Thank you guys for being here. I'm excited. Over the next six weeks, we're going to cover a whole lot of information. Kind of like trying to take a drink of water out of a fire hose, potentially, at some points. And that's OK. The goal is not to leave here an expert. all of the things that the progressive church is teaching or the things that the world I'm going to use the term progressive church a lot and we'll define that at the towards the second half today but there's going to be a whole lot of information and I have little titles for each of these weeks that aren't listed anywhere except in my own head and today is kind of about our responsibility it's um Before we can enter into good quality conversations with our kids, our family, our loved ones, we need to have us somewhat dialed and we need to have at least a firm grasp on scripture in order to do that. That's one of the things we're going to talk about, how to do that and how these things are happening, but we'll get into that in just a little bit. Matthew 22, 34 through 40, something you guys are all familiar with, says this. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him and saying, Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. The bar is set. The bar has been set for us in these passages. I love this. We are to love God with everything we have. He doesn't leave anything out. There are no exceptions mentioned here. So our responsibility for our kids and our family members starts with us. Oftentimes, again, with our kids, we're the first pastors that they know. we're the people they should be coming to to ask these questions. And right now in our world today, as we're going to find out, if we're not familiar already, there's a lot of really hard, really good, really valid questions that they're coming across, whether we kind of shelter them or not. All too often the mind part of this scripture, of this commandment gets left out. Maybe it's because it's not emotional. The other two are somewhat emotional. You should love the Lord your God with your heart and your soul. And that's maybe how we, you know, we grew up thinking what worship is, but we need to worship God with our mind. That starts with prayer and study and Sunday mornings hearing our pastor preach the gospel to us. One of the first and foremost ways that we can do that, and you're going to hear me say this over and over and over, over the next six weeks, is to pray. We need to be people of prayer. Our lives start and end with prayer. Prayer is how we fight a lot of the battles we're going to be discussing over the next few weeks. We fight these battles on our knees in prayer, first and foremost. Just like we want our kids to talk and listen to us, our father, the King of Kings, wants us to talk and listen to him. So as we get started, let's pray. Father God, we've come now to think. So I ask that you'd give us clear minds. I ask that your Holy Spirit would teach us so that we would leave here having been taught the truth. I ask that we would forget the presuppositions that we bring that are wrong. I ask that you bless us with knowledge to understand what we study, the wisdom to truly learn your truth and the ability to remember that knowledge and wisdom which you have set before us. I pray that your spirit would guide us and instruct us during this time of worship and keep our mind focused and clear of distractions. I ask that you open our eyes to your will and that you mold our hearts and minds These things I pray in the name of your son. Amen. So we pray, and we pray, and we pray. One of my goals for this class is not only to heighten awareness of the problem currently affecting our society and our church, our church is, but also light a fire inside us that drives us to scripture. The answer, saints, are here. They're in the scriptures. So in order to have a firm handle on the answers, we need to have a solid understanding of God's word. That's going to take time. I'm going to say that a whole lot during these classes because it takes time. It takes time and effort to research and to study the issues and the problems at hand, the things that are going to come across our path. We're not going to have every answer sitting in our pocket ready to hand out to anybody who walks by. It's just not going to work that way, especially not tomorrow. But this is where the answers are. And in order to even spot the question, in order to even kind of know what direction to go, we need to be real familiar. And as our pastor has mentioned, be viewing everything that we do through the glasses of scripture. I'm going to be mixing in some very practical things that we can add to our lives or things we can change about our daily living that will help us facilitate these conversations, help us facilitate these relationships. They'll kind of come and be scattered through the lessons. And then the last like two weeks of class will be specific. to things that we can do, ways that we can arrange and orient our lives, how to have these conversations as we move through our life. I said this in December and it bears repeating. The goal of Christian parenting isn't to be the best parents that you can be. It's to be the best Christians that you can be. That is how we become quality parents, is by focusing on Christ. And it just so happens that Christ has never learned anything. He knows all, and He's in control of all. So if we're in touch with Him, and we're basing our lives on that, our lives as parents are going to be transformed to His will. It starts with us focusing on our relationship with Christ. We do this by the grace of God, of course, And what we do is not for salvific purposes. It's incredibly important that we understand that. And I know that everybody in this room does. But because of who we are and because we claim the title Christian, we are members of God's family. If we've submitted to him, we need to be serving him. And we do that by serving our family. We do that by serving our kids. One of the ways that we do that is by serving our family and serving our kids. Our kids see us. The pastor said this like a week or two ago, and I hope that you were there and you heard it. Our kids see us. They see what we do. They see how we do it. The choices that we make. They see why we do it. Even when we try to hide it. This was like haunting when he said this from the pulpit. Even when you try to hide your sins from your kids, they end up becoming you. They end up seeing. So we need to be deliberate about our actions. We need to be deliberate about our relationship with Christ and our responsibility to them and to our family and friends around us when it comes to these really, really difficult issues. So we can facilitate quality conversations with our kids. Part of this class is going to be not only to spot the things that are wrong and develop answers to hard questions, but to facilitate quality conversations. with those around us, with our kids, if we're not doing that, if we're not thinking about it, there are opportunities could pass us by. And you're going to hear. how I got started with this, and still one of these issues plagues me because I was not prepared. John 16.33 says, these things I have spoken to you that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. I bring that scripture up because there are going to be times throughout this class and throughout the whole rest of your life, and some of you might be in this