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1:22
We're going to talk about something today that has blown up in Christian and non-Christian culture
1:29
here in the last, really last few days, and it's the @preachers-in-sneakers Instagram account.
1:36
So I'm pretty sure this is the first time we've ever done an entire episode just on an Instagram account.
1:41
But this is literally one of the most interesting things that I've seen.
1:44
One of these just kind of online phenomenons here in the last few months, I would say, definitely of 2019.
1:51
So here's the skinny. If you have an Instagram account, go to @preachers-in-sneakers.
1:56
So that's the word "preachers", the letter "in" in "sneakers", okay?
2:00
So this was an Instagram account that was started about three weeks ago, about three weeks ago from the time of this recording, obviously.
2:06
And it was started by a guy apparently named Tyler Jones, but apparently that's like not his real name.
2:10
I think even to this day, we don't exactly know who the person is that has this account.
2:15
But the thing about this guy, we'll just, again, we'll just call him Tyler.
2:19
He is two things according to himself. He is an evangelical Christian, and he's a sneaker head, okay?
2:26
So most of you know what evangelical Christian is, but maybe don't know what a sneaker head is.
2:30
So sneaker heads are people that love collecting rare sneakers.
2:34
So think Jordans or rare Nike's or, you know, you've heard of Yeezys or something like that.
2:39
These are shoes that are typically shoes that you can't just go into footlocker, champs, and buy them.
2:44
These are shoes that are bought and typically resold, right?
2:48
So maybe it's a retail pair of Nike's that are rare.
2:51
That's $130 retail, but maybe they'll sell online for three or four or five times that, right?
2:56
So it's kind of that type of thing.
2:57
So a sneaker head to somebody that really likes sneakers.
2:59
They like rare sneakers and a lot of these people will actually buy and sell and trade sneakers
3:04
as kind of part of their livelihood.
3:05
So that's who this Tyler guy is.
3:07
But the thing about the account that he started is this is an account that kind of started as a joke.
3:13
And what the account is is the account is pictures of prominent and well-known pastors wearing unbelievably
3:22
expensive clothing, mainly shoes, again, it's, you know, preachers and sneakers, right?
3:26
But it's basically showing a picture of the pastor wearing these shoes or whatever other
3:32
accoutrement.
3:33
And then he's basically got right next to it the cost of what those things are going for
3:37
on the secondary market.
3:39
So he says he started as a joke.
3:41
He started the account as a joke, right?
3:43
Because this is a guy that's a Christian.
3:44
I don't think he was really trying to do anything to really shed any negative light on it or
3:49
something like that.
3:50
But he did a recent interview here with Fashionista, I think it's an online magazine or something
3:55
like that.
3:56
But so here's basically what prompted him in his own words to start this account.
4:00
So here we go.
4:01
Quote, "One Sunday I was looking for a song I really liked by Elevation Worship and I realized
4:06
the lead singer was wearing a pair of Yeezy 750s.
4:10
They're pretty rare and resell for 800 bucks or so.
4:13
I thought I knew about church type salaries.
4:15
My wife works for a church.
4:16
And so I was like, this does not compute.
4:19
How's this guy wearing these kicks?"
4:21
Then I started looking into the pastor at Elevation, Steven Furtick, and I came across
4:25
a video where he was wearing this pair of shattered backboard Jordan ones, the orange
4:29
and black colorway.
4:30
That's one of my holy grail shoes.
4:32
I looked him up on StockX, that's a website where you can look up prices of shoes.
4:37
And the last sale was for like 900 bucks.
4:39
I started deep diving these mega churches and I realized there's a lot of people out
4:43
here wearing like the high-pest outfits, the highest resell kicks in the game.
4:47
I made a video for my personal Instagram and people responded really well.
4:51
At that point I was like, maybe there's something going on with a comedic factor here.
4:56
Or sorry, maybe there's some ongoing comedic factor here.
5:00
So I messed up the quote and that's the end of the quote.
5:02
But here's the thing about this.
5:05
If you would have found this three weeks ago, or let's maybe put it like 16, 17 days ago,
5:11
this had a few hundred, a few thousand people that were following this.
5:16
But as of the recording of this podcast in three weeks, this has over a hundred thousand.
5:20
I think it was 109,000 followers when I checked this morning.
5:24
And it didn't even exist three weeks ago, right?
5:27
And so the thing about this is there's a lot of pastors that are featured here that you
5:32
know about.
5:33
So I'll kind of give you like a rundown because there's really only maybe a couple of dozen
5:36
posts in this account.
5:37
I mean, it hasn't been posted for very long, but let's go through some of the people that
5:41
are on here.
