194. The Future of Fundamentalism - Charlie Clark and Vision Baptist College

For freedom, he set me free. Not for change, not for guilt, not for Pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace. Cigars and victory justified, released. Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. I ain't saved by dress codes, not by what I eat. I'm covered in the righteousness, washed from head to feet. No tally of tradition, no man-made code. Blood bought my freedom, now I ride that road. They clutch pearls when they see smoke rings rise. But my praise still ascends past the legalist cries. Christ plus nothing, that's the real math. So miss me with your fence laws and your extra path. He sat with sinners, I'm sitting with saints. Sipping grace from the bottle, no room for fakes. I light one for liberty, toast to the king. Every ash a sermon, death has lost its sting. For freedom, he set me free. Not for chains, not for guilt, not for Pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace. Cigars and victory justified, released. For freedom, he set me free. Not for chains, not for guilt, not for Pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace. Cigars and victory justified, released. Let grace begin. For freedom, you've got me free. Not for change, not for guilt, not for Pharisee. Grace lit the flame. Now here are your hosts, James Saifert and Brett Martin. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. Man, what a great time it is. I'm here in North Carolina. Brett's there in Mississippi. And we have had a great week with John here at our revival last week. We had such a blessing. I hope you enjoyed that episode. And Brett there in Mississippi just got done with his Mississippi Baptist State Convention meetup. And I hope you had a great time. Brett, how are you doing? How are you and the family doing? Tell us about the convention there in Mississippi. Man, we had a great time at our state convention this past week. We had it at a new location. Usually we have it at First Baptist Jackson, but we had it in Madison at Broadmoor Baptist. And, man, it's just kind of a safer area in Madison as compared to Jackson. And then not as many potholes. And so it kind of worked out well. But we had a great time. Emily came with me. Just a time for us to kind of take a break, recharge, listen to some preaching, listen to some worship. Wasn't a lot of drama. And so, man, we just had a great time. We've been having a good time in church. Like we talked a little bit before we started recording today, I'm going through the book of Ecclesiastes in church. There's a book called, I think it's David Gibson is his name, but it's called Living Life Backwards. And, you know, the point of the main thrust of the book is, you know, a proper perspective on death is the key to true life. And he proposes that's the point that Solomon's trying to make. Because when you start from living life forward, going to your death, if you start at your death, you live life backwards. That's, you know, gives you a proper perspective on life. And, man, we've really enjoyed it. You know, we've been doing some, I've been getting a lot of good responses from it. I really like the book of Ecclesiastes. And so, you know, it used to be challenging for me to preach on. But, you know, I've got to the point in my ministry now where, you know, a book or a passage is challenging to me or hard for me to understand. I just preach on it. And then, you know, I have a new appreciation for it. And I will tell you that I'm glad that you and John got a chance to record. I hate once again that I had to miss recording because every time John comes on, I'm not available. But one day all three of us are going to get together. Yeah, it's going to be great. You know, you said living life backwards. It reminded me we're not sponsored by this. But if they want to sponsor us, they can. Backwards Planning Financial, you know, it sort of starts to the end of your life and plans backwards. And so that's a great way to do that. I think they sponsor Haunted Cosmos and a couple other podcasts I listen to. Yeah, we had a great time with John while I'm here. Next week is our convention. And so I'll be going to Greensboro first of next week for that. Looking forward to that. But, yeah, me and John had a great time just recording last week, catching up on old times. He preached a great set of revival messages. We entitled it Restore. So restoring our soul, restoring our worship, and restoring our family. And what that looks like in a practical way. And he knocked it out of the park, did a great job, and was just glad to be with him. We hit 100,000 downloads, Brett. The podcast made it there. Never thought it would get that far. But you guys have been faithful to listen, faithful to comment, faithful to give us good feedback. And we appreciate that. But, yeah, we are looking forward to the future of the podcast, the future of fundamentalism as we look at this series. We should finish it up before Christmastime or right around our Christmas break. And then looking forward to what we've got in the bank for our next episode and our next series. I think we've got almost all of 2026 planned. And so I'm excited about the future, excited about what God's doing, and just the future of what we've got going on. So, well, speaking of the future, Brett, we've got two big things coming up. First of the year and middle of next year. What's going on first off? First off, we've got our Israel trip coming up end of January, beginning of February. And I am extremely looking forward to this. I'm going to ask you a question, and I'm going to answer it first, but I want you to be thinking of it while I'm answering. I want you to give me a place in northern Galilee that you look forward to seeing again. And then a place