Sabrina Carpenter not Welcome in NY Church

but either way I think Sabrina Carpenter comes out looking pretty good for for for wanting to do something interesting and and not you know not not a run-ofthe-mill music video and I think originally the church kind of comes out of this looking good for wanting once again to engage with Society where it's at instead of wanting to insist that Society meet our

standards I'm Scott I'm Mark and this is church is lame the podcast where we talk about the silly things that church leaders do that make the church look silly so Scott I I've got to ask you I mean before you even start anything like when I say like I'm Mark and I point out myself like do I sound angry that I'm Mark or not angry enough or is it just in my head no not angry enough not nearly angry enough I want to feel the Venom I want to hear the Venom yeah I mean like I'm not I'm not mad about me like at least not today we have a whole schoras Borg of stories to come out here um including the rare instance where we might actually agree with somebody um that's that's horrifying it's not Greg lock is it no thankfully not but for why don't we start off in our rage mode and then we'll go go to our touchy feely side okay all right I'm I'm gonna touch you feeling my side when when that time comes there we go so for a weird video feed I'm gonna put this first story Under The Heading of you may think you're fighting the good fight but you might actually be fighting the wrong fight so in California we have a girls volleyball team that cites biblical truth in forfeiting a match against a trans player right so two volleyball two volleyball teams go up against each other one of them is from a faith-based school and they give up their season by forfeiting the game because they refuse to play against a team that has a a trans person on it so like what fresh hell yeah so well like when Jesus said like suffer ye the little children what he meant was like except for the trans once he like don't play volleyball against trans people because um clearly they're Superior to you and you lose yeah you know volleyball being classically a sport reliant on strength yeah like I understand everybody has a perspective everybody has an opinion everybody has has a faith system um everybody has their way of interacting with the world um but but that's the key is the church is uniquely charged with the job of interacting with the world you cannot reconcile to people to Christ if you refuse to deal with them like the two cannot happen together like if you refuse to deal with people you are just living in your vacuum and nothing gets done for the sake of the Kingdom which is actually the opposite of what Jesus is trying to get us to do yeah like what are you trying to accomplish by forfeiting the game trying to be right right that's really at the end of the day they're trying to be right yeah it's like you you get to sit there and go oh well we took the L because we're so spiritual like well if you're that spiritual then you would have loved that person enough to play against them exactly right you would not only would you played against them but you would have broken bread with them you would you would have made sure to be the first person to shake their hand you know may maybe you don't say things like oh I respect you or I I respect what you're doing but you just say something like you know I'm happy to be here with you you know yeah yeah like when Jesus said like love your enemy he wasn't screwing around he didn't say love your enemy unless he said love your enemy full stop right I don't know I don't know how many times I'm going to have to say right he broke bread with the tax collectors he broke bread with the prostitutes you don't hold them at arms length you invite them to the table that's the whole picture that's the whole picture Okay moving on so don't be that person don't be that person okay this is maybe my f favorite story of the week Mark um just because we get to like like you know we we talk about like fake celebrities Christian celebrities this story actually involves a real celebrity Sabrina Carpenter uh song of the summer um she she did like many celebrities did and she filmed one of her music videos in a church and you know every it's a win-win you know the church gets to make a little bit of money they're not necessarily endorsing the the musician or their their music they're just making a little bit of money off of a music video that's going to be made anyway right and so the church and the denomination you know had a um had an issue with this and um the the the uh what is this the priest obviously was not popular inside the church so the church body just kind of fired him under the blanket of he's not stewarding money

well um so like the priest paid this person to film there well Sabrina Carpenter and her organization and the record company paid the church to use their facility to to make the music video so yeah I'm not sure how his stewardship is bad then right like he actually made the church money yeah and I mean admittedly you know when I think about you know if if a band came and said oh we like we want to you know record you know a music video in your church not that you know my church is very film worthy yeah um I like there'd be some definitely you know some discussion about that I'm not sure that we could go along with it if it you know whether or not it was a Christian artist I don't think would matter it just be kind of like like this is this is not really the spaces for but I mean yeah like I I don't see like if if you come to that conclusion for your church like I have no like way to like say well that was a mistake yeah it's really interesting because because you don't know the whole history of the church right so you don't know like well it's New York so maybe