Latest / 4-Freedom Podcast / Revised - 180. Fundamental Footprints - The Quiet Rise of Clarence Sexton

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Revised - 180. Fundamental Footprints - The Quiet Rise of Clarence Sexton · 4-Freedom Podcast

0:00
Welcome back to the Four Freedom Podcast.
0:02
Wanted to let you know sort of where we're at today.
0:04
The opening part that we're going to play is our original
0:07
opening from last week. We're not going to change it at
0:11
all, but we want to begin by just saying that we realized
0:14
there were some errors in our show notes.
0:16
We had started this series back in the beginning of the year and
0:22
we had some interviews that come up.
0:24
And so we had done the research for Clarence Sexton years or
0:28
years months ago. Somehow when we took those notes
0:31
and we reformatted them, information got changed through
0:36
our just human error. And we apologize for that.
0:39
Several people have reached out and said, hey, some of these
0:43
things were were really wrong, like you should have had the
0:46
right information here. Some said, hey, it was a great
0:48
episode. One thing that came across the
0:52
entire time was that there was no scandal at at Crown and that
0:57
they stayed above board during all the time that Clarence
1:00
Sexton was there, which is a huge high watermark.
1:03
So we want to thank our list for, for calling us out and, and
1:06
making us accountable for those things.
1:08
We never want to produce wrong content or bad content.
1:11
That's why we pulled the episode down.
1:14
We spoke to different individuals.
1:16
We've done the research, we realized the errors of what we
1:18
did. And, and I think we know what
1:20
had happened when we when we did that and just the, the
1:24
information got crossed in our side of it.
1:27
And so we're going to be re re recording today, the second-half
1:31
of the episode, and that's what we're going to be jumping into
1:34
here in just a minute. So after the opening intro and
1:38
our opening banter, that was the same.
1:40
So if you've already listened that part, you can Fast forward.
1:43
Then we'll jump right into our episode today with Clarence
1:47
Sexton. For freedom, you set me free.
1:51
Not for change, not for guilt, not for Pharisee.
1:54
Bracelet the flame, Now I'm puffing peace cigars and victory
1:57
Justified released. Welcome to the Four Freedom
2:02
Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the
2:05
freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with
2:08
everyday issues. I.
2:10
Say by dress codes, not by what I eat.
2:13
I'm covered in the righteousness, washed from head
2:15
to feet. No tally of tradition.
2:17
No man made code. Blood bought my freedom.
2:19
Now I ride that road. They clutch pearls when they see
2:22
smoke rings rise, but my prey still ascends past the legalist
2:26
cries. Christ plus nothing.
2:27
That's the real math. So miss me with your fence laws
2:31
and your extra path. He sat with sinners, I'm sitting
2:33
with Saints, sipping grace from the bottle.
2:36
No room for face. I like one for liberty.
2:39
Toast to the king. Every ash of sermon.
2:41
Death has lost it's sting for freedom.
2:44
He set me free, not for change, not for guilt, not for Pharisee.
2:48
Grace let the flame Now I'm puffing peace, cigars and
2:51
victory justified release for freedom.
2:55
He set me free. Not for change, not for guilt,
2:57
not for Pharisee. See grace lift the flame now
3:01
puffing peace, cigars and victory.
3:02
Justified release. Ain't no shame in my rhythm, no
3:07
guilt in my game. I ain't holier for hiding joy.
3:09
That's religion shame. They want to shrink the gospel,
3:12
make it tight and tame. But the cross crush that yoke,
3:14
it ain't coming back again. I got Romans in my holster,
3:17
Galileans on deck. When they come with that yoke, I
3:20
just show them the text. Don't submit again to slavery.
3:23
Read it and weep. Legalism looks holy, but it's
3:26
wolves in fleece. I breathe deep like Spurgeon
3:28
with a stogie in hand. To smoke or not to smoke, bro?
3:31
Where do you stand? Because if my freedom offends
3:33
you better check your heart. I'm dancing in the courtyard
3:36
while you pick apart the art. I ain't under law.
3:39
I'm under the blood, not a slave to shame.
3:42
I'm a son of the flood. No checklist holiness, no fake
3:45
veneer. Just grace that roars louder
3:47
than your rules and fear for freedom.
3:49
He set me free, not for change, not for guilt, not for Pharisee.
3:54
Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace, cigars and
3:56
victory justified, released for freedom.