in Jerusalem that you look forward to seeing again. I'll tell you of mine, I mean, there's a lot of great places in Galilee from Caesarea Maritime to Caesarea Philippi, Mount Hermon and Mount Precipice. But I'll tell you, man, I love just the Sea of Galilee. Magnolia was good, too. But man, just waking up that morning before the sun came up, watching the sun come up on the Sea of Galilee, seeing those fishermen out there fishing in the sea that Jesus' disciples fished in, that he walked in, that so much of his ministry took place in. And then for me, so many places in Jerusalem, from the Temple Mount to the Garden Tomb. But I'll tell you, I want to just walk down the streets again. I miss it so much that I just want to walk down the street to the Muslim quarter and the Jewish quarter and just, you know, kind of feel like an adventure, like you're a crusader. You're on a, you know, you're on a trek, you know, you're on a journey of a lifetime, just exploring the streets of Jerusalem. And then I cannot wait to get back. I talked to some pastors today in my meeting that were jealous that I'm going back so soon. And we're, me and you are hooking up with Marcus Merritt and looking forward to, you know, going. There's a very, very short window if people want to go. I mean, it's literally just a couple weeks left that you can, you can jump in on our trip. But if you'd like to go, we want you to go. So let us know. So now you answer the question. Give me a place in Galilee, a place in Jerusalem. Well, you know, thinking of Galilee, so many places come to my mind, you know, that we went to. I think the place, of course, Magdala was awesome. I can't wait to go back there. Um, Sea of Galilee, fantastic. The place that struck me that I wasn't expecting, um, two places. I can't just say one, I've got to say two. First one was Caesarea Philippi. Upon this rock, I'll build my church. That whole preaching and teaching moment there was fantastic. But the second place was, uh, Maguito. Um, there at the, the Valley of Armageddon. And I began just weeping uncontrollably. Standing there on the edge of Maguito, looking out into the, uh, the valley there of the Maguito Valley. And seeing cars come by. And our guide, Amir, told us this. Even the Jews believed that the end of the world was going to happen right here. And they were driving by this, this place like it was a Walmart. No care in the world. No care that this was going to happen. It just broke me. Uh, and I can't wait to go back and be in that place. The place that I want to go that we didn't get to go because there are people there. Is the place I want to go the most in Jerusalem. And that is the Church of the Flagulation. Uh, to go down in the underground, which is the, uh, some of the original, the underground tomb. The, the streets down there. Uh, they say it's the original streets and the original stone where Jesus was beat at. Uh, before he was brought before Pilate. Um, uh, and so I want to go and I want to experience that. Um, of course, I mean, I could mention the Garden of Gethsemane. Uh, the, the, the garden tomb. Like all those places are great. I want to see that because I was so looking forward to experiencing and seeing what that looked like when they beat Jesus. Um, uh, and to see that. So that's going to be great. I, I, I actually did forget we were going there. We were planning on going there this next trip. And that's just another place that I just can't wait to see. Because some, some of the places where that they say, okay, this happened here. You know, if you kind of look at it cross-eyed, like, you know, maybe that's just tradition. We added on later. But some of the places like the Church of the Flagulation, like this is a stone where they know. Look, this is where they beat people. This is a known fact. Well, and in my, in my rock collection, I've got all the rock collection of different places we went. And that's the one that I really wanted was a rock from where the Church of Flagulation is at. Where that stone is at. Um, so I can't wait to add that to my collection. Um, and it's going to be great. So, uh, after that, we're doing a little meetup like we do every year in Orlando this year for the SBC meetup. Um, if you're SBC or you're in Orlando area, um, hit us up. We're going to have, uh, Airbnb, a VRBO. Uh, the Airbnbs and VRBOs down there in Orlando are much nicer than the other places we've stayed. Um, and so we're excited about having a little bit more room to have some people over. And so if you're close by or you're just going to be in the area, hit us up. We'll have a great time of fellowship at nighttime. We'll try not to be on the ghetto streets, uh, and see the women of the night. Let me tell you, some of the pastors that came to Airbnb in Dallas, they had some stories to go back and go back and tell. Yeah. What is this crazy guy from North Carolina doing? He's bringing us in Mississippi, bringing us out here to the hood, uh, to get jumped. It was, it was great. Um, so yeah. Uh, anything else, Brett, we got going on? Of course, we're in the middle of holiday season. Um, if you haven't picked up, I spoke to Chance this week. Uh, we've got a lot of cigars that have went out the door. Um, our, our experience box is selling out. We're, we're really close to selling out of that. And so if you'd like to get a great gift for your family, uh, limited supply, we've only got 10 or 12 of those boxes left. We've almost sold out. So go buy, check it out on our website, heavily discounted right now for you and for your convenience. Uh, four cigars, a box of soap and a bag of coffee to support, um, our Nicaragua mission trips. Um, our missionary down there, not supporting our trip, but supporting our missionaries down there, uh, to help church plants. There's nine church