5:42
So we got Stephen Furtick.
5:43
Obviously they've already mentioned Elevation Church.
5:45
So those Jordan one retros, the kind of orange and black colorway, those resell for about
5:50
a thousand dollars.
5:51
And so guys, I'm not going to give you the range of these shoes because they resell
5:54
for all kinds of different things on different sites.
5:56
I'm just going to kind of give you a generalized estimation.
5:58
But also there's a picture on there of Stephen Furtick wearing the $700 pair of off white
6:04
Nike Prestos.
6:05
So again, all these are going to be rare.
6:07
Then you got Carl Lince.
6:08
If you don't know my opinions on Carl Lince, I would encourage you to go to the Deadman
6:13
stuff website or just type in Deadman stuff Carl Lince into Google and you'll find an
6:19
article that I wrote for them about that guy not that long ago.
6:22
But that's obviously the guy from Hillsong, New York City.
6:25
You can see a picture of him wearing a pair of Nike fear of God's aptly named.
6:30
Those go for about $800.
6:32
And then we have another guy from Hillsong.
6:33
He's a teaching pastor.
6:34
His name is Nathan Finochio.
6:37
I don't know how he says last name, but we'll go with Finochio, kind of like Pinocchio,
6:40
but Finochio, he's wearing a pair of, I mean, gaudy, awful, terrible Prince Town slippers.
6:47
They're $1,100 slippers like so anyway, that's a thing that happened.
6:52
And then we got a guy named David Crank.
6:54
He's out of faith church in St. Louis and Palm Beach, Florida.
6:57
He's wearing a $450 Gucci belt.
6:59
Then we've got John Gray, who I've seen speak.
7:03
He's a fantastic speaker of John Gray Ministries and he's got a pair of, this is kind of the
7:09
most egregious of all the things on here, $6,000 Air Yeezy twos.
7:15
Okay.
7:16
So if you don't know Yeezy is all you people that have been living under a rock that's
7:18
Kanye West, but he's also got a picture where he's wearing a pair of Air Yeezy twos that
7:23
are a little bit different that are around $3,700, right?
7:26
So there's like 10 G's and a couple of pairs of shoes right there.
7:29
And then we got Judah Smith, he's, I don't know if he's technically with a church anymore,
7:35
but I know he's like affiliated with this, this app called church home.
7:38
It's like one word church home with only one H, which is weird.
7:41
But anyway, he's, it's basically a church on your phone.
7:45
So it's not like church online.
7:46
It's like an actual church that is just housed on your phone.
7:49
So I'm not, I don't know a whole lot else about it.
7:51
But you can see pictures of him wearing $980 Gucci pants and $730 Gucci loafers.
7:58
So that's a thing.
7:59
Then we have a guy named Ron Carpenter from redemption church.
8:01
He's wearing $1,400 Jordan retro ones.
8:06
Then we have Chad Veach more on him in a second.
8:08
That's Zoe church in LA.
8:11
He's carrying a $2,000 Gucci travel bag and a $800 pair of rude Traxedo pants.
8:19
Rude R H U D E because apparently that's a way we spell that word now.
8:24
And then lastly, in this, this isn't just the last guy.
8:26
This last guy I thought y'all might have heard of is Erwin McManus of mosaic church out in,
8:30
I think that's an LA as well, but he's wearing a pair of $1,300 Jordan one retro highs and
8:35
a pair of $800 fear of gods.
8:37
So you get the point, right?
8:38
I don't really need to beat the dead horse.
8:40
But I mean, there's a whole lot of other pastors that are wearing things that are similarly
8:43
priced, similarly rare and kind of that whole deal.
8:47
So before I get into really my opinion on this, let's just talk about what the generalized
8:50
reception is.
8:51
So let's just say that this story is making the rounds in kind of the fashion industry.
8:56
So if you type in sneakers and preachers on Google, you're going to find a lot of articles
9:01
from a lot of blogs and stuff that you probably don't read because they're more fashion based
9:04
things.
9:05
But all of them have kind of brought this up in a negative light, right?
9:07
So it's basically, you know, John Gray spotted wearing X $1,000 pair of shoes and, you know,
9:14
he's getting a lot of hot getting getting in hot hot water or something like, you know,
9:18
it's just kind of stuff like that.
9:20
Then we got relevant magazine, which is generally a trash heap.
9:23
They tried to do something cute by saying, you know, this is the pair of shoes.
9:28
Your favorite pastor is about that.
9:29
That was kind of dumb.
9:30
But even Buzzfeed, Buzzfeed picked this up Buzzfeed news.