4:00
He set me free, not for change, not for guilt, not for Pharisee.
4:05
Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace, cigars and
4:07
victory justified, released. Not for sin, but for him.
4:14
No one smoke brings like on him. Grace.
4:17
That's the win. Let grace begin.
4:23
Not for change, not for guilt, not for Pharisee.
4:26
Grace slit the flame, now puffing Peace cigars and victory
4:30
justified released. Now here are your host, James
4:34
Seyfried and Brett Moore. Welcome back to the Four Freedom
4:37
podcast. What a great time it is to be
4:40
back with you this week, first week of August.
4:43
Back in the saddle, man, it has been a wild summer.
4:48
Great time wide open. I think for the month of June, I
4:52
was in my bed like five nights in the entire month of June.
4:57
We were going and we were blowing.
4:58
It was great. Blowing and going or something
5:01
like that. I don't know what the statement
5:02
you say is, but yeah, it was a great time and I hope you
5:06
enjoyed our new intro song. Had a friend named Kiefer Likens
5:10
who put that together for us. And so that's our new intro.
5:13
We're going to shorten it. It's not going to be the full
5:15
like 3 minutes that that you get every week.
5:18
We're going to shorten that down, but we want to play the
5:21
whole thing and we've got some great new ventures that we're
5:24
going through. Brett, how was your summer, man?
5:27
How are things going with you man?
5:29
My summer was great. I know you.
5:31
I mean, you hung out at the beach for three months, you
5:34
know, working on your tan. Three months sabbatical you.
5:37
Know, so, you know, called it in every Sunday, you know, you, you
5:40
need a little break. So I appreciate that, but no
5:43
man, things are going great with us too.
5:46
You know, summer's a busy time. That's why we take a break from
5:49
the podcast. We've got a lot of things going
5:52
on. We've got camps and VDSS and we
5:55
had conferences to go to and a lot of things going on.
6:00
Now it's think school's starting back and man, school's just
6:04
starting back earlier and earlier.
6:06
We've got, we've got schools in our county that are starting,
6:10
that started back in at the end of July.
6:13
And it's crazy how soon, how shorter summer is getting.
6:19
Summer's just getting shorter and shorter where that soon
6:21
there will there will be no more summer.
6:24
But yeah, things are from a massive evangelist crusade that
6:29
I've been organizing. A lot of moving parts, a lot of
6:32
people involved, all of our churches in the county are
6:35
praying for it and and helping out with it.
6:38
And so just, you know, we're praying the Lord to help us pull
6:42
that off, get Alex McFarlane coming.
6:44
We got worship bands coming from all over the state coming in
6:48
every night. And so we're excited about that.
6:50
But man, we are just ready to get back to work, get back into
6:55
doing the business like we've been doing preaching every
6:58
Sunday. And now we are back on the Four
7:01
Freedom podcast. And so I'm glad to.
7:04
Yeah, Brett, we were able to be together in June there at the
7:08
convention and great time that was there.
7:11
We did a live interview on site with with Luther Rice Seminary
7:17
and Marcus and the president there were able to talk through
7:21
some things there on the convention floor.
7:24
I just gave a report to the church this last week from the
7:27
convention giving them some updates on what was said and
7:30
done. We had almost every night guys
7:34
over at the house and from the RFP, Pham and Q from our Israel
7:40
trip from Georgia. He had a couple of friends that
7:43
he brought over and some guys from the Baptists that I'm a
7:46
part of were there. We had them come over, say every
7:49
night was a great night. Just had people over enjoying
7:52
our time together and fellowship and hanging out.
7:56
And then for me, June, man, it flew by.
7:59
We got back and then we went straight into camps.
8:02
We had youth camp and kids camp back-to-back and then Bible
8:06
school. We just finished it and then
8:08
we've got our serve week coming up here next week.
8:11
You said the kids starting back school.
8:12
My kids start back school next week.
8:15
And so this is the last week of them with me and all around.
8:18
And so we are balancing schedules and figuring that out.
8:23
My wife starting back volleyball.
8:26
So man, it is. It's been wide open.
8:28
It's been fun. On top of all that, we're still
8:31
selling cigars. We still got a little cigar
8:33
company that's going on. We've appreciated you guys
8:36
support. I think we've sold a little over
8:37
100 cigars this year and things have been great.