place right now, where you just feel like you're getting hammered on, and you feel like you're doing things wrong, and you don't know what happened with your kid, with your family member, with your parent. But first and foremost, remember, the King of Kings sits on the throne, and he is in charge of all things. It doesn't rest solely on your shoulders. We are to be good stewards of what we have been given. But he is in control. The Holy Spirit does the work. And so I just think that it's important to be reminded of that as we move through these very difficult subjects and these very hard questions, and potentially watching your own kids walk away, what looks like they're walking away from the faith. The Holy Spirit is in control, and he reigns, and he does the work. So don't get so down on yourself, and don't be so hard on yourself that you forget that, because then we can start making mistakes. We're going to have hard days. We're going to feel like we're failing. I know I do. But throughout the process, remember, our sovereign is faithful and remains in control. As we get started, over the next few weeks, there may be times where you're struggling with difficult information. There are gonna be new terms and lifestyles, new ideas that come up. It happens really, really fast these days, if you haven't noticed already. We change definitions of words by the day, literally by the day. Tomorrow it will mean something different than it means today. And oftentimes, it seems now in our society, these ideas, these terms, these lifestyles are something opposite than what has been known and understood for at least 2,000 years, if not the full six or eight. And all of a sudden, we just nailed it in 2020. We got it nailed now. Everybody was wrong. It means the opposite of what it did. So again, sometimes it's tough to keep up with the information because of how rapidly it changes. And we are doing this as adults. Think about our kids. Think about what our kids are experiencing. as they watch the world spin around them. And we're gonna talk a lot about that next week and the week after. Maybe you're going through some very difficult times with your kids right now. Maybe the weight of this has become difficult to bear. I wanna remind you, God is in control. God is sovereign, so be of good cheer. His will will be done, despite you or with you. His will will be done. So, let me give you a little introduction, kind of, To me and how I stumbled into all this, I was born in a Christian home. I was born in a hospital. My understanding is that my mother was pregnant with me when they started going to the church that was basically just starting up now. So I grew up in that church my whole life. It was a well-meaning church. I truly believe that the people there that I learned from believe in Christ and trust him. But I didn't get any doctrine. That just wasn't really a thing. Again, they were well-meaning. I was really familiar with all the accounts. We're going to use that word accounts. Here's a little sidebar. The Bible does not have stories. It has accounts. Start using that word instead of stories, because in our world today, people think stories. They think the hare and the tortoise. What's in the Bible is true. It's an account. So anyway, I was real familiar with all the accounts in the Bible. I grew up reading it. I'm not patting myself on the back by any stretch of the imagination, but any kid who spent any time in Sunday school learns really quick that the answer is Jesus. What's funny is I teach Sunday school now and that ends up being true. Jesus is the answer, it just turns out. So you learn that real quick. My family prayed together. We even read the Bible on occasion. We didn't, you know, honestly, we didn't sit down and read the Bible every single day of the week. But I knew, I saw their Bibles, my parents' Bibles. And we did read and study. But again, there was no real doctrine taught. And it was a different time. So, My magic number is 35. It's a number that I made up in my head. But for those of us that are about 35 and older, give or take, in my opinion, we grew up in a different world than the kids that are growing up now. Because even though technically there were no more or no less Christians, true Christians, biblical Christians, All those people, all the kids that I grew up with, had essentially the same Judeo-Christian ethics, morals, and values. Whether they were Christian or not, we all kind of had the same set of rules. So a lot of the stuff that's in our kids and our own faces today, it just wasn't a thing. So my parents didn't have to bring up and teach me about the LGBT agenda, for example, because it wasn't a thing. So we just didn't talk about it. Youth pastors didn't talk about it. It didn't get prayed about in church because everybody just kind of knew. that it was going wrong. We weren't a creedal or confessional church. I love that our church has the London Baptist Confession of 1689. We're going to talk about that a little bit throughout the next six weeks if you aren't familiar with it. Pick one up. They're sitting in there and read through it. It's super nice to have these titans of the faith over the last hundreds and thousands, but the last hundreds of years that searched through the scriptures and answered questions for us and said, here's what the scripture says and here's what we believe. My church didn't really have that, so I didn't get it. Again, I was very familiar with all the accounts in the Bible, but I didn't really know why I believed what I believed. If I was asked in my high school years, and I was many times, I was slightly a little bit of a precocious child. If I was asked about being a Christian, why are you a Christian? I would have said, because it's the truth. The Bible's true. And they would have looked at me and said, because I used to get into it with Mormons a lot. I don't know why, but they would have looked at me and said, well, why? Why is it the truth? And I would have said with gusto, because it's the truth. And round and around, we would have gone. Not really getting anywhere at all because that answer just really wasn't good enough. I didn't really have reasons other than that I read it kind of in the Bible. I had heard my Sunday school teachers or my youth pastor kind of talk about it. I didn't really truly have a firm understanding of why I believed what I believed. Even though oftentimes it was true, I call it being accidentally right. I was accidentally right because I happened to go to a Christian church and I happened to be familiar with this book, which is true and infallible, but I couldn't explain that to you. Even a broken watch is right twice a day, right? So, I discovered as I was kind of getting older, there came a point in my life where I left the house. so to speak. I happen to go into the Marine Corps. So that's a big, bad world. When you're 18 years old, you join up with a branch of the military service and you lived in a Christian home your whole life and basically existed in a set of Judeo-Christian ethics, morals, and values. And then you find out that there is actually other people in this world that have real problems and real ideas. And your eyes are like, whoa. And you're 18 years old and you get exposed to all these things that I really hadn't been exposed to before. And again, I'm not harping on my church or my parents. It just wasn't a thing. And then you start jumping around the