 Good afternoon, friends and family. Welcome to Unfiltered. Pastor David, it's always good to have you here with us. As always, I guess it wouldn't be unfiltered if you weren't with us. Well, it couldn't be just you, you know. Then nobody would watch. Nobody would. We'd have no views. I'd watch. You know, Pastor, a question that was asked to me this morning in our Tuesday morning study has to do with wokeness. And the question was posed is, has wokeness crept into the pulpit? And it was a twofold question. And has it hindered the Calvary Choppels in general? I know you probably could answer a lot of the Calvary Choppels, but ours specifically. And has it taken churches or the pulpit in a different direction? Well, you know, wokeness in and of itself, this sense that we're awake to certain things, right? We're woke. Wokeness is just the current way of presenting an opinion that differs from the norm. And in some ways, I would say it's an attempt to correct what people think may be the things that need correction and all of that. So people who claim to be woke seem to be culture driven in many ways. Maybe what used to be called or perhaps could be referred to as culture warriors. When the church begins to focus its attention on trying to make a message that is appealing to the world, rather than simply teaching a message that is intended to awaken in the spiritual sense of the world, we're going to begin to, at that point, conform our messages to the things that people want to hear. Or we're going to begin seeking ways to be less offensive and in doing so. We may water down some of the more difficult passages of Scripture, John. So there needs to be a wisdom in how we approach the subjects, but we at the same time have to be aware of the fact that God's truth is timeless. So in seeking how we might be able to present His truth in a way that it's not necessarily inoffensive because, frankly, the Word of God is offensive. But learn to present it in such a way as to be asking God's power through His Spirit to be anointing the words that are spoken in and asking God to help us to rightly divide the Word of Truth. I think that that is what the church needs to do. So yeah, I believe that there are some churches, many churches really, from what I'm reading, concerning this quote unquote awareness, this progressivism or whatever you want to refer to. And I believe that there are a number of churches that are bending their need to that. I do know that you mentioned Calvary Chapel. I do know that there are some who call themselves Calvary Chapel that are conforming themselves to the current model. And so yeah, I think that it has invaded our entire society and seeing that the churches made up of those within that society and seeing that the pastors also live within the world, sometimes they forget that they're in the world but not of it. And because we're living in the world and we're trying to find ways to approach biblical subjects and help people to see truth, we may find ourselves falling prey to what is the common way of presenting ideas to the point that we dilute the Word. We're not as strong in what we present and thus what happens is those who still do or come off in a strong way actually will have an appeal to those who are thinking like-mindedly. There's just got to be a balance. And the one church will say you'll have the pastors up there who, you know, it's like that old song, Home on the Range, where never is heard a discouraging word, right? That's part of the lyrics. Home on the Range Ministries. We don't ever say anything to offend sensitive hears. And then you have the other who presents himself as some warrior prince who's going to cut the head off of every demon and those influenced by him. And so you seem to have this. That's been as long as I can remember. You've had watered down gospel expositions and you've had fiery, angry expositions. And so the Calvary Chapel movement, as I've been raised in it over these years, has always been a balance. You know, we've always sought to to give the whole council and ask the Lord to help us to say it in a way that is loving and gentle and yet truthful at the same time. And you see that Jesus never bought into that what they call woke or progressivism, because he taught the word. And even he was saying, you may have heard, but I say unto thee, you know, and so it's a, there was a purpose for him to do that, that he was here for the tickling ears or how people can see things. And so I thought it was an interesting question because this person was saying, when you begin to have pastors who are drinking, you know, and posting pictures of themselves having alcohol saying that they're free and freeing Christ, when you have that, which we've seen, when you have pastors who are bringing in women to teach from their pulpits and teaching mixed crowds, you know, contrary to what I think scripture says to Timothy and First Timothy, when you have those things, I would say that you're basically yielding to the spirit of the age in some ways because you're trying to appeal to people using the cultural appeal method. So yeah, I am seeing that and there are Calvary Chapel ministries or those at least refer to themselves in that way who don't even know their underpinnings. They don't know the foundations. They really don't. And they may vocalize and say, well, we are Calvary Chapel, but be honest with you, there, there, there is more than one that is being pastored by somebody who doesn't really know what that means or what it is to be Calvary. You know, we're not a denomination, but we certainly do want to speak in conformity with the word of God and the truth of the spirit as well as being aware of how we have a unified and united voice. One last thing before we close here is this is when I was in, I used to be on the radio in Upstate New York for many years and the pastor of the church had spoken to me and he said, you know, Dave, he said, the one, the one complaint I've gotten from listeners who are not from the Calvary Chapel family of listeners, he said, is that you all sound the same. You all say the same thing. So he said, I take that as a, as a compliment and not as something that is, you know, a negative at all. But there are today people who are calling themselves Calvary Chapel who may have a loud voice, but in fact are not speaking for the movement. They're speaking for themselves and they're using the name Calvary Chapel. So yeah, that, that I do see. And I believe that that's, that's been for quite some time. Again, we all have unique things that make us what we are in the Calvary Chapel ministry is unique in that way. We're not a denomination, but we do have a unity of spirit and we do have a direction that we take in our teaching and and we do have doctrinal things and positions that we do hold to, of course. But when you begin to violate those things or you begin to invent something new and still refer to yourself as a Calvary Chapel, I would say if you don't agree and heart with where we are, if you don't agree and heart with how we, we've done things in the past and all items, I'd be speaking to a pastor right now because people who aren't pastors don't understand what I'm talking about at all, but a pastor would. I would say to that pastor, if you want to go your own direction, then please do. Just stop calling yourself Calvary Chapel. Call yourself by what you are. You know, just call yourself by what you are. Change your name and move on. It's okay. You're my brother. You're my brother in the Lord. It's okay. I told Chuck one time, my pastor, I said, you know, Chuck, I'm thinking of changing my name and Chuck was not possessive with that. He said, well, we're all going to go up at the same time and that was his way of dealing with it. I'm the same way. I just think if you cannot honestly embrace who we are as a movement, then find something else, do something else. It's okay. Still brothers, still could be friends, still love each other, we're going to heaven together. All of those things are still true. Just don't misrepresent the movement with your desire to be woke. Just don't do that. Amen. It's that simple. Well, thank you pastor in for sharing some insight on that. Just a couple of things as a reminder that we have our services tomorrow evening and we're serving communion after Bible study. So invite you guys to come out and join us. That's at 7pm. Going to the book of Romans. It's been a great study. This last one is, it kind of sparked me to do some more reading about Abraham. And as you've been, we've been going through that portion of Romans. And so want to invite you guys to come out and join us Sunday morning. We have our services at 830-1045. Great opportunity to invite our friends and family to come join us and worship. And man, you can still get your man's conference tickets at the gazebo or online and take an interest signups for Israel still. Still are. Just to see who's interested in going. You can stop by the gazebo after services to do that tomorrow evening and Sunday. So we look forward. We have great opportunity to join together as a church family. Look forward to having you come join us. Come join us for Bible study and worshiping the Lord. So God bless you. We look forward to seeing you.