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A Qualified Man w/ Jacob Tanner · CrossPolitic Show

• Hey y'all welcome to Cross-Politik One-on-One with the Waterboy. It's good to be with you as everyone's kind of this weekend, this past weekend celebrated America's 250th, 4th of July. Hope you guys had a good time. I'm very grateful for having a Pastor Tanner on the show today to talk about his new book, A Qualified Man. I'll be bringing Pastor Tanner in here in a minute to talk to them about this book. A very important book, I think, very important even personally to me and I'll kind of get into that in this interview with Pastor Jacob Tanner here. But I want to talk to you guys about a couple things that are going on. Of course you guys know about the Fight Lap These Conference. We did decide to extend an early bird deadline kind of as I guess the excuses to celebrate America's 250th birthday. Why not extend the deadline to get a discount to the Fight Lap These Conference through August 1st? So make sure you sign up, go to Fight Lap These dot com to sign up for that. The Topics Holy Wars, Pastor Doug, Pastor Joe Boot, Pastor Toby, President Ben Merkel, Pastor Longshore. We got a great list of speakers this year and the Topics really important Holy Wars. So make sure you go to Fight Lap These dot com to sign up for that. Also, if you guys, some of my listeners are aware of this, some aren't. But I've been working with BusinessMakers Network. You can go to businessmakers.network and basically we're building a network for courageous Christian business leaders. A lot of the Christian networks felled us in 2020 and I can go deep into those stories online and how and what happened. But a lot of Christian business networks felled us in 2020. So we really do need a courageous Christian business network to, I think kind of to bring together like-minded business leaders and to help with economic development and spur on kind of growth and build for, build their businesses for their local communities, for their church and for the, really for the good of our nation. But we're also involved in applying our business network, applying our business community to influencing politics. There's just a bunch of good stuff going on. So go to businessmakers.network, sign up or if you need to contact me at Waterboy at crosspaltic.com. I'd like to talk to you further about that because business makers network, I think, is really key for what we're doing and rebuilding the Christian economy and what we're doing in America these next 20 to 40 years. We're in a fight and this is, this is a big key to that fight. So businessmakers.network, good stuff happening over there. Also save the date for our national conference at the end of May in 11 and 10 a.m. end of May last week in the May before Memorial Day weekend in a, in Tennessee. And I'll get you those specific dates coming out here soon. So with that said, I want to bring in to the show Pastor Jacob Tanner. Pastor Jacob Tanner, he's pastor of Christ Keystone Church in Pennsylvania, probably part of the Keystone pipeline. I don't know what you know. And he's fellow of Joe boots at Joe boots Ezra Institute and everything. So Pastor Tanner, thank you for coming on the show man. Yeah, thanks for having me on today, Gabe. I appreciate it. Yeah, where did the word Keystone come from from your church? Christ Keystone Church. So it makes more sense if you're looking at a logo. So it's the Keystone state, right? But if you look at the logo that we designed the T is basically across. So what we tried to do is say that it's Christ's one church. So we're part of the Catholic church in the reform sense of that word. And you know, while also demonstrating that he holds the keys to the church, thus we have ecclesiastical authority. The logo makes sense when you say that loud though, people are normally like. So it's just a Pennsylvania church. Sure. Yeah, kind of. Yeah, yeah. That's fun. Okay. And then your maybe just real quick just introduce yourself to our audience. You're, did you go up Christian? What's your background? And then we'll get into your book here soon. I want to know the background of Pastor Jacob Tanner. First, we talk about this book. So nominally Christian, if anything, I actually grew up Roman Catholic. And so we were really good Roman Catholics. Great Roman Catholics go to church twice a year. Christian Easter, we didn't go at all. But we did do basically all of the prayers. You know, I had statues of saints all around my room, which I think a modern horror movie today would have a field day with because my bedroom as a child, five years old was just decorated with statues of saints. Angels, prayers hanging from the wall, whole nine yards from there. We went to basically extreme charismatic and penicostal churches. So huge, huge leap. And then that was all in New York, where I grew up. And then we moved to Pennsylvania when I was 12 from there. We went to Holiness churches, Wesleyan churches and basically Nazarene churches. And so there was this very big idea growing up that you had to earn your salvation. Now the weird part about all of this is I can't remember a time that I wasn't a Christian. So going all the way back to age three, my earliest memory is me praying that Christ would forgive a sin that I had committed. And if I'm honest about that memory, I had to have prayed before that because that wasn't a new thing. It wasn't in a church. So my parents at the very least taught me about Christ. They taught me to trust in him for salvation and to trust in him alone, which again, from a Roman Catholic perspective, makes absolutely no sense, but they did the best that they could possibly do. And it wasn't until we moved to Pennsylvania that we really began to faithfully attend Protestant churches. They weren't the best churches. There was a lot of there were a lot of theological errors. A lot of personal errors from leaders. I