SBC, PCA, Keller Center, & CT Today

I have a new microphone, as some of you can tell, and I'm not sure how I feel about it yet, because last podcast, and I pre -recorded that one, it blew out some of your ears, and I didn't catch it until after I uploaded it to YouTube and to iTunes and everywhere else, that like two minutes in, there was this static that was really loud in the microphone, and so if that happens again,

I may go back to the other mic I was using, but anyway, hopefully you can hear me.

Please, someone let me know, because I know I can hear it. I think it's working, but someone in the chat, just let me know if I'm coming through on the audio, because I wasn't before.

So as I was saying, though no one could hear me, my wife and I had a good time. We went down to Manhattan last night, and that's honestly enough time to be in Manhattan, one day.

It was last night, and now I'm back to my house, in my mind, and some of you like cities, but for me, it's kind of cool to be in that energy for a little bit, and then

I really need to see some woods and some open space. I feel like,

I don't know if it's claustrophobic or what it is, but anyway. It was good, though, for the time we were there.

Went to Manhattan and did something I haven't actually ever done with her. I just got a hotel for the night, and we went to see the

Lord of the Rings in concert. It was the entire Fellowship of the Ring, which is the first episode or the first movie, and they had a full orchestra, a full choir.

It was beautiful. It really was. It exceeded my expectations. If you ever get a chance to go and you appreciate music,

I think you'll enjoy it, and so anyway, we saw that, and I have some observations that I already recorded that I will share,

I think, Saturday with you all about that because it was fascinating to see the audience reaction, in my mind, at least, and maybe

I'm approaching this different than some people would, given my position here, but anyway,

I have some thoughts on that, and then today, we went walking in Central Park, and we got good

New York City bagels. By the way, I've lived in Virginia, North Carolina, and California, and I just gotta say, in all those places, well, at least in Virginia, North Carolina, people have said, you gotta try this bagel shop, or this is the bagel to get, and it never is.

Same with pizza. In New York City, though, I will say this for New York City, you do have some very good pizza and some good bagels, so that is a plus, and my wife and I had a good time, so anyway,

I'm coming off of that, and I'm riding on the train, which is a spectacular ride when you're on the train going back to more upstate in the

Hudson Valley. You get to see the river almost the entire time, and I was periodically looking at my phone just to see if, check an email, that kind of thing, because I had been out of the loop, and I noticed there was a big brouhaha, is that a word?

And it was happening on Twitter. Of course it was happening on Twitter, right? Every time something like that happens, there's part of me that says,

I should go back to my Twitter account. I should get a Twitter account again, and then I say, no, I'm actually glad I don't have a

Twitter account. I would be all up in that, as they say, in the South, and it probably wouldn't be good, but I'm gonna be, obviously, talking about it, so I am contributing here, but not on Twitter.

Twitter's where the war took place, and it was concerning the

State of the Union address, and then the head of the ERLC, Brent Leatherwood's reaction to it,

Megan Basham taking him to task, a reporter from the Daily Wire, and then the president of the entire convention,

Bart Barber, just piling on Megan Basham, and so I'm gonna show you that, and we'll talk about that first, then we'll get to some

PCA stuff, we'll get to the Keller Center, and part of the reason I told you I was in Manhattan was because I wanna talk about the

Keller Center while this is fresh in my mind, and we may talk about some other things, too. I think

I put it in the title, so we'll probably get to it at some point. I haven't read the article yet. I have been sent some things about it, so I know a little bit about it from Christianity Today about John MacArthur's church, and I don't wanna get ahead of my skis on this one just because I don't have all the information yet.

Like I said, I haven't even read the article, but there is one point I did wanna make, and it's an opportunity to do it, so maybe we'll read it together if we have time, and then let's see what else.

I have a bunch of things planned. We're gonna talk about, maybe I'll save this for another episode. We're gonna talk about AI at some point, so maybe not this episode, but if I run through it quick, right, that'll be a miracle, then we'll get to some

AI stuff, but anyway, good to have you all streaming here tonight. I hope you're having a good evening.

I know I am where I am, and I feel ready to go here. Let's just jump into it if we can here.

Let's look at first what happened on Twitter. So Brent Leatherwood, who's the replacement for Russell Moore, as I understand it, at the

Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention, decided to put a tweet thread out there, and the tweet thread says this.

The State of the Union speech is a laundry list of the President of the United States' priorities.

Noteworthy how far down the list abortion fell in the first State of the Union since the fall of Roe.

President Biden spent more time on hidden fees, bad night for Planned Parenthood. I was thankful for the time spent on items like crafting policies that help families, matching immigration reform and border security, and supporting our

Ukrainian allies against Putin's illegal invasion. Seems clear there's space there for leaders to come together.

I'm sorry, the line Putin's illegal invasion cracks me up actually as I'm reading it.

Like what war was it like not an illegal? Anyway, Russia thinks it's perfectly legal.

All right, also encouraging the President seemed most passionate in the segment discussing the brutal murder of Tyra Nichols, and Republicans responded.

I'm thankful for this bipartisan moment because an injustice like that should move our leaders to act.

And then, if I can get myself out of the way here, he says, once again, we saw a

President of the United States use image of God language while appreciate its use. It's too often limited or fails to include all of our neighbors.

Our Presidents need to understand and our laws must reflect the full weight of this reality.

So, where do you start with this? I mean, I'm gonna give my take on this and then we'll read what

Megan Basham had to say and why she got pummeled for what she said by Bart Barber.

But when I look at a thread like this, I think, oh, okay, nothing changed at the

Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention. The money that you as a Southern Baptist, if you are in that denomination, give to the cooperative program, some of which goes to the

Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, goes to someone who's basically just like Russell Moore.

What's the difference? I mean, Russell Moore would have said something very similar to this. Maybe there is a gift in the sense that Brent Leatherwood, I think, isn't quite as smooth as Russell Moore.

And maybe there's an opportunity for a little more honesty, but it's the same position.

It's the same posture. So, the first tweet in this four -part thread where he says that he's happy, really, that Planned Parenthood had a bad night.

He said, bad night for Planned Parenthood, all right? That's his negative statement. That's really his only negative statement.

The first tweet and then the last tweet, he says something else that's negative. But even in that, he's complimenting

President Biden and saying, well, he just doesn't go far enough on this one thing.

But he's still just oozing with gratitude. So, I would say the first tweet is really his only real critique.

And even that's not really that much of a critique because he's saying it's a bad night for Planned Parenthood. In other words, he, as someone who is pro -life, wants a bad night for Planned Parenthood.

So, he's thankful for that. So, I don't know, I can't even say that's negative.

What is negative in this? I mean, that's a positive, really. Most of it's positive. He's talking about how encouraged he is, how thankful he is, and just how bad it was for Planned Parenthood and that Biden said image of God.

So, I guess the only real critique here is that he didn't say image of God enough or didn't apply it broadly enough as he should have.

That's about it. This is the president, yeah, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, right? So, this is kind of a big deal for you

Southern Baptists. So, I would say, though, this is what separates the first tweet from the next three.

I would say, if that were true, I don't think it probably is necessarily true. We're gonna look at the

State of the Union speech in a minute. We would be in agreement with Brent Leatherwood. We both want, we both desire, as far as we,

I'm saying conservative Christians who get their politics from the

Bible, from Christian understanding of reality. Leftist, quote -unquote evangelicals, get their understanding of theology generally from politics.

That's the difference. So, those of us, I'm saying, who try to get our understanding from biblical principles to apply to politics, we would say good with Brent Leatherwood.

We'd say, yeah, we would agree on that. But then the next tweet, everything changes.

I was thankful for the time spent on items like crafting policies that help families, matching immigration reform and border security and supporting

Ukrainian allies against Putin's illegal invasion. You have to, if you're the president of the

Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, take into account what's happened over the past two years with all these issues.

Millions coming over the border, record numbers coming over the border. This has not been good.

It's put a strain on our welfare system, to put it bluntly.

