0:00
[MUSIC]
0:10
This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.
0:22
All right, guys, today I've got a special guest for you and he has been on the podcast before,
0:26
but he just did a little mini episode in our botching Afghanistan series, but we're welcoming
0:30
back pastor Ryan Visconti. So he is the lead pastor at Generation Church, which has two locations
0:34
out there in Arizona. Now, here's the thing about this guy is I got sent a sermon from one of our
0:40
followers, right? And so this is a fan of our show that's just like, Hey, you got to check this out.
0:43
And sometimes it's really hard to get to that because it's like, Oh gosh, you're sending me like
0:47
an hour long video. Like I don't really have time to look at it. But for whatever reason,
0:50
I looked at this one because the guy was talking about abortion. And I was astonished seeing a
0:55
young pastor at a, at a well designed and nicely decorated church talking so fervently and forcefully
1:01
about the subject of abortion. And then I dug a little bit deeper and looked at some of his other
1:05
series that he's done in this particular sermon series where he was talking about abortion was a
1:08
sermon series called grace and truth. And so whenever I dug into that and dug into some of the subject
1:12
matter in there, I was like blown away that somebody was talking about this as kind of like a relevant
1:17
pastor or something like that. So this podcast is kind of unique where I'm talking to a pastor,
1:21
which we don't talk to a lot of lead pastors. But specifically, I just wanted to talk about this
1:25
series that he did. Okay, so we, we certainly talked about abortion, but we also talked about
1:29
God, you know, coming full in grace and truth, right, which is something that I talk about a lot
1:34
on this show. We also talked about sexuality and how you can kind of cover that right now.
1:37
But then we also dug into critical theory and kind of what critical theory is doing right now
1:41
in the church. Guys, I really enjoyed my conversation with this guy because, you know,
1:45
I'm always pretty skeptical of pastors because it's like, okay, are you just trying to get famous?
1:49
Are you trying to sell books? You know, are you just going to like bend over and take it someday
1:52
down the road whenever, you know, the culture is breathing down your neck? Who knows with a lot
1:56
of these guys, but I think this guy's legit. I really, really enjoyed my time and just seeing
2:01
some of the sermons that he's putting out. I think this is a guy that you should keep your eye on
2:04
and a guy that you should be supporting. And I don't want to keep him from you any longer.
2:07
So without further ado, let's get into it. Ryan Visconti, welcome to Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
2:12
Hey, Kyle. Thank you. Great to be with you. Hey, you know what? I haven't had a whole lot of
2:16
pastors on here. And I don't know if it's because I scare them with my questions or whatever thing
2:21
is, but I have a feeling that we're going to do a pretty good today. I have a feeling that we're
2:24
going to be doing all right. Because again, like I told you off air, you're wearing a very,
2:28
very flamboyant and loud shirt. And I mean that as a compliment. So that means you're a confident
2:31
guy. So you're not going to be scared by my questions. But the reason that I'm even not even
2:36
reached out to you to do this is because a fan of our show actually sent me the is abortion a sin
2:41
episode or a sermon that you delivered to your church earlier this summer. And so that was at the
2:46
time I didn't know this. I was part of a larger series called Grace and Truth. And so really,
2:51
I want to spend our time today focusing on that series and the ideas that you brought up. But I
2:55
guess a tagline for the series could go something like this. I pulled it off the website. The world
2:59
says that the truth is relative. But Jesus says his words are the truth. We need God's truth
3:05
and his grace. Now I'm triggered automatically by reading a sentence like that. Like it's hurting
3:11
my sensibilities. How dare you say that there's anything other than my truth, Ryan? How dare you?
3:17
Yeah. I mean, we live in this world today that has made truth totally relative. And that's just
3:23
kind of the woke mindset that it's not even my right to say what is true. Because that could somehow
3:29
offend your sense of what's true. And I've been more cognizant lately just of the need for truth
3:37
in the world and sensing that people, God's people, people who are searching for the Lord or for answers
3:44
is all I think people in general are just hungrier than ever for truth. And there's a way to deliver
3:50
truth and grace at the same time. So it's not just beating people up with the truth or using it as a
3:57
weapon, but really truth delivered alongside grace is freedom. It's what sets us free. The Bible says.
4:05
Well, I guess the part of that because I hit on that a lot, Ryan, just this concept because we
4:12
tell guys, keep seeking the line of Judah. I feel like the Lamb of God is overemphasized and the
4:16
line of Judah is not emphasized at all. And especially most churches, it's way easier to talk about
4:21
grace than it is to talk about truth. But the Scripture tells us that Jesus comes fully
4:25
both. He's not 50% one 50% the other. He's 100% both. So I guess how do you just to push
4:31
or leave it a little deeper into that aspect? How do you manage that whenever you have a current
4:36
flock of millennials and ginsiers that don't want to be told that something is true because
4:41
we've bought into the postmodern lie that truth is relative.
4:43
Yeah, and I think back to the kind of church I grew up in, very legalistic, lots of rules,
4:51
lots of judgment. And so then what you saw, the last couple of decades, this major pendulum swing
4:59
towards overemphasizing grace. And in some ways that needed to happen. We know we're saved by grace,
5:04
not by works. And it's a gift to know that God loves me no matter what I do, that He accepts me
5:10
no matter what I do. But then I've seen a lot of churches have started to shy away from
5:16
preaching the truth boldly. And now I think we need to kind of bring that back to a bit of balance.
5:22
And in the world today, where Gen Z millennials are increasingly just being told from universities
5:30
at the workplace, sensitivity training, saying, you know, you can't tell somebody that they're wrong
5:37
because they're not necessarily wrong. They have their own version of truth. Well, that just flies
5:41
completely in the face of what Jesus says. He says, I am the truth, not a truth, not my own
5:48
truth. He says, I am the truth. And no one comes to the father except by me. So if Jesus says that,
5:56
he's either crazy, a liar, or he is telling the truth. And we've got to decide how we're going to
6:03
view him. Yeah, that's CS Lewis's trilema, which I heard someone even the other day, we're adding
6:07
things to it. It's like, no, he could have just been wrong. It's like, ah, don't add to the trilema.
6:11
It's a trilema. But before we really dig into some of the sermons that you delivered during that
6:16
series, this is just a generic question about why would you even go into hard subjects? Okay. So
6:23
whenever I got your abortion series, and I was listening to it, you know, reminded me of some
6:27
series that I've or sermons that I heard Matt Chandler give back in the day. And Matt Chandler
6:31
is kind of scaring me with some of the critical race theory things. He's kind of pulling into some
6:34
of his sermon content. I got to be paying really close attention to that over the years to come.
6:39
But why go into the hard subjects? Because you know the drill as a pastor now on how to keep
6:44
butts in the seats, never ask about money, talk about sex once a year, don't ever mention demons,
6:50
and definitely don't talk about stuff that's going to make me uncomfortable. So more pastors
6:54
don't should be doing this, but they just don't really want to go near it. So I guess,
6:58
why do you wade into those waters? Why is this and why is that important?
