The Feminized Church

[00:00:09] Speaker A: Welcome into the Think Deeper podcast presented by Focus Press. This is Jack Wilkie, joined by Will Harab and Joe Wilkee. Once again, we're promo free today. If you've listened for any amount of time, you know about all of our stuff, focus, plus our books, Sunday school catch up seminars. So we're going to spare you the promo today and just get right into it as we talk about something that's kind of our wheelhouse, something that some of our most popular episodes have been about masculinity and femininity. So now we're talking about it as it pertains to the church. Joe's kind of driving the train on this one. Put the outline together, so I'm just going to pass it off and we'll jump right into the episode. All right. [00:00:45] Speaker B: We really wanted to take a distinct look at feminine leadership in Christianity, which we look at and go, well, we in the church don't have women in leadership. We don't use women preachers, women elders, things like that, which, hey, two thumbs up. That is something that the church crisis held very strong on. And we want to start off and just say, that part is fantastic. We're really trying to toe the line, scripturally speaking, on women's roles, making sure they're not taking those leadership positions. However, we still believe that there is a strong case to be made that feminism still is driving leadership in Christianity right now, leadership in the church, that we are very much feminized in our leadership. And we wanted to make that case. We wanted to talk about what that looks like, what the consequences are of it, what masculine leadership looks like, kind of how we ought to be able to work through these things and why this is even a problem. Because you may look at it, and if you have kind of been inundated in this culture and maybe brainwashed a little bit, you may look at it and go, well, women do seem to be more moral. By and large. Guys are the ones that struggle more with vices. They struggle more with addictions. They struggle more with pride, with anger, all these things, right? So you could look at the male dominated spaces, quote unquote, and go, well, those are train wrecks. And so this is why we've swung the pendulum back to women kind of being more of their sensibilities, things like that. Well, we want to discuss that. We want to get into why that is a problem. And right off the top, you may go, yeah, I know it's a problem. Stick with us. Don't just skip this one. Stick with us. We're hoping to make some good points, and we do, as always, push for more feedback, for more comments, things like that. We'd love to know your thoughts on this. So as we get into it, we're just determined to make sure this is not a retread. And I'm going to define quickly and then will, I'll pass it to you. What do we mean by this? How do we know that we have become more feminized in our leadership? One of the key areas, I think, that you see right off the top is when we're discussing things. How do we discuss Jesus? Do we push Jesus as the lion or as the lamb? More often, we're pushing him as the lamb, as the servant leader, as the quiet guy who comes in and just loves people through their problems. We don't really preach too much about Jesus flipping over tables when it comes to christians. Are they servants or are they warriors? We don't really talk about the warrior aspect as much. We talk about the servant aspect and things like that in our evangelism. Are we talking about being winsome or are we talking about being bold, taking strong stances against the culture and the ridiculous whims of the culture as we are driven into feminism, as we're driven into all sorts of stuff. Right? The craziness of the LGBTQ movement and things like that in our evangelism? Are we trying to be budy buddy? Are we trying to be winsome, or are we being bold in that approach? In our preaching? Do we see it more as an encouragement where we're kind of goofy in the pulpit, things like that, and we're just having a good time. We're trying to encourage people to do what's right, or are we exhorting them? Are we calling them to a higher standard and kind of laying down the law? By and large, I would say in the church, we are starting to see this slip and not even starting to. It's kind of been this way where the feminism or the feminized, rather leadership is taking over from our pulpits in our elderships. We're going to get into this in a moment, but, fellas, anything you want to add to the intro before we really start getting into it? [00:03:59] Speaker C: This is one of those things where I feel like there are a lot of people in Christendom and Christendom, and you can even argue within the church of Christ, who would probably agree that this is an issue. Excuse me? They would agree. Okay. Fathers, husbands really need to step up in their role and in their masculinity. And all these things. The problem is they don't really understand how to go about that or what that practically looks like. I'm really big on this, you guys know, I bring this up a lot, speaking not just generically and vaguely, but specifically, what does it mean for us to be masculine in our leadership, and specifically, what does it mean for us to be feminine in our leadership? I think about that. I think it was the Kindred Brothers movie back in goodness, 2009, courageous, maybe a little, maybe 2012 or a little bit later, courageous, where the point of it kind of was for fathers to step up and really do more in their role. That movie got a lot of love. That movie got a lot of man, that's a great movie. What's come out of that? Not a ton. Not a lot of, again, just application from that. It's shouted out as a really great movie. And man, that was sure good. Not a lot of results from it. Again, even within the church of Christ, obviously, that was not a church of Christ movie, but even within the church of Christ, people shouted that movie out as great. I haven't seen a lot of change personally. And so again, I think it is one of those things that you might have a lot of agreement that something feels off, but most people within the church don't really know how to go about changing that or again, what it looks like, practically what it looks like specifically. So that's what we're going to talk about in today's episode. [00:05:32] Speaker A: Jack, I would add that I'm hesitant to use the word feminism because I think feminism sometimes drives the woman preacher thing, the woman elders that move in that direction. This, I would say, is more feminized in that it's just a sensibility. And there are churches that you could walk into that look perfectly complementarian. Male leaders, male elders, male preachers. There's just no sense the women aren't showing up to the men's meetings or the elders meetings and running the show and things like that. And yet all the men in the congregation are perfectly heeding the kind of the sensibility. It might not even be the women's fault. It might just be the men themselves. Self police, kind of. Well, we got to think about this. We got to think about that. And don't push in certain directions that the Bible would have them do. I mean, we had our church discipline episode last week. I think that's one manifestation of how this stuff comes out, is, well, we got to be careful about this. You need to have those considerations, but if you're totally governed by one sensibility, and not using all of the sensibilities God gave us, you're going to end up with this thing. And so it really, to me, is less feminism and more just being feminized, which, again, happens in churches, happens in families, places where you would look and go, oh, that's not a woman who's running over her husband, but maybe very covertly, very subtly, under the radar, things happen that way. [00:07:01] Speaker B: Well, and I think that's such a good point. This is more of a subtle episode. We have talked about feminism. We've talked about those things. We've railed against it more than just about anybody else. I've preached on it. We've had Bible classes on it at our congregation. We've done on the podcast. We're very strongly antifeminist. To your point, though, this is a nuanced approach to this. This is, as you said, almost brought on more by men who have just been inundated in the culture with, you. [00:07:27] Speaker A: Have to think about this. [00:07:28] Speaker B: You have to think about that. You got to be a good little boy, that type of thing. And it comes out in our leadership styles. One of the biggest issues, though, is let's define masculinity. We can't know what we're running to. We know what we're running away from. The toxic masculinity, the masculinity that takes things too far. The masculinity, which I would say is not really masculinity, that goes more into dictatorship, things like that. But we don't know how to define masculinity. So what do we do? You ask maybe the people of the day, the best podcasts or preachers or whatever else, and what do you see? Or even men's conferences, what do you see? Well, a man of God is somebody who's really in his word, and he's a good servant of God, and he's just loving God. He's loving the people, and he's just serving the church in whatever way possible. Okay, what separates that from, we saw a tweet like, well, my 96 year old grandma is the most masculine member of the church. If that's how you define masculinity, as somebody who's serving others and somebody who really just loves God and loves the people, and isn't that what everybody's supposed to word that's so nondescript. That could be a female, that could be a male, that could be young, that could be old. There is no masculine, inherently masculine aspect to that, because a woman could come along and be the most masculine person in the church. If that's how we choose to define it, we have to be willing to and not afraid of maybe cragging a few eggs as we talk about what masculinity actually looks like within the church. And part of that is going to be able to call out some of the sensibilities and not live according to the sensibilities. You will have people that are very upset, very