plants right now. And, uh, it's a great opportunity of partnership that we have. And so we hope you will value yourself to that. Uh, it's a great, uh, opportunity for you to support us, but also support that as well. Brett, go ahead. When are you, uh, when are y'all going back to Nicaragua? Do you have a trip planned? Yeah. I told, uh, Marcus, I told, um, um, um, Lee, uh, February, May or July. Um, so he's looking at those three months for me. Um, I've got one, when the new year starts, I've got just a couple of dates that I can float around. And so those are the dates that I'm, I'm looking at right now. So when are y'all going? Uh, we are going back in July. Oh, so July may work. So shoot me your July date or tell me what that date is. And my July just opened up. We moved our Bible school back a week, uh, or back to June. And so my July is wide open now. So, oh, good. Well, let me give you my dates. Maybe we can get our, uh, get our, you know, go, go together again. I think that's pretty much, you know, we've got Israel coming up January. Uh, our church, like we just said, we're going back to Nicaragua in July. Um, pretty much we're going to Orlando. We're looking forward to that. And so, you know, we've just got some things coming up and we're excited about it and excited to be here at the podcast. I think that's all we got. Hey, I'll tell you this right before we get started. Uh, I had a guy named Bryce. He reached out to me. He's been listening to the podcast. Actually, I've had an event a couple of weeks ago here in Taylorsville and met a lot of great people. A lot of people that had just never been exposed to the podcast. It's a cigar company and, uh, shared that with them. But Bryce reached out to me. He's, uh, get his doctorate from Liberty and, uh, was raised in a very fundamentalist church. And he told us, he said, I just really appreciate the podcast. He said, it's been a breath of fresh air. I know you guys care about what you do. And he said, I just want to tell you that it has blessed me to be listening. Um, so, you know, we don't always hear that. Uh, but I do want to share that. That it has been a great, uh, a great feedback from that. So I appreciate you, Bryce. And, uh, he's wanting to come on and share his story. And so we'll be getting him hopefully lined up here in the next couple of weeks. Uh, he was in the military. And so he got to experience that, uh, through the military, which goes into our episode today. As we talk about the, the next, uh, installment of the future of fundamentalism, uh, young up and coming guy that we're going to talk about today. So let's get started with today's episode. Today we're tackling another giant in the world of the IFB. Uh, this is one of the guys that, you know, you wouldn't necessarily say this would be in the IFB because it's so far away from the mainstream IFB area. Uh, this is in the Northeast corridor. Uh, the name of the church is Solid Rock Baptist Church. I'm sure you're, uh, if you've been around IFB, you've heard it before. Vision Baptist College led by the Clark family. Yeah. I mean, if you've been in the IFB circles any length of time, you've probably heard the name Clark. You've got Charles Clark Sr., Charles Clark Jr. And now Charles Clark III, you know, it's like a dynasty. Uh, and Vision Baptist College, it started in 2014. It's kind of quickly becoming like this prominent training ground for young IFB preachers and workers. And, you know, a lot of people have heard about this church and school and this family. Yeah. Uh, we're going to walk through the foundation of Solid Rock, the founding of it, the transition to Charlie Clark III. And then the birth of Vision Baptist College. It's now famous for what people call the boot camp approach of, um, uh, of the IFB. And we've got a video that we're going to play here in a little bit in our notes. Um, and then there's been a little bit of controversy along the way. Uh, and so we're going to sort of talk about where it's all leading, sort of what this model means for the future of the IFB. Right. So, you know, buckle up. This one's going to be a bumpy ride. Yeah, it's going to be fun. Uh, I'll sort of give you my background at Charlie Clark, um, before we get started into the notes. Charlie Clark for me, uh, was a preacher that always came at during camp meeting at my college, uh, there at Gospel Light and Hot Springs Champion College. Um, and so he'd come in, um, I went to New Mana for a youth rally one year while I was at college and Charlie Clark was there preaching. Um, and so I've been around him, uh, very, very articulate. He speaks very well. All of his family sings. They're great singers. Uh, but Charlie was one of those guys who you either liked him or you didn't. That's sort of how his approach was. Um, and so I enjoyed listening to him preach, especially his singing. I love his family, uh, and the way they sing. Uh, but today we're going to sort of rewind to when Solid Rock was founded. It was founded in 1981, uh, by Charlie Clark Jr. Uh, and this was in South Jersey, uh, the Berlin Township. Um, they came just across the river from Philadelphia. Um, and really Brett, this was not a hotbed for the IFB at the time. You think about where I'm at and maybe where you're at. There's churches on every corner. Half of those churches are Baptist churches. This wasn't the case where they're at. All right. Yeah. This is up in the Northeast. This is, you know, like New Jersey. Uh, you've got Catholicism, mainline Protestantism kind of dominated there. Uh, fundamental Baptists were outposts, not mega churches. So for Solid Rock to kind of rise up and draw thousands, it was, it's quite an unusual thing to happen for that area. Yeah. Yeah. Charlie Clark Jr. Was cut from the mold of the fiery, unapologetic preachers. Um, he