113. Re-release Bully Pulpit - Interview with Michael Kruger

Well, today we have an episode to give you. Yeah. And we are excited. So if you're part of the RFP family, you're going to love this. If you're part of the biblical counseling world, I think you're going to really enjoy this as well. This is going to be helpful for you. But this is an interview I've been wanting to get for a long, long time. And this is Dr. Michael Kruger from Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte. And he has written a book called Bully Pulpit, The Problem of Spiritual Abuse in the Church. And so we reached out to him to see if he would do an interview. And so this is coming out. We're recording this on Tuesday. This comes out Thursday. Today, the book went live. So the book is on sale now. So we're going to put a link in the show notes. So you go pick up the book and listen to this interview. I do not mean to be mean. I do mean to be mad. Those that criticize this kind of preaching, they don't like authority. If you ain't got the King James, you ain't got. Hey, if you don't have a King James, you don't have a Bible. And you'd be surprised. Son, don't go to sleep while I'm talking. Hey, hey, hey. Don't you lay your head back. I'm important. I'm somebody. I love you. You know I love you. Have I convinced you I love you? Yeah. You better nod your head. Yes. All right. Come on. Put it right there. Stay awake and you listen to me. I still believe it'd be a cold day in hell. Before I get my belly to a woman, I'm a preacher. When you got dressed today, you dressed deity. This is the For Freedom podcast, a podcast that is part of the RFP network that seeks to bring freedom in Christ from the spiritual abuse of legalism. Now here are your hosts, John Hollifield and James Seyfried. And so fundamentalism is designed to unpack the idea of authority from Scripture. The problem with that is that that's not the defining principle in Scripture. It is a part of Scripture. But the defining principle in Scripture is love. And now I'm not saying that all men who sit under that teaching will become abusive. But what I'm saying is the ones who are abusive will be drawn to that sort of teaching. I don't want to give people just a list of things they can start doing differently until they have a heart out of which they're going to be doing those things differently. But I think bitterness is different from hurt. I would say that hurt or even abuse does not have to result in bitterness. Welcome, everybody, to the For Freedom podcast. James and John, we're your hosts. We're back, and we're very excited for this guest and this topic. And quite honestly, we're just coming off of the RFP conference for the sake of the gospel conference and spending a lot of time with the RFP family. And if there's ever been an episode or an interview that is going to be helpful for the RFP family, it's this episode and this guest. We're thrilled to have Dr. Michael Kruger with us today. And he – let me just give you just a short description of what he does. And then, Dr. Kruger, I'm going to let you explain, you know, give you an intro because there's a lot in your bio. Yeah, please don't. Please don't read it at all. Yeah, Dr. Kruger serves as the president and Samuel C. Patterson professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the Charlotte campus of Reformed Theological Seminary. He's wrote many works and serves as an elder at his local church. And I've been greatly benefited by his work and teaching and writing on the canonicity of Scripture. But the book that we're here to discuss is this brand-new book, which actually, as we're recording today, was released, officially released today. It was, yeah. It is Bully Pulpit Confronting Spiritual Abuse, the Problem of Spiritual Abuse in the Church. And so we're excited about talking about that. But before we jump into the discussion of the book, Dr. Kruger, tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, well, as you indicated, I mean, I serve as president here and New Testament professor at RTS Charlotte. I've been here 21 years. Most of your listeners probably know me from my writings on canon and text and biblical reliability. But as I'm sure we'll discuss, this topic's been on my heart for a while now. And just as a Christian leader, I felt like it needed to be addressed. And so, yeah, it's outside my normal wheelhouse. But certainly within the realm of what I think all Christian leaders need to think about and ponder. And I'm looking forward to talking about it. Absolutely. Well, I think the first question, you probably would do this with any interview about any of your book or writing that you do, is what is or what was the motivation for writing this book? Yeah, this book was a bit of a surprise for me in sort of my own academic trajectory. As I indicated, most of my writing is more on the academic side. I don't do a lot of writing on the practical side. And more than that, I probably would have never guessed I'd write a book on leadership. It seems I'm convinced we have plenty of books on leadership in the church and probably more than needed on one level. But as I began to sort of look around the scene over the last decade in particular, I've been concerned about the type of leaders that we're not only producing in the evangelical church in America, but also the kind we're platforming, promoting, and sort of following. And, you know, as I lead a seminary here, we think a lot about Christian leaders. And I think there's something there that's troubling. And I think the type of leader we tend to platform these days may be exactly the kind of leader that we don't need. And also as a leader that