frustrated just at the out before we even get into this. You will have people that are very upset that you're no longer taking the feminine sensibilities into the eldership room. Well, don't you need to think about these things? We'll talk about that as we go. But we also want to say. So a couple of things to start. Yes, the church does well on the overt sort, but the COVID is what we're talking about. The other thing is femininity is beautiful. The feminine sensibilities are beautiful in the proper context. Unfortunately, the eldership room or from the pulpit is not really the context to allow the feminine sensibilities, and even in the home, to allow the sensibilities to kind of define the leadership or be the foundational structure of the home, the foundational structure of Christianity. It has its place. It is beautiful in its own way with raising kids, things like that. Not when it pertains to the structure of Christianity. And that's what we're railing against here, because that has some serious consequences, which we'll get into later. So I don't know who wants to kick us off into this, but what I want to get into, we're going to get into it here in a little bit. The feminized leadership again, from the pulpit, in the eldership, in the church, in the home, and then kind of the counterpart to that or the opposite of the masculine leadership. What does that actually look like? But, fellas, we do have a problem in the church, which is that guys are willingly kind of giving up their masculine roles as leaders, and they're allowing their leadership once again to be defined by that. Why do you think men give up their position of authority so much? Why do you think men give in to the sensibility so much instead of standing for what maybe is even right in these moments? [00:10:33] Speaker A: I think part of it is sometimes where there is a lack of moral credibility. If a guy knows that inside, and so he externalizes it in that way. I've probably brought up before where Brad Harib and I interviewed Josh McDowell, the guy know evidence that demands what was a huge apologist know sold millions and millions of books, and he turned his attention toward pornography, specifically in the church and in ministry, as being a huge issue. And suddenly this guy who just sold books everywhere he went, just, like, fell off the radar because he started talking about pornography and nobody wanted to hear it. And one of his biggest points was so many of the doctrinal compromises that you see with the world come from preachers who have a sin problem themselves. And I think you can draw a direct line toward, oh, we're all broken people. We're all kind of the victim mentality. Some of this feminine justify kind of, it justifies, well, man, we're all there, like, well, we're supposed to be coming out of that. That's what Christ and the spirit do for us. And so you've got that. The other thing is, you're trained from just a little kid. We've talked before when we've talked about roles in marriage. The guy, oh, I don't deserve my wife. I just don't know why she would marry me. She's just so much better than me. And when you do that, then you go into ministry or the eldership with that same thing of, well, clearly the women are the best people in our church, and, boy, they could probably do a better job than I could. No, God put you there, and you need to know why. In the same sense, we say for the husband, God made you the husband, the head of the house. You need to know why, and you need to live up to that. But there's this cultural sensibility of, like, you have to step back and, no, I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy. And it's not the opposite of like, oh, sit down and shut up. I'm the man. It's God put me here. This is a heavy weight on my shoulders. I better bear up under it. [00:12:22] Speaker C: I would say in answer to this question of why would men give up their position is because it's modeled for them literally all around them, every aspect of their lives. This has been going on generationally now for a while. So most likely men who are in this position now, their fathers were probably again modeled that for them in their home, of kind of yielding to whatever the wife, the emotional sways of the wife and mom, whatever kind of she wanted. That's what kind of drove the home, even if he was happy wife, happy life, right? You have the happy wife, happy life thing that we've kind of beaten with a baseball bat before on the podcast, that mom ain't happy, nobody's happy again, just the idea that your job as a man, your job as the husband, is to make sure that your wife's emotional needs are basically put first or basically prioritized. And so it's modeled for them in the home. It's modeled for them throughout kind of social media, throughout media itself, popular movies and things. Sex is painted as, it's the woman's thing to give. And if you just behave in just the right way as a man, then maybe she'll give it to you. And so you, again, structure your actions, your behavior, your words, your conduct with that whole idea of let me get in her good graces. And so it's modeled for them that way. Again, it's modeled for them when you just think about the way society looks down on men and men leadership and male privilege and all these things, again, just pretty much everywhere you turn, media, sex, societal pressure. Again, social media, even within people's homes, most of the time, men are just told, you know what? You're probably going to do a bad job as a leader, so why don't you just give it up? Why don't you just let the woman take over or take control? Why don't you yield a lot of your authority? Because, you know what? You're probably going to do a bad job anyway. And so I agree with Jack in the sense that a lot of it is, I would say, kind of inner guilt at what, you know, you have in your life that you don't have as a man wrapped up and taken care of. But I think a lot of it also would be even aside from that, that's what men are trained to be. That's what men are trained to do and act like all the way from when they're young to Jack's point. But again, also, you just look around social media, society, movies, media, all those things, men are painted in a terrible light. And so they just kind of conform to it. [00:14:34] Speaker A: There's one other thing I want to add on this. There is a guy named George Gilder, and he started writing back in, what, like, the 70s. He was one of the first early anti feminist voices and had a lot of good things to say in that vein. But even he still had this idea that the woman's job is to tame the man. The man is wild, the man is out of control, and the woman domesticates the man in a sense, like, and I think that idea, more than anything, is the undercurrent of this whole thing, because what it should be and what we're talking about of the man taking responsibility is a man who is under self control, self discipline. I mean, that's what the proverbs, where Solomon is raising up a son to take the throne to rule is like wisdom and sin. Wisdom and foolishness are both calling at you. You've got to choose wisely. And you could say, oh, well, it's women there. It's not a literal woman. He has to choose. Is he going to be wise or is he going to be foolish? And this idea that, well, men would be savage and totally untamed without the woman, if that's the case, then he doesn't have moral authority. And her sensibility is going to drive everything, because if not checked by her, he is going to destroy everything. When that's your mindset and when you bring that into leadership, bad things happen. And you look in the Bible like, man, I got to stop doing this. We're recording too early in the morning. Abigail is Abigail the woman that David and Nabal, he's a dude who has no control over himself, right? And he's got a virtuous woman for a wife that David notices and is impressed by and all that. But that's the example people think of, of, oh, there's the good woman with the bad. Yeah, be the good husband. The answer to that is not, oh, it's just always like that. No, it shouldn't be. [00:16:18] Speaker B: The other thing that I would add before kind of get out of this discussion as to why men give up their leadership, why they fail to lead. And will, you got at this going all the way back. But I genuinely think absentee fathers are very much at the core of this, because if they're not physically absent, and a lot of times they're emotionally and spiritually absent, what that creates is a boy who never really understands who he is, never really understands what masculinity looks like, never really has a rite of passage, never really has a thing that calls him to something higher. And so a lot of times in those homes, everything revolves around the mom. Everything is, can we make mom happy? Make sure mom's doing. Mom's the moral authority. Mom's the one doing the spanking. Mom's the one getting them to church. Mom's the one doing everything else. So then where is the role for the father? Well, the father brings home the bacon, right? The father, he makes the money. Nowadays in a two parent working household, we can't even say that that's just the father's role. So the father actually is being pushed out in a lot of ways because we don't really need you. Women are more the moral authority in the home. Mom's the one that's going to help me along the way. Now mom's bringing home the bacon. Yeah, she's making the money, too. So what role does a dad have? And a guy kind of looks around. No wonder why we're not self ruled. We never were taught, we never were modeled this. But then it creates a lot of attachment issues where a guy now is looking for somebody just to love him. And instead of seeking respect and instead of understanding the moment of respect, he didn't respect his dad, so he doesn't respect himself. And so what he's looking for is just to be coddled, to be loved, to be cared for, and to be safe in that moment. Well, you know what's not safe? Taking a leadership position, knowing your wife may lead you, your wife may take sex off the table, your wife may do all of these things in an attempt to