The Bowtreader Podcast
Welcome to the Bowtreader Podcast - a journey where bowhunting, brotherhood, and faith come together. Each week, we dive into the heart of the hunt, exploring the lessons learned in the wild and the deeper truths that shape our lives. From chasing game to chasing purpose, we reflect on how faith in Jesus leads us through every season—both in the field and in life.
Join us as we share stories of brotherhood forged through the bowstring, real-life challenges, and the power of community, faith, and perseverance. Whether you're a seasoned bowhunter, a believer, or someone seeking to grow in your journey, this podcast is a place to find strength, wisdom, and inspiration. Together, we'll discover what it means to walk with purpose and a steady aim, no matter what life throws our way.
The Bowtreader Podcast
Ep. 33 - Broken Systems: Public Land, Politics, and Church Leadership
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We don't normally delve into the pit of politics but the current temperature on this topic made it necessary to jump in. What happens when 500,000 (or possibly 1.5MM) acres of public land suddenly become available for privatization? What would that look like and where exactly is the money going to go? These questions have ignited a firestorm among hunters, conservationists, and advocates of limited government alike. This raw, unfiltered conversation dives beneath the surface reactions to examine the deeper issues at play.
Theodore Roosevelt's conservation legacy sparked a movement that provided nearly 400 million acres of public lands, conserving much needed habitat for numerous animals and ample hunting opportunities to hunters all across the country. We are being told that today's financial realities have politicians considering unprecedented sales. We explore whether this represents necessary fiscal responsibility or dangerous precedent-setting that threatens hunting access across America. The narrow House vote (215-214) demonstrates just how divisive this issue as well as others contained in the "Big Beautiful Bill" have become.
Beyond the immediate land debate, we confront uncomfortable truths about our national debt crisis, government overreach, and how these systemic failures mirror problems in other institutions - particularly the modern church. The parallels are striking: centralized authority, professional management replacing personal responsibility, and cultural autopilot replacing critical thinking.
The conversation shifts to examine how we've elevated pastors to unhealthy positions within churches, creating passive congregations dependent on staff rather than equipping believers to fulfill their mission. Drawing from biblical examples in Acts and Titus, we consider what genuine spiritual leadership should look like - a plurality of elders serving together rather than celebrity figureheads.
Whether facing government over-reach or church dysfunction, the solution begins with honest self-assessment and willingness to challenge comfortable patterns. This episode isn't about quick fixes but about developing the critical thinking needed to navigate complex issues with wisdom rather than reactive outrage or passive acceptance.
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The Public Land Bill Controversy
Speaker 1Let's hit the button and get started. Oh, I didn't see it coming.
Speaker 3The starting gun. Yep exactly I'm going to shake it, oh, oh well.
Speaker 1Well, it'll be alright. So, alright, let's get into it. So we're going to talk a little bit this big beautiful bill that's going to make that a possibility and everybody seems to be pretty upset about it. So we're going to talk through it a little bit this morning about what's going on. You know, without getting into a bunch of details because I have not, I will admit right out of the gate, I have not read the six million page bill and I don't think they have either.
Speaker 1I don't plan to read the six million page bill, you know. I do know that it passed the House yeah, I did see that With a vote of 215 to 214.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 1Pretty close margins there.
Speaker 3Yeah, I think one chose present or whatever they can choose. Perfect, basically just telling his constituents hey, I was here, yeah, I didn't make a decision, but I was here.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, that's exciting, I guess, but anyway. So there's this idea, or there's this, this, this fear, uh, in the in the hunting industry right now, and when I say hunting industry, what I mean is, um, yeah, people that work in the industry, but then also people that are hunters yeah you know and like, if you look at a state like colorado, 90 of their hunting access is public land, or 90% of hunters hunt on public land.
Speaker 1So let me phrase it that way. I think that's more accurately stated. So when you look at these western states that are primarily public land, I think there's like 900 million acres, that is.
Speaker 2Is that counting Alaska?
Speaker 1I don't know.
Speaker 2There's probably like 800 million in Alaska. No, there's not that many, it's a lot.
Speaker 1Let's look and see. I was reading some stuff About it this morning. Let's see. So there's been all kind of different proposals. The the original proposal was to give give a green light to sell 500,000 acres, and then it, you know, then it looked like maybe it was a million and a half acres of public land that was going to be sold. So I guess what I want to talk about this morning is I want to look at it from a holistic standpoint. You know, instead of saying no, that's public land that has to be available. This is stupid. I can't believe this would even be something that's considered. How did we get here in the first place, right? So, all right, theodore Roosevelt played a big role in this. Conservation was a big part of his administration, and they set up the majority of these public lands. So I think when you're trying to figure out how you got somewhere, you need to look at history, right? I mean, if you want to see how you traveled somewhere in a car, you're going to look back and say, okay, where did I go?
Speaker 2How did I?
Speaker 1get to where I'm at right now. Where did I start? And in this day and age of everybody using a GPS, I can tell you right now you're. You may be driving listening to this right now and you're freaking brain dead while you're driving and you're not going to do anything that your gps doesn't tell you to do. Yeah, you know you're. You're driving down the road and if the gps says, in one mile, turn left on, you know eight mile road, then that's what you're going to do. And then, once you get to wherever you're going, you have no idea how you got there. A hundred percent, I mean that. That is so. I used to travel a lot and, um, there would be times where I would use the GP. Dude, you got to, you got to sit, you got to sit. Still, you got to figure this out. I don't know if anybody else can hear it, but I can hear it and that's enough.
Speaker 2It's amazing how I actually kill deer, because I do this anytime I'm in the stand, I just sway in my saddle.
Speaker 1There you go.
Speaker 2I'm never not moving.
Speaker 1Perfect. Anyway, you completely derailed the train. Gps, there we go, but anyway. So I would notice that if I went somewhere and I only followed my GPS, I'd be there and I'd be like I have no idea how I got here. They'd say, hey, did you see this back here? We're going to go over here wherever I'd be, like okay, maybe I rode on that road, I don't know. I just went wherever the GPS said. I realized I felt like a total idiot. I stopped using GPS. Wes knows this when?
Speaker 2we go somewhere. Dad used to make me use a road atlas and now I like using a road atlas there you go because it's I don't know.
Speaker 1I've gotten used to it, yeah but I mean, a map is a wonderful thing, you know, okay, so and I was talking with a guy that was doing some public land hunting last year and and he got lost in some public land. I'm sorry, I remember the conversation now there you go. He got lost. He didn't have a GPS, he had his phone. Yeah, but his phone didn't work.
Speaker 2Oh man, no, it was dead.
Speaker 1Well, it didn't work to start with and it went dead because it was sitting there pinging, pinging, pinging, trying to grab a signal. Right, if you ever get somewhere where there's just no signal, put your phone on airplane airplane mode or something you know, unless you've got, you know, one of the newer phones that'll actually connect to a satellite. If you don't have that, put your phone on airplane mode and then just try it every now and then, because otherwise it's just going to be sitting there trying to ping a tower and it fries your battery. So anyway, getting back into this idea of how important I think it is that we know where we've been, we know how we're coming at something, what our angle is, what our perspective is. So I think it's great that the Theodore Roosevelt conservation stuff was set up and all this public land is available and it preserved, it set up a lot of national parks and things like that.
Speaker 1But if you really really distill it down okay and I know what I'm about to say is going to be very controversial but if you really distill it down, why does our government need to own so much land? You said it, I did say it. I mean, I don't understand. You know, when you look at, when you look at the responsibilities of government and what roles they should be playing, okay, what, what role should the government really be playing and what land ownership rights should the government really have? And I know everybody says public land is our land and you can go buy these T-shirts that says I'm a public land owner and stuff like that. Dude, that is buying into a freaking lie. That's what I believe, because a private land owner, I can go out on land that I own, I can do whatever I want to, right, I don't have to have a hunting license to hunt on it. I don't have to do a whole list of things. So to say that you're a public land owner is like saying you can go into the Capitol building whenever you want to, and we all know how that crap worked out. Yeah, yep, right, yeah, building whenever you want to, and we all know how that crap worked out. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 1So we said this was probably going to be a a little bit of a politically charged podcast this morning, but I mean, I think it's stuff that we need to talk about, because I haven't heard anybody really take this angle on it. And listen, I am not saying. I'm not saying that I want this 900 million acres or all right, let's go back to. Let's go back to what the original, what the original bill said 500,000 acres. I'm not saying I want that 500,000 acres to just be sold off to whatever the highest bidding private developer and then they get to do whatever they want to do with it. And I don't think that's what the private developer and then they get to do whatever they want to do with it, and I don't think that's what the bill says either. You know how hard it is to be able to build something in America right now, the freaking red tape you got to go through and everything. So I mean it's not like they're going to go out there and destroy all this stuff.
Speaker 1So let's back up and slow down just a little bit and look at what's really going on, why this needs to happen, why it should even be a consideration. Not why it needs to happen, why it should be a consideration. So I know I've thrown a lot out there already. You know, should the government even own land? That's a big question. That's not something we're going to solve on a 90-minute podcast, but it should be something that we think about, you know, kind of solve on a 90 minute podcast, but it should be something that we think about, you know. And then so let's, let's get closer to the issue.
Speaker 1If this bill goes through, and if it's in the bill that 500,000 acres is going to be up to be privatized that's that's kind of the verbiage that is being used what does that look like? Okay, and how does it affect? How does it affect hunters, you know? I mean, it's that's the legitimate question here. So if we look at this huge swath of the country that is public land and and and and public access and you're able to go and hunt, how's it going to affect it if 500,000 acres are are changed? Let's just, let's just focus on that. What's that going to look like? Who's who's going to feel that? Tell me that, well, who?
Speaker 1has pens on that land the person, yeah, the person who's been hunting it I mean, that's really the I think, the only people that feel that yeah, the people that are hunting it, for sure be it would be affected.