7:03
Well, for a while, I think a lot of churches follow the seeker sensitive kind of saddleback
7:10
Rick Warren philosophy of doing ministry, the Willow Creek kind of seeker sensitive church,
7:18
like don't make church threatening, make it very accessible and easy and safe and comfortable for
7:24
people to come. And that's one of the things I heard a lot when I was first becoming a pastor,
7:28
was hey, like help people stay comfortable. Don't push them outside of their comfort zone.
7:33
And maybe there was a time when that made sense. I don't know, but I think that worked maybe
7:39
for a season, but now we have a different reality that we're facing. I think of the world we live
7:44
in today as being more like wartime conditions than peacetime conditions. The stakes have been ramped
7:52
up. Culture is becoming increasingly at odds with Christianity. So when I think about preaching
7:58
to my church, I'm thinking these are Christians who they live in a world that they're being
8:04
constantly bombarded with all these different ideologies, messages at work, messages in school,
8:10
and they're starting even Christians are starting to wonder, am I even allowed to believe what the
8:15
Bible says anymore? Am I even allowed to think that or are the thought police going to come along
8:20
and arrest me? Am I going to get fired? Say what the Bible says? Am I actually right? Or maybe I'm
8:27
just close minded? And I have sensed over the last years, people just becoming less certain
8:33
about what they believe. And so I started feeling convicted more lately the last year. I'm kind of
8:40
wired this way anyway to be direct and bold, but people need the truth and they actually want it.
8:47
There are people who will not receive it. There are people who do not want to be pushed out of their
8:52
comfort zone, but the majority of people want the truth. So I think now more than ever churches need
9:00
to teach the truth and teach it boldly. Because if I can't as a pastor preach the truth with boldness
9:08
and confidence, how am I supposed to expect, you know, Joe six pack to go out to work on Monday
9:14
and actually live as a Christian? If I can't be bold in church, how is he supposed to do it at
9:19
the job site? Right in the worst case scenario for a lot of these people is being called a name,
9:24
right? I mean, for these people that they don't want to stand up in school and they don't want to
9:27
stand up at their workplace and say, Hey, this whole like struggle session that you're putting
9:31
me through right now is is not right. And certainly they don't want to lean on the Bible because the
9:35
Bible is just an amalgamation of a bunch of patriarchal, you know, horrific stories that were just made
9:41
up, you know, hundreds of years after Jesus died, apparently, that's what we're being told to believe.
9:45
But I think the thing that is also very important here is most people aren't seeing boldness from
9:50
their pastors, which is exactly why I asked you about these hard subjects because it's like,
9:54
I've been begging pastors because there's a pastor of a enormous church, perhaps the largest church
9:59
in the country right down the road from me. And he simply will not talk about tough subjects.
10:03
He won't talk about critical race theory. He won't talk about fundamentalist Islam. He won't
10:06
talk about transgenderism. And all the while his flock is confused about how to think biblically
10:11
about these things, which the onus is on them to kind of figure it out. Right. But again, as a
10:16
pastor, it's like, you're going to have to give an account someday for how you shepherd did your flock.
10:20
I'm not like if I go to XYZ church, like I don't I don't have to go in there and be like, Oh, I'm
10:25
gonna have to give an account for me not calling out the pastor that one day. The onus is on you. So
10:29
I think that really dovetails nicely into the very first sermon that you delivered in that series
10:33
called tough and tender. And it's really focusing around how we need God's truth and grace. You know,
10:39
we love the grace part. It's like our favorite thing, right? Because it's so easy to understand
10:43
the truth part kind of sucks. We don't like that as much. So can you kind of give us an idea of what
10:47
you said in that sermon and then we'll dig a little bit more into it. Yeah. And I just want to give
10:51
credit to Mark Drisk like I heard him use that phrase years ago that Jesus is both tough and tender.
10:57
And it really resonated with me. And I think it's a totally different way to think about
11:03
being a Christian. When I when I was growing up as a young teenager in church, I got I got
11:08
presented with this idea that Christian men are supposed to be like nice sweet boys who don't get
11:14
in fights who don't argue who don't yell raise their voices. And really it's kind of an emasculated
11:21
version of Christianity that was presented to me. And it never really resonated with me. I am not
11:26
putting people down who maybe it does resonate with them. But I was kind of like, Hey, where's
11:32
where's the Jesus I see in the Bible who's flipping over tables and making a whip, you know, to drive
11:37
the money changers out of the temple. So there's got to be it's kind of like these two sides of Jesus.
11:42
And one doesn't get emphasized enough in this current age. And what we see in the Bible is that
11:47
Jesus tends to be very tender towards the broken hearted. And that's that's good for all of us
11:53
even as guys like there are times when I'm broken and my spirit is crushed. And the Bible says the
12:00
Lord is close to the broken hearted. And really that comes out of us in humility coming to him and
12:05
saying, I can't do this on my own. I need you humbling myself knowing that if I humble myself,
12:11
no matter how bad I've blown it, Jesus will comfort me and he'll lift me up. Sometimes we
12:16
all need that. On the other hand, he is tough towards those who are hard hearted and particularly
12:23
the religious hard hearted. And there's a lot of those types of people in churches as well,
12:29
all across America, there's a lot of judgy hard hearted critical Christians who are looking to put
12:36
people down and look down their nose on other sinners. And man, Jesus has this way, when you're
12:42
hard hearted, out of love, he is not afraid to bring the hammer down and help stop tenderize you
12:50
up a little bit, right? And he does it out of love, honestly, because sometimes we have to get broken
12:55
down so he can build us back up. Yeah, I think you brought up some that's interesting and I have a
12:59
lot of guys that are kind of more in the reformed category, right? And I kind of like to poke funded
13:03
them because I align with a lot of things that they believe. But then I'm like, guys, guys, do you
13:08
realize that, you know, over your IPAs and through your mustaches, you've been arguing for the last
13:14
five hours about three words in the Greek? Like, is this, is this moving the needle right now?
13:20
And it's like, it's like we're missing out on, you know, john 133435, like we're gonna be defined by
13:25
our love for one another, because we've got to be right on this theological issue. But there is a
13:29
line with everything pastor, I mean, there's a line where your theology has to be right somewhere.
13:33
So I guess for you in, in that, you know, trying to coalesce tough and tender, where is that line
13:39
for people? Like, where's that line where it's like, okay, here's all the salvific stuff. Here's the
13:43
other crap that we're just going to figure out later who is right once we get to heaven, we'll
13:47
clink our glasses together and figure it out. What's that line? Well, I think this is a really
13:52
helpful leadership framework. So for just kind of a side, side note, I think it's related.
