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Transcript

Skillet's John & Korey Cooper Reveal Church Abuse · The Remnant Radio's Podcast

• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the wonderful world of Remnant Radio.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: In this program, we are joined with Caleb.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Many of you have seen the episode where John Cooper went on to Childers' Podcast and talked about some of the abusive stuff that took place in their local church.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we actually have one of the former elders of that church that kind of protested that whole situation and hopefully a little bit of extra information about what is going on there.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to kind of sift through it, talk about the theology, talk about the church structure, talk about some of the abuses that are taking place in that local assembly.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be an interesting program.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: You guys stay tuned.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Guys, as you know, Remnant Radio, we're trying to avoid desperately being the charismatic tabloid channel where we're just investigating all the various things that are going on in people's lives and pulling up all the salacious details.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Our actual aim here is to talk about these recurring patterns that are taking place in local churches, help people recognize those patterns in their local churches, and then equip them with theological language and counsel on how churches are to be governed in such a way that can protect sheep from predatory, wolf-like, or just generally immoral behavior.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, there are people who are good godly people who make really bad decisions.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if we can know these are bad patterns, we can confront those godly leaders, see them repent.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: There are other leaders who are just stubborn and hard-headed and generally a good person, but man, they have got some bad patterns in their lives.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's wolves, there's predators in the body of Christ.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's not always a cut and dry thing.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's not always good, bad, you know, evil, super righteous with the side of holy.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: But we hope that conversations like this can navigate you through the process of theology and kind of see yourself in the stories of others.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And today, joining us uh here, I want to say in studio, because we're not necessarily in studio.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I've got Caleb with us, who is an former elder of the church in question today.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got Michael Miller and Michael Roundtree with us.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Miller's uh solo with the kiddos.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: So you notice he's not in studio today.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: He's at home uh uh doing a podcast and Roundtree's over there in the studio.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: We just we did an episode on the book of Revelation, me and Roundtree right before this.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: You guys can be looking forward to here coming up.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Without further ado, Caleb, tell us a little about yourself, man, uh what you're comfortable sharing, um, and then we'll just kind of dive into the subject matter.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, well, thanks for having me on.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_05: Certainly an honor to be here.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_05: And uh, as you mentioned, I was an elder in the church.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_05: I joined the church when I was 19 years old.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_05: I'm a pastor's kid, and so had been in the church my entire life, but not in a charismatic church.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_05: And so joined this church when I was 19 and could not have been more involved with things.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_05: At one point, I was a youth pastor, I was on staff as a maintenance guy for a bit.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_05: I did a one-year full-time school of leadership program.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_05: My wife and I did.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, we led in home groups and then ultimately became an elder and I helped them plant churches in England as well as here in the States.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_05: So named my firstborn son after one of the leaders.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_05: I lived with the apostle.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_05: I saw him every day when we were planting churches together in England.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_05: So I could not have been more a son of the house, as they would have said.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_05: And at times some of the leaders called me a fledgling apostle, and so I very much so pictured my future being with that that ministry for a long time.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, man, tell us go ahead, Randry.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'm curious, you know, because the us following up with you was part of uh the Elite Alisa Childers podcast, and a lot of people saw John Cooper from Skillet and his wife being interviewed.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh talk to us, uh just maybe I'm curious how you processed that video, uh, that interview.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, well, just want to say on the front end, I was so proud of John and Corey.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_05: I thought they did an amazing job, and I've known them well uh through this process.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_05: We've talked often, and I think uh they just they did such a great job, and it cost them a lot.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_05: And I think for anyone that's been involved in this situation that's spoken out on things, it's been very costly.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_05: And for John and Corey, especially, with it being family and to the great lengths that John had gone to to try to get clarity on doctrine and to raise awareness about these things, I know it was difficult for them.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_05: So I think there's a lot of things with their story that are very similar to my story, and then there's a number of things that are really different from my experience.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_05: So uh yeah, just was really proud of them being willing to stand up and speak about these things.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Caleb, I'd like to, you know, okay.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, whether that's what happens when you have four guys on an interview.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead, Miller.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I was gonna ask you, um, I one, I appreciate you coming on the show to talk about it.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, I would love to hear what what's your reason for doing this?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_04: Why are you willing to come on this show and talk to us about everything that happened?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_04: What do you hope to accomplish?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, for me, the main thing is just to encourage other people that are out there going through it.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_05: I want to warn the church, encourage the church.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_05: I certainly promoted the church, so uh would like to take the opportunity to repent.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, in many ways, I was part of the problem, big part of the problem.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_05: And so one of the ways that I think I differ from John, it seems like John at times would really get angry about these things.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_05: Whereas for me, I've mostly dealt with shame, feeling guilty for preaching bad doctrine, promoting brat bad doctrine, covering things up, leading my family into something that I no longer believe in.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and so yeah, my my main goal here is to serve the church.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me, you know, you mentioned a moment ago, hey, you've got some background there at the church.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: You you've spent years there, a good chunk of your life, named kids after folks, lived with folks.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're you were really involved uh in this space.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think for all of us, there was a moment at some point in time where we realized, oh no, am I drinking the Kool-Aid?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: What's happened?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, where, you know, for me and my background, I realized I had one or two theological holes in my boat.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the second I realized there was a hole or two, I was like, oh, wait, where are all the holes?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm curious if there was a single moment that you begin to see things unravel, um, or like how did that process begin for you?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Where did you turn?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: How did you make sense of what was going on in your story?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, there were some key moments.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_05: One key moment would have been this podcast.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_05: So listening to Miller talk about his experience of being fired from a NAR church, it was like word for word, some of the things that I had been through.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_05: And so you talk about people being in your echo chambers.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_05: I think when you're in a community that normalizes certain things, crazy things can seem normal.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_05: Like if you have enough people all saying the same exact thing and saying, Oh, yeah, this makes sense, it seems normal until you have someone from the outside saying, This isn't normal.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_05: In fact, this is crazy.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_05: You're it's like all of a sudden your eyes are open to it and you think, yeah, this is crazy, but I didn't know because we're so insular.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_05: We weren't reading books from other people, we weren't listening to other teachers, we were very wrapped up in our own stuff.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_05: We listened to our own teachers, we wrote our own worship songs, we played other people's worship songs too, but so much of what we were fed was from our own stuff as opposed to going outside of ourselves.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_05: So once I started listening to people like yourselves who had opinions on these things, I realized, wow, there's some things going on that maybe I wasn't aware of.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_05: And for me, of those 16 years, 15 of those I would have said were wonderful, you know, fantastic years where the church was very tight-knit.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, you had hundreds and hundreds of people who you knew very well.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, if somebody in your family was in need, you'd have 30 people on your doorstep with a meal, people there to help you move, you had your back, they had your back.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_05: And it was, I still have a hard time processing that because part of me feels like there was something wonderful about that tight-knit community.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, but then there's also something when the kingdom of God becomes synonymous with your local 501c3, where build the kingdom becomes build this institution.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_05: And it was everything.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_05: So it's like all your friends are at the church, you're at the church four or five times a week, you're serving everything takes second place, whether it be your health or your finances, your relationships in the community, even evangelism all takes a second place to building this institution.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_05: So that's why it's so painful for so many of us when we left it, because we thought this was my everything for as long as I can remember.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_05: And so it took a but there were some moments once I started challenging things, and it really not even challenging.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_05: I remember writing a paper saying these are questions and concerns.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_05: And basically, as immediately as soon as I raised those questions and concerns, I got put on a mandatory sabbatical, told not to talk to anybody, rebuked for gossiping, having talked to people past leaders about their experience.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_05: So, pretty quickly, as soon as I I started questioning things, then it was like you kind of saw a different side to the leaders.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: Imagine so for people who are just tuning in, they didn't watch the original interview that you did on the Elisa or that the Coopers did, and they're trying to even grasp, okay, some church did some bad stuff, this guy was involved.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like just help that viewer understand the big picture.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, they've heard a few of the the bad things, but just help them understand the big picture of what we're even talking about today.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so in the end, there I think we had eight or nine congregations, and throughout there's a few in England, one in Germany, a handful here in the states that were all led by a team of local elders.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_05: So usually two or three elders at each location.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_05: I was one of those elders, preached on Sunday, did all the pastoral ministry, and then there was a uh a ministry that oversaw those churches.