control. These things do happen. So if anybody goes, well, that's rude. This happens all the time within the church. I work with this. So with that being the case, guys are terrified of being rejected, they're terrified of being abandoned. Where does that come from? A father never asks them and helped them to learn how to step up, never asked them to be a man, never show them what it looks like to go from a boy who's being coddled by his mom and being led by his mom to, okay, it's not that the mom doesn't matter, but we even know in attachment by the time you hit 910 years old, it's basically the dad's job to lead a kid up from then on out. We don't really see that. So the absentee fathers are creating a space where these boys are growing up into these homes and they want their wife's approval. They want their wife to just love them. Please don't leave me. Please don't reject me. And what that does is it creates a bunch of people pleasers. And if I can please my wife at all times, if I can keep my wife happy, she won't abandon me or reject me the same way I felt like I had to do when I was young. So it is attachment issues. It is societal pressure. It is kind of what's being modeled for us. [00:18:55] Speaker C: Can I add? [00:18:56] Speaker B: Yeah, go for it. [00:18:58] Speaker C: I was just going to say to add one more as far as why would men give up their positions as leader? I think you hit on the home portion very well of fathers not teaching. At some point we have to throw some culpability on the church as well, in the sense that churches, pulpits, churches of Christ are not modeling or not teaching men. You've got on here a great line of they fail to understand the role they've been called to. Okay, well, if the dad is not communicating that to them, what should kind of be the next thing if they're a Christian? [00:19:25] Speaker A: The church. [00:19:26] Speaker C: The church should be communicating the role, communicating the purpose. And biblically painting the picture of this is the role that you've been called to. Pulpits aren't doing that. Churches aren't doing that. Eldership leadership structures are not doing that. And so again, everywhere they turn, their home, the media, even the church, they're not getting an accurate picture of what masculine leadership is. And so no wonder they don't understand the role that they've been called to. [00:19:49] Speaker B: And if elders knew their sheep, then they'd see. Know we'll use Mary and see. Tod's kind of a deadbeat. His poor kids are not really getting it. So first off, we need to call Todd up, which goes to our last episode. Right. We need to call Todd to something higher. The elders need to get in the home and go, hey, Tod, you're not stepping up in your role. You're working all the time. Your kids don't have any father, effectively speaking. You need to change that. And if that's not the case, you can't just leave Mary, the wife, or know, use whatever name you want. You can't just leave her to raise her kids in that. Not, she can't. She can't lead boys to masculinity because she's not a man. She doesn't know what that looks like. She can give them books. She can do all sorts of stuff. But I do think the elders need to look and go, okay, Tod's not stepping up. We need to call him something higher. We need to be a mentor for these kids. Let's get in the lives of these kids. Let's make sure we're taking them out to waffle house and having some tough discussions with them, making sure they know what they're supposed to do in the home. This is the model of the church. The beauty of what the church can do is that we can see where we're weak. But this would assume elders, a, are aware of what's going on in these people's homes and b, are actually willing to do something about it. You know why they're not? Because it's feminized leadership. Because if they step in, well, what do you think Mary's not good enough. Do you think she can't do this for her boys? Like I'm telling you, she can't. That's just the God given way. Are you saying, know if you call Tod out, he might leave and he might. In which case, we're gonna rally around Mary and her kids and help her in whatever way possible. Like this is the feminized leadership of inability to call out sin as we see it, and inability to call men to something higher. So I'm glad you brought that in. So as we've hit on more than anything, this really is about allowing the woman's sensibilities to drive. And if we're right here, then we're going to see a few. There's going to be some hallmarks of feminized leadership. And, fellas, I want to get into this discussion surrounding, to be clear real. [00:21:36] Speaker C: Quick, this is the problem we see in the church of Christ. To y'all's point earlier, it's not about that we see in the church, man, all these women are just wanting to get up and preach. That's not the issue. It's not about them wanting to take on preaching roles or leadership positions within the church itself. It is more so what you just said, the woman's sensibilities, the elders wives, the grumpy old lady in the church, kind of driving the decisions that are made. That's what we're talking about in this episode. Again, it's not women in pulpits. It's women basically influencing and directing what's being said in the pulpit by the men. Just to kind of clarify there. [00:22:09] Speaker A: And again, I'm just going to keep adding this other side of that. There might be a place where the women aren't even doing that, where it's just the men themselves are kind of taking on this sensibility where emasculated men, men that don't kind of have the sense of leadership in themselves and kind of democratized leaders, well, we got to keep everybody happy, those kinds of things. There might not be a single woman in the church driving them to that. They're self policing in that way and not looking at the role God gave them. It might be women doing driving it, it might be the men themselves. But in any case, however it shakes out, it just really hinders the church. [00:22:48] Speaker B: So this branches off into an interesting discussion here. Can men exist under feminine leadership? Can anybody exist under feminine leadership? Because feminized leadership? Because as we're looking at it, I think, and we'll get to this, it's in the outline, but kind of the consequences of what we're seeing here, I'd say they're pretty drastic, they're pretty severe. We're kind of laying out the problem of men giving up their appropriate masculine leadership position. But can men actually exist under a feminized leadership here? As we're discussing it and as we're defining this with those sensibilities, and I'll answer it right off the bat and then kind of get your guys'thoughts? I don't think so. I think it's actually incredibly detrimental for everybody to be under that because when everybody's cared for, which is kind of the feminized sensibilities, right. It's the sensibilities of nobody left behind and care for the victims and care for everything else we're seeing this goes, which is instead of standing for truth, where some people may get offended, some people may get hurt, we would rather care for them. We'd rather them show up. We want them to know they're loved. Well, we do. We want them to show up. We want them to know they're loved. But then what? There is no calling them to something greater. Which is why I think this is what creates such shallow unity within the church is we can't kind of step up that holiness mountain because we might lose people along the way. You have to break a few eggs to make anomaly. Those concepts, I think are somewhat foreign to the feminine version of leadership here. So I would go on the record and just say, I think things fall apart when that is the case. Because there's less direction, it's more of stagnation. Let's stay safe where we are instead of direction, which means there is risk involved. [00:24:30] Speaker C: Well, you spoke to the practical side, I'll speak to the biblical side. Nowhere in the Bible do we see feminine leadership being set up as the way to go. That's nowhere in there, in the home, in the church, anywhere. It's always been a kind of male hierarchy thing where husband is the head of the home, husband is the head of the wife. Father leads the children, obviously with the mother. But if the father is the one that's responsible. Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath. They're in ephesians six, verse four. He doesn't say mothers, he says fathers. And so can men exist under feminine leadership? I would say my answer would be, should men? No. Again, if we're wanting to line up biblically, nowhere in the Bible, and you're going to have the people to throw out the exceptions, what about Deborah? That was a big one. [00:25:14] Speaker B: Right. [00:25:14] Speaker C: And as we talked about, I would refer you back to our women's roles episode. First of all, that is an. Then, you know, secondly, it is Bayrak that still kind of gets the credit for it there in Hebrews. And so just if we're wanting to line our lives, our churches, our homes, our marriages up with scripture, then we have to look at this question and say that the answer is no. Men should not exist under feminine leadership, because nowhere in the Bible did God set it up that way. And as I've said before, go all the way back to the very first temptation, the very first sin back in Genesis three. What did Satan get at in the very first way he ever tempted humans? He kind of split up the husband and the wife, and he targeted the weaker vessel. He targeted the one that was going to be more sway. And you can say, oh, man, that's speculation. Ask yourself, why did Satan go after Eve? Why was it not Adam? Why didn't he go after Adam and say, hey, Adam, did God really say this? He went after Eve. And obviously Adam bears a ton of culpability there. You see that when the punishments are being handed down there in Genesis three. But again, go all the way back to the beginning of creation. Men are designed to lead, and so can men exist under feminine leadership? I would say men should not exist under feminine leadership if we're