the teaching of the text and the truth being revealed, but how does this combat the culture from which we're engrossed in all week long?

59:31

How does this apply to us? Yeah, we need to know why. And so therefore conviction sets in, and then you have a burden for your lost neighbors when you realize that the job is upon all of us to evangelize.

59:46

We all must do better. It's not just attending church on Sunday, and it's your spiritual coming on Wednesday.

59:53

And if you're like a super saint, you go to a Bible study as well and even open the Word during the week. Where did we get this from?

01:00:00

This is foreign to the Bible. And so I think pastors really should drive down and teach their people to be

01:00:09

New Testament believers, to become prepared for when persecution comes, you're thriving and not dying.

01:00:16

You're not whining like the Old Testament Israelites as an example were unto us.

01:00:21

So nevertheless, we have really got to get beyond the fluff and get right into the text and teach about these things.

01:00:29

I'm encouraged as well with even the Apostle Paul. Listen to Acts 9 .22.

01:00:36

But Saul kept increasing in strength. Here's what we need. We need also to be increasing in strength.

01:00:42

You mentioned earlier, Chuck, that get John 3 .16 or something to where you can start sharing the gospel and then add another stone and another stone or another memorized

01:00:52

Scripture and another memorized Scripture. But he kept on increasing in strength and confounding the

01:00:58

Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ. So Paul was able to get to the point to confound the

01:01:06

Jews in their Judaism, not right away, but by increasing in his strength.

01:01:12

So we too as Christians need to find out where our weaknesses are, identify them, and really sharpen our sword and strengthen one another in those areas.

01:01:23

If we're faithful to do that and not do the status quo in our churches but dig down on these things, then

01:01:30

I really believe you'll start developing a culture that will be strong in the areas for which our

01:01:36

American churches are so weak in. We're doing that right now at Beulah Baptist Church.

01:01:41

We're really peeling away all of the paradigms that have led us to where the church is today.

01:01:49

I'm speaking of the church by and large. Most churches are a status quo, numbers -driven, attendance -driven, felt -needs -driven churches that are shallow.

01:02:04

And how do we get beyond that? Well, you peel back the Rick Warren, Bill Hybel type stuff and address the issues.

01:02:14

Ecclesiology, according to Acts, is not counting how many people are there on Sundays and the pastor going home, oh, we had a good

01:02:23

Sunday because we had higher numbers this Sunday. That's not it. The goal is for our

01:02:29

Christians to be more like Christ and for our Christians to be making Christians, to be making disciples.

01:02:35

The main thing is to make disciples. And so obviously, every time you ask a question, it's loaded between us two guys because we just got a heart full of love for Christ and desire to move the church forward and reach lost souls.

01:02:48

So ask away. Amen. You know, what's funny about this is, as listeners probably know,

01:02:54

I'm a very well -prepared interviewer. Typically, I've gotten questions written down.

01:03:00

I've submitted them to whoever I'm asking so that we know where the conversation is going. This time,

01:03:06

I'm like, no questions. I gave you guys topic. I'm like, you guys will be really good. So I've got them in my head, but this is all in the flies.

01:03:14

I appreciate it. You guys are doing great through this. Can I jump in, brother? You can in just a moment. So Jacob Connor says, it is more than just words on a page, and the kids need to see that in us.

01:03:24

So if we're not evangelizing and kids don't see us evangelizing, they're not seeing us put to work in large part what the

01:03:32

Bible is teaching us to do. And maybe that is one of those factors of kids just not buying into the whole thing.

01:03:40

So Marcy has a question. And so, Pastor Chuck, I'm going to let you answer this question, and then

01:03:45

I'm going to let you continue on as to how we dive into the church and how we get people to – how we change the culture on the inside.

01:03:54

So Marcy says, what would be the best way to encourage a pastor to go out on a regular basis? He has said that he used to evangelize in seminary and loved to go out with his wife every

01:04:04

Friday night. So how do you encourage this pastor? Yes, great question for a congregant to ask and a sad position for a congregant to be in, for the congregant to have to encourage the pastor and not vice versa.

01:04:22

To do so humbly, to do so graciously, to do so keeping all things in good order and not with any root of bitterness.

01:04:36

Of course, which I don't think is in Marcy's heart, but it certainly could be in another's heart.

01:04:42

So to check your own heart in going to them. But nevertheless, the

01:04:47

Great Commission is clear. The mission of the church is clear. And so to go to elders or a pastor and say, amen or pastor, you know,

01:04:57

I'd love to see this in our church. I'd love to be part of it. Even, you know, Christ commanded this.

01:05:04

The disciples did this. There are other churches doing it to maybe show them an example.

01:05:09

Find a good video of a pastor out, church out, ministering the gospel and say, you know, can we do something like this?

01:05:17

And so try to be helpful, be a facilitator, be sweet.

01:05:24

And not to be perceived by the pastor as challenging or saying there's a deficiency, even though I as a pastor would tell the pastor, hey, look, there's a deficiency.

01:05:37

But you don't want to create an uprising against the elders and pastor.

01:05:44

You want to come alongside them and encourage them to rediscover something that kind of like in Josiah's day, the law of God was lost and they had to find it in a wall.

01:05:56

In many churches today, the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Great Commission are lost and we need to dig it out of the wall.

01:06:03

And so that might be a good text to start with. So you were digging in your Bible kind of like Josiah in the wall and you found this thing called the

01:06:11

Great Commission. You know, something like that. But be careful how you do it because many have gone before you in this and have been perceived as a threat from the get go.

01:06:23

And then every encouragement afterward is seen as further threat or blowing the whistle on pastoral deficiency.

01:06:33

And you want to encourage, you want to say, hey, look at this example.

01:06:40

I think this is something we could do also as a congregant. Pastor to pastor, that's where I'm thankful to be in a little bit different position.

01:06:50

And I'm glad to be able to speak truth a little stronger. I pastor the

01:06:55

Portland 116 Bible Church. Anthony mentioned Romans 116 earlier and that's what

01:07:02

Portland 116 Bible Church is all about. We are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation.

01:07:09

And so that is our thrust by name of our church and by name of our fellowship. Some years back,

01:07:15

Pastor Jeff Rose, who at that time was Evangelist Jeff Rose, was led through God's providence.

01:07:22

A congregation gathered around and it was without pastor and he had been evangelist in that body.

01:07:28

And they said, we believe the Lord's calling us to call you as our pastor. And at first he was like, well,

01:07:33

I don't know. But after prayer and consideration, received that calling and planted a church and named it the 116

01:07:43

Bible Church. And I said, brother, that's not a church, that's a fellowship. Let's get a fellowship going. That's what

01:07:49

America needs. We need churches and pastors that are all about boldly carrying the gospel forth with confidence that God will plant that holy, omnipotent seed in hearts that he has prepared.

01:08:04

And so that is the ecclesiology, right? It starts with the pastor. We're making disciples who make disciples who make disciples.

01:08:13

We're training, equipping the church for the work of the ministry, but that's often left generic. The ministry is what

01:08:20

Christ Jesus came into the world to do. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. That's the ministry. Being good husbands, being good wives, being good kids, being good workers, being good employers, being responsible citizens, all of that is completely secondary.

01:08:35

The ministry is Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners and going, therefore, to rescue those sinners and then train them to observe all that Christ has commanded.

01:08:45

Yes, in all the facets of their life, but in all the facets of their life, they're to keep the main thing, the main thing.

01:08:52

In its place, the church, and not just the seeker -centered church, the

01:08:57

Bill Heibel's church, but in its place, even the more biblical, reformed,

01:09:05

Calvinistic churches have, in one way or another, ended up trusting in some type of invitational.

01:09:14

We'll build the church, and God will bring his elect. We'll invite people either actively and purposefully or just haphazardly.

01:09:24

People will find out we're Christians, and maybe they'll ask, or we'll invite them here and there, and they'll come to church and get saved, and all of God's elect will trickle in.

01:09:33

That's not the Great Commission. That's not biblical ecclesiology. And that leads to things like this.

01:09:38

This Sunday is Easter Sunday. Can you read that? Not your mama's

01:09:45

Easter service. This was sent out in my community a few years back, and they're embracing the invitational ecclesiology.

01:09:57

This church is not about to go, therefore, and make disciples. Here's another one they sent a few years back.

01:10:05

What's it say there? Easter doesn't have to be a drag. And they show this kid getting drug into church.

01:10:13

Easter doesn't have to be a drag because it becomes Pastor Casey's church, my church.

01:10:18

It's going to be a drag. Here's one with the actual pastor, and he's in a bunny suit, and you can see how cool he is.

01:10:25

Oh, is that the name of the church? Oh, yeah, it is. Westside. It says, casual atmosphere, cool stuff for kids, cool stuff.

01:10:36

That's what you need, Pastor Casey, cool stuff for kids, and no perfect people allowed.

01:10:42

Not what you'd expect. That's what we do. And then on the back, church, what comes to mind.

01:10:49

Westside may not be what you think of. When you think of church, our services are casual and high energy.

01:10:55

The bands are loud. It's important to have a loud band. We like to use funny videos, and message topics are relatable to dealing with the issues of everyday life.

01:11:07

And so our church is made up of authentic people who don't take themselves too seriously but want to make the most out of life.

01:11:13

It's about getting the most out of life. It's the life coach church. And if those ones are too religious for you, they also send out this one, which is a

01:11:21

Beavis and Butthead church invitation. And dude, where the beep are we?

01:11:30

And that's their invitation to church. They're sending out in the community. And again, no perfect people allowed.

01:11:38

And that's what goes out in our community. In the name of evangelism, invitation, and invitations that are really counter

01:11:47

Christ. They're anti -Christ and against true biblical churches.

01:11:54

Now, a little healthier than that, we have evangelistic associations, although most of the evangelistic associations and organizations that are out there are compromised.

01:12:03

They're ecumenical. In my area, there's Luis Palau.

01:12:09

I don't know if Pastor Casey's heard of Luis Palau. He's got a very large ministry, international ministry.

01:12:15

But in our area, Luis Palau's ministry is it. In fact, his office is about a mile from my church right where I'm sitting right now.

01:12:24

And so in this vicinity, on a pretty regular basis, Luis Palau signs go up in lawns, and they call me and they want me to support their work.

01:12:37

Unfortunately, Luis Palau said this, Pope Francis is our brother and genuine minister of the true gospel.

01:12:44

And so I do not support Luis Palau or any ministry like that. And even when those parachurch evangelistic ministries are more biblical and sound, they are parachurch.

01:13:00

And what they become is our box to check to say we did evangelize.

01:13:07

We gave some money to that evangelistic association. We supported that evangelistic group when they came to town.

01:13:14

So, yeah, we're about evangelism. So instead of it being elder led, pastor led, pastor elder trained, church based.

01:13:23

Right. It becomes this evangelistic association, this parachurch thing that's done. It becomes what

01:13:29

Ray Comfort does. And we sent some people down there to be trained by Ray Comfort. And they do this thing over there on the side.

01:13:35

And so there are there are good evangelistic associations, bad ones, good evangelistic ministries, bad ones.

01:13:40

But all of them tend to become in a very practical way for the average church, their box to check.

01:13:49

And then they get back to their ecclesiology. They get back to whatever their understanding is of making disciples.

01:13:56

That is outside of, in my understanding, the biblical, the biblical design of God.

01:14:02

Now, in contrast to that, I would lift up Paul Washer's admonishment from the

01:14:09

Shepherds Conference 2017. And he's mid -sermon. And he said this,

01:14:16

I want you to know something, that the spread of his name, the name of Jesus throughout all of Jerusalem.

01:14:23

Brothers, now, listen, not everyone has the same calling. And I know that. But sometimes we take all these passages that have to do with the power of preaching, the importance of preaching, the power of preaching.

01:14:33

And it seems as though they only apply to pulpit ministry. These men were not just standing behind a pulpit expounding

01:14:42

Scripture. They were in the streets expounding Scripture. Now, that doesn't mean that everyone has to be a street preacher.

01:14:49

But brothers, we are not children of the Reformation if we believe, build it, and they will come.

