Lead Time
Lead Time
The Sad LCMS Story of LakePointe City Church with Pastor Greg Bearss
Pastor Greg Bearss returns to share a heartfelt account of his challenging journey with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS), where allegations led to the church's withdrawal from the synod. We unravel the complexities of church leadership and the difficult decisions he faced while balancing ecclesiastical oversight with his calling. Greg's story is one of resilience and transformation, finding strength in faith and focusing on gospel-centered work at LakePointe City Church, despite facing allegations without the opportunity for resolution through direct dialogue as outlined in Matthew 18.
Navigating church rules while striving for impactful ministry can be a tightrope walk, as we hear about a guest speaker's impactful yet controversial visit due to their lack of formal credentials. This conversation shines a light on the tensions between adhering to church bylaws and fulfilling ministry goals, especially in the age of social media scrutiny. We explore the importance of direct communication, face-to-face discussions, and the necessity of reconciling misunderstandings, drawing inspiration from how Jesus addressed conflicts in the scriptures.
Finally, we emphasize the power of prayer and faith, especially for congregations facing persecution in places like Nepal and China. Through engaging narratives, we confront the challenges of maintaining vibrant faith while adapting worship practices to modern contexts. The episode encourages openness and dialogue about church traditions, advocating for a balance between essential liturgical elements and adaptive freedom.
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Speaker 2:Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman. Here I pray. The joy of the Lord is your strength. I got Jack Kalberg in the house as well. Jack, how you doing, doing well man, how you doing. Beautiful day, good to be here again.
Speaker 2:It is, and today we get to have round two with Pastor Greg Bursts, and Bursts is in the house. It's going to be so fun to hang out with you. But the conversation today is one that we pray fills you with truth, hope, unity and mission. We're going to be talking about a harder part of the story within the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and I'll let Greg kind of tell a little bit of what's been going on. And we want this to be and, greg, you're going to say it, you're going to say it too there are things that take place in the church that sometimes we're left huh, Come again, but we don't have all the details right, and so we are under authority.
Speaker 2:First we're under authority of God and then we're under authority of those. If we happen to be in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, there's a thing called ecclesiastical oversight and we want to honor those who have been placed in those roles. But we also want to talk about, kind of, some of the gray, the mess of your story today, but we're going to do so with kindness and courage, kindness and courage and great humility. So, greg, thanks for hanging out. And just how are you doing before you get going, buddy?
Speaker 3:I feel like I need to ring the bell. Jesus is good, isn't he? Yeah, I feel like I need to ring the bell. Ding, ding, round two, here we go. Yeah, there we go, here we go. Oh, dude, I'm doing great man. Thank you guys so much for having me on that.
Speaker 3:I know, within the LCMS, just putting that out there, just putting that out there. You know, it's one of those deals I've had a lot of people ask me how are you doing, are you okay? And here's the bottom line. What I'd love to begin with and here's where I'd love to end is that God has a plan. You can see it in the screen behind me.
Speaker 3:This is a mantra, should be a mantra of all of our lives that he has a plan, he's working his plan. He works. All things good to those who love him are called according to his purpose. Romans you know, romans 8 is real clear about that. And so sometimes that plan is hard. Sometimes the enemy it looks like he's winning, but actually he's not. And I think even about Jesus's crucifixion. The enemy thought he had Jesus. He's thinking when he's dead, it's over, and actually he's playing right into the hand of the Lord. And so I want to just preface with that. God has a plan in all of this, what you're alluding to and what Tim and Jack are talking about yeah, let me set you up, let me set you up just a little bit, Greg, before we get going, there we go.
Speaker 2:So Greg is a part of Lake Point City Church in Hot Springs, arkansas.
Speaker 3:Planted it. Can you believe? 19 years ago we planted that church from scratch.
Speaker 2:Unbelievable, and he's been walking through a season of having accusations that have come at him, apart from Matthew 18, seemingly being followed.
Speaker 3:So with that you can kind of share a little bit more of the story. Yeah, yeah, 100%. And if you go to the first podcast we did, there was a little bit of a setup with that. Since that has happened, just continued attacks and allegations and bottom line what ended up happening is I've ended up resigning from the roster of the LCMS. It was my choice, my decision, somewhat kind of pigeonholed into it and we can get into details of that, but it just it was a situation where I had five pastors, ended up being about six pastors that brought different allegations in.
Speaker 3:The biggest challenge with this whole thing Again, if a brother offends you, matthew 18 is super clear we go to him in private and what happens then is then we see about resolution and I never once got to even visit with any of these guys in private one-on-one. I got a registered letter in the mail with signatures on it, and so I feel like that's really the beginning of the end, when guys do not want to talk, when brothers can't sit in a room confidential and say, hey, listen, what you said offended me with this. And then the other kind of crazy thing is that there was initial charges brought and then the charges shifted and jived and changed and in in some way they started is not where they ended, which is kind of funny. And and there was one, one thing that they brought up that up, that I confessed and said, hey, I did that, and that was having somebody that wasn't in pulpit fellowship actually come to Lake Point and talk, and it was a gentleman, his name's Lance.
Speaker 3:He's with an organization called Compact which does foster care. It's a Christ-based foster care system and we have several foster parents in our church and we want to have more foster cares. We have an issue in our city, as most cities, with foster care, and so, anyways, that was the allegation that was true, but it still isn't. Without the guidelines of our church body, we can have people. Anyways, long story short, it became an arduous, just a process that I just finally just said. You know what? This is not getting anywhere. It's taking time, energy away from ministry, gospel-centered, reaching lost, doing the missional stuff God's called me and our church to be a part of, doing the missional stuff God's called me and our church to be a part of, and it just for us, it just made sense to part ways instead of continuing these fights that seemingly looked like there was no end on the horizon.
Speaker 2:Hey well, talk about how you can justify or how I guess our brothers justified not coming to talk to you and following kind of Matthew 18?.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so this is really the bizarre piece about it. When I was first approached by this and it was right before Christmas this had been going on for quite some time and really throughout the 19 years of our ministry, especially prior to my current district president, who's been in session now three terms, especially prior to my current district president, who's been in session now three terms. Before that it wasn't as bad, but I always had people accusing and attacking. But it's amped up in the last, probably last five years, and so the challenge is nobody wants to talk face to face. It's really interesting because a pastor reached out to me when these allegations started flying, I guess about 15 years ago this little thing that happened in Yankee Stadium and Pastor Banke actually called me, reached out to me and said hey, people are talking about you now and I just wanted to invite you to the conversation. And one thing he said that I thought was iconic was he said that many people will talk about him in that situation. He said nobody called me and asked me what happened with Yankee Stadium. Nobody, nobody called me directly. Everybody's talking about me, but not to me, and I want to give you an opportunity to talk to them, and so I thought that was super interesting.
