Can The Church Capitalize On This Moment?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:09] Speaker B: Welcome back to another episode of the Think Deeper podcast. I'm your co host Will Harrop, joined as always by Joe and Jack Wilke. We are coming back this week with another episode surrounding what is still on everybody's mind even a week and a half later. And that is the assassination of Charlie Kirk. It's just one of those events, you know, sometimes you'll have those news stories that die down after a couple days. You know, a week goes by and hardly anybody's talking about it. It's definitely not the case with this one. This is still very much dominating the just societal discussion. It's still on everybody's hearts and minds, of course. And so we got a follow up episode regarding just some questions surrounding kind of where do we go from here, the church's response, what should our response maybe individually be? And so we've got some, some interesting paths we're going to go down with this episode today. So I appreciate everybody joining us. We have already produced quite a bit of content surrounding this. Jack, of course, puts out several articles every week and has several articles out that I'd encourage you go take a look at Substack. He has them on his Facebook page. He released one a couple days ago surrounding basically the idea that, you know, Tyler Robinson, the alleged assassinate, what's the word? Assassin of Charlie Kirk, really got into some nasty stuff on the Internet and so he wrote an article about why parents need to be very cautious allowing their kids kind of unbridled access to the Internet. As we can see the damage that comes from, from that with Tyler Robinson. And so wrote about that, wrote about again, should we preach on it? Which we're going to get to in today's episode. My dad's put some stuff out. Brad Harb, we obviously released last week's episode via Facebook Live. And then the extra Deep end, lot of content out on it so far. And so if you're just now catching up to it, I encourage you to go back and take a look at those. But guys, again, as I open the episode with it's on everybody's thoughts, it's on everybody's hearts, it's on everybody's minds. And so we wanted to kind of just come back to the table and discuss some more aspects of it. There's been several changes that have taken place in the news. Obviously Jimmy Kimmel was a big news story that he got fired and kind of pulled by Disney and ABC from his show for the comments that he made. Just a lot of ripple effects, you might say, from this. And so, Joe, I'll hand it to you as we kind of get started with this follow up episode. Any, any introductory thoughts surrounding again, the, obviously the assassination itself, the events that have taken place since then, as we are now about 10 days removed. [00:02:39] Speaker A: Well, yeah, we recorded the day after, you know, on that Thursday. It was very fresh, very new, very shocking. It still is shocking, obviously, but I mean, we were very much just dumbfounded, you know, very, very much in shock and just kind of processing in the moment and seeing all of the vitriol and the anger and the people cheering it and everything else now. Yeah, as you said, we've had a little time, we've had nine, 10 days to really let that sink in, to think about it, to pray about it, to see where the world goes from here, how leaders respond and political parties and how it's played out on social media. And so I think there's some interesting angles that we want to get to in this episode that the main angle we want to get to is how the Church of Christ has responded. There's some other things we'll talk about, but how the Church of Christ has responded and how we can maybe use a tragedy like this to think about our influence and to think about the changes that we can make in the world. As we're starting to see people flock back to Christianity, we're starting to see them pick up Bibles and go to church and things like that, looking for answers. We want to talk about how we can best position ourselves as the church Christ and why we think right now that's such a struggle. But Jack, any other introductory thoughts before we jump in? [00:03:46] Speaker C: Yeah, there does need to be a specific look in the churches of Christ. Obviously we welcome listeners from wherever, but we are very much located and engaging with the churches of Christ primarily. And a moment like this really kind of lets us look at where we stand, look at our preparedness for when the tides change in the world and things like that. And so I think that's an important thing for us to talk about today is as part of all this, there's the cultural response, but there's also how we handle it internally as well. [00:04:19] Speaker A: So with that, I do want to kick us off and we'll just go back to you. I suppose one of the things that circled on social media that I was surprised to see actually was this idea that. And yeah, I'm curious to get your thoughts. I don't know that I disagree with it, but it's this idea that if you, if the church did not Discuss it on Sunday, the Sunday after which would be what, a week ago? If it did not discuss it that first Sunday, you need to leave your church. And again, we've advocated like don't leave your church just at the drop of a hat, things like that. But this was something that was really big of if they did not discuss it, don't leave your church. Then Jenkins Institute. And there were other things that came out of is this, should we ever adjust our sermon? Should we preach straight gospel? Or is it okay to touch the problems of the day? Is this a place where we go the oasis away from the problem so we really don't want to have to touch those things? Or is it something that we engage with? And so I want to kick you off on that and get your thoughts on. First off, should people look to leave the church if it did not discuss the Charlie Kirk assassination? And just on the idea of us discussing these ideas from the pulpit. [00:05:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say just off the, off the top here. I think it's a bridge too far to say that you should just immediately up and leave your church if they didn't talk about it. What I don't think is a bridge too far is to say that you should immediately start to question your leadership if they did not talk about it. This is one of those events. I mean, I said in the episode last week, I was 2 years old when 911 happened, so have zero memories of it. If your church did not talk about 911 the day, you know, the. I don't even know what day of the week 911 was on, but the Sunday following 9 11, to me that would have signaled a serious tone deafness, a serious lack of self awareness for the preacher or even the elders. I mean that's an instance. Again, I always hesitate to put myself in elders shoes, but after 911 as the eldership, I probably would have gotten up and you know, kind of maybe opened the service, maybe given the sermon myself as an elder and basically shared, you know, this, I know this is where everybody's thoughts are, just kind of addressed the congregation surrounding the events that took place. And that was for 9 11. Obviously this is one of the most significant political events and societal events since 911 involving, you know, tragedy like that. And so if your congregation did not, even if you were, if you were in a coma and woke up September 13th a couple days after the Charlie Kirk shooting and woke up and went to church and you had no idea that the Kirk shooting happened, I do think that's a reason to seriously question your leadership, because what it reveals is either a lack of interest or a lack of understanding on how to engage the culture with your congregation and what the people in your pews are dealing with, what the people in your pews are facing. If you're a preacher. And this is, you know, this is not to slam any preacher, anything like that. But Joe referenced the Jenkins Institute survey that basically half. I think it was 47%. Last time I saw, 47% of respondents who were supposed to be just preachers said they did not change their message and usually don't change their message surrounding any kind of political, cultural event. And Jack, you said when I think you commented on that, like, hey, it's not like we need to have every sermon be a newsreel recap, necessarily, but this is. This is. This supersedes just, you know, your average news story. And so I would say if you were a preacher that got up and, you know, said, all right, we're going to resume our study through Jeremiah today without addressing this, or if your eldership basically was like, you know, no comment, essentially, I do think that's a reason to seriously question the leadership. As far as the leaving the church again, as I said off the top, I think that might