01:14:56

Jesus said to go out to the highways and hedges. And if you're a young man here and you love the

01:15:02

Reformers and everything, you may have this wrong picture of them, that they were these men who sat in robes in these beautiful old stone chapels and they just wrote.

01:15:10

No, they were men who got out of those stone buildings. And they preached the gospel everywhere.

01:15:17

And because of it, they suffered. They suffered. Those of us who preach the gospel in the pulpit, we need to get out more.

01:15:25

We need to get out more. We need to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to the masses.

01:15:32

Why is it that so many people who do not have very good theology are constantly in the streets, and those who have really good theology are constantly in the library, in the pulpit?

01:15:43

Let us do both. Let us learn to reach out. And then he paused, and he looked out at the crowd with that Paul Washer desk there, and he said, you're all getting very quiet.

01:15:58

Is there a reason? We need to preach.

01:16:05

Preach in a pulpit and preach everywhere. Young men, while you're young and have your strength about you, go out there and preach the gospel.

01:16:13

Preach the gospel. They filled the streets with the gospel.

01:16:19

And so what's missing in America are admonishments like that.

01:16:25

And that is the only admonishment I have heard like that at the Shepherds Conference in my 20 -some years of attending.

01:16:31

And that is my one critique of the Shepherds Conference that I love, is that we uphold the ministry of the

01:16:40

Word of God in the pulpit. We uphold defending and defining and declaring the doctrines of the faith in the pulpit passionately.

01:16:49

And many of the texts that are preached from the pulpit at the Shepherds Conference are texts that are from the street, and we only make application to the pulpit.

01:17:02

We need to preach the text and keep it in its context, and we need to urge and command.

01:17:09

Even as we say to the pastors, preach the Word, and we mean in the pulpit. Well, Paul didn't mean just in the pulpit.

01:17:16

And when Paul said do the work of the evangelist, he didn't mean, oh, by the way, while you're in the pulpit, don't forget to mention the gospel.

01:17:25

You know, don't forget to throw the sawdust down and turn the music up just right and call them down the center aisle.

01:17:30

He meant go, go, find the sinners. When the Apostle Paul, who lived, bled, suffered for the gospel in the open air, the proclamation of the gospel in the open air, when he says to Pastor Timothy, do the work of the evangelist, he wasn't reminding him to include the gospel from the pulpit.

01:17:54

And so we've got to keep things in context. We've got to remember who's talking. We've got to keep the

01:17:59

Great Commission in context. Christ trained them to go two by two out and turn the world upside down.

01:18:05

Then he gave the Great Commission after he suffered and died and rose again. Then they actually went out and turned the world upside down.

01:18:12

And then the Apostle Paul says, Pastor Timothy, do the work of the evangelist. And suddenly, 2 ,000 years later, it's this great option instead of this great commission.

01:18:22

And if Pastor Casey does it or Pastor Chuck does it or some other wild -eyed pastor does it, they're the oddball.

01:18:30

Well, no, that's obedience. And it's not a mystery.

01:18:37

I've been talking a while. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, that's a great spot to kind of shift some gears now.

01:18:46

I'm going to bring someone else who's been waiting very patiently in the background. Oh, I bet. And this is

01:18:52

Brian. How are you? Hearts for the Lost. Hey, Anthony. How are you doing, sir? Can you hear me all right?

01:18:57

I'm good. How are you? I'm doing great. Doing great. I'm just back here taking notes like a madman. I want to go.

01:19:02

I want to go share the gospel. I got to go. Amen. You're already doing a ton of that.

01:19:07

And, you know, I wanted to bring you in because I think some of the questions coming up here, some answers would be very valuable from you as well.

01:19:15

You are somebody who is in a ministry that is sole purpose is to go and train people in churches and then to go out into the streets and evangelize with them, which is an outstanding model.

01:19:28

I wonder where you got that from. Might be the Bible. I don't know. Nothing new in this one, right?

01:19:34

And then lots of other ministries since then. But, okay, so here's a pretty direct question.

01:19:43

I often hear pastors talking about evangelism and discipleship just as it happens, it'll just kind of happen in the church.

01:19:55

Versus is that really the right attitude that we're supposed to be taking as pastors, that it'll just happen?

01:20:01

You know, as I keep preaching faithfully week in and week out, it'll just happen. Or are we to intentionally be doing evangelism, intentionally doing discipleship within churches?

01:20:12

Are we supposed to be actively training people in churches, actively exhorting for both evangelism and discipleship?

01:20:21

I know to you guys, it seems like a pretty easy answer, but it's a big issue in a lot of churches, good churches around the country.

01:20:30

So how would you guys answer that? I guess, Pastor Casey, I'll start with you.

01:20:36

Yes, certainly. So the question again, repeat it. The question is evangelism and discipleship, right?

01:20:44

They go hand in hand in the Great Commission. Is this supposed to be something that is intentional in the church? Like we are to be training people to do this.

01:20:52

We are to be exhorting everyone to do this. You know, some people are –

01:20:57

I remember Vodibachum at one time said that everyone needs to be in an intentional discipling relationship where they're discipling somebody and being discipled.

01:21:06

He was very clear in one of his messages at ChefCon several years ago. I think it was ChefCon. And other guys have said the same thing about evangelism, that we are all to be intentionally evangelizing, continuing to train others in evangelism.

01:21:19

So part of the discipleship, people get saved through evangelism. We disciple them. And then in that discipleship, guess what we train them to do?

01:21:28

Evangelize, right? And so is this supposed to be an intentional thing in the church, or is it just supposed to happen?

01:21:36

Yes. So back to the Great Commission again, the main thrust of it is to make disciples. That's the main verb, and then you have the rest are participles.

01:21:43

And so making disciples is a process. It's not a one -stop shot to where you just lay in the gospel and run.

01:21:52

And if you think of Jesus' ministry and how he spent three years with a few men, so it is an intentional process of growing people from being lost to being born again to being children in the faith who are still codependent, to being youth in the faith who are overcomers, to being fathers in the faith who are reproducers.

01:22:18

And so this process of growing someone spiritually and making a disciple is the idea.

01:22:24

We're to be doing this for a long time. And so you need someone pouring into you, and you need to be pouring into someone else.

01:22:31

Just last Wednesday night, I mentioned that there's always someone around you who is farther down the road than you are, a little bit more spiritual, more knowledgeable of the

01:22:39

Word of God. And there's always someone around you who is less than you are. And so we should be open with our faith and being about making disciples.

01:22:51

So it is most certainly intentional, but again, back to the American worldview versus the biblical worldview that we seem to be trapped in, the easy -believism, our churches are just filled with false converts by and large.

01:23:11

And so they have come in and been given the free pass to say this prayer, jump in the dunk tank, and become a member.

01:23:21

But yet at the same time, we've trained them to be religious. And Jesus' ministry was combating religiosity for the most part.

01:23:29

And most pastors, most Christians are afraid of controversy.

01:23:35

And so the intentionality comes from developing the fortitude, developing the inner strength, developing a strong heart, which

01:23:44

Paul prayed specifically for the Colossian church in Colossians 2, verses 1 and 2.

01:23:50

He was struggling as he wrote this letter, he said in verse 1, for them to have a strong heart so that, verse 8, they could oppose heresy, worldly philosophies.

01:24:01

And so our people, if we are haphazard or not training or unintentional, we'll get swallowed up by the ways of the world.

01:24:11

They'll be allowed to think that they're a Christian when in fact Jesus may say to them one day, depart from me, you doers of iniquity,

01:24:18

I never knew you. This is literally a matter of life and death. And so obviously the answer is easy for us as pastors to see.

01:24:26

This is a very intentional thing, and we aren't to treat the church haphazardly or flippantly.

01:24:33

In fact, most, I believe, that consider themselves faithful members would only attend once or twice a month.

01:24:40

And that is biblically the idea of even committing adultery against the church.

01:24:46

And so if you are entered into a covenant relationship with Christ, and now you are a blood -bought slave of Jesus, and Jesus gave his priceless blood for the church, how should we engage and treat and love and train and be intentional about being involved with the mission of the church?

01:25:08

It's very intentional. It's very self -sacrificial. You're not sacrificing an inch.

01:25:15

You're not denying yourself and taking up the cross unintentionally. You're intentionally denying yourself so that you will train, read, study, memorize, attend, give, worship, learn.

01:25:33

The list goes on and on and on. And the really cool part about being a Christian is the more you get into it, the more you desire it.

01:25:40

This is exactly what you want. You begin to abhor the things of the world. And even as you're growing in your faith, the things that you used to love just a couple years ago, you look back and,

01:25:52

I hate that guy. I can't believe that. Now my love has the deer pants for the water, so my soul thirsts for thee, the psalmist said.

01:26:01

And as you grow, it becomes the thing that you want to do. And so you want to discipline yourself.

01:26:07

You want to ignore the world. You want to evangelize. You want to engage in discipling someone else.

01:26:13

You see the true value in these things. And so to be unintentional about it is to treat the church flippantly, to treat the gospel flippantly, to make

01:26:22

Jesus sick. Revelation chapter 3 is a rebuke to the lukewarm church of Laodicea, who were rich within themselves, and they didn't need anything.

01:26:31

And the first rebuke went to the angel, which most theologians, along with myself, believe that that's the pastor of the church.

01:26:37

That brother was rebuked for pastoring a lukewarm church when they were just sitting fat and doing nothing.

01:26:46

And that's all I got to say. That's a rebuke. They need a rebuke.

01:26:52

Thank you. Can I speak for 60 seconds? What's that? Can I just 60 seconds take all—that was beautiful, brother.

01:26:59

Absolutely, go ahead. I was going to give it to you anyway. Sometimes I describe everything you just said by saying this.

01:27:05

We're not studying to show ourselves approved for the great Bible quiz in the sky.

01:27:11

We're studying to show ourselves approved so we can know God, love God, and make

01:27:17

Him known. That's the difference. And so we're not just studying the

01:27:23

Bible, doing our devotions, doing our little time, or getting theological facts to get the facts straight. But to know

01:27:29

God and love God and make Him known. And when you actually have the expectation that we are making Him known as elders, as pastors, and we're leading them out, then that makes that theology come alive.

01:27:40

It makes the Bible come alive. Whether it's the Old Testament and all the glorious truths in there and advancing the kingdom with the sword, or the

01:27:48

New Testament and all the glorious theological truths, advancing the kingdom with the sword of the

01:27:54

Spirit. We identify with God and God's people in that mission of advancing the kingdom.

01:28:00

And it makes all the preaching, all the teaching, all the Bible come very alive.

01:28:05

Listen to this intentionality. I've got to read this verse. We proclaim Him admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ for this purpose.

01:28:17

What? I labor. That's pretty intentional, right? I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.

01:28:25

Colossians 1, 28 and 29. Wow, that's outstanding. So Captain Black Eagle says,

01:28:31

As a young man, our elders took a month to train us in how to distribute tracts and speak with people about the

01:28:37

Gospels. Amen. Amen to that. Okay, so Brian, let me ask you this question.

01:28:43

You've been doing evangelism for several years. Every time I flip on Facebook and I see your posts, you're always doing something.

01:28:53

It's incredible. So praise God for that. Why do churches keep bringing you in to come teach?

01:29:03

I would say two things. One, I do it, or we do it.

01:29:08

We're not just teaching theoretical, like you talked about, Pastor Chuck.

01:29:14

But I think one thing that I fell in love, and I actually brought the ministry now,

01:29:21

President of Hearts for the Lost, into Indianapolis, was it had a practical application piece.

01:29:26

It's not just coming in, sitting in a sanctuary, watching some PowerPoint slides, and go.

01:29:33

The one gap I'd like to fill in from the layperson here that I didn't hear that I think is very important is the word practice.

01:29:41

What I mean is I played college football back in the day, and what I typically see in either trainings or whatever is the coach or the pastor teaching the playbook and the whiteboard.

01:29:53

Here's how to run the play. Here's our book. Here's what we're going to do. Now go play the game. That's not how it works.

01:29:59

We go out for five days, and we run the plays. We practice. We go against different defenses. We change things up, learn how to go on the fly.

01:30:07

I think it would be a great thing to not, and that's what Jesus, right? He not only taught them, then

01:30:14

He kind of worked through things. He walked with them, and then He commissioned them and sent them out.

