Our goal of this is really to give perspective to our church members, first and foremost, the family of Grace Life, just to understand a little bit from their elders, to deal with issues. We can't take up four hours every Sunday morning to deal with current events or issues or questions that come up. Well, one of the things we thought we would do for the first one is the three elders, myself, Kyle Floyd, Tim Floyd, we would kind of talk about how did we get here as a church because it's quite a journey. And when I share it with a lot of people, ministers, they're shocked that the church is actually still here and that I haven't been fired and that, you know, we're moving forward. So with that, we're going to start with Tim and I are going to kind of each of us going to kind of give our upbringing. What did I grow up in as far as church and Christianity? We'll let Kyle go last because he kind of was actually under us in a way as a teen in the church. So we need to hear his perspective is going to be a little bit different. And then we're going to start into just the process of, I would guess, the last 18 years of Grace Life. So I grew up, you know, in church. My parents got saved right before I was born, so I don't know anything but church. An independent fundamental Baptist church. The one I remember most would be Community Baptist in Crossville, Pastor Ending, graduate of Bob Jones University, so it was a very expository preaching, conservative music. But culottes were not an issue. I remember mowing the church lawn with my shirt off, going to Lexington Beach for the Sunday school picnic at the beach. I remember ladies had to wear T-shirts over their swimsuits and you couldn't swim for an hour after you ate because you just weren't supposed to go swimming an hour after you ate for cramping or something. I don't know. But that was just norm. Didn't think of it as liberal then. I remember in high school, eventually my dad put us in a Christian school. That's where I first kind of got introduced to the idea of a King James-only-ism, which really wasn't, it was more of the Greek text. So if you know anything with the Bob Jones Maranatha, Maranatha was very much a Texas Receptus idea of a school. That's where the principal and the teachers were from. Again, though, they were expository preaching, you know, those different things. It wasn't the brand of fundamentalism that we kind of became when I was pastor here. But that was just the norm and there wasn't this big fight. We would have, you know, I can remember one Monday a month was roller skating in Emily City and Court Street Baptist, our church used to be named that, would come. Tim Floyd would come with his curly hair and his fancy roller skates with his tassels and skate backwards and down low and all this. And they were known as the liberal church. And if you asked me back then, why is Coors Street considered the liberal church group? Because they'll use background tapes and music or something, or their hair's a little bit longer than ours. I mean, it wasn't based on they denied the virgin birth or, I mean that, but we still fellowshiped. The community Baptist church or the area here, the Kyle's church would show up for some of that stuff, but you weren't divided per se. Then of course, it all began to fall apart in the late eighties. and fundamentalism as I knew it, splintered into the Hiles, Sword of the Lord, and then you had the Bob Jones, Maranatha world. And you stopped fellowshipping as churches. We did camps together, you know, those different things. But I would have never viewed my church as liberal or anything. But then when I eventually got into more of the hiles world, I'd look at my church. We're liberal because women wore pants, because I mowed the lawn with my shirt off. You should never do that. That, you know, music. I can remember sitting in church. There's a guy, it wasn't Steve Green, but I think his last name was Green. He would do contemporary music in this area with soundtracks. And our church in Brown City, Calvary Baptist Church, had him in. and the soundtrack started playing. I remember my dad going, oh no, and getting his wife and six kids and walking out. You know, was that wrong, right? I don't really have a position on that other than you would think that was a denial of the faith that took place, and it wasn't. So my upbringing, though, I learned very early on, though, I determined liberal versus conservative based on standards and things, not doctrines and truths. So I never really grounded into faith. Then I went to Bob Jones University for a semester. Me and Bob Jones University both agreed I shouldn't come back for a second semester. Not to their fault, but a .7 GPA and 126 demerits, I think it was, pretty much sunk that first semester. I told my dad, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to join the army. And he's like, good idea. You're not staying here. And I went in the military and spent the next six years doing that. During that time, God got a hold of my heart. And when I got back in church, it was Ohio's brand church. And that's where the strong King James only is and sold in the buses. And, you know, so my initial upbringing thought of liberalism is determined based on standards, not doctrines, just got enhanced even more, because now I had a whole new list of standards. So if you didn't use the King James Bible, if women wore pants, if you, you know, point there, even if you had television, if you didn't run a bus route and knock on doors for six hours on Saturday, if you didn't wear a suit and tie to church, you were a liberal. It just enhanced that preconceived notion that liberalism was based on standards. Which eventually led to me coming to Court Street under Pastor Montgomery. I can remember sitting in his office saying, you have a liberal church. This church is ridiculous. You need to throw these liberals out of here. You got people cleaning the church in jeans and shorts and everything else. And it's funny, some of those folks that I was referring to are members of our church today and great friends of mine. You know, but even, but he was expository preaching, you know, so there was still that standard issue, but so, and then that just kind of led down the path. Eventually, I ended up in more of a, what I would call, if you know of, on the Sammy Allenfield kid world, that's where I ended up in Ohio. in Fellowship Baptist Church, which is really, again, in all these things, I look back, great people in all of them. Good Christians, love the Lord, good friends, were faithful, good to me. So anything we would say in this podcast or further on is not an indictment on them. Though we did come across people that I would say were less than honest and upright, but most of them just love the Lord and that's the brand that they were in. So let Tim kind of give a quick, You know, he was that liberal church, according to me. Here comes Court Street, the liberal one. So we'll let you take over kind of your process through this. It's interesting as you were talking, I'm thinking what a great segue into my testimony, because as you and I know, what forged our friendship over the years is we grew up very, very similar. We did roller skate on that Monday night once a month together and I remember those times. But writing my own couple of notes here as you were talking, So I grew up in this same body, as we'll maybe talk a little bit later, we did split years back, but at Court Street was a member there from my childhood, was born into it, my family had been there for years, my father was a deacon, my mom was involved in many ministries there, and at the time, for right up until my teenage years, it was a general association, a regular Baptist, the garb church, and as you said, at that time I went to, local school here, a Christian school, that was very involved in the Hiles-Anderson camp and that independent fundamental Baptist group. And we were the liberal church. We weren't involved in the activities that that church participated with. So in some ways it was easy for me to, if I didn't like the things the school was doing, I could default to my church's standard. And if I didn't like what my church was doing, I could lean over maybe to the other side of it with the IFBs. And then I ended up at Cedarville University. which was an interesting turn of events. And I guess I would say it made me well-rounded in many ways. And- Real quick, Cedarville for my upbringing was like leaving the faith. Like you've apostatized if you went to Cedarville. So, I mean, you went off the plantation of fundamentalism. I can never confirm nor deny if that might have been advice given to me as I went off to Cedarville. But from a guy that grew up in IFB in a Christian school for 13 years going to a school like Cedarville, I felt like I had liberty, right? It was so different for a guy like me. I remember my roommate, who had come from a public school, he was like, I can't stand the rules here. I'm never gonna last a year. And I'm like, rules? What are you talking about? This is a piece of cake, right? But I did have the opportunity to grow in the Lord. I came home listening to some contemporary Christian music, carrying a New King James, which at the time was, you know, that very dangerous ground to be on. And I had some far-reaching beliefs. And But I also had a pastor that was willing to sit down with me and study and share some of these things. But I was warned about the danger of the direction I was going and making sure that my worldview was very focused on a conservative background. And I think in this podcast, we'll talk a little bit more about that. I was told what my convictions and my worldview were going to be. And then as I interpreted scriptures in my personal study, I had to make sure everything fit into that bubble. And it wasn't until years later that, on an effort to develop some of my own convictions, and I won't take the lid off of that can quite yet, but that's where I changed, and I think that's the point of this podcast, is to change a little bit. So, grew up in a church that went from Garb to IFB to a Heil's group to where we're now. A reformed church is an interesting church. Tim just said reformed. I did out loud. Tim said reformed. I like that. So I'll leave it there for now. That's my upbringing. So next we have Kyle. Kyle's unique because he grew up also in Grace Life. You'll hear us refer to Court Street, but that used to be our name. I was Kyle's youth pastor. And so as I'm doing these different things, he's kind of undermining Tim's leadership in a way. So, you know, he went to a very fundy, I shouldn't say fundy, Ohio's type school under my recommendation and stuff. I mean, turned out okay. He has a wonderful wife because of that. So let's just kind of your process and seeing all this. Sure. Yeah, as was mentioned, I grew up at Court Street slash Grace Life as well. Actually, my grandparents brought me before my parents were saved. When I was five years old, my parents were born again, and from that point on grew up in a Christian home, and my family is very much involved in the church and things like that. As has already been mentioned, too, even within Court Street's case, I think we'll all be careful to broad brush fundamentalism. There's different stripes of fundamentalism. They're not all the same. There are definitely many in fundamentalism, even to this day, who have a very sober view of Scripture and the role of preaching and handle the Word as such. As a kid growing up in Court Street, I think that was pretty much the vein in our church, was that it was expository preaching. It was very responsible type preaching, things like that. And over the years, there was affiliations with different groups as well, and maybe more of an emphasis on the King James Only and what comes along with that. Your dad had a KGB-only license plate. He did. He had a King James-only license plate. Pretty intense. Yes, exactly. Right. So those types of things, you know, changed in the church, even as far as maybe the brand of fundamentalism we were, the camp that we associated with. But I don't think that our church ever Lost all that we had as well early from the early 90s as far as that just that Bible focused type emphasis in preaching. I think that always kind of lingered which I think maybe we'll talk about this a little bit more later, but I think that is maybe something that plays a part in our history. Yeah, I wrote that down, because later, I mean, I remember when I, well, I'll never forget my first Sunday as pastor, John McAllister, which I would love to sit down with him. You know, when an old saint like that leaves, you think of a thousand things you'd love to discuss with him. And I remember, he was a song leader. John gave you the song service for the entire year, the first Sunday in January. I don't plan a year out. And so I'm like, this will be interesting, because I'll change songs or whatever. He would point that out to me, you've changed my order of service again. And he called me Mark for at least the first year. My name's Matt, but whatever, it's Mark for him. But I remember going up in the pulpit, getting ready to preach. And he says, now, Brother Mark, you can study, you can teach the scriptures and be done at noon. There's no reason to keep us longer just to hear a bunch of stories. And I couldn't believe, I'm like, this is my first Sunday as pastor, and this is what this guy says to me. I gotta change my sermon outline. I know, man, I'm getting rid of the stories, what's left in my sermon outline. It's the stories that make it powerful, not the word of God. But looking back on it, though, as Kyle just said, The church had a background of expository preaching in that, that really we would get away from it some, but when we did, it would always draw us back because we'd be like, oh, that's just not right. And so I understood what John was saying because The previous pastor was heavy on stories, illustrations, which could go an hour, hour and 10 minutes, and not as much on the expository. Looking back, I understand what he was trying to say. I think he could have been a little bit politer to me as a young pastor. Coming into that, I think it really did give us some basis. I would say this, when I travel or I go somewhere, and I hear preaching, if it's not expository, I feel empty. It's difficult. Even when I do a topical sermon on it, and it might be a right topic, I feel like it's not the same. Expository preaching, truly. Years ago, my wife and I, she came down to North Carolina to our high house church I was at. She was a teacher there. And I remember her telling me, I just feel so empty and starved from the sermons. I was so mad at her. I'm like, this is the greatest preacher ever. I mean, he's letting it rip. But she came from Maranatha, Dr. Loggins, Pastor Montgomery, verse by verse, book studies. Looking back, I totally grasp what she was saying now. I'm getting no meat, thought, substance of the word. I'm getting a motivational speech or a brow beating. You come out excited, so you feel you must've learned something. Right, yes. If you're motivated for the next week, it had to be good. And honestly, a lot of it was, the points were good, just the text was twisted. But as long as the points are good, as long as he meant well, then that's the thought process. I think there was a little bit of almost an excusing that type of thing because, well, maybe there were some good points that were made even though we, wouldn't maybe handle the word that way. in our church, but, you know, at this conference or with this guest speaker or whatever, oh, you know, we made some good points. We'll, we'll excuse that. But, um, so yeah, I think in my teenage years, you were my youth pastor and I think the house. Yes, that's right. Pack the house Sunday, man. I hope all those sermons, all kinds. Yep. So, you know, there was those, those times of transition where we, uh, We fellowshiped maybe more with some