135. Freedom In The Church - Parachurch Ministries

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 Saferick and Brett Martin. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. Thank you for being with us today. Such a great day to be with you. Today, sunshiny outside. Great day to record and be with you today. Just personally, I just got back from a meeting with a local church. We're helping one of our local churches kind of do a revitalization. We planned on helping them with their vacation Bible school. They were without a pastor, and now they recently just got a pastor. He's 21 years old. He's ready to hit the ground running. He wants us to continue to come and help with their vacation Bible school. And so, you know, we're giving them funds and volunteers. And it's a great ministry of our church is trying to reach out into our state and help some other churches. That was one of the goals we had this year. So we're thankful for the opportunity to get to do that. But I'm glad today I am here with James Saferick. James, how's your day? Man, it's doing good. I just got off the phone a little bit ago with two different people. One was in West Virginia looking at partnering with this very small 12, 13 people, 14 people church plant there and helping them with some Christmas outreach, taking a mission trip up there in December. And then I just got off the pastor friend of mine doing a men's conference in June, asking us to come and be a part of it. So a lot of good things coming up in our world of the church and just planning vision. We've got a serve week, the first full week of June here in the Rhonda area where we're going to have boots on the ground and we're going to serve all week long with basketball camps, volleyball camps, football camps, all the different things that we can do to help young people and just reach our community and just show our community that we're there and be there for them. And so we've got a lot of great things coming up, a lot of great things planned. Man, we're less than a month away of being together face to face. Just got word also, Jake Carlisle is going to be at the convention with us and he's getting a house real close by. So he's going to get to hang out with us while we're there. Do you know who Jake Carlisle is, Brett? Remind me. He went to Israel with us. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So he's going to be there with his wife and kids. And so, man, we're pumped about that, pumped about being there with them. And we've just got a lot of great things coming up. We've got our deacons meeting tonight to be able to talk through some things of different events that we've got planned and different scheduling things. And so just loving it, loving doing what we're doing and just excited about what God's got for us. Man, I can't believe Indianapolis is coming up so quickly. We've been planning it for so long and now here it is. It's, you know, two weeks away. Yeah. And so it's coming up on us quick. But you know what's coming on us after that quick is Catoosa. That's right. The meetup. For the sake of the gospel conference in Catoosa County, Georgia, Fort Oglethorpe at, you know, Hope Church Catoosa there, J.C. Groves pastor. And for the sake of the gospel conference, if you're coming to that, we'd love to meet you there. We're going to be there. Hopefully there'll be some other podcasts to be there and from the network. And hopefully we can get together and kind of meet everybody and meet our audience. And we'd love for you to come there and be a part of that. I believe that's the first weekend in November. I want to say November 4th or 5th, but it is the first weekend in November. And so if you can come to that, we want to invite you to be there because we will be there with bells on. Yep. November 2nd and 3rd there, Brett. November 2nd and 3rd. 4th and 5th is our pastor. It's probably the first and second, Friday and Saturday. And then Sunday will be. Yeah. Yeah. First and second. And then we'll have. So I've got some things that next week with the convention, North Carolina convention. And so, hey, Brett, I haven't told you this. Breaking news here. Possibly I've been recommended to serve on the board of directors. First for the North Carolina Baptist convention. And I've been recommended and nominated to serve on the one of the committees for the SBC convention, the big convention. So we'll see if they want to go forward with this ex-fundy guy and bring him on to see some radical change or not. Just because you get recommended and nominated doesn't mean it happens. But I sent all the stuff in. And I said, if you guys want a crazy redhead like me, you can sign me up. But we'll see what happens. So, yes, I've got some cool things going on there to be able to partner together at a different level. You know, sometimes just being a layperson at these conventions, you just sort of see the surface level. And I'm all for, you know, at my age, young and being able to handle a little bit more, being able to be a part of some of these boards and and see what goes on behind the scenes, I guess would be a good thing to say. And so, yeah, looking forward to that. And then March, we've got our trip to Israel. Love for you guys to go with us and love for you guys to join us. If you would like to go over to the Holy Lands and see what God has for us there. And so you can just really understand scripture better. And that's going to be a wonderful, wonderful time. Hummus. Shawarma. Let's