Well, welcome to a special PresbyCast. I say that often, but this one is special because we're actually introducing a new show, a new show on the feed, which you might call a sub show. It's called, here you go, you might know it's about the PCA, it's called Fathers and Brothers. And we have the originator, producer, interviewer of Fathers and Brothers with us. And his name is Jim McCarthy. He's been on the show for you were here for an overtures preview show, I think in 2022. Yeah, it's been a while. As I recall. So, tell us about the new, this podcast that you sort of recorded and got some episodes in the can and then we talked and we decided it would be a natural fits and this is sort of a monthly thing, maybe 8 to 14 times a year. It would be great for our audience and you'll have an audience right from the get-go. And then when you move up to bigger things, you'll have us on your show someday. So tell us about the show. Thanks, Brad. Always good to be on with you, brother. The show is called Fathers and Brothers, which is a bit of a nod to our Presbyterian polity and our stereotypical greeting, obligatory greeting, affectionate greeting at Presbyterian General Assembly. Yeah, the idea for the show was really born out of encouraging, insightful, honest conversations that I had the privilege of enjoying throughout my time in seminary and since with seasoned pastors about life and ministry. And so that's kind of the tagline for the podcast, conversations with seasoned pastors about life and ministry. And the episodes intend to allow a more, you know, an older experienced pastor who's been around the block and seen a thing or two to share about his upbringing, his coming to Christ, his sense of call into ministry, his time in seminary, and sort of the arc of his pastoral labors and stories and lessons learned along the way. Darrell Bock Whether he's run over a Jeep with a tank, things like that. You've listened to the first episode. Oh, yeah. So wait. So anyone listening, you know, before you tune out and you think I'm not interested in this, we're going to play the first episode in just a couple of minutes. And you don't want to miss this one. But you can preview that for us in due time. Now, let's let's just tell everyone that you are the not for too long now, the minister at First Press Statesboro. No, Trinity. Trinity. Trinity Statesboro. First Press probably has a pastor named Megan or Caitlin is my guess. Taylor actually she's she's a very nice. She's a nice lady. Okay. Yeah, that would be a PC USA Church, and that's not Jim Yep, I have the great honor of serving at Trinity Presbyterian Church. I am the church's second pastor Follow in the or I'm attempting to follow in the footsteps of my predecessor and the church's planter Roland Barnes who 42 years ago now 43 years ago planted the church and and pastored faithfully all that time. And in those four decades, it's amazing to see what the Lord was able to build through one man and his wife and godly elders and deacons and church folk that came alongside. Well, maybe the secret was his wife's cool name. Tell everyone what Roland's wife goes by. She is Peaches. Peaches Barnes. In Georgia, yeah. Yes, sir. Yeah, well, he's a good friend of our senior pastor here, Roland Barnes. They were in Peru teaching recently together. So we've got connections. Now, you went to Greenville Seminary, is that right? Yes, sir. 2011 to 2015. You had my pastor as a professor, I'm sure, at least for a few courses. I did, yes, sir. And you're from Jacksonville, you pastored down there, pastored for a while in Mississippi, and now you've come to the promised land, Georgia. Yeah, that's right. A quick comment about Dr. Wilborn and my time with him at Greenville Seminary. He was so patient with me, but I remember Among the many pearls that Dr. Wilborne shared, he introduced me to the writing of Benjamin Morgan Palmer, the Southern Presbyterian who ministered almost as long as Roland Barnes pastored here in Trinity, but Palmer ministered mostly at the First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans. And one book in particular, that Dr. Wilborn gave. Usually it's right here on my desk. It might be, but it's… called The Broken Home or Lessons in Sorrow. It's a seven chapter book written by Palmer. Each chapter is dedicated to the life and really the deathbed conversations and the gospel witness of five of his children, of his mom and his wife as they prepared to cross the Jordan. That book, that book recommendation from Dr. Wilborn alone was worth my entire seminary tuition. So I love your pastor and I'm thankful for him and I got to have him on the show at some point. Yeah, that'd be good. I'm sure he would, you know, he doesn't talk fast, so you've got to budget plenty of time with him. Will do. But he talks well, and he talks important, importantly, important things, he says, weighty things. How about that? Well, so we're gonna hear the first show in a few minutes and tell us who it is And you know, maybe you you started off with a this may be the bang, you know, everything else may be anticlimactic after this one No, I I definitely started off with a bang, but we're about five episodes in now and each one is I feel like it's just got really unique and important things to offer. And each one has been different, but they all have a lot of the common themes, share a lot of common themes. All of the men that I'm pursuing to speak with, you know, have had ministries that have centered around the means of grace and they're gospel preaching parish ministers who are devoted to their congregations and whose ministries have stood the test of time and have been owned mightily by the Lord. So this first episode, I interviewed Pastor Rick Phillips. He's the senior minister at Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville. And he was a spiritual father, friend, and mentor to me and to my wife, Jordan, and our family while we- You were an intern. Yes, sir. You were an intern. Yes, sir. At that church. While I was at seminary, I got to intern working with the youth at Second Pres, and got to spend a lot of just very close time with Dr. Phillips, and I'm forever grateful for him and for his impact on my life and ministry. Darrell Bock Well, we're kind of a blue-collar podcast. We promote ruling elders and things like this, so some people might say, ìThis doesn't fit. This is all about pastors.î But I think this would be really good for anybody considering pastoral ministry. and anybody that's in seminary, and anyone that wants to understand pastors better. There's some inside baseball there. But just remember, this is a pastor talking to a pastor. If some of it doesn't seem relevant to your ruling elder or church member life, there'll be some good stuff. probably in every one. And again, we'll identify them. You're going to know if you like the show, it's going to be easy to know that's the one that's coming in your feed. But this is going to be sort of a surprise for everyone. So, do you want to give us any other names that we can expect upcoming? Yeah, so the episodes that I've recorded and we're releasing are Rick, Dr. Phillips' first. After that, I have Roland Barnes, who's, like I said, my predecessor and the planter of Trinity Presbyterian Church. Terry Johnson, pastor at Independent Pres in Savannah. Carl Robbins, who pastors Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, also in Greenville, and Dr. Pipe, a former president, current professor, and church planter. Well, that was going to be boring. That was going to be boring. So everyone skip that one. Don't listen to it. Just, just, you know, swaplift or whatever that, whatever, whatever your podcast app is just, you know, for delete it without listening. I'm sure that's what everyone's going to do. No, I, uh, I'll tell you. I thought going into these conversations and interviews that I already knew pretty much what there was to know about these men. And boy, was I wrong. They were so gracious to just share, I think, some deep tracks, deep track experiences about their, like I said, life in ministry. And I think the interviews, the stories that they share will do two things for the listener. One, it will I think just humanize the pastor will allow listeners to sort of see the man behind the pulpit or the man beneath the steeple and to see that he's just a Christian man who's doing his best to love his family and pursue Christ. And then secondly, I think that knowledge will endear listeners to the works of these men, not just their pulpit ministries, but also their books and writings. I think it'll add interest and levels of familiarity that will make those works even that much more beneficial. You know, it'll also, you know, some of our listeners are younger, so some of them haven't heard of, you know, the towering figure, James Montgomery Boyce, who, who mentored Rick Phillips. And that, that might point them towards some other interesting characters, because they're going to drop a lot of names, not in the Hollywood name dropping sense, but in the just, they're going to give credit to a lot of other people. And, you know, a lot of our world is small. So, you're probably going to hear one of these guys mention, you know, your pastor or somebody you know, or somebody that used to pastor your church. I mean, it's that intimate in the PCA. Now, let me say this. You're just on your computer microphone tonight, so the sound is not incredibly good. But you're recording these interviews live, and for a novice, you've done a heck of a job, and we can help you get even better. But you're sitting down in a room with them, so there's no dropouts. It's good quality audio. I've recorded Dr. Wilborn a few times. We do it in his office. Sounds good. Sometimes we do it at conferences, but there's a lot of background noise. But yours is very listenable, very good, and people are going to enjoy it. Well brad coming from you that is that is high praise because you are the goat of presbyterian. I'm a goat. Yeah. Yeah I got a shaggy beard and my wife Yeah blames me for everything. So yeah, absolutely No, I uh, you know, I was thinking to myself if i'm if i'm gonna do it um, I want to do it right and part of the heart behind these podcasts is preserving as one sit-down interview is able to do that, preserving something of an autobiographical, um conversation with each of these men, uh, not just For my immediate selfish interest this podcast does give me a great excuse To go and carve out an hour and a half or two and a half hours with these men who i'm dying to sit down and talk with anyway But also for any of your listeners that might find that encouraging and a blessing as I have I will say this too brad You would not have to push me or to twist my arm to um to bring in ruling elders and to open this up to ruling elders as well. I don't know, maybe that's a season two exploration, but I'm a hard to office man and I think the experiences of ruling elders are as valuable for teaching elders and prospective teaching elders to hear as the stories of teaching elders are for ruling elders and prospective ruling elders to hear. Yeah, you've got to get Mel down there in Greenville, and we'll think of some more. So, well, it's very good. Hopefully we'll get together at General Assembly in a few weeks. Maybe we can record one night there, and I think everyone will enjoy this. Any parting words you just besides, you know, don't throw things at you. Is that it? No, I'm Thankful Brad for your interest and willingness to to platform a novice attempt of a rookie podcaster Always started we've started a bunch of podcasts here and I said, you know, you're you're a sub show You're kind of like the Presby girls without the girls. So I I'm honored to stand in the shadow of the Presby girls and to, to, to, to chase after their, uh, their footprint. Yeah. We'll be careful or they'll invite you on their show and then you'll really be in trouble. All right. Well, thanks a lot. We're going to spin this up and everyone's going to love it. Thanks a lot. You got it, Brad. Thank you. James Montgomery Boyce walks up on the pulpit and begins preaching the Word of God with intellectual clarity and spiritual power. And I'd never heard anything like that in my life. And his sermon, his text was Hosea 3, Gomer on the auction block, and he just dissects my life. The Lord Jesus Christ bids the price of his blood and he will