Acts 29 Church Planting Network Exposed

Conversations That Matter

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00:11

Hey, everyone. Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast. We've been talking about a lot of different organizations and denominations recently and having interviews with people in those organizations and denominations who have started to leave orthodoxy or at least fail to define things well enough to guard against those who would want them to leave orthodoxy.

00:31

And we've seen this with the LCMS. We've seen this with the Evangelical Free Church. We focused on, obviously, the

00:38

Southern Baptist Convention and the PCA. And today, I want to focus on a church -planning network,

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Acts 29. Many of you have heard of Acts 29. Mark Driscoll was affiliated with Acts 29.

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I think he even started it, if I'm not mistaken. Matt Chandler then, becoming maybe the most notable figure affiliated with Acts 29.

00:57

And this is a church -planning network that I've had no involvement with directly, but I've certainly, in the past, and we're talking now maybe six or seven years ago, maybe before that even,

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I've thought of them as maybe a good network to ask someone who's looking for a church to check out.

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And so I am somewhat familiar with Acts 29. And recently, for those who don't know, there's been a shakeup in the church -planning network.

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And there are three major churches in the United States right now that are leaving the network.

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One of them is The Well, which is in Boulder, Colorado. Another one is in California.

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And another one in Washington. And all three of these churches in very progressive areas have cited some of the same concerns.

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And so I'm really thankful today to be joined by Pastor Chase Davis. Pastor Chase Davis is the senior pastor, the lead pastor, at The Well in Boulder, Colorado.

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And he's a senior fellow at the Center for Cultural Leadership, and he's written some discipleship materials. You can go to jchasedavis .com

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to find out more about his work. Thank you so much, Chase. I should actually call you

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Pastor Davis for joining me. I appreciate it. Sure. Yeah. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. So I want to start at the beginning with you because I've read your letter of complaint

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Is that too strong of a term? I mean, it's concern with the Acts 29 Network.

02:34

Why don't you start at the beginning? What was it like? And then what changed? Yeah. Like I said, thanks for having me on.

02:42

Yeah, that letter was issued by our elders. We were in it by our elders. And we kind of all put our hands together and put that together.

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And my other lead pastor, we kind of have an industry model, but Matt also helped me write that.

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And so we joined the network back in 2011, right? I mean, very soon after we planted the

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Well Church in Boulder, Matt was being recruited into the network as early as 2007.

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He was attending conferences. They used to call them boot camps where you would go and learn about church planting.

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And so he can remember going to one of those at the Village Church in Dallas, and it had all the big names there.

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And so he was really excited to meet all those people, really inspired to plant a church. So we planted in Boulder.

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We joined Acts 29, mainly because of its theological clarity, or at least we perceived it to be theological at the time.

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Pretty robust names. You've got Sam Storms, Ray Ortland, Matt Chandler, Mark Driscoll, Darren Patrick, Eric Mason.

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These are guys that are well -connected, well -respected at the time. And so when we joined, there was a hunger on our part to be learners.

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We didn't exactly know what we were doing in church planting. We were pretty young. Some might argue too young to plant a church, and that'd be a fair critique.

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But we were like, hey, we want to be learners, want to join. This seems like a good, trusted, reputable organization.

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And we had already been through it. Matt had been through a residency at Fellowship Associates in Little Rock, Arkansas. They're great people training church planters.

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But Acts 29 was an association that a church like which was Baptistic but non -denominational could join, find brotherhood, find relationships.

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We didn't join because of money. They weren't giving money to any church plants back then.

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It wasn't like we got financial assistance. It was mainly just connection, encouragement, relationships, and theological training.

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Matt and I were both just starting our seminary education in the early years.

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And so we were like, gosh, we know we're weak in that area. And so we joined for that reason back in the day.

04:46

So yeah, I think that was the main thing, but pretty soon after there were, you mentioned some shakeups.

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I mean, there were some shakeups going on that we didn't really fully understand at the time, but we were just trying to trust.

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So back at as early as 2012, that's when Matt Chandler became the president of Acts 29. Driscoll kind of handed over the keys there.

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And Acts 29 was started in like 2000 by David Nichols, who's a PCA pastor. Mark Driscoll always claims that he started it.

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And you could kind of go ticky tack on that, like who started it, but they worked together to start it down at Spanish River Church in Florida.