go, baby. Waffle. Many, many reasons to go. Absolutely. Absolutely. Brett, what are you preaching through right now, man? I just finished a series in Jeremiah. And I'm beginning a brand new series called Dinner with Jesus. And you would just be amazed at how much Jesus centers his ministry around food. Amen. Amen. It's just amazing the meals that Jesus has. And I've been reading books and I've been studying and going through this. And so, so much of his ministry is just all about Jesus is either in the book of Luke. Jesus is either about to have a meal, is having a meal, or he's just come from a meal. And, you know, the son of man came eating and drinking. That's what, you know, so much so that they called him a glutton. They called him a drunkard. But that's what he centered his, you know, his ministry around was food. Food was an intimate thing. It's how you got to know people. And so this summer, here's what I like to do. Every summer, I want to have a Jesus series. So I started this last year. I didn't know I was going to do that. But summer's going to be Jesus time for me going forward. And this summer, we're going to be sitting around the dinner table all summer with Jesus having meals with people, letting him teach us through the dinner table. Man, that's fantastic. I love it. I just had a gentleman, one of our deacons in our church come up to me and he said, hey, he said this past Sunday, he said, I believe this is the first message that you've preached in eight months that you didn't talk about food. And I said, well, hey, man, I love it. I said, somehow, someday, somehow every message, I guess I bring up some type of food or something I ate or something that, you know, I'm making or some type of food reference. And it just goes to show the closer you are to Jesus, the more you love food. And so I love it. It's great. And I love that idea. Um, for just thinking through, uh, the dinners with Jesus. And, uh, that's a great, great thought. Yeah. Uh, this summer I'm, I'm going summer, uh, Psalms through the summer, uh, picked out nine Psalms. I'm going to preach through and, uh, did not copy JC. I actually had a plan before he announced it. So FYI, those out there thinking, oh, he's just copying JC. No, um, I actually had this planned out in January before he announced it. Uh, but it just so worked out that, uh, summer of Psalms is what I planned. And then, uh, we're going to be walking through the book of Jonah after summer. And so really looking forward to that and, uh, where we're going to be at, uh, at the end of the summertime. I will say that I did listen to the first message of JC's Psalm series and, uh, it was really good. He talked about giving and, uh, brought some things to light that I personally, um, you know, that helped me personally in my philosophy of giving. And, uh, I am going to eventually share some. He's doing a good job preaching through that. That's great. Yeah. I chose to go the route of, so the Psalms are broken up into seven different categories of Psalms. And so I picked, um, of the nine, I'm going to do a couple of them separate on top of each other, but I tried picking each one of those different categories. The Psalm of lament, Psalm of praise, uh, going through and, and preaching through a different style of genre of Psalms. So I'm preaching Psalm 17, Psalms 28, Psalms 31, Psalms 34, Psalms 103, uh, a portion of Psalms 119, uh, Psalms 25, which will be our vacation Bible school kickoff week. And then Psalms 121. Uh, and so just preaching through intentionally picking some. So I just didn't randomly pull out nine Psalms. I actually went through and tried to find different Psalms, Psalms of suffering, Psalms of lament, Psalms of hope, Psalms of joy. Uh, and just, we're going to preach through those different, um, Psalms genres. So looking forward to that and excited about that. A couple of years ago, I preached through all the Psalms that had a superscript that tell us where in the life of David, he wrote the Psalm and then used the Psalm as a springboard to go back into David's life. That, that was a really fun series. Now, when I come back from the summer, I'm going to preach verse by verse through a book of the new Testament. And I'm not, I'm, I've got a couple of them. I'm still juggling with trying to pick, uh, which one's going to, you know, was going to be the right one to go with, but that's what I like to do. A couple of times a year, I'll preach verse by verse through a book, uh, not the whole year, but a couple of times a year. And so we'll do that when we come back from the summer. Love it. Love it. I did a new Testament book last year. And, uh, so this year I'll start my, my first one that I'll go through this year will be an old Testament prophet, which is Jonah. Um, and then man, I've been praying about this and pray with me for it, but I'm thinking about preaching through the, uh, Psalms. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Um, first Corinthians chapter 13, the love song, the love passage and preaching through a biblical view of love. My title, my work in title is what is love? And I may play the soundtrack. What is love when I come up on stage? Yeah. Really praying about that. But I think really, Hey, you, you got to do the night at the Roxbury head bombing. That's what I mean. Got to. Yeah. But I think really, we, we have a distorted view of love and, uh, getting back to a biblical view of what love is and really honing in on that passage and preaching through that my, my mind and heart has been, been laying there. I haven't fully decided on that yet. Um, me and John, we've been talking through that a little bit. And so, um, maybe, maybe potentially talking about love there near the end of this year, uh, before Christmas time. So, but yeah, man, real excited about that. And, uh, hopefully you guys are enjoying this again. We're talking about the church and we're in the church and Brett, we've got two more episodes after this. We're going to go one week into June and, uh, then we're going to take a summer break and we'll let you know about that when we get closer to it. Um, but man, we are excited about, um, meeting up in June, uh, the convention. We're going to record Brett. I've got my, I think I finally got my wife on board with doing a wives episode. And so we're going to do some live recordings, uh, there in, um, Indianapolis together, me and Brett to maybe pull in some other guys, uh, some Marcus and JC, and maybe get some clips from them while we're there and just have a good time hanging out. Um, but we are finishing up our in the church series. We've got para church ministries today. Next week we'll be talking about, um, missions in the church with, uh, a missionary named Lee Howell with United Christian missions. And it's a para church organization. Yeah, which is it for it's perfectly. And then we'll do our final episode of the year talking about, uh, the summer and, and what we've got coming up. And so, man, we're excited, but today para church ministries and what that is organizations of para church ministries. And so, uh, when it comes to para church ministries, man, I really wasn't, uh, this wasn't something, this was actually a topic that was sent into us. And so Brandon Jones suggested it. Okay. It wasn't Brandon. Okay. And so he, uh, he sent in this topic and said, Hey, why don't you talk about para church ministries in the church? What that looks like, what it's about, how it hurts and helps and pros and cons. And so we, uh, we decided, yeah, we'll throw this in there. It fits the context of where we're at. And so we're, we're going to look at that today. In my context, I don't remember a lot of, of para church ministries being even promoted or preached against if they were promoted at all. Um, we had, uh, uh, Greg Lentz ministries, which was, uh, a youth conference that, um, we, we partnered with. He was a member out of our church and, uh, had joined our church and was reaching just tons of kids and young people in our area and, uh, doing some youth rallies. Uh, was trained under the great David Harrison. If you're familiar with that name. And, uh, he was, uh, uh, very evangelistical in his preaching style and, uh, very, uh, uh, what's the term I should say? Um, manipulative in his invitation style. Um, and so he, he did some, a lot of great things. My life was changing his ministry and, uh, God used it in a mighty way. Uh, but so, so we were there, but I mean, even in camps, man, we, I went to one summer camp my entire time going to church, uh, at gospelite in Salisbury. Um, and it may have just been cause our pastor didn't care for him. So he didn't promote him. Um, but then, you know, when we got to Arkansas, they had a camp where all the college students volunteered at triple S and people like, like it was just, so I don't know if it was a buddy system, but people were for some things, but then other things they weren't really for and they really didn't talk about them. Uh, Brett, what's your experience with prayer church ministries? And, uh, I think you had a little bit of a different take than I did. Well, uh, growing up, my pastor actively preached against prayer church organizations. Um, they were of course the devil. Everything was the devil. And, uh, we were taught that anything and everything that was not under the authority of a local new Testament church was wrong. For example, my youth pastor growing up, he attended Tennessee temple and every summer he participated in, uh, organization called neighborhood Bible time and neighborhood Bible time was pretty famous. And, uh, they would go around and they would help churches put on vacation Bible schools every summer. And, uh, he liked that. He did that every summer. And I remember him telling me not only did he catch a lot of flack for that, but I actually, he was kind of personally convicted about it because it was not under church. I remember he was offered a job at neighborhood Bible time. And the reason why he turned it down was because it wasn't under the authority of a local church. Um, I remember when I was, I've told y'all before, when I was going to schools, which, you know, uh, there was house Anderson, it was tri-state, it was, uh, crown. And then one, another option that was close by us was PCC. So Pensacola Christian college. And one of the reasons I'll re I kind of wanted to go to PCC, but I was discouraged from going to PCC because the college was a standalone college. It wasn't ruled by a church. Like they had a campus church, um, that was under the authority of the college, but the college itself wasn't under the authority of a church. And, uh, so, you know, well, I was discouraged from, from going, going against that. And, uh, so, you know, I remember at house Anderson, there was a big discussion about mission boards about how, Oh, that mission board is, is not right. It's, it's, it's ungodly because it wasn't under, you know, it wasn't under a church. And I