country and learning all this crazy stuff. And then I ended up becoming a paramedic. And you get to see a whole lot of different lifestyles and a whole lot of ways of living and a whole lot of different ways of doing stuff that maybe I hadn't been exposed to before. The answer, because it's the truth, became not good enough. I had some decent conversations, and that answer just kind of fell by the wayside, because nobody believed what I had to say, whether or not I was being passionate or not. I was about 30 when I ran into two situations that changed my beliefs and the way that I understood my beliefs. I'm going to share them with you today. The first one really was Prop 8 in 2008. Most of you probably remember it. This is what I would consider, again, I don't think any website or book necessarily says this, but is the beginning of what we would call the progressive Christian era. In my opinion, I was watching it happen back in 2008 with the Prop 8 decision. Because all of a sudden, the LGBT issue, which in my opinion is one of the biggest and most popular reasons why people are uh... walking away from the faith uh... even if they don't know that they're walking away from the faith why these progressive christian churches have skewed twisted uh... their ideas and their beliefs and i'm gonna prove it to you right now with a friend of mine So this is really the beginning of the progressive Christian era, where churches started accepting these new lifestyles. All of a sudden, our country claimed, and around the world was kind of following suit, that you could marry whoever you want, whenever you want, for whatever reasons you want. They wrote that into law, so now everybody can be happy. right, because I can love whoever I want to love. And the churches, I think, were kind of blindsided by some of this decision making, because they were now like playing catch up. And, well, society says this is okay. A lot of times these laws are getting written into law, like these ideas and these lifestyles, and you can't fight them. You know, we're all super familiar with the Baker situation, where people are, they were just out to get that guy. Oh, and the churches are looking at this like, what do we do? And so they started, well, we don't want to dismiss people. We don't want people not to start coming to our churches. So they kind of started making it OK, too. I have a really good friend. We spent a whole lot of time together doing church. We actually met when I was in junior high. He was like just out of high school. So he was one of our what I would call counselors. Because our junior high and high school group was pretty big. So we had college-age counselors come, and we'd wrestle and play games and have fun. And we developed good relationships. His and I's relationship developed from counselor student to adult friends. As we moved through life, we were friends for over 20 years. We spent a lot of time doing church stuff at the same church. He ended up getting a Bible degree. And that only reinforced his knowledge base for me. I was very naive, and I thought that I was learning a lot. In hindsight, I was learning a lot. I just wasn't learning what I thought that I was learning. Then he got married, and his in-laws came with a homosexual in the family. This is similar to what our kids are experiencing now, what some of them are experiencing now. They have friends and family members. who are claiming this lifestyle, they are now gay or lesbians, they are now transgender. It's happening all over the place. Not only is it happening, but it's like the cool thing to do. I was a yard duty at a junior high for about a year. just prior to covid and i these junior hires that y 12 and 13 years old and t and do and think are cool living in a world like th across a friend like he d family member that now al And where do you go with this? And so, he started like accepting this lifestyle because it was his family member, right? It's my family member. You don't necessarily look at your family member. Most of us don't look at our family members and think, well, that person's going straight to hell, right? It's just not how it goes. So society, here I was, society's rapidly changing. The church was changing because they're accepting these lifestyles. My buddy who and I had grown up, we literally sat in the spa, you know, I was in high school talking about the Bible. We didn't know what we were talking about, but that's kind of what we did. We learned how to play guitar together. We went to the same churches. We read the same Bible. We had the same pastors. We went to the same camps. And now all of a sudden he's becoming okay with this lifestyle. And I was really confused. not only was he accepting this lifestyle, but I'm watching it start popping up in churches. And I found myself kind of wondering, how could he believe this? How could he believe in the Bible that I've grown up reading and I've grown up hearing that this particular lifestyle is not okay and is a sin? How could he believe that it's okay? How could he be okay with this? And we were close enough that I was honestly seeking answers. I wasn't trying to harp on the guy or tell him he was wrong. I didn't have the biblical knowledge and background to know, and I was really confused. And I was in my mid-twenties. I was honestly seeking answers. I had grown up with one understanding of the truth and was now seeing not only him, but many people, including whole churches, accepting this lifestyle. I was watching his theology evolve, not in a good way. So I wrote him a letter. It was an email. Again, we were really close friends and email was just easier. We lived in the same town and all that. But my question to him was pretty simple. I just asked him, hey, you know, we grew up reading the same Bible, thinking the same things. Can you give me, can you help me understand why this is okay with you now? Simple question. In a non-confrontational way, I was honestly looking for answers. I'm gonna read you the first paragraph. It was a two-page response, but I'm gonna read you what his first responses are. And the reason that I'm reading you what this is is because I'm hoping that you can spot right away some of the problems with the thinking. He says this, I've thought hard about this from the first time that I met my new family member. How was I going to reconcile this and why was it so difficult? When I really started to dig into this issue, I learned some things about myself. First, I realized that I was like a lot of other Christians who just went with the flow on a lot of issues and then became disgusted with myself for accepting that in myself. I have a degree in the Bible. Why should I accept the common view when it causes so much trouble in my brain and my soul and culture in general? I'm as capable of really digging into the word and finding out for myself as anybody, so I did. And I was amazed at what I found. Now, I don't have time to go into this whole letter. I wish I carried it around with me, highlighted, once I finally had some sort of understanding of this issue and I'd really done some digging because this issue caused me months, it still does, every six months I go back and revisit this particular issue because it bothered me so much that I didn't have answers. But I want you to notice a couple of things. There's so much error in that paragraph that it's mind-blowing, and this was a guy that I grew up going to