JAY RISNER | Extending Faith (Ep. 956)

Let's be honest, most men drift. We wake up, we scroll, we work, and then we just rinse and repeat. And we know we're softer than we should be. That's why I built the 31-day resilience reset. This is not a devotional. It is a field manual for men ready to stop drifting and start fighting back. So, for 31 days, you'll train your spirit, mind, and body with scripture, prayer, and daily challenges that forge real resilience. Go to www.undaunted.life/31. life/31day to download this resource for free. That's undaunted.life/31day. Start your reset today. This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it. Jay Risner, welcome back to the table. We're technically not doing a forging table right now, but uh I will say the moment you knocked on the door, I had an immediate rush of anxiety because it it was like whenever the principal called the classroom and they asked for Kyle Thompson to come down, it was never like to give me an award for academic excellence or anything like that. And so it kind of felt like maybe the elders got together and I mean even though I invited you at a specific time and that's when you showed up, it was like I kind of felt like I was in trouble. So what's going on here? >> Oh, I don't know. Uh maybe there is something. What what's what's down deep there that we need to get into? Uh yeah, see that's a reverse psychology thing that I don't appreciate very much. Uh because you know cuz I have admitted to things that I did wrong when I wasn't being accused of that thing before because of the guilty conscience. I don't have anything right now, but there are times when people bring things up to me where I'm just like okay. >> Well, I assure you I come in peace. Uh this is going to be a great time. >> Okay. Yeah. I'm hoping we have a good time. And so, and you're already doing a better job than Ryan Horn than to like actually talking into the mic because that guy will just trail off into the ether and all kinds of things. Like I don't know why. I don't know why he's still around. He's kind of like that dog [laughter] uh that you find in the country and then like you bring him to your house and he just kind of hangs around the barn, but like eventually you're just like is this thing ever going to move on? And the guy just won't. He's just, you know, he's kind of sticky. >> He's just that but he's that lovable too. Yeah. >> Yeah. I get [clears throat] it. >> He needs a little bit more of the lovable part of his life. But no, one one of the main reasons that I I wanted to kind of bring you in is because, you know, he had uh Mark Hitchcock on earlier this year. Everybody kind of they really enjoyed that conversation kind of getting into his brain. Obviously, the extemporaneous speaking thing like seeing him in a nonmon setting was like odd, but our audience has already seen you in a non-sermon setting. I I [clears throat] didn't I make you wear like a Santa hat or something like that. >> Yeah, we ate we ate little Debbies. It was a thing. >> Don't worry, I don't have any of those. I'm not going part of that. you do have those hard passing. Okay. Um, >> but wanted to kind of get to know your background a little bit more. We talked about that a little bit on the forging table. And then there's some really interesting things that are coming up for Faith Bible, especially in this era of kind of MC churches where it's like, okay, we're just going to, you know, keep buying real estate with cash and, you know, taking advantage of the tax exempt status and we're going to keep building these churches, keep building these screens and all that type of thing. and y'all are kind of going a different route and and you did talk about this a little bit on the forging table, but like becoming a pastor isn't I I don't really run into too many people that oh, ever since I was a little boy, I always knew I would be a pastor unless it's like my buddy Josh Howson whose dad was a pastor. Some of these other people are like, well, actually, yeah, like watching my dad travel and preach the gospel or do whatever. I just knew that's what I wanted to do, but that wasn't really your route. And so, like bit of a circuitous route to get you into pastoring. ing. And so I'm just wondering like let's just start there and then we'll build out. >> Yeah, great question. I did not see myself growing up being a pastor. Didn't aspire to it. Didn't really grow up in in church. So we were, you know, the old CEO Christian family. Went to went to church on Christmas. Went to church on Easter. Um so we we sort of acknowledged God. Uh we celebrated the major holidays. Uh but church attendance, that commitment really wasn't there. didn't didn't have prayer at meals, didn't have family disciplehip type stuff going on. And so I was always sort of a visitor at church is the way I always felt. I did go with friends here and there and and on on occasion and uh but again, you're always a guest. And so I think because of that, I didn't ever see myself as tracking toward uh ministry per se. Uh but I came to and I think maybe we share this in common. I came to faith in Christ through the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Am I am I missing? >> No, I was in uh I did FCA stuff. Uh it may have been because I posted that picture of me praying at an FCA event. Those ridiculous sideburns in high school, but we didn't have to bring that up. So nice, you know, roundabout way to get there. But >> yeah, we need to go back and look at that. Maybe you can flash that up in the >> We won't we will not land [laughter] don't do it. >> So yeah, 8th grade I come into uh AASO Junior High School. Grew up in Aaso, Oklahoma. Uh all my growing up years were there. I come into junior high one early one morning, just got off the bus. my best friend uh in life greets me and says uh hey we're going to go to FCA and uh I was like I don't know what that is and uh he said well it's it's down the hall in the biology room and sure enough you know all my friends were down there all the cheerleaders were down there all my teammates were down there so it's yeah I'll I'll let's go down there let's make that happen. So went down there um fall of my eighth grade year, heard the gospel for the first time. Uh didn't really think it was for me. Kind of always felt like, oh, I'm I'm a Christian. I'm, you know, only a fool doesn't believe in God, right? I I I believe in God. And uh didn't but had never really heard the gospel in the way that it was explained that morning. Uh so that led to a string of mornings, string of Tuesday mornings uh through my eighth grade year um where I'd go to FCA and Doc Blevens, the FCA uh sponsor who was leading it at our junior high and later on in our high school. Um he was just sharing the gospel with with our student body uh every Tuesday morning. And so it took a year uh so my nth grade year some things that happened uh in my family life that maybe wake maybe woke me up to just the realities of death and and heaven and hell and um anyway follow my my my freshman year um at actually an evening FCA event at a friend's house. I just went to doc after the message and I said man I I need Christ to be my savior. And uh so he prayed with me and and there was a a marked change. Um at that time I I remember started asking my parents to take me back to church so they would take me to uh the little Presbyterian church that we would go to on Christmas and Easter. Didn't have a youth ministry. Uh I was showing up by myself. The church body was like, "Hey, we know who you are, but you know what are you doing here? We don't really have anything for you here." And so started going to church with a friend at another church in town. started getting kind of some entry- level disciplehip and going to camps and retreats and and all that kind of stuff. But again, my whole family didn't go there, so I was more of a of a guest, a visitor. I did get baptized there. Um, and there were some really good things about that whole experience. Um, but FCA was kind of this this piece of my early disciplehip. And then as I got into college, um, came here to UCO, there wasn't an FCA chapter. So me and a a football player named Chris Cook, uh who's actually an Edund police officer now. Uh he and I just tried to start building an FCA group. And there were weeks where we'd have two people. There were weeks we'd have 20 people. There would be weeks we had no people. Um and it was the most unstrgic sort of ministry going on. All we were doing was inviting uh our friends and the athletes in in the school to come and hear the gospel and they were coming and they were hearing and someone responding. Um, but there was no real strategic disciplehip piece to it at all. I think about what student mobilization, some of these other ministries do now. We didn't have any of that going on. But my heart was in it. And it was through that experience. I was studying business. Didn't have a great interest in business. Just needed to get a degree. Needed I needed to do something with uh the the education I was getting. But my passion was in this ministry area. I was working camps in the summer and I was doing college retreats and different things. And so I remember just yielding my heart to to God. I actually have a journal entry that outlines just me spilling my heart out to God uh my senior year and just saying whatever you want me to do, God, I'll do. If you want me to go sell insurance, I'll do that. If you want me to, you know, move back home, if you want me to uh coach and teach or I'll just whatever you want me to do. If you want me to do ministry, I'm just yielded. Um, and spring, early spring of my of that same year, that senior year, a guy named Chuck Bowman gave me a call and Chuck still lives in Edmund. He's kind of the godfather of Oklahoma FCA or really national FCA in many respects. And so Chuck called and invited me out to his office out east of Edmund and just said, "Hey, we want you to come on staff with FCA." And I was like, "Man, that is an answer to prayer, Chuck. That's exactly what I want to do." And and I thought that's kind of the way God had had wired me. again, always feeling like a little bit of an outsider at church. Um, come to Faith in Christ through FCA. Uh, looking at youth pastors going, "Man, you those guys are kind of dorky. I don't want to be a youth pastor, but this FCA thing, this sort of fits." And, um, so I kind of jumped through those hoops, filled out applications, and just kind of sat and waited like, "Okay, this opening is supposed to be in the fall, so I've got some time to kill." And I was I was dating a girl who would later become my wife. I was dating Mandy at the time. And Mandy grew up in Enid, Oklahoma. And she was going back to Enid for the summer. And I wanted to be with her. I wanted to hang out with her and pursue the relationship and continue to get to know her better. And at her Southern Baptist church that she grew up in, there was like a youth summer intern program. And so I just put in my hat, put my name in the hat for that. And they invited me to to come and and serve for the summer. And my intention was to go to to to Enid for 3 months. I ended up staying for almost six years. So, uh, in that summer kind of fell in love with local church ministry and what it was about, they were the [clears throat] church was in a place where they needed some help in the youth ministry area. And so, the summer turned into a fall and during that fall season, uh, two things happened. One, I heard back from FCA and they said, "Hey, the position we thought was going to open, uh, the guy's resigning on. He's not going to leave staff. Uh, but do you want to go to Wyoming?" And uh I was like, I'd [snorts] never been to Wyoming. Uh and I had this girl that I'm pursuing and I I want to continue to pursue and I had this church that's saying, "Hey, why don't you stick around and do ministry here?" And so I just stayed put, stayed in church, uh or at least in the church ministry lane, I should say. Um got engaged to my wife. We got married a few months later. And at and that that church, which was pretty sizable, at least one of the largest churches in Northwest Oklahoma, in that same period of time, they said, "Hey, we're going to reposition the youth pastor uh into a different role, a role he was doing before. Uh we want you to become the student pastor." And so I was 22 years old, had no training, didn't really go up grow up in church, didn't know the Bible all that well. um had a heart for it, had a passion for it, really really really wanted to do it, but I had no business getting that job. [laughter] But the church was gracious with me and certainly God was too and didn't make too many mistakes that would uh destroy my life or anybody else's. And that's how I ended up in pastoral ministry. Uh just through open doors and opportunities and following wherever God led. >> Okay. So, one thing that I'm interested in as it pertains to that is, okay, cuz some people would say, "Hey, you never should have got that job because you were not trained. You were not equipped for that." But if we go and look at, you know, the book of Acts or we go look at any of these early church people, none of them were equipped because it like wasn't a thing yet, right? Like there wasn't like Bible study degrees and the I mean, there was stuff when it pertained to the, you know, the Torah and the prophets and all those types of things. And so there's that aspect of it, but I hear so often now, I hear this from my buddies that are, you know, have big churches or big platforms or written a lot of, you know, bestselling books or whatever. They'll run into these people that, man, I want to be in ministry. And what they're actually saying is, I want to be on stage with a microphone and I want all the lights down, but the only lights to be on me. I want to say really smart things and make people laugh and get people saved. I want to write books. I want to do cool podcasts. I want to do interviews. and I, you know, I want to be the center of attention. And so it doesn't sound like from the beginning that you had an aspiration that, hey, this is going to go somewhere. It's going to increase a profile. I'm going to be, you know, a lead elder or a senior pastor someday. It was just like, what can I do to serve this local body? >> Like, and again, you've been around a bunch of Christian and Christianes people. Like, what's your your read of that? Because it's so hard to surmise from the outside looking in whether or not someone's heart is pure. Uh, and whether like because it's one thing to be like, "Oh, I'll take out the trash." And that's like your thing. Oh, I took out the trash and now I'm the senior pastor. Like, okay, there's some cool stories like that. But for other people, it's like, no, everything is about the next angle and getting to the next place. It's not about serving the sheep. It's about making sure, you know, they have a bigger platform as a shepherd. >> Mhm. Yeah. And the context of the late 90s is a little bit different than, you know, 2026. uh the the opportunities and channels of being platformed uh were a little bit smaller back in the day. Uh you couldn't really get your name, face, voice out there in the way that you can now with social media and and everything else. But um interesting one other little part of my story, uh I remember my senior year in high school trying to sort out what I wanted to do. And uh the only reason I ended up at going to UCO is I had a a a guy a year ahead of me who was playing golf there. He and I were friends. And I didn't know where I wanted to go to school. And um you know, my my world was pretty small. We didn't travel a lot as a family. Um and and I think I'd been to grew up in Aaso area, which is Tulsa um proper. And I think I'd been to Oklahoma City twice in my growing up years just for different sporting events or whatever. And so, um, didn't know what I wanted to do. And I had this guy said, "Hey, I'm I'm playing golf here. I really like Edmond. You should look into it." And so went to my like high school counselor or whatever. Like, "What do you know about uh Edund and central Oklahoma?" She handed me some scholarship stuff and an application and I filled it all out and it all worked out. And so that's where I ended up going. Ironically, my buddy Greg who was playing golf, he ended up leaving. >> Yes. [laughter] Thanks, Greg. >> Yeah. So, uh, ended up just kind of there by myself, but then a guy that, um, I was very close to in high school, teammate. He ended up at UCO and we roommed together for, uh, my remaining three years. But in in that decision process as a high school kid, my mother said to me, um, I think you should be a minister. >> How old would you have been? >> I