8:41
If you want to support us, you can go over to 1689 Cigars back
8:44
slash for Freedom Cigars, the collection there, you can see
8:48
it, It's also on our website. And what a great time we've had
8:53
with that. And Brett, something that has
8:57
been in the works, really didn't even tell much with you about it
9:01
until recently. But over this last probably 6 or
9:05
8 months, I've been writing a book and being diligent in
9:09
trying to finish it. It's been difficult as Brett is
9:13
trying to get his master and doctorate and PhD level
9:16
education and stressing him out and losing his hair over that.
9:20
I've been working on a publication of a book years ago,
9:25
John came up with the 8 stages of leaving legalism.
9:28
And we re recorded that episode at the beginning of last year of
9:33
just talking through those stages.
9:36
And Lord just really began dealt with me and I thought, you know,
9:39
I'm going to put this some of these thoughts to paper.
9:41
And so I just started typing and started writing 7080 pages
9:46
later, we were finished and I let a couple people edit it, let
9:51
John edit it because it was his idea with the eight different
9:53
stages. And then he added probably 10 or
9:56
12 pages to the book. And so it's out on Amazon.
9:59
We've had some some little bit of sales, which is great.
10:02
And we're talking with another publisher that's going to
10:05
possibly picking it up as well. So it's been fun.
10:08
You can go check that out. It's at it's I'll try to link it
10:10
to the show notes. It's from brokenness to freedom,
10:14
a journey of healing and renewal and just talking through how you
10:17
can practical steps of what it looks like when you go through
10:21
that stages of healing of leaving a spiritually abusive
10:24
environment. And just some practical
10:27
counseling information for you there as well.
10:33
Let's go through the list. Your pastor, podcaster, author
10:39
and now music producer. I mean hey but but Tupac and
10:44
Biggie to shame. We were getting there, man.
10:46
This is this has been a fun endeavor.
10:48
So we did an episode, Brett, how long ago was it?
10:52
Did we talk about AI on an episode?
10:55
Oh, I don't even remember. We somewhere back first of the
10:59
year Brett began talking, we talked about social media AI
11:03
and, and that role in our churches and in our lives.
11:06
And, and up until this point, man, I hadn't even really
11:08
touched AI. And so I've started dabbing a
11:12
little bit in it. I'm on a, a signal chat with a
11:15
group of guys. We've got a little bit of crypto
11:17
investment in the 1689 coin a little.
11:20
Throw that out there if you, if you want to jump onto a fun meme
11:24
coin that has no utility right now when it's just been fun to
11:28
see a bunch of Christians jumping in on it.
11:32
And so I got Kiefer. He wrote that, that beginning
11:36
song for us and put it to music. And I was like, dude, how did
11:38
you do that? And so he told us.
11:42
And so I had already put together a mock up song that I
11:46
sent to Brett, I don't know, 5-6 months ago of we, we tired of
11:51
pastors know best off of the mocking of Mother knows best off
11:55
of Tangled. And oh, it was great to look
11:59
through it. So I dropped that into this
12:02
music producing app and within like 3 minutes it popped out
12:06
like two or three songs. I sent him to Brett.
12:10
He was like, dude, that's awesome.
12:11
And so then I put together a couple more lyrics of one of
12:14
Jack Hiles, one of me and Brett as podcasters and preachers and
12:20
put together a couple things. And so we went ahead and I found
12:24
a free distribution app and hopefully Lord Willem by the
12:27
time when this episode comes out, if not this or next week.
12:31
It right now it's in moderation that the the music is going to
12:36
be out on iTunes and Spotify and everywhere you get music as
12:39
well. So just something fun.
12:41
You know, we're I've actually put it underneath comedy.
12:44
There's not even a genre. It's just comedy, having fun
12:47
listening to stuff. So hopefully we'll see what
12:50
comes of it. We'll see what, what would come
12:52
out of it. We may throw together some other
12:54
some other songs, have Brett put together some songs and we'll
12:57
see what happens. Yeah, it's fun.
13:00
Yeah, some, you know, some of them are hilarious to listen to.
13:03
And you know, it's really. Cool what you can.
13:05
Do these days? It doesn't take much with AI and
13:09
the tools that we have, ChatGPT, things like that.
13:12
You can do some pretty cool, interesting stuff.
13:15
I know it writes the best sermons for me on Sunday.
13:18
No, I'm just kidding. But but we are.