remember when I think it's FBMI is their mission board. I remember, I remember when that came under the umbrella was first Baptist church handman, and they made a big deal about how it's biblical now because it's under the authority of a church. And, you know, it was, it was a big deal when it happened. Uh, my pastor taught that Jack Kyle's taught that, that these parachurch organizations were ungodly because they weren't under the authority of the church. Now I'm going to take that into our next kind of question, which is what is a parachurch organization? And, uh, Brett, right before you, that definition, I was told, uh, cause I looked at PCC as well. You know, it's a big college. They were accredited. That was a big draw for me. You know, should I go somewhere that's accredited? And I had a pastor friend or it may have been a dad of a friend of mine. It may have actually been John's dad, um, that said it to me, but I can't remember exactly who it was, but it said this, if you want to be a pastor, you don't go to PCC because they don't train pastors there. They train a bunch of teachers and a bunch of lily, lily white, lazy people. They don't train no pastors down there. You go down there to be a teacher. You don't go down to be a pastor. They don't know how to train pastors and put out pastors down there. And so I can still remember that in my head of, uh, PCC. There's no such thing as pastors that come out of PCC. Um, there are no, don't get me wrong. Good pastors. I know some that come out of there. A missionary friend of mine on the field right now in, uh, Peru is a, is a, is a grad of PCC. And he's doing some great things. Um, but, uh, sometimes we can get, get locked in on some things that people say, uh, that, that, that keep in our mind. So that was one of the things when he said that. Exactly. Now there are no parachurch, you know, ministries in the Bible. They're not mentioned in scripture. So if we had to kind of put a definition to a parachurch ministry, uh, you could call a parachurch ministry is a Christian faith-based organization, which carries out its mission, usually in the independent of church oversight. Now the word para is Greek for coming alongside or coming beside something. And that is the purpose of a parachurch organization is to come alongside the church and help the church. And the, the idea is it's supposed to come alongside the church and kind of provide something that the church can't provide on its own. So these parachurch organizations, a lot of them can do things that the local church can't. It's usually centered around one specific area of need within the local church or the worldwide church. Some examples of, of like family, military, publishing, education, missionary support, prison outreach, medical communications, transportation, uh, education, all of these areas that you can have parachurch, uh, organizations in seminaries are an example of a parachurch organization. I just went down to New Orleans Monday and had to go, uh, to have a, uh, uh, interview for my scholarship to get my master's degree. That's one parachurch organization that I'm thankful exists. Now, the closest thing that I can kind of find in the Bible to a parachurch organization are kind of like the groups of missionaries that Paul led, but you know, they're not churches in and of themselves. However, they do appear to be commissioned by the church. Um, they, they submitted themselves to apostolic authority and church authority. Uh, so you could say that they were, they were under a church, I guess you could say, uh, but basically, you know, in my opinion, the Bible is silent, silent on parachurch organization. So I see this as kind of a Christian liberty thing, as long as they help to assist the church in practical ways. And, you know, the church is, is, you know, is able to do more. The church is able to focus on their primary goals. I personally don't see a problem with it. I definitely don't see anything in scripture that says that this organization that wants to be a Christian organization just because it's not under the authority of a local New Testament church. Um, it's not right. I see nothing in the word of God, no scripture to support that whatsoever. Yeah, I agree a hundred percent with that as well. And I really liked the thought of, of the specific specificity of a parachurch ministry. I'll use one example, a lifeline pregnancy center or a pregnancy center. They're able to, they're able to do things as a pregnancy center that a church as a whole could not do because they have trained qualified people that are giving the gospel out that are helping a young lady who is thinking about getting an abortion. They're able to come alongside of her and do things that I could not do as a pastor. Now I partner with those ministries. I help those ministries out. I, I come alongside them and I do male training and I will invest in some of those young men. And I've done that in the past where I'll take a man through a discipleship class and, um, they're able to, if the man will go through a class, they'll able to actually get points and dollars they can spend in the store of people that have donated stuff. And so they're earning things. And so, man, those are some things that, that as an example of a parachurch ministry that is going to go further than I can do. So I can support that. I can help that. And I can be a part of that in a massive way to help it grow and reach the people that it's going to reach specifically