It's caused a great amount of, I would say displacement may not be the word

I wanna use. There's a big flashing red sign over that. You believe in the

Great Replacement? Well, to some extent, yeah. I mean, I don't, how do you deny that? But it's definitely led to a cultural phenomenon where there are certain regions that aren't even

America anymore. In other words, and this has happened for a while, but you don't even speak English there anymore.

You can't communicate if you're from another part of the country because it's kind of like Upper Mexico or Central America.

And this is creating all kinds of problems with sex trafficking and human rights violations that are related to that.

You have the drug issues, of course. So if you're aware of that, and if you're aware of the fact that the packages we keep sending to Ukraine that are,

I think, if I'm not mistaken, Israel might be the only country we have sent more foreign aid to military support than,

I think it's number one, and then Ukraine's number two, if I'm not mistaken. So we've sent them so much, so many resources already and it's still the constant drumbeat to do more.

It's just where, this is probably more than Len Lease was in World War II as far as the amount of support we're giving here.

And depending on what you think happened to that pipeline, maybe it's beyond Len Lease.

Anyway, also encouraging, he said to, so there he says the Republicans came together, or sorry, he says they came together on this tweet.

The president was passionate about the brutal murder of Tyra Nichols. It's like, well, that's all fine and good that he's, but what business is it?

This is one of the problems. What is the federal government supposed to do about this? What's their role in this?

Do we believe in federalism anymore? This is a problem for a local police department in Memphis.

Clearly they had issues, and we talked about it on this program. They had a, there was an article in the

New York Post about the hiring policies and how they dumbed the requirements down in order to get applicants to come in who were not qualified for the job.

And a lot of those guys involved in the Tyra Nichols situation were new hires. And so this is, this is a

Memphis problem. And I'm not saying there's not other cities, Chicago being one,

New York. I mean, this is happening all over, I think, where requirements are probably being dumbed down and you have the

Ferguson effect, and the departments are just nervous. I mean, there's just a hesitancy to have an altercation, especially if you're a quote unquote white cop and the perpetrator is not white.

And so this is happening all over and it's causing problems with crime. And who are you gonna go to?

Who are you gonna hire? This is one of the concerns I know, my brother and I were talking about this a few years ago because he knew some guys going into the force.

He just, and a few of them, he's like, these guys would, these guys are guns for hire. These are, these aren't good people.

They're willing to, if the criminals paid more, they would be with them, right? There's people like that out there.

And so the police departments end up attracting people that are of low character because people of high character don't wanna be police officers anymore.

There's really not a whole lot of respect with it. Anyway, I could go on a whole thing, I shouldn't, but we're only into one tweet thread and we have many more to go here, but Brent Leatherwood, he makes a big deal about this.

And I would just say for someone who's the head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, that should be at least a yellow flag, if not a red flag.

I don't want Biden coming in and I don't want him doing anything policy -wise to mess around with my local church.

Why would I want him to come in and mess with local police departments? There's gonna be bad police departments, but the potential for problems when it's the federal government that's gaining more and more power and oversight over these departments is much greater than allowing people to govern themselves in their local communities.

And my fear is that the more that these issues are seen as appropriate for a federal or a national general audience, the less and less we're going to value federalism.

And that's a good way to lose freedom. So Brent Leatherwood, in my mind, it's just a ridiculous tweet thread.

It sounds like Russell Moore stuff and he's buttering Biden up. And yeah, he probably didn't vote for Biden.

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that. He's probably to the right of Biden on things like abortion, but here we go, right?

And I know Brent Leatherwood, for those who are abortion abolitionists, I just wanna say, I know you're out there and yes,

Brent Leatherwood has been very forceful on this idea that women who try to obtain abortions are not culpable.

And so that is a problem as well. So I'm not saying he's solid on pro -life, but he doesn't want abortions to happen, okay?

And he wants it to be illegal, at least he wants doctors who perform them to be punished.

Okay, so Megan Basham saw this same thread and this is what she said about it.

Can't stop thinking about the fact the Southern Baptist Convention president, we tweeted this. This is to completely ignore unprecedented steps the

Biden administration is taking to protect abortion. Executive order to help women travel to get them, expanding access to abortion pills, offering abortions at VAs.

And this is true. I mean, Biden has explored every which way to make sure that the ending of Roe v.

Wade, well, he's trying to make it so it doesn't really end. Effectively, there's still going to be plenty of opportunity to obtain an abortion.

And Megan Basham saying like, what about that? And so if we go to the speech, if I can here, we'll go to the speech and then what

I'll do is we'll look at some of these other issues here and how this whole thing developed and how

Barbara weighed in. But here's the State of the Union transcript, right? So we have the whole transcript here. Let's look, if we can, for abortion.

Did he talk? Oh, he did. The vice president and I, this is a direct, well, actually, let's start before that. This is what

Biden said. Congress must restore the right that was taken away in Roe v. Wade and protect

Roe v. Wade. Give every woman the constitutional right. The vice president and I are doing everything to protect access to reproductive healthcare and safeguard patient safety.

But already more than a dozen states are enforcing extreme abortion bans. Make no mistake about it.

If Congress passes a national ban, I will veto it. But let's also pass, and then he goes into the

Equality Act to ensure LGBTQ Americans have dignity. And it's funny, he uses the same language the

RLC does on the immigration issue, right? And the abuse issue. They always talk about, and actually the

BLM issue, they always talk about dignity. And so, and Biden uses that language here too.

That word, I think, is starting to stretch. We talked about that in the

Richard Weaver broadcast, that words, how language is changing, and not just changing, but certain words are just dying.

There's a death of meaning. And I think that word dignity is so overused and applied to so many things. We're seeing that.

But let's see where he said image of God, because Brent Leatherwood was happy. Okay, one time he said it, he said, the only nation in the world built on an idea, the only one, well, you all know what

I think about that. That's ridiculous. Other nations are defined by geography, ethnicity, but we're the only nation based on an idea that all of us, every one of us is created equal in the image of God.

A nation that stands as a beacon to the world, a nation in a new age of possibility. I can see why

Brent Leatherwood likes this. It's pretty much what you get from the evangelical elites in pretty much in every quarter of academia, the media, it's like the most popular idea on even the right and the left, that the proposition nation,

America is just an idea, which kind of destroys all the meaning that helps people connect to one another, do things like band together to fight a war.

It destroys all that because no one really goes to war. No one fights for the general abstractions, like universal principles, what they fight for.

Now there may be universal principles behind some of these things, but what they end up fighting for are tangible things like home, way of life that we enjoy, the bonds and the responsibilities we have to each other to protect each other.

There's more than just equality or this idea that we're all created equal.

If everyone's created equal and there is no significance really to one country over the other, because everyone's just the same, why would

Biden then try to single out here that the United States though is superior? Because that's what he's saying in a way.

He's like, we are superior in this way. We're built on an idea, right? And that's the thing that's unique to Americans.

It sounded like self contradictory or it sounds that way. Because you're saying, we're built on idea.

We're not people who have a geography that defines us, but you're saying within the borders of this place is where we built a country on an idea.

So it's still like you're valuing that anyway. Anyway, to quote Joe Biden, that's what he says when he's in the middle of a role.

He says, anyway, a nation that stands as a beacon to the world, a nation in a new age of possibilities, of course.

So that's where he uses image of God. I would be offended though. If I were Brent Leatherwood, even though I know this is what everyone believes this, that we just throw around the image of God, like what does it even mean?

This is the same guy in the same speech who's saying, I want women to be able to kill their babies. I want people to be able to, even little kids, just change their bodies in ways that God didn't design them to be, to change their gender in their mind at least, to play pretend, to try to be the creator.

And we're made in the image of God. How does that work? It's such a contradiction and it should be shameful.

We should not want Biden to use that language. That's language that's religious, it's

Christian, it's our language, it's biblical, and it has an application and that's not the application.

So anyway, Brent Leatherwood thinks it's positive. I think it's negative. All right, let's go back to the slideshow here.

This is what Bart Barber did. This is what Bart Barber did when he saw this. He goes, this whole thing is just, how to say it, lacking any modicum of what once might be called journalism.

I'm not ignoring, I'm pro -life. The SBC is pro -life. The SBC's position on abortion has remained the same since 1980.