13:21
It is cool that we get the access to this stuff that we
13:25
never thought that we would have access to, but it is fun to play
13:29
around with. Yeah, I just the speed at which
13:33
it does things and the speed at which things can happen.
13:36
It's like unreal. My, my nephew, he just had two
13:40
babies. He just had two twin girls.
13:42
And he's actually, he works on music and stuff.
13:45
And I told him about the app that I'm using.
13:47
And he said one of the hardest thing for him to do is that, you
13:51
know, he's got some music producing apps that he has on
13:55
his computer. He said, but one of the hardest
13:57
things for me to do is to lay my beats down.
13:59
And he said if I could use that app and sort of tell it the
14:03
genre that I'm wanting and lay a beat down for me, and then I
14:07
produce my own music and content over top of it, he said that
14:10
would save me hours and hours, days of editing and things.
14:15
And so for him, he's just looking at it as a way to not
14:18
necessarily produce music, but produce the background content.
14:21
He doesn't have a band. He's every of these things.
14:23
He's just putting stuff out. And so thought it was pretty
14:26
cool just to to, you know, talk to a musician about it.
14:29
And he was like, that's some pretty cool stuff.
14:31
So. Oh yeah, I've talked to
14:33
programmers that use it to do you know what is that called
14:37
HTML or something? And they use it to write code
14:41
for for them and just save them so much time.
14:44
And so, yeah, it's really cool. Yeah, absolutely.
14:49
Brett, anything else about our summer, anything that's
14:51
happening with you guys, you, you doing well or?
14:54
Yeah, I think man, things are things are going pretty good.
14:56
I think we we reported everything, just had a a busy
15:00
summer and ready to get back in the saddle and get back to
15:03
business as usual. Yeah.
15:04
Hey, I wanted to mention if you listen to our last sermon that
15:07
we dropped as well, that was Robert Smith.
15:10
He was one of the convention speakers this last year did a
15:13
phenomenal message. It was the last message of that
15:16
Second Timothy passage that we did.
15:18
We walked through and when he preached after he got done, I
15:21
said, Brett, I think that may be the 4th sermon that we drop in
15:24
our summer sermon series. One by Brett, one by me, and one
15:27
by him. He's actually Brett.
15:30
I just saw they just released the convention speakers for the
15:32
North Carolina convention. He's one of the speakers this
15:35
year for it, which is pretty cool.
15:37
I may run into him like, hey, we, we used one of your sermons
15:41
and it was a great time. So I hope you enjoyed it.
15:43
If you didn't go back and listen to those.
15:45
I know sermons are not podcasts, but for us it's a good filler
15:50
and it's a good way to give you some content without us actually
15:54
recording again with our busy schedules in the summer.
15:59
When I say we were busy this summer, I barely had time to eat
16:02
and breathe and so it was busy. And so I'm excited about just
16:06
slowing down for a little bit and being able to focus on this
16:10
and some other endeavors. Praying through the next year of
16:13
calendar and church stuff, just excited about what the Lord's
16:17
doing and we're excited about jumping back into our series.
16:22
We we ended the last season. We don't really do seasons on
16:25
the podcast, but the last time we recorded with the fundamental
16:29
footprints and we haven't quite finished that.
16:32
Our goal was to finish that before the summer, Brett.
16:35
And then we recorded a couple episodes and we had some
16:37
interviews that sort of came out.
16:39
And so it just sort of pushed our scheduling back, which is
16:43
not a problem. And so so we're going to pick up
16:46
with the great Clarence Sexton the.
16:49
Clarence Section was a pastor, a church planner, founder of Crown
16:54
College, and in this episode we trace his story from his early
16:58
call in ministry under Lee Robertson to pastoring Temple
17:01
Baptist Church in Powell, launching Crown College in 1991.
17:07
We asked what the school and church model have meant for
17:10
local church ministry and the wider, you know, independent
17:14
fundamental Baptist networks. So James, let's let's get into
17:17
this. Where?
17:18
Where did he come from and how did he get into the ministry?
17:22
I was hoping you're going to go. Where'd he come from?
17:23
Where to go? Where'd he come from?
17:25
Cotton Eye Joe, but we didn't get into that.
17:27
But yeah, it's great. Yeah.
17:30
He began. He was born in October of 1948,
17:34
raised largely in Maryville, TN. He did move around frequently as
17:39
in his childhood, but ultimately did land back in Tennessee.