redeem you. He preaches the blood of Jesus Christ. I go home that night, walk back to my apartment, get on my knees and surrender my life to Jesus Christ. that night. Welcome to Fathers and Brothers, a podcast designed to bring you conversations with seasoned pastors about life and ministry. I'm your host, my name's Jim McCarthy. I am the senior pastor at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Statesboro, Georgia, and I am joined by my dear friend and mentor and father, Rick Phillips. Rick, thanks for being on. Hey Jim, it's great to be here. And we are recording this episode in the war room of Pastor Phillip's office here at Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina, where Rick is the senior pastor. And so if any noises are caught while we're recording, bulletins are being printed in the next room and pastoral offices. That's on Thursday. Today's Wednesday. Okay, so all sorts of different materials and things going on. Rick, I suppose you are either to blame or to thank for the idea and starting this podcast. I am. You are, yeah. I had the privilege of attending Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and during that time my family called Second Pres home, and As I look back on that time, I do so with great gratitude for just the way you took me under your wing and talked to me about what we were studying in class and my developing theology, but also my developing personal piety and relationship with Christ and my relationship with Jordan. And as I look back on that time, I certainly value every hour I spent at Greenville and in class, but I look with equal gratitude on the conversations that we had. Thank you, Jim. It's a blessing. Just your willingness to talk about life and ministry, which is the heart of this particular podcast. So again, thank you. Okay, well let's start with your story. I'd love to hear about your upbringing, your family. Ministry was not a first career for you, so how Christ brought you to himself and just the whole... Yeah, I'm the son of an army family, of a cavalry family. My grandfather was a horse cavalryman who, right before World War II, moved to tanks. The whole cavalry branch moved to tanks. And he did World War II, he had a good war, a very good war, I would point out. And my father was an armor officer and I was an armor officer, so I grew up on army bases. And our Christianity was army chapel, army base chapel. And so it was kind of a... Patriotic, conservative, moral, theologically indifferent experience. It's a little bit between being a Presbyterian and Episcopalian. And I remember when I was a teenager, this is the mid-70s, my mother, my dear mother, she said, we have some new neighbors who've moved in. And they're evangelicals. They're going to invite you to a Bible study. Just say no. So it was part of our military, civic, patriotic duty. It fit in that matrix. That was my Christianity. And then when we were, my parents actually, when my dad retired, they ended up in a PCUSA church and they moved considerably left as a result of that. I was a guy who, you know, I was a member of First Presbyterian Church, Richmond, Kentucky, during my three years of high school. I don't remember anything. I don't remember the building. I Googled it recently. I'm like, oh, yeah. I was there every Sunday for three years. It's made no impact. Nothing touched me on the surface of my mind. And so I go to college and I stopped going to church and I it's kind of a story behind that because I was actually the the the captain of fellowship of Christian athletes at my high school and I actually received the award in my public high school in the 70s as best Christian student and How times have changed. Yeah, and I was known as the Christian guy because I was just a good kid, and I was raised Christian. And I actually walked down the aisle on an altar call. It took place in my gym one summer. It had far more to do with a pretty girl, who I don't remember, than it did with Christ. But I moved into the dorm at age 17 at the University of Michigan, and whatever vestige of Christianity was left in the car. My parents were crazy. I was 17 years old, they dropped me off in 1978 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They dropped me off in Bursley Dorm and drive away, I don't know his soul. Good luck, Ricky. Ricky had a lot of fun, but I immediately assimilated into the social life, except for the drugs. I never did drugs. And, you know, there's no Christianity at all. Whatever was in my mind went out my mind the moment I got there. What were you studying? I was there on an ROTC scholarship, so I knew that I was going to go active duty in the Army. Where did that sense of calling come from? Well, I grew up in the Army, honestly, because of my closeness with my father. My father was a wonderful man and really a very impressive man. He was an armor colonel. And I adored my father and looked up to him. It just never occurred to me to be anything other than an armor officer. And my hometown is an Army base, and that was my culture. And I actually had an appointment to West Point. We're a West Point family. And I turned down my West Point appointment, causing my grandfather to disown me. Was he West Point as well? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He's buried at West Point. We're West Point people. When I was a little boy, we would drive up to the Army-Navy game with our car decorated. It was fun. So my dad and brother and uncle are all Naval Academy. Are they really? Yes, sir. What a family stain that is. It is. Stain? Yeah. Anyway, I don't want to take too much time talking about it. But anyway, the reason I turned down a West Point appointment, because I've been living the West Point life for 18 years, 17 years. And my dad, he was a real open-minded person. He really was. He said, you ever thought about an ROTC scholarship? Those things are great deals. And you know, Ricky, you don't have to go to West Point. I was like, I don't? It never occurred to me. It's like, well, I'd be happy if you did. You have an appointment. But I went to Michigan. In some respects, it was good. In some respects, it was bad, because it was not a high point in my life. I was the number one student in my high school, and I barely attended class in Michigan. I looked back later, well, the longer I stayed, the less I stayed. I majored in Phi Delta Theta fraternity. And to a certain extent, it was kind of a social coming of age, but with some really bad social habits. And I was always, I sometimes wonder if I was converted in high school. Because even in those days, I was pretty restrained as a sinner compared to what I might have been. Second use of the law. Yeah, and so I graduate and I go active duty in the Army, and I'm a tank lieutenant. And I spend the 90s. Did you go to OCS after? No, it was ROTC. ROTC. So you go straight from college through ROTC. Yeah, I was commissioned after graduation. My father pins on the gold bars that his father pinned on him. And then I reported Fort Knox to Armor Officer Basic School. Was that assigned, or did you choose that? Oh, I chose it. Oh, yeah. I mean, it would have been a major blow if I had not branched to armor. But I was a very... I had done very well, and I got to pick my branch. That was a huge day today. I was branched to armor. What year did you enter the Army? 82. 82. So Hart, in some sense, the Cold War is still raging and heating up. In some sense, yeah. Well, this was the Reagan Army. And this is right after Red Dawn, and I remember that movie came out, and it was kind of how we felt. And Reagan becomes president. It was all this investment in the Army. And it was a great time to be a young armor officer. And I had huge responsibility and authority. And so really, the whole 80s, I'm in combat units. All stateside? No, no. I was deployed in excess of 300 days almost every year. So we were seldom home. Anyway, so the Army then, I remember in the Army career, You do your three years as a lieutenant, and you're a platoon leader and whatnot, and then you get promoted to captain, the greatest rank in the army, because you're young and you've got power. And then you do staff jobs, and I was an armored cavalry troop commander, one of the greatest experiences I'll ever have. That's the D Troop, 12th Cavalry. That's what my sergeants gave me there. And I'm pointing to something on my wall in my office, but it matches the tattoo on his shoulder. I'm kidding So anyway but you got after so, you know, you're now like getting ready to be 30 years old and You're you're in line for major and you got to do you're not gonna do troops You got a you need a master's degree and you're gonna do some infrastructure job and I remember kind of going up What am I gonna do? And I had a letter in my mailbox, how fateful am I from West Point? And it turns out that West Point needs a certain percentage of their faculty to be non-graduates. And because I've been to a top school, Michigan, despite my bad grade point average, which they may not have noted, I was allowed to interview for a position on the West Point faculty, and I was selected for that. So West Point sends me to grad school. I go to the Wharton School of Business in 1990. And it's kind of a, I think for a lot of young soldiers, young officers, you just spent nine years in combat units and now I'm single, I'm living in an apartment in Philadelphia and you're kind of taking stock of your life. And I was struggling over meaning, the purpose of my life. I was aware that my patriotism was not pure, that I was really in it for glory. Did you miss the front? Did you miss your troops and military life? Well, I actually missed Desert Storm, and that was a crushing blow to me. That you weren't a part of it. Oh yeah, yeah. And when you're getting selected to teach leadership at West Point, this is like your career's going very well. So this is like all really good stuff. But just in the providence of God, I've been in command of an armored cavalry troop. Six months later, they're at war, and I'm in Philadelphia. And it was shocking to me because I had this egotistic belief in my own glory. And I believe that I led a charmed life. And I'm not the kind of guy who misses the war because he's in grad school. I'm the guy who leads from the front and gets medals. And all my peers slash friends slash competitors are commanding combat units in Desert Storm. And I'm stuck in Philadelphia at the Wharton School, which is not a bad gig. But I remember on August 1st, 1990, Saddam crossed the line and Bush, President Bush sent us in. The next day, I called Armor Branch that morning. I was the 13th tank officer to volunteer for service in Southwest Asia. They took the first 54 armor officers except for me. And I get a phone call back, they go, Rick, Rick, we just wrote a check for $56,000 for your tuition. You're now in the West Point faculty cycle. It could be World War III, and you're going to grad school. He says, Rick, there's guys like you who missed World War II, literally. And that was just, to me, it was one of several blows to my egocentric, self-glorifying worldview, and I couldn't believe it. The other one going on was my father had gotten multiple sclerosis, and it was incredibly brutal. And my father was the indestructible man who was being destroyed right before my eyes. So I'm 30 years old, and my worldview is not working, and my worldview is not working, and I'm just kind of... And I remember kind of reeling. In fact, I remember... Right around that time, buying a Bible and saying, I should connect with my Christian version. I tried to read the Bible and it made no sense to me. I was reading Matthew's gospel, King James, partly because it was a King James version, but made no sense to me whatsoever. And then, but right around that time, my mother calls me, my dear mother, and she calls and says, Ricky, this is like a little window into my family. I don't mean to be critical, son, but when you're a general, you'll be expected to be religious, and if you're not religious, it will hurt your career. I don't think you've been very religious the last 10 years, maybe 12, Mama. And maybe you've developed some, shall we say, social habits that would be good to get rid of. Maybe. Well, honey, you're in grad school. You live in downtown Philadelphia. Wouldn't this be a good time to go to a Presbyterian church? Find a nice Presbyterian church. Maybe meet a