I'm overwhelmingly on the public record on this topic. And in case I didn't read, I don't know if I read Megan Basham.

So he's responding to Megan Basham. Megan Basham said, can't stop thinking about the fact that the

SBC president retweeted this. So Bart Barber, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, retweets

Brent Leatherwood, who's the head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. And she says, this is to completely ignore unprecedented steps the

Biden administration took. We read this already. So you might say she was the one who started this, but then

Bart Barber responds and says, hold on. Like this isn't journalism. She's questioning her role as a journalist.

And then he says, why does it matter how much emphasis the president puts on abortion in the

State of the Union? Not because it indicates whether he and his party are all in for the culture of death.

They are. Well, I'm glad he recognizes that. I mean, that's positive. He says, makes manufacturing the conceit that I or anyone else was suggesting otherwise is quite simply how she makes a living.

So now he's smearing, saying, well, this is just what she has to do. This is similar to the comment that Karen Swallow Pryor made about A .D.

Robles and I, right? We're human traffickers. That's what we're doing when we talk about these issues. Right now,

I'm human trafficking Bart Barber by talking about it and then having a YouTube channel that has some monetization.

That's profiting off of someone else. So that means you're human trafficking. It's ridiculous, but it's the same kind of logic.

You get these smears if you challenge, if you even try to hold up biblical standards and you don't get an answer from evangelical elites on how they interpret the

Bible. So you can actually sit down and have a Bible study. Wouldn't that be nice? Or at least have a reasoned discussion.

You don't get that. And you can see that the evidence is all over Twitter for this. Instead, it's let's punch low.

Meg's manufacturing the conceit. She's manufacturing it. And I or anyone else was suggesting otherwise is quite simply how she makes a living.

Oh man. All she said was you're ignoring what the Biden administration is doing.

That's all she said. But Bart Barber is trying to make out, it's kind of a strong man. Like Megan's claiming we're all against or pro -abortion somehow.

The amount of emphasis that the president gave to this topic matters because it likely indicates that they came out of the midterms less confident than some had previously suggested as to whether abortion is their winning play post -ops.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know about that. If that is true, if abortion is not a good lead issue for them, then it should embolden those who support life to craft sensible legislation and take it to those states where life is not already being protected by state law.

That sentiment is why I retweeted the tweet, although it will not please Meg and her yunta. So he uses this term that,

I think that means like a military commanders or something. Anyway, it's not a term you're used to hearing.

For whom the least satisfactory answer is a satisfactory answer. So this is just to like go in on a character assassination of Megan Basham for questioning

Brent Leatherwood here and why the president of the SBC would be retweeting this because it ignores what the Biden administration is actually doing and kind of run covers for the

Biden administration, which I would say is exactly what it does. Tries to show a modicum of reasonableness with the left, which they're not interested in that.

They're not gonna give you that benefit that they're not gonna respect you.

If you're a Southern Baptist, you might as well just say, the only hope you have of getting any kind of respect from the left, if you wanna call it that, is if you throw those in your denomination under the bus.

And that's what Russell Moore did almost as a profession. That's what you see Brent Leatherwood also hinting at here.

And that's, he's not representing the people who pay him. That's the disconnect in the SBC. There's a lot of denominations like this.

So that's what Bart Barber had to say about that. Now, this is interesting.

Tom Buck, I think, was the one who originally pointed this out, but Bart Barber had something very different to say about another so -called journalist,

Anderson Cooper. And this is from 2022. It's not ancient history. Guess what? From October.

He says, it quickly became clear to me that Anderson Cooper and his team were committed to the same, actually,

I think I started that thread in the wrong place. Let me start earlier. One last thing before 60 Minutes airs their segment tomorrow night.

I want to be sure to say this before I know what appears in the segment after their edits. The team at 60

Minutes, including Anderson Cooper, Sarah Koch, and Chrissy Jones, were professional and committed to accuracy.

They circled back for meticulous fact -checking more than once. I'm impressed by the work they did. They were over the course of the interview, there were some obvious areas of disagreement between Anderson Cooper and the team versus myself.

It was my aim in all of those areas to treat everyone with respect while articulating my beliefs about compromise, hesitation, or belligerence.

It quickly became clear to me that Anderson Cooper and the team were committed to the same thing. My respect for them is through the roof.

He actually said that. His respect for Anderson Cooper is through the roof. And it is a beautiful thing to see journalism done well.

We need it. Yes, yes. CNN, CNN, journalism done well there.

On a personal level, I enjoyed my interaction with each member of the production team and with Anderson Cooper. They didn't have a good time, they hit it well.

I wish they'd come back to Farmersville, just for fun, just for fun. I also wish they would spend more time at the church or a similar church.

Some of the production crew were mystified to see an immersion baptistery. I would love to pull back the curtain and unveil some more of those mysteries for them.

So, I mean, that would be, I agree with that last sentiment, but man, over the top praise, just kissing the feet of Anderson Cooper here.

Who, I just, every time I hear Anderson Cooper, I think of, I think it was Anderson Cooper and there was a hurricane. I don't remember what one it was.

And he was like standing in the water. Wasn't it Anderson Cooper who was like, oh, it's like so deep.

And then someone in the background is like, is like just walking. And it's like, well, you pick like the deepest puddle you could possibly find.

Anyway, Anderson Cooper though, who's the poster child at CNN. And that was a mess of an interview.

We did a whole podcast on that. Bart Barber's interview with Anderson Cooper. And I mean, Anderson Cooper used

Bart Barber. And that's what I, goes to the point I said before. You will get respect from the media.

They'll treat you well. If you're willing to throw the members of your denomination under the bus to some extent. If you're willing to move the needle left, even if it's not far left as they want, they'll give you some respect at least.

Cause you're moving things in the direction they want to see them moved. And that's what Bart Barber did. And that's what

Anderson Cooper. I, that's the reason I think that they treated him well and it wasn't combative.

I mean, Bart Barber should have been combative with them. So this is a contrast between how

Bart Barber treats Anderson Cooper versus how he treats Megan Basham at the Daily Wire. And by the way,

Megan Basham is an actual Southern Baptist. She's a member of a Southern Baptist church.

She's a professing Christian, unlike Anderson Cooper, which to me is very interesting that he's doing that.

I know another person who jumped in on this, this is interesting to me too, was a guy named Griffin Goolidge.

And I don't talk about Griffin that much. I think I've mentioned him before, but I had to mention him because at both the last

Southern Baptist conventions, Griffin is the guy who tweets out the crazy stuff, the knee -jerk reactionary let's sack

Mike Stone because he was mean to an abuse victim. I mean, Griffin is the guy who led that story, put it out there on Twitter and it's possible it may have cost

Mike Stone the election that year for the presidency of the Southern Baptist convention. The next year, he tried to float this whole idea that the

Conservative Baptist Network was about to go into the main room where they do all the voting and call for a vote prematurely before everyone had gotten in the room so that they could get their guy,

Tom Askle, into the presidency. And he says these things very sure of himself.

And he comes across to me as just an operative, political kind of operative for the other side, if you wanna call them that, the social justice side.

And so that's the only reason you'd probably ever have to know who Griffin Goolidge is, or if I'm, I think it's

Goolidge. But here's what he did. I'll mention him again because I think it's so, I just had to do it.

I know this tweet didn't get a lot of traction, but he went after Megan Basham and I just thought this was so funny. So he goes, one of the problems of modern journalism is that so many journalists don't just want to tell the story or frame the story, they also want to be the story.

This is why Twitter usage for journalists has been so destructive, so, to media, there we go, credibility.

It has shown people much of the media are not trustworthy because of the way journalists interact. And he's talking about Megan Basham, obviously here.

The timing of it and everything. The mistake would be thinking that it's a problem on the left and not a problem on the right.

It is strange how so many who call themselves a journalist want to jump in and fight the culture war or to be part of the debate on Twitter.

They're just ruining their own professional credibility if they ever had any. So this is another, let's chop

Megan off at the knees. For me, it's just licensed to ignore them. So what has

Megan Basham done to deserve this? Megan Basham wrote a story about Jennifer, is it

Jennifer Lyle and the David Sills situation at Southern Seminary, and she poked a big hole in the balloon, she popped the balloon that the

Southern Baptists were leading with to support their Me Too movement. And she just poked a bunch of holes in it.

