234. Hyles Church Manual Examined - Part 1 Deacons or Yes Men
Episode Notes
We take a deep dive into the Infallible Hyles Church Manual. We hope you enjoy.
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Transcript
Welcome to the Back to the 4-Freedom Podcast. Thank you for joining us today in podcast land. I'm your host, Brett Martin.
I've got with me James Safrit, and we are pastors, and we come on here to try to talk to people about freedom in Christ, Galatians 5.1.
And we enjoy being on here with you, and one of the things we wanted to mention is our social media. If you've got suggestions for episodes or you're out there and you want to talk to us, we are so open with our listeners.
Send us a message. Shoot us a text. Send us a post. Give us some ideas.
We want to put stuff on here that you want to listen to, and so that's kind of where our wheelhouse is right now. So, James, let me ask you, how are things with you today? Baby, we're doing well.
I'm excited. It's been a good week. We are doing what the Lord wants us to do. My kids are back in school. We had Labor Day this past weekend, and we're able to take some time and spend some time with some family. We had some friends come over, local.
Some guys in the area came over. We hung out, grilled out a little bit. You know, it's just a good time to be together. I don't know how it's been in Mississippi, but it has been hot, hot, hot here.
It was hitting 90 and 100 degrees in the last week, and, man, we were seeing football players pass out on the field.
We were seeing – it was actually a kid here in North Carolina that died of a heat stroke at a football practice. It was heart-stopped, and young guy, 17 years old, just crazy fit and conditioning.
And so they had an emergency meeting last week, and, you know, it's just been unbearably hot this year, this time of the year.
Normally, we're cooling down into the fall time, but, man, it's like, you know, at the end of the winter, how you have the winter having like one last stand where they're – you know, you may get an ice storm. It's like summer's doing that right now. They're like, well,
we can't let go of summer. We got to have one more hot week. Like all the trees are starting to try to turn.
The grass is starting to change a little bit and grow out versus up. You know, I'm not having to mow as much, even though it's still as hot.
It's like the ground and the earth is saying, hey, it's time to go to fall. But the weather is like, nope, we ain't going to fall yet.
But, you know, in our church, and I don't know if I mentioned this last episode or not, but in our church, we transitioned our decorations over to fall. And I got up Sunday morning, and I was like, guys, you know, we got fall. We got pumpkins up here. We got fall.
But, you know, it's 101 out there, you know. So, you know, we're, you know, in our shorts and short-sleeved shirts drinking pumpkin lattes.
You know, that's just kind of – that's par for the course. There was something else I was going to mention, and, man, I can't think of it right now.
If I think about it, I'll come back to it. Yeah. Well, Brett, let me – as I was looking at the calendar, you know, this is coming out September 10th. Tomorrow, September 11th, 25th anniversary of 9-11. And let's go back in time.
Let's go back to where we were at when the Twin Towers were hit and when all that happened. I was in seventh grade.
I was – I can remember clear as day. I was walking down the seventh grade hallway coming out of the bathroom, and this little boy – I'll say little boy, guy my age, come running down the hallway, and he's yelling, America's under attack. We're all going to die.
And I'm like, what is going on? And so I walk in the nearest classroom. They had just put TVs in all the classrooms. And I told one of the teachers, I said, hey, turn the TV on. Something's going on.
And she turned the TV on, and we saw the second plane hit the tower.
And so I remember just like in awe, like we didn't even have class. All of a sudden, everybody comes over to the intercom.
All sports for that day were canceled. And Charlotte, Bank of America Tower, is the second largest,
tallest building on the East Coast. And so it's the national hub for banking. And so it was one of those terrorist hot list sites. And so they said, Charlotte and all of North Carolina, we're shutting everything down. They canceled games. They canceled events.
We went home half day at school. They fed us lunch and got us home.
And then me and my brother, we were hanging out in the – I mean, my brothers and sisters, they were at sports, and they were driving. My mom and dad were still at work. And so we're hanging out in the – down in the – in the CODA SAC where we lived at.
And my brother, like an idiot, goes out there and climbs on top of a clothesline pole and falls off and breaks his arm.
And so he comes running around the corner screaming. I thought he got bit by a snake. He's holding his arm. We flagged down a car. They drive us to the hospital. They set the arm in the hospital. Mom and dad's not there. It's just me.
And so he got his cast red, white, and blue for America and made national newspaper. You know, this boy gets hurt on 9-11 and honored America with his cast. But crazy day. I'll never forget it.
Changed America as we know it. You know, we can't fly and go do anything without the way America has been changed by that event. So.
Well, I was in my second year of Howell's Anderson College whenever, you know, this happened. 25 years ago.
And I was in my dorm room on Rice 3. So we had, you know, Rice dorm, third floor. We called it Wild Rice.
And so we were, I was taking a nap in between classes. And, man, there was a ruckus in the hallway. And I got out. And, you know, there was no TV. There was no media. So details were sketchy.
And the, the man, the people were saying that a helicopter had crashed into the White House.
That was what people were saying. And so there's a big game of telephone trying to figure out what's going on. My next class was in the cafeteria with, with Ray Young. And I came in there. And Ray Young got up and said, look, this is what happened. Planes have hit the Twin Towers.
They've collapsed. And, you know, America's under attack. But, you know, America's been under attack before. And so we, we really didn't get too keen on the details that much during class. But as soon as class was over, we went to Buffalo Wild Wings.
Because two places we could watch TV at House Anderson was we would go to Walmart to the electronics section.
And the guy knew we were college students and he would put movies on for us. Or we could go down to Buffalo Wild Wings and watch the news there. So we went down to BW3s and watched the news and saw the planes come into the towers.
And so it was, it was very interesting. We had people that day leave the college and go sign up for the military.
And, and I know a good number of guys that signed up that day that did not come back home.
That went overseas and lost their lives. And, you know, it was, it was a, it's a somber day. Can't believe it's 25 years.
Can't believe there are people today that, you know, full grown adults that weren't alive when it happened.
Yeah. Used to, used to ask the question, where were you on September 11th? And everybody had an answer. And it's something that when us that were there, something that we'll never forget.
But you ask that question nowadays and people are like, man, I wasn't even alive. Yeah. And to think that that one event just changed our world completely. Like we live in a different world. It was a world changing event on 9-11.
And so it is something that, that we don't need to forget. Yeah, absolutely. Brett, since we're mentioning it, let's, let's, let's go down the rabbit hole a little bit. 9-11 conspiracy, not conspiracy.
