Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign podcast presented by Focus Press. I'm your co host Joe Wilkie, joined as always by Jack Wilke and Will Hareb. And today, fellas, we are talking lectureships. It is the conference slash lectureship time of year. Then again, I suppose that's every time of year these days where it seems that there's always one every weekend, every other weekend, something like that, some sort of conference, whether that be a youth conference, you know, whatever it may be. We know that PTP is coming up, one of the biggest of the year. Probably the biggest of the year would be my guess.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: And in the churches of Christ. In the churches of Christ, yeah. Inside that is the main event.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Polishing the pulpit is pretty big.
And so I think it would be good for us to just examine this, the good, some of the bad, some of the. And just ask some, some questions surrounding lectureships surrounding the, you know, this, this rise of conferences. Because yes, we are in the church Christ. Yes, we're specifically speaking of those. This is not just a church Christ issue. This is something that is. Has really risen like just an American culture where we are throwing more of these things than ever before, it seems. All of these conferences where we're getting. And I, you know, I get these ads on Facebook of like 15 different speakers coming to some conference and it's like a men's conference or it's a leadership conference and they get everybody and their dog out there and, and it feels like we are in the age of conferences where it is a who's who get as many of the big speakers as possible.
And I'm not sure that that's necessarily a good thing. And so there is some good to it. I think there's some negative to it as well. We want to open that up. So, fellas, any introductory thoughts as we look to get into this episode?
[00:01:45] Speaker C: I would just say, I mean, we've, we've done episodes like this before in the sense of taking something that's pretty.
Call it central in the Church of Christ, whether it be, you know, youth groups or even worship practices like thing, you know, things like that and just ask questions is really what we're doing. Again, Thinking Deeper is the name of the. Or Think Deeper's name of the podcast. That's what we're trying to do. And so I don't want anybody to listen to this and go, you know, oh man, what are they going to say? They're going to be super anti lectureship or even super pro lectureship. Like, I think we all probably lean a certain direction on this, but really the goal is to maybe discuss things surrounding it and ask questions that, you know, maybe people haven't. Maybe people have asked. But we're going to explore it on the podcast because we like talking about this kind of stuff and we find it interesting. And I think a lot of people in the Church of Christ probably would as well. The thing I'll say briefly and then hand it to Jack is just it. It does. The one thing I'll say as we start is it does feel like there's like a, the market is a bit oversaturated, you might say, when it, when it comes to, you know, relationships and, and like, you know, there's always products like that. And, you know, it felt like everybody there for a while was doing chicken and waffles at their restaurants and like, random places. He would show up like, okay, I think the market's a little oversaturated for that. It kind of died back down. We are in the, the, the peak. The, the. It seems like the hype, the biggest moment when it comes to lectureships, like you said, youth lectureships, men's lectureships, women's lectureships, overall church lectureships, church workshops, and, you know, you could go on and on and on and on. When I was a, a the youth evangelist for, in Decatur, Alabama, just for our congregation, there were probably like 7 or 8 on the calendar. Not, not all held at our congregation, but like it was on our members calendar, like, hey, attend this one. We got this one that we're hosting. This one other one's hosting. So yeah, there's, there's a lot of them. So I do think it's. It's worth our time to discuss, I guess would be my introductory thoughts.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: Yeah. What I'd add is it's going to hit different people different ways. There's the attendees, there's the people who put them on, the people who speak at them. Like, there's just hopefully thoughts in there for everybody on this. On. If you're going. Here's some things to, you know, maximize your, your effort if you're planning them or if you're somebody who thinks like, maybe this is something you'd like to do down in the future. Maybe some thoughts to consider. So just kind of.
Yeah. A little bit of something. Of all the different angles of this is I think what we're going to hope to get to here.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Yeah. So we want to jump into it and.
Yeah, I guess we'll start with the good. Start with the things that I think are genuinely positives concerning the lectureship culture and the first as we jump into it is just fellowship. This is something that you hear a lot of which is you get to see some of your favorite people, you know, this one or two times a year whenever you get together with them.
And I think the fellowship genuinely is good. It is something probably most mentioned from everybody coming back. We have several of our church members that go to ptp. I've got a bazillion one friends that go to ptp. And that's always what's mentioned. It's just the fellowship of being near like minded Christians, people that you haven't gotten to see all year round and just knowing that there are people all over the nation, all over the world really, but all over the nation that hey, we believe the same thing. And it's just a good reminder that yes, there are Christians all over the place that we can still gather together and worship together. And so I think the fellowship is a genuinely good part of the lectureship.
[00:05:06] Speaker C: Didn't you guys both meet your spouses through lectureship type events?
Technically. Joe, didn't you meet Alyssa Atah?
[00:05:14] Speaker A: Oh yeah, you're right, I met her at one.
What is it called?
[00:05:20] Speaker C: Was it not Tahoe? Oh, Faith Builders. Okay, Jack, I thought I remember Legacy family. So yeah, I think this is a great, great one to start with just because I do think that's one of the really cool things. Obviously I think there's a ton of value in really pouring into your local congregation and, and making the, the bulk of your spiritual, call it work, I suppose, going to that congregation. But there is something special about getting to meet people from other places and maybe establishing connections with people from other places. I know we traveled a lot when I was young. You know, my dad's speaking at different conferences and you know, that's not for everybody. But that was something, you know, very, very cool that I remember is, you know, making friends that lived six or seven states away and being able to reconvene. And you know, I know that's because the other thing about it too is typically, not always, but typically you're going to, you know, be around at people that go to lectureships like that are going to be more conservative for the most part. And so, you know, know if you were somebody who didn't, you know, was, was from maybe up north or somewhere, that's just not all that conservative. Your kids probably did not have a lot of people their age who were kind of like minded. And so that is one of the blessings, I think one of the One of the good things of lectureships like that is you, you do get to kind of be immersed in a little bit more again, conservatism when it comes to, you know, you know, conservative culture, conservative church beliefs and stuff like that. So, you know, yeah, the fellowship I think is a good one to start with. I think it's a pretty good positive.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Even within that, people who have churches that have a decent amount of people and even young people, they might not be like minded.
It's when you go to a place where it's kind of like, you know, why everyone's there. They are spiritually interested people. They're not Sunday box checking people.
