196. The Future of Fundamentalism - Jeff Fugate and Commonwealth

Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. What a great day it is for you to be listening and for us to be recording. Brett, if you may not be able to tell, dear listener, but my nose, my nostril, my sinuses has been crazy. We went from like 32 degrees to 70 degrees last week here in North Carolina. Two days ago, it was down to 30 degrees, and today it's high of 75. And so we are back and forth. The leaves don't know what to do. The ground doesn't know what to do. They don't know whether it's springtime, whether it's summertime, whether it's wintertime. It has been crazy. And so I have been battling this just sinus congestion. It warms up and everything clears up and I'm good. And then it gets cold. And oh, man, it's just back and forth. It's a mess. It's a nightmare. But me and Brett, before we got home, we just were sharing some stories of the IFB and where we were raised at. And we're excited about next week's episode as well. We hope you tune in. We're going to do some things that I love about the IFB and I'm thankful for. But this week we're continuing our series. Before we get started with that, Brett, how is life in Mississippi? How's things down there? Are y'all experiencing this weird cold thing? I saw somewhere like Hawaii had snow today before Denver had snow, which is like it's never happened in the history that we've heard of things. So that's crazy. That means the anti-crisis here, right? I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. The Temple Mountain is about to be destroyed and a new temple. The red heifers are there. Somehow, I don't know if it was because we were talking about Israel a couple weeks ago, I started getting these reels of videos of guys like inside the temple with the garb and the clothing and everything's ready to go and made. And they're showing all the different elements of the temple and and the ark. There's like they've discovered like eight ark of the covenants and there's like four more out there that they're trying to find. And this guy was just pontificating on this crazy stuff about how they're going to build the next temple and set it all up. And so, yeah, we're there. We're in times ready, baby. Exactly. But, you know, things have been going pretty good here. Like you said, the temperature fluctuation is just crazy. Same thing going on here. It was in the 20s last week and now it's in the 70s, pushing 80. And it just doesn't know what it wants to do. Who knows what it's going to be like for Thanksgiving. But we got Turkey Day coming up. We had a food drive here at the church and I loaded up my truck and took all the food down to the food bank. And so that was a blessing. I'm really excited about this coming Sunday because there's a missionary Baptist church down the road. Mount Charity Missionary Baptist Church. And we trade with everything's given. We have services together. Like last year, we went to their church and we sang and preached and they fed us. And then this year they're coming to our church and they're going to sing and preach and we're going to feed them. And so we're looking forward to having this. You know, it's a black church and white church come together. And it's a really, really cool thing that the past, like two pastors before me did. And they kind of COVID put us into it. I was like, you know, I heard about that. I was like, man, let's start that back. And so I called the pastor of the church. He was the warden of the local city jail. And he just retired. But he was like, yeah, man, let's do it. I enjoyed it. So it was a really, his name is Cornelius Turner. And it's a really cool opportunity that we have to do. We always do it the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Have a big Thanksgiving meal together. And so I'm looking forward to that coming up. And then Turkey Day coming up. You know, Thanksgiving, always a good time. But, man, life's just going good. Things are moving right along. Things are going good with my school. My church and my family and my boys were playing basketball. And so we was at a game last night. And so, yeah, man, things are going great. Yeah, love it. Now, Brett, the question is, have pants broken out in the Martin household? Are you still holding strong to shorts? Oh, yeah. Well, I gave up that fight a few weeks ago. I'm just all, I'm all pants right now. Oh, my goodness. What a loser, Brett. Come on, man. I was getting looks. Okay. And so, you know, I was like, well, maybe I should. I don't want to be the standout, the only one in shorts. So I started working. I'm still in shorts. I've wore pants a couple of times at the convention. And a couple of different. During the convention, it got down like 30 degrees. The high was like 32 one day during the convention. So I have my pants on then. But now that it's, I base pants off of the high of the day. If it's, if the high is above 40, I'm wearing shorts. And so I went to a little old lady's house yesterday and she goes, where's your long bridge in that preacher? I said, well, I guess they're in my closet because still got the shorts on because it feels great outside. And so it's going back and forth. And so I know inevitably, probably next week with Thanksgiving, I'm going to have to break out the pants. I just, I prefer the shorts, man. It's great. So, yeah. You had said something that jogged my mind. I was going to say something that was about that Turkey Day, something else. I can't remember what it was. It'll come back to me here in a minute. But we've got some big things coming up. We've got our Israel trip right around