perhaps is out of sync with what the biblical characteristics for biblical leadership should be in the first place. So I've sort of feel like I've been forced into this, if you could say it that way. And what I mean is I didn't start off my career thinking I would talk about leadership. And I certainly didn't expect to talk about bad leadership. But I think it's one of those things where you're like, you know what? There's sometimes needs to be done about this problem, and someone needs to speak up. And I feel like maybe if someone in my kind of role spoke up, it would get a hearing that it may not get if other folks were talking about it. So that's my prayer. No, I like that because from what I understand, this is not born out of something of your own sort of spiritually abusive experience. And I think it's real easy for some of those, like if I was to write something on that, it probably, it would be sort of testimonial at times. And James, the same way. But it's good to have voices on both sides. It's not just like, oh, that's just a bunch of hurt people just, you know, crying about them being hurt. No, this is actually somebody that's standing up and saying, you know what? If I could say it this way, the Jesus in me is seeing that there is a problem here, and we need to address it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we have, there's definitely autobiographical books out there on spiritual abuse, and we need to listen to those. But we also need books from people who are leaders and biblical scholars themselves who are noticing it. And sometimes if it's not fellow leaders that are noticing it, no one listens. And that itself actually is the problem. And so you can see how the reason I wrote the book is exactly exemplifying the reason I wrote the book, which is that we have a leadership structure that doesn't listen to people sort of, quote, under them because it's overly hierarchical. And so I'm hoping to gain a listening just by being a leader among other leaders. And so it's really a book written from a leader to a leader saying, hey, we've got to rethink the way we're doing this. Yeah, that's great. That's great. So, again, we're talking about spiritual abuse here. What would you, what would be a good definition, a practical definition for us of what is spiritual abuse? How can people recognize spiritual abuse as they're going through their journey and spiritual journey? You know, we're going to church. How can they begin to see what is spiritual abuse? What is just biblical? Because there's sometimes where hard truth, we can sometimes partake that as spiritual abuse. So what's our balance here? How do we see that? Yeah, well, as you might know, I spent a lot of time in the book on exactly this question, right? Because I know people need some definition, some clarity. The term gets tossed around without a lot of definition sometimes. So I labor to put together a fresh definition, obviously leaning on others that have gone before me. But the essence of spiritual abuse is when a person in spiritual authority, and that's one of the key aspects of the definition, when a person of spiritual authority wields their authority in such a way that they domineer, run over, crush, manipulate, and rule in a harsh and domineering manner over those under their care. And then they do all that where they think is for the purposes of God, even though they're really doing it just to protect their own power and their own position. And so basically, you know, even though the term isn't in the Bible, the category I just described is all over the Bible. Yeah. And I have a whole chapter just on that exegetically where I talk about all the different texts that talk about this sort of heavy-handed, harsh, domineering leadership where you sort of, you know, squash those who are under you in sinful and ungodly ways. And, you know, I go everything from Ezekiel 34 and the bad shepherds of Israel, obviously to Jesus' teaching, like at a place like Mark 10, where he talks about, hey, the Gentiles lorded over those under their care, but you need to be a servant and a slave to those you're serving. And then, of course, even places like 1 Peter 5 where it says, you know, shepherds don't domineer the flock under your care. So there's numerous places where this comes up. And I would argue that it's part of the fallen human condition. We as fallen human beings are going to have a tendency in our fallen hearts to squash those under our care unless we, in a very intentional and spirit-directed way, look for leaders that have the kind of character that won't be prone towards that. So that's the problem of spiritual abuse. Now, there's a whole bunch of other things we can talk about, and I'm sure we'll get to it in terms of, well, what is spiritual abuse not? And you mentioned one already, which is just speaking the truth to somebody who's not spiritually abusive, right? Just upholding true doctrine is not spiritually abusive. You know, people in our modern day will say, well, if you believe X, you're abusive. Well, not if X is true. Now, one clarification on that. You can speak truth harshly. You can speak truth not in love. So, you know, the issue isn't just whether it's true. The issue is also the manner in which you execute that leadership office. So it's a complex, nuanced thing, and I try to cover some of that in the book. Yeah, it's definitely a hot-button topic. And even in, like, so James and I are in the biblical counseling sort of world as well, which would be considered more of a conservative, serious-minded environment. And I've found that there's pushback even in that environment of terms, spiritual abuse. And it's like, you