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And then it became Mark Driscoll's network. They were funding a lot of the stuff that was going on in a lot of the conferences.

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Marcel was really footing the bill for a lot of that. And so Chandler became the president in 2012.

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And there was kind of a market shift in the tone and tenor of the network, some for good. They were trying to move away from a more combative spirit that Driscoll tended to bring in.

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But back then they really started to push a lot of different values compared to when we joined.

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So you started here to talk about diversity in 2012. That was a big thing.

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2015, they started rolling out new values. One of them was wanting to be a diverse global network. And then really in 2016, they had a lead pastor retreat and they brought up guys like Tabeeti, Eric Mason, Brandon Washington, Dwayne Bond, Leonce Crump.

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And they were all interviewed at this lead pastor retreat by Matt Chandler. And at that lead pastor retreat, they were really pushing a lot of stuff that now we understand is woke.

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Back then it was just, we were just trying to be learners. And that really, I don't know how to say it.

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I mean, a lot of people left that event and they talk about it like an awakening, like they were finally exposed to kind of what was going on in America and what those guys present.

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And you can go find it on the AXE 29 website. You can listen to the whole presentation. They were pushing -

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We've actually, just stop you for one second. We've actually reviewed that particular, I believe, that panel discussion where they talk about police shootings and white privilege and all of this.

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So you can go back even in the archives for conversations that matter and you'll find a video on this.

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But yeah, please continue. Yeah. So at that event, a lot of pastors left, a lot of pastors' wives were there.

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And that really, they played on the empathy, the sympathy. And I feel like a lot of pastors were kind of taken advantage of and they were kind of told a very particular narrative.

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Books were recommended that were written by liberation theology guys and communists and CRT books.

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And so back then, through that point, we were still trying to be learners, trying to understand.

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It was hard to identify in the moment what was going on. Some guys were able to identify it, but back then we were still kind of stuck in a mode of like, hey, we trust, we want to learn.

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2017, I think, 2018, Matt Chandler released a video on white privilege for his church. And you listen to that now and it's like straight out of Peggy McIntosh and the literature on critical race theory, talking about an invisible bag of privilege that you're pulling things out of if you're white.

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And so all this stuff was going on, but for us at The Well and for a lot of pastors, we were just busy trying to pastor, plant churches, that kind of thing.

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So there wasn't a lot being, we weren't really paying attention and we really didn't even know what was going on.

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And you had Eric Mason writing Woke Church, he was a board member. And because there was high trust in the network with a lot of churches, we just were kind of like, okay,

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I guess this is a new missional way to contextualize the gospel. But really until 2020, that was our story.

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It was like, just kind of generally trust the network. But when George Floyd happened, they really put a big emphasis on pushing kind of a certain agenda.

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And so you had Dwayne Bond, who was on that panel in 2020, he got on a pastor to pastor call, just a call for actually nine pastors.

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And he said things like, America has never been great. It's founded on lies. It was founded on racism.

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America has designed a system where white folk always win. And this system sprung up from the church and we have to dismantle it.

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So he kind of hinted at the fact that if you voted for a certain political candidate, that proves

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America's racist. So all that was really disturbing. So at that point, I think for a lot of people, you start asking a lot of questions.

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You start, you know, I'm seeing what's going on in America and the streets, and I'm seeing kind of different movements.

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You had Matt Chandler saying like, how dare you criticize BLM when

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BLM is your fault to begin with, because you didn't step up as the church. And all this was very disruptive.

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It was getting in our church. And so we were trying to kind of do a lot of leadership on our own, but we're getting a lot of outside voices that are influencing our people from the network.

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And so we just started asking questions. And even to today, up in like 2022, what you saw in like March of 22 is you had a woman preaching in an

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Acts 29 church. I believe it was Jerome Gay's church. And then in August of 2022, you had kind of a, not a lot of Americans might know him, but in Australia, there's a pastor named

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Guy Mason who promoted transgender rights. He said, we have to lean into the rights of those who identify as transgender.

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We have to create a space for gender inclusive bathrooms at our churches. And so all that was really disturbing.

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So as far as the theological clarity that we thought we were getting from Acts 29, it really just devolved.

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Yeah, you've got that pulled up right there. It's just very surprising for a network that kind of prides itself on being complementarian, being solid on the doctrines of grace.

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These were things that were always things that we were attracted to the network to begin with. And anytime we would email them about this stuff, there was very little done.

