David Zimmer: Hello, welcome to the Sound Plus Doctrine Podcast. My name is David Zimmer.
Bob Kauflin: My name is Bob Kauflin.
DZ: And we have another very special guest with us on today’s episode.
BK: We do.
DZ: Mr. Jared Mellinger.
BK: Jared. Let’s hear it for Jared.
DZ: Whooo!
BK: Excellent. Jared, thank you for joining us for the Sound Plus Doctrine Podcast.
Jared Mellinger: Hey, it’s great to be with you guys, so grateful for the work that you do for this podcast, and it is my joy to have this time with you.
BK: Jared, I’d be interested how many actual episodes of the podcast have you personally listened to?
JM: Oh, why are you gonna ask that question?
[laughter]
BK: I just wanna see if it’s gonna increase after you’re on it, because…
JM: How many of my Sunday morning sermons at Covenant Fellowship have you listened to, Bob?
BK: You know what? Let’s just move on. I think it’s a good time just to move on with the conversation. Alright, in any case, we do this podcast to serve those who lead, primarily lead and plan, or plan and lead, I should say. The meetings of the church on Sunday. The gatherings of the church. So that’s often, often has to do with people who are musically involved, but not always, and actually, in talking to people, we find that a lot of non-musicians listen to this and people who aren’t involved in planning the meeting at all they just come. I’m not sure why, but we’re glad that you listen.
DZ: Well, I think they… We joke, but I do think they want to see how we think through the songs we choose.
BK: Yes.
DZ: And why we rehearse the length of time we do and the choices we make, and I think it has an effect on them.
BK: And how to do this all in a way that reflects the grace of God that has come to us through Jesus Christ and how to do that in a way that exalts him. That’s what we’re seeking to do. So today, we wanna ask the question, what’s the role of the senior pastor in congregational worship? And when we were talking about, actually, guests for this season, you came immediately to our minds for this topic because of the example you have been, so first, maybe we should start by you just explaining what it is you do.
DZ: Yeah, and who you are.
BK: Who you are.
JM: Yeah, so I am the Senior Pastor at Covenant Fellowship Church in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, it’s outside of Philly. And it was in 2008 that I became the senior pastor. I’ve been in the church since 2006, and it is a church of around 1000 people, and so we have several pastors who lead music, and I can share more around that later. I have six kids, I am married, and God has been very good to me.
BK: Thank you for specifying that. It’s helpful.
[laughter]
BK: At what age range?
JM: So they go from now, 18 to 8.
BK: Wow. That’s a busy household. A very busy household. We wanted to introduce this, we have a lot to talk about related to the topic of the question that we are asking, but your testimony is so wonderful, and I wonder if you just share a little bit about how the Lord brought you to a knowledge of himself in the gospel.
JM: Oh, I’d be happy to. I grew up in a pastor’s home and in a wonderful Christian home, and so in many ways, the blessings and benefits that I grew up with are much greater than most, and in spite of that, I squandered a lot of that, and my teen years were marked by rebellion in a number of different ways, and by very extreme folly. I never wanted to go to church. When I did go to church, I would act miserable the entire time, sleep through the sermon and just cruel to others who were present there, and so it was really an extreme kind of foolishness and arrogance. But my parents were faithful and they loved me through it all. They were the means through which through their patience and through their love and through their drawing me out, in time, God worked in my heart to bring me to a knowledge of himself. And the area in fact that He convicted me of sinning was in the area of honoring my parents, and ways that I was dishonoring them in pretty profound ways, and that’s the area that God brought me to understand how sinful I am, how great my need for a savior is.
JM: If you would have known me as a teenager, you wouldn’t have liked me at all, and even those conversations that I had with my parents, my goal was to make my dad angry and to make my mom cry and I was pretty good at both of those things.
[laughter]
DZ: And yet they were remarkably patient with me and so loving toward me, and so… Yeah, there’s no one in the church that I grew up in that would have seen me being a pastor, but it’s the church that prayed for me and prayed for my parents during those difficult years, and I marvel at what God has done, so I was saved late in high school.
BK: Wow.
DZ: Wow.
BK: At a gathering in your room, where did you… Was there a moment when you came to realization, this is true, I’m a sinner, Jesus died for me.