Speaker 3I, I'd be interested to know, like, how how much land does the government own total? So how big of a piece, how big of a chunk of what the government actually owns is 500, 000? Is that one percent? Is that? Oh, it's got to be less than one percent. So I mean, how much does it really impact as far as if 500, 000 or so, um, you know, I'm like you. I mean I, I I think I would rather have government have less, I guess less, um, less government control than more government control.
Speaker 3But also, there is, there is, you know, reality, especially around here, right, now in our area um at least bullock county, um the hunting lands was kind of disappearing in general, and so I can understand that like if and, and we talked a little bit about the states having an option to buy it, so I could see maybe that happened I mean anybody has the option to buy it you know if it's going to be if it's going to be privatized, which is a, which is lawyer?
Speaker 2lawyer, speak for let's freaking sell this land you know.
Speaker 1Okay. Well, if there's 200,000 acres up for sale in idaho, all right, idaho, buy the land yeah, but the thing where the problem comes in.
Speaker 3You mentioned colorado, like how much of that land is federal owned land that people can hunt? Well, colorado is not buying that land, right?
Speaker 1they already want to get rid of hunting as much as possible. Yep and so now they they may not say that in those words, but they but in their policies.
Speaker 3Yeah, that's why they reintroduced wolves and crap like that back into their you know, their ecosystem is if these things can control the population, we don't have to have as much hunting and that kind of thing. Right, those are the places that I think it is definitely going to hurt the most is because places like that, these more blue states and who won't go in control and all that crap, anyway, they're definitely not going to help the situation, and so those are the places I feel like would be hurt the most by. You know, ideally it would be great if the States could get it but there's nothing saying that they are.
Speaker 3I think the first thing we got to stop doing is selling it to freaking China and Russia. Right, and that does. That's stupid.
Speaker 1Yeah, right, yeah, it makes no sense.
Speaker 3That's the dumbest thing I can think of. We already are in debt like billions and billions and trillions of dollars to China, and then we're selling and that rooster is going to come home to crow one day, yeah. And then we're selling them our land Like that's dumb.
Why Government Land Ownership Matters
Speaker 1And those are not government transactions, those are private pieces of property. So these are two completely separate scenarios that we're looking at, two separate conversations that we're looking at. But, like I said, we're trying to look at really the whole picture and figure out, all right, what got us here? Why are we even in this situation? Why would this be a consideration? And then you know, all right, look at the broader picture. All right, let's look at this land mass that we call the United States of America and what the land ownership looks like. And when you start looking at hostile countries owning any dirt in our country, yeah, that is that. That is that's mind boggling to me. Yeah, I mean there's.
Speaker 3There's zero reason an enemy of the United States should own land in our in the United States, and I just feel like that's not very smart and which our government does a lot of things. It is not very smart which our government does a lot of things. That is not very smart when you look at it overall. Obviously we had a president who was not very smart and yet somehow he stayed in office for four years. You know, kind of the running joke that I hear a lot of people say is you know he? He didn't really even know where he was. So after he finished a speech he kind of looked like a Roomba, kind of just walking around on the stage trying to figure out how to get get off the stage. And so you know, now that's a big scandal and a lot of people feel like that's a scandal.
Speaker 3That's, you know, maybe one of the one of, if not the biggest scandal in the United States history is this cover-up that happened, yeah, and so the point I guess I'm making is we don't always make great decisions and from a government standpoint, and or from a public standpoint yeah, and it's one of those things where there are some good people who are in the government, who are either state or house representatives, that are in Congress, who actually do care about their constituents, but there's a whole lot of them that don't, and they're there to make deals, to make money, and they don't really give a crap about anything else. And I think it's probably easy to get lost in that once you get in Washington, once you get places like that, and it just becomes about making deals and that kind of thing. And it just becomes about making deals and that kind of thing. And I mean, and this is another one of those examples of you know, can we do something with common sense?
Speaker 2You know, can we?
Speaker 3can we just use common sense in the things that we do? And that's where I get frustrated. And an example I always use is like during COVID and when all that crap was going on and they told us you know, start coughing into your elbow. Well then they told us don't touch hands, touch elbows to greet each other. And I'm like we just coughed into our elbow. That's a little backwards.
Speaker 2Yeah, our elbow a little backwards.
Speaker 3Yeah, like can we use common sense in the fact that I just spit all over my elbow when I coughed on it and now I'm touching your elbow and then you're gonna stick your face into your elbow to cough, and I'm like that's just stupid, you know. And so basically I don't trust really the government to make very wise decisions at any particular level. So with this again I look at it and I'm like I just don't trust it. I don't know. I feel like the less control the government has. Obviously we have to have some law in the land, we have to have something that sets boundaries for people, but I'm definitely more of a smaller government, um person yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 1So when we, when, when we look at going back to this idea of government land ownership and what land the government should own and have control over, all right, our government should own the entirety of our borders. Right, there should be. There should be a line, however wide it needs to be, just like the mess the border between mexico and united states.
Speaker 3Now they've declared that like a military zone.
Speaker 1Absolutely, it's not very wide.
Speaker 3It's just a narrow strip and that's perfect, yeah.
Speaker 1I think the government should own our borders. I think that that should just be the way it is. That's part of their responsibility is to protect who can come into our country and who can't, who can travel back and forth between our borders. So I think the government should own that. I think they should own the property where government buildings sit, true, and I think they should own military installations Outside of that. Why does the government need to own anything? It doesn't make any sense to me. Okay, all right, so then we're going to add in some historical places. Okay, great, let's preserve our history. That's a fantastic idea. Let's have statues that point us to what our history was the good parts and the bad parts. Right, because if you don't remember the bad parts, where are you going to be in 100?
Speaker 2years.
Speaker 1Where are you going to be in 50 years, if? Where are you going to be in 50 years If you don't remember that some bad decisions that were made, you know? So that's not. That's not memorializing a bad person as good. That's memorializing. Hey, this was a, this was a screwed up situation, right? You know, we need to make sure we don't go back here again, right?
Speaker 1So so having those things I think is a big deal. And then, outside of that, what does the government need to own? You know, and the argument is, like public lands are like public libraries, you know they're available to everyone that that is like the stupidest argument I've ever heard in my life. It's all right. So if that, if that's the, how often do you go to a public library? When's the last time you went to a public library?
Speaker 2I was probably seven.
Speaker 3Okay, I've always avoided libraries. Okay, all right.
Speaker 1So I mean and I know that that's a nuanced argument, but let's just look at it from that perspective how often do we go to a library? You know, information is much more readily available to us. Now, I mean, I've got the Library of Congress right here in my hand. I can access any book in the Library of Congress, which is the largest library in the world. He's holding his phone, by the way. I'm holding my phone right, the Library of Congress.
Speaker 1I mean I am Look how strong I am. I mean I am Look how strong I am. But I mean, seriously, information is so much more readily accessible and available to us. So how important are libraries at this point? Yeah, you know, and I'm not saying we need to go tear all the libraries down. That is absolutely not what I'm suggesting. What I'm saying is we have to make sure that we look at things in a proper perspective. Listen, I don't like the idea of selling land either. Don't misunderstand me. I own land and I'm very thankful for the land that I have the opportunity to be able to take care of, and I want to be a good steward of it. But at the same time, okay, let's let's say I get in financial straits, I get in financial trouble right?
Speaker 1well, I'm not gonna. I'm not going to put my family out just because I want to hold on to a piece of real estate. Right, so being a good steward. So if we look at it from that perspective and we say, okay, I don't think anybody I don't think anybody listening to this or anybody with a pulse could argue that the United States of America, from a financial standpoint, is not in a good position, I just don't understand how we can have as much debt as we have and want to increase it.
Speaker 1I mean, you know, it makes me sick to look at the debt that we have, and it has affected an entire generation. And what I mean by that is it used to be that having money meant you actually had money and you didn't owe a bunch of money, right? Well, now there's this idea that that's okay and you can be wealthy with debt. That doesn't make any sense, right? I mean, it just doesn't make any sense, you know. So if we're sitting, so if you're, you're, so you're telling me, you're telling me that you've got fifteen thousand dollars in credit card debt, but you're still living the lifestyle of a wealthy person, you know, you're still driving new cars, you're still, you know, going out to dinners and going on vacations and stuff like that. It doesn't make any sense to me. No logical person would operate a household in that way.
Speaker 1So why, when we look at our government and say, okay, we're in trouble, you know we got problems and part of it is the same thing that can get a family to that point wasteful spending. You know it's part of it is not being a good steward to the resources that we have. Okay, but when we find ourselves in that position, whether it was a situation that didn't work out like it was supposed to, or um, or bad decisions that got us there, or whatever, regardless of what got us to that point. And we're at the point where we realize, okay, we've got to make some changes and we've got to make some tough choices. What do you do?
Speaker 1So I'm taking this from a government standpoint and a public land standpoint that everybody's up in arms and upset about Really distilling it down all the way to the personal level. If you find yourself in a position where you have more debt than you could ever dream to pay back, but you're sitting there and you're holding hard liquidable assets, what do you do? You don't file bankruptcy and make it go away. That's not the way this works. Now you may need to file bankruptcy and reorganize some things and then start selling your assets to make it happen, but you don't just I mean, that's that first off. It's not morally right to just file bankruptcy and make debt go away.
Speaker 1You know that's. That's not the way that, that any of us should do things. So I think that I think that we you know we need to instead of saying no, no, no, no, no, we can't do this. That's that's. We own that land, we, we can't give this up. I think we really need to take a step back. I think Congress needs to take a step back. I hope they do.
Speaker 1I hope that they are actually looking through this and there's not just some kind of uh, congressional aid that's going through and and and and writing these bills and putting stuff in them and you know I mean, we hear the, we hear the stories about how stuff actually gets done in in washington dc and if things actually get done the way that we hear they get done, we should, we should not be surprised that we're in the position that we're in. Yeah, yeah, you know, you know, that's just, that's just facts, yeah.
