Do you have a child that is gender confused?
Are you the parent of somebody that is either identified as transgender using different pronouns
or some other type of gender confused?
Just propaganda being shoved down your kids' throats.
I created the Biblically Parenting Gender Confused Children Support Group for parents
just like you.
The support group is completely free.
We meet monthly and you are able to connect with other like-minded Christian parents that
are struggling with how to parent children that are gender confused.
They're getting all sorts of nonsense brought to them by the world and I want to help connect
parents that are going through similar struggles and be able to tackle this issue through a
Biblical worldview.
If you are interested in joining this group or know somebody that might be interested
in this group, head on over to faithfullyengaged.com and there's more information about the support
group there.
I have a link down in the description below.
Welcome back everyone to another episode of Faithfully Engaged.
Today we're going to be talking a lot about church.
Most of you in the audience are either Christians or are fairly sympathetic to go into church
so I'm going to get more and more into that topic today with my guest, Dub.
So Dub, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Okay, sure.
Hi.
My name is Dub Carracher.
I am a retired pastor and author of a new book called What Is Church?
As you said.
I'm from Arkansas originally.
Grew up back in, well, the Jesus movement, which you have probably seen the movie or
heard about.
I gave my life to Jesus when I was 15 years old.
Had grown up in the church prior to that, mainline denominational church and really came to have
a solid relationship with Christ at that point.
You know, for the next three years or so, had a great time with Jesus and was in a band.
We traveled around the country singing Jesus music and just having a good time with God.
And went to college and had sort of a negative experience there with some Christian folks.
And so lost my faith for a little bit or I guess questioned, I guess.
Today we would call that deconstructing our faith and did that for about 12 years.
Just decided, hey, God, I know you're there, but you're bugging me.
So you leave me alone.
I'll leave you alone.
God did not keep his in my side.
Yeah, I kept my side of bargain or I tried to God never made that bargain.
So later on, got into the entertainment business, met my wife, Pam, doing that.
We've been now been married for 45 years and she too was a Christian who was kind of away
from God.
And in the process of all that, God showed us his love in a really powerful way and we
understood that he loved us and wanted us back.
So we recommitted ourselves to him and have been more or less faithful ever since.
Like I said, I became a pastor later on in life, pastored for about 17 years and was
a businessman.
I've done a lot of different things today.
I'm obviously an author have written the book, but also I run a nonprofit ministry dealing
primarily with the persecuted church, a specific people group in Central Asia and the Middle
East travel a lot for that.
And I'm just happy to be here and talk about church because the reason I wrote this book
is I really, I love the church and I know that a lot of people struggle with church
these days.
And the people that grew up in the church or maybe especially people that grew up in
the church and wonder what is this thing all about and do we even need church?
And if so, what is it?
So that's kind of my backstory.
Yeah, no, and what you just said there at the end, I would add that especially those
that have been in the church, you mentioned the deconstruction movement.
There's just a lot of that going on, especially in you talk about the Jesus movement.
My generation, I feel like deconstruction movement is probably a much more relevant
thing.
And anyways, we see that common with people that I used to grow up listening to different
music things that are out of the faith.
It just seems to be happening a lot.
So let's start with church, you know, people, especially in the United States typically
are going to like, okay, I can kind of know what church is.
Why is it important to define what church is?
So what's your kind of answer there?
What exactly is church?
Well, I think it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
As I said, I grew up in one of the standard denominations.
And then when the Jesus movement came along, we dropped all of that.
I was a teenager.
I was 15 years old.
And a lot of my friends ended up following Christ around the same time.
And the idea of denominations became very unimportant to us.
So we began, I guess that began my whole search about what is church.
I thought I knew what it was growing up.
And then I got a whole different idea.
I found out that the church was a lot larger than what I understood.
And I think the reason this is important is because if, especially if you've grown up
in church, you sort of have your idea, this is what it is.
I grew up thinking, well, I'm a Christian, you know, and I meant that I didn't look
in back on it now.