Where do you land on it? Do you think that there was some, you know, when, when the guy who is the, the owner of the building, he takes out a terrorist policy two weeks before it happens.
And it was a mass, mass event casualty where all the buildings had a fall and the three buildings that he owned, they all three fell.
And he got paid out like $6 billion for the buildings because of this policy that he took out.
And, you know, the people that, that claimed that they heard the explosions all around. Like what, what, what's your thought on that? Like, you know, 9-11 is the conspiracy.
Like they call it the gateway drug. You get in the 9-11, you get into that conspiracy. And then all of a sudden, like you can't stop seeing other conspiracies.
What, what's your thoughts? You know, I I'm, I'm the type of guy. I love a good conspiracy. Nothing, nothing makes me happier than, than a good conspiracy.
You know, but I've, I've heard these about 9-11 and man, I just, I don't know. I just don't see any of the conspiracies holding water.
Are there some coincidences? I think so, but I personally haven't held any conspiracy concerning 9-11. I, but I'm not saying that not a possibility.
I just, you know, for me, I haven't really held any conspiracy concerning 9-11. Yeah.
I would probably, I would go on the error of, you know, there's some, there's some nefarious workings and there were probably some underlying things that were going on that we don't know about. Um, the, the biggest one for me, and this is, uh, I've been, I've been to the, to the, um,
oral trade centers, the memorial. I've walked through the halls, man, it, uh, in that underground museum, it is, it's like nothing else. Um, you know, fire trucks that were smashed.
Uh, they took entire storefronts and relocated them down there. So you can see exactly where, I mean, newspapers are still on newspaper stands with dust on it. They brought down there just so they could preserve what was going on. Uh, and you walk through and you see all the different things that happen.
Um, but the part that got me as I walked through there, I got to the Pentagon and I'd never really done a lot of the research on the Pentagon and all of a sudden I see the, the tidbits of the, the one camera on a stoplight where it's like cars, cars explosion.
And it's like there, this is the most secure building in the entire world. Um, and we don't even have a video of the plane coming in and hitting it.
Um, I heard a report the other day of a guy that said, you know, he, he was, he went and watched like the, the blue, uh, blue angels practice.
And he asked one of them, what would be the likelihood of you being able to take like a blue angel and fly it into the Pentagon 25 years ago. And he said, man, you'd have to be the most skilled pilot in the world.
And he was like, well, what about like a seven 47, like a passenger jet? He said, there's no way.
He said, there's no way you're getting that, that close to the ground and hitting that close of a target moving that fast. He said, it ain't going to happen. Um, and so these are, so that's the one that I'm like, okay, it blew up.
There were some billions of dollars that were unaccounted for in the Pentagon.
And all of a sudden that portion of the wing got blew up where like you go down that rabbit hole, you start getting into some fun, fun stuff. Exactly.
Exactly. You know, and you know, maybe this, you know, this has the saying has something, you know, since we have a cigar company, you know, the famous Zygmunt Freud saying, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but I will say that the Pentagon one is the shadiest of all of it.
Yeah. And I'll give you some credence there, but who knows? Yeah.
Well, speaking of the cigar company, we, uh, we are, we'll have a couple of great opportunities for you to purchase some of those to help the podcast out. Um, we are looking at launching three more sticks inside of there. Uh, we're looking at launching a patriotic blend.
We were hoping to have it out by September. Uh, it just didn't work out.
Um, and then maybe some budget cigar sticks as well, just to help out, um, those things. And so we've got some good things in the works. Um, two books that we've helped put out, uh, from brokenness to freedom and then freedom from depression.
If either one of those will help you out. Thank you for those who, uh, have already went on and purchased, uh, either one of them or even the newest one.
Uh, appreciate those that have reached out and purchased and reached out personally. Um, if you can be a help there, do, do that. And then go check out our website. We've updated it. We've been able to, uh, help have resources there. There's some great articles that we've put out on there.
Uh, people that have questions and some of our most asked questions over the years, we've got an article page under our resources that'll help talk through some of those things. Uh, one of those articles is, uh, is, is cigar sin is, is tobacco a sin.
And so we talked through that on there and, uh, hopefully it'll help you out a little bit, but go check that out. And like Brett said at the top of the episode, if you've got a topic or an event you want us to talk about, shoot us a message.
We'd love to talk through that and, and entertain that as well. Hey, before we get started, I remember what I was going to say from earlier. Do it. So we are, have you heard that we have an El Nino? El Nino. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So for some reason, when, for those who know El Nino, when I hear El Nino,
it brings me back to a Saturday night life, Saturday night life sketch of Chris Farley without a shirt on saying, I am El Nino.
But anyway, uh, so we've got El Nino this year and I heard the other day that because of El Nino, the South is going to get hammered with some snow this summer. I hope, I hope. And I hope so. Hey, you mentioned.
Extreme heat. You never know. Extreme heat, extreme cold. I love it. I hope we do. Hey, you mentioned it and I'm going to, I'm going to look, let's go into this for a minute.
Greatest Saturday night live performer in your mind. Who is it?
Oh man. When I think Saturday night live, I think Chris Farley. I mean, he's the greatest of all time. Chris is my hero.
Like I, I used to impersonate him in college. I used to pull out some of his jokes and his dude, there's a, a documentary on Chris Farley. I think I came across on Amazon prime or something. And they walked through like his training of, and his abuse.
He was abused as a kid from his dad. Um, and then the people that he made up in his skits were actually real people. Um, uh, what was the, the living in a van down by the river? That guy, um,
his name, uh, what, what'd he call himself? Uh, but he, he based it, he based that character off of, uh, one of his football players that he used to play football with and a Catholic priest that was his good buddy.
And, uh, and he was, that was where that name came from, um, was from him. Something, uh, something, um, Matt Foley, Matt Foley.
He's a, you can actually look at that. Matt Foley is a priest in like new New Orleans or something or Mississippi. Um, and that's where he got the name from. And everybody's like, Oh, you're Matt Foley.
He's like, yeah, I'm, I'm the guy that, that knew Chris Farley growing up. Like we were childhood friends. Uh, it was awesome.
So I'm a huge Chris Farley fan. I'll pull it out every once in a while. Uh, I forgot how bad it was sometimes. And I was watching all my kids. I'm like getting embarrassed. I'm like, I can't believe I watched this as a kid. So exactly. What was the man?
Now, now I can't remember the name of the movie. Uh, well, what was the movie that him and David's a Tommy boy,
everything, but Tommy boy, black sheep. Oh yeah. They were all the Tommy boy. I mean, man, we used to watch every couple of months. Oh yeah. On repeat all the time. Still. Boy. Tommy boy. It's just a classic of a movie. Yeah. Yeah.