touched on some of that in the book actually. But around age 14, 15, I really began to question, how can you be saved? How can you be certain that you're saved? And the catalyst for everything for me was we had a revival if you're familiar with those. And a pastor came into this revival and he got up front and he was preaching, you know, yelling at everybody screaming. And he said, now listen to your church. I've gone weeks without sinning. I haven't needed to repent at all. And as a 14 year old kid who was brutally honest, I sat there thinking to myself, man, I have sinned. I don't know how many times since I got here. Like, I don't want to be here right now. I remember looking at one of the girls as we walked in who's actually now my wife. But anyway, I was like, I've sinned since I've walked in. I'm a horrible sinner. Am I even saved? And it put me into this phase of terrible sinful introspection for months where every single day, and this is not a lie, people hear me say this and they're like, you're exaggerating. I'm not. For weeks and months, I would spend every single night praying for about four hours, repenting of every single sin I could think of and I could imagine because I was just obsessed with the idea that there was no possible way. So I said, like me, could be saved. And what finally got me out of this, what finally brought me over, I guess, to the reform faith without knowing it was Martin Luther. His own testimony, he ex-describes going through exactly what I was going through and he hits this point where he's confessing his sin so much to a priest that the priest says, stop. Go on, go on commit a real sin before you come back and confess to me again, which for a guy in a monastery is like, what in the world was he going to, what was he getting up to that was so bad? But I understood it because I was like, I'm going through this as well. And it reached a point in his own words where he's teaching through Romans one and he's thinking about Romans one. Now it's Luther so it only makes sense that he's thinking about Romans one while in the bathroom and he's in his own words, he's on the toilet. Yeah, yeah. It's one 16 and 17 for he is not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ for just the saving power of God to all who believe to the Jew first and also the Gentile for here in the righteousness of God is revealed that just shall live by faith. Right. And that so he has his own like wake up moment. Okay, we're saved by faith alone. And I'm not a very emotional guy. I'm probably 14, 15 years old at this point. And I had that emotional moment where I was like, I've been saved this whole time. I'm performing. I'm trying really hard and that's wrong. And I had that same moment again a few years later when I was about 2021, but the whole point is what brought me out of that funk was guys like Martin Luther, guys like Jonathan Edwards believe it or not. Yeah, pure. Good old faithful Puritans. Yeah, exactly. And so I've kind of been studying the Puritans and reading them and in some ways, I suppose emulating them ever since in the sense that I want to make America, Puritan again. And so like, okay, so G three published this book, a qualified man. Obviously you're talking about Titus and Poland from qualified elder man. And to me, this is probably a more important topic to the church than the church wants to make it out to be. Absolutely. Especially as it even applies to just talking about elder qualifications specifically to elder qualifications. Now you talk specifically in address elder qualifications specifically, but then part of your point is also every man should strive. Correct. And then you have to live out these elder qualifications. Yeah. And there's other books that came before this that I'm trying to think of a he wrote the book New Testament Deacon, but also he wrote the book New Testament elder was it or what was that? What was that book? It's a it's a legacy elder book. I've read in our church reads it my church eldership. Anyways, I can't remember off top my head right now. So it's not like this is a new topic that you're talking about. This is a written on topic. A topic that's been written about, especially from the reform perspective and everything. But like why in some sense do you think a new a new book needs to be written about this? So we look back over the past, I don't know, two years. And well, in one sense we've lost several faithful men who were really carrying the torch for Christ. I think of guys like Vody Bachum, whom I loved. I also think of guys like John MacArthur, you know, despite having a very different eschatology than us. Still a faithful man of God. And you watch these guys die out and you start to ask, well, where's where's the next generation? And then you look at the current generation that's still here. And it's like every other week over the past two years, they've been getting disqualified. They've been leaving ministry and they've been falling into deep serious heinous sin. And so my question has been, well, who actually is left to be qualified at this point? And then there's a ton of guys who are currently preaching their pastoring, their pastoring, air quotes there, I guess. And they have giant platforms, but actually they're not qualified either for a variety of different reasons. And so me to thinking, why have we not taken it so seriously? Why do we have, first of all, so many men falling away from ministry becoming disqualified, falling into heinous sin? Why do we have so many men that are filling pulpits that honestly shouldn't be? I don't believe that they've been called to preach and they're not qualified to preach. And the other issue with all of that then is that it's creating incredibly unhealthy churches. And if you have unhealthy churches, you're going to have an unhealthy culture. The culture is not going to be Christianized. It's not going to be effectively reclaimed for Christ if