170. Fundamental Footprints - Bob Gray Sr. and Longview Baptist Temple – The Cult of the Pulpit

In the heat of the East, Texas is different. It clings to you, thick and unmoving. But even in the dead of the summer, every pew at Longview Baptist Temple was packed. It was the late 1990s, and if you were a Baptist in Texas, you knew the name Bob Gray. Not the one from Jacksonville, but the other one, Bob Gray Sr. from Longview, Texas. A man with a booming voice and a never-ending smile and a magnetic presence that filled the pulpit like few others could. He was the kind of preacher whose name only could draw crowds. When youth groups came to the super conferences, they didn't just hear sermons, they entered a machine, a spiritual boot camp per se. Services were electric, the expectations were high, and the man at the center of it all, he walked with a kind of confidence that came from knowing the influence was far-reaching. Bob Gray Sr. had built something big. Under his leadership, Longview Baptist Temple became one of the most recognized churches in the independent fundamental Baptist world. He founded a school, a bus ministry, and became legendary. Later, Texas Baptist College was founded in a training ground for young men who wanted to be just like him. If you were a young preacher in the early 2000s, there was a good chance you had one of his sermon tapes. You probably mimicked his cadence, and when you did that, you wore it as a badge of the spiritual authority. But behind the energy, behind the charisma, was something more subtle, something many didn't see until years later. You see, Bob Gray Sr. didn't rise to power in a vacuum. He came under the influence of Jack Howes, who we talked about last week. He took the blueprint of Hammond, Indiana, and laid it down in East Texas. Soul winning, bus routes, loyalty to the man of God, strict dress codes, and a view of separation that created its own ecosystem. And it worked for a while. But personality-driven ministries always comes with a cost. Ask the staff who lived in fear of being fired overnight. Ask the young people who grew up believing that to question the pastor was to rebel against God. Ask the former members who were blacklisted when they left quietly and slandered when they didn't. There was no moral scandal to mark his fall, no explosive headlines, but that doesn't mean there wasn't any damage. Because sometimes, spiritual harm doesn't come in the form of tabloid exposés. It comes in the form of control disguised as conviction. It comes in the form of performance replacing discipleship. When Bob Grace Sr. eventually stepped down, it wasn't just a retirement. It was the slow unraveling of a dynasty. What followed was a tale all too familiar in the IFB world. Split congregations, debate about legacy, and questions about whether a ministry built on one man could survive without him. Today, we're revisiting Longview. Not just the sermons and suits, but the systems that have elevated Bob Grace Sr. to a level of influence few ever reach. We'll talk about the pressures to perform, the echoes of Hyle's influence, and the long shadow cast when charisma takes center stage at the church. I found my freedom in you. I found a joy I can't lose. And thank God it's true. You wrapped your arms around me, and heaven broke through. From the moment you found me, I found my freedom in you. 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 Saferin and Brad Martin. Welcome to today's episode. We are excited to have you here with us. What a great week we have had following our Resurrection Sunday and the week after Resurrection Sunday and the wonderful things that we've had going on. Brett, what a great episode we had last week recording on Hyle's. It's feeling good to get back into the IFB mindset and been able to dissect some things from our past. And your past, you were vulnerable last week's episode. It's great to have that. And, man, we've had a lot of feedback. We've had a lot of interaction from our episode and people who have been encouraged, people who have reached out to me and to you. And, man, what a great time that was. How has your last week been? How's your family doing? How are things in your neck of the woods? Man, things are going great. Really, really good. We had a good, like you said, a lot of good responses from the last episode. I am happy that it was able to help so many people, reach so many people, talk to so many people that have kind of experienced the same type of trauma that I had to go through while I was there. But we are thankful to be back. I'll tell you, James, I feel the best I've ever felt, but also worst because I went back to the gym and I started working out again. And while for the most part, I feel really good, you know, overall, I am so stinking sore. I've been putting off. I have been putting off doing leg day for weeks, but I had to just break down and do it and now I'm feeling it. You know, I did it on Monday. That way, I wouldn't be sore over the weekend. But, you know, other than that, man, things are things are going great. Couldn't be going better. Yeah, my wife, she goes to the gym every morning and they sort of get a check out of what's going to be going on throughout the week, the week prior to it. And she always tells me every time leg day is on there, I just dread going. And she she's got some back problems from from giving birth to three kids. And and it's just, you know, it's difficult at times. And so she's always hesitant to go on those days. And so I