9:34
And so that's obviously kind of almost like a oxymoron Buzzfeed and news.
9:38
But they picked this up and obviously they kind of took it to the extreme of, you know,
9:42
it's be critical of people in the church is kind of an easy one.
9:45
But one thing I did want to kind of put out there about the reception that this guy specifically
9:50
is feeling.
9:51
And this is again, from that fashion, used to interview that he did, I'll go ahead and
9:54
read a quote here.
9:55
Quote, I've had hundreds of pastors and people in ministry message me like, thank you, keep
10:00
doing what you're doing.
10:01
It's promoting a discussion or it's prompting a discussion around what leadership and stewardship
10:06
look like within the church.
10:07
I also have this whole other component of the secular questioning or atheist community that
10:12
are messaging me like, dude, that is hilarious.
10:14
It's crazy that the money that these preachers make unquote.
10:19
And so the thing about this is the guy that's running this account seems genuinely flabbergasted
10:25
by all this.
10:26
It's kind of one of those things where it looks like he was putting something together
10:28
for his friends, something that, you know, maybe the people around him, like his inner
10:32
circle would find funny, but something that was never really supposed to get kind of that
10:35
mass marketable appeal.
10:37
But here we are three weeks later, and it's for Instagram purposes for someone who's not
10:42
a celebrity.
10:43
That's, you know, not a new team in a new area or something like that.
10:46
It's pretty incredible to get that amount of followership in such a short period of time,
10:50
especially when it was kind of a slow grumbling.
10:54
I mean, that's the thing.
10:55
Again, I was not going to talk about that this week.
10:57
But if you go to Google news, there have been articles that have been written today about
11:00
this.
11:01
So it's something that's really, really pertinent.
11:03
So the cool thing about this whole account is it's become kind of like an accidental watch
11:08
dog account, right?
11:09
So there are organizations that you may, you know, you got your Wikileaks and you got your
11:13
other ones that aren't nearly as extreme or crazy as that.
11:16
But these are accounts that basically are there to just keep an eye on things, right?
11:21
And that's kind of what this account has become because here's the thing.
11:23
At this point, I can't imagine that this account won't continue to grow.
11:27
I think there is a maximum that an account like this could have.
11:30
I mean, even people that are incredibly popular and incredibly famous on Instagram, there's
11:34
only so many followers that are going to be interested in what they do.
11:37
There's only so many followers on the platform.
11:39
But I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if this, you know, had half a million, half a million
11:44
followers at some point or maybe got to a quarter of a million, which is a substantial
11:48
amount on Instagram, especially for an account that's not, you know, paying for likes or paying
11:53
for followers or things like that.
11:55
So it's pretty interesting.
11:57
But the thing that's, that's not terribly surprising about this is most pastors that
12:02
are listed on this site.
12:04
They're just ignoring this entirely.
12:06
Like they're not even dignifying it.
12:07
I mean, they've been tagged in all these posts.
12:09
I'm sure the people around them have seen it.
12:12
So presumably they know it's happening and it may not be that way for long.
12:15
We might see some guys that kind of get into the fray, but there's one pastor in particular
12:20
that just couldn't leave this alone.
12:23
And I'm sure he bet he wishes that he did at this point.
12:26
So Chad Vichu, I mentioned earlier, let's, let's see what he was wearing.
12:29
He was wearing.
12:30
Oh yeah.
12:31
He had the $2,000 Gucci travel bag and the $800 Rude Traxedo pants.
12:36
Yes.
12:37
Traxedo is a thing.
12:38
So this guy, a pastor of Zoe Church in LA.
12:41
This is kind of a pastor that's in Bieber's circle.
12:44
So Bieber kind of has a few celebrity pastors, including Carl Lynn's kind of in his inner
12:48
circle.
12:49
This guy pretty much has close to a quarter of a million dollars, a quarter of a million
12:52
followers on Instagram, rather.
12:55
And the thing about it is, is this guy, or here, I'll just go ahead and say his comments.
13:00
So he actually responded to his own picture on there.
13:03
So this is what Chad Vichu of Zoe Church put in his, or in his response to his picture.
13:08
So quote here, want to know what's crazy?
13:11
I legit did not pay for one thing that I'm wearing.
13:14
Vich initially, or sorry, I'm messing up the quote again.
13:17
Let's just start over.
13:18
All right.
13:19
We're doing it live.
13:20
All right.
13:21
Here's the thing.
13:22
Want to know what's crazy?
13:23
I legit did not pay for one thing that I'm wearing.
13:24
Is that wild to you?
13:25
For me.
13:26
Thanks for the shout out though.