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_05: So uh the main person, the main apostle was planting those churches and then overseeing those churches.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_05: So it was a family of churches, a network of churches, you might say, led by an apostolic team.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_05: So that included an apostle, some prophets, uh, teacher, pastor, and then we never had an evangelist.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_05: So when I came into leadership, a lot of the doctrine that we preached, I didn't find to be necessarily what was practiced.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_05: And then some of the doctrine wasn't fully revealed.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_05: So we realized that there was some doctrine uh later on that was pretty shocking to all of us.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_05: And then once we challenged those things, then there was a lot of spiritual abuse and gaslighting, manipulation, deceit, and then a revealing of some other things like uh essay and uh not from the leaders, but there was things happening in the church that weren't brought to the attention of people in the church, and uh, in my opinion, some uh I didn't see misuse of finances like the leaders were driving Bentleys or anything like that, but a lack of transparency on some things where I was a pretty key leader and there was moving of finances that I had no knowledge of.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: Key leader for sure.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: You were an elder, Miller.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: I think you wanted to talk though.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_04: Well, you had mentioned earlier about a lot of the good that you experience, and from my own experience, people who do bad things, they're not bad only.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_04: It's not like these people are just monsters all the time.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_04: Uh in a lot of ways they present really well, and there's a lot of good benefit that you even receive from them.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_04: But I imagine there was there had to have been a point where where questions start coming to your mind that are really causing some um what do they call it, cognitive dissonance, where it's like over here on one side you see all this good, but then over here, this doesn't seem to make sense with the good right here.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_04: Uh when did that suddenly become apparent?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_04: And when did the the narrative that you have in your head about this person begin to unravel?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_05: That still is the hardest thing for me to reconcile.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_05: So one of the leaders, not the main guy, but you might say the number two guy.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_05: I was really close with him.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_05: I lived with him for years.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_05: He's a single pastor.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_05: On my way out the door, so after I left, after he knew I had concerns, all the different things, he handed me a check for$10,000 and just said, This is you know mine, but I want to, it's not coming from the church.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_05: It was coming from him personally, just wanted to bless me.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_05: And since then, he's reached out like at my kid's birthday and wants to send my kid money and whatnot.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_05: So it would be easier to just say, Well, they're just evil or they're wolves or whatnot.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_05: And I just don't believe that's the case.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_05: I have a lot of meaningful memories with them, doing ministry with them, great experiences with them.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_05: And so it is really difficult to reconcile.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_05: I think you lied multiple times.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_05: I think you not this person necessarily, but the the main guy, I think is deceitful.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_05: I have five or six accounts that I think you said this, and I think that was a lie.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_05: And I have many, many accounts of uh manipulation and gaslighting and narcissistic tendencies.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_05: And so it is really difficult for me to reconcile the great stuff because there was so much great stuff, and also what I would believe is a pattern of deceit, manipulation, spiritual abuse.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, let's let's talk about some of this and maybe be as candid as we can.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, feel free to share all that you want to share, Caleb.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: I know in uh Cooper's uh video with Childers, he didn't seem to feel the need or desire to uh make any of this known.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Name of the church, name of the pastor that is in question here.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you feel at liberty to do so, you can do so.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's your story, it's not ours.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but people who are on the internet, Cyber Sleuths, will find likely uh a third-party investigation of this church uh where the third-party investigation published uh a statement on this uh assembly, uh, and on multiple accounts uh says that there are uh apostolic authority problems where the apostle is saying one thing to a group of people, but believing in teaching something entirely different.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that that seems to be why that there is this kind of authority problem that is taking place inside of the church.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: There was multiple accounts of what they recorded to be uh spiritual abuse of power.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then there were uh handling of sexual allegations, uh, again, not of the leadership, but just things that have taken place in the church that were not handled appropriately.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, some of those of financial mismanagement, um, in that there was not some clarity on those things.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna touch on a ton of that today.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: I know that some of the sexual abuse stuff, as I think it's probably some of the most interesting to people out there, um uh people who are watching, they're like, hey, how bad is this?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: How far did things go?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but for the sake of victims and not having had the time to reach out and touch base with some of those victims, uh, we've chosen not to share their story until uh it's appropriate to be revealed and and we have their uh consent to do so.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're out there and you're watching this and you're like, hey, I'm one of those victims in that report, tell my story.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh maybe there's a part two that comes on the tail end of this later.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but I'd like to uh maybe just start this conversation off, uh talking a little bit about programming, because you you mentioned things like, hey, we weren't reading books outside of our assembly.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: We weren't um, you know, uh watching a lot of content outside of our specific network, our group of people.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And when I read this report, there was a statement about something called a VC, uh, which is a vision and commitment course.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: And this is 20 videos, uh 20 video series, 30 hours of teaching, and it had an accompanied 159-page booklet that would go with it uh that your pastor had put together that he's training his whole church in.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it was free, uh it was referenced as a thing to go back to.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is our church's values, our theology can be found there.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like, hey, you don't need to go read that book.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Just go go back and watch the V and C.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it reminded me a great deal of IHOP's prophetic history as like, hey, this is who we are, these are core values, and really getting people trained up into a very specific, kind of rigid system of like belief and not to go outside of that.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I just thought that was interesting.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Would you take a moment and explain to us some of the VNC as you see it?
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, VNC could not be more um instrumental to the life of the church.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_05: It was talked about constantly.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_05: Every single new member would go through the whole 20-week course.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_05: Most people had gone through it multiple times.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_05: Some people, it was not uncommon to brag and say, Yeah, I've gone through it seven times.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_05: And again, this is a 20-week course.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_05: People would listen to individual episodes on a regular basis.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_05: And I was in elders' meetings where we would be deciding what to say or what to how to handle a certain issue.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_05: And people would say, Well, we need to go back to VNC and see what VNC says about this.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_05: And I remember one elder once saying, Well, you know, VNC is not the Bible.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_05: And people were kind of like, Well, we're gonna go back to VNC on it.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_05: So I can at least say for myself that at times I was more devoted to studying and knowing every aspect of this vision and commitment course than I was the Bible.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_05: And at times, if I had something that I needed to sort out in my life, I would go to talk to the leaders first before even praying about it.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_05: And so those are issues that I can say tangibly.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_05: I think uh this apostle talks about himself being a foundation to the church and he would deny it now, but also I believe to individuals' lives.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_05: And I think I was actually starting to build my life on him and his doctrinal, almost systematic theology rather than Jesus and his word.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that is one of the most serious things that a lot of people are building their identity into a man not named Jesus.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_05: And again, this is where Cooper and I differ.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_05: Cooper was going out evangelizing, being a rock star, and I don't think he knew some of those things.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_05: Unfortunately, I did know some of those things, and I drank the Kool-Aid, and that's something that I've really had to repent of, repent to everyone I can, and really learn to rebuild my life on Jesus and his word alone.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, Caleb, I want to ask a follow-up on that because you know, I have a course that I do with my church, the theology course that we do with Remnant.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: I do that at my church.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: We have deliverance course and spiritual gifts course.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: And man, I let my church use those courses, and we we kind of train our people in spiritual gifts and theology.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but what you're describing sounds different.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: You you made a statement just there that the foundation of the church was built on your apostle's life.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: We'll call him John.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: John's life.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: John is the apostle of your church, and I think what you were quoting was Ephesians 2.20, that the foundation of the church is laid on apostles and the prophets.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we understood those to be first century apostles and prophets who are, you know, writing the scripture, giving the ordinances of the church, establishing um the kind of rules of conduct of believers.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: But but this guy is claiming, and according to the interview with John, he's claiming to be of the same kind of apostolic authority as the apostle Paul.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it makes sense why, you know, this isn't just like a section of video lectures or a pastor teaching on a systematic theology course that you're going back to learn from.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like you're going to another source to get revelation teaching education outside of the scripture.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Was V and C theologically rooted?
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Was it deeply biblical, or was there a lot of novel kinds of things added on top of it?
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so he would say that the foundation would be his foundational teachings as well as him himself.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_05: So when we were leaving, at one point, he would say that uh we would be without a foundation, having left him.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_05: So when people leave, they have to go find a new apostle to be their foundation.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_05: And my friend even asked him, so are you saying like our marriages might be at risk or like we're at risk?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_05: What does that mean to leave your foundation?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_05: And isn't Christ the foundation?
