Is Our Ministry System Broken?

[00:00:09] Speaker A: Welcome into the Think Deeper podcast presented by Focus Press. I'm your host, Joe Wilkey, joined as always by Jack Wilkie and Will Harab. And happy July, everyone. We are three days away. [00:00:19] Speaker B: Canada day. [00:00:21] Speaker A: Oh, boy. [00:00:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:00:22] Speaker A: Woohoo. Nobody cares about that. Let's skip three days ahead. Everybody cares about that one a little bit more than Canada today. Losers up to the north. [00:00:30] Speaker C: But anyway, we don't have any canadian listeners. [00:00:33] Speaker B: We do apologize. [00:00:36] Speaker A: Hey, hey. Have you seen what they're doing up in Canada? Have you seen Trudeau? The guy is a. [00:00:41] Speaker B: They're not winning the Stanley Cup. I know that much. Oh, man. [00:00:45] Speaker A: Got him. Anyway, yeah. Fellas, I don't think we have anything to push on today's episode. So I think with that, we want to jump right in. This is a part two. Last week we talked about preachers, where we find their roles. Are they biblical? Are they not biblical? What? You know, kind of what are they? The categories they fall into, the stereotypes, the. Yeah. What their role is kind of in the congregation versus evangelist, evangelists and such. And so we covered that last week, but we left what I would consider to be kind of the meat of the episode. And will, I'm going to let you kick us off here for sure. [00:01:20] Speaker C: So, yeah, last week, just to give a very, very brief recap, we did kind of start with addressing kind of the, the pulpit preacher, the kind of the role itself we looked at, is it biblical? Is it needed, went back and forth on that a little bit. If you didn't listen, I would encourage you to go back and listen because it is going to set the stage very well for what we're talking about here today. We talked about kind of the stereotypes that preachers can fall into the categories, too young, too immature, too out of touch, that kind of thing. But what we really want to address today is less on the preacher side of things and more so on the pulpit preaching system in the Church of Christ that currently exists. And there are a lot of aspects, there are a lot of components to this. I think I might have mentioned it last episode, but when I was sitting down constructing this outline, as I was thinking about the ways that I would consider the system broken. And of course, these guys as well, came up with a good bit of like six or seven different things. And I think Joe might have added one or two and Jack as well. And so listen, you might be listening to that. You might be listening to this going, man, these guys sure are just taking a baseball bat to preaching, aren't they? I mean, eight, 8910, things wrong with the system that we have. We would say that there are a lot of things that, that need to be improved. There are a lot of things that kind of set it up for failure. And so I would encourage you, as you're listening, before you just kind of write it off. We encourage you to think deeper with us. We'd encourage you to kind of take a look at some of these things, and you might disagree, and that's okay. Some of these things that we're going to address, some of these things that we're going to talk about, we understand there might be some disagreement, and we welcome that. We'd encourage you, uh, especially if you're a member of the Facebook group, get in there and let us know kind of what your thoughts are. Let us know where you disagree. But we do have, as I'm looking at our list, kind of eight things that we believe to be some, a part, a component of this, this pulpit preaching system in the church of Christ that needs to be improved, that needs to be fixed, that is broken, so to speak. And again, we're talking in the church of Christ the way things are mostly done. As we said last episode, there will be some exceptions. We are going to be speaking in generalization somewhat of. But, guys, let's just get right into kind of, in no particular order, kind of the different components that make up this broken system that we have in the church of Christ. And we're going to address preaching schools to start. Uh, we did get a question, I think, also on YouTube for our last episode about kind of what our thoughts are on preaching schools, which I'm looking forward to this because Jack and Joe both are products of preaching schools. Bear Valley, of course. Um, and so I'm going to go ahead and just kind of give the line item that, you know, as far as the reason why, I believe the component that might be broken here. And that is, it seems like preaching schools are kind of churning out guys who, not always, but who are churning out guys who chose preaching kind of as a backup plan, maybe because it's a little bit easier, guys that are not passionate about preaching. Again, not always. I don't want to have to give the qualifier every time we're generalizing here, but you do see a lot of guys that kind of choose ministry as maybe a backup plan or. Man, I didn't, I don't really know what I want to do with my life, so I guess I'll choose preaching. These are the guys. Sometimes their preaching schools are turning out. And so, guys, let's get into that. Let's get into preaching schools themselves. Again, I'm interested to hear y'all's perspective as both of y'all went to preaching school. And I know value the time that you spent there, the stuff you learned highly. And so what are y'all's thoughts on preaching schools and then thoughts on kind of that first bullet point of this broken system? [00:04:41] Speaker B: Yeah, let's. I'll do the bullet point first. The. The applicants, the guys that go there, because it's very hard to run a school when you're turning away most of your applicants. But you look at the end of Luke, chapter nine, and the guy's coming up to, Jesus, hey, I want to follow you. I got to go do this first. And he just keeps repeatedly telling him, no, not you, not you. And he had said earlier in the chapter in 923, if you're going to come after me, you got to take up your cross, die to self, and follow me. And so he limited. And not telling these people, you can't be saved. But look, you're not cut out for this specific work that we're going to do. And so this should be a very selective thing where you're trimming down a lot of the applicants, rather. And I know they're. They're not taking anybody and everybody who wants to come, but on the other hand, a lot of people. And there's. There's people that come out of there that maybe shouldn't preach. We had a comment. I'm gonna. I don't remember who it was, but somebody in our Facebook group had made the comment of, this can be taken as mean, but there are just some people that you hear them and they want to preach and they love it. Just not good at connecting with the people. They're not good at teaching the word. They're maybe not good at studying or understanding it, but what is the school going to tell them? Hey, you gave up your job, your career, you moved your family across the country to come to preaching school, and you're six months into it, and we've heard you preach five lessons, and, buddy, it's just not happening. You just don't get it. It's not working. Your grades are. You have passing grades, but, like, you don't get it. You're not a good bible student or whatever it may be. And so there is the. That's hard, is that some of those guys, it's kind of that thing about, like, what do you call the. The guy who came and was last in his graduating class at medical school. Doctor. [00:06:21] Speaker C: Doctor. [00:06:22] Speaker B: Right, right. And so in the same sense. And so, yeah, I really don't want to. I'm really not trying to shoot shots at anybody. I'm not trying to shoot shot shots at the school. School. All of these schools give people very good education. I know people from the preaching schools themselves. Memphis Sunset, there's a million brown trail southwest, and there's smaller ones scattered all about their schools that kind of do it for people and work. Nashville School of preaching. Talk to guys from all those places, learn really good stuff, great bible teachers, things like that. And that's such a wonderful resource. On the other hand, it's nothing great for vetting because there's a degree to which the school has to be a business. And if you are turning away most applicants and you're taking on two students a year, that's not good for business. And so there's that side of it. I want to get to the broader discussion here in a minute, but I want to start there on the guys that come to it. [00:07:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm with you. I got friends at a lot of different car, a lot of different schools. Great context there. [00:07:28] Speaker B: We've had doctor have their preaching programs as well. And I know some really sharp Bible students that came out of those, learn a ton, speak glowingly about their experience. So I'm not just trying to keep it strictly to the preaching schools as such. [00:07:43] Speaker A: Right. We've had doctor Petrillo, Danny Petrillo on this podcast. Fantastic Bible student, fantastic guy. But at the end of the day, we have been through this. We have seen a lot of what goes through there. And there are unfortunately too many guys that looked around and said, I don't necessarily want to grow up. I don't necessarily want to go into preaching, but I also need to find something to do with my time. I don't want to go to college or I can't afford college, but this is free. We'll go there. It's really mean of us, quote unquote. You know, people are going to look at it and say that we're really mean for judging. You can't judge somebody's heart. Look, we've seen this. This absolutely does happen where it becomes that thing. And this is why Bear Valley is a very difficult, difficult school. Sunset is a very difficult school. Like, I'm aware of their curriculums. I went through Bear Valley. It's a very challenging school. There's a reason there's a lot of dropouts. There's a reason there's a lot of people that don't pass. I don't think that they were necessarily meant for it. And some just realized this is not at all what I want. And sure, there's a, there's a way to work through that doesn't mean that preaching schools are off. It