Speaker 3:But what happened is, through these allegations, my district president decided to do an informal investigation, which I agreed to. I said there have nothing to hide. I have done nothing, but in my humblest opinion, try to honor God and be the pastor he's called me to be, to shepherd the people in the city. He's called me to shepherd. So I was not opposed. And then what happened is that he assembled a group of pastors Two of them were from our district, two of them they brought in, flew them in from their districts, and the leader of this informal investigation happened to be a part of the church that the lead accuser, my number one accuser it was one of his parishioners who then went to seminary, became ordained and he actually ordained him and he's the leader of the informal, supposedly nonpartisan investigation about me. And there were so many other things that were shady, that happened behind the scenes that I don't really want to get into. But people allowed on Zoom calls that shouldn't have been on that I didn't even know where my accusers that were listening in. It just was really not Christ-like.
Speaker 3:And so as we went through these investigations, which took a week long, where they interviewed all these pastors. They interviewed my district president twice. They interviewed me for two hours after. They talked to everybody else and collated their information, and one of the things that they said was, because I asked them, I said why was Matthew 18 not followed?
Speaker 3:I couldn't pick out four of the guys I couldn't pick up in a lineup. I've never met them before, to my knowledge. I don't know what they look like. They could be on this podcast. You know you could be one of them, jack. I wouldn't even know.
Speaker 3:And so other than name by name, and so I'm thankful you're not, by the way, but but it's so bizarre, yeah, but it's so bizarre that when I asked about Matthew 18, they said well, your offenses were done in public, your offenses were done via social media and podcasts and via live streams, and so because it was public, they don't have to do it privately. And I said, are you kidding me? That's your exegesis of Matthew 18? Like, really Like. So if I offend somebody, if somebody offends me publicly, I can just blast them, put them on blast. That sounds a lot like the way of the world and not the way of Jesus.
Speaker 3:And so I just I really was blown away by the informal investigations view of Matthew 18 and how we're to handle conflict or offenses within the church, specifically within pastors, and that was one of the things that blew me away. The other thing that blew me away is this investigative team went all the way back to 2007. They were asking me questions about messages I preached in 2007. Tim, can you tell me please what you preached in 2000? Where were you in 2007?
Speaker 2:I was a vicar man and, like some of the sermons are probably not the best, I'm still learning, bro. Bro, not that I had heresy, but come on man.
Speaker 4:Let's say, complaints can come in two forms. One form would be like hey, we've got a whole bunch of bylaws and rules that we have to follow as a church body and we're supposed to obey those, and you could have a complaint saying you didn't obey that rule. Another would be hey, this is a. You made a theological error on xyz thing. You preached a message that's inconsistent with scripture, something like that. That's a different thing, right and so like. Just bringing a guest speaker in per se is not a theological violation, it's more of a could be a bylaw violation, right, the message is the message I mean if a person shares a proper message right.
Speaker 3:He was sharing a message about, about foster care, and he did use scripture to talk about how Jesus cares about the widows, the hideons, the little ones is what it is in scripture and in. The thing that bothered them is that it was during the time where normally we would have a message, and so there was just a lot of gray area in that. And again, this is they've asked me before not to have people come in in which I just can't. I mean, I couldn't adhere to when these people are doing the ministry that we're called to do helping. You know, I'm sorry, I've just we're going to do that, and we're going to have people that are leading the organization, that are following scripture to the T.
Speaker 3:Nothing was said and nothing was brought up about anything being said that was anathema, anything that was false doctrine. There was none of that, because it wasn't I 100 percent wasn't. It's just that this person didn't have credentials and wasn't in pulpit fellowship, what they assume, which is, which is fine, you know what? That's fine. Everything else, though, was very interesting, was was shifted and changed Originally. There was supposedly somebody that, from our church, had brought up a question about an organization we were associated with, and again, I won't get into all the details of that, but there's nobody within my church. You know we're Lake Point City Church. Ninety percent of the people in our church are there. They're number one following Jesus and we've never been about making Lutherans. And I don't think Martin Luther was about making Lutherans and I don't think Martin Luther was about making Lutherans. What Martin Luther was about is sharing the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ with whoever would listen, whether they're in a bar or whether they're on the streets, and that's kind of our, that's been our mantra, that's been kind of our go-to and so it's really transparent to most people that would say you know, we're part of the Lutheran Church. There's nobody in my church that I know would call a district office. They wouldn't know who to call or when to call. Long story short, I never heard anything more about that because there was nothing to that. But then what they did is just started to begin through this informal investigation, looking at everything on social media. Social media can be our friends, but it also can be a historical trail that people can try to use against you. That stuff has longevity, which, again, man, if I'd ever said anything in 2007, 2010, 2018, 2020,. I would apologize, johnny, on the spot, if there was anything I said and the words.
Speaker 3:The thing they questioned was in the sermon. I said that I had heard from the Lord, that I heard from the Lord and made a decision based on what I felt like the Lord was telling me. And they didn't like that and I was like you don't hear from the Lord, like when I read the word of God. Lord speaks to me. Jesus says these words. The sheep hear my voice. They know my voice. I call to them. They follow me. I mean. So there was a really interesting question there.
Speaker 3:And then another question they asked me that I thought was super interesting is they said we heard you had faith healers at Lake Point. And I said faith healers, what is a faith healer? Tell me what you mean by that. And I got crickets. I said I'll tell you what we do. I said I don't know about faith healers. Here's what we do. I said I don't know about faith heal. I said here's what we do. We pray for people that they would get healed. We do what it says in the word of God in James, where you bring in those that are sick, those that are infirmed and that you anoint their heads with oil. You bring in the elders, you pray over them that they would be forgiven, that they would be healed, and God will do what only God can do. Of course, that's me paraphrasing. I said that's what we do when we have people that are sick or hurting and need a touch from God.