built his church, uh, with a strong emphasis on soul winning, uh, big revivals and a no nonsense style of preaching. Right. He had a, uh, you know, his reputation kind of grew because he was willing to stand and sometimes fight for the old paths. We know about those old paths and they hosted big conferences and you'd have big name guys come up there like Jack Hiles, Tony Hudson, other IFB heavy white weights up there over the years preaching in the pulpit. And so you had these big names come through there. Yeah. Now Brett did, um, Charlie Clark ever come to Hiles while you were there? Did you ever have any experience with him or down in, um, the, the church in the college in Tennessee that you went to? No, uh, we, I never, I never came across him. Okay. So, uh, you saw the rock as it became this hub for Northeast fundamentalists. Um, and for a decade there, Charlie Clark Jr. Uh, led this with a very strong hand, um, not just building a congregation, but he began building a name for himself in this movement. Uh, and, and lots of people, young preacher boys were attracted to this style of leadership. Right. And then in 2014, Charles Clark Jr. steps aside and his son, Charles Clark III becomes seeing your pastor. Yeah. This was a big transitional moment for them. Um, you, you've had powerful founding pastor for 30 plus years, many decades he was leading and now he's passing on to the son, which is not uncommon in the IFB, right? You, you, you began to build this dynasty. Your son's got to be a preacher boy because you're a preacher. And so you began to sort of lead in this way. Um, and this is what happens. It either goes really, really well, or you get a Jack house, Jack Scott and everything implodes. So this is this, this is this fun moment as you're looking through history, as you're looking back. I was sort of living through this. Uh, I graduated in 2011 vision Baptist college had began, started talking about building this college even in 2011 and Brett at champion. And this is sort of off our notes at champion. Um, um, we had probably 40, 30% of our students from the Northeast corridor. And a lot of them were from Charlie Clark's church. Charlie Clark was sending a lot of his students down to Eric and down to champion. And so it was sort of this moment where champion went left and went liberal in the IFB's mindset. And so how do we counter this? Well, let's just start our own college and we're already sending all of our students down there. So they'll just enroll in our college. So this was sort of the beginning foundations of this college look here. Right. And another thing, one of the things that I think about, I may not necessarily heard of him while I was in college, but I did have a lot of at Hiles, I had a lot of people there from New, from the New Jersey area. Now that I think about it could have very well, uh, been from his church. And, and to your point, um, I do want to say that, you know, in my experience, most of the time when you pass the torch on, um, it doesn't work. There are very few instances in my recollection where I've seen a pastor, we're going to hand it off to the son. We're going to hand it off to the son-in-law and it actually work out. If the church has a chance, they're going to have to just get a pulpit committee and, and get, uh, you know, get a pastor the regular way. And I'm not saying that always happens, but from, from my money, most of the time it doesn't work out, uh, very well. But you know, Clark III, he'd been involved, he'd preached, he'd led ministries and to be honest, the transition was relatively smooth. Yeah, they, they sort of co-pastored for a couple of years, uh, there during that transition, um, which helped out a lot. And what's interesting about Clark III is when he took over, he didn't just keep the ship sailing the way it was going. He began putting his own step on things. He began saying, you know, we're going to change some things a little bit, and this is the way our church is going to be going to go. And one of those huge changes was vision Baptist college. Um, and it happened the same year he took over. So same year he takes over as pastor, boom, we're starting a Bible college. Right. And that was 2014, right? Yeah. And it happened until, yeah, right there on the campus. Yeah. Um, and their mission statement is this, Brett is to develop servant leaders who are doctrinally sound, practically equipped and spiritually passionate to serve Christ in their local churches and beyond. Right. You know, that, that servant leader language is important. You know, it's not just ivory tower academics. Their model has kind of always been about hands-on ministry. And, you know, that, and, and I do have to say in a lot of IFB colleges, that's kind of like, you know, it's kind of par for the course, you know, the, the ministry stuff. I mean, you're actually out there, you're getting kids on buses, you're reaching families, you're leading people to the Lord. And, you know, uh, so being out there that some of the stuff that was in, in, especially at house Anderson for my, for my, uh, money, some of the stuff going on behind the scenes was not right, but being out there and being out there in ministry, hands-on ministry, you know, a lot of churches, they do do that. Right. Yeah. And I agree with that, Brett. I think that hands-on ministry approach is something that the SBC gets wrong. It's more theology in the classroom and not practically out in the streets and knowing how to do ministry. Um, and so that would be the one area that I would say they do it right. They probably just go a little too far and they have less of the academics. Um, and this is where the Northeast context comes in. Again, kids in that region wanted to have this training from credible IFB colleges, not necessarily