doesn't mean that they're, they're useless. At the same time, the vetting process is not the best in terms of choosing godly men that are going to go out and be amazing for congregations when in reality, if we had a school that was a Bible college, it really helped people understand the word and they were willing to give up that. And some of them came out with a gift for speaking. That's fantastic. But some of them may come out as an electrician, but man, they know a lot of Bible, and that's what something that they chose to give up. They, they gave up their profession for a little while, or they put life on hold to go get the Bible education. Some people see it as that, and that's okay as well, I suppose. Um, but the idea of every one of them has to come out preaching, and a lot of them don't, a lot of them don't end up preaching. The biblical education is fantastic. Second to none. I love Bear Valley, love my time there, and a lot of people there, but as a preaching school, I don't know, there are challenges involved. Will, and then, Jack, I want to kick back to you for the broader discussion, but will, any other thoughts on that? [00:09:40] Speaker C: Not a ton to add. You guys covered mostly the things that I was going to bring up. I mean, some of the next things that we're going to get into are, you know, branches off of this, uh, number two on our list and also number seven, which we might do third here in just a second. But yeah, I think just the biggest problem that can come from this, obviously, is if you have a guy who is in preaching school because, you know, regular college is too expensive, hasn't really found his passion, hasn't found his wheelhouse, doesn't want to do trade school, just Joe. Our podcast, the golly young men podcast, was kind of built on the whole idea of young guys these days being kind of aimless. Like not really having any purpose, not really having any drive, any motivation to do things. Carry is in the church of Christ. It's a lot of those guys, the ones that are aimless, no purpose, you know, kind of nothing to strive for that are going to preaching school to fill pulpits. And I think that's what's the most the scariest thing for me personally is, man, you want a guy, you know, if you got a guy in the pulpit, you want him to be passionate, zealous for the word of God and, and somebody who has purpose and drive. And there are a lot of guys who do. Again, but man, I just see some of these aimless young 18, 1920 year olds who kind of metaphorically are just like, well, you know, I guess I'll do preaching. Sure, I'll give that a try. That's not going to set any congregation up for success. That's going to present a lot of problems and the guys themselves are not going to be happy anytime you're choosing something as a backup plan or like, man, I don't really know what else to do. So I guess I'll give this a try. Yeah, I think those are just kind of the biggest problems that I see. But the aimlessness is such a key here, is like the aimlessness is steering guys towards preaching when the guy's aimless, doesn't know what he wants to do. No direction, no purpose, man. The pulpit is the last place that he should be turning to. Um, so that would be kind of, those would kind of be my comments. [00:11:28] Speaker A: Instead of the Jeremiah fire in my bones. Right. I have to get this out. I really want to preach. Check. Jack, you're the one that's quoted this before. St. Chesterton, who's the one that? Um, Spurgeon was it. It's basically like if you can do something, like you need to get to the point that preaching is the only thing you can do. It's the only thing you want to do. If you're going to go into the ministry, if there are other things that are kind of pulling at you, they'll go into the ministry that says, thought we talked last. Last week. Yeah, last, I was about to say last session, I do too much therapy. Um, talked last week about some of that and whether that's biblical. We, we have other things to get to here. But Jack, I am curious on your overarching issue because I do see the other one would for me would be the overall age of those coming out of preaching, school leading, which ties us into our next, which does. [00:12:12] Speaker B: But Jack, what, did you have other thoughts on that? Again, this is not just taking shots at people, is, we knew people like that, but I was also one of those people like, didn't have a plan coming out of high school. Well, you raised your hand, but it's kind of funny. You were the kid that at five years old is like I want to be a preacher. I didn't really want to get a preacher. And I'm like, well, I'm coming out of high school. I'll go get a Bible education and figure out what I want to do. Went and got another education. Didn't like it. Didn't really want to kind of explore and take the time. And I kind of just felt rushed, pressured. I got to find something I can do, and preaching was the thing I could do. Like, I could. I could always put together a sermon. I knew I was a decent Bible student, and so that's the career, quote, unquote, I ended up in, and now I'm not. And it really, I mean, obviously, I'm writing. I'm ministry adjacent, but in podcasting and everything, we're doing a focus press. But as far as, like, the weekly week in and week out thing, if I had to do it over again, I wouldn't. I might go get the education again. I don't know. But as far as, like, going into a pulpit, I wasn't fire in my bones, guy. And so this is nothing. Just that, oh, man, all these guys fill in pulpit stink. No, this is. I understand the problem because I was part of it as someone who grew up and was kind of funneled in that direction and just kind of went with it. Path of least resistance. So there's that. The other thing about the schools of preaching, and I wrote on why I'm not going to encourage my sons to go into the ministry as such for careers. A buddy of mine who I went to preaching school with, who works at a preaching school now, commented and was saddened to read it and said that, well, we've got a preacher shortage, and we need more going in. And he would love it if his sons did that. We do have a preacher shortage. I agree, and that is a problem. My thing is, remember in 2020, you'd go to the grocery store, and they were just out of stuff. And the two words supply chain became such a big deal, and it was kind of like, oh, most of our food here in America comes from, like, eight big factories. I'm like, I'm exaggerating, but your meat is being processed by a few big companies. It's very centralized. And if that goes down, if that place burns to the ground, we might have a shortage, we might not have enough, and things like that start to happen. Whereas people realized if I'm growing stuff in my backyard, they can't take that away from me. Like, I'm. It's. It's a sturdy supply chain in the same sense of we don't. We've got a lot of churches that don't have elders, a lot of churches that don't have preachers. The they don't have those people coming up from within. They don't know how to develop leadership from within. Why? Because about 70 years ago we said, well, we're going to send them hundreds of miles away to another place to do it. And most of the time when that happens when you've got the young man at your church who's a great speaker and a passionate Bible student and you go, all right, we're going to send you to preaching school. How many times does he come back and serve his own church? [00:14:51] Speaker C: Almost never. [00:14:51] Speaker B: Almost never. He goes on to another church, another kind. He goes to a preaching career and never ends up back at home. And so as a church you're developing these people to 1718 or even 20 years old. Then you send them away to freed hardware, you send them away to sunset, you send them away to whichever school it is to become a preacher and it does no good to your church. And most of the time they're not going back to the little rural church they came from. So those churches die. And because that church never developed him from 20 to 50 to become an elder they don't have elders. Like you forgot how to do it in the sense of people. Most people couldn't garden. Most people couldn't raise chickens and cow like, well, you farmed out all your talent right in the same sense your supply chain. We don't know how to make our own meat, our own anything else because we're paying somebody else to do it for us. We've paid somebody else to do our development for us. And so we send our best young people away. We try and hire somebody else's young people away from the preaching schools and the universities to come to our church. And they do. And they leave every three to five, sometimes ten years at most, like we talked about last time. And so you've got churches where they don't year after year, decade after decade, they're getting slowly smaller. They don't have their own leadership. They're not developing young men and women into strong christians because they don't have to. There's no thought to doing that. You have ripped that program that's supposed to be part of a church. You've removed it from the DNA of the church to hire somebody else to do it and now you can't. But now the preaching schools have shortages. We've got a shortage in the pulpit. And we're saying, well, we need more people going, no, no, no, we don't need to send more people into this factory. That's not working. Working in the same sense of, well, we just, we need a couple more meat plants. No, if we had some more people keeping chickens in their backyard, wed be doing a lot better off. And so its that kind of thing of rebuilding the supply chain that we have crippled ourselves as a church across the entire country by centralizing it, as. [00:16:44] Speaker C: Is usual with Jack not to pump his tires too much. That was so well flushed out. That was absolutely, man. [00:16:51] Speaker A: Well, I did yesterday. [00:16:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I did something really stupid in that I wrote an article on this like eight months ago, and it was when I kind of had the paywalled stuff on my substack site and I sent it out and I had like 40 paid subscribers. So like 40 people got to read it. And I'm like, you know what? This is actually important enough. I think I should get this out there. And I made it free while it's too late. It already