Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I've been fired from four churches in five years because the feminine men's wives control them and they can't handle my amazing masculinity. Something like that. So instead of owning his mistakes, this dude's pointing fingers like it's everybody else's fault. And I wonder, does that sound like anybody else that, you know, does it sound like you? Whether you're single or leading a family team, the temptation to dodge responsibility is real.
So as men who are chasing God's kingdom, we're called to something higher. A culture of accountability and repentance that starts with us. So today we're going to unpack what that looks like, why it matters, and how to make it real in your life. Let's get to it.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: Run your home and your dough like a biblical boss.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Let's talk about this because I got a lot to cover and.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: Okay, go.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: I'll tell you just to set the scene.
I'm wrapping up my, my fall reviews with clients. I'm telling people all sorts of news. It's been a great year in the stock market. But whenever we do these, inevitably some of the people I talk to, I say, you're not, you're not living according to the financial plan we made, which you don't have to. It's not my job to tell you you're not allowed to spend money. It's all your money. You can spend it all today, but.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: You'Re trying to serve the people. You're trying to give them helpful suggestions. If they don't want to follow it, that's their business.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: And some people respond to that bad news by saying, thank you for, for giving me a heads up. I'm going to go back to the drawing board, figure out where the leaks are and get back on track. Other people say they will blame. They will say, you don't understand.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: You know, this is going on. And I had no control over this. And the, there's a lot of, like, different responses. So that's on my mind.
There's, there's all manner of church drama happening here in Utah. There's, there's churches going through the ringer right now from a leadership standpoint. And I'm hearing all sorts of stories about, you know, this or that pain that's being caused and there's different reasons and pointing fingers and things like that at why.
And I don't know if you know this. The, the economy is not wonderful from a jobs perspective. So I've also got guys who either are in a job they don't like or they're looking for a job right now. And I'm hearing a lot of different reactions to even something like that. Like, hey man, you don't understand. My, my job sucks because I'm so much smarter than everybody I work with or fill in the blank. And, and so I'm seeing a lot of these types of kind of complaints from a segment of the people I talk to, whether that's in my professional life or my personal life.
And what, what I kind of wanted to do is I, I, like you said in the intro, I saw this tweet, which was a guy, I've actually seen him posting stuff on Twitter for a long time now. And I've always gone, something doesn't quite smell right about this so called pastor that has putting his opinions out into the world on social media.
And this one, are his comments usually.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: About being a pastor? Is he like complaining about the pastor life or something?
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Well, like you said, his tweet was that he had just lost his fourth job in five years.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: And I've seen tweets about all other of the three jobs he lost.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Similar rants. It's not like this was a new thing. And honestly, the first time I went, wow, I feel sorry for this guy. It sounds like he found himself in a really bad situation with some, some kind of unpleasant parishioners at his church. Yeah, the second time I saw it, I kind of raised an eyebrow and I said, this story sounds a lot like the last story. And then of course, by the third time, fourth time, this is kind of broken Twitter. So the, the Christian section of Twitter has just been like, what's wrong with this jack wagon? That he's blaming everything on everyone else and there's zero introspection. And so it got me thinking about the, the concentric circles of responsibility that the Lord gives us, which Mark is.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: Kind of like JLo.
She's, she's run through a whole string of men and it's always the other guy's fault because she's, she's such a good, she's a great lady and she just, she just can't find a good guy who can really love or write.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: I think we should just pretend that that never happened and that JLo wasn't brought up here on the.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: All right, that's fine, that's fair. That's not really our wheelhouse.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: But I was thinking about how the, the kind of obvious, gross, sad story that we see on display in this guy's public meltdown around losing his fourth pastoral job in five years we can all, with a few exceptions, point to that and go, that guy really is stuck.
I think what we don't always do is think about how we do the exact same thing in our different, I was going to say kind of concentric circles of responsibility. So not to be too Jordan Peterson, but we start with ourselves. That's if you're listening to this and you're an 18 year old guy who's just like, I would like to be married and having a job and a family someday.
Your primary responsibility right now is probably you. You might have a room or a space that you manage, but basically you're in charge of managing yourself. And then you get a wife and your responsibility expands and you become a father and now we're taking care of a whole crew and then Lord willing, you've done a good job at that and you're maybe overseeing a local church community and you're one of these elder guys that people look to.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: The trick, of course, as you talk about this expanding responsibility is that you can't neglect the former thing.