I love it. So, all right. Well, Hey, let's jump into our episode today. For freedom.
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.
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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.
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Cigars and victory. And Brett Martin. We're going to be walking through the house church manual. Now we're not walking through the entire manual.
Correct? Walk us through what we're going to be doing. Right. See a lot in the house church manual. You know some of it is. You know just. Just it is purely preference. It's how to run a dedication service. How to run a business meeting. Stuff like that. That's not really the goal here.
The goal here is when you know how says this is what the Bible says. So this is what we need to do. And so that's so we're not going to go through the entire thing chapter by chapter. But we are going to hit. There's like there's 32 chapters, Brett.
It would be an entire like two seasons for us. Right. To walk through every single everything. Exactly. We're definitely not going to do that.
But we are going to hit some of the high spots. Listen. When I was at House Anderson, the running inside joke was there are two divinely inspired books.
The King James Bible and the house church manual. Amen. You know that was you know that was that was it. The house church manual is up there with the word of God. And so that's you know that wasn't literally said. But behind the scenes that's what everybody thought.
And so you know Jack House could do no wrong.
And so we're going to go through this. And look and we're not when we go through this book. When we go through these chapters. We're not simply going to disagree with everything he said just because Jack House said it. I mean some of the stuff is practical organization.
Some of it is personal preferences that churches may do. And listen some of it may even be helpful to somebody.
But what we're looking what we're looking for is when practical advice starts being presented as biblical authority. That's where we want to focus on. Yeah.
Well and you know Brett just to give a quick overview here. Or just for maybe first time listening and you haven't been here. Jack House died 25 years ago this year.
He died at the age of 75. He would have been 100 years old this year. And so this is sort of a montage to him in that sense as we go through his work. And we go through what this looks like.
And so there's some really important things that are in this book that he put out.
The House Church Manual. The manual he put out. Every church has methods. Every church has policy. Every pastor has preferences. And there's nothing wrong with saying this is how our church does it.
The problem that we look at as we go through this manual is this.
This is how we do it transitions to this is the way the Bible says we should do it.
And those are two different claims because a lot of times as we go through this you'll hear today as we look at the deacons or yes men we begin to look at you know he would say this is what the Bible says. But then he starts adding to it.
And Brett there's something that always sticks out to me.
It's in a book called concentric circles of concerns. If you've never read it's a great book. But he makes a statement that I always use.
And the statement is methods are many principles are few methods may change but principles never do. And the principle is the Bible. That is what never changes. But what changes is the methods.
We're going to do things that are different methods today than it was 100 years ago. We're going to do things different today than we'll do 10 years from now. Things are going to change.
But as long as the main principle stays the same that's where we begin to see God work in and through our churches. Exactly.
But you know then you have these legalistic past IFU pastors that say you know this is how we did it in the 50s. This is how we need to do it forever. This is how church always needs to be. In fact I saw Treber the other day get on there talking about churches.
But how many churches out there are doing Sunday school Sunday morning Sunday night Wednesday night.
You know there are not many out there doing that. Like that's like that's in the Bible or something.
You know House opens this chapter saying that he's going to show us the Bible plan for deacons in the New Testament church.
So man if you're going to call something the Bible plan then we're going to hold you to that standard. We're going to pick up the Bible and compare it to your plan and see if it really is the Bible plan. Yeah.
And so our one premise for today's episode as we look at let me check here. I believe it's chapter 6 and 7 the deacon board and the dedication service for a new deacon.
We're going to look at these two chapters and we're going to ask one question. It's a very simple question. Where does the Bible actually say that?
And everything we look at as we pull out quotes from him and as we look at things we're going to keep coming back. Where does the Bible say that?
How does the Bible say that? If you're going to say we're going to lay out a biblical plan for deacons let's walk through and see what that says.
Exactly. And so one of the first questions we need to ask is are deacons the pastor's men?
One of the first things that Hiles does is build this picture of deacons as men that God gives to the pastor to help the pastor. Like they're the pastor's lackeys. He talks about Aaron and her holding up Moses' arms.
He talks about the men who followed Saul. He even points to Jesus choosing the 12.
And then he says God has given pastors deacons who will lift the hands of the pastor, work with him, and serve him. And, you know, I immediately have the way, have a problem with the way these passages are being used.
It sets up a dictatorship of a pastor where the deacons are subservient to him. Yeah.
Now, I do agree with the statement to work with him and to serve with him. The pastor should be serving and the men should be serving with him.
But none of those examples that were given were actually the offices of a deacon. He's pulling out passages and he's saying, you know, Aaron and her were not deacons. Aaron was a priest. He was the leader of the Levites. You know, Moses wasn't the pastor of the New Testament congregation.
Saul was a king. Kings had different responsibilities than a pastor did.
And so the people that served under Saul were his servants, were his subjects in the kingdom. And he was set up in a different place. And, you know, the 12 that Jesus had, they weren't deacons.
He wasn't going to them and saying, hey, guys, I really think I should do this. What do you guys think? He was leading and teaching and discipling them to become the leaders of the next church, the pastors of the next churches. And so you can use stories to illustrate friendship, support,
teamwork, encouragement. All those are fine to use those as a supporting story. But you can't use them to establish a biblical job description of a deacon. Exactly.
And then then he gets to Acts chapter six, which is at least a passage directly related to this discussion.
And how says that the purpose of choosing the seven men in Acts was that the pastor might be helped. You know, that's that's an interesting way to frame what happens in Acts six, don't you think? Yeah.
You know, the crisis in Acts chapter six wasn't that the apostles and the pastors there needed assistance.
You know, the crisis was that there were widows and orphans that were being neglected. And the apostles basically said, in essence, we we can't neglect the prayer and the ministry of the word to do these things.
And so we've got to choose qualified men who can oversee these ministries, who can serve the people that need to be served.
And so it freed up the apostles to concentrate on their calling. And the seven were serving the congregation alongside of the pastors and the apostles. And so these weren't primarily personal assistants to the apostles.
These were men that were going out and serving the people. Exactly. And that's that that's the that's the distinction. You know, when a deacon can absolutely help his pastor, he should encourage his pastor. He should pray for his pastor. But his biblical identity is not the pastor's man.
He's not a servant of the pastor. He's a servant of Christ's church. And we understand looking back hindsight 2020, why Jack House set this up this way from his his leadership style in his churches was so, you know, he would have no accountability.
And so that's why he kind of set things up this way. But the deacon is not the pastor's man.