JM: It was a phone call that… Actually, it was a car ride with my… A conversation with my parents, and I was in the car with them, they had prepared questions where they were drawing me out about a relationship that I was in with the woman who’s now my wife. And I was realizing that certain areas of my life needed to change, but it was in the context of that conversation that everything hit me in terms of my own sinfulness and who Christ is and my need for the salvation that is in him. So I’d known the facts of the gospel, but it was in that moment that everything came alive and they were asking me certain questions, I said, ask me again in a couple of weeks, because I’m gonna get home and everything needs to change. And I don’t cry easily. I remember a conversation that I then had with Megan, my wife. Sitting on my parent’s curb, after this conversation with my parents, I sit down with her. We’re totally in love, and the relationship has sparks flying, and we had been in a relationship for some time dating, but I told her that it means more to me to please God by honoring my parents than our relationship does.
BK: Wow.
JM: And I remember her saying to me, “Does that mean that if your parents say, you can’t see me anymore, that that’s what you’ll do.” And I’m like, “Yes.” Tears down my face like I am all in on living for the glory of God, and she didn’t understand that, she didn’t have the categories for it. She wasn’t a Christian at that point, but my parents showed the same love to her that they did to me and she became a Christian shortly thereafter.
BK: Thank you for sharing that. That should give hope to parents who right now have kids who just seem to be resisting and rejecting everything that they’ve grown up in.
DZ: Yes.
BK: God does change hearts through the power of the Gospel and the power of his Spirit.
JM: Yes, he does.
BK: And that has led you to this place where you are a senior pastor who still deeply and passionately cares about the glory of God. You’re one of my favorite preachers and that comes through in that. But it comes through too in just the way you have invested in what we do in Sovereign Grace Music. One of the ways you’ve shown that is by coming to many of the WorshipGod Conferences, I don’t know how many you’ve been to, but I remember you were coming long before I asked you to speak. I thought, “Man, he’s coming to this, I might as well ask him to speak.” [laughter] But how have you thought about… So you’ve been a senior pastor since 2008, did you say?
JM: Yes.
BK: Alright, so 14 years, about… How have you thought about your role as a senior pastor and what’s going on in terms of the music in the church and like the whole gathering, the whole meeting? Has that developed, has that grown, and if so, how?
JM: Yes. It’s an area where I believe… Well, so let me say this, because I grew up in Sovereign Grace Churches, even from the time that I was first saved, late high school, early college, part of me expressing love for the Savior was listening to Sovereign Grace Music. Those early albums, that’s what I grew up singing and listening to. So the work that you brothers are doing does have a special place in my heart, in my own story, is a part of that. Some of this, what I’ll share are things that I’ve learned from you, Bob. And during my time at the Pastors College. So I was at our denominational training school in 2005 to 2006, and got to spend time with you Bob, during that time, instructing us in musical worship and in the gathering. And that was prior to entering pastoral ministry, and that had a profound shaping influence on me.
BK: Wow.
JM: That along with early WorshipGod Conferences during that time. So in the kindness of God, I haven’t had to… If you look at what I was doing when I first stepped into the senior pastor role in terms of musical worship and the gathering, what we do now is, I believe, pretty similar to that. There may be small tweaks and things, but that’s because of the foundation that was received through the instruction that I received. And one of the things that was drilled into us at the Pastors College is the role of… The pastor’s role in leading worship. As part of my pastoral training, I lead singing in the Pastors College one morning…
BK: You sure did.
JM: You know this, Bob, for 30 minutes and then you gave feedback. But I remember you teaching us, this is something that you taught, that leading worship is a pastoral role before it’s a musical one.
BK: Yes, yes.
JM: And I think that’s a really important point. Leading worship is a pastoral role before it’s a musical one. So in other words, there’s a sense in which the… And this is how I’ve always understood it to be. There’s a sense in which the senior pastor is the worship leader. I’m not musical…
BK: Humanly speaking.
JM: But I very much see my role and responsibility as leading the people of God in worship as we gather. When I was in college, someone gave me an impression that they had that I was going to be a worship leader someday. [chuckle] And even though I’m not musical, I’m not musical at all, I think there’s a sense in which that impression has proven entirely true.
BK: Yes. Yes.
[laughter]
JM: That’s how I think about my role and my responsibility. So one way to think about it, the senior pastor is primarily responsible for the leadership of the church, and that includes what happens in the Sunday gathering, including music. The senior pastor’s primarily responsible for that. So this idea that the senior pastor should just stick to the preaching, stay out of the rest of the gathering, I think is profoundly misguided. Faithful pastors will care about more than preaching, they’ll have thoughts, informed thoughts, scripturally informed thoughts, on what should happen during the entire gathering.
DZ: Yup. Amen.