Of course, oh, I've got a big job now, so it doesn't matter when I sleep, it doesn't matter my nutrition, it doesn't matter whether I'm spending time with God alone because that's one on one time. I have big responsibilities. I have to put all of my attention outward. And when you crumble in the middle, of course everything falls apart.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: Right. And so I wanted to just kind of say what we can see in caricature form on social media in this particular instance, I think it actually has something to teach us all about how to lead well, in whatever areas we've been given responsibility as men, fathers, elders, city leaders, if there's any of those listening, we'd love to hear from you.
But I, I wanted to just kind of propose that this in magical ingredient that will I think often stop you from ever getting to the point that we see on display in this, this traveling pastors tweets is, is a culture of repentance and accountability.
I think that you almost don't see some of the errors that we see on display here when accountability is present.
And there's a pattern of repentance whenever things pop up that don't align with the Lord. So I wanted to talk about that. Stephen, you kind of, before the episode started said, I'm going to need some time today to demonstrate this, so I'll give you the floor to kind of lead out with example and then we'll move on.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: Okay. I gotta know, are we gonna.
Are you gonna delve into this guy's long Twitter rant anymore or is it just a diving board? We're gonna leave that to the side because I. I'm kind of interested in his.
His story or what. What his claims are. I don't even know what they are. But do you think it's just, eh. We don't have to get into his story.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, let me. I'm not gonna read the whole thing because. Holy Hannah, it's long.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that's where he lost me.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: Yeah. You didn't even make it all the way through. I would say that.
Let's see if I have it.
I was fired as a pastor on Sunday. Yes. I was fired last year on the Lord's Day as well.
Baptists are big on works of necessity, like muzzling an ox in the ditch.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: And he goes on and he says, in the past five years, I've been fired from three churches and resigned from a fourth amidst calls for my termination. In every case, I was fired for upsetting the quot church ladies, often of both sexes. Time and time again, these ladies have pressed their husbands, deacons and elders to put me under discipline, force me into a struggle session where I must apologize for offending them. And he goes on and he uses honestly sexually explicit language to make fun of the men in his church. Terms that. Terms that come from pornography.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: He and I see some of these things on kind of what I would call the woke. Right, which is this segment of the right wing that just uses the same tactics we saw succeed for the left back when all the COVID stuff was happening. Like we're offended and persecuted by everything, and we. We blame everything on everyone. He kind of reads and he. Like I said, this is pages of a. It's not a tweet. Like what, the olden days when you could only say 140 letters. Yeah, this is an essay.
But he goes into all these stories of there was somebody that found alcohol in my church, and there was wives that were uncomfortable with the way I spoke of women and blah, blah, blah. And I think the kicker for me is that he says very openly, these are the exact same complaints that I've had at every church where I've been fired.
And his story has kind of been out there. So my guess is people.
People weren't like, looking for a rainbow flag waiver when they hired this guy.
And still they found him intolerable due to repeated patterns of what sounds like just.
I mean, I can't Even read it all without kind of saying things I don't want to say in case your children are in the car, but calling men names here.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: And then he proceeds to give advice. And I think the really interesting thing is there's a lot of comments that, like I said, this kind of blew up on social media. There's a lot of comments that say, if you, if this is your fifth church or fourth church in five years, have you ever considered that maybe there's issues with you? And every time his response is like, I can see that you're gay, you loser, or some version of that. I mean, literally, that is one of the responses.
And so I just think this, like I said, this is an extreme example. It's a caricature.
And as much as we all go, whoa, what a, what a fool. Like the Bible, we're going to read some Bible verses, this is a fool displaying who he is in public. And I think there's some of this in all of us, in places where we lead. And my goal is just to kind of tease that out and say, here's how we maybe can fix it with culture, culture building inside our homes, inside our churches, even inside ourselves.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: Great. Well, my story is real quick.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: It's the first abe's wallet retraction I can remember.
And here's how, how the story is told back to me that on the episode that we did in October, in October about Sukkot, we're kind of talking through, why would you do a festival? How do we do it?
[00:11:54] Speaker A: I said in there, I, I think I, I'm quoted as using the language, God commanded us to do these festivals. And from my friends who have talked to me since, they say that you, you kind of poked on that. Now, Stephen, what do you, what do, what do you mean? You say, we are commanded to do this. And apparently I doubled down, yeah, we're all commanded to do this.
And, and blew past it. And my, I had, I had friends who kind of gently, it happened in person, add a Sukkot gathering, as a matter of fact. And then it's also happened on email where people said, you know, you, you misspoke there. You said, we're commanded to do this. And really, no, the, the Jews were commanded to do this and we don't have to do those things anymore. That's, you know, following Jesus doesn't mean that you have to do these things.
And I've usually been quite responsible about anytime I'm talking about, say, the Sabbath, for instance. Well, it's Saturday, by golly. That's, that's, that's the Sabbath of God. I usually pretty responsible about putting the caveat up front. Hey, these things are.
