131. Freedom In the Church - Strong Men, Strippers, and Driscoll

Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, James Saferich and Brett Martin. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. What a blessing it is to be back in the seat. Man, these last couple of weeks talking through the In the Church series has been fantastic. I hope you were able to listen to our Don Lom interview. Had a lot of great response from that on social media. And hopefully you will be implementing some of these items of evangelism in your everyday life. And Brett, it's been a great time. This past weekend, me and my wife got on a plane Thursday night and flew to Texas and showed up there. And we were in my sister's house on Friday when she came home from work. And we got to surprise her. She did not know we were going to be there. She's 37 weeks pregnant. And they're having the baby next week. And so we were able to be there with them. And what an awesome time that was to be able to be there this past weekend. So I was out of church, out of the pulpit. I still watch church and still part of church there. But was able to take a week off and spend the time just me and my wife. It's been three years. We figured out three years since we took just a solo me and her trip. And so that was great to get away and spend time with family. Spend time with me and my wife just detaching from ministry for a weekend. And man, it is something about getting away when we take a vacation, especially as pastors. But, yeah, it was a great weekend for us. Brett, how are you doing? And how was your weekend? Brother, you know that when you go out of town, you got to find a bus ministry. Amen. If you really loved your bus kids, you'd have found a bus ministry. And you'd have been out there knocking doors. You'd have been swallowing goldfish on your vacation. Eating pickles and Twinkies, baby. Just keep that in mind for next time, brother. I will. But seriously, everything is going good with us. And I want to say a word also about the episode that we had last week with Don Lum. Man, such a great response. I've had several pastors reach out to me and ask me, man, where can I get these resources at? I had a couple pastors ask me, where can I get the crosses at? I want to pass out the crosses. Oh, I thought they were asking about the Operation Go stuff. I know. So this was a really good response to the episode last week. A lot of good ideas there. And the past couple weeks on evangelism, we've had some really good ideas on the show. And we've done some really cool things. And I'm looking forward to what's going on this coming. What I'm excited about in our church is this coming Friday night, we've got a worship night in our church. Yeah. We've got a band that we've been working on, a contemporary worship band. And they've been working really hard. We've promoted it in our county. We've got a lot of churches coming. We've been running Facebook ads. And we're going to have a great time this coming Friday night at our church. A couple hours. We've got some food coming. And I'm just looking forward to a night of worship here at Rocky Point Baptist Church. But, you know, we're excited about what the Lord's doing. Excited about where we've been. Let me ask you, since you were just in Texas. Is it true what they say? Are things really bigger in Texas? Brett, I'll say it like this. I was driving down the road. I think it was 380 was the interstate. And, of course, the roads are bigger. Everything's like five to seven lanes wide. Your normal, like, going through town roads are like three lanes wide on each side. So, massive. They plan for the future in that sense. But we come over a hill, like there's a bridge and an exit. And, of course, all your populated areas have stores and massive amounts of stores. I mean, Chick-fil-A's are like three minutes away from each other. It's just blowing my mind. Like, literally three minutes down the road was a Chick-fil-A. It was like a McDonald's almost. Like, McDonald's are everywhere. And all of a sudden, this is where Chick-fil-A's are at. But we came over the hill. And I looked to the left. I was like, holy cow, look at that building. It was massive. It looked like a Sam's Club, Costco on steroids. And it had the words Target on the side of it. And it was the largest Target I think I've ever seen in my life. It was massive. The parking lot surrounded it. It looked like an arena almost. And it was just a regular Target store. So, yes, things are bigger in Texas. But the reason they're bigger is because they're trying to hold so many people. So many places are so densely populated. I mean, if you look at the map of where we're at, I mean, there seemed to be like 10,000 homes in just a matter of a couple of subdivisions. And so it was massive. Food was fantastic. We stopped at a place called Hard Eight, which is a barbecue restaurant there. And I had some fantastic barbecue. Great conversations with my family. Me and my brother-in-law, we were able just to sit outside, hang out. And we had a great theological conversation that we've never had before. And so that was a really cool interaction that we got to have and a great time with my sister, a great time with the nieces and nephews. And my nephew is an up-and-coming football player. He's QB1 right now for the McKinney School District and sent a lot of players to college and pro out there. And so he's getting some notice there. So I may have an up-and-coming star in the family. So just be on