They're people that obviously the different conferences kind of have their own doctrinal stripe. And so you're in alignment with people there in that way, which you might not be in your home congregation. And so I think that it's very much a funneling, a filtering effect, you know, of kind of getting down to people that you start on a good footing with. And I think we'll get to this later on of like, it'd be really good to develop that more locally. But right now, in this wild west world of what religion has become, it's very cool to have people that you can walk in the door, never met them, you see their name tag, shake their hand and know that you've got like A, B, C, D, E, F, G in common. And you can just kind of bypass those, those like introductory. Do these people even share my values kind of thing that's valuable.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: And there is something about they took their, their vacation. You know, there's some vacation to be here to worship with saints and to learn at the feet of some learned men and to fellowship with other people. Like as you talked about, that's already a good starting ground. Like they are paying money to be here. This is not the low bar. Like my grandfather's always gone to this church. So I got to, you know, whatever it may be, like, no, you are actively taking time and spending money to be here, showing that it is a higher priority. So yes, the upper, I'm not saying it's all upper echelon per se, and that sounds horrible to the, you know, to the church at home. But like the church at home, you're going to get some people that just aren't all that plugged in. People there go to be plugged in. And I think that's a key piece of this. But that also goes to the education point, which is second.
Yes, a lot of these do provide A fair amount of education for people. And I think it's a. You know, the way that you get some really good speakers that handle a text in a way that you've never heard before. That's valuable. You go in there and there's some guy that's a Greek scholar and he's pulling out his Greek Bible and explaining things. You go, whoa, you know, my guy back home is not going to do that. And we're going to get to the negative a little bit of that in a bit. But there is a positive element of being able to go and sit at the feet of guys that have been studying the Bible for longer than you've been alive, in some cases twice as long as you've been alive. They have a lot of wisdom to share, and there is a high level of education at a lot of these.
[00:09:20] Speaker C: This is where, as I was thinking about this episode, I mentally broke it down to five different styles of conferences, or call it purposes for the conferences and we can maybe get into later.
Are some more valuable owners? I think they are. But that is one of the ones I came up with is like, you know, how do people, you know, what are we educating on? Well, spiritual and textual knowledge growth, I think, is really, really important, you know, and so, you know, you get lectureships like that and obviously polishing the pulpit coming up soon. I think from what I understand, they try to do, like, everything, like all these that I'm about to go over, they pretty much try to do. But yeah, to your point, Joe, like, getting to just learn a ton of Bible and be somewhere, you know, for a whole week where you're just, you know, soaking in more Bible than. Than probably you have combined over the last month, I think is really cool.
But, yeah, so you have, you know, education in that sense. I think there are. There are conferences that are kind of primarily for ministers that work with them on, like, how to build sermons, how to study the Bible, that kind of thing. That's important. You've got, you know, again with ptp, kind of doing all this stuff, topical and cultural stuff, like how do Christians deal with mental health? How do Christian, you know, what. What should we do about social media pornography? Like, that's a little bit different than just the let's break down, you know, first Timothy one, you know, type of. Type of conference, and then the day. I think this, honestly, this next one is what most of them, most Christians really love, and that is the daily practical, like, Christian content. What do. How do I handle this issue in my marriage? Parenting, you Know, dating, like relationship type stuff, just practical Christian stuff that obviously you can do textually. Like let's break down this text. But the more practical. I think kind of the stuff that my D. Dad does is kind of where my mind goes with this like practical, practical type. And then the final one is more is just kind of like pep rally type of conferences, like getting people motivated, kind of amped up, rallying, cry type, go out there and evangelize type of stuff. And again, maybe later we can get into like, are all of those worth it? Are some of those more important than others? I think some of I would say that they are, but yeah. So I say all that to say my little, you know, tangent there is that the education from it I do think is a really good positive.
Jack.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And like you say, things are not going to get elsewhere now in the digital age that is. Has shrunken a little bit.
And so this is. I don't want to get into the cons side of this list just yet because, I mean, I think there is good education, but I think this is the one that deserves the most reexamination of what it's bringing to the table. But as part of that, and I've got this on the outline as well, it's a good chance to hash out doctrinal stances. And this is one that goes back a long ways. And I appreciate Mike and Jake Highsaw do this. A couple of guys out of the Dallas area on their channel, they dig up and I don't know how they get a hold of it. Like they're archivists, they have really good stuff. And they'll post the 1972 freed Hardiman lectures where they debated something, something. And it's really cool to have and who the different sides were and the cases made. And you can kind of see after those conferences like the sides that people took that still kind of exist to this day, like those things are valuable. And so whether it's the more academic kind of college lectureships or the conferences. And you mentioned earlier, Joe, that this is not just a thing in the churches of Christ. You see this happening with the Baptist, the Presbyterians too.
They'll put on a conference and you can just tell by the speaker lineup what kind of conference it is. And it's like these kind of people flock to this one and these kind of people flock to this one. And so with that, like, hey, this is our doctrinal stand. This is what we here are in agreement on. And I think that's important.
I think that's something I give the denominations credit for. They're doing a better job of that than us in that in the churches of Christ we, we get stuck on church of Christ pet issues a lot. Whereas really hashing out a positive vision for like this is what your family should look like and this is, you know, debating some of the things that we think are important to talk about here on Think deeper.
Those usually are shied away from. And I think that's something we could do a better job of, of like really carving out a hey, at this lectureship, we promote this vision, this reading of the text, this application, you know, that kind of thing.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: But I also struggle in the fact that it's tough to hash out things when you don't have any dissenting opinion. And I know this is kind of jumping to the cons, but this is a big part of where we go wrong like.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: And see, I think there's a, there's a side for debates and I think there's also a time for we believe this, you know, this is our side of things and we're going to teach it this way. And some people, as I said, you kind of put the posters out of who's there? And maybe what the topics are. I can see they're gonna be like, yeah, that's not for me. But it's good to rally people around a shared belief in that sense.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: I get that. I get that. I also do think though that you lose a little bit of we're going to get into the cons here. I suppose you lose some, get to.
[00:14:24] Speaker C: The last point and then we just.
[00:14:26] Speaker A: Take a blow towards it. No, just kidding. The last one is. And Will, you spoke to this, but like the different types, which is it can be motivating and exciting. Not every one of them is intended to be that. Some of them are intended to be, you know, more on the high minded type thing. But at the end of the day there is a motivation level, an excitement level that a lot of times comes out of this where you just come back, you're recharged, you, you know, maybe you were feeling a bit low spiritually. You go around 7,000 Christians and hearing some things that, you know, wall to wall Bible for a week, that's a really cool experience for a lot of people. And so it has the same experiences like a summer camp for kids. That's how I would say it is. Like kids have summer camps and the parents and the adults have lectureships and such where you just get a little recharge, you get that excitement and everything else, a bit of a boost in the middle of the year just to remind yourself like, man, this is what's great about being a Christian when sometimes you can be in the trenches otherwise. And so yes, the motivation, excitement I do think is a pro with each of these, yes, there are corresponding cons, I would say.
