137. Summer Break and The Need For Creed

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 everyone to the For Freedom Podcast. We're here to offer hope and help and healing from those who have been spiritually abused in the IFB movement. And man, we are thankful and grateful for you as listeners who have tuned in faithfully every week over the last, oh man, feels like 20 something weeks, the first half of the year. And we're excited about going into our break. Our summer break will be taking the month of June and July off and hoping to jump back up in August. And got a lot of great things planned already. Our schedule is almost full for the last half of the year. But Brett, man, we're excited. We leave in just a couple of days to be together at the Southern Baptist Convention. And I hope you are excited about that as I am and ready to go to Indiana, Indianapolis and be there. How are you doing, man? I'm excited about it. You know, we've been planning this trip for, I mean, I guess you'd call it a year. Yeah. Since last year when we were in New Orleans, we've been planning this trip. And it's hard to believe that it's here. And we'll be there. I guess we'll be there this Saturday in Indianapolis and most of next week. So, yeah, we've definitely been looking forward to it a lot. And it's kind of the end of my first season on the podcast. I know that y'all would have rather had John than me. But I have definitely enjoyed my time on the podcast so far. And I look forward to, you know, coming back from the break and hit the road running again. Yeah. And we are excited about those who are going to be there in Indianapolis with us and getting to hang out with us. A lot of people are coming. Yeah. Yeah. We are hoping to be able to do some lunches and some dinners with people. And me and Brett have rented a house. I've actually got a guy that's real close to the church here. He doesn't go to our church, but he said he'd love to go sometime. And so I told him, hey, man, we'll get a house and come hang out with us. And so he said maybe next year if he can swing it with his work schedule. And so that's going to be great. But, man, I'm looking forward to really this is it's one of those times to get away. It's a I don't say vacation time, but it is a time of being away from ministry, hearing good preaching at the pastor's conference and then being able to sit under the business of the SBC. I tell people often if we're going to be Southern Baptist, if we're going to be part of the convention, we need to be there. We need to have a voice. We need to have a say. We need to have a vote. And if we're not going to have a vote, if we're not going to have a say, then there's no point in being a part of it. And so one of the things that I me and Marcus talked about last year when I was there is he said it's like Halloween for Baptist is what we call it, because we go into the exhibition hall, the exhibition hall where all the exhibits are set up. And it's like candy and free books and they're giving away Yeti coolers and you got to register. And it's like, yeah, this is this is the Baptist Halloween. Like we're going around and we're stocking up on candy before the trip and we're picking up all these free books. And, yeah, it's great. You are. I've heard you are the bookmaster. Man, one year, one year, Brett, I came back with about 60 pounds of books because we flew to California. And the only reason I know it's that much is because we bought another suitcase, filled it up. And when I put it on the scale, it was about 60 pounds and I had to take 10 pounds out of it before I could get to the airport. That was my best haul, best year ever. But that was the year after COVID. And so everybody was trying to give away all their excess stock from the year before that. Haven't had a haul since then, but I normally come back with a pretty good stack of books free. I traditionally don't pay for much when I go there. I try to haul in free books and free things. There's one again because I've been now they send me emails. Hey, don't forget to stop by and check out our books. These are our giveaways every day because they want you to come back every day. And so there's one booth that we'll be going to. They're giving away a book on Monday. They're giving away a shirt and maybe a pen on Tuesday. But on Wednesday, they're giving out Bluetooth speakers. And so you better believe I'm going to stop in there because you never know when you need a Bluetooth speaker. Hanging on the back of your backpack, being able to play your Jesus music. And so, yeah, I'll be hitting up different booths every day. I try to stop in first thing in the morning, hit all the freebies and then hang out at the convention. And for me, now that I've been a couple of years, it's good to be able to see faces that I know, people that we've met and get to hang out with guys, part of the RFP, not part of the RFP, guys I grew up with, people that I went to college with. It's just good to hang out and be around some of those people. Oh, definitely. When I was in New Orleans, I was surprised at how many people I saw that I know. Of course, you know, I was from an area not far from New Orleans, but we saw a lot of people there. And I was surprised how much RFP fam was there and recognized me and come up and said hey. And man, it was just good to get to hang out. And I'm looking forward to this coming Saturday. I think it's going to be like a nine and a half hour drive for me on Saturday, but it'll be worth it. I'm looking forward to it. And I'm looking forward to the pastors conference. I didn't get a chance to go. I only went to like the last two sessions of the pastors conference in New Orleans. And so I'm looking forward to attending the whole thing next week. Yeah, absolutely. Can't wait. And after that, we'll be having our for the sake of the gospel meetup there in California. They're in Catoosa. They're in Brett's J.C.'s church. Man, my words are brutal today. J.C.'s church down in Catoosa, Hope Church there. And looking forward to that. And then as far as we're playing right now, Israel is still on unless something happens, unless God intervenes. And stops that. But we are still planning to go forward with going to Israel and Venice, visiting the Holy Land. And we hope you will make plans to join us and will go with us. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me or Brett. And our emails are on the website. And you can contact us. And you can direct message us and find out more information if you're interested in going on that. We also will see our Israel rep next week during the conference. And so, you know, if we get any additional details about that, we'll put that on the Facebook page, make it available to you. And any extra details we get, we'll be sure to let you know. Absolutely. Absolutely. Looking forward to seeing Paris and Marcus and hanging out with him a little bit. And it's going to be a great time. Hey, Brett, one of the things I love about Marcus, and you got to see this last year, is Luther Rice has a really cool setup typically. They've got nice comfy chairs. And anytime I can find a booth with comfy chairs and have a seat, it's always good during that time, especially if there's something going on at the convention that I really don't have a need to sit in or a care to sit in. I'll leave and go walk through the exhibit hall and just run into people and make connections. And some of my favorite connections, Brett, that I've made in the past are some just, you know, local guys or young guys that are women that are we actually have had one of those contacts come on the podcast. We talked to their hope for addiction. Last year after the convention, we lined up a meeting with her and we had her come on the interview. That was a great connection there. But, man, there's also some great little curriculums that come out, some discipleship curriculums that people will put out and that typically they just give it away free. They just want to be a blessing. And so I've got several of those that I've picked up and used in the past. And, you know, anything that are just tools in our belt that we can use to help disciple people in the ministry, outside the ministry, is always a great thing. And so I do love that and do enjoy that. And then, you know, for me, Lifeway's there and they've got them. They typically have a 50, 60 percent off sale that goes on. So I try to pick up a couple of commentaries or things that I'm looking at. So, well, I'm going to bring I'm going to bring an empty book sack. And so I'm going to trust that you're going to help me fill that joker up with some books. And so we're going to I'm going to be with you and we're going to try to to get some good stuff this year. Our goal is to fill it up multiple times, Brett, every day, fill it up. And so, well, hey, we're coming up on the convention. And if you're not SBC guy, you may want to just tune us off, but may give some good information for you. We're going to discuss a couple of things going into the convention and talk about some some issues that are coming up, some things that they're going to be addressing. Really, there's there's three big issues that they're that are always an issue. One is the resolutions committee. They come up with resolutions or just statements from the convention. And there's 10 of them this year. The the list of them came out this past week. And so I'll just read through, Brett, the the resolutions. And I'll just like I said earlier, I'll talk about a couple of them that I think are going to be the most hot topic or contested ones. And every year there's a couple of them that are talked about. But the first resolution is on the SBC leadership. The second one is on defending religious liberty. The third is just war and the pursuit of peace. The fourth is justice and peace in the aftermath of the October 7th attack on Israel. The fifth one is the pro-life ethic and the post-Rose society. The sixth one is the ethical realities of reproductive technology. And the dignity of human human embryos. The seventh one is the seventh. Yeah, is on the God given rights and responsibility of parents. The next one is the danger of abusing non-disclosure and non-disparaging agreements. The next one is the evangelism and the Great Commission. And then the last one, they always do an appreciation for the city that we're at, Indianapolis. And so the appreciation there. As I looked through this list and I read through the different resolutions, the two that stood out to me that are going to be the most highly talked about contested. And I may be completely wrong, Brett, but I believe it's going to be the abusing of the non-disclosure and non-disparaging agreements based on some things that have happened in the SBC over the last several years with the convention and the colleges using these non-disclosure agreements and how that can be. And after reading through that a little bit, I think so. And then the last one I think will be talked about the most will be the ethical realities of reproductive technologies and the dignity of human embryos. That's a big topic right now with the IVF and the industry there. And so I think those couple of things are going to be talked about. The abortion and the Roe v. Wade's always an issue that's talked about with the abolishment people. And I'm great with that as well. I believe we should abolish any type of abortion. But that's always a hard topic because there's a fine line where there is a group of people that want to abolish it and punish women that have had abortions. Right. And so there's that fine line of, okay, how far do we go here? What do we do? We want to respect the woman. We don't know the situation she's in. She may even be an unsaved person. She may not even know Jesus and she's just doing what the society has told her to do. Unsaved people don't know what to do and what is right and wrong. And so there's always a fine line there of how we can minister. And so those issues will be definitely big topic issues as well. Definitely. And the IVF is definitely