And she interviewed both sides like a journalist does. And as far as I can tell, that's it.

That's what she did. And now she's after the truth, but she's also a member of the Southern Baptist Convention. She's not just a journalist.

So for her to express concern that the head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which she's giving money to pay for, is soft peddling

Biden's views on abortion by saying that it's not that big of a priority and it's so good to see, and ignoring the fact that,

I mean, we just read what Biden said in the State of the Union and what the policies he's pushed to try to ameliorate the ending of Roe v.

Wade. That's well within her right, I would think. Now, Griffin Gutledge and Barbara, just like you shouldn't listen to her.

She lost all credibility. She's not even a journalist. You'd take away her license if there was one for journalism. Well, I just thought it was interesting.

It didn't take me along at all. I was just like, I'm wondering if Griffin's ever talked to any, like how he treats other journalists.

And so this is Ruth Graham. Ruth Graham is Twitter handle Public Road. And so I just saw this on Twitter.

This is from September of 2022, it's not ancient history. And someone posts that they're at,

I don't know, Tribfest, whatever that is, with Dr. Russell Moore talking to, guess who?

Ruth Graham, about the current dysfunction and exhaustion of evangelicalism and how it leads to people who are cynical and burned over and nihilistic, right?

So again, what I said earlier, you get acceptance with these journalists if you do what?

If you kind of throw the people that you're supposed to represent under the bus. If you talk about the people that you came from, the folks back home in negative terms, they'll like you because they don't care for the folks back home.

So current dysfunction evangelicalism, it leads to people who are cynical. It's a critique of evangelicalism from a left -leaning perspective with Russell Moore and Griffin Goolidge here likes it, likes the post and asks if it will be recorded.

So like that's cool for Ruth Graham to step into that role and to have an interview, a positive interview with Dr.

Russell Moore. That's like a cool thing to do. But for Megan Basham to ask a question about the denomination that she is a member of and where's her money goes is not cool.

And I want you to see the unequal weights and measures in this. And some of you wonder sometimes,

John, why even talk about this? I mean, the Southern Baptist Convention is just gone. Why even talk about it?

Because you're just proving the point that you've proved about a thousand times that these people can't be trusted, that they're no good as far as their motives are concerned, that your money's not going to necessarily causes you would want it to go to.

So why even talk about it? And the answer I think I have for that is there are still people waking up, number one.

Number two, there's people that believe it or not are still on the fence about this. Occasionally, it's less so now, but I will occasionally get messages from people asking about the

Southern Baptist Convention because their church is now considering whether or not they ought to stay. And reinforcing the point helps.

And then for those in other denominations and organizations, I think it helps you to identify the plays that are being made.

If you can learn from what's happening in the Southern Baptist Convention, you may be able to help prevent it or at least identify what's going on in your own denomination or organization.

And so that's the reason I still focus on this sometimes, but I have a sentiment, an agreement, we'll put it that way.

I'm in agreement with people who have that problem. I have that feeling sometimes myself.

I'm like, why am I talking about this? I know what the problem is. Yeah, but not everyone does. And that's where I come to.

Anyway, let's leave that topic. Is that okay? Let's talk about some other stuff because we have a lot more to get to today.

Let's go here. I was gonna briefly mention these things before getting into the

Keller Center. And so I've had them sitting here for a while. The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, the

Evangelical Fellowship of Canada put this out there in November of 2021, the

Bill C -4 to ban conversion therapy. The new bill to ban conversion therapy,

Bill C -4, received Royal Assent December 8th and passed into law January 7th, 2022.

It was rushed through both houses of Commons and Senate in just over a week, a process that usually takes months.

The EFC is preparing an analyst's analysis of the bill's impact. Now, this has the potential to directly impact pastors.

And that's the concern with this particular bill. I'm not gonna get into all the details because of time.

You can go check it out if you want, but this is our neighbor. If you're in the United States, this is right next door.

This is happening. We can see the same forces at work in our country. Same forces.

They just haven't moved as far down the road, but they're getting closer and closer and closer.

And so this is happening around us. We also have a few little things to show you.

Just a few things that might show us kind of where things are headed. Oh, I didn't wanna do that.

I was trying to click out of that advertisement. Here's a story. Watch the upside down and topsy turvy dresses at Paris Fashion Week.

This is from January. And yes, if you're watching, if you're listening, I'll describe. You have someone wearing an upside down dress.

That's right. Somehow they figured out how to make a dress completely upside down. Here's someone else wearing a dress completely at a 180 degree angle.

So you have the, is that called a train? My knowledge of dresses is very limited, but the bottom of the dress is sticking way out.

And then the top of the dress is sticking way out. And there's no head, of course, where there should be a head.

There's no hands where there should be hands. They're just sleeves hanging there. And this is, I mean, you could play it.

I don't wanna play the video. There were so many dresses. It was ridiculous. It was ridiculous. And what this is, if you study deconstruction at all, this is the deconstruction of art.

It's exactly what this is. So art is being deconstructed. It's a mockery of art is what it is.

It's not real art. It's not style. It's mocking those things. This is what's happening in our society.

Ted Cruz blasts the Grammys. Some of you might've seen these. I'm not even gonna play it.

And I don't even know if I wanna show you the picture. I'll show you the picture. Here's just this artist.

I don't even know what his, Sam Smith, is that his name? And a bunch of people, including men who look like they're dressed up as women.

And it's all supposed to be in hell, I guess. He has double horns on at one point.

And this is the Grammys. This is the Grammys. This is supposed to, again, this is not art.

This is the deconstruction of art. This is the death of art.

There's nothing here that's trying to reflect the order in creation, thinking

God's thoughts after him, painting what God has made, trying to depict things in an accurate fashion, bringing out our better nature, or the things that are precious and good and exemplifying those things and beautifying those things.

This is simply a rage against order, a rage against standards.

It can only exist as art because there's good art to compare it to. You can't deconstruct something if it never existed.

And that's what's going on in our culture. So we have the deconstruction of just all these kinds of things, right?

And so I was in New York City, and I get to see this to some extent, just in general society, and you probably too, every day.

When you are even walking on the streets, if you're in the streets of Manhattan, you're going to see some things.

You're gonna see some very androgynous people. You're gonna see cross -dressers. You're gonna see all those things are just, they're there, right?

And some of you in the middle of the country, you're thinking, man, I don't see that much. Well, in the cities, it's becoming very common.

And New York's probably not even the worst. I would imagine places like Seattle and Portland and San Francisco probably are worse in this respect, but New York City's bad enough.

And when you look around at the art that's displayed, the modern art, this has been going on for a while, but it's getting worse.

It's getting much worse. It's a joke, is what it is. So how do you, in a world that attacks standards because they see them as constraining in society, how do you then minister as a

Christian? Because you are representing the God who laid down standards. The order that we live in was created by God, the very order they're trying to oppose.

Who are they really opposing? It's God. At Paris Fashion Week, those photos from it, some of those people whose models probably don't think they're opposing

God, but if you root it back, that is who they're opposing. This is a confusion.

It's meant to be confusing to say that we aren't defined by the standards, by standards for men, standards for women.

We can do our own thing. No matter how crazy it is, we can do our own thing. So in that kind of a society, how do you act as a

Christian? That's the question that we have to have. I would like to play this video for you, if I may.

We'll watch it together. And talk about it. This is from the Keller Center, which is a new,

I guess, think tank. And it's under the umbrella of the

Gospel Coalition. And Tim Keller, obviously, in Manhattan, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, where I just was.

So let's play the clip and see how he wants to reach this generation, what his plan is, or the goal, at least, of the

Keller Center. We now live in a post -Christendom culture. For at least 1 ,000 years,

Western culture has been what you might call Christendom culture. Even if most people were not devout

Christians, there was a positive understanding of Christianity in the culture. The great majority of the people had a positive understanding of the church.

And so it was not that difficult to get people in the door. And many, many, many, many, many people went to church just because they felt they should, even if they didn't have a devout or vital relationship with Jesus Christ.