be a bridge too far based off of one thing. But this is where I would encourage anybody who may maybe share those frustrations of, like, man, everybody's thinking about this. Why aren't we talking about it? Go to your leadership, go to your elders, go to your preacher. And not as the squeaky wheel or, you know, somebody who's just trying to complain, but say, hey, I know this was heavy on my heart. I guarantee you, this was heavy on pretty much everybody's hearts here. Why didn't we talk about it? But. And so that's what I would say is it just reveals such a refusal. And maybe refusal is the wrong way to put. That's why I said either lack of interest, which is a serious problem, or B, lack of understanding in how to take something that. That is of national significance, that affects Christians and apply it in a sermon from the Bible. The fact that we have preachers who are unable to do that and elders that are, again, not to put myself in the shoes of elders, and I'm rambling. Sorry, Jack, you can go next. If I was an elder, I probably would have called my preacher and said, hey, what you preaching Sunday? You know, and just kind of checked in on that and said, okay, let's. Let's bring. Let's bring. Let's move our attention away from the series you're in. And let's take a quick sidetrack here. So those are my thoughts. Again, I don't know that I would lead the church, but definitely question leadership. Jack, what thoughts do you have? [00:09:07] Speaker C: Yeah. And to reiterate some of what you said, avoid the mischaracterization some people would have of, oh, well, you're just going to preach on the news all the time. I think the big distinction is if you have to get up there and explain for more than 30 seconds, you know, more than 15 seconds even what this is. Well, okay, so there was this thing that happened in this place and this guy. And when it's. You walk in and you say Charlie Kirk, and everybody in the pews knows about it because it's been all over their social media feed and it's everywhere they go. I had a doctor's appointment and the nurse lady just immediately started in talking about Charlie Kirk. It's that kind of thing. And so that's what we're talking about is when a story rises to that, the church absolutely should be part of it. Because the thing is, when people come to the pews, they are asking you, what does the Bible tell me to think about this? And if your answer is it doesn't go figure it out for yourself. They're going to go look elsewhere. They really are. They're going to go find answers somewhere else. And so it's really important for churches to take that opportunity to say, actually the Bible does teach about this. And obviously, as we talked about in our last episode, that we think there are certain ways that we should be talking about it as well. Because some people have very much butchered the Bible's response to a very much left out entire swathes of what the Bible has to say about evildoers and things like that. And so be sure it's a balanced biblical response rather than just an appeasement, keep everybody happy. There I mentioned it. Are you happy? Kind of thing. I've seen that kind of thing. Well, people want me to talk about it. So here's what I'm going to say and let's just love everybody. Like, ah, you actually got to do some study here. That's part of it as well. But it just is strange to me, this thought and this is how we get to where we are, where our churches are so ideologically divided. I saw a brother's post about it where he was saying something about, well, some churches just didn't want to talk about it because it raises implications about racism about the LGBT people that members in their church maybe haven't been discipled to hear yet. Like, that's a you problem. That shouldn't they. Shouldn't they know where the church stands on LGBT stuff? That we agree with Charlie Kirk on that one. You know, like, that's a pretty weird thing to say. And so. And I think that's the other thing about this is it didn't happen in a vacuum where they say, well, if your preacher didn't preach on it this Sunday, most people probably knew what their preacher was going to do about it the week before. Most people probably had a sense of this guy steers clear of everything, or he dips his toes in on the big things, or he just, you know, says it like it is. And. And so, I mean, it might be the straw that broke the camel's back, but I think at the very least, talk to your elders about it. If there wasn't a sermon and say, why wasn't there? [00:11:39] Speaker B: Joe, I know you want to go just briefly on that note. This was. This was not a hard sermon. Like, the idea of, like, okay, man, what do I talk about with Charlie Kerr? It's not difficult. You can talk about righteous anger. You can talk about, you know, fear and how God comforts. You can talk about, you know, know any number of those things. Finding God in tragedy. You can find about or, you know, what God does to evildoers. Like, it's not like it was, man. [00:12:05] Speaker A: What's. [00:12:05] Speaker B: What's my take here? What's the. What's the angle that we should preach on? I feel like it was pretty clear. And the other thing, once again, that's exactly what everybody in the pew is going to want to hear. But, Joe, I stepped in front of you, so I just wanted to step in on that. Like, it should not have been that difficult of a. Of an angle to figure out. What do we preach on here? [00:12:23] Speaker A: Well, you hear a lot of preachers talk about just preach the gospel. Preach the gospel. Like, what does that mean? Why did Jesus come out of the grave? What is the resurrection all about? Well, it means that in a set number of years, at least 2000, he hasn't come back yet. And at least whoever knows how many years he'll come back and save us. Okay, that's part of it. What else is there? Well, it means that all knees will bow, and that's not just at the judgment. It means that, yes, God's reign and Christ's reign over all, now he is reigning. And we should be talking about the Lordship and the reign of Christ over every facet of life. That's the gospel. That's the reason he walked out of the grave. And if we can't tie that to this for people and help them realize, well, just. We just preach the gospel. Like, this is the gospel that Christ saves evildoers, but he also punishes evil doers like those that come to him. He also punishes evildoers. We can preach Romans 13. What is this about? Why is that not the gospel? So when we want to relegate the gospel to death, burial, and resurrection, that has meaning. The resurrection wasn't just for him to come back in however many years. It's. I'm reigning now, and that means over the politics. I'm reigning over the church. I'm reigning over every thought that you have in your thought life. Christ has to have rulership. And if we are not helping people understand that and helping people acknowledge and engage with that, shame on us, shame on the preachers that they think that the, you know, we need the 50th sermon on baptism in a year when these people have no idea how Christ can reign over their entire life. [00:13:52] Speaker B: Well, let me ask you, Let me ask you guys this. What would you guys say is the motive? What was the motivation for not talking about it? I said it a second ago. Lack of interest, lack of understanding. Maybe there's others. Because the thing about it is, and not every church did this either, but, you know, 20, 20, there were definitely sermons or at least comments made about George Floyd, you know, Covid and things like that. Like, it affected sermons back then. And so the application for today, being a lot of people didn't talk about it. What do you. What would you guys say is or was the motivation for people. And, you know, not to speculate or get in people's shoes necessarily, but from an overall overarching general perspective, what do you guys think is the motivation for. Probably not. I'm just going to resume my sermon series here. [00:14:38] Speaker C: Well, there's. I've been seeing this online and in so many of the interactions, people who just have their mindset that this was a bad person and even if they don't think he should have been killed, that, you know, anything that speaks remotely positive about him is gonna drive people away. If you agree with him. That one I brought up earlier, that while people in your pews might not be ready to hear his views on LGBT or things like that, as I said, your church probably should have outlined where it stands on that stuff a long time ago, but anytime You. That's why churches avoid the political. Well, it's divisive. Well, I'm sorry. If you get up and preach that man can't become a woman, and you. That you can't kill your kids and that it's wrong to endorse people who think those things, that's gonna be divisive for sure. And you're