17:43
He was converted as a teenager like a lot of young people in
17:47
ministry were converted that and then he began his public
17:51
ministry. In 1967, he became the founder
17:55
and president of Crown College when he came back to Powell, TN
17:59
after serving in various different locations that we'll
18:02
talk about in a little bit. And as a leader, he emphasized
18:05
the the church based training model.
18:08
But one of the interesting things about Clarence Sexton
18:11
that we've learned was his his his broader worldwide ministry.
18:16
He he went from Powell, TN. He's got a campus in England.
18:21
And I was actually speaking to a guy, Brandon Jones, who we went
18:24
to Israel with. He called me this last week and
18:26
said, Hey, love the episode. I want you to I want you to know
18:29
about and I'm glad we know about it now.
18:32
We didn't find a lot of information about it, but
18:34
there's these little schools of theology, schools of the Bible
18:38
that have popped up. And they're basically little
18:40
churches that have popped up in different places.
18:42
And he's in Myrtle Beach. And he said there's a lot of
18:44
these little school of the Bible that have popped up that are
18:48
church plants out of Crown College.
18:50
And one of the things that he said that was encouraging was
18:53
just the the non scandals that had happened.
18:56
And so the very, very interesting to to study that and
19:00
learn that. But yeah, he he began his
19:02
ministry in 1967 and was faithful until he passed away.
19:08
And lots of people have been influenced through his ministry
19:13
as well. So Brett, as we continue through
19:16
this, where did he get, where did he go?
19:18
I'm sorry. How did serving with Lee
19:21
Robertson's shape Sexton's ministry model?
19:24
We understand as he went through life, he began serving under him
19:28
and looked at him as a hero. So how did that, how did that
19:31
influence what he did in ministry?
19:33
It had a lot of influence on the bus ministry, you know, dealing
19:38
with the but you know, bus ministry was big and they were
19:41
big on the bus ministry schools of the Bible.
19:45
So you have the the the colleges, what not Tennessee
19:48
Temple, the schools and an emphasis on practical church
19:53
based training. And then his growth work in
19:58
Paterson, NJ, Madison Ave., including founding.
20:03
An Academy. So these are all things that he
20:05
had worked with and had it had influence on his ministry.
20:11
So the question then is why return to Powell, TN and what
20:18
did Sexton insist on when he accepted the call there?
20:23
Yeah. And one of the things when he
20:25
went to Madison, NJ, the church was, was basically a dying
20:29
church that needed revitalization.
20:31
He came in and through leadership, the bus ministry was
20:35
able to see it very successful when he left.
20:37
There's a picture on the website of of hundreds and hundreds of
20:40
people in that church building. So the Lord was faithful and
20:43
blessing his ministry there. But when he returned, he
20:47
required the church to start a Bible college.
20:50
So he came back to Powell. He came back to the temple there
20:53
where he was at, and he said, listen, if I'm going to come
20:56
back, we've got to have an institute.
20:58
We've got to have a Bible college that's going to be
20:59
training young people for the ministry.
21:02
And so in 1991, they integrated Crown College of the Bible and
21:07
they integrated it into a training center.
21:10
And then it was opened discussed as we as he began, he started in
21:16
1999 with 69 students from 40 states.
21:21
What I think is incredible when we were at Champion, we started
21:24
with with a lot they, they dip down real low now.
21:28
They're seeing some, some good growth now.
21:31
But in the 20 something years, 25 years later, the statistic
21:36
was in O6O7, they had over 900 students representing 40
21:41
different States and countries across the world.
21:44
So there was a, a history of, of growth.
21:47
There was a history of, of continuing to develop students.
21:52
The facilities were robust. They began to invest lots of
21:56
money and time in those facilities.
21:58
Their music was conservative. And then they eventually started
22:02
what was called the Robertson Heritage Center.
22:05
Doctor Lee Robertson was in very influential on Clarence's life
22:09
and had given him lots of just strength and growth in his life.
22:15
And so he, he really loved Doctor Robertson and modeled a
22:19
lot. And after Tennessee Temple shut
22:21
down, he, he integrated some things from Temple from TTU into
22:25
Crown College of the Bible and some of the mission statements,
22:28
it changed a little bit because of, of what they had had there.
22:31
And, and you can go and listen to David and Samantha Velasquez
22:35
on the 26 letters and they talk a little bit about that as well.
