Rev. Frank Hart, Pastor of New Church in Katy, TX, and host Matt Popovits discuss the “right questions to ask” in seasons of fear and anxiety. Pastor Hart will share how he’s encouraging his own congregation in this time of pandemic.

The following program is sponsored by evangelical life ministries.

Welcome to engaging truth, the manifestation of God's word and the lives of people around us. Join us each week. As we explore the impact of his message of spiritual renewal from the lesson of forgiveness forged in the crucible of divorce, to the message of salvation learned by an executioner from a condemned killer to the gift of freedom found in the rescue of victims of human trafficking. This is God's truth in action.

Welcome to another addition of engaging truth. I'm your host, Reverend John Kane from Nacodoches Texas. Uh, joining us today is a voice that many of our listeners have heard before the Reverend Dr. Gregory Seltz is a speaker emeritus for the Lutheran hour, the oldest and longest running Christian broadcast in America. He is now the executive director for the Lu center for religious Liberty. Welcome to the program, Greg,

John, it's great to be here with you as always

Well talking with, uh, some of the members of Sunday school yesterday, there was, um, a number of people who weren't familiar with your organization and what you do in Washington DC. So why don't we start there, bring us up to speed on your role and what your accomplishments are there.

Well, again, you know, it's very simple, well, three things, we're here to advocate for our church because the church is in the crosshairs of politics and religious Liberty. Like it's, it's not been in our lifetime. Uh, there are folks who would love to silence the public voice of the church, especially it's moral voice. And I hate to tell you this too, but eventually the gospel voice will be, uh, something that's frowned upon as well, because even to say something like Jesus is the only savior, uh, of the whole world. I've heard some politicians say that's bigoted. Uh, so you might, you know, those kind of things are down the road, but advocating for religious Liberty, the sanctity of life. And then of course, marriage and educational freedom as religious Liberty issues. That's what we do on the hill. The second thing we do, and this is probably more important is educating our church and I'm getting a lot more responses from the church, um, you know, to come and talk about, you know, our unique voice, our two kingdom voice on the hill.

And so right now I'm actually my, um, um, my weekends are actually filled all the way through October because people want to know with all this threat to the church, how can we respond? Uh, and we're educating this called the champions for Liberty lectures. And then the final thing is to actually encourage people on the hill, getting to know people on the hill, becoming a voice of support to people who are battling for these things on the hill and becoming a resource to them. So advocate, educate and encourage. And that's what we do who on the hill, but, uh, Lutherans still are reticent as to whether or not we should be doing these kind of things. And I maybe that's some of the reason why we don't, uh, share that all the work that we're doing on the hill as well, because we're thinking, should we be doing this or not?

Well, I've heard people say you need to choose a hill, but, uh, what hill are you talking about?

well, when I talk about working in DC and I always tell people, you know, we talk about the, the state's role in our life and the church's role in our life. We tend to call that church and state, or some people even apply that to two kingdoms. Although two king is bigger than that. All we mean by two kingdoms is that God is at work. God is at work to preserve the world through, you know, things like the state or temple vocations, but he saves the world through some, the unique work of Jesus. And that's the role of the church differentiating that is what's key, but our culture today actually thinks the church has less imp in the public realm. And that's kind of where the battle lines are drawn here in, in DC. But again, I tell people back in the day, Walter Meyer was even attacked by certain secular voices in our church.

And they tried to take the Lutheran hour off the air. And so I, that back in the thirties, no, well, I don't, I think it was in the early forties, but it well late, late thirties, early forties. And the, the sad part about it is if we would've taken that role of, well, that's the state, that's their job. There would've been no Lutheran nower. And, and again, Walter Meyer fought back with other evangelical leaders and said, this is a religious Liberty issue in the state. Doesn't have a right to do this to us. Well, that's the kind of work we're doing now here in DC for the church.

So when you talk about people on the hill, you're talking a about, uh, politicians and their staff,

Politicians, their staff, um, there's a lot of organizations on the hill that are resources to the politicians and the staff. We work with all of those people, including the executive branch too, as much as we can.

So when you, uh, disseminate information, whether

That's, well, we try to put, you know, we got a Friday kind of rhythm. We put out a devotion that is, that is designed to be kind of like public life. Here's something to think about Friday. We have an opinion piece that comes out every Friday. Um, and it's again, how do we, as Lutherans understand things differently than other people it's called a two kingdom response to what's going on in the culture. And then on Wednesday, I do a Liberty alert, which is on our Facebook page every Wednesday and are not on our YouTube page. So we're putting out information. Plus we've got mom and pop papers, uh, which help under, you know, tell people how we think through these things. And that's on our webpage LC, R L freedom.org. And you can get all this stuff right there, anytime you want.