gonna have people leave. In fact, you know that I think that has probably happened, and I was talking to a friend about this, that I think this is gonna be a minor version of what Covid was in 20, 20 of it, just a church reshuffling of people going in both directions, of people going, I want to go to a church where they understand the importance of what Charlie Kirk was talking about. And other people going, oh, he was a horrible person. If my church likes him, then I'm out of here. Like, you're going to see both of those things. And so division's a bad thing. Alignment is not necessarily a bad thing. If your whole thing is, we as a church can't talk about this because somebody might get up and leave. Maybe just talk about it and see what happens. You know, talk to them, reach out to them. Tell them you want them here, but tell them why you stand where you stand. [00:16:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I fully agree. Because we are at war. This is a culture war. And we got to understand what time it is. We got to understand that our people need to be equipped. And, yeah, there's going to be people that drop off when you start equipping. I've had this idea. I think I talked about it before, the Holiness Mountain, like, the further you get, or the higher up you go on the Holiness Mountain, the higher up you call people to a much higher calling within the church, you are going to have people that drop off because they don't have the lungs for it. Now, your job as leadership is to help give them the lungs and bring them along so that they can have that rarefied air that they can go higher up the holiness mountain. But it's moments like these that really reveal whether you have done your work as an elder or as a preacher in the church. To say, how do my. Not parishioners, I suppose it's different congregation or different denominations. Like, how do my members, the flock, how do they respond to these things? And are they ready to hear some of the tough sermons? And if they're not, once again, I'd say that's shame on you. That's something that you have to start getting them prepared for. The culture war taking place outside those doors because they will be facing it Monday through Saturday. [00:17:16] Speaker B: There's another element to this from the young person's perspective, that is young people like to go places or listen to people who they feel like have the answers. A lot of the reason why young people are leaving the church, from my perspective for the last 15, 20 years, is, you know, they'll go to, you know, maybe people within their congregations about stuff, and they'll either be told, a, don't ask that question, or B, you know, well, the Bible says, like, they're not getting a lot of answers to things. And so we've lamented before, they go to universities and professors seem to have the answers or people, maybe a very, very liberal person at a community church seems to have the answers and the church of Christ does not. And so what does that do? It tells young people, well, I'm going to go somewhere that has the answer. First of all, why was Charlie Kirk so popular? He had answers to things. Why do people go to Joe Rogan? Seems like he takes stances and he does explore things and doesn't have his mindset on everything, but like, well, he's willing to answer stuff. To me, this reveals if you're, if you had a young person who was just walking through the doors of a church building the Sunday morning after the Kirk shooting and the sermon didn't address it. Nobody addressed it. What that would signify for a young person is they don't really have any answers for the questions that I'm asking surrounding this. They don't have any interest in answering the questions. Again, maybe they don't have the answers. And so I think that's another element of when we're talking about preaching from the culture or, you know, engaging the culture with sermons and relating that to God's word, young people and older people alike. But it's a very young person thing to want to know who has the answers I'm looking for. Obviously, we believe God's word has the answers for everything, but we have to show them God's word through some of these events that take place. And if we don't give them, and not just answers they're looking for, but just say, hey, we know what the question is. Here's our answer. Here's the biblical answer to it. They're going to go somewhere else, they're going to go online, universities, whatever. [00:19:10] Speaker C: Ruby gets promoted to serve the queen of the beehive, but then she lets it go to her head. Be humble. The latest book in the Ruby's Happy Hive series teaches children about the importance of humility and how we ought to treat others with illustrations they will love and characters they will remember. All the books in the Ruby's Happy Hive series will help your children grow in godly character and teach them all about bees in the process. Look for Bee Humble B E E Humble by Heidi Fowler on Amazon today. And check out the other books in Ruby's Happy Hive series. R U B E E Happy Hive series from Cobb Publishing. [00:19:45] Speaker A: Well, I like how you said that, because that's what I was going to say. I was going to add on. It's not just that people are coming with questions. A lot of people know their take. They want to be validated in it and they want to know that it's okay to have righteous anger and it's okay to be upset about this and how should we as a church respond? I've got all of this righteous anger in me. What do we do with it? Well, no, we're not going to do vigilante justice or anything like that. What do we do with it then? So giving that, that's the question. And again, having those answers. But sometimes it's just commiserating with them, sometimes just grieving with them. We as a nation are grieving this and we miss opportunities to grieve and to bear one another's burdens. It's not always just answering the question. Sometimes it's just to say, guys, this has been really tough, a really, really tough week. I've had at least half of my clients, at least this week, have talked about Charlie Kirk. It has come up in the course of conversation. I don't bring politics into, you know, into my therapy sessions at all. It's just on everybody's mind. And I work with people all over the spectrum. It hit a lot of people. And when the church isn't willing to grieve with one another and just be sit in that sadness together or to have a strong biblical take or any of those things, man, it very much seems like we're out of touch and people will find answers and they will find commiseration elsewhere. [00:20:52] Speaker C: It's kind of funny when the abortion Roe v. Wade decision, the Dobbs decision, was passed down and overturned, there were a bunch of Christians that got on and say, well, guys, don't celebrate too much because a lot of people are hurting about this decision, that they're not allowed or that some states might be able to stop them from killing their babies. So we can mourn with those who mourn their ability to they lost. They might lose the legal ability to abortion, but we're going to stay out of this one. [00:21:15] Speaker B: I don't think that's what Paul meant when he said, weep with those who weep. [00:21:18] Speaker C: Yeah, that's pretty weird, man. And so there's that side of it. The other side is this is not like a new policy. The churches avoid politics. Let's not talk about politics. Well, as I've said before, Satan runs a really clever play where he gets churches to agree not to talk about politics. That makes everything political. Well, now you can't talk about transgenderism. Now you can't talk about socialism, which is stealing from people. You can't talk about all kinds of issues that are permeating our culture, because that's political. You can't talk about killing your baby. I mean, that's a moral kind of thing. And people just do, oh, well, we agreed we wouldn't talk about politics. Like, don't you see how easily that got turned against us? [00:21:56] Speaker A: Jackie, you share this quote I just want to share real fast. The Charlie Kirk quote. Spiritual problems manifest themselves into cultural problems that then become political problems. That's a fantastic quote. Like, when we're dealing with the political. Avoid that. Then, yes, we're avoiding the cultural issues. When we avoid the cultural issues, we're really largely avoiding the spiritual issues. We want to spiritualize everything, but it's like it's manifest in what we're seeing in a culture that can celebrate a man getting assassinated. That is a spiritual issue at the core. And when we're not talking about it, we're not able to, you know, engage with the true issues that are underlying the political and the cultural. Those are all tied together. We're seriously missing the boat when we're not getting to