Secondly, the culture instilled in people a certain amount of background beliefs that the

Bible assumes. They assume there was a moral law. They assume that there was some kind of moral absolutes.

They also knew they needed forgiven. So they had a sense of being sinners, even if they didn't use the word. They believed in a life after death.

They believed in a personal God. The culture instilled dots. And evangelism was just connecting the dots.

And so if you came to them and said to almost anybody in the culture, hey, when you die, you certainly want to know that you're gonna go to a good place, right?

And you're trying to live a good life, but you know you don't really live up to it. Nobody lives as well as they should.

But in Jesus Christ, you can have your sins forgiven so you can know that when you die, you would go to heaven.

Aren't you interested in that? But what if the dots aren't there? What if people don't believe in God, don't believe in moral absolutes, don't believe they're sinners?

And what if you can't get them in the door to come to church to hear the gospel preached from the pulpit? And now you're in, how do you win people to Christ in a post -Christendom era?

And the church does not have any idea how to do it. The way the Calvary Center is - Stop right there.

So some of the things that he's identifying are things we just talked about, that, now he phrases it differently, but the giving up of standards, not having these conceptions that were just common sense in generations past is a barrier, is what

Keller's saying here. So he's gonna come in, the Keller Center, and they're gonna help fix this or help the church communicate and get past this barrier because the church, he says, has no clue on how to deal with this.

So, and this has always been Tim Keller's posture, it seems to me, that at least for the last 20 years or so, that what

Redeemer Presbyterian is doing is the formula and the rest of the church is, they need to just follow our lead because they're getting it wrong.

And of course, I've painstakingly argued that actually Redeemer Presbyterian Church does not have the formula and following them is following them to perdition.

And it's the ironic thing about this because you have, Tim Keller probably is the most influential, quote -unquote evangelical, at least he's inhabited those circles of the current, well, or maybe,

I don't wanna say my lifetime, but it could be my lifetime. I mean, he's extremely influential. And it's like his formulas are probably the most used right now.

He's far more popular than the Rick Warrens, the

Bill Hybels of yesteryear. He's the one now that people look to as the way forward.

And so if the church still doesn't know how to answer this, if they're still clueless, I hope he's not talking about the vast number of churches and organizations that are going down his path, saying if they don't know what they're doing now and they're following him, what does it tell you?

Seeking to address this is that we wanna raise up a new generation of younger thinkers and ministers and leaders who are able to do evangelism and cultural apologetics in a post -Christendom situation or milieu.

If the Keller Center is successful and this new generation of younger thinkers and writers and scholars produce great cultural apologetics in a compelling way to secular people, very secular people, the church itself will start to.

All right, so I wanna point out something because some of you are listening, you're not watching, but it's icons of media.

So like movie or videos, audio, is it books, something else, that the formula is we're gonna produce these things.

We're gonna produce, we're gonna create leaders. This is just the evangelical formula wrapped up again and sold to us because that's been the formula for a long time and do so.

And the word now isn't winsome, by the way, it's compelling. Just keep an eye out for that. The words switch, now it's compelling.

So you have to be able to communicate the gospel and the Christian message in a very compelling way.

And that's what's not happening. So, because the other places, right, are trying to raise up leaders.

They're putting their sermons online. They're putting material out there. So what is it that Keller's saying there?

They're just all clueless though, because it has to be what? Our material, like we're doing it.

What's the key word? We're doing it in this winsome way, this compelling way.

So you have to be compelling. And those who have read Keller, you know what compelling means.

You're going to soft pedal things like hell, like sin. You're going to make the

Trinity all about this divine dance of love and elevate that one attribute of love above the others.

You're gonna change things that are offensive about the Christian faith and soft pedal them and lessen them.

And you're gonna make things that people like about the Christian faith. You're gonna lead with those things. That's how Keller's operated.

And that's really no different. It's just a different world than the world of Heibel's and Rick Warren, but it's very similar.

And this is what's happened for so long in evangelicalism. Think back to youth group. If you grew up in evangelical church, it was very typical that the kids going through youth group in their teenage years would be identified at those early ages by a leader for going into the ministry because of their natural leadership ability or something like that.

And in other religions and denominations or Christian traditions will say, young men and women were often viewed as capable insofar as they had a skillset and insofar as they had the access to the training that they would need.

If you were raised in a home where your dad was a cop, you might likely be a cop, right? And, or at least that was natural.

And so if you had a natural ability towards something else though, you could be encouraged in that direction.

But in evangelicalism, neo -evangelicalism is what I'm talking about here. You know, post -World War II evangelicalism in the

United States, you could read the book, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. You see this start to come out with Carl Henry and Harold Ockinga that they wanted to train these leaders, these elite leaders, really, who would be respectable again because pastors had lost respect.

And so they wanted to train these people to go out there and to be part of any city across the world.

I mean, you could stick one of them in London or you could stick one of them in Melbourne or Los Angeles and they would be ready.

And one of the things that they did because they formed Truller Theological Seminary, both of those guys, is they implemented a lot of psychology programs.

And then later on, even some political things. And this was specifically a seminary to train pastors, but they wanted their pastors, they were the first seminary to be certified in psychology.

They wanted their pastors to have the respect of the world, respect that had been lost as things secularized.

And so this whole posture of we gotta raise up leaders, we gotta have cool kids.

I mean, you see that in the Christian music world where we just gotta come up with a cool sound and a cool dress and the cool kids, and then people are gonna be attracted to Christianity.

Or we gotta find that kid in youth group who's cool, that everyone likes, who has leadership abilities, and then make him the head of the next church.

And that's how we're gonna win. Let me ask you, has that worked? Has this artificial manufacturing of leaders worked?

Or is it better just to look at maybe the way that things are ordered naturally? How God's equipped certain people, the gifts they have.

And go from there and not to worry so much about whether or not the person's gonna be winsome, attractive, compelling in the eyes of the world, but just look at them more from a biblical and a

Christian standpoint, a godly standpoint. What did God put them on this world for? What's their purpose?

And I know Keller, to be fair, has said some really positive things about Christian businessmen.

He's got that Kuyperian thing running in the background where every good endeavor, right? I mean, that's his kind of point in the book.

So I'm not saying that Keller's necessarily been totally on board with the whole youth group thing

I just talked about, but Keller, the formula that he's putting out there right here for how the church is gonna be saved, essentially, it sounds like, similar at least, to what we've been hearing for generations now, well, decades now, over and over and over.

We're just gonna have to produce resources and raise up leaders that can communicate in a compelling way, in the new hip way, right?

It's different words for different decades. You gotta speak a different language every decade, and so evangelicalism reinvents itself every decade.

So anyway, so, wow, a lot of people are chiming in. We're just gonna,

I'm gonna keep going with this Keller stuff. Hopefully everyone was able to hear that video. We're gonna, let's finish it.

We have a little bit more. Translate this content. It'll find all sorts of platforms and vehicles for the content that the

Keller Center is producing, and if that happens, the reversal of the decline of the evangelical church in this country will take place.

The second thing is, many, many young. So this is a hefty promise. We can reverse the decline of the evangelical church if you use the resources that Keller Center gives to you.

I wouldn't wanna say that. Christ is gonna build his church, guys. He doesn't need you to do it, but you can be used as a means to do it, and that should be your desire, whatever that means.

It may mean that you shouldn't be a pastor. It may mean that you shouldn't produce resources. It may mean that you should be a businessman.

It may mean that you should be a politician, and I mean, God forbid, this is one of the things Keller, you know, he doesn't like Christians who are after power in politics.

Well, that may be what God wants you to do, and that's part of the role that you have to protect the civil liberties that I just showed you are being trampled upon.

Churches are in the crosshairs. The hour is late, and that's why

I showed you those news articles before. The hour is so late, and Keller is acting like, well, we can just reverse this if we can produce resources and give them to you, and it's a hefty promise to make.

Now, I'm all for good resources, but I'm not under the illusion that we're gonna be able to outgame this thing with our own wisdom.

We don't need to be trusting in horses and chariots right now. We need to be on our knees before God. That'd be so much,

I think, more beneficial than the Keller Center to replicate the errors that Keller has made.