Hiles churches, type churches, things like that, Sword of the Lord. I went to a Bible college that was very much affiliated with Hiles and had many people come from Hiles Anderson, and I'm not being critical of all those people either. There's many good people that I still care much about this day too. Some good things came out of that. Some things that I certainly disagree with to this day, but some good things came out of it. I actually came to Christ when I was 18 there. So that's, you know, that's amazing. And even though I even though we would disagree with some of their positions, I'm reminded of a statement I've heard many times, and it's that sometimes God uses crooked sticks to draw straight lines. And so I'm reminded and humbled that those who I don't always entirely agree with on certain things God can and has used. But I met my wife there as well, and so certainly thankful to the Lord for that. And honestly, one thing, and I think I talked with Ted about this a long time ago, and he was asking me about it too, but one of the things that was emphasized when I went there, I remember in my homiletics class, was the emphasis on expositional preaching. I remember being taught that, expository preaching. That's how a church is going to grow, is expository preaching. And so if you learn anything, learn expository preaching. There's a huge emphasis on that. Statements made like if you come to a text and you don't have the context, you're preaching from a pretext and things like that. quoting from guys like Spurgeon and things like that in this homiletics class. Looking back on it now in hindsight, and maybe I'm getting ahead of us a little bit, I feel like maybe to this day I have a stronger devotion to what I was taught in that class than the people who even taught it to me. Yeah, but I would say With that, the God, though, even with that was building a big church. Sure. Yeah, the motivations weren't entirely proper. One of the things you had said something about, you know, appreciate people there. I was your youth pastor, and I was 100% into the highest sort of Lord meant world. But no point was I directing you as youth pastor from a bad heart. My heart was, I was trying to do what I knew. And so I think that's one of the things I struggle with a lot of the no longer fundamentalist ministries that are out there is the way that I feel like they're unthankful for their upbringing. Some of the most godly, wonderful people, missionaries that gave up everything, went overseas. Yes, they were King James only. But I think we need to be careful that we're not thankful for what God's placed in our life, because it made us who we are. Absolutely. I'm really glad you said that. Actually, as Kyle was speaking, I was thinking the same thing. In the beginning of this, we kind of talked about where we came from. And I think it's really easy to make the assumption that we're not happy with where we came from. Yes, there were some things that were wrong. But I thank God for every person that was in my life, and there was a tremendous amount of zeal to do right, to serve. Maybe some of it misguided, but that was part of the growing process to browse where we are. Absolutely. So yeah, those were some good things that, you know, even in that came out of it. I'm thankful for those emphases that even in my training there in an expository preaching, that affected me right out of the gate. Some of the things I learned there, I still hold dear and, you know, influence my ministry today. And then I went into full-time ministry shortly after. Shortly after graduating, Brittany and I got married. We moved to Indiana in 2008, and I was a youth pastor there. And then we ended up back here in Michigan right at the end of 2010. So I guess that would be... So there is a gap there from end of 2003, when I went to Bible college, to about 2010. I mean, I was at Court Street for a little bit of 2007 after I graduated. Kyle came to work on staff. I didn't fire you, did I? I don't think so. OK, good. No. No, I did. Because I did fire Kyle. I did have to. We'll get into that. But learned a lot of lessons with staff. But I remember when you went to Indiana, it was a good move. You know, when you came back, it's funny, he and I were kind of going down the same path, but we weren't even together. He was in Indiana, I was in Michigan. Yeah, I had missed out on a lot of what was happening here, really, definitely from 2008 to 2010, but even really 2003. to 2010. I mean, I was at college or at another ministry, and so a lot of the things that you two might have been going through, I wasn't here for or was experiencing it as well, but not in the same setting. Yeah, we just for the record though. We have another person in the room Ted Sadler He's running all this because none of us would have a clue. Oh man about this electronic stuff Ted is like, you know, everyone has their liberal friend. They keep no He went to a church actually, I want to use go to Christian school Trinity Baptist in my city pastor Lashley and who would have been expository preaching, would have called himself an independent fundamental Baptist, but again, there is a large segment. When you paint IFB with one brush, you're really doing a disservice, because Pastor Lashley, but then Ted ended up coming to a Christian school here, where our current church is. That he warned us against. That would have been the hiles world that we're talking about. So he's kind of like Tim, he's in a church practicing one thing, but going to a school that is absolutely light on substance, strong King James, all that. without taking over our podcast, because I told you you couldn't talk this one. I am curious though, because Tim kind of shared, I mean, you were in two different worlds. But both were, were the ones standing for the faith, were the IFB. Yeah. So quickly, just kind of, I'm kind of curious, how'd you process all that? Well, the personalities between the two churches were really different too. Dan Lashley was not the kind of personality that was gonna push an agenda for a certain way of thinking, for a certain way of interpretation. He was just a Bob Jones pastor. who's trying to teach his church and trying to grow his church in whatever way he could while doing some of the other things you've mentioned, the expository preaching, keeping true to the word. He was a very, like the word moderate gets used for people that are between sides of the fence. He was, but in his case, he was just a level-headed kind of moderate person. He warned us against coming to the school that was here at the time because he knew the agenda that they were trying to push. But yeah, it was two different worlds. But because the personality of Trinity was so much milder and not aggressive, I was completely overtaken. when I came to the school here. Big personalities pushing big agendas, big ideas. And I got swept up into that whole KJV only, us versus them, because it wasn't just the doctrine or the aggressive personality. There's an entire animosity towards the rest of Christianity by a lot of people in that group. And I found myself, I wouldn't say at odds with my parents. They never bought into that whole thing. But I found myself really on an island at Trinity and at my home, espousing some of these doctrinal positions on things that I had really only adopted through propaganda. Well, some of it for a teenager, it's you adopted out of survival. Yeah, sure. You know, you're going to the big high school, which was huge in this area. I know when we went to my, my older brother and sisters rode a bus from Croswell to go to this school. It was huge. And I mean, if you espouse something, so some of it is, and I think you'll start hearing through a lot of our talk through this is, We adopted positions that were never rooted and grounded in Scripture. Not even saying they were wrong positions, but they weren't rooted and grounded in Scripture. And then all of a sudden, you know, you go to Bible college because you can't make it at 18 if you don't. Well, that's an indictment on us as a church. After 18 years of you in my home and you in my church, you can't go to the community college here and not deny your faith? I mean. So we send you to Bible college and you get out of that, you got to go into full-time ministry. And at what point did we ever learn to, what is the faith? What do I hold to? And we'll get into this later down when we took the hand off here. It was a scary time because the pendulum swung every which way, even my own, I couldn't, I mean, it was like. do what you want, we're free, you know, we're no longer IFB. And it's been interesting to see it like swing back to like, wait a minute, that's the flesh. I can't do that. We live Galatians. Yeah, pure Galatians. So anyway, so with that, I'm gonna go just briefly. So I became the pastor here. I was in a well known ministry in Ohio. Fellowship Baptist Church, Fellowship Track League, Pastor Walsh Pennington, really a hero of mine, would be in a lot of disagreement with him today. Again though, nothing, I learned a lot. One of the things about being Reformed that has helped me is I learned to trust in God's providence. And so it was God's providence that I went to that church. It was God's providence that I was in that school. And I, so I can look at those as things to learn from it, or I can become bitter and just trash it and mock it, which I just, again, I think is a real problem. So I went there, I get out of the moving truck. I'll never get as, I mean, I am an ultra hiles guy. Nobody has standards better than me. We are the example. We get out of the moving truck. Pastor Pennington welcomes me there. He says, time to get to work. I mean, I didn't even get a day to unpack the truck. I had to start work. Calls me in his office and he goes, brother Matt, we don't wear culottes around here. The Bible says women wear a katastole. That's a gown like garment lowered over the head. You can't put culottes. So I run home, tell my wife and daughter, put your culottes away. We can't wear them. You know, for the next two and a half years, they never wore culottes. Now, some say, I wouldn't have put up with that. At the time, I was just like, it's cloth. But to me personally, I'm thinking, nobody's more righteous than me. We only wear culottes. And now I'm in a ministry that's telling me culottes are worldly. And then we get to church that Sunday, love the church, used to always go down to the Bread Life camp meeting. I mean, we're talking shouting, Rochester singing, bass guitar playing, because that was allowed. You could do the bass guitar, just no bass drum. And, you know, I love that. And my wife, you know, here's my wife who sang in the magical bell choir at Maranatha, grew up very much in a Maranatha Bob Jones world. They say, oh, you play piano. And the problem is their piano book had shaped notes and they didn't actually follow the notes to begin with. Because they just courted everything. I mean, it was just total culture shock. The ushers come down the aisle, one of them's wearing just a t-shirt and jeans. And I'm thinking, why doesn't he wear a suit and tie? Doesn't he know this is the house of God? Who does he think he is? But yet they're, understand, more King James than me. They are more separated on some issues than me. They don't even wear culottes on their women. And I only bring that up just because I think it points out is, number one, never think you're the standard to arrive at, because someone else is going to have a standard to the right or left of you. And also, it doesn't prove the heart. The gentleman I think of that wore a jeans and t-shirt, he worked for pennies on the dollar printing gospel tracts to send around the world. Just a dear, wonderful man that would do anything for you for the cause of Christ. But because I was so ingrained, you wear a suit and tie to church. or you definitely don't get to take up the offering if you're not. And then the other thing we dealt with down there was facial hair, which is interesting. There's four of us in here. I'm the only one with a clean shaven face. When I took the church, remember I said no facial hair on the platform. That was one of my policies. And we had three women quit the choir that week. That was four. So, I mean, it was just a total, so we were there two and a half years. Knew I couldn't stay there anymore. We left, I was gonna go, you know, what do you do? Go to evangelism, right? It's the next best thing. So I ended up becoming an evangelist for Shawnee Baptist Church down in Louisville, Ohio, Pastor Maddenley. Again, we would disagree on some positions that you couldn't find a more gracious guy that would help you and do anything for you. Just him and his wife were such a blessing and minister to my wife and I. And one of the first meetings I had was here at our church. I came back to my home church, Corsi Bebs Church. And I went out to lunch and the treasurer told me, I asked her how the budget was. She goes, not good. I said, well, you're going to have to tighten it up. And she goes, it's not the people, it's the pastor. And I was like, how much is he spent? Because when I left here, I knew he wasn't, he was misusing funds. And I called Kyle's dad. Terry was the chairman of the deacon board. I said, you need to talk to your treasurer. You guys got a problem. A few months go by, he's no longer the pastor, several thousands of dollars that had to be accounted for. I said, I'll come in. I have no winter meetings. I'll come in. I had my big fifth wheel. I had the whole works and I will fill in the pulpit. We need to get some things straightened out in the church before you look for another pastor. And come springtime, Joyce LaVere, she's sitting there cleaning one of the prophets chambers. She says, why aren't you our pastor? I said, well, you know, I just kind of blew it off. She goes, no, I want to know. I said, well, you have to talk to your deacons. That's not my decision. And that started the ball rolling me becoming the pastor here. So, um, might be interesting to note there. I was on the pulpit committee at the time and I was going to make sure you were not going to become our pastor. And there was, there was opposition to me being a pastor. I remember Chuck Corey telling me, Chuck Corey, you're a novice. And his wife said, I don't believe in, believe in repentance. I'm like. Okay, first of all, I ain't letting a woman tell me my doctrine. That was my attitude. And secondly, I do believe in repentance. So jump in a lake, you know. But my mindset was, I'm busy, I'm knocking on doors, we're getting people in the church, what else is there you want in a pastor? Because the essence is you build a big church. So if you're getting visitors every Sunday, does it matter if I'm right on repentance? Does it matter if I'm doctrine? I mean, sometimes I become the pastor and really the first, I'd say about three years, Tim and I started to grow. I mean, even when I was a member there years back, we didn't hang out. I mean, Holly, she'll appreciate this. I thought she was kind of liberal. I thought she was kind of, she controlled things. Comparatively speaking, you wouldn't have been wrong. I still say we got to have a podcast with the wives at one point explaining, you know, we're going to give our side of this whole transition. I'd love to hear their, I mean, Brittany comes, all she knows is the Hiles world. It would sell better than this one. Yes. Yeah, that's true. Her family's still in that too, not the Hiles world, but still. Holly comes, she goes to Cedarville, like this is the most conservative thing in the world. Tim's coming from, I'd love to hear their perspective. But so, We begin to grow, church started growing. We did a remodel of the auditorium, which just brought new life. I mean, we were just exciting, rolling. Started Reformers Unanimous, bus routes, had some difficult times. It's weird, even in the high house camp, we still practiced church discipline, which is really abnormal