Speaker 2:And then once again I brought up scripture crickets, just crickets, greg. Yeah, it's disappointing, it's sad. I think the underlying emotion is just it's. I'm sad.
Speaker 2:We're trying as a church body in the LCMS to walk the line between union. Extreme is separatism and I feel like right now we're approaching, in your story and maybe some others, we're approaching a separatist distinction and I think this would make well, it obviously makes Jesus and the Apostle Paul. It also would make Martin Luther very sad and it's a misunderstanding of context and inability to handle conflict. Well, we have in our Constitution Synod bylaws like the section on conflict resolution. It's like 30 some pages in terms of the process. So I'm sure they tried to follow that sort of process, for sure. But if you're a part of a church that has something that's that long like, that's obviously indicative of a church body that struggled to handle conflict in the way of Jesus.
Speaker 2:So there's been other stories like yours in our line and I just don't know how anyone you went on for a while there. I don't know how you can justify a public figure not needing a brother to come face to face to acknowledge the struggle. I mean, I just think of Jesus. Jesus had some hard words for those who were. But guess what Jesus did? He said it face to face. I was reading John, chapter five this morning and Jesus hard words about I'm connected to the father. You don't know the father, he's speaking directly to the.
Speaker 2:Pharisees in real time and he's grieved that they don't recognize him as a promised Messiah and he keeps like entreating John, chapter six. He keeps entreating them, you know, and they end up falling away and conspiring to kill him, et cetera. Like how can we not see right now and I'm sorry, I get a little how can? We not see the Pharisaical tendency, thearisaical tendency right now.
Speaker 3:That's what's really really busting my chops and all this. And, man, I've weathered a lot of battles. I could tell you battles and war stories, questions about why we do immersion baptisms, why you know things that just you know. Man, I can, I can handle that when people really want to understand and learn. And, man, I told this informal investigation team, I said, man, I'd be the first to apologize if I said anything offensive, if it was interpreted in a way that I have special knowledge or any kind of Gnostic tendencies or something. That's not what was meant. Or said, man, I'll be the first to apologize. But, bro, we're talking about 2007. You're asking me things about 2000. Why didn't somebody come forward in 2007?
Speaker 3:What happens is you guys are on a witch hunt and you're digging up information. They watched every they said they watched every sermon online from from, from, from as far back as it would go and watched everything that I had. I'm like man, god, please save them, please, in Jesus name. Just kidding, no. But I'm like man, god, please save them, please, in Jesus' name. Just kidding, no, but I'm like you know, they did all of this and it wasn't for anything other than to try to find some fighting words that they could sink their teeth in and do exactly what ended up happening. And it's just, it's sad. I'll tell you one thing that was cool One of the pastors from my district that was in that informal investigation I'll quit doing the thick hashtags, but the informal investigation he actually said hey, can I get your phone number?
Speaker 3:I said. I told him. I said, man, if any of these guys would have called me, if any of these guys would have asked to meet with me, I said I meet with people all the time. My phone number hasn't changed for 20 years since I've been a pastor in Hot Springs. My phone number has been the same, my church number has been the same and my email address has been the same and I've gotten nothing from any of these guys. And one of the guys said hey, could I get your phone number? And I gave it to him and it was really, really interesting. But what happened then is this all has been exacerbated over such a long duration of time. Y'all this is like a year and a half going. And what was interesting to me and this is just kind of a side note for somebody that might be out there struggling, somebody that might be feeling under attack.
Speaker 3:The attack always came right before I was trying to experience some sort of joy in life. Let me explain. I got wind of this. It was right before I was trying to experience some sort of joy in life. Let me explain. I got wind of this. It was right before Christmastime how crazy is that? Right before Christmas.
Speaker 3:And what was happening is my wife and I were taking a bucket list trip to the Maldives Island, something we'd been saving for for years and my district president had to meet before I went on this trip. As if this whole thing was, I mean, just and I know it wasn't him and these guys aren't my enemies. Let me say that right now. I don't know, so they're not my enemies, but there is an enemy that works behind the scenes, and so you know it was trying to steal joy from that. The next time I hear about them and have conversations is before Easter. You know, you guys know how it is before Easter and I'm having to set up meetings and trying to finding there's going to be this investigation, and so the timing was just, just is crazy. The next time I hear from them is the weekend of my daughter my youngest daughter's graduation from high school. So I had my mom in town, my sisters in town, family coming in and I'm having to deal with this again. They want to meet the Monday after and they tell me in the Friday before. It just became so like you could just see, every time this would happen. One of it was when we're in Oasis. I got an email there where I'm trying to get rest and getting to know Tim and the brothers, and then I made the mistake of looking at my email and boom, there's another email regarding this. And so it just it. Just at the end of the day you know I was, I was given ultimatums.
Speaker 3:At the end of the day, I finally met with my district president. He gave me three options. The first option was seven things that they wanted me to do, and if I would do these seven things, then I could stay. I'd be on restrictive status with no deadline and if any time I broke any of the seven things, I would agree to resign from the roster. So there's no timeline and the seven things were so erroneous they're laughable. None of them are bylaw instituted type things. Second option was to take this further on and have the formal investigation now with the district presidents and do a formal investigation through the Council of Presidents which again, I'm never going to win that they get to pick two district presidents, I get to pick one district president and then President Harrison would be the definitive vote if needed. So that's obviously not ever going to work. And then the third option was for me to resign, which my district president said hey, probably this will be the easiest one for you.
Speaker 3:And in that time frame where I met with him confidentially, it was interesting that through that time frame where I met with him confidentially, it was interesting that through that time he kept saying how good of a pastor I was, how great the ministry of Lake Point was I mean, he was just super affable which I'd never heard him say anything positive to that regard. Really just never really heard from him. And in the entire tenure we were the largest church in his district and he never showed up. He showed up one time in his early tenure, unannounced, and I wasn't even there, I was speaking someplace else. So there's a lot of this craziness that happened in the backdrop and his comment was you're just not Lutheran. To which I said whoa, stop, I don't agree with that at all. That's not true. I said I stop, I don't agree with that at all. That's not true.