going according to the way that God set it up since the very beginning of creation. [00:26:28] Speaker A: The other thing is, I think one of the really important things to get at in this episode is, like, where can a woman's voice, where can a feminine sensibility contribute? Because it has to. A wise man listens to his wife and has a sense of where she stands on things. And we talked in our elder qualifications thing of, like, it's not explicitly said why he has to be a husband of one wife. But a lot of people surmise, and I don't think it's a bad assumption to say that a wife really supports an elder in his work and things like that. And so women bring so much to the table, but the question is, how does it fit in? And if it's kind of. All the men go home from the elders meeting and their wives go, oh, that's terrible. I don't like that decision. And so the men come back and they go, well, guys, I think we got to change our tune on this one, which that's a trope because it happens. And so you've got that issue there. And so there's that side of it. But then you ask, okay, well, how can women contribute? And again, it's this idea of, can they coexist where you have masculine leadership? The feminine sensibility can fit in with that. That he kind of sets the direction, and she can, again, do the arm around the shoulder, the caring for the week, the things like that. But it doesn't work in the other direction if it is led by her sensibility. There is no sense of hard truths, of taking difficult stands and things like that, because your first consideration is hers. And so it works one way. It does not work the. So to give an example, and there's a whole book on this, I've quoted Jonathan height before. He's the guy that has the elephant and the writer illustration I love so much. But he wrote another book which I think was even better. It was called the coddling of the american mind, how good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure. And it was all about, like, how did we end up with these safe spaces? How did we end up with the snowflake culture and the participation trophies and all these things and the helicopter parents and all these things that we're seeing in society? Because kind of the feminine sensibility, and there was not a masculine sensibility. It's like, all right, let's let these kids sink or swim a little bit. Let's let them scrape their knee a little bit and make some mistakes and get hurt. And then when they scrape their knee, mom can come in and patch it up and make them feel better. But no, we don't ever want you to scrape your knee. We don't ever want anything bad to happen. You bring that in of the church of, well, any hard decision, people might leave, people might get mad, people might do this, that, and the other thing. And again, so many times it's the men self policing themselves with that sensibility. And so, again, no masculine leadership can work under that system. You've got to have the masculine leadership and then bring in the feminine contribution. [00:29:08] Speaker B: There's a great quote I'm actually going to read from an article that is fantastic. It's a Joe Rigny article. It says, a key part of the challenge is the failure to recognize the lie of interchangeability in all of its forms. Male groups operate according to male norms oriented to things or ideas, willing to debate, challenge, and provoke one another. Directly and comfortable with hierarchy, female groups operate according to female norms oriented to people or feelings, prone to indirect and subtle communication and sublimated conflict and averse to open disagreement and overt hierarchies but comfortable with excluding those who violate their social norms. Making such a generalization already violates a number of feminist and egalitarian dogmas. But the more important generalization for our purposes is to note that mixed groups will inevitably tend to adopt female norms, including the orientation to feelings and the move to exclude those who violate the norms of quote unquote niceness by engaging in direct, challenging speech. The unsurprising result, often unexpressed in public but noted in private among men, is the frustration at the unfairness of the asymmetry of the mixed group. Direct speech is out. Indirect speech is in. Open. Debate is out. Emotional reasoning is in. Ideas are out. Empathy is in. What seems most compassionate and empathetic in the moment is prioritized over what is good and wise in the long run, violate the new rules and expect to be policed by white knights and sidelined for being quarrelsome, divisive, and rocking the boat. I mean, that says it very well in terms of what the feminine leadership looks like. There is a place for empathy, there's a place for kindness, there's a place for niceness. When it comes to running something, a lot of times that is to the exclusion of some of the harsher truths, some of the wisdom that must take place in the moment, because we're thinking generationally, we're thinking long term in the moment. [00:30:50] Speaker A: It seems. [00:30:51] Speaker B: This is perfectly illustrated by our last episode. Kicking somebody out of the church seems very, very mean. This is one aspect of the feminized leadership. We don't want to call people out on their sin. And so church discipline basically just doesn't exist today because we're afraid of what that might look like. We're trying to be nice, we're trying to be empathetic. We're trying to understand these people. We're trying to give them a safe place. Instead of recognizing overall, in 20 years, over the course of 20 years, when we let all of this go, how will that affect the church? Well, it's going to create people that think they can do whatever they want in the body of Christ. It's going to create people that can struggle with sins or whatever else, and we're going to try to nice their way into heaven. That will ultimately affect the unity and really the structure of the church in a very negative way. But that means you're going to have to be mean right now. So this is what we're talking about. I think when it's feminized Christianity, feminized hierarchy and leadership, here is the inability to do what's necessary for the long term, because we give up the wisdom, we give up the future for current niceties in this moment. So, fellas, let's get into, we want to run through this a little bit because this is kind of the main point of the outline. But when we're talking about feminized leadership, we've already said some of these things. We've already shown a little bit of where we're going with this, but I want to break it down by in the pulpit, in the eldership, in the church body, and then in the home. How is this manifested in the pulpit, as we see today with feminized leadership? [00:32:17] Speaker C: So I think the most obvious thing would be when we're talking about how does this show up in the pulpit? Typically you see pulpits and preachers where the goal is to kind of not necessarily please everybody, but just encourage everybody. Not a lot of conviction. There's not a lot of just say. In fact, I would liken it to you structure the things that you say based on how you think people are going to respond. You structure your points. You structure kind of maybe even the very thing you're preaching on, the content of your sermon based around how is this going to be received? Maybe even you think of specific people. How is this person going to take it? How is that person going to take it? And that's exactly what we mean when we're talking about the female sensibilities driving it, rather than just thinking to yourself as a preacher, what does this congregation need to hear? That's what I'm going to preach. What are some things thus sayeth the Lord? What does God's word say about this issue? That's what I'm going to preach. Where this comes out in the pulpit is once again, well, let me structure it a little bit differently. Let me maybe say it a little bit nicer. And I'm not one for advocating just get up there and be abrasive in the pulpit. But there are certain points where you just need to say what the Bible says. And so where this comes out of the pulpit once again is you're not really calling anybody to anything better. You're certainly not calling anybody to holiness. If you say anything, it's again generic and not specific. You see it where the feminine aspects of Jesus are focused on more the washing of the feet and know loving of this, loving of that. Those are elements of should we should teach and preach those. What about the other ones, as you already alluded to, Joe, what about flipping the tables? What about the times that Paul just comes out and says something, those tend to get neglected in the light of. I mean, I've heard dozens of lessons on Jesus washing feet. That's, again, a great biblical story. A lot of other things that kind of get left off the table when it comes to talking about Jesus. You see another example of where men are very often called out for sins. Women, not really so much. When is the last time you heard? I mean, I'm sure there have been a lot of lessons focused specifically on pornography as a man's issue, focused on lust as a man's issue. When's the last time you heard a sermon about gossip? Pretty well exclusively a female issue. When is the last time you heard day lesson, other than the one Joe preached on feminism pretty explicitly a female issue. And so I don't want to take all of them. There's a lot more that I'll let you guys get to, but I think those are some of the first ones that come to mind for me, as far as where you see this feminized leadership come out in the pulpit, never challenging anybody, never really calling anybody anything greater. And if you barely touch the controversial edge of something, then you step way back and know, I'm not really saying this. I'm not really saying this. Not a lot of solid preaching, Jack. What do you have to add to me? [00:35:06] Speaker A: There's just truths that are. I mean, statistical facts, biblical facts, things that basically can't be argued, but, boy, they're not polite, and so you're just not supposed to say