know, pushback on that. And you wrote this in one of your articles leading up. You had several articles leading up to the release of the book. And you wrote this, you quote, Fear over unbridled cynicism has caused some to put on the blinders, refusing to see and acknowledge the problems that are really there. Yeah. We can convince ourselves that loving the church means we keep our mouths shut about her weaknesses. And I was able to read the intro to the book, and I liked how you likened it to almost like that thin blue line that we see a lot of times in law enforcement culture. And we are to be people of truth. You know, I know that we have this sense of loyalty that we want to see, and we love the church, but at the same time, you know, it gets muddied and it gets messy when it comes to that. Yeah. I find the law enforcement illustration in parallel really helpful because everybody agrees in principle that a police officer could and sometimes does abuse their authority. They use way too much force for whatever they need to do. And we can all think, I'm sure, of examples that we know about where this happens. But what's also interesting about the analogy with police is the knee-jerk reaction of subsegments of the population, typically the segments that aren't being abused, where the idea is, well, if we call out the bad police, we're going to be ruining their jobs, and we're going to make no one want to be a cop, and we're going to be just being pro-crime. And, you know, people are like, no, that's a false choice. Can you not acknowledge abuse when it happens in law enforcement and try to improve it, and at the same time be pro-police and certainly anti-crime? And so what you realize, there's a polarization, and people have this sort of inherent knee-jerk reaction to this idea that you could ever say, hey, a cop stepped out of line here. And the same thing with pastors, right? Because it's a tough job, and everybody recognizes this is a tough job, so you're like, well, look, our job is to defend pastors, not criticize them. I'm like, well, no, our job is to speak truth. And if the truth that's required is to defend people who are innocent, we should do that. But if the people are violating God's law and God's rules and His word, then we need to call that out too. And so I think the police analogy is actually really a helpful one. Yeah. And from our background, it's leaving that side of the legalism side of it. And we swing to initially anything that's hard is going to be abuse. And I think that's really where we've got to get to the point where we understand that just because it's hard, yes, it's got to be spoken in truth, it's got to be spoken in love, but we've got to be able to accept that and balance that in our life. What are some other areas that you would say would be an area that you, someone who's looking for a church or maybe looking for a pastor, what are some ways that they would be able to identify spiritual abuse? What are some other ways there? Well, I've been doing a lot of podcasts, as you might imagine, over the last month. And I've been asked that question a lot. And one of the challenges, of course, about spiritual abuse of pastors is that their track record of abuse is typically kept quiet and not known. And so for the average church member who steps into a church on Sunday morning and starts visiting and maybe comes back a few times, the chances of them being able to spot in any sort of relatively quick way, the pattern is pretty difficult. Part of the reason is that abusive leaders, by definition, are selective about who they abuse. They don't abuse everybody. If you were to meet that pastor on a Sunday morning, you might think he's the greatest guy on the planet. He may even come visit you in the hospital. He may be your, you know, what you think is just wonderful. But then you talk to the people who work for him and you realize, oh, wait a second. I got one side of him, but there's a whole other side of him. And so part of the problem is there's just no way to get in there and assess it. So one of the things I talk about in my book is churches need a more robust accountability structure, more transparency, more openness about the situation with their leaders. And we can get into that if you want to. But I will mention this. One of the main ways that you can spot an abusive leader, not the only way, and certainly it's not an absolute rule, but I think a really good one, is abusive leaders have a long track record of destroyed lives behind their ministry. In other words, there's a debris field of broken relationships and broken lives that go back years and years and years. A lot of it's covered up. A lot of it you can't see. But if you're able to see it, if you're able to know it, you can see it. Years, years, years of destroyed lives. We're not just talking about a conflict here and there. Everybody in ministry has a conflict, right? Everybody in ministry has relational challenges. That's a common thing. We're talking about lives where they're utterly destroyed lives, and the pastor is estranged from them. There's no reconciliation. It's just bruised life, destroyed life after destroyed life is a trail of dead bodies, and there's never any fixing of it. That is almost certainly a sign of an abusive leader. Good work. Good work there. Yeah, it's a difficult situation, like you said. It's hard. I think that there's – because I think one of the words that's used is what you were talking about, is there's a love bombing, right? I mean, people come. They see this person who's either dynamic or just shows a lot of care. And, you know, a lot of times – Michael, I don't know if you've found this in some of