These things are based on your conscience and your discernment. Just follow, Follow the Lord. But we can follow these Jewish patterns, except, you know, we don't have to. They're not the law. They don't make us saved, et cetera. And I misspoke there. So I'm, I'm. I thought I wanted to say that anyways, on. On this episode we recorded today. And then you're like, I want. I want to talk about blame shifting and responsibility. Hey, I have a little. I have a little life picture there, which is, I had, you know, I will say this, that. And I've learned this not because I'm a good guy, but I've learned this through much experience that when people say to me, hey, I think you might have misspoke on that. And I do a lot of teaching, and so there's plenty of opportunity for people to say that kind of thing to me. And when they do, I've just learned over the years it's a really wise thing to put my arm around them and say whatever you're about to say.
I'm so grateful that you would have the courage and love me enough to want to correct me, as opposed to just letting me drift aimlessly forever. So, anyways, this is my official retraction.
I misspoke on the Sukkot episode. You don't have to do Sukkot, you don't have to do Passover, et cetera.
Our stance is that they're very helpful. They don't make you saved.
So there it is.
[00:14:32] Speaker B: Great. Thank you, Steve. I'm going to come back to some of the things you just said, because what I want to do first, before we can talk about creating a culture of accountability and repentance, we should define these terms.
So I'm going to offer you a definition of accountability and then some Bible verses that support. Support that. And then I'm going to do the same thing for repentance. And I'm going to make some conclusions based on what I've seen here.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: I love it.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: The Book of Books.
Accountability. Here's my definition. This is not from Webster's, because Webster's doesn't care what the word of God says.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: Whoa. Daniel Webster was a great man.
[00:15:11] Speaker B: Probably was. Maybe he cared.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: Accountability.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: The responsibility to answer to God and others for one's actions, attitudes, and stewardship. Fostering mutual encouragement and correction within the body. Of believers.
How does that strike you?
[00:15:29] Speaker A: Sounds great. And sooner, the sooner the better, right?
[00:15:34] Speaker A: If you want to be corrected.
I'd rather be corrected on mile one of my cross country journey than mile 900, because I'm going to have to have several extra hundred miles if the correction comes later. Yeah. So we love it. We want it.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: So let me give you some Bible verses, proverbs. I could have picked 10 proverbs. I just picked two proverbs. 1531 says, the ear that listens to life giving rebuke will dwell among the wise.
Whoever ignores instruction despises himself. But he who listens to reproof gains intelligence.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: This one seems pretty obvious that.
[00:16:18] Speaker B: If we're interested in what does it say, dwelling among the wise and intelligence and life, then we should actually do exactly what you just described and say, ooh, baby, I'm licking my chops when I hear that some. Some loving rebuke is coming. Yeah, we should covet it.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: Proverbs 27, 5 and 6 says, Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, profuse are the kisses of an enemy.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: There's guys I don't like and that I don't call when they say something dumb. Yeah.
If.
May I? I didn't call you out on Sukkot episode because frankly, it didn't totally register with me. But if you said something that I was like, that's just not sitting well with me. You can bet, because I love you, I'm going to bring it up.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: And so I can just testify that this one's true.
Better is open rebuke than hidden love.
[00:17:25] Speaker A: I gotta throw a parenting tip out here. If you want your kids to be wise and intelligent, you need to rebuke them so when they do something wrong.
There's so much accommodation of sinful kids. Let's just change the parameters so that what they did doesn't seem like sin. Let's keep moving the. The sidelines, changing the rules so that the kids feel like they didn't do wrong or something.
Open rebuke parents. That doesn't mean you're. You're mean or you're shouting at them or you're crushing their spirit. But rebuke means to say that was wrong. Can't do that, Johnny. You know, it seems so obvious, scripturally.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, we're in a. We're in an ongoing rebuke process financially right now with our kids, because I did a little dad audit and I said, this is interesting. Giving has not Happened in months and months from two of my oldest. There's been no giving. And I said first, I was like, let's sit down and talk about this. Was this just an accident? Was this an oversight?
No, I just don't. I don't know. I don't really. I don't know where to give. And it's like, it was very tempting for me to go, well, I just encourage you to give and then continue.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: Think about that.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: But I felt like, no, I actually have to say, well, what you're proceeding to willfully do is sin against God. And you're also.
It's my job to teach you how to steward things. And right now you're showing me you're not a trustworthy vessel for stewardship. So we had to shut off the whole hose. Like we. We do allowance, but we also have a lot of expenses that our kids have to handle for themselves.