church with. He was a leader of mine. I believed what he said. Like he says, he had a Bible degree. One, there isn't an issue, this, sorry, this isn't an issue he had dealt with prior to having an emotional investment. I wanna say that to you again, and I want you to hear it. This issue isn't an issue that he had dealt with prior to having an emotional investment. Remember, he said, I have thought hard about this from the first time that I had met my brother-in-law. I know that that's true because, again, him and I shared 20 years together. So this wasn't an issue he'd ever looked at and studied and researched. What answers am I going to give if this crosses my path? It was really difficult, sorry, it was really hard to deal with and his current view made his life in society difficult. Remember, he said, how was I going to reconcile this? Why was it so difficult? Why should I accept the common view when it causes so much trouble in my brain, my soul, and in culture in general? He really didn't know why he believed what he believed. And this is important, hear this one. He went looking for answers with a specific frame of mind. And the frame of mind that he went looking for answers for was wrong. The frame of mind he had when he went looking for answers was not, I want to know what Christ says. It wasn't, I want to know what scripture tells me in God's word. It was, I want to see what God says to make it okay. I want it to be less difficult. Society's having a really hard time with this issue. That can't be. God is a God of love. I know a lot of you guys have heard these things rattled off to you. But that happens a lot. It happens a lot amongst Christians who are going to real honest churches. All of a sudden you come up with this question and you go searching through the Bible to make your question kinda okay and make it feel better. We're always looking to kinda feel better. In our kids' worlds, when they have questions, if they're not steeped in scripture and have parents who are gonna go to Christ for the answer, regardless of what it costs, you're going to attack it from the wrong side. And when you go looking for the Bible to tell you what you already think is okay, you're going to find it. You would be surprised at what you can get the Bible to prove to you when you want to feel better about yourself. We have entire religions based off of exactly that. I want to feel okay. I want it to be better. This shouldn't be so hard. Why is it so difficult? Why me Lord? Aren't you a God of love? And then we twist a little piece of scripture. Maybe we leave out one word, you know, in a Bible verse and it changes everything. But if you go looking at it from that point of view, that's what you're going to find. And if you go looking at it with an emotional investment, it's going to be hard. And when it's your kids, it's gonna be the hardest thing you've ever had to do. It really is. And I truly feel for parents that are going through some of these issues with kind of adult children that look like they're walking away from the faith, and you have to make a decision what comes first. Does Christ and scripture come first? Or does my emotional involvement come first? I've seen many families that I grew up with in my church, all of a sudden one of their children Turned turned gay came out, you know for one reason or another whether it's true or not true I don't know but all of a sudden when their kid decided that that they fell into this LGBT category they went back to scriptures and They found out there were people like Matthew vines and the reconciling in Christ movement if you're not familiar with those terms you will be by the end of this six weeks and These are all churches that freely accept and are okay with these lifestyles. Even polygamy and polyamory and like these are things that are being championed in our world right now. So that's what's happening in progressive Christianity. He went on in this letter to incorrectly address what we'd call the clobber passages. In the second part of this class, we're going to get a little bit more into apologetics, and we'll attack each one of these issues as a whole in one meeting. During this class, it's going to be more surface level and an understanding of what's out there. But if you're not familiar with the term clobber passages, the clobber passages is the truth of scripture. They've been deemed the clobber passages because in Romans it just straight up says, don't live this way in Romans 1, right? So they feel like they're getting clobbered, which seems ironic. But he goes on to address all the clobber passages and his new understanding of what they meant by redefining words and by changing what Paul meant and changing Paul's understanding of, say, the word homosexuality, because it didn't exist back then. These are arguments that if you haven't heard, you're going to hear, because that wasn't an actual word. So he didn't mean homosexual as in married, two men married couple. What he meant was something like rape and incest. They're going to say these, and the folks that are championing these ideas are really, really good. If you listen to what they have to say, and you don't know the truth, what they say will sound like the truth. Because they've done a lot of research, and they don't want to be told that they're living a life of sin, so they're able to twist it around and figure it out. And he went to close with John 3.16, emphasizing, as most do when they use John 3.16, in my opinion, improperly is the whole world. This is the Jesus of love issue. I see some of you shaking your heads because you're familiar and you've heard this before. For God so loved the world. For God so loved the whole world. Look, it says right here. He loves us all. They didn't read to 18. Everybody stops at 16. At the time, I didn't have the knowledge and wisdom to reply well or to carry on any further biblical conversation. It still, to this day, hurts. It hurts that I didn't have that. Now, that's where God had me. And that's the knowledge base. But what it did do for me was drive me to scripture. And that's what I wanted to do for you, because it plagued me. For months, I called up every pastor I knew and sat down with them and asked them, is this lifestyle okay? Tell me what the Bible says. And the answers that I got were extremely wishy-washy. Most of them, pastors that I had grown up with, they have PhDs and MDivs and you name it after their name, had the same problem as he had. And unfortunately, they had members of their congregation that now that this lifestyle was becoming OK, it was really hard for them to stick to scripture where the definition of marriage is one man, one woman, one flesh for one lifetime, and that's it from Genesis all throughout the whole rest of time. And it was hard because they see these guys and girls that they love. incredibly with all their heart. They baptized them when they were infants. You know, they dedicated them to the Lord and now all of a sudden they came out and now I gotta look at him and say, if you're living this lifestyle, it's a sinful process. That's hard to do. This brings me to my other buddy, and he's a little bit quicker. He's a guy that we've known for a long, long time, for almost our whole lives. We spent a lot of time while he was developing his ministry. He was in youth ministry for quite a long time while he was getting his undergrad degrees. I would go and lead worship