The Here I Stand Theology Podcast Ep #12 (Interview with Gabe Rench of CrossPolitic)

All right, welcome to the Here I Stand Theology Podcast. We are a podcast dedicated to the pointed and spirited debate of biblical doctrine. We are pumped about being here today. We have a special guest host with us today, a pastor from just up the road.

His name is Aaron Case. Let's go ahead and bring Aaron in and let him tell you all a little bit about himself.

Introduction to Aaron Case and the Podcast Guests

Yeah, it's good to be here, Claude. Thank you for having me. It's good to be with you, of course. Yeah, my name is Pastor Aaron Case, pastor here in Seymour, Tennessee, and I'm just thankful that the Lord has brought Claude and myself together, and he's just been a blessing to me, and I'm so thankful for this podcast and just all the truth that comes out of it and just who Claude is.

So this is a special time for me to get to hang out. Any time we get together is good, and so we praise God for that, and I'm just thankful for Reformata Church and for this podcast and just everything it stands for.

So Aaron, I would echo the sentiments, of course, and we're not here to shower each other with praise, but I truly do. I love Aaron. I love and appreciate him and his ministry, his work. He is pastor at Eden Chapel Baptist Church.

That's in Seymour. If you're looking for a great church, solid biblical doctrine, great preaching, go to Eden Chapel.

Yeah, praise God. Thank you, brother.

All right.

Gabe Rensch’s Background and the Origins of CrossPolitik

So Aaron, we have a very special guest on with us today. Most of our audience should know who he is, should know the podcast that he's from and the group of men that he works with and goes to church with there in Idaho.

We have with us Gabe Rensch today, but before we bring Gabe in here, I want to read you very quickly his bio. So Gabe Rensch was born in the promised land. He was born in the promised land. That is Texas, six states later.

He's now in Moscow, Idaho. He is now in Moscow, Idaho. I'm going to move you to the center screen there, Gabe. He graduated from the University of Idaho. He also attended Greyfriars Hall, the pastoral training program at Christ Church.

Gabe is a media and marketing consultant. He is the co-founder of the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network and one of the hosts of the CrossPolitik TV show and podcast. Now in case you don't know, CrossPolitik stands for Christ over politics.

They mix the taboo formula of faith, culture, and politics in order to bring clarity, the clarity of the gospel into model America. So Gabe, as you come into our audience here, there's a couple of things we want to do for.

You.

First of all, there was a gang waiting for you. You can't see that, but that's a standing ovation and we watched the podcast in video.

Form.

I want you to notice, I'm not sure if it was, but it looked like it was Oprah Winfrey right in the front in that standing ovation. So one last thing here, I know you only get a sound bite of it, but we're going to play you in with this.

Yes, sir.

Yeehaw.

Clap it.

That's great. That's great.

Hey, it's so, so great to be on with you today, Toby. I'm sorry.

We looked very similar. It's weird.

We saw Knox there back in the back.

Yeah, but are you going to ask the question, Claude, the very important question before we get into everything?

So Gabe, we want to set the stage with a very important question here right off the bat, right off the bat. We want to ask this question. It's really to get you and our audience focused in on who you are.

Okay.

So my question is this first thing. So if, let's say for example, if you told me and Knox had to arm wrestle, who would.

Win?

I don't know. I can't be against my pastor.

Right.

And then at the same time, I can't be against Knox because he makes me look good on TV. I think I would lose.

Just not you. You would say.

Just not me.

I'm pretty sure, though, there's not a biblical injunction against arm wrestling your pastor or arm wrestling your friend.

No, no, there's not.

He just has to work with him, though.

Yeah.

My guess would be actually Knox because he's got all that leverage. He's got the short arms and leverage.

That's a key.

And maybe an add on a latter part of that. So if you saw that one of them were winning when you were arm wrestling them, would you kick one of them in the shin underneath the table to gain advantage?

I'm a pretty competitive guy.

There you go.

That's what I was looking for.

You play basketball, right? You play basketball.

That's right.

I play basketball.

I might step on their toe. I don't know.

Talk a little trash.

How CrossPolitik Began and Why It Focuses on Politics

Well, if you wouldn't mind, just tell us a little bit and tell the audience about how CrossPolitik got started. How did it begin?