that. [00:22:34] Speaker C: I thought he had an interesting. I think it might be a follow up to that line you just read. But he had another interesting point where he brought up Galatians 3 and the law is a tutor to lead us to Christ. And like in our modern society, politics are that they are, you know, where people look at right and wrong and laws and good and evil and, you know, things that you're allowed to do, things you're not allowed to do. And his point was he goes to college campuses, talks about these things, and that's what opens the door for him to talk to people about Christ. And he's talked to people about Christ more than any of us combined because he talked about issues. And I know preachers, some of them, are very hard on some guys just want to talk about issues, but I want to talk about Jesus. The issues get you to Jesus. And I mean, if we learn anything from Charlie Kirk, it's that we need to talk about this stuff more. [00:23:20] Speaker A: What a great take. Good stuff. So shifting gears here a little bit, fellas. We're starting to see revival. We are seeing people that are righteously indignant. You know, they are angry, they're upset, but they're also seeing evil. And I think they're scared, looking at the face of evil in the world and saying, man, this is really not good. And so we are seeing a ton of TikTok videos and they're getting shared on. I'm not on TikTok, but they're getting shared on X and Instagram and things like that. Of all these people, I bought a Bible for the first time. I'm going to church for the first time in 20 years. I've never, you know, never set foot in church. And they're going back. And so we're starting to see this revival where people do want to hear this. They do want to hear what does the church, whatever church they may walk into, what does it have to say on this? How can it help me? And how do I get out of this evil world? And a thought that we've all talked about off air. You know, the question arises as we look at dozens and dozens of these posts, how many of these people are coming to the Church of Christ? Like, I'm not trying to be pessimistic, but I'm going to guess a either very low percentage or 00%. We have very little influence in the culture. So I click on these posts and I look at the posts underneath or all the comments underneath, like, who's saying what? And then they're, you know, Presbyterian or the Pentecostals or Catholics. There's a lot of Catholics online that are. They're kind of bringing people back and hey, you should come to the Catholic Church or come to Mass this Sunday or whatever it may be. Like everybody seems to be represented online. I hardly ever. I don't think I saw any Church of Christ. Maybe, Jack, I think you posted something about it. Other than that nobody is representing the Church of Christ and I feel like our cultural influence is nearing the zero point. That the idea of people looking for Christ and going, man, where do I go? What church do I turn to in the tough times where when I'm opening the Bible and I try to just pick a church on a random Sunday, where am I going to go? How do we get the influence back. And how do we get to the point where we can then, first off, how do we get to that point? Because I think we did have cultural influence in the 50s and 60s. So what do you think has gone wrong? And B or second, how do we begin to get that cultural influence back, in your opinion? [00:25:23] Speaker B: This is where the, you know, just preach the gospel, it's all about evangelism crowd. You would think this would be the message that they're championing of. Like, hey, guys, there's a lot of people that are searching now. There's a lot of people that are, you know, looking up, you know, which church to go to. You know, you see those people that, you know, I'm 27 years old, never been to church. I'm going this Sunday due to the response of Charlie Kirk, stuff like that. And so you would think this would be a. A spot where that crowd is kind of stepping up saying, all right, let's. Let's. Let's bring him in. But the problem is, once again, not to just go back to what we've been talking about for the last 20, 30 minutes or so. The reason people are going to church is because, number one, I think there is a level of. I don't think it's necessarily quite the level of fear that people have with 9, 11. From what I've read, once again, 2 years old, when I've read a lot of that was fear of, like, oh, man, who knows when this is gonna happen again? I kind of gotta get my life right. There was a little bit of, like, let's just come together. You know, people thought of God again. But I think for this one, it's more of like, people. What happened to Charlie Kirk was evidence for people. Oh, the people who did this hate God. I don't agree with the people who did this, so maybe I should get on the side of God. Does that make sense? Like, it revealed who the right. Who the good guys and bad guys, in a sense, were. And for the people that are kind of in the middle on it, like, well, I don't want to be associated with the bad guys who clearly hate God. Maybe I need to check out God a little bit more. And so they're going to churches and stuff like that. Once again, the problem is if you're going into a church of Christ where nobody talks about it or it's, you know, kind of a very minimal thing, that that's not really, you know. And so that brings us. What I was going to say is that's not really what people are looking for. And so that does bring us to the question of, like, how much should we cater our message or, you know, tweak our message to cater to people who are coming in off the street. But what I, what I really think the Church of Christ needs to do overall, and I think this comes to, comes down to obviously preachers, obviously elders and leaders, but also just individuals. If you have somebody that you work with or you have somebody who, you know, you're close to, who maybe once again was in kind of this neutral camp and is now leaning towards, you know, maybe again the sight of God due to the events. What I really think the Church of Christ needs to do is just say, hey, this is, this is on everybody's hearts and minds. We're thinking about it. God's word has the answers. Why don't you come, why don't you come to church with me? You know, again, coworker, you know, why don't you come to Bible class with me, come to Bible study with me to really take advantage or have big hospitality fans, of course, having people over in your home. But once again, the issue comes around with your members, the flock, you and I are probably not going to be near as prone to do that if the pulpits aren't doing that. And so people might be wondering, man, why are you guys spending so much time talking about the preachers and the leaders? It's because if the preacher and the leaders are saying, hey guys, this is a serious cultural event, God's word has answers. Let's talk about it. The members are going to be more, more likely to do that toward their co worker or to a family member who is not a Christian or whatever it is versus, you know, just run of the mill, same stuff every Sunday. You know, kind of view it as a routine. The members are going to be less likely to say, hey, why don't you come. Come to our congregation? And so is the Church of Christ in position to take advantage of a revival? I think some of them are. But I think overall, Joe, to your point, we seem, we seem a bit like Blockbuster, you know, we seem a bit like, you know, antiquated as far as, you know, you see these companies that have to pretty much stay cutting edge to stay in business because technology is changing so fast. Church of Christ is not very quick to do that. And so I think we risk becoming a little bit antiquated. And once again, I'm not arguing we need to change the message in the sense of, you know, don't preach Jesus or don't preach the gospel. We just got to change our view of, like, this is the gospel, this is Jesus, and this is how we can reach our neighbors is to say, hey, come to Bible study with us tonight. We're going to be talking about Charlie Kirk or whatever it is. So those are my thoughts. Jack, what would you add? [00:29:11] Speaker C: Well, you have to have the infrastructure built before a moment like this. You can't go, oh, well, let's get up and start working on it. Like, you really do have to invest the time and get yourself to where you're who people think of when they think, I'm going to go to church, you're the one they're thinking of, or they've seen stuff from you or whatever. We had an interview we just did with Marco Arroyo. It'll be up as a think deeper episode here in a couple weeks. He runs a YouTube channel, and he's really gotten the Churches of Christ name out there because he just posts videos from time to time, reacting to stuff going on in the culture, things