Speaker 3Yeah, you know. The fact that we survived the last four years is a miracle.
Speaker 1You know, I think Donald Trump put a statement out this week. He said that he said that Joe Biden did not open our borders. He said that was not Joe Biden.
Speaker 3That did that.
Speaker 1You know he said that. You know we were all shocked by it, because we should have been shocked by it, because it wasn't him doing it. Yeah, you know, he was completely incapacitated.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 1And the times that we got to see him in public, I mean, all of us were scratching our heads. It was obvious, you know, wondering like how is this even happening? Yeah, back when, after he was, um, after he was elected and um, you know, we had the inauguration and all that kind of stuff, I told somebody. I said I give it 90 days because I felt like his health was was. Even then, you know, even during the campaign, I felt like his health was terrible and something was not. Things just were not adding up to me, you know. And then we go through four years of I don't know who the heck was at the wheel.
Speaker 3Yeah, nobody does. Nobody knows who's running it and the problem with something like the selling of the land, and there's so many things right now that are going to take priority over really looking at that and discussing it that I don't even know how much it will get looked at, because when you look at the stuff that is going on in our government and our country right, now where does that fall in the priority list?
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 3You know, and I mean there's so many things, Well, and the truth is I don't know. Yeah, and I don't think it's going to be at the top of the list to be discussed, because I mean you're dealing with. Do we increase the debt ceiling? You know, you got people who are very much against that. Um, you've got stuff like uh, that is in the news every day of can we export um illegal immigrants who committed crimes without going through due process? Um, it was, or what is called due process. You've got freaking men and women sports, which is a complete lack of common sense. Obviously they shouldn't be. You've got just so many things. You've got this scandal going on with who was actually running the country. How much stuff was signed with an electronic?
Speaker 1pen.
Speaker 3Yeah, the auto pen you know, you got soldiers who died because of how we exited Afghanistan and left millions and millions of dollars worth of equipment there. Who made that decision? Who made the decisions that have affected the whole?
Speaker 1country. Well, and you have two generals who said that they suggested that we not leave Afghanistan. You know, one of them said that we needed to maintain a presence of 2,500 troops. One of them said we needed to maintain 4,500 or 5,000 troops. And if we pulled everybody out that it was going to collapse. Well, guess what?
Speaker 3It collapsed and we left.
Financial Realities and National Debt
Speaker 1I mean I think the number is billions, billions of dollars of equipment and ammunition and guns, and I mean tanks and helicopters and I mean it's just, it's absolutely insane and it.
Speaker 3I mean, and I don't, I don't want us to be in wars that are in places that it doesn't make sense to be. But it also is common sense that if the presence that is keeping things civil, or at least somewhat civil, is removed, you get chaos Right, and it doesn't take a genius to figure that out. Sure, yeah, I mean, take any genius to figure that out.
Speaker 1Sure, yeah, I mean, take any fourth-grade classroom in America.
Speaker 3And remove the teacher and remove the teacher.
Speaker 1Yes, I don't care where it is inner city, rural America.
Speaker 3I don't care, yep, because little Johnny's hitting somebody in the head with a spitball, bro, yeah.
Speaker 1I mean, stuff's going to happen, somebody's standing on a desk in five minutes. Yep.
Speaker 3And you know so it's the same thought and you know, looking at the land and the land being sold, I kind of like looking at it from the other side, from the hunter's perspective. I can understand why there are people who are upset Absolutely. I can understand why there are people who are upset Absolutely Because you look at it, and what if you don't have private land?
Speaker 3What if that is the only place you can hunt? What if, you know, and you get to a place where the land we can hunt is slowly disappearing and that kind of thing? So I completely get that side of it too. But I do understand, like what? What is the government's role? And can we just get to a place where government is doing what they're supposed to do? You know, and it's all posturing, man, it's all posturing. It's all posturing. It's all an agenda. I don't care if it's right, left, middle, I don't care what it is. So much of the crap that goes on in our government is is evil is manipulative and is for the best interest of the people who are running it.
Speaker 3That's why so many of them go in with a little bit of money and come out freaking millionaires is because they're making money off of their position. And money is the root of all evil and it's why so much of our government is evil the love of money is the root of all evil.
Speaker 1Yeah, sorry, yeah, yeah. I just think it's always important that we make that distinction. That's why you'll see a freshman congressman going in. And they have. I don't. I would it be wrong to say that they have pure intentions. I think, sometimes, I think sometimes a freshman Congress Congressman or Congresswoman will go in with pure intentions and be willing to vote for um term limits for Congressman Uh, and then within a term or two, they're not even going to be a part of that conversation anymore.
Speaker 3And how much pressure are they getting put under to change their views? But then also, how many of them get in there and look at it and go, hey, this is pretty lucrative, right Like I don't want to have a term, well, and I think there's some pretty nefarious things going on.
Speaker 1I think that, um, I think there's some blackmailing that's going on. I think you know you get in office and you know you make a mistake and the wrong person grabs a hold of it and they hold it over your head and you know, all right, here's the thing we're all going to make mistakes. Yeah, I mean, it's just a fact. Yeah, you know. So I think that when that happens, the best thing for you to do is own up to it yeah be honest about it, say, hey, I made this mistake.
Speaker 1If that means I uh, I um I can't serve anymore.
Speaker 3Yeah, that means I get, I get voted out or whatever.
Speaker 1The next time that there's an election, you know, man, I hate that, I didn't mean to do this, but this happened. You know where is that? Yeah, it's pretty rare that we get to see something like that. So I agree with you that I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of evil things that go on within our, within our government, at every level. Um, and I think that I think the man that's running it right now, uh, from a chief executive, I think that he, um, I think he is in a very unique position because he is not a career politician. Yeah, he doesn't intend to, or hope to, or want to be a career politician. Sometimes I look at it and I wonder why in the heck he's even doing what he's doing, you know, because he's brought so much on himself. One, you know, and that's the thing. It's not always, it's not, it's it's never just about the heat that you're bringing on yourself. He's brought this on his entire family.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 1You know, he's put his entire family in a completely new light. Yeah, They've always been in the spotlight, you know, but he's he's put them under a different, a different level of scrutiny and under a different level of attack in so many ways. And I look at it and I'm like man, why is he doing this? And then I realize to me, the only reason that you could say he's doing this is because he really believes that he can help affect change, you know. And he's willing to say this is how I'm going to use the last years of my life. Yeah, I'm not saying that that trump has any kind of health issues. I'm saying he's. I mean he's old.
Speaker 1He's not gonna live forever, yeah you know, I mean it's just not.
Speaker 3That's not the way it works, yeah, so um, and here's, here's, here's a problem, and you probably pick up on this from this podcast. There are very few people that I trust yeah like I. I I look at character pretty hard and so for me and the government dude like I don't trust really anybody.
Speaker 3Yeah, like, I feel like everybody has an angle, everybody has an agenda and I and and I'm not saying that Trump isn't trying to help us I just there's very few people that I want to put my life and my family's life in their hands and really, when you look at it, we don't have much control over anything. That goes on.
Speaker 1And that's when you have to really look at it and go.
Speaker 3Well, god's in control.
Speaker 3Scripture tells us that God appoints these leaders and we should pray for these leaders and you know, and trust in the Lord. I've been seeing it's just been coming up a lot in the things I've been reading lately the proverb that talks about how some people trust in chariots, others trust in horses, but we trust in the Lord, our God, you know, and I think like that's, that's where we have to stay is because it's just otherwise we, we really we've got very which controls, kind of an illusion anyway, right, but especially when it comes to decisions that are being made, we, we really don't have any we can call. I kind of laugh when I see these commercials come on and they're like you know, call your ball, your local Congress, and tell them that you don't want blanky, blanky, blank, or you won't blanketety, and I'm like, why am I gonna waste that time? You know, yeah, yep, and so I don't know, man, and and I want to get away from the whole public land debate because I can see two sides of it.
Speaker 1I can, too, listen. I mean, I see the side of it that says okay, we don't know what's going to be done with this 500,000 acres or a million and a half acres, whatever the number is. We don't know what's going to be done, we don't know what it's going to look like, we don't know where it is exactly or anything like that. None of that's been identified at this point. I mean, there's been talks about it, there's been hints about it, but nothing has been. Okay, this is the property that we're talking about. These are the 500 acres we're looking at right here. Here's the 250 acres we're looking at over here. You know, whatever you know, we're going to open this up and we're going to start drill, baby drill, right here on this spot. Nobody actually knows that yet.
Speaker 1I think the biggest issue with it is the precedence that it sets about. Okay, we can open this up and we can just sell it right. So that is a legitimate concern that I have If we just go into it. So that's the part of the bill that I don't like is that it doesn't work in specifics. It's a very general opens this up to be sold, and once you give somebody an inch, once you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to want a glass of milk. Yeah Right, so that's that's the concern that I have about taking it from this.
Speaker 1These broad strokes of generalities of we're going to open this up to be sold and, yeah, they are being moderately specific by by listing an acreage amount but then they're not going into detail about exactly where it is or what it's going to be used for. Everything has been has been talking about in these big generalities. That's the part that I don't like about it. That's the part that I say okay, if we're going to do this, we need to have a very distinct and clear plan to do it. That's I think that that's pretty important. That way, going forward, if, if it's not voted on, this hasn't been voted on, if it's been voted on in the House and it's going to be voted on in Congress, but it hasn't been voted on by the people, so if we put and setting it up to start with wasn't voted on by the people, so if we put and setting it up to start with wasn't voted on by the people, it was presented to Congress by a president and Congress said, yeah, that sounds cool.
Speaker 1Let's do that, you know. So, again looking at how we got to the point that we're at.
Speaker 3Yeah, and it's almost like it seems like everything that happens, it started with good intent. So it started to hey, let's preserve, let's be conservationists, let's take care of this land and make sure that people can enjoy the land. And then now it is where it is, after decades is and after you know, decades, and so it's like a lot of things. I feel like it starts out maybe with hey, this is going to be a good thing, and then it just evolves into something else and what is? Because I haven't looked at this particular issue a ton. What is the purpose of selling it?
