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EP25- We Will Not Comply — The Bold Stand Every Pastor Must Take
July 3, 2025 · 52 min
Meet William Wolfe—former White House staffer and leader of the Center for Baptist Leadership—for a candid and urgent conversation about courage, conviction, and the call to action for today’s church.
Series The BRAVE Way Podcast July 3, 2025 · 52 min · The BRAVE Way Podcast
Meet William Wolfe—former White House staffer and leader of the Center for Baptist Leadership—for a candid and urgent conversation about courage, conviction, and the call to action for today’s church. ...more Show the full description Show less Meet William Wolfe—former White House staffer and leader of the Center for Baptist Leadership—for a candid and urgent conversation about courage, conviction, and the call to action for today’s church.
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Pastor Jeff Schwarzentraub serves as president of Pastor Jeff Ministries, a national and global ministry designed to equip believers and challenge them to take
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In this video 0:00 Standing Firm in Faith and Politics
Standing Firm in Faith and Politics 0:00 For pastors, there's a pressure from the outside, don't preach the full counsel of God. Mhmm. And then there's also a pressure from the inside of keep it here, don't let it out. Right. And I think faithful pastors,0:10 whether you're pastor of a small church, mid sized church, large church, doesn't matter, is to train your people to live it and tell it. Because the gospel is both lived and told.0:24 Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Brave Way podcast. I'm Jeff Swartzentrout, your host, senior pastor here at Brave Church in Denver, Colorado. And we're on the program today with a new friend of mine, William Wolf.0:35 William, welcome to the program.0:36 Jeff, it's great to be here.0:37 Yeah. So, William, you and I got a chance to meet just a few weeks ago. Believe it or not, we got to meet in the White House. We got we got invited out for, for a listening session, got to pray over president Trump in0:48 the Oval Office, which was a great day for me. I keep using the word surreal.0:53 Yeah.0:53 And, it's total blessing. And now you're out here in Colorado. We're actually recording this on Good Friday. And you're out here from North Carolina, and we had spent some time together yesterday. So tell everybody who1:04 you are and, and why you're here.1:07 Yeah. Well, it's great. We're just making new friends, doing things together. I love it. Yeah. It was, it was surreal being in the Oval Office praying for the president. He was so warm and welcoming.
1:16 He was.
1:16 I just that was sort of my takeaway. She seemed genuinely interested that we were there, cared about the, you know, the work that the White House Faith Office is doing in these pastors. But, yeah, I, I run the Center for
1:26 Baptist Leadership, which is it it's a it's a nonprofit group, and it was sort of the outgrowth of another organization called American Reformer. And the Center for Baptist Leadership's, mission is to reform and
1:38 revitalize the Southern Baptist Convention to make sure it stays faithful to its theological commitments in an age of great compromise. Right? We've seen the universities go woke. We've seen the public schools go woke.
1:49 We've seen corporations go woke, and we've seen, unfortunately, churches go woke in major denominations. You know, the Methodist, the Episcopalians, the the Presbyterian Church USA. It would be a huge loss
2:01 to the cause of Christ, global Christianity, Christianity here in America if the Southern Baptist Convention were to go woke. And so we're trying to make sure that they stay theologically faithful. And at the same time,
2:12 another core piece of our mission is to rally the 45000 Southern Baptist churches in America.
2:18 That's how many there are.
2:19 Yeah. 45013. There are 13000000 Southern Baptists across this country. They're a huge portion of of they could be a huge portion of the voting block. I mean, evangelical Christians always are. We want to
2:31 rally them to, be more engaged in the public sphere. So that's that's what we're trying to do.
2:37 And you live outside of Charlotte, North Carolina Yeah. But you're here in Denver.
2:41 Yeah.
2:41 Tell everybody what brought you here Yeah. Right now on Easter weekend.