And so I just said, the allowance. I can't trust you with any more money because you haven't figured out how to use it. So we're going through that, and I'll report back if I figure out the end of what that conversation looks like. But agreed.
It's easy to rebuke when somebody drops a vase and shatters it all over the floor. And you're angry and you go, you shouldn't do that, you jerk.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: It's harder to rebuke when we see a deficit in our kids, and we. We.
[00:19:40] Speaker A: That's true.
[00:19:41] Speaker B: There's no. Like, the offense isn't even against me. But we have to rebuke in those cases, too. Okay. Galatians 6, my last verse on accountability. Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest YouTube be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
So this one is pretty straightforward. You're supposed to restore with gentleness a brother caught in any type of transgression.
Okay.
That's accountability. Now, before we comment, let me define repentance.
Stephen, you probably taught me this, so you can chime in, but here's my working definition. A turning away from sin and a turning toward God with a commitment to change, involving both sorrow for wrongdoing and a transformed life.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Sounds thorough and Good.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: Okay.
Acts 3:19. Repent, therefore, and turn back that your sins may be blotted out and that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. So we're supposed to actually turn. I hear a lot of confession that has no repentance attached to it in my world. Hey, guys. I messed up again.
Oh, sorry, Billy. I hope you don't mess up next week. Thanks. See you later.
No, you didn't. Turn. So this says turn back. So that your sins may be blotted out and times of refreshing may come from what? From the presence of the Lord. So there's. There's the presence of the Lord that accompanies repentance.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: This is a huge lesson we'll talk about in a second. But when you start repenting regularly, you get more presence of the Lord in whatever sphere that's happening in. It could be your family, it could be your church, but it's a good. It's a good thing to pour into the pot.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: 2Nd Corinthians 7:10. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.
So you and I have talked about this a lot. People that are, like, grieved by sin, which I think a lot of people, even those who don't know the Lord, feel grief over sin. It's painful.
And they get fed poison when they walk into, like, a church building. That tells them, you're just so wonderful. God is so happy with you.
No, now, I'm not saying we are those jack wagons that hold up the signs about God hates you and stuff like that.
We're not here to beat people into the love of God. And we're also here to say we know the solution for your grief, not you shouldn't feel bad at all because you are wonderful. Right?
That's just a bunch of horse do.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: Let's turn briefly to the Old Testament. And because repentance is not a New testament concept, Ezekiel 18:30,32. Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, everyone, according to his ways, declares the Lord. Repent and turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed and make yourself a new heart and a new spirit. For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord. And so turn and live again.
Turning, casting away from you. These are parts of repentance. It's not simply confession.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: So, as you can see, it's hard to have a culture of repentance without accountability. These two things, the reason we're talking about them together is that they really go nicely together.
Because if I just have.
I'm cool with repentance. You know, I'm. I don't trust Anybody to call out my sin.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: But I love Jesus, and sometimes he convicts me of sin, and the Holy Spirit does that. Like, he promised he would praise God, and when I am convicted of sin, man, I repent. Okay, well, then you can just repent for whatever you want and ignore whatever you don't want to repent for.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: But because there's no bros who are going to call you to account, this is. I think about this all the time in our church community. I'm like, there are specific guys that I say, if those guys point to sin in my life and I disagree with them. But there's like two or three of them going, no, this is it. I go, I don't like that. I disagree. Like, I actually don't think you're right. And I'm still going to submit to you because I am a sinful dude. So there's people who I have real submission and accountability to. I think that's critical.
Similarly, on the flip side of this, a culture of accountability without repentance is like every men's group that has ever existed where some guy confesses his porn addiction and everybody goes, oh, man, we all struggle. We're so sorry that you're dealing with that. We. We know. We do. We deal with that, too.
Let's all try really hard not to. Okay, guys, we'll talk next week. Thanks for all confessing. That's not repentance, and it's not accountability. And I'm going to talk about later. Like, sometimes you have to actually have accountability with people who aren't coming from similar places as you.
Otherwise, you just end up exactly in the.
The little swirl that it talked about up there in Galatians 6. You could be tempted by each other's confessions if you're not careful.
So anything to say before we move on? Are these definitions? Do we understand the concept?
[00:25:30] Speaker A: No. It seems very clear scripturally, that accountability is a good thing for us. It keeps, like. It keeps buffers on the side of the road, like those sharp turns where there's that guardrail. That's. That's what accountability does. And repentance, it sounds like an ongoing heart attitude that goes like, lord, I want you to correct me. And you can correct me. You can correct me directly by your spirit, or you can correct me through the mouths of those who love me and honor you. Yeah, sounds great.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: So what does this look like in leadership? And I'm talking about leadership because, like I said, I think we're all charged with leading something, even if Right now you're just leading your yourself around.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: Thinking about these circles of authority that we have.