the church itself is not about the business of reforming. And the church can't reform. If the Pope is not reforming, right? So over the past two years, I really began to recognize this is a problem. And I recognized this problem even years ago when I was a teenager. We had a pastor at that time who was permanently disqualified from ministry. I talk about this a little bit in the book, but he based long story short. He had engaged in what was likely in a fair with one of the members of the congregation. He was married whether or not it was true at the time. It was definitely true after the accusation was made. And I remember it split the church. I remember people leaving. The church never really recovered. And when you think about these things, if you really love Christ and if you love the bride of Christ, which Christian should, then it creates this impetus, this need to desire purity within the bride of Christ, but also to really desire purity within the pulpit. And I think that even though we've had these books written, I don't think guys have taken them seriously. Now they've been written from very great academic perspectives, right? My goal with this was we need to go further. I need to create something here that's accessible, something that is hopefully short and succinct enough for men to read today because there's so many different things flying for our attention. But then I also look at the home and I say, well, Scripture tells us that within the home men are to be prophets, priests, and kings. We have to meet these qualifications here as well, at least we should strive to. And so all of that combined made me realize, okay, this is a work that I think would be beneficial for our church first. Because I train pastors, I train up elders. And then I said, I think maybe it will be helpful for the church at large. And this is probably the fastest turnaround I've ever had. I wrote the book, asked if G3 was interested in the book and it was published. So it was a very quick turnaround, which kind of answered to me that it was needed. Yeah, that was right thing. Normally when I get people on the show, basically I get them on because I need to talk to you. Some level or another. So I'm a talk to Pastor Tanner about my life. I grew up in those who listened to the show have heard kind of my story a little bit in the past. But I grew up in the Presbyterian church. Love the Presbyterian church. Love my PCA brothers. Have a lot of friends in the PCA world still to this day. I went, when I got to California, I went to evangelical, kind of reformed, baptism, evangelical church. But that was only because there's no PCA church there within an hour of driving. So stuff like that. So the PCA church was very dedicated to growing up. And then now I'm in the CREC. I moved to Moscow, Idaho in 2022. And now I'm in the CREC denomination. But I, you know, I've a couple of things. And these are, some of these are just big statements that we don't need to take time flushing out. I'm not going to point in the interview, but I think it a lot of ways right now. Obviously America needs reformation revival. But I think America really needs reformation revival in the church. I think there's a lot of people who are on the pews that either aren't Christians or are so apathetic that the church is where reformation revival really needs to happen. Right. And then I would, but I, but it makes sense to me because I think there's a lot of failure in our church leadership in the church. You know, just in, just in the three PCA churches I went to where my family was a member at in Texas, Oregon, and New Mexico. The pastor was either went committed a sin that disqualified him or his kids disqualified him. And, and like, I mean, like this is even like up for debate. It's like a 15 year old, the pastor's daughter, 15 was sent off the boarding school, got pregnant, had, had a child out of wedlock. You know, they, they, they, they suspended the pastor's daughter from the Lord's Supper for two years by the time we got there. I mean, it wasn't the offer to debate out crazy. And he was still pastoring when we got there. And that by the way, I'll just interject here. That is a requirement. It says that the children of ministers of elders must be faithful. Right. They must be faithful to the first Timothy three, first Timothy three. Yes. And, and so, you know, I, I could my, let's say we call it a random experience going to a PCA church in Texas, a PCA church in New Mexico, a PCA church in, in Oregon. And the pastors were disqualified from either their own sin or their kids. And yet they were still pastors in the pulpit. That has to be actually at pandemic levels in the church. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It is. And this is something that I can attest to myself. I've seen it. Everyone's got a story. Yeah. Everyone's got a story. I read, when I was reading your story about the church that you experienced in, in your book. And I was just like, it wasn't the same as my stories or whatever. But I was like, here's another one. Yeah. Keep going. Keep going. Well, we can see it. I'm just thinking of several different examples that I've witnessed since writing this book. And well, let me back up here. I wrote another book a few years ago called Why Sally Can't Preach, which continues to pay dividends for me and my reputation with a, with a major group of people. But back just several months ago, we and our church were talking about working together with another group, right? And it wasn't anything. I guess it was a clasiascical by nature, but it was just working together to better the community. And effectively, what we were told is that there was no interest in working with us for two different reasons. One is they said that I was too political and they wanted to remain neutral within society, which is a whole different ballgame, right? That's that that is filled with error itself. Nutrality's