they have a long history of of renting it out for you know um weddings and retion and B Mitzvah and you know jazz concerts and maybe this was just kind of like one of those or maybe not like maybe this was like a unique situation hard to tell but either way I think Sabrina Carpenter comes out looking pretty good for for for wanting to do something interesting and and not you know not not a run-of-the-mill music video and I think originally the church kind of comes out of this looking good for wanting once again to engage with Society where it's at instead of wanting to insist that Society meet our standards um but then like if they if they would have had a clear policy no music videos here they would never would have got into it and they never would have been a story but it's the turnaround that got them in trouble right oh like oh maybe maybe we want to do this but really we don't it's like like figure out what you're about before you start doing extracurricular

activities yeah I I I find this kind of exasperating just because you know it's saying like okay well like you like You' done bad at your job this this like like this one thing I feel like it should not have been like that like like a significant enough event like maybe it was a straw that broke the camel's back yeah um but I mean as an opportunity to show you know I'm not like like hospitality is not quite the word but you get what I'm saying yeah I'm sure you know it's like like hey it's like any ways we can get people around us to be able to preach the gospel in some meaningful way is good yeah it's like if they use this um opportunity to you know to preach the gospel in some way to Sabrina Carpenter then that's good and for a church to be like well no like they could be like oh you know that didn't work out the way we wanted it to so let's not do that again yeah um but you know it's all about preaching the gospel so it's like like just to to to penalize your your pastor for that is just kind of shows me like your priorities are wrong yeah yeah all right let's move on because the next story is even more fun uh maybe an arguably even a bigger celebrity okay so Denzel Washington is one of the stars of the new movie Gladiator 2 why you need to make a sequel of Gladiators behind is beyond me like it was a perfect ending there was no need to continue the story but you know in in the world of always needing a new movie to make more money they greenlit Gladiator 2 and Mark I kid you not other than like other than election news this story was the most often reported story in my Christian Newsfeed Denzel Washington revealed that that he kissed another man in the filming of this film it got cut from the film but there was actually a a um um him kissing somebody else and okay my question is why is this even a story in the Christian Media why does Christian Media even give a rip about this I couldn't like okay I say I I can't say that I can't even begin to imagine but I can't imagine and that's because you know the you know Church tends to be so redonkulous homophobic yeah that just two guys kissing um is just somehow like deeply offensive you know like I'm sure half these people that are mad about this have watched The Godfather don't care yeah um I mean like there like there are numerous um cultural uses of kissing um between friends you know between lovers Etc yeah um I'm fairly certain that like it would have made sense within the context of the story yeah that's what I'm about to say like I think I think the tension here is that that Denzel Washington would say he's a man of Faith right that he's a man who believes in God um but he's also an actor and as an actor he is as one of the finest actors in the world you know several Oscar awards All That Jazz he's dedicated to telling an accurate to story Tory words is hard yeah and so if you're going to tell a story about the the the era of the Gladiators and the U quot immorality and um the craziness of the times then this is part and parcel of the story right right that uh that all sorts of what we would Now call ungodly relationships occurred um you know in in in um in deference to the leadership of the time and the culture of the time and so did like did Christians just think that that that Christian actors can only do s that that subscrib to a Christian ethos is that where we at h i I'd like to say no but it kind of seems like that's the case yeah um it it doesn't help that our friend Candace Cameron and whatever her name is you know would take that eort like she would say happily like yeah I created a whole TV network based off the idea that there should be uh godf friendly programming you know and our favorite guy Kirk Cameron you know so so now now the loonies are running the Asylum well I mean I was thinking about KT Cameron when you were talking about that just because Kirt Cameron will you know if he ever has an on-screen kiss it you know it must be with his wife right and not somebody else because like he feels that you know acting like shouldn't cross certain bounds right and you know if that's what he wants to do I'm fine with that but you know acting a thing it doesn't mean you are the person yeah um that you're portraying yeah um either that you're nor like Tom Hanks would have died a long time ago and you fil in Philadelphia but that didn't happen you know yeah um and I think you know for believers of Faith to just refuse to portray anything like you you better have a fine reason for it I mean maybe Kurt Cameron has you know issues with listing after other women so he does not want to kiss another woman when he's acting yeah I'm not sure if that's the case but maybe if that's a reason like that's a good reason but just because oh it's tangentially gay if you do the math in a very weird sideways manner like no no and you know it's you know it's nothing