Yeah. So in 2016, actually, it actually goes back to 2015. CrossPolitik started in 2016. But in 2015, I was looking at my church, kind of scanning my church and looking at the gifts of people who know my community well.

They know Pastor Doug Wilson and they know Cana Press and they know my church. We have a really good preaching ministry here, teaching ministry, Cana Press, book writing, author ministry, a lot of blogging around here.

So we got all these gifts that I don't really have. So I was kind of looking around at my church and like, where could I maybe contribute? Where could I help? I serve as a deacon at my church, but I had some more desires beyond that.

And I looked around and I was like, well, no one's doing radio. And so my initial dive into this was actually just to try to get into the radio business and just do my own radio show. And kind of through research and through various, I applied to like our local, what, NPR news radio stations here.

And of course, when I put Jesus Lord over the show, the show title, I would never hear back from them. I'd call these local stations. I'd call these local stations. They'd be like, oh, we got all sorts of hours.

Please, please propose a show to us. And so they would never get back to me. And so I started researching podcasts. I think it was about three or four radio stations I submitted show proposal ideas to, and all of them at some level were saying, yeah, we got availability and never got back.

So I started looking into podcasts and found some good examples like Apologia and found some other good examples of podcasts that I wanted to, you know, that I said, okay, this could work. This could be a good medium for declaring the Lordship of Christ over all of life.

And then so I even started doing my own interviews all by myself. I interviewed Chief Justice Roy Moore before he got defrocked from the bench in Alabama. It was a great time with him. He's, you know, very articulate.

Interviewed a couple others on my own and started kind of learning about myself in this process and where my gifts lie or were at. And I realized I don't think I could carry an audience by myself for an hour.

And so that's when I was like, well, I need a co-host. I need someone to help. And so I tapped Pastor Toby and Toby was instant, easy to talk into doing this. He's like, oh yeah, I'm in. Let's do it.

And then it took about four months to talk Knox into joining us. If you know any of Knox's backstory, he produced Todd Frill, The Wretched for seven years. He had been in the business for a long time.

So he knew what it took to go somewhere. And me and Toby were just thinking, hey, we're just going to hang out and talk on the mic with each other. You know, that's all we're going to do. But Knox knew what it would take to go somewhere.

And he knew how long of the process it would take to get to be an established show that people would actually listen to. And so Knox, I think, at first just said no. Like I asked him, he said, no, I don't want anything to do with it.

Leave me alone. Don't call me about this ever again. He was actually really nice about it. And so me and Toby, you know, in our planning process, we started, we realized we really did want a third person.

Knox was a good fit for that. So we kind of went back to him and brought, this time we brought Knox into Toby's office, the pastor's office. And if you know the weight of what it means for a black man to walk in a pastor's office, it's a heavy process for them.

And so Knox came into pastor's office. And so we basically, man, we spent the first 30 minutes, 45 minutes just talking about the show concept, what we want to do. And we all had a really good dialogue.

I mean, it just became really natural really quick. And so when Knox, after Knox talking to us for 45 minutes, I think he started being convinced I need to participate. I need to do this. It was just such a natural fit for all three of us.

So Knox decided to start CrossPolitik with us. And we wanted to start CrossPolitik specifically because the church, we don't think the church has done a very good job, at least in my generation. I'm 42 years old.

So at least in my generation has done a very good job discipling at the church and how to think about politics. All the Christian discipleship about politics has been happening outside the church, either through like the moral majority in the 80s or through, you know, Rush, some sort of weird conservatism with Rush Limbaugh.

You know, Glenn Beck, all these guys kind of became like the political pastors for the conservative movement. And they, and Christians were not hearing about discipleship of politics from the pulpit. And so that's why we specifically started CrossPolitik because we wanted to kind of, we want to declare the Lordship of Jesus Christ over everything, politics, family, life, culture, sports, you know, every topic.

And particularly, I think politics was really lacking discipleship. So that's why we wanted to hit that specific issue and topic. And we hope to do it for the rest of our lives as God gives us time and ability to do what we're doing with CrossPolitik.

So that's how CrossPolitik started. It dropped. Its first episode dropped in September 2016. And I still have not mustered the courage to go listen to the first couple of episodes.