01:30:19

And I think what I hear too is when I get a professed believer, oh, I'm good.

01:30:25

I've got Christ. Oh, awesome. Give me your pitch, man. How do you share the gospel with people? And just some of the,

01:30:31

I mean, just wow, that's not the gospel. So being able to work some things out with your brothers, iron sharpens iron, right?

01:30:39

Working some things out in the war room and then going out would be very helpful. You know, so I would say bring us in from the practical application.

01:30:48

When we come to a church, you know, I'm under the authority of my elders and my pastor at Cornerstone Bible Church here in Westfield.

01:30:57

So that's why I post a lot of things, not for the attaboys. I want to be held accountable to my local church and in and through.

01:31:04

And hearts for the lost, when we come into a church, we will work in and through the pastor and the elders and their authority while on site.

01:31:12

But we come with, we're going to teach, we're going to have lunch, and then we're going to go.

01:31:18

We're going to go into a local watering hole, wherever we go in town, and actually get up on the box or do surveys or hand out tracts.

01:31:27

But we will head out into the streets. So we're all about keeping it biblical.

01:31:33

We're all about not teaching methods. We want to teach scripture and we want to make sure that the gospel, you said it, you and I talked at G3.

01:31:42

You know, a lot of people say, well, Brian, I just, I just don't know enough. Well, if you know the gospel, right? If you can just preach

01:31:47

Christ crucified, you know enough. If not, I got another class which starts about 10 minutes. But it's just preach the gospel.

01:31:56

And then when you get hit with skeptical, you know, some verses you're not sure of, you know, I really don't know.

01:32:03

Let me go look at that verse, but here's what I do know. I know the gospel and preach the gospel.

01:32:09

And I think Pastor Chuck, you said it, when you actually go in the streets, it'll change two things.

01:32:14

It'll change your Bible study and it'll change your prayer life. It will radically change what you study.

01:32:21

You're not just memorizing verses because you want to sound smart. It's like, wow, I need to know that answer.

01:32:27

And that Hebrew is like hit me with, you know, Jacob, so I didn't know. So now I need to go to Deuteronomy 23, seven, which is a level.

01:32:34

So there's different verses you need to learn to at least combat, not to go down the rabbit trail of the argument or win the debate, but at least to have an answer, get kind of settled and then get to the gospel.

01:32:45

So practice. And you brought something up, Ryan, that is really critical. And both

01:32:51

Pastor Chuck and Pastor Casey, you guys kind of mentioned this as well in your answers, is that the growth of the believer is tremendous when they're evangelizing.

01:33:00

Because when they're evangelizing, they're going out, they're practically doing what the word tells them to do.

01:33:06

And as they encounter people who have questions, some legitimate, some not. I mean, we have what we call the

01:33:12

TWs out there, the time wasters. All of us evangelists know those terms, but what it does do is it helps drive us back to the word, back to study, back to apologetics.

01:33:24

And we learn more and then we go back out a little bit more confident with a little bit more answers. And then before you know it, our growth is rapid through evangelism.

01:33:35

And Brian, I mean, we've only known each other now for maybe five, four years? Yeah, four and a half.

01:33:40

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we met at Ray Cumbers and Bachelors Academy. You wanted to start evangelizing.

01:33:46

You came out there and you were put on either Andrew or my team. I don't remember which. We kind of combined our teams when we were out there so they can see both of our styles.

01:33:55

But I mean, to watch your growth is just – and all of us, right? I mean, it's not all of us that evangelize, but for me as an outsider looking in,

01:34:02

I just love watching this. It's so cool to see what you're doing now. And it's obviously in God's grace and God's providence for all this, but this is exactly what happens when we are evangelizing is we see people that grow in their faith tremendously and really, really fast.

01:34:22

So I just absolutely love seeing – I had to say that. Sorry if I put you on the spot. No, no, no.

01:34:28

Going downtown, midtown in Manhattan with you and Andrew, that was kind of like –

01:34:34

I haven't been to Portland yet or Oregon. I can assume that's quite a battleground as well. But standing outside with you, and I'll never forget on the box, one of those big fights –

01:34:46

I don't know, some big fight went on with the chess match or whatever, and I look at Anthony, I'm like, what do I do?

01:34:51

He goes, preach the law. I'm like, okay, let's go. So I will never forget that moment.

01:34:58

Yeah, that's funny. I forgot about that. That's great. Okay, so function of a church, right?

01:35:06

So we could – as pastors especially, right? You guys would say there's a lot of functions of the church.

01:35:11

Where does evangelism fit kind of in the grand scheme of things? Like is gospel – is proper preaching at the pulpit the primary issue?

01:35:22

Is it – I mean, how does evangelism fit in in the grand scheme of things? What if a pastor says he's just taking over a new church and he's got – there's lots of things we've got to accomplish.

01:35:33

Where does evangelism fit into that order, if that makes sense? Sure. Matthew 4, verse 19,

01:35:41

Jesus said, come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And so we are to be made into evangelists.

01:35:49

And if you are being made by Christ, if you're following him and learning, then he's going to make you into a fisher of men.

01:35:57

And so you're going to be working on catching and then cleaning people.

01:36:03

If you're going to catch them, then you're going to share with them Christ crucified. You're going to share with them the law.

01:36:09

You're going to share with them how to be saved. And then when they come, then you're going to share with them how to be sanctified.

01:36:15

And so that's a process there that is permeating throughout all of their life. It's not just that we go to church and do church.

01:36:22

And so we've been guilty of what I believe would be a Greek philosophy of life rather than maybe a

01:36:30

Hebraic way of thinking, an Old Testament way of thinking, is that our core values circular permeate all areas of life.

01:36:39

And so who you are at home is who you are at work. And who you are is the same guy at church.

01:36:46

You do the same things, who you are with your friends and your family. You're the same person. Your inner values as a

01:36:52

Christian are permeating like circular outwardly to all areas of life. And that's indicative for evangelism.

01:37:00

However, the Greek philosophy, which our public school system is under, the humanist system, is linear, not circular, and it's compartmentalized.

01:37:12

And so if you think of public school, compartmentalization, and the church has taken on that ideology of educating their members in a compartmentalization way, which is dividing families.

01:37:24

God would want families together, but Satan wants families separated. And we have a society that has families separated for sports, entertainment.

01:37:33

They don't even eat meals together anymore. And now at church, we have all these different compartments and all these different divided up buildings to where it's divided.

01:37:42

So that's not the case of how we do life. We don't go to church to be a

01:37:48

Christian and worship. We are Christians all in life. And so it's circular, and that is who you become.

01:37:55

You're being made by Christ into not only an evangelist, but also a worshiper and a learner and a disciple maker.

01:38:04

Yeah. Thank you for that. So, Pastor Chuck, anything to add to that?

01:38:14

What was your question again? I'm sorry. Yeah, that's okay. So it has to do with the function of a church, right?

01:38:20

So the Great Commission seems to point to the fact that the outward function of a church must be evangelism, right?

01:38:30

So there has to be a high focus placed on that. But let's say a pastor just walks into your church, and there's all kinds of things he's got to work on.

01:38:39

Oftentimes what I've seen when I've talked to people is that evangelism is kind of put on the back burner, right?

01:38:45

Because there's other things that need to be done first. And so evangelism doesn't get the time that's needed.

01:38:51

So how would you speak to that? What are the functions of a church? Where does evangelism play into all of that?

01:38:59

Yeah, yeah. So the Marine Corps taught me a little acronym,

01:39:06

KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid. And we need to keep it simple lest we be stupid.

01:39:15

If we think we're smarter than God, if we think we're smarter than Jesus, then we are colossally stupid.

01:39:22

And so we need to stay focused on the main thing and not just say it, but do it.

01:39:30

And really, I think if we're faithful expositors and we keep the text in its context, and we have a heart for what

01:39:40

Christ has a heart for, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And so how does this text apply to that, right?

01:39:46

We're not just preaching Easter, right? Oh, hey, look, Jesus rose again on the third day.

01:39:52

That's a neat historical fact. Well, it is an awesome historical fact.

01:39:58

But what do we do with it, right? Go there for it. Tell the world. It changes everything.

01:40:06

And so we can preach Easter. In fact, most churches will preach Easter. They'll preach the resurrection.

01:40:12

And even if they won't even call it Easter, right? We're not religious. We reject Rome. We reject paganism.

01:40:18

It's not Easter. It's Resurrection Sunday. But they're going to preach Resurrection Sunday. And they're still not going to have any kind of inkling about, hey, what are you going to do with this then, folks?

01:40:28

This is life -changing. This is culture -changing. This is space, time, and matter, eternity -changing stuff.

01:40:36

What are you going to do with it? This is bigger than winning the lotto. This is bigger than winning the new car.

01:40:41

This is bigger than going to Oprah's show. And everybody gets a car, right? This is greater than Disneyland, the funnest place on earth.

01:40:49

This is everything. And without this, you've got nothing. This changes absolutely everything.

01:40:55

What are you going to do now? Are you going to go home and have some ham and that's it? So whether it's

01:41:01

Easter Sunday or whether it's Christmas or whether it's whatever text you're preaching out of the Old Testament, keeping the main thing the main thing.

01:41:10

When I'm preaching about David staying home and sleeping with Bathsheba, another man's wife, and murdering her husband instead of going to war, well, yeah, there's adultery there, and I'm preaching about that.

01:41:21

There's looking to lust, and I'm preaching about that. And there's the judgment of God, and I'm preaching about that, and sin taking you further than you want to go and costing you more than you want to pay and costing others around you more than you want to pay.

01:41:32

But I'm preaching about this too. He should have been on the battlefield advancing the kingdom of God.

01:41:39

And when you're not on the battlefield keeping the main thing the main thing, you're open to every kind of sin, and you don't know how far your sin will take you.

01:41:50

But David's first sin was that he wasn't advancing the kingdom of God.

01:41:56

He had his eye off the ball. And so whatever text you're in, wherever you're at, we're keeping the main thing the main thing.

01:42:03

We're equipping the saints for the work of the ministry. And, you know, if we're in a text that's particularly pointed toward fatherhood, well, what are you doing,

01:42:12

Father? You know, the main thing is that you would lead these kids to Christ. Be the Noah of your home and get those kids on the ark, because if they're not on the ark, there's a great deluge of fire coming to consume them.

01:42:25

And so don't just preach fatherhood. Be sure to discipline those kids. Well, what's the purpose of disciplining them?

01:42:30

Put the rod on their backside to save their soul from Sheol, from hell, right?

01:42:37

We don't just want kids that don't embarrass us in public. I mean, that's nice. But we want kids who are in heaven with us and are glorifying

01:42:45

God and not blaspheming him when they leave our homes. As Pastor Casey gave that statistic, tragic stack of nine out of 10, leaving and never coming back.

01:42:55

And so all of our teaching comes beneath Christ and the

01:43:01

Great Commission, comes beneath Christ and the main thing. That is the thrust of all that we do.

01:43:09

Right. And to kind of spin off that a little bit and key into the question, where does it fit like within church besides the fact that it permeates everything with who we are and our teaching?

01:43:20

I think specifically that what we need to make sure is happening is that we're celebrating the fact that evangelism is happening.

01:43:29

You know, mentioned that. And then as well, we're doing training. You know, what you celebrate is really indicative to your values.

01:43:38

What you get excited about. Right point. What you think about. And I was so, so impressed with Mona, one of our members who has been working evangelistically for two years with a

01:43:52

Muslim. Did you lose me? You know what? We got your words to keep going.

01:43:57

You're good. All right. Good. Good. So just as a case in point, that was just bragging on Mona last week.

01:44:03

He was been evangelizing a Muslim and he is to the point now to where he really wants to understand the

01:44:12

God of the Bible. And she's so excited. I've been feeding her tracks and information and case in points all the way through.

01:44:20

And so nevertheless, when you just speak up on a Sunday or on a Wednesday and you say those types of things, people think, oh, if she can do that,

01:44:30

I can. And it becomes contagious. And then all of a sudden, people see how

01:44:35

God is opening a door for them in their life to do it. So when it comes to the church essentials and ecclesiology, you know,

01:44:42

Acts chapter two, teaching fellowship, communion, prayer, baptizing, giving these things, prayer and more and such.

