Transcription
Hey, Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour, and I am at the Assemblies of God headquarters in Springfield, Missouri. I’m told by people who work here that I can just walk through this revolving door right here, and they’re going to let me talk with the guy who runs this whole thing—a man named Doug Clay. So let’s go learn about the Assemblies of God.
Doug and I introduced ourselves and sat down for just a minute in his office, where we got started with a question about taxonomy: Where does Assemblies of God fit? Doug, in particular, wanted to talk about two categories—evangelical and Pentecostal—that could both describe the Assemblies of God. Here’s what he had to say:
“I’ll put it this way: I am very kingdom. The basics to me: Jesus Christ, savior; you know, Jesus Christ, baptizer, healer, coming. I believe in the evangelical doctrine, the reality of heaven, reality of hell, the um, the infallibility of scripture, and the centrality of Jesus. I put it this way: in the 80s, we’re a Pentecostal movement. In the 80s, when you say, ‘Well, who are the high-profile evangelists that took a dive?’ Well, both of them are Pentecostals; both of them were associated with the Assemblies of God: Jim Baker, Jimmy Swaggart. Okay, I’m glad we didn’t erase the word ‘Pentecostal’ just because of that season of times, hiccup and association, because the word’s stronger than that. And I would say that the same is true: the word for our culture of evangelical is stronger than this season of, ‘Oh well, you’re really a voting block, aren’t you?’ No, not really. We’re kind of a theological family that’s trying to push the kingdom needle.”
We made our way downstairs to the chapel where we were set up for the more formal sit-down interview, but on the way we just kept talking shop, and he said it was fine if I shared this. I thought it was pretty good.
“So, there’s always been a tension between biblical truths and cultural practices. So I, I think it’s just a great day to kind of come back to scripture. And quite frankly, I don’t think, I don’t think the church legislatively can change the trajectory of morality in our country, but I can change the hearts of my grandkids. So I’m not interested in you knowing about what I’m gonna picket and protest, but I would like you to know, here’s what God’s word says about human sexuality; here’s God’s word as it relates to who we are. And so if I can win the next generation by bringing them into a clear understanding from scripture, I got a greater chance of investing in the next generation.”
I was really enjoying Doug’s casual candor about this stuff as we were hiking around the building, but now it’s time to sit down and get into my actual list of detailed questions and into the deep waters. So here’s how that went:
“So what is Assembly of God? You know, the Assemblies of God is a, a network of churches that’s about 105 years old now. When he started out of a, a revival movement, there are people that were very, very just hungry to experience God. They were hesitant to structure, yet the growth—they knew they had to do something. 300 uneducated, diverse group of people said, ‘We need to come together and create some commonality,’ and they did. What was big in the commonality was evangelism. In fact, one of our early vision statements, after a year of being founded, said, ‘We commend ourselves in this fellowship to him for the greatest evangelism the world has ever seen.’ So often times when people want to know, ‘Why is the Assembly of God’s worldwide, global?’ That was a part of why we started. We, we gave ourselves to that. And so 95% of the Assemblies of God resides outside of the United States. Really, when you say your AG, yeah. So we’re nearly 70 million—what you can count, there’s obviously those you can’t count—but 70 million worldwide, 3 million USA. But that was really a part of this group of people that were hungry for the presence of God and saw scripture; they wanted scripture to be their guiding principles, not bylaws. So there was a real reticence to a formal type of a structure, but as growth happened, there needed to be some sort of structure as it relates to credentials and church polity. But yeah, so I would just say this: we’re a part of the Pentecostal evangelical community, Christ followers.”
“Okay, can I ask you questions about all of those things?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay, let’s go backwards. Uh, Christ followers—who is Jesus in the mind of the Assemblies of God?”
“You know, Jesus is the Son of God, who is a part of the Trinity, and He came from heaven to earth; He took on the form of flesh; He died for my sins; He was resurrected; He sits at the right hand of God the Father; and salvation is made possible through Him. So fully God, fully man.”
“Fully God, fully man. That’s going to resonate with a lot of people from other traditions who would use the exact same language, right?”
“Okay, I’m trying—I don’t know if you want a theological—”
“Yeah, fully God, fully man. And I think, I think as, as you’re getting to know people from other traditions, I mean that’s kind of question number one. I mean, you learn a lot about where people are coming from, and I would say that our overlap on our assumptions about Jesus are identical.”