impossible. But then secondly, one of the big issues that they had with me was my stance on elders needing to be biblically qualified. And looking at the list, they were like, hey, there's things within this list that no, no man can be qualified. No, no man can measure up to this side of heaven. And as I then began to dig a little bit more and find out, you know, what's what's going on with these churches, this entire subset of church. And it was a lot. I began to pinpoint in each one of them. Okay, so this is actually a failure on this minister's part. Yeah, this guy graciously should not be pastoring because he didn't manage his household well. And if you can't manage your household well, how are you going to manage the church of God well? And I mean, it was just a snowball. The more I began to look into these churches that we had thought about working with, the more covered, there's no way we could rightfully work with them because they're not governed by biblically qualified men. Therefore, they're actually not functioning as biblical churches at this point in time because to be a biblical church, you need to have the word of God rightly preached by a qualified man. And you need to have the sacrabents for a minister. Well, if you don't have qualified men, you can't do that. And then you're in church. You're starting to sound like the CREC. So actually, actually that now this might be some people might think this is unfair, but actually I think this is the reality of the situation. You know, we had the whole federal vision controversy that happened over, I don't know, the last 15 years or something. I actually think the root of that controversy is over what it means to be a faithful pastor because I like, I have the controversy. The controversy is in different areas, but one of the big parts of the controversy was basically a bunch of Presbyterian denominations charging us at some level that we don't believe in justification by faith. Right. That's some of them. Which is, I mean, I've been under passable since 2002 and I can't tell how many times you preach justification by faith on the pulpit or wrote about it on his blog or in his books or whatever. So it, but I, I was part of what I was these guys who were kind of analyzing Doug's writings or charging us with, you know, this federal vision controversy. They're smart guys like to have PhDs and I kept, I kept trying to figure out trying to figure out like, why can these guys not follow an argument? And why did they keep charging us with not believing in justification by faith? Like it, I could never answer that question until I, what, what I think, I don't, I don't know when the light turned on for me. And I think some of these guys, this might be an unfair characterization, but I think it's a fair generalization if that makes sense. And what I think is, is that I think there's a real problem with qualifications in Presbyterian denominations with pastors. Oh, yeah. And so I think it was actually over in Doug's written on, you know, what it means to be a husband, what it means to be a father raising faithful kids. He's written on all the qualifications. So I actually think this, this, this battle underlying it all was actually, who was being faithful and who was qualified to be a pastor. And that's why they, I don't think they could read our arguments well is because I think, again, not all these guys, but I think there's an epidemic or pandemic, etc. So unqualified pastors in the pulpit, in the PCA, in these Presbyterian denominations. I mean, we all know the term PK. Why do we, why do all our ears, you know, our hairs on the back of our neck stand up when we hear the term PK is because pastors are known for raising unfaithful children. And that's crazy. That's not just crazy. That's sinful. And I think I would actually go a little bit of a different direct, although I think we're on the same page with that. I think the other big issue there is patriarchy, right? Actual, leading your family well. So a big part of the federal vision problem from what I understood and keep in mind, I was not in the reform world at this point. When it was really big, I would have been what like eight years old. I wasn't, I wasn't really into all of this stuff at that point in time. But, but, and I think that, yeah, because it started in 2002, right? So I would have been eight at that point. Anyway, the point is, as I go back through these documents and I read about it, here's what I'm noticing. There is a lot of pseudo intellectualism across denominations. So that's not just Presbyterianism. That's all over. And you know, you know the pseudo intellectual type, right? They have, they have a very particular characteristic, particular way of dressing, particular way of looking. And what they will often do is they will highlight just how smart and intellectual and wise they are. And when they preach, I mean technically they're saying the right thing. They have the right education. Yeah. Yeah. At, on a technical level, it's fine. Yeah. But nothing's actually being accomplished. I said, I've said on the show that PhDs have been devastating to the church. Oh, 100%. And again, you, you look at a lot of these guys, technical, on a technical level, theologically, they're sound, but on a practical level. When it comes to raising their families, when it comes to leading their homes, they're abysmal failures. And again, we could point to a lot of different things. I blame egalitarianism and feminism for a lot of this. I blame complementarianism for a lot of this, which surprises people because they'll often go, well, aren't you complementarian? No, biblical patriarchy is ever slightly different. Although some people do mean what I mean when they use the term complementarianism. Anyway, all of these things working together have produced a generation of men who are weak in their spines. They have no spined. They, it's effectively turned to jelly. It's