Speaker 1Well, so that's the part that I feel like there hasn't been enough specifics around it. So part of it is talking about setting up this wealth fund that I admittedly, I don't know enough about that to understand exactly what that is, you know. Going back to that personal level, you know where you say, all right, we need to sell this asset. Well, if you're going to sell an asset at a personal level, it is to satisfy debt that you have, you know, or it is to provide for your family in a different way.
Speaker 3Right.
Speaker 1You know, so we have. We have people all over our County right now that they have land that's been in their family for generations. You know that's been farmed, they've grown trees on it, they've leased it to hunting clubs, whatever all kinds of different uses on it, they've leased it to hunting clubs, whatever all kind of different uses, and they're at a place where they're starting to sell that land for a lot of different reasons. Yeah, you know there's I mean for, for for every piece of land that we see being sold right now, there's probably a hundred different reasons, for sure, per property. You know where they went through.
Speaker 1Sometimes it's just it was left to a kid that lives in Atlanta or lives in Chicago or lives here or whatever, and the family owned it and they farmed it and nobody in the family farms anymore. So it doesn't make sense for them to hold them to land anymore. So they're selling it. I can tell you, um, I I had a, a wise man tell me one time. He said he said, john, I've got four daughters and I don't want my four daughters fighting over what, over what's going to happen with this land?
Speaker 1yeah, so I'm selling it now, and when I die there'll be money that'll be left to them, that'll be split four ways and nobody will say, well, why dad leave so. And so this land up here on the hill that has the road front and I got the swamp, but I got, but I got the creek, you know why.
Speaker 1so he said I'm taking that out of the equation. You know they, they never had anything to do with this. This was old family land. So I'm selling it and that's what will be left to my children is the money, and then they can do with that whatever they want to. It's cut and dry. It's numbers, numbers are clean, right so. So that that's the part about this. That, a it sets a precedent of something happening with public land, with our land, right. B, there's no real clear definition of what's going to be done with the money. Yeah, but there's a lot of stuff that's got us to this point where we have this. Seemingly it's not seemingly we have this daunting debt. I mean, pull up the national debt clock. Just Google that today.
Speaker 1Just Google it, look it up, and it will shock you how fast that number grows. I mean, just pull it up on your phone, on your computer, whatever, and leave it open for five minutes, take a screenshot when you pull it up and then take a screenshot five minutes later and look at how much that number has grown. Why? Why are we in a place where our debt is just growing out of control like that? Why aren't we in a place where I'm not saying the government, I'm not saying our government should have, you know, a trillion dollar surplus? That's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 1But we sure as the heck shouldn't have hundreds of trillions of dollars in debt yeah and and it's kind of like if you ran a business like we run our government, you wouldn't last very long okay, so so I I made mention to that earlier that the way our government operates has affected an entire generation, right? What I mean by that is and and I I kind of got off track so it used to mean it used to mean when, when, when you had money or you had wealth, it meant you didn't owe anybody. It meant you had money right.
Speaker 1Well, today we think debt is just, it's just normal. You know, okay, I'm gonna go buy this truck that's 90 000 and I'm gonna pay for 84 months on it and I know that before I get this truck paid off, it's gonna be, it's it's gonna be a piece of crap. I mean, vehicles and stuff like that are disposable and people have bought into that and we have. I don't want to upset anybody. Okay, this is not an attack on anybody, you've already done it, just do it.
Speaker 1I'm just going to say this as succinctly and clearly as I can we are the affluent poor.
Political Scandals and Leadership Failures
Speaker 3You just upset a lot of people. I don't see that as offensive.
Speaker 1And that is not an attack on anybody but we are the affluent poor, and that saying comes from Charles Spurgeon, who was a preacher in London many, many, many years ago, and he saw it happening with them. Okay, now I want you to look at the United Kingdom and where they're at. They are not in a good position and they are a few decades ahead of us from that standpoint, and I think that that's where we're headed if we don't right the ship, and that means we've got to sell stuff to right the ship, but we need to put a for sale sign out by the road.
Speaker 3The problem, though I look at it, is selling 500,000 acres is not going to fix our issue.
Speaker 1No, it's not. So that's the issue that I have.
Speaker 3And that's the thing that I look at is like fiscal responsibility is what's going to fix the issue. Absolutely Stop wasting our taxpayer dollars. That's going to fix the issue. Yep, actually, giving a crap about the people you represent and what's best for them, that's going to fix the issue. But to think that selling off a little bit of land that's not going to do anything, it's not.
Speaker 1it's not even going to be a drop in the bucket? No, it doesn't do anything. So that's the. That's the problem that I have with the lack of specificity about what's going to be done and what and, like we said, what's the why?
Speaker 2yeah you know, um, what?
Speaker 3what is the why behind it? Yep, and if that's not clear, then that's concerning you know, because then that even raises more suspicion absolutely why? So why are we doing this? You know what? What's the, what's the angle?
Speaker 1what's the point if we're not going to something, if all we're trying to do is say, okay, well, we need cash in the hat. We got this asset, we can sell it, we can put some cash in the hat, without knowing or without defining what we're going to do with that cash once it's in there, or without changing any of our ways. What have we really done? We've done nothing. We've just gotten rid of an asset, yeah. What have we really done? We've done nothing. We've just gotten rid of an asset, yeah, right. And then so down the road, when this happens again, we don't have that asset to lean on.
Speaker 1Yeah, um, so you know, I I think that I think it is a very complex situation. The whole point of this conversation is to encourage people to oh, my gosh, is that the debt clock? Yes, it's stupid.
Speaker 3This is unreal and just watching hundreds of thousands of dollars yeah.
Speaker 1So the whole point of this conversation is to say, all right, back up a little bit, before you go scorched earth emailing your congressman, emailing any representative that you have calling one of those two oh two area code phone numbers and and getting on the phone and and telling somebody how stupid they are, back up and look at the, the, the entire situation and take a minute to think for yourself. That's what I want people to do. People are smart, a person is smart. I really believe that, okay, people together, collectively, are total idiots, period, you know. I mean so we talked a little bit about COVID. You know, coughing into your, into your elbow, sneeze into your elbow or whatever. You know can't go to church anymore.
Speaker 3But you can go to Lowe's and buy flowers for your flower garden.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean. So we had all this stuff going on and we just went along with it. Yeah, you know, part of it was like oh, you mean, I don't have to go to work, I think. I think part of it was people were excited that, okay, okay, I don't I get, I got a paid vacation. Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna be off for 30 days and my and the business I work for got ppp money and I'm still gonna be paid and they're pretty much gonna be made whole and everything's gonna be cool. Well, guess what that made that debt clock go up more?
Speaker 2and then we were and disease came of. Oh, I can work from home now.
Speaker 1Yeah yeah. That's a disease in and of itself. A lot of that we were lied about too, absolutely, absolutely Dude. So on the Jerry Rogan podcast they were talking about the number of deaths that have resulted from the vaccine.
Speaker 3And it's finally coming out.
Speaker 1It is freaking insane. It is more, it is more we. It is more, it is more. We've lost more American lives and guys, I know we're jumping all over the place this morning, but just hang in there with us. We hadn't talked in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 3This is basically a rant. This morning.
Speaker 1We're hitting a lot of stuff. There was more deaths from the vaccine not from COVID, from the vaccine than there was in World War I, world War II and Vietnam combined. That's crazy man. And that's just the Pfizer. That doesn't include the Moderna vaccine.
Speaker 2Wait. More people have died from the vaccine.
Speaker 1Yes.
Speaker 2Wow.
Speaker 1And that's like. That's legit data. You know that's not somebody that died from COVID itself. That's not somebody that died because of something else. You know it's that is. That is hard facts, that this is, this was their cause of death, because this is what happened and we know that people that got the vaccine, who had no history, no problem with this specific issue.
Speaker 1And then they had it after the vaccine. Okay, then what's the causality of the death? The vaccine, you know, and I mean. So that's that is insane to me. So, anyway, that's that's where we're at. I that's.
Speaker 1That's the whole point of this conversation this morning is that I want people to, I want people to to lean in on your um ability to think critically and understand a little bit better about you know what it looks like, why something should be done, why something shouldn't be done, and get to a place where we're not just living and expecting to have debt all the time. So that was what I was talking about, about how I believe that the way our government has run and had debt for the amount of time that we have, I believe it has affected an entire generation of people. Yeah, you know, when you look at, when you look at the amount of household debt in the United States of America right now, it is staggering. I mean it's truly staggering. And how, how did we get there? You know, I mean I that that's just the that's the question that I have is how did, how did we get to a place where you know it's cool to to to be carrying all this debt all the time.
Speaker 1So when I first opened this business, I remember a guy came in. He worked for a local lending institution. He came in and he said, hey, we want to be your financing arm for your business. I was like, okay, what do you mean? I said I don't need a loan, I don't need something. And he said no, no, no, no. You mean, I said I don't need a loan, I don't need something, and he said no, no, no, no. We mean for the people that are coming in to buy your products. I said he said so we would put something up here on the counter that says the name of our business. I'm not going to say who it was, but we'd put something up here on the counter that says the name of our business and they would, basically they would come in tell you everything that you they want to get and you could give them a printout and then they could come to us and borrow the money to do it.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I said, uh, I said okay. I said, well, you know it was a younger guy. I said, man, I appreciate and you know, whatever, you know. I just kind of ended the conversation and the guy that was working for me at the time, that was running the shop at the time, I went over and talked to him about it. He said, he said, he said so what were they doing? You know, and I explained it to him and everything. And I said, man, I said, I said I am not going to take advantage of that.
Speaker 1I'm not going to put that in here. That almost seems scandalous. Well, it's not. I don't want to say it's scandalous. I mean I don't think it was necessarily like a predatory lending kind of thing, a predatory lending kind of thing.