BK: Now, I know Joseph Stigora, a very good friend who was a worship pastor at Covenant, and you’ve worked with him for many years, I believe. And there are other guys. Have you ever had guys challenge you, or maybe a little bit of a rub in terms of your involvement and what you would want to bring, or among the pastors, even broaden it, where you would wanna see things going a certain way or maybe a development, an emphasis and they’re going, “Yeah, I don’t know.” Or maybe they wanna keep doing something, you want to bring a change. Has that ever taken place? Tell us about the conflicts in your life, Jared.
[laughter]
JM: Yeah, excellent. It’s all my fault. So Joseph Stigora is the primary worship leading pastor in our church and on our pastoral team. We do in the kindness of God have three men on our pastoral team who are really gifted at leading musical worship publicly and that’s a great kindness.
BK: It’s a gift.
JM: Joseph leads us in that. And not only in singing, but Joseph is also a great help to me in the Sunday gathering as a whole and I’m actually able to work very closely with him and delegate a good bit to him because there is deeply shared philosophy of ministry. And he brings a lot of humility and joy and love for theology. Sometimes what you have with a worship leader is that they can be mostly a music guy rather than… Or more a music guy than a Bible guy.
DZ: Yes.
BK: Yes.
JM: Joseph is a Bible guy first, which is what you’ll have in a pastor. You’ll have someone who loves God’s Word. And so we really have a great working relationship. The elders have put us in the roles that we’re in, and then the elders as a whole are involved in various things, but there’s not much by way of, Oh, okay, here’s this thing that I would… There’s always areas of things that I would like to do differently. I think if I look at an area where I’ve looked to some time ago, for example, we had done all the baptisms among the youth at youth camp, and the annual youth camp, they happen there. It was three hours away at that point and as we were studying as a team and this wasn’t just me leading this, but as we were studying together, I came to a place of a really strong conviction of wanting to have those baptisms happen in the context of the gathered church in the same time that the others do. But it was a big shift for the church, and so we talked together as elders, Okay, how do we lead through that and how do we get all the guys on board on the team with the thinking behind that? And so there what we’ve looked to do is just read different resources quite a bit. So currently my thing, this is, I’m looking to do all I can to grow us in the public reading of Scripture.
BK: Oh, excellent.
JM: This has been in place for several years, but it’s just where I’m looking to slowly turn up the dial, and I think if it were just Jared Church or whatever, I would have separate from the sermon text at least a chapter of a full chapter of the Bible read. But we’re doing baby steps in it. And it’s great and I love what we do, and it doesn’t represent an ongoing point of tension. But on something like that, I will say, “Okay, let’s read Bryan Chapell’s chapter in Christ exalting… In “Christ-Centered Worship” on the public reading of scripture and let’s discuss that and let’s… Or I will teach the guys on it and those sorts of things, so we’ve… Because we recognize that all the elders have authority and responsibility in the matter of Sunday planning, I really look to bring all of the guys along. So, we have read your book, “Worship Matters” and discussed it together. We’ve read Christ-Centered Worship by Bryan Chapell and have discussed it together. Just over the years, in our team training meetings, they’ve been taught. I’ll have Joseph do a teaching on liturgy, on… Sometimes I’ll even just teach on different parts of the gathering, the call to worship or benedictions in scripture, so that they’re all tracking and understanding, Okay, here’s why we do what we do.
BK: That’s so good.
JM: Another thing that I’ve looked to do is help guys with, and myself, with the distinction between personal preferences and biblical priorities in our gathering.
BK: Oh, man. Go for it. Go for it.
JM: So, that’s just like, okay, this is something that I want to have done a certain way. Now, is that a personal preference or is it a biblical priority? And I don’t wanna feel most strongly about the things that are personal preferences. I wanna feel most strongly about the things that are biblical priorities.
BK: Give us a couple of examples of personal preference that you or some of the guys on the team have found.
JM: Yeah. It may be a particular song that someone likes or doesn’t like. It may be the amount of hymns that we do. It may be even style. Do we start our service with a call to worship rather than with music? ‘Cause in our church we’ve had a church culture where it’s as the first song starts to play that everyone gathers. And so some of those sorts of things, well, all of that is a matter of preference in what we do there.
BK: And working through that, you can do it more thoughtfully than… You can do it thoughtfully or un-thoughtfully.
JM: Yes, absolutely.