a gelatinous spine. And I've often said that many of these pastors today either need to get the seminary training out of their mind because it didn't prepare them for ministry at all. They need to actually prepare themselves for what ministry is all about, or they need to find their spine. And that may require lacking them over the head with it a couple of times. But that's what books like this are written for, right? To find the spine, hit them over the head a few times and say, hey, in a spirit of love, of course, say, hey, you need to wake up and recognize what time it is. This is what we need to be doing is we need to be reaching, yeah, we need to reach to the white collar worker for sure. But we also need the blue collar, guys. In fact, they're the backbone of our churches. And if we're not reaching to them and if we're not helping them and if we're not training them, and if we're not leading by example, well, then our ministry is going to be absolute failures. And that's what I think we've seen. So often across denominational lines. Yeah. And I agree on your additional analysis of patriarchy. You know, we would, and I'm sure you're on the same page here too, like, I use the word patriarchy that doesn't bother me at all. But I would say the bigger theological connection there to me is the view of covenant. Yeah. And how covenant theology affects how I view myself as the father. Right. And how it affects my view as a husband. And then, you know, with the job, like responsibility of all the sins of my family, kind of, correct responsibility. Not that I'm individually at, at sin when my son sins, but I'm responsible for my whole family and their spiritual condition, kind of thing. That's a federal ad ship in a nutshell. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and this gets into federal vision. I mean, that's part of the federal vision argument, which is rare. I think a lot of people, you know, a lot of these PhDs would read it and start confusing, you know, representation with justification by faith with saved by works and not by grace, all these things. And so it kind of compounds there. Now, let's talk specifically. And then I got a couple questions here. You have a chapter in there in your book talking about the five sins. The five sins that basically elders cannot commit that they're that they're that Paul puts up that says, hey, these you can't be given over to this. Right. Those five sins, I'll just read them off real quick. You say an elder can't be arrogant. Can't be quick tempered. Can't be a drunkard. Can't be violent. Although that pastor who beat up his neighbor recently, I'm kind of like I'm pretty simple. Like that guy can't be greeted for gain. So those are the five sins, arrogant, tempered, quick tempered, drunkard, violent, greedy for gain. And then you focus on those in chapter five. I assume because I mean, obviously Paul specifically mentions them. You just can't do this. Can't do this. But there's also, I'm trying to think through like in 2020 when churches shut down, I think a lot of pastors should have stepped down. And so I'm trying, I'm trying to think like what? I mean, I think I think I have my argument, but I would love to hear like it doesn't. The Bible doesn't specifically say if you shut down your church, you shouldn't be an elder for pastor. Right. My question makes sense here. What would be the technical grounds for maybe thinking through maybe some areas where the Bible doesn't specifically mention like like Paul does here. And why a pastor or an elder might need to step down. So thinking back to 2020 and looking at that particularly, I think that we're on the same page there. And I would say there are several instances I can think of even in my own area where men were violent about their shutting down of their churches. And it wasn't a physical violence. It was, it was also an arrogance. An arrogance that we are right because the government tells us to do this. Therefore, do this. And if you disagree with us, you're actually hurting your church, you're putting your device of one. Yeah, yeah. And that to me was the pinnacle of arrogance. Now what I will say, I'll offer a qualification here. I know a man who I respect a great deal who when all of it was going on. He would be completely on the same side as us, right. But for two weeks for two Sundays, he did virtual church. And immediately after that, he was like, I messed up. And he went into his church and he was like, guys, I should have never shut down the church. I gave into the fear. I didn't know what to think. I didn't know what to do. I'm sorry. We're not shutting down ever again. I think there's a difference there between who's saying I have no idea what's going on. Who do I listen to? And the people who would then, I mean, I know some of them even now they're still masking up within their churches in 2026. Yeah, crazy. What do you think is going to happen at that point? Well, now I'd add to your analysis. I think there's additional kind of theological explanation for the, let's say going online for two weeks or something like that in the first part. I don't really deep fault any churches that maybe went online for the first two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, whatever it was. Because, and I would say because theologically, I believe the government, the silver government has a role in pandemics. I believe the government has a role in if our church buildings on fire and they tell everyone to get out of the church during worship, I'm not going to tell the fire chief, hey, you don't have a right to shut down my church. We're worshiping right now. Come back later. Right. Right. And so I don't have a problem with the church saying, hey, the federal, our local authorities, not the federal government, our local authorities think that maybe we need to play it safe this week or whatever. But once, but once you figure out that they're just goalable