been sent and nobody read it because I did something stupid. So here I get to bring it up again. I get to draw on my own material. But it's so important. Like, you can tell I'm passionate about it because you just look, I mean, we're in a small church in rural Tennessee, and we're guys, a couple guys came from Denver, from Bear Valley went there. Will, you've got your, your, you started here out of. It was kind of that. Well, we've got Will heribu, who's coming out of high school, and he can preach and he does a good job, and so we'll bring him in. But there was no thought of, well, this guy's going to be our preacher for the next 50 years because you didn't have that. Well, the beauty of it is life has brought you back around to where you're there and really committed to the place. And we're here. We're looking at it as, I'm not a guy that's going to take a pulpit job in Arkansas or Oklahoma or Texas or, you know, like bounce around. [00:17:51] Speaker C: Because we're not a part of the current system. [00:17:53] Speaker B: Right. And so we can be here. We can. I want Jackson, Robbie, John, Lachlan. I'm naming off the people don't know who I'm talking about. It's our kids. I want our kids to be the elders of this church in 70 years, you know, like, absolutely. Like, you can't have that if I tell my boys, all right, I'm go 1000 miles to a preaching school, and when you go there, scroll the job boards, figure out a church you want to go work for, that will hire you, and you end up in New Mexico. Nothing against the church in New Mexico, but, like, why? Why are we going to deprive our church of the talents that they grow up with? Like, that's how it was supposed to be. This is such a weird system. [00:18:31] Speaker C: And think about how much stronger each local congregation, especially the smaller ones, would be if that was the system. Um, to Jack's point there, that's great. I am going to go ahead and move us into the next category. Joe, I'm sure you have some thoughts on that, if you want to comment on that while we're talking about the next thing, because these things are branches of each other. These things do kind of spiral off of each other. Another kind of. The second component of this broken system that, again, is kind of a direct, not necessarily product of the preaching school, but comes from the preaching schools, is you've got guys that are filling pulpits at an incredibly young age. Speaking as somebody who was 18 years old when I started filling a pulpit, Jack was young. Joe, you weren't necessarily pulpit guy, but you were very young when you graduated Bear Valley. And so kind of the second component is that spiritual maturity and spiritual wisdom is tough to develop at a young age. You have Timothy in one, Timothy four, where Paul's saying, hey, don't let people look down you because of your youth. We don't know how young he was. Obviously, he was young relative to Paul. We don't know if he was 1819, if he was into his thirties, whatever. And so, guys, this is another kind of aspect of the preaching school thing, is that you have a 21 year old fresh out of preaching school. Odds are he's, you know, maybe he's close to marriage, but he's probably not married yet, so he's filling a pulpit. There are a lot of things that we actually had a comment on our focus, plus about it's tough to listen to a guy who's unmarried talk about marriage. It's tough to listen to a guy who doesn't have kids talk about raising kids. And so as a 21, 22 year old preacher, you do kind of have to, if you have the self awareness enough to go, man, there's probably some topics that I should probably just not talk about that's not ideal for the spiritual development, spiritual growth of a congregation. To have a. A young man who, whether you know, through no fault of his own, just has stuff he can't really talk about because he's not experiencing it. Doesn't have a spiritual wisdom yet. I think preaching schools do a great job of like coaching people through. This is how you study, this is how maybe how you exegete a text, this is how you put together a lesson. Those things are great. Spiritual wisdom and spiritual maturity. You can't necessarily just teach, um, and you certainly can't just give it to somebody, give somebody a full dose of it by the time they're 21, 22. And so again, as young guys who filled pulpits, we recognize it's a bit of a problem with the system. Not to say that young people can't preach and teach again, we have Timothy, but I think the bar has been lowered to the point where Timothy is looked at as like, okay, cool, he was young. Timothy was probably the exception. Again, that's why Paul says, let no one look down on you because of how young you are. Because, you know, to tie it back to the first problem of all these young guys who just kind of aimless don't really, don't really aren't really passionate about preaching. This is where we get to this kind of second problem. So what, what thoughts would you guys have to add to this? [00:21:15] Speaker A: Jack, this is actually where I thought you were going to go. That's why I raised my hand earlier. Um, not to your point. Yeah, I did always want to be a preacher growing up and did graduate bear Valley on the younger end of things. And, and coming out of it, you realize I am wholly inadequate to lead a congregation in any way, any shape, any form, whatever you want to say. Like it just wasn't going to happen. And I think when you see guys that come out, we may be very well knowledgeable, or, you know, very good in our knowledge. Can't speak today. Sorry. We may be knowledgeable, we may have those things, but it's all theoretical. It's the same thing. That I can preach a great lesson on marriage, all biblically based on marriage if I'm not married. It is a theoretical concept. It is. That's great, and it's biblical and everything else, but there's always going to be that drawback. And I think that really discourages young preachers. I think that takes guys that are starting off in new works and to immediately be looked down upon or to immediately have things that either they're a supposed to cover, that they are not wise enough to cover, or be told to not cover, that they feel that maybe it needs to be covered. You're not going to stand out in that area. And as you said. Well, I'm not against young men being preachers. I, but I would say, do, I try to, I would push people to do what I did honestly, which is be in your local congregation and ask to step up and preach as much as possible. I got to preach on Sunday nights. I got to preach occasionally a Sunday morning to fill in for the preacher. [00:22:40] Speaker C: There's a difference. There's a difference in preaching every Sunday here, you know, every other Sunday here and there as opposed to being the. [00:22:46] Speaker A: Full time minister leading a congregation. [00:22:49] Speaker C: Leading a congregation, exactly. [00:22:51] Speaker A: I just don't think young men are ready for that. And I think this is part of the preacher crisis, is all the people his age are gone. You step into these congregations and I have, you know, there are guys like this that have been clients over the years. Like I'm alone. I literally have nobody in this congregation because everybody that's basically Jack's age and down 80% of them have walked away from the church. Maybe a little bit older than you, Jack, have walked away from the church. And so you have a 22 year old coming fresh out of preaching school, preaching to 65 and up and a lot of these smaller congregations. No wonder there's a gap, no wonder why there is a struggle in this congregation. Well, hey, he's fresh, he's new. Maybe we'll, maybe we'll have him go out on door knock and people see we got this young preacher. That's great. That's not what's going to bring people back. We have lost a lot of the youth and having some young guy who's going to energize congregation. You may get a few, but that's asking so much of this 22 year old to come in and energize a congregation that's been dead for the last 15 years, and you drop that on his shoulder and go, hey, you better bring us back. He doesn't have the capacity and the wisdom and the knowledge and the experience to be able to do something like that. Why are we expecting so much of these young guys coming out, Brian? [00:23:55] Speaker B: Well, and that, yeah, learn on the job kind of thing of, well, you'll kind of figure it out or you won't and things will go bad and you'll do something else or you move on to a different church or whatever. There's the other side of it. I think this goes a lot deeper underneath all of this. It's very gnostic of us to think here's this person who, like, they can study spiritual knowledge and have this really textbook understanding of the Bible and that that's good. And they can get up there and preach and then, like, if they can bring that and they can do that, well, that's all we need from them. No, it's. And this is where we see the ivory tower thing happens, where the preacher is so out of touch with his church. And I wrote about this, sorry to keep saying that, but it just is where my stuff is. You write on the politics thing of how many preachers are so out of touch with their congregation right now politically and not caring about not seeing what the church is seeing, not seeing eye to eye. And so many preachers, like, I don't get. I don't get why people think this way. I don't. That's the problem is you're all book knowledge. You're not in the real world. You're detached from this stuff. You're detached from some of the real challenges. And especially with a young guy who has no life experience, like you said. And I don't, I don't subscribe to the idea, and I know you don't, but that every preacher has to be married, that he can't talk about marriage or things like that. You can teach the text as it says, but, man, it does add a gravitas. It adds weight to what he's saying when he's got that experience, but when it's all head knowledge, textbook stuff. But you've got the guy that's had a career, you've got the people that have raised families, raised kids in the faith. You've got people who've been through tragedy. You've got people who've just seen and done things that he hasn't. [00:25:33] Speaker C: It's just human nature to not take him as seriously. [00:25:35] Speaker B: Human