[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome in to Think Beaver podcast presented by Focus Press. Jack Wilke here. We're joined by Joe Wilkie. Will is out today and we've got a man in the third chair is a new guest. I've been a guest on his show a few times. He does a great work. We're going to tell you a little bit about, but Marco Arroyo preaches for the church in Seagullville, Texas and has his own YouTube channel in between Sundays. Does a lot of cultural reaction stuff, a lot of doctrinal discussions. Very good YouTube channel. Go subscribe to it. We're going to recommend that right off the top. But Marco, thanks for joining us.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Oh yeah, it's a pleasure. And I think you said before we started recording that if this goes very well, Will's never coming back.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: That's right.
Sorry.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: No, but no, I'm really honored to be here.
This is like getting invited to appear on an episode of the Office or something. For me. It's like I get to be on the show that I'm always watching. So it's so cool. I'm a godly young man guy. I, I know I, I'm, I'm approaching 30, but I am a godly young man still. I think I'm in that age group and we appreciate it. I'm a deeper thinker as well.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Very cool.
I, the feeling goes the other way, like man, we got Marco. Because I was thinking, okay, the, the church of Christ, YouTube, Mount Rushmore. I'm going to put Marco on there. Luke Taylor to be like Christ.
Caleb Robertson is kind of like the Joe Rogan with those like three hour conversations, you know, I want to shout out my buddy Carter Buckner, he was the OG he was on there like 15 years ago, but he doesn't anymore. But I don't know, are there any others we need to throw on the list there?
[00:01:35] Speaker B: I mean I, I'm definitely a big fan of Progressive primitivist.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:01:41] Speaker B: I mean just as a resource even with all of the debates and stuff on there, it's like a history archive. And then I also love, by the way, even though it's not really run by a person, Brown Trail has an archive channel where they've started to put out like stuff from like the 70s of like great preachers of like the 60s, 70s and stuff like that that have preached there. So that's really cool.
I'm trying to think off the top of my head here. I, I think you covered a lot of the main ones that I watch and think about there's other ones. And I'm scared someone's going to get mad at me.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: I love your people out. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking the same, like, oh, no, I started naming names. But, yeah, I mean, it's. But that's one of the reasons we want to talk to you is the importance of the public square, the importance of staying in tune with the culture, but the. The doctrinal side of it as well. And so I guess we'll start with that of one of the things you do well. You brought up Jake and Mike Hysaw and the Progressive Primitive Primitivist channel and Caleb Robertson as well. People that open up dialogue sometime in the churches of Christ. We're very. The Church of Christ is a bubble, and then our little corners of the Church of Christ are their own little bubbles. And. And I think you do a good job. I saw, you know, some of your stuff. I think you went to the Freed lectures and things like that. You just talk to everybody, and I think that's really healthy. So let's talk a little bit about that and kind of how, I don't know, technology, whether it is a YouTube channel or just kind of how to open up these lines of, like, these unofficial dividing lines. How do we break them down a little bit through these kinds of things?
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Yeah. One thing I discovered when I started to have conversations with people that eventually would happen was I was having conversations, like, with this guy, and then I have conversations with this guy, and I realized these guys don't like each other. Like, they don't talk to each other because of, like, stuff.
There was a situation like that where I was like, hey, let's do a podcast. Me, you. And then I'm gonna invite this other guy. And this brother in Christ was like, oh, if he's gonna go, I'm not gonna be there.
And so I remember I just. Having that experience was so fascinating to me. So I kind of do, like, being the guy in the middle who is trying to open up conversations. And I think that's, again, why a big fan of people who try to do that, or at least support doing that a lot. It's.
It's been the greatest experience to talk to people and to open up a conversation. And definitely what I found is the church in general is craving that, and the people that aren't are just. I mean, they're just super wrong.
The way my channel started, I. I didn't really have a plan to do a YouTube channel at all. And one day a college student here at the church asked me do you know of any good devotional, like, video devotional material by the church? And I said, no, I don't.
And I told them, you know what, you know, I'm your preacher. I'll just. I'll do one video for you a week, one devotional video. And so if you look at my channel, the first, like 75 videos are just devotional videos I recorded in a room in my house.
And it was. It started off just for this one guy and this one college student. And then I thought, well, maybe the rest of the church will want to see it. So I started to just email it on the church email list just to the. Just to the members. So only members for like 75 videos. And then one of the last ones I did of that sort was a reaction video. Very first kind I'd ever. I'd ever done. Interacted with an opposing viewpoint and among the church here alone, it just like got way more views than all of the other ones. So for sure.
And so I thought, well, I think I'm kind of onto something. And I realized, I think we're craving conversations and even conversations with people who oppose one another. And then that ended up me going, well, who out there does that? And I didn't at the time, I didn't really know anyone in the church that really does that. I thought, well, then, now I have to do it. So then that's what happened.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: That's cool.
[00:05:30] Speaker C: That's so interesting because, you know, you see these reaction videos that just explode, reacting to a new album or reacting to a TV show, or reacting to obviously cultural events and what's taking place.
And I had never really thought about that. I love that you said that. It's like we're craving connection. We're craving to know what other people are thinking about it, how to kind of wrap our mind around things. I was perusing through your channel and obviously familiar with the content. But even just last night, like, what's recent, what's new? You know, what's been the most recent videos, maybe the last three or four. And I love that you're willing to engage with some of those things.
And I was curious, I was looking, you know, kind of through some of the comments and such.
Underneath, it seems like you get some real good church Christ people. But then you'll see these people that come, and we've had this on our channel that come from, you know, other denominations, things like that. You were talking off air about talking to some orthodox and such. And so when it comes to that, what we're seeing with the Charlie Kirk stuff recently is the moment we step outside of that bubble, kind of into the public square, we immediately want to bring them back to church Christ turf. We want to go right back to maybe salvation, you know, things like that.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:33] Speaker C: And you know that that's. We have our own issues with that. But I was curious how you go about maybe kind of coming into the public square and engaging with different ideas. These comments that are coming from maybe orthodox or coming from Pentecostal or whatever it may be, how do you begin to, you know, how do you engage with those? Because it seems like when you do, and I'm seeing this, you're not going right toward church Christ dogma, but you're. You're kind of leaving the floor open to just discussing gospel and things like that. So I wonder if you can get into that a little bit of. Yeah, how you engage that.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: My primary online goal right now is just to move the conversation forward. I just want to move the conversation along. I like. I think we make a mistake sometimes.
We shoot way too high when it comes to people that we want to know the truth about things like baptism sometimes. And we want to start there, and people just aren't there yet. They're not ready yet. And sometimes you just need like an entrance first. Let's move the conversation along and we'll get there. If anyone watches my channel and they go, hey, I really appreciate, appreciated. I. I don't actually have a video about this, but it was like, I really appreciated that video you did where Justin Bieber seems to agree with what the Bible says about, you know, the Trinity or something.