accredited, but credible. And so they would leave it. They'd go to Pensacola or they'd go to house or they'd go to champion or they'd go to crown or they'd go to West coast because they wanted this training. And as the third grew up, he said, you know what, let's give them a homegrown option. Let's give them something right here, right now, where we can dictate what they learn from them. The moment they're born, we're going to get them in our daycare. We're going to get them in our Christian school. And then we're going to keep them here all the way through 21, 22, 23 years old. And we're going to train them for, for their entire life. Uh, and we're going to mold everything they think and believe. Right. And, and, and they didn't want to, they didn't want to position it as, you know, Bible college light or training course or something. But, you know, they wanted a, a serious training center, uh, for their college. And that's what they wanted to put out there. Yeah. And this is where it brings us to their own words and their own actions. In 2017, Charlie Clark, the third put out a promo video for the college. Um, it's on their mission page. It's still there. Now you can go and watch it. We're going to play it here in just a minute, but, but Brett sort of tell us about what he lays out here and then we'll play the video. Oh yeah. If you haven't seen it, pastor Clark, the third, he lays it out. He literally compares vision to a military bootcamp. Yeah. So listen to the video. Uh, if you can't, if you're, if you're just listening, you're not going to see it, but listen to it and then we'll come back and we'll talk about it in just a second. Vision Baptist college is a ministry of solid rock Baptist church. We have three years of existence. That means we're still a brand new college pioneering this work for the Lord's honor and for the Lord's glory. Bluntly, we're not trying to get everybody to come to vision Baptist college. We're trying to get people to come whom God wants to be here. We are a Bible college. That means we study the word of God and we study the work of the ministry. Everyone who graduates from vision will have a bachelor of theology degree in biblical studies and church ministry. We believe that Christ church is the greatest organization on earth. Therefore, we believe that Christ church ought to have the greatest workers on earth. Vision is God's word and action. Proverbs 29, 18 says where there's no vision, the people perish, but he, the keep of the law, happy is he. So when people apply the word of God, when God's word is in action, then great things happen. We believe our country and all around the world needs to have servants of God who are helping teach people the word of God. Therefore, the Bible is our main textbook here at vision and learning ministry is something we're very excited about. Our church is an exciting church. It's a vibrant place. If you were to come here and be here, you'd get to be part of the work of the church here at solid rock. My dad has been our pastor. He started almost 37 years ago. You could come and learn under pastor Clark. He teaches the Bible each semester. The college is a little bit different in that basically we're trying to train good soldiers of Jesus Christ. And we have a little bit of a military mindset. Let me explain. Anyone who comes to vision their freshman year would have what's called our core classes. It's kind of like you're going to boot camp. 20 credits in the fall semester, 20 credits in the spring semester. All freshmen take the same classes. If you were in the Marines, they would say every Marine is a rifleman. What we want you to do is learn how to have every good soldier of Jesus Christ to be able to handle the word of God. And that's our spiritual weapon. Also, when you're here in your core classes, you become what we are. And what I mean by that is we want to be good soldiers of Jesus Christ and we want you to be one also. After you finish your freshman year, we have what's called common classes. Common classes are the classes you'll take your sophomore, junior, senior year that everybody has to take in order to graduate. What I mean by that, we want you to flip your tassel without knowing the content of those classes. In the military, there's something called an MOS. That's a military occupational specialty. You don't even remember that, but here's why it ties in. We have what's called an MSA, a ministry specialty area. In the military, you are a good soldier and then you have a specialty area. We believe in the work of Christ that you have been gifted by God to do some specific purposes in his work. After your freshman year, you choose what would be called your MSA, your ministry specialty area. And then over the next three years of school, we work to develop your expertise in that calling of yours. So they're called calling classes. It's something you'd be passionate about. Might be you want to be a Christian school teacher. Might be that you want to be a youth specialist. Maybe you feel God's called you to be a pastor. We love to teach the work of the ministry. Vision is an exciting place. We're big on preaching. We have chapel Monday through Friday and the preaching's hot. That means we get into the pulpit. It's not dead, dry, dusty, but we're bringing that preaching with a passion. The young people here are having a great time. If you came to Vision, you'd make friends for a lifetime. We have a lot of stuff going on where you're rubbing shoulders with people. Band of Brothers-like, by the way, we do have ladies that are here, but they're ladies that are game face on. We're not trying to have a bunch of Baptist Barbies or cupcakes for Christ. We want soldiers. If you really care about the cause of Christ, you can come to Vision Baptist College, and I believe with