“Sure, which is awesome.”
“Very evangelical. Uh, the deity of Jesus, right? The infallibility of scripture, the reality of heaven, reality of hell, grace—I’m all in.”
“Okay, so yeah, my next question is what does evangelical mean? And it sounds like you’re framing that more as a, as a historical theological movement than a modern voting block.”
“Very much so, because as you and I have talked about, I’m concerned that the evangelicals in the USA today are under an identity crisis. You ask the typical person on the street, ‘What’s an evangelical?’ They’ll probably tell you it’s a voting block rather than a theological coalition. And I don’t like that, because I like the term ‘evangelical.’ The evangelical is what unites all of the traditions of faith. I recently came from a denominational heads meeting where the E3 superintendent or overseer was there, and it was sponsored by NAE. We broke bread; we prayed together; there was so much commonality there. But even in that group, because of what’s happening politically today, there was this, just this hesitancy about being identified as an evangelical. I’m like, ‘Not me, I’m all in’ from, from the theological perspective, not necessarily from the trending political uh, perspective.”
“All right, so Christ, evangelical, um, missional—that’s kind of a third element that you’ve been describing, and it seems like that’s gone incredibly well—70 million people worldwide.”
“It’s to God be the glory, but it’ll blow your mind. So that just in the month of February, I was in Nigeria, West Africa, for a conference for the Assemblies of God in an open air, under kind of a, a-frame building—45,000 were there. Just kind of go—it just, it kind of blows your mind. Two weeks later, I’m in Seoul, Korea, and there the, the great uh, Full Gospel Church, Pastor Yongi Cho, and now Doctor—you—seven hundred thousand.”
“And ten NFL games.”
“Yes, exactly, exactly. But it was loving the Lord, you know, a great evangelical message. I would say this: we link pretty close together, Pentecostal and mission. You know, the word ‘Pentecost’ means harvest. I think sometimes Pentecostals get a bad rap because people want to always focus on the sign gifts—tongues, interpretation of tongues—which are biblical, and we believe in, but to me, if you reduce being Pentecostal to just the tongues of fire or spirit-inspired speech, I think that’s an insult to the Holy Spirit, because Acts 1:8, ‘You shall be witnesses,’ comes before Acts 2:4, ‘The Holy Spirit descended and came upon.’ So I think part of the, part of the DNA of the Assemblies of God is that we see Pentecost and missions being hand in hand. You know, gathering Pentecost. And so to me, if you call yourself a Pentecostal, you better be very much interested in the spiritual condition of another person as much as you are the experience of glossolalia—speaking in tongues. So we, we go and do missions.”
“What are we hoping to see happen in the lives of people when, when you do that? What do you hope happens to somebody in Nigeria when they hear the message?”
“So yeah, so missionally we were driven by the indigenous church. It’s our goal is not to just go over and do ministry and do humanitarian things and go, ‘Ah, we feel good about ourselves.’ It’s to go over and equip the national church to become sovereign, autonomous.”
“That’s very not colonial of you.”
“Very. And I pray, honestly, I pray we never will, because the older an institution gets—we’re 105 years old, going into our 106th year—it’s very easy to become colonial or institutional, however you want to say. You, you get enough money to kind of perpetuate yourself. You got to—certainly—I’m going—in fact, our missions department right now is wrestling through, ‘Okay, what do we do in these countries that are developed?’ In fact, I ask my counterparts in both Nigeria and in Seoul, I said, ‘Do you still need American missionaries?’ Because here’s a cool thing: they still look to A.G. USA as mama, even though they’re bigger than uh, you know, there’s something about it—it all started right here, and from here. But I thought I would say, you know, because sometimes you go, ‘Really, Dr. Cho, 700,000, do you really need a missionary?’ But both of them were very sincere, very, ‘Oh yes, oh yes.’ I know in Seoul they were saying, ‘We really want to target our colleges; can you bring us some missionaries that will focus on the universities?’ And other—in Nigeria—look, ‘We need systems for leadership training, board training. We know how to get a crowd; we know how to have a church service; and we know how to plant churches. We need spiritual formation for leadership in the church.’ So I’m like, ‘Okay, got it.’”
“So the message that you take out—the Gospel—I, I mean, what you defined as evangelical, everything that’s going to sound familiar to everybody—what would you say is the Gospel? Like, what’s the message you want to put in front of people that is where salvation in a relationship with Jesus comes from?”