It's a ridiculous idea, but still. And I bet he probably does, actually, knowing what I know about it. But my goal is just to move the conversation along with that and take them further because the more they watch my channel, they're going to see I do videos about baptism all the time, but I don't always need to make it about that it matters. And I think, Jack, you were just talking about this recently, but yeah, my general goal is I just want to move the conversation along. And that doesn't always mean, well, then we talk about baptism now. I think sometimes we're. We're shooting way too high when it comes to our evangelistic efforts when we could just get people there where. From wherever they're starting from, slowly.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: I think there's an interesting parallel there. You talked about, you started the YouTube videos with devotionals. I'm sure it's like scripture readings or whatever else. And there Just wasn't much traction. And even among your own church people, when it connected with something in the real world, you're talking about Bible, but you're talking about something or there's something somebody said, a different doctrine or whatever, that all of a sudden there's interest. And I think the same thing for, you know, the outsiders you're encountering on YouTube or wherever. It's.
If you just did Church of Christ doctrinal videos all the time, they're not coming to you. They're not going to find you, but they might stumble upon you when you talk about Justin Bieber and the Trinity or those kinds of things that they'll come to you for that. And then it's okay, this guy is Church of Christ and he believes a little different than me. On well, and you guys, Joe, have had this a little bit with the godly young men. Chad in the discord. There's guys from across the spectrum in there that showed up for talk about godly masculinity. And we've had great discussions on baptism and instruments. And they're asking, why don't you guys do like that? Now they've come to you for another thing. And I think the same thing can happen with people in our church. There's that big debate going on right now, of course, should we preach cultural events like. Yeah, that's how you get their attention to teach them about the Bible, because it's the thing they're seeing Monday through Saturday, which, you know, your channel is in between Sundays, and connect that to the Bible. Right?
[00:09:37] Speaker B: Yeah. I was just talking to Rob Whitaker from house to house, heart to Heart over there and in Alabama, I believe it is. And he was saying, like, because I do a lot of the youth stuff at the church here. He was saying, like, one thing you can do in the youth ministry to make it more evangelistic is say, hey, I'm gonna do a series on, you know, we have youth devotionals every week. I'm going to do a series on what the Bible says about not baptism, but what the Bible says about dating. It's like a very important subject for a lot of young people. They want to know what God says about dating. So give them that. Start there. You don't have to say, oh, here. If you want to know the truth about faith alone, show up on and show up to our youth diva or something. It's start with dating and then get them there.
And it's such a wise bit of advice.
[00:10:24] Speaker C: Yeah, that's fascinating. Your channel does such a good job I was curious. I wanted to just kind of pick your brain on, like, how do you, how do you decide what to record on? Because there's so many things taking place out in the world, so many crazy events every single week. And you do a really good job of like, keeping up with relevant things. Relevant events, topics that are kind of going around online. Are you just. Do you find yourself perusing X or Twitter or whatever consistently? Or, like, how do you come to, okay, this is important to people. This is where the public square really is. You know, this is what's taking place out there. How do you determine that? And how might a Christian who does want to engage in those things? Where would we go first to engage in the cultural discussions around us?
[00:11:02] Speaker B: Yeah, well, getting started was relatively easy because I was already watching stuff like that. I was already interested in, like theology, YouTube or apologetics. YouTube, stuff like that. Cultural stuff that had to do with Christianity.
I mean, when I, when I started to do videos, I was really seeing the swing towards Christianity, like, happen, like to the degree that it's happening now.
So I say all that to, to say that my algorithm has really worked for me in just bringing that stuff to me when it comes to YouTube.
But I definitely have had to expand my horizons. So, like, the people that I was watching at the time inside the church, but a lot of it was outside of the church, um, the people I was watching, I would see who they would interact with, who they would engage with, who they would debate with, and they go, okay, so who's this guy? And I would watch his YouTube channel and then go, okay, so that's what he's all about. And then who's this guy dealing with? And it's just like this step to step to step, this branch to branch, which is a testament to the power of this format. It's like a guy like me gets exposed to all these different, like, people who are just pounding the pavement on YouTube, trying to get the message of the Catholic Church or Calvinism out there, Baptist beliefs out there, Orthodox beliefs. They're just pounding the pavement, man. And I, I can get exposed to all that in a day. And now the algorithm is going to go, okay, we'll give you that consistently.
Or like, with stuff like Joe Rogan, anytime there's like a Christian type person on there, I click.
And if I don't have time to watch it all, like you said, I'll go on X and I'll type in Joe Rogan in like the. Just the search.
And sure enough, the biggest clips of the episode will be all over X. And so typically, if there was like some debate or some. And now, you know, my X algorithm is very Christian as well.
If there's something Joe Rogan said that's Christian related, it probably pops into my feed on X as well. I don't have to look very far now. Now there are videos that I want to do that are just.
No one's gonna care about the video.
I'm really interested in it. And I, I don't know what to do with those ideas. But I, I think at this point, if, if the conversation is spiritual and it has to do with someone that people care about, like a Joe Rogan who's highly influential, and I want to react to that and either say, great job, Joe Rogan. I love the progression in what you believe or say, hey, let me provide some better context on that from a biblical perspective. And so now you can see what Joe Rogan experienced and then go, but here's what the Bible actually says. And now you can kind of steer the audience a little bit closer to Jesus. So, yeah, the algorithm really works for me now. And I've kind of, I've kind of made it work for me over time as well, doing all this.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: That's cool, that's. And that's a reason why I think people should follow your channel and similar ones like it in that you're going where people are and coming back with takes and corrections and all those things you just said.
I think one of the things we see a lot, and we were just talking about the young people converting to orthodoxy or whatever else, that when I was a kid, we'd have the TV on and mom didn't always watch with us, but she'd walk through the room and she'd see what it was. Well, man, with YouTube and TikTok and all those kinds of things, kids go and they'll come back to mom and dad like, hey, I want to be convert to the Orthodox Church. And this is the first time mom and dad are hearing about it. Right. And so, you know, these kinds of things. Or they saw something on Rogan, they saw something on some kind of podcast, cultish podcasts, some of these really big ones that talk religion and things like that. And, well, there's even.
What's that kid's name? He goes by Redeemed Zoomer. Yeah, he just got, you know, tens of thousands of views on his videos. He doesn't. I think the kid doesn't know anything, but, you know, like, he's very popular with young People. And so I guess the question is, A, I think ministers need to keep a finger on this pulse, but B, parents really need to know, like, what are my kids watching? You know, how do I kind of keep up with these kind of things? And so do you have tips for them on that front?