in that world to do that. Had to have some friends that cared a lot about ask to leave. And then I remember we presented the new building addition. And this is it, man, I'm building, I remember showing Pastor Jenkins that picture, and he goes, man, that's big stuff, that's momentum right there. Showed Doug Fisher, he goes, oh yeah, that's moving forward. Showed it to the church, and they were ready to hang me. I mean, like split bill happening, and you know, I guess, you know, Just on a side note, I think if you talk to any pastor that takes a church, the first couple of years is like a honeymoon phase, they love you. But then you're gonna start, you know, some of the people that bring you in here don't want you in there and so on. We have the advantage of hindsight today, understanding a little more what was going on at that time. Yeah, we were just, honestly, we were blindsided by it. Yeah, there was a lot of comfort as to this is the way things have always been, and now you're gonna shake it all up. Adding a bus is one thing. Right, right. but taking the ministry to that level is gonna require. I mean, if you could see the building we drew, it had like a rounded roof that was very modern looking with blue and green glass. I mean, it looked new evangelical. So we present that, realize there's some issues in the church. We started addressing those. We had a division in our addictions program. We had, you know, just a bunch. I kind of labeled this section a little bit at disappointments. All that were with me were not with me, I realized. There was more than one voice in the church, kind of directing the church. Looking back, the hindsight thing, I remember calling... I mean, I went through six months of real depression. Like, I wouldn't get out of bed. I'd spend days in bed. I'd get in the pulpit. I'd be in my office Sunday morning just in tears. I don't want to go out there and preach. And that's where Tim and I became close. Tim has, I mean, comforted me like a David-Jonathan relationship. I remember when it was all done, I called Doug Fisher in San Diego, and I said, this was about me, wasn't it? He goes, it was completely about God teaching you something. It was never about the people in the church. It was never, yeah, there was people that were wrong in what they did, but it was about me learning, because I was prideful. I took a church, I bet my first Sunday we had maybe 78. We're running 280, 250 consistently. You know, I'm getting asked to preach up at Grace Baptist and different places. I mean, this is like big league. Don't forget VBS with 500 kids in the church. We had over 500 kids at Vacation Bible School in one night. So God, and I thank God for it, because He could have left me to go down that path. and just continue to be a numbers guy. But God in his mercy says, I'm not going to let Matt McPhillips do that. And he jerked my chain hard. So I learned people were not the problem. It was me. But it got so bad that I resigned the church. I stood up, I'm going in the army, got a commission. Good. I'm going to go in the army. I don't have to deal with all these dumb Baptists that are always fighting and whining. I'll have Rod just tell people, I'm the captain. You have to do what I say. And, you know, I was done with it. Done with the whole mess. I've poured out my life the last three, four years, and this is what I get. Fooey on you. Without opening up another can of worms on dreams, which I don't believe in continuationism, but I had some very vivid dreams and nightmares of things of one of them. I can remember laying in Iraq, my legs blown off after an explosion and a hand from heaven saying, you're supposed to be preaching. I'm not saying that was God doing that. It could be just my conscience, but I mean, I'd wake up soaking wet in sweat, couldn't go back to sleep. My wife didn't know what to do. And I remember coming to church on a Sunday night, and I says, I'm wrong. I shouldn't have resigned. I'm going to continue in ministry. And I said, I don't deserve to be your pastor anymore. Somebody was like, why don't you stay and be our pastor? I'm like, I don't deserve that. I publicly apologized to a couple of people in the church that night. Lo and behold, they asked me to stay. So why don't you cover that a little bit? Just, I mean, we grew close over them couple of years. And then, I mean, everything's clicking great. And then boom, we hit this problem. And then, you know, well, in some ways, that's where it got real. For me, I mean, you don't have to be paying attention too hard to go to 13 years at a Christian school, grow up in a Baptist church, a couple years at a Bible college, to pick up enough to get by. Enough doctrine, enough position. I don't want to be facetious by saying put on the show, but I knew what answers to give, and there was genuine zeal to serve, but none of it was I don't know that I could have stood on my own conviction and given it. There's a little bit, maybe this is a point to inject a little bit of the difference here. You know, Kyle knew as a teenager, well, at least first year of college, he wanted to be in the ministry. And I remember getting that phone call and Kyle got saved at college and he's going to become a pastor. And you knew young, he wanted to be in the ministry, be a pastor. I did not. My goal was to be a businessman. That was what I was pursuing. And during that time, I, I did have a desire to go into the ministry. I think maybe some of the wrong reasons, but nonetheless, the opportunity was there. I was serving alongside you. I had the opportunity to serve for a while as a deacon and then, you know, I guess, how do you say, other than work my way up through the church. But that was a very difficult time where I remember being put on the spot because you physically were not able to function. One, you know, sometimes it was evenings at your house. Sometimes it was sitting down by the water in the car. And on a couple of occasions, it was Sunday morning, 15 minutes before the service. It got real at that point where I realized, am I equipped to do what needs to be done? And a time of personal growth. And it really wasn't until I came to a conclusion, I'm not meant to be in the ministry, I don't want any part of this, that God actually opened the door for me to do more with you. But yes, that was absolutely a forging time. Yeah, if I went to a doctor, they'd have medicated me to the hilt, man. It was a mess. I knew though, for some reason, and I don't, I believe depression's real. I believe people that need medication should. I'm just saying this was something God was doing to me to break and humble me that no doctor, no medicine was gonna fix. And then it was interesting when it kind of ended, it was done. It's like the oppressive hand of God was off. I was no longer that way. And it was just kind of an interesting thing. Well, and I think that our conviction I think if you took a poll in our church to anyone that was there at that time, they would say that following service is when you really began to preach. Because it wasn't the performance, it wasn't the expectation, it was things got real. I just faced my calling and almost walked away from it. maybe fear for your own life, as you mentioned, your own vision that you had, and now say, no, I'm here because this is where God wants me. And everything changed. It really was the beginning of what we're talking about today. I remember, soon after that, and this goes into the next phase, you still weren't with us at that time. No. You were clearly in Indiana, though. During the Depression and everything like that, I think I was still in Bible college there. Still in Bible college, probably. Toward the end of Bible college, yeah. But so at some point, I remember I preached a week about summer camp with Grace did her own camp. I watched this DVD on revival. And it was just just impacted me, the Welsh revival and different things. There's Leonard Ravenhill and different ones. But at some point, I'm like, all right, I'm going to settle this whole repentance thing once and for all. And I'm going to do a series on repentance. And I got every book, every article I could. I'm like, I believe in repentance. I don't know what the problem is. I looked at every single verse that had repent, repentance, repenteth, because we're King James, whatever, I mean, or even came like conversion, regenerate, all that. And I started studying that and was literally blown away at the lack of study that I had as a pastor. And Tim mentioned something did change. I started that series. It actually became a book. I don't even know if I have a copy of it. I might have one copy of it. But, I mean, I went through this whole doctrine of repentance, which then led to, while I'm studying that, I'm finding the word regeneration. Well, we better look at the subject of regeneration. That led to the word reconciliation. Need to look at that. And then conversion, except you be converted. And I got done with that. And that was the first nail in the coffin in the Hiles sword crowd, because they're very anti-repentant. So say they're not, I'll take any of them on in a debate. They are, okay. The sword of the Lord removes the word repent from songs in the sword of the Lord hymn book. So that began to start that process like, yeah, you can't be here and, you know, you can't, it's not gonna work. And that led to then, well, the numbers thing became disillusioned. You know, we had 500, over 500 on that night of VBS. That was the last night and I remember thinking the next day I was completely depressed because I'm thinking, what do I do next year to go bigger than this? It was overwhelming to me. Um, we had our addictions program and I remember thinking we've had hundreds of people come through here and we have no fruit yet. They've all made professions. They've all, you know, and the study of repentance, like that really came to the question, were they believers? I mean, in our first few years, I had the decision slip every altar call, and we'd have 300, 400 saved this year, and the church didn't grow. We'd have 100 baptized, the church didn't grow. And this disillusionment started coming in. And it came in because I'm understanding what the gospel is. Like, wait a minute. Paul didn't have to beg believers to be believers. They're regenerate. They're following him. And so when I started those series, I still wouldn't call it expository preaching, but it was more doctrinal preaching. But that's where our church's past of expository preaching came in. It's like, they loved it. Like, yes, this is what we've been missing. We love to be taught the Word of God. Yeah. And I don't know that the biggest change yet was the change to expository, at least intentionally, but it was the change that God's going to build this church, not me. Right. And when you, I don't want to say quit caring, but for sake of conversation, quit caring about the numbers, focused on your responsibility as a pastor. Yeah. That's what changed your preaching. Yeah. And unfortunately, one of the things we decided we would talk about today, and whether this is a segue into it or not, is misconceptions about the church. And part of it is, if you're just an outsider, not part of this curtain we're pulling back a little bit today, then it looks like flip-flopping, right? Man, he's changed on repentance. He's changed on his Bible. He's changed on this. Well, there's a story behind it. It's growth. But I understand how some from the outside would see And you know, people want consistency. They just want their comfort. And if you give me my comfort, I'll be a member of your church. But if you're going to shake things up and make me study it, that gets uncomfortable. And that's what we were going through. Yeah. So, you know, I had that process going on also during that time, though. I labeled this the deep state of fundamentalism. I began to have access into the deep state because I'm now being viewed as building a bigger church. I'm getting asked to preach some youth revivals, college chapel, summer camp. And it kind of gives you access. I'm viewed as a very loyal guy, so it's giving me access into their offices. And I began to see some things. And I remember sitting in an office one time to meet with a pastor, there was another pastor sitting there with me. And I don't even know how we got on the subject of infidelity, but we were talking about the church, protecting the church. And he shared with me about an assistant they had that committed adultery. They let him go, which is a good thing. A man in another town heard about it and was going to go public with it. So this church gave the man like $30,000 to stay silent. And he's telling me this story, and I'm thinking, this ain't right. And again, honestly, and I give credit, this is my Bob Jones Maranatha background coming up in me like, this ain't right. This is not ethical. In the high-altar world, there's a lot of unethical things that happen. I get called to go up to Gaylord, where you're at at college, you're gonna get married soon, and get dumped with a bombshell of your in-law, all this stuff comes out, I'm like, what's going on? And I remember, we said, we'll move the church, the wedding, we'll do the wedding at our church, great. I remember when it was all said and done, I get a call from a guy that is super well-known, he says, you just climbed a ladder quite a bit, this will pay off for you in the future. And it just sat wrong with me. This is not the ministry. This is not Christ-likeness. So the disillusionment kind of set in. The numbers didn't satisfy. Big mo, momentum, momentum, momentum. That was the thing. Well, I didn't have momentum going on. We just barely survived a church split. So we began to do the series on repentance, those different things. And then I did my first attempt at a book study. I can't remember if it was Romans or James. I think it was James, but it lasted like two months. I preached through the book of James. Well, it wasn't Romans, because I preached through Romans. I did one chapter a Sunday, preached through Romans, one chapter a week, covered an entire chapter. And before I leave here, I will go through Romans verse by verse, which will be probably a several year study. But I preached through James, and I think it was literally like a couple months. I had a lot to learn on expository preaching. I wasn't trained in it. But when you start studying for expository preaching, it starts opening up so much more study and so much more stuff. You go to the book of James and like, well, what did James have to say? Not with, here's what I believe, let me find it in James. It's what is the narrative of James? What is the context of this passage? Lo and behold, you come to find out a verse is not a sentence. several verses could be one sentence. Well, you can't preach a portion of a sentence. You gotta preach the whole context. Really, you need to preach that whole paragraph, which was one of the things that led to the leaving of the King James Bible is, not that the King James Bible is at fault, but I'd like the newer translations being in paragraph format, because that gives context. So a lot of pastors get away with preaching crazy stuff because of the verse divisions. So that's taking place, that whole process become clear. Then also in the Hiles world, you started having the things with Jack Scoff, the immorality, things, and this is before he came public, but I'm like, this isn't right. His view on the Lord's Supper and intimacy and just different things. This is not right. I remember meeting with the men in the balcony at Court Street's old building saying, guys, we can't support this. We're going to pull away from this. And I had Dr. John Hamlin called me up. And I remember him telling me, you guys keep pushing Jack Scott. He's going to go New Evangelical. I'm like, well, when do we hold him accountable? This is not what this text says. John Hamlin's another story. We used to have him in our church for