I guess I meant that more in a cultural sense, you know, like I'm a Christian, I'm Jewish,
I'm Muslim, whatever.
But without really the understanding of the relationship with God part of it.
And today, a lot of people are really struggling with this, I would say, especially those
who grew up in evangelical churches, there's a lot of young people that are like, wait
a minute, what is this all about?
And if this is all there is, why do I really need to be part of this?
So that's why I wanted to go back to what did Jesus and his disciples think about it?
Why did Jesus even start the church?
What is the church?
What is its mission?
What is its purpose?
What are we here to accomplish?
And take that from the Bible, take that from the words of Jesus, take that from history.
What have we seen the church be like throughout history?
And as time goes along, you know, is there an end of the world?
And if so, what is the church's place in that?
It causes us all, I think, when we look at the scriptures and look at the history and
look at the church globally, universally, it causes us all to stop and think, wait a
minute, what is this that I'm involved in?
And a lot of people have been hurt by churches.
They've been disappointed by leaders who have done all sorts of crazy things.
We know all the history.
And I wanted to take this from a positive point of view, not revisiting all the ills
of the church, because I think everybody, you know, has a pretty good handle on that,
especially even people that are outside the church, they can tell you everything that's
wrong with the church.
But let's go back and look at what it genuinely is.
And that's what I'm trying to do in this book, because I want people, we talked about the
deconstruction movement, I want people as they're looking at, okay, well, this is the
faith that I grew up with.
Is this what I really want to be a part of?
Do I even need to be a part of a church?
What does that matter?
I want them to have a solid foundation that they can start from rather than just, well,
these are my feelings and these are what my friends think.
And here's what me and my experts say, because a lot of times me and my experts get us in
trouble, especially when our experts get a little bit off track.
And if you've, you know, if you've followed, like you were talking about some strong personalities
or, you know, leaders in the church, and then you've seen them go off the rails and you've
seen people get hurt, you think, well, wait a minute, what, why do I even need all of
this?
Is there something solid to hold on to here?
Yeah, well, I had some fairly recent conversations about the importance of a foundation and not
centering it, like you mentioned, on feelings.
Feelings are not a bad thing.
God made us to have feelings, but feelings can be fleeting feelings can be off, and we
need to have something much more foundational.
And that's why as Christians, believing scripture is so important, because that's that foundation
doesn't change, whereas my thoughts and feelings very much can change.
So when when we're looking at scripture, when we're looking at Jesus and the apostles and
just the beginnings of church, what, what was kind of the foundation there of that beginning
church?
And yeah, why, why was it important?
Why wasn't it important that Jesus made made a church?
Well, I think Jesus understands that, well, Jesus was here for a short period of time,
right?
He was basically here for three years.
He told he showed the disciples what God was like.
And then he showed them how they should follow God in and follow and believe in him and follow
God, and he showed them what what he what God expected us to do here on earth.
Then when Jesus went back, I mean, Jesus came and he announced the kingdom of God is among
us, right?
When Jesus went when Jesus died was crucified, it was resurrected and went back to heaven.
The kingdom of God didn't go with him.
He left the kingdom of God here on earth among his disciples.
And that is what the church really is.
We are the representatives of the kingdom of God.
We are God's people here on earth.
And just as Jesus said, hey, if you look at me, if you want to know the father, just look
at me, you know, I do everything that the father asked me to do.
He instructed his disciples to do that.
He showed them how to do it.
He sent them out two by two, you know, to do the same kind of ministry that he was doing.
And he told us to wait for his return.
He ascended into heaven, he gave the disciples a charge and he said, and many, you know,
by that time there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who were following
Christ who would later become known as Christians.
And so he gathered together in the upper room, the power of God came upon them on the day
of Pentecost.
In the book of Acts, it gives us a whole pattern about the church and what they were up to,
what they were doing.
They were meeting house to house, sharing meals together, praying for one another, going
out and sharing the word of God with people, ministering to the people in their communities
and demonstrating the love of God in real practical ways to people and the salvation
that is found in Jesus Christ.