that highbrow it just plays well with the only audience that he has left is really what it comes down to right all right moving on now to to the part where like we might actually agree with with some of the stories this week not fully there's definitely a story that I don't agree with but we have two stories that we might actually agree with so let's let's start with the first one that um the nominee for the Attorney General Matt Gates uh his nomination draws push back from Christian conservative groups um that's um yes please kind of miraculous y um I mean he's I want to put this in the most Christian way possible um the crimes of which uh he is alleged to have committed yeah are significant to the point where um yeah yeah and like I don't know about you but I don't think these Christian conservative groups are really mad that he did it I think they because of the kind of groups they are right like if you're a group that is against the trafficking of young girls you kind of have to be against it if you if you're a group that's against the sexualization of children then then you kind of have to be so I think they were kind of backed into a corner and if if they could they would not take a stance on it but since they have to like it was the only stand they could take and I think that's kind of spineless yeah and I think the worst part is that I'm I'm sure that there's plenty of other individuals out there just in the world broadly of politics right that they should be taking issue with that they're not that they're turning a a blind eye to because you know that ultimately that individual is going to support their you know aims and goals yeah and that frustrates me yeah you think about all the different nominees through history who have not gotten confirmed for far less than human trafficking and allegedly uh giving drugs to underage minors to have sex like oh the level h of hypocrisy that we've gone to is just mind spinning and not that I want to get into politics I don't want to get into politics but there us there used to be a time in the church where where there was utter Clarity right there was Clarity that that morals and standards and spirituality in a person's personal life mattered and that doesn't seem to be the case and that's an indictment of the church not an indictment of politics yeah and that was that was in the 90s I don't mean the 1990s I mean the '90s right no right all right moving on to one of my favorite guys to pick on John Piper you know the the ultra reformer who believes um you know that there's only one proper way to interpret scripture and by the way speaking of Tom Hanks that you referenced earlier if anybody ever tells you there's only one correct way to interpret scripture do what Jenny say says run forest run okay all right but anyway John Piper was asked a question about um should churches uh require tithing should that be a requirement right and and he basically took a stand that that was very common sense he's like look you know thousands of years ago a the ministry was set up in such a way that that's how it was designed like this man's job was to do all the spiritual leadership and in return for that function you made sure he was taken care of that he had food that he had um shelter uh that he had you know proper clothing to keep him through the cold and the wet you know and that was the design of the system and because that's no longer the design of the system uh tithing no long as a requirement no longer makes sense and I think that's a pretty Common Sense way to to look at it um other I'm worried about that though yeah yeah I mean just to say that I mean to say that we need to require tithing I think is an absurdity um like we should never like like tell people that they are like like they're morally required too you we will kick you out of this church if you don't tithe um but the other side of it is is that to say that like that that the model of you know worshippers supporting their church is is like no longer relevant um seems weird because like where else is the is the church's money coming from um if it's not the church it it's going to have to be by the church running businesses and then we kind of get to Jesus flipping the tables over right right I hear that I think it I I didn't read the whole thing my guess would be that in America especially we are moving more and more to part-time Church leadership ship true true right yeah um but my big problem with this and not a big problem but he kind of left out the fact that at almost every Church in America when you become a member you sign a membership agreement and part of that membership agreement is that you commit to tithing right and so in on the one hand he's saying well you shouldn't require it on the other hand he's kind of saying but if you want to become a member like I'm not forcing you to become a member but if you want to be take the next step in community which every like everybody wants to belong to something like so I think it's a little bit disingenuous the way he answered it because he knows it on the other side that there's a pseudo requirement to it yeah and there's just there's a lot about John Piper and what he asserts that it's just it's like it's frustrating to me and in many cases I would say dude you are straight up wrong about this yeah um but I mean there are realities that the like the modern church is going through at least United States you know it's every congregation pretty much is shrinking or if one is growing it's because other is shrinking right exactly um and like yeah like there are realities where um I don't remember if we talked about this before but I did read I think it was in Christianity Today um and it was talking about you know um like our like do churches even buildings anymore yeah like just because of all those changes it