Cringe Pastors on the Internet

Welcome to the Uncut Podcast. I'm Pastor Luke. I am Pastor Cameron.

And this is the Uncut Podcast, where we have uncut, honest conversations about faith, life, and ministry.

Today, on the podcast, we're sitting down to kind of record, pick up a conversation

that we were kind of maybe starting to have.

I don't know exactly what the conversation is going to be exactly.

We've kind of, I don't know, maybe it's because we're, um, well, it's funny.

We just did an episode on like social media and being on our phones and conversation we're having is a little bit sparked by what we see on social

media. Um, how, I don't know,

what would you kind of describe these videos as that we kind of are coming and kind of interacting with in our social feeds.

I would say that they are usually little clips that are pulled out of a Sunday, like a Sunday service.

Usually the senior pastor or lead pastor. And it is like them saying or doing,

saying or doing the most cringe things you would ever.

Like I don't know who are these people that are sitting in your congregation,

that are putting up with this absolute nonsense.

Right, why are you not getting up and just walking out? Right, or where is like, do you,

they can't have a strong leadership structure,

that it's actually like holds the pastor accountable or that the pastor at least submits to accountability.

Probably, that's probably a. Or it's so insular and like. Right.

It's a bunch of yes men.

Because there are some things recently that we've kind of sent back and forth to each other

or on Instagram or whatever that have been like.

I would fire myself. Like it's not, like I love you, you're one of my closest friends, Luke.

I don't generally, I never like preview your sermons to make sure that they're appropriate

for the pulpit of this church.

And even though I love you, if you did something Like I, like we've, like I'm seeing in these clips, I would probably fire you before the service was over. Like, it's just what you've said, right? It's that bad. And so I'm like, part of it, it's like, okay, could I, could I be the victim of, you know, someone just

Cut cutting out one little blip of a sermon and posting it online and being like, can you believe this? But sure, yes, I could. But we've done we've done enough of these episodes to know that, like, oh, if we took that out of context and put it made it into a clip, it could sound more worse than it actually actually is, or it sounds really like thought provoking or whatever. But this isn't that This is not that.

This is much, much different.

This is either like what I would consider to be,

ungodly, un-Christlike behavior.

Pushing the, not even pushing the limits, blowing through, like diving off the cliff

of cultural relevancy, just to try and connect with a contemporary audience,

so much to the fact that it, I would say, blasphemes the name of God, the purpose of the

church, the place of worship. And some of these churches are like pastors or churches where I was

like, come on, you know, better, right.

Or you should know, or you should know better.

Yeah. Like there's like, read the room, bro. There's two, like two kind of ends of the spectrum.

I guess there's these churches that are maybe a little bit.

I guess some of the more completely and utterly outrageous things are being done in kind of,

smaller more independent churches. Probably churches you've never heard of. Churches you've never heard of, you know, like.

Pastors who don't have a significant platform other than now kind of being known for viral videos of like clips that they probably aren't putting out but people.

Probably are like going and looking at this church's live stream on Facebook

every week and seeing if they do something crazy this week enough to, you,

know, steal a clip of it and post it somewhere. And then there's the other end of the spectrum where we have maybe high-end, high-visible pastors and

churches who are doing things to, a lot of times, a significant amount of applause

and big crowd and amens, but is just when you think at all critically about what

it what's happening and what's being said it's just. I need to go take a shower after I'm done hearing it because I feel gross. Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to

play some of the clips? I mean we can. Or we can even just talk about them if we

want to. It's kind of a... Yeah I don't think that has the same... Same punch? I don't

think it has the same punch. I'll play the one that I showed you earlier about the

guy that comes up and asks for prayer or asks to pray. Okay yeah yeah. I had

I had searched for it again, because I needed to find it.

Oh, here it is, okay. So. Karaoke bar.

So the first part of the video, you can't really hear what's going on.

Yeah. But this guy is, it's from the back of a sanctuary, pastor up front.

This guy comes to the front, asking either for prayer or if he can pray.

Yeah, yeah, it's not entirely sure which.

And so then the pastor who is up front, then as he sees the man coming forward,

responds in this fantastic fashion.

What are you coming up here to do? You wanna come take over the service? Huh?

What do you want? What? I just wanna pray. Get out of here. Can I get a little grace?

No, you can't. No, you get out of here.

Get him out of here.

Drag this bozo out.