Leaders have to prove themselves before they get promoted. Now you can go get married without proving any ability to conduct your life, but you're probably not going to marry quite as high quality of a woman if you've completely screwed up when it comes to conducting your own affairs.
So there are at least some test there where if you're trying to attract a godly woman and convince her that you're the guy she should follow for the rest of her life, you're probably going to have to get somewhat decent at leading your own life and conducting yourself. But certainly once we go from the just a single guy to a married guy to a father, if you want to have leadership in the church, we have very explicit instructions that First Timothy 3 gives all these qualifications for church leaders and they can only be proved some of them inside of a family leadership setting.
So anyone that's been in the spot of leading anything knows that things don't always go according to plan.
It's, it's First Timothy 3, none of the instructions say, and he's never encountered these hardships because he's done such a good job leading that he never ran into these challenges. It's a, it's a set of characteristics that can be true for somebody who has sailed a ship through a very rough storm. Just as much as some guy who's like, oh, all my kids just naturally gravitated towards the Lord, love Jesus and came out, everything was rosy.
I would be even a little suspicious of that guy because, like, how do we know how he's going to respond when things get tricky?
[00:27:57] Speaker B: So when things don't according, go according to plan, I would say both accountability and repentance become critical ingredients. When you're evaluating a leader and a dude who's, who's been through a few things, he knows this, so he tends to surround himself with those who will sharpen him. When I say sharpen, we all think of Proverbs 27:17, right?
As iron sharpens iron.
So I think that.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: We'Re looking, when it comes to leadership, for someone willing to take the pain of their correction and go through the humbling process of public repentance. And I think it's, I don't know, Steve, maybe you can tell me, but I don't see a lot of this in.
[00:28:45] Speaker B: The pop culture or the political or it's just, it's, it's very countercultural in whatever sphere you think of to be humble and repentant and willing to submit to others when you're in a position of leadership and authority.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Yeah, usually.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: Power and influence are so precious to people in leadership positions that they would do anything in their power to minimize their actions, to minimize what they say are the repercussions for it.
That's, I, I mean I totally understand that, that reflex, but it's just not what a repentant person does. A repentant person.
You can read the way that David talked about himself and he basically just lays down on the ground, hands an ax to God and goes, you can do whatever you want. I'm just, I, I've, I've just come, I'm just a total disaster.
And if, if God takes anything away from him, he goes, you're well within your rights to do that. And it always strikes me how many men who present themselves as leaders in the church when they are, are corrected or challenged.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: They just letting go of that power and influence, they just can't do, bring themselves to do it. They just can't, they just can't go, man, My, my sin is, my sin is always before me, oh God help me.
And I could give examples, but it just.
[00:30:31] Speaker A: Never stops. And we, we have to, our reference point must not be pop Christianity or we're going to go all wrong. Our reference point has to be these kind of scriptures that you've described 100%.
[00:30:45] Speaker B: Because I don't know if you look at some of the scandals that have unfortunately been in the headlines with popular famous pastors lately.
[00:30:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:56] Speaker B: Not only do you have guys who are making excuses for their sin, like if there's sexual sin that they have been caught up in, in some cases even like really horrible abuses.
[00:31:09] Speaker B: You know, not only do you have their twisted brains and we could even go, well, they just were a faker, I guess. We, we, we didn't know it, but they were faking. They didn't actually have a relationship with the Lord. I guess we could say that about them. But what's sad to me is you get all their disciples coming around and going, don't lay a hand on the Lord's anointed. We've been taught, we've been taught to respect authority and we believe. I don't know, I was so bummed by as a, probably an 8 year old to a 10 year old kid, I used to wake up once a week and go to the Men's power breakfast at Prestonwood Baptist Church with my dad.
And we would go and Dr. Tony Evans would be preaching.
[00:31:57] Speaker B: And he is this, he's a gifted teacher who has historically, often, if you found some Tony Evans theological error that I don't know about, please, I'm not endorsing everything he said. I don't know. But, like, often I was like, this guy teaches the truth. Sweet.
[00:32:14] Speaker A: Yes. Yes.
[00:32:15] Speaker B: Recently he stepped out of leadership and said, because I have been engaged in sin, I am no longer qualified to pastor.
That's kind of a weird thing for a pastor to say, but I'm not interested in talking about what that sin was.
And his church recently brought him on stage a few weeks ago and said, we are.
