Spread the Moment

The season four finale is here! This week, Tim, Pastor Bob, and Pastor Dave recap their trip to the Colson Center National Conference in Knoxville, sharing stories from the road, memorable speakers, and some of the biggest ideas that shaped the weekend. From Os Guinness and Carl Trueman to Chloe Cole, Cliff Knechtle, and discussions on AI, evangelism, culture, and the future of the church, the conversation covers everything from civilizational moments to giant Rubik’s Cubes. The guys also discuss current events, reflect on the book of 2 Timothy as the series comes to a close, hand out the inaugural Fan of the Year awards, recommend a few new books, and wrestle with what it means to faithfully pass the baton to the next generation. As Millington Baptist Church celebrates 175 years of God’s faithfulness, this episode serves as both a look back and a challenge to move forward with courage, conviction, and a renewed commitment to live out the gospel wherever God has placed us.

175th Anniversary Service
https://millingtonbaptist.org/mbc-175th-anniversary-worship-service/

Chapters:
0:00 Open
1:04 Colson Conference Recap
29:29 In The News
43:09 Book Recommendations
50:12 Fan of the Year
52:31 2 Timothy Recap
1:17:52 Theology Sprint

Music
"Ventura"
Morgan Taylor
U76EPPNJDYZYU0Y7

Transcript

0:09

Well, hello everybody. Uh, welcome to Behind the Pulpit. You may be asking yourself if you're watching this on YouTube right now or listening on your normal device, why is Tim's voice first? He hasn't done that in two seasons. Well, today's a very special episode. It is the last episode of our season four. It's been a great uh season that we've had um this year uh throughout um whatever it is we've been, however long we've been doing this. But also we just came back from the Colson Center National Conference, um, and I'm here with your normal two co-hosts. I'm here with Pastor Bob and Pastor Dave. Um I don't have one big shot. I have a broken cord, so I'm gonna be using my fingers a lot. I think that should be the uh that should be the title of the episode, The Broken Cord. The broken cord. Um so we're really looking forward to um you know talking to you guys, recapping the Colson Center National Conference. But before we do that, guys, how I guess we I I I would ask how we're all doing, but we were all in the same place for the last couple days, so we might as well just kind of hop right into it. Tim, I am doing fabulous. I had a wonderful flight back yesterday. Well, you we we flew over top of your head as you were driving back. Um in fact, we actually crossed over the uh New Jersey Turnpike. We may have indeed flown over your your car. That's true. So for context, uh I drove down to North uh to Tennessee. Um I drove down drove down to North Carolina and then drove to the conference. And your flight was what, 6 30? Our flight was uh yeah, we left Knoxville at 6 30 p.m. We arrived in Philadelphia about eight, so it was an hour and fifteen minutes to fly up from Knoxville. So I um yeah, I got on the road at 11 30 sharp is when I pulled out of the hotel, and then I was moving down the highway. I wasn't going at speeds that were dangerous, but I was I was I was I was moving. You were you were hustling, huh? I was hustling and I made um a stop, quick stop for lunch, quick stop for gas, um, and after that I had a 50-minute traffic jam in Virginia, which kind of slipped. How many bathroom breaks? Uh just two. Just two. Oh, that's impressive. Just two. Wow. So um, yeah, so we got home at all around the same time, which is funny because they flew and I drove, but they also left a lot later, obviously. So I also didn't have to be behind the wheel the entire time. So Pastor Dave is here too. He is just uh He's over there collecting his thoughts right now. He's excited to talk about the Colson Center National Conference. And um why don't we go there? Uh Pastor Dave put together a a number of slides. Let's just walk through them. That we can walk through. So I'm gonna show those and then we can talk about them while you guys are looking at these pictures. So Colson Conference 206. That's supposed to say 2026. It was for those who are listening, you won't see this, but that's okay. Nice title slot here. So let's let's walk through. Who's that guy behind you, Bob? Oh. That is Oskinnis, the Wilberforce Award winner of this year. We had Oz here a few years ago for an underground session's not to be confused with Oz. It's Oz. Yeah. Yeah, for those of you who are what listening online, it's a selfie of Pastor Bob, and Os Guinness is shaking someone with a beard, the hand of someone with a beard right behind him. There he is. Oz spoke on the civilized civilizational moment. Yes, indeed. He defended the use of the civilizational moment. So these two guys, we saw a lot of them. You kind of you kind of gotta see the chill uh vibe going on with their maybe maybe Carl Truman's done with his talks. Is that why he's so relaxed? This is this was my I was telling Tim this was my favorite picture of the weekend because Carl Truman literally sat like this for about 10 minutes answering questions. He's like, just bring me a question, I'll answer it. He's he's up there musing about whatever question he got asked. For those of you who aren't have the visual aid, Carl Truman is sitting in a chair and he's just relaxed with his hands behind his back, his legs crossed, and John Stone Street is sitting next to him looking deep in thought. Stone Street, the master facilitator. That guy can come up with a set of discussion questions in no time flat. He creates a lot of good moments. Yes. He does. Here's Oz Live. That was either Thursday night or Friday night. That was the church leader thing. See, Carl, there's Carl Truman cocking his head and staring at him. Yeah. Being very amazed. That was a good night. They had an earlier day this year, a little different than last time for church leaders. So we got to see some extra talks, including from both of those guys, which was fun. They paid us to come. Oh, there he is. Look at that. That is Glenn Sunshine. He is a um a giant. Senior fellow. Senior fellow at the Colson Center. Tim, you made it in time for the first Beardos session. I did. I uh really enjoyed that. So for those of you who aren't familiar with the Colson program, there is a um every month, there's webinars, and every month this man on the screen, Glenn Sunshine, along with the uh the head dean of the program, uh Michael Craven, essentially just do an hour QA session um each month, and he's he's on there. He's very much covered anything from Latin. Speaking of beards, aliens to uh Latin beard trimming, church history, any kind of trivia you want to know. These two guys decided to take a stab at it. What was the question that you were you were uh you were perturbed about? Somebody asked the question about did the Holy Spirit work between 500 and 1500 AD? Yeah, that was annoying. Something like that. Somebody asked, like, what happened to the to the church for a thousand years, as if we took a break or something. It's a weird I remember them giving a pretty few. People had different thoughts about the Middle Ages and whether that was a good thing. We forgot to put your beardos picture in here. Tim made a movie movie pick poster. Well, that might be an event that's coming soon. We'll see. Okay. Speaking of me, there's there's me. Next to the women in apologies. My my adopted. I sat in that seat for every session, but um but one. I became my seat. I uh I enjoyed sitting over there. Sorry. All the speakers walked right by you, though. A little extra leg room. You know, I I I do enjoy people don't love the side angle. I I like the side angle. I feel like we should have a side angle at Millington. Okay, this is the first thing we saw. So as we were driving into Knoxville, you can't really see. Take your fingers and pinch this screen a little bit if you're at home. Look behind us. This is the legit three-story facility that houses the cult of the masons, the Masonic Temple with the insignia there. You've got your you've got your protractor there, you've got your your Pentagon or whatever it is. It's not a five-pointed star. Master Mason's hiding on the top left. The pentagram. It's creepy. And then right in front of the building next to the stairs, there's this wheelchair lift that looks like a jail cell, looks like a solitary confinement cell. It was a weird experience. And there were two Masonic temples. Yeah. I discovered a second Masonic Temple when I was when I was walking to lunch the second day. Um, and this one had like a rotating sign, like it was on like Route 66 or something like that in cars. Um as well, you also found another cult member besides the Masons. Oh, yeah, I did encounter a Black Hebrew Israel Israelite. Didn't sp didn't engage him verbally, but he was there. But the clothes gave him away, right? He had that purple shirt with like the you know, if you've seen black Hebrew Israelites, they they wear this shirt. All right. $200 if anybody at home can type in the comments who you think this is right now. Go ahead. Just kind of just kind of post it up right there. Not if for those of you online, he is he is a tall man wearing a quarter zip and he's he's he's in a stand, a wide stance leaning back. Okay, he's all leg. I got trivia for you guys. How do you spell his last name? Uh this is a test. I can do it. This is a test. Can I use can I use a pad and paper? K-N-E-C. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. T K-L E. You are so close. You are so close. It's an there's an H in there somewhere. There's an H in there. K-E-N. In honor of the spelling view that was last week. K-E-N. E-C-H-T-L. No, you're so close. K-N-E. K-N-E. Oh, there's no E-N-E. Okay. Yeah. Cliff Connectly, I think, stole the show, man. He is a peripatetic teacher, which means you walk around like a little bit of a. I just gotta say, I think Dave likes saying the word peripatetic. It's a moment for Belly Peripatetic? I can. I can. I believe you. So he like paces like a like a caged lion uh on the stage and he stretches, especially when it's a deep philosophical point. He leans over like ready to pounce. Cliff was great. Um, John Giro, if you're watching, he's your boy. So I thanked him for you, man. So Cliff Connectly has had a 45-year run of doing open-air preaching QA on college campuses, Purdue, Yale. He's a big deal. And the skill he has, the boldness he has. Can you guys imagine? Would you have the courage to do that? Go over there to the fountain at Rutgers and just grab a bullhorn, start preaching, and then just start taking questions. Would you either of you guys want to do that? I do not know. That I could handle. That that that question I could probably he was saying, actually, fair point. He said, if you don't know, say I don't know for two reasons. The first reason he said is uh it removes the myth that Christians think they know everything, right? And number two, he said it shows a dose of humility which endears you to the audience. So don't be afraid of saying I don't know. A lot of little wisdom nuggets like that from Cliff. So he was great. He was awesome. Two talks from Cliff. This is Bob trying to do the biggest Rubik's Cube in the world. So Knoxville had the World's Fair in 1982, and this cube was there, and you could actually do it, but they took black tape and they taped up the horizontal parts of the cube. You're telling me this is a legitimate, this was not just a sculpture, this was a once legitimately working giant Rubik's cube. Not once. Was it 1982 World Cup? They took black tape and they taped the edges so you could no longer do the cube, but it's a cube. It's the world's largest Rubik's Cube. At least it was in 1982 when they had the World's Fair. Wow, I thought it was just a cool piece of art. Like I understood why it was there. Because the world is very good. I didn't understand like that could have been. In 1982, Rubik's Cubes were were the thing, man. So Bob and I went up to that Sunsphere and they had all these artifacts, including like little Pac-Man ghosts and like high top Nikes before Jordans came out. They had uh a lot of cool stuff from 82, man. G.I. Joes actually came out that year, the little three and a half inch G.I. Joe's, that was when they first were introduced. I thought they should have had like an original Optimus Prime or something. I feel like the weren't the Transformers like the early 80s, the original ones? Around there. Yeah. They were missing that. Maybe they were a couple years later. I don't know. So, all right. That was good. What else we got? Hey, this is the best lunch spot we found. So the World's Fair actually created this fountain area next to UT, and we had the we had the pizza next to the water. We had some pizza. We had some subpar pizza. And then somebody came up behind us with another piece of pizza in a box and were wanted to give it to us. To describe the pizza to you, it is it was it was decent cafeteria style lunch pizza. Oh, by the way, no. Nobody who was Italian was anywhere near the after you left on our way up to the Foothills Parkway. We drove by uh it was what Jersey authentic Jersey claim Yeah, that's right. They claim to have authentic Jersey pizza way up in the uh Smoky Mountains. I saw somebody trying to do something. They're starting to figure it out, man. They're starting to they realize people are realizing that they just don't put so much dough cheese and sauce on your pizza and you put it in a really hot oven and good things happen. Um's got a business idea. It's called pizza. Not the best shot, but Chloe Cole, detransitioner, spoke not only Thursday night but Friday night. She was incredible. What a bold uh young lady. So 21 years old. I think 12 was when they started the puberty blockers, and then eventually she had a full frontal uh chest removal surgery, and then by the time she was 17, she took a class in high school, I think it was health class or something, where they were teaching about motherhood and babies, and she realized she wanted to have a child. And then she decided to detransition. And then after that, she decided to speak out against not only the medical profession but the school administrators and others who are sort of pushing this agenda and caused her no small amount of emotional and physical pain as a result. Gifted teacher, speaker? I found her to be very convicting. Yeah. Chloe Cole. She's very inspiring. She's in the truth rising, right? Yeah. Yeah. So that was good. Hey. There we go. Larry Sunday. Larry Blake. There was a spotting. There was a sighting. So people escape from New Jersey. And we got confirmation that there truly is no good Italian pizza from these guys. Larry and Jan, what's up? We had a good dinner with some old friends. Larry, chair of the missions board, chair of the finance team. Jan is the master of the shoeboxes, Operation Christmas Child. She also worked at Little Footprints. We had a good time. We escaped while Tim was honoring us. I was honoring us at the dinner. We escaped into the there was a cool little downtown area. There was Saturday Knoxville was happening, man. They had produce markets, they had musicians. The produce market was cool. They had carrots. They had lots of carrots. I almost picked up a jar of uh of authentic Tennessee honey from their bees. Check out that sunrise. Can we get on topic here? Look at that. We got to enjoy that outside the window. That was a heck of a view. Now that's the back of the Masonic Temple right there. Except for that building, the rest of the view was gorgeous. I woke up that morning and I look out the window behind me. And so for if anyone knows about like Knoxville, Tennessee, that's where the University of Tennessee is. And the picture doesn't do it justice. The sky was legitimately Tennessee orange. And I I woke up I woke up and I thought I was in a dream because I'm in Knoxville. I'm sleeping on the floor of a hotel room, then two of my bosses are sleeping in. So it's a great, it's quite an experience. I'm in a new state. I've been away from home for a few days, and the sky is legitimately the same color orange as the school. Tennessee orange. I thought I was dreaming. Um but then I realized I was not. So you died and went to heaven. I went to I went to rocky top heaven. Anyway. That's something else, man. So Bob and I went for a little drive. We had a great view. So Larry had said, go see this thing called the Tale of the Dragon, which was a snakey road on the top of a different mountain with the bigger. Then I Googled it, and every single article I found is person dies on Tale of the Dragon, and I decided we're not doing that. I need to look this thing up. This was the what, the Foothills Parkway, I think is what it was. It looks like you got a couple other pictures in here too. Uh we drove through a town that had an establishment called the Swaggy Moose in it. So that was what we went through to get up there. But uh I was impressed with the mountains, this the old smokies right there. So that's called the Foothills Parkway, and it's a great little section. And Bob was wondering why it's called the Smoky Mountains. Do you remember why? It's because the clouds above the mountains look look like the mountains are smoking. I uh when I was in North Carolina. Close enough. A couple days earlier when I was in North Carolina, I was staying up in the mountains and it was raining off and on. Um and so Saturday, not Saturday, whatever day it was, in the morning I went to go drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway to go up to Mount Mitchell, which is the tallest peak of the uh east of the Mississippi, and I was in the smoke. It was really cool. This as it was getting hotter, it was like rising up. It was it was really pretty. So we're bringing back an old uh segment here. Uh we had just inserting a segment a significant amount of chart settings. Uh one of our Pastor Dave Twenge on the floor, slain in the spirit when these cards are paramedics. I didn't even know this author, but Jean Twenge was doing a presentation on the different generations. She wrote a book called Generations. She also wrote a couple other books. And you know how they have the different generations. So she was explaining why the generations are different. Now, this chart is fascinating. So when you were in twelfth grade in 1976, your average age of getting a driver's license was eighty. How many slides are we gonna go through? Was uh let's see. Okay, eight eighty-eight percent of the kids had already got their driver's license in nineteen seventy-six, as opposed to look at today. Only sixty-five percent of the kids have their driver's license today in twelfth grade. So you see all of these activities going on a date, getting a job, trying an alcoholic beverage, which maybe that's a positive one, but all of these behaviors are being delayed. And so she was making the case that um you know kids are growing up in a slower way, in a less independent way. And those are some anecdotes as to why. So, like the big idea is that we complain that kids are 18 and they're not able to get off on their own. And she was making the argument that basically we're not giving them uh it we're not letting them do independent things when they're younger, like uh like uh previous generations did. Like ride your bike to the I remember, yeah. I remember walking to school when I was like eight, you know. I we would go and run around Great Adventure when I was like 12. People don't do that anymore. I don't even know when helmets became a thing with bikes. I never owned a bike helmet. There was a lot of unsupervised outside time. I actually do think that the kids riding around on bikes is coming back. Because it's becoming, but I think people are viewing it as an issue because I think people are so not used to it. So now that we got these kids of these packs of street youths who are riding around on their bikes. Where are their parents? Exactly. Um according to Gene Twenge, they were playing, what is it, playing Bridge? Packs of street youths. Packs of street youth. Anyway, uh, next chart here. We gotta go rapid fire on these chairs. Yeah, we don't have to go through them all, but you can see this is like the religious one. So have you ever attended a religious service? Back in 76, 87% of twelfth graders had, as opposed to today, look at that. Sixty eight percent. And so there's a lot of people who've never been to church, who've never been to a church, who've never attended anything. Like there's it's a 30% drop. That's that's wild. It's true, but notice also she's making the point over the last 30 years we've seen this steady decline. But you if you notice at the end, there's been like a big uh a little kick-up. Oh, yeah. And so the question is if there's been a vibe shift, a quiet revival, and they talked all about that. Yeah. Uh the jury is still out. We'll see where that line goes. These these I took these with my angle stunk, so I apologize. But look, this is where you get married. So they were getting married the 21, man. Very early, and now it's late 20s for for not only marriage, but first child. That's for women. All right, next one. It's only going up. Okay. So this is like, okay. You know, we've we've kind of lived through the self-esteem movement, and in terms of confidence and positivity amongst 18-year-olds, it's only gone up. We've had a every single category, whether your your ability to lead, your intellectual self-confidence, your your uh work, you know, whether you're a good worker. All of all all of all of the rankings have increased. Has there been an actual increase in these abilities, or is it just a perceived psychological increase in these abilities? That's uh the jury's out on that. So that that was an interesting chart. This one is uh kids. Do you want to have kids? Notice the down downward trend there. Not that I mean she didn't do a hundred points. It's