all my heart, God could take you to the next level. We have a great campus here already, although it's only three years old. We have our girls' dorm house, our guys' dorm house. They're both beautiful. Great food here at Vision, intramural sports program. Et cetera, et cetera. So the point would be, although we're only three years old, we're rolling along. Last year, we had just over 70 students, and they're kids that have a heart for God. I didn't say they're perfect, but they're committed. Your parents are a major part of this, and your pastor is a major part of this. If they would not be recommending you to come, we wouldn't want you to come. We're big on the local church. If you're not from Solid Rock and have him raised up here, we don't even let you join the church or tithe here, because we support your pastor and the local church there, and we want your parents to be all in with this. I don't know what God has planned for your life exactly, but I know God has an exact plan. If God wants you to come to Vision Baptist College, then this is where you would need to be. And if you come, I personally commit that we will give our very best in training you for the work of the ministry, and it would be a great time in your life to become further equipped to advance the cause of Christ. I think about the Continental Army. I think about the Continental Congress. Philadelphia is only 15 miles from here. Independence Hall, Declaration of Independence. There was a time in American history when people rose to the occasion. They brought their gifts, their talents, their passions, and they poured themselves in. They brought their gifts, their talents, their talents, and they poured themselves in. They poured themselves in. I believe that God still has a plan for America. I believe God could still save our nation. Just like those people and their day rose to the occasion, now it's time to rise to the occasion for the spiritual war that we're in. We need some young men, some young women that will just go all in, committed for the cause of Christ. I don't know that we'll see a great national revival, but I believe it could happen. And even if we don't see great national revival, great worldwide revival, there's always been a remnant group, a revival group, a people that would stand true to the word of God. We're pretty radical around here. We're teaching old school. We're teaching the way that has been done traditionally as Bible-believing churches. We believe it still works, and you could be part of that cause. You could commit to that. God could use you in a bigger way than you'd ever dreamed possible. If Vision Baptist College is part of that plan for your life, I hope to see you this fall. All right, so here were his words. If you went to boot camp for the military, they would train you and drill you, and it wouldn't be easy. But when you graduated, you'd be prepared to serve. And that's what we want Vision Baptist College to be for ministry. You know, that imagery is strong. You know, boot camp is about breaking you down, disciplining you, reshaping you. He's saying this college is not for comfort. It's training for war and spiritual war. Yeah. Students have echoed that. They've talked about long ministry hours, tough standards, constant involvement at Solid Rock. You're not just in class, but you're in the trenches fighting through this. And, you know, I want to, right before you have this moment, I want to say this. There is a war. There is a spiritual warfare. But oftentimes, the warfare that they are talking about is against flesh and blood. It's not against the principalities of the world. It's you've got to stand up and you've got to fight for legalism. You've got to fight for what you believe is right. Right. You've got to stand up for your country in this sense of the American right. And as a Christian, I'm an American right as well. But they are just looking at the physical warfare, not the spiritual warfare, which I believe is a whole lot more. And if the devil can distract us from fighting against the spiritual things, he wins because the Bible says that we don't fight against the physical. We fight against the spiritual. But their training is more physical than spiritual. Right. You know, and that's exactly what the devil is trying to get Christians today to do is to distract us, to fight over man-made constructs and man-made governments and stuff down here when there's a bigger battle to fight. But, you know, this mentality that he has in the college, in the video, it appeals to a certain type of young person, especially if they're zealous, passionate, ready to do hard things for God. But it raises eyebrows for others. Like, are we shaping disciples or are we drilling soldiers? Yeah. You know, it really reminds me, and it just came to my mind as you were saying it, Brad. I probably should have put these in our notes. But it reminds me of the, if you watch the shiny happy people too, on prime video, the shiny happy people one was about the Duggars. Number two was about the drilling of this new generation, this young generation that was going out on mission, that was doing things. And they were literally, some of the kids were actually dying on the mission field because of health problems and other things. And they talked about it on there. But everything was for, I'm laying my body down for the cause of Christ. And I am being persecuted for the cause of Christ. And this is sort of this mentality they're pushing of, you know, hey, we're in this war. And sometimes there's going to be casualties. So buckle up because here it comes. Yeah. So, you know, and that leads us into the controversies. So let's be honest. Vision is not without its critics. One of the biggest criticisms is the intensity of control. And some say boot camp, the