We are hiring a different pastor so that he will not be the pastor at this big church he was a pastor of in Dallas anymore. But we are laying hands on him and reinstating him to ministry and blessing him to go do ministry. I saw that never was sin confessed. And his kids even said to a publication, this guy never even told us what the details were. But it was bad enough that he took a full year where he wasn't. The elders of his church said, you're not allowed to minister.
That is a culture where there is no accountability and there's a fear that if I repent fully and publicly, I will lose my power. So it's worth it.
I am going to trade out the promises of scripture, which are times of refreshing the presence of the Lord, all these wonderful things. I'm willing to trade those for the thing I know I can hang on to, which is power, influence, whatever.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: Sad.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: And the only reason we're talking about this, Abraham's Walt listeners, we're not here to bash church leaders.
That would be fun. But we tried to start a podcast that was about that, and we were told it wasn't very righteous.
[00:33:49] Speaker B: We.
We're telling you this because, again, you. If you're a dad right now, you are in training mode for leading more people someday. And so the only way you're ever going to have the cojones if you're pastoring someday, to stand in front of people who you are in charge of spiritually and repent to them of sin or be held truly accountable to your actions is if you get used to it. And so that's kind of the last thing I want to cover today is how do you actually build this type of culture in your home? Or maybe you are in a church leadership setting already. How do you build this type of culture in a church?
[00:34:30] Speaker A: Great.
[00:34:32] Speaker B: The best thing I know how to do is just tell you if. If you get this, what are. What are the markers? Look like, of a culture of accountability and repentance.
[00:34:44] Speaker B: And I think it's a dirty word. This. This idea of hierarchy and patriarchy. A lot of. A lot of people want to apologize for the fact that God actually is not opposed to hierarchy.
But like so many things in his kingdom, this starts at the top.
So leadership is actually accountable.
[00:35:09] Speaker B: And it demonstrates this stuff instead of just talking about it. So what that means is it's easy to kind of point to the. The highest levels of leadership and say, well, that politician just surrounds himself with yes men, or that pastor. He just picked a bunch of people for his board of directors that would say yes to whatever he wanted.
But I think that even in your small group of men or your midrash or whatever it looks like, for you to have community, you have real people that can do exactly what your buddies did to you at the Sukkot gathering, Stephen, and say, you got it wrong here. And I think that one's kind of easy. But you need guys who would go, I saw anger and I even saw flashes of what I would call rage in the way that you dealt with your child that time. Or, hey, I hate to tell you this, but we're not. We're not going to pretend like wives don't talk. And it sounds like you've. You have mishandled leadership of your wife in this area.
I don't know if everything I'm hearing is true, but can we just talk about it? And you don't go, your response to that is not, well, who's talking about this?
You know, they're. They're. My wife never even said that. They're embellishing. And she. She and I are both mad at you now.
No, there could be sin in these types of things. And I'm not encouraging the rumor mill. There's plenty of sin out there available when it comes to, like, gossip and things like that. But would we, when confronted with this stuff, before we ever say, like, what kind of gossiping is happening in our community, would we first go, whatever the reason, this is on my plate now. I have been confronted with sin, and I need to be going like, hey, yeah, do you guys see this? Is this. Is this a real thing?
And what we saw in that, that Twitter post was exactly the opposite. It was blame shifting and then rallying. Hey, if I use the right language, I can stir up people who are inclined to agree with me.
And that's. That's not what we do. So I would say, if you're leading a church out there, let them see you repenting? When, when is the last time your pastor said, hey guys, I need to repent because God's brought some sin to, to light. If it hasn't ever happened.
[00:37:33] Speaker B: I'm not here to condemn you. I'm just saying maybe make it happen. And if you're listening to this and you're going, I'm not a, I'm not leading a church. When's the last time you repented before your whole family, even your little kids? Hey, it has nothing to do with you guys. I sometimes see parents go, well, I'll repent to my kids if I yell at them.
That's great. You can do that. That's kind of apologizing, repenting.
But what about, hey, I was spending time with the Lord and the Holy Spirit pointed out to me something that he doesn't like?
Well, instead of just repenting of that with my guys group, I'm going to bring it in front of my family and I'm going to show them what repentance looks like.
Do that and then you will be equipped for bigger fish when they come and you're leading more people with more responsibility.
Make repentance a regular pattern.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know if this is a place for this comment. I'll just make it real quick. As a tip, I got this piece of wisdom from Brian Tome years ago.
Very wise little comment is we were Talking about Matthew 18 and being corrected and somebody challenging you on something.