the lookout for Nathan Vincent and be ready for that. But, Brett, what I'm really excited about is at the time of this recording, it'll come out on Thursday, but I will be finishing up a conference in Asheboro. John is meeting me. He's coming to Asheboro. I had a conference planned with Steve Lawson and a preaching conference. And I had a guy that's in my church that was going to go with me. His wife's having surgery, and he had to back out. And so I was there with John. I said, hey, I know it's not far, but everything's paid for. All you got to do is show up. I couldn't get a refund on anything because it was too late of a notice to cancel. I said, everything's paid for. All you got to do is show up. And he's like, let me see what's going to happen, see if I can figure it out. So he's leaving Wednesday morning at like 3 a.m. his time and driving to Asheville to be at the conference. And then he'll leave back out Thursday. It's just a one-night deal. But, you know, just always looking for opportunities to enhance our preaching, which is what we're going to be talking about in a couple of weeks, and be able to work on what we do. We love preaching. We love studying the word. And so how that looks in an everyday life from some of these guys that have done it for so long. That's really cool. That's awesome. I'm excited about next weekend. Next weekend, I'll be going down to Jacksonville, Florida, and graduating from Trinity Baptist College with my second bachelor, but my first accredited bachelor. Right, right. And so, you know, Jacksonville is a, you know, pretty big city, and we're looking forward to going down there. And we've got some family down there. And so, you know, we'll probably hang out with them, hang out on the beach, show off my beach bod, make people jealous. Well, Brett, we are looking forward to some things coming up really quickly before we get into our episode today. We've got our trip to Israel coming up. Let's talk briefly about that, Brett. We've had some things happen since our last recording. Israel had some attacks from Iran. Iran. Iran. Iran so far. Anyway, sorry. Oh, you're good. And so a lot of people were, what's going on here, 99% of the bombs and drones that came in were deflected by the Iron Dome, and only one person was hurt. One child was injured at all in all those attacks. I haven't even talked to you about what your thoughts are on that. And I don't know if you have any thoughts on it, if you've looked at it. In the world news of events, you know, for me, I don't see that this is even something. I think this was a telegraphed attack. Everyone knew in the entire world this was going to happen. Iran was retaliating from an attack that Israel had done on a consulate and had killed about five or six top generals that were in Iran. And so I think it was more of an attack of, hey, this is going to happen. Get ready so you can deflect everything so we can save face with our country. That's exactly what it was. And the Iranians, they're touting it as a victory, but the rest of the world sees it as a massive, massive failure on their part. And Israel is saying that they're going to retaliate, which I don't know if they have at this point. I would see there's no need to because it's just a massive failure on the part of Iran. Yeah. So, you know, I think, like you said, this was just a show. It was, you know, just to save face. I mean, they said they said they don't want none of this. Yeah. They said that the some of the drones were literally coming in at walking speed. Like that's how fast they were coming in. Like there was no way they were trying to they were literally telegraphing this attack and just saying, hey, we're coming. Get ready. For one of the few times I agree with Joe Biden, he said, you know, he called Benjamin Netanyahu and he said, don't don't retaliate. Like you've won this victory. This is a great victory. Like you took out their top of our generals. You stopped their missiles. They're able to say we did something. Iran has no, no. They have no desire to be in a direct war with with Israel. They they're going to use their proxies of Hamas and and Saudi Arabia. That's where they're going to use to attack Israel. They're going to attack. So I'm not worried much about our trip. And it's still on. I think it's great. We've got people over there and people going here soon. And so hopefully you'll still join us. I've got several people that have talked to me recently and said they're excited and ready to go and are going to be signing up soon. And so if you haven't signed up, it's live on our website. And so you can go to for freedom podcast dot com and sign up there. There's a link there to the website and you're able to go and sign up there. Brett, we've got our Katoosa meetup coming up in the for the sake of the gospel in November. And man, really pumped about that. Excited about being around the family and hanging out. And then our next one that's coming up, Brett, man, we're two months away. What do we got going on there? Two months away. We've got Indianapolis, which I'm looking forward to. We've got the Southern Baptist Convention in Indianapolis, and we're looking forward to that. We've had several pastors who listen to the podcast, want to meet up with us over there. And if you're going to be in Indianapolis during the conference, during the convention, let us know. Send us a message. Drop us a line. We want to get together with you. We want to meet our audience and talk with you. So me and James will be there. We've got an Airbnb that we've rented and that we're going to enjoy some, you know, the pastors conference and the convention and just a good time. And we're just with all these things coming up in the future. Looking forward to, like I said, once again, looking forward to Israel. And James, I don't think people need to worry about Israel because, listen, man, things are still kicking up. Me and you will go over there a week before. We'll go to Iran, drop a few RKOs, a few Tombstone Pile drivers, and make the way clear for our Israel trip. So I think we're going to be good. People don't need to worry. We've got it under control. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, Brett, speaking of pastors and pastors conference, why don't you segue into what we've got coming up today with our conversation? What we're going to be talking about. And, again, we feel like we should do this because it's in the church. It's something that's been talked about in the church. There has been some ripples go through the Christian community over the past few days. And the center of the controversy is a pastor that, well, he's not known for controversy. He never makes up waves. He never, you know, it's not like there's a whole podcast dedicated to one of his old churches. But Mark Driscoll is in the news again because Mark Driscoll has, as most people know, was invited to speak at the Stronger Men's Conference. And something I didn't know that you actually told me was that he had spoken. He's been speaking at this conference for the last seven years. And that's something that I didn't know. But there was an issue here with an act that took place at the conference. It was an acrobatic act. And we're going to get into more details in just a minute. But Mark called out this act in the middle of his sermon. He was kicked off stage by the pastor. Pastor John Lindale was citing scripture as to the reason why he kicked Mark off stage. There's been back and forth since then. It's been a really, really big deal. And just like you said, this happened in the church. And so it's just something we want to talk about. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to lay out the details. I'm going to start into this. And, James, when you want to jump in, just let me know. But here are the details. So the church is in Springfield, Missouri. And the name of the church is James River Church. At this church, the pastor by the name of John Lindale was having a conference called the Stronger Men Conference. Okay. He's apparently had this conference for several years. Mark has preached at it for many years. During this performance, during this conference, there was a performance where a man performed a sword swallowing act in which he climbed up a pole that was, you know, down below the stage. It was like a feat of strength. I mean, they have all sorts of they have monster trucks at this conference. It's all about, you know, being a man's man, doing manly things. Okay. Well, Mark took issue with this act that happened. He did not like it. And so he took it upon himself the next day when he got up to preach to say something about it. And before we get any further into this issue, I think we should play that clip. But let me do this. I've been up since one o'clock in the morning. The reason I'm hoarse is I have been praying for you and my heart is very burdened for you. And I want to be very careful with this. And it's not what I want to say. But the Jezebel spirit has already been here. The Jezebel spirit opened our event. This is a rebuke and a correction of no one. This is an observation. Before the word of God was open, there was a platform. It was a high place. On it was a pole, an ashram. The same thing that's used in the strip club for women who have the Jezebel spirit to seduce men. In front of that was a man who ripped his shirt off like a woman does in front of a pole at a strip club. That man then ascended. See, our God is not arrogant. He doesn't us and our God is humble. He descends. And then he swallowed a sword. And Jesus cried. Okay, Pastor John, I'll receive that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If Mark wanted to say that, he should have said it to me first. He didn't. Matthew 18. Matthew 18. If your brother offends you, go to him privately. I talked to Mark for a half hour. There was not one word in fact. He's out of line. If he wanted to say it, he could say it to me. You may not agree with me. You may not agree with him. But we are brothers in Christ, and there's a right way to handle this. All right, James. So that was the clip. Give me your thoughts. Well, I've watched it a couple times. I think that they were both in the wrong. Again, let's back up a little bit before this. Conference has been going on for years. They've had power lifters. They've had monster trucks. They've had bodybuilders. They've had all these other things. I love the idea of having a conference for men to grow in their faith as men. When did growing in our faith as men be turned into a who we're going to bring in to entertain us? Why does there have to be entertainment? Why can't there just be teaching, preaching, worship? Some of the times I've grown the most is at T4G, these conferences, the convention, where it's just brothers and sisters getting together. And sometimes it's just brothers getting together and worshiping, praising the Lord, and seeing what God has for us in scripture. And all of a sudden we bring all these other outside