And that's what is the church.
And Jesus said, I will establish my church, I will build my church and the gates of Hades
will not prevail against it.
Well, in the last 2000 years, Hades has pushed back pretty hard, you know.
And so it's good to know what is the church, what are we supposed to be doing.
And we need this gathering of the people of God.
God, the whole thing about what Jesus did was he established our relationship with God,
the Father, but he also established a relationship with us.
He calls us his family.
He says that, you know, the Bible says that in Christ, we are the whole family of God
that's gathered together.
And we have a mission here on this earth.
He gave us purpose.
He gave us things to do.
We're supposed to evangelize.
We're supposed to worship him together.
We're supposed to love one another.
There's all sorts of things that he says, this is what my church will be doing.
And that's what we need to be about while we're here.
You know, everybody wants to know what's my purpose?
Why am I here?
What am I, what am I doing here on earth?
God never intended for us to work that purpose out alone.
He intends us to work it out as brothers and sisters in Christ in the church.
You know, you're using some language there of togetherness.
We're not supposed to do this all alone.
We're supposed to assemble together.
It's something within our current culture, I would say, especially post COVID, that
not that that's completely gone away, but you see a lot more isolation.
Now, staying, staying at home and doing things, not going out with other people.
Why is it so important in the church that it's not just me and Jesus and, you know,
I just read my Bible and pray all day, but why is it important that we have other people
that we do assemble together?
Why is that part so important?
Well, it was, it was certainly important to Jesus.
You know, he picked his 12 disciples.
He spent three years with them and taught them everything he intended.
Then he told them to go and do the same thing.
It's important for us because we actually do have an enemy.
Like I said, Jesus said, I will build my church so the gates of Hades will not prevail against
it.
He said, I came to destroy the works of the devil.
You know, is there an actual devil?
Sure.
You know, is there an actual God?
Yes, there is.
And we can look at the world around us.
If you can't see the effects in the world that says that there is a deep and pernicious
evil here operating here on earth and a culture that has been set up by this evil, then I
don't know that you're paying much attention.
And it's hard when you face that kind of evil, when you see that kind of evil.
We're never intended to go up against that alone.
It's important because Jesus loved us enough to come down here and live among us.
And show us who God really is.
And we then in turn need to live together with others.
Does that create some friction?
I mean, do we rub off of each other sometimes?
Sure.
But also it's really difficult for the, it's more difficult for the enemy of our soul,
the devil to pick us off.
We can get sidetracked.
I don't believe that, I personally don't believe that you can lose your salvation.
If Jesus has saved you, I know some people do.
And that's okay.
It's within their right to believe that.
But it's harder for that to happen if you are in community with other like-minded believers.
You talked about the Bible and that being the foundation, well, it is.
But the Bible, just like salvation, belief in Jesus and being saved by him, the Bible
also takes a leap.
You have to take a leap of faith and say, this is going to be the foundation that I'm
going to use as my point of reference in my life for how I'm going to live, how I'm
going to believe, how I'm going to operate.
A lot of people question whether the Bible is accurate or not, you know, and you hear
all sorts of arguments about that.
So about that, yeah, it does require a leap of faith and just as believing in Jesus requires
a leap of faith.
And it's, I think God knows it's helpful for us to have people around us who look, take
that same leap of faith together and can encourage each other when we come under these kind of
attacks.
It's a tough world we're living in today.
And if we believe the Bible that Jesus is going to return and we kind of read the end
of the book, well, it's going to get even tougher.
My parents went through World War II.
I can't imagine what that must have been like.
We have very short memory spans, you know.
We tend to think of things only in terms of what we've actually experienced.
But throughout history, people have been through all sorts of difficulties and they need one
another.
I spend a lot of time with the persecuted church, with people in the Middle East and
in Central Asia, where it's illegal to be Christian, basically.
It's illegal to have faith in Christ.
And believe me, you need other people around you.