for his kids, his youth group and stuff, and we'd play together. So I know this guy pretty well. He is now an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. And he's an apostate. It's as simple as that. He goes, he is very, very active. A lot of this has to do, in my opinion, with his wife, because of who he married, extremely liberal. And he attends pride rallies and pride parades with his clerical collar on to display to the world that we love you still and you're okay at our church. And this is what the Bible says. Man, it's painful to watch. And this is the, if you didn't catch it in the beginning, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Those that aren't a part of this church and hear things like this all the time, because we get preached the gospel, which is amazing, and I love that. You might think it's a Lutheran church, right? Martin Luther, like it's named after Martin Luther. It's gotta be okay. But you don't know what really is going on inside if you haven't read their doctrine. This time I had a little bit of background in this area and it was painful to watch my friend stand in front of the whole world, claim to be a Christian as an ordained minister of Christ, knowing that he was actively leading people straight away from Christ. That's what was happening. And we all know what scripture tells us about those that are leaders in the church and what's going to happen to them. So it was painful. I was seeking the truth and he was a good friend who seemed to be leaving what I understood to be Christian beliefs while still claiming to be a Christian. How is this possible? What am I missing? How do I have these conversations? I started digging. I started asking him good, solid questions, which he refused to answer. One of the last conversations that him and I had together was asking him to sit down and defend why he believes what he believes. He told me, as an Evangelical Lutheran Church ordained minister, I don't have to prove myself to anybody. And he refused to sit down with me. Um, cause he knew where I was coming from and he knew it was going to be a tough conversation. So he straight up said, yeah, I don't need to prove myself to anybody. And that was a minister. So that's what's happening in our world. That's what our kids are seeing. Our kids are seeing pastors like him that say that whatever is going on with you, you're okay. You're okay. I'm okay. We're okay. God, God loves us just like we are. And theology is changing. I pray the same prayer for him that I pray for myself. As I study and seek Christ, I want the truth, Lord. I want him to have the truth. Soften my heart. Soften our hearts. And lead me to Christ, whatever that is. If he's got it, I want it. I'm willing to have the conversations. If I have it, I want him to have it, and you to have it, and this guy to have it. Because the truth will set us free. That's a little bit about me and how I came kind of into this Christian apologetics, what was the dawning of progressive Christianity. And I feel like now standing here, the Lord kind of pulled me through some of that and gave me a background in some of these issues because I got really passionate about it and studying, like I wanted answers. And it just so turns out that there are answers. There are good answers. And these questions are good questions. They're valid and they're hard, but there are answers. And as I stand here now, maybe he brought me through that to help other people. Because again, these two guys, and those are just two examples, are guys that I literally watched progress in their faith and in their theology to a point where their salvation is highly, highly in question. God saves who he wants, when he wants, for the reasons that he wants to. But he also gives us the way that that all goes down and they're just not going that direction. What I've learned from my older family members and from history is that this is one of the most unique times in history, in my opinion. Again, I only have 42 years to base that off of. I have family members, obviously, that are older than that, and a 93-year-old grandfather that I can ask how it was 100 years ago. And this reigns true, that this seems to be one of the most unique times in history. I'm not saying it's any better or any worse than any other times in history. but where society is literally redefining words to mean their opposite. That's important to understand, because when you erase truth, who do you look to for truth? You look to the loudest voice, the guy with the mic, and that's, in our country, the United States government. In most first world countries, it's the government. So when the government erases truth, we go to where whoever says the truth is, and that's them. And now you have this mishmash of my truth, his, like nobody knows what's going on. So, kind of, as we finish the last, we might not have time for questions today, I apologize about that, but I want to define some terms. This is something you need to be real familiar with as a Christian, is defining your terms. The reason I say that this is important is because a lot of times we talk past each other. I have done this multiple times in multiple conversations, and it certainly is very highly probable to do with your children. They might come up and ask you a question about a term that they rattle off that they heard, and you don't exactly know what they mean by that term. So you start rattling off an answer, and that's not what they wanted to know. And so now you're both talking at each other, But nobody's talking to each other. So we've got to get used to defining your terms. By the way, this will help you. A little pro tip, not that I'm a pro, in every conversation you ever have, whether or not it's about Christian stuff or not. A couple little questions. I'm going to kind of throw out a bunch of resources that you might be interested in throughout this class. This is one of them. It's a book called Tactics. It's not specifically an apologetics book because it doesn't handle any one situation, but what it does is help you have conversations and help you kind of be able to run those conversations. And two of the things that you'll learn from this book are the Colombo tactic. What do you mean by that? It's a real simple question. Stick it in your pocket. You'll never forget it from this day forward if you've never asked before, what do you mean by that? Now you can talk to them about what they actually mean. That's a great conversation starter. Your kid might come up and ask you a question about who knows what, and just, hey, what do you mean by that term? I've never heard that before. Tell me what you mean. And now you can address that, and now the ball's in their court. Now you need to be ready to listen. It's a big problem for me. My wife's much, much better at it than I am. But you need to be ready to listen. But hey, what do you mean by that? The second question in this one, I'd say hold a little bit potentially, but is where did you get that idea? Hey, where'd you hear that? And oftentimes, most people have very little idea where they actually heard something or why they actually believe something. Christians are included in this. There are going to be things that I say in this class that are going to sting a little bit, and this is one of them. Most Christians don't know why they believe what they believe. So if you ask them, hey, what do you mean by that? Where did you hear