[00:15:07] Speaker B: Yeah, well, real quick about the, don't let me forget about the parent thing, but about the ministers keeping their finger on the polls.
I've been telling preachers this more and more in the last year that you, you may think that you're just insulated from what's happening in Catholic YouTube world. You're not, man. People, if you look at videos on, on prominent apologists, videos like Trent Horn or someone who I, who I did a podcast, my video this morning is about Trent Horn as well, about baptism. But if you look at the comments under his video consistently, it is, hey, thank you so much. I'm leaving the Baptist Church and I'm starting rcia. I'm going to enter the Catholic Church or I've left this church. I've left atheism. I've left, I've even seen in the video that I did with him, I've left the Church of Christ years ago for the Catholic Church. And largely thanks to you or thanks to other people like that, a lot of ministers think they're just insulated from this. You are not, man. This stuff is at your doorstep, at the doors of the church building.
If you're not, if you're not, if you haven't seen it yet, trust me, the influence is there.
And likely, if you don't ever see it yourself, probably just because the numbers are small, but it is happening. It's happening to the Church of Christ. We're losing people to the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church and all of that. So, yeah, it is deeply important for ministers to be aware of where the trends are. Like the Catholic Church is experiencing a resurgence and the Pentecostal Church is experiencing some kind of a strange resurgence as well, which we don't really, we don't treat them seriously. But guess what? Other people are, you know, I know in churches of Christ, I came out of a church that was very Pentecostal, like before I became a Christian. And we just, whenever I talk about it, we don't take them seriously at all. We think it's the most ridiculous thing in the world. But not to a lot of our young people, not through a lot of Gen Z. And so we have to look at that stuff really seriously. And the same goes with parents.
I always say this, please.
It's such a danger to just go, yeah, my kids on Tick tock all day and they're just watching silly like cartoon type videos, you know, they're watching the equivalent, equivalent of like spongebob, which is what I watched when I was a little kid while my parents were doing whatever they were doing.
They're not.
They are absolutely not. And you guys know this, this divide with like parents and their children, like with Gen Z and their parents were like, their kids believe like the complete opposite stuff to them. Religiously, politically.
In. In every major area there's kids who go, I believe the exact opposite of my parents. And the parents have no idea because they just don't know what they're watching. So yeah, parents should be at least moderately culturally aware, I want to say, because that stuff is out there and it's in your kid's phone and if they just have full access to that, you have to be aware.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Yeah. The other thing about the parents, the kids believing different than their parents is it seems that it's like growing extremism by the generations. Right. Like Gen Z kids are either hard left or hard right. There's not really a moderate middle anymore.
And I think some people are shocked. I wrote about this with Israel a while back. Like a lot of people, you know, 35, 40 and up think alright, Israel's cool. A lot of people 50 and up think Israel is great. You know, like just for one example, basically everybody under 20 hates them. Like, this is a different world we live in. And those are the kind of things that people kind of find out. Kids or members of their youth group or whatever believe these kind of things. You really do have to kind of keep a finger on the pulse.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It'll be at your detriment if you don't. If you think you can just be insulated from that.
[00:18:51] Speaker C: I want to come back to that in just a second because I'm curious to get your thoughts on what you think are leading kids astray. But Jack and I have talked about this a decent amount. It feels like I want to get your thoughts on this since we're just kind of talking here. It feels like the church Christ lives on Facebook and what you talked about, YouTube, you talk about X, right? Reddit is like the wild West. But even TikTok things like that, I feel like that's where public discourse, talk about this public square and public discourse, I feel like that's where it's taking place.
Want to get your thoughts on that real fast on, you know, Facebook Seems great for personal connections, but it also seems like there's an echo chamber that takes place. You get your friends, they're talking about the same stuff.
And I feel like Church of Christ lives on there to our detriment because we're not really aware of what's going on in the world around us.
This is just our theory, I guess, that Church of Christ lives on Facebook. What are your thoughts on that?
[00:19:44] Speaker B: It's like Facebook is the official sponsor of Church of Christ communication.
And now the. Yeah, the online communication brought to you by Facebook and Churches of Christ. No, I totally agree. And. And again, I love Facebook. I use it. You guys use it. But that is so true. I know that, like, I have felt the absence of the presence of Churches of Christ on YouTube, on X, pretty much anywhere else. That's not Facebook.
You can get Church of Christ stuff on Facebook pretty solidly, and the echo chamber chamber, like you mentioned. But in terms of just the general. The rest of social media, I totally agree with you. And I feel the absence of it now that I've been more active on X and I want to be. I want to be engaging people there as well. It seems like that has been very useful, and I think it's probably been very useful for you, Jack, trying to.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: Trying to get the conversation going there. Because the one thing about that that concerns me is it's a generational thing. And it's great that you get a lot more clicks, a lot more likes, a lot more shares on Facebook. For sure, that is read by people over 45.
And not that there's no younger people. I'm under 45. And, you know, we all are. We're on there. We see stuff on there. But as far as, like, going out and connecting with people, it's not going to be a lot of young people. And as a church, you have to have some kind of presence there. I was a brother, Waylon Deaver brought this up, that we're not on X at all. And so I started looking like, you know, how bad is it? And just like, major accounts, major ministry accounts haven't tweeted since, like 2020.
They just gave up on the platform and abandoned it. And I haven't tweeted from the Focus Press account much either, but that's because I'm on there as myself. But, like, you just look around, how many preachers, how many of the headliners at the Freed lectures or at PTP tweet? They don't. How many of them are on YouTube other than maybe post posting their sermon or a YouTube live, but clips and shorts and things like that. The kind of thing Marco's doing. Right. Reacting like it's not there. And I don't think that's a healthy thing for generationally. For the church.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, someone just talked about this. I know you're a huge fan of Gavin Ortland and.
Huge. Yeah, he just posted about this on X actually. He said if you're an ordained minister, a credentialed academic, or concerned about the disproportionate influence that social media influencers are having, one plea I can make is speak up. The simple fact is that spiritual hunger and anxiety is so desperate right now that if people don't find good teachers and mentors, they will learn from bad ones. For better or worse, social media is shaping people. I know that social media has all kinds of problems, but the missiological needs are so deep and so real. If you are hesitant about leaning in, you may be the kind of person who is most needed, especially if you have a track record of ministry faithfulness and. Or academic work and. And yeah, he talks more about this. I think that's something even Jack Wilkie and Gavin Ortling can agree on.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: That's the first one. That's a really good point.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: No, but it's totally true. Yeah.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: Hey, folks, you've probably heard us talk about Focus plus and the Deep End. If you're wondering what that is. Focus plus is our subscription service available through Patreon. Every week, members get all kinds of Christian content for your walk, including daily devotionals, a sermon of the week, and our understudied teaching series, which Joe and I lead through obscure and less covered books of the Bible like Leviticus and Revelation. We also have the Deep End, of course, which is our bonus segment exclusively for Think Deeper listeners, where you can submit your comments on an episode and we will respond and have a bit of a Q and A each and every week. That drops every Friday. So if you're interested and want to know more, check that out. Go to patreon.com and search focus or go to focuspress.org/.