Speaker 3:I said I'm a second generation LCMS pastor. I grew up and was baptized as an infant in an LCMS church. Pastor Grotner in Muskegon Michigan went to parochial school my entire career till eighth grade. Seventh eighth grade we didn't have in the city we lived in there was no Lutheran school, and I am an ordained LCMS pastor. I am Lutheran. I believe what I'm doing is what Luther would be doing and others that became part of our tribe in the early years and I said well, you're Lutheran, you're Lutheran. He recanted that. They said but Lake Point's just not Lutheran. And honestly, I believe Lake Point is more Lutheran than any of my accusers' churches that I am more Lutheran than any of my accusers.
Speaker 4:And it's unfortunate that in order for me to be Lutheran, I have to leave the LCMS. Let me throw something out here, because I just want to get something clear on this issue of Lutheranism. When I hear accusations being thrown out there, it sounds to me the nature of the accusation is something that we call enthusiasm, right, something that you would see, an expression that you see in the charismatic movement, the new apostolic reformation, all that kind of stuff Do you want to just set?
Speaker 1:the record clear on your view on that.
Speaker 3:Is that a view that you hold?
Speaker 3:Yes or no, absolutely not. And actually the NAR was the organization originally, they said. One of my members called the district office and said that we were a part of leaning that direction and, honestly, my parishioners, they're not familiar with the NAR, they're not familiar with any of that stuff. You know they love Jesus and they're just trying not to sin. Yeah, yeah, but so for us, right, see, the challenge is I that have been healed from PTSD and nightmares that God has removed it immediately, and physical healings we have seen so many physical healings and what we do is we just pray, like the Word of God teaches us to pray, and we do the things that Jesus taught his disciples and taught us how to do. We're doing what Paul did and Barnabas and Timothy, and we're just believing the word of God that is efficacious, it actually does work, and that there is power in the word. There's power that the Holy Spirit brings and that lives are changing and that gets misrepresented as enthusiasm or, as in this charismatic, something deep end, something that would be not biblical, when it couldn't be further than the truth. You know, one of the things, at the end of the day, one of the charges that they kind of stuck against me was that they didn't like and this is in the final letter that was given to me they didn't like that I called it a baptism bash. You know, we had 25 people baptized just a month ago and our last baptism bash, and they didn't like.
Speaker 3:He said it's irreverent. And I said I said, I said President, I said I said man, I said if it's a problem of a name change, we're not tied to that calling it a bash. But I'm going to tell you why we call the bash. Because the word of God is clear that when one, one person, one person comes out of darkness into light, one person begins to understand the love of God through Jesus Christ, one person is saved, that all of heaven erupts. And I said that's what we do. We erupt our church said that's what we do. We erupt Our church. Guys, you would love it.
Speaker 4:If you ever came to one of our baptism bashes and you're not re-baptizing people. We're not re-baptizing.
Speaker 3:We do not re-baptize. We had people that said I need to be baptized. We said, no, you don't. I said we'll remember your baptism, We'll remember it and we'll celebrate that, but you don't need to be rebaptized If you've been baptized in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. It took I always tell them that I was baptized as a baby.
Speaker 4:It took, but what we do is we celebrate, I think, the idea of a bash to celebrate people getting baptized. If that's not worth celebrating, then I don't know what is right. I mean, we are witnessing God's miracle at work right now, in this space, when that happens, and that is an amazing thing to celebrate.
Speaker 3:What's interesting about this is I talked to somebody that's extremely close to my district president, that my district president loves dearly, and that's exactly he's a pastor and that's exactly what he calls his baptisms baptism bashes and I won't divulge the names on that, but it wouldn't be real hard to figure out.
Speaker 2:Wow, the greatest miracle, the greatest power of the Holy Spirit and I hear you doubling down on this is to create and sustain faith which trusts in the promises of God. Right, and I don't. Yeah, it's pretty straightforward in scripture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2:Jesus says go and make disciples, baptize, teach. This is what we do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, go ahead for us today. We also believe that the book of Acts is not an accident, that it's after Jesus's resurrection and that the things that we as a church are supposed to be are outlined in that book from not foregoing, meeting together, from breaking bread, from praying together. They're crying out. This is so interesting. There is a small group crying out that Peter would be released from prison. They're praying and they're worshiping and what happens? An angel of the Lord comes and releases him.
Speaker 3:Peter's blown away by it. He thinks it's a dream. He realizes that's real. He finally gets out. He's like walking through. Doors are opening. This is like Steven Spielberg kind of stuff happening. Doors are opening, nobody's waking up. And then all of a sudden he gets to the house where they're praying for him to be released and old Rhoda answers the door. The servant girl. She doesn't even. She's like freaking out. She doesn't let him in. She runs back and tells him they think she's crazy. It's so funny Like they're praying a prayer that they're actually not believing God's going to answer. But he's answering it. Johnny, on the spot, you know. And then he comes in and it's just amazing. The house is shaking. Why are houses shaking. Right now, when we pray, are we asking those questions? Why are chains not falling off of people's hands and wrists? Yeah, I mean that's that's well.
Speaker 2:We, uh, I'm with you. I'm with you, greg, I we're. We've been, uh, struggling in the west, but we still have the enlightenment and we're brains on a stick and I think we're we're not viewing the scriptures and the way Jesus worked holistically. Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, body, mind, soul, strength, and we're imbalanced in terms of our content and doing things the right way. And when God comes and changes us, what's he primarily concerned about? The scripture says it over and over again the heart, our heart, gets changed from a heart of stone to a heart made of flesh that's softened to the things of God, softened toward our neighbor, expectant of God to do the same thing in others that he's done for me, and I think we have, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:We look at guys like and frankly I'm probably in that category too of an excited preacher, one who's passionate. You know, some people come out, you sound like a Baptist. I was like did you listen to what I said? Because it was very Lutheran, passive faith, like. We're all about passive faith here, right, here, right and the means of grace, good law, gospel, preaching to crush the sinner, to kill the sinner, that the new man and woman in Christ may be raised up by the proclaimed word. We've confused excitement with enthusiasm and we since we're a more stoic, reserved, you know, and I would say passive and then I got all the details on this a passive, aggressive church body that doesn't handle conflict. Well, we look at, we look at leaders like Greg and and maybe even myself, and say well, you're not, you're obviously not Lutheran, you're an enthusiast and you're obviously you're going down this NAR, this charismatic path, rather than just having a conversation with the brother. Thoughts there, greg.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 100%. I think you know, because you know back to where you started with the heart man. It's in our liturgy, it's Psalm 51, creating me a clean heart, O God, renewing me a right spirit. It's the Psalm of David that we pray and we have it within our liturgy and then we really forget what it means. And that's where I'm like man. I didn't know where to start with what you said. It makes me sad because I really would love to have conversations with my brothers. I really would love to just and again, not to debate. I'm not into Lincoln Douglas, I'm not down for that. What I'd love to just show them is in the scriptures, where we're hanging our hat on the words of Jesus, where we're hanging our hat on the apostles, where we're hanging our hat and seeing what. You know the reason.