Oh, are you serious? You've not listened to them?

I've not re-listened to them. I can't do it yet.

Someday.

Someday you'll do it.

I remember you all saying, though, previously, a year or two ago, about folks that you're all bringing onto the network, throw away the first five episodes that you do and pretend like they don't exist, right?

Something to that effect.

And we didn't do that. So those episodes were after we threw away the first five episodes.

Oh.

We did.

Yeah.

The Church, Politics, and Embarrassment Over Biblical Texts

So would you say, I mean, just in our experience as well, have you noticed that it just seems like most of the church honestly just kind of unplugs from the whole politic area? You know, it's like the church is here.

We get out of the church, then it's the world. And it's like these whole designations where we're not really proclaiming Christ's lordship. Have you seen that throughout your ministry for the most part?

Yeah.

Again, I think there's a number of factors that are playing into that, I believe. But I think kind of one of the basic factors playing into that is that the church kind of has certain Bible verses that they're embarrassed of.

And so if you're embarrassed about certain texts, if you're nervous about what certain texts say and the implications of what it means to follow Jesus because of those texts, then I think there's going to be certain topics in the world, out in the world, that you're going to be hesitant to apply the Bible to.

Give us a poor example.

Well, I mean, gosh, I mean, there's a number of texts, you know, homosexuality, the text on homosexuality. The church is very hesitant to talk about homosexuality. Bible verses on headship and submission.

The church is very hesitant. I mean, every time I hear a sermon on, you know, Ephesians chapter five, I think I feel like the pastor spends the first 20 minutes apologizing for the text, but then says, but this is what it says.

Husbands, you're the leader of the family kind of thing. So and then I think, I mean, this is a hard one, I think, for people to swallow. Our Baptist brothers tend to view this a little differently. So I think there's some room there, but not very much.

The faithful children of pastors with faithful children. I mean, how many PK children have a name for themselves because there is a problem there? How many pastors have unfaithful children in their house or raised unfaithful children and are still in the pulpit?

We've basically interpreted that verse to have no implications on pastoral qualifications. Because if he's in the house, he's not an unbeliever. If he's acting up, he's not really an unbeliever. He's still in the house, but then he leaves the house, and it's obvious he's not an unbeliever anymore.

And then we say, well, he's of age. He's of his own age. So at no point does faithful children really play into the qualifications of an elder or pastor in our church. So we're dealing with women in the military, women in leadership.

The laundry list is long, and now you can add to that plagiarism.

Yeah.

Oh, my goodness. Yeah, that's been a mess. I mean, I don't know what's going to happen with that. I'm not sure if anything is because it's such a political mess. But how in the world someone survives that, I do not know.

Well, I mean, this just goes to show you that the church can't even deal with their own politics well. It should be easy to deal with. I mean, when you plagiarize a sermon, you're doing a number of things there.

And it is connected, I think, to the moral ability of the pastor to deliver God's Word on Sunday. I think you should step down. I don't think it's not that hard to me to make that decision. But you're right.

It's political. I think the other layer to the Southern Baptist Convention is you have factions that are vying for power. And so that's why they would rather have the power with the plagiarism than lose the power.

So that's what they've chosen.

Sweep it up under the rug.

Yeah.

When there's so many other sins involved. There's theft. There's lying. I mean, it goes on and on. Deception. Plus, what does it say for the man that's supposed to be shepherding that flock? The man that's supposed to be looking out for the souls of the men, the women, the boys, and the girls that he's overseeing?

It shows a lack of concern and a lack of care for them.

Well, what was amazing was if you actually take time to look at the sermon, there are illustrations that J .D. Greer had used himself as personal. And Ed Litton used them as if they were his. Like, I don't know how I could stand up and take a message you wrote, Gabe, and tell it as if I lived it.

I mean, that is the ultimate deception to take the pulpit and to use it that way.

Even Greer, though. Even Greer was lying about his personal experience in that, if you've looked into that. He was Can't remember who it was.

I think it was Paul Tripp.

Yeah, Paul Tripp. A story Paul Tripp told and making it his own.

And, of course, he claims he's been in the same spot, felt the same emotions and all that stuff. So I'm happy to listen to his explanation and just say, okay, until I have more evidence, I won't think otherwise.