BK: I think there are preferences that make more sense at times. Yeah. We’ve toyed with that and actually we’re experimenting, hopefully, talking about experimenting with changing some of the things in the order of our meeting, and we’ll see where it goes. I’ll keep you posted. Starting with announcements up front, welcoming announcements, and then doing a call to worship. Yeah, I was in a church recently, Matt Boswell’s church, actually, that did that and thought, this makes a lot of sense. So I don’t know. But that’s a preference.
JM: Yeah.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Okay. So what would you say to the senior pastor? I mean, you got how many? Six kids, you said?
JM: Yeah.
BK: Six, that’s a great number, six. And you’re a senior pastor of a church with a thousand people coming on Sundays, what would you say to the pastor who says, “Jared, this is really great and everything, but man, I am so busy, just getting the sermon done. I cannot give more time to the singing and the plan. I got a guy who does that, I’m just gonna let them do it. And, you know…
JM: That’s a good questions.
BK: If there’s something that goes bad, I’ll get back to him or whatever.” What would you say to that person to encourage them to change their ways? Somebody say…
JM: That’s excellent.
[laughter]
JM: I like how the changing their ways was added on to it to encourage him, because I was actually… I think an important part of what I’d want to do is encourage that hardworking pastor who is laboring for the flock. And I realized, in my own situation, I have an abundance of gifted pastors that I’m able to delegate various responsibilities to, so that pastors are still involved in providing leadership to the service, and I’m able to be, in a sense, released. I’m a huge fan of delegation, I want to affirm that point. But here’s what I would say, the Sunday service in its entirety is the best opportunity that we have as pastors, as a senior pastor, to feed and edify and mature the flock. I would want the pastor to understand, in the midst of the many responsibilities that he has, the corporate weekly gathering is the most important means of grace in the lives of each person in the church. In other words, it’s more important than counseling, it’s more important than private devotions. Those things are important, those things are very important, but they’re not the most important, because of how the gathering uniquely brings together the Word of God, and prayer, and fellowship.
JM: And so given the… So I would just want to make sure that he’s tracking the importance, not just of the sermon, but of the entire gathering from start to finish, because my conviction is, given the importance of that gathering, there’s a sense in which if there’s only one thing that a pastor is giving attention to, just one thing, it should be what we do when we gather on the Lord’s day. The gathering is such a mighty means of grace in the people of God, and we know that from our own lives, and we’ve seen it in the lives of others. There’s just nothing like the Sunday gathering to awaken us to Christ and his glory. And you have a text like in Psalm 73, the psalmist despairing over the prosperity of unbelievers. He’s struggling, he’s weary, “Until I went into the sanctuary of God.” And that’s the great turning point and the change. So when does change happen in the lives of the people of God? It’s in the gathering, it’s as we sing, it’s as we sit under the word.
JM: And there’s just so many opportunities. I would actually want to say, you as a pastor, you as a senior pastor, can accomplish so much in so many areas that you care about through thoughtfully planning the entire service. It’s the best way to make disciples of Christ. And so if you wanna grow the church in being a praying church, the best opportunity you have is corporate prayer, and a pastoral prayer, and how you’re thinking about the role of prayer in the Sunday gathering. If you want to grow people in turning from sin, and living in confession and repentance, the best way you can do that is through thinking deeply and carefully about the role of corporate confession as it relates to the Sunday gathering.
BK: Absolutely.
JM: If you want people to be in the word, you want people to read their Bibles throughout the week? I know you do.
[laughter]
BK: Hopefully.
JM: The best way to do that is to publicly read scripture, and allow people… Rather than saying “You need to read your Bibles more,” try to get up… You can say that, but also get up and just read a chapter of God’s Word and God’s Spirit is within that, and they’ll be refreshed and reminded of the love that they have for God’s Word, and it will change, Lord willing, their engagement with God’s word throughout the week. So I just wanna say the Sunday gathering is such a mighty means of grace, it deserves our greatest and most capable leadership.
BK: And that’s why we had Jared on this podcast.
DZ: Gold. Absolutely.
BK: Okay. I thought of another question. That is really, I mean, that’s really…
DZ: So good.
BK: Why we wanted you on this podcast. Okay. So a guy is doing a ton, just heard what you said, that, “Okay, great. But I still have so little time. I don’t have a church of 1000, I have a church of 100, 75, and I’m doing most stuff.” What one, two, or three things would you say to him to say, “Okay, make sure you get this. Start here.” Maybe that’s a better way of putting it.