13:57
Anyone who's leading a business, anyone who might be a ministry leader, when you think about leading
14:03
people or interacting with people, the way I respond to people has a lot to do with how they,
14:11
how they present their challenges and their issues to me in terms of that tough and tender mindset,
14:15
like some people they come and they are, they're brokenhearted, they're humble, they're asking for
14:20
help. Those are the people, even if they've made a mistake or they've blown it, man, I want to
14:25
respond like Jesus and be gentle the way that I would want to receive mercy as well. But sometimes,
14:30
you know, as a pastor who has a staff that I lead, you also deal with people who are hard-headed,
14:36
they're stubborn, they're defiant, those are the times when it is justifiable to crack some skulls.
14:44
And whether you're a business leader or a ministry leader, man, that's what Jesus was doing. But
14:49
when Peter stepped out of line and started swinging swords in the Garden of Gethsemane,
14:55
Jesus rebuked him. That was a tough rebuke. But then later, after the resurrection,
15:00
you saw Jesus gently and kindly restored him in a state of brokenness. So I think that's a helpful
15:07
framework to have. When it comes to issues of doctrine, you know, we really, I do think, need to
15:12
think more big picture about primary versus secondary issues. I have a lot of guys who are
15:18
reformed friends as well. And I admire a lot about guys in that camp. And I actually, in a lot of
15:24
ways, I'm drawn to that way of thinking. But it's because I think in a lot of ways,
15:29
I want to figure things out and quantify them and qualify them and define them. And yet,
15:36
sometimes people get too caught up in secondary details and issues of doctrine that truthfully,
15:42
we just can't always know definitively the right or wrong, you know, positioning my issues.
15:48
Well, and they're not allowing room for anybody else to enter the discussion.
15:52
So there's a prominent pastor that I hope we'll talk to someday, you know, and I'm going to bring
15:57
up this issue. But he does not want to hear a single argument against abortion that doesn't
16:03
have scripture involved in it. And I understand why he thinks that way, because without the Bible,
16:09
without knowing that we don't have this inherent idea of the Amago day, we don't have that from
16:14
from anywhere else, right? We don't get that from the writings of of Marx or Nietzsche or,
16:18
you know, anybody else, we get that from the Bible from Genesis. But at the same time,
16:22
there's a lot of other arguments that will go at someone else's heart. If I try to argue with
16:27
somebody using only the Bible and yet they think the Bible is nonsense, they think the Bible should
16:32
basically be used to clean up diarrhea. I'm not going to appeal to them making that argument. I
16:37
maybe need to use philosophy or reason or stoicism or something like that to kind of more so get
16:43
through that. But hey, this is an interview. I feel like I'm doing my own podcast. I want to
16:46
move on here, because I really enjoyed kind of the second sermon that you did in that series as well,
16:51
where you dealt with godly sexuality, which again, how dare you, you big it? How dare you tell people
16:56
to how to act sexually? What's wrong with you? But to kind of give our listeners a little bit of
16:59
an overview of what you covered with godly sexuality. Yeah, you know, the world is doing this thing
17:05
right now called choice architecture where they say you either affirm homosexuality, transgenderism,
17:12
etc., or else you're a hater or you're a bigot, right? It's either my way or I'm going to slander
17:18
you and your character. And so we're coming at it from, you know, step one, how did god design
17:24
sexuality? He created one man and one woman to enjoy sex in marriage. And that's it. In marriage,
17:32
it's a good thing. It's a gift outside of marriage, although it can be pleasurable. It leads to
17:39
destruction and pain and disappointment. Now the devil, he takes, he always does this, the devil
17:45
counterfeits the good things that god created as gifts and he twists them and perhaps in no other
17:51
area more than in sexuality. That's why throughout history, idea, idol worship, all kinds of false
17:56
religions, they always go back to twisted sexuality. So here, I think this is one of the issues that
18:02
weighs on Christians maybe more than anything right now because even if you were raised Christian
18:07
or or whatever, you probably got someone in your family or a co-worker who identifies as gay
18:13
or one of the letters and you're thinking, well, how do I, how do I be kind to that person and love
18:19
that person without compromising my beliefs? Especially when the world is telling me that makes me a
18:24
hater or a bigot if I don't affirm them. And so that's where I go, hey, it's not really about me,
18:30
my opinion or what I think it's about how God designed the world. It's what God says. God created
18:36
sex between one man and one woman in marriage, one natural born man and one natural born woman
18:42
in marriage. God created us to have gender identities. They're not fluid. They're fixed at birth. And
18:49
so this is causing so much confusion with Christians. They're wondering, you know, what should they
18:55
say about this? What should they, should they go to their cousin's gay wedding if they, you know,
19:00
want to be in relationship with that family member? How do they handle it going forward?
19:05
And I think that's something that we we really need to talk about more in churches that it's okay
19:11
for us to be different than the world into not affirm sexual sin. Even though all day long the
19:18
world will say, hey, this is okay. Love is love. It's it's doesn't matter, you know, what it looks
19:24
like as long as two consensual adults. We as Christians though, we come along, we say it does matter because
19:30
God has made it very clear that when you practice sexuality outside of his framework, it will hurt
19:36
you. It will lead to your own pain. So whether that's homosexuality, a guy looking at pornography
19:44
on the internet, sleeping with his girlfriend and taking advantage of her rather than marrying her,
19:48
whatever it is, if it's out of God's framework, he says it's not good and he's not trying to take
19:53
away your fun. He's trying to protect you from pain. So churches, I mean, we need we need to be
19:59
more bold on this issue. And I'll be honest, even as a pastor, I get a little bit of those just
20:04
butterflies in my stomach get ready to talk about something like this because you're like, man,
20:08
this is going to step on some toes. I'm going to get some emails, probably going to have some
20:12
people leave the church. And every time I do talk about it, those things happen. But as a Christian,
20:18
not just as a pastor, I've got to be committed to teaching the truth, to speaking the truth
20:25
out of love for other people. Well, that's one of the things that I really love your answer there
20:29
because we've seen a cultural shift where I think it was a himming way that was like, you know,
20:34
how do things change gradually? And then all at once, why it was kind of something like that. I
20:38
think I messed the quote up, but it used to be, Hey, just leave us alone. Let us love who we love
20:42
and just, you know, stay, keep your morality out of my bedroom. And now it's like, you will watch
20:46
me make out with my boyfriend and you will like it and you will celebrate it and you will post a
20:50
rainbow on Facebook, Facebook, if not, you're a big, you're a horrible person. But it's this whole
20:55
attitude of celebrating sin. And when I have people come to me and ask me, should I go to my brother's
21:01
wedding, his gay wedding, should I go to my friend from high school's gay wedding,
21:05
I'm realizing there's no pastor for them to ask. They're asking a dude that talks to them through
21:10
their podcast app and their phone. And basically, what I tell them is you wouldn't go to another
21:15
celebration of sin anywhere else in the world. If your father was a raging and violent alcoholic,
21:20
you would not go to a five hour celebration of the fact that he does those things.