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_05: And I have him on recording saying this.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_05: He said, uh, we always have to be careful when we say, hold on, Christ is the foundation.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_05: Because yes, absolutely all Christians should believe that Christ is the foundation, but part of what we believe is that the foundation Christ has given given us is these apostles and prophets, meaning modern-day apostles and prophets.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_05: And so he said, we don't just believe in the theology of apostles, we believe in that gift being embodied in a person, and that person is a source of much of the fruit that we experience.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_05: So the fruit comes from the root, and that root being the apostle, that's the foundation of the church.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_05: So the course was meant to be theologically strong, it was very dogmatic.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_05: So we definitely were elitist in that if you didn't believe what we were believing, you weren't really building the biblical way.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_05: So there wasn't a lot of room for disagreement.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_05: It was this is the right way, a lot of straw man arguments, and it made you feel like, man, we might be the only church in history really doing it right.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_05: And everybody else is just idiots.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_05: But a lot of us didn't take time to go read other arguments or listen to other things.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_05: We just took it at face value.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_05: And some of the things are pretty solid.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_05: Like I think I could be wrong, but when I look at the parts of the gospel or baptism, I think there's some really I think that's good.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and then there'll be little parts where you think, well, that's absolutely insane.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_05: And so, yeah, it's a mixture of uh orthodox sounding things with things that are just really, really off.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_05: And actually, can I add to that?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_05: Uh he said.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_05: There was this meeting when people were kind of challenging him and he was giving a defense for himself.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_05: He wrote this paper on Ephesians 2.20 and basically put forward that it was a legitimate viewpoint to see himself as the foundation.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_05: It was a poor paper, it didn't really get into the points of contention, and I just thought it was bad.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_05: But as he was presenting this paper, he says, Hey guys, this is paper.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_05: It's really boring.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_05: Most of you probably don't want to read it.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_05: It says something along these lines.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_05: And then he says, uh, a theologian would probably rip it apart.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_05: But you know, that's true of all of our theology.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_05: So, really, what you need to do is pray about it and just determine where God is joining you.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_05: And I just thought, yeah, that's exactly what we train in the church is don't deal with the theology for yourself.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_05: Choose your pope and trust that pope to feed you theology.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_05: And so even when we brought allegations of things, there are still a lot of the people in the church that it's not that they disagree with our allegations, it's that they refuse to read them.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_05: They won't read our open letter, they won't read the CRG report.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_05: When we say, hey, watch this Cooper interview, they say, I'm not going to read that because I trust my leaders.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_05: So you're definitely built into blind trust.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_05: And at times, many times, actually, there's a very intentional reducing the uh importance of you going to scripture yourself.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_05: It is much more, I'll interpret scripture.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_05: I have this visionary site.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_05: So your job is to submit and receive it from me.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_05: And I think some of that stuff is terrifying.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_05: Sorry, one more point on that.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_05: I know I'm rambling.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, he preached a message called devoted to the apostles' teaching, where he is saying they were devoted to the apostles, they didn't have the New Testament at that time, so that means be devoted to my modern day teachings.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_05: He says the life of God wasn't just in these letters that they had, they were getting revelation every day by living with you know, living, breathing flesh and blood apostles.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_05: And his point was, you don't just need these letters, scripture, like you need to be connected to me if you want the ongoing revelation and blessing of God, which a lot of us heard that and we were like, What do you mean by that?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_05: You can't possibly mean what we think you're saying.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_05: And he was like, I do believe that.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_05: We're just like, We're out, and then a lot of people left, a ton of people left, which actually shows that there was some good health in the church.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_05: We just didn't know, we didn't know what he believed because he wasn't explicit about it until then.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, it's almost like the church was the body of Christ, but your pastor was the neck of Christ, and everything flowed through him.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um man, I just want to come out and say that is horribly abusive.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: Any pastor who says that, like, hey, if you leave my church, horrible things can happen to you.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: Horribly abusive.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: Run away.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: You can't get away faster from that church.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: Anyone listening to this, whatever church you go to, if a pastor is just absolutely terrified to the point of making threats of what's gonna happen if you leave their church, that is horribly abusive.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: It is spiritually manipulative and it is controlling.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: I don't care if they have a chapter and a verse for it because this guy did, and he totally abused not just you, but the scriptures.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, golly, uh so man-centered, so man-centered.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: But all of what what I want to say is these abuses are downstream.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: The abuses of people are downstream from the abuses of scripture.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: So he twists the scripture to make it about him and not Jesus.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: And he would never say, Oh, but it is about Jesus.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: But but at the end of the day, when you're saying things like what you just quoted, it's about him.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: And the apostles being the foundation, you know, Josh mentioned this is Ephesians chapter 2.20.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: The apostles and prophets.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, if you keep following that through line from Ephesians 2.20, and you go down to Ephesians 3, 5, and 6, what the Apostle Paul talks about is how God has now revealed to the apostles and the prophets this brand new revelation that had been a mystery prior.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: Old Testament prophets didn't even know about this, about Gentiles becoming full heirs and partakers of all the covenant blessings that Gentiles get, like, they're not just gonna have to like you know essentially become Jewish in order to kind of be second-class citizen.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: No, on equal footing.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: So, this is the revelation, which is actually the context for the temple uh image of Ephesians 2, uh culminating in verse 20, where he talks about the whole foundation.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: Jesus is the cornerstone, apostles and prophets are the foundation.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: But in what sense are they the revel are they the foundation?
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: They're this they're the foundation in the sense that they are bringing a brand new revelation that Jews and Gentiles are together.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: The Jews and Gentiles are mutually stones on a temple.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have a Jewish wall over there and a and a gentile wall over there, a whole different Jewish temple.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: No, we're all one part of the same structure.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_02: Point being, this was a very unique period in redemptive history, and he has made it all center on him and his ongoing continuing revelation.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: Now we have Remember, we believe in continuing revelation that never violates the scripture.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: This is an abuse.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: He has made himself a foundation that everyone must commit to.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: And if you don't have him in your life, if you leave him, what then then bad things will happen to you because you don't even have a foundation.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: And and what about like, what if he died?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I guess the church is just kind of up in the air.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have you don't have you see what happens, like it if Christ is a sinner, well, Christ doesn't die anymore.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: He rose and he stays risen, he's ascended to the right hand of God, he's alive forevermore.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: If he's a sinner, we're good, but you put your faith in a mortal.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, I'm preaching.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: I get I get really mad about this because I see sheep getting shoved around and controlled, and it just really upsets me.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: So uh okay, I'm gonna turn this into a question, Caleb, because we have you on the show and I want to interview you.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um talk to us about your theological journey because you were deep in this, you were even teaching this.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: You sound like you came from a cessationist church or a church that at least didn't believe in these gnar principles, uh, the new apostolic reformation apostle CEO bossman who call all the shots and are the foundation, right?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: So you had a shift and you've shifted out of it.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: Talk to us a little bit about your um your journey out of that.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I grew up in an evangelical free church, and my dad was a pastor of it.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_05: So shout out, dad, if you're listening.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_05: Amazing, amazing pastor, amazing leader.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, wouldn't have called themselves cessationists, but also wouldn't have been charismatic by any means.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_05: I joined or I visited Living Light when I was 19 years old.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_05: I really started to wrestle with charismatic things.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_05: I read Jack Deere, Surprised by the Power of the Holy Spirit.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_05: At the same time, I read John MacArthur, Charismatic Chaos.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_05: And then I also went to Nicaragua for nine months and I saw a lot of miracles and miraculous things there.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_05: I personally have seen some dramatic uh miracles, ways that God used me in words of knowledge and healings and whatnot.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and then didn't really ever wrestle with the NAR stuff.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_05: So I thought I was just joining a charismatic church.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_05: I didn't know that there was charismatic churches that didn't have offices of Ephesians 4 ministries.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_05: So that I just kind of took wholesale wholesale just because I love the church.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_05: I love the life of the church.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, unfortunately, a number of other churches I've been a part of, people didn't seem all in, whereas this church, it really attracted radical people.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_05: So we're dancing on Sunday mornings, we're bringing prophetic words, we're trying to reach the city, and it felt really intoxicating, where it felt like we're really doing something big.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_05: And so I received the doctrine because it seemed like there was good fruit and radical people.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_05: And so this was really, even though I'd been in the church for 16 years, I was an elder, I was preaching these things, it didn't take long to look at scripture and say, stuff I've been teaching for many years, it's not true.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_05: Like you just said with Ephesians uh 2.20, didn't take long to read that and say, Oh, that's not what that means.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_05: But I've taught that for years.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_05: So I think a lot of the doctrine, one, they're not clear with their doctrine, which is a big issue.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_05: So even still, I they will not explicitly say what they believe, which I think is massive.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_05: So we've had to kind of put the pieces together based off of practice and different teachings.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_05: Some of the things I'm saying today of I think they have a low view of scripture, they will freak out if I they hear me say that because they would say, We're the most dedicated to scripture, but I don't think that's true because the exegesis is not there.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_05: And like you said, a lot of theologians would rip it apart.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_05: So these last couple of years, I've had to get a hold of my doctrine and realize that doctrine really, really matters.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_05: It really, really matters.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_05: Because, like you said, I think there can be good-intended people who come across with wrong doctrine.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_05: And whether they were bad people who found bad doctrine to uh create space for what they wanted to do, or they were good intending people but preached bad doctrine so long that it corrupted their character.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know which came first, but it really, really matters to have good doctrine.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: So what's some Go ahead, Miller?
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I was just gonna say if I was to recap some of these things, I know that you don't think he's a false teacher or wolf or false prophet.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_04: I might argue otherwise just based on what you've told me.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_04: And I'll give you some criteria for this.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_04: But it sounds like he told people, you know, you've got scripture out there, you've got our theological position out there, but any theologian is gonna disagree with it.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_04: So it's better that you just pray and find out if this is where God has you.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_04: And so you replace personal private revelation and prayer with what did the scriptures say?
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so over here, but then also the allegiance to the apostle, right?
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_04: He says, you know, everything was founded on the apostles, they didn't have scripture.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but fortunately, you guys, you guys have an apostle, and that's that's him, right?