nice girl. So I go, okay, I'll go to church this Sunday. Well, the day I had moved into my apartment building, I had carried, this was like a month earlier, I had carried a load of boxes from a young lady who was moving out. And I'm a gentleman, I carry some boxes down. And I remember in the parking lot she tries to witness to me, and I body language her out. No, no, no, no. What does she say? So she says, the only thing I remember her saying, she gets in the car, she looks out the window, and she says... So she's leaving. She's pulling out after a failed attempt to witness to death. And she says, if you're looking for a church, I'd recommend 10th Presbyterian Church at 17th and Spruce Street, which was not that far. And it's great preaching to a lot of young people. You'd be really blessed if you go there. And I've often thought of her pulling out and just kicking herself. What a lame witness that was. Yeah. So my mom says, you know, would it be nice if you found a nice Presbyterian church? So I'm like, okay. So next Sunday I put on a suit and I walked to First Presbyterian Church at 20th and Walnut, which is where I lived. I was right across the street from my apartment building. And I would have been a great, it would have been just a continuation of my smug liberal, you know, upper middle class background. But the Lord had other plans because they chose that Sunday to do a potluck fundraiser for the Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua. There's a poster on the door. And I see, I'm standing at the door, there's a poster, stay by for our fundraiser for, a potluck fundraiser for the Sandinista rebels. I take it you're not a fan? No. Not at all. And so I'm not going to that church. And I'm standing on the street going, remember that young lady? And that church she mentioned, what was that church? So I walk back to my apartment, I go to the Yellow Pages, and the only thing I can remember was 17, which was a street, it's on 17th Street. And I figure it out, they had the Yellow Pages, and I missed the morning service. And I want to be able to tell my mother I went to church. Who knew they had an evening service? Did you ever know that these Presbyterian churches have evening services? Not until I came to Second Pres in Greenville. So I walked there. I walk across Rittenhouse Square, where a few years later I proposed to my wife. And I walk in the doors, and I got it. I mean, it's a traditional worship service, and I knew the Gloria Patri, I knew the doxology, I knew the drill. But what I was not prepared for was the preaching of the word of God. James Montgomery Boyce walks up in the pulpit and begins preaching the Word of God with intellectual clarity and spiritual power, and I'd never heard anything like that in my life. And his sermon, his text was Hosea 3, Gomer on the auction block, and he just dissects my life. The world bids fame and pleasure and glory and you have sold yourself and now all that will be left for you is the misery of your slavery because you are a slave, which is what I'm experiencing. But the Lord Jesus Christ bids the price of his blood and he would redeem you. He preaches the blood of Jesus Christ. I go home that night, walk back to my apartment, get on my knees and surrender my life to Jesus Christ that night. The power of the word of God. Yeah, yeah. So don't tell me, Jim, that I can't preach. People say to me, you know, you're not just going to preach. Well, I do other things, but yes, I am. I am just going to preach. Weapon of mass deliverance. And you're just wasting your time with that argument from me. The tank commander had not seen that caliber before. Yes. And one of the providences was that was really early in my two-year period. And shall we say the Wharton School was not a hotbed of Christianity? It was really depraved. But I started coming to church, actually the funny thing is, that was the evening series, the morning series was Romans, and he was in Romans 9. So the first sermon I hear after being born again is on, not predestination, reprobation. So the Lord just, you know, he just forces me, mainlines me into Calvinism. And I, but you know, after a little while, they had a luncheon for singles. We had a lot of yuppies there. And I started, we did. What is a yuppie? Oh, really? I'm from the South. Young urban professionals. Okay. And like a city like Philadelphia had all these single, young, urban, highly educated professionals. And 10th had about 200 of them. And were you a yuppie? Oh, I was definitely. I was a Wharton student, dude. I was an Ivy League MBA. We're like the poster boys of yuppiness. Are you kidding? Oh, yeah, yeah. And I was at grad school with Wall Street millionaires from those days, and we were definitely yuppies. But, you know, before long, they had a Friday night singles ministry that was great. There's a sermon, and we sang, and we did a sermon, and then we broke into a small group Bible studies. And I made Christian friends, and that was huge for me. You know, I learned to pray. They taught me how to be a Christian. And during that two-year period, it was really nice. Bear in mind, I was born on an army base. I was born in a multi-generational army family. All my childhood friends were armor officers. And the Lord takes me out for two years, and I'm away from the world I've been in my entire life. I'm 30 years old, and my life is utterly transformed. It's amazing, Jim. What 18 months will do in a really good church where you're hearing the Word of God clearly taught? You know, Boyce would, this is one of the reasons I quote people, Boyce would quote someone, he'd quote A.W. Pink, and I'd go by A.W. Pink's Sovereignty of God. He quotes Martin Lloyd-Jones. I've got three sections on the bookcase, four, of Martin Lloyd-Jones books, most of which I bought in those days. And then we had the old PCRT conferences. And so in 1991, I'm sitting there with James Boyce and R.C. Sproul and John Gershner and all these, Eric Alexander, I'm a new believer. But the big thing was just the week-to-week, you know, Lord's Day services, the preaching of the word, and then being part of a Christian community. So when I go back to the Army, two years later, I'm now a major, I'm engaged to Sharon, who I met at 10th. And... So you believe in the power of the ordinary means of grace because you've experienced it. Yeah, exactly right. I remember saying to you when you came here, You know, one of my goals for you as an intern is that you will experience firsthand the power of the Word of God. You will see what an ordinary means of grace ministry is about. You will be present where the Holy Spirit is working in these ways, and you'll never be shaken off of that philosophy. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. Yeah, and it was my own story, but then, you know, I was later a preacher there at the same church. So I go back to West Point, and one of the really encouraging things was I go back and people, these are like childhood friends of mine, and they're going, like, what's happened to you? And my mother's so funny, because she's the one who said, you know, dear, when you're a general, you need to be religious. Three months later, she calls, dear, I don't mean to be critical. Have you joined a cult? I said, Mama, I've joined the Presbyterian Church. She says, well, it just doesn't seem like our kind of Presbyterian Church. She's right. She was right about that, completely. And I think they kind of resented Boyce. They thought that Boyce had stolen their son. It was Christ who'd stolen their son. Boyce was merely the instrument of it. So you go back to Westminster. So I go to West Point. And I have three great years, three of the greatest years of my life on the West Point faculty. I was a professor of leadership. I taught the core leadership class in several. I taught a class I've often benefited from. I taught a course on leading organizations through change, change management. I taught a class on human motivation. And I didn't know that the West Point faculty was a hotbed of evangelical Christianity, which it absolutely was. So I got involved in campus evangelism, and then that exploded on me. Our organization was Officer's Christian Fellowship, and we had a Tuesday night, one hour, Tuesday night at eight o'clock was the club night. And we had seven to eight, was our club. All the clubs met then. And we had one hour, and we fit so much into one hour. Announcements, sing a couple of songs, pray, and then a 40 minute Bible study. And then the cadets would be at our home on Friday nights. We had kind of like our UF large group. And since I was a major, I had a big house. And since we were newly married, we didn't have children. So our house was the place where they all came. And the cadets asked if I would write daily devotionals for them. This is kind of a rudimentary, this is 1992 now, a rudimentary internet type thing. And there was a bulletin board through the West Point pre-internet thing. And there'd been a colonel who wrote daily devotions, and he had been transferred out. And they asked if I would do it. Well, I'm a 10th press product. I wrote expository messages. So I wrote through Colossians, I wrote through 1 Peter, all these books. And my ministry just exploded. I was asked to teach a Sunday school class in Grant Hall. So every Sunday morning, and I had a class, and a lot of cadets came. I did a book of Romans every semester. And it was my third year, it was the end of my second year when it occurred to me that God's, and I had not wanted to be, if you told me, Jim, I was gonna be a clergyman, I would have renounced my conversion that night. But the Lord, and it was a shock to me, I was raised to be a panzer general, and now I'm gonna be a minister? And in the army, there's two kinds of people in the army, studs and weenies. And I'd spent my entire life as a stud. And when you resign your commission to go to seminary, they just take your name right off the stud category, and you go in the weenie column. A weenie for Christ. And it looks back, it seems like nothing at the time. That was a huge thing for me. You dedicated your whole life to it. It was my identity outside of Christ, and it was really solid. I had a deeply committed identity as an army guy, as a combat officer, as a stud. So how did this call, I mean, was it gradual as you feel your ministry being commended by these people you're serving? Yeah, but that's not what it was. We would go to the Cadet Chapel because that's where the cadets were, and it was horrible. Was this your church when you were at West Point? But West Point has a cathedral, a Gothic cathedral. It's the Cadet Chapel. Where did you worship when you were in Philadelphia? Well, the Cadet Chapel. Okay, got it. And it's horrible, it's liberal preaching. And I remember hearing a sermon on John 3, 3, you must be born again, and it was on recycling. Oh. Is that kind of thing? I don't know if that, I don't think that's what Jesus meant. No, no, it was not persuasive. And all the evangelicals were kind of there just, we'd like make eye contact. And so I'm saying, but we were there because the cadets were there. It's sad, we laugh. Oh, it was horrible, it was heartbreaking. If that's the great truth, you draw from that text. Well, because they're just unbelievers. So I'm sitting in there, guys droning about what? The cadet chapel in them is clearly going through a midlife crisis. I swear every third sermon was from Cat Stevens' song, Cats on the Gradles, about not being a good father. Nothing better to talk about if you don't believe the Bible's the word of God. And I'm sitting there kind of, you know, and it strikes me like a bolt out of the blue. Had no previous thought of it like a bolt out of the blue that God is calling me to Preach the gospel to be a preacher of the gospel So that's Sunday. We didn't have kids we were newly married and Sharon and I would go hiking in the readout trail above these Revolutionary War readouts and She goes you're gonna think I'm some crazy Pentecostal, but I'm sitting in the cadet chapel today It's like a bolt out of the blue Rick needs to be a preacher. Same day. Same service, same time. And I said to her, I got really bad news for you. It's so funny. So I said, the same thing happened to me. And she says to me, of course, Sharon was raised an evangelical. She grew up in the church. She says, look, I don't make jello molds, and I won't