21:24
So why in the world would you affirm that? But at the same time, I say, you better be the first
21:28
couple, you and your wife or whatever that offers to have them over to your house for dinner after
21:33
they get married. That's how you love on those people, but you don't celebrate their sin. That's
21:36
what I would say. But I guess, pastor, what would you say to the churches? Because I was listening
21:41
to a podcast today where there were two Christians, one used to be gay and now he's celibate and
21:47
he'll be celibate for the rest of his life. And then we have this other guy who is openly homosexual,
21:51
that is homosexuality affirming and he affirms all the transgenderism and all those different
21:56
things. What do you say to those ministries that just want to affirm these people because they say
22:00
you can't love them unless you accept them? Yeah. And I've heard many prominent pastors
22:07
pretty much promoting that idea. I think that these churches, they start with the right intentions
22:14
thinking that they're going to be loving and welcoming. And there's even times when I've
22:18
really wrestled with this, how can I be loving and welcoming to those who might not otherwise
22:24
feel like they fit in here? But there is quickly a point where you cross a line from being warm
22:31
and welcoming to being actually unintentionally hurtful because you deceive people and you rob
22:38
them from the opportunity to fully pick up their cross and follow Jesus. And I'll just use a little
22:43
bit of a personal story. Years ago, I remember when I was younger, I had a lesbian couple in my
22:49
church and I wanted to make them feel loved and welcomed. And so I just kept bending over backwards
22:54
trying to make them feel comfortable and let them kind of get as involved as they could without
23:00
violating any real clear boundaries. And I'll just say short version is it ended up blowing up in my
23:06
face. And I realized out of that that I should have been more direct and upfront with them even more
23:12
clearly that in order to follow Jesus, you have got to lay aside all sexual sin. You've got to lay
23:20
aside sin and follow Him in general. You've got to just you've got to die to yourself and what you
23:25
want, pick up your cross and follow Him. And really, if they choose to walk out the door at that point,
23:31
that's between them and God. Hopefully my prayer is that they would choose Jesus over their sexual
23:37
preferences. And so churches are trying to reach lost people. They're wanting to make the doors,
23:43
you know, as wide open as possible. But then what happens is people come in who are LGBT,
23:48
they're looking oftentimes not for the truth, but they're looking for a church to affirm them in
23:54
their sin. And I get that all the time being a younger guy, people think, Oh, you must be
23:58
affirming because you're young. And so you're probably cool with me, right? Like, and I'm like,
24:01
no, man, I believe the Bible doesn't believe the matter if I'm 36 years old or whatever. I'm talking
24:06
about what God says here. So I know it's actually in people's it's for people's own good that they
24:13
know upfront. Hey, in order to get involved here in order to serve in order to get in any kind of
24:19
leadership role, you cannot have ongoing, unrepentant sin in your life. So I would encourage pastors,
24:26
you got to actually be more upfront about that. And I've been hearing from church planters in
24:31
urban areas around the country, large cities that tend to be very secular. They're learning
24:36
that more and more they need to be clear and upfront with people. Otherwise it just ends up
24:42
blowing up in their faces on the back end. Well, and the funny thing about that is I don't feel
24:47
like there's a win anywhere for anybody. And you really elucidate elucidated that perfectly.
24:52
Because I remember when Carl Lince, you know, before his fall from grace, he couldn't bring himself
24:58
to say that homosexuality was wrong and was a sin because he's on Oprah and he's in front
25:02
of Katie Couric and he's, you know, he's on the view or whatever he was at, whatever he was doing
25:06
at the time. And it's like, who's your target audience for this? Like, you're you trying to
25:10
lie to people to get them into the kingdom? Like, because if they ever find out that you're a fraud,
25:15
which here we are, then they're going to feel like their faith is somehow a fault. Like,
25:20
look at all the people that are having a tax of faith right now because they were saved at a
25:24
Ravi Zacharias event. And they're like, was I really saved? I mean, this guy was a horrible
25:29
sexual predator. Like, and now they're having this inner dialogue about whether or not they're
25:33
saved, which is ridiculous. Because of course they are if they've actually accepted Christ and
25:37
became a disciple of him. But but anyway, I'm kind of getting off topic, but that really goes
25:40
into again with Carl Lynch, the abortion issue came up with him. And he couldn't just say it was
25:45
a softball question. It's like, here you go. Hit this one out of the park. Is murdering a human
25:50
being and stamping out the amago day sin? Or is it not? Is there an easier question for a pastor
25:56
aside from does God exist? But you did an entire sermon series or entire sermon on abortion being
26:02
sinful. But you talked about it in a lot of different ways, which, you know, we'll get into
26:06
the political side of it here in just a second. But why do an entire sermon on this topic? Why
26:11
not just mention it? Because some pastors, they'll just, whoop, they'll just drop it in, you know,
26:15
for 30 seconds here or there a few times a year, because they don't want to make anyone mad.