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_04: And so you're supposed to glean from his teachings.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_04: Forget that the teachings that we're taking on today are were the doctrines the apostles passed down to us, like the creeds.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_04: Well, now the real teachings that you need in order to truly be founded in Christ are his teachings.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_04: And so in these subtle little shifts, he's replaced allegiance to the scripture with allegiance to personal revelation.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_04: And even above both of those things, uh, what the scriptures taught really aren't good enough.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_04: What you need is this apostle, which is him.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_04: I've often said that the hallmarks of a false, not often said, I've said this in the last few years after realizing even some of the reasons I I went through what I went through, was uh that you see that the false prophet or false apostle or false teacher, it's not so much that they're telling you, hey, let's go worship Baal.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_04: It's rather that they supplant worship of Christ or Christ's leadership and his headship with someone else.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_04: And that that shift can be more subtle.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_04: Instead of leading you to go worship some other god, uh, quote unquote, they lead you to themselves and out of dependency upon themselves.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_04: And I would imagine uh that when you start to question that person, there's usually going to be some sort of trump card, some sort of authority card that's pulled the moment you start asking questions.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and and again, that that leads everybody back to this one undisputable fact that person is at the helm, they're at the top, and they've replaced Christ.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_04: Um, how how would you relate to what I just said?
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_04: Or how would you is there anything on pieces that I'm missing or things you would nuance differently?
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_04: What are your thoughts about that?
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think what makes it complicated is it's not that all the time.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_05: So, like, yeah, that's absolutely there.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_05: It's just sometimes it's not there, sometimes it is, you know, rooting people into Christ.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_05: And so there's just a mixture of certain times it is, certain times it isn't.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_05: The other thing is people probably, as I'm saying these things, have a picture in their mind of this kind of hierarchical, uh, hey, I'm in charge and don't you forget it type of thing.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_05: It's not that at all, it's actually relational leverage.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_05: And what I mean by that is people that have been so caring for you for so many years, people that use father-son language with you, and then in the moment when you're questioning them, it's not, hey, don't forget your place, you better shut up.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_05: It's man, we always loved your family so much.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_05: You know, where's the loyalty?
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I want you to be loyal to me.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_05: And it's very warm and relational.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_05: And so you don't feel like you're coming against uh this CEO that's this big hothead.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_05: You feel like you're betraying your spiritual father, and that's a big thing.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_05: So I think some of those things are pretty wicked, uh, in that he would look at Paul calling Timothy his true son and Paul saying, I became a father to you.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_05: And so I would say he believes apostolic leadership is synonymous with fatherhood, which I think creates a ton of issues because okay, what point of the parental stage am I in then?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_05: Am I a teenager?
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_05: Can you give me extra biblical commands?
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_05: He believes Paul is a good model for a modern-day apostle.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_05: And so Paul gave the church commands.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_05: That means I can give the church commands.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_05: Well, what sphere of authority does that function within?
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_05: Can you give me commands about where I live?
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_05: Can you give me commands about how I raise my kids?
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_05: You know, so some of these issues of authority, I'm not totally sure.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know that I'm willing to make the jump and and say certain things.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_05: I certainly think he's disqualified from ministry, and I think a lot of the stuff he's doing is is really, really bad, and it hurts a ton of people.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now you you said like it's not a heavy-handed leadership sort of thing.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's more of a um relational, you know, uh kind of kind of weighing into the relational equity that he has with individuals.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I was reading the document in there, and it seems as if when elders would have questions, like you had questions, or maybe gentle disagreements, um, it you you said you were put on like mandatory leave.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds heavy-handed to me.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, uh, as I'm reading the document, questions are like, Well, do you love me?
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Are you committed to me?
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: Are are are you committed to the vision here?
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like those are the kinds of things and pieces of language that are being brought up when people begin to question.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it's funny, I I don't remember which, whether it's bully pulpit or a church called Tove, but you know, I remember reading something and kind of summarizing the idea that that saying there's heresy left is the only heresy left.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: That, you know, we um if if you uh you if if you really want to say there's something heretical, just say this is wrong, and people get upset, not at the fact that there's wrong doctrine, but get they'll get upset that you've said that there's wrong doctrine.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: They'll get upset at the fact that you've called it out.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you know, when you talk about this relational dynamic, you told me at the beginning of this call, you don't have exact numbers.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: First time you'd reached out to us was I think in January of this year saying, hey, you know, uh we've had some issues at our church, and uh your videos have been super helpful to kind of help us make sense of this and work through all of it.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, gave us follow-up messages, and then you know, last week you're like, hey, this was the church you know, video with Cooper, which I thought was, you know, pretty funny.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, yeah, that that seems to be a serious situation.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um with all that in mind, um, oh shoot.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, uh with all that in mind, with uh, you know, having these kind of relational dialogues, if it sounds pretty authoritarian.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: Can you make sense of that for us?
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Of how, in one sense, it can be really relational, but also any elder that dissents is being removed.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: You said at the top of this call, 50% of them were gone, or we asked you 50%, you said it might be closer to 75% of the elders have quit.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: That that doesn't sound like a communal relational, hey, we're all in this together sort of leadership structure and leadership model, even though you do technically have a plurality of elders on paper.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: So help us make sense of some of that.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think he always is conscious of his tone, and he's always conscious of selling you things for your benefit.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_05: And so putting me on mandatory leave could come across in the military of like, you're in big trouble, you're on leave, you're not allowed to talk to anybody.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_05: Or in this scenario, it could sound like, man, it really just sounds like you have a lot going on right now.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_05: And so, for for what's best for you, we want to give you space, we want to give you time to pray.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_05: And obviously, while you're going through this, you know, it's not gonna be helpful to talk to anybody.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_05: So we're just gonna clear your schedule, you're not gonna lead any home groups anymore or preach on a Sunday.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_05: We'll just give you that space that you need to go and uh take care of yourself, and so it everything feels like it's done um in a kind way, he can say really mean things in a really kind way.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, not just mean things.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_05: Sorry, can I clarify that?
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_05: I think when I first heard about spiritual abuse, I was like, people just don't like authority and boo-hoo, bunch of snowflakes.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_05: But I'm not just saying mean things, I'm saying abusive things would be a better way to say it.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_05: He can say very abusive things to people in a way that it's hard to quickly identify that oh, you're actually messing with my head and you're controlling the situation.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like this might be a good opportunity to talk about that Darvo text that Cooper got.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you want to share that, um, but it might be a good time to share it.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so Cooper, I can pull it up here.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_05: For those of the water after I'll set up a story as you're looking for the text.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I have it.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh oh, okay.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: So Cooper's, you know, on the podcast with Childers, he says that, like, man, he's so frustrated, he's so worked up about this whole situation.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: He just wants to go get drunk and fight somebody.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the way he's talking about is he's just talking like he was angry and he wanted an outlet.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: And anyone who's been angry has been in that situation.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I want to hit a wall, I want to do a something, like I I, you know, I'm I am I'm looking for my misplaced aggression to have an outlet somewhere.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's just talking about in general, and and and this is the the text reply.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, Cooper also said words like, uh, I think he said something along the lines of like we're gonna blow this up, meaning we're gonna expose this to everyone.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_05: I don't believe in any way that there was anyone that could interpret that as inciting violence.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, but this is what uh the apostle sent Cooper.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_05: Uh he says, You clearly present me as a false apostle, an evil man.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_05: It's not a stretch to think that some might be inspired to take such actions, or worse.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_05: Perhaps you'd consider this an acceptable outcome as far as I'm concerned, but I feel sure you would not want this for others you still love.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_05: I know there's nothing that could be done but plead with you from you know saying these statements in the future.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_05: I remain deeply sorry for the hurt I've caused you, and continue to pray that you will know God's blessings in the days ahead.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_05: So that's exactly what I'm saying is that Cooper goes on a podcast, talks about all this abuse that he's received, says a few statements that there's maybe a sliver of truth of okay, could you have said that in a different way?
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_05: But then he exaggerates it and says, Hey, you're basically inciting violence against us.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_05: Your family members could be essentially killed.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe you would want that for me, but I'm continuing to pray for you, and I'm sorry for all the hurt I've caused you.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_05: And I just think, oh boo hoo, like you are always the victim.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_05: You always twist it to be a victim.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_05: And then this is the type of scenario where you go back and you say, No, I'm not inciting violence, or I'm not doing this.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_05: And next thing you know, you're defending yourself, and he's the victim.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_05: And it that is just over and over.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_05: Questioning yourself can't speak without victim language.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_04: I would imagine you question yourself about that too.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_04: Or if I was John, I'd be going, Wow, did I incite violence?
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_04: Did I did I do this?
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_04: Like, that's the nature of these kinds of accusations.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, and it's a subtle way where it's like, you said this and did this, this and this, and this.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_04: But he's going, What did I do that?
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_04: And then he's got to think through a two-hour interview where he had these statements and go, Hold on, what did I mean by this?
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, that's what we call gaslighting, where they cause you to question your own history intentionally.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it's not a difference in perspective.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_04: This is a tactic to cause people to second guess themselves and the truth of their perspective.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh abusers use pious language all the time that tricks people because it's like, I'm I'm praying for you and I bless you, brother.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_02: And uh language around reconciliation will be weaponized, where they're not willing to actually deal with truth.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_02: They just want you to have fake unity.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_02: And and that I think is a large crux of the matter when you have abusive situations, is you have uh it's a false unity and it's an unquestioned loyalty.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas in scripture, we see true unity is rooted in truth itself, not lies, not your pious language, that's not admitting to the actual allegations of what's taking place here.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_02: And if you loved me, you would never expose what wicked things that I've done.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: And while it is true, I don't think that as believers we should be like out to broadcast every salacious detail we ever hear anywhere, right?