that I may never reach because I'm just a pastor at a church. Um, and so there's just one example we could go through and I mean, we could pull out food pantries. We could pull out, uh, different organizations like that. Um, so as we think through parachurch ministers, as we think through this thought of it, what are some pros to parachurch ministers? We've already hit some, but we'll, we'll go through. I think one is the specifics of what they're able to do. They're able to isolate a specific need and a niche that they're able to minister in. Um, and that's a huge pro. What are some other pros that maybe you have, Brett? And we'll sort of go back and forth on this. Well, I want to say that I think a lot of the reason before I get to my pro, I think a lot of the reason why our brand of Baptist that we grew up in, I think one of the reasons why they don't like parachurch organizations, they preach against it so much as I can't control it. You know, the MOG, the man of God, he's got to control everything. He's got to be in complete control. And because they can't control it, they can't oversight it. I think that's part of the reason why they have such a big problem with it. But I think that, uh, one of the first pros, you know, like I mentioned before is like a parachurch ministry, like you said, can do a parachurch ministry can do things that a church with a hundred people or less can't do, uh, you know, like before the internet, like sermons of Edwards and Spurgeon and the writings of Bunyan, these things were made available to Christian publishers. Okay. Now today we can go on the internet and we can get this material anytime we want to. Uh, but you know, back then you relied on like Christian publishers to make these things available. And, and it's, and it's like, as far as Christian publishing, that's something that a local church can't do, no matter how large they are. They can't duplicate the effort of a publishing company. Uh, there are parachurch ministries today that spread the gospel throughout the world, radio, the internet, reach areas that are inaccessible to church and minute church missionaries. Like we're talking, uh, get inside closed communist areas and Islamic countries and things such as that. So, you know, I think that they, the, their ability to do things that the local church can't do, I think is really cool. I have a buddy in Florida that his job, we were talking about abortion centers, you know, one of his ministries that he does on his own is they have a ministry where they go to outside of abortion clinics and they bring sonograms. And, you know, it's a really high rate of these women that, that get a free sonogram before they get an abortion. He said, if they give out a free sonogram, like 80% of these women don't go through with the abortion, that's a pretty high number. And, uh, he's able to, it's a parachurch organization, a parachurch ministry. And, you know, they're out there, they've got kind of a niche, uh, you know, uh, focus, a specific focus and like churches like mine and your church can come along and we can, we can give to this ministry over here. We can have a bunch of different irons in the fire and support these different ministries doing different things. And we're spreading out our mission, uh, in the church and, you know, and we're gonna, we're gonna dog it just because it's not under the authority of a local church. Um, I don't see that at all. So I think that's one of the main pros. Yeah, I do too. And I, again, I get back to, they can do so much more. I mean, uh, another, uh, another illustration would be, you know, some of these pro activists, uh, on Capitol Hill in Washington. They're able to speak with senators and speak with house representatives, uh, in a, in a massive way because they are a religious organization that's meeting on behalf of where we give our dollars to, uh, in order to affect change. And they're going to be able to isolate some things and help out some things that I can't do as just a local pastor here in small town, North Carolina, rural North Carolina, same thing for you in Mississippi. So thinking of the positives, there's a lot of positives. We just mentioned that. And what are some, some negatives? What are some cons to parachurch ministries? I think the most obvious con for me is that sometimes some of these ministries can take the place of the local church. All of a sudden you've got a, well, I'll go back to my, my primary illustration pregnancy center. You've got this pregnancy center that's operating outside the church. They're giving a, they're maybe churches are supporting them. Uh, and all of a sudden these are now taking the place of the church, the women and men that are coming there. They don't ever assimilate into a church. They never get incorporated into a church. They never are brought into the umbrella of the church. So therefore discipleship is not done. There's not a community of believers there. And the only sense of lifeline they have is this pregnancy center that ultimately is not going to be able to supply all of their needs because they're not a part of the church. And so we must come alongside and help those ministries, but ultimately there's got to be a partnership of us helping and them incorporating the people that are coming to them into a local body of Christ so that the body can be fitly joined together so that they can help and edify one another. They can build one another up. They can strengthen one another. There