local church and local lawyer on this edition of Truth and Love.

I'm Dale Johnson, and you're listening to Truth and Love, a podcast of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors,

where we seek to provide biblical solutions for the problems that people face.

And today I'm so delighted to have with us Todd Sorrell on the podcast. Once again, Todd is a California

state licensed lawyer. He has been practicing for 25 years. He works with disputes of different kinds, and I wish I knew all the legal

lingo. I'm sure he can fill us in on that. He works at the state level, the federal level,

and also works with international arbitrations as well. He graduated with his JD from UCLA,

go Bruins, so I understand. And he also graduated with his Master of Arts

and Biblical counseling from the Masters University. He's ACBC certified. And Todd just brings a

wealth of knowledge to this issue when we discuss legalities and how pastors and churches

and counselors should think about legal issues. And so I'm so grateful, Todd, that you're here with us.

We need to walk hand in hand, especially in the days that we live in today. And so thank you so much

for being here with us on the podcast. Glad to be here, Dale. So as we think about this issue of local

lawyers, certainly we believe the church is an autonomous thing, and we're supposed to be led

by Christ who is our head and elders who lead us and shepherd us well. But we also recognize

that we live in a society. We live in communities. We live in states that are under regulations,

and governments are a part of the plan of God for society to help keep peace and so on and so forth.

And so it's important that we understand there are distinctions of authority, but we also recognize that there are several places where some of these things overlap.

And I think it's important for us to think about.

I know for me, several

issues as a counselor have risen over my past as dealing with different issues in the counseling

room. And even pastors coming to me asking, man, what should we do about this? And inevitably,

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