He's a servant of Christ serving his church. Yeah. And it's important because once you define the office as the pastor's helper,
then it's easily for a disagreement with the pastor to start being treated as a failure in the office. And so we'll see eventually how how House makes this exact move in order to get his loyalty men behind him and around him.
So let's jump into the Bible plan here. Another thing that jumped out to me was how confidently House labeled this system biblical.
He doesn't just say this is how First Baptist Hammonds operates. He says that this is the Bible's plan for how you should organize your your deacons. He later said this. A simple, organized church has pastors,
deacons and people. And that's the scriptural plan. And, you know, that's a much bigger claim than here's the system that works for us. He's laying out a biblical scriptural plan, but yet never really backs it up.
Exactly. When you use the words Bible plan and scriptural plan, the burden is on you to prove that from scripture.
You know, where does the New Testament tell us how many deacons to have? Where does it say deacons form every committee? Where does it say that the church treasurer has to be a deacon? Where does it say give Hiles nomination procedure?
Where it doesn't say that at all. Yeah. You know, and some of those ideas may be fine. And that's actually what makes this issue easy to miss, because something doesn't have to be bad to be unbiblical. By unbiblical here, it doesn't necessarily mean it's sinful.
What we mean is it's not a command in the Bible.
And it's okay to do something that's preferential in your own church that's not in the Bible, because that's how your church is operating.
But when you begin to lay it out as the biblical plan, and yet you can't back it up with what's prescribed in scripture, all of a sudden you are walking down a very, very slippery slope.
Exactly. You know, James, I've been at churches where the deacons were like the finance committee. And then I've been at churches where the finance committee only had one deacon on it. There's no standard for that.
Every church is autonomous. But, you know, we have to establish between this violates scripture and scripture doesn't require this. And legalism often grows because that distinction is not made. Yeah, that's where this comes from.
And this is why we're getting to this point, because once you lay something out as scripture and biblical and it's not, and you abide by it and you're saying it's biblical, you are now adding to the Bible. Now you're adding to what scripture is saying.
So long before something like this begins to be a practical wisdom must begin to come in and our practical wisdom must say, you know, this is dangerous. You have to start with the idea of saying this worked.
And when this is where it happens, this is what what Jack House is saying. This worked. And since this work, this is the best way to do it.
And since this is the best way to do it, this is the right way to do it.
And then now, because I've got the largest Sunday school in America and Stetzer's writing books about me, this is now the Bible way, because this is the only way to do it, because I know it works. And it's the way I'm doing it.
And so if you're not doing it, then you're wrong and your church is in error. Exactly. It's almost like he uses, you know, world's largest Sunday school claim to say, OK,
this is look at my church. I must be doing it the Bible way, because look at look how big my church is. Yeah. You know, and so so let's get to the question of who actually chooses the deacons.
Let's get into the election process outlined in the House Church manual, because this one is very, very interesting. Howell says the existing deacons bring names of potential candidates.
Then every candidate is concert is considered by the deacon board. At the time he wrote this, there were 66 deacons. Every current deacon plus the pastor had veto power. So a candidate needed 67 affirmative votes just to be allowed to run.
So, Brett, I'd never seen or heard this worked until I began looking through this.
And I remember back to my very first ministry in Idaho. And this is how the deacon process was ran. Again, the seven or eight men and the pastors sat in the room. And I thought that at first I thought it was the weirdest way we'd ever done it.
So a name got brought up. I brought up a name and I was first time there.
And all of a sudden that name, the pastor said, all right, we're going to go around the room. And who, all you have to do is say yes or no.
And if you say no, the name goes into the middle of the table. If the name gets back to me and it says, and everyone's in yes, then we will consider that man. And so I began pleading my case for the guy.
I'm like, dude, this guy, he's doing so well. We're going through the discipleship group together. He's doing properties committee. He's here serving.
He's already doing the job of a deacon and doing more than you guys in this room already. I didn't say that, but I was thinking it.
And so it went to the next guy and he was like, yeah, yeah, I think that'd be good. And like halfway around the room, one of the guys goes,
nah, I don't like this guy. And put it in the middle.
And so then I began to like argue for him. And the pastor goes, no, no, no. Once someone says no, it's done. We don't talk about it until next year. If he's not ready in this room, he's not ready out there. And I was blown away. I'd never seen this before.
One guy could veto the entire process. Just one. Like he doesn't have to explain why. I asked him why.
And he was like, I don't like him. I don't want him on a deacon. Like that was his explanation.
But he didn't have to. The pastor's like, he doesn't have to say anything. If it's a no, it's a no. The Lord's telling him no. So how specifically said that they don't ask the person why they vetoed the candidate. So imagine 65 deacons think that the pastor,
uh, some sort of 65 deacons and the pastor think that you're qualified. And one person in the room says, you're not, you're done. No exclamation, no discussion, no evaluation of whether this objection is legitimate or,
Hey, that guy spikes his hair and I don't like his head spiked hair. He wears wire rim glasses and I don't like that. And all of a sudden now you have objected to that one person. Exactly. And then later the congregation votes and house will say, see, see the congregation, Alexis deacons.
And while technically that's true, it's, it's really not. Yeah. Yeah.
And you know, the congregation gets to choose from the names that were already presented to them by the committee, the deacons and the pastor. Um, which is why I love the way we do it here and way we did it. My last church, um,
we nominate men, uh, to be deacons and then those men then get in a room and they walk through those names that the church submitted.
Now there may be a guy that the pastor knows, Hey, this guy's living in sin. We can't put this guy as a deacon. And so it goes to that room for those men to then sort out those names. The congregation may not know those things.
They just see the external of this guy and may not know the intimate details. And so, um,
the way that they do it here in the house search manual is the heavily controlled ballot. We're giving you the names to choose from you check yes or no on these names, but you don't get to add any names. Um, uh, and they pose like this. You're completely free to choose.
And the choices have already been decided for you to choose from. Exactly. You know, it's, it's Coke or Pepsi. You're not getting Dr. Pepper. Like it's check your yes or no on Coke or Pepsi.
You may want Dr. Pepper, but you ain't getting it. These are your two options. Exactly. And it's interesting that how's quotes Acts chapter six himself. Uh, when the apostles in Acts chapter six,
tell the congregation, look he out among you seven men. He tells the congregation, Hey, you give us seven names. The congregation is deeply involved in identifying those servants where the house way, uh, they, they like control everything from the beginning to the end. Yeah. It's almost like, um,
I want to explain it like this, like the leadership has enormous power of reproducing itself. I'm going to put the men in this room that is like me or more like me so that I can keep this, um, group, the same mindset.