Pull him out. Hey, help him out. In and out.

And you know what? Anybody who wants to come up here and take over the service,

we'll throw you out of here, buddy. This church is not a free-for-all. This isn't an open mic.

This isn't a karaoke bar, okay? I'm the man of God here. I meet the qualifications. I run this church,

and if you don't like it, then get out. This is not some church where every first-time visitor,

and brand-new believer and people who've never even read the Bible are going to come up and

take over the service. Not happening! Okay? If you want that kind of watered-down leadership,

go to some house church with your Amish buddies and sit around the coffee table with your coffee

clatch. This is a New Testament church. We have a bishop here. We have an overseer here. Like it or

lump it. And if you don't like it, feel free to get up and leave the service at any time.

50% of people walk out. I don't care because you know what? I'm not going to pastor a oneness cult!

I'm not going to pastor a Pentecostal church. I'm the pastor of a Baptist church.

And if you're not a Baptist, then get out. Sit down.

Talk about someone who had too much pre-workout in their morning devotional. Oh my gosh.

Like, I don't even know what that is or Or like, I don't like sheer and utter total overreaction to a situation.

I mean, I think that I think your description is the underreaction of the century because it's not because here's

the thing. Here's the thing.

I think ultimately for me. That is the kicker, is that.

That man just showed the character by which he pastors. Period.

It is not as if he was like, oh, I just lost myself in a moment of passion.

Right. You know, and something slipped out of my mouth that I didn't think of.

Like, you feel something deep in your heart about, like, this is the way in which this man pastors these people, or doesn't pastor them,

but ironed fists them. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. The mouth speaks.

Right. Right. And here's the thing, like, his line about, I'm the man of God,

God, I run this church.

Yeah, you don't like it, get out. Don't like it, get out.

Pretty much, I mean, maybe this is an overstatement, but pretty much when you use those words and

phrases, you show that you're not.

That you're not qualified.

That you are disqualified, that you're not the man of God to lead this place.

It's kind of like leading with the statement. I think humility is my best.

Yeah, I'm the most humble person I know.

Yeah, it's like leading with that. I am the most humble person that I know.

And so when you undo what should be the stated and clear and obvious fact by your words and actions by stating it.

Yeah, yeah.

Now, okay, benefit of the doubt.

A two-minute clip. I don't know him. I don't know the church. Sure.

But in a two-minute clip, you get a really good idea of just who the man is.

Yeah. I mean, I'm willing to concede that, sure, like, he doesn't have to give over the microphone

to anyone like... I don't like... If someone we did not know came up and approached the stage

on Sunday, like we're not gonna just say, oh, sure, give them a microphone or something

like that.

100%. But we're not gonna have them physically removed from the sanctuary.

And then flip out on the rest of the congregation. Right.

You know, why don't you go meet with your Amish friend?

That's the weirdest. That's the statement where I'm like, there is some context that is needed for that statement.

That was Amish friend opened up a church at some point and he lost a bunch of people Amish church or something.

Yeah.

I was like, I don't know what he's talking about, but all like, you know, like there's

a gazillion ways you could have responded with that.

Like you could have, you, you, he said he had overseer and Bishop, like, so you've got

other lay leaders, have them come up, talk with the guy and like either give him prayer

in the middle of the service, if that's what he was asking for, or like have them listen

to what is it that you want to share or say, and they can, there's a gazillion ways to have handled that.

Take him into an office, pray for him, do what needs to be done without.

And you still get to maintain orderliness. The way he reacted did more to disrupt the orderliness of the worship and the service

than that guy's request was.

So it's just...

Yeah. You know what I'm discovering? I think the older I get or the longer I'm a pastor is how little tolerance I have for,

or abusive church leadership.

It just like, I, there's, like I feel very little,

I feel very little desire in me to be exceedingly graceful.

In those situations. Like, with those that would actively do the church harm, or the people in the church,

or the church leadership, or the church staff, or whomever that I'm just like, yeah, my wick

is super short on that, or I guess my fuse is super short on that.

Yeah, and you know the thing that frustrates me is having been closer to having graduated

Bible college, and a lot of my friends and stuff, we all have gone into a lot of our

first church positions.

And the ones I've kept in touch with, I would probably say that just off the top of my head,

doing an inventory of my friends who are in ministry or serving in ministry,

most of them ended up in poor church leadership or unhealthy situations.

Why do you think that is?