“Man is a sinner and he can’t save himself; Jesus came to forgive us our sins. In fact, whenever I lead in a, either a sinner’s prayer or believer’s prayer, however you want to call it, but I started out this way: ‘Lord, I do believe that You came from heaven to earth to die for my sins, and I am a sinner, so I invite You into my life, and with my mouth I confess and in my heart I believe that You are the way, the truth, and the life.’ So flat out, the Gospel has nothing to do with church affiliation; it has everything to do with the four spiritual laws: man can’t save himself; I’m a sinner by nature; I was born into sin; Christ came from heaven to earth, took my sins upon himself; and my accepting of Christ’s love into my life is a free gift of eternal life that He gives to me. So somebody like me going to a Free Church where we, we don’t understand tongues, we don’t do that—like, we’re still going to heaven.”
“Absolutely. In any of our traditions, there’s this whole spectrum of beliefs.”
“Yeah, and, and so there’s a lot of lumping that happens when we don’t talk to each other, because, well, there are versions of Pentecostals that would say, ‘If I don’t learn how to do that, or if the Spirit doesn’t give me that gift, there’s something wrong with that,’ and maybe there’s something wrong with them. Entrance into heaven is through the personal relationship with Jesus Christ. But at the same time, for me personally, my family, and the church I lead, I want all that God has for me, and I do happen to believe that the work in the person of the Holy Spirit, who is the third person of the Trinity, and our relationship with Him is really important, even to salvation—that there is an experience called the baptism in the Holy Spirit that’s, that provides for me spiritual maturity, that provides for me—talked about in the Old Testament, fulfilled in the New Testament, Jesus talked about. So I want everything the Lord has for me, but that doesn’t make you any less of a Christian because either you’ve not experienced it or, hey, I struggle with believing that.”
“Okay, you’re still my brother in Christ.”
“Yeah, I mean, we fist-pounded it. Exactly. It’s there, it’s there, but I, I believe it, but you know what, I’m never going to let that be the thing that keeps me from linking hands with you and say, ‘Come on, uh, let’s advance the kingdom of God.’”
“So that baptism of the Spirit is—that I think there’s gonna be a lot of people who aren’t familiar with that term.”
“Sure, is that something that happens when people become a Christian or is that an experience that happens further into—”
“Yeah, so we do believe that that experience follows salvation. You know, first of all, someone—you might ask, ‘Well, didn’t I get the Holy Spirit and I got saved?’ Absolutely. You know, the Holy Spirit comes into our life, convicts us of our sin, and establishes Himself. But we believe, according to the book of Acts and in a pattern there, that after salvation there is an experience that the Holy Spirit comes upon, and out of that experience one is receives the, receives a spirit-inspired speech. But I want to be careful because I think sometimes people focus more on the tongues and the spirit-inspired speech than they do what we call the coming upon or the infilling of the Holy Spirit.”
“Yeah, okay. What purpose in the life of the Christian—and this is an honest question from somebody who just doesn’t know, because I, I haven’t had that experience—what purpose in the life of the Christian do you feel like the, the sign gifts, particularly the gift of speech—”
“Sure, what does it accomplish?”
“Yeah, I, I just spoke on this last uh, Friday night in South Texas with a bunch of Hispanics—120 some were, or filled with the Holy Spirit—and I end my presentation on, ‘Why do I speak in tongues?’ Yeah, you know, just well, I think first there is a demonstration that there’s a, there’s a power for witnessing and a power for living. I, I think I can only speak for me; my own willpower doesn’t give me the ongoing strength to overcome sin; I need a, I need a strength outside of myself, and I see that that’s what the Holy Spirit does in our life. Secondly, I believe there’s a, there’s a power in a relationship with the Holy Spirit, particularly as it relates to spirit baptism that helps us in our, in the fulfillment of our ministry. So when Paul in Acts, I want to say 19, when he was traveling through the interior and he came into the uh, Ephesus area, he said, ‘Hey, have you received the Spirit since you believed?’ They said, ‘We didn’t even know there was a Spirit,’ and so we just got that baptism of John—that’s kind of where we’re at.”
“Exactly.”