the corner. Man, we are just a couple of months away. End of January, January 30th through February 7th. I believe that is February 6th or 7th, that Saturday. And so hopefully, if you haven't, we've got a phone call interview meeting today when this interview comes out. This episode comes out. We'll be meeting with Marcus and Ernest and me and Brett, the guys that are leading this trip up. And we'll be talking through what that looks like and all the details of it. If you want to be a part of that, I believe that's tonight at 7 o'clock. Is the call. And so am I awful? All right. Yeah. Well, this is coming out on Thursday, Brett. Oh, you're thinking fourth dimensionally. Okay. Yes. Yes. You have to do 3D chess. And so if you want to be on that call, let us know. We can add you into it. And you can know all the details if you've got safety concerns. Marcus has been back to Israel even this year. And so he's going back again with us. He's going to be one of the guys leading this trip as well as me and Brett and Ernest. And Brett was talking to me before we got on about how just the pictures of pastors that he knows that are there on the ground going through Israel and looking at the different sites. And just an exciting time to be able to go back to Israel. Brett, I just remembered what I was going to say. You jogged my memory before you. You were talking about the combined service between you and the other church. When I got to Pleasant Grove, they did a combined service with two other churches, a Pentecostal holiness church and a Methodist church and a Baptist church. It's almost like a joke, like you would start this like a joke. All get together the Sunday before Thanksgiving and we did a combined Thanksgiving service. We added another Baptist church. And now the majority is two Baptist churches, a Methodist church and a Pentecostal holiness church. And we all get together. I have lunch with these guys once or twice a year. We've got a group text. They're just right here in the community. And so we were rotating between churches, but it has now grown to such a large service. We actually written the community center out every year. And the last couple of years we've done that. And we set all the tables up. We do a meal. One church provides the meal. One church provides the singing. One church setups and tears down and cleans up and pays for the facility. And then this year is my turn. I'll be preaching this year. One church does the preaching. And so, yeah, we're looking forward to that. We're excited about that whole venture coming together and being able to be a part of that combined service this coming Sunday. It's a unique time. When you get together and different cultures, different walks of life, different community style, the way they do worship, you get to experience some fun stuff. And so I'm going to get up and preach the gospel. I'm preaching Psalms 103, 1 through 5. The things that we remember. And just looking through just some great texts there of praise and worship and remembering the goodness of the Lord and being thankful for some things. And so I'm really excited about that coming up this coming Sunday as well. Yeah. Like I said, you're I'm stuck in the present. You're living in the future, but that's OK. That's where you're supposed to be. But, yeah, it's a great opportunity doing those joint services. I'll tell you that before we started back with Mount Charity, a couple of for a couple of years, we went over to our sister church, Corinth, right down the road. I actually live closer to Corinth Baptist Church than I do to my own church. And I live pretty close to my own church. But they they would every year they would have to back. We were the second Baptist Church and two Methodist churches in this community come together. And probably not as diverse as the service you're talking about with holiness up in there. But it was a really it was a really cool thing for us to get together and do. And but, yeah, it's good to get out in the community and just, you know, get together with other churches. And I'll tell you one of the things you mentioned that I was talking, looking at all these pastors on the ground. And so one of the things I've been doing on my Facebook is I've just been friend requesting pastors just because I'm trying to build a community. And a lot of the pastors that I'm friends with on Facebook are in the Holy Land this week. I got a good friend, Justin Corley. He's there. I didn't know he was going. And I started seeing he's posting pictures on the ground in Israel. I was like, man, you should have moved with me. But I'm glad he's over there. And then seeing these pictures has got me the fever. I'm ready to go back. And I told you this before. This is my last time going without my wife. I won't go back again because I really, you know, I want to take Emily this time. Didn't work out. But, you know, I'm not going back without her next time. But I'm just still it's always an exciting time to go to Israel. So the fact we're going to places we didn't go last time is really, really cool. I'm really looking forward to it. Yeah, it's going to be exciting. Good time for us to get together. The For Freedom Podcast. Again, international trip. Great time to get together for that. Hopefully you'll join us. All that information is in our show notes. Also on our website. You can go and check that out. And it's going to be a wonderful time. Also got the National Convention coming up in Orlando in June. We'll be there at the convention. Me and Brett, as well as 10,000 other people. It's always a great time to get together and see what the Lord's doing