was 17. Okay. >> And so I that didn't make a huge impression on me at in the moment. Um, but it was kind of validating as I moved along like you know mom kind of knows best like she saw something there was something there that uh compelled her to say that and I think God used that that affirmation in a cool way. But to your original question, you know, I think the funny thing about pastoral ministry, now not necessarily youth ministry, maybe at a lower level, um, but and this is an overused term in this day and age, and so I don't want to abuse it, but I I think I think the narcissist can be very drawn to pastoral ministry. >> Oh, yeah. And I think it has a way of feeding, you know, the supply that a person with, you know, that uh uh that personality it deals with. And so to your point, yes, there are a lot of guys that that just want the platform. They just want the microphone. They just want to be the center of attention. They want they want it to be about them. Um I didn't really have that going on. Um, I I do think I I loved seeing um kids who didn't have a relationship with God, um maybe were far from him, didn't have much of a connection to church, get it. And that just thrilled me. And so as I got into youth ministry, um I, you know, the I was not at at a rough church. I was never at a rough church or a place where, you know, um the the the the demographics, the context, uh was super super challenging. Um it was always a mix of Christian school kids and public school kids and and then when I came to Faith Bible, some homeschool kids as well. Um, but as you well know, uh, there are kids who grow up in church who are as far from God. >> Oh, yeah. >> As anybody. >> Yeah. They went to Christian school. They went to AANA. They memorized verses >> and and they don't get the gospel and they think it's about their performance and they think it's about uh certain sets of rules that they're keeping and they're really proud of their ability to keep those rules. >> And so even seeing those kids get sort of torn down and just in awe of who Jesus is and what he's done for them, uh, that just thrilled me early on. and continued to kind of empower and thrill me all all all along the way. Um was never afraid of the platform though. It was was never when I say that like getting up in front of people and speaking or or sharing. And so I think that helped serve me well. Um but also at the same time uh I I wasn't hungry for it. Wasn't one of those things that okay I if I could just get there, if I could just get to that size church or to that size group, then then I'd really arrived. I don't I think people have that mentality. They never really get satisfied. So, >> well, and and so going back to the whole like narcissism thing, like there's some sociopathy there, some psychopathy. And I remember when Mark was here, he said something and I had said it on the show as well, but even, you know, people at our church cuz, you know, our church is, you know, pretty down the middle. I mean, there's depravity, all kinds of flavors. Ours is just dressed up with, you know, nice SUVs and perfect hair. But like well in some cases uh but no like when Mark said that there are pastors out there that aren't even Christians like I could hear the audible gasp in the future of people listening to Mark say that and almost just how dare you how dare you judge somebody that is a pastor and blah blah blah blah blah but it's like guys that is not a stretch of the imagination at all cuz we we talk about how oh this person was a faithful pastor faithful person and then you know they just kind of got caught up with the wrong crowd. They had an affair and they've denounced their faith. They've deconstructed and now they're on Oprah. Like whatever the thing was like if if Jesus could not lose one of his sheep, then the only conclusion is that that person was never a believer. They were leveraging knowledge about the Bible and you know attractive personality or an attractive face and embody in order to gain themselves a claim uh to to control other people to be the center of attention. And so like, you know, there are a lot of verses that are terrifying in the Bible if you read it closely, but it's like, "Depart from me, for I never knew you." And they're like, "No, look at all this stuff. Look at the list. Like I look at all these things I've done." And so for you, I I wonder if something like that is is scary to you as well because a really good indication that you are actually a Christian is where if you're a little bit worried about your salvation, like wanting to make sure like is this really true? Because if you're, you know, on the other side of the Romans one equation, like you don't really care. It doesn't really matter to [clears throat] you. But I'm just wondering what your read is of that because again some people think just because you have pastor on your, you know, placard outside your office or on your business card that, you know, you're automatically in and also you are equipped to be able to lead others to be in the the same crew as you. >> Yeah. I to your to your first or not your first point, but the point you made about concern concern over your salvation, I think, is a sign that you are in fact saved. Uh, one way of saying it is, you know, a sense of his absence is a sign of his presence. Okay? >> So, if you're there's a longing there, uh, you wouldn't be longing if you weren't being pursued. And so, you know, that's kind of a separate issue from from the core of the of the question. But, you know, a guy who wrote on this really before his time essentially, Sinclair Lewis wrote a book called Elmer Gantry. Uh, I commend it to you. Um, and it's the story of a kind of larger than life personality, uh, college jock who basically gets called into the ministry and he starts doing these evangelistic revival type crusade things. And he does it because he's talented, he's got a big personality, he's good at it, but he's he's he's awful. He's a depraved man. And so that the book is this this unfolding of his depravity alongside of his quote unquote ministry. Uh and so what Sinclair Lewis was projecting there in in the 20s uh in I think the setting is rural Kansas uh you know we have in high definition now I think all over the place in in the church. And so I do think there are example after example of guys who lack the character development to take the platforms that they've been given. Um, and you know, when a when a guy gets that much influence, uh, when he gets that much real or imagined power, however you want to talk about it, uh, but certainly when when he can control people, if his character isn't high, um, then there's going to be destruction in the wake. And I mean, we could we could sit here and make a list and, you know, name the names, but no need to. >> Hey guys, real quick. I know a lot of you train for very specific things. 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And for a limited time, Mount Tuff is extending undaunted lifers like you an incredible offer. Go to mountaintuff.com, that's mtnuff.com, and enter the code kyle when you sign up for a monthly plan to receive your first month free after your 14-day trial. So, that's 6 weeks free to make sure this is for you. I'm sure it will be. That is six weeks free on the best-in-class physical and mental training app in the world. So, stop wasting time. It's time to get real fitness results. Let my friends at Mountain Tu guide the way. Again, go to mtntuff, that's mountain.com, promo code Kyle. >> And that that's one of the things that I point out on the show and that, you know, gives people a little bit of a little bit of a tummy ache. They're like because what they want me to say is they want me to describe everything that someone did, but they just don't want me to say their name. Mhm. >> And I'm just like, you knew I was talking about like, so I said the name so that everybody was on the same page. And why exactly do you want me to pull cover for Robert Morris? >> Why exactly? Like [clears throat] a pedophilic rapist. I'm sorry. You wanted me to to pull cover for this guy so that you feel better. End user. And I just don't really understand that. It But it's one thing to go around like these uh you know, what do they call those super reform guys that are like the theology police? They're always going around looking for everybody. like the entire their entire reason for existence is to catch a pastor saying that's saying something that's slightly off color or a little bit inaccurate whenever they're just speaking uh extemporaneously and they're like >> the no-name discernment ministry guys >> like we're going to put this up and this person mark and avoid and all that but look there are people that do need to be marked and avoided and again like I understand that my default mechanism is aggression and you know forthrightness and like hey like let's point these things out but I I do get very very concerned when I see even my friends being pulled over towards ministries or towards ministers where it's like there's no there there like this person is a tremendously gifted speaker but what they're saying is incredibly nefarious because the nefarious nature of the things that they're saying Jay aren't always super overt [clears throat] >> but I mean even go back to the garden when the dragon was a dragon was talking to Eve in the garden um you know it wasn't overt you've got to do this go take a bite from the tree it was hey did God really say, and a master deceiver gets you to question in your own mind the things that you know you should do >> so that it becomes your decision whenever you do or don't do the thing right [clears throat] and so I I just >> and I guess all this comes down Jay is like this tremendous lack of discernment that I've seen you know since the murder of Charlie Kirk last year I feel like the mask came off for a lot of people and you know these people that they're educated beyond their wisdom and they'll hear something that a Tucker Carlson or an Ian Carol or a especially in a Candace Owens says, >> and they take the total amount of claims as evidence. And the same thing goes into ministries. Well, hey, how could this person be that bad? Pastor Jay, he's got a huge platform. He has 50,000 people that attended services. He's been on the New York Times bestseller list multiple times. Hey, he's on television. And I [clears throat] just think for a lot of people and for you as a shepherd, you know, and a lot of your flock listening to this and then, you know, other flock elsewhere listening to this, like kind of help us have some more discernment in these types of people so we don't get romanced by their personalities. >> Yeah. I think it's weird because I've never been a lay person. >> Yeah. in my adult life at least, you know, had some church experience in high school and college, but immediately entering into pastoral ministry and having never been a lay person, I've I've never had to find a church, you know, I've never had to the old church shopping term, which I don't love, but I understand it. >> And so I think people will often find their church based on, okay, did my kids like it? um or you know, was there was the coffee good? Was the were there enough bathrooms? Was it easy to get around? Is it convenient? What you know, there's all all these all these little things. >> Um and and never ask the question of who are the elders here and what is the what is the what are the church bylaws look like and how does the polity work itself out? And are there checks and balances? How's the budget put together? So on and so forth. uh because I think when you peel back that layer, that's when you see the nature of a church, uh the humility of its pastor and all those things that I think are so valuable and hedge against some of the abuse, spiritual, financial, whatever else that exist in those churches where the pastor is king and what he says goes and everybody bows to him and there's a a strange reverence that sort of takes over in those places for whatever the pastor has to say or whatever his vision or idea might be. And so I would love to see more people and I love it actually when people come to Faith Bible and they are curious about some of those important things. Uh because at that point I realize, oh, you're going to be a you're actually going to be a good church member. Um and you're not you're actually probably not going to leave when your kids don't like it anymore or you know when there's something else here that you're not satisfied with. Uh, you know, we get a lot of people at faith um from other churches and, you know, they'll say, "Well, you know, the teaching wasn't deep enough or the um, you know, the pastor said this thing wrong or you know, they didn't have this going on for our certain needs." And I always tell them, "I'm so glad you're here. Um, but there's going to be something here that is going to disappoint you or bother you at some point. Um, we're not perfect. We're led by imperfect men. We're full of imperfect people. Uh we're looking to the one who is perfect. Now, he he's the center of everything we're doing here. Um we want to be faithful to him, but I do love it when people are curious about the right things. And um not that, you know, children's check-in isn't is is unimportant or not that uh some of those other pieces of the Sunday morning puzzle uh don't matter, but when people are asking some of the big questions about doctrine and polity and stuff, that's when I realize, okay, they're their heads in the right place. They understand what they're doing here. >> Well, I even remember you mentioned the church shopping thing. This was years ago. We got to find out when we were actually members, became members of Faith Bible, cuz people ask us all the time how long we've been there. and we both just look at each other like we don't know how words work and it's just like [laughter] I don't know so we need to like figure that out. Um, but I remember when we were uh cuz we had been at Life Church for, you know, 10 12 years or whatever. And we kind of realized, man, that's about, you know, 9 to 11 years too long. Like, you know, you know, we did leadership, we did all the different things. But it like hit me one day. I'm like, if I died, >> I don't know that anyone from the church would be here to to check on Kelsey. >> It'd be my dudes, right? It'd be my foxhole. Like, they'd be there. And I was like, I don't really know about that. And so, we did a little bit of shopping. We tried this church. We tried that church. We popped around to this one that was, you know, put up, you know, in a junior high school and then this one was like a brick and mortar one, blah, blah. And then we got to the end and we were like confused, right? It's like whenever you're going and like trying to like buy a car and you want to be the perfect car cuz you don't want to have to sell it and buy a new one and then you drive all these different cars and then you're just confused. Uh, you know, you're just paralyzed with the decision. And so like any, you know, good college educated human beings, we like we whiteboard this thing, right? And so we had categories that we gave it a score from 0 to five. And it was, you know, embarrassing to say now, it was like preaching style, music, uh, convenience of how we could get there. And like there were a few other categories. And she and I each went into each category and gave it a score from 0 to 5. We averaged it out. And there was a dead heat tie. I don't know how this happened, but like an exact tie between Life Church and Faith Bible. And Kelsey just looked to me to her credit and just said, "Look, I trust your judgment. This is before we had kids. I trust your judgment. like we'll we'll go wherever you see best. And the difference for us became how Faith Bible approaches children's ministry versus Life Church or really any other church where there was a whole lot of Bible. Weren't as concerned about making sure they were entertained and just, you know, kept out of their parents' hair. And so that, you know, made the decision for us. And we grew to love, uh, Sunday school. And, you know, no one calls it anything else other than that. It's it's clearly a Sunday school because calling it something else wouldn't make any sense, right? It's just it'd be like the dumbest thing possible. And so we the the Sunday school like having that at church during that time. Our Sunday school class is a little bit big. So we have like almost like little subgroups that meet, you know, on a monthly basis or something like that. But then I got to a place where guys were like, "Hey, I live in whereversville, Wyoming, and there's not a lot of churches around here. Like, but what should I be looking for?" And what