nature, right. And again, like, but you don't even feel like you have to take him seriously because it's like, well, he's got, he just brings the Bible knowledge. He's that guy. We'll pay somebody to bring that in, and then we've got all the rest of this figured out. And it's like, no, these things married so closely together, and if a guy doesn't know how to do that, the church isn't going to know how to do that. That's his job, to show them what he knows, connects to what they do. And if he doesn't know what they do, he can't connect what he knows to it. [00:26:03] Speaker C: That was. I was just to add to that I was just going to say that's what feeds this idea. We got the Bible and Christianity over here and everything else in our lives over here. [00:26:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Sacred secular split. [00:26:12] Speaker A: We farm out our Bible knowledge to this guy. He knows. I don't have to know the Bible that well because my preacher's really good. So in terms of me having to. [00:26:20] Speaker C: And I'll get my two hour dose, you know, when I'm there at church, and that's all I need. [00:26:24] Speaker A: Right. Which also incentivizes the super duper preachers, the circuit preachers that are fantastic. And every congregation wants one of those. Because if we are relying on the sermon and we're relying on the preacher to be our spiritual, our spiritual guru and our spirituality, this is why so many christians are weak as they're waiting for their preacher. And this is the pressure we put on young guys to be the end all, be all. We really want that circuit preacher guy who's fantastic because he's got more bible knowledge than the next guy. He's got more, whatever it is. You're right, Jack. I think there's a gnostic element to this. I want to bring in number three, though, here, which is in this broken system, I think small congregations can be seen as a stepping stone. This goes right along with it, which is the guys that really do have good biblical knowledge, the guys that are just fantastic. Next thing you know, hey, they started at this 40 member congregation. Maybe it's their home congregation, but the goal is, well, hey, I got a big offer. I mean, 120 member congregations offering me this, and then they work out there and they're there for five years and they grow it to 160 and people are, whoa, that's incredible. And this guy's amazing. And then, then the 250 offers him the job. Well, he'd kind of be there. It's a $40,000 a year raise. I mean, this could really set his family. So of course he goes there and you just find yourself going up this stepping stone ladder from smaller congregation, bigger congregation. And I think that can be very, very unhealthy when you're talking about a preacher who kind of uses this as a stepping stone mentality. And I don't even think most of them even realize that's what they're doing. It just naturally occurs where. Why would you not take that next role? Right. That's going to pay you more. And so you find that it's just this, the smaller congregations are these farm teams. Jack, Jack, you've used this before. It's kind of like the soccer clubs, which you call football over there in England, where you have the smaller guys, the Wolf, Anton or whatever, they're never going to beat Manchester, whatever it is. [00:28:15] Speaker B: Try as a good try. [00:28:16] Speaker A: Yeah, whatever it is. [00:28:17] Speaker C: You know how many of our talking. [00:28:19] Speaker A: About probably, probably have no idea. But the man, they will know. Manchester City and Manchester United. At least they should, uh, Chelsea, Arsenal, right, the big ones. Look, those guys have millions and millions of dollars. They're the big clubs. And every time that you have some smaller Lester city, there you go. They did win a few years back, but some small town team, they get some massive talent. They've developed him from young and then he goes to, to the bigger boys, they will always be stuck with the lesser, they will always be stuck with the guys that are kind of mid tier, whatever it is, because any guy who's worth assault is obviously going to move out to the next congregations. So you got some in the middle of nowhere, Wyoming or whatever, that man, if they do have a good guy, we hope that the guy is solid in his congregation, that he's stuck there. I'm just throwing Wyoming out. It could be anywhere, right? But like, you hope that the guy says, no, this is my people, this is really where I want to be. But the pull toward moving on up when you've proven your worth as a preacher is really difficult. And I think that stepping stone has created an issue within the church specifically for the smaller congregations. [00:29:17] Speaker B: So let me go ahead. People literally say that to me in rural east Texas where I started preaching. Well, you know, we know that it's going to just matter time before big, bigger church comes and snaps you up because you're a good preacher, like. And I just tell them that I have no interest. In fact, when I switched jobs, they're like, oh, there's a bigger church, huh? No, it was more. More pay, huh? No, it was just situational fit and things were in a bad spot. Not to get any of the details, but like, they were just sure that's what's going to happen. We're a small church, that's our role. Our job is to be the feeder to the big church. Will either hire guys that are retiring and are on kind of the tail end, need to preach a little more to get a little extra income, but aren't looking for a full time thing, or we'll hire the young and up and coming guy to put in his two years and move on to the next one. And as you said, this is not to accuse any, nobody gets into this for the money? No. Preachers like, well, put my two years in and then I'll get the big job. Nobody's doing that. And it is, well, man, there's more opportunity to reach more people and to teach more people the bible and use the gifts God's given me. I understand all that, but it's not good for that little church. And that is why so many little churches are dying. It is part of a death cycle that just keeps cycling these guys through. [00:30:24] Speaker A: Every two to five years. [00:30:26] Speaker C: So let me ask you guys a question on this, and I'm going to go ahead and rope this into what we'll say is number four here because we're already halfway through and I've done like three points, which is the compensation problem, you know, that a lot of preachers deal with. So we had a discussion on our last deep end about our preachers underpaid, our preachers overpaid. I think there's a lot we could get into there. So let me ask, because obviously, let's face it, a lot of the reason why young guys married with kids, why they're going to take another job at a bigger congregation is because they're trying to take care of their family. It's because they're trying to make sure that they can, you know, in this, in this economy where inflation is going crazy and, you know, obviously we're huge advocates for keep your wife at home. You know, not everybody is, but that's going to mean you need to make more money. You need to, you know, up your income stream and whatnot. So there's that side of things. But let me ask you guys this, you know, because it's difficult, because I 100% agree that the stepping stone problem, I mean, I'm the one that put it on the outline. So of course I agree here. This stepping stone problem for smaller congregations is just, it's a death knell for these con. It's a death sentence, I should say, for these congregations, for these small congregations of like, you know, if your preacher's good enough to grow your church, he's not going to stick around. I always reverted to sports analogies, which I should not. But it's like the, the team that has a really good offensive coordinator, he's not sticking around. You know why? Because there's going to be other teams that say, I football team. I want him to be my head coach. So, you know, a really good offensive coordinator in, in, for most NFL teams three or four years before they get offered a head coaching job, you know, and there's the brain drain there. Similar to, again, these small congregations of this guy that's really talented at preaching, maybe grows the congregation, really evangelistic, he's going to get a bigger job, he's going to get paid more, he's going to get more, all these things. And so I guess to set all that, give all that context, my question is, how do we handle this in light of every other industry, every other career field for guys, we would encourage them and to, hey, look for ways to make more money, look for ways to get promoted, you know, put yourself out there, maybe try new things, maybe switch careers. I mean, I'm somebody who, if I look at a guy who's been the same place for 30 years, never gotten a raise, never moved up, never done anything different. It's not that I'm necessarily looking down on that, but I am kind of thinking like, oh man, he must not, must not have everything going for him there. Something must be, something must be off. And yet, and so again, the parallel for that is the preachers who are able to kind of advance and move up. That's not good for the small congregations. But I think it's just natural in men to want to conquer more, to want to move on to more challenging things, to want to obviously increase their income, increase their revenue, whatever it is. And so how do we square that circle again, I'm, all I'm doing is kind of convoluted in the problem here, but I think that is an element that of guys who want to move on up and make more money and maybe new challenges, like you said, jack, reach more people, new congregation, new place, whatever. How do we deal with that? What are your thoughts on that? [00:33:30] Speaker B: The providing for your family thing is, is important because a lot of times these young guys, they go there either single or young, married, and by the time you have two, three, four kids, it's just not feasible anymore. [00:33:40] Speaker C: Those expenses are adding up at that point. [00:33:42] Speaker B: Right. And the small church just can't afford that. It's not like they can pay more, it's not there. And so like, that's understandable. But the question you have about the difference between other careers and moving up as a natural part of life, it's