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In fact, Guy Mason preached at the village church in Dallas just a few months after delivering that message on the church should lean into the rights for transgender people.

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And so it was just very disruptive. It's very confusing. And so all that really sparked in 2020, we just started asking a lot of questions, trying to get clarity.

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We would email those people directly. We would try not to air our grievances publicly because we were just trying to understand.

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We were still trying to trust. We were trying to rebuild trust. And it really also led into us questioning sincerely where our money was going.

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You saw that mentioned in the other letters as well that churches have sent. Because if this is what's being taught in Acts 29 pulpits, and this is what

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Acts 29 is advocating for, then you start wondering what kind of churches are getting assessed and approved by the network.

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If part of our money that we give to Central, it's like two to 3 % that every

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Acts 29 church is committed to give to Acts 29 Central. And that helps fund assessment conferences and paying for assessors and that kind of thing.

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Then you start asking, okay, well, what's being assessed? What kind of theological clarity are we going for?

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Are we planting woke churches? Is that what we're doing here? And so you start asking about it, but then they won't give you a budget.

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They didn't release a budget for three years. And even now they finally released a budget this year and they're experiencing a 20 % budget deficit, but this year they're still planning to take all their pastors to Cancun.

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And so it's an odd thing that's going on financially. And on top of that, the shakeup had always been there.

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Acts 29 has always been a very oddly led organizationally network because there was a lot of staff turnover.

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You had reorgs, at one point you had regions, then you had kind of other networks, sub networks like US West.

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And so every two years, there's kind of like a reorganization of who's in charge. No one really knows who's in charge.

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There's a lot of confusion, like who do I go to with these questions? Do I go to directly to the president? Do I go to my regional lead?

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And we don't even know who our regional lead is. And so all of that led to a bunch of questions for us about like bylaws, like, hey, how do people get on the board?

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Why do we see people on the board one week? And then they're gone. A good example would be like Eric Mason was a board member for six years.

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And then apparently he stepped down in 2019. And then he left the network in the summer of 2020.

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And there was just no communication as to like, why, what's going on? And that was a common theme throughout

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Acts 29. There was never any conversation about churches like leaving, like it was just kind of ignored.

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You know, it's always any presentation on Acts 29 is very up and to the right. It's like a business presentation where everything is always great.

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Things are going awesome. And I get that impulse as a leader, but there was a lack of transparency. And that was the big thing for us is just like all throughout, there didn't seem to be kind of an honesty and integrity about what we were doing and why we were doing it.

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It seemed to be kind of a network based on, you know, who you're connected to and big names.

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And they're always having these meetings that other people don't get invited to. There's not a lot of clarity about, hey, this is how we've changed or, you know, they would claim we haven't changed.

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We've always been this way. And it's like, well, we haven't, we've never seen a woman preach in the Acts 29 pulpit.

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That's never been what we've been about. And so, so at some point that, that became just like, it felt like blatant hypocrisy, you know, where it's just, they kept saying, we value diversity of thought and we value pastoral care.

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And then when you, you'd advocate for a different view than woke church or something like that, you were immediately sidelined.

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I remember I was writing, I wrote a couple articles on Acts 29 blog, just on discipleship.

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That's kind of my thing. And then eventually, you know, I was getting denied entry. They're saying, we're not going to publish you anymore.

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And I was like, okay, why? And they're like, we're just moving in a different direction. We're trying to include new authors.

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And it's like, okay, like, that's, that's interesting. They would promote, you know, you've got

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Matt Chandler promoting it. I think it was that MLK 50 event, where he would say he would hire a, you know, what is it?

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An Anglo, if he had an Anglo eight and a black seven or something, he would hire the black seven.

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And that was being, you know, that's how they hire in Acts 29. Apparently they were teaching that back in 2017, that they're going to make, you know, intentional efforts to hire minorities, ethnic minorities, you know, that's, that's their call.

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But like you start asking questions about why, like what's going on? And does that mean you're firing non ethnic minorities in order to replace them with ethnic, that, that doesn't seem biblical.

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You know, we should be evaluating people on, can they do the job? Are they solid? Do they line up rather than that kind of thing, rather than on skin color, which is fairly racist, you might say.

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Yeah. So to me, what I'm hearing you say is lack of accountability was a big part of this.

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There was writing letters, not getting responses. One of the responses, I don't think it was yours.