[00:23:38] Speaker C: And this speaks to, you know, kind of coming back to the question that I left for a second because we don't have a ton of people speaking up, I feel like it's easy for kids to get inundated with Catholic doctrine. With orthodoxy. We're seeing a lot go toward high church and Anglicanism and things like that. But even just from the Calvinists, as you talked about, the Pentecostals are getting.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: On there more.
[00:24:00] Speaker C: What should parents be aware of? You know, what do you think is.
I guess there's a couple different questions that kind of come out of this, but I want to know what's leading people astray and what you see as the biggest issues leading people astray and maybe some things that parents can watch out for. We talked about that, of not just allowing your kid to be endlessly on TikTok, but specifically the doctrinal things that you see leading people astray. And I want to get your thoughts on why that is or why you think that is.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: Yeah, the conversation is happening. If I could tell parents anything or just churches, people, the conversation is happening and two things are true conversation happening and your kids are online and they're talking, everyone's talking about something.
So then the question is, well, who's right now? Who seems to be dominating the conversation? I would argue Catholics are dominating the conversation.
They seemingly, like right at towards the end of the 90s, like mid 2000s, maybe you can say, have begun like a concerted effort to be really good at apologetics. Really good. And they are so good at apologetics. They do something really cool, which is they aren't making the same arguments in the same way that they made them in the 90s or the 80s or the 70s in churches of Christ. We're doing, they are reshaping, restructuring their arguments to make them harder to deal with or just different so that it's not like, well, we answered that 20 years ago. You didn't answer this version of the argument. And I, I found this about people like Trent Horn and others. I, I, I talked with a couple of preachers in my lead up to my study. My conversation with Trent Horn that, that I posted and I said, hey, help me about the Catholic Church. And they go, well, you know, I, I, there's a preacher who did a debate with a very prominent Catholic like in the 80s or 90s, and virtually everything he told me in my podcast with Trent Horn was no help. It was irrelevant, outdated. I'm sure it was super good at the time, but they have restructured, reworked all their stuff. I know multiple people in my circle in the local church out here who are deeply considering Catholicism and it's because they are again, they're pounding the pavement. They are in the conversation constantly. They found their way in and I love that they have with pro life stuff. I love that they are big on pro life. I basically agree with them about all that stuff.
But they, they are, Trent Horn has said this. He started doing his like apologist career with pro life stuff. And he realized that he can show people, well, if you're going to be pro life, you have to have that rooting in some kind of a moral system. And what system is better out there than Catholicism as, like, the system. And so. And that's been a very popular appeal to a lot of people. So what do they do? They do what I'm trying to do, but just on a big level, which is, all right, here's like, cultural stuff, moral issues of the day, and then let's dominate that conversation. Let's. Let's have those disagreements, let's win those debates, and then let's show people where they should go now that they are persuaded or seeing a better argument that they've seen before. So my argument, I don't know what you guys think my argument is, who's dominating the conversation right now has got to be Catholics.
[00:27:22] Speaker A: That's interesting. Well, and that I was just kind of thinking through, like, how can we evolve our stuff? And I, you know, your first point there of it is wading into the cultural stuff, talking about it, and then bringing them back onto your turf to have the doctrinal discussion.
That's why. And I know, you know, Marco, you and I have talked about this on your channel a number of times. It just drives me crazy when churches think, no, no, no, I'm not supposed to talk about that kind of stuff. I'm gonna stay out of that stuff that's going on in the world. Like, no, I mean, pro life abortion, like that. That is a big in for a lot of people. And so.
But then you think about kind of our apologetics thing. You're right. It's. It's not that it's wrong, but it hasn't changed. And I think it's.
Well, I've seen young people do that. You know, we did an episode on the ex Church of Christ people and sourced kind of the subreddit where they complain about it. And they are. Our arguments are a laughing stock. You know, some of the. And I, I think it's right. But as far as, like, how to address them and the ways they're thinking, it just doesn't connect anymore. Some of the lessons and so that kind of thing, man. I think it would take a lot of thinking as to what exactly the changes would be, but it makes sense that there is a need for an update.
[00:28:34] Speaker C: I think it starts with engaging in cultural. Because exactly as you said, Marco, like, there may be. It may be the same question, but asked in a Different way. And we have to learn how to navigate. The way a Gen Z is going to ask a question is not the way that a boomer is going to ask a question.
So we could give them the same pat answer. But a lot of things have changed. You know, we talk about being in our feelings more and things like that. Like we have to be able to adjust. We're not adjusting the message itself, but we're adjusting the presentation of the message. And I think that's where we really struggle is we're assuming.
I just get the sense we're very left brain in the church. Like, well, of course we're going to stick to, we're going to stick to doctrine, we're going to stick to the Bible and it's whatever the Bible says, which is fantastic except for the fact that we don't recognize how it intertwines with people's emotional lives.
And so bringing it, making it real for people, connecting to something they are emotional and passionate about, I. E. You know, fight for life. Right. You know, the being pro life instead of pro choice, those are very big passion points for people. And so it starts on something they're already emotional about, they're already engaged with, and then we go from there. And I feel like for us, we almost stay very above the muck and mire of the emotion and the passion because you see the way that we interact with like Pentecostalism and we interact with others that are very emotional. We go, whoa, we can't do that. And so we stay very left brain, you know, let's just stick to the word. I think that's to our detriment, personally. I think that's to our detriment that we aren't able to adjust the message to a younger generation that is a lot more in the feelings. It doesn't again mean that the message itself needs to change. But I do think we can do a better presentation on the emotional piece, if that makes sense.
[00:30:08] Speaker B: Yeah, this didn't happen on my YouTube channel actually, but I did, I gave, I gave the Sunday morning crowd here at the church a little bit of flavor of in between Sundays in a sermon, I don't know, maybe nine months ago or a year ago where I'd done a video about like, I, I don't remember which church. It was some big mega church, had like a men's day and you know, our men's days in churches of Christ, we have breast breakfast, we have biscuits and gravy and you know, we have a devo or something like that. And there was this Men's Day, this huge church did, and they had like a guy riding a tank, shooting a fake machine guns, like, squishing cars and stuff. And. Yeah, and it was like. It's like crazy, like a hair metal music playing and stuff. And I showed some snapshots of that. There was one where, like, they had a guy swallow a sword with fire all around him and stuff at this Men's Day.