things that can be good, but how are they creating strong men because we're entertaining them? And so to start out with that and then to have this former stripper be shirtless on stage. They've had other shirtless men on stage with bodybuilders and power lifters as they did some things. So this isn't the first time this happened. And from what I understand, Mark Driscoll just put out a book called New Dangers, Old Demons or something that specifically talks about this Jezebel spirit. So I sort of think that he's coming out and beginning to talk about what's on his mind because he just studied this and he's he's he just put a book out and he begins to rip this church, this pastor, this this conference, a new one. If it's true that he talked to him for a half an hour before stage. And he didn't bring it up, then, yes, he was in the wrong for getting up and saying this, he was in the wrong for causing division. This should have been addressed privately. If I go to John's church and he asked me to come up and preach for him and it's got a revival going on or you call me to come out and do that. And the day before I was watching online and I saw that you got up and you began to play Highway to Hell. And that was your opening song of worship for service. I would have probably said, hey, Brett, I'm going to preach, but I'm going to have to address that you guys got up and and sang this song. There was no glory in God. There was no glorifying God in that song. How what's your justification for it? I would give you a time to rebuttal it. And then you would say, well, if you're going to say that, then I can't have you get up and preach. But I would address it with you personally first, because you're the pastor of that church. You're the one hosting me. And so for him to have a half hour conversation, then, yes, he was in the wrong. And I'm sure that it had been advertised that this sword swallowing guy, Alex, would have been there. Everyone would have known that he would have been coming. And so it would have been no surprise for Mark Driscoll to have seen this or to have known what was going to happen beforehand. So that's a great viewpoint. Let me back up a little bit, too. So we've got Alex Magdala. OK, Alex Magdala was the was the performer. Alex Magdala was a former stripper. I've seen no evidence that he's still today a male stripper. I think it's something he's done in his past. OK, he is a professing Christian. Now, John said that he was, you know, born again. And then Alex came back and said, no, I'm an Orthodox Christian. Either way, today, he's a professing Christian. OK, and so let's say that the stripping is in his past, something he's not proud of. He's asked forgiveness for. Let's just say that's the case. All right. One of the issues was the pole. I heard many people say that he was up there pole dancing. OK, I think personally that to say it's pole dancing is disingenuous because, you know, a striptease is different than an acrobatic, you know, like what he was doing. You know, that's an acrobatic pole. You know, they've you know, this this profession, this thing about using a pole for acrobatics. It's been done for thousands of years. OK, that's just you know. And Brett, you do it all the time. I mean, I know. I mean, I've got one in my office over here. Amen. Amen. Yeah. So, you know, I'm professional at it. So but, you know, I think it to call it a pole dancing act. I think it's disingenuous. It's an acrobatic act. Now, I think the big issue here and the sword swallowing, no big deal. OK, it's a you know, it's a feat of strength. It's something. And, you know, so I don't have a problem with that per se. I think the issue here came when he took his shirt off. OK, although you made mention that they've had boxers up here before at this conference. I've never seen boxers box with their shirts on. Yeah. You know, so how come and Mark has preached at this conference for seven years. How come he didn't say anything about that? Now, we'll say it probably wasn't the wisest thing for him to do it shirtless. But it is kind of a men's conference is great area. I would say that's probably wouldn't be beneficial for him to do that. Might have would have, you know, might have would have told the guy, even if he's a new Christian, say, look, it's probably not a good idea. You do this with no shirt on. Maybe put a tank top on or something like that. So, you know, I do have you know, that probably wasn't the wisest thing. OK, now, let me say something about what you said about bringing in these acts. I'm going to push back. Not not too much. I'm more or less going to see the opposite side of it. If you're bringing in these acts as just entertainment, I 100 percent, 100 percent agree with you. No doubt whatsoever. OK, we don't need to be entertained. We need to be taught the word of God. OK, if your goal, however, is to bring in unchurched people that have never been to church before, you might have an act like like monster trucks. I've had monster trucks at this thing before. You might promote monster trucks to get unsaved men in. And there were a lot of men saved, you know, made a professional price at this year's conference. I think John said it was in the 50s, maybe 52 from a video that I saw today that he said 52 men had got saved at the conference. So, you know, I think, you know, you look at it from that point. If that's your goal to do these things, to get people in, get unsaved people in to share the gospel with them. I can see the