like that. And that kind of thing makes a big difference. Now. Not everyone has to be a YouTuber, but again, being involved locally, I know Caleb Robertson writes for their local newspaper where he lives and gets lots of feedback on that. Just where you're a name and a face, people aren't going to go searching. Because the other thing that happened in the aftermath of this, and we've. I've even had a number of people contact me about it. Was Charlie Kirk a true Christian? Was he baptized for the right reasons? Was that kind of thing? Like, obviously, we believe baptism is important. Getting it right is important. It is not the time when everyone is mourning a tragic death that happened on camera that thousands, if not millions of people saw to jump in and be like, well, hold on, was he baptized? Right. That comes off as off putting to anybody who's seeking. They're looking for a church. There are people that. [00:30:32] Speaker B: There are articles that literally, basically said, you know, it's tragic what happened to him. It's too bad he'll be in hell. Is essentially. Essentially what? [00:30:38] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, there was a whole video done another outlet that. That was kind of the conclusion. And it was like, read the room. Okay. There is a time and a place to have that conversation. But if. If the whole public square is coming together, literally. I mean, like in Dixon, there was a vigil, and in places like that, people rallying and things like that. And if everyone's coming together and all our representatives are coming to that thing to do is to say we, well, yeah, you know, he was wrong about baptism. They're not coming to us. They're not going to turn around and go, oh, well, explain to me how you're right and everyone else is wrong. What you do is you get involved and you preach strong truths. You preach about how justice is right and that the Lord will take vengeance and that evil is really out there and we need to stand up and preach the truth, things like that. And some of the people are going to come your way and then you can do the Apollos thing. Then you can pull them aside and say, all right, well, in baptism, let's talk about this. I mean, even Paul did that. He didn't lead with baptism in Acts 17. And so there's this like this conditioned response we have where it's like, well, let's go to that first. Yes, it's important. There are other things you can get there on study number two kind of thing. I mean, like, not everything is PENTECOST In Acts 2, where people are literally the Jewish people who knew who Jesus was and all that other stuff are coming to Peter asking, what do we do? People aren't coming to us asking, tell me what to do. Tell me who's right and who's wrong. And we just kind of think rightness is going to answer all of our problems. [00:32:03] Speaker A: Jack, you made an interesting point before. You think about Alexander Campbell, Barton Stone, you know, them coming over and coming from Presbyterianism and them coming over from Europe and coming here, like they naturally had a different way of viewing things. And I think we have a chip on our shoulder. And I think that's kind of inherent. It's baked into the process of anytime that you are going up against the system, quote, unquote, right in the restoration process, like they are trying to re. Overhaul, really, I mean, revamp the entire system. So I think what that's done is it's put into our DNA this idea that we are different and we're right and we're different, and those are the two things that stand out. We don't fellowship with anybody else, and I'm not saying we should per se, but we don't fellowship with others. We don't. We're pretty isolated. And what that creates is either. Well, most of the time, really. I mean, it's going to create the sense of we're better than everybody else. That's a dangerous place to be. Now, do I believe that we have the way of salvation, the actual plan of salvation down? Yeah. Yeah, I do. On the other Hand, it's a very thin line that we're walking toward arrogance and toward this. We always have to come in with a hot take of why everybody else is wrong. That is so off putting. It's like the kid in school that's the geek that yes, everybody knows he knows the right answer. That's not the point. Nobody likes him because all he does is go, everybody's annoyed by it. Exactly. You guys are wrong. Like, I get the sense, right? The actually guy, I get the sense that's very much how we're kind of viewed around other people. Is the first thing we're gonna come in, skid in is, yeah, you guys are wrong and we're right. Nobody likes that guy in any cultural setting, in any friendship group, in any, you know, school or anything else. Nobody likes the guy that's going to come in with the chip on his shoulder and who's got to be right about everything. And so what you do is, you know, the people that have sway in the culture, the people that have sway in going back to school and things like that is the guy who is friends with a lot of people and he persuades people along the way very much like Charlie Kirk, who you can make friends with people, you can debate people across the aisle, but you may. Yeah, you can. He still took strong stances. I didn't agree with every one of his stances, but he took strong stances. How did he get there? Because he was willing to have the conversation and come openly and honestly to the table. We don't do that. We come with the idea of I'm right and you're wrong. And let me tell you why that's insanely off putting last thing will and then I'll let you go is think about this from any other funeral point of view. Is the first thing you do when you walk into a buddy's, you know, their parent died or whatever and they're not going to heaven. Hey, I'm really sorry for your loss. Sorry that they're going to hell. What? You're never going to do that because now is not the time. Now does that compromise doctrine that we didn't say? It's. No, it doesn't. You're compromising the friendship by coming in and saying, that guy's going to hell right away. Like grieve a little bit and tell the guy, man, we're celebrating the life that was whether he's going to heaven or not. That's not the point about Charlie Kirk. The point is we're all grieving this Together. And it speaks to so many other issues rather than he didn't get baptism right. Man, we got to stop being like spastic about this. [00:35:03] Speaker B: Well, that speaks to the time and place thing that you just got to Joe and Jack referenced a second ago, you know, because I can hear people so you guys saying we shouldn't speak and teach truth. It's not all what we're saying. What we're saying is there is a time and a place. And you know, my dad posted some things. He posted a, an open letter to Erica Kirk on his Facebook and he even had a paragraph in there that said, hey, you know, if you're open to studying the Bible, I'd love to study with you. He had people first of all comment but also message him privately saying, hey, I just felt compelled to tell you, you need to put a disclaimer that they didn't get salvation right. And so that way, you know, people aren't led astray basically pointing out how they got baptism wrong. It's like, first of all, I put a message in there saying study the Bible. But what I was getting to with the time place thing, a social media public forum to me is really not the place to step in and to yalls points, you know, point out why they were wrong on baptism and why we're right. Social media, where you're just reading, you know, texts that people write and you can't read body language, stuff like that's not the time and the place. Now you get somebody again across the table or, you know, co worker, whatever, and you know, maybe they ask you a question about that or, you know, you, you know, just have an open dialogue. Yeah, okay. That's the time and place. That's where you're not gonna again, not speak the truth and kind of hide behind. Well, you know, I guess we don't really know. No, maybe there is a time and place for that. But once again, the social media public forum to me is not the place to jump in and immediately point out why this guy who we got, we watched his net get blown off essentially on social media, why he's not going to be in heaven. It's just not the time and the place. And so that speaks to the tone deafness and kind of the lack of self awareness that I say at the start of the episode, yes, we need to speak truth and yes, we need to stand firm on biblical doctrine. Understand there's different methods and different outlets to do that. And Joe, to your point with the funeral example at the visitation is not the time you know, when you're walking through the funeral line is not the time. If you guys are at dinner three months later and it gets brought up and a question is