But the plagiarism thing, I mean, you're this pastor who's supposed to be cooking and preparing meals for your congregation, and you're calling up Domino's to bring the pizza.

Yep. Yep.

Exactly.

Courage, Lordship, and Decompartmentalized Christianity

So what would you say, Gabe, motivates you guys to just keep pressing on with the tough issues that are coming up almost daily? What motivates you guys to just keep going and being faithful?

Man, I'll never forget. So I grew up in the PCA church, Presbyterian church. Had a pretty good foundation, but my heart wasn't really—I was always a Christian. But I wasn't all out for Christ, really, until I came to Moscow.

When I came to Moscow, God just put all this theology into my heart. I had all this kind of knowledge in my head, and it wasn't even that coherent of a biblical worldview. But just sitting under the teaching of Pastor Wilson really assembled a lot of the parts for me and put some meat on my bones.

And one of the things he said that was so simple—this is back in 2002, 2003—one of the things that he said was, Resolve to never have a problem Bible verse.

Amen.

Resolve to never have a verse that you have to apologize for. Now, you might not know how to understand the whole Bible. Some of Paul's writings were pretty tough, as Peter said. So there's some verses in the Old Testament that are pretty tough to understand, but don't apologize for.

Maybe you don't quite know exactly what the Bible says or what that verse is saying, but at least don't be embarrassed of it and don't apologize for it. And that, for me, was really helpful just to anchor my teeth into that principle.

So when something does happen or some unbeliever brings up a crazy Bible verse that is crazy, I'm not embarrassed of it. I'm like, yeah, God said that. He put it in His Word. I need to figure out what it says, but I'm not going to apologize to an unbeliever about it.

That's for sure.

Exactly.

And so when we know that we're standing—and so that applies to kind of cross-politic and all the controversies we've been kind of wrapped up into or all the fights we've been in. Well, I hope every step of the way I'm standing on God's Word.

I'm not embarrassed of God's Word. I'm not apologizing for it. I'm leaning into it. And we're seeing the evangelical world just is kind of getting embarrassed of the Bible. They have to deal with verses on homosexuality.

And now you have the transgender movement, and now you have this big movement based on feelings, and you hate people if you don't accept them for who they are, you know, kind of thing. So standing on the Word of God, you know, it really is a blessing and a protection.

And so I don't think we don't really—here at CrossPolitic, we don't really, I think, consider the calculation of what the world would think. And what we do is we want to consider what does the Bible say and then let the chips fall where they may because that's where I'm going.

Well, that comes through in basically everything you do. And I have to say, I know for myself and many folks at our church, you guys are such an encouragement, you know, to stand. And, I mean, my goodness, when you guys had the guy on from Revoice.

Greg Johnson.

Yeah, man. I mean, you could cut the tension with a knife. And there you are. I mean, you know, Toby's there just giving him the gospel. And just, I mean, for people who are our age, I'm exactly your age.

And so I relate in this way. You know, feelings have become our guide rather than sacred Scripture. And so when we can see examples of godly men who are not apologetic towards the Scriptures but instead stand upon them, that encourages a whole generation.

And I just, I mean, I know you get that at the conference and you get that. I'm sure you get some encouragement. But I just want you to know that your reach goes everywhere. And you are a blessing to many, brother.

Thank you.

And we've said this on the show before, courage begets courage. And that, I mean, first our foundation for courage is found in the Scriptures, found in Jesus going and dying on the cross for our sins.

You know, the courage, courage from Christ, courage from God's Word, really does beget more courage. And then when you see, you know, like James Coates or Pastor Tim Stevens just stand up. I mean, like how courageous do you feel when you see that brother go into jail on your behalf, on the behalf of Christ's body?

Like that's very encouraging and it really plants courage into other believers as they watch this man of God take a huge stand. So I'll never forget that moment when Toby on that show told Greg, hey, you need to repent and not host this conference.

You need to shut that conference down.

Amen.

And, you know, just sitting there next to Toby and I'll get another little, I'm going to brag on Toby a little bit. When I got arrested last year for singing psalms and protesting and exercising my First Amendment rights, which is still crazy to say.