22:38
But Brett, beyond Tennessee, where did Crown train students
22:44
serve and what ministries sort of grew out of his leadership
22:49
well. What grew out of that was like
22:51
hundreds of mission works, the two year schools of the Bible,
22:56
replicated across the US and abroad.
22:59
All over, students carry the Crown program to places such as
23:04
the UK and Nepal. And let me say, growing up
23:08
personally, you know, Clarence Sexton growing up, I, I looked
23:15
up to the man a lot. He was someone I consider going
23:20
to Crown for a long time. It was one of the places that I
23:24
was going to go. And if I kind of, I really
23:26
wanted to go to Crown, but I was being pushed to go to house.
23:30
And I can remember going to youth conferences at and in the
23:36
Crown area and, and at his church there in Powell and
23:40
really looking up to the man, really admiring him.
23:44
And, you know, growing up in that, you hear a lot of negative
23:47
things about Clarence Sexton. And that's just, that's just
23:50
honest reflection of, of, of what I've heard.
23:53
Like we've said before, no, no scandals to talk about things
23:58
like that until, as we look into what he did and where he come
24:02
from, he got a lot of things done.
24:05
And we're just going to kind of I, I want to ask you this, how
24:09
does Crowns model compared to other IFB colleges?
24:13
What were the strengths and what were the limits?
24:16
Yeah, absolutely. I think some of the strengths
24:18
were the local church training, they had practical ministry labs
24:23
that consistent discipleship pipelines, right.
24:25
We we as young people at Champion and other places,
24:29
discipleship was not a a model that we had talked about a lot
24:33
and and I believe they worked diligently on their discipleship
24:37
and what that was what that looked like.
24:40
They they grew into large multi campus ministries, thousands of
24:44
members. That was one of the things like
24:48
and how's Anderson where you were at?
24:49
It was all one site church everyone attended at the First
24:53
Baptist Church of Hammond. That was their big number crown
24:56
began this sort of multi site, multi area location that was was
25:01
helping plant churches around, which was really, really
25:05
interesting to see that. And so something that they
25:08
hadn't a lot of the other IP colleges hadn't done before as
25:13
they sort of the, the the negative side that you could say
25:16
some of the the weaknesses. What of course be some of the
25:20
interviews we're going to have. We've got Brooke coming on.
25:22
We've got another guy coming on next week to sort of share their
25:26
personal time. But of course their standards in
25:29
the way they did things that was standard with all IB churches
25:33
and colleges help them to to continue that same oppression of
25:39
women. The standards, the extra
25:41
biblical standard of legalism that we often talk about how we
25:45
want to break free from those things and to have the freedom
25:47
that the the Bible gives us. And so we, we definitely have
25:52
seen that. We definitely have heard that
25:54
first hand from different people we've talked to.
25:57
And so we we definitely see that there are some, some big things.
26:01
One of the things that was really cool is Clarence had had
26:04
an extensive acreages that the church had bought the the
26:07
facilities, they had some camp facilities.
26:10
And one huge thing that he had this massive take away from Lee
26:13
Robertson was the significant bus ministry, large bus ministry
26:17
at Crown that that definitely reached hundreds and thousands
26:21
of people. And so sort of our final take
26:24
away, our final thoughts on Clarence Sexton today is he
26:28
built a durable church centered ministry training model.
26:33
I want us to understand that there are some fruit that comes
26:36
with that, but there's also trade-offs that sort of tightly
26:39
integrate this college church system, as one of our
26:43
interviewers say, they said was it didn't feel like it was a
26:47
church model. It felt like it was a ministry,
26:49
college ran model. If the college students wasn't
26:53
there, these ministries wouldn't exist.
26:56
And that was someone who had been there years later.
26:59
Now the college and church may have the church may have started
27:02
these ministries and the college just evolved into doing it, but
27:05
that was a personal, personal first hand experience account of
27:09
it felt like the the ministries were mainly LED through the
27:12
college students. And then we wanted to say that
27:16
many ministries we've looked at J Frank Norris, how's Anderson,
27:19
Jack Scott, many different people that we've looked at.
27:22
There have been scandals and pitfalls that have defined their
27:26
ministry. In our study over 30 plus years
27:29
of Crown, there was not a scandal.
27:32
There was not a pitfall that we could find that would have been
27:37
a defining moment for the college or clearance.