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It was another church, but they said their main reason comes down to Acts 29 used to be a network that served churches.

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And now they expect churches to serve the network. And this is a centralization tendency that I at least see in other places.

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The Southern Baptists are dealing with this now where the autonomous churches that the denomination is supposed to serve.

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And that's been that way since its formation are now expected to tow the line of the central authority, namely

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Kevin Eazell and the North American Mission Board and whatever they want to do and not to question that.

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And that's going on all over the place where these organizations that are supposed to serve individuals and churches and local areas are now just wanting funds and support and unquestioned loyalty.

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And so that seems to be the thing that's really causing this. But the woke stuff, if you will, that is maybe a pretext or a the occasion for this scenario, it sounds like.

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Yeah. And it is. But I think it was baked into the cake with the Acts 29 system of governance.

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So one of the things that kept coming up as we here's what's funny, dude, is like back in the day, there was just high trust.

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So we would have these town halls or anything like that. And we just didn't have a lot of questions. We just kind of like, well, these are the older, wiser church planners.

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We want to learn from them. But eventually in 2020, 2021, 2022, you're like, hey, like, what's the budget like?

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And like, hey, like, what are the bylaws and how does a board member get appointed to be a board member?

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And what you discover, what's funny is they would never send out the bylaws. You would ask for them and they wouldn't, they would refuse to disclose the bylaws, which is odd, but it's a publicly accessible document on the state of California's website.

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So one of my friends found those. And when you look into the bylaws in the history, you see the Acts 29 is not, it was never designed to serve churches in the actual governance.

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It's a board run institution so that the board controls who's in and who's out.

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There is no vote. If you're in Acts 29, I always joke with my SBC brothers, you know, when they complain about the

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SBC, I'm like, hey, at least you get a vote. You know, in Acts 29, it's more like communist China where who's ever at the top, you know, determines who's in and who's out.

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They can, they can say, you know, they have a good assessment process. But at the end of the day, the board is, is the one who controls the power.

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And that's I don't know why they designed the leadership structure that way. I mean, I, I can imagine why they did that back in the day, maybe it was in a smaller network.

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They were trying to, you know, hold power in a very centralized form, but that's kind of baked into the cake of the system of Acts 29 is that it's a board governed institution such that, you know, they determine everything.

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There's no way for you to get on the board. If you cross any of them, question them and don't display kind of a blind trust and loyalty to the brain.

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So that's that's just how it's governed. Um, you were kicked out, right? Am I correct in that you, you were before.

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So, so I don't exactly know how this works. You and your co -pastor were both, uh, told in very vague terms without any specifics that you were no longer a good fit.

20:23

Um, that was last year. That was, uh, two months ago. It was two months ago. Yeah.

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So the church, does the church remain part of the network or were you booted completely? The whole church. The whole church.

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Yeah. Uh, back in the day they, they used to assess just the lead pastor. So the lead pastor or the planter would be the one that was an

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Acts 29 planter. Um, they changed that over the years to be all of your elders have to kind of do a covenant renewal every year.

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And you all have to agree that your church will be an Acts 29 church. So it's the entire church that suffers the consequences.

20:57

So technically you didn't leave, uh, at least the initiation of you leaving was

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Acts 29 themselves. And these other two churches, it sounds like they're initiating it, but with, in your case, they, so the thing for me that's so weird is you say you weren't given any reasons concretely why that's strange and that should cause concern.

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Even if you're, I don't care if you're on the woke train and you're in Acts 29, that should really concern you that you don't, you can't get any answers.

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Yeah. And that's the big thing for me is like, you know, if actually I had just been clear, like we're going to, we're going to tolerate, or we're going to be a big tent network.

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We're going to put up with a different variety of viewpoints. You know, our church would have to decide is that a network we want to be part of?

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They would never answer that. But really the way it went down was really disheartening, especially because in the last year we had asked multiple times,

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Hey guys, we just want to know if we have a place here. You know, we want to know if we fit in still. And they were like, we need you now more than ever.

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That was, that was told to us half a dozen times, including up until the last, last fall.

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Um, the same guys that were actually on the call that kicked us out, uh, were the ones saying that, that we need you here.

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And I don't know what changed. I don't know. Uh, I know there was a board meeting and the board voted to kick us out.

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And so, you know, you can go look up on the ACT 29 website who's on the board now. Um, but yeah, they voted to kick us out, but they didn't, we didn't even know that our church was even in danger.