And I don't know if I can get my elders here to justify that in our budget, but I showed some. Just pictures of it. I didn't play the video or anything like that. And there were some members that were kind of perturbed about that. There was one member in particular who said, I need to talk to you about that. That stuff that you did. And they said, you know what? Don't show me that stuff. Don't show me the tanks. Don't show me the guy shooting the fake machine gun. That's. I don't want to see that stuff. That. That's a. That's nonsense. That's a mess.
That's just crazy. I don't want to see it. And I told that member, well, that's the problem, because, like, your kids are seeing it, your grandkids are seeing it. That's a mega church. It's a megachurch. The fact that you don't want to see it is a big problem because it's happening. So, like, we've got to address it. And I was. I wasn't going like, hey, don't you guys see how cool this is?
[00:31:55] Speaker A: Right.
[00:31:55] Speaker B: I was saying, like, this is a major problem. We have to contend with this. And like you were saying, we have to find out, how do I get those people to realize that's not what church is?
And how do I. How do I do more than just say, that's ridiculous, that's silly. There's 10,000 people in that room.
They don't think it's ridiculous. The vast majority of them go there and they go, wow, how cool is this? How do we get those people? We're not going to get them by going, well, that's been dealt with. That's silly. The church isn't this. We. We have to. We have to be more intentional and specific towards those people.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: Yeah, that's.
We're really great at theory, but why do people go to those churches? Because they see action, they see momentum. They see engagement with ideas and cultural things and things like that. And I worry that's one of the reasons why we lose Young people, it's kind of like, yeah, you can throw all the answers at me, but what are you showing me? And that's.
And I think that's the Catholic, the orthodox appeal sometimes. Is that the fancy nature of it? Like, there's an external appeal to it, and then, no, we're not gonna match that. But, like, there's got to be something besides just theory, tangibility to it. Yeah, exactly.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: Yeah. You've got them again. You've got them going.
We're going to give. We're going to make a concerted effort to be great debaters for the pro life position.
And so then when our young people want to go defend pro life at their school and they want to learn about pro life, they're not getting that from their preacher. They have to go on YouTube and learn from Catholic guys about pro life. And then guess what? Now they get the Catholic videos in their algorithm and they go, wow, that guy, that's great on pro life. He's also great on this issue. And yeah, maybe like my video today is about infant baptism and like the early church.
Maybe like that is true that all the early church for 1500 years, this is the claim that they make. They believed in infant baptism. And so that's how it happens. So when we're not. When we are not in the moral conversations, when we are not in the.
I think you earlier, Joe, called it the marketplace, which is literally what it is.
That's where the people hang out. Like, whenever I. This doesn't happen in America really that much, but whenever I've gone to, like, Mexico and for evangelism, if you want to just evangelize to people, just go to the marketplace, go to the, the town square, and people are literally just sitting there and you walk up to them and talk to them and they go, oh, hey, they're happy to. That's what they're there for.
And the same thing. It's not like that in America as much, but online, that's what they're there for. They're there to hear your view, they're there to hear opposing views, and they're there to talk about it.
Go there. Go there and talk to him.
[00:34:33] Speaker A: That's very much Paul in Acts 17, right? I mean, showed up. They've got their idols. He points out their idols. He talks about the things that concern them, and he steers that to Christ and the resurrection and all those things to have that conversation. But yeah, well, he knew their own stuff, you know, their poets, their. Their stuff. Like he was plugged into Cultural things for sure.
[00:34:54] Speaker C: So going to shift gears a little bit because you talked about the young people.
I would love to see out of this and not to, you know, I'd love to see you just explode and millions of subscribers, but I'd love to see thousands of young church Christ guys getting into this. Yes, some are going to fall off. Some are going to make two videos and realize it's not for them. But we want to see a lot of young people and really, I mean, old people too, I suppose, which is probably not as likely as the young guys, guys your age and down really getting into this. And so I was curious to get your tips on that because we're talking about shielding young people from that. But I think one of the best things we can do and what we try with godly young men and what you're doing and such is okay, we don't just want to protect it from, we want to have our own ideas out there. And we're talking about this a lot.
And so what is the point of entry? How would you, or maybe what are some tips that you'd give Maybe somebody who's listening or we got a lot of parents that listen to this. Maybe they want to get their kids set up with equipment or whatever it is to start making some of these videos and diva, maybe it starts as a diva like yours did. I think that's fantastic.
What are some tips that you'd give the average guy, the average church Chrysler so we can start getting more people online?
[00:36:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:05] Speaker B: If you have a heart for this stuff, if you want our voice to be out there. And don't you think our voice should be out there more as well? Of course. We all do. Don't you think people on YouTube need to hear what we, the stuff that we preach? Of course.
What I would say and I don't know how the more of us that are out there, some of us are going to make it big. Some of us are going to catch on to something and ride some kind of a wave and be huge. A lot of us, though, are not like, like I'm not famous. Right. And this is what I would tell, this is what I've told people because I've had multiple people since I've been doing my channel say, hey, I want to start a YouTube channel. Like, what advice would you give? Don't think you're going to become famous and don't make it about that. Don't try to become famous. I, I, I legitimately mean this. Like I said, I didn't even want to do this YouTube channel. It kind of fell in my lap.
I don't have any desire to be famous if it happened, glory to God, and I'll do everything I can do to use that for him to get glory.
That's all I, that's all I cared about since the beginning. Again, I, I can prove to anyone. I've. I did these videos for a year and a half, just emailing it to the local church. I wasn't trying to like, get out there at all. It was just for. It started with one college student.
I was only sending it to him for a couple weeks.
So, yeah, I, I've, I've seen Christians start YouTube channels and they stop after a few months or they don't even make it to like a year because it didn't grow fast enough for them.
I've seen many now. I found a list of a bunch of churches, brethren from churches of Christ, who have started YouTube channels. And it's staggering how fast the drop off is.
I don't care how fast my channel grows. In some existential sense, that's not the deciding factor for whether or not I am doing in between Sundays.
I have seen enough in my first year of doing YouTube videos to justify doing them indefinitely. Like I might right now. There is no end in sight remotely. No. Part of me goes, when is this going to be over? This can't end. That's truly the way I think. And again, I, I've got 1500 subscribers. I'm not, I'm not blowing up at all in that sense.
I was willing to give years to this channel before I ever even remotely considered stopping. And I saw enough in the first year to go, oh, I need do this for as long as I can right now.
So start.
Be thoughtful in what you say. Capitalize on what people are interested in. Like, we've been talking about constantly rework and restrategize in order to be efficient with the videos that you do. You can't just talk about the stuff that you like the most.
If you want to be evangelistic, at least you've got to go to where people are.