play piano in the church. Those were the first two things. And she's never played piano in the church, but she makes a great jello mold. So in my case there was some supernatural, I believe it was a supernatural thing. That just began the process of really praying about it and I concluded not to do it. I concluded not to answer that call. Because it made no sense. I had 13 years of service. In seven years, I'd retire as a lieutenant colonel or colonel. And I'd have this massive retirement pay. And I wanted to finish my Army career. And so I remember telling Sharon, the answer is, when I retire, I'll be a preacher. And we'll have had kids then, and I'll do the OCF thing, and I'll lead Bible studies, and then I'll have more money. And the Lord just did not accept it. He does not take no. He always gets his man. And I had no peace. And so I realized what the Lord was calling me to do. I've only recently thought of it in these terms, but it's what it was. He was calling me to slay the ox and kill the and burn the ox guard that's what he was calling me to do and and that was that was a very fearful thing for me to do and We were driving to Sharon's college reunion at Messiah College in Central, Pennsylvania And she win, you know long drives loosening a resistance and she says honey, I believe me I'm thrilled not to be a pastor's wife and I had I had orders to the command of General Staff College then I was gonna be deputy commander of an arbor cavalry squadron in in Germany and And she says, that's gonna be fun. We're gonna be in Germany. But we need to make sure we're obeying God. Are you sure about this waiting till you retire? And I'm driving along and I go, oh no, I'm just terrified of losing my identity, my identities and my rank and my profession. And the thought of just radically answering God's call is just too frightening for me to handle. And then nobody spoke for five minutes and we're like, Well, once it's been said, you can't unsay it. And on the way home from that trip, we stopped into Westminster Seminary and I enrolled. Then I resigned my commission, which was a colossal thing in my family. Oh, my word. And I mean, nobody resigns as a major with 13 years service from the Westminster faculty and all my My army buddies tried to hold interventions to talk me out of it. Two of our three generals were really strong Christians, but the dean, who I worked for, hated the Christians. And he calls me in, and, you know, how dare you? You were raised to be a general, and the army's invested in you, and your parents have invested in you, and you're going through this crazy religious thing, and you have no right to resign your commission. Isn't it something how you go to 10th Prez at the subtle urging of your mother, and then the subtle questioning of your wife about your sense of calling and the direction how life is so radically transformed by these two sweet ladies? It's true. And the funny thing with this general was I had a massive payback. It's a three for one payback. I had done, I'd worked off three of my six years payback, which meant that I owed like $70,000, which we could never have paid back. So in the resignation form, it says request for waiver of payback and then rationale. And I checked request waiver. What was your rationale? I left it blank because I had no rationale. So the general calls me in. He was so mad at me. And he goes, I want to know, I see here, Major Phillips, that you have requested a waiver, and then you didn't even give a rationale. Sir, I had no rationale. He goes, I want to know what strings you pulled that this was approved. What? And I said, very high ones, sir. What's he going to do to me? I'm resigning my commission. So then I went to Westminster for three years. So you spent three years at Westminster. Three glorious years. What are some of the golden memories and moments from your time at Westminster? Well, the classroom experience and just the opportunity. I always want to tell young men, devote yourself to your seminary education. It's like really important. And, you know, to learn Greek and Hebrew. I remember pouring over my Greek and Hebrew vocab all the time. I think of Ferguson as my systematic professor, Sinclair, and Dick Gaffin as my biblical theology professor. There were many others. It was a great time in my life to really, and I was an intern at 10th Press. I led the same singles group that I had been so greatly influenced by. And it was just three incredible years in my life. And I would say that I was probably, I had pretty I had a very good reformed systematic theology Kind of like, you know, RC Sproul Ligonier PCR T or to salute us I head down Your hardest loss blew my mind. I And I've had many people say to me over the years, in fact, I've preached at places where somebody came up to me and said, so you were a student of Gaffin's, were you? And I said, thank you for noticing. Once you've been inducted into the School of Gerhardtus Voss and Redemptive Historical Interpretation, that was really an amazing, I was deeply marked mainly by Dr. Gaffin, but not just him, in biblical theology. Rick, speak to the importance of your time at 10th as an intern while going through seminary. Well, I did the Westminster MDiv in three years, which was crazy, because I was 35 years old when I got there, and I just had a sense that I was behind the game. You always want to do it. Whatever is the most hardcore method, we're signing up for that. How old were you when you started in seminary? I was 35 when I started. and we didn't have children, and so Sharon worked, and I will say, and I'm a guy who went to the Wharton School, so I've been to some good schools. The Westminster was not an easy program. Just the sheer readings, and it was what I wanted. It was academically challenging, but then when you're doing the three-year program, buddy, you're getting after it. And I honestly, I was so exhausted, and so I was the, My internship, and Tenth didn't really have much of an intern program, but I ran the singles ministry, which was great. So the first ministry Sharon and I did was the singles ministry at Tenth, which meant I preached every Friday night, and that I was the pastor of that group. But honestly, I assisted in worship occasionally at Tenth. I preached twice at 10th during a Sunday service. I preached scores of times on Friday nights, but honestly, it was too much. My third year, we'd had our first child, Hannah was born, and so I dropped my internship my third year. I was paid as a 10th internship a whopping $2,000 a year, Jim. I would have paid them. And I didn't really get to know Dr. Boyce. That was my next question. But he wasn't really around. He had a global ministry. I'm now a year older than he was when he died, which is always a funny thing. So he wasn't that involved. But I was on the radar screen. He knew who I was. So my third year, I'm getting ready to graduate, and I have no idea where I'm going to go. And I sent my resume to every hundred-member church on the East Coast, because we thought we'd like to be... My father was dying, and they were in D.C. Sharon's family's in Philadelphia. And I remember one Sunday, Boyce was preaching, it's like December, and I noticed he's looking at me. And I know what he's doing. He's keeping track of where I am, because he's going to talk. Because bear in mind, in those days, Boyce didn't even greet people after the service. Really? He preached and left. It's kind of a story behind that. And I see he's looking at me. And sure enough, he walks right over to me and says, I need to talk to you. So Boyce asked me to stay on as assistant minister at 10th Press. Now, Phil Reichen was already there as associate. So Boyce preaches in the morning. Phil preaches in the evening. And he wants me to join staff as an assistant minister. And I'll continue to do the singles ministry, but then I'll be chief executive officer of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. And I said, this is like a nightmare to me. And I said, honestly, Dr. Boyce, with all due respect, I did not leave my Army career to run your Christian ministry. I left my Army career to preach Christ. And I, well, he says, what's your plan? My plan is to go to some church that'll hire me and start preaching. And he looks me in the eyes and he goes, Rick, I really need, I need your help. So here's the man under whose, who I knew, but didn't have a personal relationship with. But you converted under his ministry. I'm converted under his ministry. And we all had a sense of what a great man he was. And he was. And at the end of those days, it was like he was a big deal for a good reason. And I held him in extraordinarily high esteem. And he goes, I need your help. And I remember going back to Sharon and saying, it's a nightmare. I mean, she says, well, you didn't say yes. I said, how could I say no? But you see, here's the thing. And I've learned a lesson from this. I had a place where I wanted to get and I had my plan for getting there, which was probably not a very good plan. But what I ended up doing was serving Christ where I was needed. And that was in fact a massive shortcut to being a preacher. And Boyce said to me, I'll take care of you. I said, you don't even have a preaching slot here. He goes, I understand, I'll take care of you. But I need your help. So I said, I'll do it because you need my help. And so often, We need to serve, the way to be ambitious and to have a career is to serve the Lord sacrificially where you're needed right now. And through that I started traveling with voice and what ended up being the last three years of his life. I traveled a lot with him and I began speaking at conferences with him. And no doubt what the Lord had planned for me as a preacher was, I remember people saying to me, who are you? We never heard you. Now we got a book by you and you're speaking at a conference. I'm like, yeah, don't ask. I mean, I'd been ordained about three years at that time. And so that was a really special thing. I became very close to Dr. Boyce and he really became my spiritual father. So how would you summarize Dr. Boyce's influence on your ministry, your preaching, philosophy of ministry? Yeah, I mean, he was a very godly man and a very kind man, but a very shy man. And a lot of people thought he was arrogant because he was shy. He was really shy. And he was a bit of an introvert, but a lot of fun. He really was a lot of fun. He and I went through an Everest mania together that was a little... Who was the first to summit? Yeah, in our dreams. Hillary or Norgay. Oh, Everest, like climbing it together? Well, they summited it together. Norgay and... Didn't Norgay later confess that Hillary was the first to step? No, I thought that he said that he asked, he told Hillary to be first, because that was his job, and Hillary insists, I don't remember. That they walk on it together? That was my, but I could be editing that. So were you guys having an Everest obsession about the story of the first time? Yeah, so I had written a book that was published by Doubleday. My first book was published by Doubleday. And we're in Colorado Springs for the PCRT, and I'm doing a book signing for my book at the Barnes and Nobles in Colorado Springs. And then when it's done, the guy says, let me give you a book. What do you want? And I said, you pick one for me. And he gives me John Krakauer's Out of Thin Air. And so I read that, and I give it to boys. He reads it. We're Everest obsessed for the next year. Always talk. We're on the everestnews.com website following Jim and Ira, following The Ascent. It was crazy. And so you're working with Boyce as a pastor? I would say in terms of my ministry, Boyce was wholly consecrated to his life as a minister. He worked a lot. He was ambitious. He did huge amounts of things. He wrote scores of books. He was consecrated. He worked hard. So when Boyce and I were on the road, we would have breakfast together. We would work all day in our rooms. We would have dinner. We'd speak at the conference. We'd go back to rooms and work. You know and we and we worked hard and and he had a sense of calling to an expository ministry That was inspiring to me. I remember sitting there one time and he was he this is not long before he gets his cancer probably maybe one of our one or two last trips together because he didn't know he had the cancer but he'd started preaching revelation and And we're having