I don't know. I think, I mean, part of the reason simply is that when you're new,

you just take whatever job you can get. But then I also think some of it has got to do with the.

Like, the culture around, like, the type of church that we expect churches to be.

Like, some of it's even just, like, organizational. I had a friend who's

part of a denomination, he just left, left his position. And I was asking him, I was like,

well, what steps, because what he was describing to me was pretty atrocious behavior, some pretty

awful stuff. I was like, what, what steps did you take to kind

of report or like seek rep, you know, to seek justice on this?

Because you were done wrong and multiple people are, are, have been done wrong in the situation. And he's, and he's,

like, well, he's like, I pursued everything that I could, but the way that the structure of the organization, the church, the,

denomination, all that leaves little teeth for there to be anything done about it until somebody inside of the system,

kind of makes it blow up or makes the pastor or the unhealthy leaders leave, there's nothing to be done.

And it's like, well, that's a systems problem.

Going and filing reports that the denomination can hold onto but can't do anything with,

I'm like, well, that's, that's pretty awful.

Right. Um, so I don't know, I think it's, it's a, um, you know, we, I don't know, maybe

we've talked about this, but there is this, um, weird upside down pyramid.

That's kind of happening when it comes to, um, comes to churches, right.

Um, the majority when I say, so picture an upside down pyramid, at least it's the way I think about it,

as you think the majority of Christians,

attend abnormally large churches.

So, like...

Maybe maybe an upside-down pyramids not a helpful way to think about it, but,

majority of Christians are attending mega churches Tending churches with really large attendance, but the majority of churches are around a hundred people.

Is that Did you say that backwards? So the majority of Christians attend megachurches rather than the majority of churches, or majority

of Christians just attend regular churches?

So I think I said it right. So you've got, so like, so for example, the way that like, kind of talked about this when

I was studying, getting my pastoral ministry degree, is most of the people who I was in

class with attended churches that were 500 plus. Like maybe not necessarily mega churches,

but they were 500 plus. They were these big churches. And a lot of people think that that is

the normal church experience, because that's where the majority of Christians are slowly

funneling to. They're going to more and more big churches. But because those churches are

big in attendance, there's fewer of them. And now we've got the majority of churches,

are actually around about 100 people, but that experience no longer encapsulates the majority

experience of people's church attendance. See, I would have thought that it would have been

different. I would have thought that by sheer number of volume of smaller churches.

Yeah.

And lower amount of megachurches that while it appears.

As though more people go to big churches, there's just an undercurrent of so many people

in smaller congregations so that it would,

so that while big churches with a full sanctuary appear to be the norm because they're really big

really full, it's actually the smaller churches with 100 people, because they're everywhere.

Right. I think that used to be the case. And I think what I was told over and over in my classes,

was that that was not the case, that it shifted, where more and more people are attending these...

What people have come to think of as an average church size, right? Like some of the terms that

we use to describe churches are sometimes wrong. People often will say, oh, well, I attend or you

go to or that is a small church, and they're referring to a church that's about 100 people,

150 people. Really, that's an average-sized church, and people think like a normal-sized church is,

upwards of 300, 400, 500 people plus. I suppose it has a lot to do with where you live, too.

It does. So here in Chautauqua County, if someone says, well, how many people are at

your church? And I say, well, we average between 250 on a Sunday. It can... Somewhere in that

realm is our norm. And they're like, wow, that's a pretty good size church. It's a pretty decent

size church. I'm like, well, yeah, maybe for Jamestown or Chautauqua County, but

But, you know, if you go to Chicago.

Right, the suburbs of Chicago, which are like famously known for big mega churches.

Or down South, you know, and a 200 person, 250 person church is a small community church.

I still generally know everyone's name here. Yeah.

So, you know, I think context probably makes. Yeah, like it's, you're not gonna, like trying to think on a.

Like for instance, the largest National context is kind of hard.

The largest church in the county here is like 500.

That's a county of 100,000 people. But then it's like, it's that same thing of like

the population, you know, that strange population density towards urban centers that like, you know,

everybody starts kind of having to wrestle with around like election time and stuff like that

because you're, you know, you might be confused why some states are conservative

or why some states are blue or red, you know,

but it's got to do with where the population centers sit.

So it's a similar kind of dynamic of that, of like feeling like, oh, well the whole state

seems to be representative of this type of individual,

but because the population rests so heavy somewhere else, the majority experience of that state

sits somewhere else in that area.