and they're buying into the fear, then yeah, you should open up immediately. Right. Once you feel like you're being played, once you get all the cards and all the everything on the table, you see everything clearly. Then I'm like, no, you shouldn't shut down in the same way. If a, if the fire chief came every Sunday to my church and said, hey, I think your buildings on fire again, everyone needs to get out. Well, the first Sunday, I'm going to do that until I want to get out of get out of the building. The second Sunday, he does that. I'm going to come outside. We're going to stay in a worship. I'm going to come outside. I'm going to check with him. I'm probably not going to have everyone get out of the building yet. You know, that kind of thing. And the third Sunday, he does that. I'm like, dude, you're so, you're so far gone off your rocker. I just say that because I think there was a lot of, I don't think theologically we've got through that. So I think people were shutting down like your friend, maybe more out of just like deference or fear than actually thinking through the theology of pandemics. But I think there's, there's some theology there that could help us better understand and not just feel guilty about maybe, you know, also wanting to listen to the civil or at least, at least hear out the civil authorities and some of the things that they're doing. But, but yeah, anyways, just well, I think we can also add to that that fear itself left unchecked can turn violent. And so, I mean, let me take this in a different route here for a second. If you have gauge in a theological debate online, then what will happen is you'll see groups of people kind of weaponizing theological language. And their goal is to basically browbe you into submission, right? You agree with my position because this is definitely what the Bible says. And I mean, you can pinpoint tons of different fallacies when they do things like this vulverism, they commit the red herring fallacy, hasty generalization, so on and so forth. But at, at the core of what they're doing when they're arguing violently or they're getting violent, if they are reacting fearfully, rather reacting with the courage that we should have as Christians. So, take it back to the pandemic. And when people were shutting down their churches and they were, they were getting upset, they were getting violent about it. I'm sure you dealt with it. I dealt with it here in Pennsylvania where people were, you know, supposed Christians saying to me, you're putting your entire church at risk, you're a horrible investor for having the doors open, how dare you do that. You should be disqualified. That's actually a weaponization of theological language. It's a scare tactic because they themselves were fearful. So, I would put, and now I wish I would have put this in the book for short, but I would, the concept of a fearful pastor actually under the violent pastor. And I would say that a fearful pastor is likely disqualified as well. Now again, there's different types of fear, but I'm saying the fear that takes your eyes off of Christ and makes you react violently or irregantly within a situation rather than submitting to what God's word actually calls you to do. Yeah, that's good. Okay, so here, I want to, I mean, this chapter's easy read, this book is easy read, it's seven chapters, it's great for your, you know, I recommend elderboards read through this, you know, that kind of thing, you know, men's groups, stuff like that because, you know, men's groups should read it because they should all desire to strive to live the qualifications of an elder. Right. While not all men are called to be elders, men should regardless strive to live those qualifications, very simple. Now, I want to push on the kid thing because this is where I think there's a real problem happening in church leaders. It's particularly their kids. Now, I think there's a covenantal, a lack of covenantal view here. I think there's a, a, a pastor's vision for his family, a disconnect between his ministry and his fatherhood over his family. There's a number of things driving this, but, but as we talked about earlier, there's a problem with elders and pastors having faithful children or lack of faithful children. Right. And what I want to, and I think honestly, man, I think if the, if the elders would leave the, lead the church in repentance, the church would repent and the congregation would come along. And I think if the church would lead American repentance, America would come along in a lot of ways. I mean, you know, I mean, I think it's, you know, judgment begins in the house of God, we know it. And I think the reason why we're under judgment is not because of the LGBT crowd. The reason why we're under judgment here in America and we're not seeing God's hand of blessing is because the church has not been faithful. It's the only explanation for that. And so we need to wake up. So, but I want to particularly press on the kid thing because one of the, first, you have the, you know, the church. And first, you have the extreme side of this where I have, I'm not going to say the area or whatever, but I had a friend who was taking care of their kids were the same age and the, and the pastor kids came over to her house there, you know, 10, 11, 12, something like that. And the pastor was a Baptist, not even reform Baptist Baptist Baptist, you know, probably probably not quite a Rick Warren Baptist, but a Baptist Baptist. And the kids were talking to the mother, the friend of ours. And somehow they got on a conversation with Jesus, talking about God and stuff. One of their, one of the pastor's kids asked the mom, am I Christian? And the mom was like, do you love Jesus? And he was like, yeah, do you believe Jesus died for his sins? Yeah, you know, he goes home and tells the pastor's mom, hey, mom, she said I was a Christian, you know, this 10 year old kid, this 11 year old