And he said every time there is a challenge that comes up, every time people can find reasons why the challenge wasn't brought the right way, that wasn't the tone, that wasn't a good tone. You shouldn't have done it in that circumstance. It shouldn't have been in front of somebody. There's always a reason. We don't like the way that came up. And he just said, whenever someone brings any charge against you and it's about sin, just shut your mouth and just listen and don't be complaining about how it happened or they seem upset, they shouldn't be upset, they should be loving and supportive. Whatever. However they seem or however it's come across, just spend all of your energies going, is this true? Is what they're saying true? Do I need to hear this? Instead of all of the noise about, well, I don't like, I don't like the situation. I like. Nobody ever does. There's no such thing as a great situation where you get corrected of sin. It just, it doesn't happen. So I like that tip. In case it comes into your life.
[00:39:47] Speaker B: Yeah, that's good.
I think on that. My, my second tip for building this type of culture is it's going to be true if you're successful, that bitterness and offense aren't the norm.
The water we swim in is a blame shifting culture. So a, if you know, if you're on social media and you don't know this, I don't know if you're really on social media, which is that a common enemy is the best way to rally support for whatever it is you're trying to do. And this can be true at the individual level. It could be like, hey, my boss is a jack wagon. I think I've used that term like four times today. I need, yeah, you love it. I need a new one. But my boss is a jerk and that's why my work life is miserable. It could be true for your family.
Hey, those woke liberal neighbors that are out there flying the rainbow flags, they're, they're opposed to us. And so we aren't. We, we don't have to be hospitable and friendly. We can kind of sneer at them.
It could be true at the past. At the church level where you go, those who question the pastor are just gossips and they're not submitted to leadership. So we are not going to entertain their comments.
I'd say in a healthy culture, leaders lead with kind of three characteristics. Conviction, openness, and humility.
So conviction is important because if you don't have it, you just become a people pleaser. So they are not completely unmovable and just like, I don't care what you say, this is what I say. But they do have some conviction and they're not out to please everyone. But at the same time, there's humility. So they reject the, the urge to shun accountability and blame others.
I kept thinking of Job.
You know, Job could have probably justifiably said to his friends who gave him just objectively bad and wrong advice. He could have said like, you guys, you guys are off your rockers. This is terrible advice. He didn't. He sat in it and just sat there and went, lord, is this my lot?
What is going on?
There was a lot of humility there. So there's humility and conviction and then there's openness which could look like, hey, everyone, let me explain why we've had some disagreement on this topic. Here's how we're addressing it. And we might come to you and repent if we got it wrong here, because we're not operating in closed rooms and behind closed doors. That doesn't mean every single thing that you hear has to be shouted from the rooftops. But I do think some level of openness is really important to good, to good leaders.
You could say I'm doing this to just generate clicks, Stephen. And you, you might. I don't know if I am. Maybe I'll come back with repentance.
[00:42:32] Speaker A: Let's see if it works. Go ahead. Go ahead and give it a shot.
[00:42:35] Speaker B: Our buddy Jeremy Pryor made a tweet. I think it was this morning or I saw it this morning. He said something on social media. He said, when a wife submits to her husband, any shortfall in the overall culture, performance and progress of the family becomes entirely his fault.
How did that strike you? How does that strike you? I don't know if you've even read that before.
[00:42:57] Speaker A: I, I read it when you kind of underlined it. And.
[00:43:03] Speaker A: I, I think I've said something very similar to that before, which is a wife gives her wisdom to her husband, then she kind of submits exit stage left, and if lightning strikes, it's going to hit her husband and not her.
What do you say?
[00:43:19] Speaker B: I just say that there is a big difference between responsibility and you. And I totally agree. And Jeremy, responsibility for the overall culture, performance and progress of the family is on you. Dad, we agree on that point completely.
[00:43:37] Speaker B: But it actually, this kind of idea of like, well, if you submit to him, it's his problem. I think that kind of appeals to the part of a woman that would want to be able to say, that's not my fault when she herself was hold accountable, because submission does not equal. I no longer have any responsibility before the Lord. And just like a father could be called out, so could a mother. There's a lot of women who need to be held accountable for a lot of things.
And this is not a. You could be. You could be under the leadership of a great husband and dropping the ball when it comes to teaching your kids math. Well, if you're a homeschooler or you could. There's a thousand things. So I do think what we're not saying, you know, is that you, this, this magical formula exists. If you do it, you don't have to take the blame for, for anything. It's. You can just say, I am into submission so I don't have to do that. We could be guilty of that in a church setting. We could be guilty of that in a family setting.
Don't do that.
[00:44:44] Speaker B: So here I just want to wrap up with a Few calls to action.
[00:44:49] Speaker B: And I think these are practical things you can do right now.
One, lead your family with both accountability and repentance. So can you find time as a family to repent and restore each other with dad leading the way in that?