only purple, though. The point was the purple is the women, the women really don't want to have kids. Yeah, which is interesting. It's a 10-point drop for the ladies. Yeah. And then this is the last one we have on here. Okay, so these are just some conclusions. So here's what's going on. We got more time online, we got less time in person, we're not sleeping as well. And she's okay, so she said that started before COVID. Yeah. So the depression and the mental health crisis and the anxiety that's being reported, she says is really attributed not so much to the pandemic stuff, but to the smartphones. So she pointed it to 2012 when more people had smartphones than nothing. Oh, difficulty concentrating. Yeah. So and then there's the purple stuff is like, oh, yeah, that too. Like political stuff and the world is on fire. So, you know, please delay giving your children these devices as long as you're not going to be able to do that. Do not get them on the internet. That's a problem. A profound point, maybe to put a bow on it, was that uh people think that uh, you know, when previous generations would send their kids out unsupervised, and now we've sort of uh you know gone against that and we want to make sure that they're always supervised physically, but we don't have as much supervision when they're online. And the thought is that, well, if they're out there uh, you know, in the physical world without being supervised, they're not safe, but if they're next to me but online, they are safe, and that's not true. That there's a lot of dangerous stuff that's happening out there on the on the interwebs. That's an irrational thought. Yeah. And so the social media is there, especially things like let's say if your kid downsloads downloads Snapchat and then they start interacting with a stranger, you can go from two steps from Snapchat, some them someone sends them a link to OnlyFans. Now they're in a porn site, they click one box that says I'm 18, and they're being like inundated with the gr most graphic stuff you can imagine. So just because your kid's at home in their bedroom, it might seem like they can't be getting into too much trouble or they're safe up there. That's not true at all. So uh give them more freedom on their bikes outside, let them walk to school, but be more careful about what you're allowing them to do on the devices. Indeed. Um, yeah, so I think we're we're nearing the end of our Colson conversation here, but I do want to shout out uh the 11 other members of my MBC uh Colson Fellow graduating class. I'm not gonna say all the names, but you know who you are if you're watching. Um we didn't get pictures of the people that were there? We did not. Pastor Dave was too enamored by the charts. That's okay. We're gonna we're gonna post them on social media. I didn't take those pictures. We're gonna post some on social media. Um Tim's got some good high def stuff. Hopefully. Tim, how did you feel walking across the stage? Tim's name was sh was rung out. By the way, how long did you have to wait for your name to get called, man? You thought it was a big class. You were the kaboose. I was I was the third, I thought it was the third to last. It turns out I was the fifth to last, which is okay. It was a while, but it was cool. I clapped for everybody. How big was your class? 2500 or something. It was a big long time. Well, the conference was 2500. I don't know. I think there was like 1,600, um, but there was only around 500 that were there. And you guys was was third from the end. Yeah, it was it was cool. Um, I I had never experienced any sort of graduation ceremony like thing before that I've participated in. Uh when I was in high school, I didn't go to my graduation ceremony because I went to nationals for track and field. Uh, I didn't graduate college. Uh so this is my first time walking across the stage and receiving some sort of thing and getting a handshake by a guy who knows more than I do. So um it was it was really cool. And I I really recommend the program to anyone who wants to do it. Um, you learn a lot. Um, it's funny, I I told myself that I was ready to be done with all the reading and all the all the all the types of reading that we did going through the program. And next thing I know, I'm I'm ordering six books from Carl Truman and Gene Twangy and and Osaginnis that I'm looking forward to begin reading. So it it really does um get you excited to for learning. Readers are leaders. So I think a good way to to um to wrap this segment up is is a quick 60-second or less exhortation from each of us to our listeners. Um, one takeaway that you got from the the conference that you think would be good for um our listeners. So, Pastor Dave, why don't we put you on the hot seat, then we'll go, Pastor Robin. We'll end with me. All right. Um, you know, my favorite moment there was from Cliff Connectly. He did two talks mostly focused on evangelism. And then one of the things that I thought was super helpful was his desire to genuinely understand the person that was right in front of him, using Christ as his model, that Jesus was very focused on the person right in front of him. And for him, that was always the most important person. So Cliff Connectly had an ability to empathize, to listen, and what he described as this, and this might help you. So evangelism is introducing somebody to your best friend named Jesus, and then it is feeling around the rim of their life for a crack and then applying the gospel to that particular crack. And I thought that was a really helpful way to think about sharing Christ. And if you get a chance to Google Cliff Connectly, I think he's got some great stuff out there. Lots of other good speakers there, but he was one of the highlights for me. So that was uh my my top takeaway. All right. Well, I guess my my takeaway, I I uh he was good. Um I I in I always enjoy Carl Truman. Carl Truman gave like five talks, and his uh new book, The Desecration of Man, I I was one of the books I picked up on the way out. I thought he did a good job of highlighting what the issue of the day is as it relates to anthropology. Everybody was talking about the question, what does it mean to be human? And that applies to the transgender conversation, the artificial intelligence conversation. Um so I thought they gave some really helpful ideas of r remembering what it means to be made in the image of God and to be an image bearer and to and to live an embodied life. Um there also was a great um uh breakout session on use of AI uh and how to think about that from the Christian Christian perspective. Um so yeah, so my my big takeaway was uh that think about what it means to be human and uh Chloe Coles, actually her, I think her her main uh one one of the one of the statements she made that I I think of is uh courage uh courage is contagious, and so we need to be people who courageously stand up to the untruths of the day. So that was a big takeaway for me. Yeah, so for me, as I mentioned, um I was commissioned in in Knoxville as a Colson Fellow. Um and so I really enjoyed all of the um all this all the different speakers, but you know, I think the commissioning uh talk in in particular was what stood out to me by Dr. Bill Brown. Pastor Dave mentioned a bit of this that Cliff said when um I wasn't there, but this is also gonna be part of mine. Um one of the things that I love about the Colson Fellows program is that like on a at a glance, it's very you think it's very intellectual, you think it's very, you know, thought first, but it really is, they really do focus on how we should be living. One of the books by Chuck Colson himself is called How Now Shall We Live, um, talking about how we how we as Christians, with this thought and this worldview, because of the worldview that we have, how should we actually be living? And so Bill Brown said uh two things to me, uh not to me, uh he's talking to everybody, but first was uh the person who Jesus was the person in Jesus' mystery who was most important to him at any moment was the guy who was right in front of him. Um and then he told the story about um this man who was able to impact on a bus, who was a bus driver and he was very big and scary, and he gave him a tip because he drove him a long way at an awkward hour. Um, and and it turned into this really amazing experience. And Bill Brown said, Um, I got to be part of his life for just a moment. And I wrote down in my notes, how can I be part of somebody's life for just a moment? Um I think that there's so many, so many times we feel like, oh, this is just some person I don't know, like how can I actually make an impact for Christ? When you can, like you can see somebody on the street, someone in the grocery store, someone, you know, on the side of the road in the city somewhere, you you don't know, but you can you can make an impact for Christ in their life in just a 30-second or less um interaction. Um, and so I I think that's really important for us to think about um as we work on being more Christ-like um in our lives. Uh yeah, so those were some really key and awesome takeaways. And before we get to the next segment, since I'm sitting here, uh we can I'll do some ads, and we're only gonna have one ad for the entirety of this program that's gonna be repeated over and over and over again this Sunday at 4 o'clock in Parsippony, New Jersey at Liquid Church. We are having our 175th anniversary worship service. We're gonna be celebrating our 175 years with a worship service. There's gonna be a lot of really cool things. We're really excited for it. You do not want to miss it. There's no church on Sunday. Uh, please sign up. Even if you don't sign up, we want you to. But like if you don't, if you forget to sign up, that doesn't mean you can't come. We just want to know that you're coming. So sign up and come. Um and now I'm gonna turn it over to my It's gonna be a moment. It's gonna be momentous for sure. Uh now I'm gonna kick it over to my boss, colleague, and friend, Pastor Bob Ford in the news. Well, I think this is a good segment to uh to segue from after uh our discussion on the Coulson uh conference and the Coulson Fellows program, because part of what uh becoming a Coulson Fellow is is to think about the world, all of the world, from a Christian worldview. So not just I go to church on Sunday, uh, I get you know biblical teaching, that's great, that's necessary, but then how do I take that out and see all of the world in light of what scripture teaches us? Uh so that's what we'll we'll try to do with some of these news stories. Um I'm gonna mention one, Dave's got one. Uh the first one I want to highlight, which you may have seen and doesn't get as much um coverage here in America, is the current Ebola outbreak that's happening over in the Democratic Republic of Congo. So if you've ever seen the movie from the 90s outbreak with Dustin Hoffman, there was this crazy virus where people like almost everybody that got it died, uh, lots of