your research, but we've seen a lot of times the spiritual abuse is not evident to a congregation. Oh, no. But to the staff or maybe the other leaders. Oh, yes. It's intense. That's exactly right. The most common recipients of the abusive leadership of a pastor are other leaders under that pastor. So assistant pastors, youth pastors, office managers, women's ministry directors, children's ministry directors, anybody who works with and under the person are almost always the front lines of the abusive relationship. It spins off into members too, but it's going to begin and primarily be manifested in the staff. And a lot of times even the elders don't know about it because when staff are too afraid to complain because they plan they're going to get fired, and even when they do complain, the research I've seen is that it's kept in some sub-subcommittee, and the broader elder board never knows about the history of conflict. And then when it finally comes out, the elder board's like, what? Well, you didn't know about this. And they can't believe it. And the reason they can't believe it is because they didn't have any history. They think this guy's the greatest thing in the world. And you hear these accusations. You think they must be false. And the reason you think they must be false is because you haven't heard anything for 10 years about the conflict that's been going on. And so this goes back to the transparency and openness theme again. So this is a little bit off topic, but we were always taught. James, I don't know if you were taught this, but I can't tell you how many times I heard this. If you ever leave a place, leave quiet. Oh, yeah. Don't bring reproach on that ministry. Don't split that church. But, Michael, is there any theological backing or any type of biblical wisdom if you were that person who is like, okay, you've tried to go, like you said, Dave, that they're not listened to, but you know there's people there that just – they need to know. I mean, what's wisdom there? I mean, should they – what's the word for the fire alarm or the – Whistleblower. Whistleblower, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the sentiment you just laid out in a broad, very general proverbial way is, I think, okay, which is that our job in the Christian life is not to sort of blow things up, and we don't want to necessarily create division. We want to be peacemakers, okay? So if someone lays all that out there, we can say, yeah, that sounds good. The problem is that that whole sentiment is used to suppress complaint about abuse because if you bring up the abuse, the problem isn't the abuse. The problem is that you brought it up. And I can't tell you how many times that the person who gets destroyed in abuse situations is not the abusive leader. They're protected. The person who gets lambasted and raked over the coals is the person who brought it up because now they're like, well, you're divisive. You're a slanderer. You're a gossip. You're trying to destroy the church. You hate the church. You're this. You're that. And that's a really tragic, sad thing. So what you realize is the church is situated now in such a way that in most cases, there's not a mechanism for someone to come forward with a complaint and not get destroyed. And most churches, if they come forward, they're going to get crushed. And so either they get crushed or people don't come forward. But the one thing that's not happening is people coming forward and getting listened to and the problem getting addressed. And so you have a train wreck of destroyed lives as a result. And if you guys are in the world of counseling people with church hurt, you probably don't need me to tell you this. You probably already know this. This is what happens in churches. And it's not just abuse that causes church hurt. I realize that. But look, abuse is a big part of that. And here's the thing. It's not just the abuse. It's the cover up of the abuse and the refusal to address the abuse that the real church hurt is being felt. In other words, it's one thing to be mistreated. It's another thing to be not listened to and destroyed when you try to bring it up. And that's just really, really true. It's a double tragedy. You've been abused and then you got destroyed by the church you're trying to bring it up to. Yeah. Well, this came to my mind just as I was thinking through it. We've talked a little bit about the pastor and about how, you know, you may see some things through a trail of people that he's hurt or not being able to keep staff, whatever it may be. But what are some things that someone could be aware of or conscious of, of even going to a church specifically, that would be sort of the DNA of the church that would be a red flag to say this church probably doesn't have everything balanced. Yeah. What would be some of those red flags that are for just a Joe Schmo church member trying to find a good church? You may not be able to get to know that pastor because they are busy and, you know, they can hide a lot of things. But there should be some things in the church that should be red flags to us. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll mention a number of things. You know, you'd be one of very, you want to be very cautious of a church that has a celebrity culture around the senior leader in such a way that everything is deferential to that person and they have absolute control and power over the church. If you're in a church like that, even if you think he seems like a great guy, you are in a situation where abuse can happen because there's clearly no accountability. So if you if you come into a church and it's clear that this is the big show and this guy's the big the big cheese in the show and there doesn't really seem to be anybody around this guy speaking truth into his life, I would say that's a very unhealthy situation that you'd want to be really cautious of. A second thing I would look for in a church to be a warning flag is a very hierarchical and if not patriarchal culture. So this is closely related to what I said before, but it can be a church where you never question the authority of the church. You never you never bring up a criticism of the church. Your job is to submit and listen. And if you ever bring something up, the problem is you. You have a culture that can't take feedback. You have a culture that cannot listen to its people. I would say that's a church that's right for abuse. The patriarchy thing is also a real danger because patriarchy and I distinguish that between biblical complementarianism. OK, a biblical healthy complementarianism is one thing. Patriarchy is one that devalues women. Women are inferior and that men really dominate in a way that's unbiblical type of domination. That is a sign of a church that I would have very big concerns about. So those are several things to be looking for. The last thing I'll mention is that some churches have a vibe. I know that's very vague and subjective, but I think you guys, if you're coming out of the circles that you were telling me about, you probably know what I'm talking about here. Sometimes you're in a church, you're just like, why is this not feel right to me? There's a vibe there that can be very negative and to some extent even very scary. And I'm not saying that vibes are absolute truth, but if you're searching for a church, right, and you're trying to suss it out, there's room to listen to what your conscience might be saying to you as you think about that church. Yeah, that's great. I appreciate that. I think those three things can be very influential in helping people as they do go through that process. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, and I think listeners that have experienced what we're talking about gets what you're talking about with the vibe. The Sunday we left the ministry we were in where we were hurt, the very next Sunday we visit a church in the town we moved to. We go to the church, went to Sunday school, Sunday morning service, get in the car. My wife says, what did you think? And I just looked at her. And I mean, this is not after I had spent years growing in theology and relearning a lot of things. I have not done any of that yet. I just looked at her and said this. It reminded me of exactly where we left, and I don't want anything to do with it. And she said, me too. Yes. You can tell. I mean, it really is. The word I have for this is what I call tone legalism. So there's different kinds of legalism. One type of legalism that says you're saved by your good works. And there's very few people who are going to, at least in evangelicals, are going to say that. There's another type of legalism that's basically like, I'm going to add man-made rules to you, right? So you're not saved by good works when I'm going to dump all these man-made rules on you. They're not God's rules or men's rules. That's a problem in a lot of churches. But then there's a third kind of legalism, what I would call tone legalism. It's not neither of the first two, but there's a sense of heaviness, harshness, coldness, and a sort of a focus on law that's out of proportion to the way it should be viewed through the lens of the gospel. And I think when you sense that, those are some things you should see as red flags. That's really good. That's really good. Well, we are coming to this. I know we've probably – Michael's already said some things that have been helpful. But as we close the interview, Dr. Kruger, could you give some help? We like to say it this way, hope and help, right? We're dealing with sinners and sufferers, and we like to bring hope and help to them. And could you maybe give some help to those listening who maybe have experienced a bully pulpit? Yeah. That's – if someone's listening to this podcast and they've been through what my book describes, then I know they're hurting, and I know they're under the weight of it all. And I know they probably are doubting the goodness of Christianity, and they're doubting the goodness of the church. I mean, what I would say to them is, first of all, you're not alone. There are many people who have been where you are and are where they are or you are right now. And so there's fellowship out there of people that you can relate to and that can understand what you're going through. You probably feel like no one gets what you're going through, but people really do and can't get what you're going through. The second thing is I would remind you that not every church is like that. One bad response I hear to people when abusive churches come up is their response is, yeah, well, you know, we're all sinners. And I hear that, and I'm like, wow, you have missed this entirely. Of course we're all sinners. Or they'll say something like, well, you know, there's no perfect church. Okay. But at the same time, I'm like, well, yeah, but no one's asking for a perfect church. We're just asking for – that's not abusive, right? I mean, imagine going to, you know, Ravi Zacharias' ministry and go, well, there's no perfect ministry. No, but there's no perfect ministry, but there's also ministries that aren't, you know, sexually abusing people. There's actually ministries that aren't harsh and cruel to people. So part of what I would tell the listener is there are good churches out there. Don't equate the bad church experience with the Church of Christ universal. There's