Um, a current deacon determines the future deacons and everyone has veto power. So the pastor now has veto power as well.
So it could easily get through all 66 of those men.
And the pastor was like, you know, this guy, he's not gonna say yes to everything I want him to do.
And so I'm going to go ahead and say no to this guy. Cause I don't have to explain myself because I know that he's got too much of a thinking between his brains. And so I'm going to produce, I'm not going to allow him to come in.
And so this produces a leadership culture where only the people who already fit the existing mold are able to enter the room. Exactly. And it's a breeding ground for abuse.
We're not, no, we're not saying that every veto was corrupt, but it's a breeding ground for that. We're saying that this structure makes accountability weaker because the leadership controls who gets access to leadership and, you know, a guy can be branded disloyal.
You know, that was the, you know, we, you've been, me and you've been in IFD long enough to know the cardinal sin is disloyalty. Disloyal to the pastor. And anyone branded that, you know, carries that, you know, carries that moniker is, is blackballed.
And here you just got this process that he's laid out. It's just, you know, the leadership protecting its own power. Well, in 25 years later, after the man's dead, Edelapina is still getting up and singing his praises at this last youth conference.
You know, they're still getting up and saying how, how great of a man and him and Jack Scott were and leading and being pastors of the church. You know, they're, they are still so loyal to this man with no questions asked. Um, and you know, now we get to the, the biblical qualifications,
uh, probably my favorite contradiction of the entire chapter.
Howe says this, he says, you know what, we only use Bible and spiritual qualifications.
And I thought, you know, this is great. He's finally getting to the Bible. We're going to get there. Here it comes.
Uh, first Timothy chapter three, we're going to lay out the biblical qualifications of these men and Brett, why don't you go ahead and go through the, he lays out here. So he's, he does, he starts reading first Timothy three. Uh, he quotes the passage. Deacons should be dignified,
not double tongue, not greedy, holding the faith with a clear conscience, proven faithful in their homes.
And, and, and all of that is in scripture, but the problem is he doesn't stop there. Yeah.
The list begins to grow, Brett. I love it. He's, you know, the, the infallible, uh, un, uh, error free scripture of the King James is only so good when it comes to what Jack house wants to say, because we've got to begin to add to it here.
Uh, and then all of a sudden he goes, you know what? Not only do they got to do these, you know, Paul didn't quite go far enough, Paul, you got it wrong.
And so I've got to add some things that Paul didn't put in here. Uh, he goes on to say, you've got to participate in soul in the ministry. Uh, there's no alcohol of any form that you're going to use. There's no tobacco of any form, no dancing.
We got to get rid of that dancing, man. Come on. You can't have a dancing knee and a praying foot. Come on. Dancing foot and a praying knee. You can't have that. Can't do the sprinkler. No, no.
He goes on to say, you cannot violate any of the convictions that we have here at first Baptist church. And I'm sitting here thinking, wait a second. I thought you said you were only using biblical qualifications.
I've not found first Baptist Hammond, Indiana in the Bible yet.
I've been studying for, for 37 years of my life as I've been, I've been 37 years old and I've been, uh, had a Bible in my hand since I was a little boy. Uh, and I have yet to come across the name first Baptist church Hammond, Indiana in scripture.
And yet you're saying you're only going to use biblical qualifications and you're using first Baptist church Hammond, Indiana as one of the qualifications. Exactly.
You know, where, where are those in first Timothy three? And you know, and again, somebody to hear this and say, so you're defending smoking and drinking and, but that's not one. That's a, that's an argument for another day. Yeah.
But, but two, that's, that's, that's not what we're trying to say here. Yeah. But Brett, we have a tobacco company. All right.
I mean, yeah. I mean, like I said, that's you, you can, yeah, you can believe that tobacco is foolish and it's a waste of money. Uh, and it's a, it's a waste of what God has given us. Um, but you can't have a total absence since,
um, you can, you can have a personal preference of these things to be absent from alcohol or absence from tobacco.
But when you begin to force it on other people as the biblical narrative, now you have went over scripture and you are mandating something on a brother or sister that the scripture never mandates.
Um, you can personally refute dancing and you can say, you know what dance is never going to happen to my house, but I can take you to scripture where Daniel danced before the Lord and David danced before the Lord. Like you can't use that as an opportunity to oppress someone else.
And the question is whether God included those things in the qualification of his list for the deacons. Right. And if God didn't put it in there, I better be really careful about putting it there and then presenting it as a spiritual qualification.
You know, a church can say for practical reasons, leaders here agree to certain expectations. Fine. But say what it is. It's a church policy.
Don't quietly upgrade your church policy into God's qualifications and call it scriptural and call it biblical,
uh, which, which is exactly what's going on here. So the next phase that concerns me the most in this section might, it isn't any of that alcohol, tobacco dancing stuff.
It's this, it says the deacon cannot violate any of the convictions that we have here at first Baptist church, which, you know, that's incredibly broad. Yeah, it is.
Uh, because now the qualifications go from simply been scriptural to this broad policy that can change at any time.
Uh, the qualification scripture plus whatever convictions of our church presently holds is where legalism gets this slippery slope. Uh, a conviction can be perfectly legitimate, uh, for me without becoming God's law for you.
Um, and that's what we have to understand is I can hold a conviction that is for me and my family.
And I don't have to say, Brett, you and your family have to have this and have to do this, or you are going to be in sin. My, my famous quote as I go to is R.C.
Sproul was preaching a message on the weaker brother and how the Lord has given him freedom in Christ and a dear old lady, a saint of his comes up to him and says, Hey, brother Sproul, can I know what, what you guys are allowed? You and your wife are allowed to do, um,
in the freedom that Christ has given you.
And he looked at him and said, man, with all due respect, you'll never see that list.
And I never want to see your list because the moment I see your list and you see my list, you'll begin to judge me and I'll judge you and think, how dare he do these things. And I'll think, how dare she do these things? She can't be right with the Lord.
But if God has given you the freedom of Christ to do those things, I cannot be the one that applies it to you as law. And that's what we're doing here when it comes to putting these scriptural expectations on them. Exactly.
You know, scripture gives us a principle, live a holy life. And then, you know, I apply that principle to, let's first say my life. And I say, because of my background, I don't go to this place.
That's, that's, that's a, that's a great conviction. I've had people in my family that are, you know, ex-alcoholics and say, say, okay, because of my background, I don't go to a bar. I don't go to this place over here. But personally, for me, and 100%, that is, that's, that's totally up to them.