revivals. That's where we were. I remember him jumping off the platform onto the front pew in front of a lady, scaring her half to death. So, you go through this, you know you're leaving something, don't quite know what we are. Again, there was never a staff meeting where we said, let's create a three-year plan to pull out of this. It was, we can't stay in this. That's what happened. We can't stay in this group because integrity of the text or just integrity in general. I mean, I was floored by the things I heard that were covered up and done that were just atrocious. And yet these people are speaking in the main conferences. So we start that process of leaving Didn't know where we were going, didn't know what we were going to look like, but knew what we weren't. I think that's one of the best ways. We never knew where we were going, but we knew what we couldn't be. And I knew we couldn't be Hiles Sword of the Lord anymore. For a moment, made a little turn. Let's go back into our Bob Jones Maranatha roots. There's some churches in the area that are still in that aspect. I remember going to a youth rally and a guy preached the sermon, completely used Philippians 1.27, let your conversation become the gospel. He preached on how you need to share the gospel everywhere you go. That verse has nothing to do with that. And I remember two teenagers turn around looking at me, I was sitting behind them, and they said, Pastor, that's not what that says. One of them was my son, he had his MacArthur New King James Study Bible, which MacArthur's Study Bible ruins anyone taking a verse out of context, because he's reading it and he's like, damn, that's not what that verse means. I know, I know, turn around. And then who was the other person? It was one of the girls, I forget, and she's like, that's not what that means. I said, I know. And it kind of forced me to realize I'm trying to keep my foot in this world, but be different as a church. Just like you growing up, of course, you're going to Ohio State, going to Trinity, going to school here. You can't keep a foot in both worlds. I was either going to have to you know, betray what the Lord's led us to do with expository preaching and the text and so forth and all the hype and all that stuff being done with, or, you know, or we're going to raise a generation that doesn't respect us. Like, what is it? Which, so that kind of led us to, to leaving that brand of fundamentalism. But we would have said we're, in fact, in some ways we got stricter because we went into a very strong Baptist landmark, hung around some Baptist briders. I mean, repentance crowd now, David Cloud, right? Like, let her rip on repentance. And we did. But I would say one of the, people ask you, what are things, what were, the expository preaching was one of the biggest changes. It's like. You can't leapfrog over tough issues. No, I would avoid, I remember defining election, because I did something through, I think I preached through Ephesians in five weeks. And again, a chapter a week, you know, it's crazy. But in chapter one, he talks about elect. I mean, the word's there. And I defined election as this. Webb will listen to this and laugh, because he brought it up to me the other day. I've rephrased election. To understand election, it's kind of like this. If you're running for office, you want to be elected. You're the candidate, God's the candidate, but you still have to vote for him to become the person. And so our defined election is God has elected us, but I still have to give him my vote. And what a perfect example of what we're talking about this narrative, right? So I grew up with a view that was given to me and I had to fit my doctrine into that view. And I'm, again, not trying to be facetious or anything, but when you come to a definition like that, you either have to change what you believe or fit it into your doctrine. And I was trying, because now, because one of your expository preaching, you can't skip that passage. Right. So then I had to try and find a way to explain that passage, to not say what the passage says, to fit in the narrative that I grew up around. And so expository preaching, I would say, would be the first bit, well, the disillusionment, the integrity aspect But the second big thing was expository preaching. It's like, yeah, well, that's probably not the best interpretation of Ephesians 1, but it worked. It kept us away from the big C word, Calvinism. We can't be that. So we can't even be moderately Calvinist. I mean, it's just all bad. So then I did a series on the family. I remember it was the first of the year. And I said, we got a lot of young couples, young kids. Let's do a series on the family. No curriculum. We're going to start in Genesis one. What is the family? And we did that for a year. And that really changed. We went to an integrated church model for a while. We had a Christian school going for one year and I junked that. I was like, you know what? You want to raise your kids, homeschool them. If not, there's other Christian schools you can use, but we're not going to burden the church with it. I came across the Vision Forum crowd with Doug Phillips, which has pretty much gone away. Not the idea of family and stuff, but that specific group, which then led me to meet a guy. I came across a guy named Votie Bauckham, which we had in. Paul Washer, I came across his sermons. But again, all these guys are bad because they're not using the King James Bible. They're saying, they're preaching phenomenal messages, but the wrong text, wrong translation. So, you know, and, and they don't, they, they, they let their women wear pants. I mean, that's, so we're done, you know. But that's, that kind of opened up the whole series on the family, which still to this day in our church is very important. I believe the best thing I can do as a pastor is train dads to be shepherds. and to shepherd their family. I don't need a youth pastor. First of all, it's not a biblical position. There's pastors. You know, the youth pastor is a guy that wants all the glory of the pastor without having to study and put in the hard work and be a theologian. Well, there's only one type of pastor in the Bible. So we go through the family thing, got real strong in Baptist history, Baptist heritage. That's where we connected with some old friends of mine, did Baptist history tours, had Baptist conferences. And that became the third big nail in the coffin when I studied our Baptist history, because they weren't King James and a vast number were Calvinists. And I had, I mean, what do I do with that? Do you remember the family series? You were gone still. I was still gone. You were in Indiana then. Cause I remember your dad was there. I'm going to send this to Kyle. But yeah, that, that, That changed us structurally as a church. Like, okay, I spent all this money to run a bus to pick up a kid. Well, if I could reach that dad, I'll reach that family. And how many people viewed, why aren't you having a program for my kid? Why aren't you at home? Why aren't you doing devotions? It really, and to this day, our morning service kids are with the parents. I think the greatest thing you can do is worship together with your kids. You say, does it bother you when they scream? Ted, does it bother us when kids scream in church? No, it doesn't faze us because they're just learning. It just is what it is. I mean, um, but that, that, that gave us a way out of the, I think of the high house crowd we were in that, that drew us into a different, we can be outside of it. Negative part of this was we had no friends anymore. Fellowship. our fellowship was with each other. I didn't know where to call to get a missionary to support. I didn't know, there was no churches. I mean, people were like, that church is the plague, they're, you know. We didn't have to fire anybody, by the way. They were all too quick to pull away. Well, I did fire an assistant or two, but. As far as ministries, right? Yeah, not ministries. So, yeah, it just, But in theirs were a lot of misconceptions. I mean, the biggest one we joke about, I'll share it with, is I was convicted, you know, children are a gift of the Lord, and yet we do everything we can not to have children. So I'm like, you know, I made a decision not to have children, did some research, found a doctor that would reverse the vasectomy, because I wanted more kids. Never did have more kids, but that was my goal. Tim Floyd, being the guy that has to be there when pastors have a rough day, drives me to Chicago to undo this thing and gets to drive me back, because I'm in utter pain and misery. I drove only. Oh my goodness. Months go by, and someone called Terry, your dad, Kyle, and said, what is going on with your church? Pastor made every man get on a bus and go to Chicago to get their vasectomies reversed? That's the nonsense within the fundamentalist world that we were just like, How dumb, you know, just because we emphasize the family, then this must be true. No, we just for a year, year and a half thought it was important to emphasize the family. You know, so that whole thing, you know, we get just, I love the Baptist history, but it came to in studying Baptist heritage. I've got to have an answer against Calvinism, I've got to defend the King James Bible, because we're reading the Old Baptist now, that was the goal. And so I have to answer why they called the King James Bible the Anglican corruption, that's what they called it. Plurality of elders, all these things. And I would say so Baptist history was that third big, yeah, there's no return from this. a little bit with you, then I want Kyle, because Kyle's not here during all this. I don't know how Kyle's ending up the way we did, because he's in a very strong, go get him, would you call that Ohio's church? Ohio's church. Yeah, very pragmatic, very numbers oriented. Yeah. So who wants to jump in first? Tim's on the, he's the right hand man going through all this, like, you know, and I admit it, it did create some instability. Where we're going, I remember saying, I don't have a plan. I'm just trying to follow scripture. Well, what's interesting to me, I'm kind of snickering inside a little bit, is we have come through this, and we kind of look at where we sit today, and it's really easy to make it look like sunshine and roses. Like, you know, I was just your yes man. I've been called that more than once. Where, you know, if you wanted to change on something, I was just like, absolutely, let's do it. And you would know that's the furthest thing from the truth. admittedly a little bit of a traditionalist. I shouldn't say a little bit, a lot of it. Tim's a grown-up. What's that? Me and Kyle refer to Tim as the grown-up. Well, me and Kyle discussed, I bet you Tim's not going to be here a year from now, several years from now. Exactly. Change does not come easy to me. And I remember wrestling through some of these things and in some ways it was yin and yang where you'd challenge me with something. I'm like, absolutely not. No way, that can't be right. But I would study it out, maybe a month later, sit down with you and say, okay, I got some questions. Maybe there's really something to this. And you challenged me, I did try to challenge you back, and we'll talk about that a little bit more as we go. And I fought change. I liked where I grew up. I had questions. I had things that I honestly just didn't want to exude the effort to wrestle through doctrinally. But I was confident enough that the people who taught me knew more than I ever would. And so it was just easiest to stay in my lane. But as a deacon, you'll remember the day we had a deacons meeting and we were having a discussion about a member of our church and whether or not she should be allowed to serve in our church with short hair and wore pants outside of the building. And a deacon, a well-respected deacon in our church said, well, I just happen to believe God. And there's obviously a story behind this, but, and I'll paraphrase that God's more pleased with an unsaved woman living by those standards than a saved woman that wouldn't dress modestly. To me, that was a mic drop. I'm done with this. We have come way too far. We've made much of little. And that began for me, okay, what does the other side look like? And we were talking about Detroit Seminary and some other people that we had known where some other preachers that we had in our building even, and they were raising children to go out into the mission field, they were building churches, they were doing things. And in the middle of scandal in the IFB movement, we're sitting here, if we had a mental scale in front of us, we were looking at, what is wrong just from a fruit perspective? What is wrong in the ministry just from the fruit that these churches are bearing? What lane are we in and why? Not that I wanna change everything, because I can tell you as of today, I still haven't changed everything, but at least looking at it objectively, what does the scripture say? So for me, I'm coming back a little bit more from that. When it came time And I don't want to get too far ahead of us here on the doctrinal thing, but when it came time to change, I've probably been the biggest thorn in your side through this process, just from, I don't want to change. But I do want evidence. I do want to be right. Even looking back at some of the changes, it would be easy to say, well, Tim's got some bitterness. Well, I got some regret. But at every step of the process, there was zeal and a desire to serve. And I thank God for the people that helped us through that. And I think, too, I can remember having the discussions with Kyle as we knew some things that we were going to change on, discussing, will Tim be here a year from now? Right. And our heart was, I don't want to lose Tim. So is this really something I need to change? Like when we changed translations at ESV, that was a several year process. And at the end, I would say I was probably the biggest holdout because I was worried I would lose one or two church members. And I do believe the King James is the word of God and I could pastor a church with the King James Bible, you know, without any doubt I could. So was changing the translation worth losing this family or this member? And one of the concerns I have within what we call the young reform, young fundamentalists, or the reformed fundamentalist group is they show no deference for people. that struggle through these. They're like, we're just changing, I don't like you, get out of here. He said, dear saints of God that I have served with, that have ministered to me, I have ministered to them, they faithfully love the Lord. I remember one time my own father, we were talking about something, and he goes, I just feel like I'm being told everything I believe my whole life is wrong. That's difficult. Maybe this will be another podcast in a row, but be very careful of the flippantness towards those that are still in an IFB church or those that struggled with the change. We're not questioning zeal, we're not questioning heart. Some of them, yes, you could do that. But by and large, they're just people. That's what they grew up with, that's what they knew, that's what they loved the Lord. And so when we would make changes, is this really something the Lord is compelling us to do? Or do we really need to do it for the sake of, you know, knowing we could lose someone? And we would sit and talk, you know, Tim, there's no way Tim's gonna become a Calvinist. The text, we'll never be able to change the text with Tim. And by the end of it, Tim and Kyle were pushing me to change the text. But, and in a side issue too, don't forget, we all got families at home saying, what on earth is going on? My wife's like, I can remember driving to Iowa to preach at a conference on, I was gonna preach on fundamentalism, it's past, it's present, and it's future, basically that is dead. And... So I'm going there, but this is a landmark Baptist, Baptist Brider group of