So it's a kind of, maybe a similar kind of thing like that. But all that point, and maybe we'll look

and see if we can't verify some stats or something on that.

But I think my main point is being is that like, we're making normal certain church culture and experiences.

Either through what more and more people attend and call and consider to be a normal church experience,

or through social media, right? Because like now, you get to see more on your phone.

And through maybe your computer or whatever, you see more of other churches

than you probably do of your own church.

If you're like heavily engaged in like Christian church social media.

If you're constantly seeing like sermon clips or you're watching other people's sermons,

you very well could be more exposed to churches that are not your church throughout the week.

And if that's the case, you might become, you might be seeing, what you don't realize

is that you're seeing kind of this, you're seeing a small segment of churches represented

that's popping up on your media feed.

And you might begin to see that that's, oh, well, that should be what I expect, right?

I should expect, you know, a large service with all the trappings, and it should look

like a concert, and it should feel this way, and the speaker should talk this way and dress this certain way.

And so those expectations, I think, lead to compromises inside of who we want to be leaders.

I think the belief, the myth is, is that like a church will grow if you get a charismatic

leader up front.

And you know, that's when people begin to prioritize, you know, churches when they're

hiring for a pastor, they're like, well, we want to, we want to grow and be a big church,

want to be a successful church.

That means we should probably get a pastor who looks like on the outside, you know, whatever

celebrity pastor they think is the best, you know, and that could look, that doesn't have

to look, you know, that doesn't mean that they necessarily have really cool tennis shoes and

look really hip. It could also mean they wear a suit. It can go both ways. Of, you know,

oh, okay, we want someone who's like, very polished at speaking, looks and acts a certain

way, is really charismatic, can really rally people. But what you've done is you've put a

but a significant outward appearance and skill set,

above inner character and qualifications.

Yeah, charisma over character.

Yeah.

Yep. And usually what happens is that the Lord, the Lord will,

the Lord will ultimately balance that scale. You know?

Yeah. I find, or at least my experience is that the Lord will bring the level of, you know.

He will bring the level, we will not like,

he will match the level of our success with the level of our character in him.

Like, it's not, you know, not like, I wouldn't etch that in stone tablets, right?

But generally, generally speaking, right, we don't, I think I said this a few weeks ago in a sermon

that we don't rise to the level of our, or the potential of our calling.

We fall to the level of our abiding in Christ.

So we will not rise to the potential of the calling that God has given to us,

which is great because it comes from him.

We will end up falling to the level of our personal abiding in him and then leading others out of the overflow

of that abiding relationship.

And so when I see clips like that that we just listen to,

it makes me angry because one, I don't like.

You know, it's a dereliction of duty, Yeah. But it's also a, it puts a very big blemish or spot on both the role of

pastor and the, and the body of the church itself.

Yeah. I mean, like, because like, um, these are, you know, there's a, there's a, I don't think we talked about this last week, but like, media in general, and social media, even more so than traditional media, um, gravitates towards what is shocking,

controversial, angry, and it's the same, you know, it's the same thing that happens when

people are driving by a wreck on the highway, right?

Everybody slows down, they rubberneck, they turn, they're looking at, they want to see

what's going on, and so those things get traction, right?

And so a clip like that probably does really well on social media.

Probably actually gains more watches, responses, and shares than somebody who actually does a

really good job of preaching the gospel and, you know, pointing people to Christ, because

Because that's not as shocking.

It's not as like viral making, you know, and so it is, um, you know, I think one of the reasons that

like, you know, cause I was thinking about this as we were getting ready. I was like, why,

why are we going to talk about this? I was like, well, like part of it is, is because chances are

you're running across not, if not that clip, you're running across clips like that. If you're

like, um, and we got to think about them, we got to talk about them because they're,

They're not going to go away.

I think they're here to stay.

You know, people are building, you know, whole kind of like platforms and reach and followers

off of sharing content that is mostly just controversial or just like upsetting or inciting.

Like the reel that we sent each other a couple days apart about a pastor who shoots an Easter

bunny on stage on Easter Sunday.

And then rants and raves about how we're not talking about the Easter money this morning.

And then he has someone in a Santa Claus costume come and drag the dead Easter bunny and then he shoots Santa.

What's going on here? I'd like, what is going on? I couldn't really see from the clip.