26:19
And then I guess why go so hard, right? Why not do the whole like, you know, tip towing through
26:23
the tool? It's kind of thing to make sure nobody gets offended. Yeah. You know, the first
26:28
thing that tends to happen as a pastor when you talk about abortion is you think about the people
26:34
who've had abortions. And I, you know, a lot of pastors, they just really sensitive hearts and
26:40
there's nothing wrong with that. They start thinking, you know, man, there's people in my
26:43
congregation. They've had abortions and I don't want to make them feel ashamed and I don't want
26:47
to make them feel crushed. But what I have found over the years is the more I talk about abortion,
26:54
the more I get messages from women who've had abortions who say, please talk about this,
27:00
please be direct about it because it's so painful. It causes so much damage and we don't want anyone
27:06
else to go through what we've been through. So while I always want to let anyone who's had an
27:11
abortion or a guy who maybe encouraged his girlfriend to have an abortion, no, there is forgiveness
27:17
for that sin and God can show you mercy for that. Absolutely. I want to be really clear and upfront
27:23
that this is murder, there is no and if or buts about it. And the world tries to justify in all
27:30
kinds of ways talking about when life begins versus when it doesn't, they want to talk about
27:35
different circumstances. What about if you were raped? What about if there's a deficiency, a birth
27:39
effect? And at the end of the day, it is clear cut murder, violating one of the 10 commandments
27:46
thou shall not kill. It's got to be one of the most clear cut issues for Christianity. And I don't
27:53
understand why so many Christians allow themselves to vote for pro-choice politicians who are furthering
28:02
the cause of abortion in our own country. Almost a million babies in America alone aborted per year
28:09
and Christians are sitting around debating secondary issues about immigration and tax policy. It's like
28:15
if we can't get the abortion thing right, we deserve, in my honest opinion, we deserve God's
28:22
judgment in a lot of ways. If we can't get something that basic right. Well, it's even nefarious inside
28:28
the church, Ryan, because even guys that I like that I respect guys that listen to this podcast,
28:33
they've said things to me before like, well, you know, I'm very, very pro-life. But gosh,
28:38
if the woman was raped, I just don't know. Or, you know, if the woman's life was at risk, which
28:43
they don't realize is a silly argument because you don't have to kill the baby to save the mother's
28:47
life, you can try to deliver baby. You can try to save both lives. And sometimes that's just not
28:51
possible. But the thing about is it's like, this isn't a pervasive attitude, even in a conservative
28:56
part of an affluent city in the middle of Oklahoma, right? And so just think about it as you get
29:01
closer to the blue centers of different big cities and things like that. Even Christians,
29:06
they think they're being loving by saying, ah, we should probably stamp out that baby because
29:11
why would we want to do the injustice to that woman of making her, you know, she's 13 years old and
29:15
was raped by her uncle. We want her to carry that baby. What I would do is I would give them two
29:19
envelopes. One of them has an ultrasound image of that baby and one an ultrasound image of a
29:24
baby from a loving family. And this is their first fourth child and have them tell me which one was
29:28
the rape baby because if they can't figure it out beyond a shadow of a doubt, I don't want to hear
29:33
it. But again, most pastors don't want to go that hard. And the thing that I was shocked by,
29:37
I was honestly shocked, Ryan, when you talked about voting, not just a second ago in the sermon,
29:43
because most pastors, they'll get real, real ballsy, right? They'll start beating their
29:47
chest and they're saying, it's murder. And it's this and it's that. And they want to talk about
29:51
all these issues, but they won't take that logical next step and say, if you vote for somebody that
29:56
is pro baby murder, you're doing a wrong thing. You're doing a sinful thing. It's sin by fiat
30:03
type of a thing. So I guess why did you take that extra step, which is to say, you shouldn't be
30:08
voting for anybody that supports this. Yeah, to me, it's just the logical conclusion and saying what
30:14
needs to be said, nobody wants to have their pastor get up and say, vote for this candidate
30:19
specifically. That would probably leave a bad taste in most people's mouth. And you know,
30:23
you're all grown adults can make your own decisions who you should vote for. But I do feel like it's
30:28
okay to say you should not vote for XYZ candidate based on that person's support for abortion rights,
30:38
and a pro murder of children. And you know, the truth is that as last I checked, there was only
30:45
one pro life Democrat in all of the US Congress left, I believe in Texas. And up until recently,
30:53
it was only a handful before that. So I would get up and say, you know, you don't have to vote for my
30:58
you know, favorite candidate, you don't even have to vote for one particular party. But as a Christian,
31:04
who knows, abortion is murder. How are you going to vote for a pro choice candidate? And then people
31:10
will bring up these issues like, well, yeah, there's all these other important human rights issues and
31:14
matters of loving people. It's not just abortion. Yeah, but abortion is the one thing where one out
31:20
of every one baby aborted dies. You can talk about immigration policy and tax policy and social
31:27
programs all day and debate the intricacies of that. And let's just be honest, most of it's
31:32
more complex than I could even wrap my mind around. But as a simple man, I look at abortion and I go,
31:38
if babies are getting aborted, one out of every one of those babies lose the opportunity to live
31:44
life, live for the Lord and make a difference in this world. If that baby was conceived in rape,
31:49
that baby does not deserve to be punished for the sins of his or her father. If that mother's life
31:56
is in danger, like you said, the medical procedure is to deliver the baby early, not intentionally
32:05
kill the baby. And those instances are very rare. So in real life, in real life, when you look at the
32:12
stats, the majority and it's like 95% plus closer to 97% of the times when babies are murdered,
32:20
it really comes down to convenience. Babies are aborted for convenience. It will affect my mental
32:27
health. Well, what does that really mean? It's going to bum me out to have a baby. It's going to
32:31
affect my socioeconomic well-being. What does that mean? It means it's going to interfere with my job,
32:37
my career to have a baby. So people are using abortion as birth control and it is just unacceptable
32:43
for anyone who believes that the Bible is God's word. I think we can't vote as Christians for people
32:49
who are pro-choice. Well, when people say they're worried about the health of the mother,
32:53
that's an nefarious thing they're doing with language because you just brought it up there.
32:57
Well, there's physical health, but there's also psychological health. There's financial health.
33:01
What kind of health are we discussing at this point? And again, yes, the people are going to
33:05
think I told you to say that because I say that all the time. It's about convenience. I don't know
33:09
who the dad is. I'm in college right now. Now's just not really a good time. And so they're expecting
33:13
all of us to go, okay, I get it. You should definitely murder that child. It makes total sense. You're
33:18
busy with class. Okay, I totally get it. So, but I really think it comes down to a seared consciousness,
33:24
right? And you talk about this with political with political candidates. If that person
33:29
can't surmise through their own judgment that what's growing inside of a woman's stomach,
33:36
my wife is pregnant right now, right? What's growing inside of her stomach is not worthy of
33:39
life and protection. Then why should we trust that person's judgment on tax policy or immigration
33:45
policy or foreign policy? Why should we trust it? Because they have a seared conscious. Like,
33:49
why would we ever go that route? And a lot of it is downstream from a lot of the things we're seeing
33:53
change at the foundation of the country, which goes into the last sermon you did in that series,
33:58
which was talking about critical theory. And you specifically pitted critical theory against
34:02
Christianity and critical theory. And you know, when you go back to the Frankfurt school and back
34:06
to Marxism, those are the things that are really foundationally tearing at what we're trying to do
34:12
as a country and as a people. So I guess just most generically, why even take on the concept
34:18
of critical theory from the pulpit? Well, it has permeated all throughout culture. And I,
34:24
I don't even think I realized until recent years how it was at the root of so much of the culture
34:31
war taking place between Christianity and the secular world that we live in, tearing down the
34:37
nuclear family, tearing down those in positions of authority, fighting against biblical, let's
34:44
call them Judeo-Christian values. Really, all this stuff is stemming out of critical theory.
34:50
And it's a very mixed, complicated bag that makes it a little hard for Christians to wade through.
34:58
Because there are some things within it that smell like they could be legit. For example,
35:04
if you knew about, you know, let's say someone who's a minority facing legitimate injustice,
35:11
you should care about that, right? That's obviously something I would care about. And it's,
35:16
I would be upset about it. So they take things like that, critical theory takes a race issue
35:21
like that and it intertwines it with sexuality and gender identity and rebellion against authority.
35:29
So this is a really complex, it was actually a really hard sermon to condense down to 40 minutes
35:36
or so. But I think Christians need to be aware of critical theory, which includes critical race
35:43
theory and how that is what's shaping so much of the message behind all the TV shows we're watching,
35:49
the sensitivity training, all the power struggles at work where people are playing the victim cards
35:55
constantly. And so it's a big problem right now. So we'll get more into some of the kind of
36:01
tendrils that come out of a sermon like that. But let's just start at the most basic level.