people, Ruckmanites. I mean, the guy that preached before me preached on why you don't even need dictionaries to understand the King James Bible, just the King James Bible. No commentaries, exposition. I mean, this is what, and my wife, and I'm listening to Pastor Minick out of Greenville, South Carolina on the history of the text. You know, all these things, and her looking at me saying, are you really? going to say you're not King James only anymore?" She basically alluded to, should I just buy the moving boxes now and start packing the house? Because we're gone. They're going to fire us. Yeah, it's safe to say in no way is this a commercial for what a church should do. No, no, no, no. 10 times over been easier just to walk across the street and start a new church. Absolutely. Praise God we're where we are. But, you know, going into that, preaching in that meeting, knowing these people that I love are going to disown me in just a matter of months if they have a clue what I'm studying. So my wife's going through, my kids, I remember coming home from Shepherd's Conference and giving my kids each an ESV Bible. And Two of them liked it. One of them was, I don't know about this, you know, I said, just read it, just study it. Um, and, but, you know, I'm worried as a dad, basically I'm telling my kids as a dad, I've taught you wrong. I mean, there, there's a lot, it would have been easier to just never change. Just, hey, this is who we are, it's the way we are, bless God, we're gonna stay this way the rest of our life. I mean, it was- We had more than one missionary friend tell us, I agree with what you're saying, I'm just in too far to change. Yeah, I had a pastor, a well-known pastor say, he disagreed with me on the music aspect, but everything else he agreed with me. He says, yeah, you're right, those changes are coming. He says, I'm just too far towards the end of life to worry about it. We'll let the guy that replaces me do it. You know, um, so our families, you know, so we're dealing with the church aspect, but then each of us go home and got our family, our wives saying, what on earth are you doing? Our kids are like, we want to lead them with stability. Um, you know, your kids were younger, mine were teenagers, Tim's were teenagers. So, you know, I went and preached the King James only conference. I preached to our church why only King James is the position. Uh, and now, you know, an interesting thing that happened to me. One of the side effects of all this that was a blessing. When we went through one of these big struggles, we sold our building in town, we bought this building, we're going to move out here. We realized we had a big divide in the church and it was kind of like, well, don't follow us because we're done. I was just done with church fights and splits. It seemed like every couple of years I was fed up with it. So this group bought the building, started a church there. Good for them. But before we sold it to him, I had another person that wanted to buy our church. We would have made about $100,000 more. I mean, it would have been to our benefit. And I sat down with him for dinner, him and his wife. He pastors a church in town. His wife is the praise and worship team leader. I mean, totally not us. And we sit down at Applebee's, and I said, hey, I got to tell you something. We may not be able to sell the building to you. He goes, why? What's going on? And I shared with him the division in the church. And he says, forget about us buying the building. How can we help you? And this couple, that is not in our camp in any way, ministered to my wife and I for the next couple months, taking a call on us, taking us out to eat. He didn't care that he was not probably gonna buy the building, he cared less. He immediately says, forget about the building, what can I do to help you? How can we be a blessing to you? And this man though, according to my old camp, I was not supposed to enjoy his fellowship. I'm not supposed to enjoy his Christianity. And I learned, boy, one of the best things that's come out of this, I can enjoy other Christians that aren't just like me. I can sit down, have coffee, have a dinner, fellowship. We went to Shepherd's Conference. There's all types of people that are not like us. But I can enjoy fellowship with people that minister. I called Dave Dorn, he's the pastor of Inner City Baptist Church, Detroit Baptist Seminary. I said, can I meet with you? He goes, yep. So we get to Chili's restaurant there in Allen Park. He walks in, sits down, and he goes, I got to ask, do I know you? And I said, no, but I've sure talked a lot about you. And he kind of chuckled. I said, I've gone everywhere blasting your name as a compromiser because you're not King James and this and that. And he just kind of, he found it humorous. And he goes, what can I do for you? I says, I don't think I'm King James anymore. I need some help. He could have been like, you jerk, you called me this, instantly ministered to me, helped teach me, introduced me to Dr. Combs, Dr. McCabe. Dr. Combs came from the Tennessee Temple days, Lee Roberson, so he understood where I was coming from. No angst, no, and I remember Dave Dorn telling me at that lunch, he says, well, are you kind of like leaving that? I said, no, no, man, they're my friends, I'm not leaving it. And he says, let me tell you, I'll be the only friend you have left when you get done. Cause they have no room for a Christian that is not just like them. I said, well, even the old Baptist didn't use King James. He goes, doesn't matter. There's no room for you. In fact, you will become a threat to them. And actually had a friend tell me, I have to call your name out because you're a threat because people will listen to you. So I really learned to enjoy. I mean, this is Dave Dorn. What that church does for missions is unbelievable. And I completely would have missed that fellowship because of a text or Pants on Women. And just that kind of jumped ahead there. Kyle, how did you get into this? I mean, me and Tim are going through this whole thing like, oh, Kyle's down in Terre Haute, Indiana or something doing his thing. Yeah, so I was here just out of Bible college. when you preached on repentance, that series on repentance. So I was here for that. And we left for Indiana shortly after that. But yeah, we were in Indiana for beginning of 2008 to about November of 2010. So nearly three years we were there. A church that was, and before I go on, let me just say, my wife and I learned some important lessons there too. We really did. There are things we took away from there that still help us to this day. I also think it was providential for Brittany and I to leave because I did grow up in this church. A lot of these ladies were working in the nursery when I was a little kid, so I think it was beneficial for me to leave. Port Huron and Court Street for a few years, more or less maybe to grow up a little bit. I remember seeing your saying, one of the ladies pointed out, I changed your diaper. And I thought, that's the last thing he wants to hear as the assistant. Right, exactly. So I think that was a blessing a little bit too, that I was able to kind of leave and then come back maybe a little bit older and a little bit more mature. and things like that. But the church there was very much, it was a pragmatic type approach, very much numbers driven, numbers oriented. That was the goal, was just building a big church by any means possible. A couple of the things that you had said, even in your background during the years when I wasn't here, kind of resonated with what I was going through there to the expository preaching. Even as a youth pastor down there in Indiana, I can remember teaching through the book of Acts, teaching through the book of James, verse by verse with my youth group. Yet the preaching from the pulpit there on the Lord's Day was very much just excitement-driven. Its intention was to build excitement, to build momentum, to do those types of things, but it wasn't anything of substance. It wasn't Bible preaching. it wasn't being faithful to the text or anything like that. So that was something that I didn't know what I was going to do, where I was going to go, or anything like that. I just realized that, man, I think I'm in the wrong world here. This doesn't seem right compared to how I think the Word should be handled, how someone should preach, so on and so forth. The other thing, too, that you had mentioned was church history. I remember once again in Bible college being told to read guys like Spurgeon, which amazes me, because I wonder sometimes if the guys that told me that have never read Spurgeon, because if they had, they probably wouldn't have told me that. So I'm just following the counsel I've been given as a young man going into ministry to read guys like Spurgeon. I can remember going to the local Christian bookstore there in Indiana, and I can't believe they had it. They had a 10-volume set of Spurgeon sermons. I still have it. And it was there, it was like 50 bucks, brand new. Like it was discounted. It was the only set there, probably no one wanted it. I bought that. I thought, well, hey, they've been telling me to read guys like Spurgeon. I'm going to buy Spurgeon sermons and read them. Yeah. And I remember being confronted with things like Spurgeon just coming out and saying, I am a Calvinist. in his sermons, and I'm thinking, wow, I've been told that Calvinists are bad guys, but one of the guys I've been told to revere was one. And just listening to how men like that handled the Word. Also, I had been exposed to preachers like Paul Washer and others And this was the disconnect for me a little bit with the King James only-ism of fundamentalism. I was told that our group, being King James only, that we had the highest view of Scripture. And that anyone who wasn't King James only had a low view of Scripture. They didn't believe the Bible. We were Bible-believing Christians. And yet I would listen to guys who weren't King James only, who were preaching out of a New American Standard or an ESV like Paul Washer. And I remember comparing what I heard from them with what I heard from the pulpit of the church I was serving in, and realizing, okay, we supposedly have a higher view of Scripture, yet in this sermon I just heard on the Lord's Day, the Scripture was not honored. was not handled properly or accurately in any way, shape or form. And yet these guys who aren't King James only and have a lower view of scripture are very sober in their approach to preaching and are very careful in how they interpret the word, how they explain it, how they preach it, how they apply it. So that was a little bit earth shattering for me there because I'm seeing an inconsistency If we have such a high view of Scripture, why don't we treat it like that? If we believe it's God-breathed, why don't we seek to handle it accurately and properly being such? So that was another thing that kind of, you know, I'm seeing these guys who aren't in my world. They aren't in my camp. In fact, I'm being told that they're heretics because they aren't King James only. they are approaching the task of interpretation and preaching much more seriously than the leaders of my camp. So there was that, the church history thing. One other thing that kind of, I look back on it now and I say it's providential. At the time I just think, in the moment you're thinking, wow, what a fluke. But I remember buying a Cambridge King James Bible when I was in Indiana. The fancy leather one. Yeah, the Cadillac. This is like top of the line. Yeah, nice leather. I always heard people brag on their Cambridge, and I thought, man, I gotta buy a Cambridge, so I bought a Cambridge. And the interesting thing, I don't know if the Cambridge King James still has this in it or not, but they did back then. And I didn't know it existed even until I bought a Cambridge, but I bought the Cambridge, I opened it up and I saw the preface to the King James, the translator to the reader. And I thought, wow, this is cool. I mean, I've never seen this in any King James I've ever owned. And so I started reading through it. And I guess I could go into a long discussion of what I encounter when I read that, but I think I could just narrow it down by saying, I'm reading it and I'm realizing that I'm more King James only. than those guys were. And thinking, alright, something's not right here. Something's not right. And it was about those things I'm struggling with, realizing I can't continue to serve in this church. We just have two different views of how ministry should be done. And so we ended up coming back to Michigan. More or less, we just, I mean, this is where I'm from, and we didn't know where else to go. We just knew that we couldn't in good conscience be serving where we were. Even if we were to stay there, it'd be under a pretense. It'd be dishonest with the disagreements we had with that pastor and that church to stay there under those circumstances. So we came back, and that was, right at the end of 2010, and it was right around the time that you were wrestling through some of those same issues. So I guess that's kind of how, even though we were in different spots, we still were kind of going through those issues at the same time. And I remember going to Detroit Seminary with you, even, to discuss the King James issue. Yeah, we sat in Dr. Combs' office. And I remember the time. So if it wasn't a dorm, probably the greatest enemy that I had was James White. I mean, he's the enemy. He's a Calvinist. He actively is attacking the King James only position. I mean, this guy has to be, you know, burned. That's all he does. Yeah, that's all he does is try to dismantle forget that he debates Muslim clerics and Mormons. All he does is want to destroy the King James. So he had written a book on the King James only controversy. And the only book he's written, right? Yeah, he's never if you ask some people, that's the only book. So I remember hearing about this book, and I hated this book, and it was full of garbage. And I thought, Well, I should probably read it. So I read this book and he had a section on Erasmus. Erasmus, based on the, I haven't done a great research on his life, but based on what little bit there was, is in hell today. because he believed in the sacraments for salvation and stuff as a Catholic. He never went against the Catholic. He debated Luther horribly. But Erasmus, when creating his translation, what we would call the Texas Receptus, which really isn't his translation, it's several lines down, but by and large, he had five editions. The first two, he did not have 1 John 5, 7 in. The third one, he put it in based on pressure, and he says he's putting it in here based on pressure, but he doesn't believe there's any documentation to back it up. many parts in his portion on Revelations. He didn't even have Greek text for it, so he went to the Latin, translated the Greek, you know. But one of those five has to be the perfect one, the other four can't be, based on my view of King James only preservationism. So right there, it starts falling apart with me. Like, which one? I remember asking a local pastor that one time, I said, which one of Erasmus' Texas Receptus is the right one? He goes, what do you mean? I said, well, he did five. Which one's the right one? The one with First John 5-7, the one without? I don't understand what you're saying. I mean, he had no idea. And so, the struggle was, I had no idea, and I'm doing conferences around this country and slamming anyone that doesn't hold my position, and I've never even read the other side. That's another thing I learned through this whole process. And I began to read that and realize things. So you talked about preaching, one of my favorite things, and I was good at it. I looked it up here, Psalms 119, verse 31, I have stuck unto thy testimonies, O Lord, put me not to shame. and right there's a sermon on how not to be ashamed in the ministry, stick unto the King James