kid. And the pastor's mom calls her and says, what are you doing? My kids aren't baptized. They haven't accepted Jesus in their heart. Don't tell them their Christians. Don't fake it for them. It was like the crazy. So that's, that's the extreme side of like, like creating insecurities and, and a kid's faith, right? I'm familiar with it though. I've seen it. I'm sure you have all the way to the other side of this of we're talking, I want to remind everybody we're talking about pastors with faithful children or, or elders and pastors with non-faithful children. That's what I'm getting at here. So you might need to bear with me just for a minute. And then the other extreme side is you have a pastor whose kid leaves the house and then leaves the faith at age 22. And the pastor doesn't think he needs to step down either. And, and so you have the fruit of kind of this unfaithfulness. You have Baptist pastors who refuse to baptize their kids. And, and they know they're, and they say their kids aren't believers. And yet they remain in the pulpit. There's a little weird contradiction there all the way to like kind of my side of Presbyterian world. It's like, hey, he, they, they, he's a junior left the house. He seemed to be a believer then. And now he's 22 and he's obviously not a believer now. And the pastor is still pastoring. So how do we sort through like this faithful kid dynamic where, you know, so I'll just kind of, it's a broad question, but I kind of painted it. So love your thoughts on this. No, it's actually a fantastic question. And this has been a huge topic of discussion at our church. I've actually talked to several pastors about it. Some, some actually very well known that I'm sure listeners would know as well. And it's been fascinating to me that a lot of people take a different approach to that text. So let me just let me explain this first. It does say within Titus chapter one that a, a elder is to have children who are believers. Depending on your translation, it may also state that they are to be faithful children. So for example, I think it's the King James that says he has to have children who are faithful. Whereas like the ESV will translate it as they should be believers. And the core, the hinge of the argument is the Greek word, Pista, which we know really means faith, the way it's used here. It could either mean faithful or it would mean believing. I take a dynamic approach, which is that it's basically the same concept. Either way, you know, so here, here, let's look at it from the Baptist perspective. The Baptist perspective is like Vody used to say you treat your children like their bipers and diapers. And effectively, they, they are not part of the covenant. You don't treat them as part of the covenant community until they make that visible, tangible profession of faith. But the problem with that is, and I believe Vody even pointed this out and some other Baptist appointed this out recently. And I'm thankful for it is that you can't really do that if you're going to follow God's commandments, like you raise this child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. So what are you going to do? Wait until they make a profession of faith and then say, ah, those first 10 years where I ignored and neglected you and didn't bring you to church and didn't pay attention to you. Well, we have we have to make up for all of that now. So you better start coming to church and now start training. No parent is going to do that, right? Every critical or I should say at least every faithful Christian parent is going to look at that and say raise a child up in the way they should go when they are older. They will not depart from it. I'm going to faithfully raise them as though they are a Christian currently in the hope in the prayer that they make a profession of faith. And as it turns out, Baptist and Presbyterians and even Lutherans aren't too different on this front because although on a theological philosophical level, they'll be disagreements for sure on a practical level. There's a lot of agreement. We're going to raise our children as Christians. So this is then my approach. How do I raise my children? I raise them as though they're Christians. I trust that I was going to save them. I believe that as a federal head within my home, I'm the head of the household. Therefore, body follows where the head goes. Right? Another way of explaining federal headship is to think of Christ. Christ is the head of the church. The church is his body. We talk about imputation, double imputation and salvation. So my sins are imputed to Christ. He goes and he bears them away as far as the East is from the West from one scarred hand to the other. They are gone. Never again to be remembered against me. And his righteousness is imputed to me. I am actually clothed, cloaked and covered in the very righteousness of Christ. But how does that happen? Well, it happens because I have been imputed into Christ's body. Right? So if you think if listeners are like, what does that mean? Think of amputation. Amputation is the cutting away of something that was previously attached. Imputation is the attaching of something that was previously foreign or alien to something else. So Christ is imputed to me. He's now my head. I'm imputed to him. I'm now a member of his body. And that when God looks at me, he sees not me, but he sees Christ. Right? Now men act as the federal heads of their home, who went to together here and what do we end up with? That means that it is the husband and father's responsibility to basically represent his family before God and God before his family. Now if he does that well and he does that faithfully and he does that as God has commanded him, I don't know of any Baptist or Presbyterian listening to this that would ultimately disagree with the logic here that God will save that child in history at one particular point at one particular time because hey, God