Behind The Pulpit
Our weekly pastors podcast where we discuss fun new stories, church events, previous sermons. As well as answering interesting questions from you!
Behind The Pulpit
Big Beautiful Babtists
It’s the penultimate episode of season 3, and the Book War is heating up. Pastor Dave has a chance to clinch the title, but can Pastor Bob mount a late-season comeback? Before the big reveal, the pastors turn their attention to a heartbreaking national tragedy: the deadly Texas flood that devastated Camp Mystic. With personal ties to the story, Dave and Bob reflect on grief, loss, and the quiet power of faith amid chaos, including the incredible account of a Jersey-born Coast Guard hero who saved over 160 lives.
From sorrow to ecclesiology, the conversation shifts to the distinctives that define the Baptist tradition. Pastor Dave takes listeners on a theologically rich (and occasionally hilarious) tour through Baptist history—covering everything from autonomous church governance to why Baptists don’t baptize babies, with a few purple book covers and goat cheese tangents along the way.
Also in this episode: a listener question on Jeremiah 31 and the New Covenant, a theology sprint on sinning in your dreams, and a friendly debate on baptism, membership, and church polity. Throw in a few summer wildlife encounters, a salad that may or may not be overrated, and a preview of next week’s finale, and you’ve got another classic Behind the Pulpit blend of heart, humor, and deep biblical insight.
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:04 In The News
11:37 The Great Book War
20:00 Sermon Recap
22:39 Audience Question
27:47 Baptist Breakdown
54:47 Chart Sightings
1:01:15 Theology Sprint
1:06:40 Church Body Life
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Behind the Pulpit. We have one big, beautiful show today. We're so glad that you're joining us for July the 7th. We are now into the seventh month of the year on July 7th at 7-7-2025. And I'm joined here by Waldo to my left. Here I am. That's the striped shirt. We
Dave:found him. We found him, folks. Thank you. This is my Blue's Clues shirt, not Waldo. Oh, that's true. Good to see you, man. Blue's Clues. One big beautiful show. I see what you did there, man. I did.
Bob:I did. Although we're not going to talk about the one big beautiful bill. It passed today, Bob. I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I'm hanging in here. It was a little cooler down here than it was outside. And so I think we're going to have an action-packed show today. By the way, I was told in the lobby yesterday that people were tuning in just to hear me laugh. So I'm counting on you to make some jokes today. I will do that. Okay. There we go. All right. So we got a good show for you today, and as usual, why don't we kick it off with our In the News segment. Alright, as always, so much to talk about in the news. Where to begin? Where to begin, Pastor Dave? But, we did discuss this, and we're going to focus in on the tragic story that happened down in Texas this last week with this flooding, and many, many people have lost their lives. It's a sad, sad tragedy, especially at this Mystic Camp. Headline I'm looking at right now includes 27 girls and counselors from the camp, 82 killed. It's pretty horrific. And, you know, I didn't grow up in Texas, but you were telling me that the river can get pretty high pretty quick. I think they told me it went up, if you read the news story, it went up by a bunch of feet in like Yeah,
Dave:there's a lot of fake news out there, but it does surge. Back in 1987, it did the same thing. My summers were oftentimes spent in the Texas area, and the Guadalupe River is kind of like how we tube down the Delaware in Jersey. That's the place to go to tube down in Texas. And so I've done a lot of tubing down the Guadalupe, many, many summers. It's usually pretty slow, pretty uneventful in the month of July, not much going on. on. In fact, you have to paddle to get down that river. But this weekend, it was obviously devastatingly raging. I also did a lot of traveling and speaking in the West San Antonio area. So I'm very familiar with the hill country. It's a beautiful place. It's some of the only mountains there in Texas. But because of that, there's a lot of limestone. And when the rain comes, there's really nowhere for it to saturate into any of the ground there. So it just starts to pile up in the river bed and then it goes whooshing down in a raging fashion. And when I woke up Saturday morning, this story really rocked my world. I, you know, just to think about, you know, I've sent my daughters to camp to sleep away camp. And just to think about your second grade, uh, little girl having a tragedy like that four in the morning, I think they got like a year's worth of rain in like four hours. And, uh, just how, uh, How terrifying it must have been for those campers and for anyone in the nearby area to have that tragedy occur. We're certainly praying for those who have lost family members and praying for a quick recovery of that area. But a devastating story that just kind of took my heart out of my chest. Having little girls myself and remembering... Those kinds of fun memories with, you know, Christian summer camps, just obviously sort of families living in an absolute nightmare right now. So the current
Bob:death toll, it stands at 82. Most of those in Kerr County, at least 68 people have died, including 28 children, as you mentioned, girls in that age range, which my daughter is, my oldest daughter is right now. So it's, you know, pretty terrifying to think about that. 10 girls from the camp are still missing. On
Dave:the plus side... Camp Mystic. I understand the director was also someone who was trying to rescue his campers and passed away in his efforts to try to save as many lives as he could as well. I actually have a personal connection with somebody who died. So my daughter Alex went to law school with... A student that just, her parents live in the West Texas area, and she was there for Fourth of July weekend. So she went to law school with Alex, went to Emory, and then she also got hired at the same firm in Atlanta that Alex is working at. And she was... She was killed this weekend because of this raging river. It was her and her dad and her mom. And the dad, somehow, I think the story is he found a tree to hold on, and he was trying to hold on to his wife and daughter, and they slipped off of his hands. And the dad was... He had to watch his own... Wife and daughter go sweeping away in the river. So my daughter's somewhat traumatized by this story as well. Just a terrible, terrible disaster. So certainly be praying for those who have been affected by this. It's really a heart-wrenching story. Last night, there were some people that were posting videos of these girls on a bus going back home, and they were singing these Christian camp songs on their way back. And I was like, wow, this is just such a powerful moment as these girls have have just experienced the biggest crisis of their lives. And now here they are finding some solace and comfort in God's grace and singing those traditional camp songs that you might sing at those places. You can't even hear the details of the story without... Tears come to your eyes. This morning, I was struck by the heroism of a guy from New Jersey. So there's this dude, Scott Ruskin, who grew up not that far from here, in the western part of Jersey. I can't remember the town, but he's in the Coast Guard. He's an awesome swimmer. He saved 165 people at Camp Mystic. Wow. This dude is a rock star, man. He was using a helicopter, and so... um he was lifting these girls to safety one after the other after the other sometimes he would have two girls in one arm and um one of the girls asked if she could bring her stuffed animal he's like of course and he's just like the hero of this story um you know fred rogers um has that famous saying that when you hear this tragedy on the news um look for the helpers, try to find some comfort in seeing who are the people that are sacrificing and helping. And there is some beauty there when you see what people are willing to do to lend a hand and put their own lives in danger in order to help. So that was a wonderful story to read about, but obviously a devastating news story, keeping that whole area in prayer.
Bob:So I think from a From a Christian worldview perspective, this is a natural tragedy. It wasn't necessarily anybody's fault that this happened. And yet, devastation and destruction did happen. Death happened. And I think your illustration about those girls still choosing to turn to the Lord, even in the midst of that, is what we see. need to do. It's to recognize that God is still in control despite the tragedies that happen in life. And you have a choice either to turn to him or turn away from him. I'd rather turn to him and find his grace even in these moments of tragedy. So certainly we should pray for the families involved, continue to pray for the rescue efforts, those that are still missing, and just ask that God would intervene in that situation.