with the convention. But it's also a great time for us to be able to get our batteries recharged, to get to hang out together. And hopefully meet some of you as well. And so if you're going to be in that area, if you live in that area, let us know. And we'll definitely try to meet up with you for that. And then I think the last thing we've got to talk about is our cigars. If you have not purchased any, Christmas time is right around the corner. I believe, if I'm correct on this, the website that we've got, 69 Cigars, where that's at, next Friday will be a 50% off one day sale. That promotion code is Brotherhood, I believe. And so everything on the website, I believe that's including our products, will be 50% off. And so if you're looking for a fantastic deal for gifts for family, for family members, you're not going to get a better deal than that. And so please go check that out. Support us in that way. Support the cigar company. You're also going to be a great way to support the other endeavors. Our soap company, our coffee company that we've partnered with to help other ministries in that area. So go check that out. It's going to be a great time. Next Friday, one day only. Brotherhood, I believe, is the code. And you can get those things for 50% off. Brett, last week we did an episode on manipulation and very well received. I think I've received more feedback from that episode than I've received in a very long time. All of it was positive. Just guys, hey, thanks for the thoughts. Thanks for the, just the encouragement of what that looks like. It has spurred me. I have been listening and watching. John's friend, or my friend as well, lives in Florida, had got us on a podcast. A guy who does, who did an in-depth, I think it was about 20 hours long of Jim Jones and the People's Temple and the spiritual manipulation that that went through. And so I've been listening to that. National Geographic does a documentary on that. And the whole time I'm watching it, the thought of spiritual manipulation kept coming up, which spurred me to do that episode, to put that episode together. I've compiled a couple of episodes now to talk through Jim Jones and sort of do a case study of what spiritual manipulation looks like. We may do that the first of the year, once we get through the Christmas time. But we have, I have really been challenged in this area of, even challenging personally, are we spiritually manipulating people in the ministry? How are we doing things? How are we doing things effectively? And got into Jim Neuheiser. We've had on a couple of times. Recently came up with a book called Boundaries. Are boundaries good or bad? And so we're reading through that, looking at maybe doing a follow-up after that at the beginning of the year. We're talking through boundaries and having Jim come on and talk through that as well to have healthy boundaries. As we're looking through this series of the IFB and the future of fundamentalism as we go through that. So thank you for the feedback. I've already had a couple people reach out about the availability of the free book. If you would like a copy of that, please reach out to me. And we can get your address and get that shipped out to you just as soon as possible. Brett, any thoughts before we jump into the episode? I'm ready to go and hit the ground running, man. Let's do it. For freedom, you 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, you 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. For freedom, you 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. Let grace begin. For freedom, you set me free. Not for change, not for guilt, not for Pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace. Now here are your hosts, James Saifert and Brett Martin. All right, so we're continuing our new series on the future of fundamentalism. Today we're looking at sort of the next generation of people who have carried the IFB torch, per se, forward. Oftentimes they founded new colleges, they founded new churches, new networks of people that have come together. And so today, who are we talking about, Brett? Or who have we talked about so far, I guess would be the question. So recap. Well, I'll tell you, some of the things we've talked about so far, first and foremost, was Erica Pacey. Now that was an interview that we had a lot of also positive feedback on. A lot of people said they enjoyed hearing Erica Pacey and listening to his testimony. But we've talked about Erica Pacey and Champion. We've talked about Paul Chappell on the West Coast, Charlie Clark and Vision. You know, we've been through that. And today, we are heading to Kentucky, to the Bluegrass State. And we're going to talk about Jeff Fugate and Clay's Mill Baptist Church and Commonwealth Baptist College. The land of bluegrass, whiskey, and a lot of crazy things that go on in Kentucky. Louisville, the baseball team, the baseball bats, lots of things there. But yeah, this one's interesting because Fugate, he wasn't just a pastor. He was one of the loudest public defenders of the IFB fundamentalism in the 2000s and 2010s era. Particularly after the decline of Jack Howells, Lee Robertson, and the early generation of the IFB. He sort of picked it up and ran with it in the thought and the idea of, we've got to keep this idea in motion and movement going forward. Exactly. You know, he kind of positioned himself as kind of an heir of the Jack Howells model. He didn't just want a big church. He wanted all the stuff that came with it. He wanted the college. He wanted the conference. He wanted the bus ministry records. He wanted the whole package. He wanted all of it. And so