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Um, they never warned us of that. Anything we were doing would, would warrant such consequences.

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Our church had considered, like a lot of churches in ACT 29 have considered whether we should leave, whether we should do what

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John Needham and Justin Buzzard and their churches did, just leave. But our, our attitude was like, we've already invested over a hundred thousand dollars into this network through our annual commitment over the years.

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And it's much harder to build a new institution. Um, and our, our interest was not to, to, to destroy an institution.

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Our, our interest was to offer, uh, opportunities to reform, to grow, to mature.

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And that was obviously now I know not received well, you know, with our questions.

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Um, and so, yeah, they, they called us up, same day meeting, kind of demanded we get on a

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Zoom call. And quickly into the call, it became apparent this was, uh, not a call to catch up.

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This was a call to, uh, confront us and remove us. And they provided no evidence for any accusations.

23:34

They didn't accuse us of any sin and they couldn't point out in any kind of statement of faith, uh, uh, confession of faith values.

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They couldn't point out any particular evidence of our deviation that would warrant such a unilateral action by the board to kick us out.

23:53

So there was no evidence. We still have not been presented with any evidence as to why we were kicked out.

23:59

There were vague kind of intonations that we were not aligned, that we had publicly critiqued.

24:05

Um, I asked for, uh, publicly critiqued the network and I had asked for evidence for that. And there's, there's not any evidence for that because before that day,

24:12

I had really tried to resolve these differences by emailing people, by just having conversations like brothers in Christ, you know, but, uh, but I guess they perceived those conversations very negatively.

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Um, the, the real, real issue for us now is that they're actively telling churches in the network, um, that they've warned us multiple times that, that we would be kicked out if we continued.

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That never happened. So now they're actively sowing lies against us saying that, uh, saying that they warned us over and over again and we just never changed.

24:48

And I'm like, that, that just never happened. The complete opposite happened. And so I don't know how that happens, but that, that's what, that's what's going on.

24:56

Well, it's so unbiblical too, because if you're not given the opportunity to repent, even if you have sinned, then they're doing you a disservice and, uh, you're going to go along, keep, and you're going to keep sinning.

25:07

And of course, uh, if it's a false charge and there is nothing wrong, then they have, uh, no opportunity to, uh, be cross examined by other brothers and sisters in Christ and held to account.

25:20

So there's no accountability in either direction when, when you have something like this, um, man, uh,

25:27

I don't even know where to go from here. Um, what do you say about, I mean, I think the answer is obvious, but for the future of acts 29 and people may be still in the network.

25:36

Um, I know there's probably some good pastors doing good work, uh, in the network, maybe unaware of some of this, but I don't know if you have any advice for them or, uh, warnings.

25:47

Yeah. I mean, based on our experience, um, you know, my, my conclusion, my kind of like, kind of reading what's going on is that actually nine is completely married to pragmatism.

26:02

They are, they are solely based on pragmatism. The way they present the organization as very successful up into the right, always growing.

26:10

I mean, this was the same stuff Driscoll use to, to justify a lot of stuff whenever he was confronted was look at how many baptisms we had.

26:18

What's, what's ironic is that actually 29 really hasn't grown over the last, uh, several years.

26:23

You know, they've been around seven, 800 churches for a while now. And so, but they're married to kind of pragmatism, whatever works.

26:30

Um, you know, they're, they're in my mind, they're very compromised and I would even call it corrupt organization that operates like an oligarchy.

26:38

Um, there, you have no say in the network. If something goes sideways, if they, if they continue tolerating women preaching and actually 29 pulpits, or they at least never acknowledged that it happened and don't offer any kind of clarity, then, uh, there's no way for you as a member of church to, to change that.

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And if you do change, try to kind of call that out in any manner, you could do it in the most gentle manner possible, then you're going to find yourself sidelined very quickly.

27:07

And on the outs, because, uh, you'll be seen as somebody who's a troublemaker for questioning the leadership.

27:14

And so my conclusion, I mean, is that actually 29 needs to change or it needs to die, but it cannot keep going in the manner it's going.

27:21

So to other, like you said, there's lots of good guys in the network, lots of good friends of mine, and thankfully they've continued to be friends to me.

27:28

Um, there's lots of good guys who are committed to the core values and the confession and the same that we originally agreed to, um, who see these problems.