But on the other hand, I don't think you could take that away from him in the fact that there is a level of excitement that shows up with most of these lectureships.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: So let's get to the other side of the equation. I'm not going to call it the bad, the.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Cross examinations.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: I mean there's pros and cons, but I mean cross examination, whatever you want to call it, I think the main thing we want to get at is what this is doing to and for the local church. And sometimes the people coming back energized into the local church is great. People coming back more educated into the local church is great. All those things we talked about, on the other hand, something like the fellowship we talked about as such a strength.
Yeah, but maybe if we're so looking forward to that, maybe we're not invested enough in the local church's fellowship where they're not as like minded and we have to work a little harder at it and things like that. And so I want to look at these things through that kind of lens of how the local church can benefit more if we kind of rethink some of these things.
[00:16:24] Speaker C: Just briefly, Jack, before you get into that, the evidence for that, and this is kind of a. Not a debate but like a disagreement.
The local church is dying, lectureships are not. Lectureships are thriving. You might say that's probably, I'm sure that's a name of a conference somewhere.
But the local church is dying.
You'll go to these lectureships and the kind of prominent presences at those conferences will kind of make to just be frank about it, false statements about how much stronger the church is getting and how they're growing. It's like, yeah, I'm sure you probably think that when you're surrounded by 7,000 Christians who all to Joe, as Joe said earlier, took a week off to be there. Like, that's great. The local church in many places is not doing that well at all. And so that's kind of the heart behind a lot of what we want to get at here is man, let's take some of that vigor and energy that maybe comes from it or goes into some of these lectureships and man, pour it into the local church because hopefully we can all agree when it comes to kind of the importance of the kingdom of which of those is more important, it has to be the local church. Like even the most die hard lectureship fans have, would have to admit, like you had to take one or the other, you got to, you got to go to the local church there. So I didn't mean to cut in there, Jack, but like that is kind of a point of contention for a lot of people.
[00:17:37] Speaker B: Yeah, it's not, you know, there's always that somebody will chime in and say correlation does not always equal causation or does not mean causation. That's true.
But I don't necessarily think it's a coincidence that we're getting more and more and more conferences at a time when religion is going backwards.
Like it's almost what we're doing in lieu of the real grassroots work is, you know, kind of a, we'll go give one good, really good weekend a year or, you know, a couple of them here or there, whatever the case may be. And so with that, the, the, some of the things that are negative and might take away from the local church is there's a doctrinal clique culture where you're kind of supposed to be aligned with a conference or with the kind of people who go to a conference. And sometimes your preacher has to be aligned with. And these are, this is some inside baseball stuff. We're not going to tell stories from behind the scenes, but kind of the pressures that are on people of, you know, you're in this circle of churches, the type of church that goes to X conference over Y conference, X lectureship over Y lectureship and you know, other churches and other preachers and people like that that go to those and you're expected to kind of be in line. And there's kind of a, you know, we talked about the good side of this, which is the conferences can bring people together under doctrinal alignment, but it also can command conformity. It can command, hey, you know, if you're not going to be one of us on this, you're, you're out the door. And that's hard. I mean, you're choosing between, you know, it can almost be, I don't want to say it can become a mini like denominational click, but like almost a mini. Denominations have like their synods and their conferences and they're not like gathering conferences, but like they're organizational conferences of groups of churches that are associated and you almost end up with that Sometimes if you're not careful, as you said, we're.
[00:19:30] Speaker A: Not going to tell too many stories. But I do know of lectureships that uninvited guys. Because you spoke on a lectureship with somebody else that we didn't agree with. Spoke on a lectureship, there's 30 speakers. But that guy was there. We don't agree with him. You spoke at the same conference there. We don't want you speaking on ours because if you fellowship that guy. And so what we do is we take a lot of these doctrinal issues and unfortunately we do start drawing lines of fellowship over some of these things. And I think all the people that go there aren't necessarily sure what they're buying into to some degree. Yeah, I know that they're. Man, that's my favorite speaker. What they don't know is the guys that were disinvited that for some fringe. Take again, New Heavens, New Earth, whatever it may be, I would consider a fairly like tertiary principle here.
They're getting disinvited and in the. Or uninvited. And in that uninviting.
What that seems to indicate is like, am I just uninvited from this lectureship or are you telling me that I'm like, my soul is jeopardy.
That's a really tough line to walk with some of these things. And so, yes, with the doctrinal clicks, when you fail to platform that guy, is it just because I don't really like some of the things you're saying, or is it because I genuinely think you're a false teacher who's going to hell?
That's a tough thing that I don't think lectureships really want to wade into. But that's kind of the brass tacks. Like, you get it down to brass tacks, you have to be able to say, do you think the guy is still right. Doctrinally correct. And I get you don't have to be. You don't have to platform anybody. You know, like, you get to choose who you want. Especially if it's your lectureship. I don't think you should be. It's compulsory type of thing for you to platform certain people. On the other hand, I think that's, to me, where the clicks really come in and where the gray areas come in is we will shun the guy to some degree, but we're not really at the point of saying that he's a complete false teacher or he's going to hell, but he certainly is not allowed to speak on the lectureship. And we just Blur those lines. I do think that's very detrimental to the people attending. I think it's very detrimental to the local church.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: Well, the local church part is like, are we autonomous or not? And that's what you start to lose sometimes if we go this direction.
[00:21:31] Speaker C: Well, what this leads to. And then briefly I'll get into the next point. But what this leads to too is the conservatism competition, essentially. You know, how, how the, how conservative. Oh, you're this conservative. Well, I'm gonna take another step that direction so I can be more conservative than you and kind of in a weird way, like a, you know, high school popularity contest almost about who can be more conservative. But that gets us into kind of.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: I'll just say briefly, that goes the other direction too. The, the progressives.
[00:21:56] Speaker C: Oh, absolutely.
[00:21:56] Speaker B: Have their, their ratchet as well.
[00:21:58] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. So that gets us into though, the, the next section of kind of the, again, whatever you want to call it, cross examination. And that is kind of the idea of guys using the lectureship culture or the lectureship conference type of thing as a bit of a career ladder. There's the, just to be frank, celebrity culture that surrounds these conferences and lectureships. I mean, you'll see people parading around taking selfies with as many popular and more well known preachers as they possibly can. And obviously, as I'm sure one of you guys were going to speak to the, the way that social media looks and all this, like, to be honest, for me, it's, it's pretty uncomfortable to, to see a lot of that just because of the, the seeming deification of some of these, some of these guys. But you'll see it's almost like, you know, young pre, this is a young preacher thing that, you know, it's kind of a badge of honor that you were invited to, to speak at say, X conference, and then the next year you get invited to Y conference and then after that it's Zeke. And it's like you're working your way up in a way. And there's nothing wrong with, you know, you know, getting to know people and I guess somewhat networking. You know, I don't have a huge, I don't, you know, think it's all bad, but like, I don't know, the celebrity culture, I think of these two is the one that really makes. It kind of bothers me a whole lot more just because, listen, this is not the, the NFL combine here. Like, this is not, we're not, we're not in Hollywood out here taking selfies with every Star, actor, and actress. We can find it. That's the feel that it gives a lot of times. First Corinthians 1, verse 12. Jack has on the outline about, you know, Paul kind of chastising the Corinthians for claiming to follow a certain person who baptized them, or, you know, Apollo and Cephas and Peter and Paul. And Paul says, hey, I didn't baptize you except for Crispus and guys, for this very purpose. Like, that's not the point here. And so, guys, what thoughts y' all have on this one. I think this is a pretty significant thing to bring up here.