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: But what I heard John saying was we tried for years to pull this, bring this to your attention, and you repeatedly gaslighted, deceived, dismissed over and over, and the abuse multiplied.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_02: This was an absolute last resort.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: And let us not forget Ephesians 5 11 that uh don't partner with uh don't don't become participants with darkness, but uh, but instead expose.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's what the uh children of light are supposed to do.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: Light exposes.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_02: So uh this idea that if you're loyal to me, you'll never expose.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_02: I sure I think that you should try to give people the benefit of the doubt, you should try to work with them.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_02: That you try to uh confront.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: And you should walk through all those processes, but there does come a point of exposure.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_02: And there does come a point of breaking loyalty.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, Caleb, I'm curious what you learned about loyalty in all of this, because I'm even seeing in the chat statements like uh this pastor would say things like, Do I have your whole heart?
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: Which is like an extremely manipulative thing to say.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, like, like what is he, a lover?
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_02: Like of his uh it's so awkward and abusive and manipulative, but like there's this thing of loyalty, and and loyalty is interesting because like it is good.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_02: Loyalty is good.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_02: You know, David and Jonathan, the loyalty that they shared with one another, that was good.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_02: But Jonathan had a bad loyalty towards Saul, and that cost him his life.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so there's a good loyalty and there's a bad loyalty.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_02: I know that was a thing for you.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: Talk to us about what you learned through this about the right and wrong kinds of loyalty and how that can be weaponized.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I have a theory.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_05: I guess it's a I call it the pendulum principle, which is essentially the momentum that takes you from one bad thing can swing and take you into another bad thing.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_05: And so let's say authoritative leadership, you could pendulum swing and say, we should have no leadership.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_05: We should ever, you know, everyone should be able to do what they want.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_05: Or, you know, you look at most of church history, it seems like you have somebody saying, if you don't speak in tongues, you're not a Christian, and then other people are saying, Well, no, now tongues means you're demonic.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_05: And I think a lot of church history is really just reactions to a bad experience, and then people swing the other way.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_05: And so that's been something that I've worked really hard to go back to scripture and say, okay, where's a right sense of loyalty and where's a wrong sense of loyalty?
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_05: I think for me, pretty clear line in the sand, I'm never gonna devote myself to another man again, not named Jesus.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_05: I'm never going to uh blindly trust leaders without looking into the word.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_05: I'm not just gonna receive teachings.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_05: I I definitely wasn't very trusting when I started attending churches up here.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_05: And I think I'll have my antennas up for the rest of my life.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_05: So even when we started to plant or we thought about planting a church up here, and so the other guys that I was working with, one of the first conversations with them I had, I said, Hey, look, you're my best friends, but you are required by scripture to expose darkness if you see it in my life.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_05: Like it's not just like I'm okay with you challenging me, it's like I'm a flawed man, you have to challenge me.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_05: Like, be my friend, but being my friend, you have to be willing to burn me if this goes south or if I'm doing something wrong.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_05: So that's right.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_02: Wounds from a friend can be trusted.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's good.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_05: So when I challenged this leader on his doctrine, he said, Where's your loyalty?
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_05: He didn't want to have the conversation about doctrine.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_05: He said, Relationally, I want you to be joined to me.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_05: Have I lost your heart?
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_05: And I was like, Well, I think I'm being loving by actually asking you questions of doctrine and practice.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_05: This has nothing to do with loyalty.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_05: Where he would say things like, essentially saying, Well, you're talking with John Cooper, and I'm way closer to you than John Cooper.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_05: So why are you taking his side and not my side?
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm like, I'm not on like, I'm on Jesus' side and the Bible, so I'm on his side because I think he's with the Bible, not because you and I have more relational history.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_04: That's called triangulating.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_04: It's where he pits you against someone else in order to glean loyalty to himself, which is why he did what he did on Cooper's name.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_04: I'm sorry about that.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_04: That was awful.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_04: I imagine that was probably not the only Miller's going in and out.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: So hey, I'm gonna walk you through a couple of uh uh a couple of things that are in this article.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm gonna let you kind of speak to them at your own discretion, whichever one you want to pick up on.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, there were people were asking questions about this apostolic leadership model, and there were statements from the elder team saying, You're the only person who's ever had a problem with this.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_00: You you're the only person who's ever uh had questions about this apostle thing.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what's what's your problem, essentially, is what is being asked.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not the case.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: The investigation found in 2017, 2018, and in 2020.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: There are multiple times where individuals uh came, even in the leadership team, that were being removed, pushed out, that kind of thing, that were questioning this sort of practice, this sort of teaching.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you mentioned earlier that your apostle had visionary uh insight into uh things to teach, people who were uh, you know, beginning to push back or begin to step into apostolic territory that they weren't allowed to cover.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there was language of carrot and stick, uh, you know, seen in the investigation that people were being told, oh, you know, you're gonna be a prophet, you're gonna be an apostle, but then if you get out of line, you're kind of crazy, you're out of your mind, those sorts of things.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned uh in our conversation the other day with Cooper, uh, was that on Monday?
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Matthew 18 was used as a barrier, not a pathway.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: I know that's something that you want to talk about here uh uh today.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: We can feel free to pick that up.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um CRG, that that organization found strong and uh persistent gaslighting patterns.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh leaders spread uh demeaning narratives about people.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, they've gone crazy, uh, they're they've poisoned someone's mind.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh she's menopausal, uh, she got cancer, she's suicidal, he she's dangerous.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they just to use any kind of language about a person to discredit uh their opinion, discredit what they're saying, um, to kind of hey, they're not a they're not a reliable witness because all these various things are going around.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's so many things I could camp out on here.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's a few.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: Pick one if you'd like, and and we'll chase that rabbit together.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think this battle, in my opinion, is won and lost on the sheep having conversations with each other.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_05: And so I know for me, I would not have made it out of this if I didn't have trusted friends to process things with.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_05: And so I know a lot of their my friends are listening to this.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I think of like Keegan and Brian, different people who we would wrestle with these things together.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_05: We'd wrestle through scripture, we'd try to discern, and those conversations were massively helpful for me in getting clarity.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_05: And at certain times I was being gaslit and I would come back to those guys and I would say, guys, it was actually my fault.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_05: It was all just a big misunderstanding.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_05: I just didn't understand what he was saying.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_05: And they were like, Hold on, but he said this and he said this and he said this.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_05: And I was like, Oh, yeah, he did say that.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_05: And so, like, I think there's a reason in America the first amendment is freedom of speech.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_05: And there was nothing that this apostle was more passionate about than no one should be talking.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_05: If you want to have a conversation about this, I'm all ears, but you come to me and you come to me alone.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_05: And it wasn't until I broke that barrier of I need some friends to discern with that all of a sudden things started to come into light.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_05: I just couldn't have figured it out in isolation.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_05: So listening to your podcast, having conversations with other people, the people that challenge these things, they went through brutal, brutal things, and most of us went through them in isolation.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_05: And so once we had a text group and we were able to talk to each other about things, then all of a sudden you think you think you're the crazy one, and then six other people share, oh, he said that to me too.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_05: And you're like, Oh, there's something here.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_05: And so I think Matthew 18 is constantly being used as you come to me alone.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that's really unhelpful.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_05: One of the things people were criticized of is when he brought that teaching on being devoted to the apostle.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, he some people sent it to each other and they said, Hey, does this seem really off to you?
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_05: Can you listen to it?
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_05: And they got hammered for that by the apostle saying, you know, how dare you send around my teaching for the sake of criticism?
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_05: How is that a friend?
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_05: How is that, you know, that's in um that crosses over Matthew 18.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_05: You've sinned.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_05: When they told me that, I was doing my own little investigation where I went to past leaders and I said, Hey, I'm seeing some things.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_05: Can you just tell me your experience?
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_05: And the elders, I was on an elder call with a number of elder other elders, they came down hard on me and said, This was gossip.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_05: You should not have gone to those past leaders to figure out what their experience was, or talked to Cooper, or it's actually another guy that was on staff.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and so I repented.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_05: I repented in front of all the elders.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_05: I said, Yeah, I did talk to them.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_05: That was gossip.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_05: I was sinning.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_05: So I went on the call to say I have some concerns about your stuff because I've investigated some past leaders and it seems like you've handled people poorly.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_05: And that call ended with me saying, I'm actually the sinner, I repent.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_05: They were saying you're deceived by the devil and whatnot.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_05: So again, I think the main goal of leadership is no one should be talking about this.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_05: Stay isolate, isolated, and silent.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_05: And I think the main antidote to this is conversations.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_05: If people can have conversations about these things, I think it's helpful.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_05: I do think it's charitable if your pastor says something to try to go to the pastor first and say, Did you mean what you said here?
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_05: Or can you help me understand this?
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_05: Because you want to verify things before you spread some big rumor and blow up the not blow up the church, but to expose things publicly.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_05: Um, I was not inciting violence.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_05: I was just saying to expose things publicly.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, but I don't think it's a uh crossover of Matthew 18.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_05: If a pastor preaches something crazy and you walk out with your friend and you say, Hey, did that seem off to you?