a big issue that needs to be addressed because, you know, there are you do have a responsibility when you, you know, when you make an embryo, you have a responsibility to that life. And so but at the same time, there are parents or even good Christian people that that, you know, want to have children and can't have children unless they go through this process. I personally know some couples that, you know, Christians and, you know, had to go through this process to have children and could not have children any other way. And now they're blessed with children. And that's a good thing. And so it's a brand new door. It's a brand new area. We never thought that Roe v. Wade would ever be overturned. I never thought I would ever see that in my entire life. So now we've got this new this new realm that we have to deal with these new issues. And while that's a good thing, that does bring up more questions and more issues that we need to deal with. And so, yeah, I think that definitely talked about. Absolutely. And speaking of Roe v. Wade there, Brett, some of the problem with some of the conservative states are is that when Roe v. Wade did get overturned, it reverted back to the law of the land in the state and it went back to what they had passed. And some of the states, instead of staying conservative and saying we're not going to have any abortion, we went to a six or eight or 12 week ban on abortion up until that point. And so what happened was is when it did get overturned, it went back to, well, now they can have it in this state up to 12 weeks or up to six weeks or up to eight weeks. And so there were a couple of states that had still in the books where abortion was illegal in that state, but the federal government had it where it was legal. So when that was overturned, it went back and some of these states were set up to where it stayed at an illegal setup. And so that's where we as Christians need to be wise and be diligent on what we do and how we pass things and how we word things. Because when things do get overturned and God's sovereignty and God's grace upon those lawmakers were able to overturn that, well, now it's back to the state. And so we're having to fight other battles. And so those are some things. Next up, Brett, I think we'll talk about is the, we'll save the article that you have printed out for us for the last thing, is the law amendment. This is the amendment in the bylaws. It was passed last year, but to amend the bylaws, it has to be passed two years in a row. And law amendment goes just basically to state that we're clarifying and further defining the role of a pastor in a church. A pastor should be a male ordained man of upright standing. And it's just clarifying that language. I'm for it. I think it's a great thing. I think if anything, if people weren't for it last year, they should evaluate and look at what's happening to the United Methodist Church right now. And understand that if we don't define more properly and more clearly where we stand, then bad things will happen in the future. And I don't know if you follow the news or not, but in one day, in one day, the United Methodist Church lost one million members. One million members. One tenth of their association of their community pulled out from the United Methodist Convention because they went far to the left. But it didn't happen in one day, Brett. It happened because 10 years ago, 12 years ago, the United Methodist Commission began to adopt women pastors. And when they began to adopt women pastors, now it became a transgender pastor. And after a transgender pastor became a homosexual couple. And after a homosexual couple, now we've got to take our confession of faith and we've got to adopt it to fit where our confession is at. And now we're taking things away from a confession. And so I would rather add things and be more conservative fiscally in our confession than to not have it there and to open a door for us to go into a slippery slope of where we're at. Now, you should think that is this going to seriously, they lost a million members. You think it was just going to hurt them financially. Well, not at first, because you have to understand with the Methodist, the individual churches don't own their property. So, like, the organization owns their property. So, in order for a church to pull out of the Methodists, they have to sell their property and give the UMC the money. And so they'll coast on that money for a little while. But eventually, it is going to hurt them. And it's just, it's such a sad, sad thing to see compromise, destroy something like that. But I'm glad to see there are still some people that are still standing by what the Word of God says. Yeah. Well, it just goes to show how large, because this was the Ivory Coast Association of the United Methodist Convention, which was the African Convention that pulled out. It just goes to show how strong in other worlds, other countries that we sometimes see as third world countries, are more conservative and more balanced in their approach to ministry than sometimes we are. Right. And that the African Convention said, we're not going to stand with this. And the entire African Convention is going to pull out, which is 10% of the population of the United Methodists, which is a huge signal to say, we need to be aware. We need to be on guard, and there's opportunities for us to plant our stake and to further define where we're at and to make some great confessional statements of where we're at as a convention. And so for those reasons, I'm for it, because we know Scripture says it's for male-only pastors. And so why would we not be for that? Why would we not say, yeah, let's go ahead and make this crystal clear in our own confession, in our own bylaws, in our own what we believe, and go ahead and put this there? Because we want to be—Brett, I'll put it like this. In our church and in my church, I try as much as humanly possible to make sure that every member of my church is a born-again believer. That's a membership. That's basic