Dave:Yeah, a good reminder that life is short. Yes. Yes. Life is very fragile as well. I will say I'm a little annoyed. Okay. I feel like every single news story has to become somehow a political pawn. It has to be politically charged, no matter what it is. Oh. It used to be the case that as a nation, if there was a tragedy or if there was a war or something like that, partisanship would just get put aside and we would come together and, you know, be Americans. But no matter what happens, it seems like we're going to spin this. And, you
Bob:know, it's somehow Trump's fault.
Dave:Somehow there's, you know, there's the left and the right are taking their before there's any real data. You know, they're talking about, oh, this must be climate change. And, oh, Trump made all these cuts. And so they didn't have the weather service people that they need. to have and there wasn't adequate warning and you know there's really no verifiable proof for any of that yet but like right from the jump people are starting to raise their voices in favor of politics and you know I think you shouldn't exploit a tragedy for your own political purpose. Just imagine if that was your child. I don't think that you would want people grandstanding and putting your child and their story in the forefront so that they could use this as sort of a prop for their own political purposes. I just think we're better than that. We don't have to go there and That, to me, is sad, where we are as a country. So I wish we could have a little bit more unity in that way. Devastating story. Definitely a top news story of the weekend. That was all over the news. What else is going on?
Bob:Well, that's all I had, unless you have something else you want to put in there. You guys have some other news stories you want to bring up for
Dave:Fodder today? We'll just do one today. That's fine.
Bob:We can do one. We can do one. It was a holiday weekend. We had our 249th anniversary, and we kicked off the 250th year. Yeah, man. Did
Dave:you see some fireworks or anything?
Bob:I had fireworks in my driveway.
Dave:Oh.
Bob:In New Jersey, you can do that now. I forgot. Well, the little ones on the ground that just kind of shoot up and stuff. All right. Not going up in the air. There you go.
Dave:I went over to see a Somerset Patriots game with my family. They always have a good fireworks display there. The Patriots had a walk-off victory in the 10th inning. Did they? So the home team won, and we got to see some nice fireworks, and I had a very overpriced cheesesteak. No hot dogs. No hot dogs. Okay. No. Although we did have hot dogs, I think, for the first time ever at Summer Connections yesterday. Correct me if I'm wrong. We did. I don't think that's ever been on the buffet before.
Bob:We did. I heard, was it Linda that was working really hard despite... They were good.
Dave:Thank you,
Bob:Linda. Yeah. So thank you. Those are some good dogs. Yeah. Very good. Summer Connections is in the house. It is. It is. We'll cover that a little bit later. Yes, we will. All right. So I heard we had an audience question for us today. We haven't had one of those in a while. By the way, you can write in and ask us questions, and we would love to answer them as best we can. The audience question is connected to the sermon. So do we want to do it now, or do we want to do it a little bit later? All right, let's do a little bit later. I guess we can do the book war now, right? Shall we do the book war? Let's do the book war. By the way, so this is the penultimate episode of the season. We're going to be taking a break after next week, and then we're going to be picking up with our Isaiah series in September. I feel like every time you use that word, we have to define it again. Penultimate is the second-to-last episode of the season. There we go. So there you go.
Dave:So for a little bit of background, last week we– We saw Pastor Dave take a 16 to 13 point lead in the book war. And this week was a three point voting week. So if Pastor Dave won this week, that means he would clinch the book war title for the season. If not, we have a winner take all book war match for this week. And the winner of the book war for this week was not the magazine. It was the Baptist Confession of Faith. The Baptist Confession and the Catechism. That's two books in one. Here's the breakdown of the votes. We had six responses. All right, all right, all right. Bob got some love. So the final score of the book war is... is 13 to 19 Pastor Dave, which means Pastor Dave is your book war champion for season three. I'd like to thank the Academy. I'd like to thank all of those people out there who watch and made this possible. I couldn't do it without you. You are my people. You are just showing you lots of love right now. Thank you so much. We love you guys. Right here. That's where we get your good books. So, Pastor Bob, we have to discuss with the unlucky loser. Comments on the season, and what will you be doing next season to ensure that you take the title for season four? Well, I'm
Bob:not sure the voting was fair, because we started off part of the year with you guys, and now we have some folks out there, so it's been hard to understand what the people out there like. I guess they like what Dave has to offer, so... Anyway, I feel like we're
Dave:not done, though. Don't we have books today? Yeah, you can recommend books, but I'm saying the war is over. The war is over. So this is like a peacetime book recommendation? I guess it is. Just like the old
Bob:days. We'll see. Maybe we can come together next season and we'll agree upon a book to recommend.
Dave:What if we did Noah and Tim's book versus Pastor Bob and Pastor Dave's book?
Bob:I thought you guys recommend that. Oh, actually, that would be interesting.
Dave:Noah, have you read enough books to cover a season of... 40 something episodes yeah
Bob:that's what you got you guys should have us vote on books that you recommend that will be interesting and then we'll decide is this worthy of being included in the we can have we can have a like a final four bracket with the books that'd be fun we'll have a time up with
Dave:March Madness maybe we could do that we could find all we could we put we can put together all the book recommendations and come up with a bracket And March Madness time next year. Okay.
Bob:There you go. We'll see what goes. All right. So the book I was going to recommend today was just a book called Christian Worldview by Herman Bovink. And I'm recommending this because our Colson Fellows program is beginning next month. By the way, if you are still interested, you can sign up by August 1st. So we have a couple more weeks for that. Bavink was a Dutch Reformed theologian in the latter half of the 1800s, beginning of the 1900s. He's written, probably his biggest book is the book Reformed Dogmatics. That's also been put in a smaller form. And this is a compilation Transcription by CastingWords This is the book for you, and I will just say it also looks quite old, and maybe that is what people out there want. So here you go,
Dave:Christian Worldview. I was going to say the one I have in my Amazon cart for the Colson Fellows program does not look like that. I'm going to have to look back.
Bob:Well, this book is not on the reading list. Oh, it's not? There's others, yeah.
Dave:It's a different Bavinck.
Bob:Although there are several Bavincks. I don't think this book is on the list. We'll go back and look. All right, what were you going to recommend today? You've got a stack of books over there. Yep, I do. You were going to pick one based on the one that I recommended. Okay. Here's
Dave:where I'm going today. So this is a classic. This is probably the second or third revision. It's by Bush and Nettles. It's called Baptist and the Bible. Tom Nettles? Yep. And then it's been revised and expanded. There's something called the conservative, there's a conservative resurgence inside of the Southern Baptist Convention that occurred in like the early 80s where they started to take back sort of their key cardinal doctrines because there was sort of a liberal theological slide in the 60s and 70s and this book documents the complete history of the Baptist view of scripture from going back all the way back to like the early 1600s. I love the creativity of the way this dude organized, these two dudes organized the book. What he does is he takes biblical phrases from Genesis, and part one's called In the Beginning God, chapter one's called The Spirit of God Moved Upon the Face of the Waters, and that's his... sort of symbolic way of capturing the beginning of the Baptist movement right and then chapter two is like and God divided the waters and that's about how there was this division between the general Baptist and the particular Baptist and then it's like God saw that it was good and that's all about the second London Baptist confession and how that came to be and then it says the waters brought forth abundantly and then it starts talking about all these new Baptist leaders that started coming on like you know Bunyan and Benjamin Keech and stuff like that. Be fruitful and multiply. He's talking about how these new Baptist leaders came on the scene. Unto a land I will show you that talks about the missionary movement. It's just a really creative way to organize history. And so I really love this book. If you really want to know from soup to nuts what the Baptists do with the Bible throughout their history, this is where you would go. It's a classic. It's so interesting. And it's like all in one place. And it's purple. Yeah. This covers kind of, I mean, this publication date on this one is 99. So this is what they were doing in the 90s. The content of the book is excellent. Not good. I don't know about the looks of it, but fantastic. I don't know. The purple is the royal color right there. The Baptist and the Bible, man. So it was first published in 1980. And it's become like the most complete and... often quoted sources for this particular topic.