blood coming out of their eyes, and it was pretty gruesome. That's the Ebola virus. It's like no joke. And uh for some reason it always pops up uh in the middle of Africa. Um that's where it kind of lives and and has its uh its its uh its its uh its point zero, I guess. Um there's a couple different strains of it. The first one is the Xyre strain, and we actually now have uh vaccines and treatments for the Xyre strain. Uh but about a month ago there was a new uh a less common strain, but one that we can't treat that popped up, and it started this outbreak in in the Congo. And so I think over a thousand people have been infected. Uh a lot of those people have died, I think it was two or three hundred people. I I hear I've been reading recently that a few people are now recovering from it. Uh but it's it's a very dangerous virus, and uh, you know, the response, people have been criticizing it for being slow, uh, although it's picking up. I know the World Health Organization has gone in there. Um some some of the CDC for Africa have gone in there, and so I I think that's something to be aware of. Uh so you can read online about all the different details, but I wanted to comment and just say that um even though we don't pay attention to that, these stories over in Africa probably as much as we should, there is a Christian worldview of looking at it. And uh one of the things the Colson Fellows program teaches us to think about is the story of God in three parts or four parts creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. And so the creation uh element of that story tells us that every patient, every person is an image-bearer of God. And so when you hear about people dying, it's not just cases and numbers and risks, but uh people who are our our neighbors and uh people who are made in God's image, and we should care about that. Uh a disease like Ebola is part of the fall. It's not the way it's supposed to be, you know, and so whether the uh response is good or bad, it can expose uh problems in the healthcare system, and that's that's an element of the fall. Christians should always be asking themselves, how can I bring redemption into this situation? How can I be Christ in the middle of this um this crisis? Uh one of the things I've seen recently is that Samaritan's Purse that's run by Franklin Graham, his organization, they have sent people over there to be the hands and feet of Jesus, putting themselves at risk to care for people. In fact, there was also an American missionary uh doctor who who was there treating people caught Ebola, and then he went up to Germany and got treated. So those are people that are really living out the uh uh their Christian worldview. And then even though those things happen, there's there's an element of restoration that one day Jesus is gonna come back, he's gonna um heal the nations, he's gonna end disease, he's gonna make this world right and bring justice into it. And so when crazy things like Ebola happen, we can always look to the future and know that Jesus is coming back. So I guess the challenge today for you would be to think about in in when I hear about situations like this, how can I bring the redemption of Christ into those uh situations? How can I pray for those people? Uh John Stone Street said at the conference, you know, sometimes we say, um, or maybe it was the uh the guy for the guy from the uh abortion talk, um, he said, sometimes we say, Oh, I'm just gonna pray about that, and praying is not doing nothing. Praying is doing what we're called to do. So we should pray for Africa, pray for people affected by this, and try to be involved as much as we can. So that's going on in the news, the Ebola crisis. Pastor Dave. Well, I agree with everything you've said, 99%, except outbreak was not about Ebola. Outbreak outbreak was about a fiction fictional virus called the Motaba virus or something like that. Oh there was uh some similarities thing, but the movie was way more severe than Ebola. So Pastor Bob just scared the heck out of our audience there. But that one. But Ebola is nasty, and we definitely want to be able to get a lot of people. If you look at the thing they put up there, it did look like it looks kind of like the Ebola. There is similarities. Yeah. So the second news story is something more from SBC. Um, I know we're CB, but this is something that happened. Uh, I think that's worthy of our mentioning. So in the SBC, there's a yearly conference. It's coming up, I think, in Florida this year. Orlando, man. Orlando. Al Moller put out a video a couple weeks ago, and they they you remember in Lord of the Rings when they have the lighting of the beacons at the tops of the mountains? As soon as Al Moller put the beacons put the video out. Gondor calls for aid. Yes. So he's going to propose something from the floor, and the SBC draws like 20,000 people, so you can't just like walk up to a microphone and you know make a motion. They plan these agendas weeks and months in advance. And Al Moller has put together something called the Truth and Unity Amendment. It is a proposed amendment to the constitution of the SBC that will be considered next month. And the amendment basically adds a requirement for SBC churches to be in what they call friendly cooperation with the SBC. Here's the language. Um, a cooperating church, quote, does not act to affirm, appoint, or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor, elder, overseer, etc., such as preaching in the assembled congregation. So this is being proposed to limit the office of pastor to men, as we see in 2 Timothy. The office appears to have that kind of restriction for many reasons. There's been a lot of controversies uh in SBC churches with women serving in pastoral roles, and I think Moeller wants to kind of put this issue back to bed once and for all and get it into their documents to say here's how we do things. And it's somewhat controversial. I'm sure it's not going to be 100% unanimous, but this is a big, huge amendment that's coming up. But it's a little different than a couple years ago. There was another there was another attempt to do this on something called the law amendment. And um that one didn't go through. Um I think you needed I think uh the requirement was two-thirds, two-thirds vote to get that to go through, and it didn't make it. So they're kind of trying again with this one, and that's a key debate that's gonna maybe be decided in a couple weeks here. Will there be only male pastors in in this particular d denomination? So that's kind of something that's pretty big in the news. We'll keep you posted on whether or not that passes. I don't know. What do you guys think about that? Well, I uh I like it, but uh it's it's gonna it's there's been some uh there's been some beacons lit on the other side. So we're gonna see uh what happens. And uh, you know, like a lot of places, we're gonna see what the voter turnout is and who's on who's on what side. Yeah. Um I think Beth Moore tweeted out that she wasn't really that excited about this one. Yep, yep. And then Elisa Childers was commenting on it, and there's uh it's gonna be interesting. So Katie Faust tweeted about it, I think it was last night. And she had like a list of 20 reasons why she was supportive of the male pastor amendment, and it was really well thought out. And she was basically making the case that God has set up society in such a way that when men lead, this is really, really good for women flourishing, especially in a church context. Um, if you're on X, check out her post from last night. Katie Faust did a fantastic job, just like being a voice of female support for an amendment that appears to be like without a whole lot of substantial uh thought behind it, it appears to be somewhat um restrictive. Katie Faust, we just found out, new Colson fellow. She graduated, although I don't think they called her name. I don't think she was there. She wasn't there, but she did go. We did learn she went through the program this year. Jackie Kennedy was there, though. Jackie Kennedy. I got a kick out of that. So was Bob Evans. And uh I had to look up my I was focusing elsewhere, and then I heard Jackie Kennedy. I'm like, oh, whoa, whoa, who's this? So speaking of all this, um, I just have a quick story from from the weekend. Um, so we during worship on Sunday, we sang It Is Well, and the worship pastor um who was leading worship split, you know, it is well, it is well, split the men and the women up um into the call and refrain part. And I remember closing my eyes and just listening to the voices, and for the first time in my whole life, it just I had this beautiful there was a thousand something people in the room, and you hear the women by themselves just singing, and it was beautiful. And then the men sang by themselves, and it was beautiful, but it was completely different. They both complimentary very and then they came together, and it was the most beautiful of them all when they came together and they actually sang together as one. I'm just like, this is I I got I kind of got teared up. I kind of got emotional because like I I'm having this like through music, like it's it's right there, like the beauty that God has created in men and women individually, and then how it comes together, it's it's it's very obvious to me, even just through there through music. So it was wonderful. That's a that's a wonderful uh observation about that that powerful moment. Yeah, it was a great moment. By the way, Bart Millard uh of Mercy Me put out a new song and it's based on that hymn, but it's called Make It Well. Make it well with my soul. If you guys haven't heard that song, it's really good. Okay. I really enjoyed it. It was like it was a what do they call that? A banger? What do the kids call that? Well, uh well, they're not calling them, they're not calling them that anymore. Oh, that's old. I can I can only imagine, Pastor Dave. Nice, good one. Uh really. I saw what you did there. One last bit of we'll I'll do this very quickly. We would be remiss as a church in New Jersey to not talk about the fact that the New York Knicks are going to the NBA final. New York Knakas enjoy the Saturday night go uh game together. We got to watch, I think a nail biter man watching a neck and neck Saturday night, but the Spurs with tears in his eyes. Wemby told the Thunder where to go, man. He's amazing. So that's gonna be an interesting, fun series. I think Friday night is when it starts the sixth Knicks versus uh No, no, it starts the third. Oh, it starts the third? Yeah, it's starting up, man. Oh, this Wednesday. Yeah, man. Starting on Wednesday. New York Knickerbacks check out the finals, the New York Knicks. Stephen A. Smith. He loves Stephen A. Stiff, he loves the show. Shout out Stephen A. Uh, he is watching. I get a lot of emails from him. He has to be a guest, right? Yeah, just so we know. What are you predicting here, Tim? What did you what did you say was gonna happen? I mean, it's next month. Knicks and four, guys. Come on, Knicks and four. The Knicks are gonna win it all. Can they stop the big guy? I mean, that guy is. You cannot edit that out. That's your prediction. Well, I gotta edit something else out. You told me that guy was uh 7-5 and still growing. 