2:46 Yeah. Sure. Well, it's this, Colorado House Bill 25 13 12, which is this radical transgender bill that, destroys parental rights, essentially criminalizes, you
2:58 know, Christianity, coerces speech, threatens to remove children for parents who won't affirm kids in, you know, transgender insanity. And, yourself and other pastors, friends
3:10 of mine out here in Colorado are working hard against it. 1 guy in particular, Chase Davis, at, the bold at the Well in Boulder, he is a contributing scholar at the Center for Baptist Leadership. He's in the Southern
3:20 Baptist Convention, so I've had a working relationship with him. And so when guys like that, my buddies, are stepping up to the plate to do good things, to be bold at Center for Baptist Leadership, we're here to support
3:31 them and help them in that. So I've I've essentially let, the platform of Center for Baptist Leadership, my own personal x account to these guys, and just trying to get the message out. And when I heard about the rally,
3:42 I said, I'll come and join you. And they said, come on.
3:44 Yeah. And so I've I've just recently met Chase. We'll hit we'll have him on the program too, up in Boulder doing a great job of rallying people. Yesterday, we were down at the state capitol, for the purpose of sharing
3:56 our convictions in our hearts as Christian pastors and leaders in our state as to why these, bills are so anti Christian. Yeah. And it's not just, hey, let's have compassion for
4:07 transgender people. It is, let's take away the rights of Christian parents, Christian pastors, Christian media, Christian schools, because we don't want that to be anywhere in our culture. And it basically criminal
4:17 criminalizes some people like me and you for holding a biblical standard. So you were there. Talk a little bit about the day yesterday. What you experienced? What you saw? Mhmm. Why is that important? Does it even
4:27 matter?
4:28 Oh, man. It it matters so much. And, you know, we were there yesterday as a Christian pastors and ministry leaders, but I I just kept thinking about how this matters for everybody. Mhmm. You you don't have to be a
4:38 Christian. I hope you would be, but you don't have to be a Christian to believe that your little boy can't become a little girl. You know? We're we're as as Christians, we're fighting for truth, and all truth is God's
4:49 truth. Yes. But truth is still truth. And so what we're taking up this cause for everybody, Christian or not, you know, who particularly parents who would want to see that their children grow up to become the men and
5:00 women that God made them to be. And so, you know, yesterday was I thought I was I was really impressed. I was, you know, I'd say there's about 300 people there. That'd be my my
5:10 rough guesstimate. I think
5:11 that's very accurate. Yes. And I think that's a great turnout for short notice. We had 3, state representatives come out and speak. More came by. We had state senators come. And what really struck me particularly was,
5:23 Jarvis Caldwell's, just gratitude. Because that guy, he's a state rep here in Colorado. He's been fighting the bill. He's been on social media raising awareness, doing a lot of, you know, media hits about it. And
5:35 he said, thank you. Thank you so much for coming out here. So that puts steel in their spine, shows them that they're not alone, because I I do think that here in Colorado from what I understand, and you would know
5:45 better than I do, is that, even a lot of Christians or conservatives have kind of checked out because of how blue it's gotten. And so for people to show up and fight back, I think is really encouraging.
5:56 Yeah. And I'll talk about that. I think Yeah. We live in a day and age where, certainly, when I was being educated, growing up in the faith, doing all that, hey, let's make it about Jesus. Mhmm. You know, he died on the
6:07 cross. That's what this weekend's all about. I mean, tonight we have 2 Good Friday services. Sunday we'll do 3 Easter services. It's all about Jesus dying on the cross for the sins of the world. That's what it's all
6:15 about. So to repent and believe that he's the Christ. And I think there are too many people that think that's it. Like, stay out of this stuff. Like, it's not that big of a deal. And we were talking a little bit off
6:26 camera, but, you know, for me, everything began to change in 20 20 when COVID hit, and they're trying to shut down our church, and the health department's threatening to board us up, and I'm getting threatened to go to
6:36 jail, and all these things where you have to take a hard look in your soul and in the word, like, god, what should I do here? And it was so obvious to me, you can't do the 1 another's online. Mhmm. You you can't you
6:48 can't just preach and teach and develop this community, without gathering. And and God commands us to do that. And there's nowhere in the bible that says, I want you to be safe. Mhmm. And I wanna make sure you're healthy
6:59 all the time. Right. It's hey. Go into all the world. If you lose your life, you've already lost it. Mhmm. And you'll be with Jesus. So Amen. So for me, we stayed open. We did all these things. And I realized that there
7:10 is such a push culturally to take God out of our culture, to take biblical values out of our culture. And even like you said, even if you're not a Christian, to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, or to
7:19 believe that your kids belong to you, and that you as a parent have the right to to raise them and and do these different things. So for me, you know, if you would have asked me 10 years ago, should you go speak out at
7:28 the capitol? I'm like, yeah. I'm I'm just not that kind of person.