Speaker 3:As soon as we're done with this podcast, at noon, I'm taking a group of people downtown in our city and we're going to pray with people. We're walking the streets and we're going to see who the Lord would bring to us. We're going to be guided by the Holy Spirit and we're going to speak only what the Lord would want us to speak, and we're going to love business owners. We're just going to go in If nobody's on the sidewalks. We're going to go in the businesses and say, hey, listen, we're just here praying for people. We're not even going to say we're from Lake Point. We're just here praying for people. What do looking for? What's going on that we could pray for for you, and we're training people how to do that. And we're in a day and a time.
Speaker 3:I'm glad, with the elections behind us, I feel like people can move forward. There's some fear that's been removed, but I think there's a new onset of a different kind of fear and maybe even a lackadaisicalness to not oh okay, we're okay, now we don't have to worry, whatever. Whatever people are thinking, where the mantra is still true time is short, hell is hot. Whether it's my life, bro, I'm in my 50s now. I can't believe that. How did that happen? But my life on this earth is finite. Of course, I have eternity and infinity in heaven waiting for me, but we have a job to do and that's really the bottom line.
Speaker 3:The reason I resigned is it became a hindrance to be a part of the LCMS, to do the job that God has called me to do and to have to worry about five, six, seven preachers, brothers that should be leading their own churches and charging their cities and the gates of hell, but instead they're looking over my shoulder and looking for ways to attack me instead of the enemy and frankly, it's just exhausting.
Speaker 3:And immediately when we prayed about it and again, I talked to several district presidents that are amazing, that are friends of mine, I had conversations with people that have been in this tribe for their entire life as well and just just asking to pray with me to get really good wisdom and sound guidance and my wife and I praying and our leadership in our church praying, everybody praying about what should we do? And it just became evident that this was the really the best next step to continue the ministry God's called me in our church to, in which I really believe. It's the same ministry the LCMS is called to, but to remove the shackles, to remove the chains and to be able to move forward in the gospel-centered ministry that's biblically based and we believe God is still doing what God was doing then and he wants to do it now.
Speaker 2:Amen, jack. For those that are watching, he keeps coming on and off. He's got some weird stuff going on in his computer. Two things. One, if anybody's listening, how many times has Pastor Greg referenced prayer? Over and over, you've referenced prayer. One testimony to how, uh, prayer may not be at the center of a number of her and guilty here from time to time too, like uh I'm. We're learning from a lot of our brothers and sisters in third world countries where maybe the, the church, is under persecution and the house churches in Nepal or China or something like that. And they'll get together. These are Lutherans now, mind you. They'll get together and they will pray for an hour, two hours, three hours. They'll strategize. Then. What did you hear? Yeah, that's connected to God's word and what's the like? God's will is not hidden as it relates to mission. The son of man came to seek and save those who are lost. You know.
Speaker 2:So it's not like we got to. I wonder if God wants us to go after those. No, Jesus is like so evident, right, so like we're going to pray and really what we pray for is the courage to share the right word at the right time, in the right way, with the right tone, that the Holy Spirit would work and create and sustain faith, that a person would be drawn to the waters of baptism. But they spend an inordinate amount of time in third world countries where the church is being persecuted, in prayer, just praying In prayer, and it sounds like the leader will offer a petition. I actually tried this last night in our confirmation class and this is not throwing anybody at Christ Greenfield under the bus, but I mean, it was a larger group, and so when there's when there's a larger group, people are a little bit more hesitant.
Speaker 2:There's been maybe like 75 people in the room and I just I just walked through the Lord's prayer and, if anybody wants to pray, connected your life around the petitions of the Lord's prayer. You know, and there was, there was a handful, but not as many, you know. But we're, we're all working it out. Jack, next executive staff meeting we're going to spend an inordinate amount of time in the word and in prayer. We spend probably 15 minutes in the word and in prayer. We're going to make it uncomfortable.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we're going to be comforted by the power of the word yeah, go ahead. You know, I've got a military background. One of the things that what I see in scripture, but I've also seen in military tactics right, is the futility of fortifications. Patton said that building fortifications you're just building a monument demands stupidity. And we get into fortification mode with the church. We're building a holy fort here and we're trying to create, you know, and what is that? It's like through purity and setting up boundaries and separating ourselves from the other and just being totally reliant on ourselves and trying to withdraw from the world. And I know that people who are criticizing you they would say that's not their opinion on it. But I mean, let's actually look at the impact of what we're doing here.
Speaker 4:The church is an offensive army, right. It's not here to build a fort. It's here to storm the gates of hell. It's here to take over Satan's fort and absolutely plunder it. Right, that's the goal of the church?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the question has to be asked what is the modus operandi? What is the reason behind the real reason? And when it came down to it and I got that formal document which I don't want to make it public or not, but the seven things, you know, one of the seven things was that I was, I had to be at every, every Winkle, that I could not miss a Winkle. For those of you that don't know what a Winkle is, it's not winking, it's a pastor's gathering, but I had to be at every pastor's gathering. If I couldn't be there, I had to give an excuse as to why that would be accepted and approved. Another one of the things that was that was mandated that I would have to do is, every week I would send them a worship order, a order of worship, because one of the things they didn't like is that I didn't have a formal invocation. In their opinion. In their opinion, we didn't have a benediction. In their opinion, we didn't say the Lord's Prayer every Sunday, which is absolutely true. But guess what? We pray a lot of prayers every single Sunday and every worship experience we have we end with ministry time, praying for people. My wife and I and our prayer team will stay as long as people are there that need prayer.