You don't do that by yourself.
It's helped shape my view of the church and the need for the kind of community that we
have.
This is not a given.
The love of God, that's just not a given.
You know, I work with a lot of Muslim background believers.
And in Islam, there is no, the Quran doesn't say anything about God being a God of love.
That says a lot of other things about God, but it doesn't say that he's a God of love.
And the idea that there is a God who actually loves us personally and is invested in our
lives personally, and not just an angry God that we have to try to appease by our, you
know, obedience or good works or whatever.
That just doesn't exist.
And it doesn't exist in other religions either.
It's one of the things that makes Christianity unique.
And there's so many commands in the scripture that we're to love one another, serve one
another, prefer one another.
We need all those things happening in our lives.
We need to be engaged in that ourselves.
And there's sometimes we need to get some of that back when we're going through tough
times.
Kind of along these lines about what the church needs to be, what it was intended to be, and
some of the benefits there of being alongside other believers.
How has the church Christians just in general, how have we kind of failed here recently?
Like what are ways that Christians in the church as a whole are not being like Jesus
currently?
Well, love is the big thing, right?
And I don't know that Christians, and I'm talking about Western Christians or Christians
here in the United States, I don't know that we do a very good job of showing the love
of Christ.
It's like we forgot what it was like to not know God or to be away from his presence
or to be ignorant of God and who he is, of his holiness and all those.
We're really quick to show judgment to people.
We love John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever
believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
But we forget the scripture after that, John 3.17, where it says, for God to not come into
the world to judge the world, the Son did not come into the world to judge the world
but that the world might be saved by him.
There is a judgment coming, but it never says that Christians are supposed to be doing the
judging.
And as a matter of fact, we're to show the love of God.
It's the kindness of God, the Bible says, that leads us to repentance.
We're not even very kind.
I mean, just go on X these days, you know, used to be Twitter, just go on X these days
and look at the Christians, you know, going at it with each other and not just with each
other with people who are not believers, don't share the same values that we do, don't have
the same understandings that we do.
And man, unkind is probably one of the weakest words I could use about some of the ways that
we interact with other people.
How is that demonstrating the love of Jesus?
The only people Jesus ever got upset with and was ever unkind with were the religious
people who were trying to put rules and regulations on people that weren't even, you know, in the
scriptures.
I think that ought to give us all a pause as Christians.
If we look at who Jesus was, what he did, how he served people, how he spoke to people,
how he loved them, how he touched them, you know, and healed them and did those sorts of
things.
And then we look at the church today.
Is that what we're doing?
It needs to be.
And I think those are some of the ways that we're kind of really missing the boat.
We're quick to point the finger at other people and not recognize that, listen, I'm a sinner
and I needed a savior to save me from that sin.
And I think the church needs to do a much better job of that and not be so critical,
harsh, judgmental.
People get enough of that in the world.
We don't need to be.
We don't need to be piling on.
You know, it's an interesting topic here that especially when we're dealing with the outside
world, not within within the church, that there is the there is truth standing on on
truth is important and doing that in a kind way is it can be difficult, but it's important.
And I think what you pointed out there of I'm a sinner, there's that there's that humility
of showing that I don't have it all figured out.
Like yes, this is wrong.
This is sin that we all have.
But there's good news.
Christ is here and we believe on him.
He can forgive us of our sins.
That's that's that good news.
That's that gospel.
And we need to make sure that we're not, you know, we're not the we're not the good guys
here.
We're not the ones that figured it out.
Christ is as long as I have a prideful stance.
Yeah, you're not going to have a very kind response.
Yeah, that's really true.
You know, I think I think it would help if we were more honest about who we are and what
our failings are.
You know, abortion has been a big topic of conversation for years and the church, you
know, has a stand on that as we should.
We you know, we're we're life people.
We're not death people, right?
And you were just referring to being able to speak the truth with kindness.
The Bible instructs us to speak the truth with love.
Well, you know, I'll just tell you a quick personal story.