So you can sign up for, uh,

Emails. Yeah, the emails you can go to our LCR L freedom.org webpage, and you can sign up for the emails and you'll get that devotion on Monday. And that op-ed on Friday every week and it's all there on the page. Uh, you'll also see our, our, um, um, our YouTube page. And you'll also see our Facebook page there on the whole own page. And you can kind of sign in every time you wanna see those things too. Yeah. You know, we try to, we try to figure out a way to disseminate all this information and the best way to do it is just to try to put it all in that one spot and then try to draw people to our website. So folks, please go to that website because it's all there

Talking about, uh, two kingdoms, whether it's, um, uh, left hand kingdom is, is sometimes our shorthand for the things of politics and money and business, and then right. Hand kingdom being the things spiritual. And churchly, um, you talk a little bit about, uh, on one of your recent videos, talking about our view of, of things with the courts and you, uh, talked about, uh, highlighting how good it is to have a constitutional court, not a legislative court. Well,

That's an yeah. That's the American experiment, you know, we talked about we're two kingdom people, no matter what country we're in. Okay. Okay. But we've been given blessings in this American culture that I think we don't want to give up. And one of 'em is our founding fathers believed in the dignity of man, but they also believe in the depravity of man. And so they set up a system that was designed to keep the government from gaining all the power in our lives. And so, you know, you have the executive branch, the legislative branch and the, and the, the, uh, judicial branch and each one of 'em had their role. And in fact, they all had antagonistic relations with each other. The whole point was just to make sure none of them coalesce power together, cuz that meant your power as a citizen, uh, would be depleted.

And so again, the co what we want the, the, the courts to be is to not be a legislative branch. We, we don't want them solving our problems. We want them saying whether that legislation is constitutional or unconstitutional. And even if you wanna amend the constitution, we have a process for that. We don't let five judges out of nine determine those big questions. And so again, that was to prevent the, the government from a massing power and of course, making us subjects rather than citizens. And so again, we want a constitutional court, not a conservative or a liberal court, a constitutional court.

When Thomas Jefferson responded to the Danbury Baptists who were afraid of government persecution because they were Baptists and not, uh, say church of England, uh, uh, pointed out from the very earliest days, just how important having the structure of, um, good operation and good, uh, protection for the rights of, of all the people was intended. So that wall of separation between, uh, uh, the state, uh, government and, and the church was intended to be, um, not antagonistic, but mutually beneficial. Wasn't it?

Yeah. And I think if you, I guess sometimes you have to ask the question separation, are you talking about separation where you have two equal branches? Well, the, or are you talking about the founding fathers tended to put the state on the bottom? And so even if you wanna talk about a separation, they thought that was the, that was a necessary, but not significant. It was the free individual motivated by his faith and self discipline who was on the top and the separation of church and state, if you will, would've had the, the church up here and the state on the bottom. And so, yeah, I don't mind that talk. We call a differentiation of church and state. And, uh, just for your listeners, if someone brings that up and says, well, I believe in separation of church and state, here's what you say. You say, I didn't know you were a Christian because it's a Christian worldview.

Right. You know, cause Jesus said, give to Caesar what a Caesar give to God, what is gods? And so to have two significant organizations that have some authority over you, that's the biblical worldview. And so every other worldview has the state on the top and the church doesn't matter, or the church is on the top and the state doesn't matter. So again, and then James Madison said this, and this is what it's I think so amazing. He said, if you have two duly constant, two did organized public entities called the church and the state, those two entities will determine, uh, will, will protect you as an individual citizen. But once one of those is, you know, subverted, then you as a citizen will cease to exist.

Yeah. Yeah. Because it, without the, uh, uh, the church informing the morality.

Yeah. Uh, yeah, I think about it this way, back in the day in the west, you had the Pope and you had the holding Roman emperor. And if the holy Roman emperor said, you gotta do this. And you said, yeah, but the Pope said, I didn't have to, you had enough power with that opinion to push back on the holy Roman emperor and vice versa and where those two people had to fight over you. , that's where you as an individual citizen were, was born in history.

Right. And so the American experiment as you call it, this is how we thrive this. This is, um, this is proven to work. It's proven to be good for the people. And it's not, uh, something that any Christian should go along with any attempt of someone in go government from silencing, right. Uh, the gospel.