they're really asking me is, "Do you do you know of a church in my area?" I'm like, "Bro, I don't know of other churches in my area in my zip code that I would say yay or nay" to. But I would try to give them hints. I was like, "Is the sermon 30 seconds of Bible reading and then 44 and [clears throat] a half minutes of personal anecdotes and funny stories?" >> Mhm. >> Or are we expositing the scripture? Are we exeding versus isogating? If they don't know what those mean, that's a great opportunity for them to look that up. Um, you know, hey, do you see men around? Are the men involved? Are there a lot of women walking through the congregation or walking through the the facility with their kids and their husbands gone? Because that's a hint, right? That that's a hint that something's off. >> And then, yeah, you can get into corporate structures and, you know, elders versus uh a board of directors because a lot of people have insulated themselves from accountability. They don't have elders. They have a board of directors with all their pastor buddies from across the country. Oh, yeah. And they're not voting. Yeah. So, they can't even be voted out of their own uh leadership position. Right. And so that's what I've tried to like push guys to because the issue becomes when we start to weight certain things that aren't as important. And I feel like, you know, you mentioned, you know, Christianity and the old church thing in the '9s versus today. I feel like I am just inundated with people, and this has been a major sticking point on my show, Jay, that they will go to a church for the music, right? >> Music music is carrying a lot of lot of churches. You're exactly right. >> The style of music, how good the people are at performing it. Um, and there's almost no regard for are the lyrics being sung even vaguely biblical? Are they theologically sound at all or do they just sound good? Do I get whipped up with emotion? And we get to this place where worship becomes a lot of things. It becomes optional. It becomes a spectator sport, not something that you participate in. It's something that you watch and make sure you clap at the end. Allah a concert. Mh. >> And then, you know, also, uh, it's like, hey, we're supposed to worship in spirit and truth, right? So, a little bit more spirit on the worship side, but then there's got to be the truth side. And so, if you get this TED talk at the end of the the 20 minutes super emotional worship service, >> like what is that actually giving you tangibly? You're getting some you're getting spiritual Skittles, but you're not getting any stake, right? Like, that's going to wear out before you even get out of the parking lot. And so I guess what have you seen because you've been in the Christian world, you know, longer than I have and you've seen kind of the rise of these ministries where if it weren't for the band, >> like the ministries wouldn't have a platform, the lead pastor wouldn't have a platform. >> But and again, this is a huge subject for me, but like I remember first finding out one of these mega churches in our area, the only Christian in the band was the the leader. >> Oh wow. >> Everyone else was a session musician. they were just a basist or a keyboard player or a guitarist or a drummer and they, you know, they'd get paid 500 bucks a weekend or something like that just to fill in because it's got to sound good, right? Because if we're Christians, we got to make sure what we're putting out there is the best thing possible and then, you know, there's no regard for the people on stage being examples to other folks as to no, this is how you should model your life. It's like, no, I'm just I'm just, you know, getting paid for a sesh kind of a deal. So, I know there's a lot in there, but I know you've done some thinking on how worship should be done and what's appropriate. Yeah. So, pretty interesting if I think about my like span the span of my ministry career coming into youth ministry in the late 90s um around 2000. That was actually the same time that sort of worship exploded on that was that coincided with the Passion Conferences. >> Would this have been like the DC Talk News Boys? Would it have been that or was it Michael W. Smith? I'm trying to like place it in my brain. So, you know, mid90s youth ministry was, you know, Father Abraham and Spring Up, oh well, gush, you know, these basically songs with motions. Okay. >> By the end of the decade, 2000, you had um, you know, you had Matt Redmond and you had Charlie Hall, you had Chris Tomlin, you had Louis Gigglio's passion movement was sort of just emerging and so worship amongst young people became heartfelt and passionate and all the emotions and things went away. It became a very much an extension of their devotional life and obviously did a lot for uh corporate uh corporate life as well in the body. And so you can even think about this in terms of the way contemporary Christian music used to exist in the 90s and 2000s and how that as a genre has basically gone away and yielded itself almost entirely to worship music. most probably 90% of C I don't listen to a lot of Christian radio or whatever but most of it now is geared in the direction of worship and so the rise of that and the the churches accommodating I think what's with what started in a youth movement um has now put worship at center stage uh it it is what's driving the attendance of a lot of churches and so it's it's 30 minutes of sometimes 40 maybe even longer of of worship in a black box with all the lights on the stage and um you know and then a sermon that follows that I think you've called them TED talks but you know might involve some scripture um but certainly isn't what we might think of as biblical exposition and I don't want to completely bash that approach um there are good things that come from it um but it doesn't really get ever get you very are. And so I I I think when when you have people who, you know, probably don't read their Bibles all that much, um, and you you have people who need to be confronted with the the truth of who Jesus is. Um, man, you do not help them by not delivering that mail on a Sunday morning. Um, because they need they need the word. Uh, because they're being discipled by cable news. They're being discipled by their their algorithm and the scrolling that they do. Um, they're doing that for hours a day. uh and even if they're reading, you know, for 10 minutes that morning out of the scriptures, the balance of disciplehip happening is not through the word. Uh so if you can help them in that 40 minutes of time that you have on Sunday morning to not only deliver the truth and confront them with it, but over time if they can watch their pastor exposit God's word, unpack the scriptures, the thing that happens is they they actually learn how to read the Bible for themselves. uh it becomes less about pulling verses out that might apply to me that day and more about reading through a passage and doing observation and doing interpretation and doing application. Basic Bible study gets built into someone who sits under good expositional preaching. Now something I have said before maybe on this podcast I don't know but you know I don't remember 99% of the meals I've eaten but they've kept me alive. You don't remember 99% of the sermons you hear, but that is what God uses to shape and beautify and grow you over the a period of time. And I do think because the whole thing is worship, both the preaching and the singing. We don't need to bifurcate those two things. The whole thing is worship. But if those two things can be pulled together in a thoughtful way, so there's not this dissonance between this very grandiose approach to passionate worship and then this very kind of neutered, you know, sermon on the back side of it, sermonet on the back side of it. Um, man, something's wrong there. Uh, if we're going to have worship that looks like this, let's have preaching that looks like this. Um, instead of having the dissonance between the two. Old Vance Havner, he was a um pretty fiery preacher in the first part of the 20 20th century. He said sermonets, all they do is make Christianetses. [laughter] >> Hey, that'll preach. My goodness. >> That'll preach. Yeah. Yeah. >> Well, so you use a word there. So it's like, and you're right, there's this passionate worship service and then it's almost like no matter who follows it, it's a bit of a let down. And so the pastor, if you can call them that, that follows, they they have to light it up. They've got to be funny. They've got to be engaging. We can't just march our way through First Thessalonians and then march our way through whatever's next. Like, we can't do that. It's just it's not it's not as sticky in the brain. It's not going to grip these people. >> But I think for a lot of people, especially the people that are making this kind of music, passion is the point. Mhm. >> So, while they're playing it, they want you to have an impassioned response to their chord progressions, to the lyrics, to the fact that they make you sing it over and over and over and over again for 17 minutes. And so, uh, and this this became a major sticking point for me, Jay, and you and I have talked about this and I've talked about it in Osum on this show, >> is it became that CCM became synonymous with worship music to where it's not worship music unless it's contemporary Christian worship music. >> [clears throat] >> And so there's no category for worship hiphop or worship country or worship India or worship underground death metal like the stuff that I'm into. And so what happened for a lot of men that were in churches of varying kinds that were somewhere on the continuing continuum between hymns and hill song, they go in there and then they're forced to sing these songs that are not only just bad songs. They're just not well done songs, but the lyrics, if you took out the name, you know, Jesus and put in the name Mike, you know, it sounds like you're singing to your boyfriend. Like the the whole point is you've got to be in passion. You've got to be in tears. Your hands got to be up. You got to be falling out in the aisle. And if you're not really wired for that or that's not really your disposition, you are a little bit more stoic. I've heard pastors say, "Well, hey, you may not be saved." I was told I may not be saved because I don't like Christian contemporary radio or music or anything like that. Hey, you've got a major pride problem if your hands are left in your pocket during the worship service. But I'm like, for the people that are saying that, have you ever looked at what you're presenting to the men and thought to yourself, maybe I'm somewhat responsible for the fact that their hands are in their pocket. There could be a pride issue there. Let's acknowledge that. [clears throat] >> But then you talk about participatory singing versus like, I'm just going to watch. And so if men don't have a part to play, they typically go do something else. That's another thing that happens on Sunday mornings. If there's [clears throat] nothing here for me to do, I'll I'll go tinker in the shop. I'll go golf. I'll go shoot. I'll go do something else. Right? And so I I guess I just I I worry about these pastors that are just so cockure that no, this is how worship is done and you're just going to do it and if you don't have your hands up, there's something wrong with you. But I just want these guys to just stop and pause for a minute and just think, hey, I'm aiding in this process. Maybe some of these men are broken. Maybe some of them are not. Maybe there's something else that we can present. And I've seen videos, Jay, of a room full of men singing the doxology with no backing, no drums, no guitars, no microphones, no organs, no pianos, just men's voices. There were parts which represented every male voice, you know, the whole spectrum, every pitch, all the things that you could get to. And there wasn't a single man sitting there silent with his hands in his pocket. It's like, guys, that might be a hint to you that that this whole worship wars thing is leading us in a place that I don't know that we necessarily want to go. >> Yeah. I I think back, this is not a new phenomenon. Uh CS Lewis, he was critical of church music. I think he called it uh uh fifth rate poetry set to third rate music. And um [laughter] >> that needs to be a t-shirt only for the insiders. Let's go. And um but in the same in the same passage he he reflects and realizes, but there's something important going on here that I must participate in. Um, and he and he references looking across uh the church hall or the or the sanctuary at a shabby a shabily dressed old man and and seeing him sing and realizing, you know, I I don't I don't even deserve to clean that guy's boots and and just compelling him to participate and worship with the saints because that's what we're commanded to do in scripture, regardless how we judge the judge the music or if it's our style or if it fits our preference or whatever else. Um it's actually commanded for us to sing to one another. And one of the one of the coolest parts of my Sunday morning because of where I sit in in the worship center kind of on the wing kind of toward the front and our our our uh worship center is sort of fan shaped. I have this perspective kind of on the whole room where I'm able to kind of look across and and I sit there for security purposes on one hand, but also sit there just because I like to take in um what's going on in the room. And I love to watch our men sing. And I I love to to look across and know a little bit about this guy who's singing with his whole heart and know that, okay, he's got a cancer diagnosis. He's got this going on in his life. And look at him. singing um and or or this person over here who I can tell is not disengaged. Uh they're they're locked in to what's going on. And so I I do think the worship is a is a volatile subject for a lot of guys and I think there's a way that it's been done that um sort of maybe marginalizes or ostracizes some of the voices in the room. U but it's interesting. We used to have a lot of opinions and a lot of voices at Faith or a lot of uh uh critiques at Faith Bible about worship. Those have largely fallen away. Um and I think a lot of it relates to we have a worship pastor that understands so well what it means to arrange a piece of music that wherever your voice fits in the range, you can kind of find the slot, which I I'm not a music person. that that didn't mean much to me until it was pointed out to me. Um because there's other guys I've sat under where I want to participate, but I for some reason >> my my voice doesn't fit what we're doing, you know. >> And what was the thrust of the complaints that you faith was getting previously on the worship side? >> Oh, you know, just the typical stuff, song choice, volume, this that and the other. And and I think volume is a big part of the discussion because in in in the blackbox arrangement where the focus is the platform a lot of times the volume is cranked up. >> Oh man, big time. >> And what that does is it drowns out the voice of the congreation. >> There's no congregational singing. >> Um and some some people would argue and say, well, we do that so you you you'll be uninhibited. You can just sing out. Um but I I found the opposite to be true. It it it sort of sets them aside and says that what we're really doing is up here, not out here. And the what I try to do is is I don't ever want to call the those leading us in worship the worship team because the worship team is the congregation. The choir is the congregation. Uh what we're doing here, we're doing all together. This group's leading us. Um they're facilitating this. They're helping us. But this is for all of us to be participating in so that we can do it well. Um the the the grading of worship often usually just relates to how well the people on the platform are doing. I would say the grade comes with how much participation is taking place. And and I think there are if you think about some some circles, if you think about a a devotional circle that overlaps with a theological circle that overlaps with a singable circle, in the center of that vin diagram is where a church should largely live. Um in the center of songs that are devotional, they're they're heartfelt. You're you connect with them. They're theologically rich. They're true to scripture. They have a high view of God. and then that they're conducive to corporate worship. We can sing this together uh in a way that has, you know, power and edifies and all those things that are needed in the corporate gathering. So, >> I have a request on the worship side of things. Actually, uh three requests. Uh number one, would it kill y'all to get a banjo up there just