01:44:50

Where does evangelism, you know, fit into what you actually do?

01:44:56

I think it's more of who you are, kind of like being a disciple maker, being a Christian.

01:45:02

I like what John MacArthur said, to be a Christian and not to disciple is a contradiction. And so that is very, very close to the point of being a

01:45:12

Christian and not to evangelize is also a contradiction because of how closely knitted evangelism and discipleship are.

01:45:20

And by the way, in our relationships, may we not error and presume that people are saved.

01:45:29

We really, truly need to go very back to like Ken Ham does to the very beginning and establish a foundation.

01:45:38

And Genesis chapter one is a literal, grammatical and historical case for God created the heavens and the earth.

01:45:46

And then start from there so that we know exactly where we are with folks.

01:45:51

So nevertheless, you could shoot right by someone and they not even be saved, but give you the Christian answers.

01:45:58

Amen to that. So a couple of things I want to touch on. You know, one of the things that Andrew, if he was on the show, he would probably have brought this up today.

01:46:06

But in his first pastorate, the youth group was not doing very well.

01:46:11

And the way that he helped turn around the youth group is through teaching and then taking them out to evangelize the high school group.

01:46:19

And what he saw happen was when they were out evangelizing, eventually the ones who weren't saved went and stopped going.

01:46:29

Stopped going altogether. And it gave the ones that stuck around who we believe were saved to evangelize the ones who had stopped going to youth group.

01:46:38

What it also did though is for the ones that were in youth group and going out and evangelizing once a week or once every two weeks.

01:46:45

He said that they started to become concerned about their personal testimonies.

01:46:51

And they started to iron sharpen iron and talk to one another about what they see maybe going on in someone else's life.

01:47:00

I mean, these are high school kids and it changed everything about them. As kind of as you were mentioning,

01:47:05

Pastor Casey or Pastor Chuck, one of you guys said this. But it was a character building thing for them as well.

01:47:12

And so I absolutely love the story. Of course, I'm butchering it compared to what he would say.

01:47:18

So if he's listening right now, I would love for you to jump back on and give your full story on that. Celebrating evangelism,

01:47:25

Pastor Casey, you had said this. Pastor Austin Hetzler is a pastor here in Cleveland, Ohio area.

01:47:31

I preach for him three, four times a year. And he's really one of the best preachers that is in Northern Ohio.

01:47:41

Not even seminary trains, but he studies the word and just it's amazing how good of a preacher he is.

01:47:48

What's more amazing, though, is that he is a constant evangelist. And when he planted this church five, five and a half, almost six years ago now.

01:47:57

His goal was to was to he and some of the families that planted with him were all evangelists.

01:48:02

They wanted to keep an evangelistic minded church going forward. And so one of the things he instituted early on was was the evangelism.

01:48:11

I can't remember what they call it now, but basically right after the call to service, right at the start of service, they they allow one person who has talked to Pastor Austin before service who has an evangelism story to share from the week.

01:48:26

They allow that person to go up and speak for 30 to 60 seconds, sharing their evangelistic encounter that they had that week.

01:48:35

And what that does is it causes everyone else in that church to to get excited for that person.

01:48:41

And they want to go out and get their own stories now from evangelism. And so every week, there's several people that approach him with their own story, wanting to be the one to be able to share it that Sunday.

01:48:52

It is amazing how he has empowered his congregation with just a simple little thing for 60 seconds a week.

01:49:01

So having said that, I want to say a couple of things that we're going to bring another guest in here. Speaking of evangelism, there are some events coming up.

01:49:09

So Striving for Eternity is every year is called to come and teach alongside the

01:49:16

Christian Collegian Network, which is a network of evangelists who go out on college campuses once a week, evangelize.

01:49:26

As they see people who are Christians that talk to them or people get saved, they start

01:49:31

Bible studies on those campuses. And and there's there's people on the same campuses for years within this ministry.

01:49:38

And so they have something called Repentant Witness every year, which is usually in New York City. Obviously, the last two years we have not been back this year.

01:49:46

We're not going back to New York City, but we are resuming it again after a couple of your hiatus. And it's going to be in Maryland, Ocean City, Maryland.

01:49:54

And so that weekend will be June 21st to 24th by Christian Collegian Network. I will be there teaching on evangelism apologetics.

01:50:03

I believe Pastor Andrew is supposed to be going as well to do the same thing. So you can look up Christian Collegian Network and and sign up if you want to go.

01:50:12

It is a great time of evangelism. It's you get teaching half the day and then you're all evangelizing to like eleven o 'clock at night.

01:50:19

And you get back up eight in the morning next day and do it all over again. So it's a wonderful time for those of you like apologetics.

01:50:26

Mike Riddle and I are going to be teaching at ICR Institute for Creation Research for the second year in a row, doing our our

01:50:32

Christian Educators Conference in June. That'll be June 21st, 24th. You can sign up for that on creation training .org

01:50:38

is especially good for people who are Christian teachers or Christian, Christian Sunday school teachers or Christian school teachers who want to be more effective in their not only teaching skills, but their apologetics.

01:50:49

And then we also have our our flagship five day course, which

01:50:54

Pastor Casey, some people from your church just signed up today. Somebody from my church has signed up.

01:51:01

What's great about this course is it's five full days. We're talking like eight in the morning to eight at night days of of training in apologetics.

01:51:11

And you will have prepared some of your own talks before you come in. And you're going to actually teach in front of small groups that are led by myself,

01:51:20

Mike Riddle. And this year, our third teacher, which is Eric Hoven at Creation Today, you'll actually be teaching in front of us and we're going to critique you and your teaching style and help coach you to be a more effective teacher.

01:51:31

Everybody that comes in this course absolutely loves it by the time they leave. And we've seen so many people come to this course, go out and become

01:51:39

Bible, Bible school teachers, leading Bible studies, all kinds of great stuff as a result of coming out of this course.

01:51:46

So those are some some really cool things coming up. So, OK, having said all that, as I bring in our next guest, another one of those pastor kinds,

01:51:57

Pastor Darren Steed. I think it's Steed, right? Or is it Stead? It's Stead. The joke is it used to be

01:52:04

Stud when I was born and they had to change it up. Yeah, that's a good one.

01:52:11

So one of the things I want to say and then I'll let you kind of talk, Pastor Darren, is I talked earlier about how

01:52:18

I've been so really upset about the last two years with all the COVID nonsense and Christians hiding in their houses.

01:52:26

The other thing that really upsets me and why I want to do this show is I don't know about you guys, but I am tired of the world evangelizing every one of us, including trying to evangelize our own kids and our own family members.

01:52:42

And it is it is astounding to me that you can have known pedophiles putting on lipstick and dresses, going to public libraries and having little kids sit on their laps while they read stories and bounce the kids on their laps.

01:52:58

And everybody thinks this is OK. It is astounding to me that this is going on.

01:53:05

Where are the Christians standing up and putting an end to this nonsense? Why are we allowing teachers to teach young schoolchildren not just sexuality, not just what

01:53:17

God calls normal, but what he calls abnormal, homosexuality and all the other perversions that we see out there.

01:53:26

Why is this stuff not being not being addressed out there? Where are the

01:53:32

Christians in speaking out against this stuff? It is it's crazy to me to see what we see happening.

01:53:40

And and so Christians, we we need to get out there. Pastors, you need to you need to start speaking this from the pulpit.

01:53:49

Like, look, nobody wants to address a talk about men in dresses and lipstick from the pulpit.

01:53:54

Like, I get it. We don't want to do that. But you know what? It's happening. And your congregations need to know what's happening.

01:54:01

And we've got to empower our congregations to go out and evangelize this this wicked world that is out there.

01:54:08

So, OK, I'll get off my soapbox now. Pastor Darin, thank you for being on. And I know you've had some comments.

01:54:16

The there that Pastor Chuck and Pastor Casey are very prolific in their words.

01:54:21

So I've not been able to get through all of the comments yet, but I know you've had a couple of things to say. So, no.

01:54:27

Hey, listen, thanks for letting me come on, first of all. And the second thing I want to say is last week,

01:54:32

I said I wanted to come on here and agree. So this is that week. I was kind of like the other guy who's like, hey, well, have you considered it from this perspective?

01:54:42

But I've loved the show and everything that you guys been talking about. Brian is an amazing brother here in Indiana.

01:54:48

We're grateful to have him here and the work that he does. Not Brian. Yeah, Brian. I always want to call you

01:54:53

Brad for some reason, brother. But you hit on it a little bit when you were sharing the story about Andrew and the church that he was a part of.

01:55:02

So I was involved in youth ministry for eight years and now a senior pastor now at Harmony Baptist Church.

01:55:09

But and I went through this whole cycle that I was involved in with youth ministry where, like,

01:55:14

I started out as the, you know, sort of the normal. Let's have fun, you know, get the kids to show up and we'll do concerts and things like that.

01:55:21

And I noticed that the kids were all going off to college and they were, quote, unquote, abandoning the faith. So then

01:55:27

I thought, OK, we need to get the gospel more into this. And so we started incorporating the gospel more.

01:55:32

But the kids still continue to go off and abandon the faith. And then I thought, OK, well, then we need to teach apologetics.

01:55:38

You know, we need to teach these kids the truth. And I got into, you know, Ken Ham and in creation ministry, which I think is an important thing to do.

01:55:45

And I think we should do that. So I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. But it didn't it didn't help the problem.

01:55:51

The kids still continued even when we taught them good apologetic truth. That alone in itself was not sufficient.

01:55:57

They still went off to college and and abandoned the faith. And I have my own kids. I have nine children. My oldest son,

01:56:04

Nate, is 18 now. And I thought and prayed about this long and hard when

01:56:09

I was in youth ministry. And one of the things I've learned over the course of the last six years since I've been involved in street ministry and bringing the gospel to the streets is that and I do this with my own kids, is that when you bring young people to the streets and teach them how to share the gospel on the streets and they see the men dressed in dresses, they see the women whose lives are being destroyed at the abortion mill.

01:56:40

They see they see these things with their eyes and they interact with these people and they learn how to minister the gospel, these people and so on and so forth.

01:56:48

To me, I've noticed as we teach these kids the gospel, we teach them apologetics. We still do all the things that we're doing before.

01:56:55

But now we're bringing them out to the streets and we're teaching them how to share the gospel with lost people. And that has been absolutely transformational in our ministry because you can't you're not going to be able to come to my kids and tell them that abortion is no big deal now.

01:57:10

You're not going to be able to do that because they've been on the streets in front of the abortion mill and they've seen they've ministered the gospel to women that are in abortion situations.

01:57:20

My daughter, 13 years old, has ministered the gospel to women in abortion situations. Nobody's going to be able to tell her that abortion is no big deal.

01:57:28

You're not going to tell my kids that this worldview that's being promoted out there, that there's no such thing as gender is a good thing because they've been on the streets and they've actually seen the lives of the people that buy into this way of thinking.

01:57:41

And so the gospel becomes sort of ingrained as they go out and they minister the gospel.

01:57:48

And so this has been important for me as a pastor of a church, and I've encouraged our church along these lines.

01:57:54

Of course, there's other aspects that have changed with that. We don't do youth ministry here anymore. When people come here and they say, what do you guys got going on for youth ministry?

01:58:01

I say, we have 18 youth pastors in our church. And people say, oh, 18 youth pastors, you must have a lot of youth.

01:58:07

And I say, no, we have 18 dads, and those are the youth pastors in our church. Those are the ones that do the youth ministry in our church.

01:58:15

And we call on the men not to just get to the streets themselves, which I think is a very important aspect of what you guys have been talking about.

01:58:21

But the only thing that I wanted to add is this. We speak to pastors about getting in the gospel of streets, and we should, because people do what you do as a pastor.

01:58:30

They don't just do what you say. But the other thing is we need to encourage men to get their children to the streets with the gospel.

01:58:38

Don't hide them away. This should be part of our discipleship of raising our family. It's part of making disciples.