them. And I'm going to use a dumb example here, but you'll see the fight rage about this online. Pit bulls are, like, the most dangerous. They're just killer animals. [00:35:25] Speaker C: They just are. [00:35:26] Speaker A: I mean, statistically, it's what, like, 60% of dog bite injuries are by one breed, and, man, you say that and people lose their minds. I mean, like, well, what about this picture of my sweet dog laying with our kid? I don't care. The numbers are what they are. And, man, there's just this fervor for that kind of thing. Now, you're not going to preach that from the pulpit, but there are things you can preach from the pulpit where that exact same thing is going to happen, where you just have the facts on your side and people do not care. In fact, we've probably got some listeners who have a pit bull and are really mad at me right now. The numbers are what they are, right. And so the same thing with how did homosexuality come to be so palatable in the culture. I saw a survey and I can't find it. I wish I could a year or so ago, where they kind of asked people, what are your feelings toward homosexuality and homosexuals? And you see them on tv, they're the funny guy, they're quirky, they dress a little different, things like that. And it was pretty positive. And then when you described what it is, which we have families who listen, you know exactly what it is, what it means to be homosexual, the act that you perform to be homosexual. When they described that, people's sensibilities, like the survey numbers dropped in a hurry, like, oh, that's right. That is what that means. It doesn't mean he's the funny 7th character on my favorite tv show anymore. It means it's a guy who does that to another man or to another woman. Like, oh, that is perverse, that's gross. But, boy, that's the kind of thing like, oh, well, don't talk about, know, don't get into the details, the specifics of that. And so I'm working from the outside in. I'm going to get a little bit closer as we go. COVID, a few years, you know, posted on Facebook, boy, this sure looks like it came out of a lab and not from bat soup. People lost their minds on him. I mean, people calling him to repent and to delete the post and stuff like that. Those posts, you can still read it today. It's basically all but stone cold fact that that's exactly what happened. And yet people were telling him to sit down and shut up. That's kind of this sensibility of, you can't say things that are mean. You can't say things that you were told not to say. And how many things through COVID did. The church was governed by a feminine sensibility of, well, we've got one person sister, so and so that if we don't all wear a space suit into church, a hazmat suit, she's going to not feel safe. And so everybody's going to have to do that for the next three years. Or you know what some people were two years later, and they just don't feel like getting in the building, so we're not going to. And so the whole church goes along with it. And the preacher cannot say from the pulpit, we're getting back in the building. I mean, that's what we're talking about, the BLM thing. Like, man, if you didn't bow the knee to that, and if you said, well, hang on just a second, are we sure about all these narratives, this isn't maybe what it's being presented as. [00:38:02] Speaker C: These numbers, polite thing to do, no. [00:38:04] Speaker A: Man, but their feelings. How can you not empathize with this community? But what if I'm telling the truth to this community? That there's like ten a year in a country of 300 million and those are tragedies, but that this is a systemic, overarching issue? You can't say these things because people get really mad at them. Why can't we say them? When we say, you can't say them? That's feminized leadership. You can say them, and you need to. [00:38:27] Speaker C: So I want to report letting Joe back in here. I want to read another quote from that article that he referenced. Generally speaking, men tend to be more theologically rigid, whereas women tend to be more theologically flexible. That's because men do not have the emotional intelligence of women. We are more black and white. Meaning we tend to be logic based when it comes to problem solving. Women tend to be more inclusive, they are more empathetic and tend to be more emotion based when solving problems. You can see how that might be a problem when a group is claiming to be an oppressed minority and the thing preventing them from attending church is the cruel doctrines and the regressive scriptures we follow. Which empath wouldn't want to compromise in order to make a so called oppressed minority feel included? It's the exact point Jack was just alluding to is that everything is looked at through the lens of man. How does that make this person feel? What type of tone is being used versus. Let's look at this with logic. Let's look at this know stone cold. What does the Bible say, as Jack said, with COVID stone cold facts? No, it's more about when women are the driving force behind it. It is more about, well, wouldn't you rather the one super uncomfortable older lady in the congregation be happy and everybody else be miserable? No, there are other things that need to play into this. And the theologically rigid versus theologically flexible thing is. So it calls exactly back to what I brought up with Adam and Eve. There was a reason Satan targeted Eve, and he didn't go after Adam first. And so, yeah, I wanted to read that quote because I think it shows exactly what Jack's talking about. Where we get into a society where people can think about transgenderism, we haven't brought that one up. The fact that we have people who will acknowledge that it is acceptable for somebody to pretend to be an opposite gender or pretend to be a dog that walks on all fours and go into public places and pretend to be an animal, or where we get people that are performing sex change surgeries on eight year olds. How did we get there? How do we get to that point? It's because no man had the backbone to say, I'm sorry, what. What are we doing here? Again, it's the female driving the forces of. What about their feelings? What about this? What about that? That's how we get to this level. [00:40:32] Speaker B: The confusion of transgenderism, this started decades ago. It wasn't men dressing as women. It was women dressing as men. That's really what started. This is women not just proverbially wearing the pants in the family, but women losing the feminine qualities, the feminine aspects, wearing pants, wearing men's clothing, and kind of taking on those girl boss elements and things like that. That's where all of this, you know, from the pulpit as we're talking about it, I think. And, Jack, you're making some. Actually, both of you guys are making some very good points. The biggest issue that I see specifically in terms of feminized leadership is the caveat. Christianity is what I call it when we go to call something out. I'm not saying this and I'm not saying that. It's like, what are you saying? We can't just come out and make a bold statement on BLM. We can't just come out and make a bold statement on these things because you might offend someone. And, yes, there's friction in conflict. Absolutely. I mean, that's literally, conflict is conflict. It's difficult, it's messy sometimes, but it doesn't have to be. And just because there's been some conflict that has been messed up in the past by guys who take it too far or whatever it is, that doesn't mean that swinging the pendulum to the feminine side of it is the answer. It means guys being men being masculine, men who call each other out in an appropriate setting and try to be self ruled men. That's the answer here. Not for a woman to come in, swoop in and save the day, but the caveat, Christianity, it's the same thing as, like, women should be workers or should be keepers of home. Women should not be working outside the home. Now, we could say that. Hold on. But I know there's some situations where. I know there's this. We can't say anything without qualifying a bazillion times as to what we're not saying. [00:42:06] Speaker C: We should be homeschooling our kids. We should be homeschooling our kids. Well, what about the people who can't? Or what about this? [00:42:11] Speaker B: What about that? Look, there's a woman on the board at her public school, and we really don't want to offend her. It's like, okay, I'll offend her. I'm sorry, but if this is the case, public school is sending millions and millions and millions of children to hell. At what point do we get to call that? At what point do we get to say that? Well, we can't because somebody might get offended. So it's a misunderstanding of love, ultimately. It's a misunderstanding of, like, we want to say what's loving. We want to make sure that people feel included. Included to what? And loved in what way? We don't understand that because we've allowed it to be a feminine version of love, which is very important, and it has its place, but it's not in a leadership position to have its place. Compassion and empathy are great, but not to the exclusion of wisdom and what's right. [00:42:57] Speaker C: So for fear of us going 90 minutes on this episode, Jack, I am going to go ahead and let you get into the kind of the masculine alternative. I do have one more quote I want to read, and we'll keep shouting this article out. It's american reformer Joseph Rigney. Fantastic article. But just to speak to one final time where these tendencies to want to accommodate people's feelings can lead to, and especially when men are accepting of them, this quote is just killer. He says to mix metaphors, the slippery slope is a one way train with four stops. Stop one. I'm not that kind of complementarian. In other words, I'm not one of those guys. I'm not one of those guys that says XYZ about, we shouldn't be domineering all these things. Stop number two. Right qualifier. Stop number two. I'm neither complimentarian nor egalitarian. Stop number three. I'm egalitarian. Stop number four. Sodomy is cool. He lays it out. That's exactly anything he says. The frequent