13:27
You're a blessing.
13:28
Unquote.
13:29
So he, I guess he was trying to play a little bit of PR thing, but let's just say this,
13:33
Vich got torched for this.
13:36
And I mean, absolutely torched for this, um, Vich ended up, uh, yeah, I guess the guy
13:41
that Tyler, the guy who was running the account, had to kind of delete a bunch of very, very
13:45
rude and mean comments because he, you know, basically didn't want the comment section
13:49
of his account to become a cesspool, but eventually Vichu went in there and he deleted
13:53
his own comment and the dude even changed his Twitter handle, right?
13:58
So I guess he was getting mentioned a lot and just getting kind of ripped up and down.
14:02
And so he was trying to kind of mitigate that.
14:04
And so he like basically took his middle initial out of his, of his Instagram handle or something
14:08
like that.
14:09
But at the end of the day, that's the only pastor that tried to get back into the fray
14:13
and it just, it just did not go well for him.
14:16
This is one of those things where he's probably should have let sleeping dogs lie, but he just,
14:19
he just couldn't really find himself getting there.
14:21
So what I want to kind of do now in the story, because I feel like you obviously have a very
14:25
good overview of what exactly was going on here is I want to talk about some, some good
14:30
things about the preachers and sneakers thing, right?
14:34
So we're going to look at some good things and some bad things and then I'll kind of
14:36
give you my read on the situation.
14:37
So three good things about preachers and sneakers.
14:40
Okay.
14:41
Number one is making pastors think twice about how they represent themselves publicly.
14:47
I mean, I don't think there's a way that you can see what's happening here and see a lot
14:52
of other pastors that I'm sure you know of that I didn't even name here and kind of see
14:56
how their names are being dragged through the mud a little bit right now.
15:00
And I mean, I guess we can have a debate as to whether or not that's deserved.
15:03
Maybe we'll get more into that here in just a second.
15:06
But these pastors have to at least be thinking twice because everyone knows about Joel Osteen
15:11
and his mansions and you know, his big this and his $10,000 suits and you know, and like
15:17
the big, the big church that is I forgot my thought earlier, but yeah, the big church
15:21
and then the flood came and he wouldn't really let anybody be in the church and like so we
15:25
get that.
15:26
And then you got Benny Hinn basically flying all over the place, hitting people with his
15:29
jacket, knocking them out, healing crap, even though he's not actually doing that.
15:33
And you know, he's basically a billionaire now and things like that.
15:36
And so there are other pastors that I think truly are, you know, gospel centered individuals
15:41
and they have a heart after God.
15:43
And now they're having to think to themselves and I wait a minute, am I just trying to be
15:46
woke?
15:47
Am I just trying to be relevant here?
15:51
Even if you're into fashion, maybe you have to kind of slow your role a little bit.
15:54
So I think that's a good thing.
15:55
I think this is a good thing that pastors are having to look internally at how they're
15:58
representing themselves publicly.
16:00
The second good thing about preachers and sneakers is it's causing the Christian community
16:04
to discuss the issue of materialism.
16:08
Okay.
16:09
So materialism is one of those subject matters in the church.
16:13
It's almost like divorce in that it's mentioned, but then no one really wants to hammer the
16:18
point.
16:20
You kind of get what I'm saying.
16:22
So it's so clear what divorce is and how the church should look at divorce and how church
16:27
should look at people that are divorced, right?
16:30
I mean, Jesus made a lot of public declarations on important issues.
16:35
He also made one on divorce.
16:36
I mean, if you get divorced, you were an adulterer.
16:39
And if you remarry somebody else, that person becomes an adulterer, it's pretty clear.
16:44
But in most modern day churches, the divorce rates are just like they are outside of the
16:49
church in secular society.
16:50
It's, you know, it's still around 50%.
16:52
And so it'd be really, really hard for you to be a pastor of a church of any size and
16:56
to really, really hammer the divorce point.
16:59
But the same is true about materialism because the thing that's interesting about this is
17:04
a lot of people are given a crap to these pastors wearing really, really expensive kicks.
17:08
But at the same time, their pastor is wearing, you know, a three or $4,000 suit, custom
17:13
suit that they got made.
17:16
And that's the thing is in the day and age that we live, you can go and endochino.com,
17:20
get, you know, you know, your self measuring kit or whatever, send in your measurements
17:24
and get a custom made suit shipped to your front door for a few hundred bucks, right?
17:28
You don't necessarily have to go the multiple thousands route, but you can't really tell
17:32
the difference for the most part to the untrained eye.
17:35
You can't tell the difference between a $200 suit and a $2,000 suit.
