All right. Thank you again for all the excellent questions.

Pastor John and then

Pastor Conrad can join in as well.

Good one to get us started.

Regarding engaging culture, a very trendy phrase these days, This gentleman says, I have MacArthur on my one shoulder saying,

take only the best of culture into the church. I have Driscoll on my other shoulder saying redeem it all. How do we navigate the balance?

Well, we certainly should redeem what's redeemable, and I think best is too high a standard.

I don't do anything best. I don't preach best. I don't act best. I don't read best. I just don't act best I don't read best I just don't live at that level and I wouldn't know how to define it either I mean I love John MacArthur okay if he was sitting here I'd just kind of hug him like this and say,

what do you mean best? Best? Like only classical music? That's really best, isn't it? Well,

or is there best rock, best folk, best country, best blues, best jazz, best or, I mean what is best?

So I don't know for sure what to say to that particular council.

I don't find that statement giving me much guidance

because it sets not only a qualitative standard that I think would rule out most of our hymns.

And I think would, we were just talking about over there with Stuart Townen how he writes songs and I said you know

one of the songs I can't understand why it has survived except for the tune is

the first Noel that's really bad poetry I I know it's your wife's name I know for a fact it's not best

in fact most of the songs that we sing are not best.

If you broke the music out and read them as poetry, they would be average.

I would say John Wesley was an average poet, and Isaac Watts was an average poet. So all that to say, make the sieve of what is brought into the church, what's edifying, what's loving, what serves the truth,

what serves the spread of the gospel without compromising the gospel.

I think the criteria of the New Testament are not

aesthetic best criteria, but rather they are criteria of love.

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