7:31 Right.
7:31 I don't need to lend my voice to that. I'm not may I'm not the 1 voting on it anyway. I hope we elect good people, but you know what? Colorado's a little more liberal anyway. If it goes that way, nobody go. But these are
7:42 these are issues that will take over the church. Yes. They'll take over the families in the church. And so to be silent on these issues is to be complicit with what they're voting on.
7:50 That's right.
7:51 So to not speak is to say, if they take our kids away, we don't care. If they take your kids away, I don't care because I don't care about you. And by the way, I don't care about those kids. Mhmm. And I, for 1, will not
8:01 stand there anymore. I will not be silent. I will not, back away. And what I'm finding is is the more that I just speak, which is just truth, it's the same thing I would share in our pulpits Mhmm. That what
8:13 you just said, it gives people steel in their spine. Like, well, if Jeff can do it, then I can do it. I mean, it's not that big of a deal. And if Christians would just stand on the truth like, during COVID, my whole
8:22 conviction was if every true evangelical church would have stood up and said, no. We're gathering. It's important that we gather. This is what we must do, and they would just open their doors. COVID, the whole hoax would
8:32 have been over in about 3 weeks.
8:34 Probably.
8:34 You know? And everybody be going and doing all this stuff. Because I remember asking our governor at the time, because we got on these clergy calls, and I talked to my friend. I'm like, hey. How do I get my question
8:42 answered? And it was like, hit star 6 as soon as you get on or something. And I asked governor Polis. I said, hey. Listen. Appreciate what you're doing. I know it's a difficult time. All of us are uncertain, but I just
8:51 have a question because I wanna be able to tell my congregation what you said. When I drive around, this was early in the pandemic. I said, I can go to, you know, Home Depot or Lowe's or King Soopers or, Safeway
9:03 grocery store, hundreds if not thousands of people there, no masks, no social distancing, but in churches, we can only have 50, and you're thinking about taking it down to 10, we gotta be 6 feet apart and masks. Just
9:13 help me understand what makes the church different than that in terms of the spread of this health scare. And, I'm gonna hang up and let you talk about it so I know what to tell my congregation. Yeah. And, it was
9:26 for about 5 minutes of nonsense. And at that point in time, like, they have no reason.
9:30 Right.
9:30 We're opening our doors. And so I think, you know, and the more we stood strong, the more we saw other people stand strong. And and so my hope and conviction is I just wish every Christian would just stand on what they
9:41 say they believe and speak it. Amen. Amen? Amen. So what are you seeing around the country? Yeah. Not just here in Colorado, but you travel the country. What are you seeing around? Like, what are you noticing
9:54 about the church?
9:55 Yeah. Well, so what what the the background here, Jeff, is that for really centuries in America, it's not just that Christianity was, welcome.
10:07 It was celebrated. We we knew that Christianity was core to the founding of this country and who we were as a people. We had religious freedom for other faiths too, but we knew that Christianity held a special
10:19 place in who we are as Americans. Our founding fathers, many of them were were bible believing Christians. The bible held a pride of place in our public discourse and in our political discourse.
10:31 And then we hit this revolutionary period of the mid twentieth century in which, you know, postmodernism and competing ideologies and secularism, the sexual revolution
10:43 took over. And and we are now at a place where Christianity is, in many ways, and particularly in blue states, it's not even really even welcome anymore. It is actively discriminated against. They want it
10:55 out of the public square. But because we had so much of a period of Christianity being normal and welcome, people thought, I don't need to defend it. Right? I don't need to step out. Like, it was this idea of what
11:07 we call the neutral public square to took over where it's like, hey. You know, like, you gotta leave your beliefs behind the doors of your church or behind the doors of your home, and we just have to argue off principles
11:17 of reason or science. And we know that that's not true. There's no such thing as a neutral public square. And so now, really, what we're seeing is that people are waking up and have to wake up to the fact that we need to
11:29 defend our heritage. We need to defend our freedoms, and we can't just go along to get along anymore, particularly because and I I hate, you know, paid to get too political for your church podcast, but because the
11:38 Democrats are so radical. It's like, you know so you you're saying, I got involved in this in COVID. It's not what I was interested in. You're right. But it was interested in you. You weren't interested in politics.