definitely get your fear. I used to work out all the time as well. I haven't in years, but leg day was that dreaded. I love working out with leg day workout. I just hated the days after. And in Idaho, I had a teenage boy who Dawson Van Manen was his name. He he he would get me going. And so we worked out for like a year and a half. And my office was on the second floor of the education building. And man, on those days when I had leg day, I dreaded walking to my office the next day because walking up those stairs was, oh, it was so painful. So, so hard to do. Yes, very much so. I, you know, I each lift weights, you know, of course, back when I was a teenager in my early 20s. And then I could load that leg press up. I think I got that leg press up to 1800 pounds one time, you know, and that was nothing. Now, I say that because I can't do that anymore. So but I am it is a good part. I need to be working out. I'm glad I'm working out. And I am just excited for I got my boys there. They're working out too. I'm showing them how to do it. I mean, my my oldest son, I don't know where he gets his skinniness from. But he's like a 17 year old beast. Like he'll be outside, he'll play basketball for three, four hours, and then go to the gym and lift weights. I mean, he doesn't have to do anything to get those veins popping on his arm. And I'm like, I hate you. You're my son, but I hate you. Yeah, I've never been able to do that. I've got very small veins. And so my veins never pop. My son is also in that same thing. He's like, Dad, I got to get my veins popping. I got to get them looking right. You know, I got a girl that I like. And yeah, it's we make fun of him all the time. It's wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. So we've got, we've got Dallas coming up, man. We are 40, 40 some days away from being there in Dallas, Texas. Uh, what a great time it's going to be to be around friends and family. For me, I'm going to spend the week before the convention with my sister in McKinney, Texas and explore all the things around Dallas and around that area. And, uh, just enjoy some time with family swimming and all the fun stuff that comes along with that. And, uh, then we'll be there at Dallas at the convention. Uh, what a wonderful time it's going to be. Uh, we've got a couple of meetups already lined up with some family and friends out there. And if you're in the area are going to be in the area for the convention, please reach out to us. Let us know. We'd love to, uh, get a dinner with you or hang out, have you come over to the house and enjoy a, a full freedom cigar with us. And, uh, we'd love to have you be a part of that. Speaking of our, our cigars, Brett, we are a couple of days away from unveiling all four of our cigars at a full lineup. Uh, we've had some supply chain issues with the tariffs, but we think all that has worked out. And, uh, we are moments away from launching our, uh, sweet cigar, our, our, uh, Connecticut suite. And we're excited about that. Got some fun things coming up in the future that we're going to be rolling out some partnerships that we're going to have with the cigar company. And, uh, hopefully you'll go and check out that website and make a purchase. It does help us. It does help with some things that we're doing and some things we're trying to do. It's a good, easy way to support the podcast and support the ministry of what we're trying to do here. Exactly. I can't wait for Dallas myself. Uh, we are, uh, got everything ready. I'm ready to go. I'm excited. It's always one of my favorite times of year. And just like James said, if you're going to be there, uh, we want to meet you. We want to meet up, let us know, drop us a line. Another trip that's coming up that we want to keep in front of you because it is near and dear to our hearts is Israel. Don't forget the for freedom in the Holy land trip that is going to be a next Jan in the next January, 2025. We've still got some spots available and we want to let our listeners know. Uh, I can just imagine us going out recording episodes on the sea galley, uh, just like we did before. And, uh, it's just going to be a great time. We want you to come with us. You will never regret going, uh, to Israel for a trip. It's a once in a lifetime thing. This is probably I've asked around and this is probably one of the best prices you're ever going to find to go to Israel. Um, I mean, I'll just go and tell you, it's all in 4,500, but I'll tell you that split up into payments. You've got over the next year to save up and pay on it. And listen, I've priced other people. I know of price this trip out and like $10,000 a person. And so for 4,500, I mean, uh, over half of that is flights and back and we're in five star hotels every night, tour buses, tour guides, all the places we start from the top of the country, go all the way to the bottom. So register today, check out our website, check out our trip website. It's on our Facebook page and other social media platforms. And I cannot wait for, for freedom to go back to the Holy Land. Yeah. Not a lot of people know Brett that the, uh, our Israel trip that we first went on was the, uh, culmination of a lot of things. It was our time where we got to experience the Holy Land. Uh, but it also was the time where me and you connected for the first time, really heart to heart and the, uh, rebirth of the for freedom podcast with you coming on as a cohost really started in Israel and, uh, went from there. And so I'm excited about, uh, going back and