move from egalitarianism to the affirmation and celebration of homosexuality is not so much a slippery slope, but simply what cancer does when left untreated. That is as revealing as it gets. That describes it perfectly. And so, Jack, I don't know if you want to go ahead and get into the masculine leadership side of the pulpit, kind of the alternative to what we've just been painting there. [00:44:12] Speaker A: Yeah, it's the ability to say, thus saith the Lord. It's the ability to have the prophetic voice when you need it. And it's exactly the thing I made the case for earlier, that the sensitive, tender touch that a preacher should have can work under the masculine front, but it can't work the other way around if you just lead with the feminized or the leadership, the unthreatening and, man, I'm sorry, the preachers, who I don't need to get into what I see on Facebook. But the thing where it really is the, I'm the most unthreatening, don't worry about me, know, ever stepping on your toes or hurting your feelings, then you can't do that. When the time comes, if it's all softness, if it's all tender, if it's all lamb and no lion, if it's. [00:44:57] Speaker C: All goofiness, to point. [00:44:59] Speaker B: Yes. [00:44:59] Speaker A: And on the other hand, it's possible to be all lion and no lamb. That's not good either, because, man, you just wear people out. You really hammer them over the head. The Bible does both things, and so you've got to be able to do both. But the only way in which you can do both is if you have the prophetic voice and if you're really strong. Because one of the other things is, one of the jobs of the preacher is to encourage the sheep to feed them and say, man, keep going, this is good. We're marching towards Zion, and we're all in this together. But if you're not yelling at the wolves, if you don't have the voice that can bark the wolves away, false teaching, confront the false doctrines of the world, the things that your people are facing, then your voice that encourages the sheep is no good because you encourage the wolves, too. And so, as a preacher, you have to have both of those. And it has to start with the strong voice. If you don't have that, your softer voice is no good. [00:45:53] Speaker B: One of the issues we see is that any man who does that, it's like, man can't call out man's problem. We need a woman to call out a woman's problem because we're trying to get the tone right and everything else. And so from the masculine side of it, we need a man who can speak to both sides of it, who can speak to the encouraging, who speak to the exhorting and kind of calling those things out. But a lot of times what we do is we actually say, a man probably shouldn't be calling out women's issues. Let's get a woman up there. And to your point, it really can't work that way. Where you have a woman who's barking these orders, right? Where you have a woman who. It doesn't carry the same weight, the same gravitas, because a woman is going against her biological nature in those ways to kind of call those things out. And so we trot women out and go, this will solve the problem. If we get a woman to speak to woman's issues, they'll listen to them. The problem is not having a woman listen to them. The problem is, the woman needs to submit to her husband and submit to the leadership of the church. But we try to solve the problem retroactively by having a woman step up and say, thus, say it, the Lord, instead of just having a man say, thus, say it, the Lord. Because a man might offend them, but it's less offensive coming from a woman when a woman calls it out. And so we look to women to say what a man should be saying and what a man is saying, but they just don't want to listen to it. So I think that's one of the issues. But a passage that comes to mind for me is numbers 25. And you have phineas, right? He goes out, got some people doing some bad things in a tent. He takes a spear, runs it right through him. And what does God say in that moment? How could you? That's horrible. We should have called. [00:47:21] Speaker C: Consider their feelings, right? [00:47:23] Speaker B: Consider their feelings. Like, that guy's a priest right there. That's who I want on my team, is very much God's tone in that situation. We have to bring that into the church. No, I'm not saying drive spears through people, but the point is, you need to have somebody who is willing to call that out. And God goes, that's my guy. Because he's the same type of priest who will then sacrifice on behalf of the people, who will then take that lamb, sacrifice it before God, and help clear sins away from the people. He had that role, too. So both sides are coming into this, and that's what masculine leadership looks like. [00:47:55] Speaker C: This speaks to needing to get back to the Old Testament quite a bit and why Old Testament stories, Old Testament portraits of God, kind of get left off the preaching docket, so to speak, by a lot of people, because we don't know what to do with it. Makes us uncomfortable of God coming down from Sinai and saying, I'm about to blow these people off the map. That's not something that we like. Or what you just talked about numbers 25, or striking Uzza down dead, or striking Nadab and Abihu just like that. That leads to this thinking of the Old Testament God was mean. New Testament God is loving. Old Testament God was harsh and vengeful. New Testament God is the guy who washes everybody's feet. Obviously, that's marcinism. That's a heresy. That's not true. But that's where we have to get back to preaching more of the Old Testament, teaching more of the old testament. But Joe, I was going to let you go ahead and move us into the next section. We hit the pulpit really well. What about elderships? How do we see this feminized leadership come out in the eldership realm? [00:48:49] Speaker B: Well, I do think that you see kind of the whisper of the wife. We all know the elderships that are run by women as they go into that meeting. And fellas, I've really thought about this, and I just think we should change our minds because there's something that maybe they stood for that the eldership said, this is what's going to happen. And the wife bent his ear for the next four days. Yeah, we absolutely see that happen. That's one of the ways that this comes in. But it's a lot of the things that we've already discussed, I think it is giving way to victim thinking. Well, they're the marginalized. We really need to think about the marginalized. No, we need to be thinking about everybody, and we need to be thinking about direction. What direction are we calling them to? I think a lot of elders are content to kind of keep the status quo because we want to grow numerically, but we really want to make sure that we're keeping people right. We're keeping people keeping people. And when the direction of the church is really no direction, it's just standing still and hoping that our fences are good enough or we don't let any of them out. We're not leading them toward Zion. We're not leading them to greater holiness or anything else like that. And I think, yes, it's a preacher's job, but it's also partly the elder's job. You spoke to the wolves, Jack. It's the elder's job to get the wolves out, to take the wolves and go. Absolutely not get out of our church type thing. It's the elder's job to exact church discipline. It's the elder's job to get in the nitty gritty of people's lives. Going back to Tod and Mary or whatever, which isn't Mary Todd. I don't know why that came to mind. Maybe I've been thinking about Lincoln. Isn't that his wife? Anyway, why that came to mind, I don't know. But getting back to that illustration, it's the elder's job to know the flock and to say, hey, you can't do this. This is what we're calling you to. Again, there is a certain level of masculinity, of friction, of conflict in that moment. To call somebody out, feminized leadership would never do it because feminized leadership is more concerned about keeping people than it is about calling them to something better and showing the direction. There's risk involved with that and not security. Well, women want security. That's why a lot of them are tight with a buck. That's why a lot of them, not all of them, but women want security. They find security in certain things. A lot of elders find security in how many people they have in the congregation rather than what is the spiritual security of my congregation, which why this. [00:50:53] Speaker C: Leads to a world where you hear so many stories of preacher gets up and says something. Eldership, because of the backlash that is received, lets the guy go. Not going to back him, we're going to let him go. Just a lot of controversy. And this is just, we just need to put this fire out. Feminized leadership leads to that, again, of a guy who maybe ruffles some feathers. Maybe he again just says something that people don't want to hear or takes a stance that might be controversial. The masculine version of leadership says that those elders are going to back him up when he stands for truth. Feminized version says, man, sure, it was a lot of issues that came with that just to keep the peace. We're just going to let the guy go and we're going to get a new start here. Why? Because they're concerned with everybody else's. Again, the optics. Female sensibilities. Yeah, optics, female sensibilities driving the decision. That's what you get. Whereas again, the alternative being in masculine leadership, we're going to back him up. He said something, maybe he said a little strongly. However, it is truth, we're going to back him up on it because we hired him to speak truth, and that's what he's. Again, you don't really hear those stories, unfortunately, at least in the church of Christ circles, you hear the stories of the guy who gets canned because of the backlash you receive. [00:52:05] Speaker B: But even if he didn't speak truth, there's still a masculine way to handle it, which is not necessarily to fire the guy right away, show him a different way. If the guy's clearly off on scripture, yeah, this is something that, the