that? They don't know. I mean, the answer might be, my pastor said something about it. Or I think there's a verse, you know cleanliness is next to godliness? You laugh. There are a handful of non-verses that Christians rattle off as verses all the time that just aren't in there. So if you kind of ask them, and the reason I say hold this one back in your pocket is because you don't want to offend them, especially if they're a kid, right away. And the way you ask the question is important. You can't just say, hey. What do you mean? No, no, no. Take a step back and, hey, I'm not sure I'm familiar with the term you're using. What do you mean? I want to understand so I can help you work through the question a little bit better. And that's a little bit less of an offensive way of putting it, I guess you could say. So what do you mean by that and where did you get that idea? These two questions will help you in talking to the person you're talking to, your kids included, even if they're only five years old, especially if they're five years old because they rattle off, my kids rattle off terms that like where in the heck did you hear that? Like what does that word mean? Oh, this, that, no, no, that's not the definition of that word, you know? So we need to learn to define our terms. This is something we need to start doing with our kids. We need to find out what they mean by a word or a phrase and then listen. So we're gonna define progressive Christianity and doctrine today before we leave. But before we do that, we need to understand this. Anything plus Christianity is not Christianity. If you have to have a qualifier, you're the qualifier. You're not the Christian part. I even struggled, I had a real big problem with this two or three years ago when people would ask me kind of what I believe saying that I'm reformed. I'm not a reformed Christian. I'm a Christian that happens to have reformed theology. There's no qualifier needed. If you need a word in front, as a qualifier, you don't have Christianity, at least not in the biblical sense. I'm a Catholic Christian. I'm a Mormon Christian. I'm a gay Christian. I'm a progressive Christian. You're identifying as the qualifier. You're not identifying as being in Christ. And we as Christians are in Christ. And that's incredibly important to remember as you move throughout this life. And as you have these conversations with your kids, who are gonna bring these terms up when they rattle off these things and if they qualify their Christianity with a word or with a lifestyle, that's gonna give you an idea of where they're coming from. And we're gonna talk more about next week in week three about the emotional involvement that a lot of these issues have and it's real because their whole life is wrapped up in the qualifier, not in Christ. So we need to remember that. So progressive Christianity. Progressive Christianity is a little bit easier to define by what it's not. What it is not is Christianity. It is not biblical Christianity. It is everything else, almost. The reason that I say that is because this one's kind of hard to define, because those who fall into this category have such differing views in what they believe. You see churches pop up all over the place that have just a slightly twisted view of this, or a slightly twisted view of that. Again, the big one is the LGBT agenda. This is the big one that's in your face all over the place. The churches that are accepting of those lifestyles and saying that it's okay. And they use scripture to defend the fact that it's okay. And we know that that's not true. Elisa Childers says this, it's easier to identify a mood rather than a set of beliefs, even though there is a general consensus around certain beliefs, even if they're defined by what something isn't more than what it is. Progressive Christians view the Bible as primarily a human book and emphasize personal conscience and practices rather than certainty and beliefs. She writes, they're also very open to redefining, reinterpreting, or even rejecting essential doctrines of the faith, like the virgin birth, the deity of Christ, and his bodily resurrection. Yes, all those things are in question by the progressive church, things that you and I almost take for granted. It's not, I don't say take for granted in a bad way. We just know it's true. Now all of a sudden, like, the resurrection of Christ is in question. Yeah, it doesn't matter anymore. If you're familiar with her book, you've read some of the stories. Progressive Christian churches end up being defined by what they have chosen not to believe, or even what doctrines they've changed. You know, we're okay with believing this, but not this. Yeah, the Bible's a big one. They, oftentimes, it's not completely inerrant and infallible. Some of it's good to know. It's hard to explain to you how that works, but we're gonna get into that in the next couple of weeks. In order to really be able to see or recognize what might be progressive, we need to be familiar with doctrine. So what is doctrine? Google says, a belief or set of beliefs held and taught by a church, political party, or other group. I like that definition. It's simple and to the point. It's what's taught. For example, like Arminian theology and Reformed theology is going to be different. We each have doctrine that teaches what we believe about the scripture and how we interpret the scripture. Ligonier says this, in its basic sense, doctrine is any sort of teaching. According to one definition, doctrine is teaching from God, about God, that directs us to the glory of God. So basically doctrine is the teachings of the church, the big C. Why we believe what we believe, the true doctrine is the teachings of the church, big C. Why we believe what we believe, based on scripture. We'll talk briefly about some essential doctrines in this class, but that's gonna be part of your homework. So for the next, well, until you die, we need to be studying foundations of the faith. We need to be in the word. We need to know why people have claimed to believe. And again, the London Baptist Confession of 1689 is a great place to start. Read through it. If you're members, you've done that already and you have a copy. Because again, in order to spot incorrect thinking and teaching or doctrine, you need to be aware of the truth In order to have solid conversations with our kids and those we love, we need to be ready. My favorite illustration of this is the FBI, this doesn't come from the FBI, but in the FBI, if you're going looking around for fake $100 bills, they don't put a whole bunch of fake $100 bills in front of you to study. You become an expert on what a real $100 bill is, and because you are an expert on what a real $100 bill is, you can spot all the fakes. First Peter 3.15 says, but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. I like the words ESV uses, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect. All four of those words are really good. Meekness, fear, gentleness, and respect. That is who we are, Christians. You're an apologist whether you like it or not. If you call yourself a Christian, you're an apologist. Because we're told here in Peter, always be ready to make a defense. That's what the word apologetics means, is be ready to make a defense to those that ask. But do it with gentleness and respect. And we need to have kid gloves with our kids with these major issues that they're facing today. So