Speaker 1But at the same time, like I understand that I I live and work and operate within the discretionary spending category, and discretionary spending is when everything else is paid for and you have something else and you have something left over and you want to support a hobby, then you spend money on this, yeah Right. And if you don't have something left over and you want to support a hobby, yeah, then you spend money on this, yeah right. And if you don't have something left over after you have paid all your bills and bought groceries for your family and provided reliable transportation for your family and all of the things that go along with having a family, if there's not money left over to come and do something like this then you shouldn't do it, and a lot of it comes down to discipline, right, you know, being able to say no for a period of time.
Speaker 1So it's one of the fruit of the spirit. Yeah, self-control, yeah, so I'll look at people. Self-control, yeah, so I'll look at people. I had a friend of mine come to me a couple years ago and he said, hey, I need to sell my bow. And I said okay.
Speaker 1And I said well, you know, just bring it by the shop. You know, we've got a consignment rack. I'm not going to buy it from you, but I'll hang it up in here and I'll sell it. You know, like I don't sell used equipment in the shop, there's a fine line between a pawn shop and a bow shop, and I'm not a pawn shop and I'm not against pawn shops, I'm just not a pawn shop. Okay. So I said but I've got a consignment rack, bring it in, hang it up and we'll sell it. And he said you know, I feel like the Lord has just told me that I need to cut this out of my life, that I spend too much time on it. I said, okay, well, I understand, that Sounds good, bring it back, we'll sell it for you.
Speaker 1Well, the reality was that bow hunting was not the problem, yeah, okay. So the reality is self-control was a problem. Yeah, the reality is self-control is a problem, realizing that, hey, I'm at a different spot in my life, in my family, right now, and I need to be able to spend more time with my sons and my daughters and more time investing in my wife. I need to be able to stay more focused on my career right now because I'm having to do things to make sure I'm able to stay more focused on on, you know, my career right now because I I'm having to do things to make sure I'm able to provide. You know, I'm not a 20 something year old guy anymore that if I don't like this job, I'll just go get another one. Sure.
Speaker 1You know it doesn't. It doesn't always work that way. There, there's something to be said about somebody that will go to work for a company, go to work for a man, and say you know what I'm, I'm sticking with it, I'm going to stick in here with you, I believe in what you're doing, uh, and thankful that you gave me an opportunity and that you gave me a job, and I'm going to stick here with you because I know that I can become a big part of your business, right? So there's something to be said about that. So, anyway, yeah, it points back to that idea of a fruit of the spirit of self-control, of being able to realize I need to. I need to step back on this a little bit.
Speaker 3So, and and his intentions were pure and they were good, yep, it was just, it was um and I can get that to like getting rid of the temptation also hey, I think it's great Temptation is there.
Speaker 2It's taking up space in your mind.
Speaker 1We've talked about this before. If you're tempted by something, what do you do? Get rid of it, you get rid of it, you get it away from you. So the intent and the idea behind it was pure and it was good, but it focused on a very finite issue and what my prayer was was that he would realize hey it, the bow is not the problem. Yeah right, the the arrows I got over there is not the problem. The camo clothing I got is not the problem. I got a heart issue with this. I've got a self-control issue with this that I need to deal with. Because if we don't take and look at it and say I've got a problem that I need to take care of, then what's going to happen is something else is going to move in there yeah right.
Speaker 1So that that's that's why I point to that, to say, you know, we we need to, we need to take a holistic approach to this stuff. We need to look at. We need to look at the whole picture, not just look at part of the picture and like this situation we've been talking about this morning. Part of the picture is we're talking about selling public land. Well, okay, what's the bigger picture? And, to your point, there's a lot of the bigger picture.
Speaker 3We're not given the opportunity to see there's a lot of pieces of the puzzle missing for us.
Speaker 1yeah, yeah, we can't see, yep, and that's the part where I say, hey, we need to pump the brakes on this. I'm not saying we need to pump the brakes because we shouldn't sell the land. I'm saying we need to pump the brakes because, all right, tell me why we're doing this, tell me, tell me what this is going to look like and what else we're going to do, because we all know that this is a drop, this, this isn't even, this isn't even a drop in the bucket. Yeah to to to do what needs to be done to kind of right the ship, um, so that's, that's, that's my reservation about the whole situation, um, about, it only took an hour to to talk through all that.
Speaker 1Well, I mean we hit a lot To get through your view of it. We hit a lot of different points. I could keep going.
Speaker 3I mean, I could too, man, there's so much stuff.
Speaker 1I want people to. There's only so much of the picture that I can paint because there's only so much that I know about it. Like I said, I'm not going to sit down and read the bill. I'm just not going to do that. I don't have enough time. It would take me the rest of the freaking year to read that bill and it's probably written in ways you can't understand. Well, it's freaking lawyer, speak, you know, and I mean, if you're a lawyer, god bless you. I love you.
Speaker 2I mean, you know, I'm not like Ron Swanson, who says what does he say? Three most useless jobs in order Doctor, congressman and lawyer.
Speaker 1Yeah, there you go. I don't subscribe to that. I think that lawyers have a place.
Speaker 2But that's in order. Lawyers are at the bottom.
Speaker 1Sorry, but anyway, that's why we wanted to talk through that this morning. So to stay on our political trajectory right now. What about this crap that's going on in South Africa right now?
Speaker 3Yeah, that's crazy too. Have you seen that Wes no.
Speaker 1I'm not on news or Instagram or X or any of that. White farmers are being killed in South Africa right now To take their land. And they're taking their land. So the president from over in Africa came to the Oval Office and met with Trump, and Trump plays this video of government officials. What? Was the government Calling for these farmers to be killed?
Speaker 1Yeah, so it's the government that's doing this Well and then this other government official said you know, that's a small party within our political landscape and they don't represent the views of the government as a whole, but it's still the government, but it's still happening. The views of the government as a whole, but it's still the government, but it's still happening. In the video that was played for this African delegation that was in the Oval Office, there was a video of this roadway in South Africa and it was recorded on a Sunday morning and it was just this line of cars, you know.
Speaker 1Yeah, and crosses on both sides of the road. That represented people that had been killed, you know, and the response from some of the reporters in the room. There was this freaking idiot reporter from NBC but as soon as they got done playing the video, he asked a question about a jet that was being given to the United States by Qataris, qatar, qatar.
The Modern Church's Broken System
Speaker 3It depends on who says it Right yeah yeah, and it was like. It was like like all these people are being killed, a president trump, um. So explain, why are you? Why are you accepting a right, a 400 million dollar plan? The funniest thing, whether you like trump or not, you, you gotta. Some of the clips of him dealing with people are so hilarious because he's like are you really asking me about this right now? Yeah, y'all look like you're an idiot, you're the worst, you're terrible.
Speaker 1No more questions your network is terrible. Your whole network should be investigated, the way you run that network you. You should go back to the studio your mother doesn't even love you like man it was, it was wild you're all fake news but all right.
Speaker 1so let's get back to this thing that's going on. We've got these farmers being killed in South Africa. We have people from South Africa fleeing to the United States because they want to get away from it. Yeah, I don't think that this is a religious thing or anything like that. I mean, I really don't know. I really don't know what the driver is behind this, why this is happening, why it's going on. What is I?
Speaker 3mean it's just, it's evil. Well, it's another human rights thing, right? But then you want to talk about other human rights issues. China is one of the biggest violators of human rights, but the nba doesn't mind taking money from them yeah but then they're going to complain about all the trans stuff and all this other stuff that's going on well. First of all, why don't we quit taking money from a communist country just because you're getting rich off of it and you don't want to do anything about it?
Speaker 3right, so and deal with the human rights issues that are going on there. So, like, don't tell me you you really care about human rights and you ignore what's happening in china because they feed you this huge sum of money, right, you know, and it's the same thing is what are we going to do about those human rights?
Speaker 3Are we really going to do anything about it? And we'd rather argue about should a man be able to play in women's sports than deal with something that really doesn't just require common sense to deal with, like that actually requires some effort to look at, because that should be a non-issue. That shouldn't even be, that should not even be taught about.
Speaker 1Well, I mean, like the whole gender thing shouldn't even be taught, it shouldn't be taught about how the heck did this even come up? I mean, you, either you, you either have boy parts or girl parts.
Speaker 3Yeah, you are either a male or a female and period. And the thing is, I'm like on this rant and I know the people that I would want to hear this aren't going to hear it but like, if you think that a male should play female sports, you're a moron. If you think there are more than two genders, then you're an idiot.
Speaker 2And your mother doesn't love you and your mother doesn't love you.
Speaker 1And your mother doesn't love you.
Speaker 3Oh my gosh, and that is just the way it is. It is just the way it is, and the fact that our country has gotten to this place and there are people running our country who think this is worth fighting over and should be an issue is ridiculous. It is ridiculous and, you know, I mean it's mind blowing. The things that we want to say are OK, and there's no way a logical human being whose mind is completely there can look at it and go yeah, I mean, just because they cut their wiener off, there's they, you know, they should be able to play with, with the girls. I mean, there's no difference there, you know, and I'm like that's stupid yeah and I mean it's not fair.
Speaker 3And then the same people want to say that they are fighting for women's rights and they're not. They're not, they don't care. All they care about is pushing an agenda that will get them elected, by the same people who think, with this moronic way of thinking, that they'll get me elected again.
Speaker 2And it's just what you what you said it's evil.
Speaker 3We're gonna ignore all of these human rights violations so that we can fight for. You know joe, who became joanna to be able to run track and field, you know, with the girls right, and sometimes there's not even a um, there's not even a procedure.
Speaker 1That's been done it's just a guy who says I'm a, I'm a girl yeah you know, like that swimmer, yeah, you know, nothing had been done, nothing had been changed to deal with this at the church one time.