seeing some of those sites and seeing sites we haven't seen. I ran into a lady yesterday at my son's t-ball game and, uh, she stopped me and was talking for my former church, talking to me about Israel and the trip and how she wants to go. And I told her, I said, go, you've got an opportunity to go with us, sign up. Her daughter was there and she said, yeah, mom, you can go do it. She was a little nervous, but I got to talk with her. And so, uh, if you're on the edge about it, jump on with us, come, uh, enjoy the trip with us, enjoy the time that we're going to have together in the Holy lands. You're not going to regret it. And Brett, the, the next item that we have not really talked about, but it's coming up. And, uh, we've just now established that we're pretty much we're 90%, 95% sure me, possibly both of us are going to be theirs. We're going to be at the G3 conference at, um, Georgia in Atlanta, Georgia. And, uh, we are going to have a booth set up. We're going to have a booth set up, talking about the podcast, talking about our cigars and just being able to be a part of all this going on there. Uh, we're going to be selling cigars there. We're going to be having a great time of fellowship, answering questions. Uh, we've got some things that are going to be rolling out that are going to be special, uh, that'll be there at the event. And so, um, hopefully that if you'll be in the area or be a part of it, I've already got one dinner lined up, um, with a guy that reached out to us. And so we're going to be hanging out and having a good time. Um, so if you're in the area of Georgia and you'd like to come to G3 and be a part of what's going on there, uh, we'd love to have you be a part of it. Absolutely. I'm looking forward to that. Uh, we, that plan just kind of fell together and I'm hoping it all works out. That's going to be an exciting time to, you know, push our cigar line for our company and for the podcast. And so we also, if you are going to be at that, we want to put a line out to that. We want you to come and meet us and see us. And we'll have more information about that as, uh, as we get closer to it. Absolutely. And I did have someone reach out to the podcast, to the website. We do have a website for freedom podcast.com. Uh, if you would like to share your story on the podcast, some of our best episodes, some of our most enjoyable episodes have been interviewing and talking to people. And so if you'd like to share your story, you'd like to reach out to us, uh, any of our social medias, our website, or my cell phone. Um, you can always reach out to us and we would love to, uh, hear your story and then record your story so that you can, uh, help others that have struggled in and out of the independent fundamental Baptist movement. And, uh, it's a great way to encourage and help other people by helping others in a way that is, uh, just sharing who you are and what Lord's done in your life. And, uh, we've had a couple of those this last season with Olivia and Joe. And so we'd love to line up some of those in the future episodes as well, especially as we're talking through these fundamental footprint series that we're going through last week, we talked about how's Anderson and what the house Anderson movement looked like. And today we're looking at an extension really of the house Anderson movement. And we're going to be dissecting even some of these other ones in the future. We're looking at next season already and plan through that and, and having some interviews and people come on that really have come through this movement and, um, out of some of these movements that we're talking about. And today we're going to be talking about, uh, Brett, tell us about who we're talking about today. We're going to be talking about the Longview Baptist temple and we're going to be talking about Bob Gray and, you know, uh, it's in Longview, Texas, Bob Gray, senior, like I said, this man idolized, uh, Jack Hiles tried to replicate his model almost step-by-step. The Longview Baptist temple was his empire. And just, just like with Hiles, you got the bus ministry, you got the inflated numbers, you got the strict standards and, you know, unfortunately you also have a fair share of, uh, controversy. I will say that before I went to house Anderson, I'd never heard of Bob Gray before, but I can say this. I want to say that every, almost if I can't say every single time, but I can say almost every single time, Jack Hiles name dropped. Every time I heard him name drop, he would mention Bob Gray, senior, Longview Baptist temple, Longview, Texas. I heard that so much every week. Jack would mention his name. And that's because Bob Gray emulated Jack Hiles. And that's what Jack Hiles wanted all the preacher boys to do. Be like me, read my manual, read the fundamental man, emulate me. And that's what Bob Gray did to a T and that's why Jack Hiles pushed him so hard. Yeah. With, you know, with Jack Hiles, when, when the man would get up and release a new book or a new mini series, um, they said that every time he released one, he sold over a million copies. Um, and so everyone was trying to be like him and in the flip side of it, everyone wanted to be mentioned by him because if you were mentioned by him or you were, uh, uh, an illustration in a book or something, that's a million people. And this is before the age of social media. This is before the age of viralness. This is before, you know, some celebrity can say things. And so if you can get a million people to know or