11:50 Politics was interested in you, And the politics that's interested in you, brother, primarily from the left is a politics that wants to shut you up and silence you. They they don't want churches meeting. They would close
12:00 churches if they could today. They they would take the next excuse to shut you down, because they believe in an agenda that is fundamentally anti God. And so we either have to speak up and step out and
12:12 respond, or we will be complicit. Right? And so that that's what I'm seeing. I'm seeing this fight right now in American Christianity between sort of this this legacy of let's keep our faith behind the church and in our
12:23 homes, and people who realize now, well, if we don't speak up, they're gonna shut us down.
12:29 Yeah. I I see it all over the place. I I see it everywhere that I go. And I think even we were talking a little bit about this earlier. Let's talk about this. What's the purpose of the church? Yeah. Because I think I
12:39 think the way we frame our understanding of what the church's purpose is helps us understand what we should be doing in that public square.
12:45 Right.
12:45 Right? Because even I I, you know, I grew up in the I I grew up in the eighties. I was I even grew up in the seventies. I was born in 19 70. So totally different. Mhmm. Right? I mean, you could talk about whatever you
12:55 wanted, and there was a default to, oh, we it's good to be a Christian. Right. It's good to have good values. It's good, oh, you don't wanna go do that bad. And now we have to realize the gospel is not just Jesus died
13:07 and rose from the dead. Do you cognitively believe that? Mhmm. Is is he living in you? And if he is, how are you living and speaking for him so that his cause advances? But let's do that. Let's talk ecclesiology just a
13:19 little bit. We what do you see in the Southern Baptist Convention? What do you see across America in different landscapes? What's the problem with certain people's ecclesiology, and why are we in the mess for in?
13:30 Right. So, people, particularly the the seeker sensitive movement, really kind of that took over American evangelicalism and Christianity. And in In the early eighties. Early eighties.
13:42 And it taught pastors that really the main purpose of the church is only to evangelize the lost, that you have to get them, you have to get, you know, butts in pews and
13:54 share the gospel with them, calm down front, have them make a confession, you know, raise their hand, say a prayer, and then you get to add that number to your box. You know, we had this many confessions and this many.
14:05 And and and they and so because they bought into that idea of what the church is there to do, which is just to reach lost, which, of course, it should reach the lost. They began to think that I can't say anything
14:17 that might offend the lost.
14:18 And why is that the philosophy? Why wouldn't they not be able to say anything that offends the lost?
14:22 Because then they won't come. Okay. It's right. It's like they if they if you if, if if a homosexual comes to your church, and you preach about what the Bible teaches about marriage, well, that guy's gonna get up
14:34 and leave.
14:34 And that would be a bad thing because that's detracting from our mission, which is to grow the church. Grow the church by
14:40 by any means necessary, essentially.
14:43 Never people say stuff like this. We'll do anything shy of sin Oh, goodness. To get somebody across my mind.
14:47 I've never heard that.
14:48 Yeah. What what what would be the problem if you hear me say that?
14:51 Yeah. I mean, well, that's just that's not what God calls us to do. And what I believe, and I think what you believe too, but it's, like, fundamentally, what I believe is that the the purpose of the church is to equip
15:01 the saints. It is. It's it it is not to entertain the goats. It is to feed the sheep. And when you're feeding the sheep, you're you're equipping them to go out and do evangelism, to do missions work, to reach the lost,
15:12 but you have to if you're gonna equip the saints faithfully before the Lord, you have to preach the whole council
15:18 of
15:18 God's word, apply it to every area of life without apology. And if that offends somebody lost in their sin in your church, well, maybe that's a good thing. That's a good thing.