When I got arrested last year, I'm, you know, got handcuffs on. I'm fixing to go in the back of a cop car. And Toby walks over to the police officers and just starts rebuking them. Like, I'll never forget that moment because most pastors would probably have been apologizing.

Hey, we'll work this out later. Don't worry, Gabe. You know, officers, we appreciate your service here on the streets. Thanks for everything you're doing. We want to back the blue. And, you know.

What a blessing to know your pastor has your back. Like I can't imagine what that's done for you, you know, personally. I mean, obviously, you know, you love him already. But just to see the proof in the pudding when you need your pastor, he totally stood up for you.

Like, what a blessing.

Well, I know going to that jail that night, you know, I didn't think I was going to be in there for 36 days like James Coates was. So I didn't, you know, suffer for the kingdom in any sort of extent like James or Pastor Stevens had.

But I knew going, even in that moment, the way Pastor Toby was talking, I was going to be okay. I was going to be backed up. My family was going to be taken care of. My wife was going to be called. You know, all those things.

It was very, just that small little kind of rebuke that Toby was doing with the police officers just had enormous effect.

Praise the Lord.

Yeah, amen. I mean, one thing else before you go on. I've got to just say this. But like another thing that I appreciate that I've heard in your response is the beauty of the way Doug paints a Christian worldview that reaches in every area of life.

Like, you know, I heard about, you know, when you were talking about how your views grew. That's what it's done for us, too. Like, you know, when you grow up and just plain Baptist life, you know, this is this container where you put church.

You know, this is how you act here. This is how you act here. But he has shown many, and I can't imagine what a blessing it is to sit under him. You know, just the fact that Christ does deserve lordship.

He has purchased that lordship in every area of life.

Yeah, that decompartmentalizing Christianity. That's a term I've thought of throughout the years. That's so important because our as Christians, we're not just we don't just affect our family. We affect the people we work with.

We affect the people that we go to school with. We affect the people we go to Walmart with. We affect everybody. And our choices and our decisions that we make on a day-to-day basis have eternal value.

But so few people consider that. So few.

That's right.

That's right.

Amen.

The Politics of Sex and the Upcoming Conference

All right. So speaking of so, you know, you you you were posing all those challenging scriptures that, you know, Christians are veer away from and themes and topics. Speaking of challenging topics. So y 'all are going to be doing a having another conference, right?

Fat Life Feast conference. So real quick here, we're going to play the promo that we made for the conference. And when we come back, Gabe, if you would just give us the the why that of the politics of sex.

Sound good.

Very good.

All right. Let's play the promo.

Yeah.

So the sexual revolution was an explosive, explosive revolution. It was not simply a rearrangement of the furniture.

Thank you, Jesus.

That's a great beat you had there. Thanks for putting that together.

Hey, you're welcome. You're welcome. Thanks for letting us use it.

Yeah.

So why? Why the politics of sex, Gabe?

Yeah.

So sex applies. It matters in every area of our lives. I mean, just from, you know, me being here because my parents, right, to what happens out in the world. You know, now my parents had me through covenantal marriage, faithful marriage.

They raised me in the knowledge and fear of the Lord. And then now I'm having kids with my wife and we're raising our kids in the knowledge and fear of the Lord. So it's just very practical in what it means to the world.

And Christians have forgotten it. In some sense, for Christians to take over, you know, Knoxville, all you've got to do is have faithful kids. It should technically, you know, of course, God's blessing needs to be upon it, all that stuff.

A work of salvation needs to be happening in your children's life. But just, you know, if you think about if parents are faithfully raising their kids, well, the world doesn't really have kids. They might have two kids if that.

If they don't have kids, they're aborting their kids. You know, like it should just be a pretty easy numbers game for Christians to take over Knoxville or Moscow, Idaho. So we need to reestablish kind of a practical vision of what it means of what faithful covenantal marriages look like.

In addition to that, the negative uses of sex, the sinful uses of sex have ramifications all over the world, right? I mean, from homosexuality to transgenderism to, you know, the world's view of sex is fruitless.

Homosexuality is 100 fruitless. Transgenderism is 100 fruitless. They cannot take over the world. And so we need to recover the politics of sex. Sex is inherently political. What happens in your bedroom will come out in the streets, either through faithful children or unfruitfulness.

So that's why the politics of sex conference, I think, is so important to what is going on in our current cultural context.