that's, I guess what we need to start with is we kind of need to start with the background. Yeah. So we'll start at the very beginning. He was born in 1960. He grew up in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. So he's a Kentucky race boy. His testimony was that he was saved as a teenager. He attended Bible college at Lexington Baptist College under the name Clyde B. Wesley. Now I'm not familiar with that at all, Brett. I don't know if you are, if you've ever heard of this guy. Never in my day have I heard of Clyde B. Wesley. And he was part of the Kentucky fundamentalist tradition, which is a little bit different than the way we were raised in the IFB. You know, a lot of what we get in our tendencies of the IFB was the J. Frank Norris, Jack Howell's IFB, those two lines of guys. But the Kentucky fundamentals were a little bit different. And so let's sort of see where it goes from there. Well, that's kind of an important point to make because Fugate, he's not a product of Hiles Anderson or Tennessee Temple, which tends to be where most, you know, in kind of our circles kind of came out of. But he came up through Kentucky fundamentalism. But the point is, is that he adopted Hiles model and he adopted the Hiles style and method later. And that's kind of the story of my pastor. My pastor, of course, my pastor did go to Tennessee Temple, but my pastor really fell in love with Jack Hiles at pastor school. And he kind of, you know, adopted his style and methods and preaching through the pastor school, kind of picked up the Hiles torch later on. Yeah, I think it's interesting because a lot of guys, they saw the model that Jack Hiles was doing, may have not agreed with 100%, but it was hard for them to argue the results. It was hard for them to argue that, hey, he's doing something here. Look at how big his ministry is. If I can go back and model or replicate this, I'll be able to get that same type of results. We looked at Bob Gray out in Texas at Longview. Same idea. He had to model what Jack Hiles was doing. A lot of these guys, even preacher boys coming out of House Anderson, I noticed when I was there, I wasn't as familiar with Jack Hiles. But they had even gotten the cadence down of how Jack Hiles talked, how he cleared his throat. He walked around with the throat spray and he had to spray his throat and the three little coughs that he had. The mechanics of his style, they modeled and mimicked because it was, I've got to do this way because this is the way God's going to bless my ministry. And so in 1991, Jeff Fugate became the pastor of Clay's Mills Road Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky. At the time, it was a very small church. The record has it that they were about 18 people in attendance. Under his leadership, the church exploded in size. Fugate used aggressive soul winning programs, bus routes, revivals, and the very strong IFB identity that had been ingrained in him his whole life. Right. And, you know, he was hungry. He wanted Clay's Mill to be one of the flagship churches in the IFB world. And that desire shaped a lot of what he did moving forward. Yeah. Today, Clay's Mill Baptist claims to run several thousand in attendance. Like most IFB churches, the exact number can be debated. You never know what that number actually is, but they claim a couple of thousand people. My pastor growing up would always say, great day in the day of the Lord's house today. If anyone from the swords here were running somewhere under a thousand and we would typically have, you know, 253 other people there. But it was always somewhere under a thousand. And so that was sort of the idea was, you know, you really can't understand numbers wise on that. The church became known for its bus ministry in the area. Fugate often bragged about running one of the largest ministries for bus ministry in America. His claim to fame, as far as you could say on that, would be the records of bringing over a thousand kids on buses to special Sundays. And so this was a huge promulgation of his ministry, the way he reached the inner city, the way he reached where he was at. And hey, I'm not going to knock it. I was a bus worker for many, many years. I love the bus ministry. My wife is a product of the bus ministry, was born and raised through the bus ministry, you could say. I've got a video of me as a baby on a bus. My mom's driving the bus. My dad's running the program. John's dad's there helping my dad pick up kids. And so the bus ministry has been a big part of my life. I love it. It's not in the context of where we're at now. It wasn't in the context of where we were at in my last church. I'm not saying I would never be in a church that had a bus ministry. I do love the idea of it, but I think there's got to be the right context and the right program specifically for it. Exactly. You know, I was raised up in the bus. I was a bus kid, actually. And that's why I was the only member of my family that was going to an IFB church because I was raised a bus kid. And so growing up in the bus ministry and I've been able to translate that to, you know, vacation Bible school, things here, whatnot. But you're right. It's really not in our context. I don't have a problem with it if it's done the right way and not abused and things such as that. But, you know, like other IFB megachurches, Clay's Mill became kind of a conference hub. They hosted youth conferences, revivals, and Fugate became a big name preacher on revival circuit. And even to this day, Fugate travels. I've got a friend that I went to Tri-State with that travels with Jeff Fugate. He's very close to him. And, you know, when