not other careers is the biggest thing is your boss is God, and you, your obligation when you work for Chase bank, let's just throw that out there, is to provide for your family and we don't. As a culture, there used to be kind of the thing of like, man, I'm a, I'm a Ford, you know, like, I've worked in the factory my whole life, and I would never work for anybody else. That's what I do. I'm loyal, and I'm a union man and all that stuff. And now this is just the millennials, and people look down on it. It's like, you literally have to do this because they won't give you the raise. You'll be stuck. You've got to do exactly what you're saying. Not be stuck in the same job forever and ever. Look around, put your resumes out there, you know, just reach out and go, okay, where can I jump to? What's my next. Where can I get a little bit of a raise? Where can I get a bit of a raise? And so that loyalty is gone, and you understand it, but this is not every other career. And your obligation is to souls. And it's just so hard to think of Timothy going, well, Ephesus, it's been real. But Corinth came calling, and it's just such a good opportunity. And Corinth is just all these things that I can do out there, and they've got. [00:34:55] Speaker C: They give me four weeks vacation instead of two. [00:34:58] Speaker B: And I don't even mean to be cynical about the pay or the package of the offer that they're making. This just maybe more opportunity, more whatever it may be that they offer that Ephesus didn't have to offer. And it's like, well, but what about Ephesus? Isn't that what God gave you? And again, Paul moved these guys around we talked about last time. I don't think Titus was supposed to be in Crete forever, but I also don't know that when Titus left, they asked around and hired another preacher, another one of Paul's buddies for two years, and then he left. And then five years later, they got somebody else. And then, like, I just. I don't think this system is conducive to long term growth. And so it's a fair question. And these guys, how do you provide? And, like, with. It's one of those. That this problem is not fixable within the current system. And so you get. We're going to get to. At the end of this, which is. I don't know, like, I think the more churches jump ship from the current system, the stronger and better off we. We all are. But a guy who's like that, who's married and doesn't have kids now and is in a small church, if he's going to have kids, he either needs to start talking to them right now. The church and looking for opportunities to have a side, you know, side hustle, location, whatever, working outside of it to provide for his family to stay there, or he is just going to have to leave. I mean, that's part of it. And then, so I understand that, but I don't think it's. Paul talks about this. We talked last time about the workers worthy of his wages and don't muzzle the ox, like help them keep going. And part of that is making sure they're paid enough to live to do their job. But he also talks about the, the work of these guys, and they are different. It is a special kind of work. It's a work provided for by the church and all that. And so you have to think of it as different than building a career elsewhere. You got to think of it. It's in one corinthians three where he talks about, you build on the foundation of Christ, and some people build with really durable stuff that's going to be around. And some people build with straw man. It's kind of like three little pigs thing. Right. And, and some of that building with straw is you're, you're getting people in the church, but you're, you're not going to have anything to show for your work. And I think leaving a church every three years, you're not going to have that much to show for it. [00:37:11] Speaker A: My answer to that would be either. Two things. First off, I think tent making solves that. A guy who can achieve greatly outside Paul could sell as many tense as. [00:37:21] Speaker C: He's jumping ahead, man. You're jumping ahead. [00:37:24] Speaker A: I know. [00:37:26] Speaker B: Joe versus the outline. That's right. [00:37:29] Speaker A: Hey, I know I'm jumping ahead, but this is, this is the answer. The other answer that I would give is I don't really believe it's a paid position in the first place, as we talked about last time. [00:37:38] Speaker B: See, I disagree with you there. I think it's okay for it to be a paid position, but I still. [00:37:44] Speaker A: I mean, I think you're, I think it's okay to pay a guy to preach the idea of having a full time guy for all of the reasons, including the ones we haven't gotten to. I think it's better to have either elders or a guy in the congregation who is already working outside in the congregation, or he's already working outside the world. He's already, you know, got his career path lined out, whatever it is, as a who knows what, you know, construction worker. [00:38:06] Speaker B: Do you think Timothy had a side job like that that he was doing? [00:38:08] Speaker A: I think I take Timothy's job, in my opinion, as you just spoke to, was temporary. Timothy was supposed to go in and establish it as an evangelist, but I don't think he was. [00:38:17] Speaker C: But do you think he went out for all time, was in construction after that or you think he went and did that again for somebody else? [00:38:23] Speaker A: I think you go do it for somebody else, but then we're back to what we're already doing. If we're going to say that, then basically what we're saying about this whole preacher leveling up, you could easily say their job is to fill it until the congregation is ready and then go to the next one. Go to the next one, go to the next one. In which case you could easily make the case that an evangelist is a legitimate role to get a congregation to the point of having elders and pass it off. We're talking about a pulpit guy who stays for 50, 60 years if all things work out of in a congregation. I don't see that in scripture. I don't see that being the way that this is supposed to work out. So do I think it's wrong to pay an evangelist to come in and help kind of set in order what remains, so to speak, and to set up an eldership? No, but the way it's currently structured, that's not at all what we're referring to. So when you talk about a guy who is supposed to level up and look to make more money for his family, I think that can be done in secular work outside while he works for the church and preaches for the congregation, because it's a spiritual gift. The same way that the spiritual gift of encouragement and hospitality and all of the other gifts that we talk about, you don't give up your job to become misses hospitality at the congregation and we pay you for it. No, your gift is hospitality. So while you're doing your life, there. [00:39:33] Speaker B: Is precedent for, there's not precedent for that. There is precedent for people preaching and teaching, receiving their wages. And so I think you're, you're going a little to bring it back around and get us back on the outline that you jumped ahead of. I think one of the biggest critiques here, and that is hard to get around. You look at the Catholics, they teach about the beauty of the family, the importance of the family, and the existence of celibate priests undermines so much of that. Like, yeah, but our most holy people, we're not going to let them have families like, what are you doing as the church? We're not real good on emphasizing the family and if we're going to get back to it, one of the things we have to do is make it to where these guys have to stop choosing between providing well for their family, spending time with their family, having their family have a stable church life, not having to move their family all over the country, putting their roots down for their kids. Those are good things. We make guys choose. Are you going to serve the church and put God. And so many times it's like, well, you got to sacrifice for God. It's like, yeah, a lot of times these guys are sacrificing their wife and kids for God. That's not okay. And so this system of the, whether it's the latter and they're sacrificing that small church to move on up to provide for their family, or their family has to suffer in poverty at that small church, they can't pay them enough. That is a horrible choice to make. These guys have to make. And so when you've got a system that is giving you that choice, that's the system, right? Yeah. When you've got a system that's giving that choice, you really do have to start questioning it. [00:40:54] Speaker A: So then, so then what is the answer? [00:40:57] Speaker B: Surprise, surprise. Do we have any more problems we want to discuss before we get into the solutions here? I mean, is there anything else before Mister jump? The outline finishes off here five minutes early? [00:41:10] Speaker A: Actually, yes, there is. We do want to get into a few other broken system. What number are we on at this point? Just five, six? I don't, I don't even. [00:41:17] Speaker C: The glass house. Five. [00:41:19] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Well, this goes to my, the point I was just saying about the, the struggles it puts on the family is. It is hard. [00:41:25] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:41:25] Speaker B: I think this is less of a problem than maybe it used to be, but it's still a thing of the preacher. You're supposed to be a certain way. Your wife's supposed to be, certainly. Hey, the preacher, your kids are x, Y and z and they're held to an unfair standard. [00:41:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the glass house is one of the worst parts. And this is honestly what caused me to grow up thinking I was always going to be a preacher and doing a 180 in preaching school and saying I'm not going to go into full time ministry. Was realizing all the preacher stories, all these horror stories really came back around to one simple concept. Glass house. You can't do anything without people getting upset. I know one guy that was a preacher and he ended up buying a used truck, but it was a fairly new truck, but his family was looking to get a vehicle, and he decided to get one. Wow. Is that a new truck? So. Well, boy, we must be paying you real good. This is how you spend your money. He started getting flak