asked, okay, sure, then maybe that's the time. But that's not the time right then. And this is where, once again, I will come back to those who continually want to worry about our influence, our influence with the world and our influence with those who are outside. Wouldn't you think this would come into play a little bit in the sense of man, what's the world going to think? I don't think we should really filter things through that lens very often. But once again, if we're parachuting in at the last minute and all we're doing, all we're adding to the discussion is man, it's just too bad he was. He's not going to be in heaven because he wasn't baptized, man, that is certainly going to damage our influence quite a bit. I went to a Bible study a couple weeks ago with some guys who they are. They're not Church of Christ. We've talked about baptism quite a bit. They wanted to talk about Charlie Kirk right away for me to immediately jump in and say, well, you know, wasn't baptized, guys. So I don't know why we're talking about this. Wrong time. Wrong time again. It was a couple days after. And so not saying that we shouldn't speak truth, but to understand the time and the place for that would be my point there. Joe, looked like you had a thought you wanted to add. [00:38:06] Speaker A: I had a thought, but a die to loneliness, as they say, so can't remember it. [00:38:09] Speaker C: You know, Joe was teaching on some of these things and engaging and taking advantage of this hopefully revival moment. And the problem is that is our only public square thing is running out there and telling people we're right. So many times that's. That's our engagement with the public square. But I was making a comment in that class that there are three levels of engagement. One is the individual. It's evangelism. It's talking to your neighbor. It's door knocking. It's talking to somebody at work. That's very important. And the churches of Christ are very big on the importance of that. But sometimes we don't really go beyond that. When we do wade into the public square, that's one of the other levels. It's with this argumentative tone. Rather than trying to win people of the truth. Well, I mean, they would say they are trying to win people the truth, but you're Just coming in guns blazing like that. But we aren't really involved in the public square. That again goes back to the YouTube and social media and where we are with that. But also just locally, like, are we known? Is your church something. And we've talked before about the charity thing. Yes, it's good to be a charitable church. A lot of churches are known as the place where you can go to get a free meal, but not as a place where truth is engaging the culture and things like that. So that's something to work on as well. And then the third one is institutional reform is whether it's in the local government, whether it's through the schools, whether it's through local businesses. It's things like that. Like the church very much. So many times I run into people who are adamantly against that, that all we are allowed to do is the evangelism, the reach in a person, individually, institutionally, these things really make a difference. It makes a difference if you have Christians influencing your town, whether through local government, whether through school boards, you know, things like that, whether through the, the classroom, whether where. I mean, there's a million ways in which it can happen. But you have to strategically do that. I mean, other religious groups have very much targeted those kinds of things because they know, hey, our ideas can come from both bottom up and top down. And we've got like this, you know, sometimes people, you'll see this in like the workout community or whatever, where people make it harder on themselves artificially. Like they go out of their way to do stuff that you don't even really need to do. But because it looks tougher, they do it. I feel like we do that in the churches of Christ sometimes. Like, no, no, no, we can only go from the bottom up. We can only do one individual at a time. Why, why can't you do both? Why can't you go top down and bottom up? And we, we've just not even tried. But that's a really good way to have the church's name out there and engage in a moment like this. [00:40:47] Speaker A: You look at the gay manifesto though, something like that. Clearly they had a plan. Clearly they knew what they were doing institutional wise in terms of getting into the, you know, higher, higher learning and things like that, the colleges, getting into the schools, getting into the government. Like they have infiltrated because they had a plan and they worked together. But here's that, that right there is the difference. They work together because we're all autonomous. This makes the church of Christ. It's difficult for us to gain traction and to have cultural influence. Because, look, in Nashville, I could go to four different churches of Christ and run into. I go to two different churches of Christ and run into one that is highly, highly pharisaical. And if it doesn't say church of Christ on the door, and if, and you know, if it's, if they're not preaching the gospel every single Sunday, they're going to hell versus the church that has women up there and you know, their thriving LGBTQ ministry. But they both say church of Christ on the door. It's very difficult to work along the same lines with one another because we don't know where everybody stands. And that's. There's so many good things. We had a podcast on this a couple weeks back. There's so many good things about the Church of Christ structure and about that autonomy. This is one of the drawbacks is getting anything organized from an influential standpoint, which means on a congregational level, we have to have young men and women rising up, spread, specifically young men. As we talked about the godly Young men podcast, rising up and having these tough conversations, getting online, driving these things on YouTube and such. Because if we're looking for a church wide billion dollar ministry, it's not going to happen. So it's going to have to be grassroots, as you talked about, Jack, where we start engaging the culture in individual congregations everywhere possible. Dixon county, here and in the town of Dixon. Yes, our church, where we are, can and should start making a difference just locally. And if every church kind of took that approach, we don't have to have everybody get together to talk about it. It just needs to be something we're already thinking about doing and start getting into the institutions and going from there. [00:42:42] Speaker C: Hey, folks, I wanted to tell you about our new Christian book combo. It's two books [email protected] the first is Sunday School Catch Up. It's 150 Bible basics for those that maybe didn't grow up in the church or feel like they're lacking in the fundamentals of the Bible. And then starting line by Dr. Brad Harrib and of course by Will on that one as well, on the basics of the Christian life, of what it means to be a Christian, to be part of the church, why the church does what it does, some doctrinal basics and things like that. And so with those two books, we've got them at a discount on our site when you buy them together. A great starter pack for anyone who wants to know more about the Christian faith. So check that out [email protected]. [00:43:21] Speaker B: There'S one other angle that I want to talk about with this that we're kind of hitting around, but I want to try to illuminate a little bit brighter here. There's really kind of two types of jobs that men can have, of course, women as well, but that men can have. You can have your job where, man, when you're there for your 40 hours, you're there and then when you leave, you don't think about work, you don't text anybody from work, you don't take any work calls. Like you are truly able to completely disengage. Generally those jobs, you know, are pretty highly sought after because it's like, hey, work life balance, right? Then you have other jobs. Obviously if you own a business, if you are a upper level manager of something like that, if you are, you know, basically the opposite, where yes, you might not be at work, but you, you still have the weight of the, of the job on your shoulders. You might be taking calls, you might be taking texts or responding to texts, you might be, you know, having to answer questions. Well, basically like you don't really leave work in the sense of leave it all at the office and just come back the next day, you take it home with you. Right. I see very much in the church a lot of this attitude from the members, but unfortunately it can really be peddled by the leadership as well that Christianity, the church serving God is something you do four or five hours a week at the building, you