7-4 going on 7-5. Um no, I I mean I I so I'm not a Knicks fan. I don't really watch the NBA like that. I'm a fraud. I watched them during the playoffs. I'm more of a hockey guy. But you know, I want the local team to do well. Um, I don't think the Knicks are gonna win in four. Um I actual prediction. Give me Knicks in You're still going Knicks. Knicks and six, they get it done at the garden. You think they'll do it? I think Knicks are gonna do it. Okay. Okay. It's gonna be. The Knicks, listen, the Knicks, they made a deep playoff run last year. Um, the San Antonio Spurs have a lot of young talent on that team that hasn't made a deep run. I think they're gonna, as we saw with the Montreal Canadians in the conference final of the NHL playoffs, I think they're gonna run out of steam. Uh Wemby blows another one like he did in the Olympics last year, I think. Knicks and six. Woo! You do know the Spurs are favored over the Knicks, right? Yep. So we're uh so so we're that's okay. You know what? So was Goliath over David pastor. Most sports books. So was the Soviet Union over the United States back in 1980. So was Canada over the United States here in Milan Cortina, Nixon 6. Anyway, now it is time to tell you about that. We have a 175th anniversary service coming on Sunday. Um, it we won't have church at the normal times. It's at Liquid Church in Parsippony. Please come. And now it is time for book recommendations, and we have Fan of the Year 2 award. So who would like to go first to recommend their book? I'll make it quick. I mentioned it before. Um, I'll say it again. He's a legend. He was awarded the Wilberforce, William Wilberforce uh what is it, Cultural Engagement Award or whatever they call it there in the Colson Center. Os Guinness wrote this book a few years ago now, Magna Carta of Humanity. I I just now discovered, based on his talk this weekend, what he was talking about in terms of like why is America unique? You know, you ask a lot of people. People like even MAGA people. Well, what made America great? And he took some some time to actually answer that question. And his his main thesis was that America's very different because it's based on a covenant. And it's a a freedom-based covenant that's really um something that was modeled in the book of Exodus. So anyway, Magna Carta of Humanity, Sinai's Revolutionary Faith, and the Future of Freedom. He will explain more about that in this book. Please check it out. I think he's uh prophetic, articulate, I believe Tim said he was worth listening to all night long, right? I think I think the good Lord put a little bit extra of the Imago Day in his vocal cords. That's true. Tim Tim uh The Republic falls asleep listening to his audiobooks every night. I do sleep. I will have to say that was a book recommendation from the two-time now book war champion. Yeah, Pastor David Mitchell. I will take this time. Oh no, we're gonna wait for the sprint for that. Never mind. So that's Os Guinness. It's it's a moment right here for us. And check it out. What do you guys got? Civilizational. Alright. Well, one of the speakers I did we didn't mention, he spoke at the end, is a guy named Abdu Murray. Uh and he spoke on AI. So he's got a book out called uh which I picked up called Fake ID, how AI and Identity Ideology are collapsing reality and what to do about it. So he talks in here. Oh, and here's his uh here's his card. Um we've actually engaged him. Maybe he'll uh maybe he'll come and speak at one of our events. We technically had breakfast with him yesterday. We we did. We saw him in the in the breakfast room. I thanked him for his talk. You did? So you say thank you. Something like that. So he he's uh he's you guys are stealing my time here. He's he's a he's a uh former Muslim, and he had a powerful story about uh how he uh uh uh was at a college campus and God God sovereignly ordained for him to speak to another former Muslim and helped her get baptized. Um But anyway, it in the book he talks about the current artificial intelligence issues, how to think about that. He he talks about what he calls AI mania. And he did say at the beginning he's not against AI, he uses it, but uh there's ways to do it responsibly, and he kind of walks through underlying philosophical issues with it as well as uh how to how to handle it from a good biblical perspective. So uh fake ID, that's uh Abdu Murray. Abdu. Uh he was good. My favorite quote from him, well, I'm gonna get this wrong, but he was talking about like the blue screen of the iPhone and how much better it is to like connect with someone emotionally, face to face, person to person, body to body. And he said something like the blue phone from the iPhone, the blue light from the iPhone is being replaced by the glory of God and the face of Jesus Christ. I was like, man, that guy can put together a line. Good speaker. He was great. Yeah. So my book, um, I don't get to do these book recommendations very often. Um, pay close attention. So this is a this is a hidden gem right here. This is a book um called Why You Think the Way You Do by Dr. Glenn Sunshine. He was the guy with the beard that we were talking about before. Um, this is a book that was recommended for me, not recommended, required uh for me to read to go through the Colson Fellows program this year. Um, and this is really cool. I really enjoyed this. Uh Dr. Glenn Sunshine is a historian. Um he teaches at Central Connecticut State University and he teaches history. Uh and what this book really is, it's called The Story of Western Worldviews from Rome to Home. So he he starts in ancient Rome, uh kind of explains what the cultural landscape was like in Rome, and then how Christianity kind of set into Rome and took you from crit from ancient Rome, how Christianity affected that all the way through the medieval times, um, into into early England and Ireland, um, and then what it looks like for us today, um, and you know, different cultural worldviews that we're seeing today, um, and how a lot of the ways we are returning to a lot of the uh ideals and uh worldviews of of what we saw back in ancient Rome before Christianity um was was implemented by Constantine and Theodosius um in ancient Rome. So um I really recommend this book. It's good. Um I I I got to talk to Glenn um and I got to thank him for this book. And I said, I have a friend who um who the who doesn't think Christianity is good for society, and he thinks he's told me he thinks it's the worst thing that's ever happened to the world. Um and Glenn sent Glenn thought that was really funny, uh, but I I thanked them for that because this if you if you know anybody who struggles with Christianity's impact on the world, um this is a great book um to read to help you with that. Um so why do you think the way you do still teaching over there? Or uh I don't know. He's he's he's retired from college teaching. Yeah, he's got his own ministry called Every Square Inch Ministries and stuff. Well, when this was published, he was a teacher that he was, yeah. He retired a few years ago. Just to nerd out on everybody, just a second. So Constantine basically put together the Edict of Milan, made it legal for Christianity to exist as a licit religion in the Roman Empire, and every single emperor was Christian after Constantine until Julian became emperor in 361, who's Julian the apostate, and he actually removed all the Christian curriculum from the schools, tried to resurrect the Greco-Roman temples, tried to bring the priests back, persecuted the Christians again, wrote books saying Christianity is stupid, Jesus wasn't God, he was only emperor for 18 months, then he died, and he was taken over by another Christian emperor until we got now to Theodosius, which was in 380. And Theodosius is the guy who actually mandated that Christianity is the official religion of the Roman Emperor Empire, and so from there on out we had the Christian influence in the whole Roman world. There you go. Wow, a little nerding out there for you guys. So I love it when a recommendation or a requirement becomes a recommendation. See what just happened right there? How about that? Um, so a couple weeks ago, the last time we had the show, we teased that we are going to be awarding the fan of the year. If you remember, all the way at the beginning, we were trying to figure out how do we get people to vote for the Great Book War. Um there can only be one. Except for this time, where there are two. Um so Except for this time we have two fans of the year that we're going to award. Would that be the fan of the year? The fans, the fans of the year. Uh the first fan of the year. Not only fans. They are gonna there's a lot I have to edit out of this episode. Um the first fan of the year. Uh, we're gonna figure out how we're gonna reward you, is uh our very known John Bucksbaum. Congratulations. Where's the picture? No picture. John, John, John, John, John, John, John, John, John. We had a lot of Grove City references in our conference, man. John's son goes to Grove City. Oh. It was Grove City everywhere. It was like Truman called Truman. He pitches at Grove. He just called this Grove. I'm at Grove. I've been at Grove for many years. Yeah. And then yesterday at Millington, we heard from Jack Krause, who uh went to Grove and got kicked out of Grove twice. Twice? Yeah. Uh Grove, man. It's coming a lot, coming up a lot lately. Sabrina Harold uh of currently of MBC goes there. I've I've driven through it once. Uh congratulations to Melissa Claybow, who is our second year. Both John Buckspawn and Melissa Claybow. Uh I feel like we have to do a chant for Melissa now because we did one for John. Melissa. Melissa. Melissa. Melissa. Melissa. I think we should go Claybo. Claybow. Claybo, Claybo, Claybo. Congratulations, we're going to figure out a way to reward you. But those are two fans of the year. If you were disappointed that you're not the fan of the year, um. So what was what was the requirements for being fan of the year? Um what was the rubric? They just they they voted for the book war every single week. They did. And both of them, as as like both of them have come up to me a couple times. Let you be warned and talked about. Don't skip a week of voting. And you know, they compliment the show. They um so I I we we appreciate when you guys come and talk to us about the show. So uh speaking of church and pastors, because that's what we do here, uh, we just had a sermon series going through the book of 2 Timothy, and we just wrapped it up uh yesterday. Jack, speaking of Jack Krauss, he talked about Fred the eunuch. Uh, we're not gonna talk about that today. We're gonna be talking about the last two sermon meetings to talk to about. Um, and