hear about you, there's a chance that they're going to reach out and say, Hey, will you come and preach at a revival or preach at a conference? And, uh, so let's sort of begin with who Bob Gray is. Bob Gray was born in 1946 and became known as the preacher's preacher in the IFB circles. Uh, he was a staunch, as you said, Hiles loyalist. Uh, he was a frequent speaker at many, many IFB conferences and he pastored Longview Baptist temple, uh, from 1980 to 2009. So this is a recent moment. This is, he recently retired and stepped down. He's, I believe he's still alive today. Um, according to some of my research, but, uh, what, what else about the, the history of who he is, Brett? You know, let me say something about this, this thing in independent fundamental Baptist movement, your goal as a preacher boy, you, you mentioned this, James, is just to get your name recognized. It's just to be on a platform and rub elbows with your heroes and sit on the same platform, uh, in a suit and tie with somebody that you looked up to. And that is the goal. I've got good friends right now that they, they've accomplished that goal. Their goal was to sit on the same platform as their heroes and preach. And they, they got what they wanted. That's what that, that recognition sitting up there. Everybody look at me sitting up there during the whole sermon. That's what this whole culture, that's what it, that's your goal. That's what you go after. When it comes to Bob Gray, Longview Baptist temple became one of the biggest independent fundamental Baptist churches in Texas. Now, Bob Gray senior took that over from Jim Crane and under his leadership, the church grew rapidly, especially through the bus ministry. And if there's anything that me and you know, anything about James, it is the bus ministry. Yeah, absolutely. I did do just a quick search yet. Bob Gray is still alive. Um, and he also received, get this Brett. I didn't know this, uh, an honorary doctorate from Howes Anderson college, um, for being such a loyalist to, uh, Jack House. Um, and you know, no surprise here. Like Howes Gray focused intently on soul winning and bus routes, uh, by the mid nineties, just a couple of years after he had started pastor and Longview claimed tens of thousands of salvations decisions annually. And you, you, you said the word right there. There's a key word that you just said that is the word claimed. Okay. Many of those decisions came through questionable evangelism tactics, coerced prayers, pressured children, zero followup. I mean, if it's anything like the Howes Anderson model, it was one, two, three, pray after me. I'll see it. I'll never see you again. Bye. Bye Felicia. Like you're gone after that. There's zero, there's zero discipleship. It's just pray and you're gone. Yeah. And as we think through the influence that this one man, Jack House has had on the independent fundamental Baptist movement, you know, we, we talked in our opening series years ago when John began this with the J Frank Norris and the influence he had. And as we went through some of those influential figures, the influence of Jack House, and you're going to hear this name a lot over the next couple of weeks because his influence was far reaching and far deep in the independent fundamental Baptist movement. He, he was the catalyst for what the movement is known for today. Bob Gray senior was one of Jack House's biggest fans. As we said, he often said that House was his spiritual and physical hero in this world. Uh, in fact, Gray was a featured speaker at pastor school, uh, and in Hammond and multiple times he was there speaking in chapel and doing many different things in the house Anderson Institute because he was such a fan. He wanted to be as close as he could. And as part of this movement as he could, because he wanted to ride the coattails of what was going on. And look what we're saying, we're not making it up. It's not conjecture. Okay. It's just fact. You look at vibrates preaching style, his church structure, his view of standards, his view on women, his view on music, and it echoed Hiles and he wanted to be Jack Hiles and he got very close. Yeah. One of the things as we look through this influence and sort of piggyback as sort of looking at the house Anderson side, everything in this world is interconnected. If, if how said something at pastor school, uh, you could expect gray to echo it from the pulpit of long view the next week. And you could expect hundreds of thousands of churches all across the country echoing what was said at pastor school the next week. And so this was a way of his influence spreading. And the way that this whole system, uh, was working was one man was influencing and, and really molding these other churches and pastors into the one that he wanted him to be, to look like him and act like him. Exactly. And you know, if you've heard him preach, he had, they carried that same angry, loud screaming tone that Hiles had. There was, you know, we, we, we know preachers like this. There's very little grace, if any, lots of shouting, a deep emphasis on external experience, uh, appearance, ain't no one else he was big on. He was big on alliteration. I mean, if you can get all the points in your sermon to start with the same letter or get them all to rhyme, man, you have arrived and so heavy into alliteration. Like you hear some of these points, you're like, what? That, that, that doesn't even make sense. Like James, when you have to sacrifice making sense to make it rhyme, it doesn't need to