I was at Hal Anderson, Jeff Fugate was a big name. And Commonwealth was a big name. And I went to college with several people from Fugate's church. And so he's always kind of been a figure that's been around since I've been in and out of movement. Yeah. Another interesting person that he was close to was Sheldon Smith. That name may not ring familiar to you, listeners. Some of you may know him. But he was the guy that leads the Sword of the Lord. After Curtis Hudson passed away, Sheldon Smith became the leader of the Sword of the Lord magazine, the newspaper that came out. And so Sheldon Smith and him locked up pretty closely. This is a way for him to get his name out. Millions of people receive the Sword of the Lord every single month. I think it comes out monthly. And so what happened was he began preaching at sword conferences regularly. And now in turn, the Sword of the Lord began to promote Fugate, Ecclesiastes, Mill, Heavily. Eventually, they began to promote his college at Commonwealth. They would publish his sermons and he would write modern day blogs for them, articles that they would put in there. So he was a big part of the Sword of the Lord because it was promoting who he was and the idea of what he was doing. And, of course, that boosted his national profile in the IFB. He wasn't just a Kentucky pastor anymore. He was recognized as a voice in a wider movement. And he had a bigger platform. Yeah. And then about eight years after he had started being the pastor of this church and took it from 18 people to a couple of thousand or how many of it was running at that in 1999, he launched out of the ministry of the church, Commonwealth Baptist College. Most of our listeners have heard of that and heard of that college. His vision was to train preachers, missionaries and full time Christian workers in to the Hiles mold. The model was very similar to Hiles Anderson. Strict rules, strong loyalty to the pastor, practical minister training with a heavy emphasis on the bus ministry, soul winning and loyalty to the IFB calls. Exactly. Exactly. And this is important. Qgate marketed CBC as the alternative for kids who might have gone to Hiles Anderson, Tennessee Temple or Midwestern in earlier decades. I mean, these schools are declining, are gone. CBC became part of this new generation of IFB schools trying to fill the vacuum. Yeah. I'm going to, I've got a couple of clips. If I can get them in there, I'm going to put a couple of clips in through here. But the structure of the college was very much a preacher boy boot camp. There's a clip out there called obedience is better than motivation. I'm going to try to put it in. Classes were taught by Fugate and his staff. If students were required, it was not a optional thing. They had to work in the bus ministry. They had to be a part of the soloing programs. Any special campaign that was going on, the students had to be a part of it. And Fugate often pitched it as a spiritual army, sort of preparing soldiers for the Lord, which really, as I was studying through this, gave me the same feel and idea of what Vision College sort of tacked on from Fugate. They sort of took what he was doing and applied it to the northeastern context, a little bit northern from Kentucky. And that's sort of how they modeled there. And they're currently modeling their college after that same mentality. Right. And he also used the phrase that Commonwealth was training a generation to keep the old time religion alive. Man, don't you just ready for that old time religion, aren't you, James? Right. That's right. What does Brian Edwards say about old time religion? I don't know what he's saying. It's just a period that you overly romanticize. Yeah. Because really, what is old time religion? Is it old time like Jesus old time religion? Paul old time religion? Is it the time of Peter and Nero destroying the Christian old time religion? Or are we just going back to the 60s and 70s where we've overly romanticized a period of time that we want to get back to? And so this is really just a made up idea when it comes to old time religion, because how old time are you really going? You know, 50, 60, 80 years ago is really not that old in the context of where we're at. And so that is a huge thing. Fugate also, Brett, he became known for his rodeo ministry, radio, not rodeo, radio ministry. His books and especially his conference preaching, he was one of the loudest defenders of the King James only ism, the bus ministry and the separatism that came out of that. Right. He positioned himself as the voice calling the eye feedback to old time methods in a world where many were drifting. So his sermons, his books, they railed against contemporary music, against Calvinism, against the Southern Baptist Convention, against the broader evangelical movement. So it's kind of a standard stance in the IFB. Yeah. I mean, think about it. During this time, early 2000s, 2010s, around that time, you've got the fallout of Jack Howes and Jack Howes passes away. You've got Jack Scott that now gets arrested for the horrible acts that he did. The movement as a whole is fractured. It's busted up. And now we've got this guy that says, hey, I'm going to sort of fill the gap. And he begins preaching this idea that resonates with pastors who felt that the IFB was losing steam. Right. The whole movement is sort of fractured. You've got this new IFB with the Steven Anderson movement. You've got colleges sort of doing their own thing. And, yes, they're all independent. But the independent movement was sort of faltering a little bit. And so he came in and he sort of offered this rallying point