point of that as well. So, like I said, this is my viewpoint on Alex and his, you know, probably was the wisest things or some things I would have I would have I personally would have done different. But but really, the issue is the main issue of this is how Mark handled this whole situation. So we have the act one day and then the next day, Mark gets up and preaches. Now, in between that 24 hour period, he had a 30 minute conversation with John Lindell. In that 30 minute conversation, Mark said absolutely nothing about this incident. He'd bring it up once. Apparently, he had he had stayed up all night praying about this. He had lost his voice praying about this. But yet when he has a 30 minute conversation with the pastor of the conference, he decides to absolutely say nothing. OK, he gets up at the conference and he he proclaims the spirit of Jezebel. Now, before we go any further, OK, let's talk about the spirit of Jezebel in the Bible. Chapter, verse. We're going to read that at this time. Oh, wait a second. We're not going to read it because it's not in there. Can't find it. Can't find it. Now, there's spirit of Antichrist. You know, that's in the New Testament. The spirit of the Lord. Spirit of the Lord. But do we think Jezebel spirit is floating around getting people to do these immoral things? I mean, I don't see that. It's very convenient that he has a book coming out about this. And at the same time, kind of an opportunistic thing that I think of. OK, so John says, OK, Mark, you're out of line. Kicks him off stage. John gets it gets up on stage. Now, here's where I want to ask your opinion about this. He cites Matthew 18 as the reason for him kicking, kicking Mark off stage, because we know Matthew 18 says if your brother offends you, you will win privately. If he doesn't accept it, go to witness, go with witnesses. He doesn't accept that. Take it before the church. OK, he's saying Mark didn't do any of that. So in your opinion, let me ask you this, James. In your opinion, does Matthew 18 apply to this situation? The context of Matthew 18? No, does not apply to the situation. Matthew 18 is a Matthew 18 is a scripture that we have that teaches us church discipline in the context of the church, in the context of the local church setting. If I've got a member that's struggling with sin, struggling with maybe thieving, maybe whatever it may be, we go to that person individually and we say, hey, you're struggling here. It's causing division. It's causing sin in the church. And we try to rebuke or try to restore them first privately. If they don't receive that, then we bring an elder or a deacon with us and we have a council of witnesses and we talk again. And then if they still don't receive it, then we go before the church and we say this person is not in standing in line with scripture and is breaking biblical principles. And so therefore, we're going to have to disfellowship or ask them to remove themselves from our church body because it's causing disunity in within our church. OK, so this is in the context of the church is when this is talking about. Can we use these principles in our everyday conversations? Absolutely. We can. But to cite this and to say Matthew 18 tells us that he should have came to me privately because that's biblical. It's a stretch. But I do agree that it should have been done in private first. OK, OK. See, I'm a little unsure about it personally. I mean, I see where he's saying it. But then again, it was a public thing that happened publicly. And I've heard I've heard people say that in this situation. I've heard people say, oh, because it was public, we should have addressed it public. And, you know, a lot of people that are like, I like how you said it. You said it. It wasn't necessarily in the church. We can apply it to things in other in other areas of our life. You know, a lot of people are dogging are dogging John because he used, you know, he used Matthew. He cited Matthew 18, but don't have another scripture to take its place of what of how he should have handled it. But I like the way I like the way you put it. So and we use this principle for us personally, me and my wife. I mean, we use this when we use our kids. Right. If a kid gets in trouble, we pull Brody aside and we say, Brody, what's going on? Well, Jade, Jade did this. And then that's why I retaliated. OK, so we'll privately go to Jade. Jade, what happened out there? Oh, we were jumping on the trampoline and and I accidentally hit Brody and and he started punching me. OK, so now we're getting more of the story. So we then we bring them together with mom and dad and the kids there and we say, OK, what happened? Well, now they're face to face and we've already heard individual stories. And then Brody begins to change the story or Jade changes her story. And now we can begin to catch what's going on. But it's private first before we go public with the whole family council, basically. And so it's a great principle to use. But specifically to cite Matthew 18 here, I believe he's citing it out of context. OK, all right. So here's what happens after that. After that, after that whole thing, what a lot of people don't know is that John left and found Mark in the parking lot. Mark was heading to the airport. OK, he was gone. Mark, John tracked Mark down in the airport and said, look, we need to talk about this. They had a half hour conversation. And then a lot of people don't know that John and Mark come back on stage that same day and have another