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[00:24:53] Speaker A: I very much agree. I think part of this is normal, part of this, of finding a guy that you just happen to really, really like. You enjoy listening to him. You found him on YouTube, whatever it is. There's some people that are great, you know, Daniel Mayfield, Fantastic. You know, his preaching is really, really solid. I like listening to him. And if I was at the conference.
[00:25:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: You know, I might. I might enjoy going up and talking to Daniel and, you know, whatever conference that may be, and just shooting the breeze with him.
I think it'd be a little weird for me to take selfies and post on Facebook and post quotes, and I'm.
This is a jerk thing to say. Can we please also stop with the quotes that are like, Jesus died for you. Oh, brother. You know, that's just it. Like, okay, let's wait for, like, some hot take. I'm not saying that that's not good to post. That's great. But, like, you know, so. And so brother said this, and it's like that literally is he's just quoting scripture and you're attributing it to him, or he's literally saying the most basic thing. And we gotta be quick to post our little, you know, well, brother so and so said this, like, okay, but that leads to that celebrity culture. And I do think that for preachers, you gotta realize, you know, 51 weeks of the year or whatever, unless you're speaking a ton, 51 weeks of the year, they're just the preacher. And a lot of times they're the butt of the joke. And they're not always treated super well. And, you know, they're scratching by and things like that. And this is the week where they get to go. And especially if they're speaking, they get to be a part of something that's bigger than them. They get to be a part of something that is. Is lively and they get to be included with some guys that have been preaching for twice as long as they've been alive. And I mean, there is a level of this that is normal, that is like, wow, that's really cool.
I think we can just, you know, it crosses the line when we are.
Yeah. Kind of celebritizing some of these people. And the other thing for the career ladder is I'm all for a guy getting invited to these lectureships and everything, but, yes, it does seem like the next thing to get bigger and better is you got to get invited the next one, the next one, the next one. And you really want to show up well and shake all the right hands and get the right selfies with xyz and then you'll be able to go on to the next one. I mean, it just.
I'm not trying to be super cynical here, but yes, there is that level of like, I think for preachers, this is kind of getting the play from single A to double A, to triple A, to the pros, to the bigs. You know, when you get to speak on the lectureships of the other ones, that's a big deal. Now, will people might listen this go well. What about your dad? Right. You know, Brad Harab is your dad. Your dad's very well known. Your dad's experienced some of this. I know you've seen some of this where.
And you know, there's that time. I'm saying it is natural for people to have a favorite speaker and to come up and to shake some hands. I think that's normal. But even people posting selfies with your dad.
Yeah, I'D say the same thing, you know what I mean? It's just as we, it's just a moment of reflection is all I would say. I'm not condemning anybody for it and just. Are we making too big a celebrities out of some of this? And in some cases, yes.
[00:27:39] Speaker C: Well, I don't want to speak for dad, you know, but he's even said before like back because he hasn't been to PTP in years or a lot of the other, that's the one we keep using, I apologize just because it's fresh our mind. But like, you know, he even said like, yeah, there is an element to. You got all these people that want to come and talk to you. Like no matter how humble you try to remain, it can get to you like as naturally as you would expect. Just like a, a 17 year old kid who's really good at a sport, man, he got everybody telling him he's good at it. What's he going to think, you know. And so I wanted to relate that. Just like we want to relate all these points to kind of the way it impacts the local church. And Joe, you spoke to some of this already but like what it can lead to and then Jack, I'll hand it to you is you go to these, you go to a conference, you go to something you get to hear maybe you know, 10, 11, 12 really great speakers, kind of the big names. You hear a couple and then you go home and it's like, I gotta listen to my regular preacher this Sunday. Oh, here we go again with this guy. And kind of, even if it's subconsciously, you can really just devalue your preacher and you know, kind of look at him with disdain because he's not one of the big names. You know, if you go to a lot smaller congregation, something like that. And so I think that more than anything is what I would warn people to be cautious of. Like the last thing your preacher needs is for you to come up to him after a week at one of these conferences and go, man, it sure was heaven on earth getting to listen to this other speaker that's not you. And now I gotta come back and listen to you. Like again, most people probably aren't that rude about it. But you know, I do think that is an element needs to be brought up here is, hey, we've had our gripes with preachers before, just like, you know, and we've kind of cross examined preaching and all that before. Like obviously these are things we discuss and talk about, but at the same time Preachers work really hard. And the ones that don't get invited to the conferences, you know, they don't deserve to feel like they are, you know, this big because they didn't get invited to PTP or to, you know, Connect Conference or to whatever it is. So, Jack, what thoughts do you have on this one?
[00:29:30] Speaker B: That's a really important point.
You know, like the. The guy on stage, boy, he might be a great orator. He hasn't had you over into his house. He hasn't come over to your house for a visit. He hasn't, you know, been there in the hospital with, you know, with little old lady at church. He hasn't. And I'm not saying they don't do that. I'm saying they do that in their own place. But, like, appreciate the guy that God has put in your town and what he brings. And that's the hard part about this thing, you know, like, the idea of a platform, of a podcast. Like, this is a platform having, you know, I write on online and things like that. And some of the coolest people, some of the, like, best people I know are people that I've met through this, people who reach out and say, hey, I really appreciate your work, you know, or I really enjoyed that article or whatever it may be. And I really appreciate that there is a difference. And it's very weird to me when, like, the. It's the selfie thing or like, when there's, you know, the few times where I kind of have had, oh, I'm talking to you. Like, no, it's just me. I swear, it's.
You do not need to be impressed by this. Like, this is, you know, but like you said, well, it can get to your head when somebody comes up like, oh, it's you. Like, and not that I have that happen a lot, but, like, where it does, you know, that's not.
You're not going to have that with your local preacher. Your local preacher is like, man, that's a good guy. That's just there. He's reliable. He's there. And so I think that can be fostered. There's one other angle of this we haven't discussed. On the latter kind of celebrity culture thing, one of the best ways to get yourself in that rat race is by hosting a conference.
You host your own. You invite people, they invite you to theirs.