of, hey, let's get behind this big idea. Let's preach against contemporary music. Let's preach against Calvinism. And let's preach against this SBC. And it brought this idea and the ideology down to these common ground root efforts. And he was able to build a following through that. Right, of course. And, you know, with that level of influence, it came some controversy. Yeah, anytime you put yourself out in a light, you know, with the podcast, with any type of public faith ministry, you're opening yourself up to some type of criticism and controversy. And so we're going to go through a couple of them. Brett, we'll just go back and forth. I'll do one. You do two. There's four of them that we found. And we'll just walk through. The first one is the rule structure at CBC. Former students described Commonwealth as extremely strict. And so if you've been a part of any IFB college, you would know this. There were curfews. There were dating rules. They had dress code. Intense loyalty was expected. Often compared to Howell Anderson in through the 1980s. As far as their dress and how that goes, some students have gone publicly and even stated on different websites and different podcasts about the spiritually abusive situations they were in and of. And I know that the church split has covered a lot of this. I think Will was actually from Commonwealth. And we have an interview that we're going to do as well. So we're just giving you the broad strokes today. Hopefully the interview will be a blessing to you as far as filling in some of these gaps. Exactly. And, you know, rules and standards and like that, you know, that's kind of par for course for IFB colleges. And the next one we looked up was accusations of inflated numbers. You know, critics often question Hugh Gates' attendance claims and bust ministry statistics like how before him. I mean, he was accused of exaggerating numbers to boost the church's reputation. And so that that's kind of the claim. And, you know, from being Howell Anderson, I can tell you that we 100 percent boosted the numbers. We would street preach outside Kaminsky Park and count everybody that came by and heard us preaching. We'd count that as a salvation. So we definitely inflated the numbers. And so this was the accusation that's laid against them. Yeah. The other one was a 2017 allegation. This was a former staff member accused Fugate and Clay's Mill of covering up misconduct. Nothing was proven legally or nefarious in that sense. It was just accusations. It circulated widely into the ex-IFB forums, the Fighting Fundamentalist. A couple of Facebook groups have talked about this. And what this did was it just tarnished the reputation among the critics of Clay's Mill and Jeff Fugate. And it showed that there was some type of cover up that was done. The Baptist shuffle that we often talk about where one guy does something wrong and we're just going to shuffle him to another ministry, another location. And then he messes up again and they shuffle again. And this is sort of what we saw here in this 2017 allegation. Right. And then next is the King James rants. You know, Fugate's passionate defenses of the KJV sometimes turn into viral clips where he, you know, yells or mocks about compromisers. And this earned him both, you know, admiration and ridicule. And, you know, we've seen that on Twitter and things like that. These rants, these viral rants. So, in other words, all we're trying to say is he's a polarizing figure. You know, inside the IFB, he's seen of a hero of the old time way and the old time religion. But outside of that movement, he's often cited as an example of what people are trying to get away from, what they're trying to escape from. Yep. You're exactly right. So, what is the legacy from here? How does he begin to come back from this or what is he trying to accomplish? To the best of our ability, we see that Fugate has created a powerful hub in Kentucky. Clay's Mill is one of the largest IFB churches left in that area and in the Commonwealth area. Commonwealth, as the college that's there, continues to churn out graduates. His influence through conferences and the S.W.O.R.D. is continuing to happen. You can't deny that he's having influence in that area. He still hosts Back to Bethel and old time religion conferences and people come all over the world to hear him. So, he's definitely having some influence in that area. You know, that's true. But on the other hand, this model is also very fragile because it's built around his personality. The college is tied to his church. The church is tied to his leadership. You know, the IFB is already declining in numbers. And Fugate's style doesn't appeal to younger generations the way it did in the 90s and the early 2000s. It just doesn't have the same steam. It doesn't have the same attraction that it used to have. Yeah, there was actually a conference I was watching of him in the preparation study of this. And it was at a church. It was a smaller church. They had some type of Western get up. He showed up in a cowboy hat. I think the message was Satan desires to have you. You can look that up. But as he was preaching, he made a point. And I thought it was interesting when you said that because he made it a point to, he said, if you're under the age of 25 in here or 30 or something like that, stand up. And he wanted to recognize that there was this younger generation. And he was applauding. Well, look at all the young people that we've got because he's trying to say, hey, look, this movement is not dead. We've got young people here. We've got people that are here that are trying to serve the Lord even at