This week on Liberty Action Alert with Greg Seltz, join Dr. Seltz and his guest, new LCRL “Champions for Liberty Network” director, Rev. Mark Frith, talking Reformation foundations for religious liberty in service to the mission and ministry of the Church. Also, hear about the building and expanding of the “Champion’s Network,” trained 2KG citizens who know how to ‘put their temporal liberties to work in service to the sharing of the eternal freedoms of God in Christ,” protecting the Church’s right and responsibility to proclaim the whole counsel of God in the public square for the sake of all. Hear again the moral, biblical perspective to “speak the truth in love” on the vital issues of the day….as we continue to grow in the 2KG-citizenship-wisdom needed times like these. Join us!

Welcome to Liberty Action Alert with Greg Seltz, sponsored by our friends at the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty here in Washington, DC a program that cuts through the chaos and confusion in the culture today by talking to Kingdom citizenship, bold, biblical principles for a robust public Christian life. And now, your host, Dr. Greg Sells.

Good day,

Good day, Washington,

DC and friends of the program all around the country. I'm Greg Sells. Welcome to Liberty Action Alert. Today in our program, we are privileged to welcome to the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty team, Reverend Mark Fri, who is now going to become, uh, the leader of the Champions for Liberty Network, amongst other things. Welcome Mark Gregory.

Thank you so much for the opportunity and for the privilege of coming alongside of you and the others to work in this magnificent opportunity, as challenging as it may

Be. Yeah. And it cha you know, well, why wouldn't we wanna do something unless it was challenging, right? I mean, so, you know, folks, just to let you know, if you're one of those who are listening now saying, Gosh, I really would love to know more about how this, this thing about two kingdoms. How does God engage the world? And then how do we engage the world, you know, to be faithful to him? And how can our church do that? How can we learn about that? And how can we be ready for that all for the sake of the culture and the church? Well, now we have a man on the task who's ready to receive your calls and ready to res to come and be a part of that with you. So I just want you to know that we have a staff dedicated to that. And of course, I am too. We want to be useful in God's hands to prepare you and our churches for what is yet to come. So, Mark, start off just a little bit by, tell, tell the folks a little bit about yourself. You and I have known each other a long time. We've done some work in the trenches, evangelistically, and now we're gonna be doing this. But talk about yourself a little bit and, and your new role.

Well, uh, thank you again, uh, Greg. Appreciate the opportunity. So our lifelines, like you say, have kind of interwoven from time to time through the years from playing some basketball at the seminary, and then, uh, finding ourselves in, uh, uh, mutual circuits down there in Florida for our early years. And, uh, and then back and forth. So I, I spent 17 years in the parish, uh, parish pastor in two congregations. Uh, got a chance to serve in the Kansas District for, uh, a few years in missions and stewardship. That was fun. Came alongside at Luther, our Ministries for a couple of years, and then for the last almost six years, really enjoyed my time with Lutheran Church Extension Fund and coming alongside of congregations helping them. And I, I often thought, Oh, you know, we're a Lutheran Church Extension Fund. And the, the operative word for me was always, uh, we are a support, uh, group and, and ministry, uh, folks who help you to extend your ministry, right? Uh, your Kingdom presence. And now this opportunity with LCR l that, um,

Well, lemme jump in before, Let me jump in before you say that, because folks, I want you to know one of the reasons why we were so excited that Mark came aboard is he's a churchman. I mean, he, he really wants our churches, cuz the message that we have is incredible. The message that Jesus has bequeathed his church, that mm-hmm. , and we're gonna talk about that in a minute cuz it's Reformation weekend. Well, obviously, you know, extending that message into the cultures that people might know the grace of God through faith and, and the person and work of Jesus, and the freedom and all that, that means it's such an incredible thing. And I want you to know that his passion has always been, how can we help the church better be the church for the sake of others? Now, Evangelistically, I know how you and I work together many, many, many times. Well, now we're doing a bit of a different work. , the Luther Center for Religious Liberty has a different focus, and we'll talk about why in a minute. But talk about the Champions for Liberty Network in a what, what excites you about the possibilities?

Uh, you know, Greg, the opportunity to actually work through, uh, congregation and Christians and, uh, bringing together, bringing them together in a special coalition, if you will, to support each other, to encourage each other, to help, um, uh, educate one another through these, the gift of understanding of what it means to be two kingdom citizen citizens and what it means to really champion, uh, what the call of the church is. Uh, literally to preach and teach that good news of Jesus Christ that does change people's lives, not just now temporally, but even into eternity. And, um, you know, with, with, uh, certain powers that be, that seem to be wanting, or, or certainly more than wanting, are working hard to, to restrict that, take it away. Right? What a finer time than this now for, you know, the church to kind of step in and step out and step up, uh, into this opportunity. I think men and women across, you know, the country are excited about this and are looking for this. Um, and for whatever reasons we haven't had to step into it too heavily over the last, you know, three or four decades.