That, I think, is one of the reasons why this perpetuates, why there are so many of them, is it's just kind of, okay, now you're one of the schedulers and planners. And you're a name that's known, you had people into yours and maybe you get on the next one. I'm not saying somebody goes, I'm going to have a conference. I'm going to spend all the local churches money so I can get an invite to such and such lectureship.
Nobody is that cynical. But it's just one of those, like this is what starts to happen. It's like, well, we should have a conference here.
[00:31:31] Speaker C: Why?
[00:31:32] Speaker B: How is that going to help the local church to have guys come in and preach to them for a weekend?
Are there better ways to allocate those resources? I mean you look at the budget of like flying in a bunch of guys, hoteling a bunch of guys, rental cars for a bunch of guys, setting up, you know, the design and all that stuff. Like, and a lot of these are put on for free, you know, like locally. And so I don't know that it is the best thing for the local church.
Luke Taylor had a really good article on this on To Be Like Christ a couple of years ago.
He got a lot of flack for was called Consider.
[00:32:03] Speaker C: Very well written.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: Yeah, it's called Consider skipping the next Christian Conference. Here's why. And that was one of his points is like investing in the local work might be a better use of your time and money. And you know, and so to that point Will made earlier, like we have more and more conferences that's not making the church stronger and stronger. And so that's something to consider as well on that, you know, celebrity culture side of it of like just having one and being around those guys, that's not necessarily helpful and the resources we're setting into it. Another point that I think goes along with Will's idea of kind of making you look down on your local minister, looking down on the fellowship of the local church and of the experience, the worship experience. No, nothing is going to match a thousand people singing Our God, he is Alive together.
Your local church of 70 people can't do that. And it's not really fair to compare it to it. But then you know, people come back and you know that that was just the, the greatest thing you'll ever hear. Okay, but now 51 weeks of the year, you don't get that. And, and you've got to live with that.
[00:33:10] Speaker C: This is the spiritual high point that we've made before for church camps and stuff like that that we, you know, I know Joe's probably anti church camp but like when it comes to, you know, we, we have, you Know said like, hey, you know, nothing necessarily wrong with church camp, but be very wary of that idea of the spiritual high, which is I want to be strong, super spiritual this week and then I'm going to go home and you know, not pay attention and worship again and be on my phone in class and that kind of thing for young people specifically.
I think that that's something that you have to be very mindful of here with, with the, again the conference culture is that spiritual high that you just get all recharged and listen, that needs to fuel you into.
To your point, Jack, really working hard in your congregation, not just returning to.
Yeah, I mean there's going to be that, that, that concept of a spiritual high that you just have to be very, very again, wary of is I guess the best way that I would put that. Joe, what thoughts do you have?
[00:34:05] Speaker A: Well, Jack, you have the thought in church reset. You do a really good job of laying it out of everybody being consumeristic. Right? Consumeristic Christianity.
Is this not the ultimate consumerism Christianity where you go, you get really good preaching, you get to sit back and listen to really good acapella music. Thousand people sing in one song and it feels great. And it's like, it's a, it is a, you know, high high. It's almost like a dopamine rush that you get from things that you're already a consumer at home. And this is just 10 times better. Like this is the really good candy at home. It's kind of like we have, you know, you got like Smarties or whatever, but like this is like double chocolate Oreo XYZ and you're going, whoa.
But hold on, let's, let's go back to the local church and realize we weren't intended to be consumers. You can go there and consume all of the content in the world and at the end of the day when you come home, we're intended to work. We're not just intended to wait for our preacher to wow our socks off with some amazing message. Like our goal is to get to work, to encourage the preacher, to encourage more fellowship, to get out and evangelize, to be players in the game. And I don't think there are very few people in the lectureship game that are players in the game. Like they are going to be entertained, they are going to consume. I'm not saying all of that's bad, but on the other hand, I think it's, it is just church, like regular church, mega sized and it's really tough to go back down to it. Once you've tasted that and we're kind of looking at as the exact same thing, like, it's completely different callings. One is more consumeristic. That is the local church is not intended to be the local church is, what can you bring? How can you help those in your church? And the potluck illustration Jack uses is perfect. This is, you know, going to your. The favorite restaurant in the world. Like, oh, man, local mom and pop shop's not going to be near as good as, as getting to go to the best steak place in the world.
Yeah, but you should be helping cook the steak. You should be helping make that restaurant the best it can be. So we have to do a little bit of thinking in our minds, like a little reframing, a little changing to recognize that's great to be able to go and consume those things. That is not what you were called to do. When you get back to your local church, you are called to engage.
[00:36:07] Speaker B: I think a lot of people do go for the, all right, I'm going to go get spiritually supercharged and come bring that back to the local church. And when that happens, that's good, right? I think sometimes it's, you go get that supercharged and you come home and you want to do something. And the people at the local church are like, yeah, you know, we're busy, like, and yeah, that. That can take it.
[00:36:26] Speaker C: That's discouraging.
[00:36:27] Speaker B: It is discouraging. And I get that. And even with the preacher thing, we talked about, you know, of like, devaluing your local preacher, I think even a lot of the guys on the lectureship would tell you if you heard them, 52 weeks a year, it's not like they've got their, their kind of their keynote lessons and things, their home run sermon.
And it's a different even way of presenting. I mean, like, the thing is different. And so it's very similar to the church camp discussion, as you said in that, like, if you're looking at this the right way, then it can be a very useful thing. If you're looking at it the wrong way, it can make your spiritual life worse. Where people go to church camp and like you said, they get that spiritual high and then the rest of the year is just not good enough. And so if you come at church camp with a view of like, man, this is just a really good time and there's going to be some Bible involved, I'm going to just meet friends, have a great time and all that, then you're not gonna like, have that that withdrawal, that spiritual drop off. Well, the same thing with this. If it's like, man, this is a really good fellowship, maybe make some new friends that I can transfer from. You know, I can become Facebook friends with them, keep up with them, maybe meet up with them. I know some people have like found lifelong friends just from going to some of these lectureships.
[00:37:36] Speaker A: That's great.
[00:37:37] Speaker B: I think that's awesome. Use that, you know, in that sense of like go engage with it and then take something away for real life with it and something to take back into your local church and something like new or different than you can do that adds to the work of the local church or whatever. If you're going to be a part of these things rather than, as you say, Joe the consumer and just going back going, oh, it was so great. I experienced heaven and can't wait till next year. Well, you're kind of telling your local church family they're not good enough, right?