They have the freedom in Christ to do that in their own personal way. Yeah.
And I think it's a great conviction. We should all have our own convictions on what our families can and can't do. As leaders of our houses, that's what we do. But the problem is, is when we take another step forward and say, no Christian should do those things.
And now we've changed the categories. We've taken it to another step where we say, you know what, if you go there, you can't be a leader in my church.
You can't be a leader of the gospel. And then if you disagree with our rule, well, now you're worldly. Now, all of a sudden you have taken this man-made conviction, man-made ideology, and you have put it at the level of scripture.
And now you are now looking at someone and saying, you know what, you are of Satan, the devil, because you don't agree with what I agree with. And you don't have a conformity of standards the way I have them. And so you must be in sin. Exactly.
And Romans 14 is extremely important here because Paul recognizes matters where Christians can have different convictions while remaining faithful believers.
You know, the mature response isn't always, everybody has to share my conviction. Sometimes maturity means I am fully persuaded in my own mind, and I am not going to bind your conscience where God has not bound it.
Yeah. Here's a phrase I like to use. Convictions are good servants, but terrible masters. Have convictions. Live by them. Teach biblical wisdom. But don't attach God's name to your preference. Amen.
You know, he goes into the next one for service qualification, and he gets to the church attendance that we look at.
How's says a deacon has to be faithful to Sunday school, Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening.
Now, you know, I completely understand expecting our church leaders to attend church. I don't think this part's controversial at all. Like, we want people who are dedicated to the church serving the church.
If you're showing up as a CEO of Christmas and Easter only, it's going to be hard to serve the church when you're only there twice a year. So, I think we can agree on this. Oh, I definitely can agree with you on that.
If a man never gathers with his church, I'm probably not going to ask him to be a deacon either. Hebrews, you know, Hebrews tells us not to forsake the assembly of ourselves together. Faithfulness matters. When I'm thinking about potential deacons in the church, I'm looking around. I'm thinking about, man,
who are the men that are here when everybody else is?
And who are the men that are here that are serving? You know, so I'm faithfulness is definitely part of it. Yeah, and I agree with that, but here's where Howells begins to change it a little bit. When did Sunday school, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, become God's definition of faithfulness?
I can't find a New Testament schedule. All it says is they assembled themselves on the first day of the week to honor the Lord and to worship the Lord. And then they met every single day of the week, and they broke bread together, and they grew in the Lord, and they had fellowship together.
So how does the New Testament schedule go from early in the morning on the first day of the week to every day of the week to now only these four days and become a church tradition of these are the four services. If you're not here, you're not faithful. Exactly.
James, you want to make some Baptist squirm? You suggest dropping the Sunday night service.
Oh, yeah. You're going to have some. You're going to kick up some dust then. Amen. You know, it's definitely a tradition that I happen to be pretty familiar with. And listen, there's nothing inherently wrong with it.
But imagine telling a first century Christian you're disqualified from being a beacon because you miss Wednesday night. You'll probably say, what Wednesday night? What are you talking about?
Yeah. Brett, quick little sidebar. Do you know why Sunday night service even started? I think with you.
I think I did hear. I heard this. Do you want to? Yeah.
Do you want to say it? I'll segue into it for just a moment. So I heard this years ago and it was Sunday night service became a big deal because when power companies began to put power into communities, they found like big community buildings like a gym churches.
And they put power there first so that it would spread out to the rest of the community. So your churches were some of the first buildings that got power in a community.
And so as churches got power, they're like, well, hey, let's go ahead and put lights up.
Well, so then it became an evangelical tool to have Sunday night service so people in the community could come to night service and have a night service in the church and look at the light bulbs because they had
never seen them before. And really, the churches used it as an evangelical tool.
We brought most people was getting saved on Sunday night because they were lost people coming to see the lights in the church. And so they used that as a tool that became part of the normal Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. But it wasn't a normal thing until the 30s and 40s.
You didn't have Sunday night service because you didn't have light. You didn't have anything for people to see. And so you wouldn't have it. And so that is the tradition.
So separate categories here. We see a biblical command. We see faithful to church, local church practices. You know, we gather at particular times. And those are great. But when you begin to dictate specific services that you have to be at, all of a sudden now, you're not just faithful to church.
I mean, I've got men that serve as my deacons that cannot be at church for Sunday school because they're farmers. And they have four different, five different chicken houses.
And they come to a deacons meeting and they leave and they go back to the farm and they run the chicken house and they show back up right at 11 o'clock. I would love to have a 10 o'clock service.
But half of my men have told me, if you do a 10 o'clock service, we can't be here because I can't leave the farm till 11 o'clock. And so 11 o'clock, they're running in.
Some of them still have their chicken overalls on and they're coming to church, but they couldn't physically be here and have never been able to be here for the history of the church because they run a farm. They can't, it just cannot happen.
And so if that were my qualification, half of my men couldn't be deacons because they have a farm. Now they're here every single Sunday morning at 11 o'clock, but they don't come to Sunday school because they just physically can't. So all of a sudden they are just disqualified as men. Exactly.
So let me give you one little anecdote before we move on to the next one. When we left, first left open door and went to a Southern Baptist church, the Southern Baptist church I started pastoring.
They had low numbers, so they didn't have a Sunday night service. And we felt so guilty because we didn't go to church on a Sunday night.
And so for the first few weeks, we went to, you know, Arcola. We went to other churches on Sunday nights and we felt guilty. But then one Sunday night, we were just like, can we just stay home and just be with our family?
And man, it was so great because we had been so busy that, you know, me and Emily both worked, the boys had school. And so that Sunday night time is just being together with a family. Sometimes we'd stay in, we'd cook something special, and sometimes we'd go to the movies. And, you know,
that Sunday night time, just spending it with the family has been some of our closest, most special, intimate times as a family. And I think it has helped us grow closer together.
And a few years ago at our current church, we dropped Sunday night service in favor of small groups.
And so it is just, it's been a really special time to us. And I'm not knocking any church that has a Sunday night service.
I'm just saying there's no set way to do it in the word of God. And you can spend time with your family and get just as close not having it.
So let's move on to the next one, the next subject, and that's loyalty to the pastor. Now we're getting to the section that kind of bothered me and James the most. Hyle says this, this is a quote.
And then he says that when a deacon stops being loyal to the program and a pastor, he ceases fulfilling one of the primary purposes of a deacon. Brett, this is some dangerous language here. And I want to distinguish cooperation from loyalty.