masculine thing to do, I think, is to call him out and then as a wolf, get him out of the congregation. But if a guy misspeaks or speaks something, that's not true, but he's got a heart for it. So many elders just want to do the very quick thing, which is cut him off. I'm not trying to be mean to women, but consider women groups. Consider how much they cut each other off. Consider the cattiness among women groups as, like, you're no longer my friend or shiny new toy, new kid on the block. You see this a lot among women. I'm not saying it doesn't happen with men, but men, more often than not, are more binding. We see this in teams, we see this in army and everything else, like, men are driven toward groups, whereas women are more likely to cut each other off. What do we see with elders? What do we see within the church? Cut one another off. Cut the preacher off. Even if he is wrong, the way to handle it is to call him out for it and go for the elder to get up and go, hey, that's incorrect, that's off. But then you study with him and you try to bring him to something new instead. We are fire happy in the church, and this is just a soapbox of mine that is a little bit adjacent to this. But my goodness, Jack and I, because we were at Bear Valley for a number of years, we know a lot of preachers that came through the program, great men of God, we could probably sit here and come up with at least a dozen stories of guys that were fired on the spot for something that they did, or because so and so got upset and they had two weeks to move out and figure out, find out another job. That is, their family and elderships are doing it because they're feminized, because instead of handling it the way they're supposed to handle it, going to the brother, treating him as though he's less of an employee and slave and more as a brother in, no, no. Somebody might get upset. Therefore, we need to cut him off immediately and basically excommunicate him from the group. There's a better way to handle it. But this is what happens in feminized leadership. Feminized elderships, Jack? [00:53:54] Speaker A: Well, it comes down to two things you need. Number one, and like I said, one can fit with the other, the other can't fit with the one. What does God think? What do people think? Women are concerned by God given nature. What do people think? How do people feel? What do they need. But if that drives everything, then what God thinks doesn't matter. If you start with what God thinks, then you can take care of the people and their feelings and all that underneath it. And so when you fire a preacher, there's a time to do that, because God thinks he's got to go. If it's because people think he needs to go. Ask what God thinks before you make that decision. It's this democracy mindset that governs the church of how are we going to handle this? Well, what do the people think? And again, it's not even taking a vote. It's always the squeaky wheel thing. It's the loudest people. And so really it's the path of least resistance. And that is kind of the dominant leadership model throughout society. You see it a lot in business management. You see it in the home, you see it in the church, man, whatever is going to give me the least amount of resistance, the least amount of pushback, that's what we're going to go with. And, man, if we do this, somebody's going to make a really big stink and I'm going to have the headache and I'm going to have to deal with that, so I'm just not going to do it. They're the members that, more than anybody else, need to be confronted about the issues that they're causing. But we don't. We capitulate to them. So they drive the church, the squeaky wheel, the insubordinate person drives the church. That's the problem. The reason God puts you in place is so they wouldn't, so that you would stop them from driving the church, not capitulate to them and let them make all the decisions. And so a good leader has to know his people. He's got to be, again, sit across a kitchen table from, he's got to know their mindset and where they are on things, but he also has to be able to correct them when they're wrong. But then he takes what he knows of them and he leads from that, not ignoring his people, but not also, not just bowing the knee to them. It's a tough balance to strike, but you have to start with what does God think? And then underneath that, to the best of your ability, cater to what people think. But you cannot start by compromising what God thinks. And that's almost all. Well, not always, but in so many cases, what happens. [00:55:59] Speaker B: I want to get us in the last two sections here with our brief remaining time. And that is where we see this in the church body where we. [00:56:08] Speaker C: Have you guys seen that sports show? Is it. Pardon the interruption. I'm not sure where they have like a two minute clock and they have to move. [00:56:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Pardon the interruption. [00:56:16] Speaker C: Pardon the interruption. If we ever had that, we would be so out of luck, we'd be toast. [00:56:21] Speaker B: Yeah, sorry, go ahead. Let's try to do this. [00:56:24] Speaker C: Two minutes. [00:56:25] Speaker B: Yes. So in the church body where we see this with feminized leadership and kind of the feminine sensibilities taking charge, I do think we see clicks among members and we see some caddiness. I'm not just saying that's a strict woman issue. We do see this with men, by and large, not as much. So I think the clicks that take place of, well, we're friends with so and so, the church family, like the unity, I think, is very thin in churches these days because of this approach, because it does take a little bit of conflict. We have to get along with people we don't necessarily like. We got to call out some of the things that we don't like or be willing to have these conversations in the church. We usually don't. We just avoid the people we don't want to have those conversations with. I do think you see women as men's consciences. Again, they kind of get to determine what the sins of the congregation are, what the sins need to be called out. And so, yes, this is from the pulpit, but just within the congregation as a whole. I do think that you see a lot of men who are. Jack's already spoken to it very well a few times. Kind of the self policing aspect of men will call out men. Nobody's there to call out women. And so the average woman in the church goes around kind of viewing herself as more holy than the average guy in the church. And again, listeners may be, I don't know, they may disagree with that. Look around your church. More often than not, you see women who take more of a position of holiness than the average guy because the average guy has been told time and time and time again he's not. He's got all these issues. I think we see that in the church. I think we see women run Bible classes where they're the ones that speak up. They're the ones that have all the biblical thoughts. The guy barely opens his Bible during the week. He's too busy working. And so when he comes, he doesn't really have anything to bring to the Bible class. He's not really taking any sort of leadership, masculine leadership. It doesn't have to be like teaching the Bible class. But for him to speak up and have thoughts that contribute, we don't see that from a lot of guys, unfortunately, in a lot of churches. And then I'll just go to the last one, which I think is weak evangelism. I think we don't call people out and we don't really call people up. We try to do the. And I'm not saying friendship evangelism is all bad, but I do think that there's more of a little bit of the oddling. And we struggle to call people out of the sin and call them to a higher standard within Christ because I think we're trying to do the buddy buddy approach and hoping that they'll kind of understand as they go along. Maybe I'm in the wrong things like that. So those are the things that I think we see in the church body, fellas. Anything you'd add to that, Jack? [00:58:39] Speaker C: Joe used our whole two minute clock. [00:58:41] Speaker A: I know he really did. [00:58:42] Speaker B: No, I meant two minutes for me. [00:58:45] Speaker A: We'll split the other. Yeah. Just need a buzzer for him. Yeah, no, I mean the evangelistic call, and I get the sentiment behind it. There's good sentiments behind a lot of these things. The one beggar telling another one where beggar or where bread is, it's like there is that side of it of what you gain and the blessing that it is to come to Jesus. But there's also, this is the king, and you owe it to him to bow before him like your life is not your own. What was preached at acts two and acts 17 is somebody walked out of the grave. You better deal with that. That is a whole different thing than man. You're really going to like it. I really do want to like it. That's part of it. But it's not the whole thing. [00:59:25] Speaker C: In acts 17, Paul telling them, all these gods you're worshipping. [00:59:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:59:29] Speaker C: They're not the real God. Again, very sternly, kind of a wake up call. [00:59:35] Speaker A: You can't evangelize without saying you're wrong. But right feminized sensibility is you can't say you're wrong. [00:59:42] Speaker C: Yeah, let's go ahead and move into. We are just about at the hour mark here, so let's go ahead and move into the last section in the home. We talked about the pulpit, elderships, church body. I think we can probably spend the least amount of time on this one because we have hit this one before in previous episodes. But where you see feminized leadership in the home, you see very passive aggressive leadership. You see avoidance of conversation, avoidance of communication, it's all very passive aggressive, kind of subtle. Again, just not a lot of direct communication. That is one of the surest ways to have problems. Let's just isolate marriage for just a second within your marriage, but also within the family, with kids and things. You got to have these open conversations. Sometimes you got to have the tough conversations