I told you that there was that 12 years where I was where I walked away from God and was
kind of doing my my own thing.
Well, during that time, and this was back when abortion, Roe v. White had passed, but
abortion was not legal in every state.
And we went to the doctor and the doctor said, Hey, you know, she's pregnant.
This was a problem for us.
My parents were Christian.
Her parents were Christian.
Matter of fact, her dad was big in one of the churches and and the the doctor convinced
us that we could get this taken care of easily and that it was not really a human life.
It was just a blob of matter at this point.
And so we went to a neighboring state and had the abortion.
And unfortunately, it went really badly for her.
And well, for us, I guess, and she saw some things that she shouldn't have seen.
And it tore her up.
And then that tore me up.
And now I'm living with guilt.
We're both living with guilt thinking, Well, we've killed our own child.
You know, I I've been a pastor.
I've told this story a lot because there are so many people who have been through this
and thought that they were doing the right thing.
We certainly thought we were doing the right thing.
And then you have to deal with all the emotional baggage on the other side of that.
The reality is very grim.
And, and there's a lot of guilt and a lot of shame that goes with that.
I think we it's good when we can be honest and say, Listen, I've been there.
And you know, I found I found salvation in Jesus.
I found forgiveness in Jesus.
I found acceptance in Jesus and love.
And that he would even forgive even that he would forgive of me.
And it was that love that drew me, drew me back to Christ.
And, and that's that's a lot better than standing there and shaking our fist at people and saying,
you know, well, this is wrong.
You can so there's the whole thing of speaking the truth and love and being honest and not
being hypocritical about our own condition.
Yeah.
Well, and again, that that was obviously a very, very powerful story.
And we read, I mean, we read throughout scripture, there's all sorts of murderers and bad things
that that happened in scripture.
And again, it's not about them being these great people that did it all on their own.
It's faith in God.
God has the power to save save people that did not deserve it.
And you and I and no one else deserves it.
And I think that messaging there is just so important that it's not about it's not about
how great I am.
It's about it's about how great God is and that humility again to share that your story
and all of our stories of sin that speaks that speaks to people that, hey, we've got
a real loving God that despite my own evil still forgives us.
That that, like you said, that's much powerful than just pointing out like you're terrible.
Like it's that that doesn't that doesn't do a whole lot for us to just simply state things.
And especially in the manner in which that that we can kind of have that vitriol towards
one another.
You know, I was in the entertainment business and most of my friends were gay.
And I love them dearly.
I went through the AIDS epidemic, you know, back in the 80s when they were the my friends
were calling it the gay plague, you know, and they were scared to death because they
were dying and getting very sick and no one knew what it was.
And then the church, unfortunately, stood up and said, well, you know, this is God's
rep duration against you all.
And those were my friends and I lost some of my my dearest friends through all of that.
The church did not handle that very well.
Why was that sin so much worse than my sin or anybody else's sin?
I think that's that's what we do as human beings.
We tend to kind of parse that and go, well, you know, I'm my sin's not as bad, you know,
I'm just I'm just a liar or, you know, whatever it is.
And and we kind of parse that out.
But we, you know, especially today with all the gender confusion and, you know, you've
got to try to get everybody's pronouns right and all that kind of stuff.
I think Christians, we have a real responsibility.
Yes, we need to speak the truth, but we need to do it in love and we need to do it with
humility.
Like you said, I think that's a big thing.
A lot of the church just has seems to have lost their humility.
And I think some of the leaders that we listen to, they they have their they have their own
agenda, I would say, are we building God's kingdom or are we building our own kingdom?
So I think we have to be careful about who we're listening to.
And one of the ways that I try to use as a sort of reminder is, is this person humble?
Is this person teachable?
Or, you know, are they projecting something else?
And I think that's why it's important for us to be together and have mutual accountability
in the church.
You need somebody that can look you in the face and go, Hey, man, you're being a jerk.
What are you?
What are you doing?