17:39
Even I mean, even if you get one tailored and the other one's made custom, I mean, if you
17:43
have a normal body, I mean, it's going to fit you fine and you're going to look good
17:46
in it and it's just kind of the deal.
17:48
But we don't really think about that when it comes to our pastors because I know some
17:52
very, very well-dressed pastors that maybe have really, really expensive clothes that,
17:56
you know, are significantly more expensive than some of the sneakers that these people
18:00
are seeing.
18:01
I mean, if they're wearing, you know, Allen Edmonds or really expensive Italian dress
18:05
shoes or something like that, you might get into some of what those rare shoes cost,
18:08
right?
18:09
But I think it's really causing Christians to think about materialism because I know a
18:15
lot of Christians out there and I know some personally that are sneaker heads that that's
18:18
just something that they like to do.
18:20
But they're having to think about that now.
18:21
They're like, now, wait a minute.
18:22
Wait a minute.
18:23
Yes, but I go out in public and these rare set of sneakers, right?
18:29
And you know, they draw attention because it just doesn't look like, you know, your regular
18:33
white and blue new balances that your grandpa wears to Motelon in, right?
18:37
And so it's at least making them have to think about whether or not they're worshipping
18:42
at the altar of materialism or specifically of fashion or of a particular brand, right?
18:48
Maybe they're a Nike person or Adidas person.
18:51
So I think that that's a good thing that this has prompted a lot of conversations that are
18:56
in that area.
18:58
And the last good thing I think of for the preachers and sneakers is that it's calling
19:02
pastors out, which is something I think we need to do more of in a lot of different
19:07
areas.
19:08
I mean, I know sometimes if you listen to this podcast might seem like I go negative
19:11
on a lot of pastors, it's because they deserve it.
19:14
I mean, there's a lot of problems in the state of theology podcast.
19:17
We talked about there's just massive theological confusion in the United States church, even
19:22
in the evangelical, the somewhat evangelical community.
19:25
And the people that are directly responsible for making sure there's not that theological
19:28
confusion are these pastors.
19:30
So they're not doing their jobs, right?
19:34
And I've also talked about other pastors kind of mega church pastors that seem to be more
19:37
concerned about being cool and having like kitschy statements and, you know, bumper sticker
19:41
stuff and, you know, just these really, really fun TED talk with Bible verse sermons that
19:47
I talk about all the time, and that's what they're there for.
19:50
So I think it's fair when some of these pastors that you could stick into one of those categories
19:54
is getting called out for something like this.
19:56
And again, I still haven't even got into my opinion, my personal opinion on that on kind
20:01
of what my read of the situation is, but it's kind of interesting to see people and this
20:06
guy is from inside the church.
20:08
This is a guy that considers himself an evangelical Christian calling pastors out for something
20:11
like this.
20:12
So again, the good things I think it's making number one, I think it's making pastors think
20:15
twice about how they represent themselves publicly.
20:17
Number two, it's causing the Christian community to discuss the issue of materialism and three,
20:21
it's calling pastors out.
20:23
So but now I want to kind of shift gears and talk about three bad things about the preachers
20:27
and sneakers thing.
20:28
So the first thing is it's judgment without an investigation.
20:33
Okay.
20:34
And so obviously if we are Christians and we are judgment and truth based individuals,
20:40
there has to be an investigation that is that is biblical.
20:43
That is about as biblical as it gets when it comes to investigating something that is
20:46
going down.
20:47
So the interesting thing here, and you kind of heard the guy talking about it, the beach
20:51
guy talking about it earlier, do we even know that these guys bought these clothing items
20:57
or not?
20:58
Like, do we have any idea because I don't know that, you know, this Tyler Jones guy that
21:05
runs the account, he doesn't know that now I would presume that most of these guys have
21:12
probably purchased these items.
21:14
Maybe they got a sweetheart deal from somebody that they know that's also in a fashion or
21:17
something like that.
21:18
We don't know, but it's judgment without an investigation.
21:22
What if it was a nice gift?
21:25
So here's a, for instance, so I was having kind of a rough patch several years ago and
21:28
you know, it's just kind of down in the dumps.
21:30
And my wife, we don't really do this very often.
21:33
We don't really do lavish gifts.
21:35
We don't do Christmas presents for each other.
21:37
We don't do Christmas, like birthday presents or anything like that, but even Valentine's
21:40
day.
21:41
We keep our money in certain areas like we like to travel and we like to invest in certain
21:45
things.
21:46
But she bought me with kind of her own business money, the money that she asked for her business.
21:51
She bought me a G-Shock watch.