Bible, stick unto Saul when he's sick, understand her, stick unto me, you know. And I would bring the house down with that sermon. That text had absolutely zero, never was that text written for that purpose. But because my points brought down the house and it perpetuated the narrative, the worldview that we had, it's good preaching. And that's stuff that just kind of Crumbled with it. Ted, you've been sitting over there. Any questions, anything you want to add into this? I mean. No, it's all good. Ted's probably on there controlling the world on his phone. Manipulating things, cutting things out. Nothing at all? No, nothing. Good, nothing yet. Next thing I want to do is what led to our transition. So you can kind of get like, Oh my goodness. I remember when we moved out here, I met with a group of men in my office. I said, guys, we're moving out here, but there's a group that's not going to come. That's fine. We actually, what we did is we sold them the building for the cost of what we owed on the building, plus 10,000 to cover our cost of move. Left them a lot of stuff, took stuff, switched stuff back and forth. They formed a church, so on. It was kind of a Paul and Barnabas. It's something I learned. You know what? I don't hate them. They're not my enemy. We just have a completely different direction we're going to go with this. And we're not coming out here to the new building bringing this old fight. It's done. And I remember sitting in my office and I said, I am not going to be the same pastor and things are not going to be the same. I didn't. In fact, Web Bailey, are you a Calvinist? Oh, never. I'm not a Calvinist, man. Are you kidding me? Come on. I'm a Bible believer. You know, there was no agenda, but I just knew, I'm just done with this old fighting, screaming, calling people names, hating. I remember, I just had this Christian couple minister to my wife and I through a very difficult time that is completely different than us. I mean, he was expository preaching. He was actually going through Matthew with John MacArthur, which I had just started Matthew. Remember my series on the Sermon on the Mount? People got mad when I preached on anger being a sin, because I guess it isn't, even though the Bible says it is. Well, sometimes it's good to just yell, you know. I mean, summer in the mouth is the summer in the mouth, you know. But we moved out here. I remember sitting in my office that Sunday morning, my blinds were slightly open, and I was checking to see who actually was going to follow me out here, because we had no idea who was coming out here and who was going to stay at the old building. I didn't know. I mean, this will be interesting. And watching people come in, like, oh, wow, that person came, that person came, that person's not going to stay, but they're coming today, praise the Lord. I mean, it was kind of like a new church plant in a way. Well, there was a certain volatility at the surface that we didn't exactly know how big it was. There were people asking, well, where are you guys going? Whether that was doctrinally or standards or whatever they meant by that question. And we couldn't answer it. It wasn't, I'm not going anywhere, I'm going where the scripture leads. But we knew what they meant by the question, where are you going? I think all we knew is where we're not going. Yeah, we weren't being deceptive. There was no road map. We knew what we weren't anymore. And I knew I was done with the fighting. I was done with hating other Christians that love the Lord and are serving the Lord, like a Bodhi Bachem, a Paul Washer. I'm done trashing these guys. John MacArthur, the guy's done great things for the cause of Christ, and I'm going to hate on him? John Piper? I just was done with that. So knowing that's not what we were, I wrote some of the things down, what led to transition, things I learned. Obviously, Baptist history was huge in that expedition we're preaching, learning through the church struggle towards the end there, people that actually cared, realizing I can enjoy other Christians. I remember, though, we had an incident before we had moved. Your dad, Kyle, went and watched the movie Courageous at the movie theater. Okay. He was a deacon of our church. I get cornered about this, that a deacon is going to a movie theater. I mean, Ted laughs, but if you were in a Christian school here, you'd have been in trouble for going to it as a student. Oh, I know. We did that battle when I was at the school here. Yeah, I mean it's, so, and so I gotta deal with this now, you know. Terry Floyd, deacon in the church, went and saw the Christian movie Courageous that we're all waiting to come out on DVD, because I actually showed it in the church. We had a movie night at the church to watch Courageous. So I'm thinking through this, you know, what do I do? And so I asked myself a series of questions. Number one, Is the movie Courageous bad? No. Okay. So secondly, is going to the theater bad? I don't necessarily think so, but the proof text for that is in Thessalonians, abstain from the appearance of evil. When in doubt as a fundamentalist, that's your text to control what people do or don't do. So knowing that was going to be the argumentation, I thought, okay, well, who does this appear evil to? So if the world, and poor Heron, saw your dad going in to watch Courageous, would they think that's evil? No. It's a Christian going to watch a Christian movie. Would the majority of evangelical churches in Port Huron area think it was evil that Terry Floyd, well, no, many of them were actually renting out rooms in the theater to go watch the movie as a church. So they wouldn't. And that brought me to this real realization. The only ones that think it's evil is an independent fundamental Baptist, high-sword of the Lord, culture, world that we're in. And then another thing that came out of that was, Well, but how do you know he's going in there to watch that movie and not a bad one? Well, that's where I learned. My love for brother Terry Floyd tells me he's not going in there to watch a bad movie. And why do I immediately think evil of my brother instead of saying, I know his testimony, his character, I should be shocked if he went and watched. But we immediately jumped to, oh, you went on air because you were going to watch a bad movie. That's bearing false witness. So I remember trying to make light of it. And I said, probably the only biblical reason not to go was the expense of popcorn. It's outrageous to spend that much money on popcorn. They didn't take the humor. That wasn't a good answer. No, they didn't like the answer. But that was just a little thing like, okay, we're moving away from this. Baptist history, John MacArthur, these guys are having great impact in helping me understand expository preaching and the word of God and so forth. So one of the first things that when we got out here that probably first started was kind of took the hand off the control hand of standards. Which I'm gonna tell you now, if you do that in your church, get ready, it's gonna get crazy. Because you're gonna hear members are doing things you're gonna cringe at, like, oh, I don't know if they should do that. But it's kind of like taking your child, your hair as short as a guy, your hair as long as a female, you carried a King James Bible, you sang these type of songs. If you did that, you're a good Christian. And now I'm like, taking that control off, they gotta figure out how to live for the Lord. And boy, our pendulum's swaying everywhere. I mean, it just went every which way, because they're having to learn to live in their Christian liberty. but not to an occasion to the flesh. Where before is very clear. We put a pencil on your ear. If your hair goes over the pencil, your hair's too long. I mean, it was easy to pass hair check. I'm a good Christian because I passed hair check. What about the heart? So first of all, that is a huge thing to work through. You just gonna have to be patient and work through that. Secondly, the text issue. We dragged that out forever. I did a series on the text. And I remember one of our members who's here now actually came in my office towards the end and he goes, how much longer are you gonna be trashing my translation? I'm like, I haven't brother. The only thing I've done actually on the King James Bible portion was did a comparison. But that was a heated time, and I thought, man, are they gonna fire me after this? And I'm like, we're not changing texts, folks, we're just, I need to undo what I did. Dave Doran told me I gave him the ammo to shoot me. So we dealt with the text, we knew we weren't King James only, so we would have some King James only people come in here and immediately hand out their KJV only 1611 pins, and we're like, no, we're not for that, and they would leave, okay? Even though we used the King James at that point. And then, really, The aspect of Calvinism coming in, I forget why I did it, but I did a series on the sovereignty of God. It wasn't Calvinism, it was the sovereignty of God, which then just knocked the wall, the blocks fell. And I remember going to a conference with Webb Bailey, Jason Goetz, Ted, your dad went to a solo 13 in Lansing, Michigan. Okay, everybody had beards, flannel shirts, untucked, you know. Skinny jeans, a lot of skinny jeans. A lot of skinny jeans, my boys still pick on me because I tuck your shirt in, we always tuck our shirt in. So drums playing, I mean, and I'll never get the last night John Piper preached on the sovereignty of God. Jason and I, were you there? Yeah, Kyle went too. Kyle and I knew, we're going Calvinism. We're not going, but we're believing the tenets of the doctrines of grace. Notice Tim wasn't there, we'll get to that later. We kept Tim in the closet for a long time. So driving home that night, Webb is furious and Webb told Jason he was ready to punch us. He was so angry. And he says, I refuse to let them take the church to Calvinism. I mean, he was furious. And then it was around December. Of course, your dad didn't come after the first night, I think. I mean, Yeah, no. It didn't last long. Ted seems like, this is, I think the music got, I mean, it was loud. It was too much for me. My chest was bumping. Yes. The instruments overtook the words. To his credit on that. Yeah. I was wondering if I might have a heart attack. Yeah, we were sitting in the back. The instruments overtook the actual words of the person. It's too loud, you're too old. Yeah. My chest was shaking. We come back, Webb starts studying over Christmas. I remember thinking, man, I ruined Christmas for his family. Because he's gonna wrestle, and if you know Webb. Down in the dungeon. Webb Bailey probably has one of the best minds in our church that if he reads a book, he'll tell you what it says. I have to read it three, four times. He just, it sticks with him. It's like he's in his dungeon, man. So I remember in the movie Tora Tora Tora, where the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, it shows one of the planners in the belly of a ship, his shirt's off, he's sweating, there's no windows, and he's working through the plan. And they knock on the door and he yells at him. That's what I pictured Webb going through this. And Webb comes through and he's like, I've got to quit fighting it. And he'll tell you why. One, he felt, what if my kids weren't elect? What would I do with that truth? And things he struggled with, emotional issues he had to work through on it. But once that was done, I knew where we were taking the church. I knew what I was going to start teaching, the text. I wasn't going to skirt around the Calvinist text. What that meant, but I'll be honest with you, we had a couple families leave over it. But I was amazed at how many people were like, well, yeah, that makes perfect sense. It was kind of sovereignty of God. You had your Sunday school class, the care group. So I would teach this. The next Sunday in adult care group, they would discuss it. And Tim, I'm not even sure if you're there yet, but I'm dropping bombshells on Tim to have to then guide the discussion in the adult Sunday school class on sovereignty. as I'm back in my office going back into studying. And my big struggle on the doctrines of grace, I remember I shared this morning, was never particular atonement. To me, that makes completely sense. It was irresistible grace. that I see people in the Bible refusing God. And that was my big holdup. I always felt if you bought into one truly as defined in TULIP, like depravity, if you truly define it that way, the rest just kind of falls into place. So we began to work towards the tenets of Calvinism. At some point, I actually used the word and told, I did a series on TULIP, straight up, this is, where I would stand. We brought before the church finally to change the text and why. That went through with no problem. And the one man that got mad at me for tearing apart the King James, he said, is a member of our church to this day, uses the King James, which I'm fine with. I'm fine with, I would expect every older person In fact, I laugh when I'm preaching, I'll quote a verse, and I know I quoted King James. That's just what I know. If the government came through and said, the only Bible today is the King James Bible, fine, okay, let's go build a church. I mean, it's not the issue that I would have, that others, that the King James only would make it to be on translation. So we worked through the standards and the text. the doctrines of grace. And then one of the other things in the process of this, and I forget where it played in, probably before we went doctrines of grace was plurality of elders, which I think has been the greatest decision that I led the church in, even more so than changing translation. Because I look back on, I don't know how long we're into this, an hour and a half into this, we've broad-brushed a lot of struggles. I mean, I'm telling you, it would have been easier to just go plant a church. When Votie Backham was at our church, I told him a little bit of the testimony that I just shared, and he looked at me and he goes, I can't believe you're the pastor. You're only the second person I know that has transitioned to church and they didn't run him out. I don't even recommend it. I mean, it's great on the other side, but man, you're going to learn a lot about yourself you don't like. You're going to learn a lot about, it's just a difficult process. But if we had been plurality of elders through that whole thing. One, I don't think we would have made so many sudden changes. It would have been more of a steady process. Secondly, back then, if you didn't, you'd just attack Matt McPhillips, just get rid of him. But when you've got a plurality that gets up and says, the elders, we recommend this. Now you've got to tell the whole church, all the elders are crazy. Secondly, accountability. And we're going to do a session, probably the next session will be on plurality, the blessing of it. I am not gifted in all the spiritual gifts. No pastor is. But yet, when you're the king of the mountain, you gotta be able to do it all. So we basically hire these assistant pastors, we call them, that have gifts that I don't have. And so I'm trying to be out of my lane doing things I'm not comfortable doing, where I know what my strengths are, what I can do, that's where I need to focus on. I know what Kyle's strengths are, I know what Tim's strengths are. And so, plus it provides perfection. Secondly, through that whole process, all them years, who pastored me and my family? Which probably led to some of those dark times we talked about. You know, I mean, people think this is great, right? No, I went home, my wife's looking at me like, we're not talking for a couple days. I remember my daughter saying, because there's a couple of times I'm like, I'm leaving here. This is just not going to work. I'm going to move on. And I remember my daughter saying, I'm going to live with someone else. I'm not moving with you. When she