Speaker 3So we had we have boys and girls restrooms, and this has been a few years ago. I'd probably go to jail or something for it now. But we had someone who dressed like a female. He wanted to go in the girls bathrooms and I was told about it. So I had to go address it and basically I was like no, so we'll provide you a bathroom that can be.
Speaker 3If so, I had to go address it and basically I was like no, so we'll provide you a bathroom that can be. If you don't want to go into men's, we'll provide you a bathroom we have one that you can go in that is non-gender specific if that's what you want to do, and a lot of people are like, well, you shouldn't be here anyway.
Speaker 3I'm like the best thing for them to do is to hear the gospel. So I'm not going to make them an elder and I'm not putting them in a place of leadership, but if they want to come and listen and hear the gospel, that's the best thing that can happen, absolutely the church, the church is for sick people.
Speaker 3Yes, and so well and so. So they were like well, uh, you know, I identify as a woman and basically what I told them is, as long as you got one of them, you're not going in there. And I'm like I'm not going to have you, with your feet facing the toilet, going to the bathroom with a four-year-old girl sitting next to you on the toilet.
Speaker 1That's not happening.
Speaker 3And then I never saw them again.
Speaker 1Really.
Speaker 3But I don't care, there's not happening. And then I never saw him again. But I don't care. There's right and there's wrong, and it wasn't.
Speaker 1You were not trying to drive that person away or anything I didn't want him to go away, but I am going to stand up for what's right. Yeah, and there was many people in your church like you kind of alluded to that. Just wanted you to tell that guy get out of here.
Speaker 3I don't want you to leave right. I want you to hear the gospel yep, and the thing is that they had a decision to make you know, and that was sounds like they got many decisions to make. Well, and have made some bad ones but, yeah, anyway. Yeah, you know, I'm kind of thinking too the why behind selling this land, somebody's got to pay For Nancy Pelosi's plastic surgery. Oh no so.
Speaker 1I think Pelosi is pretty, did y'all see? They introduced the Pelosi bill which prevents Trading, and they call it it's an acronym that which prevents trading, trading, yeah, and they call it the Insider trading.
Speaker 1It's an acronym that spells Pelosi, but it's lawyerese for something. I don't remember the whole thing, but yeah, I think if that would pass, that would be pretty cool. Yes, if we could get a lot of lobbyists out of DC, that'd be pretty cool. Yes, if, uh, if we could get a lot of lobbyists out of dc, that'd be pretty cool. Yeah, you know. I mean, I think I think there's a lot of things that need to happen. That's going to be I I don't want to say it's going to be hard to happen, it's, um, because it's not that hard, just do it you. But it's going to be hard to happen because there's a lot of people there who don't want it to go away.
Speaker 3Yeah, that's right, they're benefiting.
Speaker 1They love those dinners that they get to go to for free, that the lobbyist is paying for. They love being able to have their little pet project funded because they've got somebody up there trying to get them to vote a certain way.
Speaker 3And I would say this if I've offended anybody today, I'd love for you to email me at Brandon at I don't give a crap. Brandon at I don't give a crap.
Speaker 1Don't worry, y'all give him. I'll give you his real email address in the in the podcast notes and I'll give you the one that doesn't get screened by anybody.
Speaker 3So it just gets less white.
Speaker 1Oh, my gosh, all right. So we've picked on. We've picked on the my gosh, all right. So we've picked on the government enough. All right, let's pick on the church a little bit, all right. Yeah, for today, for this morning, For this morning, we've picked on the government enough.
Speaker 1I want to pick on the church a little bit, because you talked about the situation that you faced and how you needed to address it. I don't know the entire situation. You gave us the quick 30-second rundown of it, so I don't know exactly how all the conversations went or anything like that. What I want to look at and this really goes back to the bigger picture of why we are where we are, and you and I have talked about this before the pastor of a church has been given too high of a status within the church. Yep, right, yep, and I know we could spend days talking about this, but we're going to distill it down to 20 or 30 or 40 minutes and talk through this about, about what the church actually is. Right, the church ain't a building with an address. All right, let's address that first. The church is not a building with an address. The church, you are the church, whether you're in a particular building, or whether you're at your house, or whether you're at work on Friday morning or Tuesday morning or Wednesday afternoon.
Speaker 3You are the church, yeah, okay yeah, the word for church in scripture. Actually, it simply means a gathering right. So it could have been a political gathering, it could have been any kind of gathering, but it was the people gathering. That's what the church, that's what the word for church literally means.
Speaker 1Right, and there's only two spots in all of scripture where the church is referred to in any type of plurality, and it confuses things. It makes it feel like, okay, all right, so what they're referring to now is the local churches. All right, so what they're referring to now is the local churches. But I think that that was a transliteration of the word instead of an actual translation of the word that was originally used, and it created some confusion about, okay, what is the church supposed to be?
Speaker 1So let's dive into this idea and you get to come at it from a unique perspective because you are a lead pastor at a local church and you have this perspective about what it looks like to you and how a church should be led and how a church should be operated, and I've got a perspective on it from being a part of church leadership from a deacon standpoint within my church and Wes. You've got a perspective on it because, being a part of church leadership from a deacon standpoint within my church and Wes, you've got a perspective on it because you serve in leadership of your youth group right and you get to see how that works from your standpoint. So let's look at what the church is. When Jesus said, when he changed Simon's name from Simon to Peter and he said you are the rock that I will build my church on, what was he talking about?
Speaker 3You want me to answer. It wasn't rhetorical. It wasn't rhetorical.
Speaker 2Wes has got it.
Speaker 1Come on, you just went through a study of all the apostles. Have you hit Peter yet? How in the world could y'all talk about Peter's life and not talk about how his name got changed and why? Let me call Mark Santana, right? Now what kind of operation are you running up there, you know?
Speaker 3in that when he tells him that it's right after he confesses that Jesus is the Son of God and he is the Messiah.
Speaker 1He is the Christ, right yeah.
Speaker 3The rock that the church would be built upon was the revelation of who Jesus is. Thank you, there you go.
Speaker 1It wasn't Peter.
Speaker 3It wasn't the man.
Speaker 1This did not this. It wasn't the man. This in no way transferred any type of deity to Peter. I'm sorry anybody who wants to pray to Peter or wants to put him on a pedestal and give him some sort of deity. That never happened. That's not what took place.
Speaker 3I mean, even if you look at a few verses later, if he was going to raise Peter to that level, then a few verses later he calls him Satan, right, so you know, basically symbolically saying you know, get behind me, satan. And so I don't think Jesus was elevating Peter, um, in the same way that we elevate certain people, um, and of which we've seen lately, and so, um, I think what we're looking at in that is a total and many times, many times a total um misunderstanding of what was happening there, and Jesus said it's upon this revelation, basically that I will build my church.
Speaker 3You know, I'll give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.
Speaker 1And the keys to the kingdom of heaven is the gospel.
Speaker 3And you think about what do keys do? They unlock doors, they unlock ways of getting into things, and the gospel is how we enter into eternal life with God. And that's the point of that passage, right, and I want to say this because I've been kind of hard on some things this morning as far as my opinions, before we even talk about pastors and positions.
Speaker 1You're referring to the whole Brandon at. I don't care.
Speaker 3Well, I'm just referring to all of it because I've been very opinionated this morning.
Speaker 3Let me be very clear. I am very, very imperfect. Every Sunday I stand on the stage to preach. I feel like I shouldn't be there. I'm unworthy of that. I've made a lot of mistakes. I've not done everything perfect of that. I've made a lot of mistakes, I've not done everything perfect. So, as I'm talking about other people and the mistakes they've made, it goes back to that old saying that if one finger's pointing at you, then three more pointing back at me. So in no way do I want to sound, or I probably do sound, but no way do I intend to come across as I've got this figured out, because I don't Right, yeah, you know, and our church is as imperfect or more imperfect than any other church, right? So I don't want to come at it from that standpoint of thinking that I have all the answers or Right, well, why don't you do it the way we do it?
Speaker 3No, we got this figured out.
Speaker 1You don't have it figured out, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, that's definitely. I hope we never come off as that way. Yeah, we'll cut, come on here and be jerks about something or to come at something from an authoritative standpoint. You know like I can help you with your, with your bow choice and with your the way to tune the bow and stuff like that. You know, I I'm not going to say that I'm an expert and I know absolutely every single thing, but I know a lot more than most people that come into the shop just because I do it every day, you know. So, yeah, I think it.
Speaker 1I think it was important to address that. But let's go back to that, that initial thought or that idea about you know what, what a? So let's talk about the local church. What a local church? So let's talk about the local church. What a local church's task is right, because every local church should have the same task and they may carry it out in different ways, and that's okay, there's nothing wrong with that. But the task at hand never changes and that is to deliver the gospel. Yes, that is to preach the gospel, the unchanging word of God, to a world that changes every second yes, right, I mean, that is the role of the church.
Speaker 3And the great thing about the gospel is it doesn't have to fit into a certain context or cultural context. Ok it fits wherever it goes.
Speaker 1So truth, truth is really cool. The truth is the truth.
Speaker 3Right. And so it doesn't matter what country you're in, it doesn't matter what culture, and the truth is the truth, and the gospel is the greatest news that humans have ever heard, and it is the the message that should register with every person's heart, because we have the same issue, and that is sin and separation from God, right, and this is the path of reconciliation, and so, um, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1Yeah, for sure. So when we look at one of the things that I said, okay, we're going to pick on the church. So the thing that I said was we have, within local churches where pastors are elevated to um, I think, an unhealthy position and I'm biblical position, and that's what I mean by unhealthy.
Speaker 1You know, if we're going to, if we're going to compare healthy anything, let's look at the original intent in scripture and if we get away from that, that's an unhealthy thing, right? So, uh, if you're, if you're comparing health, your physical health, to something you look at where you should be, you know, and if you're morbidly obese because you're, you know, you have 60 fat or something like that we've already offended enough.