Bob:Some people were saying they need a new conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention. Well, there's
Dave:different issues now with the whole like the woke stuff. Yeah. Yeah. But back then it was more mostly dealing with inerrancy. So that's when like the Chicago Statement came out. Right. Sure.
Bob:All right. So those are the offerings today. I guess they're not really worth. How about you guys? How about you guys vote? Okay. We'll see who's going to win today. Oh, uh, Okay. How do we do this
Tim:again? We haven't done it in a while. Do we want to... Well,
Bob:actually, I think what you did was somebody recommended one of you. We had to...
Tim:Oh, yeah. That's right. How about this? Do you have one that you would pick? I think so, yeah. I have one that I would pick. So we'll do this. We'll do three, two,
Dave:one. And then after one, one would say go. Instead, we'll say Bob or Dave. Okay. Okay. Three, two, one. Dave. Bob. Uh-oh. Oh. It's a tie. Split tie. So we end with a tie. There we go. We end with a tie. Everybody wins. That seems appropriate. This is interesting, though.
Bob:All right. Good book war. There we go. All right. Audience question leading into the... Yeah, let's do it. Or should I have him summarize a sermon and then we do the audience question?
Dave:Um... Yeah, let's do that. Why don't we summarize the sermon, we'll jump in with the audience question, and then we can get in the weeds. There's a few charts here and 30-something slides that we can go through, so I'm looking
Bob:forward to that. Okay. All right, so you covered the distinctives of the Baptist faith yesterday with your acronym of Baptists. So why don't you give us a little bit of a... flyover of what, well actually pick, what's your favorite distinctive? Maybe we should do that.
Dave:If you had to pick one distinctive, which one do you like? You know, I guess probably autonomous congregationalism. So actually we were talking about, let's do this series about the blueprint for a healthy church and let's try to cover topics that we don't normally cover about like why we do church the way we do church. And then somewhere in the middle of the series, you and I were having a conversation like, is there anything that we haven't really covered in First Timothy that's like not in First Timothy, but we should probably talk about it because the series is about how we do church. And we decided, why don't we just do a one-off week on the Baptist distinctives? And I don't think we knew which one of us was going to do that, but it just kind of landed on my week, I guess. And so, okay, let's do that. So this was a week about... why do Baptists do church the way Baptists do church? And I organized them in a typical Baptist way with an acronym, which is very Baptist of me, right, to write an outline like that. It is, although that
Bob:didn't make it in your chart. No, it didn't. But Noah actually just posted a meme. And it was more than three points, which was very un-Baptist of you.
Dave:Yeah. But he didn't dance at all, which was very Baptist of you. That's true. I did make a joke about dancing. So, you know, we talked about the distinctives. Noah, man, nice job on the graphic. We talked about that. The name Baptist is being spelled out there. B-A-P-T-I-S-T-S. Not to be confused with the way my pastor in Dallas used to say that word.
Bob:B-A-P-T-I-S-T-S. It's got a ring to it. Yeah, there you go.
Dave:It's borderline a chart there,
Bob:isn't it? That's kind of close. Visual representation of data. Nicely done.
Dave:Isn't the I-S-T-S like stand for something? I don't know. I don't know. So my senior pastor in Dallas used to call it the Baptists. B-A-B-D-I-S-T-S. Baptists. So that's what we talked about. It was informative. It kind of felt a little bit like a lecture, but I tried to make it into a sermon the best I could. But it was all about why we do things the way we do things. That's what it was about.
Bob:All right. Well, good. So let's start with the audience's question, and then we can dialogue about a few of these topics. these uh these distinctives all right what's the audience question
Dave:so the audience question i believe was submitted right after the second service yesterday
Tim:all
Dave:right don't know from whom but that's okay uh so here's the question pastor dave quoted jeremiah 31 can you explain this more specifically in verse 34 where it says and no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying know the lord for they shall all know me for the least of them From the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. Why does it say we no longer teach his neighbor? Thank you. It's a good question. The old covenant that Moses had instituted was a failure. One of the famous New Covenant theologians used to say, the old covenant should have said, batteries not included. Okay. It gave us God's law, but it didn't give us the power of the spirit that we needed to actually fulfill the law, and so a new covenant was needed. That's really what the book of Hebrews is all about. There's a lot of different phrases in the new covenant that require interpretation, and there are different interpretations of those phrases, so I'll give you four. Covenant theologians see the new covenant as related to believers and their children. Baptists typically see the New Covenant just as related to believers. Dispensationalists actually see the New Covenant in a very interesting way. In fact, the president of Dallas Seminary challenged the student body in his day, Dr. Chafer, the founder of DTS, said he will give any one of his students an honorary doctorate if they can write a dissertation and figure out the New Covenant. So dispensationalists struggle with the new covenant because actually Jeremiah says, I'll make this covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. So dispensationalists see this new covenant as something that's really related to the people of Israel, the nation of Israel in the future. But yet it's clear that Hebrews chapter 8 says, like, this applies to us. So that makes dispensationalists nervous to apply the new covenant to the church in that way because they want to keep Israel and the church very distinct. But yet clearly... The New Testament says that we are under the new covenant. A second Corinthians says that we are ministers of a new covenant. Jesus in the upper room said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. It's really hard to say that we don't participate in the new covenant in any way whatsoever. So somehow the church gets to participate in the benefits of the new covenant. But dispensationalists will say there's a future fulfillment for the nation of Israel that's still yet to come. Progressive covenantalists will say the new covenant is for believers only. It's for today. So what does it mean that we won't teach our neighbor saying, know the Lord? Well, it means that the new covenant will have a completely regenerate community, that the new covenant will be made up of only believers, unlike the old covenant, which was made up of believers and their children. The promise was to you and to your seed, to you and your offspring. The new covenant, we believe, is made up to believers because the book of Galatians says, no, the promise wasn't to you and your seeds. It was to you and your seed, singular, and that seed was Christ. And the only way we get to participate in the new covenant is we get to actually be grafted in by faith. Galatians is really clear about that. So it's not actually... promise to me and my kids, like my three kids. The new covenant is not for me and my children. The new covenant is for the seed of Christ and his offspring. And the only way you can be Christ's offspring is by faith. And so those who have faith are part of the new covenant. And unlike the old covenant, where you would have to sit down and teach your children, you know, like it says in Deuteronomy 6, when you're walking on the road and when you lie down and when you get up, in the new covenant, There would only be believers in the New Covenant. And so when it says there will no longer be anyone saying, teaching their neighbor saying, know the Lord, for they will all know me. The idea there is not that we don't have teaching. The idea there is that we are no longer teaching people to know the Lord. Because they actually already know the Lord, because they've been regenerated by the Holy Spirit, because they're part of the new covenant, because the Spirit has made them new. Our hearts are circumcised, and we are now partakers of this wonderful blessing of the new covenant. So that's my interpretation of it. I don't know if you feel any differently about that, Bob, or if you would spin it in a slightly shaded way, but that's how I would go with that question. What do you think?