boot camp analogy isn't just about training. It's about conformity, strict rules, limited freedom, a culture that can feel authoritarian. And, you know, just, you know, before you go on, I want to say that, you know, we can, you know, we don't have to manufacture persecution. You know, persecution is going to come on its own. You know, we don't have to, you know, we don't have to make it up to like we're suffering for Jesus. The devil will find a way to do that on its own, on his own. Absolutely. What did Jesus say? He said, they hated me first. They killed me because they hated me. If they hated me, no, they're going to hate you and they're going to come after you. But fear not, I have overcome the world. And that's where we live. We live in that fear not because he's overcome the world and we get to live in that freedom. You know, another issue here that we have heard as we've done research is the insularity thought of it. And this is because vision is so tightly controlled and ran by solid rock. The Clark family that the students are under the same leadership under their church, under school, under ministry events. It can, it really can foster this type of loyalty mindset of you have to do what I do because of the man that I'm leading. And a lot of man worship in that sense. It also limits exposure to other perspectives. Brett, I don't know if you got this when you were in Bible college. But when I was there at Champion, they only ever talked about one side and it was the side that they believed. And so, for instance, we're going to talk about eschatology. We're going to talk about the pre-trib, rapture, pre-millennial reign of Christ. And we're not going to tell you the other side or explain the other side because our side is right and you don't need to know what the other side is. And a lot of the training that you get here is the same way is you're just being told one side of the story and not the other. You know, that's so true because, and you know, I'm even seeing that in our modern circles today because you've got some amillennialists out there that are like staunch against pre-mill. Now, I'm pre-mill. I'm not ashamed to admit it. But at the same time, I'm not going to be so arrogant to think that I have it all worked out and that my way is the right way. And, you know, when I teach it, I'm going to teach, look, these are the options. This is the one I believe. I think that's the proper way to teach. And when you go out there, even if whether it's pre, whether it's ah, when you go out there and say, hey, this is the way. And if, you know, it's, you know, if you believe something else, if you believe Darby from the 1800s, then you're wrong. And, you know, I just think that that, you know, we don't need to be so arrogant that we think that, you know, we know everything. And then we'll get getting back to vision. Then, of course, there's a classic IFB critique. And that's separation. You know, vision is unapologetically KJV only. Tradition, traditional music, strict in standards. For some, that's refreshing. For others, it feels like doubling down on an insular IFB structure that's already shrinking. Yeah. And, you know, that's the part that I see is the shrinking side of it. This is this ancillary term where it works in one region, but you get to another region and it doesn't. And it's starting to fall flat. People are wanting to have the freedom in Christ that is promised through salvation. And so you occasionally will hear pushback from former students online. There's a couple of Facebook groups out there that you can find that stories about burnout, unhealthy expectations, expectations, or even feeling, Brett, this is one, feeling spiritually crushed under the boot camp system. And you can imagine the physical and spiritual turmoil that someone would have after they, you can see it in military folks, right? When they come out of boot camp, they don't even look like the same person anymore because of the stress that came on. Now, imagine taking this into the spiritual realm and putting someone under the boot camp of that and how they would respond. Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, to be fair, you hear strong testimonies from loyal alumni who say that boot camp saved my life, gave me discipline, prepared me for the ministry. You know, it really all depends on who you ask. Yeah, I agree 100%. I had a guy that I ran into just a couple of weeks ago, and he said the spiritual rigor of just getting up and reading my Bible and the discipline is what I needed to break me from different addictions that I have. And I needed that. And I think definitely it's there to each his own. But when you try to take your step, I'll illustrate this, Brett. There was one week in chapel, and this is how my wife was. She was very much, if the pastor says it, this is what I have to do. And so on Monday, we had someone in chapel, and they got up and said, you know, what you need to do is in the morning, you need to read your Bible. Every morning before your feet hit the ground, you need to read your Bible and pray. That's a great device. And so the next day, Tuesday, we had chapel, and the pastor got up, and he said, you know, the best time that I've found to read my Bible is in the middle of the day. I'm awake. I'm alert. And so I carve out 30 or 40 minutes in the middle of my day, and that's when I do my Bible study and prayer and devotions. And my wife, she wrote it down. That's a great thing. I'm going to write it down. The next day, Wednesday, someone came in. We didn't have chapel on Wednesday because we had church. Thursday, we had chapel, and the pastor got up, and he preached. And he said, you know, the best time to do your devotion, and there's three different guys, I found is at nighttime. Man, right before you go to