rhyme. Okay. The word of God does not require you to make all the words start with the same letter in order for you to preach it. And some of those, some of those alliteration points were just such a stretch. I mean, stretch Armstrong ain't got nothing on him. Absolutely. You know, I try to alliterate and rhyme, but if it doesn't fit, I don't do it. I sort of have my, my outline, I work through it and then I'll send it to my wife and I'll send it to a couple other people and, and they'll, you know, my wife will say, Hey, you know, you could use this word instead. I'm not a, I'm not a big thesaurus guy. I can't, I can't do that. So the thesaurus is, is a big, big help for me. I used to try so much to alliterate just like you. I used to spend hours just trying to find the right word. And then one day I just gave up on it. I was like, man, this is not worth it. So I'm like you, if I can make it alliterate, I'll think about it for maybe two minutes. And if it can't come together in two minutes, I'm just going to move on. Yeah. The other day, Brett, I was preaching and in my sermon, I didn't even realize that I had alliterated. And like one of the points was, and I see, you know, I probably should have used this word instead of that word. And it would have all alliterated. And one of the, I have a guy that takes pictures as I preach and puts off everything on Snapchat. And he said, the preacher said it this way, but it should have been worded this way because it all matched and lined up. And I just don't think like that as much as I probably should. I know people remember things when you alliterate and you rhyme. But let's talk through the culture here for a minute, Brett, the Longview Temple culture. The culture, I'm going to explain like this, it wasn't just a church. It was really a kingdom. It was the Longview Baptist kingdom. And Gray was the king of that kingdom. And he set himself up on that pedestal and on that throne. And this is the model that we begin to see from the house influence is this kingdom mentality of it's my kingdom. And I'm going to set this kingdom up the way I want it. Right. The church was his fiefdom. Staff was expected to be loyal to Gray above all. And questioning leadership meant you were in rebellion, even if you question anything. So what the result of that is you employ a bunch of yes men, a bunch of men that won't tell you how it is, won't give you any constructive criticism, won't help you get better in any way, won't pick up the ball if you accidentally drop it. That's what you get when you set up this culture. Everything in it was about performance, bus route, soul save, standards kept, that all of it was about performance. And, you know, his pulpit became a platform for power rather than proclaiming the word. Talk about some P's and some alliteration right there. You know, dissenters were shamed. They were removed or they were, you know, ridiculed publicly. Yeah. You know, this environment is intense. I'm talking to several men right now in counseling that tell me, you know, the culture I was in or the culture I'm currently in is intense. And I'm not real. I'm just now realizing the severity that it's doing to my soul. But let's think about the members here. The people in the congregation, there were, they were guilted into constant activity, right? If you're not here every night of the week, if you're not doing something at the church, then you're not going to be this holy Christian. And that was this view and focus on external holiness, a dress code, a haircut, the entertainment bands. And what this leads to is a culture where as long as I look right on the outside, it doesn't matter what the inside of my house looks like. And a lot of these people were in hard home lives and the husbands were authoritarian and there was abuse and there was hurt. And there were things that were being done that has promulgated for generations after generations. Because as long as I look good on the outside, as long as everyone outside of my structure sees that I'm holy, then it doesn't matter what happens on the inside of my home and the inside of my life. And so there was this external performance that was so driven. And right, exactly. Heavy, like heavy emphasis on dress codes, haircuts, entertainment bands. Listen, it would, hey, I don't know about you, but my pastor called it the movie house or he called it the picture show. That was them old school names that they would use for it. And, you know, you mentioned something that made me think of this. I remember those days when I had to do something at the church every single day. Just imagine going to the church, you know, when you're not a SNAP member like I am now, but going to the church seven days a week, you were on that property doing something. And when people don't, what people don't realize is that that takes a toll. It overtaxes your people. And even if they don't realize it. And again, the women, the women were heavily policed. I saw a picture today and I thought about posting it. And it was what Islam does to women. And what you have is you have that this father and this son swimming out in the ocean and standing on the beach was this Islamic woman with full garb from head to toe in the home, hot beach and a big black blanket, essentially. And the caption said, this is what Islam does to women. I've thought about that. And I also think about what the IFB, maybe not to that extreme, but what this culture does to women as well. That modesty is drilled into girls from