Yeah. And don't start with a mindset that says, well, if this thing doesn't take off quickly, I'm just going to spend my time somewhere else. If we did that about anything in life, we probably would never accomplish anything. So. And you guys know, you kind of have to put in the hard yards before you start to see stuff tangibly. I'm not famous, but I definitely feel very famous sometimes. I Get messages from people that I don't know. I'm sure you guys do, too, all the time. To go, thank you so much for your videos. You don't know me. When I was at Reed Hardman and polishing the pulpit, multiple people, several people I don't know going, hey, I know you don't know me. I just recognize you're. You're the YouTube guy. You're in between Sundays, right? Yes, I am. Thank you so much. That was instrumental, helping me evangelize to my friend. Or it was. I've heard this.
Your videos have kept me in the church of Christ.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:39:55] Speaker B: And again, I'm not like some big guy. I'm just doing videos from a biblical perspective and saying, here's. Like, here's why you should know what we in churches of Christ are preaching.
[00:40:06] Speaker A: That's really cool.
[00:40:07] Speaker B: And it. It's amazing. It makes me feel so famous. Like, in that sense, I already feel like I'm Joe Rogan.
And I know I'm not even that. But if there's, like. If I go somewhere and there's like, two guys that go, hey, thank you so much that I don't know, those are just two guys that walked up to me. What about all the other guys that are not at PTP or that are not at Freedom?
It's way bigger than I think. The. The thought that not just in churches of Christ, but outside of churches of Christ, when I go, all right, guys, I'm going to talk about Justin bieber Now, like, 200 people go, okay, I want to hear that.
[00:40:41] Speaker A: Right?
[00:40:41] Speaker B: That's crazy to me.
It blows my mind. It's making me yell right now. It. Oh, it's such a crazy thought. That's a big deal.
And so don't try to be famous. Like, you're not going to be Joe Rogan. In all likelihood, you're not going to be him, maybe, but probably not. And so make it. If you make it about that, you're not going to do this thing.
[00:41:01] Speaker A: Well, especially even if you just get it out to people in your vicinity so they know they can talk to you about it. They know that you have views. They know they can ask you about those kind of things.
That is invaluable in itself. I mean, if nobody ever finds it on the algorithm. But, you know, 15 people in your own church are watching it, and it helps them navigate things. Like, you say, it might keep them out of the Catholic Church or might be a thing that answers questions they've had or whatever the case may be. And I'm sure you get the same thing.
You get questions from people on things that you never talked about, but people want your view on it because, like, hey, you've been solid on these other things. And so you're just.
[00:41:39] Speaker B: You're just.
[00:41:39] Speaker A: You become a resource for people, which is really neat because, like you say, man, everybody else has resources. The Catholics have resources. The orthodox, Every, any. Anybody. Any group out there is just flooding the zone with content. Like, it's. It's very good that there's at least some people. People can ask about other things.
[00:41:57] Speaker C: Well, and you also don't know how many of those, you know, the 200 or whatever that watch the video. You're giving them resources that they can go share somebody else. You don't know the impact. 200 people may go talk to 10 people each about something. Now it's 2000. You know what I mean? It can grow exponentially from there because you're equipping a small group of people to think differently about the world and to engage in this and what the Church of Christ can think about this. And, yeah, I think the impact is incredible.
[00:42:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Some of my consistent viewers have their own YouTube channels and always tell me, like, thank you so much. This helps me for my own. There's a guy, I think his name is Young. What's his name? I know his YouTube name. Ryan, something like that. But he has a YouTube channel. He's in Churches of Christ and consistently watches. So it's like, yeah, I'm. My videos get to him, but at least some kind of an impact of my videos get to his audience too, and. And so on and so forth to his audience, to his people. It does stuff like this. I want people to understand this. Stuff like this does keep churches, kids and churches of Christ, adults and churches of Christ. It does keep us out of the Catholic Church. So imagine if there were. Were thousands of us that were doing this and not like a handful of us. Imagine if there were thousands of us who have a heart for this and. And, you know, Bible knowledge to engage in these conversations. Who were doing this, who were in the conversation. Could you imagine to be.
Could you imagine being culturally relevant again, that when people list out the different beliefs that there are, that we're not always left out of the list because no one's making our case. Like Trent Horn. You know, he has a huge YouTube channel, and he just mention me in his channel a week or so ago when he was talking about infant baptism and how unlike a lot of other churches, we believe that baptism Saves as well, like Catholics do. We just don't baptize infants. So that puts us in a very unique quadrant of this whole conversation.
But yeah, like now, because of my affiliation with him, he brings up the churches of Christ like here and there when he talks about this stuff. And his video was in response to Gavin Ortland's position on infant baptism. And Gavin Ortland reads his scripts before he posts his videos to make sure that they're fair towards the opposite side. So like Gavin Ortland is hearing about churches of Christ and in between Sundays, like my video with Trent Horn, he's probably seen that by now. Like, think about that. That's just me, that's just one guy. Imagine if there were many thousands of us doing this. Where would we get? What would we reach? We'd go all over the place again. We'd be culturally relevant again. And that would be huge for us in terms of getting the gospel out there and getting people to understand important things from scripture.
[00:44:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Other than where we are in Tennessee and where the churches of Christ are very thick through here. Everywhere else I've been, it's kind of like, well, what's that? What do you guys do, you know, like it and you're starting from zero. Whereas like you're saying if we're on people's radar in that way, that that is a leg up. That is kind of a, you know, people know a little bit about us going in. And so yeah, it's just really important, all of these things and bringing the Church of Christ closer together as we talked about. I'm gonna throw one at you that I, I don't know the answer to this question, but it's been a debate in the Think Deeper back room for some time. We did a video on against TikTok. We are very anti Tick Tock and all the time we get people like you post on Tick Tock. You should be on TikTok. You should post your clips to Tick Tock, things like that.
I see TikTok is on the brink of selling, so it might not be as bad of Chinese spyware here soon. I don't know where that's going to go, but.
[00:45:25] Speaker B: So that's your opposition to the way.
[00:45:27] Speaker A: That's one of them.
The little exposure I've had to. It seems very much a den of iniquity. But I know that's where a lot of people go. I know Paul Mays gets on there. Coogan Collins. There's a couple of Church of Christ preachers that use it.
[00:45:42] Speaker B: Do you use it at all.
[00:45:44] Speaker A: Okay. Do you use it and do you if not or reasons. Yes or no?
[00:45:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
I would probably use it more if I had the time.
My, my biggest weakness now, like, in terms of my priorities, I wish I had more time to make clips and upload them of my videos. I do it here and there on like a more important video or one that I think will get some more, like, easily get more traction. I should be uploading clips consistently. I just don't have the time for that. Eventually I'm going to pay some kid in the youth group here to do it for me now, you know, $5. I don't, I don't even know what to pay him. I don't. But anyway, from what I've seen, from what I've seen now, I'm not a big fan of the fact that like, you know, China kind of owns this, just to put that out there.