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_05: And you have a conversation about it for the sake of discernment.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I encourage my church to do this.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we were talking about um potentially looking at building properties.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: We've we've talked about various theologies, like just things that affect church life.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, hey, if you disagree with me, like grab a friend, go to a coffee shop, talk about it.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like I encourage people to go outside.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, I'm pretty sure this person over there disagrees with me on you know eschatology, but but they're well studied.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: Go, go chat with them.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like that kind of activity is important.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I am a teacher in my assembly, but I'm not the only teacher, I'm not the only person who has access to the Holy Spirit or understands the scriptures.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_00: We we have a robust community.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: And to have those kinds of you know, relational, if you're a leader, if you're a leader and your ego is so fragile that if someone misunderstood what you said and went and talked to their friend about it that you think it's going to undermine your leadership, you should probably not lead.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're gonna be misunderstood the rest of your life.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's that is so junior high-ish, you know.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like the girl's not gonna like me because she's gonna think I pick my nose.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what are we talking about here?
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is really childish.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_02: But it's isolation and narrative control are the key features here.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so multiple times I've heard you say, Caleb, various ways in which you were isolated.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: And when you're isolated, you don't have those people that you can process, like these questions that you have, because you actually feel sinful doing so.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_02: And then this just helps them control the narrative more, like, hey, nothing to see here, no problems here.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so, uh, man, I'm really sorry that you suffered through that.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure that this has caused you to reflect on what qualifies as gossip and what doesn't.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_02: And surely some of our viewers and listeners are thinking about this very thing as they're processing matters in their own uh churches and situations.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_02: Because I think we would all probably agree that, like, yeah, I wouldn't think it's good for just like 24-7 casting stones at the pastor, you know, like that's not that's not what you're advocating for.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh on the other hand, if no one can say anything ever, like what what qualifies as gossip?
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_02: When is it okay to talk to someone?
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_02: And does it matter to whom and how?
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_02: And how have you wrestled through those matters?
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_05: I do think intention matters, I think position matters.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_05: So I was an elder, which was in theory the highest position that you could have at the church, and so you were equal to him.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so I went to past leaders that weren't even in the church, and I didn't even share what experience I had.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_05: I just said, I think I've heard that you have some con some concerns, and I'd like to hear your story.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_05: And I didn't even share what they shared with each other, but so much of their stories were so similar that that really helped me to discern what it was that I was uh wrestling with with the leaders.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_05: And so I think discernment's a big one.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_05: And I think you need it's helpful to have trusted friends who you can go to and say, I had this conversation with the pastor.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I want to talk to the pastor about it, but I don't even know where the line is that he's crossed.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_05: So can you help me wrestle through this so that I can bring him, bring that to him?
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_05: Now I think, like you said, there's the other side to that.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_05: My dad was a pastor, I've been a pastor.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_05: False criticism and false accusation also exists.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_05: And so you don't want someone, as soon as you say something wrong or as soon as there's a misunderstanding, they're actively trying to tear down the church, or they're not coming to you to verify things.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_05: So I think there's a balance there.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_05: If you want to be charitable, but I also think it's really reasonable for you to have a conversation with your friend for the purpose of discernment, versus there was nothing in me that was like, ooh, guess what?
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_05: They did.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_05: Let me share this because I want to tear down the church.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_05: It was the exact opposite.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_05: It was, I love the church, I love this leader, I want to get clear on it so that I can help us become more like Christ and more like the Bible.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_05: And that's the stuff that I repented of, where I was like, Yeah, I was in sin, I was wrong.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_05: And I unrepent of that now, where I think that's actually what a godly elder should do is when you hear concerns, you go listen to people's story, you try to get clear on what accusation you're bringing, and then you faithfully bring it to the leadership team.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_05: But I kept my circle tight.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, there was I was leading a lot of people, but nobody knew that I had concerns uh before I had brought it to the leaders, other than a few trusted friends.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_00: Roundtree, would you kind of walk us through you you did an episode on the difference between gossip and slander?
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: I know that we we did that together.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think it was a good episode.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_00: People can go check it out, but give them the cliff notes version so that people can maybe distinguish.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, is this conversation in the church lobby gossip?
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: Is it slander, or are people using these words to control narratives?
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think more often than not it's the latter.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sure.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the word for a gossip in the Old Testament in Proverbs is a whisperer.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_02: And the idea is that you're sharing confidential information in non-confidential settings.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, Josh maybe confesses something to me, and uh and then I post it on Facebook.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's gossip.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'm uh I'm or more a more likely scenario if somebody confesses something to me and I sit tell the next person and they tell the next person and that they tell the next person these this gossip is passing around.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, this is this is confidential, it doesn't need to be out there.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_02: Slander is is actually making false statements, it's bearing false witness about somebody.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so, like let's say that you are processing a potential church abuse situation.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, certainly you have to be very careful if you're gonna, if it ever enters into a more of an exposure type of space, that you never bear false witness, that you never say incorrect things.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_02: So you have to be very careful there, or that does become slander, saying true things that are hard to hear, not slander.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, in addition, when it comes to gossip, like a couple of church members processing together what felt like an abusive, manipulative, controlling, and unbiblical sermon, what about that is gossip?
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_02: What about that as being a whisperer sharing confidential information?
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_02: He it was literally a public teaching.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_02: So, no, I don't think that everybody should come like after every sermon and be like, hey, what'd you grade the pastor?
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_02: I give it an eight, uh, I give it a six.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think that's unhealthy.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_02: But man, I you know, when I was on sabbatical and I I was visiting churches every Sunday, and some of them, sometimes my kids went to my home church, sometimes they went with me to various churches.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I liked it when like sometimes I remember my son telling me, he's like, Man, that was an unbiblical sermon.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_02: And because I had been thinking the same thing throughout.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_02: And he's like, and it wasn't Christ-centered.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, praise God, I'm glad you have some discernment.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_02: He wasn't gossiping, he was just identifying something that was true.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I and so I think when it comes to gossip, am I sharing confidential information that doesn't need to be shared more broadly?
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_02: If it's slander, am I sharing false information?
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_02: But if I'm talking to a friend or a mentor trying to get a deeper processing and understanding, absolutely, it's neither one of those.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's in fact, that's that's crucial and it's necessary because the if abuse is at play and you don't have friends to process with, you're just gonna put up with it longer.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_02: You're just not gonna know how to deal with it.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_02: We all need people that we can process with.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_02: And Caleb, that's why I love like I wouldn't have made it without my friends.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I I've been in scenarios where I felt pretty dang isolated and not allowed to talk to people.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you you have to have it.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_02: You have to have that.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_02: So labeling that gossip is uh wicked.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's not gossip at all.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what I would say.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_05: And I would also argue that Matthew 18, there's a difference between if your brother sins against you versus if your church leader errs in doctrine, practice, or character, and you're concerned about the well-being of the sheep.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_05: So this wasn't, oh, this pastor individually stepped on my toes and now I'm exposing it.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_05: It's I'm seeing patterns of doctrine, practice, and character that I'm concerned for this, your role as a pastor.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_05: So I think that holds so many people are bound by what they think is Matthew 18.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_05: But I think we have examples in the Old Testament and the New Testament of people publicly exposing sin.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_05: I can think of David or Paul to Peter or First Timothy 5, you know, exposed in the presence of all.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_05: There's no, it doesn't say that they went to them privately first, that Paul goes to Peter and says, Hey, you really shouldn't be eating with, you know, he exposes him publicly for a public sin without any one-on-one meeting first, which I'm a fan of one-on-one meetings.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_05: I think there's an appropriate time to don't put somebody on blast until you've verified the facts.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_05: But at the same time, my intention was this isn't a one-on-one, a brother sinned against me.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_05: I don't believe I'm bound by Matthew 18.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_02: Weaponizing Matthew 18 to uh to harm the saints and to protect yourself.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_02: That's not what this is about at all.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_02: Totally agree with you.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, sounds like a lot of scriptures getting weaponized here.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I just that's really my point.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_02: And Josh, I don't know when we're trying to tie this episode up.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_02: I know we're about the hour mark a little over, but um they start by abusing the scriptures to protect themselves, to silo other people, they abuse the scriptures to give themselves massive levels of authority that go to even beyond the scriptures.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, they abuse the scriptures, and downstream from that come the abuses of the people.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_02: So that's why we're having these conversations.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's fair.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh, Miller.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm gonna toss it over to you.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_00: I know we've Brown Tree and I have talked quite a bit.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything in this that you're you want to pick on a pick up on that we haven't addressed yet?
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um just kind of give you an opportunity to give some commentary on what we've shared.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I mean, there's so much about this that I can relate to, and I'm honestly really thankful that you guys watched some of our content and it was helpful to help you make sense of things.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_04: I would imagine, and I've seen this as a common thread, that one of the things that people will do to discredit those who leave is there's always some sort of narrative uh spin on the person who left.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_04: And that narrative spin usually attacks their character, their uh ability to discern reality.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, things, statements like, well, that person is just bitter and wounded.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_04: Um, oftentimes people hear that and they go, Oh, okay, don't talk to that person, they're just bitter and wounded.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_04: That that becomes a way to distance and isolate the person who left.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um, have you experienced any of these kind of things in your exit out?