21:54
And this particular G-Shock watch was rare and it was, it was expensive.
21:59
I think it was like a, I think it was like a $300 watch or something.
22:03
It was a lavish gift, especially for a couple that doesn't just give gifts like that back
22:06
and forth.
22:08
So think about how silly it would have been if I had just not worn it because it was
22:13
so lavish, but I wanted to wear it.
22:17
I wanted to show it off.
22:18
I wanted to show people what my wife got me and I've gotten, every time I've gotten a
22:21
compliment on that watch, it gave me a chance to brag on my wife and say, yeah, my wife
22:24
got me this gift.
22:25
I mean, I mean, gifts are really my love language, but it kind of became one the day I got this
22:30
watch.
22:31
But that's the thing is if they bought it, maybe there's, there's some, some thing that
22:35
we need to think about and talk about when it comes to the hearts of these pastors, but
22:39
we don't know that.
22:40
So that's a bad thing, in my opinion, about this is its judgment without an investigation.
22:45
The second thing though, to kind of to switch gears a little bit is at the very least it's
22:49
a modest what these pastors are doing, right?
22:53
And so it's, it's okay to me that this guy's pointing that out.
22:58
And again, the Bible, I could go into a lot of different scriptural areas here, but I'll
23:04
just kind of keep it simple and 30,000 foot view modesty is, is expressed throughout the
23:09
Bible in a lot of different ways and a lot of different applications.
23:13
And you certainly could look at Jesus and his apostles and think the word modesty with
23:18
a lot of those guys in terms of how they traveled in terms of where they stayed in terms of
23:23
what they eat, the things that we know, it seemed like it was a pretty modest crew.
23:27
So it's a modest if nothing else that that this even had to had to happen, right?
23:33
You know, it's just tough that we even had to get to this point where a guy could make
23:36
an account like this that had more than like 12 followers.
23:39
And the third bad thing I think is it gives secular society more ammo.
23:43
I mean, this is about as easy as it gets here.
23:46
Secular society is always looking for a church or a church leader or a prominent person that
23:52
has the word Christian behind their name to screw up somehow.
23:57
Like these people, they love it.
24:00
When a big time pastor cheat on his wife, they love it.
24:03
When a big time pastor, you know, actually is found, you know, there was that guy.
24:07
I think he was one of Bush's Bush W George W Bush.
24:13
He was one of his guys in his inner circle and he was caught with like a tranny hooker
24:17
or something like that.
24:18
And it was like, Oh, people just love that because here's this conservative Christian
24:21
guy that has W's ear and this guy is, you know, depraved and has this really, really
24:26
sick fantasies that he was actually acting out in real life.
24:29
And, you know, when these churches are found doing fraudulent things with money, I gosh,
24:33
I mean, the list goes on and on the, the mainstream media and secular society.
24:37
They just love it.
24:38
It just gives them more ammunition and more punching power whenever they're just taken
24:43
on the church.
24:44
Right.
24:45
And so that's the thing that I don't really like about this.
24:48
Again, I don't really have a problem with the account.
24:51
I'm following the account.
24:52
I'm obviously talking about it right now.
24:53
You guys are going to go see the account and maybe follow it as well.
24:57
But that's the one thing is like, did we, did we really need another reason to make fun
25:01
of Christians?
25:02
Did we really need another one?
25:04
I mean, they already think that we pretty much believe in a spaghetti monster in this
25:08
guy that gave us these golden tablet words that that we worship by and all these different
25:12
things.
25:13
I mean, they already think these silly things about us.
25:14
Even Joe Rogan, the other day on his podcast, he said some this ridiculously ignorant thing
25:19
about the Bible.
25:20
He's like, yeah, you know, the Bible was just basically handed down verbally for so long.
25:24
I mean, we can't even trust the writings that we have, which again, shows, you know, just
25:27
kind of like a side note, he really needs to have an actual biblical scholar on his podcast,
25:32
not just another comedian where they're talking about why they don't like religion, but we'll
25:36
get off my soapbox here.
25:37
But the thing about it is is that's the one thing that I think is the most disappointing
25:40
about this.
25:41
But the thing about it is is the only reason that this account is out there is because there's
25:45
guys actually wearing the stuff.
25:49
Because if they weren't wearing the stuff, if they weren't flying it around, then there
25:53
wouldn't be enough pictures to have an account.
25:55
This guy would have ran out of, you know, pictures to post at like four or five pictures, you
25:59
know what I mean?
26:00
So it's out there.
26:01
So again, the three things that I think are kind of bad about this is it's it's judgment
26:04
without an investigation.
26:05
I think the entire movement, it's it's a modest of these pastors, if nothing else.