where you know conflict is going to happen, where you know you're daughter is going to get ticked at you when you tell her you're not wearing that, we don't wear that stuff here, or your son's going to get ticked at you when you give him the rules for the weekend or whatever it is. And again, same thing with the wife. Feminized leadership doesn't lead that way. Feminized leadership kind of avoids those conversations and just maybe will passive aggressively make a comment. But it's never really going to come down harsh or firmly on anything. Again, clothing standards or whatever it is. And so that's where we see it. We see it pervade in sexual issues. And gentle parenting comes out of this as well, where again, there's no standards for the kids. It's more so about the kids. Feelings and participation tropes were already referenced. There's a lot of ways it could come out. I don't want to again, spend a ton of time here. I think we've beat these drums before, but this is where I think most of our listeners it will probably resonate with as far as this is where you have seen it in the home, feminized leader, not women, not even necessarily women taking charge, but the men being driven by the female sensibilities are okay with the gentle parenting are going to just with the sexual issues. Well, it is what it just not really going to do anything to solve it. And so those are the problems that you see. Joe, what would you add to that? [01:01:33] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I don't think I'd add anything. Like you said, we've spoken on this before, see previous podcasts that we've had. I think we've had probably at least two of them, two podcasts on that specific issue. I just think it means men need to take the spiritual lead, but men need to take every sort of leadership in the home as much as possible, setting the tone for discipline, cherishing and loving his wife and modeling for his kids. Not just a weak man who gets blown by, but a man who stands up, says what needs to be said while cherishing his wife, while loving his wife, modeling for the kids. I mean, those are the things that need to. That, I think can help kind of write the ship here. But I spoke to, and I'm going to breeze through these because we touch on so many of these. But I spoke to earlier, kind of the consequences of feminized Christianity, feminized leadership. And I'm just going to go list by list of the things that I had listed. Fellas, if there's anything you want to add. And then we'll probably look to wrap up here. We got a few other random thoughts. We may push to the deep end here. Just about women testing leadership. They're kind of smart to do so. I'll throw that out there. They are smart to test in some ways. There are ways that are very wrong, and there are some ways that are correct. We're going to leave that to the deep end because I think it makes for a very interesting discussion, but some consequences of feminist leadership. Only women can address women because they don't want to take it from a man. Men are perpetual white knights, kind of fighting against each other for the kind of that. Who can defend women the most? Jump on social media. Who can get the approval? There you go. Political correctness. What you can and cannot say. Selective sins. We'll talk about some sins and not other things. Wimpy pulpits, consumer driven churches, which is just about appeasement. It's about bringing people in, but not really about calling them to something better. Weak unity, shallow unity. Because without conflict, there really is no depth of unity. Feminist women, directionless, uninolved and angry men who really feel like they either don't have a role to play or they just pull away completely. They're neglectful. A lot of them are just angry about kind of the state of the world, or they stay involved in things that feel like politics, that feel more masculine to them instead of really engaging in spirituality. And then ruin marriages. Because hierarchical differences, if there is no hierarchy, the marriage will be ruined. There's hierarchy in every situation. There's hierarchy within the godhead with Jesus humbling himself and such. So, yeah, there's supposed to be hierarchy, but in know, feminized leadership, that's an issue. So what I wanted to end on for me, and then I'll turn it over to you guys to kind of wrap up. I am going to echo something Jack said. This is going to sound like we're bashing women in so many places. This is not a woman issue as much as it is a male issue who's been dominated by this thinking in the culture. And males are very pervasive in this. I'm not saying we're not calling out women. Absolutely. So if you're a woman who's dealing with this, struggling with these things, trying to take a leadership position, and maybe not even like the big leadership position, but you need to wrestle with that. But the second thing, men, we have to do a better job of being able to call this out and saying, no, we're not doing that. The hey, let's just appease everybody approach. That's largely a male eldership pulpit dominated thing. So it's going to sound like we're very against women. There's a time and place and a very needed place for the sensibilities of women, for empathy, for kindness, for compassion, all of these things and the marginalized and such. Without that, we'd have a culture that's dominated by guys that just kill each other type of thing to a certain extent. So there is a time and place for that. However, what we're trying to advocate for is in a leadership position that's not the case. So I don't want people going away going, boy, these guys hate women. I think we've already gotten some of that. It's not about that. It's about we can't allow the feminine sensibilities to be the thing that drives the church into the future because it's driving it into the ground. And guys are the ones that are kind of pushing it. [01:05:08] Speaker A: Our biggest target is the guy who says, bro, you can't say that. [01:05:11] Speaker B: That's what I was. [01:05:11] Speaker C: Yeah, that's very true. My challenge is for the men listening. Stop trying to be the nicest guy on the block. Stop trying to out nice all the other guys around you. Because that's what you see is, again, the guys policing each other. The guy that jumps into the social media comments section to defend the woman's position or the female tendencies and things like that. And it's like, that is exactly what we're talking about. As far as a consequence know, Joe, you put on there, men are perpetual white knights fighting against each other. Quit trying to out nice everybody. Be a jerk. No. Be abrasive. No. But stand for truth. Stand for things that need to be said. Stand for leading in your know, we've talked about the misinterpretation of servant leadership before. That very much applies here. It's not about who's the nicest. It's not about who's just the guy over here who doesn't really deserve. No, you're supposed to lead. So quit trying to do it in the absolute nicest way possible. That's not always going to be the case. Jesus, again, certainly did not always lead in the nicest way possible. He's still the greatest leader there ever was. So that would be kind of my closing comments. [01:06:18] Speaker A: More than anything, you answer to God and that's not a pass like, oh, we get to run roughshod over women and everybody else because we don't answer to them. No, it's a very serious thing to answer to God. And so you better not just use that as license to run over, but you also need to use that as license to do hard things that people don't want you to do that people are going to yell at you for doing, of not caring what people think. And again, more than anything, to elders, to other preachers, to men, stop getting in the way of God's men doing that. Stop being the guy who's trying to shout down Elijah, the guy who's trying to get in Moses's way. I mean, think about how much opposition Moses got. Don't be that guy. Those guys got swallowed up by the ground. If you want to know how God feels about. [01:07:05] Speaker B: A, that's a great wrap. Not much we're going to add to that. We will push some things in the deep end. We got a few more notes on. I wrote a lot on the outline. [01:07:13] Speaker C: Which if you're a new listener, why don't you tell maybe some new listeners what the deep end is and then you can wrap us up. [01:07:18] Speaker B: Yes, if you're a new listener, check out our patreon focuspress.com backslash plus and that will take you to our Patreon focus plus and lots of great perks on there. So as a quick ad read, I mean, we got a revelation class on there. We got Brad's new videos, brains and brew. It's fantastic video series. We got daily Devos, tons of stuff. Daily Devos, that's right. We got daily Devos on there. We've got articles going up, sermon podcasts going up, but exclusive articles and sermon casts and the deep end and video content. I think we'll be switching that over where everybody will be open to the video content for the main podcast. But still the deep end, the second half, the after show or after party, whatever you want to say that we record questions and listener questions, all of that stuff. So make sure that you are signed up to focus plus and view it maybe as a donation. We are trying to do Lord's work here. We're trying to do something so something cool. And we have some really good plans going in the future. So maybe consider it as a donation if you're interested in that. With a lot of perks, a lot of great content, other perks as well. We don't talk about very much with shipping and discounts and things like that. Exclusive access to new. Yeah, that's, that's our little push. But we appreciate you listening. We very much are, again, putting out for questions, comments, thoughts. Please let us know on any of the Facebook, YouTube if you are focus plus member. Of course, we want to get to those things at the deep end. So we look forward to the discussion that comes from this one. Let us know what you think. We're going to wrap right there. Thank you for listening, and we will talk to you again next weekend.