childhood. And they're, they're taught that if the man lusts, it's the woman's fault. You know, it's, it's her fault that, uh, that she lusts, that they lust. And in this culture, men have all the authority. Uh, you know, you could not allow, you were not allowed to correct your husband in public, even if he was wrong, even if he was making a mistake, you are not allowed to say anything. And that right there, the first part of my marriage that took that, that, that mentality, we had that mentality because we grew up in this and it, it hurt, hurt us at the beginning of the marriage until we, we repented of that. And I repented of that and, and, and, and got away from that. Absolutely. And, you know, we don't need to forget about the, the Christian school that was connected, uh, for some reason, um, I don't know. Um, I know the reason that's for a different episode. Uh, a lot of house model churches after they planted the church, they started a Christian school. And then after they planted the Christian school, then they started a seminary or Bible college or institute or some type of higher education training as well. My, my church growing up same way. We were heavy bus ministry, bus ministers growing. We had a Christian school. And then right after that, we had eventually started a Bible college and the Bible college only lasted for a couple of years, but that was the model. We were going toward that model. Um, and this Christian school that was connected was Texas independent Baptist schools and a seminary. And later that turned into, uh, the Texas Bible college. Um, and, and it followed the same ideology of, of house Anderson, right? It was King James only no accreditation, strict rules. This is the, the model and the mindset. If you could, uh, take the house church manual, which we're probably going to do and dissect it. And in a while we're, we're looking at these three things, you gotta be King James only. You can't be accredited by the world because then you're going to follow the world standards, but we're going to follow our own strict standards and our own strict rules. And these are the rules you're going to follow. Exactly. And this next subject we're going to get into, this is where things start to get a little dark because there had been multiple allegations and not just allegations, credible allegations of abuse, emotional, spiritual, sexual abuse coming out of long view Baptist temple. You know, as we've seen in other IFP churches and other podcasts that talk about this in depth, um, we begin to see that there's a structure. And if you watch, let us pray, they, they dissect this a lot of the, uh, protecting the leadership and silence and the victims. It is a sense of, we've got to protect the highest level of authority. And if someone's been hurt, we're going to move them. We're going to silence them. We're going to change it to where they can't be heard. Uh, abusers are often moved or were quietly dismissed in the church structure so that there was no outside accountability and no one asked questions. It's where did youth pastor so-and-so go? He felt led to leave and go to another place. And it was a quiet coverup move, or it was just moving from one church system to another. It was calling up and saying, Hey, I need this done, or I need these done for, uh, the, this, this friend of mine and not telling what happened. And then years later, uh, we began to see, uh, the change in the hurt and the, the coverup that came to happen from that. Exactly. And you know, this, this kind of, this happened in my church too. Uh, a guy was hired from house Anderson and I don't want to give too many details, too many names, but he got into some issues at the home church, sent over to the buddy's church, went and started his own church. And so, you know, this is prevent prevalent in the IFB, but in, in 2010, several whistleblowers came forward and shared testimonies of trauma, abuse, and coercion under Bob Gray senior's leadership. These weren't isolated incidents. These were patterns and you can tell they were patterns. Yeah, this was the year after he retired and stepped down and Gray himself has not been criminally charged. There've not been any formal charges against him, but what we want to talk about is the culture that he created that enabled harm. Uh, and to this day, many survivors are still processing their trauma. They're still trying to figure out life because again, this was a kingdom mentality. This was everything you do must be processed through this church and kingdom. And so when the trauma structure gets broken down and you begin fleshing through and working through these things, everything about your life, everything about your faith begins to be questioned and hurt. And it's a difficult thing for survivors when they go through this. And the worst part is many victims are made to feel guilty for speaking up. Like they were, they were told they were hurting God's man. This is that mentality of you talk about God's man, the she bears will come after you. You'll go crazy. You'll die. Bad things will happen. You can't criticize God's man at all. And it, that's just, well, it's spiritual abuse is what it is. You know, would you agree? Absolutely. This is, uh, the fundamental markers of what spiritual abuse is. And it is very plain and simple. When you look at this, this is, uh, what spiritual abuse looks like. And it is the breeding ground for spiritual abuse, right? When you have a structure set up like this with no accountability, with constant