dinner, and he's just so excited about it, just talking about, you know, Phil and I had recommended he read William Hendrickson's More Than Conquerors, and Hendrickson had persuaded Boyce, thankfully, about the organization of Revelation. But I'm sitting here at dinner, and I'm like, this guy's been preaching every week for 32 years. And he's like a little boy talking about his favorite baseball team, talking about his sermon series. And I'm thinking, I wanna be like that when I've been preaching for 25 years. He was so excited about it. And Boyce never, he once said to me, you're not an old man while you're excited about things. By that standard, he was never an old man. And at the time, I thought, you know, he lived a long time. He was 62. Now I think, boy, that's young. I'm 63. But he left a huge impact on me. And just the integrity of his ministry. And look, he had weak spots. There were things he didn't do that ideally a pastor would do. But in terms of, you know, the preaching of the Word of God, he was wholly consecrated to it. He was a godly, loving man. And he believed in what he was doing. And that was a great experience for me. Any other preachers or pastors that left a mark on you? Well, I mean, Eric Alexander did because he, Eric was, do you know who Eric Alexander was? Yes, sir. Okay, good. I thought he was the greatest preacher in England. I'm not the only one who thought that. He was unbelievable. But I've never known anybody who was as much of a lion in the pulpit and as much of a lamb out of it. And it just so impressed me. I mean, what a thunderous preacher with a great Scottish accent. I can remember so many sermons I heard from him, almost as if I heard them last night. But he was such a kind, sweet man. And for whatever reason, he took an interest in me. And when Jim died, he was very, very special to me. And even like two years later, Sharon and I were thinking about taking a church in Florida, and I get a call from Eric Alexander saying, Greta and I will be fasting and praying all day. Eric Alexander and his wife were going to fast and pray for me for a day. Just his spiritual care, his investment in me made a huge impact on me. Yeah, so I mean, there's undoubtedly a number of other ministers. Phil Reichen and I were very close friends, and we would discuss each other's sermons. Phil would, he was so funny, because we did two services in the morning. So after Boyce died, Phil did the mornings, I did the evenings. So Jim, my job description was minister of preaching at 10th Presbyterian Church. It's all I did. Pretty sweet gig. And I quit that job. I'm a senior minister, what was I thinking? Yeah, what happens next after 10 days? Yeah. Well, the answer is you go out and you serve the church. Because I knew that I wasn't needed. Phil was there. So you're evening, he's morning. And I just felt, look, the Bishop Church doesn't need both of us. But Phil and I, Phil would say to me, he'd say, okay, Rick, I've got two options on my sermon conclusion. I'll decide while I'm preaching it, and I want you to give me thumbs up or thumbs down. And so I'd go and I'll do the other one. But Phil and I, it was fun if just with peers and friends to critique each other's sermons. It was a really rich time. Having someone to share the day-to-day kind of ebbs and flows of ministry can be such a blessing. So that was a really formative time for me. So then on to Florida. So yeah, we accepted a call to a church that if it was somebody else, somebody like young Jim McCarthy, I would not recommend the call to be accepted. Why not? Well, the truth is, and look, I'm very grateful for being there. I got an email today from one of my former deacons there, and I love those years. The Lord is sovereign over all. And it played a big role in my life. The fact is, we didn't know that we needed to do our due diligence. So R.C. wanted me to go there. Who? R.C. Sproul wanted me to go there. I know. I'm just kidding. And he said, this is going to be a great church. And it was a church. That was a very contemporary, very non-reformed PCA church, but a very large one in South Florida. And it was dividing because the elders had become reformed. This is the short version. Anybody who's there would say, this is not really the story, but this is the short version of it. And the elders wanted a reformed minister to help them reform the church. And the congregation did not want to be reformed. And so we accepted the call, I think in retrospect, because it was time for us to go. And the thing I always have to watch about a search committee is they put the hook in your mouth. And we actually decided- You told me about the hook. You warned me about the hook. We went to our first night there, and Sharon and I said, it's not a good fit for us. Then they said, let's show you around, and the hook was put in my mouth. And you just want to love them. It was a great opportunity to preach the gospel to a lot of people. Yeah, you know, and it was a big change for South Florida. And it's the greatest state in the Union, also? It's a great state. The free state of Florida? No, well, South Carolina is the free Christian Republic of South Carolina. But Florida is a great state, and a diverse one, and a massive one. But literally, like a month later, we're standing there with this young family, my wife, two little children, my wife's seven months pregnant, and people in the church are screaming at us. In the line to meet the congregation, they're screaming at us. We don't want to, And it was really a shocking and heartbreaking experience for us. Why? I mean, it's a silly question to ask, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. Why was that so shocking? Because I had been nothing but praised. What's the 10th Presbyterian Church? I was like baseball perspectives number one prospect in the PCA. I was the evening preacher at 10th Pres who was publishing books and I'm available to be a senior minister and everyone loved me and this is what the Lord was doing in my life of course. And I go there and people are screaming at me. Now what happened was they The session was trying to reform the church fairly radically, and let's just say the change management process was not what I might have advocated in the class I taught at Westminster. And the outgoing executive minister had sent an email to the congregation before we arrived saying, this is a bad guy. who's being brought in illegitimately to take away your drum sets. And the harm you do, of course, as you know, the left is ruthless. And we would never do that to somebody. And so we get there and they've been told lies about us. And one elder had sent an email to the entire congregation claiming that I said something about a person in the church that, of course, soon afterwards he admitted was a lie, that he'd made it up because he wanted to oppose me. And it's just a dehumanized, you're not a human being. Isn't it amazing how much destruction the devil can cause with just such little fodder? Yeah, and you're just going, what's going on here? And why would they do this to us? I remember someone came to me and said, we'll never accept you as pastor. You're completely illegitimate. And I said, OK, help me out here. You all form a search committee. Congregation votes on the search committee. They come up. Your representative comes and talks to me in 10th. I come down. The search committee voted unanimously for me. Yeah, but half of them don't want you, which was true. Then they shouldn't have voted for me. And I said, you know, you've moved my family down here having voted me in and now you tell me I'm illegitimate He goes boy, and it was heartbreaking and we had a sense that we'd messed up But you see but the Lord was breaking me to be honest with you and I remember one time during those horrible first six months and I got on my knees in my office and I remember I prayed, Lord, we trusted you and you deceived us. Then I started laughing. I said, you know what, you own me. You can do what you want with me. Let me stop whining and work on my sermon. But I mean, that was the time. So I get there and I decide I'm gonna preach on the miracles of Jesus, which I had preached at 10th and I had a book on it. Because the miracles are a picture of the gospel. Biblical definition of sin, biblical picture of redemption. And I've been there like five weeks and this South Florida guy comes up to me in his Hawaiian shirt and goes, you know you're killing this church. I said, no, I don't know. You can't believe people say these things to you. How am I killing your church? He goes, every Sunday you talk about sin in the blood of Jesus, and you're killing this church. And I said to him, I may be killing your church, but I'm building his. I'm a little more diplomatic now. You know, I've had my rough spots knocked off the old-fashioned way, but this is before then, and I was under pressure. I think that answer's fantastic. But it was heartbreaking, because you go there to bless them, and half the church left in six months. So I became, and I was, it's not me, this is just not that I thought this, I was, I became the poster boy of what not to do in the PCA, and the nominational agency people who, you know, this is a prominent church, Know they were telling people don't see the tenth press goes down there He ordinary means of grace and and he goes in and preaches reform doctrine. This is what happens you lose half your church Well, honestly We had actually we had a church plant Formed out of our parking lot a prominent church plant. In fact, there was a one of the elders that his daughter babysat for our little children. And one of the deacons came to me and very cowardly said, someone needs to tell you, Pastor, but they're bringing a guy down out of Chattanooga, or Knoxville, and they're gonna do a church plant, and they're taking half the church. And there's a group of elders who are paying for this, and they had a meeting last week, and even today, in the parking lot, there's flyers on the cars in the parking lot. Come to our church plant. And so I see an elder right after that, and I said, this guy, I said, I was just told this. Do you know anything about it? He says, oh no, pastor, I would never be involved in that. That would be so wrong. He was funding it. Unbelievable. There's no class in seminary. Actually, and so the next Sunday, half our church was gone, and it was the best thing that could have happened to our church. We became a church then. One of the funny things with our giving was the same. I learned that they stopped giving six months before they leave. And truth was, it wasn't really about me. It was about the Sessions' godly desire to make a Reformed church out of a church that was anything but that. I then saw an article in a seminary magazine about the other guy. He was a famous guy. And he said, well, there was no one preaching the gospel in Coral Springs, so I had to plant a church there. I'm like, thanks, buddy. He's not in the ministry anymore. How do you and Sharon and the kids survive that? Well, it's a really tough time for us. And honestly, Sharon would walk in a room and the women would turn their back and walk out. But the session was loyal to me. I mean, there were some, like the one guy, well, the crazy thing about hyper-affluent South Florida, and we didn't know it was hyper-affluent until we got there, the elder who sent an email to the entire church, falsely accusing me of saying something about the pianist, which I did not say, and he admitted I didn't say it, he comes and says, yeah, I slandered you, here's $50,000. That's how they solve their problems, by writing a check. How about just an apology? Or Matthew 18? No repentance. It's a check. And I'm like, what are you talking about? No, I'm not taking any money from you. Just confess your sin. No, they don't do that. They write checks. And so you went through a phase where there were a number of betrayals. But then there was a group of elders who, you can't reform a church without the elders. And when people say to me, look, I'm being asked as a preacher to go to a reforming work. I say, tell me about the session. No, no, really. You can't do it without the session because they, you know, particularly when they're going to do these things to you and they're going, I mean, and the outgoing executive minister, remember it was right before he moved there and the chairman of the search