Hey, if people wanna put out good material, I mean, this is what I do. I mean, I put out some material that I think is very helpful for churches, but I'm not under the illusion that it's going to reverse the trend that's happening right now in and of itself.

I think it could be used by God, but I'm looking to God to do that kind of thing, and Keller, as someone who claims to be

Calvinist, I'm surprised he phrased it that way, and this is vetted. This video is, I'm sure a lot of production went into this.

People are leaving the evangelical church for a variety of reasons, but one of them is this. Just as we do not know how to effectively evangelize highly secular people, in the same way, we really don't know how to protect our own young people from the narratives and the arguments and the messages of our secular culture, because when you do cultural apologetics, you may be winning people to Christ who are not believers, but everyone knows that apologetics also serve as a kind of strengthening of the faith and the belief, especially of younger

Christians, and therefore, the cultural apologetics will not just do evangelism, it'll do formation, and I think it also, 20 years from now, hopefully, it'll close that back door so that more young people are coming into the church than are leaving, and that's our hope for what change and difference the

Keller Center could make to the church. I wanna say this.

It's an excellent pitch. It really is. It is a compelling pitch. It really is.

I mean, think about it. So, I'm gonna share a story.

Years ago, there was a guy that I knew who was in a certain ministry, and I remember

I asked him about raising funds, and he told me, well, if you can communicate to parents that the only thing preventing their children from becoming apostate or atheists is me and my ministry, they will give money to what

I'm doing, and I thought, man, that seems manipulative. I remember thinking that. It sounds kind of manipulative, but man, does it work.

Keller right now is approaching you with, not only am

I going to just see what the Lord does, I'm gonna produce some good resources that you will find helpful. I think that's how

I have always tried to frame what I'm doing for you. I'm just gonna give you some, in this case,

I'm giving you some opinions in my books. I'm giving you some resources and facts, truth to help you in the documentaries that I'm doing.

I'm trying to give you resources that will help your family, and I just hope it helps. I mean, that's how

I end the podcast a lot of times. I hope this was helpful for you, and that's pretty much it. We're just gonna see where the

Lord takes it, and if the Lord doesn't want me to continue, then he'll dry up the Patreon account. People will stop giving to what

I'm doing, and that'll be it, and you know what? That'll be fine if that happens, if that's what the Lord wills, and I'm not trying to,

I know I'm sounding like I'm tooting my own horn here, and I'm not trying to do that. I'm just saying that there's a posture that I know

I've consciously tried to have where I'm not over -promising things to you guys. I'm not trying to tell you that if you give to me, this is what we're, this is the plan here.

Like, we're gonna stop the trend, or people are gonna stop leaving the church, because, you know,

I've been around enough, and I'm not that old, in many churches, to see that this is a trend that's happening, even in homes where children were raised correctly, where you look at the parents, and you're thinking,

I don't even know what more they could have done. Now, granted, a lot of parents are ignorant, and they're not doing the right thing, and I think the next generation is going to be, oh my goodness, oh my goodness.

Some of the toddlers that are around now, the next generation could be frightening, but I've seen it where, man, you know, they've raised their kids right, and why did half their kids go towards the world?

It's a spiritual thing. I mean, ultimately, the relationship with the Lord is between a child and the

Lord, and there's no foolproof way of stopping this. We can't outgame it, is my point.

We can't, the strategies fail. We have to trust in the Lord. We have to trust in the

Lord. We have to completely give ourselves over to Him, and say, Lord, whatever my role is in this,

I will play a part, because you've made me to spread the gospel, to make disciples, so I'm gonna play a part in this.

I have a spiritual gift you've given me. I'm gonna use that, but people are complaining, by the way.

I'm in the middle of a role here, but people are complaining about the audio. I'm not sure exactly why. Some people are saying they can, the video is soundless.

The video is soundless. Okay, well, I don't know what that's talking about. I will try to get back to that, guys, if the video is soundless, but anyway, let me finish my thought.

Hopefully, I'm not soundless, and you can all hear me right now. We need to trust in the

Lord, and not horses and chariots, and that's the bottom line here, and the concern I have with the Keller Center is it's compelling, because people are thinking that it's gonna be the solution.

They're gonna give money to it, and it's gonna be solution, but it's not, so.

All right, people are saying they couldn't hear the Keller video, so I'll try to probably delete this after I'm done, and maybe upload another version of it or something.

That's the Keller Center. There's a lot more that we could talk about in regards to the Keller Center. You have, let's see, we're on the website now.

Why don't we just look at it a little bit? Let's see. If we scroll down, there's a whole book on Tim Keller.

Oh, yes, Biblical Critical Theory, right? The online learning cohorts. Okay, they have Biblical Critical Theory, five challenges facing the church in the

Western world, and the beauty of the Christian sexual ethic. So these are courses you can take, and they have all kinds of other,

I guess, resources down here. How to reach our neighbors in a post -Christian culture.

Three tips for our churches. I'm just curious, what are the three tips? Countercultural community, all of life discipleship, and gospel centrality.

Okay, well, what about this? The beauty of the Christian sexual ethic. Who is that?

I don't know who this guy is. I will say this. Oh, man, I'm gonna be mean.

I shouldn't be mean, though. But I, guys, it's probably wise. Oh, I can't say it,

I can't say it. I'm not sure who this guy is, but this is a core.

Oh, Josh Butler, I guess, is the guy's name. I'm just noticing, though, the tree and his hairstyle are very similar.

Okay, that's all I'll say. All right, let's get to the PCA stuff now. Speaking of Tim Keller and the

PCA, because Tim Keller is in the Presbyterian Church in America, some not -so -good things happening in the

PCA. So Overture 29 is, well, there's a bunch of overtures. We'll start there.

Here's a bunch of them here. So you have most of them passing, two of them not passing.

One of them that hasn't passed is, and these were adopted at the

General Assembly, but then the churches have to vote on them. So one of the ones that wasn't passed is Overture 15 on sexuality, did not pass.

Now, there was two other ones on sexuality. Item, let's see,

Overture 29 and Overture 31, and those did pass.

Now, I wanna get into this just a little bit with you. Let's look at Overture 15, which did not pass.

Overture 15, or sorry, no, is that the one that did not pass? I gotta go back and look at it now.

Yes, so this one did not pass. And it says this, whereas, well, actually, let's read the actual language here.

Men who identify as homosexual, even those who identify as homosexual and claim to practice celibacy in that self -identification are disqualified from holding office in the

Presbyterian Church in America. This did not pass. That's concerning, that's concerning.

That means, what are the numbers right now? So 57, or sorry, against it, 42%.

So that means almost half, I mean, more than two thirds of the

Presbyterian Church in America is cool on some level with having an identity or having a orientation that's homosexual or being same -sex attracted, whatever you wanna call that, and serving as a pastor.

I don't know how else to read this. Now, people say, well, you know, what about Overture 29 and Overture 31?

Well, here's what Overture 29 said. Officers in the Presbyterian Church in America must be above reproach in their walk in Christ -like in their character.

Those who deny the sinfulness of fallen desires or who deny the reality in hope of progressive sanctification or who fail to pursue spirit -empowered victory over their sinful temptations, inclinations, and actions are not qualified for ordained office.

And I will point out here, by the way, this Presbyterian Church in America, for all those talking about concupiscence and stuff, it is,

I have more coming, and so I'm gonna tease it. It is standard doctrine to say there are sinful temptations.

That is a category. Anyway, our standard of conduct is always the word of God, which transcends any culture, whether a sin is especially hated or excused in a particular society, shall neither excuse those who are unrepentant nor bar those who are clearly repentant.

So people are saying that, well, this takes care of the homosexual issue, the revoice issue.

No, it doesn't. And there was, I don't know if I have it up anymore. I think I got rid of it.

Maybe it's, is it this one? Yes. So you have folks who are, who have been kind of pro -revoice -ish in the

PCA who are supporting Overture 29. In fact, the founder of the

National Partnership, James Kessler, is supportive of Overture 29.