[00:38:09] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And tied to that kind of last thing that I put on here was I really think that what we have, I'm sure talked about in a couple podcasts before is the Titus 2 version of teaching, which very much reads as kind of personal mentorship. Older men teaching younger men, older women teaching younger women. While it doesn't explicitly say that, that's more one on one, that doesn't seem to be in the form of a class, you know, because you're teaching them how to love their husbands, how to take care of a house, how to be homemakers, and then for the young men, certain behaviors. And like that's not really easily done through a class. And so to me, obviously that is very much because that's how Paul was to Timothy as well. It was very, you know, kind of one on one mentoring type. I think that as we've said before, the church does. The church needs so much more of that. And that is, I do think one of the call it more negative sides of conference culture is it's basically the total opposite of that. There's no one on one mentoring going on. It's very much a, you know, one in front of 500 people, you know, lectureship style, which, you know, might have its time and place, but this is where I think it can harm the local church is it emphasizes and prioritizes the big group lectureship stuff. And I think we need more people used to, if they're older and have the wisdom to share finding a young person.
I'm not even talking about 15 year old. I'm talking about a you know, maybe 27 year old married guy that an older man can, you know, go out to coffee with and share, share some wisdom or obviously the, you know, you know, 47 year old woman to the 31 year old woman. Like that's what I think the church needs more of. And that is pretty.
Again, just kind of a very distant thought when it, when you're at the, at the, you know, whatever conference that people find themselves at. And so again, you could argue there's a time and place for both and I think, you know, somebody might have a really good argument for it. But what I will say is right now we have once again an over saturation of one side and basically hardly anything when it comes to the one on one mentoring, which I think is what Titus 2 is all about. So I, I do, I would slot that into kind of the negative column when it comes to the, the conference culture.
Hey guys, Will Hareb here. Just wanted to take a minute and let you know that if you enjoy listening to the Think Deeper podcast, we wanted to make you aware of another podcast we have on the Focus Press podcast platform. It's called the Godly Young Men podcast where myself and Joe, we tackle a lot of cultural issues that are facing young men. The target age range is around 15 to 25 years old, but we have young men of all ages listen to it. Our goal is just to restore them to godly masculinity and talk about the challenges and things that are facing young men in today's time. So if you're interested, check that out on YouTube or on any of your favorite podcast platforms.
[00:40:57] Speaker A: Yes. So that actually brings up an interesting question as we kind of wrap up that cross examination section. Here is more preaching this lectureship style. You're talking this lecture style, this preaching to people. Is that our biggest need in the church? Because what you just spoke to is a very interesting thing. I think we overemphasize that. That's why we have so many of these lectureships starting and so many big name speakers these days. Is like growing up and maybe this is me not paying attention. I don't know. It felt like there were a few. Everybody knew Tom Holland, you know, he's a big name obviously and you know, huge in the church and like there are some big names. I feel like everybody is getting big these days and I feel like all of this is in service of finding that next great speaker. Very much like an American Idol mentality. Used to be local bands would, would, you know, get big. And that was a great thing. And then at some point we decided let's celebratize this and let's make it an American Idol. And I feel like that's a big part of what we see in the church today, which is more and more and more American Idols. And I'm not trying to call people out, I'm not trying to say there are some fantastic men, some fantastic speakers, no doubt.
But it does seem to promote this idea that preaching is our biggest need.
That's the thing that's going to kind of save the church is we're going to rise up these amazing speakers. I'm curious to get your guys thoughts on that. Is preaching. Is more preaching more of this lecture style our greatest need in the church? Do you think this is a positive trajectory? I mean the cat's out the bag in some ways. Obviously we don't think that this is a sign of a super healthy church. But on the other hand, to have better speakers, more well spoken speakers who are able to communicate their messages effectively I think is good. But is more preaching our greatest need?
[00:42:41] Speaker B: I asked the question in church reset, what would do you like if you really were at a stuck point in your spiritual life? What would be better for you?
A few hours across the table from an elder or a weekend full of listening to the best preachers? You know?
And I always get some people answering, well, both like please participate in a thought exercise asking you to rank these things is what I'm asking you to do. And I think everybody knows the ranking is somebody who knows you. A relationship closer is that other. And the other thing that comes to mind is that quote about where drowning in information but starved for knowledge.
And I think there's a million things you can put on podcasts like this all year. You can pull up the, the live stream from whatever church, listen to the sermons every single day.
There's a point at which. And Luke Taylor, I brought him up earlier, had another great article on this of what some people need is to stop listening, reading, consuming lessons and go do something.
[00:43:41] Speaker C: Go do it. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah. My thought on this was okay, I don't think preaching is our biggest need. And so the next question would be what then is our biggest need? And if my answer is not what I spoke on a second ago, which is older men teaching younger men, which I would say is probably top two, the other one that I think is the church's biggest need is Christian parents raising faithful kids.
I think that's the, the church's by far biggest need. And you say, well, the lectureships help teach them how to do that. Well, Stats would say otherwise, honestly, like that's, it's not seemed to be helping that much. And so again, the theme there is a lot smaller, closer to, you know, again, one on one, one on two, one on three discipling. It's a been a, it was an evangelical buzzword there for a while. But I do think that is more of what the church needs is a Christian dad, a Christian mom, raising faithful kids, raising them up in the faith to have their own Christian family. Sure. Can that be helped by conferences? I suppose, but I think that's more so helped by kind of a lot of the stuff that Jack was just talking about. And I don't know, those are my thoughts. Joe, what would you add?
[00:44:45] Speaker A: I mean, I think training workshops specifically for like elderships would be huge, like small time, not a thousand people there, but like you get 20 guys there and help them grow up to be elders, you know, train them in whatever it looks like, get some very well knowledgeable elders in the area or some preachers that are well respected and help train them up into that. I think that would be one of the biggest needs of the church is strong elderships that are willing to actually stand up and say the things they need to and are actually willing to sit across the table from their members and willing to help the parents who are really struggling with their kids and willing to get into the nitty gritty doctrinal discussions and to say these are the doctrinal things that we adhere to here. You know, we use that autonomy and we call our, you know, they call the members to the highest, to the highest degree of holiness that they can, right, Rather than waiting for the lectureship to do it, rather than going to the right lectureship with the right speakers, with the right doctrinal clique. And no, this is what we do here, right? The elder sets the culture. And I think we would do so much better if that was kind of the goal is take elders like elder workshops basically and help them grow up into being the man of God. They need to be, you know, helping individually the people at the congregation rather than smattering of people that heard a great lesson on, you know, at that lectureship, whatever it is. That's fantastic. But how much more would it matter if 52 weeks of the year you are in 52 different homes helping somebody else? I mean, I think that's the future. That's what's going to have to be the hyperlocalism and getting Back to the individual matters and the individual gets lost at some of these 7,000 people conferences. It's great, glad they go there, they get their batteries recharged. But man, we could do. I think the local church is the solution to these things.