Speaker 3:And so these things that they're putting on and they're calling Lutheran or they're making mandates out of things that are really adiaphora, and there is nothing in our bylaws that say you have to do a certain type of liturgy or you have to do a certain type of order of worship, was the gospel presented?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, you cannot tie me. We tell people all the time we're a Bible-based church, we're going to preach and teach from the Bible, we're going to have scripture every single Sunday and I want that inordinate amount of prayer to become normative. That's my prayer for you, tim and Jack, that it's just normative that we spend an immense amount of time in prayer. I've been praying for people to wake up in the middle of the night, that God would wake them up with a holy awakening and they would just spend time with the father and that they would go back to bed and wake up in the morning, not missing any sleep. Those are the kind of prayers I'm praying because when that happens, I'm telling you there is nothing better than spending time with the father in the quiet hour, and Jesus models that for us the quiet time that we have with the Lord, and that's where ministry happened. My best messages and sermons have come from quiet time and from that time in the word of God.
Speaker 2:Amen, amen. We also know what is the will of God. Paul tells us very plainly, easy Rejoice. 1 Thessalonians 5. Yeah, rejoice in all circumstances. And that's, greg, what you're doing right now. Pray without ceasing, without ceasing, yep, and then give thanks, give thanks, rejoice, pray, give thanks. This is the way of Jesus, the way of the Christian, and you still have that posture today that we're villainizing one another in the LCMS and we're using the wounds of Seminex to justify these, these attacks on one another. That was a battle over the Bible. Yeah, and the higher critical method. That said, all of the Bible is not the inspired, inerrant word of God. Like would you, would you agree that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, never changing word of God?
Speaker 3:One hundred percent, one hundred percent, word of God, 100%, 100%. And I think the problem that we have, honestly, is some of my accusers are not. They're focused less on the word of God, saying that it is inerrant and that what happened in the New Testament should be happening today. I mean, that's the question we have to answer. Do we really believe in the scriptures and what the word of God says about the Holy Spirit, about healing, about lives being changed by the power of the gospel and the Holy Spirit's work? You know, we give him all the credit and all the glory. I always say that God does all the heavy lifting.
Speaker 3:One of the funny things that happened through this is they were asking me about the Holy Spirit. They were really inquisitive about that and I said guys, I've said it probably a hundred times from the platform I've never heard the audible voice of God. I've got people that I know that said they have and I believe them. You know I don't put God in a box, but I've never heard that. You know I always make a Charlton Heston, this is God. You know, kind of this, this, this, what I think his voice would sound like.
Speaker 3:But I said I've never heard that, but I've heard from God, because I read his word through prayer, through supplication, that he is absolutely leading and guiding me. The mission and vision of our church has been guided by the Holy Spirit, the words of God, and so there's a big disconnect where, all of a sudden man, it's like our ecclesiology defines everything else, from our Christology to our missiology. Our ecclesiology, the way we do church, is like the number one stance of what's most important, and it has to define everything else that we do, which I don't see that in scripture.
Speaker 2:It seems like it seems like Jesus centered in the Holy spirit and the apostles.
Speaker 3:When did he start?
Speaker 2:his ministry. Yeah Well, if the order of worship were like the thing I would have liked Paul and the other apostles to like, list it, peter, john Jesus, where are you at? John Jesus, like, where are you at in terms of like giving us in the divine service, the divine service, hey, the divine service is wonderful, it's wonderful. It grounds us in our no knock. I mean we practice it, we're still, we're high church man, it's no knock. But like what we have in that service book is only 100 years old.
Speaker 1:That form as we have it there, and there are others that can speak to this.
Speaker 2:What did they do before that? There was variances of some sort of an order. So we're not anti-order or anti-institution or anti-hymnal. This is too narrow of a way to think about this. But we have to say hey, for your context, there is Christian freedom to maybe do.
Speaker 2:I think in my context, the best thing is having a traditional and a more modern expression that has a liturgy that grounds it. People kind of know what to expect. There's going to be time in the word, time in singing time, in prayer, time for confession, absolution, et cetera, with an invocation and some sort of ascending off, normally the Aaronic benediction, like I think that's good, but we can't we turn Pharisaical really quick If we're going to start to mandate. This is always a way. Jesus would have been more, jesus would have been more specific. And here's the thing too is the Bible.
Speaker 2:This is one of the counter arguments, greg, is that the book of Acts is not prescriptive. It was descriptive of what God did during that time. And so for us to say that God has to work just like this, like that's not what we're saying either, that everything in the book of Acts it has to go, no, luke just gave us an account of how the Holy Spirit spread the word of God, the message of the crucified and risen Jesus, and it was fueled by the Holy Spirit. Yeah, the normal title for the book was called the Acts of the Holy Spirit. That's how it was kind of shared, and I think we're approaching a point right now where we're very, very suspicious of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and even as we leaned into that, tim, like to be more Book of Acts. Let's just say, with small groups ministry, we had Lutherans in our history that got offended by that, right. You know that's not a traditional Lutheran thing to do small groups in people's houses, right, and so some people left on account of that, but it is very book of Acts. Here's the problem.
Speaker 3:The problem is we're hanging our hats on things and we're not just hanging our hats. It's fine if you hang your head on it, but when you're requiring me to hang my hat on it, that's a whole, nother issue. And when we talk about things like that, like baptism for instance, there's a reason. I strongly believe there is a reason that there is not a one, two, three, four, a five-step process that Jesus outlines, like he does prayer by the way, like he does prayer, by the way, but he doesn't do that with baptism that we see baptism happening with John the Baptist in the river. We see baptism happening.
Speaker 3:The crazy thing happens with the eunuch on the side of the road. There's crazy things and it's again. It's because baptism is a sacrament, it is a gift from God. But it's not what we hang our hat on. We hang our hat on Christ crucified. More than that, Christ raised from the dead. He is the only way, the truth and the light. He is the only way to the Father. There's no one that can get to him except through Jesus, and that's got to be our focal point, not on the way we do church. We love liturgy, we do liturgy. Liturgy is the word of God, that's what it is. Liturgy is confession in absolution. That's what it is, and we do that every Sunday, every Sunday at Lake Point City Church. It just doesn't look the same form as it might look in a hymnal, whether it's blue, red, yellow or green.
Speaker 4:And even be clear on that statement of hanging our hat on baptism. We do, in that there's a true promise of forgiveness of sin in there and the promise of the Holy Spirit. Right Well, I'm talking about the way we do baptism. I'm not talking about baptism A particular order.