Bob:No, I would agree with that. So I thought you articulated that pretty well.
Dave:Nice question. Whoever that was, like, you're really reading the text. You were really like, you were carefully looking at that scripture and going, hey, what part is, what does this part mean? So I appreciate that. Good job. So where else are we going with the sermon?
Bob:Well, so you had a few that I think other denominations would agree with. There's other denominations that would agree with biblical authority. They would agree with the priest of all believers and things like that. There's a few that are very much distinctly Baptistic that are not shared by, let's say, a Presbyterian. So why don't we talk a little bit about the autonomous congregationalism? Okay. And what are the implications of that? So if you're coming to our church and you're joining our church, how does that play itself
Dave:out? Mm-hmm. You know, Presbyterianism is a great system. The word that they use to describe themselves is connectionalist. So they value the relationship between themselves and other congregations, and they are connected together. So in the Presbyterian church, you have a board that oversees that church called a session. And then that session is elects members of that session to be part of the local presbytery that's made up of a few different Presbyterian churches. And that local presbytery actually sends delegates or representatives over to the... Assembly. To the General Assembly, which is the largest gathering in your state. So it's like there's the General Assembly, and then there's the presbyteries, and then there's the session. And there's only one little... work in here called like synods so in between the general assembly and the presbyteries there's like offshoots of synods and what they do is like projects like write curriculum and they do papers and they have like committee work but generally that's the structure and the authority of the presbyterian church is found in the general assembly which is a group of representatives like so In that model, it is the elders who actually have the authority, who have the keys to the kingdom, if you will, which is different from an autonomous congregational church. So we actually don't believe that anyone from outside of the church, not a presbytery, not another group, can tell somebody inside the church what we should be doing. We believe that that local church is individual. It's... It is independent is the right
Bob:word. Is this partly why Baptists get a reputation for being kind of rowdy because you have more congregational members that are asserting authority within the local church and questioning things?
Dave:Yeah. To that extent. It is. And that can sometimes be one of the drawbacks of this particular model. It empowers everyone, no matter their level of spiritual maturity, to have a voice and a vote on church matters. And sometimes that can be an opportunity for the flesh to be manifested. I will say this. So here's a tricky little concept. Inside of an autonomous congregational church, you can have it functioning not as a congregational church on accident. So sometimes the pastor actually functions as the de facto decision maker inside of a Baptist church. Sometimes this happens, like an SBC church usually has one pastor and that's the elder, and then they have a deacon board under them. That's a lot of times how SBC churches are set up. There's only one elder. There's not a plurality of elders. And that pastor really has a lot more authority than, let's say, a pastor at our church would have. Mm-hmm. And that's actually like a little miniature episcopacy.
Bob:We actually probably have less authority than people think we do.
Dave:Yeah, we really don't have much at all. We don't even have a vote at the elder board level. So that can be like one distortion of an independent church. There's another distortion like inside of an independent Baptist church, you can have the elder board empowered to make all of the decisions as well as a plurality of elders. And that's like a mini presbytery inside of the church functioning that way. That's not congregational either. Congregational is when It's actually giving the keys to the kingdom and the authority to the congregation. So that's what's unique, I think, about the Baptist government.
Bob:So there also is a segment of churches called the Congregationalist churches. Will we consider them Baptist, or are they totally different? Are you familiar with them enough to speak about that?
Dave:They're similar in the model of government. A lot of times they practice infant baptism, though. So there's some differences there. A lot of the early... churches in the United States of America were congregational, and they were actually quite upset with the Baptists for their believer's baptism stance. Ah, there we go. Always comes back to the baptism. I would have to do a little bit more research to speak intelligently about congregational churches. I'm not remembering.
Bob:Okay. Well, let's stick with Presbyterians for a second, because the other thing that you talked about in Other Distinctive, the S is the saved church membership, or what a lot of people call the regenerate church membership, and that's different than what a Presbyterian church... would hold to. So they would allow people that are not Christians to be members, right? Is that too simplistic in seeing it that way? Not intentionally,
Dave:right? Right. So, I mean, I think, generally speaking, in Acts chapter 2, when Peter gets up on the day of Pentecost and tells them that These people here are not drunk. It's the morning. This is what Joel prophesied. The spirit has come upon us in the last days and our people are prophesying and speaking in tongues. Peter commands those people to repent and to be baptized, to be saved. And then he said, this promises to you and your children and those who are far off. So a Presbyterian hears that and they say, okay, the promise is to me and my children. It's right there in Acts chapter two. So I'm going to take the sign of baptism and I'm going to apply that sign to my children when they're babies, just like we applied circumcision to our children in the Old Testament. However, we would not interpret that phrase in that way. We would say, no, what Peter is saying is that the promise of salvation is for you and the promises for your children too, as long as they believe too, and the promises for those who are far off too, as long as they believe too, which is what happens in the book of Acts, right? It starts, he's talking to people who are gathered in Jerusalem. To you and your children, like right here, you guys who are gathered in Jerusalem, the Jews, is where we're going to start. It's going to start in Judea, Samaria, and then it's going to go to the uttermost parts of the earth. So to you and your children, that's the promises to you. and to those who are far off as well. Now, what we don't do is baptize those who are far off. We don't just go to all the nations and just baptize them. No, we go and tell them the good news and tell them to repent and believe, and then we baptize them, right? So the same rule that we're applying to you and your children, we're going to apply to those who are far off as well. So we would just interpret that a little bit differently. But regenerate church membership is like probably the hallmark, the cardinal point of view of the Baptist church polity. That's what really sets us apart. That's what got Roger Williams kicked out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. That's what got Fritz Erba thrown into that hole. Because it was like, you know, dangerous stuff. You not baptizing your infant was like scandalous back then. So they didn't want any part of that.
Bob:So are Presbyterians always wondering if the people in their church are actually saved? Is that a logical outflowing
Dave:of their position? So R.C. Sproul is probably one of the most well-spoken Presbyterians of our generation. Used to say the task of the... leaders of the church is to make the invisible church visible. But it's like concentric circles. I see my brain just thinks in charts. It's like concentric circles, right? So there's the church. I can see it. It's
Bob:forming.
Dave:Tim's
Bob:just going to
Dave:fade
Bob:to
Dave:a
Bob:chart
Dave:right now. Imagine a Venn diagram. So there's two circles. Then you have the invisible church and the visible church. That's right. And the goal is to have those be the same thing. But in this life, the Presbyterian would say we can't really know for sure who the real invisible church is. But we're going to try our best to discern that. And they do that through the practice of church discipline. Yeah. Good.