Of course, each church leader should work together. We should be in one mind and one accord as the early church was in the first book of the opening part of Acts. But a deacon shouldn't spend his week.
A deacon should never also spend his week trying to destroy the pastor. He shouldn't gossip about him. He shouldn't undermine him. But loyalty to the pastor cannot become a spiritual qualification.
You can't say you can't serve as a man if you're not going to be loyal to me. You know, and this is where you're getting into these yes men. Exactly. I mean, because, listen, pastors are human beings. Pastors can be wrong. And pastors need accountability.
So with this language, you're building an atmosphere where you can't say no to the pastor. Yeah.
And, you know, sometimes the most loyal thing a church leader can do is tell the pastor no.
Not because he's rebellious, but because he's trying to be faithful to what the Lord has called him to do.
I know we've taken a bunch of rabbit trails today, but, you know, this is what happened even when Jack Howells was at First Baptist in his first couple of years of ministry. The church was growing and they were going to tear down a building and build a new building.
I'm sure you've heard this story before, Brett. The contractor shows up and says, hey, which building are we going to tear down? And Jack Howells walks outside and points to a building and says, that one over there, we're tearing that one down. And they went to demolishing the building.
And all of a sudden, the chairman of the deacons gets there and go, hey, why are they tearing down the wrong building?
And Jack says, that's the one I told him to tear down. That's the one we're tearing down. He said, that's not that one. We're tearing that one down over there. And all of a sudden, they're tearing down the wrong building because Jack Howells put it on himself to say, that's the building.
And, you know, we're not going to call him. And he said in his own words, I used a lot of change in my pocket.
They could have fired me because it's a massive multimillion dollar mistake. But all of a sudden, if someone would have said, hey, Jack, no, no, no, that's not the building. It's the other one over there. Would he have been loyal to him? No, he would have been considered rebellious.
And he couldn't have said that. That's right. Even, you know, even Paul confronted Peter.
Galatians 2 is one of my one of my favorite stories because Paul, you know, Paul confronts Peter on not eating with Gentiles and kind of gets that in his face at a potluck in front.
It calls him out on the carpet in front of God and everybody. And, you know, imagine Peter looking at Paul and saying, how dare you oppose God's man? Yeah.
You know, that's where the whole loyalty culture could become spiritually dangerous. If loyalty to the pastor becomes synonymous with loyalty to God, you've now created an environment where correction becomes rebellion.
Questions become disloyalty. Disagreements become division. Accountability becomes almost impossible. Exactly. You know, a healthy pastor should not want yes men.
You know, I don't need people around me who are going to tell me that I'm right every time. I need godly people who love me enough to say, Brett, I think you're missing something. I think you're messing up. I think you're making a mistake. You know, a pastor is not a dictator.
He's a servant leader. He works with the deacons and the congregation and the teachers of the church. Yeah.
You know, Brett, I don't like to be told no. You know, it's just our nature. I would love for every decision that I bring up to be a yes decision. But biblical unity isn't about everyone agreeing with the pastor. Biblical unity is everyone submitting together to Christ and his word.
I mean, think about what Christ did on the cross when he's in the garden and he's praying and he's saying, God, I don't know what's going on here.
I don't know what's going to happen, but not my will, but yours be done. You know, all of a sudden it's, God, I don't know what to do. I don't want to go to the cross. It's hard. My body, my physical body is telling me no, but not what I want, Lord.
Not what my body is telling me, but what you want and allowing him to be in unity with the Father. He's submitting his will to the will of God.
And that is what we must be doing every day. You know, he gets to the next portion and we're going to hurry through this. Howell's used something that really caught my attention. He used the word pressure. And he said, thinking about the perspective of deacons, he says, if enough pressure,
earnestness, and frankenness is exerted in the meeting before the deacons run, this will avoid the same problems and heartaches later on.
Now, I want to interpret him fairly. What he's saying here is, I think what he's meaning is, to be very clear about the expectations before someone accepts the position. And I believe that's good advice. Yes, but we don't want to manufacture something sinister from one word.
But in the context of everything else we've read, pressure deserves attention. Because now we've got follow our convictions, follow our program, follow our attendance expectations,
remain loyal to the pastor. And we're going to exert sufficient pressure beforehand so that everybody understands it.
Yeah, and that is so difficult to do because this creates a culture where conformity can start to masquerade as spirituality.
And you can have a room full of men who all agree, not necessarily because they are convinced biblically of what they should believe, but because they've learned that disagreement carries a price. Exactly. Exactly. Healthy leadership says, here's what the Bible teaches, hold me accountable to it.
And unhealthy leadership says, here's our system, get in line. That's the major difference there. Yeah. Now, here's another strange tension here. Hiles reportedly insists the deacons have no authority whatsoever. And he says, the final authority rests with the congregation. You know, and I'll give him a little credit for affirming congregational authority.
But then look what these men actually do. Every committee is made up of deacons. The treasurer has to be a deacon. The clerk has to be a deacon. The head usher has to be a deacon. The trustees come from the deacons.
They handle the money. They do all the altar work. They help administer the ordinances.
And Hiles says they have to oversee the entire program of the church. But remember, no authority whatsoever. Yeah.
No. Right. They apparently they have no authority whatsoever, except that they're involved in almost every single matter of the church.
They control who can run for deacon. They compromise. They comprise every committee. They hold the church offices. They handle all the offerings. They become trustees. They oversee all the programs. They help determine the church's future direction. But you have to remember, there's no authority whatsoever. Oh, they got no authority. Exactly.
You know, I'm not saying I'm not saying having deacons do these jobs is sinful or wrong. I'm saying don't don't play word games with the word authority. If one small group has tremendous influence over nominations, finances, committees, church offices, programs,
future directions, that group possesses significant practical power, whether you call it authority or not.
Yeah. What we call this in the professional world is what you may have heard before. It's called the leadership loop. When you put all these pieces together, you start seeing a closed loop of how leadership works. The existing deacons determine who can run for deacons.
The deacons make up every committee. The church officers come from deacons.
The trustees come from the deacons. The deacon advises the congregation on what direction they should take. And one of the qualifications to join this circle of loyalty is to be loyal to the existing pastor and the existing program.
You can't go against what's going on right now to be a part of it. James, this this is sounding very concerning. This structure is is very, very concerning.
The pastor and the existing leadership have essentially built a system that reproduces people who already agree with the pastor and already agree with existing leadership.
And then Hiles can sit back and say, our congregation almost always unanimously approves what the deacons recommend. Yeah.
And you've designed a system that filters people long before the congregation ever sees the decision that doesn't I'm not going to mean that these deacons are bad.