Speaker 2People just say if you're fat, like real fat, I mean.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean you need to change some things, right.
Speaker 2It ain't just going to go away.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's not going to go away. You keep doing all the same stuff. It's just going to stay there. So, and, like I said, we could spend days on this, but when we're looking at perfect, when we're looking at um, when we're looking at the church, and we, we, we see this idea of where pastors are elevated to a point that, like they have, they have a greater connection with god than somebody in the congregation does. Yeah, you know, then then, uh, then, uh, then a lay person, right, how did that happen? And why do we operate in that way? Why is so much pressure put on the pastor to do, you know, to be the one that leads your family in the ways it should go? Like, how did that happen?
Speaker 3I don't understand that. A lot of the hierarchy of the church started as soon as the second century, where they were already appointing bishops and things like that to be overseers of churches, a lot of that began to be decided. They began to make decisions of who could be baptized, you know, who could take communion, things like that. So there was already a hierarchy that existed. I think the elevation of the pastor. When Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, that didn't help. A lot of the elevation of the pastor came, I think, after the Reformation. The Word of God's put back into the hands of people. People were able to now read the Word of God, but you had people who would preach and probably had a little bit of a deeper knowledge of the Word of God.
Speaker 3So as they would preach, those people were elevated to a higher status right, and so it really developed an unbiblical model of church, where this one person is elevated and everybody else is there to consume and this one person is there to disseminate information. And that's what we have in the church in in in too many ways today and that and that's not.
Speaker 1Um, this is not a denominational thing. This is, this is, this is kind of a universal thing that goes on, at least in in the west yeah, it goes on more.
Speaker 1you know um like in a, um in the catholic denomination, that's definitely more. You know um like in um, um in in the Catholic denomination, that's definitely more. Um, you know, the priest plays a big role and and uh, is very elevated, obviously, um, but but even in a Methodist church and a Baptist church and non-denominational church, you'll, you'll see, you know this, this, this elevated status that a pastor gets, this elevated status that a pastor gets the responsibility to teach your children the gospel is never, ever, at any point, removed from the parents.
Speaker 3That's plan A, right. I got a friend of mine who's actually on staff and he talks about this a lot and there was actually a book written about it too. But plan A for discipleship of your children is you? Yeah, Like that is plan.
Speaker 2A, that is the family. Yeah, we were talking about that the other day in youth group. I don't remember where I was. I was either in a meeting. I think I was in a meeting for my leadership team. Anyway, the main mentor of the kids is their parents, but it's also good to have other mentors.
Speaker 3A hundred percent.
Speaker 2yes, I'm sure you could just work off your mom and dad to get spiritual growth. You got to have somebody else.
Speaker 3Yes, yes, you need community around you you need that community.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah I agree with us that it's. It's very important to not just have your parents but your parents being the primary source of discipleship. But, like I know, our, our, um, our student coordinator. He has played a huge role in the life of my, my children, and you know by one. He spends time with them, but especially by creating community around them. Um, so my, my son, who's graduating tomorrow night or tonight don't get that confused tonight is they had such tight community with the group that he was with.
Speaker 3I mean, it was just a special, special group, so definitely you know, agree with you on that so, and I'm not even really taught to our church about this as much as I will in the future, but I feel like the thing that god's put on my heart is that we've got to get our church to a biblical model and that means at some point we're at a place where I'm removed and the church keeps going and not saying it wouldn't now, but that it is so seamless that it's almost unnoticeable, because I think that's how it should be. If you look at scripture and've been doing like man I've been studying this and it's been so cool because God has just been opened my eyes to so many things as I've gone through scripture just studying the church there was always a plurality of leadership called elders, and when Titus Timothy would go places, Paul's instruction was established elders yep early on um and he told them who to look for what, what to look for?
Speaker 3I mean, it's like it it is spelled out, and one of the things that they are called to be able to do is teach yep, and so there should be a multiplicity of teachers. I don don't know if that's always from a platform right of a stage or pulpit or whatever you want to call it, but there should be a multiplicity of leadership through the eldership, and elders too often function like a board in a business, like a board in a business, and what happens is churches end up being staff-led and elder accountable. That's not the biblical picture. The biblical picture is an elder is a pastor, a pastor is an overseer, an overseer is an elder. That's the same word. It's the same thing. And so the church should be led by a plurality of leadership through the elders, that is, guiding the church spiritually, not just making decisions on. Should we build this building?
Speaker 1Or should we replace this AC unit? I mean, come on, the air's not working putting the unit in.
Speaker 3Yeah, and, and that may be a part of what they help to do is steward the finances, because that's a part of leading. But that should not be the primary purpose. Primary purpose shouldn't just be to decide do we hire this person? Primary purpose shouldn't be. Should we build this building? It shouldn't be. Should we buy another van? It should be. Are we shepherding and leading the people? Are we guarding them by teaching truth? Is the doctrine we're teaching sound doctrine according to Scripture? Those are the things that elders should function as, and it shouldn't be one person who is at the helm who's doing all of that. We've got to get the ministry back to people. We've got to get the. The quote celebrity pastor. I'm not saying I'm a celebrity, that's not what I'm saying. Brandon at idontgiveacrapcom. But what I am saying is I can go two weeks without preaching and you'd have thought I killed somebody you know and I could start getting.
Speaker 1Oh, I would say that it's very similar to that in our local church, the church that we attend and so I start getting sarcastic comments yeah, the church that we attend.
Speaker 3And so I start getting sarcastic comments. I had one guy get absolutely furious with me one time when they came. They were visiting from out of state. They had been to our church twice, visiting with family, and he asked me if I was preaching that day and I said no, and he got mad. He's like I've been here twice and you have not preached yet, and I tried to explain to him how we do our preaching schedule and he goes well, that must be nice, just to be able to take off like that, right, not do anything, and like one, you you're talking about something you don't even understand. And two, you're one of these people who think I only work on Sunday and so that's the way, though that it works is. We don't, and it's not the people's fault. If it's anybody's fault, it's mine, because I haven't led us into a biblical model.
Speaker 3But that, I feel like, is the mandate that God's put on my life at this point is to get out of what I call the broken system. That is a deep rut because we have existed in it as a church for so long, but we've got to be a people. Christians have to be a people who understand our role and who aren't coming to look for entertainment. They're coming to worship God one and to be in a biblical community and to be equipped spiritually so that they can do the work of ministry. The role of the apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher is to equip the saints for the work of ministry. The role of elders is to equip the saints for the work of ministry. The ministry belongs to the body, and that's where I think we have missed it in a big way, and I feel like the mandate on my life right now is get this thing the way god wants it, and so I've just to honor him, right yes, to honor him, to honor god, and again.
Speaker 3If not, then we're saying god, we're gonna do it our way. Can you bless this?
Speaker 1yeah, can you bless this for me? Yeah, we're I'm gonna run my business the way I want to run it. Could you, could you bless this? Yeah, can you bless this for me?
Biblical Leadership vs. Celebrity Pastors
Speaker 3yeah, I'm gonna run my business the way I want to run it could you, could you bless it for me we know that you set it up this way, but we think we're smarter than you, so, and it's a lot easier for us to pay this guy some money and him do it every week, and for us to hire a youth pastor to raise our kids to know the lord, than for me to have to do it. So we, we're going to do it this way, god, even though this isn't the way you set it up and the way you designed it. And if you could just bless it. And, oh God, all we want is your Holy Spirit and all we want is you, and all we want is you know Jesus and you're our cornerstone and you're our foundation. But we're just kind of going to just to say it, give you the middle finger and do what we want to do, yeah, but we still want you to bless it, right?
Speaker 1So I don't know why I'm so fired up this morning man listen. I mean.
Speaker 2Yeah, what'd you put in that coffee?
Speaker 1Hey.
Speaker 2Is it Columbia?
Speaker 1It's Guatemalan.
Speaker 2Oh.
Speaker 1Trying out a new bean there. It's got some extra oomph, apparently, yeah, evidently no. I think it's good that we're doing right now what we're asking our government to do, yes, is to be honest and say you know what? We've gotten to a place that we're not supposed to be. Yeah, right.
Speaker 3How do we make some changes to fix this? And again, if I step back and look at the church and I don't like it, or I see that it's some biblical.
Speaker 1Whose fault is that? Right, yeah Me, yeah, you played a role in it, for sure, yes, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 3And some of it was not done or most all of it. Most of it was not done or most all of it. Most of it was not done intentionally. It was done out of ignorance, because that's the only model we've ever seen.
Speaker 1That's what I was going to say. It's a, it's a cultural issue, so so, so we have from a, from a cultural standpoint. You know, we have the culture. We live in Right, we live in South Georgia. South Georgia has a, has a particular culture. Yeah, all right. Well then the Right, we live in South Georgia, south.
Speaker 2Georgia has a particular culture.
Speaker 1Yeah, all right. Well then, the church has its own culture, and the culture that the church has taken on is that you have staff that handles and manages and does everything Well. That doesn't necessarily mean that's right. In fact, what we're saying right now is that's not right, it's not right, it is not biblical.
Speaker 3You know, one of my favorite things is, if you go and you read the book of Acts, you get to Acts, chapter 6, and the apostles are. The church is growing like crazy.
Speaker 3The apostles say it wouldn't be right for us to neglect the preaching of the word. But it's a young church. They're raising up people at this time to be equipped to be sent, because we know jesus said go all the way to the ends of the earth. So they appoint seven men, all right, to wait, basically wait tables. And so the apostles continue to teach. That's in the very first part of act six. You go to act seven. Stephen basically just lays it out there for the Jews, like hey, here's the truth of the gospel. You killed the Son of God, and so the whole chapter 7 is about his whole discourse of how they have neglected the Son of God in Christ and actually put him on the cross. Well, he gets stoned at the end of 7 and killed. And then you go into 8 and it says a great persecution broke out. Saul, who later becomes Paul, is persecuting the church um, taking men and women and putting them in jail. All right.