“And then he unpacks about that. So you know what, you look at that, then you look at the gifts listed. Now here’s something that’s very important that I would want to share with my Pentecostal friends: if you’re not careful, there’s a tendency to want to put these sign gifts as, ‘Wow, these are the, these are the all-American gifts; they stand up here better than maybe these other six.’ I don’t see it that way. Sometimes we fixate, we fixate on tongues, interpretation of tongues, and prophecy. Well, they’re spectacular; they’re fascinating, even if you don’t do it; they are—I mean, if I come to an AG church, that’s what I’m paying—you see, I want to know how that works; I’m wildly curious. And frankly, anything that in any way is even the slightest demonstration of the supernatural in a tangible way—”
“Yeah.”
“—is going to be fascinating. And I think on the day of Pentecost there was a lot of people fascinated because when the upper room experience was going on, Peter emerges and all these people are going, ‘Hey, what, what’s that? What’s that?’ He says, ‘Well, this is that was spoken of by the prophet Joel,’ referring back to Joel 2, ‘the in last days.’ And then he starts to unpack this. So there’s always been a curiosity I think with, with tongues.”
“What do you hope is, is the legacy of your church?”
“My quest and my passion is to take this 105-year-old fellowship and move us forward in the following areas: Bible engagement, Spirit empowerment, and missions participation. You know, as 105 years old, we’ve kind of learned how to do a few things right. We know how to do some missions right; we know how to church plant right; we got the strategy; we’ve got the system. But I feel a passion to call this Pentecostal church back to a, to a real understanding of the Word. Um, I think as opposed to what—as opposed to being really good in worship, as opposed to really being good in community transformation, as opposed to being really good at, ‘Hey, I can build a crowd,’ but do you have biblical worldview followers of Christ? See, I, I think the Pentecostal church is attractive just by its liveliness. You think about it in the 80s, during the charismatic renew—or Catholic charismatic renewal—we experience a lot of growth because we have these Sunday night services, and a lot of mainline people go, ‘All right, I want to go over there; we really like the music; we really like the music.’ And so we’ve kind of had lively, spontaneous, but I want my kids to have a biblical worldview. I want my kids to understand human sexuality not from a Disney Channel, but from scripture. I want my kids to understand politics not from Fox or CNN, but from scripture. So, so coming back—I’m not saying being fundamentalist, yet—I, I like that word; I, I don’t—that word doesn’t bother me—don’t forfeit on anything. I don’t—you’re going—allowing a Pentecostal movement to have more fundamental understanding of God’s word, God’s word, God’s word. So that’s what I mean. And how do I engage this church known as the A.G. of being really known as a word church? But then secondly, I want to follow that up with Spirit empowerment—that that we don’t have to shy away from being Pentecostals; we don’t have to—I don’t want, I don’t want weirdos and wackos defining what it means to be Pentecostal. I want a healthy expression of a biblical understanding and a healthy practice.”
“Oh, okay, I see what that means. Wow. You feel the Holy Spirit calling you and leading you and—”
“Okay, I get that. And then our mission is participation. I don’t want to rest; I don’t want to go, ‘Okay, yeah, we’re in a couple hundred different countries; we’re doing—’ Now there’s still more; there’s still more unreached people groups; there are still more uh, countries that, that there’s very little of any presence of a Christian witness. So that’s my heart. And you know what, I think both within our tribe—the Assemblies of God—that has a lot of different expressions, and outside of our tribe, be it Efree or my friends from the Wesleyan or my friends in certain Baptist group—Bible engagement, Spirit and part, missions participation are things we can grab a hold of and say, ‘Yeah, yeah, we’re in.’”
“Yeah, I think they’re going to be a lot of people who listen to our conversation and are startled by how enormous the shaded area in the Venn diagram is between their traditions—”
“Sure.”
“—and yours.”
“Yeah, thanks for being willing to articulate it.”
“Yeah, a little bit more here, even though you already wrote the whole thing.”
“Thanks for being interested. You know, it’s good to have an interest, and I pray God’s best for you and your journey, and that what you do here helps to do a couple of things: brings the body of Christ together, you know, because we still have a lot more commonality in the body of Christ than we have separation. And if we can, in a time in our culture where even inside the body of Christ where we’re polarizing because of political perspectives or cultural—the body of Christ can come together—this is a strong, strong movement to advance the kingdom of God. And so thanks for the part that you play and sort of, ‘Hey, let’s pull these tribes together and talk and focus on—’ And I’m, I’m pleased with that. I think in some circles I’m, I’m very pleased with, ‘Check your denominational badge at the door; make sure you have your Jesus badge on.’ Scripture is, is foundation. And I think in these last days—if I can use that expression—and there’s no doubt about that—um, I’m hoping more and more that the body of Christ will be strongly unified for the end result of seeing more people come to faith in Christ.”