moving of people around from one place to another, you are breeding spiritual abuse. You are allowing it to grow and flourish and you're not cutting the weeds. You're not ripping the roots out. Uh, it is a horrible, horrible thing to do and see. So what happened after Bob Gray Sr. stepped down? So he retired in 2009 and the church went through some leadership changes. Today it's been renamed Emmanuel Baptist church under a different pastor. Yeah. His son is actually the pastor now. Uh, so it's still a gray as a pastor and the legacy of gray still lingers. It's still active online. He runs a website and publishes books. He continues to preach at conferences and writes about soul winning and church growth. And you can go and you can see he is the chancellor at independent Baptist online college. And so he's still running a college and he's still writing and he's still trying to publish and, and peddle his influence even today. Uh, and he's still preaching and you can see some of these videos online of him preaching today. Uh, and the message hasn't changed. He's still preaching the same Jack house messages. He's still preaching with the same flair of Jack house. And he's still trying to peddle his influence in a way of look at what I've done and look at who I am. So there's a new generation of IFP pastors who still quote him. He's considered a legend in many circles, but it's important to ask the question, what exactly are they inheriting? You know, if we don't critically evaluate the systems we come from, we'll end up repeating the same cycles. We'll begin being in the same area. And so we want to challenge our thoughts. We want to challenge where we're at and we want to look and see and say, what is this? And why is it? The, the, the whole premise of our podcast is, uh, Galatians five, one to find freedom for Christ to set us free, not to be under the yoke of bondage to, but be set free on the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so we must ask ourself, what is it we're setting, being set free from? We're being set free from the legalism and the bondage that so easily besets us, the, these things that hold us down. And so we must ask ourselves, where are we at? Are we willing to sacrifice freedom on the altar of legalism, or are we willing to sacrifice legalism so that we can be set free from these yokes of bondage that we are so easily entangled with? And oftentimes as we begin to see this, this, this, this form of inheriting is there because they saw a movement. They saw a person that was elevated to a standard that is, uh, popularity that is, uh, allowing them to be preaching at different places and allowing them to be promulgated in a way that would be set up, uh, for success in the future. I alliterated for you there as well, Brett. There you go. You know, it's okay to learn from the past, uh, but everything should not be carried forward. Look, it's okay to look back and see where you came from, to look at the mistakes that you've made. That's actually a very healthy thing, but there's a difference between learning from the past and living in the past. Those are two very, very different things. And there's some baggage that we can look back and say, Hey, these things were done wrong, but we don't need to carry those forward into the future. And that's kind of the point of what we're doing is we want to go back. We want to examine, uh, examine things like this, see where they went wrong and what we can do to correct it, to go forward. He's got a whole new generation of IFB guys that are coming up who idolize him. But what we want to do, we're hoping that this episode gets out to somebody who's questioning, who's like, man, I'm seeing some of this legalism. I'm, I'm hearing some of this rhetoric preached and it doesn't line up with my Bible. Like my, my pop ball used to say, things are not G hauling. And so, you know, that's what we're here for. We're here to be that voice crying out in the podcast wilderness, say, Hey, look, this is, this isn't right. Just because you were raised this way and taught this way and preached to this way. Doesn't make it right. Uh, you need to get back to the Bible, get back to the basics and not the man of God. Yeah. As we begin to wind down this episode, I really want us to, to leave you with four questions, four thoughts for you to wrestle with today. If you're in this movement or you've come out of this movement or you were under Bob Gray, or you were under Jack Howes or some of these others that we're going to talk about, begin to ask yourself a couple of thought provoking questions. And the first one is this, what kind of culture are we building in our churches? What we build in what we leave in our churches and what we're teaching our children is what's going to be in the next generation. If we're teaching abuse and harm and, uh, mistreatment of women and, uh, authoritarianness, then that is what the next generation is going to see and take to the next level. And so we've got to get to the point where we're asking ourselves, what is the culture that we're having and that we're leading in our churches? Exactly. Uh, the next question we have to ask is, are we elevating pastors to celebrity status? Uh, are we, are we measuring success by bus routes and, and baptisms or by transformed lives and discipleship? You know, the only celebrity in our churches should be Jesus Christ. And we should put no other man or no other pastor in that position where we worship him. Like people like James, I'm telling