So they don't see the contradiction. They don't see the problem with Overture 29. It's not gonna do what some of you think it's going to do.

And Overture 31, the same thing. Let's see if I can get to the actual language in this.

It talks about a person's character. It's about sanctification. While imperfection will remain when confessing sins and sinful temptations publicly offers of the church must exercise great care to not normalize those sins in the eyes of the congregation as though they were matters of little consequence, but rather should testify to the work of the

Holy Spirit. Now we can read this and we can say, oh yeah, that's totally against that same -sex orientation.

You have to ask yourself though, why did Overture 31 and 29 pass and Overture 15 did not? A lot of people who voted for the language

I just read to you would not vote for Overture 15, which specifically says men who identify as homosexual, even those who identify as homosexual and claim to practice celibacy and that self -identification are disqualified from holding office in the

PCA. Because they're gonna argue on Overture 29 and Overture 31 technicalities.

They're gonna say this doesn't apply to us. This doesn't apply to an innate same -sex orientation.

They're gonna say that they're not normalizing anything. Because it's not, is it actually even sinful?

It's not a sinful temptation. See, this is where you have to be so crystal clear.

These language battles are insane, I know, but that's what's going on. That's my take at least on what's going on in the

PCA. All right, second to last thing. I haven't read this article yet.

And I can't remember because I had a false start to this podcast if I explain this to everyone once or not.

I'll just reiterate though. I have a point I wanna make about this. And that's really the only reason

I'm bringing it up. We might talk about it more if things develop. I'll just say the point I wanna make. The point I wanna make is

I really encourage Grace Community Church and specifically the counselor who was part of the case that's discussed in this article to weigh in on this.

And it's not, the reason is because my sense is only one side of this story, of this abuse story has been told so far.

Now we have court documents and I've read those, all the ones I could get my hands on. This is an issue that goes back to last summer when there were bloggers going after John MacArthur and Grace Community Church for a situation surrounding a guy named

David Gray from like over 20 years ago. And he went to prison. He was convicted of molestation charges of some kind.

My mind's a little fuzzy on all the details because it was last June when I was looking at this last. But there was enough question in my mind when

I looked at everything that it seemed to me at the time that this all went down that the leaders at Grace Community Church, the elders did not seem convinced of the guilt.

So in other words, and I think this was, this is what I remember from that discussion that it seemed like they disagreed with the conclusion of the jury.

And there were reasons for that. There were things that, for example, things like,

I think it was the lawyer who was talking to the children, wasn't able to share like his professional opinion about whether or not what they were sharing were things suggested by their mother or legitimate.

He gave the jury instruction on how to maybe look for those things.

And that's probably appropriate in a court setting, honestly. But I'm not saying there was anything necessarily wrong that happened there.

But now we know in hindsight what that particular lawyer thought.

And there seemed to be some countervailing evidence as I remember it. Anyway, that was the situation. And the blame, the play that seems to be made is that the blame is on John MacArthur, on Grace Community Church, because they disciplined a woman who was being abused, they say.

And some have even said that she should be divorced and they were preventing that from happening.

And they're just abusive meanies at Grace Community Church. Now, I don't know the specifics. There's a level of, there's a barrier.

We can only, we only know what we know. And there's a lot of open questions. And so I'm open to, there was some very wrong things that happened.

If you have a church of 10 ,000 people and you're over the course of decades operating, it wouldn't surprise me if there's gonna be a few cases where things went poorly, where they were, scripture was applied incorrectly, whatever.

So is this one of those cases? I'm not a hundred percent sure. I mean, it looks like some of it, probably there was some mishandling, but is it as far as this article and some of the other articles have gone?

So I've read the other articles. Let's read this article. Last year, Han Cho concluded

Grace Community Church had made a mistake. The elders had publicly disciplined a woman for refusing to take back her husband.

As it turned out, the woman's fears proved true and her husband went to prison for child molestation and abuse. The church never retracted its discipline or apologized in the 20 years since.

As a lawyer and one of the four officers on the elder board, Cho was asked to study the case. He tried to convince the church's leaders to reconsider and at least privately make it right.

He said, Pastor John MacArthur told him to forget it. When Cho continued to call the elders to do justice on the woman's behalf, he said he was asked to walk back his conclusions or resign.

Now I'm gonna just tell you, I don't know if this is true or not, but, and I'm careful about the information that I give out publicly on this, but I think it is pertinent for now.

When this happened, I remember that Han Cho, there was a blog,

I think, that ran about him saying that he was, assuming that he left because of this situation, which now, you know, maybe that's true because he's being featured here in Christianity today.

However, what I was told at the time, and I'm not, it's, I think it was two different people.

And they were not like high level people at Grace Community Church, but there were two different people. My uncle goes to the church.

My parents met at the church. I did a semester there. So I have some connections to the church. And I asked two people about him and both of them said the same thing to me.

It's like, oh yeah, Cho didn't leave over that. No, he had family issues. That was his stated belief.

I don't even know. I may have even seen a document to that effect. I'm not sure. But anyway, that was the understanding.

And now Cho's coming out, and I wanna say this right before Shepherd's Conference, the timing of this, you have to scratch your head a little bit about that.

I mean, if this was a problem, if, think about it this way. If there are people that are going to Grace Community Church and getting horrible counsel and abuse is taking place and Grace Community Church doesn't care about it.

And wouldn't you want to right away, if that's the reason you're leaving or if it contributes heavily to why you're leaving the church and you're resigning from the elder board, wouldn't you want to right away, let's get the word out there.

Why wait two thirds, three quarters of a year until right before the

Shepherd's Conference? Because that's, I think, yeah, it's about a year ago. That'd be, it was right before the Shepherd's Conference. I think the blogs that talked about this went up last year.

All right, it's been 10 months since Cho left Grace Community Church. Yeah, 10 months. And he has not been able to forget the woman,

Eileen Gray, whose experience was described in the detail last March in Julie Roy's news outlet, the Roy's Report.

Though Cho stepped down quietly, he continued to hear from other women from his former church.

They had also been doubted, dismissed, and implicitly or explicitly threatened with discipline while seeking refuge from their abusive marriages.

Even at this new congregation, Cho began to meet visitors with connections to Gray's case, which he saw as a sign of God's providence.

You know, one of the things, things are coming back to me about this case now that I'm starting to read about it. And I remember one of the things was that the observations of the counselors versus the claims of abuse and the observations of the counselors with the father and the children didn't match up as I remember.

And I think there was also a question about whether or not those, the issues that David Gray had, had been rectified already.

And so anyway, I'm not justifying anything. I'm just saying that the sequence is really important and knowing what the elders who were counseling

David Gray and Eileen at the time knew, whether or not they had all the information available that's now available is very pertinent.

So he says, no, he couldn't forget it. Now, and I should also mention from my understanding,

Cho has only looked at the court documents. He wasn't there for the situation. So, but still, I mean, he's an elder at the church.

So I'm not saying it's not important and something is wrong with my browser.

Let's try to reload this if I can here. Okay, the more he learned, the more people he talked with, the more the injustice weighed on his conscience and the more he's concerned about the church's biblical counseling and abuse.

Cho wrote a 20 page memo to top leaders at the church. I genuinely believe it could be wrong to do nothing at the end of the day.

I know what I know, I cannot unknow it. And I'm in fact accountable before God for this knowledge. And if you have labored mightily to read this far, you are now accountable before God for it as well.

Grace Community Church is led by John MacArthur, one of America's longest standing and most influential pastors. The Sun Valley, California mega church is best known for MacArthur's preaching and prides itself on its fidelity to the

Bible. Talks about how influential they are. And let's see what else is pertinent.

And this is kind of a long article. I don't think we have time to read all of this and I don't think we're gonna read all of this.

Let's see, how long have we been going? I need to determine how much longer we have. We've been doing an hour and 15 minutes.

Do you guys wanna hear more of this? People are lighting up the comment section. If only he could have remained an elder for a few more years, then he might've been head honcho.

Someone's got some dad jokes there. Let's see. So yeah, people are weighing in on this.

The article said his reason for waiting was that he wanted to give the elder board one more chance to come clean.