01:58:45

We have a duty to raise our children in discipline and instruction of the Lord. And part of that duty is not just teaching them truths from the

01:58:52

Scripture and catechizing them and discipling them. That's all important. But it's also teaching them how to share the gospel and regularly putting them in a context where I'm there to protect them, but they're sort of in a dangerous context, and their ideas and thoughts are being challenged, and they're learning how to share the gospel in that context.

01:59:11

That's part of raising our children in discipline and instruction of the Lord. So I just wanted to add that to the conversation.

01:59:17

In addition to everything else. Amen. That's right. Wow. So, guys, we're starting to get up towards what should be the end of the show.

01:59:30

But, you know, people love Anthony's time, so I have no problems going a little bit longer. Any other thoughts you guys want to share?

01:59:38

I think that he hit on a phenomenal idea, and that is family discipleship.

01:59:45

You know, Anthony, we've spent two hours on evangelism. I think we should just go on Anthony time for another two hours on discipleship and just continue rolling or something.

01:59:56

Because, man, my heart's full of information for discipling.

02:00:02

And you've opened the door, brother, in saying the father is teaching their children. You know, in Jude chapter 1 verse 3, we're told to contend for the faith.

02:00:12

But that's just, that's not the pastors contending for the faith. That's the church contending for the faith.

02:00:20

And if you're going to contend for the faith, it's going to start with the parents teaching their children according to Deuteronomy chapter 6, taking that very, very seriously.

02:00:31

So we are, first of all, discipled by God. And then we are to take very seriously the discipleship of our children, to teach them and to love them.

02:00:44

And if you're going to teach them in a way that they're going to be able to stand against the wicked ways of the world, then they're going to be contending for their faith no matter where they're at.

02:00:53

Because the kids next door across the street, whether it's in private school, public school, or even homeschool friends in the neighborhood, they're going to have different ideologies all around them.

02:01:05

And they're going to have Disney, which is right here in our backyard, with their sick and gross, immoral, wicked ways that they are seeming to have the agenda to themselves to destroy the nuclear family.

02:01:22

Walt Disney would be just turning in his grave right now to see what's happening to his family -oriented business here.

02:01:30

But nevertheless, it's been hijacked by this LGBTQ movement. And keep it in mind, even down to the very basic levels of the atrocities in the cartoons and in the

02:01:44

TV shows is that kids are being taught that it's okay to disobey their parents.

02:01:51

And that is one of the things that's listed in the book of Revelation. For those who will inherit the lake of fire, they are disobedient to parents.

02:02:00

They're not only cowardly and evil, but they're disobedient to parents. At the very basic level for which

02:02:05

Disney has been producing with these cartoons, it's funny for kids to disobey their parents.

02:02:12

And then the parents take a secondary role and affirm that, oh, yes, the child was right.

02:02:18

I was wrong. And they're repenting to their children. This is like a common thread and theme through all of these

02:02:25

Disney movies and cartoons. And so the very perversion of the values that we are teaching, our children are trying to teach, should be teaching, is being usurped by the culture.

02:02:36

And so we've got to step up our game and equip our own children, first of all, to be able to stand up against the ways of the world, to have a reason, to have a defense, to be able to know that they own their own faith and aren't piggybacking on their parents' faith.

02:02:54

So there's a huge issue there to where compartmentalization is divided. The families up in our own churches and pastors have thought that it's been their role to be the primary professional in teaching the gospel to everybody and that usurps the role of the parents.

02:03:11

And so in our pulpits and in our preaching and in our churches, we have got to get back to the point to where we are equipping the parents and not usurping them.

02:03:21

We're celebrating the fact that they are the primary teachers of God's word for their children. And we're here to teach and to train and to equip and to lead.

02:03:29

But primarily, they are the teachers. Don't bring your kids and drop them off to a youth ministry or children's ministry and at the end of the day, when they don't come back to church, say, well,

02:03:41

I brought them to church all their life. That's what's by and large happening in our ecclesiology and in the way that we do church.

02:03:51

We have trained people over the decades to bring your children, drop them off at church.

02:03:57

We will do the professional work of teaching them about the gospel and about the word of God.

02:04:03

And the parents go into neutral and don't take personal responsibility there. So evangelizing and discipling your own is primarily starting.

02:04:13

The starting point is right there in the family from the parents to their kids. And I just don't hear that by and large by most churches.

02:04:22

And so the family discipleship model for a church has got to be being talked about these days to address the elephant in the room.

02:04:31

And that is our children are getting swallowed up by worldly philosophies, by humanism, by mysticism, by attractional ministries that are no ministries at all, by churches that aren't churches, but they've got the name church on the front door.

02:04:47

It's nothing but a show. It's nothing but a club. It's nothing but fun. And we've all been drawn or even done these types of attractional ministries.

02:04:59

It's something that we thought was the thing that you were supposed to do to be faithful. And if you haven't,

02:05:06

I commend you. But the culture that we have grown up in is like bait and switch stuff.

02:05:14

And man, when you study the Bible, you think, Oh, what a wretched fool I've been for trying to bait and switch somebody into the gospel through a humanistic effort.

02:05:24

It's not by my power at all. It's by the power of the gospel that someone is saved. So you teach, and you preach, and you expect the gospel to be done in biblical ways.

02:05:34

So I appreciate you bringing that up, man. I knew we'd get there eventually.

02:05:42

So Pastor Chuck, I'll let you speak to discipleship next. And maybe how you launched it in the church.

02:05:48

One thing that was interesting to me was I got done with a teaching tour in Idaho right after Shepherd's Conference.

02:05:55

Six days, 14 talks, 12 different ones over those six days.

02:06:00

It was pretty intense. And some of them were Christian schools, and some of them were churches, and people just showing up for them.

02:06:08

And so the first place I went to was a Christian school. It's a

02:06:13

Slavic school, and I talked to the pastor afterwards, a solid pastor who pastors the church as well as the principal of the school, or headmaster, whatever they call it.

02:06:25

I talked to some of the teachers, very solid. You could tell that this was a good church and what seemed to be a really good

02:06:33

Christian school. And the topic that the principal chose for me to speak on before I showed up was one of my favorite talks to give, which is how do we know the

02:06:44

Bible is a source of truth? Great topic for kids. And so when

02:06:49

I came in and I started my talk, I said, okay, kids, hold on one second. Parents, teachers, principal,

02:06:57

I want you to close your eyes and cover them just for a quick moment here for me. Kids, nobody's watching right now, real quick.

02:07:03

How many of you have questions right now about the Bible, if it's actually true or not?

02:07:08

Now, this is a class of probably close to 100 kids in here, and nearly every hand shot up.

02:07:18

Nearly every one of them. We're talking first to ninth grade is what this school was. So from the youngest to the oldest, a lot of them shot up right away, and then within a half a second as they kind of look around, you see a few more hands go.

02:07:29

Nearly the entire room had their hands up. It was astounding to me. And so here, right, you got parents.

02:07:36

They bring their kids to what seems to be a good church. They bring them to a Christian school.

02:07:41

They're learning nothing about the Christian worldview each day, and yet those same kids by and large have questions.

02:07:48

And you know what? Probably every one of our churches has a numerous amount of kids in the exact same boat, which is why we see the research that you quoted,

02:07:58

Casey, and you quoted Pastor Chuck earlier, is because there is a disconnect. We all think that it's happening when the kids are being, when they go off to college, we think that's where the loss occurs, right?

02:08:11

We do everything we can, and then they get lost in college. But the research that was done by Britt Beamer and Ken Ham and other organizations has shown the questions that kids have that cause them to question the faith usually start in elementary to middle school.

02:08:27

That's why they title their book Already Gone, because it didn't happen in college.

02:08:32

It happened way before then. So on that, Pastor Chuck, I gave you a few moments to gather your thoughts on discipleship.

02:08:42

Well, as I confessed before we started, I'm half sick and half medicated, so I'm fading a little bit as we go on here, brothers, but I'll try to rub some brain cells together and see if we can get a spark.

02:08:57

Is it Pastor Darren in the yellow? Is it Darren? Yes, sir. Pastor Darren, yeah, you hit on some wonderful truths in conjunction with Pastor Casey regarding the importance of parents for discipleship of the children, and now

02:09:15

Anthony's been building on that. And I so agree that the rubber needs to meet the road.

02:09:22

They need parental involvement, not just pastoral involvement, not just professional involvement.

02:09:28

If mom and dad are smoking a pack a day and saying, don't smoke, they're going to raise smokers.

02:09:36

And so if mom and dad are saying, don't go to hell, but they're living lives that typify those that are on the way to hell, well, their children are going to do the same thing no matter what they're being taught at church.

02:09:48

And if mom and dad aren't intentionally, along with the elders in the local church, instructing the children in such a way, not just in the head, but in the life, engaging them so as to protect them from some of the greatest evangelists in this world.

02:10:06

And what do I mean? I mean, Satan. Satan is a phenomenal evangelist. He's got the good news of atheism.

02:10:13

There is no God. You can do whatever you want. He's got the good news of Big Bang cosmology.

02:10:18

There is no creator. You're not accountable. He's got the good news of homosexuality and lesbianism and transgenderism.

02:10:28

Sexuality is undefined. You can be what you want. You can do what you want. If it feels good, it's great.

02:10:34

Do it. And that that is something Anthony touched on and got kind of fired up there.

02:10:42

And you Pastor Deer grabbed that torch from him and ran a lap or two around the track with him.

02:10:48

And rightly so, because Satan is assaulting humanity as a whole.

02:10:54

And our children specifically has targeted our children with this message of abomination, this message of perversion.

02:11:02

And he's using, brother, that abomination in your backyard, Disney World, to do it.

02:11:08

Disneyland, Disney, to do it. And it is such a tragedy. As Disney, it was meant to be fun and family and all that.

02:11:15

And now it's this great vehicle to assault the family, to undermine the family, to destroy the family, to pervert our children.

02:11:22

And there is a conscious, deliberate attempt on Satan's part, a Romans 1 agenda, to turn our children against God and make them

02:11:31

God haters through sexual perversion. And so if we're not conscious of that and we're not combating that, not with one sermon, because Pastor MacArthur said, hey, we need to preach a sermon on this.

02:11:43

But sermon after sermon after sermon, where we expose the sin of sexual immorality, if we're going to touch on sin, we're touching on that sin.

02:11:55

And we warn them and we show them, as you were saying, Pastor Darren, they see it. When they're with us out there evangelizing, they see the horror in front of them.

02:12:04

You kind of romanticize it when Hollywood dresses it up, whether it's through Disney or another producer, they make it prettier, they make it fancier.

02:12:15

Whether like you've got Bruce Jenner, right? When I was a kid, you know, the guy was on Wheaties and, you know, it was awesome.

02:12:24

He was a stud. And now they got them all dolled up like a woman. It is sick and perverted and disgusting.

02:12:31

And they make it kind of glowy. But in real life, you see Bruce, it's not glowy, it's ugly.

02:12:37

In real life, you see these men in the heels stomping around. It's not glowy, it's ugly.

02:12:42

I mean, you see them hating God. And it doesn't matter here in Portland, whatever I preach, right? I could be preaching

02:12:47

John 3, 16. I could be preaching John 14. Anything, no matter what

02:12:54

I'm preaching, no matter what side I'm holding, right? If homosexuals or lesbians come by, they stop, they kiss, they hug, they cry out, hail

02:13:07

Satan and other abominations. Why? Because they know that I represent the

02:13:14

God they hate. No matter what I happen to be saying, no matter what sign I happen to be holding, no matter how big the smile on my face is, they know

02:13:22

I represent the God they hate, which is really a testimony to the reality of who they are and where they're at, which is tragic, right?

02:13:29

The devil's deceived them. He's destroying them through this sexual perversion. It's going to be fun.

02:13:35

It's not fun. Ultimately, their conscience cries out against them. They reap the whirlwind of sexual

02:13:41

STDs, sexually transmitted diseases. They reap the whirlwind of relational destruction.

02:13:48

The police have come to realize that if they've got a particularly violent murder where the stab wounds are just terrible and in the face and whatnot, often it's a homosexual lover.

