Lutheran Church Went Down to Georgia... To Election Tamper?

this is Reverend Stephen Clifford Lee and he's harassing election workers the Chicago way so let's talk about how this breaks the church and how to fix it this is Church's lame oh my gosh uh so maybe he's a reverend maybe not we'll talk about that later who knows yeah um so so Reverend I'm going to call him Reverend Lee from now on instead of saying the whole thing because that sounds pretentious or like that he shot a president but now every time you say that I've got to go River really there's a song oh maybe I'll play it at some point in the video all right I'm glad that I'm on this end of it so I don't have to see that happen Diane sure man it's gonna be awesome it's gonna be epic forever [Music]

stay tuned just for that yeah so you know it's it's nice that we're back after it's been a little it's been a few weeks it's been a minute yeah yeah so it's it's nice to be back doing this so I'm sure I'm sure I will forget how to read like eight or nine times throughout the recording so um and hopefully that like that ends up being amusing for our our listeners exactly let's see if we can see if we can walk and chew gum at the same time today after being off for so long yeah so so to break it down um yeah this this comes to us uh by way of the Roy's report so uh so thank to them for just this gem um so Reverend Lee here um he is a pastor in Orland Park Illinois which is a suburb of Chicago um I get of course you would like you mentioned like yeah he may or may not be a pastor he could be retired um it that's a whole thing yeah but like in the whole Georgia election tampering case like of the 19 people that were indicted he managed to be one of them right which is a bit of a trick um you mean like you can see how like that headline just grabbed my attention I'm like huh now yeah yeah it's like being from Chicago it is at one time it's at one on the one hand heartbreaking and on the other hand completely predictable

like it should I mean it shouldn't be I mean it's like like so like so he's an lcms which is the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod um if you're not aware of that that is a a very like very very socially conservative uh Lutheran denomination and there's only one that's even more conservative than them that you know which I don't even know how that works um so it's like you can kind of you know guess what his politics were um in this situation I don't want to get caught up in that um I just want to be cut up the fact that this a pastor um that drove from Orland Park Illinois to what was it like Fulton Georgia yeah 12. hours yeah a half of a full day a half turn of the Earth to do this yeah yeah and you know like this guy is old and and I guess kind of maybe retired or whatever so like you know he stopped halfway he got like a hotel room

you know so you know like it took him two days to get down there like just to harass um this this poor election worker hey this was his pilgrimage to Mecca don't you make fun

oh my gosh Jordan Mark he's crossing the river Jordan yeah and the election working he wasn't just like going after any like particular random election worker this was like a an individual who was accused by um you know the president at the time of having submitted like boxes of fake ballots right so this was just some a wacky unsubstantiated conspiracy theory spout out by somebody and then this pastor took it upon himself to drive 12 and a half hours um and when like he got there of course this this woman didn't know who this Rando dude was didn't want to open the door for him and then so when she didn't answer the door he then went back and got his car and parked in her driveway and then just sat there um that is just yeah it's stalker yeah so so you know she like any like sensible human being called the police on this Rando that just parked in her driveway and then he's like this dude's telling the cops um like oh well I'm just here to offer some quote unquote pro bono service like there's no Pastors in between her house in Chicago right