But from what I've seen happen, like with Jake Hysall on Tick Tock or like Paul Mays or there's some other people who have debates now and, and it's because of Tick Tock. I think Net positive. I think that positive. I, I do agree the Den of Iniquity, but I think definitely Net positive when it comes to that. But yeah, I'm curious to hear what you guys think.
[00:46:59] Speaker A: Yeah, we got to talk about it some more. I know a number of our listeners are on it and have told us to get on it, so conversations happen, man.
[00:47:07] Speaker B: It's pretty cool. Conversations happen.
[00:47:09] Speaker C: Yeah, it is where the people are. And as we're talking about going to where the people are, like, we came out of that take probably three years ago and I'm still on that. Like, I am not on TikTok. I don't have it on my phone. I will not have it on my phone. But we talked about getting a burner phone of sorts and, you know, that's cool. So I can't track us, but I wouldn't use it to look at anything as much as just to upload because as you said, that's where people are.
[00:47:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't use it at all. I don't, like, I don't ever scroll through it. I've never seen what my own feed is. I don't want to know what my own feed is.
But yeah, I, I have it, like for when I've uploaded stuff. I. The way I think about it is this. Maybe this is naive or something.
I'm willing to give Jesian Ping my passwords in my phone if I can talk to some people about the gospel. I mean, what's the worst he gonna do, you know, read my emails? That is just a bunch of junk emails from all these food places I go to.
[00:48:04] Speaker A: Right?
[00:48:04] Speaker B: You know, I know it's worse than that. I'm being silly, but.
[00:48:07] Speaker A: No, no, it's all right. Figured I'd, I'd ask you that one as we kind of close here, but really appreciate you coming on everyone. Again, go check out Marco's In Between Sundays. I am. This is one of the things, like, age wise, I'm like, I'm like five years older than you guys, so. YouTube, I just don't sit and watch videos. But Marco's also on podcast form, so when I see an in between Sundays audio come down, I'm like, all right. And I'm listening to it in the car, so you can subscribe to him on there as well. In between Sundays. Anything else you want to promote plug or anything to before we get out of here?
[00:48:42] Speaker B: No, no. Thank you. Thank you guys so much again. I, I'm so honored. I'm such a fan. I, I'm a true fan of you guys, and I really think we are.
We've got to keep on hitting the pavement and get more people in this fight.
It's, it's, it's happening. The fight's happening and it's, it's, it's Siri. It's like, I, I've had people.
Sorry, I know you're trying to wrap this up, but.
[00:49:04] Speaker C: No, you're good.
[00:49:05] Speaker B: I've had people be like, oh, you're doing YouTube stuff. Like, like it's all about, like, I'm trying to be some, like, vlogger or something. Like, I'm trying to be Mr. Beast. Like, I, I. People, like, look down on it. They frown on it, people. Oh, yeah, really? Like, you have a Patreon. You're asking people for money or something like that. Again, people, for some reason are so weird about this. They stigmatize it so much when again, your kids are learning from these people, man. Your kids are learning from these people and you are too. I see grandparents scrolling through stuff.
I see them, I see them, like, looking my, like my family in California, my grandparents, or, you know, my family over there, like older people, they send me YouTube videos all the time that they watch and they're like, oh, look at this. Cool. Everyone's on YouTube or everyone's, like, listening to stuff, watching stuff. The conversation is happening. So, like, let's, let's not stigmatize the people who are out there. Like, sometimes people go, they have that mindset, like, well, you know, there's better people than Marco to do something like this. And no one's ever told me that, but it's definitely true.
There are way better. I wish the best people in the churches of Christ would get out there and do this. They're all too busy with other stuff. I wish they weren't. I wish they weren't. I wish some of our best and busiest people in the Lord's church would carve out serious time for this. Because that's what the Baptists are doing. That's what the Catholics are doing their best. People carve out time for this.
So what does that tell us about what we need to be doing? We're just too good for this. We're just told that's pretty on brand for how churches of Christ view a lot of things. And we should stop that nonsense. We are not above this. We're not too good for this. This isn't some fad that's going to go away. This is here. This is reality. Until the robots take over, this is what the reality is.
[00:50:59] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. And it's just easier to keep posting on Facebook. But we got to get out of our little bubble. So really appreciate you coming on again. Go check out In Between Sundays, everyone. Stay tuned. We're gonna have Will jump on for a think fast and we'll wrap with that.
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[email protected] all right, let's get to our Think fast for this week. We did say we were going to have Will with us. Scheduling worked out that that was not possible.
He's a real busy guy and our schedules this week have been a little different. And so look for him to be back next week, Lord willing, back as usual. But we're going to get to a brief. Think fast on forgiveness. Obviously, that's kind of been the topic of the week, going back to the Charlie Kirk Memorial, Eric Kirk saying that she forgave the young man who shot and killed her husband, but immediately after President Trump jumping up and saying, you know, she forgives her enemies, I hate my enemies. And a little bit of a juxtaposition there. But also at the same time, Stephen Miller and others getting up and talking about bringing the killer to justice and things like that. So there was a lot going on there, but one of the debates that broke out was, should she have said, I forgive him? Some people say this is Christian weakness, some people say this is preemptive, and it's not time to forgive. So let's get into that and then we'll get into the hatred part, the justice, the vengeance part, all of that. So we'll start with whether you agree.
[00:53:03] Speaker C: Theologically with it or not.
It's moving. I mean, it's incredibly moving to see somebody who's willing to offer forgiveness. I think her willingness to do it is, you know, you can say, well, you can't force forgiveness on somebody who didn't ask. And I get that, and I've kind of been in that camp before myself. But, you know, you look at it and it's like that is one of the most moving, touching things and speaks so well of Christianity, is meanwhile, while you have the. The leftist side talk about, well, it's basically a Nazi rally and things like that. It's like she's here for giving her her killer. And. And, you know, of course, justice will be done, but still. Or forgiving her husband's killer.
What a moving moment. And so, yeah, I look at it as 100 million people are watching that, and they get to see what the love of Christ looks like. They get to see that she's willing to offer forgiveness to somebody who did an unspeakable horror, you know, that they brought about one of the biggest tragedies of the last couple decades, probably going back to nine, 11 maybe. I mean, it's such a tragedy.
It was moving, honestly, it was moving. And I saw a few posts where people were willing to offer forgiveness. I saw, I think, Tim Allen, the actor. Tim Allen.
[00:54:05] Speaker A: Powerful. Yeah, yeah.