02:13:59

And so the Bible is true. The wage of sin is death. And when we expose our children to it out in the world, now

02:14:07

I'm not saying take your children to the abomination parade necessarily and parade it all in front of them, but just in the normal society.

02:14:16

And here in Portland, you can pretty much go anywhere. And if you're going to be ministering the gospel, that subset of society is there in force and they see their hatred of God and they see you respond with grace, right?

02:14:27

So they're pouring hatred on you. You're pouring grace and truth back. And they see grace and truth win the day again and again because these people have no truth.

02:14:37

And that's back to the Bible, right? Is the Bible true? These poor kids, right? They need to be taught that without God and without the

02:14:43

Bible, you have no truth. You have no path to truth. Your feet are planted firmly in thin air.

02:14:49

And so these fundamental truths all tie together. And, again, when we keep the main thing, the main thing, and not just in theory but in life and practice, in the weekly ministry of the local church, whether it's in bringing folks up and saying, hey,

02:15:06

Billy Bob was out there ministering the gospel or Susie was out there ministering the gospel, their neighbor, and Susie, would you share that testimony?

02:15:14

Oh, praise God, that's beautiful. Let's pray for that. Or whether we've got the kids or family units, dads leading them out with us on the streets.

02:15:22

This is all part of building those disciples and equipping them for the work of the ministry as fathers and mothers, as young men and young women, as young people, all together, all together, not broken down as Pastor Casey is saying.

02:15:43

We've got the young people's church. We've got the middle -aged church. We've got the senior church. We've got the young single church.

02:15:49

We've got the young married couple's church. No, it's the church. And we're all together in this mission and the great co -mission learning to obey

02:15:58

Christ our Lord and make his name great in the earth. Can I spin off of you just for a second?

02:16:05

And Pastor Chuck, you brought up some great points, and I want to clarify as well and drive home the point that the main thing being the main thing is to be heralded.

02:16:18

In the Southern Baptist Convention, there's a great cry for unity around the mission right now, but I think the underlining understanding with all of us is that, first of all, we are primarily unified in Christ, and in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was

02:16:37

God. So Jesus is the word according to John 114. Christ is who we are united in first, and so it's the scriptures and then how we understand

02:16:47

Christ's commission is we're still continuing to be unified in that. And so to kind of address immorality in the

02:16:55

Southern Baptist Convention right now I think is an important point because a few years ago, critical race theory was voted in and nothing has been done about it since then, and now there's a huge cry for unity, unity, unity.

02:17:11

So pastors, by and large, I guess from a culture that precedes me, they seem not to want to rub or call out one another, and that's foreign to the

02:17:25

Bible because the apostle Paul was there for Peter when he capitulated from the gospel, and we also see that Peter was made better for that, and so we need to be there for each other, and with this soft peddling of homosexuality from J .D.

02:17:43

Greer, the prior president, from Ed Litton plagiarizing the words that J .D. Greer said, homosexuality won't send you to heaven.

02:17:52

How do I know that? Because heterosexuality won't send you to heaven or hell and heaven.

02:17:58

That's an atrocity to say that homosexuality will not send you to hell, and now we even have churches who are embracing the

02:18:07

LGBTQ movement so that they can grow their churches. It's a pragmatic means of evangelism, and this is needing to be addressed because we're not only talking about what evangelism is.

02:18:21

We need to talk about what evangelism is not, and so we don't take around the ways of the world.

02:18:28

James 4 .4 says friendship with the world is iniquity towards God. You're going to make yourself an enemy of the

02:18:33

Lord, and so nevertheless, we all have people whom we love and are involved with that are tempted by this social justice movement, and it's gross.

02:18:45

It's against Christ. It's adding to the gospel. It's immorality. It's everything. Like Justin Peter says, it's like a train, and all of these issues are connected, so when us being able to proclaim the gospel in our training with our people, we need to clarify what it's not because they'll be up against it.

02:19:03

I have a passion inside of my heart to clarify these things and to call pastors to be strong in this area because we're fighting for our own children.

02:19:14

You see, our own children are going to grow up, and they're going to have friends who are gay and lesbian, right, and they're going to have social media that's pushing this down their throats, and they're going to have all the movies that are self -peddling and even celebrating these things, but yet their parents and their church may say no, but yet they may have other churches who say yes, and with a teenager who's going through a little bit of a rebellious stage where their parents don't know anything anymore.

02:19:47

They've become empty heads all of a sudden. They're going to side with their friends. They're going to side with the world.

02:19:52

They're going to say, hey, there's another church down the street that's affirming, and all of a sudden, we're at a loss with our own children, with our own church members, and so for us as pastors to come alongside and to call a brother out in love and with gentleness of spirit wanting to be there for him, not against him, is something that I feel like it's got to be part of what we're doing regularly now, clarifying what the gospel is.

02:20:22

We can't be united around a mission, around a great commission that embraces these types of methodologies, and it's happening all around us, so nevertheless, just want to chime in and add a one -two to that for what it was worth.

02:20:35

You know, one of the things that's interesting, oh, you go ahead, Brian. Oh, just real quick. What you were talking about,

02:20:42

Pastor, by the way, Semper Fibro. I've got two boys with me, so praise the Lord. Thank you.

02:20:48

But yeah, you talked about when, and I go down to the Colts games, and we open air before Colts games, and once a month at Planned Parenthood, and what amazes me, and you had mentioned it, you know, the outcry and the screaming certain things at us, and that sort of thing.

02:21:05

It always amazed me, and I questioned them, why aren't you over to the Hebrews lights over there in that corner, screaming it down, or the

02:21:11

Jehovah Witness on that corner, just sitting there with his tracts and his pamphlet. It's because you know they're not true, and that's,

02:21:18

Anthony, what you talked about with the presupposition, right, of no excuse, right, laws written on their heart, and they're just suppressing the truth, and I remember that, that ball in the pool, right, you did a cruciform,

02:21:29

I'll never forget that, and I steal shamelessly, but understanding that gives you the confidence of, look, you know, that, that, you know, the opposite of anger is not hate, it's indifference, right?

02:21:41

So the hate you spark something, but it proves that A, the Bible is true, but B, it also gives you a platform to know and stand firm, to go ahead and just proclaim the gospel, that's what's going to crack the code anyway,

02:21:56

I can try to win debates and arguments all day long, until the gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit transforms that person's heart, that's when the real change is going to happen, and I can back up, you know,

02:22:07

Darren, and I've been out in the streets with the stud boys and girls, but, and he does practice what he preaches, and I think it, man, it just starts with the man, it starts, we got it, you know, the, the, the feminization of the man in, in, in media as well, and you talked about it earlier with David, you know, just chilling out when, when all the others were at war and, and dudes playing, you know, video games in their basement, you want a real adventure, you, you want some excitement in your life, you want to lean on the power of the

02:22:35

Holy Spirit, come out and step on the box, hold a sign or proclaim the gospel, man, you'll get the greatest ride of your life, and will you be scared?

02:22:43

Absolutely, absolutely, but you know what, once you get into it and the Holy Spirit, it is the greatest feeling in the world, you can float off that box, and man,

02:22:52

I've never went, there's been times I didn't want to go downtown, I'm going to be real, right, there's something, but man,

02:22:58

I've never driven home going, I wish I didn't go down there, wish I didn't do that, not once, not once, so, yeah, it, it is all about the truth, and preaching the truth, it's about standing firm, about being biblical, but also, man, that first word, go, right, go, be like Phillip, go and get out of that chair, and go run to that Ethiopian eunuch, and explain the gospel to him,

02:23:22

I think, you know, along the lines of what Brian, yeah, Brian just said, and we've done ministry in the streets together, and you talked about,

02:23:34

Pastor Chuck, is it, in Oregon, right, one of the interesting things, when you're in Oregon, and you're out there doing ministry on the streets, and I haven't,

02:23:42

I have never done ministry on the streets in Oregon, but I have in places that are similar, or likely similar, one of the interesting things here in Indiana, that speaks to some of the stuff we've been discussing here, is in Indiana, when you're doing ministry on the streets, whether it be at a cult scam, whether it be in an abortion mill, or whatever else the case may be, it's not actually the pagans, that are the first ones that will come up, and complain at you, for sharing the gospel on the streets, it's the

02:24:08

Christians, or the professed Christians, I should say, they will be the first ones, in Indiana, and I have found this to be the case, in the

02:24:16

Bible Belt, so in Indiana, it's the case in the South, whenever I do street ministry, down South, it is just about universally, the

02:24:26

Christians that come up to you first, and say, you know, hey brother, listen, I'm a Christian too, but you're not doing this right, you know, you can't be standing out here, telling people to repent of their sins, what would

02:24:37

Jesus do, you know, and I mean, the more you listen to these people talk, the more it's like, have you read your

02:24:43

Bible, you know, at all, and it's really interesting, but the reason that, they're saying that, is because, they haven't been discipled, to share the gospel, to them, sharing the gospel, is inviting somebody, to show up to church, on Sunday morning, and the pastor is going to preach, a nice felt needs message, and at the end, he's going to do an altar call, and that's their version, that's their understanding, of what it means, to preach the gospel, and so you're out there, standing on the streets, and there's no quicker way, to see the apathy, in the church, in America, than to go to the streets, and do street ministry, because you get

02:25:17

Christians, coming up to you, just constantly, left and right, telling you, that you're doing it all wrong, it's the, but I think it was, was it

02:25:24

Moody or Spurgeon, you know, who said, I like the way that I do it, better than the way, that you don't do it,

02:25:29

I don't remember, it was one of those two guys, I don't remember which one, but and I don't know, I don't know,

02:25:34

Brian, maybe you can co -sign on that, I don't know, if you've got the same experience, here in Indiana, but it is universally, been my experience, except for in the

02:25:42

Northeast, and out West, those two parts of the country, if you're anywhere, in the middle, whether it be

02:25:48

South, or wherever, it's going to be the Christians, they're going to be the first ones, to come out and confront you, and that speaks, to the dearth of discipleship, that's actually taking place, in the church, we see that in Cleveland, Ohio as well, yeah, that's another

02:26:05

Midwestern town, to there, I actually, have done street ministry, in Cleveland, and I had a lady, I had a

02:26:10

Christian, pastor, a Christian lady, I don't know, if she was born again, or not, but she almost punched me, in the face, doing ministry, outside of an abortion, in Cleveland, Ohio, was so mad at me, and she's, she was out there too, she was pro -life, she was holding the sign, but the second,

02:26:26

I started preaching the gospel, she got upset, and she just, came right over to me, and she was ready to fight, because I was preaching the gospel, on an abortion clinic, so, wow, yeah, so we, we need

02:26:38

Ryan Ditton, or Ray Cover, to write a track, titled, You're Doing It Wrong, and go from there.

02:26:47

That's good. You know, there could be a ministry, going after evangelism. It's still early enough. Yeah. Brothers, I have a quote,

02:26:56

I'd like to share, and I won't go long, but it's, it's from J .C. Ryle, and it's about,

02:27:01

George Whitfield, and he says, he was the first to see, that Christ ministers, must do the work, of fishermen, they must not wait, for souls to come to them, but must go after souls, and compel them, to come in, he did not sit tamely, by his fireside, he dived into holes, and corners, after sinners, he hunted out, ignorance, and vice, wherever they could be found, in short, he set on foot, a system of action, which up to his time, had been comparatively, unknown.

02:27:37

Now, tragically, he, J .C.