it didn't occur to her to get any advice about the election beforehand oh my God so many ways this is so crazy so many ways ah yeah okay so um I know it's this is so totally absurd let me just start here I just said this parenthetically but I think it's important and I think it kind of drives right to the heart of the matter if you're gonna do stupid crap maybe don't start with the line I'm a pastor which is how he started out when all the like I guess when the police got involved and things like that like well I'm a pastor and I'm just trying to offer some counseling kind of thing and uh to which she uh quite rightly replied I've already got a pastor like I mean like come on Reverend Lee it didn't work To Catch a Predator it's not going to work here um you know it's just like giving any kind of an excuse for your behavior is immediately telling the cops that you're up to no good it's just it doesn't work it's it's interesting how the Pastoral license whether it's official or unofficial you know you you get your your you get your pastor certificate from all some online stamping house like somehow that official piece of paper it justifies the worst behavior in some pastors not all pastors yeah it does kind of like how does this become your justification for um you know kindness love uh being sympathetic being empathetic you know how does that absolve you of the responsibility to still act like respectable human being yeah and it doesn't which is kind of like you know my like my major Point like how does this break the church it's like dude you're a pastor take care of your congregation hello stuff that's happening in Georgia unless it's like a relative of one of your congregants has nothing to do with your responsibilities exactly I think the internet age and the YouTube age and the live streaming age has caused us all to forget that churches are local organisms they are planted locally they grow locally they are supposed to bless the local area right because in Georgia they're not their own churches that bless that area there's no need to make this commute from one place to the other because in in a country as connected and as um you know um what are we what is it called the modern we are modern we are uh what am I thinking what's the word we are in an age of information Aid Information Age yeah it's you throw a stone in any direction and you are bound to hit a church there is no shortage of Christian thinkers in Georgia to help people who have questions about voting to help them like understand how to vote in a spiritual context or how to how to how to interpret the Bible to have bearing on the way they think about public policy right that's already taken care of right yeah yeah and it's like you know I kind of like my my second point that I wanted to point out about that is it's like um you're a Christian um in Illinois um you are not a member of law enforcement um or the justice system in any way shape or form in Illinois much less in freaking Georgia like you know what is your deal I mean like it it does it makes it it just makes the church look so bad when Christians are going out of their way to just do things that aren't their responsibility to try to force the world to behave the way they want it to behave yeah can I go one step further because I think bad is kind of a generic term I think it makes the church look cowardly that like at least the January six people at least they you for for all of their um misguidedness at least they have the guts to possibly take on the Capitol Police and possibly you know the National Guard or whatever right that was a possibility yeah this dude just goes after a a a single woman who has no protection who has no expectation that she's about to get harassed in this way like this without a doubt in my mind Paints the church writ large as kind of like the Cowardly Lion you only step up and Roar when you know that you are in the safest position as possible yeah you know and it just is like all inspired by an abstain