can be correction there because that's what the church does. The church helps build the body of believers up. And so oftentimes these parachurch organizations will take the place of and ultimately become sort of a small church that's never designed or is being a church. Another organization that's similar to this is the Samaritan's Purse. I'm all for Samaritan's Purse. I love what they're doing. I love what Jack Billy's son's doing. I love what they're doing with Samaritan's Purse and Samaritan's Ministries. But oftentimes it can become part of that. That is the only thing we're going to do because it's they're doing so much and and it can be a huge takeaway as well. Were you going to say Jack House, son? No, I was going to say Jack, Jack Graham. Oh, that was realizing Jack Graham is not Billy's son. That's not that's not him. Yeah. So I agree. You know, I think that even though they're not under the authority of a church, they need to keep in mind the gospel and what we're here to do. We're here to bring people to the church. And, you know, we'll talk more about that, how it can go off the rails in a second. And I think that I think one major con, which is kind of similar to what you brought up, one major con to a parachurch ministry is it's independent of church oversight. So these organizations, they don't have the same structure as a local church. And the local church is the pillar and foundation of the truth. The local church is God's plan for building up the saints to do the work of the ministry. The church is structured in such a way that godly leadership oversees the members, feeding them the word of God, making sure they're built up in their faith and protecting them, you know, in all they do. There's no kind of structure like that in a parachurch ministry. So you're right, a parachurch ministry can become an entity of themselves and, you know, they're winning people to their ministry instead of winning people to Christ or winning people to the church. It can be kind of a, you know, a standalone thing. So lack of church oversight sometimes is a big con, in my opinion. Yeah, and it almost sounds, if you're listening to this, it almost sounds like we're talking in circles, right? A pro is they're able to do things outside of what the church can do. A con is they don't have church oversight. It almost feels like when you talk about a ministry like this, yeah, they're doing great things. And we're not saying they're not doing great things. The problem is, is sometimes these organizations, these parachurch entities can become more and can become greater than what the church was designed to do. And what they, what I'm saying by that is this, they can become sort of like a country club. They can be like a membership of, of people who are in this organization and they've got the Samaritan's Purse code or they've got whatever it may be. And they're, they're in this elite club. And this is what I'll say to this. When a church becomes like that, the church needs to be radically changed to be away from a country club mentality. The church has to be about the mission, which is to reach, teach, disciple and baptize believers into the body of Christ. That's what God came. God came to send his son. He sent his son to purchase the church with his own blood. He didn't come for a country club. He didn't come for a parachurch ministry. He came for the church and he came to redeem the church to be his bride. And so that is the primary focus of what we can, what we should be doing. Now there's nothing wrong with us supporting these other ministries as long as they are not doing anything illegal or immoral, wrong, biblically breaking commands. You know, we're able to have friendly partnerships and cooperate with one another. As Southern Baptist, as we've said before, we have what's called the cooperative program. And what do we do? We cooperate with one another. We pull our money together so that we can do more together than we can separate so that we can help, as Brett's saying, go to Bible college and get his master's degree. Our CP dollars goes to New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary so that pastors can go and get training at a discounted rate because they're part of the convention. And so that is us working together and the church having oversight of those things. And so, Brett, why don't you discuss, unless you've got anything else, why don't you discuss, close us down, is how can these things go off the rails? You know, if you want to, you know, some people have said you want to get rich, go start a nonprofit. You know, I know, I know, I know one organization in particular that has, you know, a whole bunch of, you know, like thrift stores and medical clinics and shelters and things like that under one umbrella. And they're just kind of raking in the cash. And instead of being a ministry, it has turned into a cash making thing. And, you know, that's that's that's not right. So we asked the question, how can these types of parachurch organizations go off the rails? And I think one of the things we have to be careful of first, because it's a it's a coalition movement. OK, so what you have is a lot of times you have these different denominations coming together and they find common ground that they want to talk about things. They want to talk about just stuff they agree with, which means they sideline other issues. Now, they'll come together on the Trinity, the incarnation, the authority of Scripture, justification