that's going to be the main focus of this class, to better understand what's happening in our world and in our churches so we can better defend the truth and loving kindness with our kids and develop a relationship of trust so when the hard questions come up and they're going to come up, they come to us. They know that we are a place that they can come. They're going to get solid answers from us, whether they like them or not, but they're going to be safe. We are their safe place. There is no such thing as a safe place outside of mom and dad or outside of the family. Grandma and grandpa, do not neglect your duty. Statistics tell us that grandma and grandpa have an incredible effect on their grandchildren. So the bar has been set by Christ. Remember, we love God with our heart and our soul and our mind, and we love our neighbor as ourself. That's everything we have. In a world that's struggling, struggling with truth, struggling with hard questions, we need to be there for our kids and our friends and our family. The world is giving them everything they've got. At one click of a button, you can get an answer from the world right now. They'll even come to your house and buy a meal to sell you what they got. So we need to be beating the world to that. We need to be in front of the eight ball. Sometimes you're going to feel like you're getting hammered a little bit. That's not the intention. There's going to be times in life where the amount of information and work seem to be overwhelming, but in order for something to be better, we need to know where we're going wrong so we can fix it and stay in the fight. This is a term that is a military term, and I don't mean fight, heads up, fight. What I mean is don't lose your bearing. Don't get scared. It's going to be scary sometimes, but you need to stay in it because it's important, because it's our kids. One way to do that is by being out in front of it and doing the study beforehand. Some things we talk about in the next few weeks may cause you to have to rethink how you spend your time. That's going to be difficult. Our time is precious. But like our pastor asked back in October, what would you be willing to do to prevent them from departing from the faith? I like to add, what are you willing to give up? What are you willing to give up to serve Christ through serving your kids? It's going to cost you. It's going to cost you something, probably time, at least time, if not money on books and meals. Whatever it is, it's going to cost you. You've got to decide what your priorities are as you move through these issues and these questions in this crazy world that we seem to be living in right now that, man, up is down and black is white. Being here is a great first step. It might feel like you're taking a drink of water out of a fire hose sometimes, but stay in the fight. You don't have to fix everything all at once. We start with prayer, and we take a step, and then we pray, and then we take a step, and we read, and we pray, and we study, and we pray, and we step, and we pray, and we pray, and we pray, and we pray, and we pray. From the pulpit just a couple of weeks ago, he stole how it happens in my head, but I suppose the apple doesn't fall too far from the family tree. You're not too busy. Your priorities are out of whack. You can come up. It's quoted right here. I went back and watched the sermon. That's a quote from Pastor Errol Hale. You're not too busy. Your priorities are out of whack. So you're going to have to decide. I remind myself this all the time. For those of you who know me well, you know that I'm a stay-at-home dad. That's the position of life that God has put me in. My job is to make it as easy as possible for my wife to wake up and go to work and come home and live in a happy home. That's my job. I do the laundry. I do the cleaning. I raise the kids. But I have to say this to myself all the time. Don't be lazy. Don't be lazy. Don't be lazy. I repeat that in my head. If you knew how often it happened in my head, you'd probably think I was a nutcase because I'm lazy. But there is no lazy here. Your priorities are out of whack. going to get some homework. They're easy. Most of you in this room are doing these things already, so we're already one step ahead. But I want you to pray. Spend some time thinking about your priorities. Write them down if you have to. What are your priorities? What problems or questions or issues are you having right now in your family that need to, you know, write them down if they don't just come right to the top of your head. But spend some time in prayer. thinking about that because I can't change what's important to you. That's between you and God and the Holy Spirit. That's something you have to come up with through prayer and serious consideration. But what are you willing to do? If you're looking for a quick, simple fix, this isn't going to be it. It's not quick. It's not simple. But it's worth it. So again, if you're not, everybody in this room is already doing this. Start with 10 minutes a day. 10 minutes a day praying, 10 minutes a day reading. That's 20 minutes out of your day. If you're not doing it already, start today, not tomorrow. When you get home, do that. All you gotta do is read. You don't know how to read, start in Matthew. 10 minutes. Pray for 10 minutes about what you read. And then pray, and then pray. Next week, when we come back, we're going to be taking a look at how these progressive Christian church ideas are affecting society, and we're going to define deconstruction, kind of how this is all working with our kids, as well as taking a look at five signs of a progressive Christian church. Then week three, we'll be talking about redefining a culture, like safe spaces. Where are there safe spaces? Emotional issues, defining hermeneutics and exegesis, because these things are important to understand as we learn ourselves. And it's important to understand hermeneutics and exegesis in order to spot what they're doing wrong. So we're going to talk a little bit about that. And let's not forget, how do we fight these battles first and foremost? we pray. So let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this time that we've had together. Lord, Thank you for being our Lord. Thank you for being steadfast. I love the word steadfast, Lord, because in our lives where we see chaos, and where we're uncomfortable, and where we don't know the answers, and where we're scared, and where we don't know kind of what to do, Lord, you're steadfast. Thank you. Thank you for being that. Thank you for being the rock that we can count on, for giving us the 66 books of the canon to turn to. Your word to us. Father, praise you. Thank you for this time that you've given us in a church, like in a church building, Lord, to meet and to discuss and to worship you with our minds and to learn and to spend time here loving on our kids, Lord. And wherever they are right now, whether or not they're in Mr. Benyo's class or getting ready for worship, Lord, open their hearts and draw them to you. You do the work. Father, help us remember that as we move through this class and as we move through life. Thank you so much for the time that you've given us. I pray all these things in your name, amen. All right, we have three minutes for questions. Went a little long today. Again, please write your questions down because I will get to them if it takes you more than a three by five