Did he have like a gun and holster on him? Like a cowboy just like a cowboy that Texas flags

Yeah, if I remember correctly and like and what's I think even crazier is that he got two volunteers,

Dressed up in a Easter Bunny costume and Santa Claus costume. I'm just like what are,

people Thinking so like and the fun, you know, I I will take this pot shot at that clip if you want to talk about

about like idols in the church, like usurping Christmas,

and Easter and like the commercialization of it. Don't do it on that day.

Don't do it on that day. Or also take down the flags that aren't Christ from your church.

There you go. Like an idol that like I would say seems to be that you're oblivious to is not the Easter bunny,

but nationalism, you know, take that down.

So that just infuriates me. Or do we want to talk about the Beatles clip?

Sure, we can do that. Yeah, so there's, um...

Clip you sent me was a large church, you know, kind of stereotypical, like.

Concert-looking sanctuary, lights, and everybody's got these, like, glow LED, like, tambourine,

shaker things, or, I don't know, light things that the whole crowd's got,

And the worship team is up there, and they're like leading the congregation and singing,

Hey Jude, right? And I don't want to sing the whole song or else we'll get like monetized

banned or something. I don't think my singing is that good. But they're all singing, Hey Jude.

And this wasn't a clip that like somebody took of this church and then like put it and said,

Like, isn't this shocking at what this church is doing?

This was a clip that church put together and said, hey, this is a thing we're doing.

Like we're starting all of our sermons or all of our services during the summer

with like our favorite summer tune or something like that.

And that week they had done a Beatles song. They did Hey Jude as the opening song.

And they kind of, so they just, the way they start all their services for the summer

is starts off with singing some pop song that everybody loves to jam out to,

and they're all singing.

And then once they're finished singing whatever that song is,

presumably they transition somehow into singing worship songs to Jesus. Yeah.

And. You can tell that the crowd is really into Hey Jude. Yes.

Like really singing. Yeah.

I mean, it's not hard, nah, nah, nah, but like. But like waving the tambourines.

Yep. in the air, really singing, and then like, soon as the worship music starts, I mean, I don't know,

As soon as the worship music starts, tambourines go away.

So why is it bad? Why or maybe it's not that maybe we shouldn't just outright say it's bad.

Why? I don't know like because I know I can I can hear the apologist for someone who would argue for

that right like in my head I can hear someone say well like well like you know we've got people who

don't know Jesus coming to this church and like we want to show them that Christians can have fun

too, and they don't have to just be, you know, party poopers. And they can, you know, they can

just they can enjoy a good Beatles song too, right? And so like, and, you know, summer attendance is

normally low. And so we do, you know, particular sermon series and things like that to kind of like.

Bring people in to continue to raise engagement and not just kind of, you know, just resign

ourselves to letting summers be low attendance. Right? It's all in the name of reaching people

for Jesus. Like I can hear that rhetoric. I can hear that explanation for it. I can even recognize,

you know, some positive heart elements behind it. But for me, it conflates particularly like,

and I even agree with a number of the sentiments I just said, but putting what is just mere

entertainment that has no distinction between like what you would see at like a Beatles cover band

concert and then putting it right next to worship? And what's the discernible difference

and who can discern that difference.

Certainly not an unbeliever.

Like the ones you're trying to reach. Certainly it's not someone who's marginalized.

Right. Because what is the difference? You have to have a theology of what's happening,

in those two moments, and what's the difference? And what it does for me is it begins to pose a,

even more critical and crucial and scary question is not what's happening during the

the singing of Hey Jude, what's happening during your worship, whether you sing Hey Jude or not. Yep.

Because if you're willing to put them that close to each other, is it just a concert?

Is it just like, let's get people to sing and like feel something?

Or is it something more sacred is supposed to be happening there than what's is happening? Yeah.

And I find that really disturbing. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it just runs parallel with just a lot of dangerous ecclesiology, a lot of

dangerous understanding of what the purpose of the church in the world is, and whether

or not, I think we could have a pretty long conversation about whether or not.

The church should really work really hard to be culturally relevant.

Yeah. Like how hard are we supposed to try and cross that bridge? Yeah.

Which I think has been like a default assumption that we ought to for several decades inside of a

significant segment of the church. And I think we've come pretty close to getting to the bottom of that well.

Yeah. Yeah, because we see that we're not able to not cross lines. Church is generally not able to,

not be now indistinguishable from the rock concert that you're at.