committee, who's still a good friend of mine, calls and goes, I got bad news. Remember I told you the outgoing executive minister was, uh, was okay with it? He sent an email to the congregation denouncing you, and it'll be all right. It's crazy. But you're deeply hurt, but you have to turn to the Lord. And so my short version is this, I became a preacher at 10th Prez, and I became a minister of Christ in Coral Springs. In the fire. Because you have to choose, it's not just to serve Christ, you have to choose to love them. I remember one Sunday I was preaching John 112, which is a rather good passage. And this is before the church split. And half the eyes I'm staring at hate me. It was crazy. I'm preaching to those who received him that he gave them the right to become the children of God I'm preaching this sermon about the the glories of the gospel and they hate me. I remember thinking what privilege it is to be Reviled for Christ. What is Paul right to the Philippians for to you? It's been given not only to believe Yeah, but also to suffer for his sake now the people if anybody who hears this is in Coral Springs ago We don't we don't remember that at all. Well, that's because The Lord blessed the church But on the minister and his family, there's a lot of damage that's done. And I was destined not to be there long-term just because it's so, and people don't, I mean, one of the big, I don't mean this in a self-pitying way, we shouldn't throw a pity party, but ministry's dehumanizing, both to the people who love you and to those, you know, nobody thinks you're a human being. And the price tag on us personally was super high. They don't think you're a human being, what do they think you are? you know, the man of God. And so that whole first year was so traumatic. On the one hand, it really caused us to decide to be servants of Christ and to love people and to preach fearlessly, regardless of whether leaving the church or not, but then not to fight back. And I was surrounded by some really great couples who were session members and the half that stayed, I mean, kind of for me a crystallizing moment was one of my elder's wives said to me, this guy became an elder later, she said, you know, when you got here I wanted to leave so badly, all my friends left. And actually, what she says, well, all the families led by women left the church. All the families led by men stayed in the church. And that's essentially true. And she said, I wanted to leave. My husband said, we're not going anywhere. That man is being faithful. Everything he's saying is biblical. And look, I don't understand it all, but I know he's acting with integrity. We're not leaving. And then she said, five years later, our family's totally transformed because we stayed. And that's so there was a lot of satisfaction in that and I felt that the Lord really blessed it But I mean it was what I needed if my dream was I'd go from you know, look I'm in seminary and I started hanging out with James Montgomery voice and I started writing books and I'm speaking at you're like, you know Rick not every Seminary grad has this experience and I'm kind of on this golden boy track and I know it. And if I go from 10th to some church where I'm a big success, I think it would have been very detrimental to me. I needed to be crushed. I needed to know, and Sharon has said this, it wasn't until then that I knew why you were doing this. You were doing it for Christ. You were doing this because you believe and because you want to serve Christ. And she said, you just can never know that about someone until they're persecuted. Until they go, when they're suffering, when they're losing. And I think one of the things that hurt me most was my reputation. I knew that my reputation had taken a serious ding, that the PCA establishment, I was the poster boy. I was the warning of what not to do. People were talking about you. Isn't that something? I found this when I'm going back through the Psalms. And you're reading these songs that David has written out of the anguish of his heart. He's on the run for his life from Absalom and from Saul. And the thing that he sings about the most, that he cries about the most, is what they're saying about him. I read it and I'm like, dude, they're trying to cut your head off. Yeah, and you have to. I think that of all the sins, slander is one of the hardest ones because it is what it is. The damage is done, and your reputation is marred, and you just have to leave your reputation to the Lord. Lord, my reputation belongs to you. You know, there was another thing, not dealing with my church there, but with another organization I was in. R.C. and I had resigned from a board that involved an organization with a lot of money, and they spread the rumor that I'd had a sexual affair, because I had left to come here. And there was a meeting of that church, very large church, and the question was brought up about this institution. Why did R.C. Sproul and Rick Phillips leave? And one of the guys, leaders of the other side, stood up and said, well, you know, Rick Phillips was a disappointment. You know, the reason he left Coral Springs was he'd had a sexual affair. Fortunately, one of my elders was present, and he stood up and said, that's a lie. I'm an elder at that church. But Sharon and I, we were here, we're just like going, oh my word, they have publicly, and when there's money and power involved, they will do anything to destroy you. See, and I just, there needs to be a seminary class. You can't. How are you gonna simulate that? I don't know. And that's why these conversations are so important. And you just have to consecrate everything to the Lord and go, well, I mean, And it's just, the church can be a little shocking. In fact, I remember when I was first ordained, I said to Marian Clark, who was the executive minister at 10th, I said, you know, I'm still looking forward to coming into the church. I'm used to army politics, and to be in an occupation where there's no politics, and he just laughed. He goes, oh, you're in for a brutal fall. Church is worse than the army. Isn't that something? Well, we have Satan. So we do. So my takeaway was, First of all, I grew as a preacher because I was doing morning and evening preaching. Actually, I went to the church there. They had no evening service. And so I said, we do now. They said, what do you mean? At 6 o'clock Sunday night, I'll be there preaching. Please ensure the doors are unlocked. And we started evening service. So I did grow as a preacher. But I think the biggest thing was The Lord had given me such privileges that I needed to be taken down so that my heart would not go in the wrong way. And I had to decide, no, I'm doing this. It's not like I was doing it for glory and power, but when you were getting nothing but praise, you never know. You never know. It's kind of like Jesus questioning Peter for the third time, and the third time he says, Lord, you know I love you. And in my case, I needed that. So we look back on those years not as fond years, although by the time we left, we were very happy there. And I feel the Lord, there's so many people we're grateful for there. Just this week, I got an email from my man. I love touching base with them. And I don't think when we left that they understood. They were hurt by us leaving. It's always painful. For one thing, I knew I wasn't a really great fit there. I knew I'd be more useful elsewhere. But the other thing was... it was never gonna be home to us. Sometimes you gotta look in the mirror and go, it's just never gonna be home. It was so painful. We had a Christian school, we pulled our children, our little Hannah was a kindergartner, we pulled her out because she was being bullied by the teachers who had left the church but stayed at the school. It was really the number one reason I left was my family. My children, had been through a really hard time there and needed it. And they were little children, but people are vicious. Rick, what would you say to a pastor who would find himself in a similar situation? Maybe listening to this right now and like, man, that sounds so much like my situation. Words of encouragement? I've got so many ways to put it. I used to say, you say, what's your philosophy of ministry? And I used to say 2 Corinthians 4, 1 to 6. Since we have this ministry by God's mercy, we do not lose heart. We refuse to use underhanded ways. We commend the Word of God to the consciences of men. And yeah, Satan's blinding people, but we commend ourselves, not ourselves, but Christ as servants of Christ and God who made light shine out of darkness. The power of the Word is my philosophy of ministry. I've now undrafted the whole chapter. Because the second half of that chapter is death is working into us, life is working into you. And we hold this treasure in jars of clay. And it's what we signed up for. The shape of a true gospel ministry is always cruciform. There is a death involved in being a preacher of Jesus. And Sharon and I, and even at Good Churches Like Seconds, been at Good Church the whole time I've been here, there are serious crosses you're going to bear that really hurt you. And you're going to suffer losses that you're never going to recoup. you consecrate yourself and you say okay that's fine it hurts but we choose it we have union with Christ in his cross and there is no other way to minister many times I've said to Sharon over the years and she's been wonderful I said we chose to be crucified with Christ because you cannot be a gospel minister Without being prepared. I mean every Christian carries his cross but the minister is nailed to it and that is the Christian ministry and You know, we either do it for Jesus. I mean at the end of the day The only real motivation for a faithful gospel ministry is out of gratitude to Jesus and a desire to be his servant. And the only reward, really, the ultimate reward, and if you're looking for anything else, God help you. The reward is the joy of serving Jesus Christ. And that's where we were brought to. That's very different from, you know, I have a celebrity ministry and look at my books. No, no. You're reduced to the point where we are doing this for Jesus' sake. And I've been a minister for a long time. There have been times where I would have left the ministry if I could. It was just so painful. And I don't know if I would have it, I thought I would if I could. You're being slandered, you've got elder wars against you, you've got whatever. It's just the crazy stuff that you go through. You've got to get to the point where you say, the thing I'm looking for is the pleasure of serving Jesus, and I accept that the process of my faithful ministry is my own death. And once you get there, you're like, okay. And then you're prepared to do this, and any church are gonna have these sorts of things, where you just decide I'm gonna love them in Jesus' name. I'm not gonna fight them. I'm not gonna do any power struggles. I'm gonna commit myself wholly to the Lord's care, and I'm gonna fulfill my ministry, and it's up to him what happens to me. Do you sense that young ministers oftentimes, that there's a heavy handedness, that there is almost like a cruel idealism where they, you know, we go to seminary to learn these beautiful ideals, but we don't know how to implement them in a particular context. And so we take a one size fits all approach and we can grind people up in the process. Well, yeah, a couple things I'd say. We live in a time that glamorizes the preacher, and the good part of that is we elevate preaching. And so preaching is esteemed. But then an able preacher gets a lot of adoration, a lot of positive feedback. And that's a danger to your own mentality. And I've certainly, I was a poster boy of this. If you'd asked me, back when I was the evening preacher at 10th, are you doing this for your own glory? I would have said, of course not. And I would never have thought that. But I had not been tested yet, had I? And so you don't know. But the other thing is, I think that, well, a couple of things. I think that on the one hand, our generation of the evangelical church, and I certainly mean the PCA, does not really honor the office of teaching elder. We don't have a sense of the pastor as a consecrated man, who's to be respected. And one of the things that was crazy to me in Florida, it's just a casual culture. I had 10 year olds calling me Rick. Bear in