for once? Maybe steal guitar. Uh get a little bit of stuff. >> So, the guy that played banjo on Sunday, Wait, >> over there on Sunday? Yeah. the or excuse me, the guy that played bass guitar on Sunday, he is the curator of the banjo museum. He is >> Oh, in downtown. Okay. >> Yes. He is the best. He's the best banjo player in the state of Oklahoma. We have him in our church. >> Jay, we [laughter] just put him in the back next to the drummer in a box and it's like, what are we doing here? So, Banjo Man's at our church. >> At our church. He and he had a bro come with him one day um and had a steel guitar with it. >> Okay. My request My request is turning into a demand. [laughter] I demand that we have that. Like that's got to be like >> Tyler's great, super gifted musician. >> Okay. And I'm gonna get rid of one of my uh requests and so I can have both requests go into [laughter] one demand. And so like why why is that not that's like the best kept secret at our church? >> Yeah. >> Oh my gosh. Okay. Now I'm furious. But like we're we're going to figure that part of it out. And then the other thing I remember and I've told this on the story or on the show before, >> it was Easter this year. >> Okay. >> So woke up that morning and you know kind of normal Sunday morning. My wife and I had even discussed not going to church >> because it's like of all the times not to go are Christmas and Easter because they just become it's just a banana sandwich. There's there's you know nowhere to park. You don't want to take a spot because every time I go I park way out in the boonies anyway to not you know take a spot away from a new person and then just someone who's gone there for 20 years takes a spot I would have taken anyway. So, it's kind of a waste. But like, so that morning, you know, I'm I'm getting ready and I've got, you know, for whatever reason, I put some Phil Wickham on and I was just like choking on the words. It was like, [clears throat] >> maybe it was the setting, maybe it was just, you know, what I had in my diet the day before, whatever, but like just the truth in the words. And Phil Wickham does a great job of that. He submits his lyrics to theologians to make sure he's saying the right things. Like, I love that about him. And then I come to church expecting the same worship that we get every week which is fairly predictable and all these types of things >> but there was a choir which we don't normally have small choir >> and the song arrangements were so off the charts good >> and the medley's like one thing into the next and I forget what hymn it was at the end it may have been how great thou art or something like that and we didn't have uh the only for the very young children was their child care but for slightly older children there wasn't. And so six-year-old James who had never no he would have been five at the time. James had never been in service with us. And so there's a lot of different things going on like how's this going to work out. And as soon as they get into like how great thou are out, how great thou art. He reaches up and grabs my hand. >> And like I about melted. I'm trying not to melt right now just describing it because there was nothing that y'all did to try to conjure up that emotion. It was all about worship. like worshiping the worshiping God, worshiping Yahweh, that whole deal. But there was just something that had set the tone getting into that environment. But I guess my my question is outside of the banjo and steel guitar thing, which duh, like the easiest layown, yes, of all time. Um, I would I'll even I'll even start calling it ABF if we start having banjo, you know, that's how serious. I'll never say anything nice about Lord of the Rings or mid chocolate chip ice cream, but I [clears throat] will say this. I will start using ABF if we can get that banjo and steel guitar at least bi-weekly. >> Okay. >> But the other thing is >> the amount of effort that was put into the Sunday morning service for Easter is not the same as the amount of effort seemingly from the outside looking in as the normal Sunday. Don't normally have the choir. Again, you have to make sure people will show up to be on the choir. It's like how much of a revolving door can you have? Most of these people are volunteers. They can't be expected, you know, to just do things based on whatever the the worship pastor wants to do. But just kind of explain that to me as a congregate of Faith Bible because I was I was not the only one that heard positive things about the worship when typically in my circles if worship is brought up at all, it's not always in the most positive light, if that makes sense. >> Yeah. Um there's different things going on there. First of all, I would say at holidays, um Christmas, Easter, when there's not ABF happening, there's always parking. >> You never have to worry about parking on holiday. I guess that's true cuz we're just turning over the parking lot for each service. So we don't have any of that overlap. So people aren't staying for 2 hours. So parking is never an issue. It's after those after those days I'm always like why do we have why do we have ABFs? Why do we have Sunday school? This is so much easier without it. But then I but I understand the value of of ABF, Sunday school, whatever we want to call it today. Um, and then to but to your to to the thrust of your question, um, the the worship team does an incredible job week in week out of, uh, of of serving the church in in worship. Now, I think on a day like Easter Sunday, you do have a little bit more going into it. So, like you said, a choir. Everybody loves a choir. >> Sure. >> But nobody likes a bad choir. And what it takes >> or a kids choir. Can I be one of those guys that says the one of the worst sounds ever [laughter] is kids singing? Can we never do that ever again? >> And so to have a good choir, you got to have some commitment there. And so you can get those people to commit in the three or four weeks leading up to Easter, but 12 months out of the year, they're not going to commit and then it's not going to be what you want. Um, so I think that explains some of what we do with choirs is it's typically a shorter term commitment. Um, because the long-term commitment, we've tried that, it's just not going to be there. Then also the other thing you have I think you have people who show up more ready to worship. Um and so you have an energy in the room uh that is palpable. >> Yeah. The empty room, the empty tomb is on their mind. >> Yeah. And so you know people come into uh Sunday morning gathering with all kinds of things going on in their heart and their mind. Um and they're not ready to they haven't woripped all week. If you haven't worshiped all week, you're not going to show up on Sunday, ready to roll. Um, you might get there by the third song um on a good day. Um, but you're still carrying whatever concern or anxiety or thing or fight that you had with your spouse or whatever into the room. And so, but on that day, it's a little bit different. I think people are a little bit more locked in. Uh, their their hearts are a little bit more prepared uh for what they're about to do. And I think that's a factor. But one of the coolest things I think you mentioned is, and this relates to kind of how we operate as a whole, is by the time a kid gets in about first grade, we want them in worship with their parents. Uh because there other places have kids church and and a setup where, you know, kid may not worship alongside an adult until they're in high school or something. I don't think that serves that kid very well. Um I don't think it serves that family very well. I think James and Eli need to watch mom and dad sing and and participate and sit down and take notes and lock in with the sermon. I think they're not learning a whole lot in the preaching time when they're in seven years old. You know, a lot of us just going above their head or whatever. They're picking up some things here and there. Um, but what they are watching is the two most important people in their life participate in something that they care about and then that that per and then that's going to lead them to care about it later on. Uh, I think a going back to another part of our conversation, I think some of what exists as church today is just youth ministry for 18 to 50 year olds. Because what happens is from if they grew up in church from the time they were little, they had kids church, then they had junior high group, then they had high school group, then they got to college and they had were part of some college ministry that was geared specifically for them. And then they get out of college and they have never worshiped next to somebody in their 50s. I don't know what it looks like. >> Yeah. >> And and then when they're when they go into a church and they're, for lack of a better word, force forced to, they don't like it because it's not catering to them. M >> it's not it's not their little life stage that they've been that's been catered to all along the way [snorts] isn't being accommodated and so they tap out. They're like not for me cuz they never had to do it. >> Yeah. >> Um and so >> I know there are people maybe that just come for the one hour and they don't bring their elementary age kid into to worship with them. I get that. I'm not condemning that. But if you're there two hours, you know, and your elementary kid can go to Sunday school, uh, and then follow you to worship, uh, there is so much value in them just being in there with you and holding your hand when the when the, you know, crescendo rises or whatever. So, >> yeah. I mean, I it's kind of weird you, oh, there's like a quote from like the very end of the the show, The Office where one guy is like, you know, >> I wish someone would tell you you're in the good old days when it's happening. Like that kind of thing. Like sometimes you don't realize it's a core memory until you get a little bit further away and you're like, "Oh gosh, you know, uh, save some sort of dementia. I'm going to remember that until the moment that I die." Cuz the moment James reached up and grabbed my hand, I felt like I got a slice of heaven, right? Because [clears throat] I know there's a lot of focus on, you know, a lot of people put a lot of emphasis on I'm going to get to see this person again someday when it's like the point of heaven is not the people that are there. It's the God that's there that, you know, you're you're giving your worship to eternally, >> right? Uh, and again, we we don't even know how that's going to look and you know what it's going to be like or if there's going to be lines to the roller coasters in heaven or any of those types of things. You don't you don't really know. And so, like, I I think it's important for people to create space for for things like that to happen, you know, because I've heard guys from our church that, you know, their kid was in the sermon and then they asked a question that night before they went to bed and you could tell the kid was chewing on it all day and here you are just thinking, "Oh, they're just, you know, you messing around with with drawings or, you know, just trying not to like, you know, completely go nuts and it's like, well, something got in there." And our job as parents again is, you know, we can't save our kids. We can't, you know, save them into heaven. Like we can't we can't do any of those things. We can't convince them to accept the gospel. We can gather a bunch of kindling, right? And put it around them. Put them around godly people. Continue to expose them to the word of God and pray that the Holy Spirit penetrates their heart. Um, >> I want to back up just a little bit because we started talking about some faith Bible stuff, but obviously you're you're doing the ministry stuff in Eden, but you eventually find your way to Faith Bible. And so you did tell us on on the last podcast, but just do a quick fly over because you were at Faith Bible, you left for a stretch, and then you came back. And during that stretch, one of the worst decisions in the history of Faith Bible happened whenever they made the official decision to change it from Sunday school to adult Bible Fellowship, which again, no one knows what that is. And so it was because you left that that happened. So I do hold you personally responsible for that. So talk about like kind of like >> finding Faith Bible, you know, leaving First Stretch, coming back, and then I want to kind of get into what the future looks like. Yeah. So, another key factor too in me coming into pastoral ministry is by God's grace, I had I had friends in high school, close friends um that were all Christians and many of those guys tracked toward ministry as well. And uh these are guys I'm still friends with today, still talk to every day. Um, and so it was almost a collective. And a lot of us did come to Faith in Christ through the the FCA ministry. Uh, and just really cool to see what God did and used to kind of bring a lot of us, three or four of us, uh, to the same place and to where we're still all in vocational ministry now. But, um, so yeah, five or six years into uh, my time in about 5 years in, I realized I got to get some education. I need I need seminary and started looking around and I I had actually done a little bit of um course work through Southwestern uh Baptist in Fort Worth uh early early on in my in my ministry days. But I'd kind of set that aside uh as just the ministry activity picked up and wasn't in love with the program and so I kind of stepped away from it. But I'd gotten to a point where like I got to do something here and was looking to go out to to Biola to Talbot out in Southern California. was thinking really hard about that. And one day in the fall of 2022, Mark called me and Mark and I had some mutual friends. Uh he and I had talked on a couple of occasions at a football game or whatever. We knew each other. We didn't know each other well, >> but I was the only youth pastor Mark knew like in the world. And so [laughter] >> and check out and Faith Bible needed a youth pastor. And so he just called to see if I was interested. and some thing I and I I I knew I needed to go to seminary. Some things that were also happening at the church I was at that had kind of had kind of loosened me up a little bit to where I thought, you know, I could make a move. Um I had had some opportunities to to make a move prior to that that I just really uh didn't didn't feel great about or didn't feel the freedom to leave, but I'd gotten to a place where I did feel some freedom to go. And so, um, I remember I drove up from Enid. I had an 88 Land Cruiser at the time and I drove up to Edmund, um, I guess down to Edmund, uh, from Enid one fall afternoon and, uh, came onto the Faith Bible campus. Had never been to Faith Bible before, even though I had spent, you know, four years in college here. Uh, didn't really know much about the ministry itself. Knew Mark, knew he was smart, knew he had written some books, uh, and so forth. And so, we sit down and and I'm like, "Hey, well, tell me about the church." like I don't really know anything other than you about this place. And I said, "What do you want to be known for? What do you want to what what do you want to be about? Uh what's your reputation?" And he said, "We want to just be known for teaching the Bible." And >> so [laughter] that's it. Uh in very simple Mark Hitchcock fashion, that's he just said, "We we just want to teach the Bible here. That's what we want to be known for." And um for some that just struck me. I'm like, "Yeah." And I I was at a Southern Baptist church that was a little bit hyperactive and you know lot going on for a lot going on sake and you know that whole mode of ministry after 5 years was was wearing me out a little bit. And so when he said that I'm like okay that connects. And then I said well I feel like I need to get some education and here's where I'm at with that. And he's like we'll we'll figure out a way to help you with that. And so it just checked a couple of boxes. And so by the spring of 2003, I was on the ground as as student pastor at Faith Bible. Um started to pursue uh my masters and uh my wife and I, we were 27, 28 years old, didn't have kids yet. Uh so she was teaching school and I I was doing student ministry. We felt like we had a lot of kids and uh we always said we were going to wait a few years before we had them. And what's interesting is because we were 27, 28 years old and we showed up at Faith Bible without any kids, you know, the Faith Bible culture, it existed the same then as it does now. Everybody was looking at us like, "Hey, something's wrong with you guys." >> That's right. >> Cuz by 28, most people had three or four. Yeah. >> You know, we and we didn't have any. And so