02:27:42

Ryle, says, that, he was the first, to see, that Christ ministers, must do the work, of fishermen,

02:27:49

I would say, he was the first, in many centuries, to see it, and, and tragically, still today, we're amongst, a few, not the many, that see it, but it's, it's all over the pages, of scripture, it is the great commission, and the fulfillment, of the great commission, and anything else, is what

02:28:11

I call, creative disobedience, to the great commission, it's redefining it, it's taking the impetus, out of go, because of, a nice, grammatical arguments, you know,

02:28:22

I don't care about, your grammatical arguments, Jesus said go, and the disciples went, you argue with Jesus, you argue with the disciples, not with me, and your grammar, when they got there, after they got up, and went and obeyed

02:28:37

Jesus, yep, they made disciples, and so the imperative's there, but unless you go out, and find them, you're not making them, so go therefore, and you're not making disciples, out of the

02:28:47

Christians either, unless you're getting up, and going out, and finding the lost, because you're supposed, to be training them, to get up and go out, and find the lost, and so we need to put the go, back in go therefore, and it's not, you know

02:28:59

Chuck, or Casey, or Darren, or Brian, or Anthony, that found this, they found go, look at that, they found a

02:29:06

G and a O, and it said go, and wow, this is something right, it was always there, it was there, when

02:29:14

George Whitefield found it, it was there, before we found it, it was always there, that's what Jesus did, his entire ministry, did he not have a going ministry, he came out of heaven, to earth, he went everywhere, he healed everyone, he fed the masses, he preached to them all, they hated him for it, they killed him for it, and he rose again, conquering sin and death, and then he said you, go, go, go, go, and so brothers, we gotta go, we gotta train others to go, and yep, we need to know what to say when we get there, and the best way to train them what to say when they get there is by taking them with you as you're going, and that's my last word.

02:29:49

Yeah, well it's amazing, with the go, right, it's going as you go, is a good Greek translation for that, right, and this is supposed to be part of our everyday lives as well, right, so we're supposed to be just going out there and doing the work of the evangelist, the moment we walk out of church, to the point where we walk back in, you know, whether it's on Wednesday night or Sunday, whenever that next time is, we're to be doing the work of the evangelist.

02:30:11

You know, I recently have preached a sermon, I've preached it a couple times out of different churches, 2

02:30:17

Corinthians 5 verses 11 to the end of the chapter, verse 21, and what's striking about this passage is we all want to focus on the idea that we're, if you're in Christ, your new creation, the oldest passed away, behold the new has come.

02:30:32

We talk about verse 21, for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

02:30:39

So we focus on these aspects of this passage and yet this passage is full of where we've been given a ministry of reconciliation, we persuade others, the love of Christ controls us.

02:30:53

This passage is wrought full of what we're supposed to be doing as a result of being saved.

02:31:01

And it didn't hit me as hard as until I studied this out before preaching it to recognize how intertwined these two pieces are.

02:31:10

To me, when I read this, it seems that the identity of a

02:31:16

Christian is one of an evangelist. That this is a marking point of a

02:31:22

Christian. You know, we examine somebody for their works as we, you know,

02:31:28

Galatians 5 and in other areas, we examine them. Shouldn't evangelism be one of those things that we examine as well?

02:31:34

Are they actually out there and caring, they care enough about the loss they want to go share with them? So I don't know about you guys, but that's something that hit me hard.

02:31:43

And so with something you said Pastor Chuck, I'm gonna do kind of quick lightning round here. I know it got

02:31:49

Todd Friel and John MacArthur in trouble when he said one word, Beth Moore, go home.

02:31:58

Okay, but what would each of you say to the Christian who is not evangelizing on a regular basis?

02:32:05

What word or couple of words do you come up with? Go. Go? I think

02:32:14

I would say repent. Repent? Jesus said, you call me Lord, why call me, why do you call me

02:32:19

Lord, Lord, and you don't do what I say? You know, he is the high king of heaven, and he has given us one commission, and that commission is to make disciples.

02:32:28

We're not doing that. We need to repent. It's a sin. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, my kind of thing.

02:32:37

Obedience. Yes. E, all the above.

02:32:43

No, get equipped. I think get yourself equipped. Show yourself approved. You mentioned,

02:32:50

Pastor Chuck, you know, fishermen, you know, we're called to be fishers of men. I think it's good to get it. Every good fisherman has a tackle box, right?

02:32:57

Get yourself a tackle box of different ways. I dislike when people just teach like one method.

02:33:03

Hey, you're gonna go for, you know, four spiritual laws. You're only gonna do the Romans Road, or we're gonna do the bridge, or we're gonna do a good person test.

02:33:10

Have an arsenal to be discerning on what to use when. Be equipped. Start, you know, you can start small.

02:33:17

Maybe sharing the gospel with your waiter or waitress. Pray for them, and then give them a gospel tract, right? Leave a tract at a gas station.

02:33:23

As you're going through a drive -through, just start doing something, but walk alongside.

02:33:29

Get equipped. Learn, and yes, go, and be obedient, and repent.

02:33:36

Fair enough. Okay, so let's let's go on this train of thought, and then I want to jump back to the discipleship side.

02:33:42

If somebody says, okay, guys, how do I get started in evangelism? What's the first thing I should do?

02:33:48

Now, granted, it's prayer, right? We pray. Pray for God to give us the strength.

02:33:53

Pray for God to give us the boldness, and pray that he puts one foot in front of another to go out and actually do it, right?

02:34:00

But what would be the, I don't want to call it entry level, so to speak, but how do we get somebody started in evangelism?

02:34:09

And maybe, Brian, you want to start? You train in this, so how do you get people to start? Wow, I think,

02:34:15

Darren, you hit it on the repentance piece. I've run into so many evangelists that say, you know what?

02:34:21

I was a false convert until I watched Hell's Best Secret or Paul Washer's Shocking Youth Conference.

02:34:27

There's, I mean, a large number. I would start there. This is gonna be shameless.

02:34:32

I'm sorry. We started a Hearts for the Lost podcast for that exact reason, to get the basics of biblical evangelism out to the masses.

02:34:41

Anybody that can listen to it on a podcast, I would say get trained up, but I would say lock arms with someone.

02:34:47

I've always said, if you're a newer disciple, get a Paul in your life. Who's someone you can learn from?

02:34:54

And then, obviously, get a Timothy to bring along as well, but to arm yourself, get involved with people that actually do it, and that you can experience life with them and follow along.

02:35:05

But I'd say get, too many people also want to jump into, I want to learn Ray Comfort's Way of the

02:35:10

Master, right? And I kind of liken that to maybe the triangle offense back when Jordan played. That's a play, right?

02:35:17

So many people don't understand dribbling or setting a pick or a V -cut, how to get open, how the pieces of that play work.

02:35:23

Let's understand, you know, systematic theology around the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, what really happened on that cross, and then

02:35:31

Christ is my life. How does that all work? Now, understanding that, to appropriately now run that play,

02:35:38

I think is a better way to kind of break that down. I know it's a long answer to a short question, but I think getting back to the basics,

02:35:44

I think a lot of people assume, a lot of people assume people know the gospel, but until you really run them through it, and it's like, oh boy, wait a minute, you know,

02:35:52

Galatians 1 .8 is pretty important. We got to understand the gospel. I don't want to be a curse, so understanding what the gospel is and the componentry thereof,

02:36:01

I think that is absolutely crucial. Yeah, I think it's easy.

02:36:08

The starting point is two by two. If you're going to be a learner, then get underneath somebody who's doing it.

02:36:18

I teach people to start with one verse, which is

02:36:23

Romans 6 .23. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life, and Christ Jesus our

02:36:29

Lord. We teach people to memorize that verse, and then all the other aspects of the gospel presentation, we fit into that.

02:36:36

We go through the law. The wages of sin is death. What is sin, you know, and so on and so forth, and then the other thing is just start the conversation.

02:36:47

The Spirit of God, if you're a Christian, if you're truly born again, the Spirit of God indwells you.

02:36:53

He will give you. He will, that's, this is not to say you shouldn't equip yourself, okay. It's not a, it's not an excuse for laziness, but if you're faithful as a

02:37:03

Christian, you're in the Word, you're spending time in prayer, you're walking with the Lord, if you open your mouth and begin to share the gospel with a lost person, the

02:37:10

Spirit of God will be with you, and He will work through you if you're faithful to minister the gospel.

02:37:17

So I tell people, open up your mouth and start talking, and the Spirit of God will work in and through you.

02:37:23

Amen to that. You know, I think when we recognize that it's

02:37:29

God who sovereignly changes hearts, and He does it through the preaching of His Word, that the thing we're responsible for is giving the

02:37:37

Word, right? We don't worry about the results, and we don't have to worry about the results. It should take all the onus off of us, and evangelism really, it gets quite easy when we understand the scriptural basis for it all.

02:37:50

You know, practically speaking, one of the things I want to share too is when I'm doing evangelism training, when Andrew's doing evangelism training, we tell people, you know what, start with gospel tracts, and as I jokingly will say,

02:38:02

I'll say, you know what, next time you're at the gas pump, look both ways, make sure nobody's watching you, then quickly slip this into the gas pump, right?

02:38:09

And then quickly hop in your car and drive off before anybody catches you. Eventually, you do that enough, or you put in your library book, or you put it into beer boxes in the store.

02:38:20

Eventually, you're gonna get bold enough to just hand it to somebody, you know, maybe at the cash register right as you're walking out, and you exchange it with a receipt, and you have bolts out the door with your groceries, and eventually you're gonna give it to somebody, and you might actually have a conversation with them.

02:38:34

You know, so it's okay if you start small, but start somewhere. I mean, these are great ways, just make sure it's a good gospel tract.

02:38:41

This one is written by Mike Stockwell, a thank -you tract, and I can get these through Marv Plevin Tosh at million,

02:38:48

I think it's milliontracts .com, but a great gospel tract, and a thank -you card, right?

02:38:54

Just give it to somebody as a thank -you, and it's really easy to do. Okay, let's talk about discipleship here, and we'll probably start to wrap this up here pretty soon, because I think we could do a whole nother show on this, and go into some more detail, maybe when

02:39:09

Pastor Chuck is feeling a little bit better. Although, you warned me you were sick ahead of time, and you haven't seemed sick the whole time, so you've done a great job.

02:39:18

Just a little chilly sitting here, got some chills. Yeah, so we'll get off here in just a moment.

02:39:23

I'll ask one last question, then. How do we get discipleship started in the church?

02:39:29

Like, how do we say, okay, I'm going to, as a pastor, because a pastor can't do this on his own necessarily, right?

02:39:36

You've got to get guys at least somewhat trained that are gonna train others, but eventually, you know, it doesn't, it shouldn't take very long to be able to get lots of people trained in your church that can disciple others, and I know,

02:39:52

Pastor Casey, I'll start with you, because you actually have developed something for your own church to do this in the last couple of months.

02:40:01

You spent your sabbatical, I came down and spent some time teaching your church while you were doing this and preaching, but you actually took that time not to just go have a good time.

02:40:11

I mean, you sat down and really worked on what you call your discipleship manual or discipleship booklet, so I don't know if you want to share that a little bit, and kind of what your vision was for that, and then

02:40:21

I'll let others talk after that. Yeah, absolutely. You know, getting back to that word intentionality, it's very intentional to make disciples, and kind of keying off of 2

02:40:34

Timothy 2 to the things which you have heard. This is Paul talking to Timothy. He's heard the gospel.

02:40:40

He's heard the Word of God from Paul in the presence of many witnesses and trustees to faithful men who are able to teach others also.

02:40:48

So this is a measurable downline of disciples. You have Paul to Timothy to faithful men to others.

02:40:55

It's measurable, and so you can see that there is evidence that a Christian is making disciples, and so you can ask a question for your congregants.

02:41:05

Who are you pouring into? How are you doing it? And are they growing? And so forth and so on, and as I really wanted to be intentional with our culture here at the church, not only being evangelistic, but being very strategic in evangelism.

02:41:22

And by the way, teaching the Word of God is also illuminating truth, which is disciple making as well.

02:41:29

So teaching the Word will make disciples. It will grow your people, but they also have a responsibility to spread the

02:41:37

Word of God. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. So you want to equip them to be able to make disciples.

02:41:44

So obviously the Bible is the best, but when you say, go make disciples, and they look at a big book, and they're like, yeah, that's a bit daunting, right?

02:41:53

Well, there's always so many concepts in the Word of God, and so I've tried to boil them down to palpable concepts to where we can understand and at least get on a basic level to where we are expecting our people to be making disciples, and this is obviously tied in with evangelism and discipleship.

02:42:18

And so John 8 31 says, if you continue in my Word, then you'll prove that you're disciples of mine.