mind, I'm from an army culture. But I'm just like, you're calling your senior minister by his first name? You're 10 years old. Everything's super casual. There's no sense of, you know, he's a regular person, but I'm gonna show honor to the office, like the Bible says. And I think in many of our churches today, the ministers, someone they hire for his gifts, and there's no sense of we're to be led by a man of God. Now, that's partly because often we're young. If you're gifted young and handsome and have a pretty wife, you can pastor a large church soon. That's what they want. Sooner maybe than you should. Certainly sooner. And then there's this ruthlessness. We hire a 33-year-old guy with virtually no experience, and then he makes a mistake and we crucify him for it, which is where this whole bully pulpit thing is so absurd. I know there's abusive leaders out there. It's absurd. The pastors are being crucified throughout the land, and we're talking about them being bullies. I mean, it's crazy. So on the one hand, we need, well, a lot of it has to do with we're a Corinthian movement. We value gifts, not character. And we want a guy who will fill the pews. We tend to measure success in worldly ways, attendance, buildings, cash, all of which are good as byproducts of a faithful ministry. But we want a guy who will fill the church and who will look good on social media. And so we're going, we're looking for the wrong thing. So search committees call me and ask for advice. What should they be looking for? Looking for a man of God who's experienced and be faithful and who's got the gifts and will preach the word of God well while he humbly serves your church. And what should those candidates be looking for in their potential future co-elders in a church, members of the session? Well, you know, I flirt with three office views, you know, I've had this conversation. I'm actually persuaded that our, because mainly because of what, Acts 14, 23, I think it's probably right that there's one office of elder and two grades. But there is, you know, you think of Ephesians 4, he called some to be pastor teachers. The minister is a thing, and our polity basically doesn't have it as a thing. You know, we're all elders and one of them preaches. No, the history of Christianism and the Bible, there's ministers who are vocationally consecrated, and they're to be godly men, and they're to be able to lead. They are to be first among equals, but there's a reason why in our vows. When that person's installed, everyone vows we will meekly receive the Word of God from his mouth. And the only thing I ask is that when I am plainly teaching the Word of God, and what I'm saying is manifestly biblical, that there be reverence and respect given for that. And there's not in so many churches. You know, the ministers, dude, you're supposed to tell jokes on Sunday. These are conservative churches. You're to have good illustrations on Sunday and, you know, have your wife playing the role of the door. And in a sense of we're being led on a vitally important thing, which is really not about numbers, cash and buildings. It's about souls. and the kingdom of Christ. And if the guy's less experienced, then you patiently nurture him along. And we all need to be less thin-skinned. I'm way less thin-skinned than I used to be. And I'm probably not that great now, but I'm way better. But the things that people, elders, pull you aside and say to you, you're like, Don't say that. Don't say that to a young minister. Don't slander them. Don't send them the note. Look, I'm in a really good situation here. I have been the whole time. You never know when you're opening an envelope what's gonna be in it. I want you to know how deeply I resent you. Okay, thank you for calling and sharing. There was a time when Phil and I were preaching at 10th in those days, in the late 90s. There was a guy, and we both had a theory, that when we preached, and we didn't wear robes. Another reason for robes, because you have no pockets they can put notes in. We would always find in our jacket pocket a note criticizing the sermon we preached. And we never figured out who it was. I mean, what a thing he went through. And you're like, don't say that. Just humbly. And I'm not saying we're above criticism or above, but you probably, you listener, probably don't have the right to do it. It's the elders, and then the elders do it jointly. The elders, a session is not eight CEOs. We had an elder here and I had an associate minister who maybe was not a great preacher. And he preached a particularly bad sermon one night, and one of the elders saw him in the narthex and just railed at him. And I went and said, please never do that again. Make a motion at the session meeting, but you as a ruling elder don't have the right to ambush him in the narthex and tell him what an ignoramus he is. Yeah, there's a time, place, and manner. Yeah, and the only things that we do severally as elders are things teaching elders do, like administering the sacrament and preaching. Everything else we do is joint. But all those notes... Now, the other side of it is that we've got to... You know, I'm a person who gets a huge amount of praise by sincere people who love me. So it shouldn't bug me so much when I get an anonymous note saying, you know, I've resented you from the moment I met you. And I'm not new, I'm pretty, nowadays, of course I'm 63 years, getting a little older helps. You're like, well, I wonder who that, I'm not even gonna worry about it, go to the trash it goes. You've been in ministry a lot longer than I have, but the importance of having thick skin to not, hopefully we're not men who are easily offended. I remember talking to you after a chapel sermon that you preached at Greenville. And you talked to me about the importance of being weaned from both the fear and the need for the praise of men. And so that we can't be easily offended. Why? Because we're serving in the midst of sheep. People say rude things. We're not perfect. We say things improperly sometimes. And they have the ability, the kind of resiliency heart, for someone to say something, and to just roll off your back, to give this person grace, to cover their weaknesses in love. At the same time we have to be open to constructive critique. Also that. But see, young ministers are so insecure. Look, it's not an easy thing to stand in the pulpit and say, thus sayeth the Lord. So when I first got here, there was a retired minister who gave me more feedback than I was interested in. And I put him on the six-month rule. When you give me criticism and critique, because he did it every week, I didn't think it was good for him, and I was fed up with it. I said, you can't give me another piece of advice for six months. But I ended up using a lot of his tweets. Yeah, it turned out to be super helpful. But I mean, honestly, you just can't. Faithful are the ones. Nobody can take that much feedback. And one of the things, when you're a preacher, or he's a retired preacher, you got to force yourself just to hear the sermon and not, you know, judge and critique the guy and all that. Yeah. But I put him on the six-month rule. That's a good rule. So six months from now. And like six months of the day. He respected it. Yeah. I don't know why you want to take my advice, but I got five more. So how long have you been at Second now, Rick? This is my 17th year. I'm wrapping up 17 years. That is a really, really long pastoral tenure. Not by 10th press standards. I'd be like 5th or 6th in longevity in my home church. So 17 years. I guess... Which I will say, I'll say this. There's things that, there's an influence you can yield as you get close to 20 years that you can't earlier. What do you mean? You just, you know, a lot of the young mothers and fathers were kids here when I got here. And they trust me. And I mean, in the Lord, they should trust me. They, and I love them. You put the time in. And I, you know, and they, so there's a gravity to my words to them. And, you know, and even just the, you know, your husband's been transferred. And let me remind you to be a godly wife doesn't complain, but who supports her husband. And I know you want to come back. And she, you get a note six months later saying, you know, I've been thinking about what you said to me. They trust you you've been there 15 years you buried family members, you know you and you just have the ability to do good and and you know people I mean, there's there's people I'm burdened for right now in prayer who are suffering with medical things Who we raised our children together? You know, Sharon and I spent a couple hours in the hospital last Sunday with a dear woman in our church who's really, I mean, she's fighting for her life and she's suffering. She's been in the hospital a long time. We're old friends, you know, and I've been her pastor for 17 years. And so I think it just gives a gravity to your ministry. Of course, you know, most of the people in our church haven't been here that long, I mean, but still, and the relationship with the elders, you know, the whole learning, I've learned so much about interacting with the elders and learning, you know, a lot of the changes, I've changed and they've changed. I've definitely changed a lot of my leadership style with the elders, and I'm much better, more thoughtful, less insecure. Now, they might say, well, buddy, you got room to grow up. And I will grow. And you kind of work it out. We don't rotate our elders here, and I'm glad we don't. We're fruitful together, and we don't have any outstanding contests. We've kind of resolved it all, I think we have, and we're ministering together. You know, the importance to a church of unity and joy and love and trust among the leadership is ginormous. And the spirituality of the church exudes out from the pastoral staff. I was just meeting my staff today and I always conclude those meetings with prayer. And I pray, Lord, help us to love each other. Help us to be friends. We've got jobs to do and we're accountable. But let us bear each other's burdens. And the senior minister is important. You know, if you're not a father figure, you've got your faults, but you've got to love people. They've got to feel blessed because they're on your pastoral staff. That just creates kind of an inner core. Then you add the session and the other officers in, and it just kind of goes out into the church. Well, you don't build that in three years. You build that in 15 years, or the Lord builds it through you. What are your favorite things about being a pastor? Why is it the best job in the world? It's not the best job in the world. What? I've never crunched a Jeep with a tank. Did that happen? Honestly, it's a hard job. I say it's not the best job in the world. You've got to tell the tank story. I don't know if it's classified. It's a challenging thing. It's a difficult thing to do. What's the best part? The best part's the ministry of the Word. Preaching. And it's just the life in the Word. As a week-to-week preacher, my whole life is spent in the study of God's Word. I've called you in the middle of hard weeks before, and you oftentimes end those conversations the same way. Do you remember? No, I don't. You'll say, are you preaching this upcoming Sunday? And I was like, yeah. And he's like, so you've been studying the Bible and writing that sermon all week? And I was like, yeah. And you said, and you got paid for that? I was like, yeah. And then you go, sweet gig, man. That's a sweet gig. I have to give hat tip to David Hall for that comment. David Hall. It was really helpful for me. One of my worst times in Florida goes, did they pay you and you preach? And they said, dude, you're living the dream. But undoubtedly the great privilege of being, you know, Lloyd-Jones talks about the romance of preaching and there's a reality to that. And it's in the context of a local church. I look forward to Sunday. We get done with our worship services here, and I think we have great services. And at the end of the Lord's Day, I just go, wow, that was great. And the privilege of being their minister and preaching to them is a really exciting thing. Obviously, you develop relationships and partnerships. I mean, I value my relationships with my old interns, you know, and our staff here. But it's demanding. I mean, I'm wiped out. I mean, I work hard. You're a machine. The guys who've all worked here, whenever