membership. Okay? And so if that's going to be the case there, why would we not have sets of guidelines for churches that are going to cooperate in friendly cooperation with our churches? That is closely defined as we can. And so we're only going to be stronger together than we are separate. And if we take that mentality, we're going to take it to its fullest extent and say, okay, let's be together in one mindset of what we believe and how we cooperate together. Absolutely. Yes, sir. So, Brett, let's talk about this last thing, and then we'll be done. A shorter episode today, but just hitting a couple of things as we head to the convention, and then we'll talk about something. What's the last thought of today of what we think is going to be big at the convention coming up? The question on the table is, does the SBC have a need? A need for creed. So, this last issue is, so next month for Southern Baptists, and I'm going to go ahead and read the names, Andrew Brown, Stephen Lawrence, Steve McKinnon, and Malcolm Yarnell are going to move that the messengers amend the Baptist faith and messages, the Baptist faith and message, with the article, the creed. The creed they're referring to is none other than the Nicene Creed. And so, what they want to do is they want to take the Nicene Creed, and they want to add it to the Baptist faith and message 2000. And they're doing this, they claim, for the sake of doctrinal clarity, and increased unity. Now, I've seen a lot of things go back and forth. I've seen, I've read a lot of people's opinion on this before I kind of developed my own opinion. Some people are for putting the creed in there because it's a historical, you know, early church creed that's, you know, a lot of people agree with. And they say it just gives more clarity on some certain issues and just adds depth to the Baptist faith and message 2000. So, that's one side of it. But then there's the other side of it where, you know, is it just a redundancy? Is it, you know, isn't the Baptist faith and message, isn't it, you know, sufficient as, you know, as a confession? And, you know, what extra details is this going to, is creed going to add that the Baptist faith and message doesn't already have? And I can't see too much where, you know, it is going to add anything, anything extra. What's your opinion on it? Well, Brett, when I first saw this come out, and I think maybe you or John or someone shared it with me, my initial thought was, oh, I know the Nicene Creed. It's a great creed. It's a great statement. Man, I'm not against that. I think it's great. That was my first initial knee-jerk reaction. Then I began to sort of look into it a little more, compare what it said in this Article 9 of the Nicene Creed to the actual Baptist faith and message. And what I began to see is there's a progression in when the writers of the Baptist faith and message 2000 sat down and wrote things, they wrote it in a progressional sense. And so it starts at one point, talks through the church, and Godhead, the Father, the Son, the Spirit, begins to walk through all these different things in a progressional sense. And so there is a structure to it for a specific reason and a specific purpose to it. And then it sort of bundles everything in together. When you throw the creed in at the end, it disconjoins that a little bit. Because the things in the creed have already been talked about. The things that, it's sort of like rehashing the same thing that was just discussed. So when I saw that, I was like, okay, that doesn't really flow with the Baptist faith and message for my first thing. Exactly. Yeah. The second thing, and I think Moeller had said this, is Baptist are, or the Southern Baptist Convention is a confessionalist convention. We adhere to confessions of faith. The Baptist faith and message is a confession. The Southern Baptist Convention, in its existence, 170, 80 years, however long it's been, they have never adopted a creed. They are not credo-Baptists. They are confessionals Baptists. So for that reason, this would go against the traditional norms of the Southern Baptist Convention. As we are confessionalists, we're not credo-Baptists. We affirm that our creed is the Bible, and that's where we stand on our credo. So for those reasons, after looking at it from that side of it, and after thinking about it, and after praying through it, I don't think I would be for this. For the reason of it, it causes discomfort, disunity, an uncohesion of thought. And then the last thing it does is it puts this in the Baptist faith and message. And so if a church is not a credo church that does not have creeds in their church, and they just for sake of unity and for sake of clarity decide that they don't want to be a part of a credo, well, then they would not be in friendly cooperation with the church. And so for those reasons, I think I would be against this article being brought up to amend the Baptist faith and message 2000. A couple of points that I want to bring out in this article is it says a couple of things. It says, the oldest generations of Baptists quoted the Nicene Creed verbatim. And then you're down and it says, for nearly two millennia, Christians have universally used the creed for both teaching and worship. Now, listen, for me, if you're trying to appeal to me, tradition is not the way to do it. OK, tradition is just not a good enough reason for me. We need to do it this way because we've always done it this way. You know, more of a appeal to me is what's in the word of God. You know, and like you had said, we were talking about this earlier. And you said for the Southern Baptists, the Bible is our creed. You know, the New Testament is our creed. So traditionalism is not is not a good way to, you know, to appeal to me about this. And then near the end of the article, it talks about, you know, the dean of Southern Baptist theologians, James Leo Garrett Jr. noted even the most recent version of the Baptist faith and message remains underdeveloped regarding the Trinity. And, you know, I just