for buying himself a new vehicle. Now, who else in the congregation gets that? There's so many horror stories like this, and that just goes to the monetary. You look at what they do to the wife, you look at how many preachers wives are intended to be like the preacher light. They have to have the exact word. They got to show up and run all the ladies days. I didn't sign my wife up for this. Like, who else does that? Well, I'm an accountant. I show up as an accountant, what's your wife going to provide for us? Is your wife going to be an accountant as well? Does she get on any of it? No, you hired me, you didn't hire my wife. I have a problem with that. The other glass house issues is how many of these creatures struggle with porn. You think they're ever going to come out with that? You think they're ever going to tell anybody or seek advice from the elders or seek help or prayers or anything? Oh, no. Because the moment they do, they will be fired on the spot. And I see, if you believe that's wrong, come talk to me. [00:43:06] Speaker B: I have a less of a problem with the preacher being held to a high standard for I'm not. And all that his family. And so, yeah, don't cut me off while I'm. His family's like, his. [00:43:17] Speaker A: You're making it sound like. You're making it sound like I'm saying yes. The glass house of the preacher has to be absolutely perfect. And if he ever shows sign of breaking or sign of sin, he's not perfect, but if he has a problem. [00:43:28] Speaker B: He should be fired. He should not be leading people spiritually. And so, sure, I think you should. [00:43:32] Speaker A: I think you work with him on the side, dude, you're not gonna have any. You're not gonna have any preachers left. You're gonna have, well, maybe 50%. [00:43:40] Speaker B: This is my problem is like, okay, I would rather have us fire. Like, if. If right now, you could just have true sin. [00:43:50] Speaker A: What sins are okay for him to have? [00:43:51] Speaker B: If you could have truth serum and you just figured out who all has and hasn't, and we lost all those guys. Right now, the church is better for it. You have to believe that. If somebody has. [00:43:59] Speaker A: What sins are okay for a preacher to have? I'm curious. What sins? [00:44:03] Speaker B: Everybody's gonna have a sin. But if you have an. [00:44:05] Speaker A: What sins are. Okay. [00:44:07] Speaker B: Why? [00:44:08] Speaker A: It depends on what he's doing about it. It depends on what he's doing about it, in my opinion. [00:44:12] Speaker B: No, I see. [00:44:13] Speaker A: This is my point. You can hold him to a higher standard. That does not mean he's going to be sinless. That does not mean that if you're going to start removing preachers for this. Okay. The guy doesn't treat his wife well. Well, he doesn't beat his wife, but he's also really. He doesn't show up well for his wife and family. Do we fire him for that? Well, no, that one, we. That's a, that's a slide by offense. That's. Okay. Um, this goes what we said last. [00:44:31] Speaker B: Week about being, about being the respectable guy. First Timothy 412. And if you've got a guy that everybody in the congregation is like, this is a horrible family man. He's not setting an example of the believers in love conduct speech. [00:44:42] Speaker A: This is the point of the glass house. He is, he is putting on a facade to show everybody he's not a family man. [00:44:47] Speaker B: This is my point. This is, I told you, this is why I quit is because it's like this guy needs to be the guy in the congregation. And if you can't be, don't do it. [00:44:55] Speaker A: The elder is supposed to be the guy in the congregation. That's why this job shouldn't exist. [00:44:59] Speaker C: First. [00:44:59] Speaker B: No, first Timothy 412. Timothy was not an elder. [00:45:02] Speaker A: He was an evangelist specifically set for a time. [00:45:06] Speaker B: Yes. He can't prove that. That is a theory on that job. And I agree with the theory, but a lot of people have the theory that it was very akin to the modern preacher job in any sense. He was a non elder who was there to teach the word to the people and was told by Paul, you've got to be an example to everybody. You've got to be somebody they can look at, and you've got to be able to say what Paul said. Imitate me as I imitate Christ. That doesn't mean you have to be perfect, but it does mean people need to if they want to know, hey, how do I follow Jesus? And they look at this guy and it's like, I'm right here in the trenches with you, buddy. I don't know. [00:45:41] Speaker A: So should every preacher keep every one of his sin problems in? Should he ever confess to any of his sin problems? [00:45:47] Speaker B: I think he should have outlets for it. Like, he might not be going to the person in the pews and meaning? [00:45:53] Speaker A: Meaning the elders. The elders of his congregation, those who are over his soul. How many elders fire guys on the spot for any problem that they have? This is my problem. [00:46:03] Speaker B: I mean, like, it define any problem, because we've seen. We've talked about this before. We've seen a rash of, in the last five years, preachers with adultery problems or divorce problems, you know, they're. Their. Their wife leaves them, and. And they're just separated, heading towards divorce or whatever it may be, and they just stay in the pulpit, and it's like, man, you've got bigger fish to fry right now. That. That should be your number one thing. And I would say the same thing with a porn addiction. Like, man, if you haven't gotten that fixed, that needs to be your number one focus right now, not the souls of other people. [00:46:35] Speaker C: If. [00:46:35] Speaker B: If. Essentially. My thoughts. No, no. This is my thing. When you get on an airplane, they say, don't put somebody else's mask on until you've got yours on. If the oxygen masks drop, if you are. Don't have your spiritual oxygen going, why are you up there trying to give everybody else theirs if you're drowning, if you. [00:46:52] Speaker A: Because his livelihood and his family and the. And putting food on the table is dependent on it. [00:46:57] Speaker B: No, no, guys, I'm not talking. Why should he do it? Because it's his job. I'm just saying, like, from a theoretical point of, should this guy be in this job if he. If his own spiritual life is not in a place where he's ready to go home? [00:47:12] Speaker A: We're not talking theory. [00:47:13] Speaker B: We're not talking theoretically. We are. This whole thing is about the theory of the role of the preacher and how we get. [00:47:18] Speaker A: We're talking about, guys, that this actually happens. Where. What is their recourse? If they quit their job and admit that they are porn addicts, where do they go? They can be a porn addict accountant, I suppose, because that's okay. But it's not okay to be. To struggle with any other sin. I understand what you're talking about. They need to be held to a higher standard. At the same time, one of the issues, in my opinion, why you see so many preachers lives implode is because they are put under such scrutiny, and they do have to put on a facade as though they are perfect and they are not. And they do need the prayers of the carnage, and they give me elders. [00:47:47] Speaker B: Helping them is that they have to realize you signed up to be a. Held to a higher standard than other people. Don't. [00:47:55] Speaker A: They're not supposed to meet. First Timothy three. Qualifications. First Timothy 412. Mainly. Sure. [00:48:00] Speaker B: Right, right. Not for again, if the imitate me is I imitate Christ. This goes back to our thing about young guys. This goes back to our thing about the. The applicants to the preaching school. It's not the guy who did a good job in a preacher's camp at 17 years old and can present the lesson well. It is a guy that people can look at and go, you tell me how to follow Jesus because you're doing it, and you know how to teach me how to do it. And if. Because there are just. There are a lot of cases of this, as you said, there is a. Some statistics say 50% of preachers, 65% of the members. Right. And so there. I'm sure a lot of those guys are hiding it well. But it comes out. It comes out in ways of, you're not spiritually competent. You're, as we've talked about before, like, they. They don't have the moral authority to call out other sins. This is Josh McDowell's big theory about, like, how. How so much progressivism has come into the church is. Well, and it's my theory as how we got brokenness culture is porn addicted preachers. Well, we're all broken sinners. Like, man, you're supposed to be up there saying, imitate me as I imitate Christ, not man. We all got problems. We all do have problems. We're here to get out of them, and you're here to show the way out of them. And if you can't do that again, like, this is not the job. [00:49:10] Speaker A: So you're saying it would be okay if a preacher, if he struggles, he needs to quit. But the other thing would be, don't tell your elders. Don't tell anybody in your congregation, but go find somebody else to help, is that. [00:49:21] Speaker B: I think the. One of the most impactful things the church could do is some millionaire. Who. Some millionaire. Think deeper. If that's you, contact me, because we could use some supportive focus press, too, but somebody to start a fund, that it would have to have a significant amount of money in it, and maybe we get multiple people. Again, this is just throwing out something off the top of my. Well, not off the top of my head. I thought about it before, but one of the best things the church could do is have a fund somewhere of, you can get six months severance if you come forward as a preacher with a pornography addiction to go get you a Runway, to go find another job so you know, you're not out on the street. You know, if you're in a parsonage or whatever, you're going to have lodging for your family, whatever it may be that there is a taper off from this, but you don't need to be in the pulpit anymore. We'll set you up with that. With the, the caveat of, if you get caught and you don't confess it, but somebody catches you in it, you don't get the money if you confess it. If you come and say, I've got this problem, we're going to help you with that. We're going to help