bed, you've had a long day. You need to be spiritually recharged. And so I get down beside my bed, and I spend 30 or 40 minutes, and I read my Bible, and I pray, and I have my devotion, and I just get spiritually charged for the next day. My wife looked at me. We met at the end of that week, and she said, James, I'm exhausted. I said, why? She said, we heard three different messages this week. I've got to do my devotions in the morning. I've got to do them in the middle of the day. I've got to do them at night. She said, I've been doing like three or four hours of Bible study and reading and prayer, and I just, I'm wore out. I don't know what to do. This is that mentality, right? You are, you're, you're, it works for one, but it doesn't work for all. And so you begin to take these thoughts and take these ideas that other people have that's not going to work for you personally. And I challenge people, find what works for you. Everyone's different. It doesn't have to be the way Jack Howes did it. It can be the way that God has designed you and your body and the way you work. Um, so the bigger question, Brett, I want to ask you is what does this model mean for the future of IFB? I think vision represents one possible trajectory and that's double down on intensity structure, high standards. You know, you won't attract everybody, but you'll attract the highly committed. Yeah, I would definitely say it is not mass market Christianity here. Uh, it's very selective. Um, and that may work in regions like the Northeast Valley where they're very much regimented in that sense. The, the cultural Christianity is already sort of weak and you need strong identity markers. Uh, and so it may work in their region. Right, but, but the risk is sustainability here. You know, can you keep producing students when the broader IFB movement is shrinking or does the boot camp model burn too many people out? Yeah, I agree. And I think that's where we see so many people leaving the IFB because they're getting burned out on the legalism and their standards of what's going on. And then there's this question of the dynasty question. Solid Rock and Vision, they're so heavily tied to the Clark family. That can be a strength, but Brett, it can be a vulnerability as well. What happens when the next transition comes? What happens when the next generation comes and they're maybe not as militant? They're maybe not as strong in some of these things that the third has and Michael Clark has. And they begin to maybe change a little bit. Is the church and college going to be open to that change the way they were when Charlie Clark III came in and made change? Right. You know, before we go on, let me just, before we close out here, let me just interject this. You know, you've got Vision over here treating students like we're in boot camp. And when I was at Hal's Anderson, they were treating us like we were teenagers at summer camp. And I just wish one of these colleges would have actually treated us like we were adults, you know, because we got out into the world and we still acted like kids because they treated us like kids, you know. And so that's one of the things that's constant across, you know, these IFB colleges is, you know, just treat these kids like they've got to grow up sometime, you know. So that's just my two cents. Either way, Vision Baptist College has already become a flagship in the IFB, especially in the East. It represents both the strength and weaknesses of that movement. You've got zeal, discipline, doctrinal clarity, but also insularity and potential authoritarianism. Absolutely. I agree with everything you just said, Brett. I think we need to treat adults like adults. I would say a lot of my mistakes that I made in ministry is because I was treated as a child when I was in college. And I was 21. I was 20, 21. I was getting married. And yet I still had some of the same rules and regulations that an 18, dare I say, a 14-year-old would have under those same rules in the school and the Christian school mindset. And so giving that freedom, giving that ability for us to grow and make mistakes in college, I assure you would have saved me a lot of heartache in ministry as well. And so that's sort of our deep dive into Solid Rock, the Clarks, and the Vision Baptist College. Maybe you are listening and you have been there or you'd like to come and share your story. We always are open to people coming and sharing their testimony. And we'd love for you to come and be one of those people on the show. I've got a couple that I'm talking to right now, but we'd love to have you on to share that. Absolutely. Absolutely. And whether you see them as a beacon of training or a bastion of old-school control, you can't ignore their influence. Yeah. The influence is there. The power is there. The structure of power is there as well. And I'm really looking forward to the next guy we're going to talk about. The next guy has made waves for many, many years. The church split, who we talked about briefly last week, was from there, Will Hess, from Jeff Fugate and Commonwealth. And there's some friends of yours that have reached out to us that want to share their story about Commonwealth as well. And so we've got them lined up to come on and share. And so we're looking forward to that, looking forward to jumping into Jeff Fugate's story and the things that he is doing there. And so until next time, to God be the glory. Great things he has done. 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. Found that second chance. Found my best friend. Found my forgiveness. Found my happiness. I've been singing ever since. 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.tletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletletle

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