Bob:Little question. Yeah. Good question. So religious liberty. You had two points about that. You called it individual soul freedom as well as separation of church and state. Is that a distinctly Baptist thing? view would would a presbyterian or an episcopalian see their relationship with the state differently uh because of course over the over the course of history when it comes to the episcopal church descending from the anglican church there was a wedding of the church and state as well as with the catholic church so were baptists the first ones to bring that about that that doctrine
Dave:we were we were i mean if you read the founding document of the the Puritans who came over, the... Is it the Mayflower Compact? I'm trying to remember the name of the document, but it says we are founding this colony for the glory of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. They are setting up a city on a hill. They are wanting to set up... Right. And John Calvin led Geneva that way, too. Yeah. Exactly. So back then... They didn't think in these terms. They didn't think that there could be a separation. They understood the fact that we have leaders and it's their job as the magistrate to bring about God's law upon the people. And people today, some people still feel that way. I mean, there's a very famous book called Christian Nationalism written by Stephen Wolfe a couple years back that made the case even today that we should, even in the United States of America, be pursuing... the idea that we're going to have a Christian government and that these are the principles, these are the God's laws. Why wouldn't we want God's laws to be laws in our nation? Wouldn't that be a blessing to everyone in our nation if God's laws weren't, if God's laws were our nation's laws? So people who hold this view tend to be more reformed in their doctrine. They tend to be a lot of times post-millennial in their doctrine. They tend to think that society is going to continue to grow better and better, and eventually we are going to bring the kingdom of God on earth, and it's our task right now to bring the kingdom here, whereas a Baptist would say these are different spheres, and we're kind of living in the already but not yet, and we're never going to bring about the kingdom of God by our own governmental power. So
Bob:it's not that a Baptist wouldn't say that having Christian principles as part of public life is a bad thing. In Right. Am I summarizing that correctly?
Dave:Yeah. If you want to read more about that, Andrew Walker's stuff is excellent. So don't put a caricature on that and say... then we should never legislate morality. The only thing you can legislate is morality. So there are certain principles that we would want to see put into effect in our laws, especially like you talk about creation order issues. What would you say would be those kinds of
Bob:issues? We're talking about sanctity of human life, marriage and the family, marriage. Those
Dave:things that are good for a society's flourishing. Yeah,
Bob:there's one other big one that I'm forgetting.
Dave:Religious liberty. Religious liberty, yeah. Yeah. So we would certainly support that. But I think Baptists and the separation of church and state was kind of a novel idea back then. And it caught fire in the colonial days and America made for very fertile ground for Baptist churches to start springing up like crazy. Right. Good.
Bob:Well, let's talk about baptism for a second. So you had a long section on that, and you had a couple questions that you answered about where should you be baptized, who can baptize, when should you be baptized. Yeah, and you talked a little bit—let's talk specifically about the where. So why, again, is it important that you are baptized within a church— It's certainly preferable for that to happen in front of your local body of believers. And you had this cool illustration about being attached to an assembly as an ambassador. Yeah, let's talk about that and see where maybe some objections could come up to your answers. Okay.
Dave:There are exceptions to this, and we call them irregular baptisms. I told everyone that I was baptized in a pond, and it happens. The Ethiopian eunuch is a great example in the scriptures of an irregular baptism. He's out there, and he's not really connected to a community. So if you have a missionary who is sharing the gospel and someone accepts Christ, but there is no church community for them to be connected to at that time, then that would be perfectly fine to practice baptism in a more individualistic way. But the general principle I think we want to go by in scripture is that baptism is a profession of faith that's being affirmed by the local congregation the body that that person is joining and so we want to understand baptism as the passport if you will if I could give an illustration like that like it allows you in it gives you access it is your the card that it says yeah I'm I'm allowed to be here I I'm in the front door so you would want to actually participate with the congregation in because it's a very meaningful act, and it's wonderful to do that before your brothers and sisters in Christ. So to just isolate and do that alone, I think you're missing out on a broader implication, because baptism is not just about you. It's about us, and it's a movement, actually, from the me to the we. And so we would encourage you to do that in the context of the congregation, if possible. So I have a follow-up question to that, because Obviously, the goal of baptism is you're proclaiming to everyone that you are following Christ and the congregation, those are your witnesses to that. So if someone wanted to do a natural baptism, I don't know if that's the right word, but you know what I mean. If someone, like the ocean or a pond, what would you say is the acceptable amount of witnesses to bring baptism? if someone wanted to do that? Like, it's just like, I really want to get baptized in the ocean, but I also want there to be the appropriate amount of witnesses. How many people do you think they would need to bring? I don't think it's about the number of people as much as it's about, is this something that you're doing under the umbrella of the church leaders and your church congregation? And are they welcome to attend and affirm your profession of faith? So I think it's less about like, counting heads and more about hey this is something that i'm doing with the elders and my pastors here and there's my my brothers and sisters that are also members of this body and we're all invited out to this lake or this river or this beach together and like this we're having a thing but we're here as the church and we're celebrating together as the church so that's um the ideal way to practice it so i don't i don't think there's a number there but um do you get the idea like the context yeah i think is important for you to think about Okay, who's my church? Who are my people? So ideally, that doesn't mean that if you were baptized like me, that we wouldn't accept your baptism. We would. It's great. We celebrate with you. It's wonderful. You know, my daughter, Michaela, she really wanted to get baptized outside. So we took her down to Round Valley. And, you know, but we invited... church people so you know there was a lot of millington baptist church people there at round valley playing the guitar singing songs with her listening to her testimony you know watching her go professor faith in the waters of baptism there so it was very much a church event um and so we think that that's wonderful so there's certain environments that are just you know people want to get baptized in certain environments, that's fine. That's great. Good. They actually had like guidance in the early church about what kind of water you should like find if it's possible. Like in the Didache, it said if it's possible, if you can find running water that's more conducive than just stagnant water. They had like preferences as to how this would go. And they really gave it some thought, huh? They did. Yeah. So it's interesting when you read about the early church practices.
Bob:And another question for the baptism topic. So from a Baptist perspective, would we consider a baptism valid if someone has a genuine believer's baptism, but it wasn't by immersion, it was by sprinkling? Do we still view that as valid for a
Dave:Baptist? Our church insists on immersion. Um, not every Baptist church has that strictness. So that's called the mode. So, um, we want to see three things. We want to see like the right mode and we want to see the right reason and we want to see the right time. So Millington is probably the strictest, strictest church that I've ever been a part of. Um, and that's okay. I kind of agree with it, but, um, So the right time is like after faith, not before faith. The right reason is you're doing this because you think it's a profession of faith. You're not doing this because you think this is going to save you or you're not doing this because your mom pressured you or your friends are all getting baptized. So you're going to get baptized. You're doing this because you've accepted the gospel and the spirit now lives inside of you. And you want to like acknowledge God as your father and Christ is your savior and God's people is your people. And then the right mode is we're going to ask you to do that by immersion. Because we think that it communicates something about the gospel. It's a redramatization or a recapitulation of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. And we would want you to be immersed. That's what our Constitution says at Millington. I believe that you were baptized in two different ways. Is that correct? Yeah, I've mentioned this before. I
Bob:was baptized. I was baptized as a baby. We grew up in more of a Presbyterian-type church, or I did. But then when I got to high school, I started attending a Baptist church, and my convictions changed, and I was baptized as a believer in my church when I was about 22. But it took some time. I had time, discussions, and I said, you know what? This is something I should do. So were you going by yourself to the Baptist church, or did your family... No, I wound up going by myself. Yeah, it was mostly me.