you get out of the pulpit. We're going to help you with the addiction, we're going to set you up with the therapy, the counseling, the accountability, whatever it may be. The thing of that, I think that would be one of the most impactful things that could happen throughout the church today, is somebody do that. I don't have the money to do that. [00:50:37] Speaker A: I don't disagree with you. [00:50:38] Speaker B: I'm spending somebody else's money trying to set this thing up. But because, yeah, I agree. It's a tough situation where a guy's like, well, I. My, my options are try and fight the sin by myself or see my family put out on the street. Yeah, that, that's not a great situation. Again, so many times this whole preacher system sets a guy and his family and his own personal life, and the church is like the, the thriving of, and the health of the church. They're all against each other there. He's having to pick and choose and of these things, and it's not conducive to the church growing and being strong. [00:51:14] Speaker C: You want to welcome me back in, or. [00:51:16] Speaker B: I was about to say, you have one of our brother fights over here, but it's been a while. [00:51:22] Speaker C: I was not about to step in there. Yeah. [00:51:25] Speaker A: And we didn't make this about a porn issue. The general point, getting back to it, is the glass house. This does happen. [00:51:31] Speaker B: Sorry. [00:51:32] Speaker C: And Joe, I very much see your point in the sense of. Okay, so if he struggles with anything, is, you know, do we. I get what you're saying. I'm not going to resume up everything you said. I understand your point. I think. And I'm going to go ahead and get. Because I did want to get to at least one more discussion before we completely ran out of time. So I'm going to rope this into it. But I would go to two Timothy, chapter two as well, where he's talking about a servant of the Lord. You know, the context there seemingly being somebody who is in a Timothy role, somebody who is going to serve, leading the church again, Timothy himself. And he does say in verse 22, flee also youthful lust, pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. And he goes on with a few other things. I do also agree with Jack in the sense that you can't just be one of the guys who's got a, you know, I guess you have to define what fleet you full s means. Does that mean, you know, is if he's addicted at all, then he's out, you know, that he's out of luck and he's got a. I do think there, you have to have the question of what is he doing to get out of it. But I think the question of should he be held to a higher standard than the members. Absolutely. I think, you know, absolutely in the sense of, you know, you are leading people, you are teaching people from the word and your credibility just gets destroyed. You know, the same. We just talked about you, man. Hard to take guys seriously when they're not married. Talking about marriage, I'm sorry, it's really hard to take somebody seriously on self discipline, on fruits of the spirit, walk in the spirit, follow it. To take up your cross daily. If he comes out with, hey, I've been addicted to porn for the last two years, I'm sorry. Your credibility does just go up and smoke at that point. And so that does not solve your question, Joe, your problem with this of like, okay, so what it, what is his recourse? I understand that. I do think though you gotta, you guys gotta, you gotta rise above. And so to address the problem of, okay, what about guys right now? What do they need to do? Cause you have, that's where the glass house problem comes in. This is where I'm gonna bring in this other side of discussion with, which. [00:53:26] Speaker B: Is, let me just go ahead to wrap on that, because there was one last, there was a thing I said there I wanted to clarify. I said I quit for that reason. I didn't quit because I had a porn addiction that, you know, I've, I've been open before that, like, yes, I did have that as a younger Mandev. That's not why I quit. I didn't quit for like some big moral failing. It was just like, wow, these people are leading me and I need to get my life together. I need to like really believe that I can lead people before I do this. So that I want to clarify. [00:53:50] Speaker C: Yes, but Joe, to get back to your, this is where I think the relationship between the elders and the paid preacher is so unhealthy in a lot of places. I think one of the recourses for this would be if you have a very healthy relationship with your elders, which is ideal, you go, you need to go to them with this. You need to go and share, and obviously sooner than later, because the longer you go, let's say you say, hey, I've been really struggling with this for three months. Hey, I really been struggling with this for a year, three years, five years. The longer that it goes, the more likely the elders are going to be very frustrated and the relationship is going to suffer. This is why I would encourage them. Go to your elders. Again, this is dependent on having a good relationship with your elders where they're going to help you through it. Maybe you don't necessarily have to come out to it with, or come out about it with the congregation, you know, whatnot. But you work through with the elders and the elders determine what are you doing to get out of this? Do you have, are you by yourself in your office with unlimited access to the Internet? Okay, we're going to probably put a stop to that. What are you doing accountability, partner wise? What are you doing, you know, social media wise? Are you on Facebook for 8 hours a day? That's also not great. All these things. The problem that I was going to bring up is the elder preacher dynamic is often. Not that it is often elders say, well, you're just our paid employee, so, you know, you know, put up or shut up, basically. Again, another issue being that preachers are to set it to step away from the porn discussion for just a second. Preachers don't preach tough things because they're afraid the elders might fire them for offending people. That is, that is the other side of this discussion that I desperately wanted to get to because my, because you do see that, you see guys that preach fluff sermons, you see guys that preach baptism 50 times a year, don't preach anything tough, but it's hard to blame them. When we have elderships, when we have church leaders who man the second miss so and so gets offended, they're getting called into the office and it's like, you know, basically, don't ever do that again or you've got two weeks to find a new job. That's, that's a terrible aspect of the, of this system. You know, kind of stepping away from the preaching school side more so with the eldership side of like, you've got guys who don't want to say anything hard because, or say anything difficult because these elder a lot of elderships are so concerned with not offending people that you can't speak tough truth. And so, Joe, I want to get your thoughts on that to maybe go back to what I said a second ago. I. To me, that's the recourse. If you don't have the healthy relationship with your elders, then obviously you are up a creek. I don't. I don't know what your thoughts are on that. [00:56:14] Speaker A: And I think. [00:56:14] Speaker C: Go ahead. [00:56:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that's probably the best thing you can do. The idea of, it's been going on for three months. Most of the time, porn addiction takes place in the teens. It's been going on for years. Uh, if you get a young guy at 23 years old, which, to Jack's. [00:56:26] Speaker C: Point, you should not have taken the pulpit at that point. [00:56:28] Speaker A: Probably not. Probably not. And I think that would be a call to young men, first off, preaching. [00:56:33] Speaker B: Schools, like, don't graduate a guy and send him out until you vetted that he doesn't have the problem. [00:56:38] Speaker A: Correct. [00:56:38] Speaker B: Obviously, the guy can lie to you, but, like, this should be a prominent feature of every program right now. [00:56:44] Speaker A: Not a. Yeah, not a one time thing like, this needs to be a consistent. We are checking on this, and we're looking at it for that reason, because this is that serious. And I guess what I'm kicking against is the idealism of everything. Having the fund and everything else. That's great. Unfortunately, where we stand is, I mean, in, in this age group that we're kind of raging against, of this 25 year old and down age group that are kind of taking the pulpits up to 30. I think it's 32 years old. It's seven. Anywhere from 75% to 85%, depending on the statistic you're looking for. [00:57:15] Speaker C: I don't think that excuses it, though. [00:57:17] Speaker A: I agree. I'm not saying it excuses it. I'm just saying. [00:57:20] Speaker B: Well, okay, let's. Realism is, where do we closet alcoholic. Let's say he's got a closet cocaine problem. You know, something like that. Like, okay, should he. [00:57:30] Speaker A: I think he needs to take a step away from the pulpit for time, no doubt. I think he should take a step away, too. Or, yes, with pornography as well. I'm not saying. My point is, if he's going to get fired for that or any other sin he shows, if he gets fired for preaching the wrong thing, if he gets fired because his wife doesn't step up, there is a million and one ways for a preacher to get fired. He's going to struggle with sin. I want to create a situation where we don't have the guy cheating on his wife years later because he had an undisclosed porn addiction when in his. When he was 23 years old. And he let this get way out of control in the closet. I know how bad secrecy is to any sort of addiction, to your point of alcohol or anything else. We have essentially created a secret place where the preacher is in his office all day alone. He is not. I'm sorry. There's not that much to do for a lot of preachers. There's just not that much to do. Idle hands of the devil's workshop. So he's got all sorts of time in the world. He is loaded. It's just ripe for this. We need to have something better in place, and so will, I think what you're talking about is better in place. I wouldn't have him step away for a time, but he would have to go to some addiction camp and. Or something like that. He had go to an