was really interesting to to think about that um like whereas you know like my church is trying to find more and more ways we can make better and better use of our facilities um you know I'm sure like how like there's a good place I think for house churches yeah yeah yeah yeah all right well let's keep moving on um okay so um in in at in in in terms of talking about uh churches kind of um reorganizing because people are leaving coming and going uh the prian Church of the USA pcusa has cut 12 National staff members as an effort to reconfigure their off their offices due to declines in memberships and donations so like like we've seen everywhere else um Southern Baptist um United methodists uh like you just said the church is generally speaking on a decline path in America and uh this is no different yeah I I I really wish it wasn't the case I for any of a number of reasons uh just because it's it's it's sad I mean it it shows that pardon me it shows that we as the church are not really doing a good job of preaching the gospel yeah and like to an extent I feel kind of like personally at fault for this even though I'm a creepy introvert yeah um and I I don't have any like of the skills necessary to be involved in I don't want to say sales but like it's that same kind of like personality like you have able to talk to people that way yeah I I think there's a lot of baggage that comes along with the phrase preaching the gospel like I would say more to the point that modern churches are failing at a higher and higher level to to be an integral part of the community the larger Community yeah right there used to be a time in this you know in this nation in your towns where like okay the uh the there's a town square right and there was like a town courthouse and there was a church and that was the epicenter of your community yeah and as you know as uh um populations have gotten bigger as Urban spraw happens um yes churches like we're building satellite churches and we're building more buildings but then the people of the buildings are coming to the buildings and the church is not actually part of the community and that's a problem yeah I know a lot of people have argued about you know churches shouldn't be streaming services for you know reasons like that um but I mean I think when it comes to preaching gospel I mean the way I would interpret it um is that we preach in word and deed um because if people know who you are and where you're coming from uh you know what you believe in and and you are really just loving on the people the community uh and like there's that they can see the Light of Christ in you like to me like that is a way of preaching the gospel exactly you know you don't have to be you know like a used guard salesman about it um but I mean how many times have have we talked or you know just cried because churches just yeah like they're just they're not preaching the gospel even indeed anymore yeah yeah let me give you a real world example of how this is failed um Emanuel Church in Franklin down here um you know so I live south of Indianapolis for those of you who don't know and there is a real there there's real poverty down here it's not just a bunch of hicks living on Farmland you know there are really homeless people there are there is real poverty there is real hunger There's real um health issues right that go along with with not being able to afford board Healthcare right and so the local satellite of the mega church in the area every year they do an annual Public Service event right so much opportunity to be the healing and hopeful hands of Jesus and what do they pick for their annual service they help the Local District who has employees to do this shut down the community pool for the summer like and I don't think there's anything wrong with helping the community shut down the pool by all means if you find that valuable then that's valuable but the people who are hurting the most are the people who should be the most valuable to the hands and Heart of Jesus yeah I mean like when you said annual is a part of my brain that just went what about the the rest of the time yeah yeah 51 weeks of the year um yeah but yeah yeah I I'm not sure what I want to call it like it's like fax Mission or like you know they're country they're Country Club churches yeah that's that's a it's a sad thing it's I don't know if that's a nice or less nice way right well hopefully it's less nice hopefully that paints the picture right like you could easily mistake it for your local golf club okay all right moving on moving on um so then the church that you hope would close um G Gateway Church we've talked about Gateway Church in the past um their Pastor um was forced to resign after he's publicly accused of sexually assaulting teenage girl uh from when she was 12 years old um so a like scandals don't just hurt one person scandals hurt the whole church so Scandal hits the church the pastor is forced to resign attendance goes down tithing goes down other leaders are forced to resign the whole structure of leadership and support falls apart the church falls apart and yeah so so the Deep staff cuts are coming to this church as a result of of not holding one man accountable not knowing who he is and how he lives his life not living in community and not forcing that Pastor to live in community um with the others of his church it's it's sad but it's in a way it's necessary and it's good in the case of this church yeah I know it's like every time I you see one of these stories about this exact thing yeah which is let's face it every week we look at the headlines way too often yeah yeah I mean I I I I get discouraged uh a lot by it you know because I'm like like how am I supposed to like reach out to somebody who is like unchurched yeah but even somebody like I know well personally and I