36:05
And this is an almost impossible thing for people to do just to find critical theory for us.
36:10
Yeah, it's basically a power system, which says that those who are in positions of power are
36:20
oppressors, it pits everyone is either an oppressor or oppressed. And it seeks to tear down those
36:26
in positions of a power who are oppressors and replace them with those who are oppressed.
36:32
Critical theory also includes a concept called intersectionality, which is where you really hit
36:39
on all these characteristics that identify us. For example, intersectionality would be like,
36:46
the ultimate oppressor is a white male, straight, cisgender, Christian man. So like, I would be
36:54
Darth Vader. Yeah, exactly. Evil villain according to critical theory. And so this is where all this
37:01
stuff about white privilege comes from, all this stuff about the patriarchy is coming from is
37:07
critical theory. And critical, it's basically saying that we need to take guys like me,
37:12
tear them down from their positions of authority, and then replace them with oppressed people groups.
37:17
Well, oppressed people groups are the opposite of basically what I am. It'd be a lesbian,
37:24
let's say non-white, transgender, immigrant. That would be like the ultimate oppressed person
37:32
according to intersectionality. And that's why a lot of guys, this might make more sense when
37:37
you think about it this way, you always see people playing these these victim cards like,
37:41
well, as a person of color who's gay and also from a inner city, why are they throwing all these
37:49
things down? Well, according to intersectionality and critical theory, the more oppressed you are,
37:55
the more power you're supposed to be given, the more valid your opinion should become, the more we
38:01
should all listen to you, the more we should step aside and empower you. And so what it does is it
38:07
actually promotes victimhood in people. And we can all see how destructive that is to go around
38:14
telling people that they're victims, raising kids to see themselves as victims. Well, critical theory
38:19
rewards that because the more of a victim you are, the more power you now have in society.
38:25
So it's affecting a lot of the way that we interact with people in the workplace in general.
38:31
Yeah, not just the workplace, but also in church, because I feel like Christians are so gullible to
38:37
critical theory and specifically critical race theory, especially because all the nonsense I
38:41
went down, you know, one summer ago, but also they're very naive on this subject. I was sitting down
38:46
with a good buddy of mine. He's a, you know, he's a smart guy. He and I went to college together.
38:50
And this is maybe a year, year and a half ago. And I mentioned the word Marxism.
38:54
And he went blank. He had no idea what I was talking about. He had never heard of it,
38:59
never heard of Marxism. And so after I kind of like, you know, got my bearings back,
39:03
I tried to explain it in basic terms. And I'm like, man, this is a guy with kids and he's in
39:07
the church right now. And you know, if the pastor started spouting off critical race theory nonsense,
39:13
he's going to be caught completely flat footed. Yeah, he might feel uncomfortable, but he's not
39:17
going to know what to do. So I guess why are Christians so gullible and naive on this subject?
39:21
How did we get here? Well, it's because it plays off of a lot of legitimate Christian concepts.
39:28
But like everything, the devil, he's smart. He counterfeits things. He twists things up in a way
39:33
that he confuses us between truth and lies. And so for example, Jesus, he legitimately comes
39:41
to free the captive. He legitimately comes to bring justice to the oppressed.
39:46
And so as a Christian who believes the Bible is true, you hear something like that and you go,
39:51
yes, sweet. So when people start talking about critical race theory and they say, hey, man,
39:55
we got to support oppressed people groups. It's really easy to say, yeah, let's do it without even
40:02
thinking to ask more questions. Well, what do you mean by oppressed? And what do we need to do to
40:07
help them? Well, because critical theory sometimes identifies legit problems, but it doesn't offer
40:13
legit biblical solutions. So there could be legitimate problems of racial injustice in our
40:21
society, let's say. But critical theory would say the answer to that is to tear it all down
40:26
and replace those who are in power with those who have been oppressed. Well, that is antithetical
40:32
to biblical principle and teaching, which talks about honoring authority. Jesus really came to
40:38
build up. You never see Jesus build tearing anything down. He builds up. It's hard to build up. It's
40:44
hard to improve upon. It's easy to tear a house down and burn it all to the ground. It's hard to
40:50
improve something that needs some work. But that's really where we have to do the hard work is we
40:55
have to improve. We have to work a little. And then at the same time, Christianity says, we are never
41:01
going to fix all of our problems on this earth. We can try and we should try to do good,
41:08
but we can never stop all evil and injustice as long as humanity exists on the earth.
41:14
Critical theory would say, no, no, no, we've got to do whatever it takes to end all suffering. Even
41:21
if that means we've got to tear the whole system down, burn it all to the ground. That's what we'll
41:26
do in the name of ending suffering and injustice. The funny thing is when you ask proponents of
41:31
critical theory and critical race theory, well, what do you do? Once you've empowered the oppressed,
41:36
what stops them from becoming the oppressors? None of them have an answer for that. They'll
41:41
all be like, well, we never really thought about that. So it's pretty, it's pretty funny.
41:46
Well, because that's what utopianism is in this kind of worldview, there are no limiting principles.
41:51
And what they don't realize is the revolution will always eat its own because it has to,
41:56
because, and you have all these people, you know, they posted the black square on Instagram last
42:00
year. And you know, they, they knelt down and posted a picture with their mask on. And then
42:04
someone finds a off color joke that they said when they were seven years old. And also it's like,
42:09
no, no, no, don't kill me, please, please don't kill me. It's like, sorry, the revolution has to
42:13
eat its own. But I really appreciate you letting us kind of go through all of those sermons that
42:17
were in that series. And guys, I do have that in the show notes for you. So you can check that
42:20
out. But I do want to transition a little bit as we work ourselves towards the interview here.