leave it there and go home and then you come back Wednesday night, pick it back up again for a couple hours, put it back down and go home versus something that permeates Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. That to me is a such a, again, just something I want to illuminate with this point because it's no wonder when we're talking about why are we not really talking about this, you know, in pulpits and stuff. How can the church Christ respond? One of the biggest ways to me, the church Christ can respond is to get rid of the attitude that this is the 40 hour a week job, that you just don't have to deal with anything when you go home and you can just leave it at the office and come back and up, pick up the next day. I mean, there are literally members of the church that basically, again through the week don't really do much when it comes to serving God and being a Christian. They don't believe that it permeates their job through the week. They don't believe that they need to be doing family worship at night. They don't believe in serving people necessarily outside, you know, because they're just too busy or whatever. Man, being a Christian permanent, you will hear people who literally talk about all I need is worship. All I need is to just come, you know, and nothing else really outside of that. I don't really need anything like that. Man, being a Christian permeates every single day of the. It's not the job that you can just again clock out, go home and not think about it for 12 more hours till you come back the next day. That's how a lot of people view it. And the problem with, because with again, the way that elders and ministers can sometimes feed this, because I don't think elders and ministers believe that. At least I would hope not. But man, the way they can permeate that idea is to keep everything generic, is to keep everything ultra spiritual and never make it practical, never make it about their, their members Monday morning, never make it about the Tuesday afternoon, the Friday night. You know, again, pushing family worship or should you be skipping for sports? You know, Wednesday night for sports, should you be watching this show, whatever it is, A lot of churches don't get to that. And so that's where once again, these members get this idea that I can leave it at the building, maybe I can even leave my Bible in the car because I won't need it until I'm back driving there Wednesday night. That's a big aspect of this that we just have to get away from because that's where we can finally communicate to once again, people who are seeking right now, people who are searching. Hey, this is not just a four hour a week hobby. This is not just a social club where we get together for a couple, couple hours a week, sing a few songs, catch up and then go home and come back the next time. This is a lifestyle. This is a taking up our cross. This is a commitment. This is a counting the cost. This is, this permeates every aspect of your life. And until once again, members, and I'm sorry, ministers and leaders of congregations can really push that idea by saying, hey, this is how the text that we're studying this morning will apply to you on Tuesday afternoon, or this is how it will apply to you on Saturday morning. Until we can do that, we're just going to have a hard time having a cultural impact. We're just going to have a hard time taking advantage of this revival because I mean, people in the year 2025, they don't want Anything fake, they want stuff that's genuine and a once again fake 4 hour a week hobby, they can go do that somewhere else, they can go find that anywhere else. And so that's why we've got to get away from pushing this idea that hey, just clock out, go home, come back, it'll all be here when you come back the next day. From a job metaphor perspective, it's not the way Christianity works, but it's the way that a lot of people pretend. [00:47:47] Speaker C: Like it works and just keeping it simple. It is an as you are going kind of thing that it's not that you have to be making Jewel Miller presentations every night of the week and things like that. It is people are going to have conversations and you need to be ready to have it and draw them back to Christ and things like that. And this goes back to the point we made earlier of this is the kind of infrastructure you cannot put together on the fly. You have to put together for years of getting Christians ready to engage people, to have these conversations with people, to encourage people to pray with people, to invite them to church or whatever. For a long time I kind of looked down on inviting people to church. Like that's not real evangelism. Nothing wrong with that. Invite people to church. And obviously, as we've talked about, it's good that when you invite them to church, they're coming to a place where they're going to hear the truth about these things that matter. But getting everyone to Will's point there, every member to go out thinking of themselves as ambassadors of their church in some way and that that opportunity is not going to present itself every single day or at every waking moment. But there's going to be opportunities. If you think along those lines. And it might be, as he said, skipping your kids Sunday sports game, it might be the way you act at work, it might be there's a million different ways, the kind of neighbor you are or whatever, that those kind of things have to be in place. So I think that's a really important point before we finish though. Joe, did you have a point on that before? I was gonna go to one more before we finish. [00:49:12] Speaker A: I was just gonna say now's the time to be vocal about these things because everybody's seeking and you don't know who at your church is just picked up the Bible for the first time in decades. You don't know who's around you that might be looking for you to be taking the right stand and for you to be actually talking about these things and Letting them know that you do go to church, like now is the time to do that more than ever because so many people are seeking, you might be the conduit back to the church for them anyway, go for it. [00:49:39] Speaker C: Alright, so as we finish, one other thing that needs to be talked about is as people are going back to church. That's happened before, you guys are probably too young to remember it. I remember it even a little bit where we were, the 911 bounce, lots of church attendance, lots of people flocking back and it's fear, it's social unrest. I mean that is a natural response. People go, where's God? I need something in my life. The problem is statisticians will tell you you can google the research or whatever, but by the next summer, really by the next spring, five, six months after 9 11, attendance was basically back where it was. And I'm sure there are some people whose lives were changed that went back, really dug in and became lifelong Christians out of it. Which is great that something like that can come from such a tragedy. I do worry that's something that's going to come out of this, that a lot of people going to buy a Bible, a lot of people flocking back into churches. So I guess there's a two part to this message. There's our message to the seeker and there's a message to the church of man. If you see an influx of people coming in, one of those is talk to them about it. Don't be above it for sure. But what can we as the church do and what would you say to the seeker to really help them realize, hey, this isn't a fun little gimmick, this isn't a fad that you do when things get bad and then you get busy and life goes on. But to really plant some roots here, advice in either or both directions. [00:51:06] Speaker B: Go for it. Joe. [00:51:07] Speaker A: I'd engage him immediately, as fast as possible. Have them over in your home, start a Bible study, you know, send them cards, get them integrated into the church as fast as possible so that if this dies down in two, three months, they're already like bringing food to the potluck, you know, they're already engaged at your church, you've already been in their home or they've already been in your home, you know, like if that's the case and you can immediately get them started and you're very forthright about, hey, we love that you're here, we really appreciate that that you're coming and you know, we want this to be a great church. Home for you. We're trying to make it a great church home for everybody and you're really invested in their life. I think it's that investment that's going to keep people there because look, they're still going to be getting on TikTok and seeing true evil in the world. They're still going to be getting on X or they're going to be getting on Reddit or whatever it may be and seeing there's a lot of bad stuff. That's the difference between 911 and this one is this. This