we get together, we're like, how is he doing it? How does he still do it? Because you're always flying, like, to different continents in Africa, and there's another book coming out. I know. And you're still preaching morning and evening, mostly. I look at now, I'm like, this is the first time and as long as I've known you, which is going on since 2011, so 13 years now, and I'm like, he's letting these assistant pastors preach in the evening a little bit more. Hey, I was very privileged. We just knew you were committed to morning and evening preaching. Yeah, but here's my deal. If I travel during the week, I can no longer write the evening service. Not with that attitude. I'm just kidding. I don't wing it, and I don't have time and energy to do it. And I travel about 20 weeks a year. No, you were very generous with... I was never an assistant pastor here, but I know that... You were not an assistant minister. I was never an assistant. So I left... You were ordained down there? I was ordained down there, yeah. I was licensed here in Calvary Presbyterian. You were on the examining committee. I think I've forgotten the details. Yeah, yeah. Some of those, anyway. No, I loved my time being an intern here. It was such a privilege. But we just knew that preaching was precious to you and that you counted it a sacred duty to do it. Yeah, but my assistants preach way more than most assistants. It's true. It's the truth. I actually preach less than half the evenings, because you throw in a vacation, you throw in, and then I travel 20-some weeks a year, and I just don't have the physical ability. Another great reason, though, to have an evening service, not just for the double portion of God's Word, but gives you that much more opportunity to give men chances to preach. Actually, I hate to say this, I think I enjoy not preaching more than I used to. Things I never thought I'd hear Rick Phillips say. I'm just sitting with my wife and listening to myself. I heard a great sermon from Jeff early Sunday night. He's a gifted guy. Yeah, man. But I mean, I'm not ready to give it up. And I've got an evening series, but I just can't do it as much. But I mean, so the romance of preaching, as Lloyd-Jones puts it, is just your relationship with the Lord, the whole process of sermon prep and then delivery of the sermon and all that. is the most enriching aspect of it. People say to me, would you leave second? And I do get attempts to get me to leave. This last couple of years have been a lot of attempts to get me to leave. But you know what? There's so many people here I'd have a hard time leaving. And frankly, I'm not willing to leave. And I do enjoy the depth of the relationships, many of which are not deeply personal. They're kind of Sunday relationships, but they're sincere. And the work we're doing together as a church, that means a lot to me. I mean, so this is just, you know, I always say they're always free to run me out, but The privilege of pastoring a church for a generation or so is a really high privilege. And look, none of us, we're all little men in local places, laboring in relative obscurity, no matter who you are. I mean, that's true of John MacArthur, really. The Alistair Begg, I mean, 20 years from now, I mean, it's funny for me now, I talk to young ministers and they don't know who James Boyce is. And I kind of laugh. I mean, he was colossal back then. Now, I mean, you know, it's two or three people a century they remember. And you don't want to be that person because they lead miserable lives usually. But just being you and your ministry, I think of John the Baptist saying, no one has any ministry other than that which God has given. And you fulfill your ministry, but you do it with ambition and zeal. We want to make the most of it. We want to really, we're not just marking time here. We're getting after it. This is a missionary outpost of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm going to get after it, and then I'm going to die. It's great. And go home to heaven. That's right. Pastoring a church is a very difficult thing. And there's a lot of demands on you. But it's a worthy challenge. And I'm very grateful for the elders of this church. That pastor-elder relationship is not always ideal. And so you got to work that out, and you got to grow, and there's some humbling, you kind of go, wow, I'm kind of doing that the wrong way. And then someday after you go to them and go, hey, you're doing this the wrong way, and we can't go on this way. You got to work through all that stuff, and I think of, you know, take Hugh Player, you know, Hugh Player, our admissions chairman. I mean, I would trust my life with that guy. And there's probably things he thinks I'm doing wrong. I don't know. He hasn't said it. He's not just a fanboy, is what I mean. He's a real contributor. But just the privilege of working alongside faithful elders. There's a bunch of them. I think of Stuart Patterson, who was with the Lord when I first got here. The colossal impact he had on this church. And Stuart loved me. People don't realize that their pastors need to be loved. One thing we need is more love. And that's not constant praise, but just loving these people. But don't be surprised if it doesn't seem that way. They have to grow, you have to grow together. You've been so generous with your time and I just have a lot of stream of consciousness Jim. I'm sorry No, it's been it's been exactly what I was hoping it would be and I'm just thankful for your willingness to share a little bit about your life and ministry and Grateful for your willingness to spend time with me. You wanted the tank story. I I do. I was scared to ask because I didn't know if it was classified. This is my criminal arrest. What? I didn't know you got arrested? Oh, yeah. Oh, fantastic way to end the podcast. So I'm a tank platoon leader in 1983. How old are you? 23. And we're doing exercises with the 2nd Armored Division on the Cow House Creek in Fort Hood, Texas. What kind of tank are you driving? It was an M1. So our listeners can go pull up an M1 and look at a picture of an M1. It's actually an XM1. We were the first platoon. What's the difference? It was a little, it was the first one, my tank was serial number 14. It was the 14th M1 tank ever made. The biggest difference was the transmission was not governed, so it went 70 miles an hour. We were kind of the reason why they put the governor on it. How much did they weigh? 55 tons. Going 70 miles an hour. How many guys are in the tank? Well, the crew, four guys. I don't know that. You say that. I've only seen Führer. That's the only thing I know about tanks. A driver, a gunner, a loader, and a tank commander, which is, if you're an officer, you command the unit and your tank. So, it's one of these evaluated exercises, and so I'm supposed to cross the Cow House Creek, and I'm going through this ford, and I'm in the river, and there's a guy, it's at night, and there's a guy standing there with a red flashlight, and it's one of the evaluation teams. It was an engineer major. Lieutenant your side has been delayed 30 minutes They were penalizing us for something. And so you've got to go and take up an overwatch position over there. So I'm like, yes, sir Well, he had parked his Jeep behind my m1 tank they weren't used to the m1 engine because we were like the first ones to have it and it has a jet aircraft engine in it and they were parked like 20 feet behind my tank and I'm in a riverbed, which you don't That is a throw-a-tank-track risk. You don't want to throw a track. You certainly don't want to throw a track in a river, but that's soft. Rivers are dangerous for this. So the mud would build it? Well, it's gravel, which is actually the worst. And so what you do is you have the driver rev the engine and then slap it into reverse. And it's like a motorcycle. He's revving the engine, this gas turbine engine back there, this aircraft engine. And he slaps it into reverse, and that tank Jumps, I mean it it the back end comes off the ground And and so they're sitting in their Jeep, you know Smoking and joking and the tank leaps into the air and they dive out and it smushes their Jeep Which I didn't even know I didn't feel it didn't hear anything I had no idea So we go up into our battle position, and like 30 minutes later, some soldier runs up out of the dark and jumps on my tank, starts yelling at me. And I'm like, get off my tank. And the next day, the first sergeant. I'm like, get off my tank. And I'm armed. I've got a .45 on my shoulder. Do you know who he was? No. Don't be jumping up on Second Armored Division tanks anywhere, all right? And so the next day, or two days later, something like that, the first sergeant sends a thing over. The Corps, which is the very high level, Provost Marshall wants you to come down to their headquarters. I said, tell them to jump in the lake. I'm an armor officer on maneuvers. No. And then like three hours later, he's like, uh, there's a Jeep coming around and you're getting in the Jeep, Lieutenant. So I get in the Jeep and I haven't slept, I haven't bathed in five days. As is typical. I mean, you're on maneuvers. I'm like, you know. I don't want seminarians to think this is okay behavior. No, no, but this is combat life. And so I'm battle gear and I've got a 45 and I walk into the provost marshal and they're all like, there he is. And I go there, sir, you need to hand over your .45. And I'm like, no. You don't hand over your weapon to anybody. No. You have the proper form. I'm not giving you my weapon. You don't hand over your weapon to anybody. And so it's funny. So they bring me back in this sergeant first class military police guy. You got to understand, the military police are the natural enemies of the combat troops. Because we're kind of rowdy, and they resent that. And we think of them as unworthy soldiers. And so he charges me with felony hit-and-run driving. And it was so funny because he goes... Vehicle description? Yeah. I said Chrysler, model XM1. And then the next question is, two or four door? And I said three hatch. And the funny thing was that jeep was in the motor pool next to our battalion motor pool. We drive by it. It's like six inches tall. And there was a new provost marshal who was a full colonel. And he was trying to make a statement to the combat troops. And so he files charges against me. And so my battalion commander is like, this is ridiculous. I mean, you're never getting it. Don't even worry about it, Lieutenant. And I go see my brigade commander and he's like, that guy's just jerking our trains. Don't worry about it. But I was, nonetheless, I was charged with two, actually hit and run driving and failure to render aid. And they couldn't believe that I didn't know it. And so we get there, and it was a good experience because I was, you know, you're like, it's good about the doctrine of justification. I know what it's like to stand before the judge. knowing you're innocent. I was innocent and I knew I was gonna get, I met with a defense attorney, he's like, I can't wait, the judge is gonna hammer him, the judge is gonna throw this case out and chew the provost martial law, I can't wait to see it. That's exactly what did happen. And, but boy, I'll never forget standing there, didn't sleep a wink the night before, knowing I was innocent. I'm standing before the judge and I stood there with sweaty palms and then he immediately threw the case out. What will it be like to stand before the Lord of Glory knowing you're guilty? So that's my... I think that's the story you're referring to. Oh, it is. But you've never told it like that. I have to say... Lieutenant, hand me your sidearm. What? No. Never. Get off my table. I don't just give my .45 to the first person who asks, Sergeant. I think I can confidently say that there's no other Presbyterian minister who can tell that story. Well, there's more interesting people than me. We'll see. Bring them forth. If they exist, bring them forth. Rick, thank you so much for taking the time. It's a blessing. I love you. It's a blessing to see you, Jim. Good to have you back. I can't believe you weren't ordained here. I mean, you left too early. We've been down this road. Yeah, I did. We have been down this road. And you were right about many, many things. Oh, but you're doing a great job. It's good to have a sovereign God. Isn't that right? Yeah. Yes. All right. Thanks, Rick. Bless you.