You know, if you don't have friends in the church that can love you like that and tell
you that, hey, you're you're wrong, you know, then we can easily get into more trouble than
we really need to.
And we can hard and we can really hurt and damage people.
You know, kind of along these lines, I think we all have people, those that are that are
Christian, have people that you listen to that are outside of the church or read books.
I mean, like you're you've got a book coming out and there's certainly nothing wrong with
people reading books or listening to people that are outside their church.
However, as you're saying, there's no there's no reason to not have that local body like
that's that's a requirement that we need to have that local body there.
So what would you say to somebody that's like, OK, that's all fine and good.
But I I just do I just do church online is going to church just doing that online.
Do you think that suffices for that kind of church commitment there?
No, I don't because you don't have real relationship.
It's it's I don't know.
It's it's sort of like it's sort of like dating, you know, online.
I mean, everybody connects now online, right?
You're looking for somebody online.
And that is fine and it goes to a certain point.
But if you're actually as a Christian, if you're going to follow through and you're
you know, you're thinking, well, I need to get married at some point, I need to have
someone that I can spend my life with.
I need to maybe there's a family that God has for me.
At some point, you have to actually have a real in person face to face kind of meeting
that because you can be anything you want to be online, right?
You could I can present any sort of image that I want to online.
But when you actually are together with someone in person, well, there's some reality there.
And I just I don't think that I mean, there's nothing wrong with listening to podcast, watching
services online, you know, whatever.
But you cannot live as a Christian.
You cannot live your whole life online and think, OK, I'm, you know, as the scripture
says in Hebrews, you know, we're not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together.
Well, I can assemble myself digitally together, you know, but but can can I actually be together?
It's like when you go off to college and you think you got it all together and then suddenly
you have a roommate who has different, you know, is different from you and you've got
to put this together.
Are we going to have a relationship or not?
I mean, with a with a roommate, you can just simply request, hey, I need somebody else
or whatever if it's not working out.
But you know, it doesn't work like that in the kingdom of God.
We're going to be spending eternity together.
And I think trying to do this online is not ultimately beneficial.
I mean, you talk about covid, that was really tough for everybody.
And Kylie, there were, you know, there were churches that took all sorts of stands on
that.
There were Christians that took all sorts of stands on that.
And and ultimately, you know, Jesus is in charge of the church, right?
And we have to we have to be obedient to Jesus and what he's telling us to do.
And that may be different for different people.
But it's some point if you sat at home in your pajamas on, you know, and and did church,
you know, every Sunday for two years, and you were perfectly fine with that.
At some point, you're going to have to establish real relationships with people again.
Life, life moves on even after pandemics.
And sometimes we get stuck, I think.
And so, you know, is at that point, what do you do?
Well, you pray and you go, OK, God, you know, what do you want me to do?
Your your word is pretty specific.
I'm supposed to be an actual fellowship with other people.
We're supposed to be doing things together like, you know, sharing the gospel together.
We're supposed to be loving one another, serving one another.
We're supposed to go and take the good news to all the world.
How am I going to do that?
How would you have me do that?
And then and then do it, do what God is telling you to do.
You know, kind of looking back at the the COVID timeframe, the church I'm currently going to,
I did not attend during the very beginning kind of March 2020.
But the decision that they ended up making was to they closed down kind of initially
when everybody was was closing down.
But they never chose to do any live streaming or anything like that.
Not saying that churches that did do that were necessarily wrong.
But the reasoning I read through this after we joined, I really liked the reasoning was
they wanted us not meeting together or at the time them meeting together.
They wanted that to hurt.
They wanted that to not be natural and to feel like we can just tune in on our phones or on the computer
and that will replace meeting together.
So the way they did that was for however many weeks that they were off, they're like,
we want you to miss each other.
We want this to not be an enjoyable, easy time where I can just sit on the couch and get used to that.
So when they did meet together, it was like it was a celebration.
Like we were back together.
And I really appreciate it kind of learning about that when I came in of how serious that this church takes meeting together.
It is that important.