is very in your face and it's not stopping. The LGBTQ movement is going to continue to roll for a while and I think we've had some serious victories against it, but it's going to continue to roll for a while. People have a reason to continue to show back up to church. You can give them all the more reason if you are engaging them again in Bible study hospitality, you know, bringing them loaves of bread or whatever it may be. Really think about the ministry for people that come into your congregation. [00:52:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that answer. I probably jumped the gun a bit on my last point because I think it ties very much into this question of, you know, how do we really. Kind of sounds bad to say take advantage, but really, I guess maximize our impact on kind of this resurgence. And I would say it is to carry it out Monday through Saturday. It is to, as Joe's speaking of man, take the opportunity to have people over, take the opportunity to start up a Bible study, a weekly or bi weekly Bible study where you invite maybe members of your congregation, of course, but then also neighbors, co workers, friends or whatever, bringing people baked goods and stuff like that. Once again, just really looking for opportunities to serve. But that has to take place again with the understanding that this is an everyday lifestyle that we have to. The question of is this just going to kind of be a temporary bouncer And I don't even know Jack if you asked that, but I'm going to give my take on it here. I think it's tbd. I think it's to be determined. I think it has the impact or I'm sorry, it has the opportunity to be both or one or the other. Right now it could be very much still yet to be determined if it's going to be like 911 where, you know, to use a different example, like the, the January, February bump that gyms get, you know, right when people have their New Year's resolutions where it's packed and then by mid February it's basically back to the way it was in November and December. I do think it has the potential to be that. Unfortunately, just due to the way that we are wired to chase after our own desires and follow our own hearts and chase after our own lusts. That might be temporarily put on hold by this for a while, but I think unfortunately for some people that still could win out. Where I think there is potential for this to lead to a bit more of a longer lasting resurgence than 911 did is due to the way the cultural tide is shifting in favor of, of call it biblical values, maybe not Christianity overall. But you know, I was shocked to see that Jimmy Kimmel was fired by Disney of all people. You know, abc. I was shocked to see. [00:54:26] Speaker C: That was really funny as seeing the boycott Disney messages going the other direction like, well, it's all boycott and that's. [00:54:31] Speaker B: Great, right, left, otherwise put them out of business. But I was shocked to see that, you know, I was shocked to see a lot of things like that lately where it's like, man, you feel the cultural shift and we've talked about on previous episodes. I don't want to belabor the point there, but I do think the American culture is turning back slightly in favor of again, maybe don't call it Christianity, Christian principles, biblical principles, you know, God, family and country. And that's what people are searching for. And so as long as we have a nation and a society that is maybe moving more in that direction, I do think the, maybe the groundwork will be laid, the foundation will be set for maybe a bit of a longer lasting resurgence. And this is where pushing for good things to happen in government, good things to happen according to Christianity in politics leads to this type of thing where again Roe v. Wade getting overturned several years ago, you know, all the, the, the, the impact of, you know, outlawing the. What happened at Vanderbilt where you can't, you can't do those operations on miners anymore, like stuff like that. The cultural groundwork is being laid to where I think maybe potentially, maybe this is just the optimistic, wishful thinking side of me. This resurgence might last a little bit longer than 911 did where it really wasn't the case back then for the resurgence to last. So those are kind of my thoughts. Jack, I know you haven't gone yet. What would you, I'm curious what you would say too because you are the one that remembers 911 and the aftermath of it more than Joe and I do. So which way are you kind of leaning for as far as maybe just more temporary or might it last a little bit longer. [00:56:11] Speaker C: I don't. There's definitely the potential there, like you said. I do think there is a possibility of that because of the political climate, is the realization. And I think similar to Covid, where Trump churches that were more courageous during COVID did really well. Churches that really stand up and name things and don't shy back. There's a lot of people looking for that. There's a lot of people that were already kind of looking for that. And this might have sent them to churches. I think that's where that bump is going to come from if they come into church. And it's just same old, same old, nothing different or whatever. But I don't think, as you were kind of getting at, the culture war is toning down. And so. And again, I'm not seeker sensitive. I'm not saying we get into the culture war because people are. That's what gets people in the door. No, I. We take these stands because they're the right thing to do, but we got to stop being afraid of them. We've got to stop like, well, we're gonna stay above that stuff because it might drive people away. It's gonna bring the right people, the people who want to be allies in fighting evil, the people that want to be serious about this. They're the kind of people running the churches right now. And so don't be afraid of that. I think that's the. The biggest thing churches can do is lean into. Yeah. You are in the right place for combating an evil world. And it's not just a politics thing. Our answer to the evil is not vote this way and not the other. I mean, that's one part of it, but just more than anything, it's your personal holiness. It's your family. It's the things you talked about earlier of taking it into the workplace with you and things like that. Yeah. Helping turn that tide. Like, momentum shifts like this are incredibly rare. We have to have the willingness to jump on it. And for somebody, if you walked into a church Sunday and you were disappointed, they kind of pretended it didn't all happen. Keep looking. You'll find one. Keep going. The churches of Christ, if you're in middle Tennessee, reach out to us. We'd love to have you come by and say hey to us as well. I mean, this is a moment that people who get what's going on need to get together and rally under the cross. [00:58:13] Speaker A: I think that's a great way to wrap. Yeah, I appreciate it. I don't have much more to add. [00:58:16] Speaker B: So for anybody, I want to push a couple things real fast. Sure, we don't push this very often, but hey, if you are a faithful Think Deeper listener and you are not currently subscribed on YouTube and you are not currently subscribed on Apple Podcasts, we would encourage you go subscribe. It does help. Helps the numbers and stuff like that. The other thing is we talk about this every so often. If you're listening and wondering what do they keep meaning when they or what do they mean when they keep saying the Deep End? That is an extra episode segment that we do every single week in response to the main episode where we allow people to comment, ask questions, give their takes on the episode, and we respond to it. That's available by going to focusplus.org/p o u s just for $10 a month. You can be a part of the community that gets to respond to the episodes. And we do. I think the last Deep End that we did ran like 48, 50 minutes, basically a whole nother episode. So I want to encourage any listener who might not be aware of that. Just go check that out. But as always, we really do appreciate everybody listening. Even if you don't subscribe to Focus plus, leave us a comment on Facebook or YouTube. Let us know kind of what y' all are. You know, your response is, again, everybody has thoughts on this right now. Everybody has takes and it's interesting to hear what people think. So let us know what you think, guys. Anything else before we wrap up. If not, we will see those who are subscribe to Focus plus here in a couple days on the Deep end and we'll see everybody else in a week. Thank you guys for listening. [00:59:57] Speaker C: Hey guys, Jack Wilke here. If you enjoy our work with podcasts like Think Deeper and Godly Young Men and our books, articles, seminars and want to support the work that we do. The best way to do so is to go to focuspress.org.