Well, what is it that we're offering?

Right. Are we offering Christ? Yeah. Is this Christocentric?

And I agree with all the reasons you said, well, yeah, like what's wrong with having

fun and singing a fun song and all that? Well, nothing. Right.

Nothing is wrong with it.

But when we put it parallel to the experience of worship, we don't elevate, hey, Jude, we cheapen worship.

Yeah. So do it do it in the Sunday picnic afterwards or something. Yeah, I don't know

I can't I can imagine context in which that would be appropriate. But yeah, I don't,

Like what are we offering?

Are we offering people entertainment or are we offering people Christ, right? So,

Yeah Yeah, I mean I have a hard time with that because I generally the church that that happened in, I generally respect their leadership, their pastor, and

think that he has a lot of good things to say and is usually misunderstood.

In fact, his latest book, what the heck is it called?

Don't know so I don't pay that much attention to him. I don't think anyway. He wrote a book is Andy Stanley irresistible,

Something like that anyway, he wrote a book that he really got lambasted for.

Because he Essentially called the church to task for its idolatry of the Bible,

Now, you say that it's a thin line, a really thin line.

Right, but we've talked about that. We've definitely talked about that issue.

And how the church has put its authority in Scripture.

And if you say that in any Christian church, you get an amen.

The authority of God is the Word of God, the Scripture. And you said that here in the podcast, I think we actually have a little reel about it.

That actually... Some people even got mad about. Yeah, some people got mad about, right?

That our authority is not the scripture. Our authority is Jesus Christ.

All authority on heaven and earth has been given to him. And so, he was trying to make a corrective of bringing people back to the center of the

church is 100% under the authority of Jesus.

Yeah, which is not like a...

It's not a new theological nuance that's been around for a while.

I think the other person who, at least in my mind, most famously kind of tried to make

that distinction and sometimes gets misunderstood or lambasted for it was Barth.

I think his understanding of Scripture and like, he kind of reworked.

He was a theologian working in Europe during a very liberal part of theology, and he came

up with neo-orthodoxy, which was an attempt to return to orthodoxy, but through a theocentric

or a God-centric and Christ-centric framework.

So it was a different type of systematic theology. So when he came and talked about the Bible, it was again, the Bible as not the Bible,

It's not Father, Son, and Holy Bible, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and it's Christ as we

know him through the Bible that we are submitting ourselves to.

So but that, again, that's a distinction that... Yeah.

So anyway, he took a lot of heat for that and continued to defend it.

And so, and I think it's accurate.

I think it's accurate. And I don't get the sense that he doesn't think critically or intentionally about the

types of things that they do in service.

And I think most would say, and even I would say this, that it's not, that's not like singing

Hey Jude at the beginning of a worship service is not what I would consider to be a disqualifying thing.

No. I think it's a leadership preferential thing probably. Sure.

I just, I would never do it because I don't know that I would just could ever feel good

about the theological implications of doing something like that.

I think that's, at least in my mind, I think that's what he, Andy Stanley, has probably

been accused of the most over the years.

That line of like, how far do you go in order to be winsome?

He goes pretty far. He goes pretty far. So that's, you know, he also has incredible.

Influence. Yeah. Reach, you know, so, but then again, it's difficult to know the character of

the man, you know, by all accounts, he seems to be a man of God and, you know, have pretty,

tremendous character. I did meet him once. Oh, really? Had, you know, three minute conversation

with him in a line at Catalyst West Conference out in California. He was one of the keynotes and,

did a great job. And he signed my book, the same book I was just referencing. And we had a brief

conversation with him. Seemed like a real genuine guy. But I'm hoping if we go to GLS, I can get a,

get a picture with Craig Rochelle, who I also met out there once, but he trains jiu-jitsu now.

So, Craig and I are like besties, pastor of jiu-jitsu. We should do like a podcast trade-off.

We bring him on here and then he'll come on and we'll go on to his podcast, right?

Let's go! Let's do it! Come on! That's not your talking.

Our podcast is definitely as big as his. Not your talking.

But anyways, it does like, I don't know, the face of what...

Is what happens inside of churches, and it probably sped up because of.