keeps covenant faithfulness to a thousand generations. I should have the earnest expectation and belief that God loves my children more than I love them and I love my children quite a bit. And that means he's going to save them, but that also means I have a responsibility. I have a duty. So do I treat them as heathens that are my enemies that are Christ's enemies? No. Because they're in my home. God has entrusted them to me. My job is to actually train them and lead them. And like a profession of faith, you count them as Christians. So I'm aware some of my ideas here, some Presbyterians will be like fantastic and some Baptist will be like, oh no. And then on the flip side, you'll have the other thing. But I had my younger boy, make a profession of faith recently at age four. Actually, he was still three years old. I counted it 100% as valid. I said, he has saved, praise the Lord. I've known people that are like, you have to delay baptism. Then if you're a Baptist, you have to delay baptism. At that point, I would say, well, that's just in Peter's view, which is, you know, he's a staunch Baptist. He was on a video interviewing on this topic and he was saying, you know, 1617, 18, I would still 16, 15, 1617, I would still hold them off and make sure that the conversions real before I baptize him, even if that. Right. Right. And I would say that's, I can understand. I can appreciate the logic that they're going for, right? Because we even see this within the early church. There are some who argue you have to put off baptism. You have to cataclyze first. You have to go through all of these things. But what we see within scripture, from even a Baptist perspective, you would see that we read, hey, I believed what doth now hindrame from receiving baptism. And from the Presbyterian viewpoint, I mean, your children are in covenant. So just go on baptize them right now. Both perspectives, I think, are actually way closer than people give them credit for. And I mean, hey, I'm a, I'm a post mill guy and my pric on 17. We're all going to be united one day anyway. So we'll eventually get that figured out and everyone will be on the same page. I truly believe. But when it comes to raising faithful children now, I think one other aspect of this that has to be considered is if the man has failed to raise Christians within his home. There's no way he's going to raise Christians within the church. It's just not possible. So this is, this is not, and I say this in the book too, this is not mean spirited. This is not nasty. This is not cruel or unusual. This is loving and this is gracious. We care for the bride of Christ. We want to see not only Christians being produced, being discipled, being sent out and made. But we also want to see that man's family cared for. And I would argue that the man who has unbelieving children, unruly, unfaithful children has a responsibility first and foremost to his family. So in the case of a guy who, you know, the kid makes a profession of faith age 22, they're out there on the streets. They're no longer claiming Christ. He has a responsibility, whether it's to a son or a daughter, to go to them and to treat them as the prodigal son and to say, leave the 99. Exactly. And love them and design and earnestly pray for them and disciple them. Now in a perfect world, he has done that earlier and this doesn't happen. And I think that we see both situations occur. I think that there are faithful men who for a time maybe even are called to pastor who later are disqualified because of children. But listen, here's the beauty of it. Those children could then get saved. Yeah, they could then return to ministry. But my thinking on this is they're a shepherd. Their responsibility, as you said, is to leave the 99 go after the one, especially if it's their child. Man, this conversation is just getting started, but that's why people need to buy your book qualified man by pastor Jacob Tanner, Jacob pastor Tanner. Where's the best place you want people to pick up this book at? Great question. I don't know. I would say probably I think G3 is currently the cheapest. We're working on an audio book. So if you for whatever weird reason, want to hear my voice more, I will be doing the audio book version of it that should be available here some point soon. And available. I think every place else Amazon. I think you can buy both physical and Kindle. I will say Amazon physically is going to be more expensive than if you just go to the G3 store. Then you have to factor in shipping as well. So either way, one or the other. I appreciate the support. And I know what some churches have been doing and I immensely appreciate this is they've been buying it like boxes of the book. Or they're planning to buy boxes of the book to actually take their entire session through or their their board through to take the elders through. And then to use it as a requirement for hey, if you're going to enter training, you read it. Yeah. Or even just Bible study groups. I know a couple of men that said, hey, we're going to use it for our men study. So I mean, there's even study questions in it, right? And so that's the goal, the goal that the Lord would really just blessed and use it to help train up faithful men, whether that be in the home or the church or our nation. Yeah. All right, Pastor Jacob Tanner, thanks for coming on cross Paul to go on one with me. Appreciate you. Thank you so much, brother. I appreciate it. All right, everybody. Hope you guys enjoyed this interview. Make sure you go to D3 Minutes. Ramazon get a qualified man. And you know, hopefully this conversation is really helpful to you in processing kind of like what it looks like to be an elder and what your elders should look like to kind of standards your elders should be pursuing and discipling on and talking about being as simple as for. Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed this interview and we'll see you next week.