was like 14, 15 years old. I'm like, well, yeah, you're kind of, I mean, nobody's taking you in. She goes, I'll find someone. I mean, it was just, you know, I'm taking her from her friends. I'm taking her from her world. And so, you know, who pastored? And so over the last couple of years, we've learned to be able to pastor. So, you know, when we do probably the next one, we'll do it on plurality. All three of us have gone through some very difficult things. Kyle's dad almost died in a motorcycle wreck that made you to be his guardian. I mean, whoever thought that? Tim has started a business. There's family dynamics. You've got your parents living with you. I end up going back to full-time work. There's just a lot of dynamics. You know, pastor's not exempt from the flesh. You guys minister to me two years now. that if you didn't minister to me, I probably would have ruined my ministry, but not a ministry today. That wouldn't happen in a single pastorship, but plurality. So that would be the other big change that I think was a real blessing to us in the church. Tim thought, I mean, transition, the whole process. Now Tim's interesting because Kyle, Tim said, I remember one time, I think Tim just espoused Calvinism. I was shocked because Tim would say things and I'd be like, did Tim just use the word reform? It was kind of like Tim, Kyle and I, we wouldn't push it around Tim because we didn't want, we were like, You know, again, our hearts were always, we love everybody in the church. Nowhere, and these people will say, I just throw them out. I don't want to see anyone leave a grace life. So. Well, I think it brought a certain comfort to the latest and maybe most difficult transition our church went through when we brought up before the church to bring me on as an elder. And the majority of the church knew that on some of these positions, I'm not there yet. Yeah. Now, how does that work? I think you even told Connell, we brought it up to you, you're like, I'm not with you guys. You sure? Yeah. Right. So, you know, I mean, what's interesting is I think we've done some disclaimers on this because we're not, haven't done a ton of podcasts yet. But for the sake of the listener, we've mentioned things like this is a difficult journey. I don't recommend the church goes through it. It'd be easier to go across the street and start another ministry. A couple of key things that came to my mind as we've been talking, and number one, this has been a 20 year journey. Not three years, not a year. This is the majority of our adult life working through this together. And some very difficult, you're right, decisions. And only by the grace of God that we're all still ministering together, we're still part of this body, and obviously his plan for the church. And as we went through that long journey, you mentioned Webb, myself, Ted, there's others. A key word that came up is study. We were challenged with things we didn't want to believe, didn't want to change on. But one thing that's kept us together was those that were willing to say, let me open scripture and see what it says. And you led us down that journey. And the other side of that coin that isn't quite as pretty, you mentioned care group. So that was a very humbling time for me when we started care group. I absolutely loved the premise of it. The premise was, I'm not going to stand in front of a class and teach whatever three-page lesson there is for this Sunday. I'm going to sit down with the outline of the Sunday before, mention some of the highlights, and then open the floor for discussion. That's terrifying to anybody in that position, especially when you've got 30 people in the room that do know their Bible. But second of all, to be the person in the room that isn't quite there in agreement with maybe everything that was preached the week before. Not at a point where I'm willing to split fellowship over it, but we're talking about things like Calvinism and the doctrines of grace. And the looks I'm getting is I'm saying, well, what do y'all think on that? But that was an opportunity for healthy, open debate, discussion to work through. And on many occasions, people didn't like the way the discussion went. And we had the opportunity after service to sit down one-on-one and talk. And part of what pushed me over the edge, if we want to call it that, was people that I thought were aligned with me when I said, but you can't ignore that the scripture says this. So how do we work through that? Well, I don't care. I'm not changing. But I would challenge again, but Scripture says, let's get together and go to Tim Hortons and have a discussion about what this means. I'm not changing, there's no point in having a discussion. And I've met a lot of those roadblocks, and those people are not with us today. The key that is grace life today, the key that is why we're ministering together and growing in the Lord, I believe, is those that said, it may be different, but what does the Scripture say? Yeah. And I'm willing to work through a systematic theology because that's more important to me than maybe what I was taught 20 years ago or what my parents believed or what the church has always stood for. And I'm not saying change for the sake of change. But if growth isn't part of our Christian walk, then what are we doing here? And we're not afraid of it. I'm not afraid of a member to say, you know, I'm not sure this is how I studying that text this week. I don't know that we're going through the atonement right now. General particular atonement. We're not afraid as a leadership, as a pastor. It doesn't bother me when someone disagrees with me. I mean, if they deny cardinal doctrines of faith, that'd be an issue. But when you're like, you know what? I'm not sure I'm totally there. I got questions on this. Study it. It thrills my heart when they said, I've been studying this this week. And I'm really working through, I got some questions on this. Isn't that what we want? Now back in the old days in our fundamentalist world, you didn't want people studying. This is who we are, this is what we do. So I don't feel threatened at all when someone is studying and is either not where I'm at on something or has a different take on it. I mean, there's obviously, you go to some extremes where they're denying a text, that's a different issue, but I'm okay with that. We have people in our church that are not Calvinists. For sure. And that's fine. We have people in our church that are King James only. And that's fine. You ask them why they're coming because they also love expository preaching and they can't find a King James only church that really does that anymore. Right. Well, that transition of care group that maybe helped me work through some things went from being my greatest fear to absolutely one of the greatest blessings. Because now we go into it, I think many people come to the table with a healthy debate of scripture. And what does it say? Let's dissect it, let's get into it. In fact, sometimes we don't want to move forward, we want to stay later, right? And have those discussions. Let me finish, I guess, we call it the elephant in the room, if you will, you've mentioned a couple times. I'm not gonna give you the satisfaction of saying I'm a Calvinist today, but I will say, I'll agree with the five points of tulip, I'll give you that. He's wearing a beard. He's got a beard, his hair's a little long, you wouldn't pass hair check at the typical high school. Absolutely, that is true. And he did start off the podcast by saying we're reformed. Yeah, so. I'll give you that. Which, there's Calvinists in our reform. All the pieces are there. That's true. Well, when you did the doctrine on sovereignty, there was no animosity on my end. In fact, it was, the most liberating study I've ever been through in my adult life. It changed me doctrinally. I have gotten saved, and on a podcast, I'm giving the finger quotes, right? Resaved 25 times if I've gotten saved once because of some of the doctrines we had to work through together. I was working. And maybe it was a large part of that zeal the first 15 years of the ministry, why we had buses and were at the church three nights a week and doing so many things because it just pleased God and I needed to keep that favor because when I didn't do it, I questioned my salvation. And so the sovereignty study, it really, you two gentlemen are scholars, you love reading. I'm not that guy. There's a lot of books on my nightstand that you've given me and I've worked through over the years. Begrudgingly, I read these. I love what I learn. It's just, I'd rather get a shop manual on building a small black Chevy. That's my- Yeah, for Christmas, I'll buy Tim a car part and Kyle will get a theology book. Exactly, exactly. Real quick on the sovereignty thing. One of the great theologians, Holly Floyd, told me, it's Tim's wife, there in the middle of that, she says, it's connecting the whole Bible to make sense. Exactly. And I remember her saying that. And that's kind of what happened with me. It's not disjointed. This is all God's plan, the whole thing. And sovereignty kind of brought that into place. And so this has been an up and down. There's been times when I thought, yep, we're not going to be together in a year. And then there's times where, man, I thank God we've had the privilege to work together and fellowship together. And what I thought was gonna be the straw that broke the camel's back was Voddie Backham and our Doctrines of Grace study. And all that went on and you gave us a comparison study, Tulip compared to what we used to believe. And I took that home and that one page handout in the service that day turned into six pages of notes that I carried for a year and a half to prove you wrong. And was the single greatest Bible study I've had personally in my home with my children, with my wife, She had a book, and I don't recall the name of it that you gave her at that point. But as she worked through that book, we were having our own one-on-one discussions that led to our family discussions together. And the two that I got hung up on, I remember I was a three-point Calvinist, and I was a 3.5, and I was gonna give you maybe a four, right? But when it came to limited atonement and irresistible grace, I'm just, I'm hung up. I'm sorry, I can't get over that one. But what Holly said, she got it maybe only a week before I did. It was the same thing. It connected the Bible for me. And I then came to a position where I either got to hang on to what makes me comfortable or what really makes logical sense in my systematic theology. Since then, I look back and I literally, I'm like, why did I struggle with that? I really don't understand what the hangup was, although I know it's real and I'm empathetic with anybody that is struggling with change like that. It's an affront to us personally. It's the atonement study. Next week, I'm gonna look at general particular atonement specific. I'm gonna have the two dry erase boards on the platform. We're gonna go through the points of each one. Neither one really struggles with all the points until you get to the one particular atonement says God didn't die for everyone. I don't like that. that He died in my place, that He bore my sins, we all agree, you know, these things, there's an emotional attachment to it and uneasiness with it. What you were just saying though, if you'd have come through that study and said, you know what, we just can't stay here. I'm thrilled though, because a man in my church and his wife and his family spent months studying the Scriptures. Isn't that not what we want a Christian to do? Why are we so afraid? to challenge them to do that. And yes, some will come on disagreement with me. Some will say, I disagree, but I'm staying. Some will say, I disagree, I gotta go. But what an awesome thing that you were challenged to lose sleep, to be stressed, whatever, to study. So here's a husband and wife studying the doctrines of scripture together. Amen. And yet 15 years ago, that would have been a threat to me that you were studying, you know, because you got to do what I say. And we all kind of went through that same type of approach as far as we didn't, we didn't one day say, you know what? Yeah, I want to be a Calvinist. I'm going to study Calvinism. If anything, we started studying it because first of all, we were forced to deal with it with the expository preaching. like shooting yourself in the foot there, you got to deal with it. If you're going to preach through the scriptures. So my original definition of someone's running for office and I vote for him was no. Yeah, that's not no, no. But pretty sure that's not what Paul had in mind there. But anyway, we, you know, we had to deal with those things. And we set out. I think each of us could say honestly, that we set out to prove Calvinism wasn't true. I know I did. Just purely based on where we came from. Yeah. And the thing that made a difference, though, I think was when we set out, obviously, we looked at the scriptures and tried to interpret the scriptures in their grammatical historical context, which is important. But we also engaged with Calvinism. We engaged with what Calvinists said about their own position instead of engaging with what in Arminian says the Calvinist believes. I went to original sources on a lot. The text issue, original sources. The Calvinist issue, original sources. The King James Bible thing, original sources. I remember during the hiles with Jack Scott and all that, I actually ordered his books and his sermons because I was going to be able to say, I listened. And I remember a guy saying, well, where'd you hear that from? I said, I read his book. Do you want a copy? I mean, I went to original sources, I was not going to be, no longer be, I was told to believe this or I was told to believe that. Which is what we should do if we want to be Christians, if we want to be truthful, then we want to represent people accurately in what their positions are accurately. So there's that. But also, if you're going to truly grapple with something, you go to the source. So there was that, and I think we all came to the conclusion that we had traditions that kind of blinded us a little bit, and there were inconsistencies we couldn't account for, and eventually that led to the result of us being Calvinists. which I wanted to mention too, just maybe to address a couple of assumptions or misconceptions, because we, I mean, you know, we listed some things almost like bullet points today. And I know you mentioned that Both of you had mentioned that these things were a long process for us. It's not something that happened overnight. In fact, I chuckled a little bit even when you said that the translation issue was many years. Because we actually didn't do a leadership meeting at the beginning of this year, I don't think. But we normally would do a meeting We used to laugh, Kyle's gonna bring up, we need to change the translation. I think there was three or four years straight where I had that on my list. We would have a leadership meeting, what do you think we need to address this coming year? And right away, Tim and I knew, Kyle's gonna bring up, we need to change the translation. So I can personally testify to the fact that this was not an overnight change. It was several years. It may be the only topic that I wasn't the last one. That's true. Yeah, that that might be the case. So, you know, we didn't, we didn't make these, these decisions. These changes quickly. Yeah, haphazardly. There was if anything, with some of it, it was with kicking and screaming, but also just slow, deliberate, careful. And also, we didn't make some of these changes on a pragmatic level. We didn't think, oh, you know what, we're gonna build, our church can get bigger if we make some of these changes. I'm working full time today because of some of these decisions. It was not pragmatic. I don't know if you haven't heard, but most megachurches aren't Calvinistic. No. So we definitely