These decisions are bad. But unanimous agreement isn't necessarily proof that everyone is spiritually unified.
What he's actually meaning to say is the system has removed any disagreement before it ever becomes visible.
I'm not. Yeah, I'm not going to put someone in the position to disagree with me in order for that to happen. You know, conflict isn't necessarily a wrong thing. Sometimes conflict can be healthy.
You know, churches need disagreement sometimes. Not not sinful division. I'm not talking about that. I'm not talking about fighting, but they need godly disagreement.
Proverbs talks about wisdom in many counselors. He talks about iron sharpens iron. If nobody in leadership ever feels free to challenge an idea, that's not unity. That's that's that's vulnerability.
Okay, so let's let's let's define what we're criticizing because I don't want legalism just to mean rules. I don't like. Yeah, absolutely. Brett. I think this is where we get to the heart of what we're talking about today.
Every church has rules. Every family has rules. My rules in my family are different. Your rules in your family. Every organization has expectations. And a rule doesn't mean and automatically mean legalism.
You know, this is where oftentimes we we have been abused by rules. rules. And so we begin to have the.
Personality or the quantification that, okay, if it's a rule, it's bad. Rules are good. Rules are there to be our guideposts and our guardrails on the highway. And it's not a bad thing to have those things. The problem is when a human rule is elevated to divine authority. Exactly.
And I think you can picture several levels. First, you have the biblical command. Then you have a biblical principle. Then you have wisdom and applying that principle. Then you have church policy. And then you have a personal preference or conviction.
Yeah. You know, Brett, the mistake is pretending that they're all on the same level.
The mistake is saying that the personal preference is the same as the biblical command. Or the wisdom that applying the principle is the same as my personal preference. And mixing these up. The Jesus is Lord and our deacons must attend Sunday school. Don't carry the same authority. Jesus is Lord overall.
Going to Sunday school doesn't mean you're up in this super spiritual realm. Do not commit adultery and don't dance are not the same thing. They're completely different. Meet the qualifications of 1 Timothy 3. And participate in the particular soul winning program.
They don't carry the same authority and weight. Exactly. And when you blur those lines and you blur those categories long enough, people eventually can't tell the difference between obeying God and disappointing their pastor. And that's where legalism becomes destructive. And the man of God becomes abusive.
Yeah, I think this is where the discussion becomes bigger than just jackals.
Because it would be easy to sit here and say, you know, those crazy people back then.
But, Brett, you know as well as I do, there are churches today that still follow the same program. You know, like I said 10, 12 years ago at my first church, this is how the deacons were ran. This is how they did it.
I'm sure they still do it this way. And churches are still doing it this same way today. Absolutely.
You know, you got different clothes, different music, different vocabulary, but the same problem. Our methods start working. People respond. Attendance grows.
And then slowly we start assuming, oh, this must be the Bible way. This must be the biblical way. Yeah. And I think something we got to understand and we must put into our brain. Success does not inspire your methods.
A big church doesn't prove your ecclesia or ecclesiology works or that's the way you should do it.
A thriving ministry makes your preference God's command. Just because God is blessing you doesn't mean that the preference that you have are God's ways of doing things. Exactly. Man, James, I think what you said was really, really good. You said success does not make a method inspired.
You know, God has given us one inspired authority, and that is Scripture. So when Scripture speaks clearly, we obey.
When Scripture gives us a principle, we apply them wisely. When Scripture gives us liberty, we have to be willing to give liberty as well. Yeah. And when we come up with that system that really works well, you know, that's great. Use it.
Teach people how to use it. Teach people how to work in that system. Recommend it. Maybe write a book about it one day where you can say, you know what, this is what me and John did.
We had this idea of brokenness to freedom. And we say, you know what, I think people can help from these things. But we did not say this is the Bible plan, the clearest way of Scripture.
Now, we use lots of Scripture to help with it, but we are not coming across as the Bible plan for these things. And it could be ideas. It could be preferences.
But when you begin to elevate that to the Bible way, all of a sudden you are now saying that this is on top of the Bible. And it's absolutely demonstrating the Bible.
Exactly. So as we close this out, the one question that I want to encourage everybody whenever somebody gives you a spiritual standard.
And really, James, this is the whole theme of our podcast. It's the theme of everything we stand for. And that question is, where does the Bible say that?
And if the answer is this, if the answer is, well, the Bible doesn't exactly say that, but this is our conviction. Okay, then call it conviction. Call it this is where our church lands on a convictional basis. Right.
If it's wisdom, call it wisdom. If it's church polity or policy, call it church polity or policy. If it's your preference, and there's nothing wrong with having preferences. But if it's a preference, call it a preference. But Brett, we must not take our conviction,
preference, tradition, the ministry method that you've been handed to by somebody else, and say God has signed this and his signature is attached to it. Scripture has enough authority without us adding rules to it.
Yep. You know, Christian freedom doesn't mean we don't have standards. It means we refuse to bind other believers'
conscience where God has not bound it. And that's the issue we're going to keep coming back to as we work through the House Church Manual.
We're definitely going to tackle a few more chapters in this book. And the issue is, is everything House says bad? You know, clearly not. Even a clock is right twice a day. But the question is, where does biblical authority and human authority begin?
Yeah. And when we get those confused, Brett, somebody's freedom usually ends up paying the price.
And I think that's a good place to leave it. Y'all, thanks for listening to the 4-Freedom Podcast today.
And I'm looking forward to our next episode on this, James. Yeah, it's going to be exciting. Thank you guys for tuning in. I hope it was a blessing to you.
Like we said, if you have a comment or an idea for a future episode, let us know. If you'd like to come on and share your story. Just like with Lee last week, he reached out to us and said, hey, I've got some content I think will be good for you.
Reach out to us. Let us know. We'd love to have you on.
And thank you for supporting the show by listening, by purchasing some of our cigars, by purchasing our book.
And love to meet up with you or talk with you if you're ever in the area. I just had a meeting with a guy just a couple of miles down the road from me that reached out to me and said, hey, can we get lunch sometime? Can we hang out?
And so we met in Morrisville and he'd been encouraged by the podcast. And so hopefully this has encouraged you.
And if you ever want to reach out to us, feel free to reach out to us. But 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. Has no ending. Found that second chance. Found my best friend. Found my forgiveness. Found my happiness. I've been singing ever since. I found my freedom in you.
Thanks for listening to the 4-Freedom Podcast. If you enjoyed the content of the podcast, please do us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing the podcast on whatever podcast platform you listen to. I know. I know. I know. I know.
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