15:29 Yeah. Yeah. I think I think, you know, I I I kinda after getting saved was kind of in some of the seeker movements, and so I'm very familiar with the language and all that. And I think we both agree. We're we're both
15:39 excited anytime somebody comes to meet Jesus. That's that's not the problem. Mhmm. The challenge is is if I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get a lost person to come through the door, meaning, hey. Keep your
15:49 convictions to yourself. Don't share it like that. Don't share all don't preach that passage because that's gonna offend. Let's make sure to keep it light. Tell good stories. Do this because we gotta get them in. Your
16:00 job is to go get some of those lost people and bring them in so that I can preach the gospel and get them saved. What it lacks is then the the full biblical understanding of really feeding, growing, maturing, having
16:10 strong Christian disciples. And throughout the history of the church Mhmm. When you have generations or seasons where there's strong Christian disciples that are standing up, cultures can actually change. So it's a it's
16:21 not a come and see, or it's a go and tell model.
16:25 Right? Well, it it's almost as if this model cut the great commission in half. You know? Go therefore into all the nations, baptizing and make disciples and baptizing them in my name,
16:37 and teach them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And that that's that's the discipleship part. Teach them to obey. So if you're if you're homosexual, if you're transgender, if you're an alcoholic, what
16:48 whatever your the sin is that's in your life before you come to Christ, but, you know, an adulterer, like, you have to repent and believe in Jesus, and then you have to obey his commands. Right. And and Jesus never
16:59 contradicted any of scripture. Right? He fulfilled scripture. So it's like, you know, the moral laws that we find in the old testament against homosexuality, against even things like transgenderism, there's
17:09 prohibitations on cross dressing.
17:11 Mhmm.
17:11 You know? Those still apply today. And we and so, like, teach them to obey everything I've commanded. You know, there's this fascinating story. I I won't name the pastor, but there was there's a big prominent, pastor in
17:23 New York who had a high profile convert, a former, a former, Obama administration official. And she converted and joined the church. It was like this big thing. And then a couple
17:35 years back, she left and wrote an article about it and said, yeah. I didn't realize that they they were pro homosexual. I didn't realize that this meant that, like, I can't support abortion anymore.
17:47 And so it's like that that's the issue right there. It's like, how crazy is that? She thought she became a Christian, and I guess they downplayed their teaching enough on those major issues that she thought it was okay
17:56 to be there. And when she really realized that they didn't support homosexual marriage and they didn't support abortion, she peaced out. That that's not what the church is for. Conversion.
18:04 Yeah. I think we have, millions of false converts in our churches. Mhmm. And because we don't teach the whole counsel of God Mhmm. Which is, you know, Jesus' invitation to the gospel is if anyone would come after me, he
18:14 must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.
18:16 So you
18:16 wanna be my disciple? You die, you you deny yourself, and then you obey everything that I want. That that's the invitation. You want that? Well, no. I don't want that. I just want the easy believe is, I believe you I'll
18:28 believe you died on the cross and rose as long as I don't have to change anything. Right. And there's a lot of churches would say that's good. Yep. You're just not ready for discipleship yet. And I'm like, no. You're not
18:37 ready to be saved yet. Yeah. And so I think we have
18:40 that going on. Can I make a quick connection here? Please. Okay. So for for because the let me make the explicit connection to the political issue. So there's theological issues with easy easy believeism, secret
18:50 sensitive movements, and ecclesiological issues with it too. But when you adopt that, what it leads to is impotent and silent political engagement from the church. Right? So if that's your
19:02 missiological and ecclesiological model, you will then when things like HB 13 12 come down the line, you your church has been discipled to be silent about that politically.
19:13 Yep. And and just talk. I know the answer to this question. Yeah. That's right. Why is that a big deal? Well, I
19:18 mean, it's I think it's it's such a big deal because it it is it's a failure. It's a it's an abdication of our responsibility as Christians fundamentally to be salt and light, to to obey Jesus and his
19:30 commands for us to take his his message to the lost world, but also to to to do justice. Right? You as you were saying, to be silent is to be complicit. We have a responsibility before the
19:42 Lord to advocate for the poor and the needy, to speak up for those who can't speak up for themselves. Biblical justice. Yeah. That's true biblical. It's not social justice. It's biblical justice. And, you know, if if not
19:53 the church, then who? Right? And and and and it it essentially is taking the the army, you know, of Christ, you know, off the battlefield and putting them on the sideline, seeding the public square to people
20:05 who don't believe what we believe, who don't know the truth, and who are ultimately going to do harm to others.