card to write down your question. let's get coffee instead because it might require more of a lengthy answer and that's that's good but if anybody does happen to have a question again we only have a couple minutes before the prayer service and that's a great way to end what we're doing here is to go start our worship service and prayer in the in big church do we still call it that what we call it Like a big church. Are there any questions that came up that I can answer for you now? Or again, if you wrote them down on a three by five card, I can answer them next week as we get started. All right. Question. OK, so what would you say is the difference between the progressive church, progressive Christianity, and, shoot, now I've just lost my mind, the movement that was happening prior to the emergent? That's a good question. So what's the difference between like the progressive church and the emergent church? My answer would be that it's hard to say because the emergent church really was progressive and was liberal in nature And it's hard to define what a progressive church is because the first thing that comes to my mind which isn't accurate is LGBT affirming churches they are progressive in nature because they've taken scripture you know and Distorted it and and that happens again. And one of the ways they do that is by reducing and removing the inerrant and infallible word of God. The whole thing is not inerrant and infallible, only some parts. And so again, it becomes hard because you kind of have to know the pastor and you kind of have to know each individual church because they don't have like a confession that says, here's what we believe. They twisted this and they believe this is okay. There's a real popular I forget what his name is, and I'll have it before the six weeks are up. But there's a real popular pastor right now who's real big in media and in this little circle of the world who is promoting and celebrating and championing polyamory and mixed relations. You don't even have to be married. And he literally claims it's sometimes it's I have to monitor myself and how much I watch these guys talk because I get all worked up. But he'll sit there and tell you that the Bible tells us we should be doing this. If you're only married to and intimate with one person, you're doing it wrong. And so that's like his form of progressive Christianity. Now obviously he's reduced how he feels about scripture and what he believes is true and what's not true. And I have some really good quotes for you guys. From a progressive most progressive Christian pastors and churches don't call themselves that at this point I just recently watched an interview between Sean McDowell and a progressive Christian pastor He calls himself a progressive Christian pastor. It was fascinating. This guy was awesome. He was a really really nice guy and I have some quotes for you in the next week or two of some of the things that he said But the long answer is really it's very similar. We just coined the term progressive Christian church because that's kind of what they're doing right now is they say they're progressing, they're liberal, and they're moving in this direction where a popular way of thinking amongst these folks is we didn't quite get it for the last 2,000 years. It's almost Mormon in nature. You didn't get it, and now finally we're understanding what these scriptures mean. A new revelation, new teachings, and that's why it's progressive. The Emergent Church was real similar. I mean, even back to the Gnostics, there's nothing new under the sun, right? That series was fantastic. Go back and watch it. But there's nothing new under the sun. Even the Gnostics were essentially taking what was understood as biblical doctrine and biblical understanding and like changing it, you know, because we got it wrong. Well, you can't do that. It becomes not this. You can, and then you call yourself something else, but don't call yourself a Christian. All right, any other? I was unfamiliar with the term polyamory. That's multiple partners. Yeah, multiple partners. So polyamory, polygamy is multiple marriages, polyamory. And there's a handful of these polys that all revolve around the same. And it's real popular across the pond. So in Europe, it doesn't seem to be even that odd these days to be either married to two people, two other people, or married to one and have like a girlfriend. Most of the time it's a guy with two girls. Of course, you can figure out why that is. But there's a bunch of different terms that essentially have to do with that. So if you had two guys and one girl, you might call it a different word. I don't have all of them right sitting in the front of my head. I figured that's what it was. But polyamorous, dating, or intimate with multiple people. What's the author for the tactics? Greg Kuckel. I'll leave these, I should have left them on the back there. I didn't mention this one. Pastor mentioned it a couple months ago. This is a great book to read also. It will give you her story and her understanding of progressive Christianity. This class is loosely based on the information in here. Elisa Childers, progressive Christianity is kind of her wheelhouse. All the professional apologists kind of have a thing. They kind of have a wheelhouse, so to speak, and that's hers. And man, is her story incredible. It's really, really good. She has a really popular YouTube channel and podcast that you can also listen to. And it's chock full of amazing information because she does like an hour a week or so talking to different people who have been deconstructed and come back to the faith and all this kind of stuff. So that might be something you're interested in. This book, this is the 10th anniversary edition. Greg Kokel is the president of a ministry called Stand to Reason. It His ministry is designed to teach Christians kind of how to do apologetics, how to be ambassadors for Christ. And this book is one of the best. If you're at all in the apologetics world, the information in here is so helpful because again it teaches you and helps you how to have conversations just like the little Columbo tactic we just talked about what do you do or the steamroller tactic is what if you're talking to a person who won't let you talk and they just keep how do you handle that situation how do you guide the conversation because you are not always The weight is not always on your shoulder. The ball is not always in your court. And when you're talking to other folks, especially atheists, sometimes it can start to feel like that. And this book will help you develop those conversations and stuff like that. So I'll leave them in the back if you want to thumb through or just take a look at them. But there will be more books coming. And I'm going to tell you this in the next week or two. Don't buy a book and give it to your kid. Buy a book and read it, and read it with your kid. Because they're not going to read it. That's a common problem amongst, especially, parents of junior and senior high age kids. And like, oh, what book? They'll ask you, what book should I get to give to my kids so they can understand this? There isn't one. They're not going to read it. They don't care. You read it. And then you walk through the information with them. And if they see you're interested in it. So I'll have a bunch of books on different topics that kind of come up throughout the next handful of weeks. Let's go pray.