42:24
Again, as I mentioned off the top of the show, I kind of gave gave my hand away a little bit talking
42:27
about the lion of Judah. So for you specifically, if you had to say and be honest, because you have
42:32
to be honest, because you're talking on a podcast, it's illegal to lie in the last year in the last
42:36
12 months of speaking before your congregation. Have you mentioned the lamb of God more or the lion
42:40
of Judah more? Man, I don't know if I've really even mentioned either of them. But I can see,
42:48
you know, why you you would more emphasize the lamb than the lion. There is kind of this feeling
42:57
that when you talk about the lion of Judah, it's almost like, well, you know, is that kind of just
43:03
chauvinistic macho kind of thinking. And it's like, no, I mean, we're really supposed to see
43:10
both those sides of who Jesus Christ is at the same time. Really, you can't appreciate either
43:17
without seeing them both at the same time. Yeah. And so again, that goes to the whole concept
43:22
of grace and truth. And you know, I had a buddy actually sent me a screen recording of this. So
43:26
shout out to Matt Grassmeyer for doing this for me a while ago. He went to a very famous Bible
43:30
app and he searched for Lamb of God in the plan section. And he just scroll just kept flicking
43:35
for two minutes. Lamb of God, Lamb of God, Lamb of God, Lamb of God, Lamb of God. Then he searched
43:39
for Lion of Judah. Six plans popped up. Three of them were mine, right? And so it's like,
43:45
it's something that is not really discussed. Now, this is why I think it's so. So I'd like to hear
43:50
if you agree with this or if you have another explanation, I think the Lamb of God is very digestible,
43:55
very easy to understand the idea of this somehow white blonde haired blue eyed Jesus, not a Middle
44:02
Eastern carpenter Jew going around and like kissing people on the tips of their noses and
44:06
giving them high fives. That seems really, really nice and really, really easy. The Lion of Judah,
44:11
you know, clearing the temple, as we saw in Matthew, I think it was Matthew 21, you know,
44:16
clearing out the temple, right, you know, premeditated aggression and anger, right? It doesn't sound
44:21
very Christ-like, you know, coming back with a tattoo on his leg and his robe dipped in blood and,
44:26
you know, you can look at it as an allegory, but you know, a sword coming out of his mouth type of
44:29
a thing. I think it's because the Lion of Judah is just way too scary and most pastors are pansies.
44:35
Am I wrong? You're not wrong. You are not wrong. The world that we live in, it likes the soft,
44:43
sweet, tender hearted, hair flipping Jesus, kissing babies and hugging hurting people.
44:50
But this is actually one of the biggest problems in American Christianity is that not enough
44:55
Christians see Jesus as their king and as the commander of heaven's armies. This is why we have
45:02
so much, so many challenges as Christians today actually doing what Jesus says to do because we
45:07
think of him as just another buddy who's giving us suggestions about how to live our lives.
45:12
And in reality, he is the king of all kings. And if we had true respect for who he is and his role
45:19
as the victorious, conquering king of kings, the Lion of Judah, we would quickly kneel down in
45:26
submission and obey every single thing he tells us to do to the best of our ability. And we would
45:31
still say thank you for your mercy and grace when we blow it. But we wouldn't be so flippant about,
45:37
oh yeah, maybe one of these days I'm going to get around to living for Jesus. Oh yeah,
45:40
maybe one of these days I'm going to stop sinning. I know I need to work on that someday.
45:43
Well, you're thinking of Jesus like he's your BFF and not like he's your king. Like he's your,
45:48
like he's the Lion of Judah. And so I think this really, you know, other cultures tend to have a
45:55
better, they do, they tend to do better than we do at recognizing authority and the benefits of
46:02
authority figures in our lives, both for our blessing and protection. And this is one of the
46:07
things most missing from American Christianity. It comes from our independent nature, our rebellious
46:12
streak. It's kind of how our country got its start, you know, we're kind of rebels at heart.
46:17
And so we don't want anyone telling us what to do, but people need to understand the sooner you
46:21
submit your life to Christ and recognize him as your king, the better your life is going to be.
46:27
And the great thing is you're submitting and following a king, you're submitting to and following a king
46:32
who is victorious. So he leads you into victory in every part of your life. So that's what my
46:37
encouragement to people do it. Yeah, absolutely. And some of you brought up there that made me
46:41
think about this episode 176 of this podcast. I don't have all my podcasts memorized, but I just
46:46
get asked about this one constantly. It's called contemporary worship music is for women and
46:50
effeminate men. And part of it. Yeah, I'll have to send that to you later. I think you might enjoy
46:55
it. But part of the thing that I think we've gotten to this place, and I go into a long philosophy
47:00
and a lot of other episodes, but I think specifically contemporary Christian music talks about Jesus
47:06
as if he's our boyfriend. They refer to God as if he's our best friend or if he's our buddy.
47:11
And so we don't get the right relationship in our brains as to how we should look at the
47:15
triune God. Because if someone's a boyfriend, that means they're replaceable. If someone's
47:19
your buddy, that means that you can get a new buddy. And that's just not really how this is set up.
47:23
And I think contemporary worship music that doesn't really focus on the grandeur and an
47:28
omni everything of God is not doing us any favors, but specifically to men. Because I've spent my
47:33
entire life not in church, but when I started going to church as a teenager, looking at the screen
47:37
and looking at these words and I'm like, yeah, I don't think I want to sing that. And it took me
47:41
years to realize, Oh, it's because it's homo erotic. Yeah, because I'm singing to some Middle Eastern
47:46
Jew named Jesus about how much I want to embrace them in my arms and cuddle up with them. And it's
47:51
going to be so fun in the meadow. And so I feel like and I and I've not watched any of your your
47:55
church's worship services. So hopefully I'm not offending anybody that's on staff there. But
48:00
do you feel like that is playing a role? Because guys have responded in a big way to that episode,
48:04
like, Oh my gosh, this has been the problem the whole time. And I didn't realize it.
48:08
Is there an onus that we need need to be putting on these right-brained artistic worship leaders
48:13
to be like, Hey, consider the men when you're picking your songs? Absolutely. And this is
48:18
actually a subject I'm very passionate about. I preached a series called a sacrifice of praise.
48:23
And a whole sermon was called worship as warfare. And I believe that that is a huge issue. And it's
48:29
one of the reasons why men don't really participate in a lot of churches during the singing and the
48:34
praising time. Because they do feel so ostracized, not every single church, but a lot of churches.
48:38
When it comes to music, it's very feminine. It's led by women. And then or you get these guys on stage
48:46
who maybe in their hearts are pure, but they just kind of have a feminine artistic nature.
48:51
And it just it's off putting right from the get go a lot of times. And then you get into the lyrics
48:56
of some of these songs. I mean, there's there's a song by Kerry Job. It's not bad. But it just
49:01
talks about, I want to sit at your feet, drink from the cup in your hand, lean back against you
49:07
and bring your heartbeat. And it's like, bro, I am not singing that. I'll be jealous if my wife
49:14
sings that it's ridiculous. And so I have made an intentional point to teach men that one worship
49:22
is a part of spiritual warfare. You see in second Chronicles 20, the worship team led the army of
49:29
Judah and Israel into battle against the Ammonites. And God used worship to confuse the enemy and
49:36
destroy the enemy. And so when when men of God worship, and you can do it with masculinity and
49:42
with courage and confidence, that scares the devil. So we need to really understand that we need see,
49:49
I think we need senior pastors who have an understanding of doctrine and biblical theology
49:55
involved in writing worship songs to keep them kind of on track. Right. And this, this is something
50:02
that needs to be addressed in churches. My thing, and I've got music that I've suggested people to,
50:07
I'll send you that episode so you can check it out. But it's if if you're not leaving a worship
50:12
session, feeling like you could storm the gates of hell, yeah, probably wasn't the right type of
50:18
music for you. But hey, we've talked about a lot of different things so far in this episode. But
50:21
as we wrap up here, I like to do something at the end of my interviews, it's a segment called
50:26
what would you say to someone that said? So this is lightning round. Okay, so I'm going to start
50:31
out with what would you say to someone that said, I'm going to fill in the blank, but you got 30
50:35
seconds maximum. And some of these are kind of big topics. So it's just meat and potatoes answer.