26:09
And the third thing is it gives secular society more ammunition.
26:13
So as we kind of wrap up here, I'll kind of give you my personal read of the situation.
26:18
So I kind of gave you some good and bad and gave you gave you all the details and everything
26:21
like that.
26:22
But this just kind of my personal read, here's the thing guys, I don't care if pastors make
26:27
good money.
26:29
Like I really don't.
26:32
I know that there are guys that get on pastors when they have a nice house or they get on
26:37
pastors, you know, if they're driving around in a decent car or if they're taking vacations
26:42
out of the country and it's, you know, not ministry based, a lot of people get really
26:46
sensitive.
26:47
I mean, there are even pastors out there that have, you know, I think we've talked about
26:50
on this podcast, we have apology, apology of studios, which we like and support.
26:54
And you know, you've got the cross politic network that has, you know, basically like
26:57
one good show.
26:58
But you know, those are people that have a paywall.
27:01
So these are pastors that have put some of their content behind a paywall.
27:04
I'm completely okay with that.
27:07
Like I don't think our pastors should be poppers.
27:09
I don't think that, you know, our pastors shouldn't make good money.
27:12
I don't think any of those things to be honest with you.
27:14
I kind of wish our pastors made a ton of money, like even more like I wish they had more influence.
27:19
I wish they were more sought after for their opinions in everyday culture.
27:23
I've talked about that before, like, you know, when something big happens on the world stage,
27:26
we go and talk to some, you know, seedless actress to get her read on something that
27:31
happened, you know, half the world away.
27:34
And we're like astonished whenever her read on it is absolutely absurd, you know what I
27:37
mean?
27:38
Like just think about that.
27:39
So again, I don't, I don't really care if pastors have money.
27:42
I don't really care if pastors have good investments or rental homes or any of that stuff.
27:45
I really don't care.
27:47
What I do care about is I care about it if they have a lot of money and a lot of investments
27:53
and those pastors are basically spouting prosperity gospel nonsense and are profiting off of that.
27:57
I have a problem with that.
27:59
I mean, obviously there's my caveat.
28:00
There's my line in the sand is if you're spouting this prosperity gospel, your church is growing
28:05
because you're basically spouting non-biblical nonsense and then you are Joel Osteen and
28:10
you make this, you know, 74 bedroom house and all this ridiculous stuff.
28:15
At that point, is it the, is it the fruits of God's blessing or are you taking advantage
28:19
of people?
28:20
Right?
28:21
I mean, I can't know for sure.
28:23
I got my, my guess is here.
28:26
And here's the other thing guys.
28:27
I've heard a lot of people talk trash about people that are Christian famous quote unquote
28:30
Christian famous.
28:31
I don't care about that either.
28:32
I've heard people be like, Oh, well, I don't really like that pastor because he's like
28:36
a Christian famous.
28:37
I'm like, who cares?
28:39
Again, I want him to be famous.
28:41
I want them to be well known.
28:42
I want them to be some of the most wisdom filled people.
28:45
I want them to be the people that people in the news are like, man, we got to get this
28:48
pastor's opinion on this situation because gosh, we're just lost right now.
28:51
Or man, we just had natural disaster or terrorist attack or something like that.
28:54
You know, we need to go to the pastor in that area because surely this, this man's going
28:57
to have some, some words for us that'll help comfort us in this time.
29:00
Like I want that to happen.
29:03
But I will say this, I do care a little if these pastors are using church time to write
29:08
their books or do, or do their speaking gigs.
29:11
And so the thing about it is a lot of these, these guys are getting money from the churches
29:16
or getting paid a salary based on a certain percentage of this or that at these churches
29:21
and all the lowly other staff members are not being paid very well, very well at all.
29:25
Now again, I'm a kind of a capitalist.
29:27
So if you're the main guy and you started the church and, you know, you're the reason
29:30
why it's, it's grown in your area and all those different things like, and you want to
29:34
be paid a higher salary.
29:35
I don't care.
29:36
That's fine with me.
29:38
But whenever they do start doing these extracurricular things that make them famous, like writing
29:42
these best selling books and doing speaking gigs, it is a little weird to me that they're
29:47
doing that on the church's dime, you know, doing it while they're in their office and
29:51
doing those things and they're not doing any of their, you know, biblically based pastoral
29:56
duties because they got to go do some speaking gigs around the world or they need to host
30:00
a workshop or they need to do that type of thing.
30:02
So it's, it's a little bit of an issue there.
30:05
So that's kind of a little, a little bit of rundown of some of the issues that I have with
30:07
that there.