27:40
And I want to also say Brett, in one of my studies, as I was
27:44
looking through him just this past weekend, he actually
27:48
attended a Southern Baptist Convention back in the early 70s
27:53
and 80s when the convention was sort of fractured with the
27:59
inerrancy of Scripture. And he left from there, and he
28:02
came home and he said the convention doesn't even know
28:07
what they believe about the Bible.
28:08
And so because they don't know what they believe about the
28:10
Bible, I believe it's time for us to pull out from the
28:13
convention and become an independent church.
28:16
And so he led his church away from the convention because they
28:20
didn't understand where they were at.
28:22
Now we understand years later, the conservative resurgence
28:25
happened, and the conservative surgeons brought the convention
28:29
back to a conservative viewpoint of the inerracy of Scripture,
28:32
the belief of the Bible. And I believe by studying his
28:37
life over these last couple of days and sort of refreshing my
28:40
wine with it, he would have probably been a Southern Baptist
28:43
today if he was around the convention today and would have
28:47
went to a meeting because of the way their stand was so similar
28:50
to what it was at. And so he was, he was, he was
28:53
very close to the line with that.
28:55
I thought it was interesting that he had been to 1 during
28:58
that time, been to the convention during that time.
29:01
My my pastor grew it growing up. He was under the Lee Robertson
29:05
era, Tennessee Temple University.
29:09
And I believe he was trying to take our church from independent
29:11
church to a Southern Baptist church because when he left our
29:15
church, he went to us on the Baptist Church.
29:17
And a lot of what he did was sort of that high church model
29:21
of the convention style of it. And so I thought it was
29:25
interesting. What?
29:26
What's your thought? One other thing that we've
29:29
gathered from people that we've talked to personally, from
29:34
comments that we've read on the RFP FAM network, things like
29:39
that. One of the things that kind of
29:41
has been consistently mentioned is that as Clarence Sexton got
29:47
older, he began to change a little bit.
29:51
This is from people who've had one-on-one dealings with him
29:54
have told us that he would get a little less discreet, a little
29:59
less tactful, a little bit more blunt on some things.
30:03
In fact, the famous, you know, saying that was in the the
30:08
recovering intro or you're just stupider.
30:12
And you know that that did hurt a lot of people.
30:16
But then there were also people that said that what was probably
30:19
going on was he wouldn't have known about any of this if there
30:23
weren't people whispering in his ear telling me about these
30:26
things, kind of painting a, a, a picture that, you know, this,
30:32
these were covering fundamentalists or, you know,
30:34
they're, they're worse than they really were.
30:37
And so I do want to put that out there that, you know, some
30:41
people said he probably had people whispering in his ear
30:44
telling him this stuff was bad. And so I kind of colored his
30:47
opinion of it. But you know, from all intense
30:51
purposes, Clare, you know, he was, he was sincere.
30:54
I think he did have some, some habits, some things about him,
30:58
you know, very, very IFB type things that are, that are come
31:03
standard with being in the IFB and being a man of God in the
31:07
IFB. But you know, I, he was, I, I do
31:12
believe he was a sincere person. Absolutely.
31:15
One of the things that someone shared with me was they were
31:18
with him in the earlier 2000s era sort of when some of the big
31:25
IFB leaders were passing away and he was being sort of handed
31:28
the mantle of the leader of the IFB.
31:32
And he they said that he in his response, when people would say
31:35
that he was very humble, he was very like non deserving of it.
31:40
And he never bragged that he was one of the main leaders.
31:42
He sort of took a step back and said that.
31:44
And so, yeah, we want to thank you for listening today.
31:49
Want to thank you for your time today.
31:51
Again, we apologize for the error in our last time.
31:54
We want to take ownership and credit for that and and know
31:57
that we never our intention to produce false information.
32:01
It was just a mix up in our notes.
32:02
And we do apologize with that. Looking forward to the
32:06
interviews that we have coming up in just a couple of weeks and
32:09
then getting into the Tennessee Temple error and what that looks
32:12
like with Lee Robertson. So until next time, to God be
32:15
the glory. Great things he has done.
32:20
Found my new name, found that good grace, found that healing.
32:26
And the tears fell down my face when I found my beginning.
32:30
It has no ending. I found that second chance,
32:31
found my best friend, Found my forgiveness, found my happiness.
32:34
I've been singing ever since. Thanks for listening to the Four
32:53
Freedom Podcast. If you enjoyed our content, do
32:56
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