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_05: I think all of us have.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_05: For me, the one that they happened to run with is when the church in North Carolina started looking into things.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_05: One of the main guys there, uh Trey, who you know, uh basically brought some allegations based off of a lot of my interactions with the leader.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_05: And one of the first things that they said after the meeting is, you know, we've had a lot of issues with Caleb's memory.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_05: He had this bad concussion playing soccer in college, which was like 13 years ago, and he's kind of had memory issues ever since, which is a flat out lie.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_05: It's my wife, who's been married to me for about 11 years, would say that she sees no symptoms of me having memory issues.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_05: I did have memory issues for the first year or two, uh, but it's been a decade since then.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_05: And the apostle who said, you know, Caleb's had memory issues, and he said that in the presence of multiple people, I wasn't there.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_05: I'm going off of their testimony.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_05: He laid hands on me in front of the church two years earlier and said, I've known this man for however many years, uh, 14 years.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_05: He's a trustworthy man.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_05: He's a man that you can trust.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_05: But as soon as I questioned him, well, now I have memory issues, and you really can't trust his testimony.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_05: So for some women, it was uh, you know, menopause or you know, cancer, or um, that person's always been a little bit whatever.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, it was brutal.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_05: Again, I think of my friends watching this, and I think the cost for being a whistleblower was so heavy because you immediately lost friendships, you immediately lost your community, you immediately lose reputation.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_05: For some of us, we lost our job, we lost our purpose, kind of our vision for a church.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_05: And uh it's brutal.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_05: It is really costly to be a wish whistleblower.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_04: Those still in the organization, they see you as their personal betrayer.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_04: By blowing the whistle in that lever, you're tearing down this thing that all of them have been building together.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_04: So they see you as a Judas, not as somebody who's actually being faithful to Christ by calling people who are unfaithful to Christ to repent.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but there's something else we haven't touched on that's worth mentioning, which was that there was a third-party investigation done.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, how did that happen?
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_04: And what were the results of that?
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's a long story to how that happened that I won't go into too much, but uh essentially there was just enough noise made where enough people, this was quite a while after I left, but more people just kept asking questions, kept holding leaders to account.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_05: I don't think they necessarily wanted a third party, but I do think some of the elders uh in England wanted a third party because they weren't sure what was all the chaos that was going on in uh the American churches.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_05: So, yeah, third party came in, they interviewed a lot of past people, and they wrote a 76-page report uh identifying patterns of spiritual abuse as well as SA cover-up.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_05: So, meaning people were abused by people in the church, uh either some of them without their knowledge, and then the leaders didn't care to even share it with that person.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, that they say not saying spiritual abuse, though that was also the case.
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_04: There were other forms of abuse that took place within the church, sexual got covered up and never never mention mentioned to the community.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_05: So let's say that someone, let's say there's an issue with voyeurism, and a man views a woman when she doesn't know it and she's unclothed, and then the leaders hear about it, but then the leaders don't tell that woman that she's been viewed by this man, and then for years that woman goes over to that man's house for dinner and they remain family friends, and that person uh has youth events there, and um there are multiple situations like that where either someone abused a minor or there was some kind of uh situation of abuse and the church didn't know about it.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so if we're having youth events at this person's house house, or the church didn't know about it, as in the elders were made aware and the elders did not disclose to the congregation, yes?
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_00: Right, the elders were aware, right?
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_05: Some of the elders, I was an elder during that time, and I was pretty shocked when I read the report.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, so some of those things I didn't know about as an elder, or they were before I was an elder.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, so I'm not I don't believe I had any knowledge of that.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_05: Although I think I said to you guys, even if I did have knowledge of that, if it came back that I was in a meeting where some of that was discussed, I had so I trusted these guys blindly.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_05: I was just I was a new elder, and so I just thought you're the apostle, you've been doing this for a long time.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_05: I would have rolled with I think whatever, potentially.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_05: I don't believe I did.
• 1:10:22
  unknown: What's that?
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_04: I was gonna say it shows you the level of group think when you're so involved in this and you've been like there for years, loyal for years, only seeing good from this person.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_04: Then when something comes about, you find yourself agreeing to things you go.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_04: If you were an outsider looking in, you would never agree to, but when you're in it, that's all you know to do.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_04: You've been programmed to do so already.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_05: Totally.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_05: So that's why people are like, Caleb, did you know that stuff?
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_05: Did you not know?
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_05: I'm like, as far as I know, I didn't know any of that stuff, but I don't think I'm without guilt in the sense that I just wasn't in a position to question those guys.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_05: We weren't, I was mentored by this guy for however many years, and then I came into eldership, and he told me that he had some special visionary sight that he hears from God, and I believed him.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_05: So, who am I to ever say, no, I don't think that's best?
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_05: You have experience and you have a supernatural gifting that I know nothing of, and you're my mentor and my spiritual father, and apparently my foundation.
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_05: So you're kind of all these things to me that is beyond accountability, and that's why I say the accountability isn't you're not told this is top-down, you guys aren't allowed to ask questions.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_05: It's you guys are absolutely allowed to ask questions.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_05: I'm fully submitted to the elders, but in actuality, that doesn't happen because you're also told that he is a supernatural, gifted person that, as he says in VNC, he can see things that ordinary people can't see.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_05: And so I was like, I'm just an ordinary person.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_05: Who am I to question you?
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_00: There may be there may have been an undisclosed rock star who sent me a video of uh a clip on uh me doing a video on you might be a part of a cult, and then I'll say like two minutes worth of things, and then there's a clip of your former apostle uh saying the thing that I said don't say if you want to be if you don't want to be a cult, and then it's just back and forth.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, hey, this is culty, and then it's your pastor saying the thing that is culty, and then me is like, hey, here's another thing that's culty.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, uh it was it was a funny video for sure.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_00: That he he seems to be ticking all those boxes.
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Round tree, uh, it sounded like you had something you would add to.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, we talk about this a lot, but in Colossians 2, where it where Paul warns aga about people who are puffed up by the visions that they have, supposed visions.
• 1:12:45
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, and I think anytime there's a leader or anyone who's like having these spectacular visions all the time, oh, it's Tuesday.
• 1:12:52
  SPEAKER_02: Tuesday is my trance day, Wednesday is my angelic visitation day, you know, I'm being exaggerative here, but you get my point.
• 1:13:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like people who seem to have all these, it's not real life.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry, it's not real life.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I I'm prophetically gifted, it doesn't work that way.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_02: I don't get in daily trances, you know.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, these these kind of magnificent visions.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_02: And the thing I think especially dangerous for church leaders is that if a church leader can say, like, hey, the vision for this church is something God downloaded to me.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I fell in, you know, I had an angelic encounter, or God spoke in this magnificent way, and I had this dream, and this is what it means, and this is what the church has to do, and I'm the apostle, so this is it.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_02: And everybody else is like, oh, well, I'm I'm a little, you know, peasant down here, so I have to do that thing.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_02: Now, here's the thing: I expect leaders to have a sense of a direction of where things are supposed to go and to believe God is in it.
• 1:13:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm not discounting that, but there's a way to talk about it that doesn't control people.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_02: There, there's a way to just say, hey, our sense as an elder team is that we're supposed to go in this direction or that direction.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, cool.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_02: And it's okay that you have that sense that it's from God.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_02: But if you start pulling in, this is because this is what Bickle did with his prophetic history.
• 1:14:07
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, listen to my 12 CDs.
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_02: And like I listened to it back in the CDs day.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, I was never at iHop, but I I listened to it because I was just curious.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to learn what was going on.
• 1:14:18
  SPEAKER_02: And uh and people use it to trump up their own authority to go beyond the authority God has actually entrusted in them.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_02: And uh it's my my kids have at least I don't think they really say this anymore, but they used to call somebody a Tommy tryhard if they were trying too hard.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's what this looks like.
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I had a vision.
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's just it's like, come on, man, just just be normal.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to trump it up so much.
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's a big red flag for people to watch out for if your leader is constantly having magnificent visions and that the church has to obey them.
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_02: That's a huge red flag.
• 1:14:54
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Caleb, is there anything that you want to add before we we sign off on this program?
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think this is a a decent spot to kind of land the plane.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Anything that you intended to speak on that we haven't brought up naturally, um, you know, any kind of concluding thoughts, kind of main takeaways you want people to be looking out for in their own local assembly uh to avoid the kind of slow creep of this apostolic-like leadership.
• 1:15:20
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think we covered a lot of it.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_05: I think uh when we were looking for a new church up here, I really wanted to be a part of a church where the guy wasn't this sensationalized thing.
• 1:15:34
  SPEAKER_05: So I went to a church and people were like, Oh, you'll love it here.
• 1:15:36
  SPEAKER_05: This pastor, I think he might be the best, most anointed pastor in the US.
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_05: And I was like, that's all I need to hear.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_05: Have a good church, and so like I want unannoying guy, yeah.
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_05: I want a guy who teaches normally.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_05: So maybe he is an amazing guy, but I I just didn't want to find a place where this guy was just like, he is this amazing person.