“I’m on the same page. Thanks for helping me take a swing and do a little bit of that.”
“Yeah, I so appreciate your time.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“All right. Doug really impressed me. And me being impressed, it’s not like some kind of gauge of whether or not something’s a good idea; I just really like the guy. I like that he is so clear on what the Assemblies of God is, what it has been. He has such respect for that, now that he also has points of emphasis that he wants to press on moving forward, and he was very clear on how to communicate that stuff. I mean, within like two minutes of me meeting him, he was already talking about, you know, the, the world right now is so overrun with political madness and strife, and the church plays right along with that. You know, maybe we’ve done too much of that in the past; that is not where we want to be. You know, speaking generally about Christians and, you know, AG—maybe outsiders look at us and they think we’re part of a political voting bloc, and that just can’t be; that’s not what we are; it’s not our calling; and we want to be a church that is about the Bible. And if we happen to think something that overlaps with the political party here, political party there, fine, but most of all we want people to understand that about us because of our loyalty to the Bible, to the text. That’s pretty cool that you come out guns ablaze and you want to tell me that stuff right up front.”
I also appreciated that at every turn he was gospel, gospel, gospel. And I know that word might mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. I believe the way he was employing that idea and that term was to say that he wants the AG—Assembly of God—church to be arrow pointing out at all times: We’re gonna go do stuff now.
This is interesting and compelling to me on a couple of different levels, because one, I am a part of a tradition that highly values the life of the mind, and maybe my expression of Christianity—a little over self-importantly at times—fancies ourselves to be super intellectual and good at solving the deep intellectual theological quandaries of history. And so we like our large, Reformed beards and our frosty pints of beer, and then we sit and we think, and then we’ll go out and we’ll do things later. That is a gross over-characterization of people who come down on the Reformed or Reformed-ish side, but I think there is a reasonable contrast here with what I just saw at AG. There’s—I mean, these are smart people that think about theology and care about theology, but whereas the more Reformed confessional tradition might be a little more inclined to be like, “No, we’re gonna be the keepers of the flame on the theology thing here, and when we have that right, then we’re really ready to take that message out,” the AG looks like they’re more willing to say, “Yeah, some of those theological questions are hard, and we think about it, and we care about that, and also we got to go do things right now because there are people who need the Gospel, and we’re going to put it out there.” I’m sure there are exceptions both ways; please don’t take offense to that evaluation one way or another, but Doug really characterizes this impulse to say, “Arrow pointing out all the time; let’s go; we’re going to be a Bible church and the Gospel church.” So that’s one of the things—it’s kind of the elephant in the room contrast between my assumptions coming in and what they’re going for.
The other elephant in the room thing is—well, I got to frame it around this Pentecostal term. I’m not Pentecostal. The Pentecostal emphasis on the Holy Spirit and particularly the manifestations of the Holy Spirit that they see biblically—prophecy, uh, healing, tongues, miraculous stuff, things like that—I don’t know; I, I’ve never seen anything like that that I thought was credible. I’ve seen people do things that look to me like an attempt to imitate that, and I’ve seen it up close, but for me it was not compelling; it looked like…
Was well-intentioned and meant to be honest, but what I have seen can't speak for everything. But what I have seen has not compelled me to think that there's a lot of that going on. What I read in the text does not draw me to that conclusion. As we've established earlier, I am wrong about tons of things, and if I knew which things I were wrong about, I'd already change them. Because I don't, I don't want to be wrong about things, but I don't know which things I'm wrong about. So then sometimes I probably keep thinking things that are actually wrong, so I got to be patient with myself. I got to be patient with other people. That is my presupposition. Their presupposition is no miraculous stuff happens, and we think it looks like this, and we think it can be inspected, expected in these different ways.