a young age. And so what Commonwealth desires to do is produce loyalists, whether they train as a model to be able to stay in long term is the real question. Again, he he preaches this model of Satan desires to have you as, hey, if you follow in our way, Satan can't get you. Look at how long I've been in ministry. Look at what I've done in ministry. And if you follow me, this won't happen to you in your ministry either. Right. And, you know, kind of unlike someone like Erica Facy, who shifted toward the SBC and broadened the theological tent, Fugate has doubled down. He ain't budging. He ain't a changing. That's right. He ain't changing, baby. So here's my big takeaway. Fugate, he represents the hardline separatist wing of the IFB future. He's saying this. We don't need to adapt. We just need to dig in. Look at these other guys. They're adapting. They're changing. They're going to credit it. Look at what happened to them. Lee Robertson. He changed and the college shut down. How's Anderson? They didn't stick to the old paths and look at where they're at now. And so he's using this as a model of, hey, if we just stick to the old stuff, if we just dig into where we're at and don't change, then we'll be able to continue on where we're at. Right. And in that sense, he's important because you've got guys like Paul Chappell on one end that they're kind of polishing the edges and they're making things more palatable and they're making things more appealing to more people. And then on the other side, you've got Fugate who's like he's digging in. And he's, you know, he's keeping that raw house energy alive. He's he's, you know, he's digging himself in and he's doubling down. And that's kind of what he's bringing to the table. Yeah. The one question and want to sort of address it like this is can this model of IFB last another generation? Can it go through the same turmoil of exposure? Because really, this is this is what happened. And if you want to look at it, you can really trace a lot of this back to 2020, the year of COVID. This is when the RFB came out. This is when our podcast came out, because what happened was, is for the first time, these IFB churches had to go online. They had to put what they were saying public in the face of what was going on. And so I had I had members that literally told me this. They came to our church and they were going to a really good church down the road. And I would go and I'd talk to them. Hey, why are you coming? They said, well, we were at home and the pastor was preaching and we really wasn't getting anything out of it. And we saw that this other church did a Facebook live. And so we popped over there and we're like, wow, we're really been spiritually fed from this church over here because they're preaching the Bible. They're not preaching standards, not preaching legalism. And so we decided to start going over here to this church because what they were doing was finally exposed in a public light because they had to. It's the only way they could do ministry with COVID and everything else. A lot of those guys have kept their public ministry. And by keeping that, it gives these naysayers or people that are against them ammunition to say, hey, look at what they're teaching. But do I think it'll last another generation? I believe it will. Two generations. I don't know if the IFB will be able to sustain two full generations later. But what I do know is as for right now, Jeff Fugate, he's got one of the loudest voices. And what he says is the IFB is alive and the IFB is well. Come join us because we got to continue what we're doing. Exactly. And, you know, that's kind of our look at Jeff Fugate coming up at this college in our next episode. We're headed back out west, back out to sunny California to talk about Jack Treber and Golden State Baptist College, which Jack Treber, when it came to COVID, he became famous for not canceling services. And we saw his face all over, you know, all over everywhere. Fox News, CNN, they were all running his face. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to getting into that. Yeah. I hope you will listen to it. Hope you have enjoyed this. Next week will be the last installment of the Future of Fundamentalism. Or the next time we do the episode on that. We've got a couple episodes in between there. And then we plan to take just a short break from fundamentalism to cover a couple of issues and topics that have come up. But we're not done with it because we've got one more series which we're going to talk through. And we've got some great guests. We're going to talk through. We'll save it for a little bit. We won't tell you exactly where we're going. But it's going to be fascinating as we go through Treber. I'm excited about it. I actually looked at Golden State. That was one of the three colleges that I looked at going to when I was looking at colleges. I looked at Champion. I looked at Golden State. And I looked at Commonwealth. Those were the three colleges that I looked at. Eventually, I landed at Champion. And that's sort of where we fell at. And so I'm excited about looking at Golden State next week. It's a different kind of leadership. West Coast roots. Big production. And really, it's a whole different flavor of fundamentalism that we're going to look at. Because he's not polished like Paul Chappell. Yeah. And listen. If you're out there listening to this, make sure you hit that follow button. Hit that subscribe button. Like it. Share it. Because you don't want to miss it. Absolutely. Well, 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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