[00:54:07] Speaker C: Commenting about forgiving his dad's killer who was murdered, I believe. And so just such a powerful Post. If you get a chance to go check it out on X, make sure to look up Tim Allen's post on that.
Very, very powerful stuff. A powerful response to what I think was a very powerful moment by her. And I just think it reflects very well on Christianity. When the world is looking at it saying, man, it's all hate filled bigots to hear I forgive him. Was it just. It gives you chills.
[00:54:30] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, you just think of Jesus on the cross saying, father, forgive them for they know not what they do.
[00:54:35] Speaker C: Stephen.
[00:54:36] Speaker A: Stephen repeated that. And in both of those cases it wasn't like, oh, okay, the Pharisees, the Romans, they're in the clear now. Like, that's not what that meant. It meant from his side, he's, you know, absolving whatever he has over them. And obviously for Jesus, it's on a whole other level. But that kind of Christian love that is. We talked in the main or the episode a week and a half ago about turning the other cheek. And that's the right application of that. It does get misused to say basically the government should turn the other cheek and we all should not seek vengeance and justice and things like that. But the on the individual level, that's absolutely right. And so obviously where Trump got up and said, well, I hate my enemies.
I think it's good for the government to hate people who will hurt its citizens, Hate murderers.
We talked about the psalms and praying that God would shatter those people and things like that. But he was kind of talking about personally his enemies. Yeah, that's not right.
And so you talk about the powerful image that she cast there.
It's powerful when you put the two together because you're like, yeah, this is our natural state, this is what we want to do and this is what we do in Christ. And you see the big difference there.
[00:55:46] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm glad that you brought around the, the political side of it because I saw people making the case on the other side. Well, she forgave him, so shouldn't we just, you know, shouldn't that. Absolutely, yeah. No death penalty, like that's not how it works. The government bears the sword to put evildoers to or to punish evildoers. Romans 13, while we still have turning the other cheek on Sermon on the Mountain. So both of those two things can be true and they both have two different ways. Like she doesn't correct. Both of those things are biblically correct. For him to be put to death by the government and for her to forgive him. I think both of Those are biblically correct. And people are trying to make it as though they're not.
There's a juxtaposition there. Yeah, you got to pick one. Not in the least. Her job is not to bear the sword. Her job is to be able to offer forgiveness. And it doesn't matter whether he accepts it or not or whether he, you know, whether he asks for forgiveness rather, and. And, you know, tries to make it right if he never does. But I'll tell you that if he gets word of that, I'd love to know that kind that. That kid's heart, you know, that guy's heart. I don't know if that changes a thing, but it sure changed a lot of other people's hearts. And that's encouraging that that whole memorial really did a lot for people. Just looking at the comments, looking at people that were atheists, people that are agnostics, people in the world looking at it going, whoa, that's different. This was not some rally where there's hate filled, you know, everything else. It's like we're coming together, yes, to mourn a life, but also to preach the gospel and, you know, to put it out there, like, that's. That's powerful.
[00:57:04] Speaker A: Yeah, the. Well, and people in the middle, seeing them talk about Jesus, seeing them talk about forgiveness, seeing those kinds of things and just remembering a friend and all the things they did, and then turning on the news or pulling up Twitter or whatever, seeing the website saying, oh, this Nazi, this is dangerous rhetoric at this rally. Like, that's gonna push people more in this direction too. So that's a good thing.
As somebody said, Jesus forgave the thief on the cross. He didn't take him off the cross.
There's still consequences. There's still, still real world consequences. And, you know, the. The best thing is that the killer and the person they kill would both be in heaven. You know, like, that's what you want in these things, is that they would repent and come back around. And so, yeah, the, the forgiveness thing, that absolutely, absolutely should be our posture. Not forgiving, not. Not forgiving, not condoning, not just saying, yeah, it's okay. It's not like she was saying, oh, no big deal. That's not what is being said in that moment. And I don't think it's right to twist it into that.
[00:58:00] Speaker C: That's the power of a good Apollo or a good offering of forgiveness is. Sometimes we have that even just individually with one. It's fine. It's fine. Like, let the power of what was Done. Stand. It's not okay. It's absolutely not okay. And that's why there's power in offering forgiveness. We do this on a personal front because we try to downplay the things that have been done against us and the wrongs. Oh, it's fine. Don't worry about it. It's fine. It's fine. Like, no, sometimes it's okay to say it's absolutely not fine. And I still am offering for, you know, I. I forgive you for that. That's where the gospel really comes through. It's the same as God. Like, our sin is not fine, but God is still, you know, asking for that. The only thing I was going to say is you have a great point that I know you've made on the podcast a couple times, I think, but just about this idea, sitting across the table from somebody and kind of offering. Just speak to that real fast before we wrap up.
[00:58:45] Speaker A: Yeah, this would be an old favorite for longtime listeners, but, you know, forgiveness is. Your duty, is just. You write the word forgiveness on a piece of paper. You're across the table from somebody.
Your job is to put the piece of paper on the table. Your job is not to hold onto it and say, all right, I'm going to wait until they apologize good enough, and then if I think it's a good enough apology, I'll forgive them for it. Your job is just to put it out there and say, you know, I want to work this out and just put it in the middle. And if they want to come get it, which is to say I'm sorry and all that, then they can come get it. You have done your job by extending it. You also are not going over and shoving it in their pocket. You're not forcing them to accept it. You're not, you know, like, forcing forgiveness on them. You're. You're doing your part of showing the grace, showing the willingness to meet in the middle, showing the willingness to work it out and all that.
And so, yeah, that's. Don't overdo it. Don't shove it on them. Don't withhold it. Just put it in the middle. Let them handle. Put the ball in their court at that point.
[00:59:40] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's a great breakdown. Great breakdown.
Big things are happening. That's. Talked about it in the episode. We talked about it in the last couple episodes with Concerning Charlie Kirk, but big things are happening. Be in prayer. That's. We just tell everybody, be in prayer for her words, for what Eric Kirk said and for the others that this might be on people's hearts and minds and that this might spur on more of a revival in this nation to bring people back to God, for people to see that there's a lot of power in Christianity, there's a lot of love in Christianity, and yes, there's justice in Christianity as well. And those two things don't have to be opposed, but just be in prayer that this might be able to move the hundred million or so people, however many ended up watching it, that they would be moved closer to Christ and doing his will. So, yeah, be in prayer about that. But man, crazy times, good times I think are headed our way. Lord willing.
[01:00:27] Speaker A: Lord willing. All right, so once again, we missed having Will on this one. Thanks to Marco for joining us for the interview.
As we said, go check out his channel in between Sundays there's a podcast feed, but the best way to consume that is via YouTube, so be sure you're following Marco. Thanks to him for coming on and we'll talk to you guys on the next one.
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 donate that's focuspress.org donate. Thanks again for listening.