20:10 Yeah. And and you've seen this all across the country. Mhmm. We have people that will sit in our church and say, I'm ready to be martyred when the time's right, but won't even open their mouth and say what's going on
20:19 right now is wrong.
20:19 Yeah. You're gonna die for Jesus, but you, you won't take those pronouns out of your bio at work. Exactly. Right.
20:25 I mean, that's kinda craziness. But let's talk about this a little bit too. Let's transition, just a little bit in this conversation and talk about I mean, you're Southern Baptist. Mhmm. I'm not Southern Baptist. Mhmm.
20:35 We work with people in all different spheres. Even when we went to the White House that day, we have all different kinds of people. And I know I have people kinda talking to me afterward. Why are you hanging out with
20:43 people like this? I know you get this as well. Sure. What does unity look like Mhmm. In the body of Christ? Does unity mean I have to believe everything you believe in order for us to get along? Or are there some
20:54 essentials that we should hold on to? Or how how do we work for the greater good? Or should we not? Should we just hunker down and say, you know what? These are the essentials, and everything's an essential. And if you
21:04 don't believe a hundred percent of our essentials, I can't partner with you. Yeah. What's that look like? And
21:08 you know? I mean, if if if I could only work with people who agreed with everything I believed, I could only work with myself. Okay. You know? I mean, that's just and so, I think there's a lot of people, you know, I I'm
21:20 I'm reformed. It's funny, but I don't take I don't make being reformed like my personality. You know? In fact, the reason I I don't do a lot of, like you know, people wouldn't think of me as, like, this great, like,
21:30 reformed leader defending the reformed faith because in the Southern Baptist Convention in particular, there's a lot of nonreform guys too. And the work I'm doing at the Center for Baptist Leadership, I think, is really
21:40 important, and I need so I need reformed and nonreformed Baptists to work together on things we agree on, like stopping wokeness, defending the inerrancy of God's word. You know? And and we've had this battle where we're
21:51 trying to defend our complementarian convictions, that only men can be pastors. So even just in my own little world of Southern Baptist or big world, I have to work with people I disagree with. But there's a fundamental
22:02 difference, Jeff, between what you do as a church, what you do as a denomination, and what Christians of all backgrounds do together in the political and public square. Right? And so it's like, I do
22:14 think strong fences make good neighbors. You know? It's like, I I there are a lot of people I've said it like this. There are a lot of people in America, good Christians who I I know I'll see in heaven, that I might not
22:24 be able to do church with. But by God's grace, I certainly can do politics with them. And and if I can't do politics with them, then we're in trouble. So that's the way I think about it is I just try to think about the
22:35 difference between am I doing church with somebody, or am I doing even say, like, an explicitly Christian thing with them or theological thing with them? You know, it's like, are we pitching this as a a Christian
22:46 conference and then inviting, say, a Mormon to come speak at it? I don't think that's probably the best idea. Right? It's like, you're saying this is a Christian conference, you should have Christians there.
22:55 Right.
22:55 You know? But if we're saying we're doing we're we're advocating for policy and politics that are good for everybody, well, then I can sit around the table with a Mormon and a Catholic and a Jew and a Pentecostal, you
23:07 know, and a Baptist and a non denominational, and we can all do that work together.
23:10 For the sake of the greater good. For the sake of the greater good. And this is where I think to understand politics, politics just means I'm involved in what's going on in our culture. Yeah. That's all it means. Mhmm.
23:19 To say I'm not gonna be involved in politics means I don't care what happens outside the walls of our church Mhmm. Which no bible believing Christian would ever say or ever do. But I do wanna drill down on that just a
23:30 little more. So I mean, let's talk about a little bit a little bit because you and I both would agree Mhmm. On that. We'd only have men serving as pastors, elders, all those kind of things. But like the national faith
23:40 advisory board led by 2 women. I see that you were there just like I was there. Yeah. Sure. So talk about that because I know people will say, well, we shouldn't have a woman doing that. Mhmm. You're a guy. You should be
23:49 leading that. Those kind of comments that could come out, you know, in a direction. Talk about that. Why would you still partner?