by faith and things like that. But like, for instance, when it comes to church government or baptism, predestination, internal security, a lot of these issues get sidelined. Now, I'm not saying that we can't fellowship with other people who don't exactly agree like us. I'm not saying that at all. But it can throw a monkey wrench into the into a situation. There are some times when you know this to be true, when a church leader becomes more well known as the leader of an organization instead of the leader of his own church. And, you know, what that does, it makes the church role a less important role. And I definitely see that as a problem. Back to the coalition movement, I think it's a good idea for a parachurch organization to have some kind of doctrinal statement that everybody joins or everybody signs or some sort of confession that maybe everybody agrees to. That way, everybody's on the same page. And I think that a second reason why these organizations go off the rails a lot of the time is because they rarely have, you know, proper structures of accountability. Whereas the church, the custodians of the church, the elders and the pastors, a parachurch organization has no such structure. So it can quickly go off the rails if you let it. So, you know, interdenominational is not a bad thing, but it can cause issues. And then just lack of accountability inside these organizations can lead to some corrupt practices. And we have to mention that because it's happened too many times for us not to say anything about it. But I think those are some ways that these organizations can go off the rails. Yeah, and I think another way to also guard some of these things, again, we should have guardrails. We're driving on the road. They put guardrails where things are dangerous because they want to protect us. Some of these guardrails can just simply be who's supporting these ministries. What type of groups of people are supporting this specific type of ministry? If you've got a group of ministries that are different than what you believe or what you agree with, that could be a sense of what is this ministry is going to be about or for or who their clientele is. And so it's just doing some basic research. It's knowing who we're partnering with, how we can partner together, and ultimately asking the question, what are we partnering for? What is the object of this partnership, and are we meeting that objective? This can be from a church itself. What's the goal of the church? What are we doing in order to reach the goal? And if we're not, okay, what do we need to change? It's the same thing with the parachurch ministry as well. But having that church there with you partnering does give you some of that benefit. Again, sometimes it's not a benefit. Sometimes, like I said, with a pregnancy center, it's not good to be attached to a church. It's good to be separate because they can do more. They're attached to a church. There's some religious things that can be brought about against them, and that's why most, if not every single one that's productive, isn't attached to a church because of that reason. And so there's just some things that we can do to ask some basic questions to help us out. And again, not to always be leery of what some of these other organizations are doing, but look at what did Jesus say? By their fruits, you're going to know them. What fruit are they producing? Use that basic judgment, basic test, and say, what fruit is this producing? Amen. Amen. You know, Samaritan's Purse, you mentioned earlier, you know, before I passed from my last church, I had never heard of them. And I fell in love with the shoeboxes the first year we did it. And we still do at this church that I go to. But, you know, we, Sparitan's Purse caught some flack last Christmas, last season, because, you know, there was a rumor rumbling that these packages that we were building, these shoeboxes, that they weren't immediately going overseas, that they were being put in a warehouse somewhere and being held up for a year. And, oh, they'll go out the next year. And that's why we can't put perishables in them and this, that, and the other. There were rumblings and, but, you know, we sent ours out, we tracked all ours, and ours went overseas where they're supposed to go. And they could be lying to us. But, you know, you know, I think they've got some accountability worked in. And I think that's a big thing. Like, if you're a church and you are going to give to a parachurch organization, you're going to help, you're going to support them in some way, then, I mean, I want to know where my money's going. I want to know what you're doing. Don't just blindly say, oh, we're going to do this. No, I want to know. I want to see. I want to be able to report that to my people, you know. And so, you know, we just need to be careful. Just like you said, we'll know them by their fruit. You may get into, you know, you may partner with an organization, and then there's just no accountability. There's no transparency. Well, then you cut ties and you move on. I think that's important in this kind of a relationship. Absolutely. Love it. And I hope you'll join us the next two weeks as we finish up our series of In the Church. We have thoroughly enjoyed talking through this. 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 on whichever podcast platform you use. Be sure to join us next time for the For Freedom Podcast. 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