intensive, and that's something that the elders maybe can support him in. But we do. If we're firing people, if we fire the preacher for that, 65% of the men in your congregation struggle with this. They will never come to anybody about this again, because if that's what you do, the preacher, what we. We have to be thinking on those things as well. So I'm not saying you're wrong. This guy has to stand above. And I would say, if you are thinking about going into preaching school or you are coming out of preaching school and you struggle with porn addiction, please don't take a job. Please don't take a job until you get this fixed. That's why I'm so passionate about this. That's why I made my work on sexual addiction, is this destroys families, it destroys lives, it destroys churches. It is a big problem. But getting back to the outline here, because I want to wrap up as we kind of get there, I don't. [00:59:17] Speaker C: Know if y'all want to speak to the eldership thing. I brought up less about the porn thing and more about their. Their muzzling their preachers about not letting them teach anything hard because they might get fired. Yeah, that, to me, is a huge. That's one of the biggest problems on this outline, I think. [00:59:30] Speaker B: Yeah, their. Their job has to be the shepherding of souls, and that includes teaching. And you look at what Timothy is told to do. Preach in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort, and rebuke and exhort and reprove. I mean, those words are absent in a lot of places of people just don't want that to happen. You're going to get mad if it happens. And if an eldership won't tolerate that, and that's one of the worst things. That's another reason why I won't encourage my sons to go into ministry is you might be the finest man in the pulpit, doing God's work and serving him in every way possible, and you get an eldership who's just not on board with it, you got a problem like that, and now your family's uprooted and all those things. And so, so, and I think that leads well into our solutions here. I'm just real big on the localism thing to keep the supply chain local, raise up people within your own congregation, be future preachers, future elders. That giftedness is going to come out, but also the respectability is going to come out. We talked last week about the. You show up and send in an application and your resume. You come out for a weekend interview. If you preach a good sermon, maybe they hire you. Maybe they bring you back and do it again. You, they hire you because you're good at preaching and have a good resume. They don't know you. They don't know if they respect you and if they can follow you. Well, your, your local people do. And they know at 18, maybe they're not going to hand you the keys, but they're looking towards, this guy's been around and done the work. [01:00:50] Speaker C: Two things on that very quickly. I would say that 100% is going to help with what Joe brought up about, you know, coming out about sin and whatnot, man, if, if you've had roots there down, if you've had roots down there for 15 years, 20 years, how much easier is that going to be than the new guy who's been in town for eight months hardly knows people. You know, that that whole idea is going to be so much easier of getting to know people and being able to be upfront with the things that you struggle with, you know, however small or big they are, that helps with that. Joe, I was going to let you get into the tent making side of things here in just a second because I know you started that. That's something all of us believe in as well. But Jack, I love your, I love the localism point. I think the, the benefits to that are enormous. Again, just with, with raising these young guys up to, to stick around. I just think it makes for stronger congregations. The family feel the, I don't know, the discipling of your, of your kids, the discipling of your grandkids. There's just more invested, there's more invested in your congregation. There's more invested in the young people that is completely uprooting the system. But of course that, but we see that as a pretty big solution. Joe, if you want to get into the tent making stuff. [01:02:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:03] Speaker A: I just think that making is very needed in today's day and age just because it's so expensive to live in. It's so difficult for young churches, small. [01:02:12] Speaker C: Church, which explain what tent making is. Just real quick, if anybody doesn't know. [01:02:15] Speaker A: Yeah, Paul, Paul's a tent maker, meaning you have a secular job, you work outside, but also preach for congregation. I'm a what we, we all three preach for Jack step. We're all tent makers. Right. We have other jobs. And to me, I think that makes the, there's a great brother back in Colorado, unfortunately, past Marty Trujillo, who was big on this, and he talked a lot about this, talked about starting kind of a school just for this, where he mentor young men and kind of did some of that work and did a fantastic job on this. And he worked outside, worked for the post office, and yet he had this small congregation that was, he was vital to that congregation. He was everything to them. He was such a fantastic leader and led them in very well. And, you know, as they were working toward elders and things like that. And that to me is the ideal, is a young man who is willing or an older man who has an established thing outside of the home where, look, you can, you can't really muzzle me type of thing. You cannot stop me from preaching on things that we really need to preach on because, well, we'll fire you. Okay. I told the magextel, you can fire me. I'm still going to go here just because I love the congregation and I feel like I'm a member of the congregation. I've really tried to do away with the glass house of, look, we are here, and I will preach for the congregation, but I'll preach and expect every other member to do a lot of the spiritual duties as well, instead of just getting to him. But I can do that because I preach outside because I'm not getting a full time salary for that. And so I just think it provides a lot more freedom for the preacher to do what he needs to do, to say what he needs to say, to work within the congregation and be a member of the congregation, not just the, you know, stand back and kind of, everybody sees him as the elder light type of thing, and sometimes as the pro elder, like the guy that's even above the elders. Um, I think you just have a lot more freedom and a lot more flexibility when you are as such. And it really helps the younger congregations to know they can get a, you know, for some other guy, they can. He can be incredibly talented and he can stay local because he's got a really good job down the street at XYZ business. [01:04:12] Speaker C: Right. [01:04:12] Speaker A: He just loves preaching for his local congregation. [01:04:15] Speaker C: It's, it's a muscle move. It accomplishes, you know, kills a lot of birds with 1 st, as the phrase is. But like you have that side of the threat of losing that income is not going to be near as high. You have the added benefit of the members don't necessarily feel like man. Well, that's what our preachers paid to do. He's supposed to go evangelize. He's supposed to do all that. I mean, what we're talking about here, tent making, especially with what Jack's talking about. I'm very interested to hear the feedback. I'm very interested to hear what comments, you know, what, what everybody thinks about this, because a lot of the problems that we've come up with or that we've put down on this outline and talked about today with this current system we have, are solved by the tent making homegrown church leaders. The localism supply chain thing that Jack has done a great job describing. And so, yeah, I am curious to see what everybody thinks about that. Guys, what closing comments do you all have as we get ready to wrap this very wide ranging topic here that. [01:05:12] Speaker B: We'Ve looked at, but it's very hard to entertain the thought of like an entirely different system. So one that you haven't seen. And so if people want to maybe tweak the system, maybe, oh, well, the system's not great. But I mean, like, literally we're talking about stopping and going a totally different direction. And I know that's kind of hard to get your head around, but the idea of in your own congregation, in your own family, train the, the young men to be solid Bible students, encourage them to stay local, encourage them to plant roots, encourage them to be there and raise their families there and all that. And the giftedness is going to come out. I mean, not all of our sons, as I talked about, I hope they're all part of this church for years to come. They're not all going to be preachers and teachers. Like, I just. Kids don't work that way. And that's okay. Some of them will. And so as they get older, you're going to give them those opportunities. Joe said you kind of start taking them as a young man. And after ten or 15 years of that, the congregation is going to go, hey, man, he teaches well, he's respectable. He's been a part. He shows up and serves. He does the dirty work. He's not just here to collect, collect a paycheck. We can hand the reins to him. That is so radically different than, well, let's bring some guys in, collect some resumes, post on a church job board. But it's one of those that like, when you think about it, it's why do we do what we do? It just doesn't make sense. And so I hope people are open to the entertaining. The idea. This is very theoretical this time around. [01:06:32] Speaker C: But I think those point is very idealistic also. [01:06:35] Speaker B: It is in a sense. I do think it can come about. I think it's doable. [01:06:40] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:06:40] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. So, yeah. But, yeah, this should make for some really interesting comments. I don't know that our preacher buddies are going to like it as much as some of the other folks, but I know some of them do. Some of them really do believe in this. So we'll see what we, we hear from people. Anything else? [01:06:56] Speaker A: No. [01:06:56] Speaker B: All right, well, we will talk to you guys next week. Thanks for tuning in.