27:38

And so there needs to be a push. You know, I was talking to one X 29 pastor last week and he's like, um, you know, why, why would we just go out one at a time?

27:47

What if we did a charge the hill kind of moment where we, we all did something together? And I was like, man, I was trying to get y 'all to do that before we left.

27:54

I was trying to encourage other guys to ask questions and reach out and get clarity, but there was just no, uh, no opportunity afforded to anyone to do that.

28:05

And a lot of guys don't want to be seen as a troublemaker. There is a culture in X 29 of fear in terms of the pastors fearing questioning the leaders.

28:14

That is exactly what's happening in every other denomination. It seems like that's experiencing similar issues.

28:21

You just described it beautifully, uh, that there, there's a moment. I remember the moment in the

28:26

SBC, there was a few moments where it was like, let's all together form a United. Um, and then in conservative

28:33

Baptist network came along eventually and it was a little late, but he, but it was, um, I don't want to, I don't want to say anything about CBN that there's, they've done a lot of good things, but, um, the point that you just made though,

28:45

I think is, is a hundred percent accurate as far as, uh, it's individual churches that end up going against the machine and they get squashed, they get ignored, they get kicked out.

28:57

And then it's, um, it's the principle that was it, uh, Niemöller, I think said in Germany when they came to the, uh, the, uh, unions first.

29:07

And then, and eventually, you know, all the groups are eliminated until it gets to you and you're like, oh no,

29:13

I have no one to defend me. Right. And, um, so it's, it's, it's, it's human nature, I suppose. That's just how we are.

29:19

There's no trouble knocking on our door in the moment. And we, we don't want to band with someone else. We want to avoid the trouble they're having until that same trouble comes to our house.

29:29

Uh, and then, uh, they're taken out. So, um, I, I, I, one of the things that I like about what you're doing is you didn't just leave, uh, you also formed a, an alternative.

29:40

And so I wanted to show everyone this, you have your own, uh, I guess, church planning network that you've started.

29:47

So people who want to be involved in church planning and are maybe former acts 29, or maybe even outside of acts 29, but want to be involved, they can get involved in your network instead of acts 29.

29:59

Why don't you tell me about that? Yeah. And I didn't know we were going to talk about this. So this is not a promotion for that necessarily.

30:05

And that's totally fine to highlight this. I'm happy to share about it. Um, so when we had always been a church planning church,

30:12

I mean, that's what we were told we should be by X 29. Uh, not a lot of extra nine churches are actually church planning church, but we were trying to do it.

30:19

And so we have planted four churches in the Boulder County area besides our own. Um, or I guess, including our own over the last 11 years, we're about to plant another one in Colorado and they will be a well collaborative church.

30:31

And so we're trying to provide a really, it was mainly for our church. How are we going to be a church planning church?

30:36

We're trying to provide a sort of sub network of good relationships with churches that we have a residency program.

30:43

We have an internship program where people can apply. They can come get experience. I mean, Boulder's a very progressive context.

30:49

Colorado's increasingly turning blue. And so if people want to come experience kind of ministry on the front lines, we have internships available.

30:57

Um, but really, you know, I'm very thankful for the guys that we have in the collaborative, um, to be transparent right now it's, it's us and another church in the collaborative.

31:07

Uh, but our residency program, I think is, is pretty good, uh, compared to a, to a lot.

31:12

I think we have a pretty good model of, uh, unity. Um, and we're always trying to improve upon that.

31:18

And so, um, so yeah, we're about to plant another church out of the well collaborative, but it's a way to get funding, to get partnership, to get community, to get training, um, to get coaching, all the stuff that we originally thought we were getting with Acts 29.

31:33

Um, that's what we're trying to do with, with the well collaborative. So it's a great opportunity. And our focus is really is

31:38

Colorado, you know, trying to, trying to reach people in Colorado. And we have one church that's going to be

31:44

SBC. We have one church that's part of a kind of a smaller denomination, the four C's and our church is trying to discern what, what denomination we might be able to belong to.

31:53

But, but for now we've got a good little network that, uh, that we can provide resources and help to churches in Colorado.

32:01

So. I like that you're focused on Colorado. I think the scale matters in this, the larger, the scale, the more opportunity for centralization, corruption, and what you're experiencing with Acts 29 right now.