you, after Jack Howes died, there were people standing behind the pulpit, a first Baptist church hammer, who were praying to the man. I was sitting in the auditorium when it happened. I think one of them was Ray Young. Uh, well, this is the mentality we need to get away from. We don't need to measure success by how many routes we have. And when, when I was in the bus ministry, the, the, the second, I had one route, but the second bus route I had, what they did is they cut a block of a block of blocks out of four routes to create another route, just to say, we added a route. It was all about numbers. It wasn't helping anybody. And when I read the new Testament, Jesus didn't care about numbers as much as he cared about relationships. I'll tell you that when he sent the 70 out, he told them, Hey, he said, look, y'all go out and whatever house you go to stay in that house, don't go house to house. And the reason why he said that is because the culture of the day was to go every day or so you would, when you stayed in a new city, you would go from house to house, the house, the house, and the idea is you meet more people. Jesus told the 70, don't do that. Whatever house you go to stay in that house, eat what they set before you because relationships were more important to Jesus than numbers. You will reach more people through relationships than you will, uh, any, any other platform. A sermon can be forgotten. A social media post can be ignored and a track can be thrown away, but nobody will ever forget how you made them feel. That's what this culture is missing. It's mission. It's missing the relational aspect, the discipleship aspect. It's all about numbers and that's not how Jesus thought. Yeah. Discipleship and accountability is the key to, uh, growing people for the kingdom and discipling church members for the kingdom and growing a church is, is about discipleship and small groups and accountability because that's where we begin to wrestle with the heart issues. You begin to notice when someone is struggling in that small group and you're able to love and care and show that accountability. That is so much needed in our churches today. The third question we want to ask is, are we fostering a church or a culture where questions are welcomed? Uh, I often go to, uh, the abide in me passage of Jesus's last teaching to his disciples before the cross and the crucifixion. And he's telling them about a place where he's going to go and, and he's going to be leaving for a little while. And Thomas looks at him and says, how are we going to find you? How are we going to know where you're at? Jesus didn't shut him down. Jesus brought him in and said, Hey, I love the question. Let's begin to talk through this. And let me continue teaching. And we get four or five chapters of John there at the end of John talking through Jesus and his disciples. And there's questions and Peter's questioning and, and, and all the other disciples are talking through this. He didn't silence them. He didn't spiritualize things. No, he was a real person who talked to real answers and began to help them out through their struggles. And oftentimes that's where we need to be at. We need to welcome questions and not silence or spiritualize things. Exactly. And most importantly, the fourth question, are we pointing people to Christ or just to our brand of Christianity? You know, when you're in the IFB movement, it's not just about being IFB. Uh, you know, we sell independent. It means every church is independent, but now there are clicks and, and, and in the IFB movement, it's called camps. What camp did you belong to? Did you belong to the house camp or the Lee Roberson camp or the, the, the house Anderson camp or the crown college camp or the Carl hatch camp or the Tom alone camp or the, all these different camps. Uh, and this, you know, there's just no unity in it. And that's what the church is supposed to do. Are we promoting Jesus or we promoting our college? Are we promoting our pastor? Are we promoting our brand of legalism? It's all about pointing people to Christ. And that's what we want to stress to people and what we want people to get back to. You're absolutely right. You know, and next week we're going to look at another two powerhouses in the independent fundamental Baptist movement. We're going to look at Bob Jones university, which necessarily wasn't a independent movement, but there was some connections with house there. And we're going to look at Pensacola Christian college. It's different in many ways. Both of these are different, but it's got its own share of serious concerns that we want to look at. And we want to examine from a biblical Christian worldview. And, uh, hopefully that you're looking forward to that. I know we are, we're excited about what God's been doing through the series. And, uh, we hope you enjoyed today's episode. You know, thanks for being with us for this fundamental footprints, little mini series we're having. If you or someone, you know, has a story related to long view or the IFB movement in general, reach out to us, hit us up. We'd love to hear from you. That's right. And until next time to God, not the pastor, be the glory. Found my new name. Found that good grace. Found that healing. And the tears fell down my face when I found my beginning. Has no ending. Found that second chance. Found my best friend. Found my forgiveness. Found my happiness. 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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