Well, and again, we have a role to play. Yes. Um, you know, like I always say science can do all kinds of things, but it doesn't have the moral capacity to know whether it should, right. Government can do all kinds of things, but power corrupts, and it always corrupts. Absolutely. And the church has a role to play lake and being a moral voice as well as a gospel voice in the culture. I think what we're really struggling with today is we don't wanna be that moral voice cuz it's contentious. Um, but I think back, I mean, should shouldn't we have said no to the Nazi doctors who were, who were operating on people like Guinea pigs to see if they could develop the master race. I mean, shouldn't, we have said no tomorrow, Margaret Sanger, when she, she talked about certain people as weeds who needed to be weeded out of the DNA, of course we should.

And those are examples of science without morality.

Yeah. And those are examples where the church had had a role to play. And I think we have a, still a role to play in the, the life debates. We have a role to play in the religious Liberty debates, even theism of our culture, which has caused a all kinds of havoc in, in relationships and in children and in violence and all those things. We have a responsibility to be a cultural voice there, not just to be, uh, a voice that's known, well, we're the gospel voice ultimately, but we even have a cultural role to

Play. Certainly. So when you talk about, uh, three themes, encouraging, educating, and advocating, why don't we, uh, go into encouraging a little bit? How do you, uh, functionally encourage Christians who are feeling that they, uh, don't have a voice?

Well, the encouragement stuff is, so let me just say it this way, the, the advocacy and the encouragement, that's focused to people here on the hill. Okay. So my, I, I have a very specific role in the encouragement, in the advocacy role. And in that regard, I'm looking to the politicians, their staff, all those folks and, and I'm, I'm bringing our voice to them. And then for those who actually are trying to fight for us, I'm actually offering more of a pastoral connection to them. So we have these, yeah. We have these things called, uh, two kingdom round tables where we gather people on the hill together. And we talk about these issues. Uh, I go visit, uh, Congressman senators, uh, even white house staff and, and ask, how can I be of service? And then we have these eatings that I attend, where we're actually, you know, we, we actually work with the senators and congressmen and the values action teams and, and try to be an encouragement to them.

And if they want pastoral, um, uh, connection where they just wanna talk to somebody, I even offer that, especially to our Lutheran, uh, folks on the hill, um, the, and the advocacy, again, that's on, that's focused on the hill. Now. The education is what I think you were talking about. How do we help our people become more of a voice without politicizing the gospel or the church now that's, that's something. If you go to our website, it's called a champions for Liberty, uh, lecture there, we, we come into a, uh, champions for Liberty weekend at your church. I, I go three hours of this stuff. We talk about things, answer questions. And then if you want, we, we would offer you an opportunity to become a champions for Liberty church. And we have a whole one year process to put the church through, uh, of, of reading, of participating in cultural things, you know, reflect thing before we actually say, okay, now you're a certified champion for Liberty church, cuz we do wanna prepare our people for what's coming, but we don't want to overly worry about politics and divide the church over things that, uh, you know, we're not, when it's all said and done, we do need to fight for religious Liberty and the sanctity of life.

Why? So we can be the church in the public square period. Um, but we don't wanna politicize the church. We don't want to do more than what we're called to do in the public square either, but right now we're not doing enough.

Right. So as we're coming up on the 4th of July, and I think this program is going to air first on the evening of, uh, Sunday, July 4th, independence day talking about, uh, perhaps the, uh, the second stanza as we know it of, uh, the star Spangled banner, uh, which answers the question from the first, uh, stanza talking about, uh, where our strength lies and that's with God, right? Uh, that our identity as Christians living in this land is, uh, the, the source of our, our blessing. Uh, before I forget, I wanted to touch base with you on, uh, support, uh, going to your website. I was interested to see that, uh, people can support you by texting money to you. I think that's the first time I've encountered somebody that will take a text, um, from their phone. That's that,

That, that my, my webmaster folks must have done that, cuz I didn't even know that myself, but we do live, listen, we're in nobody's budget. We're not, you know, we are purely, uh, people are on the country are supporting us and that's why we're here. We do function as an agency of the church. So yes, we do speak for the church as a whole, but uh, our resourcing we're in nobody's budget. So if people are moved to give, we sure could use it.

You know? Uh, I, I, I don't know how many years that it's been since we've had, uh, a person in your kind of position speaking for us there on Washington DC. So I, I think, uh, the work that you're doing is fabulous. It is so dramatically needed. And uh, I think you're the right man for the job. so, oh, thanks.

We do miss. I dunno. Well, I, I laugh about that a little bit because to be honest with you, I love the Luther being the luau speaker. I love the work I did there, but when I saw Walter Meyer's other legacy, which was protecting our church's voice in the public square, it's not as glamorous a job, I'll give you that. And uh, but it's gotta be done. And my work in urban ministry in New York and LA prepared me for this, cuz I dealt with the alderman a lot in those places. I saw how we had to get involved in this to some degree to keep those forces at bay. So we could actually do our work. So, but you know, you said something about July 4th. If I, if I may take off on that. Sure. Um, you know, the big issue today is which one is the ultimate freedom and the founding fathers believed that religious Liberty was the first freedom.