32:14

And the smaller the scale, the more accountability and the more brotherhood that you can foster because you're not paying exorbitant amounts of money to go to some central location somewhere that people have to travel thousands of miles to get to you're, you're already right there.

32:28

So you can be more involved in each other's lives and see each other more frequently. Um, even have members who might, you know, move from one part of the state to the other.

32:38

And, uh, there, there's just more opportunity for actual real networking. So I like that.

32:44

Uh, and I hope others will take that lead and maybe in their own states do something similar. Um, so now you're right though.

32:51

You didn't ask me to share that. I just noticed it in your letter that you had done this and I thought, wow, that's, it's rare to see that happen.

32:59

Most of the time people just leave and you don't hear anything, but you're providing a solution, which I appreciate. So thank you.

33:05

Yeah, for sure. Anything else you want to share? Uh, I think you pretty much covered it, but, um, predictions, what, uh, do you think

33:15

Acts 29 is going to continue? Do you think more churches are going to leave? Uh, what do you see?

33:21

Yeah, I think actually 29 is committed to not being transparent and committed to not changing.

33:26

They, they sent out a letter after kind of all three of these churches, uh, and all three letters are unique, but they all share a commonality, a lack of trust, uh, in the network.

33:38

Um, and they actually on central sent out a letter saying we are undeterred, you know, we're not turning back, you know, it's just going to get better.

33:47

And all of us are going like, you're not even acknowledging that there are problems like you're, you're blind.

33:54

Um, and so really, I mean, for people in the network, you have to ask the question if, if,

34:00

I mean, I don't, I don't want to use hyperbolic language, but it w there was a sense of betrayal, you know, and how they treated us a sense of hypocrisy in the network.

34:10

If these things are built into the cake, um, it's hard to see how a network like this last, I mean, it would be, you know, it'd be bombastic to say it's going to collapse and on itself.

34:21

Um, I presume a network like this with as much cloud and power, um, it's a, it's kind of a big

34:27

Eva organization like the gospel coalition. And it's connected very well to Christianity today. Um, I assume they'll kind of exist for a while, probably as a smaller, uh, church planting network, but we've already seen, um, uh, around 20 churches in the last, uh, three months leave the network.

34:46

And so there are people leaving. I don't see how it survives, um, in terms of what it was.

34:53

It may, it may continue as some kind of woke denomination or just kind of corrupt organization.

34:59

That's oligarchical. Um, I, I don't see how it continues unless, unless there's a true repentance, which was always kind of, you know, what we want, what

35:08

I want as a pastor is always to be somebody who's receptive to the spirit and, and, and as a repentant man.

35:14

Um, and so I would hope that they would repent, um, that they would change, but I don't foresee with the current leadership structure and the current leaders in place,

35:23

I don't see any indication that they're interested in that at all. They're simply kind of continuing on the path they're on.

35:29

And in my mind for churches like that, that, that path leads to destruction and it will lead to a lot of, uh, a lot of, you know, harm for the sheep.

35:40

It'll hurt. There's a lot of hurt going on. Yeah. This has become one of the stories among many of elites in Christian organizations, unfortunately, acting like elites in the world and every other institution that's failed the people they're supposed to serve.

35:56

I know, um, even, uh, seeing some of the connections that Southeastern has,

36:02

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, where, um, if I'm not mistaken, isn't Tony Miranda, is he, is he, he's like a theological, uh, uh, advisor for Acts 29 or was, and...

36:13

Yeah, Tony Morita. And here's what's interesting, John, is he, uh, there's a call he did, I think it was last year.

36:19

And I want to, I want to read it. It was just comical to me in the way they kicked this out. Highly ironic.

36:25

He said on the call, Acts 29 does not assume responsibility for monitoring or policing matters of orthopraxy in our member churches.

36:31

So that's, that's coming from the head of kind of theological training in Acts 29. I don't remember exactly what his job title is because they keep changing job titles.

36:39

But if Acts 29 does not assume responsibility for monitoring or policing matters of orthopraxy in our member churches, then he's telling you that they're not going to change these matters.

36:49

The hypocrisy becomes clear and that they are policing matters of orthopraxy.

36:55

They are, you know, they can say contextualization all they want, but if you cross them or you disagree with them on certain matters that are, that are tertiary, um, then they are going to police you and not, they're not just going to police you, they're going to remove you.

37:10

Um, if you ask questions about it. And so there's just like this double standard baked into the network.