then we're gonna go through and kind of recap our second Timothy series. So you guys want to take us through the last two sermons that you guys did? Um, I believe Pastor Bob went first and then Pastor Dave wrapped it up. So if we want to go in that order and then we'll Sure. We uh Second Timothy chapter four. What what is there to say about that? Well, I I had verses one to five, and uh the title of the sermon was Itching Ears in a Swiping World. There was uh the famous um uh verse in here where Paul talks about in the in you know in the end people are gonna want their ears to be to be itched. And so I I spoke a lot in here about um people getting caught up in myths. Uh use the analogy of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 570 or 370 that disappeared a number of years ago, and uh connect that at that in with the idea of uh conspiracy theories and how in our in our world of internets and apps we tend to swipe to things that we we don't like. And so I talked about how that applies to other types of gospels, gospel narratives, and then we we walked through uh each of these uh each of these uh these points. So the main question was how should Christians respond to the myths of our age? And we we saw how Paul offered uh the charge to Timothy, which was preach the word. Uh he offered the uh the warning to Timothy, which was we live in an age of itching ears, and then we talked about finally uh the work, which is fulfill your ministry, and there was all these imperatives at the end that we we spoke about and uh finished off with a little preview for what Pastor Dave spoke about uh for the rest of chapter three. Chapter four uh chapter four rather, sorry, concluded by uh I think a good example of somebody who finished well. So that was really the theme. And there's a lot of different ways you could go with that passage, but I just decided to teach six principles for finishing well. I'll just go through them. So, number one, you finish well by seeing your life as an offering to God. Paul saw his life as a drink offering, that's the way we see our lives. Number two, you finish well by staying faithful all the way through the entire race. You fight the good fight, you finish, and Paul was a finisher. That's why we love stories of tenacity, perseverance. That's why we uh loved the movie Rocky, the greatest movie in 1977. Because that guy endured all the way to the end. So you finish well by sticking to things to the end. Number three, you finish well by living for eternal rewards, not present comfort. Uh the contrast there was there's Paul finishing well versus this guy, Demas, who loved this present world, and that's a draw toward all of us. Number four, you finish well uh because you continue ministry to the end. What you want really is not to retire and collect shells and drive your you know RV between north and south for 10 years. What you want is to continue serving God, using your gifts all the way to the end, and let death like interrupt your ministry. Um, and that's what Paul was doing. Right at the end, he's still dispatching like five different people to different areas. The gospel is not bound. Paul's working right up until the end, even though he's in jail, and that's the way we need to be too. We need to continue ministry right up until the end. Number five, you finish well by trusting Christ when people fail you. Paul was failed by several friends who abandoned him. They were not standing by him in his trial. But he says, Don't I don't hold it against them. The Lord stood by me. And I think that's a great way to think about how to engage with life when people let you down. Um, such a different attitude towards church hurt nowadays. People get hurt by the church, like, I'm out of here. That's not really what Paul did when he was let down, or when people disappointed him as part of the Christian church, he took that as an opportunity to trust Christ more. And I think that's a good example. And then number five, you finish well by passing the faith on to the next generation, passing the faith forward. That's really the whole point of the whole letter. That's why we did this series. Second Timothy is a little bit like the four by one one hundred relay. You know, one guy takes off, then they're, you know, going stick, and then number two, and then number three, and then number four, stick. This is Paul at the end of his life going stick to Timothy. And he wants to continue this ministry long after he's gone, which, by God's grace, the church continues to march on 2,000 years later. And it's a great really reminder for all of us that that's what we're doing individually, and that's really what we're trying to do as a church as we celebrate our first 175 years. How are we thinking about this generationally? How are we thinking about the people that aren't even here yet? How are we preparing to have God continue to use this church long after we're gone? Because when you think that far out, you begin to get outside of yourself, and really that's how you make a difference. Uh, so that's what we want to be about as a church, and that's really what we're gonna celebrate this coming Sunday at our service, our combined service. 175 years. If the Lord should tarry, what do we want him to do the next 175 years? And so that's a little preview of where we're headed for this coming Sunday. Second Timothy, I hope that really um was a convicting book. I hope that was a warm, um, nourishing study in the Bible, and I hope there's some truth there that all of us can can take away. Good series, really enjoyed um spending some time in that four-chapter letter. So glad we got a chance to do that. Yeah. So um I have a couple questions for you guys to kind of just, you know, recap the series. Um, so obviously we know Timothy, not Timothy, Paul was, you know, on his last legs. He was in prison. He uh was instilling a lot of putting it. He was passing on, passing the faith, passing on a lot of wisdoms. Um you guys obviously did the work, you guys went through, you guys wrote all the sermons, you preached them. Um in your what would you say is is the most important lesson that Paul taught that you guys came across in in uh in 2 Timothy. For me, it's chapter 4, Karukson Tan Lagon. That Greek phrase is etched in my mind, like translated those non-Greek readers. Preach the word. All three of those words are really critical. The word doesn't just need to be taught or explained. God's word is so beautiful and the gospel is so beautiful, it deserves to be heralded, it deserves to be preached. The word, there is nothing like the Bible, and the word is really the centerpiece of what we're talking about. I don't have that much to say, but this book is inexhaustible in its riches and treasures, and that's what we're here to convey. So, chapter four is a little bit of a life calling for me. I feel like that's what I would love to be uh, by God's grace, known for doing for my whole ministry. I I really am convicted by those words, and I feel there's a real uh opportunity for us in our generation to continue that calling 2,000 years later to preach the word. That's not just for preachers, by the way. I think that verse applies to any particular uh calling that you find yourself in. So you can herald the good news in a one-on-one coffee. You can you can preach the word in so many different settings. Moms, you can preach the word to your kids. Uh, you can preach the word in s in a variety of different environments, but we're all called in some way, shape, or form to do that. That was my top takeaway. So I think that's good. That's obviously one of the most famous verses of um of uh of chapter uh of of Tim uh Second Timothy. I think the thing that I would say that I thought was a theme that came up over and over again is the idea of um having an authentic faith that's gonna stand the test of trials. Um so I think back to the um the end of chapter two, I did I did a message on the the what I call the sanctified life. And uh but but Paul so Paul is talking about how you have to have a life that is very much uh you're not it's not it's not a fantasy, it's not just something that's easy, it's something that's gonna cost you, right? And then he keeps going on with that theme in chapter in chapter three as well. Um, because this is the guy, like you said, who's on his, if we want to say he's on his last legs, but this guy was about to die, and he was gonna die, particularly because of his faith in Christ. People are not visiting him in prison because if they're associated with him, they may lose their life too. So if you are somebody who's gonna give your life for something, you better be you're gonna be motivated by the fact that it's something that has really transformed your life, and you want to finish the race well. Uh and so it, you know, he rings out in chapter four, I've I fought the good fight, I finished the race, um, I've kept the faith. So I I think it is a it is a call for uh for me to be courageous, to be known for following after Jesus, even when times get tough, and even when the culture turns um against us and even when people turn against us that we love. We need to our our first allegiance must be to Jesus Christ. And I think that that was um the main theme that Paul brings up over and over again through through Second Timothy. Yes, Frank Turk would say Paul was an overtime. Um so second to last question, I got three for you guys. Um a lot of I feel like we heard the theme of like endurance um and finishing strong a lot, kind of like you you were just saying. Why do you think it's very easy, it would seem, for Christians to start very well, but potentially have a hard time finishing well. Why do you think that's difficult? In chapter four, he talks about I got demons who love this present world, and what I said was um how you finish is based on what you love. I think there is an allure. There's a you know, Celestial City is a long way off, and Vanity Fair is right there in front of us. And at times, uh, you know, to use the acronym HALT, a lot of times people use that acronym to talk about when we're most susceptible to being drawn away towards the things of this world when you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired. When we're looking for immediate relief, when we're looking for predictable comfort, as Dan Bove would say, uh, which by the way, chapter two, we've spent a lot of time on that issue of lust. There's things in this world that can really um be used by the devil to bait us, and he loves to show us the bait, hide the hook, and it's so easy for us to slip away, fall away, and uh I think none of us are immune to that. Uh, we see this happening um even in the first century with people that were with Paul, but we certainly see that happening in the 21st century. So um I think you can you can wander away in a variety of different capacities, but it's always an intentionality to stay the course and finish well. Like you can easily get