02:42:26

So prove you're disciples of mine by continuing in the Word. Jesus kind of pushed back on the belief that the

02:42:32

Jews proclaimed that they believed in him, and he said, nah, prove your disciples by continuing in the

02:42:38

Word. And so that's the idea is for your congregants to continue in the

02:42:45

Word, and basically an interactive 50 -page little manual that fits in the

02:42:52

Bible that they can carry around with them and meet personally with someone. So say, for example, they lead someone to Christ, or they share the gospel with them, and they're not even led to Christ yet.

02:43:04

Whatever the case might be, maybe there's a couple in the church that are friends, and they want to go through this manual together, whether it's a mother and a daughter, a father and a son, a grandparent and a grandson.

02:43:17

Whatever the case scenario might be, two or three small, you know, group -oriented focus here.

02:43:25

Here's the thing. First of all, talk about their belief in Christ, and I'm just going to go with the five chapters here.

02:43:33

And what is it to really believe in Christ? And then from there, what is it to be biblically baptized?

02:43:40

And then from there, how do you belong to a local church? And then how do you study the

02:43:46

Bible? And then how do I engage in passing that gospel baton onward?

02:43:52

How do I become a Great Commission Christian who is obedient to that Great Commission? And so you will have gone through some basic steps on the essentials of the faith, and obviously this is just the basics.

02:44:08

But the thing is, when you go through indiscriminately with your church what it is to believe in Christ according to the

02:44:17

Scriptures, and you just flip to the verse, you read the verse together, you read the paragraph, and you talk about the question, what it's going to pull out is whether or not that person is truly saved.

02:44:32

And by them truly thinking about the Scriptures, if they're a false convert, they'll fall under conviction.

02:44:39

And many times you have folks who have been obedient outwardly, but inwardly they're still rebellious.

02:44:45

They've never been converted. Their church is just their life. It's what their family's always done.

02:44:52

It's their social club, whatever the case might be. We've got to be faithful to our own people to evangelize our own children, and to develop a disciple -making culture within our church.

02:45:06

And how do you do that? Well, like I just said, the Bible is a bit daunting. Obviously we can ask our people to sit down with a book of the

02:45:14

Bible, go through the Scriptures, and study it together. And an astute student of the

02:45:21

Word of God who knows how to study the Bible should be doing that already.

02:45:27

They should want to show others how to study the Bible. But in this next steps manual,

02:45:34

I go through how to study the Bible on that fourth step. So basically belief, baptism, church membership, which is belonging, and how to study the

02:45:45

Bible, and then how to evangelize through passing that gospel baton is what I've done my absolute best to try and narrow down what it would be to disciple our people, and be faithful to the full counsel of God to the best we can.

02:46:01

And then obviously beyond this, you would want to study doctrine. You would want to study more and continue to dive into the depth of the

02:46:09

Word of God. But believe me, it's very hard to write on a basic level to where folks can not only get it, but thrive in it.

02:46:18

It's got to be transferable. I haven't found a whole lot of material out there that doesn't just choke people who are busy.

02:46:29

Most men have full -time jobs, and they're just trying to provide, to get food on the table and pay the rent and everything.

02:46:35

And so we've got to get a system in place to where they feel like, I can do this.

02:46:41

I can be a faithful Christian. I can evangelize and disciple. So nevertheless, that's what

02:46:47

I've been working on. And we've got the rough draft down. And here pretty soon,

02:46:53

I look forward to working slowly by discipling our deacons personally, and then laying down the expectation for our elders and deacons to do personal discipleship with their wives and children.

02:47:08

And then once they go through, I mean, it shouldn't take two weeks per chapter. So you're asking for a 10 -week commitment just to establish the very basics of the

02:47:16

Bible. And so I do this with them. And then

02:47:21

I go with them to the next step as well. And I will stay with them until they are confident in this transferable material, until they're confident with reading the passages on their own and asking the questions.

02:47:33

And I have in my mind this concept of kind of like two pilots in an airplane. I fly, but you watch first.

02:47:41

Maybe you've heard this before. And then after I fly and you watch, we fly together on the next round.

02:47:47

So I'll go with them on their next discipleship engagement and fly with them.

02:47:52

I'm assisting, I'm helping. And then even if they want me to go again to the third discipleship session, then perhaps

02:48:00

I would watch them and just be there for them while they're flying and I'm watching. So it really takes three intentional steps to set a disciple up for success before they're confident in being able to approach someone else and lead them through what the

02:48:17

Scriptures have to say to become a fully devoted follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. So nevertheless, to kind of review it,

02:48:24

I would disciple, say, our deacons, right? Spend an hour a week with them for approximately 10 weeks.

02:48:31

And then along the way, I would say, be praying about whom you want to disciple next. And then

02:48:37

I'll go with you. And so that's the next layer. And then that's another 10 weeks.

02:48:42

And then following that, we would take those two people and me and we would go again. And along the way, it's going to divide and multiply.

02:48:52

But think of it this way. Within just a few months, your people will be going outside of their own church walls to reach out and evangelize and disciple their cousins, their brothers, and their neighbors.

02:49:09

And you will be going with your people to personally sit down and discuss what the

02:49:15

Scriptures have to say about belief in the Lord Jesus Christ and what it is to be baptized and belong to a church and study the

02:49:24

Word of God and evangelize. So think of it a small amount of time it would take just to be able to have your people evangelizing and reaching the world for Christ.

02:49:37

So nevertheless, I'm very excited about it. And I can't wait to finish it and start producing it.

02:49:43

Yeah. And Bond Serving for Jesus said, where can we get your manual? So I know it's not done yet.

02:49:49

You're in the rough draft stages. But maybe we should talk about putting it for sale on the Striking Fraternity website once you've kind of worked out the key you want to work out.

02:49:56

I hope to make it. Oh, yes, sir. Yeah. Praise God. It'll be cheap, if not free, and available for a download to print via PDF on our website.

02:50:07

We're just going to get this thing out the best we can. And I have enjoyed it. I mean, we went through the draft together already, the first draft of it.

02:50:15

I haven't seen this. I haven't seen the next one yet. But it's excellent. Amen. Thank you, sir.

02:50:21

You're welcome. So Pastor Chuck or Pastor Darren, you guys got thoughts about how to start discipleship in the church?

02:50:28

That was beautiful, brother. That was beautiful. I'll just let that stand, except to say that I have my own manual.

02:50:38

Amen. Tools for Evangelism. And it's been on our website for some time.

02:50:46

Our church website is currently down because we're transitioning. But it'll be up there in downloadable, printable form as well.

02:50:53

But Tools for Evangelism. And it covers some of what Pastor Casey's manual will cover, some of the basic theology, although you might have given me a few more chapters, brother.

02:51:10

And yeah, but I think it's a good tool to get folks going individually, to get folks going corporately.

02:51:16

I think Mike Stockwell stole it from me and has taught through portions of it in a few churches out there.

02:51:22

And I would say if there's any pastors listening live or in the future, get an

02:51:28

Anthony Silvestro, get a Mike Stockwell, get a Robert Gray, invite them.

02:51:33

They're happy to come at very little or no expense. I mean, these men live on faith and run on fumes, but they're all in for Jesus.

02:51:44

Get them alongside your church, alongside you. Say, hey, let's go out together. Show me how

02:51:49

I can reach my community. And you'll have your feet on the ground. You'll be discipled by these men who may be well ahead of you evangelistically.

02:51:58

You may be a Calvinesque theologian. You could write your own institutes, but you haven't preached in the city center yet.

02:52:06

Well, these men are stalwart champions of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they'd love to come and help you step out in faith and preach that glorious theology that you know and love and can write and articulate in the pulpit, in the open air.

02:52:23

And so don't hesitate to get a hold of a Mike Stockwell, a Robert Gray, or an Anthony Silvestro, and they'll help you get those gospel shod feet out there in the world and really to test out that armor.

02:52:35

It gets kind of stiff in the pulpit, that armor. You know, it feels kind of heavy. But out on the streets, out on the highways and byways, you need it, and you realize all the more how much you need it.

02:52:48

And so do that, and then you'll be better equipped to say to your church, follow me as I follow

02:52:53

Christ, and to be leading them out there. So that's my final word.

02:53:00

The only thing I would add to that, I haven't written my own manual, so I feel like I'm qualified to answer here or not, but I'm actually looking forward to reading both of those that you brothers bought.

02:53:11

This is what we use here when we're discipling a new believer. So there you go.

02:53:17

I bought a stack of these from Andrew Rappaport when he was in town. It runs through, the verses come from the

02:53:23

New King James Version, and it's a pretty good resource. I'd recommend you guys jump on the website and check it out.

02:53:30

It's not a shameless plug because it's not my resource, but I definitely, they're on the Striving for Eternity website.

02:53:36

I'm glad you just said that, by the way, because I was just about to give that shameless plug. Andrew's got a plethora of outstanding resources to help disciple, but thank you for doing that for me.

02:53:47

That's right, I did it. Did it for you. Yeah, man, there's a lot of great resources on Striving for Eternity. We use

02:53:52

Andrew's book on systematic theology to train our young pastors, our guys that are coming too.

02:53:58

Yep, there you go. Great book. Right there. We use that to train our young pastoral candidates here in theology.

02:54:06

So we use a lot of Striving for Eternity stuff around Harmony Baptist Church, What Do They Believe? Good book on cults and world religions.

02:54:12

Where's Anthony's book? What's that? There it is. Of course, about kinds, and then the book on Mormonism, which

02:54:20

I was just going through. There's a discount on this, he said earlier, but one other thing I would say too is, and I think this is important when it comes to training disciples as a pastor, is

02:54:31

I try to live my life before the people in such a way that when they see the things that I'm doing, it doesn't look like I'm doing something extraordinary because I'm a pastor.

02:54:44

So I don't, not that there's anything wrong with this, but I don't talk about, I read these 18 books this week, and not that there's anything wrong with reading those 18 books this week, or the big pictures of my library, and stuff like that.

02:55:00

I want the people that are part of my flock to look at me and say, he's a faithful follower of Jesus Christ, and if I go do what he does, he's not perfect, but if I go do what he does, generally speaking,

02:55:15

I'll be serving and obeying the Lord. And that's the thing as a pastor, I want to communicate to people, and then be involved in their lives, and have them be involved in my life, and let them see my manner of living.

02:55:29

Let them see what kind of a husband I am. Let them see what kind of a father I am. Let them see how

02:55:34

I study and read the Word of God, and so forth. And yeah, read your stacks of books. I talk a lot to young pastors, and these are some of the things that I share often when

02:55:42

I'm talking to young pastors. I was like, be the kind of a guy that the blue collar guys in your church can look at you, and they feel like, you know, it's not like you're some kind of scholar, you know, or something like that.

02:55:56

You're just a faithful brother who's serving the Lord. You stand before the church with God's Word each

02:56:01

Lord's Day morning, and you proclaim the Word, and then you're just faithfully living your life to serve and worship

02:56:06

Jesus. And if they come and interact with you, and see what you're doing, and follow your manner of living, that's actually what discipleship is.

02:56:14

Like sitting down with a book, and opening it up, and working through it with people. That's a tool that's tremendously helpful in that process as well.

02:56:22

So I think that's awesome, and that's why we use this. But also bringing the people along with you in your life, and coming alongside of them in their life.

02:56:32

Discipleship happens when you bang your knuckles because you're helping somebody work on their car, or you're helping them build a fence in their backyard, or you're, you know, you're babysitting their kids so they can go on a date night.

02:56:44

You know, those to me as a pastor, I've noticed those seem to be the moments when

02:56:49

I really have the opportunity to impact people's lives, because they see me as I am, just as a

02:56:55

Christian who's trying to faithfully serve and worship God. So that would be the only, in addition to all the other awesome things these other two brothers said, that would just be the only other thing that I would add to that.

02:57:04

Wow, thank you so much. Well I think on that, we're gonna end the show. I think we need to do this again, so I'm gonna try to find some dates and have this continue on.

02:57:17

We had a lot of people watch tonight. I think they really enjoyed it. So thank you all for being on, Pastor Chuck, Pastor Casey, for coming on from the beginning, and Pastor Darren from jumping on later on.

02:57:27

Brian, thank you for helping me out as one of the non -pastor kind on the show tonight.

02:57:34

Good to meet you. Always good to have the other perspective as well. So on that, we thank you all for guys coming.