Speaker 3:What I'm seeing is that I was ostracized and I've been attacked for the way that we do ministry and things that are not defined, one or match, that I don't wear vestments, that we have a stage and we don't have maybe what they would consider an altar area, although we call the platform an altar all the time Just things that don't meet their standard or their approval, and it goes back to the pharisaical movement where it's the approval of man versus what does God say? What's God say? That was the big problem that Jesus had with the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Sanhedrin. What does the Word of God say? We have the Word of God, so let's go there.
Speaker 3:But the challenge is, in my sense, the accusers didn't want to follow the Word of God. How do I know that? Because they never instituted Matthew 18 and my district president never made them. That's the problem we have when we can do things behind closed doors, when we can put informal investigations that become formal and gather information. By the way, the district paid for that, that whole thing to be sent. As far as I know, those guys didn't come out of pocket. They were put up in hotels for a week. There was all this other stuff happening behind the scenes and it's just, it's just, it's unbelievable that they're not following the word of God. To start with, meet with me one-on-one, privately, let's have a conversation, let's have a beer, a cup of coffee, a Coke and a smile and have a conversation. And if we still have problems then then then whatever we need to do then, then we'll do then.
Speaker 2:But man, I'm telling you, I'm a pretty nice guy, dude, I'm quick to say I'm sorry. Were the Lutheran confessions.
Speaker 3:I know that I am not. I don't have a corner on the market of theology, you know. I know I probably said stuff off the top of my head that is offensive. Maybe done it on this podcast, you know I will be the first one to apologize for offending a brother, even if it was their interpretation.
Speaker 2:versus what was literally said Were the Lutheran confessions mentioned Greg in the accusation.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, not in the formal, not in the final accusations that I have now that they weren't. They might have been in the informal investigation. I can't recall. I mean, it was two hours of grilling, yeah, yeah yeah, what scripture?
Speaker 2:Can you tell me what scripture references were? Used to justify the accusations None.
Speaker 3:There was zero, zero scriptures. It was all ideophoric, it was all not using words like baptism bash. It was nothing. Nothing. Words like baptism bash, it was nothing. Nothing that was outlined from Scripture used. In fact, every time I brought Scripture in, the crowd silenced.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's sad, so it's very interesting. So final point if Matthew 18 had been followed, what would you have confessed and said OK, I can see your point and we'd love to adjust. Is there anything that you would have said, OK?
Speaker 3:offended them, shifted and changed, as I think one didn't carry weight or one couldn't be substantiated. It shifted and so it would. It would have to be, you know, a beginning. If they had questions about the Holy Spirit, if they had questions about how we pray over people or for people, man, I would just, I would just show them, I would tell them, I would explain it, and if there's something that's offensive, listen, I'm a reasonable guy. I'll say listen, I apologize for that.
Speaker 3:If there's something I'm doing wrong and it's in Scripture showing me that I'm doing incorrectly, not only will I apologize, I told these guys. I said, you know, back in 2007, if somebody would have brought this to me, I said I can see how what you're saying could be misinterpreted, man, I would have been happy to apologize to them and in fact I would have been happy to apologize to them and in fact I would have been happy to stand before my church and say listen, I said these words, but let me explain what I meant. I never heard the audible voice of God telling me to do something. I just had an impression, through reading the word of God and through what we were doing, that this is the direction and what we should do. I would be so happy to do that, but we're, you know, 18 years later, and so it's. It's. Here's the deal. I would be happy to say I'm sorry for anything that I did that offended them.
Speaker 3:I'm not above apologies, you know. Would I change things, it would depend on what they're bringing before me. We're not changing the way we do baptism. I don't care if we called a bash, I don't care if we called a party, I don't care if we call it a bash, I don't care if we call it a party. Whatever the holy rite of baptism, we're going to hoop and holler and yell at our church because we're excited for what God is doing, what the Holy Spirit is doing changing lives. Call that enthusiasm. I guess we're enthusiasts, we're fired up when somebody is saved from the depths of hell and moving and transitioning into the eternal grace and on their way to heaven.
Speaker 2:You know it's a very sad story. It doesn't always happen like this. I can go back gosh 15 years and I am going to throw out a name of a brother that was in my area. We were both pastors in the Denver area and a pastor by the name of Brian Wolfmuller. I care for you, brian. We haven't connected in some time.
Speaker 3:Brian's very intelligent he was a classmate of mine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, brian, I regretted his house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's a good dude man and we have some differences of opinion regarding maybe some of the worship conversation that we just had, etc. And that's that we can continue to talk as brothers. But he actually listened to my first generosity message that I preached, all right, and he thought it sounded a little bit like and it probably did I don't remember exactly the title or whatever it was that it sounded a little bit like works righteousness, like God will bless you. If you know it was probably throw open the floodgates of hell.
Speaker 2:Prosperity gospel, something like that. It just had a tinge that it could move in that direction. Guess what he did. He calls me up. I'm young, he takes me out for lunch, he has a conversation with me. I'm able to say yeah. I probably could have phrased that a little bit more clearly.
Speaker 4:And I'm going to try harder next time. And I have, I grew through it, so thank you, Brian.
Speaker 2:That's the way it works, man that is it?
Speaker 3:Brian, by the way, is the first person when I was in Fort Wayne that asked me if I was a confessionalist and I was like I didn't know what it meant. You know, I came out of the business sector and I was like, yeah man, I could fest my sin all the time, bro, you know. So it's so funny that good guy, good family, haven't talked to him in years and years. But that's the right way, that's the way, man, I wish it would have went that way. You know, I went after we'd already made the decision I hadn't gone public with it I decided to take my lead accuser. I asked him if he would go to lunch with me, if I could buy him lunch, and I drove to where he is and let him pick the place and just told him I'm sorry, man, I want to ask for forgiveness for anything I've done that offended you and man, that was never my intent and he was very gracious to receive my apology. And, um, we already knew we were leaving and going to resign, but I really felt obligated and not obligated, but I really wanted to and I thought about doing it with the other guys, but the fact that I had never met any of the other guys. Really, I was like I don't know. It's probably a waste of time, honestly, but that's still my heart.
Speaker 3:By the way, people have asked me oh man, are you okay? Man, I'm good. God is good. God has a plan. It's behind me on the screen. God has a plan and we believe that, and there's already some fantastic things that have happened out of it that have opened doors that I don't know if they would have opened or not, but we can see things happening and so. But it is kind of like I've never been divorced, but it's kind of like what I would imagine a divorce is like, because there is some grieving man.