didn't go into this thinking, oh yeah, if we make these changes, we're gonna be cool and people are gonna wanna come to our church. If anything, we, You know, we lost friends. We did. You know, I mean, all we knew was fundamentalism. I mean, that was the college I graduated from. Those were my ministry friends. Yeah, things like that. So yeah, there was nothing. When I say gained, there was nothing gained earthly. Right. Heavenly, it's been a glorious thing. Absolutely. But earthly, there was zero gain in the earthly sense. You mentioned misconceptions. Let's go to that. One other thing too I was going to say, and we've mentioned this too, but we aren't kicking people out of the kingdom. No. I mean, I'm not saying that people who are fundamentalists are unsaved. No, and not in the kingdom. I mean, there are many people who would identify as independent fundamental Baptists who are kind, gracious people who spread the gospel. Yeah, love the Lord and preach the gospel. I definitely have a love for them and count them as a brother, sister. We're not kicking people out of the kingdom by any means. Hopefully that's being communicated, but it bears repeating. You mentioned about the struggle coming through this. I actually have a bigger concern I remember a few years, several years back, Ted was home. You were dating Hillary at the time, and we were in the back of the auditorium here doing something. And I forget what I said. I said something Calvinistic, whatever, because you like about fell over. The curls went straight in your hair. And you looked at me and goes, are you reformed? And I remember telling him I'm not because I knew reformed was more than just Calvinism. And I said, I don't feel it would be fair to call myself reformed. Because I was still working through the idea of being confessional, which I 100% am right now. We should be grounded in a confession, absolutely. And then covenantal, working through the covenantal aspect of hermeneutics and that. But many, in Ted's generation, they've jumped at Calvinism without the struggle we went through. I'm thankful for the struggle because I had to ground myself and I had to be like, okay, are you sure you're gonna get up and teach this? Because you're going to lose people over this. If you say, yeah, I think Calvinism is the right way, it was no big deal. I'm concerned about that because there's a sense to where Calvinism became the cool thing. You know, it's not my dad, you know, or I'm reformed because there's Calvinist. Well, that's MacArthur, I'm reformed. Like I hate when people downplay John MacArthur. The guy is a blessing to the church that we won't even know two years after he's dead and gone, the blessing he's been. He fought the Calvinism thing before it was cool in the 80s, you know? So this whole process has been a struggle. And I encourage anyone, it was worth it. Don't be afraid to reach out to people through the struggle. Call us. I mean, it's fine. We've been through it. But I mean, this is not just, these were not just light. We're deciding if we're gonna change the carpet from blue to green. That's not what this was. This was real. So misconception number one I wrote down is we planned it all. No, we didn't, man. No, we didn't. And that was easy. The second I wrote, we forced everyone to follow and trick them. Never. I was up front every time. I never hid, I would say, I'm struggling through with this, I'm working through with this, I'm not even sure where I am on this right away. And you know, we aren't Baptists. I remember that when a guy says, you don't have Baptist in your name. I'm like, yeah, it's Grace Life Baptist Church. I went and took a picture of our sign. He goes, yeah, well, Baptist is smaller letters than Grace Life. And I thought, you know, one of the greatest distinctives of a Baptist that separates us from other denominations is soul liberty. Hello, this guy's not even granting it to me. So misconceptions are going to happen if you go through a transition. Decide which ones are worth addressing and which ones aren't worth it. Because you can get bogged down spending all day defending yourself instead of teaching your people. There's many things that were said and done that we could have got bogged down into the fight with. For what purpose? What would we win on the other side? Win those people to our side? No, they weren't with us. I learned most Christians don't practice the basics of the Ten Commandments, which is don't bear false witness. At a minimum, you should call. And I remember through this whole process, I got a call from the pastor of Ross Bible Church. It had nothing to do with Ross Bible Church back in the day. He says, we got so-and-so looking to join our church. Someone had told me you guys disciplined him. Why? I said, we went through a battle of the King James Bible. This is when we had our battle to be King James only. I led that battle. That was great. You know, Tim, your dad, I mean, we made a decision to be King James only. This man was not, was correct in saying this is a wrong position, but his spirit was horrible. He sent letters out. He accused people, if you're King James only, you have a 50% chance higher of your husband cheating on you in your marriage. I mean, just crazy stuff. And so this pastor, who did not agree with our position at all, called me. I told him what happened. He goes, well, we're not going to let him join because his spirit is not Christ-like. And that's a concern to me. He says, I disagree with your position on the text, but that's something wrong with that. We're going to tell him he needs to make that right. And here's a church that I wouldn't fellowship with at that time that's upholding our church discipline because he saw it wasn't about a text issue. Those are the little things that you work through. What are the misconceptions that you think people might not understand? We're really not argumentative. People think I'm an in-your-face argumentative guy. I usually walk away from the argument. I put it off. You know, I was thinking that. a list of things if we wanted to go down it that we wonder why people thought. Because if they really saw behind the curtain... There was nothing to be gained through this other than the truth. People that maybe were frustrated with change, didn't want to see that they were stuck in a tradition or appreciate maybe why. Like you said, we could easily fellowship with anyone that has disagreed with us on these topics. But the assumption maybe along the way by a few, not a lot, but a few that there was some pragmatic benefit to this, that this is, you know, he's taking the church this direction for himself, when in reality it would have been a lot easier to stay where you were. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, probably the most practical thing is I have to share my Christmas bonus with two other elders now. Before it was all given to me as a pastor. Now I have to split it between three of us. But again, I say plurality is the greatest, one of the greatest things, because it helped through the process. We're going to close with this. What we've transformed in today, how would we define grace life? Number one, expository preaching is our desire and our heart. We want, we're going through the book of John. We get done with that. I'm really tempted to start Romans. I know people would love for me to do revelations, but that just brings out all the kooks and I don't want to do that. And I'm not totally grounded in my eschatology. I know what I'm not, but I don't know that I would feel comfortable getting up teaching my view. We've done Matthew. We've done John. We did 1 Corinthians. I don't think I did 2 Corinthians. Maybe we'll jump over to 2 Corinthians. But expository preaching is just the lifeblood. We just work through it. Like right now, we're dealing with the subject of the Atonement. We could skip that all day long. but the text is there. What did Christ mean when He says, I have accomplished the work of the Father? What did He actually accomplish? So that's the beauty of it. We are a church that holds to the doctrines of grace. I make no apology about it. We tell people when they join. Nobody joins our church that doesn't know that. We have people that join our church and say, I don't agree with that. Well, you were told at the beginning this is what we hold to, so don't get mad at us. There are no secrets with it. We're very transparent, open about it. We believe in the best for each other. I think that's a real Achilles heel of fundamentalism. Almost like, well, if he fails, I get to rise up. That's a horrible place to be. Like I said, your dad going to the movie theater, why would I think he's going to watch the bad movie? I've known him for 20 years, his testimony, why would I think that of my brother? We see the best, and even people that would disagree with us in our own church right now, their hearts. Guys that disagree with us on the text of this day, their hearts, they love the Lord. And then I think grace life, we're simple. There's no pizzazz. I think we should start on time more. We usually don't even do good at that. But there's no problem with just a military service. We need to address this. Let's talk about this. We're very transparent, very open. One of the things I remember when I stopped, we don't sit on the platform, the elders. We sit with our families, man. This is not a showman. I remember you'd have 10 chairs or 10 guys. Remember that? I'd have all you guys sitting up there behind me when I preached. You know, it's just suit and tie. It's like, okay, let's stop and let's study the Word. And if that means I use a dry erase board next week to better get the point across, that's the purpose, is to rightly teach the Word of God, not put on a show aspect of it, church simple. Like I said, our morning services, Our kids are with us. We have a time of doctrinal teaching. We have a time of singing. We have a time of scripture reading. We have the Lord's Supper every Sunday. We have times of prayer, the preaching. And we believe that's best done as the whole body, the whole family together. I'm not saying it'd be wrong on Wednesday night to have a program for kids to learn systematically. If it's a game night, I'm not doing that. But if it's like a true system, like a catechism, the church catechizes. That's fine. Or if we were to have a men's fellowship on Thursday nights to ground, there's nothing wrong with that. But the primary biblical teaching of a Sunday morning worship, I think is best done together. I feel bad for families, especially new families that have kids that aren't used to that. There's a growing process. I know we've lost some families because of that, but that's comfortable with doing that. Then I know the question of eschatology. I would say right now we're working through the subject of eschatology and still learning what is the liberty of the believer. We have liberty. but Galatians, but not to the occasion to the flesh. That's still something we are working on. And some of that's from our upbringing, learning through that. People do stuff and I'm like, oh, I don't like that. And I'll talk to my wife and she'll be like, does the Bible really say it's wrong? No, but I don't like that. I mean, is it really a scriptural reason or is it just, I wouldn't do that. You know, that's still a process that, you know, we are working through. I think we're drawing more back to a true Christ-like righteousness, where I see some of the liberties we might have exercised before we wouldn't now. I mean, there's that growth there. And so that's just kind of where I see, you know, if someone asks, we are a Reformed Baptist church. We make no bones about it. We have our statement of faith. We adapted the New Hampshire confession of faith several years back. Kind of wish I didn't do that. It was kind of like, I want to adapt to 1689, but I don't think they're ready to do that. So let's adapt the New Hampshire, which is kind of a bridge between the two. Kind of like with the text, I'm like, what if we want New King James? Maybe that would be easier. And someone says, well, if your goal is ESV, don't do a transition in five years to everybody buy a new Bible. Just do it. So we would definitely hold to those tenets of it. But again, everyone has their own definition of those things too. So if you've got a question, call Grace Life, we'll answer. Don't just assume. I know some of you go, oh, they probably sprinkle babies. No, we're not Presbyterian. We're Baptists. There's a clear distinction in our covenant position. So that's just kind of what I... You guys, misconceptions that you think or even things transitioning to working towards as a church. Well, you mentioned that we're a reformed Baptist church, and we are reformed and being reformed. In no way, shape, or form do we think that we've arrived or that we have nothing left to learn, nothing left to do. We're being reformed. I hope in 10 years we can do a podcast of how we've grown in 10 years. I would hope so. Agreed. You know, that'd be good. So for my perspective, and Kyle, I don't know if you were done. No, go ahead. There's three personal aspects and then one I think as a church, just to comment on what have we transformed into today. And I'll be fast because we've touched on these already. I have a systematic theology. And if anything doesn't fit into that, that becomes the question. Not what I was raised against or whatever, but why doesn't this fit into a systematic theology? And that's been a tremendous blessing to me in my study. I no longer doubt my salvation. My salvation is not in what I'm doing to perform. My salvation is what has already been done for me. And that might be the simplest summary of Calvinism there ever was. But if you're doubting it, I'd challenge you to go on this journey with us. I enjoy fellowship with the unified body. There was a point where I assumed the infighting in a church was just part of church. And, you know, not to go down that road, but that was my reality of my childhood in church. And now the term grace life is who we are, a very gracious church. We're certainly not a perfect church. I think we've expressed that many times over. But the church has been incredibly gracious through a growing process. And you just mentioned eschatology. If there's one single maybe greatest transition we've made as a church is we've talked for the last two hours about how painful this process has been at many steps along the way because we had to drag people, maybe even kicking and screaming sometimes through a change. And not even sure where we stand on some of these changes. Well, the transition of Grace Life now is a position when we attack eschatology People will be very comfortable to say, well, I've thought this, or this is what I see in Scripture. It'll be a very healthy debate. love the word and want to be right regardless of what that means. And that's a very healthy place we come to worship. If you study Baptist history, pre-, mid-, late-1800s, you're not going to find dispensationalism. You're going to find upholstery, and again, that term is different. So would I not fellowship? But yet, the group we grew up in, fundamentalism, if you weren't a dispensationalist, we wouldn't fellowship with you. You kidding me? So I wouldn't fellowship with much of my Baptist heritage. You know, we've made eschatology almost a godsend. Now people are looking at the, oh, they raided the Capitol. That fits right here in Revelation. The next thing is, I don't see that we're supposed to be looking at the newspaper to get our signs and times and wonders. I'm not saying dispensation is wrong. I'm just saying it's created this. We're totally clueless of church history that we think this is the way the church has always believed. And it's not. And it's interesting to read and study and see the different views on it, especially Revelation and End Times, because it, you know, it is clearly a thing that a lot of stuff can run off the rails on.