[00:46:26] Speaker B: That's the question is, you know, somebody will say why can't we do both?
I think at some level we can, but the more and more we're adding to the schedule, it's just not going to happen. Like there's a point at which we've got to go, okay, we've got enough of those. We really need to return the work locally. And the thing is these are all fulfilling a really big need people have. As Will brought up earlier, Joe, you and I are married because of conferences like this. And even to a lesser extent, Will is in a little bit of a different way. But you know, there's a lot of people with those stories. And so, you know, even in with the homeschool circles, that's another niche of this and things like that. There's a need that's there to be met.
And I'm not even against getting people together. I think kind of reframing it like really being fellowship forward because there's a degree to which you go and you're in the lectures all day long from like 8 in the morning till 8 o' clock at night you can do more of the fellowship. Like what if you just made it a fellowship kind of thing and there's a worship at night or you know, things like that. And I mean Legacy Family Camp where I met my wife was a little more like that. There's you know, a little bit more time to go do and have things to do. But you know, really thinking like that's the thing that everyone says about all of these is like the number one thing. And I think there's a place for like the, like I said earlier, the more academic lectureship kind of things. But I don't know, there's something here where you don't want to just be like, ah, this all stinks and try and talk everyone into, you know, canceling everything. And now there's a huge gap there. There's like a huge, you know, hole in a need that was being met for people with fellowship with finding like minded people with, you know, not feeling so isolated, things like that.
I agree with you. The best way to handle that is in the local church. And I think the best way for the local church to create this is to get more specific with your teaching, like to get to Be distinctive in what you're teaching. The, as I said earlier, the promoting a certain kind of doctrine, and not just we don't use instruments and we don't have women preachers, but some of the things we talk about here of a view of the husband and a view of the wife and a view of children and a view of the home and things like that. Like, that's a. There's a beacon for that in the same sense that, like, during COVID the churches that were very strong stance, you know, took very strong stances, grew like crazy because it was putting out a beacon to a certain kind of people.
I think the kind of thing we've avoided doing in the local church is one of the best ways to get back to getting this kind of fellowship in the local church. So, yes, the local church, yes. I think there's always going to be events, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. But rethinking what we're trying to get out of them, I really think is maybe the key question there. That's. I don't know. We're kind of drawn to the end there. That's all of my summarizing thoughts. But I know you guys still have some stuff to say. So what do you guys have to kind of wrap your thoughts on this?
[00:49:22] Speaker C: I. I think what I would say is I do see value in these overall. Like, you know, I. I think there is. There's certainly value to them. I do think there are too many of them is kind of where I'll kind of plant my flag. And that sounds terrible, but what we. Again, I'll go. I will just go back to the point that I started with, which is the local church is not doing very well.
And you, of course, can't blame conference culture for that, but I don't think it's helping. And so I would say again, like, will I attend one of these in the future? I'm sure I will.
I think there's a lot of good that comes with it. I think there's a lot of value. I think the spiritual, the equipping, the. As long as you're wary of some of the things we brought up, I think they're valuable. The problem is, most of the time it's done at the expense of the local church. And that's what I think needs to change. And unfortunately, while there's this many of them, again, to go back to the analogy, while the market's oversaturated, you're just not going to see that emphasis on the local church. And so that's what I think needs to change more than anything. And if that means a few of them getting. Getting chopped off the calendar, like, I think that's necessary. Again, I don't condemn anybody for going. I think once again, there's value. I'm not trying to ride the fence here, but I think once again, we've got to get our emphasis back on what are you doing for your local church? Who are you mentoring? Who are you being mentored by? What are you doing to disciple your kids? What are you doing to, again, invest in your congregation? If you're not doing those things, but you're attending, you know, Connect Conference or Lads to Leaders or PTP or whatever it is, you might need to reevaluate some things. And that's all we're trying to say, I think with. With this episode. I guess that's all I'm trying to say with this episode. Joe, what, what would you wrap this up?
[00:51:04] Speaker A: I think that's a. That's a great. That's a great wrap.
If it can be used appropriately. As long as it is pushing you back to being on fire for your local church and not being a consumer at your local church, but really being a doer, you know, somebody that gets that done. And so I think that's the.
That's the only thing I'd say is I'm with you guys. I'm not against them. I don't think they're the end of the world. I don't know how they're not a net negative, but they certainly can be if through the glorification over glorification of some of these things and celebrity culture and just some things to watch out for. But I also, if we use them appropriately, hopefully this does grow the church and has an opportunity to really be a beacon for people to go back, be on fire for everything in their local work and to make that work all the more so. Yeah, that'd be the only thing with that. Let's jump into the Think Fast for this week, and there's a few different things going around, but I think we'd be remiss if we did not cover one of the biggest Internet events, I think. I don't know the year and I.
[00:52:09] Speaker B: Just don't get it.
[00:52:10] Speaker A: I have a theory.
I have a theory. I'll get to here in a bit. But Coldplay has a concert and wouldn't you know it, the guy on the Jumbotron or the. The major screen has his arms around somebody that he's not supposed to. And she, he ducks and she turns around in, in shame and embarrassment. And Chris Martin, the lead singer basically said like, well either they're really shy or they're having an affair. Like he just calls.
[00:52:37] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:52:38] Speaker A: And indeed this was a CEO of Astronomer, which is an AI company. I think it's worth millions.
Startup company, but either way worth millions. Guy is worth a significant amount of money. And yes, he was caught cheating on his wife and the wife is now divorcing him. It is a huge story and people are absolutely fascinated by it.
And so yeah, I think the key question that I kind of wanted to get into is why you think it captures the imagination. Like I said, I have some thoughts. Will, it sounds like you have some thoughts.
[00:53:05] Speaker B: Thoughts.
[00:53:05] Speaker A: So Jack, I'll start with you because you're the one that, no, I want.
[00:53:08] Speaker B: To, I want to hear you guys thoughts since you have them on, on why it was going to say because I'm a little bit baffled here.
[00:53:13] Speaker A: Okay, Will, what are your thoughts?
[00:53:17] Speaker C: So I, I, I'll give why it's popular and kind of my maybe a take or two that I have.
I honestly think one of the reasons it was so popular, when I say popular, like why it spread so much and went so viral is because of how genuine the reaction was. Like there was no faking that. Like it was almost like you're, when you're, it's like watching a car wreck happen. Like everybody's captivated by it, you know. And so I think that's what a lot of real, it's very real. Like you know, stuff that people see in movies and shows. Ah, that's Hollywood. No, this was real life. Like you, you can see the instant they realize they're on the Jumbotron and just how quickly they break away. And it's just kind of a fascinating insight into the fact that people don't just do this in the movies, they don't just do this on TV shows. No, people do this in real life. And we got once again one of the most raw, like sincere examples of it played out right before our eyes. So that would be my answer as to why it went so viral and why it kind of dominated the Internet and still kind of is for over the last several days the only kind of takes I have on it that are, you know, again there's been people that, it's all the Internet's been talking about. So this, none of these takes are going to be original to me.