Speaker 3But then it says because of the persecution, everybody but the apostles were scattered from Judea to Samaria and everywhere they went, they preached the gospel and so evidently the apostles equipped them pretty well to be sent to go preach the gospel. Philip goes into Samaria, he begins to preach the gospel and even does signs and wonders that left the Samaritans in awe.
Speaker 3Simon the Sorcerer had been the dude that was doing all this witchcraft crap. Well, even he wanted the power that Philip and John and Peter had. They hear that the Samaritans have received the gospel. Peter and John are sent not because Philip's gospel was incomplete, but because Peter and John had to see the Samaritans receive the Holy Spirit, just as they had to really understand that God accepted the Samaritans, who the Jews and Samaritans didn't get along in the same way he had accepted the Jews by faith in Jesus. So Philip is preaching the gospel in that. He goes on. He leads an Ethiopian to the Lord.
Speaker 3You get over into Acts 10. Peter and Cornelius have this encounter. Peter goes to Caesarea and leads this Gentile, non-Jewish person who was a Roman centurion, to the Lord. He sees him receive the Holy Spirit and it says that the Jewish believers who were with him were in awe because they could not believe that God had accepted the Gentiles in the same way that he had accepted the Jewish people. But the thing that you see in this is that the people that had been equipped with the gospel kept going.
Speaker 3And you get on into Acts and it says that Philip went as far as Caesarea, Well, when Paul is making his way back to Jerusalem, but right before he is arrested and eventually put to death, and he had a couple of different imprisonments. But it says that they stopped in Caesarea and stayed at Philip the Evangelist, his house, and he had four daughters who prophesied. What's cool about that to me? Philip was going around and he is preaching the gospel and Samaritans are coming to faith. The Ethiopian unit is coming to faith because he's been equipped with the gospel. He has no title. You go through all these years and you get to this, this other place in scripture, on into acts, and now he's Philip the evangelist. But Philip didn't need a title to go and lead people to the Lord.
Speaker 1Right, and nobody does Exactly so. The great commission, you know where we're told to go into the go to the ends of the earth and preach the gospel. If you literally translate that, it says as you go, as you go, all right, as you go. So we have this. We have this idea that you can only go and do that if you're on a mission trip. Right? Yep, the reality is remember how I started this whole thing out the church.
Speaker 1You are the church, whether you're at a building that has church on the side of it that says church, or you're at home, or you're at work or you're on vacation. You are the church wherever you go, because the Holy Spirit lives inside of you and you have the truth of the gospel inside of you. So, as you go, wherever you go, whatever you do, this is what you should be doing. And when we put this to me, this is the crux, this is the essential issue when we put the onus on staff, we stop doing our mission, and that's the problem. To me, that is truly the problem is that we go to church on Sunday. We might go back on Wednesday if our church has something going on on Wednesday, or we might go to a small group or whatever.
Speaker 1Or we may go to a small group during the week, and that's it. Yeah, that's it we take. We put very little stock in the mission that we have been called to and that is as you go, wherever you go. If you go on a hunting trip to Colorado, if you go on a hunting trip to Africa.
Speaker 1If you go to work on Tuesday, right? If you go to the baseball game on Thursday night, as you go, tell the gospel, share the gospel, don't assume that somebody knows it and don't beat somebody over the head with a Bible. That's not what this is about. It's about treating people with respect and build relationships. It's about building rapport with somebody, showing somebody that you care about them, and the reason you care about them is because you know that they are made in the image of God, right? Yep, so that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1So it sounded like okay, we're going to talk about how churches are doing everything wrong. Now, people are doing everything wrong. It's not the staff's fault. Yes, they've played a role. They've played a role in it, but it's not the staff's fault. It's at my church, it's not Dr John's fault that we do things the way that we do. It's not Keith's fault that we do things the way that we do. It's the cultural embodiment within the church that says hey, this is how this is going to be done, and when I go to Paulson Stadium, I'm going to behave however I want to. Sunday, I'm going to go and I'm going to behave a different way. People lie on Sunday mornings more than any other time of the week, just by singing the songs that they sing. I surrender all to Jesus. Do you really?
Speaker 3Yeah, all we want is you.
Speaker 1Holy Spirit come. Do you really? Yeah Right, all we want is you, holy Spirit, come. Do you really want it to come First off? It's already come. You don't have to ask it to come. Let's address that theological issue right now. You don't have to invite the Holy Spirit to come, and in doing that, you don't even know what you're asking for.
Speaker 3Right yeah, right yeah, and and again, um, on my side, and I appreciate the grace of, like you, saying it's not the staff's fault and but I would assume a large portion of responsibility for that, um, because really, out of ignorance we've, we set things up the way we set them up and I think it's just one of those. You know, a deep rut is hard to get out of.
Speaker 1Well, it was based on the cultural status quo of the church. What we knew, Right. But when you come to a place where it's been revealed to you by the Holy Spirit, this hasn't been revealed to you.
Speaker 3you know by a person and the conviction of it in my heart isn't just because I decided, hey. The reason I'm very passionate about this is because I know it's something that God has put on my heart.
Speaker 1Yep.
Speaker 3And you know, I feel, I think there will always be big churches. I think there will always be, and we're, I think there'll always be big churches, I think there'll always be.
Speaker 1And we're not saying that there shouldn't be big churches, that there shouldn't be big gatherings.
Speaker 3That's not what we're saying. The day that they function more like a CEO than a biblical elder who works with other elders to lead the church, those days should come to an end. And and that's where I feel like we need to get to so much so that to get to so much so that it operates where, if one person is removed, it doesn't make that big a difference.
Speaker 1Yep, and what we're talking about. Remember, I said, okay, we've picked on the government enough, let's pick on the church. Just like I said, removing the lobbyist, the, the, the idea of lobbying in dc it looks like man, that would be really hard to do. Just do it. Yeah, you know it's wrong. Yeah, you, you know it's wrong. You know what. What that should be called is extortion, it should be called bribery, it should be called entrapment, which all those things I just listed are illegal. Yeah, right, that's what. Let's call it what it is. That's right. Okay, so now come and bringing that forward to the church. Let's call it what it is.
Speaker 3It's wrong.
Speaker 1Yeah, and it needs to be addressed. It needs to be corrected, for sure, right, and it needs to be addressed. It needs to be corrected, for sure, right. So this fall, tell you all about this. This is going to be really cool. So we're actually going to go through a study of the book of Titus on the podcast. A guy who happens to be a pastor wrote a book. It's called the Titus 10. And I went through that book several years ago with a close friend of mine, uh kip, who's actually been on the podcast with us before. He and I studied through that book together and it it opened our eyes to a lot of what we're talking about right now, not to the point where we got pitchforks out and we're like let's go take.
Speaker 3Let's go take the staff out it doesn't have to be a hostile yeah, it just needs to be a change it.
Speaker 1Just it needs to be, it needs to be a shift of of what it, what it looks like, right, and so we're going to go through that study here on the podcast. Uh, josh is actually going to come on the podcast with us and talk with us about the book when he wrote it, what his intentions were, you know kind of how he hopes people to go through it, and then we're going to go through it together so we'll share that stuff with you. As we get closer, we'll encourage you to to uh, if you don't have a Bible, get you a Bible so you can follow along with us as we go through the book of Titus. Uh, we'll also encourage you to get one of those books, um, and really go through it with us and look at who we're called to be as men. Right, because that's really what it's talking about.
Speaker 1What role do we play within the church and when I say the church, I'm talking about capital C, the church, the body. What role do we play? How have we neglected that role? What caused it to happen? And once we identify that, what are some practical, real-world changes we need to make to right the ship for us individually? We've talked about organizational issues this morning, whether it be within our government or within our, within our local churches and things. What are things that we need to do as individuals, as families, because that's what that is, the, that is the major. The first building block of any society, of any culture, is the family. We can go anywhere in the world. We can go anywhere in the world. We can go anywhere in the world and we can talk about how to strengthen the family and that's going to resonate with wherever we go, with the people that we go and talk to. That's going to resonate with them. That's why one of the ministries that I love and I love to support is focus on the family.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 1I think it's a wonderful ministry. I think that the things that they do to to build up the family and to to focus on that institution that God set up, the institution of marriage that God set up to build a family on, is is something that, um, we would do well to give a lot more attention to. Yeah, so, um, so we say all that not to attack anyone.
Speaker 3It's really admitting our own faults.
Speaker 1Just like this situation within our government. We all have played a role in getting to the point that we're at right now. For years, I can remember people saying they were not going to vote because it didn't matter yeah, well, look at where it got us.
Speaker 3Yeah, it's either been through in the church and in. In our country it's either been through sins of commission or sins of omission. Sure, sin is the issue. Yeah, and you know, apathy um has played a big part in the country and in the church and in families yep, and in family, apathetic dads have played a huge role in families being in the position that they're in now.
Empowering Believers for Gospel Mission
Speaker 1That's right, you know. So, um, we talked through all that. We know that a lot of these were big, hot topics. We know some of it was stuff that you didn't realize we were going to talk about this morning. You know, sometimes we don't realize what we're going to talk about this morning. We always start out our time together in prayer, asking God to use our voices to communicate whatever he wants to communicate, and then we want to be obedient to that as we go through our conversations and we still cut up, we still have fun. We we try to touch on issues that are that are that are big issues. We try to touch on stuff that's fun. We try to talk about hunting. We try to talk about, you know, all kinds of different things and, um, you know, our goal in all of it is that we become healthier people.
Speaker 3Yes, right, that we become healthier people.
Speaker 1Yes, right that we become who we are supposed to be. That's the goal of every bit of this. So I say we call it right there, dub. You got anything to add? We'll get Dub up a little bit earlier next time. No, get him fired up. 6.15 wasn't early enough this morning.
Speaker 3You just need some of that coffee man. There you go, That'll fire you up All right guys.
Speaker 1Thanks again for listening. We'll catch y'all next time.
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