when our first two were twins, everybody's like, "Ah, caught up. Let's go." [laughter] >> So So someone was in the water. We caught up. um did youth ministry at Faith for about five more years after I arrived and then the the church was was not growing dramatically but incrementally and nobody was doing a lot with adult ministries. Nobody was doing a lot with adult Sunday school for instance or men's ministry or uh or missions for that matter. And I I was already doing some in the missions area because of my student ministry involvement. And so I moved out of student ministry. We had had a couple of children and so that actually fit really really well. I had a mode of doing student ministry that just wasn't real conducive to like family life. I was, you know, going a lot of trips and spending a lot of evenings with uh students at ball games and this and that and the other. And so as we were having kids, it the transition made sense on that level. And so just started to develop more the of the of the uh adult ministries at Faith Bible, Sunday school being one of them. uh we didn't have the the version of adult Sunday school we had early on late 90s early 2000s uh was sort of elective based like you just went to classes based on what that was being taught. >> Um but we had had a couple of classes come online that were more like for newly married people or for this sort of affinity group that were more based in fellowship and care and ministry and stuff. And so we wanted to develop some more of those. And so I kind of took that on. And then um in 2012 I I was feeling an itch uh to to preach more uh and to to lead in that capacity. And Mark was always gracious and giving me opportunities to but I had a church um back in Enid. Again, I go I go Enid, Edmond, Eden, Edund. That's my path in life. Can't get away from these two towns. And um it was a church that I had a connection to just through some friends and through uh the Christian high school that my wife had gone to and her her dad was the headmaster of up there Oklahoma Bible Academy. And they needed a pastor. And I said, "No way. I'm going to go back to Enid and pastor this small church." Like this is crazy. But I really loved a couple of people that I because I knew that I knew that were engaging me in the conversation. And I told Mandy about it and she's like, "Jay, I'm not moving back to Enid." >> Now minds. >> Now mind you, this is a woman who said, you know, in college she would never live in Enid >> and she would never be married to a pastor. So we had already lived there once. I was a pastor and we were thinking about moving back there again for me to continue to pastor. So never say never. So first meeting that she was involved with with this group, she was immediately sold. She said, "We got we got to go do this." >> And I remember when I was still praying through it, I was at the intersection of 81 and Willow Road in in Enid. And I was praying and um kind of a rougher part of town, especially coming out of living in the Edund context for so many years. I'd been here almost 10 years. And I'm sitting at that intersection and I it just kind of this little question hit me in the face. It was Jay. Do you love people or do you love certain kinds of people? Do you like polished, professional, suburban, uppidity types, or do you like all people? Do you like people from, you know, that that operate a farm, blue collar, this and that, people that struggle? And uh that just that just hit me pretty hard. And I was just like, "Yeah, God, I I love people." and took the took the call there um in the summer of 2012 and uh spent four years there preaching 50 times a year, you know, all but two Sundays a year uh at this at this little church. And uh after a few years of doing that, Faith Bible had gone through a pretty significant uh oh sort of seed like a line change, however you want to say it, reorganization of leadership uh on the staff side. And so they pursued me, asked me if I want to come back uh to to serve in the role of lead pastor, which was a a position that they had put together with me in mind, which is extremely flattering, extremely flattering and affirming to be approached by a group of men that you respect that know your weaknesses. Um it's easy just to put your strengths out there in a resume or whatever else. These guys knew my weaknesses. Um but because they also knew some of the strengths I had, they wanted me to return. [gasps] And so um my impulse, my my original answer was no, I can't. I got some things I'm in the middle of right now I can't step I I I got to do u there's people out there because of Faith Bible's profile because Mark's connection to DTS there are candidates out there that would be better at this job than me. Um you should pursue those guys. Well n months or so go by. They come back to me. Hey still are looking at this role for you. And I remember in a in a larger setting sitting there looking at the new staff that they had hired and Mark was the only one that had been there prior. Every one of the new staff they had hired uh was had just been at the church for two months, three months. And the thought I had was, you know, there are guys that can do this lead pastor thing at Faith Bible better than me, but none of them have 10 years of history at the church. None of them know the body in the way that I know the body. >> Um, and that's what this church needs. this church needs a pastor on staff that that knows it. And so that was kind of the big um oh just the big kicker that that pulled me back uh to Edmond. That was in 2016. So I've been back a little over 10 years and um yeah, here we sit today. >> Well, so I'm curious on the trajectory of that 10 years because best I can guess or remember is I would have gotten there maybe two or three years after you came back. >> And so this is precoid. This is in pre- new building. Yes or the the build onto the building, >> you know, we were basically when I started coming, we were meeting in whatever the youth gymnasium would have been, right, with all the chairs set up and those types of things and then there was the old, you know, the old side and you know, all that. >> Mhm. >> But then there was a hockey stick thing that happened >> and I know it's been talked about a lot by the elders, by you, by you know, the rest of the staff, by Mark, like, okay, where did that come from? like what what was the positioning of that that made that possible? Because there's partially an element of if you build it, they might come, right? It's not that they will, it's that they might, [clears throat] right? And then there's some people that build it and then it fills up immediately, which is kind of what happened to Faith Bible where I mean there was a stretch there and I don't know how big it got, but there were like five to 10 new families being added to the the kids area weekly. >> Like what? Like that. So that's mom and a dad and like somewhere between one and five kids, right? Like being added every single week. And it seemed like there were 2020 I think uh caused the scales to fall off a lot of people's eyes on a lot of different areas like uh you know whether that's trust in government or government institutions, trust in our moral betters, um you know trusting in what people say versus what they mean, right? So they say black lives matter, but what they mean is give money to this communist organization so we can buy real estate for ourselves. Like that's what that meant. It wasn't a statement of fact about image bearsers of God that had a certain level of melanin. It was a grift uh to make money from a real estate scheme. And so a lot of people started seeing things differently. And so a lot of people in our community, call it the the greater Edmond, North Oklahoma City area, were at churches where it was like all of a sudden they're like, "Let me evaluate what we've been talking about here at this church for the last two to five years." Has this just been a revolving uh like, hey, okay, we're going to do every two years we'll do a money series and we'll do a manage a marriage series and then we'll do some random topic and then we'll turn, you know, the story of Samson into a fiveweek series so the men aren't completely disengaged or or just something like that. That was kind of what people started to do. And then people became like they had a voracious appetite. I read in a book somewhere where it's like if you don't have an appetite for the Bible, that's one thing to call into question your salvation. like is there any fruit there? You like if you just have this aversion to even reading it. >> But then you had people that were like wait a minute I I own one >> but it's not worn in and [clears throat] I don't even take it to church cuz I have the app and you know I don't even need to do anything and and church was just super easy for them. And there was no expectation that they would ever try to feed themselves because why would I feed myself when you know the pastor he's studying during the week right and he's just going to tell me what I need to know and then give me some life application and all is going to be great. But I want to know from your perspective like okay when was the idea we need to expand the size of our building? You obviously didn't know CO was coming. When did y'all as a staff kind of see that hockey stick in attendance and interest in Faith Bible over other churches and ministries in our area start to go up? Because I remember watching you guys and it was like every elder and pastor I saw for a stretch there for a few months. It seemed like y'all were on fire. Like y'all and I don't mean like you were excited. I mean like there's so many people here. like we got to make sure like everything gets done and it just seemed like it was it was crazy. It kind of felt like it all happened at once. But that's, you know, from my perspective, I want to hear from y'all. >> That energy will be there in a couple of weeks when everybody's sort of back to church here for for the fall and we'll have another little uptick of people. But going back to my my first day back in the office in 2016, uh Bert Strox, who was senior adult pastor at the time, and he had he'd been a part of some master planning, I'd been I'd been there 10 minutes, and he comes in with a set of drawings, puts them on my desk. He said, "You got to figure this out." And so, first day I'm looking at sort of what they're thinking about. and the the dollars that were being entertained relative to the amount of growth being planned for didn't add up. It was like, okay, this this gets us 500 more people here for $28 million. That >> math is a math. >> Yeah, it doesn't seem like maybe the best use of funds. Let's let's scrap this concept. And so we entered into what we called the Greater Things campaign. and stewardship was at the top top of the list and in how we were going to build out the campus. Um and that's why we went into the the existing gymnasium. It just so happened to be the right height um to to put a balcony in there. And I remember leading up to kind of finalizing those plans, how how much capacity are we going to plan for? What Mark and I had this discussion like, okay, people are going to church less, not more. Uh so people are twice a month Christians these days, you know, >> uh the the squishy middle is going away. You either are or you're not a Christian. And so sort of the nominal people are going to be falling off more and more, too. And so we thought, okay, if we if we build this out with 50 to 60% more capacity, that's going to be just right. you know that that gives us 2,000 people here. That's a lot of people to say grace over full steam ahead. And so that's what we did. Um that's about the capacity we we tried to figure out was, you know, 2200 or so people uh on campus. And right after we finished that build out in December of 2019, punch list was done. You know, we're feeling great going into the new year. COVID happens. were out of the building for 10 weeks and we're like, man, that wonder wonder if we just overbuilt. Uh, nobody's even here. And then slowly people came back. By summer, we were kind of all systems go with programming. We're starting to see a lot more new faces. We're like, hm, who are all these folks? and we're starting to not see a lot of people that had been mainstays and they're just staying away from whatever reason or maybe they've there was that great reshuffleling of churches there in that period of time. Um people seize the opportunity that maybe maybe they wanted to leave their church or anyway but then we're also seeing this influx of people from the Pacific Northwest and California and coming up from Texas and this kind of migration piece to it all as well. And I think one of the things that happened during COVID, during the political turmoil of 2020, um, with that whole great reshuffleling, faithful Christians that had been a part of of churches for years, what they realized is, "Oh, I'm not squishy, but I think my church is." And because of either the way they were talking about politics or because that whole season woke them up to realize my life has to be anchored in something really, really deep. And I'm realizing right now it's not. And so where is a church that's going to give me the depth of truth that's going to keep me from just getting blown over in these storms that our culture is experiencing? And so that was part of the influx as well is is people just realizing, okay, I I don't if this is the way culture is headed, I need to be at a place um that's going deep with people and really really delivering uh the truth of God's word in an unapologetic way. And so that led to a lot. Now we we made space. So providentially we made space. um providentially people started looking around or moving into town and wanting to go other places and then providentially there were a couple of churches in town that just kind of hit a wall started struggling and good churches big churches with a lot of people in them and we ended up with a large group of people from from those contexts. So it was the confluence of probably gosh 10 different things that has led to the growth. And what's funny if I look back at 20 uh 2002 you know when I showed up to to talk to Mark and then showed up as youth pastor in the spring of 03 you know we were church of 600 people and never never in my wildest dreams did I think that we would be like the desirable place like the cool place whatever you want to whatever category you want to put it in. Um it was very niche at that time. It was it was it was a church that appealed to Bible church people. Um certain theological convictions uh certain convictions about maybe the way church was done or or worship was done. Uh whatever. Uh but now just through a series of of providences and just through a real investment in church staffing and and building out some systems that accommodate growth. uh you know, we're now whatever we are 3,000 people a weekend, uh 5,000 people at Easter, whatever. Uh those are numbers that just baffle me. Um I find hilarious at times. Hey guys, real quick, I just wanted to remind you that we have an official Undaunted Life store. You can go to shop.undaunted.life or check it out in the show notes. Guys, we're always going to have hats and shirts and a bunch of other awesome stuff. Go there, support us, wear the mission. Again, it's shop.unaunted.life. Check out the link in the show notes. Shop.unaunted. undaunted.life. Okay. I was going to ask you on like, okay, how many people are coming on a on a normal like Sunday, not during the summer, like not during the holidays or something like that. And so immediately there's the idea of like, okay, these people are here now. What do we do with them? Obviously, the expectation is they go to a Sunday school class, they they go to one of the three services. But then I've also heard arguments from people that I really respect like the late Bodie Bacham as it pertains to look if your church has multiple services what you have are multiple churches. >> So you have the 8:30 church and then you have you know or the 8:00 church, you got the 9:30 church, the 11:00 church, you've got the online church, you've got the whatever. So I'm curious because y'all never really had to deal with that dynamic. Y'all were doing some, you know, live stream stuff and they're in nursing homes and people that are fans of Mark's preaching all over the globe would kind of like kind of go into that. Mhm. >> But I mean, our church really isn't conducive for the Yeah. the online church is your church. That's your church body. You just sit there on your fat butt on your couch because you don't want to get dressed >> and come to church. Like, but for people that are had just had surgery or they're infirmed