You know, I feel like pre-pandemic, it was kind of the norm for a church to have,

at least an audio recording, right? Like, it was pretty safe to say that, like, any church,

you went on to their YouTube or went on to like their, their web page, their website, you would

find like an audio podcast of their sermon, of their sermons and their services. I think COVID

and pandemic bumped that to now that like, everybody's at least got a bad video recording

of their service, and usually in its entirety, posted on social media somewhere each week,

that's now become like, you know, pre-COVID, you know, it was maybe like.

You know, a 50-50 chance as to whether or not you were going to find video recordings of sermons on,

a website. Now it's almost ubiquitous. You will find someone video recordings of things. And so

now what is happening inside of churches is more and more visible than it ever has been before.

For. I hope that with that comes some greater accountability, discussion, maybe some change.

Hopefully. I hope that it doesn't become a cycle that just perpetuates itself where we,

see more and more outrageous things, beget more and more outrageous things.

Well, I mean, that ultimately is what has to happen, right? You.

When you run in the norm of fairly outrageous things.

You have to keep bumping the outrageous factor to hold control or hold attention of the crowd

that you have gathered to see the outrageous things.

I don't, does not mean, not my idea, don't remember who said it or where I read it,

but somebody pointed out that like, what you win people with is what you win them to.

Yes. Right? So if we're winning people to Christ with fancy songs, or crazy, outrageous sermon

out illustrations, or a fantastic worship experience, that's what we're winning them to.

If we win them with the gospel, with grace, with Christ, that's what we're clearly winning them to.

And it's, I don't know, it's hard to say, like, I'm, you know, I'm not a sociologist,

I don't have all the research, I haven't been to every church, haven't been around long enough.

But what seems to me from my vantage point is that a large reason why we have so many

people who seem to be walking away from the faith or deconstructing or trying to figure

out like jumping denominations and things like that is because we have people growing.

Up in really anemic churches. Churches where I think like whether it's a big personality,

type of experience, abusive relationship that, or abusive leadership that's kind of a lens an

air of authority or control or spirituality. And I think that lasts for so long. But then I think

people eventually wake up, and they step out of it. And then they realize, like, I don't have much

substance behind what. If I had to go to a church that didn't have a... let's say,

like, people had to go to a church and they didn't have access to podcasts or

YouTube, and you had to sit underneath preaching that was faithful, Christ-

centric, biblically expositional, all the positive things, but it really just

wasn't all that good. Like, if you know what I mean, like a solid, someone who delivers the

message that God has given them to deliver, but they're just not a good public speaker.

They're not that great.

What if that was the church you had to attend Would your what would your what would happen to your faith in your relationship of Christ? It'd be really difficult,

Yeah, I mean it would.

Well, I mean, I don't know Like, you know, I want us I want to say like no like

Like, because God is the one that develops our relationship with him, you know, and we

can stay, we can abide with Christ, even in the midst of non-charismatic preaching or

whatever, that we can still grow in our faith and still be, we're still discipled.

So I would say, yeah, it would be maybe a much different experience, but I think you could still grow.

Be a challenge, right? Be a challenge.

And I'm not making an excuse. I don't think pastors should just say, like, oh, it doesn't matter that I'm a bad public

speaker. No. I think they should strive to grow in that.

But the question that the thing that I'm trying to drive at is I wonder, is we have people

who are connecting with people's good public speaking, yep.

And not Christ. Yep. And if they were forced to attend church that had Christ, that didn't have good public speaking, what would happen?

Right? It'd be like, would people be moved?

Would people be moved in discipleship or moved closer to Jesus?

The same through sitting through one of your sermons as they would by reading the transcript.

Because one, they're gonna get just the content, the other, they're gonna get the personality.

Right, and I think that there is a difference there.

Yeah.

Where did we start the conversation? We started the conversation with just like,

what is, I guess kind of just like opening up with like, what are the things that like,

We send these videos to each other with some regularity.

I see, you know, I spend any amount of time on social media.

I'll run across one of these in a day, you know, of somebody acting this way.

And question is, what do we do with these, I guess?

Like, where do we process this? Yeah, I think that we need to say that even though,

Even though they're right in front of our face. They're probably not the norm.

Don't get discouraged when you see them Because,

There are many many many faithful pastors. Yeah, who are not screaming at people. Mm-hmm,

Who are not doing outrageous things in order to You know

Entertain a crowd. Yeah, who simply want to bring people closer to Jesus,

and And so when you see them, don't get discouraged, don't fall into the trap of thinking that.