That's right. You know, I love what you just said because, you know, we talk about all the time you're gonna have to learn when to stand up, when to stand down, when to stand firm, and why all in service to the gospel and all in service to God's, even preserving work in the culture so that people can hear the gospel. And all that is, is such a beautiful thing. And I think we say it all the time here at the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty. We're just trying to help you learn how to put your temporal liberties to work for the sake of the eternal liberties of God in Christ. And I was even thinking about the Christmas message, I'm getting ahead of myself, but you know, when Herod decided he was gonna try to wipe out the, the gospel, you know, by killing all the, the, you know, people, the boy, the boys, uh, two years and under, I think they would've loved to have had a First Amendment to say, Herod, you can't do that.

You know, , you know, so here we've got it. And, and so how can we put that to work, not to politicize things. We're the people who are trying to depoliticize a lot of issues so we can have conversation and evangelism and, and there's a group that wants to make everything political. All right folks, it's Reformation weekend and here's, here's a way to get at it. And we'll, we will get at Mark's work and two kingdoms and all that through this incredible weekend work. Um, here's the good news. God's at Work. God is at work. You know, the, this idea that we've gotta do something because, you know, no God is at work. We get to participate with him. But he works two different ways. And I think that's the one thing that the Reformation really rediscovered. That our salvation is by grace through faith in Christ alone.

Yes. But that God also works to preserve through Caesar and through vocation and through family, through law outwardly followed. It doesn't save us, but it preserves us. So God works two different ways, Law gospel, uh, through Caesar, through his church. And we need to learn how to differentiate God's work cuz God is at work to preserve and save. And I think that's what's so exciting, folks, God's at work and and you can be part of his work today. We're not talking about his saving work in Jesus, although that's the main point of the reformation, obviously, right? But we're differentiating God's other work, His preserving work. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. Because really Luther also pointed out that God preserves the world so that people can hear, uh, the good news of his gospel so that everybody can hear it. It's hard to share the gospel in a failed state, you know? So, so Mark, I throw it back to you. What are some of the challenges that the church probably is gonna have to relearn in being more of a public voice in the public square for the sake of the culture? Not, not just for proclaiming the gospel so that some people can hear and be safe, but even to preserve the culture so that all hell doesn't break loose. Uh, and, and we lose kind of the ability to even speak to each other freely.

Well, I think you make some great points just even asking the question, Greg. I think, um, the understanding of what it means, uh, when we talk about, um, aspects of the church that seem to be politicized and they're not politicized, how do we encourage one another? So I think this network of opportunities really to understand, you know, who we are and who we're not, uh, the op the other opportunity is for men and women who are in their vocations, find themselves in the world, they find themselves in organizations, they find themselves in business, they find themselves, even within some of the government confines themselves, are highly skilled, um, uh, knowledgeable about these things. And so for the opportunity for the church to actually give them a little bit of air and opportunity to converse over these things, right? I think that's probably essential in the starting point when, you know, and by the same token, this is an area where over the last, you know, number of years, I think back to my own parish experience where we didn't really navigate, um, the public square very well, conversations, we kept ourselves confined with understanding, right?

Teaching orthodoxy, preaching the gospel, teaching, you know, and discipling people. We did that. And then as parish pastors, uh, being you, both of you and I have having been, uh, parish pastors, uh, in the past, we might have shadowed or, or shied away from these opportunities to encourage our people in this way. What would it look like if you literally had a network, a conversational place where you're encouraging one another, uh, within y you know, your community within your state, within, you know, within your country. And we're gathered together in that way to help really understand that so that men and wo women could come alongside and both support the church, support their pastors, support the men and women who are involved in, in, uh, governing work, uh, among us at the local level, state level, and the national level. So I think having that conversation's important along with providing the kind of resources that, um, LCR l has been working through and working up, you know, just through, you know, uh, our website and what does that look like? Oh, I'm very excited about that opportunity and thinking through what's the best way to do this.

Yeah. You know what, what's amazing to me too is that people don't understand the new, you know, when we even talk about separation of church and state, or I like to seize the word differentiation of church and state or intersection of church and state. That's actually a New Testament idea. You know, it cracks me up when I hear, you know, atheists say separation of church in the state. I say, Oh, I didn't realize you were a New Testament person. , you know? I know, I know. But again, that's, that's Jesus saying both are legitimate authorities. Caesar was a legitimate authority, even though it was even in Jesus' statement. Give to Caesar, what does Caesars give to God? What is God's? He's, he's saying Caesar as a role, but already there's inherently this limited role of Caesar cuz government cannot save us good gov. We always say, Good government can't save us, but bad government can destroy us.

And, and so the saving action of God was always gonna be through Christ in his church. And it was differentiated. But Caesar had a role, our founding fathers took this and really, uh, explicate it well by saying, And the government's even more limited than you thought. And they even made the citizen Caesar. What, what's amazing to me is how Christians don't understand that biblical two kingdoms under girds constitutional freedoms. And there's a quote that I have, and I, I write op-eds occasionally on, on, uh, Reformation Weekend, and it talks about reformation, revelations about liberty and freedom. And one of them is in James Madison's letter, you know, to Reverend Schaefer. And he talks about Luther's two kingdoms undergirding and, and forerunner being a forerunner of the Bill of Rights. And again, when I I say this to Lutherans, who should know this, they don't even know what, how, how does that, how does that happen? It happens because these are two legitimate authorities in which God does his work, but he preserves and saves. And so, you know, we call it two kingdoms. We call it God at work. Two different ways to preserve and to save you. Is there another way that you, you think speaks even more clearly that way? Or is that something we're gonna rediscover together with all of our new, uh, network friends?