Dave:So you kind of had your own individual pursuit of the Lord apart from... Yes, very much so. That's cool. So at other churches that I've been a part of, they would accept other modes of baptism as long as it was as a believer, and they didn't do this for the purpose of saving them. They would accept another mode, but then in the church database, like their version of CHMS, there was a little drop-down menu that you had to check something called watch care, which means whenever that person's profile would come up, you would see that that person is a member by watch care. And what that meant was you need to realize they were not baptized in the way that we typically baptize at this church. We accept it as an irregular baptism, but every time that that person would want to do something like lead or teach, the person would have to be reminded We want to have a conversation with you if you're going to be teaching about baptism here because they don't want to have that person communicating like something different than what the doctrinal statement said. But, okay, here's something else that's fun. So, Tim, maybe there's a slide about this. There's a guy named John Smith. Back in the early 1600s, it's in the very beginnings of the slides, who was the first ever Baptist person. He was part of the Church of England. He went to Amsterdam. And he was convicted that baptism was for believers only. And there was no one to baptize him. He's the first. So he baptized himself. And you may not know this, but he's like the very first Baptist And he baptized himself not by immersion. He did it by pouring. And so the very first, like the founder of the Baptist movement did not. It's been a big bucket. Yeah. He didn't baptize himself. Ice bucket challenge. By immersion. He baptized himself by pouring. And then. This other guy, Hellweiss, came along. Thomas Hellweiss. If you go to the next slide, I think I have him next. He actually did a deep dive on the Greek term for baptism. And he's the one who discovered, oh, we should do this by immersion because that's the way they... That's what the word means in the New Testament, like baptizo. It doesn't mean to wash, although sometimes baptizo does refer to washing stuff, but what you realize when you read it is they're washing stuff by submerging the stuff. That's why it's used that way. You know how you wash a plate in the sink? The reason they're using baptizo is they're washing it by submerging it into the sink full of water, right? So the word baptizo is used to describe like a sunken ship at the bottom of the ocean. That thing is like down there, man. It's submerged. It's, you know, and so boom, Hellwise said we should do this by immersion and then He came along, and then pretty much after him, they were doing baptism by immersion. By the
Bob:way, that guy looks like a Hellweiss. When I think of Hellweiss, I think of that guy right there. Yeah. Did he just go by one name, or is that his last name? I don't know. Those
Dave:were the general Baptists. So you're coming to the baptism on Sunday. Yeah. Go to the next slide, Tim. What's after this?
Unknown:Let's just take it through here.
Dave:Let's just walk through. All right, so there was two kinds of Baptists. Thomas Hellweiss. There was general and there was particular. So the general Baptists were the guys who said Christ's atonement is for all, and then the particular were more reformed. They said that the atonement was limited. All right, go to the next slide. Okay, so this is a famous particular Baptist, Henry Jesse. If you want to click through a couple slides. He was the pastor of the JLJ Church, and he was the leader of one of the first particular Baptist churches in England. in England at the time. Alright, go to the next slide. How about that guy's picture, huh? Henry Jassy. So he said, this is his thing about... That is a picture right there. Baptism. All right, just click through, Tim. I'll just talk our way through this. Okay, he's one of the most... Bunyan's one of the most famous Baptists. He was convicted of believer's baptism. He got saved after he got married. He was baptized in 1653. And then soon thereafter, in England, it became illegal to preach in a way that was not used in the Book of Common Prayer. And so Bunyan got put in prison. And then while he was in prison, kind of like the... Apostle Paul, he wrote some wonderful things. And so his book was The Pilgrim's Progress. And that's his story. Kiffin, he was a particular Baptist that was very influential in the writing of the second London Baptist Confession. And they wrote the first one in 1644, and then they wrote a second one in 1689. Actually, they wrote the second one in 1677, but it was illegal, so they didn't publish it. And then when it became legal to actually be Baptist, then they published it in a more public way. All right, go to the next slide. Oh, this is Kiffin. We just talked about him. He actually advocated for closed communion, meaning only baptized members of this church can take communion with us. Him and Bunyan had a smackdown about that. Bunyan said, why are you excluding people? You know how we have open communion? Bunyan was like us. He wanted open communion. Kiffin was like, what are you doing? You can't affirm these people's profession of faith. Why would you let them into the Lord's Supper? So Bunyan and Kiffin had like back and forth on, you know, the early version of Facebook wars, it was like writing letters to each other, arguing about all that stuff.
Bob:By the way, when I went out to Colorado, my friend's church does only baptized believers can take communion. So if you had kids that weren't baptized, they weren't supposed to take
Dave:communion. That's very common. We actually don't take that view here. We could, but we take the view that We won't baptize children unless they're 12 or older, but we leave it up to the parents to decide whether or not their children are ready for communion. So we're a little bit more flexible and loose around that. It kind of depends. Parents, you kind of know best whether or not your child is ready. That's a big decision. Well,
Bob:yeah, we decided. We thought it was okay for Jenna to take it. But when I went to Colorado and they said baptism, I said, no, you can't take it here because of their rule. And then she was upset. So I had to explain it
Dave:to her. Right. Remember when you and I used to go up to the Apostles Church in New York City with J.R. Vassar? They had a slide on the screen that said, baptized believers may come. So that's not that uncommon. Yeah. All right, Tim, what other slides do I have for today? I'm not remembering what else is in there. Okay, so those are some other Baptists in the early days. We talked about Roger Williams yesterday, First Baptist Church of America in Providence, Rhode Island. This guy was kind of like an over-realized eschatology guy. He couldn't find the perfect church, so he was even dissatisfied after he founded the First Baptist Church. He was a little bit of a quirky guy. Did he also
Bob:found the Second
Dave:Baptist Church? He's our hero. So these pictures were taken by Scott Rajopi. You can just click through here, Tim. Scott went up there for vacation or something like that, and he actually visited the First Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island, and he sent me these pictures. So this is like their foyer. There's not much to it, man. It's a lot smaller than Millington. It's just like an old school Baptist sanctuary. But it's been there since the early 1600s, and it's still there today. It's still a functioning church. There's... people who worship there. It's a top-notch steeple. It is, man. It's a quite
Bob:beautiful church. What do you think it would take to maintain that church right now?
Dave:Probably all kinds of historic rules and all kinds of little things. Tell me about Obadiah. Obadiah Holmes was actually whipped and scourged for his belief on believer's baptism. In those days, man, to be a Baptist was to be like persona non grata. You were not welcome in society. So that's a famous story of somebody who was persecuted for the Baptist faith. All right, next one. Oh yeah, this is the tree that ate Roger Williams. I think that's a hysterical story. Had you guys ever heard that story
Bob:before? People had a big chuckle over that, man. There's lots of
Dave:laughter around me. Tim, is that the first time you heard of that? Yes. It's actually a really weird story, but it is what it is. So they kept the tree root. So now I got to my charts. I have like four or five charts. What I did this week, and these charts are ugly, but They're meaningful. There's a lot of good data. As I said, who's like the most meaningful Baptist? And I started making a list. So here's my list. Some of those you've already seen. What is Marty Ray D.? martyred. See, I told you, this chart is busted. All right, go to the next slide. You can see there's some, this is loosely in date order, so as you keep going up. John Gill, he was a major Baptist theologian. Benjamin Keech, he's the guy who wrote the Keech's Catechism off the Baptist Confession. Next slide. Andrew Fuller, there he is, man. Yeah, this is important. William Carey, the founder of the modern missionary movement. Definitely a Baptist. John Broadus. Remember when you and I were at Harvey Cedars and we saw Brian Chappell? Yeah. He talked about John Broadus as the founder of expositional preaching. John Broadus. He's the guy who brought it, man. He was one of the founders of the Southern Baptist Seminary. Didn't they
Bob:have the Broadus gavel for the
Dave:president of the Southern Baptist Convention? Yeah, that's what it is. That's right. That's awesome. All right. I got a couple more there, Tim. So here's some more modern people. Graves. Noah, are you related to this guy, J.R. Graves? Did I ask you about that? Are those your people? Not to my knowledge. All right. Might be. He's a famous Baptist man. Landmark Baptist movement. So Spurgeon in London. A.H. Strong. B.H. Carroll.