50:40
So you up for it. All right, let's do it. All right, let's get into it. The first one,
50:43
what would you say to someone that said, Christians should stop worrying about being relevant?
50:51
On one hand, I want us to be relevant in a way that means we can communicate to the world so
50:58
that they can digest it. On the other hand, it's okay for us to be irrelevant in the sense that
51:04
we are going to be different than the world. If we want to make a difference, we've got to be
51:09
willing to be different. So and I want to communicate my message in a relevant way, but I'm not going
51:14
to try to cater my message to the world and make it different, trying to make it relevant, if that
51:21
makes sense. Absolutely. Next one here, what would you say to someone that said churches should stop
51:26
worrying about being relevant? Yeah, churches are going to increasingly become a lighthouse in the
51:36
darkness. And the darker the world gets, the more people need to see the light of Jesus shining from
51:41
these churches. That means that we've got to get louder and louder about the truth. And we're
51:47
always going to bring grace at the same time, but we're going to look increasingly different than
51:52
the world. So I don't really care about having cool graphics and singing, you know, cool songs.
51:58
We want to do all that. I don't want to be intentionally kind of out of date or anything,
52:02
but we're going to stand out and be different than the world more and more as time goes on.
52:06
All right. Next lightning round question here. What would you say to someone that said,
52:10
I'm okay with abortion, but only in the case of rape, incest and potential harm to the mother's
52:15
health. It's easy for you to say concerning you've already been born. I'm going to go ahead and let
52:21
you leave it there. That is a very quick answer and a perfect answer. We're going to keep moving on.
52:24
You're doing a great, you're doing a great job. All right. What would you say to someone that said,
52:28
I'm not replacing the gospel with critical race theory. CRT is just a lens that will help me
52:34
understand my nonwhite brothers and sisters. Wow. Yeah. The gospel doesn't need any lenses
52:41
added to it. Any lens that you use to see your nonwhite brothers and sisters is actually going
52:46
to hinder your ability to appreciate the gospel on its own and of its own merit. So it's true for
52:52
all of us, male or female, Jew or Gentile. The gospel is sufficient in and of itself.
52:59
All right. Next one here. What would you say to someone that said,
53:02
churches spend too much time on presentation and too little time on discipleship?
53:07
On presentation, discipleship is obviously important. Jesus told us to go and make disciples.
53:18
But what we do on the weekends, when we have church services and we have
53:22
presentations of the gospel via preaching, we have worship, music like that,
53:30
that's all important as well. So it's, I guess I would say like this, I know this isn't very
53:34
succinct, but it all, it all works together. It's all part of the process. Okay. Next question
53:40
here. What would you say to someone that said, we should always be skeptical of famous pastors?
53:45
Yeah. That's just a really pessimistic way to see the world. You know, pastors who become,
53:52
let's call it church famous. They're just like anybody else. Some of them are great guys and all
53:58
of them are imperfect human beings. And we live in a world today that is really celebrating,
54:05
bashing anyone in positions of authority, looking at all leaders skeptically. And that's not the
54:11
way that the Lord wants us to look at these guys through a skeptical lens, assuming the worst
54:17
about them. I think we should believe the best about people until proven otherwise.
54:22
You heard it here. First guys, Ryan Visconti is a huge Joel Osteen fan, just admitted it to everybody.
54:29
But hey, we got a couple of more here. What would you say to someone that said, the lion of Judah
54:33
is scary. I like the lamb better. Ooh, I like the scary lion of Judah. I'm glad that he's scary.
54:41
And because he's, he's my lion of Judah. I love being on the wedding team and following Jesus,
54:47
knowing that he wins. He destroys all evil. He destroys his enemies. And he does what I can't
54:54
accomplish for myself. So I'm so grateful that the lion of Judah is who Jesus is. He is scary.
55:02
And that's why we want to get on the right side of Jesus. You know, it's better to be
55:06
following him than standing against him. That's right. Get it. All right. Last question of the day.
55:11
What would you say to someone that said, the woke movement will usher in the end of the church
55:16
in the West? Oh, that's not going to happen there. The woke movement is just the most recent
55:23
twisted ideology, but the gates of hell will not prevail against the church of Jesus Christ. So
55:30
it's going to in some way separate the sheep from the goats. That might happen, I would say.
55:36
But at the end of the day, it's just another twisted form of lies that's just it's camouflaged
55:43
in niceties and heart, heart tugging concepts. But really, at the end of the day, the church is
55:50
going to keep pushing forward, especially churches that preach the truth. All right. Well, we covered
55:56
a lot of subjects here, but that is all for me. Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
56:00
Dude, I'm so thankful just to be able to chat with you. And I love that you're doing this podcast
56:05
encouraging guys to be confident and courageous and stand up for what's right. And there needs to
56:12
be more of that in the world. We're doing our best here. Ryan Visconti, thank you for coming on
56:17
undaunted life a man's podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having me. There you go, guys. I hope you
56:22
enjoyed my interview with Pastor Ryan Visconti. I really enjoyed my time that I spent with him.
56:25
This is a guy that I think you should definitely be checking out as we continue to move on because
56:29
there's a lot of pastors that are falling the way of the woke. And this guy's not going to be that.
56:32
But before we let you guys go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost at undaunted life. Our
56:36
mission is equipping men to push back darkness. And specifically, we do that by providing you
56:40
content like this podcast. It helps you forge spiritual, mental and physical resilience. So
56:44
here are the links I've got for you today. I've got links to the entire sermon series called
56:47
grace and truth. That's what we spent this entire episode talking about. Also, I've got a link to
56:51
the generation church website and also to Ryan's Instagram. So you can check them out there.
56:54
All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening to this podcast. I really do appreciate it.
56:57
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive review.
57:01
If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an email to info
57:05
at undaunted.life. That's I N F O at undaunted.life. You can follow us on Instagram and TikTok and
57:10
like us on Facebook. And also you can check out our website for everything else, including how to
57:14
donate to keep more content like this coming your way. Just go to www dot undaunted.life. And we
57:19
also want to thank the band August Burns read for allowing us to use their music for our content.
57:23
The entire outro track on this podcast is our song cutting the ties, which is off their 10th
57:27
anniversary re recording of their album leveler. The links are in the description. I'm your host
57:32
Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness. Keep forging spiritual, mental and physical
57:40
resilience. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
58:02
[Music]