people out there that love Jesus. And you gave the story of going to a church and realizing that's just like our last church. We want nothing to do with it. I can tell you stories of people I know that have gone to another church and come out of it, and they've said, whoa, I never knew church could be like that. I never knew church could be happy. I never knew church could be freeing. I never knew church felt that way. I always thought church was this way. And so part of what the listener might need to realize is there's good churches out there. You can heal in those. You need to find them. It may take some work, but you can find them. And I think you realize that the problem isn't, of course, Jesus. And the problem isn't even really the church. The problem is the sin that we need to fight against. And that's what my book is designed to help us do. Absolutely. And one of the things that I like to point people to as well is realizing the number one group that Jesus called out and rebuked in his ministry were the spiritual leaders. Yeah. And most of the time it was for spiritual abusing the people. Yes. Yeah. I point people all the time. I was like, look, there's two different problems with authority. You can abuse it, which is what my book's about, or you could abdicate it. Right? There's abdication of authority is a problem too, right? But notice that when Jesus deals with leadership in his day, it's almost always on the abuse of the authority, not the abdication of it. He doesn't go to the Pharisees and go, well, you guys are slacking off the job and not leading. That's never his complaint. His complaint is you're putting heavy burdens on people's backs. You're crushing them. You're destroying them. You know, you're abusing them, which is basically Ezekiel 34 all over again. And I think that's very telling. Yeah. And I think if you're listening to this and you're maybe not someone who has experienced abuse, and maybe you're on that sort of train we talked about earlier, it's like, you know, I'm just sort of skeptical about this thing. I want to remind you, this is why this subject is so sinister. Because what happens is, is that people, they come away from this with things that should be good, encouraging, and uplifting to their spiritual walk. And now it triggers them to a place. You know, it's sort of like, I remember hearing a story of a lady who was sexually abused by her youth pastor. And she remained, she kept her faith. She remained a Christian. She remained in church. But she said when she moved to a different church and she ended up having a ministry to women who were sexually abused in church. But she said this 30 years after the fact. Anytime the song, I think it was It Is Well, is ever sung, she has to leave the auditorium. She can't stand it. Because the youth pastor that did that to her would sing that song in their church. And it brings all that back. And you imagine, this is what happens. That stuff happens to people to where Bible verses are used that way. It should be good scriptures that encourage us in life. Now they have the connection of that. And that's why this is such an important subject. And that's why Dr. Kruger is writing this book and why this book is so important for us to listen to what he's saying. Yeah. And let me add one more thing to that because I think you raise a good point here, which is that a lot of people will hear a conversation like this and go, yeah, I'm not sure that really happens. Or I don't see it. Right. They're kind of skeptical. I want to point out something that's often not pointed out. When someone says, I'm kind of skeptical, what they aren't realizing is that they're basing their skepticism just on their own personal experience. In other words, they've never been abused. They've never met maybe someone who's been abused. And so everything's just based on their own personal experience because they've had a good church experience. It's usually those same people that complain about people being too focused on experience and too focused on subjectivism. But yet here they are dismissing the whole thing under the heading of their own experience. And I want to show that to them and say, look, until you've sat down across the table with victims of spiritual abuse, until you've heard their stories and see them weep in front of you, don't dismiss this. Right. This is why I wrote the book is because I want you to realize this is real. And so the idea that you could dismiss it because I haven't seen it, it would be incredibly callous and also incredibly subjective and driven by your own personal experience, which is exactly the thing we shouldn't be doing. And so I just want to point that out for those who may be listening to this and think, oh, yeah, there's nothing to it. Well, go meet a few spiritual abuse victims, sit down with them, and then come back and we'll see if you think maybe there's something to it. A hundred percent. James, you got any closing comments? No, that's great. Michael, I appreciate you coming and hanging out with us and taking from your busy schedule. I know you're busy at RTS and you got a lot going on. And I appreciate you giving some insight for our listeners. Well, thanks, guys. Keep up the good work and good to be with you. Absolutely. Thank you again. And to everybody else listening, remember to God. Not the pastor. Be the glory. Thanks for listening to the For Freedom podcast. To find more content like this, please visit RFPNetwork.org. To find more podcasts like this one, resources and meetups to encourage you on your journey. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Auto-generated transcript · 6,314 words. May contain errors.