Bob:Strongest concordance,
Dave:man. What's that Prince of Preachers hieroglyphics going on right there? The Prince of the Pulpit. My chart didn't come over very well. All right. One more slide or maybe two. Okay, W.A. Criswell, First Baptist Church of Dallas. Millard Erickson, that's your favorite systematic, isn't it? Millard Erickson's my guy, man. I still like him. He's got a good book. Grudem. Okay, Annie Armstrong, she's a famous missionary. Billy Graham. All right, Noah. All right. You're a Graham fan, right? Go, Billy. He was a Baptist. John Piper. I often refer to Noah as the next Billy Graham. Yeah. All right, here's my last page. Charles Stanley, First Baptist Church of Dallas, and then Al Mohler and Mark Deverer. That brings us to today. Al Mohler, martyred, no. I probably left out a lot of Baptists. Not yet. Those are some well-known titans, some pillars in the Baptist church movement. I feel like we got some heroes. We do. We do. That's not to take away from other denominations. There's a lot of Christians that make up Christendom. There's folks in
Bob:other denominations.
Dave:But we have something to be proud of. There we go. It's okay. A lot of people throw shade on the Baptists. I feel like, boom, wait a minute, wait a minute. We've done some good things. There
Bob:it is. All right. Well, I think we're going to call an end to the sermon portion for today. All right. Next week, we are finishing 1 Timothy. We're going to do the end of 1 Timothy chapter 6. I'm preaching that. And 1 Timothy 6, 11, and 12 is actually what I adopted as my life verse. So I'm pretty excited to preach that one. Fight the good fight of the faith. Yeah. Fight, fight, fight, man. So we're going to get after that next week. Okay. And then next week is our last Behind the Pulpit. We're going to take a break. And then in the fall, we're going to be diving into Isaiah. So we'll be back for some Isaiah discussions. That'll be kind of like Revelation. Lots of, lots of.
Dave:Can I just throw out, throw out a couple books? All right. So I did a lot of research this week. Here comes, here comes a stack of recommendations. Here we go. If you want to read like a pretty accessible history of the Baptist, get the Baptist story by Finn and those guys. That's really good. If you want to just like have a theological case for believers, baptism, this is just about that. There's a lot of different authors, different articles in here, including Steve Wellum. That's a great book. This one is about Baptist church polity called Baptist foundations. Debra and Lehman edited this, um, True Confession, I only read part one, but it was good, and I still need to finish that one. This one is actually about congregational government. It's called Don't Fire Your Church Members by Jonathan Lehman, which is good. I love this book by Bobby Jamison. He's over also at Capitol Hill Baptist. This is about baptism and subtitle why baptism is required for church membership. Why would we do that? He makes a really good case in there for that. This is my little tiny pocket copy of the 1689 Confession. Check that out. It's really cool. Look at that, man. if you want a little book about congregational authority because you just want to like a taste this this is a tiny little thing it's only like 50 pages so understanding congregational authority 1689 and that's all that's all i got so just throwing out a couple little research things that i started
Bob:adopting the uh what is this one
Dave:That one's understanding congregational authority. Gotcha. There you go. Perfect. Hope that was helpful for you guys, and I enjoyed a little deep dive. No pun intended. Can I ask one more? Hopefully by this point you understand why we're Baptists. Can I ask one more question on baptism? Okay. All right. We're still here. Let's keep talking about it. I keep trying to move on, but... So I feel like... Things are reeling. Yesterday. We're going to
Bob:skip over the theology sprint.
Dave:Yesterday. Oh, we have a good theology sprint, I hope. Yesterday. I feel like you often hear in the Baptist church, like baptism and membership are always kind of hand in hand. Do you ever think that it gets almost skewed that people are just, you know, they're getting baptized for the purpose of becoming members and that we sometimes lose focus on like the actual purpose of baptism? Does that make sense? Yeah, no, I think it's the opposite. I think we put probably too much focus on the individual baptism profession of faith, and we forget to tie it back to church membership. That's actually the real problem. So baptism is wonderful. I think it's a thing to celebrate. We should do that. But as much as possible, we should probably tie that more closely to people's membership. And that's why we would say delaying after 12 is perfectly fine. You want that individual to be able to participate in the life of the body and use their gifts as well. Because that's really what baptism was back in the day. So that's what it is today.
Bob:Part of the challenge is a lot of people might go to different churches or non-denominational churches that don't have membership, but they emphasize believers' baptism. Right. So they don't, you know, it depends on the person's background and where they came from.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah. And so, and people come to Millington from all different backgrounds and they bring all of that history with them. And so we just try to like... kind of shepherd them in our way the best we can because this is who we are. Tim, did that answer your question? Yeah, thank
Bob:you. Did it spark a follow-up question?
Dave:No, it sparked a theology sprint. All right,
Bob:let's go with a theology sprint and then some few announcements and we're out of here today. Oh, here it is. Can I just focus again here on why Pastor Dave is so upset with the
Dave:microphone? Speaking of lightning bolts, we had an incredible storm here Thursday night, man. There was lightning. You look like you're going to beat somebody up in that picture. You're like, I'm going to give you a theology answer. Sound doctrine. He doesn't mess around. So I should hold the mic like this. All right. So I'm taking a theology sprint this week. It's something I actually have wondered about. So I've saw it somewhere that sin is defined by when the thought, word, or deed is against God's character. What about dreams? If you sin in a dream, is that something you should be repenting for?
Bob:Wow. You ever heard that one before? It's a first-time
Dave:question. You know, I heard a funny story about a marital dispute where the wife was having a dream that her husband was mistreating her, and she got up and she was mad at him. He's like, well, it's not even me. It's like in your dream. I don't understand dreams. I'll just be totally honest with you. The stuff that I dream of is so wild and bizarre. It's just like, where did this come from? I have no idea, man. I have this repeated snake dream that keeps happening in my life. I have some weird, wild stuff. If I'm accountable to God for what I'm dreaming... I'm in trouble, man. I got a lot of repenting to do. I don't know what dreams are or where they come from. I know in the Bible sometimes there's prophetic dreams. I understand that. I don't think my dreams are prophetic. I think they're just wild stuff my brain's doing to try to decompress the stressors that I have or something like that. I don't see anywhere in the Scripture that we're going to be held accountable for our dream life. Do you want to take a different
Bob:perspective on that? No, I wasn't going to say that. I was going to say, though, in terms of just... You know, we are sinners, and we then also actively engage in sinful acts, and all of it is something that needs to be redeemed by Christ, you know? But I think you're asking the question, hey, in my dream, I did something terrible, or I committed adultery or something like that, whatever it is. Correct. Do I need to repent of that thought? Correct. And I just... I think I would agree with Dave. Who knows why your mind is running wild like that? Sometimes they're symbolic. I mean... So I don't think so. I don't think you need to be repenting of things that happen in your subconscious. Great.