unsubstantiated accusation

and like we're supposed to be committed to truth which means just going on like just Whole Hog into trying to take the lawn in another state into your own hands is is is Tripoli insane to me um and and like you said don't begin your defense whether I'm a pastor because when you are a pastor like you or me just going out and doing some jackass thing you know is going to make Christians look bad to some degree um just because we're Christians if we announce that we're doing this for the kingdom like where they're freaking Blues Brothers like I'm on a mission from God you know um like that's that's like strike two and strike three is you're a pastor it's like you cannot make the church look worse than you have yes yeah or maybe I'm just like blowing it out all out of proportion you're not if like like you said if you're gonna break the law and start with I'm a pastor there better be the the world's largest cop chase in film history involved you know what I mean yeah this one is just so like for for a small scale thing like there are things that are Beyond The Pale that are large scale like when our friend in Texas um you know locked the doors of his church during a major hurricane to keep people out who needed shelter you know that is beyond the pale under large scale but then when you bring things down to this pale this this small scale just a single Pastor that nobody knows you know it's still Beyond The Pale like if you if you have a functioning conscience which I hope you know people who are professional speakers of God's truth I hope they have a functioning conscience like that quote unquote still Small Voice should be knocking you in the head saying don't do this home now you know and it just it floors me that at no point in this 12 and an hour 12 and a half hour trip with an overnight stay did it did it occur to this guy that this not might not be a great idea yeah and I don't know it just it's a complicated situation and when we talk about you know what is like the role of you know our religious practice and how does that inter like in terms of how it interfaces with politics okay there's there's no easy conclusion to come to you know I I'm not going to sit there say like well Christians should be just completely you know without political motivations like everything is political I just it's just life you know it's the definition of politics it's people's lives we're dealing with um but what I can decidedly say is that what what Yahoo series here just did isn't it yeah no doubt I mean like like this is not how any Christian should engage a political process so it's like we're not harping on Reverend Lee for having a political opinion that's perfectly fine but how he went about doing anything with it was it was shameful and it makes Christians look like maniacs and people are already kind of on edge especially in certain circles like they're worried about you know Christian nationalism and they're worried about some of these uh these politicians out there and how they're talking about trying to you know undo and roll back certain rights that have been achieved so it's like it's just kind of crazy to me let's let's go ahead and pivot and turn the corner and and bring how many bad euphemisms can I put in here let's uh let's bring this plane in for a landing and I want you to save your fix for last because I think it's the most relevant but let me just let me just say this in terms of fixing um what you just said is a really important aspect of how to fix this at some point and I don't know like when this started I think it probably started with like Jerry Falwell in the Moral Majority kind of thing at some point we stopped trusting our congregations to think for themselves like we we lost the ability to just preach truth and then trust people to go home and let it stew and then make good decisions based on what they heard at church now we basically just spoon feed people as if they're in second grade here's how you should live your life based off of my interpretation of the Bible and so I think one of the fundamental things we need to do to to regain Trust on a larger scale than just within the church but for the world to see us and go they're not so crazy after all is we just need to to teach what we teach that's based on what we know from the Bible and Trust the world to do that information what they're going to do with that information and I think that's my big takeaway for for how to fix it I think yours is better but that's mine yeah well I mean when like with you saying that you know just it kind of makes me think of like you know videos they've seen of Greg Locke in in he doesn't so much like you know spoon feed it as he knocks you upside the head with a shovel of it um and and if you just if you don't agree with him you just don't agree with God like that's the worst kind of way that this manifests um but like this to me is like it's it's it's aiming in that direction and that's troubling but like but like I feel like my like my fix is just the dumbest thing because like it was just stay in your lane and you know I I feel like I should maybe explain that a smidge um if people actually did it but they don't so you have to say it yeah you know it's because like you know whatever like our giftings are as individuals you know and whether it's you know whether you believe you know your your skill sets are like you kind of you have like a natural skill set whether you believe that comes from God or something else I don't care I'm saying it's a gift that you have in this life um but that prepares you to do certain types of things and not all types of things um and and if if we have a gifting for teaching but then we go and we become a construction worker um where we just can't seem to ever use a tape measure correctly oh yeah it's like we we like like we are we are wasting talent and we are making somebody else's life harder so good yep that's so good you know and and this kind of thing it's it makes other people's lives harder you know like even if the accusations that were made were correct this dude was still getting in the way of anything actually happening so it's like the more like if we can just stay like where our giftings are where our callings are and when you're a pastor of a church you're calling is that church in Orland Park Illinois by the way um you know it's like we will do the best most work we can I think I said that backwards but you think you get the point I do get the point yeah all right so I think that's about as good as you can do when uh when you're trying to sum up how not to be a terrible Church stay in your lane that is as good as it gets listen we are churches lame uh I know you've heard me say this a thousand times but if you watch this episode and you're seeing this for the first time you may think wow Mark and Scott really have it in for the church and that is the furthest thing from the truth we love the church we love what it was designed to do and what it's capable of doing and we want to see the church grow and flourish we just think that every now and then things go awry that cause the World At Large to kind of go not so much that's not it and so we make this podcast so that when churches ask the question what are we doing wrong here's your repository of answers all right so if you have something to that you know about the story you want to say about the story by all means check us out on YouTube and leave a comment or a um or a thumbs up or a thumbs down or leave us one of those super like kind of things whatever they're called um and if you were to hear us through a regular podcasting app by all means feel free to give us a rating and a review and with that go in peace and serve the Lord hey if you like this video and you want to see more like it we will have a playlist up in that corner for leadership lunacy