conversation in front of everybody. And Mark tells everybody that he was in the wrong. Now, that's a clip we're going to play for you right now. I believe what I should have done since I had another session. I was thinking about it. It wasn't in my notes. I didn't intend to go there. I was up late praying for the men. I just kept seeing it. And I should have, between sessions, talked to you rather than just verbal processing on the stage. And as the father and the head of the house, you could have given me a thumbs up or down. And I need to honor that as spiritual authority. I honor your spiritual authority. That was sad. I apologize to you for not going that route, which would have led us from the most awkward moment in the history of any men's event. So, yeah. And I don't, I mean, if I were you, I wouldn't let me speak again. That's something you should pray about. So, as we can see here, you know, Mark comes back on stage after that whole debacle. He apologizes to John. He tells John in the whole conference that he's in the wrong. Okay. But then Mark goes back and he doubles back on what he said. He gets back to his church. He gets back to Arizona and he begins preaching that he was in the right. Okay. And so he double backs again. And he's texting John and John's son, telling them that he loves him. He'll do anything for them. He just felt he had to say something. And he keeps doubling back. Like he'll say, he'll tell John one thing and then he'll post something on social media. That's the complete opposite. Okay. So Mark keeps bringing this up and keeps doing double speak. And then when, you know, Mark posts a picture of him and John together after this mess. Well, when John texts Mark and says, Mark, you're doing all this double speak. You're still talking about this thing behind your back. You're still saying that you're not in the wrong on your social media. Mark takes the picture of him and John down. And then Mark begins to double down on the fact that he was right after all. So then John Lindell gets a man named Jimmy Evans. I don't know who Jimmy Evans is because Mark, John is still going after this. We need to follow Matthew 18 on this. So he sends Jimmy Evans to talk to because that's the other witness. Mark still doesn't repent, John says. So then John goes before his church, I think this past Sunday, and publicly rebukes Mark before his church and says, Mark needs to repent of all this. He needs to repent of what he did at the conference, the text messages he's been sending my son, of what he's been, you know, pushing on social media, of using this as an opportunity to sell his book. Mark needs to, you know, repent of all this stuff and is calling him out on this issue. And so this thing is just really snowballed into a big, big ordeal. So I'm going to give you my last thoughts on what should have happened, and then we can discuss it a little more. I think what you said earlier is exactly what should have happened. Mark should have seen the thing, seen the act, and if he had a problem with it, he had an opportunity to speak to the pastor of the event before he spoke. He should have went to the pastor and he should have said, look, this wasn't right. I don't think this was right. I think you need to go up and you need to apologize for this. And then the pastor would have done one of two things. He would have said, you're right, Mark. I'm going to go up. I'm going to repent of this. I'm going to apologize for it publicly. And if the pastor didn't do that, then what Mark should have done is said, well, since you are not going to publicly apologize for this, I can't preach for you today. And he should have left and not preached and then put out a public statement as to the reason why. That's how this should have happened. Yeah, absolutely. And Brett, one year ago, March 8th of 2023, Mark Driscoll preached a message called The Jezebel Spirit is in American Churches. You can look up. Mark Driscoll has that posted on his YouTube page. And he streamed it live on April 15th that was originally aired on March 8th. And he restreamed this sermon that he preached. And his subtitle was, What is the Jezebel Spirit? And how is it destroying the American church? Today, we're going to pull the veil on demonic. So we can see April 15th was just this past Sunday, two Sundays ago, two Mondays ago. And so right after all this happens, he goes back and pulls a sermon that he preached that is still leading this book. We start seeing the theme of everything around and surrounding this is around a book. One of the videos that went out that was shared, that live video that we played, the first one, it got 10 million views in about a couple hours. After it got played, after it went live on Twitter. And so all of a sudden, we begin to see this publicity, this trying to figure out what's going on, and a lot of people talking back and forth. But then for Mark to go and to have this apology that we just played, and to admit that he's wrong, and then to go back and double down that he was right, just begins to just show exactly the type of attitude that he has. I want to read one thing by a friend of mine, and he said this. He said, He said, He said, He said, He said, Well, then you keep that same position in that other pastor's face and not be nice to him, but then dog him behind his back. That's my issue. One of my biggest issues with Mark in this situation is how he's handling his relationship with Pastor John. Whether or not Pastor John is in the right