If, if you had religious Liberty, uh, um, Liberty of conscience, all those other liberties would, would flow naturally from those things. If you got rid of religious Liberty, all those other liberties would fall. And so on July 4th, church people, you're not just celebrating Americans' political liberties, you're celebrating the founding of America, which was that religious Liberty is the key to it all. And that's what's under attack because in the pandemic they were trying to say the church was a secondary institution. They were trying to say that that our religious liberties, uh, were, were actually something that the state would dictate to us. Now I'm not arguing whether you should have shut down or not shut down. I'm just saying you should have been able to do it in freedom. You should have been able to make the decisions that you needed to, to care for your people because you're part of the solution. And that's something that we may need to fight for more than just celebrate on July 4th.

That's right. That's right. It's good to be postured in that way. Uh, we'll come back to Dr. STS in a moment briefly, I wanted to tell you a little bit about this engaging truth program. I invite you to visit our website, Elm houston.org, to read more about us there. You may download podcasts of our past programs, find shortcuts to our Facebook clear and YouTube accounts and also to, uh, to donate, to support our work. All of our on the air hosts are volunteers. And so you donations go far to help us purchase airtime. Uh, coming back to, uh, Greg sells Greg, thank you for being here. I want you to give your contact information, your, uh, uh, website again for our, uh, listeners so they can check out this. Uh, so, so valuable information

Again, L C R L freedom.org. So Lutheran center for religious Liberty, L C R L freedom.org. And you're gonna see all kinds of things there. You're gonna see papers. We call 'em mom and pop papers. How do we engage these questions? How do we sift through 'em while we got mom and pop papers on those? Because we think in 500 words, we should be able to tell you you how Lutherans engage these things. Then we've got the champions for Liberty page there. We've got all of our, uh, videos, all of our, we've got other resources that we have about protecting your schools, protecting your preschools, all those kind of things. It's all on LCR L freedom.org.

That's great. I enjoyed, uh, looking at some of your, uh, uh, videos as well, education there that, uh, all of us can use, but most of all, we're, uh, just thrilled to the fact that you are there. Uh, you started there 2017. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. We've been here a while now. yeah.

Yeah. So you're getting established. So, uh, yeah, absolutely some great things happening there and uh, just elevating some of the, these issues and the hearts and minds of our people. How can our people pray for you, Greg?

Well, again, I think right now the pandemic was tough on us. It didn't hurt us financially. Like I thought it might, but it did take away a lot of momentum. So again, we're trying to build that momentum up again, and you can already see the churches saying, come on out back to us and talk to us. That's part of the momentum building. So pray for that and then pray that the capital, the capital is still shut down. I mean, it's, it's unbelievable. I used to be able to walk into the Capitol to go visit somebody, knock on a door, stop in and say, hello, there's still a fence around the Capitol. Um, and so, you know, this isn't just not, it's, it's definitely an overact to some of the issues in our day. And so we need an openness again from the government because it's really the people's house. And we have a right to be there talking about what we think's important. And so we just need that openness to come back. And of course, you know, we want them to be, we want it to be a, a, a healthy one that's protected properly and those kind of things. But we also want an openness again, that allows us to do our job.

There's lines of communication, the lines of communication that say that, you know, tell, share the gospel. How, how would you describe the gospel to someone who's never heard it before?

Well, I mean, keep it simple, you know, there's yeses and nos in life. And what happens is after a while you realize that because we're sinful people, it seems like nos. The only answer I get until God actually takes care of the problem and sends his son to live our life, to die or death, and to give us his life as a gift. And so again, the gospel is what God has done for us. Um, this, even this thing that I'm on the hill, it doesn't save anybody. I say, good politics. Can't save us, but bad politics can destroy us. I'm just trying to keep the bad politics out so that there's freedom to hear about that. Good news. And so that's, the gospel is still this incredible gift that God gives to the world. And it's for all people, this political stuff I'm doing is just to make sure that our solutions or a, our, uh, struggles don't prevent us from hearing that. Good news.

Great message. Great message. Thank you, uh, Greg, for being with us, once again, we always enjoy talking to you and, uh, encourage our people to, uh, visit your website, support your work text. You text you some

Support.

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Jesus said, if you continue in my word, you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. Hi, this is pastor Dave Schultz, and I want to invite you to engaging truth on 100.7 FM in every program, we take up a relevant current issue facing Christians and discuss the issue from a biblical perspective. Join us Sunday night again at 7:00 PM for engaging truth right here on 100.7, the word KK HT and K ht.com.