• 1:16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm like, just teach me a other church, and they were like, Yeah, this pastor is so like unanointed, he doesn't do impartation, he does departations and just removes the spirit from the room when he preaches, and you're like, Yeah, that's where I want to go.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he has the gift of reverse healing.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_02: People get sick when he prays for him.
• 1:16:20
  SPEAKER_01: People get more, people get more sick when he prays.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he prophesies over them, then they have no future.
• 1:16:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, I'm just kidding.
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_05: I think I was deeply arrogant.
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, I think that's at the root of so much of this.
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_05: I genuinely thought we might be the best church in the city, in the state, in the country, in the world, in the history of the world since the New Testament, because we're doing something cutting edge.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_05: And so I think if you I think it's okay that you love your church and you think this is such a great church for me, but the chances of you actually having the most radical church in history or the best or cutting edge or whatever is very small.
• 1:16:59
  SPEAKER_05: Um, so yeah, I think for me, the big the big thing is just humility.
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, I that's part of the reason why I personally feel like I'm at least tempor temporarily disqualified from leading in ministry because I was just so, so deeply arrogant.
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_05: And that arrogant caused me to have massive issues in my doctrine and practice.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_05: I would like to spend a minute or two sharing hope for people because I know there's so many listeners who have come out of this, and it's like, where do you go from here?
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_05: How can you ever trust people again?
• 1:17:29
  SPEAKER_05: How do you get in a community again?
• 1:17:31
  SPEAKER_05: How do you build relationships again?
• 1:17:33
  SPEAKER_05: And for me, there was a couple things that were really helpful.
• 1:17:36
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, one is just it can feel like your world is falling apart, and finding joy in the really small things again can be really healthy.
• 1:17:45
  SPEAKER_05: Where you're eating a steak or you're going for a walk outside, or uh, you know, emotional or physical intimacy with your wife, getting closer with your family, having worship nights with your family.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_05: There can be a really simplicity, uh a big simplicity of just making your world small and being grateful for the little things.
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_05: I found that oftentimes evangelism in the moments of deepest depression are really helpful.
• 1:18:08
  SPEAKER_05: So I made a commitment.
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_05: I was going to meet somebody new at the gym every day and try to share good news with them.
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_05: And I wasn't even sure where I was at with church or doctrine, but when you just share the simple gospel with someone who doesn't know the gospel, there's something that I don't know, steadies your heart in a different type of way.
• 1:18:27
  SPEAKER_05: And so, yeah, finding a church that teaches expository was really helpful, which I'm a big fan of topical teachings as well.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_05: But early days, I'm like, I'm fine if you just read the Bible and maybe provide some small commentary.
• 1:18:41
  SPEAKER_05: But I think I would just say there's been times, like you said, Miller, the hurt will probably stay with you forever.
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_05: And I know so many of my friends are hurting.
• 1:18:50
  SPEAKER_05: I know there's so many people out there that are hurting, and I'm so sorry for all that you've been through.
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_05: But I would also say there's been moments where I didn't know life could be this good.
• 1:18:59
  SPEAKER_05: You know, coming out of things, it's a breath of fresh air, and you're able to focus on some things that maybe you haven't before, like your health or your finances or your family time.
• 1:19:10
  SPEAKER_05: And uh I just want to say that there is life after whatever you've come out of.
• 1:19:14
  SPEAKER_05: So if you you've been a part of something and it's turned your life upside down, there's hope for you, and there's actually intimacy with Jesus for you that uh and even community.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_05: You know, we're two years out now, and we've started to put ourselves out there with the church that we're a part of and making connections with people.
• 1:19:30
  SPEAKER_05: Do you want to come over for dinner?
• 1:19:32
  SPEAKER_05: That can be really scary when you've come out of something, but it's worth it.
• 1:19:36
  SPEAKER_05: There is life after.
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_05: And I would just encourage people not to just hide the rest of your life.
• 1:19:41
  SPEAKER_05: Don't pendulum swing into isolation or hating the church or hating God.
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_05: Like Jesus is actually still good, even if you were a part of something really bad.
• 1:19:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's super wise, man.
• 1:19:52
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm I'm thankful for that sign-off.
• 1:19:55
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think here's the pattern that we we've seen uh repeated.
• 1:19:59
  SPEAKER_00: And and I hope that people can hear the story from you know John Cooper, hear the story from Caleb, um, and go, okay, what uh what are my takeaways?
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_00: What are the patterns?
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_00: What are the red flags?
• 1:20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a lot of these red flags are gonna come down to authoritarian leadership.
• 1:20:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's some guy at the top who's able to control the narrative, um, make people who speak out against him, an attack of the enemy, crazy, unreliable, helps control that narrative.
• 1:20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, in this model, the NAR model, you've got apostles at the prop the at the top.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_00: And and if you want anointing and blessing in your life, you really need to submit under that covering so there's a downstream flow into your life.
• 1:20:36
  SPEAKER_00: And in this case, it's probably the most extreme case I've ever heard of because it sounds like this guy believed he was a foundational apostle like the apostle Paul.
• 1:20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's that's pretty startling.
• 1:20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, when when you begin to um get high on your own supply, as it were, uh, when you begin to think that you're the only one left, the only one doing a thing, um, that pride, as you mentioned, humility has been a huge takeaway for you.
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_00: That that pride, I don't think is neutral when it comes to doctrine.
• 1:21:07
  SPEAKER_00: When you begin to see yourself as the hero of every story, um there it it the idolatry of all of that begins to do something to doctrine downstream.
• 1:21:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it might have been the case that you know these people were very gentle towards everyone outside, but but the more you begin to think that you are the best and you're at the top of the hill and everyone needs you, you begin to treat them that way.
• 1:21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I I would encourage people who have succumb to this form of doctrine.
• 1:21:33
  SPEAKER_00: These are the fruits of this.
• 1:21:35
  SPEAKER_00: This is the fruit of the new apostolic reformation.
• 1:21:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's the fruit of folks who believe they have to go to apostles and prophets to get to Christ.
• 1:21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we have a mediator, his name's Jesus, and uh, and we don't need any others.
• 1:21:46
  SPEAKER_00: So um thank you so much, uh Caleb, for jumping on the program and talking to us about your story.
• 1:21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, Cooper, if you're out there, thank you so much for doing that program with childers.
• 1:21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we're really thankful and hopeful that the body of Christ will continue to glean and learn from some of these stories that won't be a little salacious tabloids, but they will be okay.
• 1:22:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's just something to learn here.
• 1:22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this is how the scriptures are being manipulated.
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is what we need to be look out, looking out for moving forward.
• 1:22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I I think I gave Mailer a chance.
• 1:22:13
  SPEAKER_00: I gave uh uh you know uh Caleb a chance.
• 1:22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Round tree, is there anything you want to add before we sign off?
• 1:22:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um maybe just you know, the three hosts on the show are all local church pastors.
• 1:22:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we've all seen really, really, really nasty sides of church.
• 1:22:29
  SPEAKER_02: And we still love the church.
• 1:22:31
  SPEAKER_02: So the church has some ugly parts, the church is also beautiful.
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so I love Caleb that last part where you were talking about, hey, we're reintegrating and we're doing community.
• 1:22:41
  SPEAKER_02: I'm really thankful that you made that.
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's a healthy approach.
• 1:22:44
  SPEAKER_02: I do understand where people are coming from when they say, I can't read the Bible anymore, I can't pray anymore, I can't trust a church leader anymore.
• 1:22:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, so this is not a dismissal of those feelings.
• 1:22:54
  SPEAKER_02: I 100% validate those feelings.
• 1:22:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I think though those feelings can exist at the same time that we can say the church actually is beautiful and beloved.
• 1:23:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we we hold these realities in tension, and it's a it's a journey to figure out what a church community looks like for someone going forward after they suffer this kind of horrific and wicked spiritual abuse.
• 1:23:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but hopefully we don't give up on that journey.
• 1:23:19
  SPEAKER_02: Hopefully, it stays a journey.
• 1:23:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I think I will finish with that.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Guys, thank you so much for tuning into this episode.
• 1:23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, continue to follow as updates continue to come out of the story.
• 1:23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, like, share, subscribe.
• 1:23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and if you're out there, I want to very much encourage you.
• 1:23:33
  SPEAKER_00: I always forget to do this, man.
• 1:23:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's the end of the program.
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't come and registered for the conference there in Houston, Texas, please register for the conference in Houston.
• 1:23:42
  SPEAKER_00: We're doing prophecy hearing God.
• 1:23:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's myself, Michael Miller, Michael Roundtree, John Mark Baker.
• 1:23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we're going out to uh the woodlands at Woods Edge Church.
• 1:23:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be a fantastic time.
• 1:23:51
  SPEAKER_00: People report their lives get transformed every year that we do this.
• 1:23:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they they receive prophetic words, they hear God for the first time, they share it with others.
• 1:23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Some really pretty, tremendous stories.
• 1:24:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, guys, thank you so much for tuning in.
• 1:24:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna see it next time, 4 to 5 p.m.
• 1:24:03
  SPEAKER_00: at Central Standard Time, Monday and Wednesdays.
• 1:24:06
  SPEAKER_00: See you then.