That's everywhere. That's everywhere, and that's the only thing that the church does.

I would say this, let it move you towards praying for your pastor, for your pastors,

wherever you go to church, wherever you're listening to, if it's, you go to Conduit and we're your pastors,

if you go somewhere else and you have pastors there or a pastor there or whatever, pray for them.

Pray that they would hear from the Lord, pray that they would be inspired,

in their proclamation of the word, in their preaching,

so that it would not just be a kind of like rote.

Dry,

just communicating, passing on content, but that it would, that there would be

a significant portion of their personality that would shine through,

that God's working through our personalities.

And so, and then if you are getting into a place where you feel like those types of clips,

on social media or whatever are really discouraging or really angering or whatever they are,

I mean, it might be wise to take a break from that.

You know? Yeah, I think before I was officially in ministry, I was younger, I hadn't gone to school yet,

I was serving and volunteering in ministry, but I was beginning to encounter...

Ministries and platforms where the whole ministry's job or idea or goal was to essentially call out,

expose, or accuse false teachers, bad teachers, bad theology.

Bad churches, and these things still exist. There's whole ministries that that is almost

all that they do is that, you know, I can even think of churches that spend a significant amount

of time, like, in their preaching and public-facing stuff, talking about other churches or other

ministries that fail to be as faithful to Christ as they feel like they should be. And while I

think, like, we've done, you know, and we will continue to do, you know, an occasional dive

into and talking about other trends that we see in other churches and videos like this and all of that.

By no means do I think, like, that's, neither of us want that to be a defining aspect of our ministry.

Like, I came to the conviction that being defined by what I'm against is a terrible

way to go about doing pretty much anything.

And so ministries or teaching ministries that are oriented around what they are primarily

against is, that's a pretty, that's going to lead you to minister in a particularly

unhelpful way, in my opinion.

And so.

And so, some of these clips can kind of lead you into that path, and I'm not saying that

we shouldn't ever be against things.

Not saying that either. Like, we should be against certain things.

But I want us to be, or at least I want to be a little bit more defined by what I'm for.

I'm for Christ. I'm for following after Him, for knowing Him more.

I want to dedicate time to promoting that message.

And sometimes that requires that we talk about the things that are not quite in line with

that. But if that's all I end up doing, like, I've never seen that bear good emotional and mental

fruit in anyone's life.

I've never seen anyone who's like, consistent intake was content that was calling out people.

I can't remember what those ministries, there's a name for those types of ministries.

Dog ministry is not the right thing, but contender, something like that, that kind of defines those

types of ministries. Anyone who's like... They self-proclaim to be like an ombudsman of all

churches and all ministries. Yeah. And anyone who drinks from those on a regular basis,

I've never seen positive fruits of the Spirit born out of that. I don't see meekness,

self-control, love, gentle, kindness.

I don't see those things. I see anger and frustration.

And so the same thing with these clips is like,

if we are continually taking in things that just like stir us up with anger towards that.

Like we need to be wise of what we're taking in.

And also recognize too, to some of my philosophy of like social media argumentation, which is like

Facebook is really well known for in the comments of any post ever in the

internet is known for right that kind of that back and forth that arguing is do,

you do you have a personal relationship with that person right do you have any

context in which it would be appropriate for you to speak into their life And if you do, you should do it over the phone or in person and not over the social media.

And if you don't have any context or relationship, you should probably just move on with your

life. That's why we have guidelines for social media use here as a church, right?

Yeah. Right. Cameron and I, particularly on our.

I don't think in our private social media accounts or on the Conduit social media accounts like we're not,

Out to pick arguments or no, we won't we just we just flat out won't yeah, we'll either ignore you or just delete you,

like um you know, that's not.

And we would have like but we'll have a conversation if you if we have a relationship with you. Yep,

We'll talk about hard things. Yeah, just not gonna like do the tit for tat back and forth

No, I'm not interested in defending myself against an unnamed username.

Right.

You know, and I think that would be wise. I suggest that as,

submit that as wise counsel for anyone who's on the internet. Don't...

Whether you're a pastor. Pastor or not, just don't argue with people on social media. It's, I've never met anyone who

was like, you know, there was this one comment once someone made on the thing that I said,

And and they convinced they changed my mind. Yeah, I've never met that person. Yeah, I,

Don't think it happens. No, it doesn't know,

Okay Well, we probably end for there. Yeah there today,

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