37:16

Here's the interesting thing to me about that though. So if you don't, if you're not familiar with Southeastern, if you don't live in the

37:22

Raleigh -Durham area, Tony Morita, uh, is known to be one of the more woke pastors, at least, uh, a lot of the more progressive types at Southeastern, the students who are more on the left, they like to go to his church,

37:35

Mongo Day. And, and so I, I didn't know much about him past that, just that he had this reputation.

37:41

He would, when I was there, he preached in chapel a few times and I could tell he was just trying to be kind of smooth and hip and that kind of thing.

37:48

Uh, so whatever. Right. But when he, when I saw, uh, someone showed me that he had become whatever the position is now, but the theological advisor for Acts 29 essentially,

38:00

I thought, wow, like I didn't expect that connection. I, I, he's in a category of my mind at Southeastern and in the

38:08

Southern Baptist world and pushing the needle kind of left in that world. But Acts 29 absorbs these kinds of people, these, uh, well -connected, um, uh, just, uh, more on the woke train leaders.

38:21

Well, here's the thing why I think this is interesting to some extent, why I guess I'm mentioning this. Uh, one of the examples that you cite right for, um, why number of these churches are leaving is the case of a woman pastor or a woman preaching, um, at a vision

38:41

RDU, right? Vision RDU. Well, vision RDU, this acts 29 church where you have a female preaching is in the

38:49

Raleigh Durham area, right? It's in his backyard. And so you just, here, here's the slam dunk here,

38:56

I guess, like that proves that they, um, have lost their ability to protect against the virus coming in there.

39:05

There's no, there's, there's no healthy body there. Um, you have

39:10

Tony Morita who's supposed to head up the theological understanding, training, whatever discernment for the organization in his backyard.

39:18

It's not like it's across the country. It's right in his backyard. Uh, where he lives is where this woman pastor in acts 29 is.

39:26

So it's, not only is that going to be apparent, but he's going to be well -connected more than probably most of the other acts 29 churches to that one.

39:38

Uh, and he can't, he writes you and says, no, we don't police this kind of stuff. So the person, the most acquainted with it, that has the, probably the most knowledge of it.

39:47

Who's right there. Who's aware is the one saying we can't do anything about this. It's not ignorance is what

39:52

I'm saying. People. It's not ignorance. Right. Yeah. You can't claim like they don't know. And that's, what's baffling.

39:58

I mean, I've had Tony on my podcast. I've, uh, I used one of Tony's books, uh, as a commentary on Exodus, amongst many others.

40:06

And so, you know, I, we were always trying to, to build relationship to understand, but there just comes a point where it's like, they're not ignorant.

40:16

Like they've got to know what's going on. And this lady that preached, she's not a pastor at vision. She had actually preached to Eric's Eric Mason's church like a month before.

40:24

And so Eric Mason still has deep ties to the network. He's still, uh, shaping a lot of the, the way churches are leading.

40:31

Um, and so, yeah, it's just, they, they pretend to be kind of like, oh, wow.

40:36

Yeah. I didn't know that. And then they claimed to not police orthopraxy. And it's like, that's not true. I mean, at some point, you've got to kind of look at it for what it is and face reality of that either.

40:45

They're, they're just blatantly lying to you. Um, maybe they're cowards.

40:50

I don't, I don't know what's going on. My, my, like I said, my heart is that actually 29 would be revived.

40:58

It would flourish. It would grow and it would live into what God called it to be right now.

41:03

There seems to be no indication that they intend to do that. Very sad to me. Very sad.

41:09

Um, well with that, on that negative note, right? Uh, we should probably end the podcast and just, uh, refer people to, uh, your website.

41:19

What's your website? Uh, you have J Chase Davis .com. How can people get in contact with you though? Uh, there's a form there if they want to fill it out and email me right on the website, they can email me there.

41:29

They can follow me on Twitter if they want. Um, I have a podcast, foolproof theology, um,

41:34

F U L L proof theology. So they can listen to my podcast. Um, but yeah, go to the website, reach out.

41:42

And if you're an extra nine pastor, you're part of an extra nine church. Um, feel free to reach out. I would encourage you to just reach out to your pastor.

41:49

Um, share this episode with them, see what they think and start having conversations because they're, people can't change if you're not going to talk.

41:56

And so if churches keep leaving without, you know, saying anything, um, there's no hope for X 29 to, uh, to change.