JM: I would encourage him for prioritizing, if it’s still the same pastor that I talked to earlier, who’s prioritizing the preaching, I would say that that’s good work to care about, and to ensure that the preaching of God’s Word is getting his attention. I would want to say, what we currently do with our benedictions is just draw from the benedictions of Scripture. So, do you have benedictions that you end your service with? Just create a list of them, from scripture and then select one of those, that isn’t gonna take much time. You can do the same thing with calls to worship, so that you have that. I think that the Scripture readings, and the sacraments should receive care and attention, meaning what’s your plan for how often you’re doing communion, and what that will look like and what’s… Because those are important in the life of the church. Baptism is important.
JM: I think that… I don’t think that a pastor needs to drop in to song choice if he is… If you have a solid bank of songs, these are what we sing, so it may be that the pastor has an influence from among these songs, select these songs, but it should be that if there is someone who can lead in the actual musical worship that a pastor is able to give a feel for, here’s what I’m thinking for the sermon and the Scripture reading, and then someone can run with that, and can place in appropriate songs, is what I would say. I’d be interested in if one of my rules on these things is to try to disagree with Bob Kauflin as little as possible, and so…
[laughter]
JM: So if you say otherwise I’ll need to change it.
BK: Wish more people thought like you did.
DZ: We disagree all the time.
BK: I wish more people thought like you did. Yeah. Well, I think you do have to make choices and I wouldn’t want a senior pastor feeling like, “Well, oh great, I gotta plan the whole meeting now.” I think it can be effective for… To delegate that to someone. Ask someone to help you with it. Have those banks of scriptures that you can go to, but not be afraid to say that, “Would you start this? Or send me something that I can just look at.” I think in the end, a senior pastor really needs to look at what’s happening before it happens.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: So the pastor says, “Well, I’ll get back to you after the meeting, if I hear anything.” That not only is unhelpful, but it can be really discouraging for the guys doing the music.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Because all they ever hear about is when things went wrong.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: I wish you hadn’t done that. I wish you hadn’t done that. But in general, I just wanted to hear just thoughts on what we could prioritize in terms of your involvement.
JM: Yeah. Where possible, if there is an ability to delegate things, a senior pastor should be able to express leadership and delegate to others so that they can carry out certain work. That’s some of what I do. We recently did a series on the Ten Commandments, for example. And as I was studying the Ten commandments, I decided I want to have Scripture readings, extended scripture readings during Exodus each. I want them in the world. We’re just dropping these Ten Commandments, but I want them in the world of the Pentateuch and the Exodus. And so, well I just give Joseph that idea. Now, I think that any mature Christian would be able to put together a draft of recommended scripture readings from Exodus for a sermon series and get back with that, those sorts of things can really save the senior pastor from work while he’s still delegating and carrying out, carrying out the vision.
JM: And there was another thought that came to mind, Bob, when you talked about that the senior pastor is only criticizing, and in some ways, this could be said up front because there’s a sense in which this is just as important or maybe even more important than the senior pastors planning, and that is that the senior pastor set a personal example in their worship, in their singing, in their entire approach to the Sunday gathering, in their encouragement of others. The senior pastor sets… is setting culture, leads the way in setting culture and specifically in scene and celebrating the grace of God in the service. I wanna say that that’s just as important as planning, that might be even more important than planning.
BK: So true.
JM: Acts 11, Barnabas goes to Antioch, he saw the grace of God and was glad. That’s what a senior pastor should be doing every week. We model that joy, we see the grace of God, and we are glad. We’re not mostly evaluating the service, we are mostly enjoying the Savior.
DZ: That’s good.
JM: Someone says that we need to be more concerned with a beautiful Savior than we are with a beautiful service and that’s absolutely right. Christ loved us, gave himself for us, so I wanna see your pastor to gather, even if he’s feeling overwhelmed with responsibility, you don’t have time for all… Make sure that there continues to be a sense of the privilege of what we do as we gather as the people, as those who have been redeemed, bought with the precious blood of Christ, what a privilege that we get to gather. And so if you didn’t get as much time in your sermon prep as you wanted, if you don’t have great illustrations, you didn’t push the application as much this week as you want, the songs you weren’t… God’s Spirit is going to meet with you, and God is eager to meet with his people. And so that whole mindset of the privilege and the joy of gathering is something that the senior pastor needs to set for the church.
DZ: Yes.
BK: Oh man, that’s so good.