30:08
But here's kind of my, my overall opinion on this.
30:12
I hope this account continues to grow.
30:15
I hope it continues to shed light on some of these pastors that I already have very, very
30:20
mixed feelings about, some of them I have mixed feelings.
30:23
Others I don't like Carl Lance, not a whole lot of ambiguity there, like what he did on
30:27
the view and his views on abortion and what he said publicly about that.
30:31
I pretty much can't forgive that guy unless he completely disowns.
30:34
But the things that he used to do, like it's just a, most of his words are empty to me.
30:38
A lot of these guys are kind of more leaning on the prosperity side or they're at least
30:43
on the feel good side of the Christian thing.
30:46
And they're just not doing themselves any favors by dressing up in these expensive clothes
30:50
and drawing even more attention to that.
30:52
I don't think that that's something that necessarily attracts millennials or Gen Z or kind of
30:58
that next generation of Christian.
31:00
I know that there's an argument to be made, especially for these guys that are pastors
31:03
in LA and New York that the part of their flock, these are people that really appreciate
31:08
fashion.
31:09
These are people that appreciate looking good and doing all these different things.
31:12
But gosh, you can look pretty darn good and I think that was one of the points that was
31:16
made in the Fashionista articles.
31:17
You can look pretty darn good without having to shop at the most expensive stores.
31:22
You know what I mean?
31:23
Like, it might be okay to have a couple of lavish things here and there or maybe gifts
31:26
that you've gotten.
31:27
But, you know, you should probably get to the point where you actually speak to people
31:31
about that.
31:32
You can say, "You know what, these shoes that I'm wearing right now, these are really
31:34
expensive shoes."
31:35
But, you know what?
31:36
Someone bless me with these.
31:37
They know I like this particular designer or they know I like this color and so they
31:41
got me these shoes.
31:42
Like I think that's okay to just talk about that.
31:44
Come right out and talk about it.
31:46
But at the end of the day, it's an okay website.
31:50
If you want some good times, click on one of the pictures when you go to the account.
31:53
I'm going to give you a link to the account here later and just look at some of the comments.
31:56
I mean, there's some really, really good conversations that are going on.
31:59
I mean, there's their normal trolls out there.
32:01
But I think it's prompted a lot of really healthy conversations, and again, I appreciate
32:05
my buddy Brett here in Oklahoma City pointing this out to me so that I can bring the content
32:09
to you guys.
32:10
All right, guys, before we let you get out, we're going to do a quick resilience boost.
32:13
And as you know, by now, we are a men's ministry and our mission is cultivating mainly resilience.
32:16
And specifically, we do that by providing content like this podcast that helps forge spiritual,
32:21
mental, and physical toughness.
32:22
So today we're going to work on the mental toughness a little bit.
32:25
I'm going to give you a few resources.
32:26
So obviously, I'm going to provide you guys with that Instagram account.
32:29
I want you to go check it out, but also while you're already on Instagram, check it out
32:32
the app.
32:33
I want you to hit us up.
32:34
So at undaunted life, at undaunted life, let us know, you know, tag us in a comment.
32:38
Let us know kind of what you think about what's going on there.
32:40
Let's keep this conversation going.
32:41
And also I, the quotes I took from the Tyler, Tyler Jones guy, I went ahead and posted
32:47
that fashion Easter article here for you guys as well, because they ask him a lot more questions.
32:52
And so again, this doesn't seem like just some, some dorky little punk kid.
32:56
This guy seems to be a fairly well thought out individual.
32:59
He seems to have a fairly deep opinion on all these things.
33:01
And so I think his opinions are really cool to check out.
33:04
So guys, thank you as always.
33:05
We really appreciate you listening to the podcast.
33:07
Please subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud or Google Play and refer your friends to listen.
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33:23
We're currently booking speaking engagements for the rest of 2019.
33:26
So if you want me to come speak on your podcast to your team, to your men's event, hit me
33:29
up email info@undontadotlife, again info@undontadotlife.
33:33
Our website is www.undontadotlife.
33:36
You can follow us on Instagram and Twitter @undontadlife or facebook.com/undontadlife.
33:41
Check out our free devotionals on the U version Bible app, just search Undaunted Life under
33:44
plans.
33:45
And as always, we want to thank the band, August Burns Red, for allowing us to use their entire
33:48
music library for our content.
33:50
The intro outro track on this podcast is our song, King of Sorrow, which is off their latest
33:54
record entitled Phantom Anthem, the links to all of this are in the description.
33:57
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
33:59
Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical
34:05
toughness, keep seeking the Lion of Judah.
34:20
[Music]