And yeah, there's great resources online.
All sorts of great sermons.
There's some sermons I've listened to that I really appreciate when they say like this is a this is an online resource for you.
But please find your own church to go to.
But yeah, you can learn all sorts of things out there, but you cannot neglect meeting in person, like you said.
So I really appreciate that answer.
Yeah, I think that's terrific.
I mean, I like the approach that your church took.
As I said, I spent a lot of time and people with other parts of the world with Christians and other parts of the world that.
Listen, they didn't stop meeting.
I mean, if if you're in Iraq or you're in.
You know, Syria or somewhere and all you can do is meet together as a small group.
You know, there's no large group available.
You meet in somebody's home. You may or may not be able to sing songs because it might attract attention.
To what you're doing and the authorities might show up, but you meet together, you share the word together, you pray for 1 another.
You take communion together. What do you know you do the normal things that a church does.
But when COVID came around.
I mean, and it wasn't because of ignorance. It wasn't like, oh, well, we don't understand what a pandemic is.
That it's just that that's life to them.
And to not do that is not life. And so they they never quit doing it.
You know, did there's I mean, was the where their repercussions for that? Sure. Sometimes there were. I mean, it was tough. But I think here in the West, we.
We have so much and we can easily jump online or.
You know, however you get on your phone or whatever you want to do.
That's just not an option for people in a lot of other parts of the world.
Especially those that are that are in places that are.
Hostile, you know, to the gospel of Jesus Christ. If we could get.
A better idea of the world that we live in.
And what it means to be a Christian, not just here in the West, not just here in the United States.
But what it means to be a Christian as part of the the broader community of Christ in the world.
I think it would.
It would help us a little bit to to get out of kind of our I me my.
Kind of thinking and the scriptures pretty clear that, you know, the I me my thing.
Is not really the way that God wants us to go.
You know, for those that are interested in more of the global church, like you said, you've traveled a lot.
You've really been hands on to a lot of very persecuted places towards the church.
But I'm thinking of somebody that's, you know, kind of just.
They've got kids there, they've grown up in their same hometown, and maybe they don't even have the resources to necessarily.
Travel today anyways to to go to a more hostile place towards Christianity.
How could that person, how could they get a little bit more connected and maybe have a deeper understanding.
Of some of the struggles that other Christians and different parts of the world have.
That's a good question and I think the answer to that is one of the.
One of the things that the church is to do together.
You know, the gospel, Jesus told us in the in the Great Commission to go into all the world and preach the gospel all creation.
Well, you don't have to go to the other side of the earth to do that.
I mean, you can go to the grocery store.
You can you can go to your neighbor's house.
But one of the things that that I think that God gathers the church together to do.
Is that that that have any any church, I think that's being obedient to God and to that commandment needs to be engaged in in the church in the world in some way.
And that's something that we can do, you know, we like you say a lot of individuals.
I just don't have the resources.
I may be disabled.
I can't, you know, get around.
There's a lot of reasons why people can't go to other nations get involved in that way.
But there are one of whether you have a church that meets in your home or whether you're part of a large denomination.
However, God has you connected with people in your church that needs to be part of what the church is doing.
There are many different ways that we can get engaged with people around the world.
A lot of that you can do online as a matter of fact.
There's if ask God to ask God to put put someone on your heart.
The way I got involved in doing this was that our church back in the 90s decided that listen,
there's a bunch of people who have no access to the good news at all.
They've never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Most some of them have never even heard the name of Jesus Christ.
And what are we what are we supposed to do about that?
What is our response to that great commission?
And we just began to pray and ask God and we did that together as a church and ask God,
will you have us to get engaged?
What are we supposed to do?
And in doing that, God began to point out to all of the people in the church as we prayed.
We started out with, well, we think we're supposed to do something with Muslim peoples.
Okay. Where were we supposed to do that?
And we began to look at the different areas of the world.
And then as we prayed, God began speaking to people.
And it's like, well, you know, I have a sense that maybe we're supposed to be doing this in this region of the world.