23:56 Yeah. So I am I am not gonna let anybody, you know, muzzle me from saying this. I'm very thankful for the work that Paula White and Jenny Korn are doing. I think they're doing a fantastic job. And so it's funny. In
24:08 some of these arguments that I've seen, I've thought about asking, is what you're really saying is that women can't work in the government? Is that the argument you're really making? Right? Because that that White
24:20 House faith office is not a church. It is an official office of our White House.
24:26 And those women were appointed by our president.
24:28 By our president. Right. So it's like I mean, I I don't hold that conviction. I I think women can work in the government. And, look, I I'm very, you know, I'm I'm very pro women being home, being moms, you know,
24:40 raising children. Like, I'm all for that, but I don't have the conviction that it's sinful for for a woman to work in the government. And so, I I mean, I just it's it's not hard for me, brother. It's not hard for you
24:50 either. I think it's like
24:51 It's not hard at all. It's just I think we live in an era that says, hey. If we don't believe a hundred percent of the stuff. I love what you said at the beginning. Like, if I only could work with somebody that agrees
25:00 with everything, I I'm working by myself. Self. Yeah. Including my wife and kids and everybody. So at the end of the day, I think we've we also have had a really difficult time cross denominations Sure.
25:12 Cross different demographics or whatever saying, okay. These are core tenants. Right? If we're gonna be Christian, we gotta believe that the word of God is true. We gotta we gotta believe that Jesus died and rose again.
25:23 But on these secondary and tertiary issues, for the sake of the greater good, I can believe what I'm gonna believe. I I can worship in my church. I tell our church all the time, I'm not gonna change Right. My convictions
25:34 about the bible just because you see me in a picture with somebody that has a very different conviction about something else.
25:40 Yeah.
25:41 If for the if for the next generation of my kids and my grandkids Yeah. That they can live in peace, I'm I'm willing to do whatever it takes. Yeah.
25:48 Did you see I mean, they just had this incredible Easter celebration. I know. Wait. What I've seen our our friend Travis Johnson has been saying this. It's a great little phrase. He said it repeatedly. What a difference
26:00 a year makes. I mean, what a difference. Last year, the Biden administration issued a proclamation praising transgender day of visibility on Easter.
26:08 On Easter Sunday.
26:09 On Easter Sunday. Just a complete insult to to Christians across where we celebrate 1 of our most holy days, so to speak, of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And and look at what, you know, Paula and Jenny are doing. I
26:21 mean, they are just at every opportunity, they are getting our president, the White House, to celebrate faith, to celebrate Christianity, to welcome pastors in. I mean, it's
26:32 like, you know, a year ago, pastors, pro life protesters were being persecuted by this administration. Being arrested. Being arrested or, you know, during COVID, and and now, now they're being welcomed into
26:44 the White House. And And this is really good for our country, Jeff, and I think I just wanna drill down on this for a brief second, is that, you know, again, it's like it it's it's sort of it's pan denominational or
26:54 nondenominational. They're you know? But that's it's good for the people in America to see our highest government official, the president of the United States celebrating Christianity, celebrating the resurrection of
27:05 Jesus Christ. And if you can't take that as a win, as a good thing, brother, you're doing it wrong.
27:10 And my understanding is and and talking with pastor Travis and other people that were there, the president spent like 4 plus hours with them, gave him a whole tour of all the White House. I mean, it wasn't like he was
27:21 just making a political, you know, drop by just to say, hey, I'm gonna talk for 5 minutes just so it looks good on social media. He was spending time, with Franklin Graham and Johnson Franklin and Travis Johnson
27:33 and all these different people that I I was seeing online in order to say, hey. We're for you.
27:38 Yeah.
27:38 We're for what you're doing. And for the president to say, hey. Jesus died. He he rose. It's the most significant event in history. All those things. That's a powerful thing for me. It is. It is. Right? And it it's it's
27:50 encouraging for me as a pastor, a bible preaching pastor, to know that my president supports what I do.Show more
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