out of shape, and it doesn't take a whole lot of effort or thought, right? But to always stay in shape requires the constant sort of mindset of maintenance and uh a uh diligence there, a perseverance, right? Dave Ramsey always says you can wander into debt, you can't wander out. So, like you have to really fight to finish well. So that's a daily effort, and I think you know, sometimes we have a variety of reasons for getting off the beaten path. But may we together as a group project um hold each other accountable to follow through on our sanctification all the way to the very end. Yeah, I think in in chapter three, uh the first part of chapter three, um, Paul writes, but understand this that in the last days there will come times of difficulty uh for people who will be lovers of self. And that's that's a big theme in those uh the first half of that chapter. And uh I think it was um Dave that turned me on to this when I was going going through and some feedback in the in the run through. But one of the main themes of the Bible in general, not just Timothy, is that um you don't find people that struggle to love and live for themselves. We struggle to live for and love God. And so by nature, we are selfish people who want to we're we're we're constantly turned inward on ourselves. We love pleasure rather than being lovers of God. And so it's very easy to get distracted because this world is gonna constantly pop things up, you know, and give us enticements. Uh you know, that's that's part of what um uh Paul's saying in chapter four about the itching ears. People will know just how to how to scratch your ears and get you distracted. And we have this underlying theme of the youthful passions, which you talked about in chapter chapter uh two. Um there's things that we're gonna constantly be drawn to that we have to fight against. And so the Christian life is a constant. Fighting against my carnal desires and putting myself under the lordship of Christ, even when uh it doesn't feel good, but it's yet the best thing for me. And so people don't usually like to do that. Uh we tend to we have a tendency to want to do what's easy, not what's hard. And so if there's there's uh things in this world that just know how to how to itch our ears, um uh it's very easy to get off the uh off the the goal that Paul that God has for us. So a lot. I actually have two more um since you mentioned what's easy and what's hard. Um last two questions are gonna be talking about the church. Um what is one thing that you guys and this kind of connects with the Colson discussion too, and kind of what the Colson Center and the Colson Fellows are about. What is what is something that you guys think the American church needs to be better about, being more courageous about? Well, I I heard a lot about um there was a challenge that we were given. You weren't there for the church leader summit, but John Stone Street in a in a moment of uh exhortation perhaps, um, he was interviewing Chloe Cole and this this other pastor who was a friend of his, and and they both were engaged in some of the you know people will say as the quote unquote cultural war issues. But in regards to Chloe Cole, he challenged us and said, you know, when all this stuff with the transgender nonsense was happening kind of at its height in the last few years, um, you know, you had different organizations stepping up, but he said, How many, how many Christian leaders stepped up and and stood against that and spoke against that? And he said, uh his he said it it wasn't zero, but it wasn't as many as it should have been. And so I think in the American church we are very drawn to being comfortable, uh to not being put in the bullseye, uh, to not taking risks. And uh I think we need we need more courage uh for our faith, and we need to see how our faith imp impacts more than just the quote unquote gospel preaching. Of course, we should preach the gospel, we should want to see people come to faith, but there are implications of that in how you live out your life um every day and how society should be ordered. And so we need to s we need to step into into more challenging issues and not be afraid of that. Yeah, I I agree with that. Again, not to bring up Cliff clinically too many times, but his boldness and his courage was so impressive. I was really convicted by that. Here's a guy that just puts himself out there, secular college campus, and uh of course he's studied up and he's prayed up and all that stuff, but it also takes a lot of guts to go there and just put yourself in a position where you're gonna be catching fire, and I'm sure he's caught a lot of fire over the years, but you know, that's the call of our day. Second Timothy chapter one says that God does not give you a spirit of fear. So if you're kind of sensing that timidity, anxiety, that's not really from God. And then I as I was preaching in the end of chapter four, the concluding sort of clause that he finishes the whole book with, which I think is the whole point of the book, is may the Lord be with your spirit. And I think he's uh praying that Timothy would have that spirit stirred up in him again, that would be courageous and bold in a day where it was needed and it's still needed today. Alright, last question. I'm gonna put you guys on the spot here a little bit. So this Paul, this letter of Paul was obviously listen lit let me start over. This letter from Paul was obviously written to a person, that being Timothy, uh, but Paul also wrote wrote a lot of letters to different churches. If Paul were going to come, and I think this if this follows our theme of passing the faith and really looking inward at our church, if Paul were to come and visit Millington Baptist Church, what do you think uh would be one thing he'd be really excited about? And then maybe one thing he potentially could um provide some constructive criticism on about Millington Baptist Church here in its 175th year. Have you ever seen that t-shirt? And the t-shirt says something like Paul were alive today, we'd be definitely getting a letter. You know, I was really intrigued by a comment that Truman made about this, and what he said was what is the church? And he had a very simple, sort of three-legged stool answer for that. And he said, The church is made up of these three things it's the creed, the cult, and the code. And then he said, just to explain that, so the creed is what you believe, the cult is how you worship, and then the code is like ethics, how you live. So then he said something really, really thought-provoking. He said, It's rare that a church is hitting all three of those things really well. You know, some churches are really good at one, maybe two, but they're not always doing all three equally well. And you know, I made this comment to Bob when we were walking out. Um I said, I think we're doing okay on the creed. You know, I don't think we're compromising on the doctrine. I I think we've got our position papers. I I just I mean, I don't I could be wrong. I don't mean to say to be overconfident. I you know, I'm sure there's areas of doctrine where we could probably brush up, but I don't think that's a huge, glaring area of compromise, timidity, anxiety, fear, or weakness here. But, you know, I do think there's areas of that code part, that ethic part, that um living the faith out part that I think we could probably grow in and be stretched in. And, you know, I think there's a lot of opportunities at Millington to say, you know, how are you like teasing this out in your daily life, in your work life, in your marriage life, in your family life, in your in your business life? And you know, Christian life is holistic, right? So we get the code pretty good, but I mean we get the creed pretty good, but I I think the code part could be something where we could look at and go, okay, how how can we do better at this? Um that's one area where I think we could probably get a real rebuke from the Apostle Paul if we were to get something like that. Well, I I would uh maybe to go along with that, I think yes, the creed, uh yes the the code. The cult part about what do you worship, we tend to think about that as being, oh, how well do I sing uh out the songs? And really when when he's talking about worship, it's a whole life thing. Uh worship is driven by what you ultimately love, and then that I think impacts how you live in that that ethical code uh section that he was talking about. So I think we would do well to always ask ourselves, what is it that's most important to me? How what what are what is the organizing center of my life and how can I bring it more in line with worshiping Jesus and loving him first and foremost above all the other things in the world? Because there is a natural draw to the things of this this world that um give us comfort or give us pleasure or give us um security that if we were to lose those things, we would probably feel lost. And at some level, they might be taking our worship away from Christ. And so um I I would say I would say maybe that the cult part is something else that we should be we should be constantly asking ourselves and evaluating ourselves against. Speaking of the cult part, you guys were together worshiping all weekend, and I thought they did a really good job liturgically helping the big group, the collected assembly there worship. There was responsive prayers, there was readings, there was a couple different, as Tim would say, doxes that were uh that were given a few doxes. I thought the cult part of the Colson Conference was a highlight. Josh Bales, if you're not familiar with him, go to Spotify or wherever you listen to your music and check him out. He's got a lot of good um originals, but he's also a pastor and a corporate worship leader, and he does a great job leading people, I think, in the cult of uh Christianity. And I thought there was some really good ideas. Cult in a good way. In a good way. Very cultural. A lot of people think of that word like it's all negative, but it just it just means worship. They talk about that. Um I think both Colson and Stone Street talk about that in their books because they talk about the cult. Um and really like at least in their books, a cult, it's it's dry it's a good thing, right? It's we mean just short for short for cultivate for culture. Um you know, it's it's a it's it's a farming term, cult, you know. Um cult cultivate, cultivating the Christian life, right? Exactly. Um I saw a book by that title. Yeah. Uh just to close out what you said, Pastor Bob, from you know, you mentioned like you worship really comes from what you love. Like I know for me, I'm a big New Jersey Devils fan, and when they're in season, I'm doing everything I can within reason to make sure I'm sitting down and able to watch the games. Taking a pilgrimage to the pine barrens. Exactly. Um they play in Newark. Um Welling out and looking for the New Jersey Devils. You know, if if I if I say that I love if I love Jesus, I'm