JM: Bob, one of the other things that you said, and you actually, when you first said this, you talked about how people in the church will watch the pastors, and they’ll watch the senior pastor in particular during the service and in his engagement. And when I first heard that thought, that’s so true. That’s what I do when I’m visiting. I can think of these times, in this particular church, and what am I doing, while I’m often aware of what the senior pastor is doing. Well, that provides a wonderful opportunity as the senior pastor and any pastor engages and expresses his love for the Lord to set a personal example. Years ago, in the church… Let’s see if I can… Yeah, there was no particular church.
[laughter]
JM: There was a pastor…
BK: An imaginary church.
JM: There was a pastor I knew, ’cause this is far… This is decades, decades ago. He would have a handheld recorder during… So this was tape recorder. And during the service, and if there was anything that he thought should be done differently…
DZ: No way.
JM: He would speak into… So you would see as a song is being sang, it was just he’s doing a little note to self into his tape recorder, so that he can remember that…
BK: Don’t sink so low.
JM: And share that feedback later. That’s not what we want to do.
BK: Lift your hand here.
[laughter]
BK: Oh wow, that’s scary. Well, that kind of covered the question I was gonna ask, just about encouraging the musicians, those who do, and that’s probably the greatest way you can do it. Do you do anything else in terms of thinking about how you express your gratefulness for what they’re doing?
JM: We have a big old budget for WorshipGod and we get as many of our musicians there as we can.
BK: What a great way to encourage your team.
JM: Hey, man. Yes. What a great… Come to WorshipGod Conference.
BK: And you sent a bunch of people this past year and what a joy that was ’cause they were…
DZ: Yeah, it was awesome.
JM: So, we really did it. Our worship leap there’s our musicians and others and myself and several other pastors were there. And it’s such a refreshing time.
BK: We want it to be.
JM: I find myself so refreshed and edified. You had mentioned the conference earlier but I would want to, and it’s not just because I’m talking to you guys. This is what I do.
BK: I’ll pay you later.
JM: The reason years ago that I early on as a senior pastor would go to the WorshipGod Conference is because I experienced a unique refreshment personally, spiritually in that context. And God consistently would meet with me and refresh me. It’s one of the main reasons. So it was interesting. I didn’t even… Actually, I wasn’t mostly going to be… There’s other reasons equipped and it benefits the church, but I received such… God would meet with me and that even happened in this most recent WorshipGod Conference. There was a particular sermon by Mark Jones that I was at a place of sort of resenting some of my dependence in certain areas and feeling my limitations, and Mark Jones preaches this sermon, as you know, on the independence of God and the beauty of dependence, and it was just God ringing my bell saying, “I made you to be dependent. I’m with you.” And so the refreshment, the deep ways that God met with me, it’s just… That’s what’s happened throughout, throughout the history of attending the conference.
JM: I love being in a setting where it’s… And it’s not the norm for me that I don’t have leadership responsibilities, but I’m not needing to make decisions that the service is happening and it… And I can just receive and benefit and engage the word. So it started as that and then overflowed into the edification and the equipping that our church experienced, and we really do look to get a good number of musicians there. In terms of the care of musicians, Joseph is more involved in that. But he does regular meals, gatherings with them to bless and encourage and honor.
BK: But I would say the musicians in your church know that you are for them, that you are with them, that you are big fans of them and grateful for what they do, and that’s what’s huge. I mean, CJ has led in that, but you are a great example of being an encourager and someone who’s not just thinking, “Well, I do the important thing, I preach, and you just set me up, so thanks for doing that.” But you’ve never been that and so grateful. Well, that’s probably enough for… Jared, thank you.
DZ: Yeah. Thank you Jared, so much.
BK: You’re…
JM: I thank God for you guys. Hey, I would listen to a lot more of these if I were a podcast guy, I just feel like I should say that.
BK: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Of course, no one who heard that first comment is gonna listen to that. Probably five people are still listening by this time.
JM: In case that made you insecure, I just don’t really have a podcast I listen to.
BK: It never makes me insecure. I do it because I think, he probably hasn’t listened to any of our podcast, which is totally fine. It really is. There are podcast people, and there are non-podcast people, and we’re grateful for the podcast people.
DZ: Yeah.
JM: Yes, indeed. And I’m grateful for the work that you guys are doing because it does bless our church. I know Joseph listens to what you guys are doing and others in the church, and so I… And we here at Covenant Fellowship benefit directly from this work.
BK: Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Trust it’s gonna be our good and lasting fruit for the glory of Jesus and the good of his church.
DZ: Amen.
JM: Thanks Bob, thank you.
BK: And if you’re listening and watching, thank you for joining us, David. Thank you for being here.
DZ: Yes.
BK: See you next time.