So Doug talks about the baptism of the Holy Spirit as being a secondary thing that happens beyond the moment of salvation, and Doug talks about these miraculous manifestations. But what I loved is that knowing full well where this video is going to go, and that you're going to be sitting in the audience, and they're going to be people in the audience who have the same kind of skepticism that I would maybe have, and maybe even some of you are a little more openly frustrated and burned by this stuff, maybe even a touch hostile toward those kind of miraculous claims. I mean, he knew that, then he still invited me into his office; he's still inviting you into his office; he still did the conversation, and he just owned what he thinks. Like, this is who we are; this is where we're coming from; this is what we believe.
But I loved the way that right after just clearly and eloquently explaining his position on the thing, he then pivoted to a place of saying, "And also grace to you, man, grace to you people on the internet. You don't have to think the same stuff or experience the same manifestations we believe we experience in order to be Christians." There's like a fist bump in there, like, "Okay, cool." One of the things that I'm probing for in all of these videos, sometimes overtly, sometimes a little more subtly as we talk, is I want to know what each of these churches' ethic for "what if we're wrong" is like. To what degree does your theology afford you some humility buffer? Some theologies, just logically the way they're built, can afford no humility buffer; you must be right because the authority of your theological position would be obliterated. I mean, it would be a house of cards if you were wrong about anything. So some systems just don't lend themselves to allowing for that possibility. Other systems do allow themselves more of that possibility, maybe so much so they could even become vacuous. I did not sense that here, but that's what I'm trying to feel out: What's your ethic of "what if we're wrong"?
And another thing I want to feel out is what's your ethic of what happens and what do you make of everybody who disagrees with you? And so I thought it was really cool that there was room in this theological system for a degree of humility, and that there is room in this theological system for, of course, you don't have to think the same things as us. I think Doug went out of his way to hit that point because there are expressions of Pentecostalism where adherents would say, "No, you get this second baptism of the Holy Spirit, and when you do, if it's not confirmed like we see in a couple of examples in the Book of Acts through miraculous signs, maybe you don't have the Holy Spirit, and maybe you're not even a Christian." I think that's a minority position, and if you hold that position, I'm not offended that you don't think I'm a Christian. We're past that; we can get along just fine. But it was good to get a sense of that, and I could tell Doug wanted to really nuance and clarify where AG fits in this pretty large and pretty disparate branch of the Christian family tree that we would call Pentecostalism.
But again, he goes from "Here's exactly what we think and why," he pivots from there to "And also, you don't have to think the same thing as me or experience the same thing as me to be a Christian," and then he pivots from there right back to his point of emphasis all along: "We want to be a church that is not about political power and voting blocks. We want to be a church that is not first and foremost known for our hype and our energetic worship, though we are into that, or our sign gifts, though we do believe those are real. We want to be a church that is known as being people of the book, Bible people, and people of the gospel message, people who are out trying to do transformative things and put the message of Jesus and His kingdom in front of people." I just don't know what more you could ask from a visit like this than total honesty, crystal-clear communication, and grace on the stuff that, for a lot of Christians, might seem a little bit different or a little bit uh, beyond what they've encountered themselves.
I loved my day in Springfield, Missouri, hanging out at two churches, hanging out at headquarters. Look, I say this pretty much every time, but it's a risk, right? You're smart; you're on the internet; you know how these things work. I mean, I suppose that if somebody came in with a camera and wanted to make everybody look like a clown and be a jerk and try to do damage, I suppose you could do that. Well, I want to do that; I want to make this whole thing awesomer, and I want to understand each other better, and I want to be pushed because I want to understand the grand questions of life and faith and God and death and "what the heck am I doing here" better. And I think this is benefiting me; I am growing; I am changing, and I hope that it's benefiting you to do the same. And so every time somebody is willing to take the risk of opening up about who they are and what they're doing, that's a gesture of trust, but it's also a gesture of grace because it's an investment in me, it's an investment in you, and hopefully you find this kind of thing to be as rewarding as I find it to be.
There's a reason I can do this stuff, and it's because some of you, a fraction of you, have decided to go to patreon.com/tnbh—that's the one—and support the program. You don't have to do that; it's free; it'll always be free. But wow, it just opens up the world to go and do stuff like this; it makes it affordable and possible. So have this happen because you all do that. Thank you very, very much for those of you who are the majority of the audience who don't do that—uh, it's fine; that is completely fine. I just can't tell you how grateful I am that you're up for this kind of conversation, that you're here; that in and of itself is enough. Thank you. I'm Matt; this is The 10-Minute Bible Hour; let's do this again soon.