Speaker 3:I love the LCMS. I'm born, bred, raised. I'm an OG man, I'm second generation, so there is some sadness there, but I've never let the LCMS be the definition of who I am. I'm a child of the living God. I am saved by grace, through faith in Christ alone. I am his shepherd and my job is to please an audience of one and to honor God and so. So, in the middle of it all, there's some, there's some sadness, but but I still I tell you what I feel like.
Speaker 3:I have more brothers that have come out of the woodwork that said, man, we support you, we love you, we're here with you, we're for you. Brothers that have tried to say, hey, we're going to fly out there, could it, could we fly out there? And I'm like, man, dude, really I'm good. It's just so much, so much support. And I want to say this if there's anybody else who's going through a challenge, put my digits up there, put my contact information out there. Tim and we would love to connect. There's a couple of other guys I've connected with that have gone through some tough stuff and recently resigned and we're just asking God what's next and we're supporting one another and encouraging one another and that's what we want to do. We want to be a support and encourager still to the LCMS and to the Capital C Church abroad. That's our heart's desire.
Speaker 2:Amen, amen, greg, care for you, love you as a brother in Christ. I'm saddened by this but I know I speak for many. I mean, we're under the big C church on mission to declare Jesus and we're obviously still brothers toward that end. And the sad thing is you think you lose relationship. The sin in it is people walking together in relationship that goes back to times at Concordia times in a circuit like district relationships and through the ups and downs we care for one another, we lift each other up and I'm just here to let you know you still have that, that group of friends here in the LCMS.
Speaker 2:And uh, we'll. We'll just wait and see what the Lord Lord wants to do. Um, Jack has been struggling the entire podcast. Jack, you're finally back and we're closing it up. Jack, what's your final word, though, before we end?
Speaker 4:I guess you know, just kind of hearing the story just makes me very. I lament this. I am praying for a time and you know the LCMS is a big church body. You hear wonderful, beautiful things. You hear sad things. This is one of the sad things that I've heard. I'm praying for a spirit of reconciliation. I'm giving thanks for your ministry and for everything that you've done to bring in I mean, greg, you're probably one of the most successful pastors out there at reaching non-Lutheran people and bringing them into the fold and I lament very much that this situation has pushed you out and I'm praying for a spirit of reconciliation to cover this whole situation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love that. Thanks so much, guys. You've been great supporters and encouragers and, honestly, man, I want to encourage other people to. You know we will absolutely receive your prayers on what's next and what God's doing. But I want to encourage people that God has a plan in all this. He's working and he's working things for good and we just continue to see his hand, his blessing, our. And he's working things for good and we just continue to see his hand, his blessing. Our church continues to grow. We're seeing new families come.
Speaker 3:All the marks of God working are happening, and so we we we continue the good fight and we keep fighting it and we're brothers. You know we're brothers to the end and we know that God is is still on the throne. He's not surprised by any of this. I do think that there's some lament that he has for what's happening, but I'm really praying for reconciliation. I am still for that. I pray for our church body that the leadership would go a direction of reconciliation and who knows, who knows what God has planned. If there's a determination to not go that direction, there may be something else that God rises up. He's so good at taking things that look dead and resurrecting them, and so I believe this poises us to be in a good spot, and I'm excited to be a part of whatever's next, and we're going to keep doing what God's called us to do. The vision and mission doesn't change. It doesn't change, it doesn't change, amen.
Speaker 2:So this has been a good well hard. I can't say it's been hard and we know God is good and God definitely has a plan. If you want to reach out to Greg Burse, you can hit him up at PastorGregAtLakePointFamily. That's a point with an E LakePointFamilycom. Pastorgregat, that's a point with an E lake point familycom. Pastor Greg at lake point familycom and I pray the emails you get are filled with love and care and concern for for you, or rather than, rather than condemnation, and we're praying for a new day in the LCMS and we pray this conversation is a one step in that direction.
Speaker 2:And my final, my final note is we've got to learn to do conflict better, um, managing stress well among the pastorate, where we don't do that very well. Again, I have the data from the Harrison behavioral assessment to to show to show that we don't manage stress Well, we don't handle conflict well. And the peace of Jesus, the peace of Jesus, changes us when we have the peace and the love and the joy, the fruit of the Spirit being shown in our life patience with one another, self-control, both in person, face-to-face and online that we would just grow up into Christ you handled. If you look at the story of Jesus, like he handled himself pretty well in the midst of conflicted situations. Yeah, never out of, never out of control, Speaking words of truth to power. Right, I think of Pilate, you would have no authority. I think, jesus Stone, you would have no authority unless it were given you from above, just so we're aware I'm going by my own volition to the cross for the sins of the entire world. So Jesus did conflict pretty well. I pray we can learn with him because we have the spirit of the living God that lives inside of us and the same spirit that, raised Jesus from the dead, calls us his temple, his home, and so we must grow in this.
Speaker 2:If we can't grow in terms of having difficult conversations, everything else is a loss. Because I need my brother who sees, sees the other side. I need, I know where would the hand be apart from the head, you know where would the head be apart from the foot, like we need the body of Christ, all of the gifts. And even if you disagree, like with some of the things we've said, or you're the practices of our church, like reach out right to the top of the list, you'll go. We have some challenging conversations coming up with brothers who have different perspectives on the Concordia University. Talk about another gee whiz Concordia University system, struggle, differences of opinion, like. We should have public conversation about these things, and that's why Lead Time American Reformation, that's why these podcasts exist. Long Form Podcast is, I think, a tool in the tool belt of the living God to talk about hard, hard things, and so I love you, greg, and this is Lead Time Sharing is caring Like subscribe, comment wherever it is you take in these podcasts and we pray.
Speaker 2:we grow up into Jesus, who is our leader and our Lord. We'll be back later this week with another episode of Lead Time. Wonderful work.
Speaker 1:Jack. Thanks, greg. You've been listening to Lead Time, a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collective. The ULC's mission is to collaborate with the local church to discover, develop and deploy leaders through biblical Lutheran doctrine and innovative methods To partner with us in this gospel message. Subscribe to our channel, then go to theuniteleadershiporg to create your free login for exclusive material and resources and then to explore ways in which you can sponsor an episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for next week's episode.