So what are some of the topics that's going to be addressed at the conference?

Yeah, so Pastor Toby, he's going to kick off the conference on Friday morning. So we kick off all our conferences with beer and psalm sings and punch for the kids and stuff like that. That's Thursday night.

And then it's a great time learning to sing psalms, learning to sing with the church, with the people of God and eating food and drinking beer and punch for the kids. It's a blast. But Friday morning, the conference will kick off with Pastor Toby's talk called Molotov Family, Molotov Cocktail.

And the family really is a nuclear explosion. And how we view the family with that idea in mind, that your family should be an explosion of faithfulness to the world. So Molotov Family is a really great title.

We had some other titles that we can't make public.

You're going to be announcing some of them, right?

Voti is next. He's coming on after Toby. And his topic is critical sex theory, how to keep Marx and Freud out of your bedroom. Voti's lane that he's been in this last year has been critical race theory.

And we wanted to get him out of that lane. But we thought critical sex theory is a great way to kind of tie everything together. But really hit a new lane with talking about sex and family and so forth.

He's the man. He's a good one.

When I texted Voti that topic, all he sent me was a laugh emoji. He didn't even know what to say. He's like, all right, I guess I'm doing it. And then we got Doug TenNapel. I don't know if you guys know who Doug TenNapel is.

He's our artist, Earthworm Jim. He invented Earthworm Jim, a number of video games, a number of anime. He's a real intelligent Christian artist. And so he's going to talk about lies and the prophetic poet.

Art is full of lies. Art has impacted everything. I'm probably summarizing his talk wrongly based on what he's going to do. But we've been lied to consistently in our culture. And in the last year, the lies are just mounting like crazy.

With everything, how we understand the pandemic, to how we understand voter ID is racist somehow. Lies and the prophetic poet, really excited about Doug TenNapel. He's just got a great angle on things and really interesting.

We've got Greg Bonson, David Bonson, not Greg. His dad's Greg. David Bonson coming in to talk about, apparently. So the first conference we had him speak at, his talk was punk rock something. Something punk rock.

And in this conference, we're having him speak on punk rock economics. So every conference we're going to have him talk at is going to have something to do with punk rock. Punk rock, home economics, the family is the foundation for all economic activity.

And the family is just Molotov family. It's such a powerful means of how God calls Christians to take over the world through family. Through the gospel, through family. And so economics has everything to do with that.

So it's going to be really good. And then lastly, Pastor Wilson is going to come and talk about gay pulpits. The politics of sodomy, transgenderism, feminism, and unfaithful children. It's that unfaithful children I talked about earlier in elders and pastors in the church and everything.

So that's the first day. The second day, we're doing what we call SWAT talks, strategic weapons and tactics talks. And the goal is we got two or three people are going to be on stage with various backgrounds.

But we're pairing the topics, pairing the presenters in a way where we really want the topics to have a lot of meat and ground level application for our people. We want people to come to these kind of conferences.

We want them to feel overwhelmed, encouraged, and excited about how to go home and impact their local cities and churches. And so the SWAT talks are kind of geared towards that. We have Sheologians talking about feminism.

We have my friend Rob, Zach Lautenschlager, and Dennis Sofartzi talking about all people matter. But it's a very interesting way of talking about that issue because it's talking about right now we're experiencing a demographic decline in our country and in the world in a lot of ways because we aren't having enough babies.

Eventually, we're going to hit a moment where we aren't going to have enough babies here in America to be able to keep our own demographic presence here in the United States. And we're going to have to import in other cultures, import in other people to be able to maintain the demographic presence that we need based off our tax burden, based off our military, all that stuff.

So we have a real problem here in the U .S. with kind of what we call a sans dimic. And, of course, abortion is connected to that. And then political strategies are all connected to that. So I'm really excited for Rob, Zach, and Dennis on that.

So that's a number of SWOT talks, a number of interesting angles for Saturday morning. And then we're going to do a live show with Votie Barkham and Pastor Wilson on Saturday afternoon. That'll wrap up the whole live cross-politics show.

That'll wrap up the whole conference and everything. And then we're going to end with a big dinner, a big Sabbath feast on Saturday night. We've got a bunch of food trucks pulling up on Saturday night.