in some way, like you're still ministering to those people. >> But obviously the church takes the Bible and disciplehip very seriously. Uh which is, you know, something that's kind of the first two things that are >> not dealt with at some other things. Like let's not deal with the Bible. that could get a little little, you know, pnicity and then we're not going to really do that. >> People disagree about that. >> Yeah. And it's like, well, then so we're not going to do the the disciplehip thing, you know, we're basically going to let, you know, the home group people do the disciplehip cuz we're we got stuff to do. Like we got to build the ne the next MCampus. We've got to [clears throat] do those types of things. And so >> you get this tremendous influx of people over a very relatively short period of time. So, as a lead pastor, as an elder, like how do y'all make sure these people are not only being fed, being taught how to feed themselves, but they're also being discipled along their sanctification journey or that evangelism is happening. Some of these people flat out, you know, aren't saved yet. >> Yeah. Uh, discipling people in a rapidly growing church is difficult. Um and and even in just a I I don't know what the metrics are now for megaurches or giga churches or what the numbers are to qualify you for those categories. Um but but there's something even about being a church that size that attracts people who don't want it to be known or an intensity related to disciplehip. >> But I would say on the front end, one of the things we do care about is meaningful membership. So we think membership in in the local bodies is is a biblical thing. Um, and so that's where Bod and I would have agreement. Now, he he has a different view of the word ecclesia and what gathering means and one gathering and one body and and I get that. I'm not terribly sympathetic to it, but I get it. I understand where he's coming from. And I would say that it approaching church that way does strip away a lot of complexities um that tend to creep in when you start adding services. But as long as I've been at Faith Bible, we've always had more than one service. So even back in our you know 600 700 days um you know there were two two services at that time there were different styles. Thankfully along the way we made everything one style so people weren't choosing services based on their on their worship preferences. Uh that's always a healthy move for a church cuz then you really are inching toward more being one church rather than if you've got different styles and those all things going on then you you are inching away from being one church and being multiple churches. But I I think meaningful membership when we when people on board and we invite them uh into a membership process and we sit down with them one-on-one and we ask them about their testimony and they check off on the statement of faith and um we we we we want to understand when they were baptized and what led to that and and we want to talk about their their marriage and and their family uh a good bit. Uh I think that goes a long way uh because somebody who doesn't want to belong to a church isn't going to subject themselves to that. Uh really there's not going to be the tolerance there. And so you know I think one of the now you have a really cool group of of people in your ABF u but I think one of the most sanctifying things that people can get involved with in in the small group setting is a group of people that they wouldn't otherwise be friends with. I think there's something supernatural going on that that is bonding those people together as they care for one another and pray for one another and serve one another and find out that they really do love each other. Um I I think the the the world can look on a a a group at a church um that is that all looks the same and and um you know votes the same, is in the same life stage and the same whatever and go, "Yeah, it makes sense that they like each other." Yeah. Um, but if they look on, you know, a group of people who's varied in their backgrounds, varied in their life stage, young, old, whatever else, and they manage to care and love and and pray for one another, that's that's a pretty awesome thing. And I think God uses that to sanctify you and r and and file off your rough edges in all kinds of cool ways. That paired with Bible teaching, paired with serving, you know, all those different things that you do in the context of a local church that help to sanctify you. Um so so I but I do think that it starts with meaningful membership helping people see um that as as you come on board here membership language is not is not language we borrow from the culture people think it is because you're a member of a country club or you're a member of you know the car wash on the street you know on the corner down the street you know membership language you know you're a member at the gym whatever >> membership language is biblical A body has members. We are in Christ. We are in Christ's body. Um and so if you want if your life's falling apart, if things are spiraling, you've got a bad diagnosis or whatever else and and you're pleading for Christ to show up in your life. You know what he's going to do? He's not going to appear at the foot of your bed. The church is going to show up and they're going to care for you and they're going to provide meals and they're going to pray for you and they're going to come alongside you and they're going to prop up your wife. Christ is showing up in your life through the ministry of his body. And so that and that takes a meaningful connection to to the body. So when we talk about the core value of connect with one another, we're talking about meaningful connection. We're not just talking about the stand and shake and greet greet one another time uh that some people love and some people hate. We're talking about meaningful connection that leads to ministry. Um and uh I think that happens within the context of serving together within the context of our Sunday school/ABF groups. uh the women's Bible study stuff, the men's Bible study stuff that takes place as well. >> Now, it's just going to get more complicated if we say Sunday school/ABF because now we're making it even longer. We might as well just Jay, like I don't know how I can get you submitted to church discipline, but like we've got to go backwards in time to the time. >> I feel like we're up against a Jew gentile divide here. >> No, we're not actually. This is [laughter] the like no one in church likes it. And by and I as evidence of that is I said it right. So here I am doing my own can of impression. I don't have to present you evidence. I just have to say actually I heard about it in a dream. The Lord told me we're going back to Sunday school and I think everyone's going to be okay with it. So we good? We good with that? >> I think I think everybody would be okay with that. >> Okay. All right. So, all right. We're going to do that by the end of the year. We're making that happen. It's going to work out well. Question. Uh I remember being absolutely floored. This Jay, this may have been >> over 10 years ago. >> There was a guy I was talking to that was a pastor at a a congregation edund. I can't remember. All right, I remember the name of now. It doesn't matter which which congregation he was at. He was just a buddy that, you know, I was, you know, I would hang out with sometimes and would do jiu-jitsu with sometimes. And he just made this comment >> uh because when you live in Edmond and as I've said on the show a bunch, Edund's like Camelot, >> right? All the people are really done up. It's kind of what you were talking about earlier, the Enid versus Edund, right? So, it's kind of the uppidity, you know, highly college educated. Most people have money or pretend to have money. Nice cars, like perfectly manicured lawns. The kids are in all the activities. They specialize in a sport at three and like it's, you know, it's it's all the things in Edmond, right? >> And he just, this pastor casually mentioned, he's like, "You would not believe the levels of depravity in Edmund." And I was like, "What are you talking about? Like the cops are bored here. They have to chase down people that have like, you know, uh, overdue library books." >> He's like, [clears throat] "Dude, there is so much abortion in this community." >> Um, and I was like, "What do you mean?" He goes, "Just think about it, Kyle." He's like, "A 15, 16 year old girl. she's a star athlete, star student, all that, gets pregnant, and her family's got a reputation to maintain. And you know, if little Suzie's a little bit of a that that doesn't work with the the the mode of what this family's trying to do, right? So, the dad just pays $400 or $500 to kill his grandkid. >> And he's like, the the rates of of uh abortion in this town are astonishingly high. No one talks about it. He's like, rates of divorce are high. The rates of adultery are high. Substance abuse is insane. Like alcohol, other forms of substances, things that are easy to hide. Workcoholism, if you want to get into other sins that maybe aren't as like, you know, don't have as bright a lights or things like that. He's like, Kyle, you wouldn't believe the swinging culture >> that we have in in this town of of people that literally everybody shows up to a house, everyone puts a name in a a bucket, there's the guy names, and then there's the girl names, and then they just separate off into the bedrooms. He's like, "That's what's going on in this town." But everything has this beautiful veneer of, you know, women who have been altered and men who pretend to have more than they have. And and so I'm curious for you as a minister, not just a minister of the gospel, but somebody that actually has to minister to people in a local congregation in this type of town like, and we're on the old money side of town. So there's even Edund East dynamics versus Edmond West dynamics, right? And so in a way we're in a the belly of the beast. The beast just looks really good. So like how hard is it to do ministry whenever we're in this this area where one people don't think everyone thinks they're a Christian and number two like their flavor of depravity is just better than some of the other people's. >> Yeah. I think the I call them the up and out. You know you got the down and out and you got the up and out and and there's plenty of people in this town that qualify as being in being in the category of up and out. Um, and and I think the the hardest part of that person or that or that that person's situation is the destruction that they cause through all of that behavior. Most of them can sort of buy their way through it. So, a downand-out person who's involved in all that stuff you just described, they they really hit rock bottom. Y because they [clears throat] can't buy their way out of those. >> They're closer to bottom. >> Yeah. They can't buy their way out of those circumstances. >> A lot of people in this town can pay their way through it and and appear to still be doing okay um and appear present uh as still pulled together uh when when in fact they're not. And so I think that's the challenge is they have the resources uh to power through through through whatever circumstances their depravity gets them into. Yeah. And so as a pastor, as a as an elder of this church, like how do you sift through all that to potentially have the evangelistic conversation or to potentially address the the sin nature of a of a believer that is like allowing the world and these other circumstances? Like, you know, cuz I get some of the craziest emails and DMs from guys and I I mean, I'm not their pastor and I I make sure they know that. like look, I'm your favorite podcaster and you just laid out abuse that you've suffered and you know the the drug use and the affairs and like you just laid all this out in an email and then you're like what do I do? It's like man you just you just kind of gave up uh the the reality which is that you don't have men around you. You don't have a foxhole and man you're not submitted to the the leadership of a local body of believers or local you know elder or pastor >> because you're asking me a perfect stranger in my DMs or in my inbox. But you you know these people. You have relationships with these people. And for me, not being a pastor, like how do you even go about helping that person see like, hey, up and out is just as bad. It just looks different than down and out. >> Yeah. And I think people in that in that crisis moment, they're going to do one of three things. They're going to numb out. That's one that's one option. Uh so they're they're going to go deeper into substance abuse or deeper into pornography or deeper. They're just going to numb out, escape, >> you know, travel more, whatever. They're going to numb out, try to escape the issue. They're going to flame out, which means they're going to go even harder at it and just destroy their life and get into their second marriage or third marriage or fourth marriage or whatever. They're just going to flame out or they're going to go deep. And so as a pastor, you're trying to get them to to go deep, trying to get them to go deep in relationships, deep into God's word, um deep into whatever issue that they've got to just cut, whatever cancer it is that they've got to cut out of their heart, u so that they can be a whole person instead of uh this person that they're trying to be. Uh and so it's that going deep. And and again, if if if [clears throat] the if if the church is just serving up sermonets, that's an that's not going to get them to go deep. Um and if the if the relational level of the church is very surfacy, it's not going to get them to go deep. Um, but if they have a group like some of the guys I know that exist in your class who are ready to go deep with one another or how do you put it, carry each other's mat or whatever, you know, that is ultimately going to be the thing. They're not going to do it by themselves. Uh, they need people and the one of the ways they probably got in the situation they're in uh is by being isolated and self-sufficient and on their own uh and without accountability. So, you got to you got going deep brings all that around them. one going deep, you have to be known. >> And so that's the thing, and it even drives me crazy in our Sunday school class because uh who So Joby put it this way. I think he may have gotten it from another pastor. I can't remember. But the the gist of it is is basically like if you looked at your prayers over the last week and then all a sudden God snapped his fingers and all of it came true, what would be different about the world? Like I mean, hey, you just thank than thank him for this day. >> All right, this the world's not any different. All right, you just thank them that you got that that parking space that you know you got inside before the rains came or you know you blessed this food to the nourishment of your bodies. It's like how how different would the world be? And so I'll even see the the prayer requests of our Sunday school and it's like some people are like laying it all out there like things are things are going wrong like there's there's death, there's a depravity and other people are just basically like oh you know things are busy at school and and everyone's issue is their issue. It's like not everyone's constantly melting down, right? So, it's not like everyone has to be at a level 10 of like panic at all times and anxiety, but when when people are suffering in silence because they want to keep up with the Joneses or they want to keep up the appearances and you know that just becomes a major problem. And so when I get into these discussions with people and I'm like, "Bro, this started two years ago. Why are you coming to me now?" Well, and to to your earlier question, nine times out of 10 when the crisis gets on my radar as their pastor, um the clock is expiring. It's >> we're late in the fourth quarter. >> Somebody's already got a lawyer. You know, it it's beyond repair or rescue. Um you know, unless a miracle happens. Uh, and so if there's somehow those situations can get caught in the first quarter or before halftime, >> Yeah. >> then that's what needs to happen because nine times out of 10 it's we're down to the wire. This thing's over. Um, everybody's already everybody's already settled on how this is going to go, whether it's divorce situation or or whatever else. Um, so >> well, there's two types of people in this world. There are people that see the check engine light come on and they schedule uh their appointment with GM. And then there's other people that put a smiley face sticker right on top of the check [laughter] engine light and just say, "This isn't