have a relationship where I can talk about those things with when there's so much of this stuff going on inside of the church walls and it makes me kind of terrify like what if it's happening inside of my church and like like I'm just too blind to see it or like you know like it just it's it's terrifying to me yeah because you know again what Jesus says you whatever you do to the least of these you do for me yeah well I mean that cuts both ways whatever bad thing you do to the least of these you do to Jesus yeah I think I think it's very revealing how churches talk about it right so the consistent thing that you might hear from the church is well what do you expect us to do how invasive do you expect us to get right like this this is a man in America who has the right to go out alone if he wants to go out alone what do you expect from us right but then on churches that expect accountability that expect transparency those are churches that are going to be very direct with you look our pastor will be part of a home group you know our pastor will not be going out alone at night he won't be other or he won't be our pastor you know for most churches uh one of the qualifications of being a pastor is being married right so if your wife doesn't know who you are where you are that's a problem right so P churches that understand the importance of accountability and transparency talk in a very different way than churches that don't and it's very easy to tell the difference yeah and I I've heard people mock Billy Graham for yeah not wanting to go anywhere to you know without about his wife that he always refused to be you know anywhere alone with another woman he always had to have his wife with him um but you know what um this didn't happen to Billy Graham

right yeah I'm not yeah uh yeah I guess so that see I don't know I don't there's there's there's a lot of different ways but yeah I guess in one sense like if you hold a high standard for yourself and you hold yourself to that high standard then bad things tend not to happen I get that okay let's just leave that there okay let's uh let's roll this up with a little bit of uh persecution watch you know we tend to complain about a lot of persecution in America that's quite frankly imaginary right oh I had to I had to start my own TV Network Hollywood is so God unfriendly I had to start my own TV Network right it's like that is not persecution oh when when I stand outside when I stand outside of a women's health facility there are people who stand against me that is not persecution that is people using their free speech to maybe be louder than you using your free speech right but so let's talk about some real persecution just to make sure that we uh we keep some perspective uh Nicaragua once again um they have expelled the senior Bishop Carlos Herrera uh he's the head of the country's epis conference uh so there are really situations in the world where they are trying to silence Christians and they are trying to minimize um the influence the Christian church has on a country like it's real and it's like not hidden and it's not subtle they literally just expelled the man you know uh up next uh in Europe this was one was interesting and I don't want to go too far deep into it because I don't really know all the instances but apparently there were like 2400 cases of anti-christian hate crimes in Europe in 2023 2400 and so I guess I guess this number is a combination of um like individually committed crimes as well as they what they consider to be the state committing some sort of discriminat crime discriminatory words hard crime against the church and finally um a young Christian Pakistani woman um reports that the police refused to arrest her abductor and rapist who abducted her and raped her at gunpoint and they refused to arrest the man so this this is a case where you know things in Pakistan may not look all that different than things in America sometimes um yeah it's it's terrible When anybody gets you know assaulted like this that but then to have the authorities just say oh no we're not going to arrest you know um the perpetrator because you're a Christian like that's like that's just so evil to me like in Pakistan if you're Christian you are less than human where in America if you're Christian you are you are the privileged view like you are the most powerful voting Block in America y you know so so for all of you who claim persecution here in America like before you go there please think about whether or not you're really experiencing persecution yeah like search like Christian killed Nigeria and then get back to us yes please all right so that's our show for this week um we uh take very seriously what we do every week telling stories of the idiocy in church leadership that makes all Christians look like idiots this show exists to document that so that when church leaders ask the question why don't people take Church seriously here's your answer so by all means if you got something to say we welcome it uh send us a review if you're listening to the podcast give us a rating if you're watching on YouTube you know shoot us a comment I'm very good about uh reading those comments and getting back to you if your comment is pretty snarky you can expect me to be snarky back if you ask a question or leave a comment in good faith I will leave a comment back in good faith if you really want to say something in long form churches Lane podcast at gmail.com and Mark is is gonna you know G give it a good reading and and give it give it the consideration and response that is is appropriate we want to hear from you and we're part of this conversation in order to elevate the church the rising Waters lift all boats and by lifting all boats we see God's glory done on this Earth and that's my and with that go in peace and serve the Lord amen