don't I think it's sufficient. I mean, the Baptist faith and message says the eternal triune God reveals himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence or being. And then it goes right into the God, the Father, God, the Son and God, the Holy Spirit. That's like four paragraphs on the Trinity. I don't think it's underdeveloped at all. And then the last thing I want to bring out is it says with the church throughout the ages, we will invariably invariably find that our faith and message, no matter how well intentioned, diverges from that once for all delivered to the saints. So what he's saying in this article is not just the Baptist faith and message isn't sufficient. He's saying that the Baptist faith and message without the creed diverges from the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. And I disagree with that wholeheartedly, you know, that the Baptist faith and message diverges us from the truth that was delivered to us in the word of God. Now, I think it's I think by putting I agree with you, it's going to disrupt the flow. It's going to restate things that have already been stated. You put the creed in there. It's just going to be a hodgepodge of copy paste redundancy. And I don't see the point. I don't see where it gives any more depth than the Baptist faith and message does. All it does is restate the same thing. Yeah, I agree 100 percent. And I think those are great points, valid points. And I'm excited, Brett. Since my very first convention in Nashville back in 2021, I think it was. Yeah, 2021. The the banter, I believe that there needs to be. I'm an old school guy, man. I like to watch the old school senators and House representatives when they begin to debate a bill. And they begin to go back and forth. And they're there. They're calling on their party and they're calling on these things to be changed. I just love that side of it. I see it's a natural debate that is good. That's healthy. But when it's all said and done, we get through where we're at. We make our appeal. We make our vote. We move forward with it. I just love that sense of debate and contesting back and forth. Some people are like, it's a bunch of just junk. And I just I just I find it fascinating. I think it's great. We need more of that decorum. We need more of that back and forth banter where we get to just voice where we're at. And and sometimes, man, I'll go in and I'll be thinking one way and we'll have that debate. I'm like, OK, I'm a different way now because I've heard so and so give their opinion. And I've been able to hear this side of it. So I'm excited about it. I think it's going to be great. If all else fails, we're going to have a great time of fellowship. We're going to eat some fantastic food and we're going to have a great time together. And so I'm looking forward to it and looking forward to hanging out with you here in just a couple of days. You know, nobody else that I know of in my association is going to the convention. I think I'm the only one. And for them, you know, they've been in the SBC their whole lives. They've been in the ministry 20, 30 years. I mean, I can only assume I guess they're just disinterested or over it. But me, I'm like I'm new to the, you know, relatively new to the SBC. You know, this is really the first officially Southern Baptist Church that I've pastored. I've been here two years. Last year was my first convention. I was unsure going in. But, man, I went and I absolutely fell in love. And I was so thankful that you were there to kind of help guide me through the process because I was brand new. It's like a new kid coming to a new school. And you were showing me around campus the first day. And, you know, it was a great experience for me. I'm glad I'm going to get to go to the whole thing this year. I'm excited for it. I'm excited to participate. I'm excited to be a Southern Baptist. And I'm excited to see what the Lord's going to do through this. Love it. Can't wait. It's going to be exciting. Hope to see you there. Hope you'll join us. And we'll try to give some different. We may actually do a little live thing on Facebook while we're there. And we're going to try to get our wives to record an episode together while we're there as well. And, man, we're just excited about what the Lord's doing in our lives and our churches and the convention. And ultimately, it's, again, how we can cooperate together and do more together than we can separate. And so if you ever have any questions, feel free to reach out to us. We may not have the answers, but we'd love to have a thought and be able to talk through those things. We hope you've enjoyed this last series of the In the Church series and talk through these different issues. We're going to we've wrapped all that up with missions and parachurch ministries. If you have a parachurch idea or I'm sorry, not a parachurch idea, an idea that would go along within the church. Maybe we didn't talk about it. Maybe we we talked. We need to talk more about something that we didn't hit long enough. Shoot us a message, put a comment on our Facebook or mess or instant messages or however you feel like doing that. And we'll try to work that into our fall season, our second season of the year. And I'm looking forward. We're going to be doing some crossover episodes with the RFP network and just excited about the future of the podcast. We're here and we're going to here to stay and can't wait for what we've got going on. Brett, final thoughts before we close it down? Yes, there's one hundred and four days of summer vacation and I want y'all to enjoy each and every one of them. Have a great summer. Yes. And until next time to God, not the pastor, be the glory. I found my new name, found that good grace, found that healing and the tears fell down my face when I found my beginning that has no ending. I found that second chance, found my best friend, found my forgiveness, 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. For Freedom Podcast.

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