happening. Everything's okay. Everything's going to be okay." >> Okay. So, for the last several years, uh really up until the last few months, >> there was kind of this constant question that was being peppered at Mark, at you, at the rest of the elders, like, "Hey, what are we going to do?" >> Like, [clears throat] you built it and they came, they showed up. Like, >> there there's not enough. And it wasn't really like I'm not getting my spot in the sanctuary. So, it wasn't like that. It was just like >> there's nowhere else to go. >> Like, we know y'all aren't going to spend 10 million million dollars on a parking garage, but like on the plot of land that the Lord blessed us with that we have dominion over. There's nowhere else to go, right? We're not going to build an eight-story church. It's just like, so what do we do? >> And I remember talking talking with Mark on the show, talking with him outside the show, and there was all kinds of ideas that were being bandied about. >> Mh. um you know trying to make even more additional and more creative adjustments to the current campus. Um okay, you know some of those uh churches that are part of you know apostate denominations, those buildings are going to be shuttering before too long anyway. We're going to go in then we're going to do like a reverse seance and get all the dirty spirits out of here. Throw out the pride flags and then we're just going to take over and do Bible stuff. People are wondering, hey, [clears throat] are y'all going to do the MC church thing? are we going to get a building and just put up a screen >> and you know Mark can just preach multicight and do that whole thing >> and there were no good answers and I remember so actually so I I want to get to what what what is actually going to be happening which is what we're in process of but I only know like this much about all the different iterations and ideas and almost but didn't happen and we put in an offer it was accepted but then it was rescended so can you kind of take us through all the different like when y'all knew we got to do something and then it's like all right Let's figure out what something means. >> Yeah. So, I mean that that conversation goes all the way back to late 22, early 23, maybe even further back than that. We we added uh the first thing we did after Extending Faith um as we begin to grow a little more, we knew we wanted to add more parking, so we did that. Um we were adding staff and so we were just trying to find places for staff all over the building. and we didn't really have a centralized office. So, we thought about um you know adding on some offices or even putting an a separate office building right in the middle of the parking lot, which that would have been really stupid at the time. I'm glad we didn't do that. Uh we looked at the land across the street which had come available in different stages and and that didn't work out. Uh even though we we had made a a generous offer, the guy just didn't want us to own it. Um we we'd looked at other off-site office locations. We currently do have an off-site office location. and we looked at a large building uh in the Quail Springs area um larger than the one that I'll talk about here in a minute and and that didn't work out. Grateful that wasn't disappointing. So, yeah, we when it comes to your parking capacity, your building capacity, the number of seats you have uh in your worship center, uh the programming that you that you're trying to to operate, everything kind of has to match. And when we when we built the building that we built back in 2019, when we finished it up, the programming that went into that design was two services. Well, as you know, we're at three. >> Y >> um and we have a confluence at 9:30. Uh that really is problematic both on the parking side and in the children's ministry area. So anyway, in in 2023, that was the first time I threw out this this term, this this name for what we might do next, which was extending faith. And again, it took a few different um iterations. But um going back to that point, it it was also should we tear down the singlestory structure? you know, we've got the old kind of original building uh on the on the north side, northeast side. Uh let's let's tear that down and build two stories there. That's problematic because that basically halts our ministry programming for two years. And what does that look like? And we still got a parking problem. We still got a cold train problem, you know, traffic and whatnot. So, [clears throat] um, last at the end of last summer, early fall last year, uh, and it was really cool the way it it kind of came together because in an elder meeting, it was like the Holy Spirit convinced us all at the same time, okay, let's stop waiting on a piece of land to fall on our lap. Let's stop waiting for a building to fall on our let's stop waiting for a church to close that we can swoop in and get um let's let's go let's go buy something and just start taking steps in that direction. Um well, our original purchase was a piece of land. Um but right before closing on that piece of land, a building came to our attention uh that we had actually shown a little bit of interest in before, but it was just priced in a way that didn't make sense. And so it was uh 3201 Quil Springs Parkway over kind of in the Quail Springs Mall area just to the west. Um right butts it butts right up against um the Crossings Christian School campus and it was an old old AT&T corporate call center building uh 128,000 ft. So right before we're about to close on this land uh a realtor I had gotten to know puts this building on my radar and says hey this has just gone back to the bank. I think you can get it for a steal. Do you want to go look at it? I was like, "Sure. I've been in, you know, two dozen buildings over the last two years. So, what's one more going to hurt?" So, we go through, look at it. We start crunching the numbers like, "This is a really good deal. We we we can buy this building, remodel it, get into it at an at a really high um possible capacity for a fraction of the cost. We're going to build something new on this piece of land over here." So, we start working a deal and we start thinking through the the heat map of Faith Bible Church in terms of the giving units that are on that side of town. Um, we start thinking through how luxurious it will be to have basically five different ways in and out of this this neighborhood where the church is is pllopped down on or where the building is is is sitting. And um we think let's let's bookend this community with another congregation. We're over here at 600 North Coal Train. Depending on who you talk to, it's it's east side. Um well, there's a spot over here on the on the on the west side, southwest side, northwest Oklahoma City, where we could plop down a Kingdom Outpost. Um and be a place where we know we have a lot of people who already live in this area. Um, and you know that getting east west across Edund is problematic. Uh, so let's let's put this right here and be a bridge to not only this part of town, but be a bridge further west where we also know we've got people coming from. You think about the Deer Creek School area, Pedmont, even Yukon. And so, um, the extending faith, the basic vision is to extend the gospel reach of Faith Bible Church by mobilizing people to strengthen. So, strengthen Cold Train because we're going to do a little bit more development at Col Train. we're going to kind of max out the footprint there. Um there's some things that we need to to accommodate the growth that we've experienced. Uh and also we really want to bring our staff back to campus. It's been fine. They've managed. Things have gone okay. Uh not officing on campus, but getting everybody back together is going to be um just I think huge force multiplier. Um, so we're going to do some things to strengthen where we're at and and then we're going to establish that congregation and hopefully over the next 10 years establish multiple congregations. Uh, those aren't video venues. They're not they're not uh what you call them big churches. Uh, [laughter] they're not it's not really a franchise approach per se. Uh, but it I use the word a congregation. It will have its own live preaching, own live worship. It have its own staff. Uh, the program will look similar. the pillars will be the same. You know, timing and the exact complexion of the program that we have at Faith Bible uh may not look exactly the same. We may call it Sunday school. Who knows? Uh >> you already shook on it. So, it's like it's already a thing. We know the banjo is going to be a part of it. Well, and I want to get I want to get more into like >> and so I'm going over there to do that. I'm going to I'm going to establish that congregation in the fall next year, >> right? So, I want to really dig into to the fact that you just had a church love dropped in your lap like merry Christmas to you, right? Uh >> product of righteous living. But just real quick, I because I can I can already hear some people in my audience or people that are from this area. They're like, "Another church in Edund, Oklahoma City. Another church." Like even on that side of town, I saw a sign the other day for a church with the word faith in the name of the churchland. And I I had to do a double take like, "Wait a minute. I thought they brought the thing." I was like, "Wait, that's not that's not our church." And it butts up against to a huge church, maybe the largest single footprint church in the Oklahoma City metro. Yep. uh church has got some massive issues. U and so like some of those people would probably do well to refugee themselves somewhere else but like at the same time like address that objection which is did we really need another one? Did we really need another church? Like y'all do it so well that we need another one butdding up against others. >> My joke Jay is like if in Oklahoma if you trip and fall in the process of catching your balance you're going to touch four or five churches. Like that's where we're at. Um, yeah, I would say so the spirit of this isn't, oh, Faith Bible Church is so awesome, we need more Faith Bibles. That's not that's not it. We we know we're not awesome. We we know that that duplicating ourselves is duplicating our strengths and our weaknesses. Hopefully, we can mitigate that as best as we can. Um, but you know, if you if if if you drop a pin at Memorial in Portland, Memorial and Highway 74 and draw a five five seven eight mile circle around that pin. Um, you've got quarter million, you know, 200,000 people. Yeah. >> That that live in that area. >> Um, there's density over there unlike we have over here, condos, apartments, things like that. And so let's say let's say like Crossings was maxed out, you know, it's right next door and they had 10,000 people there on a Sunday. Let's say Coil Springs was maxed out and they had 2500 people there on a Sunday. There's still 95% of the people in that area aren't going to church anywhere. [laughter] So there there's still plenty of people uh to reach. There's I I'm I'm a fan of the local church. Um, and again, I use the word kingdom out outpost. The where the rule and reign of Christ exists on this earth today is in the local church. And so, um, let's invite people into that and as many people as as as we can, um, because we think it's key to not only their flourishing, but the flourishing of the community in which it sits in. And so, uh, knowing that there are plenty of people in that pocket of town and and as you extend further west that, uh, don't have a church home, uh, let's put ourselves there and make that happen. And I think I've said this in in in our worship services before, which is let's say 10% of of the congregation of Faith Bible Church got really fired up about evangelism and about inviting someone to church. They can't do it. >> No, there's nowhere to put them. >> There's nowhere to put them. Um, let's say somebody who lives that goes to Faith Bible, who lives in Lone Oak or lives in, you know, Rose Creek or Coil Creek or somewhere over there by the mall and says, "Hey, um, to their neighbor, come to church with me." The neighbor says, "Oh, cool. Where where do you go?" Oh, well, it's over on Cold Train in in Edmund. This guy this guy who doesn't go Yeah. This guy who doesn't go to church is going to cross town, go 30 minutes away to church. Not going to happen. Um, so it it it provides the the ability to our people um to invite people in to what we've got going on. Um, and it helps those people who already on a Sunday morning do drive, you know, whatever it is, 20, 25, 35, sometimes 40 minutes uh to to church. It gives them that that location that's just that's just more friendly to where they're located um and more friendly to how they might reach their community. Uh so that's that's some of the the mission the thinking about okay yes we're this this new church in this new location but it is surrounded by two or three pretty large churches >> and so so yes you are going to be the senior pastor of this church like um and I remember when all that was announced all at once it was like way too much information all at once to kind of take [clears throat] in >> and so inherent in that are a lot of different questions like okay with where with faith by by well first of all what's it going to be called do we fishible church. Okay. So, it's going to be faith Bible as well. And so, you got that. That was a question. Then it was like, okay, well, who's going to be the lead pastor under Mark, >> right? So, is that going to be backfield? Is that going to be someone from outside of the uh you know, uh Faith Bible or whatever? Well, I guess does that have an answer? >> Yes. Okay. So, um, the lead pastor title will still exist and, um, we're kind of tweaking some title thoughts right now, but so the Joel will assume the role of lead pastor, but it won't be >> who's currently the worship leader and is kind of >> currently our worship pastor. He's going to transition to lead pastor. The job description won't quite look the same as mine. Yeah. Um, so sort of being the way I've described Mark and I's relationship as senior pastor, lead pastor is he's teacher first, leader second. I'm leader first, teacher second. Uh that teaching piece won't be quite as big a role for Joel. Um he will focus a lot of attention on just leading our staff. Our staff has grown oh gosh since if we want to use 2022 as a marker. You know, we've more than doubled in in our staff size. Um and so some of the just both care for our staff, leadership of our staff, admin of our staff, HR, some of that stuff uh is where where he'll find um most of his energies focused. So he becomes lead pastor. Uh I move over to uh Quing Parkway to be to to be the lead pastor there. Uh there will be some aspect of which I come back to Col Train and preach occasionally. Mark comes over there, preaches live occasionally. There was also the the desire, the design to bring a couple of more voices onto the staff um that can do uh some preaching at both locations. Um and and maybe it's not two at once, maybe it's one and then another one as we find the right person. Um but I think there will be maybe a slight reorientation of the pulpit ministry in terms of uh we don't want a celebrity pulpit pulpit culture here. This is all about one guy. Um, we we we want to um raise up younger guys. Um, we want to to to bring on uh a pastor or two that we know is a very capable preacher. Uh, I would say even beyond capable, very gifted uh preacher to bless and encourage our congregation. So, uh, those moves haven't been made yet. I think we'll look at the first quarter, first half of next year to start making that stuff happen. >> That was going to be the next thing I was going to ask is like, [clears throat] okay, so Mark's in good shape. I know this for for a fact because where I was doing my PT on my baby arm, he was uh in there lifting, getting after it. And so, uh, but he's not a spring chicken either. And so, uh, he's at or nearing the fourth quarter of whatever his calling is. And again, no one knows, uh, the hour they'll be called home, but like, you know, he's not going to be doing this for forever. Uh, has there been any talk about Mark's desire to, hey, I would like to preach and I would like to retire at this age. And then timelinewise, how long do you bring up kind of that young pup? What ideally, how old do we want that young pup to be when he takes over the flagship, right, of of Faith Bible, which was a plan of another church, but like the the flagship where Mark has been at the helm for over 30 years as of right now. And by the time he's done, over four decades probably of faithful service to one congregation in one location. Like that's a big ask