If you can't think of anything that you might be able to publicly repent of with your family and maybe you and your wife just demonstrate, hey, I'm going to repent to you wife. And it would help me if you just spoke the truth that I am forgiven when I repent.
[00:45:24] Speaker B: And then, hey, family, I'm going to. I'm. I haven't been in the word of God more than once in the past week, so I'm going to be doing that. So you're going to see Dad's light go on at 5am in the mornings. And if you wake up at 5:30 and dad's still asleep, I want to be. I want to put this out there so that, that you can remind me that that would be a good thing to do.
[00:45:48] Speaker B: Number two, beware of echo chambers. Like I said, it's really easy to surround yourself with people who will endorse whatever boneheaded opinion you might have. I would say just find real friends.
Can you find men who will hold you to account not just for the things you feel comfortable with, but also the things that you don't like hearing?
So I might talk about this in my last two points, but a lot of times people want to be held financially accountable, but they only share their budget with other people who make as much money as them.
[00:46:22] Speaker B: That's weird because you all have the same temptations and the same tendencies.
Similarly, I was talking to somebody who doesn't make any money and they were kind of like slightly taken aback and offended when I said, well, you're conducting yourself financially like a, like, like a loser.
Everything you're doing here is totally irresponsible and it's sin. And they wanted to say, well, you're just, you got more money than me. But the truth was they were just sinning.
That wouldn't have come out if they had been talking to someone else that was struggling to make rent.
Next one, look. Look inward before you blame outwardly. So if you see bitterness towards others who are, you know, quote, the cause of your problems, have you first looked inward to figure out if there's any repentance opportunities or accountability opportunities?
You might ask, what am I tempted to blame? You could pause this right now and say, what am I tempted to blame and just repent of that Right now. And this, like I said, it doesn't have to just be, quote, spiritual.
I hear excuses for why a family can't save money. And there's a deafness to the simple fact that they didn't bear responsibility for stewarding their resources. They'll blame the stock market or a sales deal that fell through or a medical bill we weren't expecting, but that's not actually the issue.
Yeah. So look for those.
[00:47:41] Speaker A: I just emailed a buddy this morning. It's a mutual friend of ours. He has a lot of legitimate pain in his marriage, and I just encouraged him. You have got to make sure that there's no bitterness or unforgiveness in you. I'm not talking about her sin. Talking about your sin. Bitterness or unforgiveness? Or you're not going to start the day with a clean slate and go, how do I love this woman? Even the way that you're supposed to oppose her sometimes in her sin. You're not going to have a good grid or compass for doing that if you're walking around with bitterness and unforgiveness toward her. So, again, there's that. I got to look inward here. I got to make sure that I'm clean before the Lord and before my family. Or I can't even see straight to lead.
[00:48:26] Speaker B: Yeah, that's good.
The last thing I would say is, like, you can use those three things I talked about in a leader, in a culture that is healthy. I said conviction, openness, and humility. You could use those as kind of an audit for your own scene. So do you need more openness? Maybe you share your budget with someone who isn't in the same financial position as you. Yeah, maybe you set up a software that shares your browser history with someone who has no struggles with what they look at on their computer.
Do you need conviction? So spend time on a family vision so that you have some idea for where you're going. And put some numbers on paper and say, these are the things that will be. These are the specific measurable goals that will be hit if I do what I'm setting out to do in order to fulfill my assignments in the kingdom.
If you need humility, set aside all your excuses and repent from your role in whatever brokenness you're bumping into where you've been entrusted as a leader. Again, that could be just you yourself. It could be your family. It could be something bigger than that. But hard to find better medicine to grow humility in a person than public repentance.
[00:49:39] Speaker A: That's true.
[00:49:41] Speaker B: So I think if you do these things, you can create a culture of accountability and repentance that will really head off so much of the pain and suffering that we see leaders who might be so, so well intentioned and they're trying to lead families like biblical bosses, but they end up harpooning it and they end up a meme on social media like we talked about at the front end of this episode. Don't be like that. Build a culture in your home where accountability and repentance are hallmarks of how you operate.
And I think that you will find that you are suddenly running your home a lot more like a biblical boss than you can without those two key ingredients.
[00:50:21] Speaker A: Excellent. All right, that's a wrap for today's episode of Abraham's Wallet. Brothers, let's stop dodging the mirror and start building a culture of accountability and repentance. It's not easy, but it's the path to leading like the biblical bosses God calls us to be. Come see us at Abraham's Wallet or on er. And until next time, stay accountable and humble and lead your family like a biblical boss.
[00:50:45] Speaker B: See you next time.