So that's apparently, I guess that's why waiting right before Shepherd's Conference to,

I don't know, man, the timing to me. Last year, it was the same thing. It was like right before Shepherd's Conference, we're gonna go out there and do this.

Now, the thing that happens with this is it gets picked up by, so it starts off with like low -level blogs that people don't take as seriously.

It goes up to Christianity Today. And then from there, Washington Post, New York Times.

I'm telling you, that's how this works. I mean, if you can say, look, you got an elder, former elder, and you got

Grace Community Church, or sorry, Christianity Today, weighing in, that's legitimacy in the minds of, and they're just gonna take the whole narrative.

And this is what colors the biblical counseling at Grace Community Church. That's what they'll say. That's what John MacArthur's ministry is.

Trying to skim this to see if there's anything else I wanna mention before ending the podcast. We might return to this article if there's interest.

Some conservative communities retain an underlying skepticism around victims' advocacy movements and trauma -informed psychologists.

Former members who reported abuse said they feared church discipline for lack of submission. So they're trying to connect this to bigger issues in the article.

Like this is a problem across the board for churches. MacArthur considers church discipline a distinctive at Grace Community Church, where elders follow guidelines taken from Matthew 18.

Cho, the former elder, said that at this stage, elders must unanimously approve cases and go before the church a few times a year.

The woman who spoke to Christianity Today about their counseling experience had been members of Grace for years, some over a decade.

So it's women. We don't know who we don't... In a church of that size, you're probably gonna have, especially people who don't like the way that their counseling situations went.

And maybe there's some legitimate claims in here. I'm just, I'm not saying it's all like that, but you're gonna have, at any church of that size, there's gonna be people who have gripes who will come and share.

You have to take it on the evidence. This is one of the things that I've even done evangelicalism. I've talked about this. People, especially, it doesn't happen as much now, but when the social justice movement really got started, it got going, right?

I had people everywhere coming to me. Like, John, this is what's happening here. And I would always say the same thing.

Look, if you can't get out there and share your story, if you can't publicly talk about it, if you can't put your name on it, what can

I do? I mean, you can point me to some evidence of something, but I can't... If it's a personal story that's personal to you, there's nothing

I can do. I'm not gonna trot it out there, right? I may say, like I'm saying right now, like I may say that there are people who came to me, there's a lot of people who came to me, but the hard part is

I can't really use it as evidence. I can't, because I can't prove any of it. And it's the same thing with this

Me Too stuff. Like, you can't use it as evidence. It shouldn't be showing up. I mean, you could report that you have an elder who has said other people have contacted him, but they're returning to this over and over in the article.

And they're trying to establish a pattern. That's clear from the article that is going on at the church.

And it's John MacArthur's teaching, it's his theology too, that impacts this.

I'm telling you, they're gunning for this. Even if this is a bad case, right? There's abuse and it was not handled correctly, whatever.

The end goal seems to be to shoot down someone who has the theology of John MacArthur on the role of women, on church discipline, biblical counseling, that's not informed by psychology.

All these things are in the crosshairs to be taken down. Let's see, let's just end, let's go to the end of the article here.

Just days after Christmas last year, Chose sent what he called the final appeal. Okay, this is what people were talking about in the chat. And Chose was, so he sent out a final appeal at Christmas.

Okay, the Lord has so often done far more than I could ever have thought possible, even knowing that the board was unlikely to move.

At the end of the day, I need to do what's right as the spirit and conscience and prayer. So this is the courageous man.

Chose is being portrayed as the hero here who bucked the system and went against these abusive people, these elders who all voted to discipline a woman who is suffering abuse.

Tell her to go back to her husband where she'll get beaten up or something, which that's very hard to believe that they would knowingly do that.

But this is the situation going on right now. And this is what I think is gonna be trumpeted over the next few days.

You're gonna see a lot about this. And what I would wanna encourage, if there's anyone from Grace Community Church or any influence that's listening to this,

I would really wanna encourage what I tried to encourage to the best of my ability last time, which is try to...

And I realize, look, I gotta start by saying this before I had to qualify this, because I know there's people who will think it's disrespectful to...

Don't question the wisdom of the elders and that kind of... I get that. I understand. I'm not there. I don't have all the facts.

But I'm gonna give you my perception, at least of what happened a year ago.

The concern was, from my understanding, that if Grace Community Church or the elders or Carrie Hardy, who's not even there anymore, were to come out and talk about this case and why the church made the decisions they did, it creates serious mistrust with current counseling situations.

Because if you could just go 20 years back and say all this confidential counseling stuff, we can just bring it back up, then what's to stop you from doing it with other cases?

And who wants to be counseled by someone who could just publicly start disclosing things? I get that.

However, this is what I would wanna encourage them with. This is a little different. This is a little different because you have someone, a former counselee,

Eileen, who has decided to go public, who has decided to put many of those documents already out there, the ones that would be favorable to her and or disfavorable to David Gray, and to paint the church in a negative light.

This has already happened. So under those circumstances, I think it's a little different.

It's, at this point, this is just my opinion, it's the church of the

Lord Jesus Christ. And if, this is an if, but if there was a justification for the decisions that the church made, in this case, whether that was they were missing information or there's added information that's not being presented, then it's part of defending that church and the reputation of that church.

And I would say that in other situations where you don't have the counselee, the former counselee attacking the church and already breaking that confidentiality by sharing personal documents and so forth,

I don't think there should be any concern there of people who aren't gonna do that.

But maybe it would serve as a warning to others that, look, if you are gonna do this, we'll pull the file. We'll make it available, or at least parts of it available so people can see.

And so you can at least know that there is another side to this. And so my understanding from a year ago with the people at Grace Community Church who were there at the time, who did have opinions on this, there was just a decision not to share any of those things, even though some of them may have wanted to.

And some might think I'm meddling in issues that aren't my business, but I see this as so much bigger.

And that's why I'm talking about it. I don't think, and it's my prediction, I don't think this

Christianity Today article is going to end with John MacArthur. This is going to be about going after, what made

MacArthur do that? What kind of things are in his theology? What makes him tick?

The crosshairs are gonna be on biblical counseling. They're gonna be on counseling that sees scripture as sufficient, on church discipline, on the things that, honestly, the world hates, the things that the world does not find compelling about the church.

Those are the things that are gonna be targeted here. So that's my encouragement.

And that's the only point I really wanted to make by bringing this up. I'm not trying to tell you one way or the other whether Cho is right or wrong.

I just think that if that's the only elder being heard from, then you know what narrative is gonna be painted.

So that's my best pitch to Grace Community Church. We'll see what happens.

If they don't, the thing is, if they don't defend themselves on it, though, it is hard for others who want to defend them to try to weigh in.

I know right before, this story actually fell on my lap right before I pressed the record button.

So I was like, oh, I wanna talk about this, but I don't have time to go through all of it. David Morrill, though, was one of the guys from Protestia who he commented,

I saw a brief comment from him, and he just thinks it's more of the same. He doesn't buy any of it and all that. And I get that.

And some of you are gonna be like that, but here's the thing, guys. It's an elder from the church. There is a level of credibility that comes with that.

Being in the room, being in that position, you gotta take that into account too. And that's why I think it'd be good if people of that same level would weigh in if there is more to this.

All right, everyone's buzzing up. Let's see. There are many, let's see, read for you some of these. There are many

Paul and Barnabas decisions that have to be made, and God will use both, but many of his followers will not see that.

That's a good, yeah, that's a good point. Absolutely. Let's see, anything else from the chat section?

Man, there's a lot of good, good points being made in the chat. A lot of people lighting it up. This is the last call, though.

If anyone has a question or a point they wanna make, and I will correct the sound issue, yes.

There's a lot of people saying the sound issue is a problem, so yes, I will re -upload, and it'll have, the color video will have sound.

I'm still figuring this stuff out. I mean, I've been doing this for years, and I'm still, new technology is still confounding to me.

In fact, I got a, what do they call it, an encoder now. I'm not using it yet, but it's supposed to help the quality of the video and stuff, and I'll probably play with that next week, so.

So more technical difficulties coming to you. Eventually we'll get it right. I appreciate you all listening.