for for somebody, but that's essentially what every successful pastor and by successful I don't necessarily mean, you know, number of likes and likes and subscribes or, you know, book sales, but a pastor that faithfully serves whatever size congregation that the Lord has gave him, you know, leadership over, there has to be a a transition. And the idea is that the transition won't end with the shuttering of the doors of the church because, you know, the next person just wasn't ready or, you know, everyone was just used to the old guy. Let's, you know, all who cares about the new guy. So, how do you even start to really unpack that further than what you you just said? >> Yeah. I mean, there's a lot to that and and plenty of it that isn't really worked out yet. I mean, to your point, the old adage, you know, there's no success without succession. And I I think that's true and I think we agree uh as a pastoral team and as an elder team that that uh needs to go the right way. Um regardless, this is an old wear and we adage and I remember reading or seeing from him where when a pastor leaves a church it's going to shrink by a third. Um as I think through some of the ministries that that's occurred kind of holds true somewhere in that range is is pretty true. So, is that going to happen with Mark? How how do we prevent that u from happening with Mark? I'll say this, Mark's in good health. Mark loves to preach. Um the the uncction, the passion is there. Uh and he's a workhorse. He simply doesn't know what he would do with himself um if he didn't have the projects that he has, the preaching that he has. And so, um, I think for the foreseeable future, however you want to quantify that, five, seven, 10 years, um, he's just going to stay at it. And, um, I think that is going to be a blessing to our church. And because it's already been a blessing to our church. I mean, if you think about the stability of Faith Bible, uh, over, uh, the last, you know, 35 years, you know, it Faith Bible did go through uh, a splintering uh, in the early 90s, right? Right as Mark was coming on board. But if you think the stability since then, uh, and there've been little moments, little blips of turmoil, but for the most part, it's been a very stable church, that's because of the longevity of the pastor. I mean, he's trusted. Um, we haven't tried to pull guys in and out over the years. It's just he's just made that happen. Um, I think that's going to be a blessing to our church going forward. It's going to be a blessing to this whole project of seeing other churches established. And I mean, I think from the get-go over there at Coil Springs, I'm not going to be I'm not going to be a 48 weekends a year guy. Um, again, reorienting the pulpit in a way that says, you know, once a month I'll be out trying to raise up a new voice, trying to prepare somebody maybe for another congregation that we'll do down the line. Um, or maybe even I'm open to establishing that one. And then when the third one's ready to establish, maybe I go and establish that one, get that one up and running, you know, up and going. None of that's set in stone. But I'm open to all possibilities. I've always just wanted to serve Faith Bible Church as best as best I can. Uh even to the point as when we were talking through this whole plan like hey guys if it is to your question if it is the best thing for our church for me to stay put to keep my hands on these reigns going forward um speak into that cuz I'm I I'll do it. Um, but as we talked it through, it it seemed to be the best to establish that one with a known voice and somebody that was trusted and and could could bring um a good group of people from Faith Bible over to Quail Springs uh Parkway to get that thing launched. What that number will be, I keep using the number 150 families, 400 people. If it's more than that, great. Um if it's less than that, great. And I I think there's again plenty of people to reach over there. So, >> timeline for launch, >> fall of 27. >> Fall of 27. Oh, I asked this uh >> early fall. Let's hope. >> Okay, >> let's pray. >> I asked this to you a while ago and there wasn't a good answer quite yet. Own Elder Board is are the elders at Faith Bible East going to be over that flock as well? Where are we at with deciding? >> Great question. So the arrangement right now, we haven't set this is going to be the way it is for time of memorial, but the language right now is one church in two locations. One church meaning one elder board. Now what the elders have affirmed is a provisional elder board. So basically that's a group of men for me to work with to do some decision-m a plurality of wisdom to come alongside me so that I'm not trying to do this in isolation. Uh so it's not just my project. Uh and also so that some of the oh discussions that might pull our our our elder board into the weeds don't have to happen. we can just kind of have those over here and I can report back. Uh but I'll maintain a position on the faith the faith bible church elder board, the ruling elder board as we call it. Uh I'll maintain a position there and it will essentially govern um both congregations but the congregations at Quail Springs Parkway will have sort of a provisional group of elders to start with and then we'll see how that takes shape over time. Yeah. >> Well, also I'm curious for you. I mean, so how many times are you preaching per year at Faith Bible East? >> 10 to 12. >> 10 to 12. Yeah. >> And so first calendar year, how many times do you foresee yourself doing that at the new location? >> Oh, probably 35 to 40. Definitely over 35, probably 36. >> So we're talking, you know, 3 to 4x of what you're currently doing now. So first of all, are you nervous? And then second of all, like I know, so your style and Mark's style is very transcribe heavy. uh not as much, you know, uh bullet point and go >> uh or bullet point and flow, however you say it. And so, like, you know, that's more my style. Like, the only thing I I technically transcribe a little bit more is the Daily Blade because I know there's a little bit of a time crunch there, but I'm just used to getting in at a particular time or hey, it doesn't matter. I can record for 3 minutes or 3 hours. It doesn't matter. I just need to elucidate the point fully. But for you, like I mean I've seen I've watched your progression and your preaching style and your uh your effectiveness uh improve over the last several years, even from the first time that I watched you preach, >> but for for my money, when you go a little bit further off of the transcript, more of your natural personality comes out. And I know you're not trying to create a a cult of personality, but there's a little bit more levity. There's a little bit more like kind of sarcastic, joking, tongue-in-cheek type stuff that comes in. It's not as lecture-heavy and as serious right? >> And there's pluses and minuses to all that, and I can argue both sides. I'm just curious for you as you look forward to, you know, a yearish from now, a year plus from now, uh, which is what we're praying for. >> What is your preparation going to have to change and be like for you to, you know, 3 4x the preaching you're doing? >> Style differences, like any of those kinds of things. So when I when I went to Enid that second time and pastored there, you know, like I said, I was I was 48 50 weeks a year uh in the pulpit. And so that rhythm I've I've done uh before. And so doesn't necessarily scare me. Um, I I do remember though at one point up there I think I'd done like 25 26 weekends in a row >> and [clears throat] it just kind of hit me like I need a break. Like I'm just I just did six months of preaching. What am I doing? You know, and so I tapped out and asked the youth pastor to preach that week and and kind of gathered myself. >> But I'll remain a transcriber um at least initially for a couple reasons. one, I just really the economy of language that is used when you transcribe is important to me. I I don't want to waste a lot of words if I can help if I can help myself. Um when I don't transcribe, I tend to repeat myself some >> uh which isn't always the best move. And then also like the um when you're preaching multiple services, which I think when we start out over there, we're going to try to do more than one service. Um, sometimes you'll you'll really like the way you said something in the first service and you're like, >> and then what did I say? And then you get in the second service and you try to find you try to find it and you're like, it's gone. >> And you spend, you know, some mental anxiety trying to find that phrasiology. And so when you transcribe, it's just kind of all there for you. Um, so I've learned to lean on that. I I do have points in my and these are maybe the points you're talking about uh in my transcript that are just kind of bracketed where I just give myself the freedom to kind of launch off and and do some of that. Uh and I do recognize the connection that comes with those points in the sermon and probably need to do more of it. So, >> well, the one of the things that I do is because, you know, on my website, I think I have eight or nine different talks that I could get up give up and give this evening, right, on a myriad of topics from destroying proabortion arguments to why Jesus was a godly and manly man, uh, you know, having a foxhole, like all the things, right? >> And I can adjust those up or down based on my time limit. And so, like even like this weekend, as of this recording, I have backto-back speeches on backto-back days. The first one is an hour plus and the second one is 35 minutes. but they want the same subject. And so it's like, okay, how do you, you know, put all that in in the right window? Because, again, if I'm, >> you know, kicking off this men's event, there's two other speakers coming after me. I'm not going to be the guy that goes into overtime cuz I felt a move of the spirit and all that and then jack up everybody's calendar and schedule. I've been on the back end of some events like that where the guy that was supposed to, you know, transition into me was supposed to talk for 10 to 15 minutes and talk for 45 and I'm in the back pacing like a lion just like ready to either devour him or everybody in the room and I was just like let me up there and I knew that, you know, that guys can only pay attention so much. But like my my point being is, you know, like the reason why I flow is because of the prayer that I say to myself before I start recording on the show or before I walk out in front of a group of people. And you know, it's a derivative of what, you know, Joby says when he goes into the deer blind to write a sermon for that week. And it's like, hey, they're not my sheep. They're your sheep. They're they're not my people. They're your people. What do you want me to tell your flock this week? >> And I do the same thing before I go up there and speak. And I have a lot of play in my notes, right? there's stuff I got to hit word for word then there's a lot of play and so even if I'm doing something two times in the same day that prayer of what do you want this flock to hear my assumption is that if there's difference between the two of which there will be different examples like different emphasis is that God put that in there the Holy Spirit put that in there and there's some level of guidance somebody or some group of somebody's in this room needed to hear it that way or needed to hear something else >> and I was just a conduit and more than likely I'm never going to know that that connection was made for that person, but I just did like my part as the cog in the wheel. And also, I promised that I would do this to you back in the day, and it hasn't happened yet cuz I'm still looking for the right time. >> As you're walking up on the stage, >> I think about it every time I preach. I My head's on a swivel. Where is God? Where is God? And it's going to [laughter] be at that moment where they are closing out the song. You got to take those three steps up on the stage, ready to go. I'm going to snatch your transcript and you won't be able to catch me, baby. It's not going [laughter] to happen. and you're just you can't you can't go get your notes. You can't be like, "Hold on. I need to go back to my printer." You're just going to have to preach it, baby. >> Okay? >> And maybe that'll be the time where it's like, "Oh, oh, this is all right." Like, "This wasn't as bad as it uh felt like it was going to be." But even just the fact that you're thinking about it makes me happy that the threat of that. >> You live rentree on a Sunday morning inside my head. >> A lot of people's heads. And [laughter] that's part of the problem of what we're doing here. But hey, we're winding to a close. I really appreciate you going to into all this detail. But you've been living rentree in my brain for the last several months on one very specific topic >> because here I was on the forging table minding my own business, right? You know, you're sitting right there. I'm right here. I forget who all was here. I think it was uh Ryan Horn and uh do we know who else was over with us? >> It was either Eric or Adam. I think it was Adam. >> Okay. So, we'll we'll say Adam. >> And then I say something. I threw out a phrase that I've thrown out before. >> Yeah. [laughter and gasps] And you just immediately put me under church discipline because I said I I go blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and you know what that begs the question blah blah blah and you interrupt me and you go actually no that's not what begs the [laughter] question means what you're doing is leading to a question doesn't beg the question >> raises the question doesn't beg the question >> and I was like I'm like first of all did are you the captain now did you just like Somali pirate the the show first of all and then no one else really knew what to do but they knew it was funny somehow and so Like again, I was put under church discipline by an elder of the church live on my own show. Didn't edit it out. So I wanted the the people to kind of get there. And since then, every time I want to say begs the question on my show, I I don't say that. I say, you know, it raises this question. Mission accomplished. >> No, but but here's the thing. I don't know when it's proper to use begs the question. So I think ALL THAT BEGS THE QUESTION, JAY, when is it proper to say like I need a better example? when you're it's when you're accusing in an apologetic arm argument typically it's when you're accusing someone of begging the question using a circular argument they're begging the question you it's an accusation you're begging the question so >> okay so let's let's do an example let's role play here because like I I still >> the Bible is the word of God because it says it is the word of God that's begging the question >> okay and so like if I were to say like hey well that actually begs the question this that's never a proper way of using it >> I think it's become Cuz isn't that just circular reasoning? >> I think it's become clo like colloquial enough to to use without much too much of an issue because you couldn't sit on your hands for two seconds. Just let me say it. >> There are certain little pet peeves that I just have and that's one of them. So it >> it's it's just my it's it's my subtle way of being high and mighty. I need to apologize. [laughter] >> Yeah, obviously it's like gosh like somebody went to Oxford has read a little bit too much CS Lewis but okay. Uh, I don't know that I'm any clearer on that, but I just know that I'm never going to say it again. Uh, and so the mission accomplished the rim thing is working in both directions. But that's all for me. Anything else you want to get off your chest? >> No, man. Appreciate you so much. And your ministry is just uh it's just awesome. Uh, I I was nervous today because I'm like, I can't match Thompson's energy, like his pace, his vocabulary. And so, um, yeah, I appreciate your graciousness and just having me on. It's been great. Thank you for coming. You bet. Thank you everyone for listening to this episode. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive five-star review. If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an email to info@unaed.life. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else, including how to donate to keep more content like this coming. www.undaunted.life. The music on this podcast is the song Conqueror by the Christian metal band Void Awaken. Be sure to stream their music on Spotify, Apple Music, and wherever else you get your music. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness. Keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience. Keep seeking the Lion of Judah. Heat. Heat. [music] [music]