if I am I if that I love God, am I doing everything that I can to make sure I'm spending time with him like I do with other things that I love. So um yeah, that put it in perspective for me. Yeah. So we have one last segment, but before Pultus is Latin. Pultus? Cool. By the way, we didn't talk about cultivate. Cultivate. Every time we weren't in session, Dave was studying Latin on our Colson Weekend. You should have seen the sack of two hours. The commitment to Latin trip was amazing in the morning from like six to eight. And then Bob and I were waiting for our plane. And bro, like I'm talking five seconds before I had to get in line. I submitted four different assignments on Canvas to just like be done with the weekends, homework and Latin. Uh, it took me a lot of time. Latin, man. It's my new patch. Did you get the fireworks from Canvas? Yes. I don't get that on can get the assignment. It's like a party, man. If you if you turn in your homework, we're popping the champagne. I don't like to is that a setting? I got I don't get the confetti. I don't know, man. But it does it. There's a reward. Whatever the dopamine thing is, that like you do. That'd be a big hit. Because you you like to cross things off of your checklist. So what's that with confetti? The inventor of the explosion of dopamine knows my love language. The the Saturday morning that we just woke up. I think we were up at like it's like 6 30, 6 45, and you know, Bob, Dave, and I are sitting in the room and we're just figuring out what we're gonna do. And Dave just goes, Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna study Latin for now. I said, Okay, I'm gonna do it immediately. Sorry. I'm a real fun person to hang around with. The first day I want to go out of town and have a good time. I'm your man. I got flashcards. He was, man. He was he's like, got up, made his coffee. The first day I woke up at I had to I woke up at five, I couldn't go back to sleep. So I went down to work out, and Dave's like, all right, Latin. Bob was faithful with the physical exercises, even out of town. You got in what, three days of good cardio? I did. I got I got around I almost got in three miles the one day in between uh the sessions during lunch, just walking around the campus. Oh, walking. Walking, yeah. Did we talk about the scooters? Did we talk about the scooters earlier? They were fun. They were fun. They wrote some scooters. Electric scooters. It was don't go in the no-go zone, though. That's right. You you gotta you gotta push that with the right side of push it. I had a lady slog through the no-go. I had a uh lady yelling at me and I didn't know why. I was like, what's what's your problem? So we got one last segment uh to close out our season four of Behind the Pulpit. Uh, before we do that, two things. First, obviously, we've said it a couple times, but please come out to our 175 uh year anniversary worship service on um on Saturda Sunday at four o'clock um in Parsippany at Liquid Church. Um we have some great worship plan. We got some great special elements. Uh there's gonna be communion. Um there's gonna be a lot of people there, and we want you to be one of the number. Uh, so please come worship with us um as we celebrate how God has worked in 175 years of our life uh here on the corner in once Millington, now Basking Ridge. Um so please uh check out more information on the website uh and sign up there. Um and also, yeah, season four of Behind the Pulpit, another one in the books. We're actually nearing, it wasn't very long ago that we were celebrating a hundred episodes. We're nearing 200 episodes of Behind the Pulpit. I realized I think early next season, within like episode like anywhere between episode 12 and episode 22 or something, we're gonna hit 200. So that's true. That'll be kind of crazy. So thank you all for paying attention and and and tuning in and and watching. Um, as someone who puts all these shows out every week or every other week, uh, it means a lot. So thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Hope you guys continue to enjoy. We're taking taking a summer break because we got a lot going on, but we'll be back for Ezekiel in the fall, right? We'll be back for Zeke. Good old Zeke. Pastor Dave is back on the road again next week. Zeke? In honor of our 200th episode, since we've come such a long way and the podcast has progressed. Can we delete those weekly pastors videos from six years ago? Those are those are, I think, needing to be sunset at this point. Back on Zoom. You know what, you don't want to relive the COVID days? I I I'm good. I think I've enjoyed that enough. We should we should put those back out for weeks, we have to miss. No. Um, so yeah, so we're gonna finish off with the theology sprint. Um, I don't have the graphic today. Uh, but so you may have noticed that we, throughout the course of this episode, use the word moment quite a bit. It's kind of a funny thing. Uh, the word moment is used a lot in the Colson stuff, like cultural moments, civilizational moments. We're in a moment, blah, blah, blah. And so it comes in, it creeps into our speech a lot, and we we say it today. So you may be wondering why they keep using this word, why what's going on with Os Guinness, and we're in a cultural moment and all that. So we we for you guys, what what is meant by the word moment? Oz actually took some time to explain his somewhat obsession with the word moment on Thursday night for the pre-conference. And so what he said was the reason why he keeps saying this is a moment is that he was referring to a certain cycle that happens in cultures. So a culture is a way of life, right? A culture is a shared learn system of beliefs, behaviors, and products. I learned that in college. A culture is something that people agree to and they all kind of you know end up living the same way. But a civilization is when a culture rises like high enough and lasts long enough to establish a certain organized form of life and flourishing that uh becomes you know dominant for a long period of time. And what he says is that it's been 500 years since really so this is the 500th anniversary of William Tyndale's translation of the Bible into English. So for the first time ever, the Bible was put into English by Tyndale 500 years ago. I guess there was certain pre-versions of that, but Tyndale had the main first English translation. Now, what's like gonna happen the next 500 years? What have we come to that point in after 500 years where we decide we're gonna continue this little project? And he says, you know, civilizations they have roots and they have restraints and they have a need for renewal, and you have to make a choice. Like when you get to this point where this is civilization is maybe being questioned or threatened, you can either choose option one, renewal, option two, replacement, it gets replaced by something else, or option three, decline. And like the jury's out, and so you know, us is saying this is the moment where we have to make one of those three decisions, like it's a multiple choice question. What are we gonna choose to do? Yeah, renew, replace, decline? This is the question. That's why he keeps using that word. I feel like that's a pretty good explanation. Yeah, it was it was a good explanation. The only thing I would add to that is that when you look at um at uh at the Greek, the the Greek word there's Greek has a couple different words for for time. Uh there's uh and the one that people use a lot is kairos. And I hear people talking about a kairos moment, which is a bit a bit redundant because kairos means a moment. Um it is a a right, opportune, or critical moment. And that so the Greeks use the word kranos, which is the other word for sequence, uh, but kairos was qualitative. It signified a fleeting opportunity that must be seized before it it passes, which I think is going along with what you're what you're saying. So if you're if you mean a moment of supreme opportunity, that's the Greek word kairos. And I I I would tend to agree that we are in a kairos moment in terms of history, which is what Askinis is is getting at. And we have to seize it before it passes, and we head into decline. Don't you guys feel like you're in a moment? We are in a moment. So I'm I'm uh you know what? I don't care. Let's just let's just spread the moment, man. Spread the moment. That is our episode title. If for those of you who wanted a uh an insight of what our hotel was Saturday night, we essentially watched basketball and talked about moments. Yeah, but after it was done, though she the the one the reporter went up to the basketball player and said, How did you meet the moment? They they just kept saying moment. Everybody uses moment. Amy and Staffine today was bringing in a moment. Amy was momenting it up. So we we were expecting we were expecting a lot of moments, so we set the line, like the like the betting line, at 85 and a half for like the over-under. And I took the over, and unfortunately it went under only 77. I guess actually technically 78. Uh I didn't count one, so there was five moments from the commissioning on Sunday. 78 moments. So we were John John Stone Street was the biggest. That's a high bar. 78 is still quite a lot. I originally think I said it at 60, right? And then we came out of the gate super fast. You said 55, but they they did come out super fast to have. So there's a debate about you know what to call a worldview. Carl Truman had an opinion that worldview is not the right term. We have a disagreement about this, yeah. Yeah. He called it social imaginary. That's they kept digging at each other, yeah. Well, at the end of our season four, I think it is only important uh only it's good for uh it would be good for us to end with a good word, or might I even say a benediction. Who would like to offer us a benediction to close out season four of Behind the Pulpit? Josh Baylors had a good benediction at the end too. That was that song. I should have written it down. Yeah. Something remembering. We remember. We we remember. We obviously don't remember. I remember it had to do with remembering. Oh man. All right, so man, I wish you had told me I would have had one at the ready, but off the top of my head, I don't know. Who's got a Ben A on the spot? I mean, the one I use is always the June one. You got a favorite benediction uh number one? You know, there's that Irish blessing that is always a classic for us. Yeah, so it's something like May the road rise to meet you, may the wind always be at your back. Uh man, I'm gonna screw this one up. But we we did a behind the pulpit episode with the Irish Irish blessing where we were having the Irish soda bread and you gave that beneficial. All right. So I've already used that one. All right, Bob, take a second. Give me a different one. Well, I always use the June one. May the road rise to meet you, may the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand. We'll hope to see you in September.