And okay, now let's look at people who are not engaged.
I mean, you can look, you can get on the internet and look there easily and find unengaged people,
unreach unengaged people groups and just pray over that.
And then when you find that find other people that are doing that similar kind of work,
it doesn't require a lot of resources.
It doesn't require a lot of travel necessarily.
We have plenty of people in our church that have never traveled overseas.
And yet they feel very connected to the people that we are serving and trying to reach
because they've been hearing their stories for years.
And then we find out that there are some that those people are here.
Some of them have immigrated here to the United States.
And they're going to college in my town.
You know, I'm three minutes from Duke University here where I'm located.
Well, how many, how many foreign students do we have at Duke University?
There's tons of them.
And there's lots of them that have never heard the gospel.
And so you can invite people over to your house for a meal.
You know, invite a college student who's not from this country who doesn't have any friends,
invite them over for a meal, that doesn't take much doing.
It's intent, I think, more than anything is, okay, this is what Jesus told me to do.
I don't have the first idea how to do this.
Let's start praying about this and let's see what God will do.
And then we can engage in meaningful ways right from where we are.
So you don't have to travel around the world to do this.
That's what God's called me to do.
But that doesn't mean that's what God is calling anybody else to do,
or much less everybody else to do.
Yeah, no, I love that answer because it's just so simple.
And there's really no excuse to not be involved in some way,
even if it's just praying.
Right when you hear this podcast is giving a prayer for
an unreachable people group or something like that.
So yeah, you can be involved from your own bedroom,
but just you have to do something.
It's not going to just come up and hit you in the face.
You got to be actively involved.
Well, Doug, I really have enjoyed this conversation.
And I know that those that are listening to this could really benefit from
being able to read your book and know more about it.
So how can they find out more resources about your book and to be in contact with you after the show?
Sure. So this is the book.
It's, let's see if I can get it in there.
It's called What is Church?
It's going to be released to booksellers on, buy booksellers on January 16th.
You can order it online at any of your favorite booksellers,
Barnes & Noble or Amazon or anywhere.
All you've got to do is just look up What is Church?
And it should pop right up.
If you want to engage directly, or if you wanted to get a Christmas present or whatever,
you can go to my website.
My website is dubcaraker.com.
Let me put that up so you can see the dub character part.
Like, sorry, not go with cameras.
Dub character.
And you can engage with me there.
I, if you want to get a book from the website, you can order one there and I will send you a signed copy.
But you can also engage with me there.
I've got my blog there.
There's all my contact information.
I would love, I just love to talk to people and I love to help people who are curious or wanting,
you know, to know more.
I'm very happy to be a resource to anybody that I can.
I've been doing this a long time and I know a lot of people and I know a lot of organizations.
I'm just, I'm a connector.
That's one of my gifts.
So, yeah, I would love to see you at dubcaraker.com.
I would love to see you there.
And like I say, by the book, it should be in bookstores January 16th.
But, you know, I mean, who retards copies anymore, right?
So, and my publisher will not let me release the audio version until it has been in bookstores for six months,
unfortunately, because I know a lot of people prefer to listen.
But if you go to my website, you can at least find some things, some audio resources there.
But yeah, I'd love to engage and be a help to any individual or any church that's interested.
Great.
No, I definitely will link all of that information down in the show notes below and dub.
Yeah, thanks again for coming on and it was a great discussion.
Thank you, Johnny, so much.
I really appreciate it.
This is this is very helpful to me.
I did this because God has put I'm old.
God has put younger people on my heart.
I've been I've spent my life working with, you know, teenagers, 20 somethings, 30 somethings.
That's that's really where my heart is.
My wife and I were foster parents.
We've had a lot of people, a lot of young people in and out of our lives.
And so thank you for having this this program and helping get the good news out to people.
Absolutely.
Yes, absolutely.
Appreciate you being on here and sharing about your book.
And thank you again to everybody that tuned in today and we will catch you on the next episode.