or wrong, Mark is just wishy-washy and too afraid to stay and stick by his guns. Yeah, let me read for us. First Timothy chapter 6, verse 3 through 10. Let's just compare Scripture to what's going on in this situation. It says, It says, We see here in Scripture. As Paul was talking to Timothy. There is a group of people that seek unhealthy interests in disputes and arguments. We've seen podcasts that we have associated with that are constantly looking for a fight, constantly looking for a way to put something out that's going to get a million views. Because if we can dispute something or worry about something or cause division, that is this spirit, this thought of disunity. And Paul is specifically saying to Timothy, watch out for these people. And this is what we're seeing in this situation here. This is Mark Driscoll who is taking something that he sees going viral and saying, you know what? I'm jumping on this train because it's getting millions of views. Now, we're not recording today because we're expecting to get a bunch of views. We're just simply talking to an issue that's in the church because, quite frankly, right now we're talking about what's going on in the church. And how can we can be aware of these things in the church? And so, Brett, we begin to go from there. Mark and John are going back and forth. What now is transpiring after that? I think right now everybody has dug into their ditches. They've dug into their positions. John has laid the gauntlet down at his church. He's called for everybody to rebuke Mark. If Mark doesn't repent, he's calling for everybody to not support his ministry. Not watch him. And then, of course, Mark is on the other side. He's promoting his book and using this thing as an opportunity to promote himself. And I don't see much of this changing anytime soon. You know, Mark's not going to repent or anything. And John is staying at his course. And I just think we need to look at the situation and learn, see it for what it is, learn from it. You know, how can we, if we get in the situation in the future, how can we handle it? We can learn from this. We can learn from other people's mistakes. This whole thing is very disunifying in the church. Whether or not you agree that the act itself, the sword swallowing act, whether you agree that it was right or wrong, that it had a place or didn't have a place. There was an issue here that needed to be handled better than it did. Mark basically dropped a grenade in that conference. People are yelling. Two or three hundred people got up and left after that whole thing. That whole thing, the whole situation could have been handled a lot better. And I think it was just very, you know, disunifying the way he handled it. And we're just going to have to learn from the mistakes here. Absolutely. I think that's a big thing that we've got to do. We've got to learn from what's going on. We've got to observe and we've got to see true and what's right and see where God is blessing. Man, when you when you hear that clip, when you see that clip and you hear the the yelling and the screaming, I mean, it felt like I was at like a political debate where everybody's yelling and screaming one way or another. Like, how is this building stronger men? How is this building the body of Christ up and ultimately beginning to look at who we are listening to and who's poured into our lives? We've got the wrong people and we've got people that are seeking after money and the love of money. Again, this is what Paul simply said to Timothy is, hey, be aware. Watch out for these things. Know what's around you and know the people that are around you. You're not going to always know their heart. You're not going to always know what they're dealing with or struggling with. But you can begin to see the fruit of their labor and you can begin to see. I like how one person put it, the wave of destruction behind them or the wave of grace behind them. What are they leaving behind them? Is there carnage? Is there wreckage or is there grace and love and mercy and restoration of people behind them? And so I think that that would be a better thing for us to look at. So, Brett, any final thoughts on this or what are you thinking? You know, this episode is is not only for everybody listening, curious about the situation, seeing how they should have handled it. But, you know, it's for JC, man, because he's going to have Mark preach at the for the sake of the gospel conference. And he needs to know how to handle Mark Driscoll. Yep. Love it. But but anyway. But yeah, this is a this is a sad situation. All kidding aside. And just like we said earlier, the only thing we can do is learn from mistakes, move forward, pray for the parties involved and, you know, figure out better ways we can unify the church. Absolutely. Well, and speaking of that, we'll close this down. And until next time to God, not the pastor, be the glory. I found my new name. I found that good grace. I found that healing. And the tears fell down my face when I found my beginning that has no ending. I found that second chance. I found my best friend. I found my forgiveness. I found my happiness. I've been singing ever since. I found my freedom in you. Thanks for listening to the for freedom podcast. If you enjoyed our content, do us a favor by liking, subscribing or sharing our podcast or whichever podcast platform you use. Be sure to join us next time for the for freedom podcast. I will.

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