I guess the big one that I have is, is why so Many people are focusing on the man, not the woman.
You saw a ton of people come out and just. And to be fair, there were some that bash both of them, but the guy is the one that's getting all the attention from what I've seen.
And you can easily tell from the woman's reaction as well. She knew what she was doing. It's not like she was like, oh, you were married. I didn't know. Like, you could clearly tell. I couldn't tell in the reports that I. I think she was married. I know some people were saying that she was divorced. But it did seem like everything was heavily weighed once again, as usual, towards the guy for it when obviously I think both of them need to share an equal part in the blame there. And I guess the other thing that I'll bring up is, isn't it amazing how as soon as light gets shown on the darkness, what happens? Like, they. They went from the euphoric feeling of, you know, being together. And, you know, I think TMZ released a video as well. Like, you see what happened before they went on the Jumbotron again. They're just perfectly happy in sin. Perfectly, again, having these euphoric feelings. And probably we're going to continue in this for months and months until somebody's shown a light on it. And I just think that's perfectly emblematic of. Of the way sin is. Is when it's accepted, exposed, is when you get to see the true ugliness of it. But as long as people can stay in darkness, man, they'll love it as much as they can and they'll enjoy every minute of it. So, yeah, again, none of those. None of that's original to me. I'm sure other people have said that, but those were kind of the thoughts that I had.
[00:55:56] Speaker A: Joe, how about you? My theory on this is it touches on so many different aspects. Tendrils of life. Everybody is almost forced to have a take one way or the other sexually. Obviously, the power dynamics between a boss and an HR rep, like, you know, is he using his power? Right? Kind of brings back the me too. The business dynamic of watching his business navigate through. What does this look like? The new CEO saying, wow, we have more publicity than ever. Nobody knew who we were, but kind of not the way you want to find it. And so that's an interesting take, obviously, the morality take. There are people in the world that have no standard, and all of a sudden they found a standard. Like, well, where's your standard in this? You know, is this a shifting Standard for them.
Obviously for Christians it's a pretty easy standard. But morality privacy, should they have been on there? It sounds like he's going to try to sue Coldplay for putting them on there now.
[00:56:46] Speaker B: And that's about.
[00:56:47] Speaker C: That's about the least self aware move.
[00:56:49] Speaker A: There's no way if he does correct. I mean I think you're signing like when you buy tickets you kind of sign like yeah, you're going to potentially could be on the Jumbotron. I don't think he has any leg to stand on. That may also.
[00:57:00] Speaker C: Sorry just privacy. You're at a concert with 60,000 people.
Give me a break.
[00:57:05] Speaker A: Right, exactly. But you know the, the privacy of. Should all of his dirty laundry have been aired now we know his wife, we know everything about him. We know their divorce settlements, we know how much money like should we know all of that. And so it kind of roast people in women in the workplace. I saw some things on that. How much. How much of a dynamic shift that is having women in the workplace. And this would have never happened without it. And then of course monetarily people are tracking the money side of things. Are tracking the worth and value of his company fluctuating. I mean I just think it touches on so many.
[00:57:33] Speaker C: To be clear, which one of those is the reason why you think it's. Oh Poppy, I'm just kidding.
[00:57:37] Speaker A: No, I'm saying.
[00:57:37] Speaker C: Yeah, it's.
[00:57:38] Speaker A: Everybody is forced to.
You're engaging on some. It's not just a cut and dried. It's like there are. It is morality wise but there are so many things to this that are like how did that happen? Why did it happen? What's going on?
It's a fascinating thing that touches on so many different parts of life, aspects of life. Somebody like basically everybody is forced to have some take one way or the other is what it feels like to me. You're forced into taking a side one way or the other. And everybody likes being against him, of course. But as you said, where's everybody against the woman?
That is the fascinating thing to me is how much she gets let off the hook when it's like wow, this guy's a dirtbag like and she didn't know that he was married. This. It takes two to tango and both of them are in the wrong. But she's pretty much absolved. And that. That's also a very interesting angle in all this. But Jack, what are your thoughts as you listen to us?
[00:58:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's so big because people really, really, really like judging and there's very few opportunities to do it without feeling like a bad person. I think that's why reality tv, you can go on and think I'm better than these people. I mean, like, that's why they always show, like, the bottom of the barrel of society is it gives people that, like, sense of superiority. And so no matter what you've done, at least you weren't the guy who got caught, you know, with, with another woman on the jumbotron. I wrote on it last week about, you know, this versus the Chip gains thing with it. Will and I had the episode on, you know, that, oh, you're not supposed to judge with the Chip Gaines thing, but nobody has a problem with judging here. Nobody's doing love the sinner, hate the sin with the Coldplay, you know, fan CEO guy and his alleged mistress. And so, you know, people like judging and here's an opportunity for them to do so. And it's like, man, your standards are garbage. Your morality is garbage.
It's so frustrating to see, but I mean, they're absolutely right in this case. And then it's bad.
And it's nice that people can agree on objective morality for once. This is awful, you know, like, you just feel awful for the, the wife and the husband that weren't there.
I think Matt Walsh had a great take on it of, we need to punish this very seriously like we used to as a society. This used to be a very big crime, and now it's, like, laughable that it would be a crime. Why, like, you are violating the most important contract you'll ever sign. You violate any other big contract, you're in big trouble. And so, you know, to kind of, you know, not make too much light of this thing, like, that's. Don't do that. Just. Everyone knows that, but don't do that. And, yeah, we should take this far more seriously than we as a society do.
[01:00:07] Speaker A: I think his life is going to be. It's not over, but I think it's going to be very, very difficult. He's a disgraced CEO. Nobody's going to want to hire him. That's. That's really where sin gets you, is it always seems good on the front end. There will always be consequences. At some point it will catch up to you. And I think that's a key takeaway that this is one of those. You talk to your kids about, guys, this is very serious. These are the consequences of sin. No, maybe it doesn't always come out, but these are the consequences that sin brings in your life. If you're not careful.
[01:00:36] Speaker B: All right. Well, we're going to wrap right there. If you're watching this on the think fast only. The episode comes out next Monday on church conferences, lectureships, the benefits, the things that maybe we think are worth rethinking. And so you might enjoy that one, keep an eye out for it. Be sure you're subscribed either here on YouTube, be sure to click like and subscribe to our channel or on the podcast feeds. Wherever you get your podcast, just search for thing deeper. So we'll talk to you guys on that one. We'll see you Monday.