Dave:Sounds good. If you feel differently, I'd love to hear from you. I really don't know the answer to this question. This is a total stab in the dark for me. So if you got a different perspective, please share. Yeah, this stemmed from you hear the funny stories of someone like Like you said, Pastor Dave, where it's like, oh, you were doing this to me or you cheated on me in your dream. It's like, no, but it wasn't me. It wasn't me. You made that up. Yeah. So I was just wondering about that. Cool. I will tell you, like... I sleepwalk. Did you do? Yeah. Wow. This has happened a couple times in my marriage, and it really disturbs my wife. So I used to manage a pizza shop, and evidently she was in the living room, and I got up out of my bed and walked over to the living room, and I looked right at her, and I said, what are you doing? She's like, what? I'm like, stretch the pizzas.
Unknown:What?
Dave:And she's like, Dave. And then I walk back into the bed. Did she follow you? She was scared. Because what are you capable of when you're dreaming? She's like, what can he do right now? I don't want to move. I don't want to disturb this. This is really kind of dangerous to even provoke a sleeping person. So that's happened a couple times in my marriage. And it really, really... Like, if I'm accountable for that stuff, Tim, man, I'm in trouble. I gotta... Repent. Next time we go on a conference and we're rooming
Bob:together and you start yelling at me to stretch the pizzas, I'm going to know what's up. I was working a lot,
Dave:and I must have just been dreaming and stressing about not having enough dough and not having enough stuff for the customer. This guy out here wants a margarita. Get on it. Stretch the pizza.
Bob:Is that the title? I don't know. I'm surprised there's not a deep theological work on this, because dream life is a pretty big part of your life. You spend, what, a third of your day asleep? So I'm surprised that there's not... like half a third of that treatment. Maybe there is. I think we're just not aware of it. Yeah, it's not as popular or widespread.
Dave:The only stuff I've ever read on it is Sigmund Freud's student... Carl Jung has a famous book on the interpretation of dreams. I got that at a library one time just to see, like, what are the major symbols? What do psychologists think that these things symbolize? It's interesting, but I don't know. There's nothing, like, biblical about it as far as I
Bob:understand. There might be more stuff in, like, the charismatic stream because I know they have kind of an emphasis on dreams and stuff. So we'd have to look it up. Have to do some research.
Dave:Yeah. Okay. All right. There we go. That show took a weird turn at the end. Time to wake up. All right. How
Bob:about we end with some announcements? What's going on in the body life?
Dave:Yeah, we talked about it earlier. When
Bob:you're awake, let's see what you can do.
Dave:So way back, about an hour and five minutes ago, this was teased. So we're going to put a bow on it. Let's talk about Summer Connections.
Bob:Summer Connections. Don't sleepwalk into Summer Connections. Here you go. Can we talk about how good the salad is? Let's talk about how good the
Dave:salad is. Some green goodness, huh? What's in there? It's strawberries. It's blueberries. It's goat cheese. And it's that incredible Italian dressing. It's
Bob:the goat cheese. Okay. It's the goat
Dave:cheese. It's amazing. I actually don't love the cheese. I eat the salad. I don't enjoy it. I love food, obviously. But I don't love the goat cheese. I'm not a big cheese guy. All right. Well, listen. Tim's going to save it for you. So there's more salad for you guys. I do like the dressing. thing.
Bob:But by the way, fun fact, I was on a conference call. Did you know that the Kangs, you know Stan and Delia, I was on a conference call with her the other day. They have goats out there. She was like. No, I didn't know that. She was just out tending the goats. Is that where they get the cheese from? Or whatever they were doing. And I'm like, you guys have goats? Wow. It's Kang goat cheese. I have to ask them if they have goat cheese that they make themselves. We're going to find out about this.
Dave:Have you ever seen like those videos of the goats screaming and it sounds a little bit like a human? Yes. Yes. Yes. It's scary. It's scary. I wonder if that happens at her house.
Bob:I tell you what, a little while ago, middle of the night by my house, there was, I think, a fox outside barking and it sounded like a baby crying and being tortured.
Dave:There's a lot of stuff around your house. We've got snakes here. The other day we had a coyote. Now you've got foxes. Maybe it
Bob:was the
Dave:coyote. Yeah. When foxes do that thing, whatever it is, it sounds demonic.
Bob:It was really weird.
Dave:Michaela had it happening outside of her window one time. She's like, Dad, something's going on in the backyard. I don't know why. I'm like, just go back to bed. She's like, no no you gotta come see this I woke
Bob:up it was like 2 in the morning
Dave:what is going on outside I had someone text me one time and it was like oh there's something crazy happening outside there's like weird sound I was like does it sound like a baby getting mutilated I'm like yep it's probably a coyote Yeah, well, I know
Bob:there are several foxes around here.
Dave:I've seen them. I know, like, back in the back behind Crest, there's, like, a wild preserve, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bob:But periodically, I'll be taking the garbage out, and the fox will steer me down. I'm like, all right, out of my way. The
Dave:garbage is like an adventure around here in the summer, man. I had a run-in. I had a run-in one time. I was throwing away some trash. Raccoon? There was a raccoon that didn't want me in there, man. Raccoons, foxes. He came up on the edge and looked me right in the eye. I'm like,
Bob:oh my gosh. I saw a groundhog scurrying around the other day. It's like the wild, wild, wild west out here. Got a zoo here. All right, what else are we announcing? Summer Connections. We only got one more. I feel like Summer Connections is happening on July 20th. Virtues. All right. You want me to take that? You want to take that?
Dave:So Virtues is a new partner ministry that they are going to be launching soon. And what it is, is it's an opportunity to get two years of college credits and you can take those classes here at Millington it's part in person part online there'll be a teacher mentor that will help you with the in-person classes you can even take those classes before you're done with high school in your last couple years of high school junior year senior year you can get started on some of your college classes early and get credit from at least six different universities right now that are partnered with virtues it's an alternative model might not work for everybody but it might work for you if like four-year school going away to a traditional college is not really the direction you want to go, or maybe you don't really know the direction you want to go, but you want to take a few classes, that could be an option for you. It is a Christian-based education. There's going to be some theology classes there, some business stuff. And we're going to be looking forward to how God might use our campus to bless other people and maybe get a little bit of a head start and maybe help with the financial debt problem that sometimes college can bring. So Virtues Campus. If you have questions, see Amy Huber. She's going to be the main liaison for that here at Millington. But we'd love for you to inquire about that. We're glad to share more information.
Bob:Boom. There you go. And as we heard yesterday, it'll save some money. It will. All right. We've come to the end. Unless Tim has another question.
Dave:No, I'm out for today.
Bob:Well, we hope you have a wonderful week. We'll be back here for our season finale next Monday. Is that called the ultimate? We had this conversation before. I do believe it's the ultimate episode, right? Next week, we'll be... Well, actually, it'll be Summer Adventure or VBS next week. This
Dave:might come to you late next week. We'll see.
Bob:It might be late. We might have some guests. Maybe we'll have some kids running around in the studio. Who knows? But we'll be here next week. week to conclude.
Dave:Say a prayer for Summer Adventure. We're looking forward to a great week. It's going to be incredible. God bless. See you guys then.