Uh, that's a great question. You know, and I'm still wrestling with that myself, you know, having, you know, been reading through this stuff for the last couple of years, partly through your work, through some of the other readings, and you just think, I like the two kingdom that's, that's familiar to us

Mm-hmm.

, um, otherwise, you know, uh, and it doesn't really roll off the tongue, but just, just the, you know, the public square work and um, you know, the holy communion work. Um, but that's

Not really the public square holy com. That's good. You know what I love about it though, folks is limited government, the fact that God can only, God's only. Well that's not that the government has a limited role, we should not expect too much of it. Uh, you know, we talk about equal access, getting to the starting line. We talk about religious liberty, the sanctity of life and even marriage to us is a religious liberty, uh, issue. And, and education's a religious liberty issue after that, you know, we say live and let live, but these are the foundational things where we say no, that that's something we can defend for all people. And that's all we want Caesar to do. We don't want 'em to do anything else. And the amenity starts benevolent us. We get really nervous cuz as not what God says, you know, it's a law and order place and it's a coercive place and that's not what God wants it to be doing.

Um, you know, benevolent in that is. So again, as we talk about this, the other way to think it maybe is two freedoms. And folks, I want you to understand this, freedom is not an American ideal. It's a biblical ideal. It's a biblical reality. So, you know, in Galatians five s is, it is for freedom that you have been set free. Well, who sets you free Christ that freedom no government can take away from you. But the founding fathers of this country, the, the framers said, Wait a minute, If if we, if we're supposed to relate to God in freedom, well shouldn't we relate to a secondary thing like the government in freedom too? And that's where they put these constitutional limitations on government, but made government responsive to the, to the citizen v versus the subject. See relationship. So again, two freedoms. Um, we need to make sure that we understand how these things relate to one another so that we can be useful in God's hands. Do you, So when we talk about this Champions for Liberty network, I think what we're doing is we're trying to tell people, you can be an expert in sharing the gospel. You can also be an expert in God's preserving work to protect the voice of the church in the public square or to keep Caesar in his place. And I don't think a lot of people thought that was a work of God before. What do you think?

Well, I, the, I I think you're absolutely right with that, but that's, I asked the question of myself, Why is that? Why is it that we shied away from, you know, that side of the kingdom? We've taught it Catechetically uh, all these years. We've understood that, we've watched it in this reformation time. Luther himself was, uh, Frederick the YIs who protected him at a time when he, he was being hotly per persecuted had it not been for Frederick the Ys. That's right. Yeah. We wouldn't have had Luther when had these writings most like, you know, that he wasn't the only reformer. But, um,

Well you brought, you know, you brought up something too, and I, it just hit me, um, folks, if you've listened to the Lutheran Hour, I used to be the Lutheran hour speaker and I left the Lutheran hour to come to do this work in DC and then I've got Mark to come along with me. So I'm excited about that. But, um, people ask me, Why would you ever leave that? Well, how many of you know that the very first Lutheran hour speaker, they tried to kick him off the air back in the forties they tried to kick it was the most, it was the number one radio gospel program in the country, number two program overall on radio. Uh, the shadow was number one. We were number two on CBS radio. So everybody listen. Well, they tried to kick him off cuz they said he preaches about Jesus too much or only Jesus.

Well, what should he have done? If the FCC says we kick you off the air, we'd go, No, he fought back using Jeffersonian Freedom principles Yes. Of the First Amendment to keep all religious programming on the air. And folks, that's the, that's the work that we're talking about doing here. We're, we know this doesn't, isn't the ultimate work of the church, but gosh, you know, if the government can silence your ability to share the gospel, even though the gospel cannot be totally silenced, we know that. But, but that means a whole lot of people won't hear it. And we're the kind of folks now are saying, I think we're gonna protect the church's space so everyone can hear. Okay, Mark, here's my thought. Now, I I've, I've been trying to share this with people. I said, I, I used to, I used to be part of the, you know, using football analogy and metaphor.

Um, when you're, when you're training like an evangelist, someone who shares the gospel, that's like training the wide receiver or the running back or the quarterback, right? And they score the touchdown of sharing the gospel and people come to faith. How exciting that is. Well, , here it goes. The work that you and I both are gonna be doing now and trying to educate people to do too is you, are you and I, well I think I'm the offensive line coach , and you are the, you are the guy down on the field calling the plays for the offensive line. If we win the Super Bowl and the church does this great job, no one's gonna interview us. I want you to know that, right? Because no one, you know, everyone thinks, well that's who the offensive line, how, how unsexy. But if you don't have people blocking, I don't care how good your quarterback is, I don't care how good you, you're running back and wide receiver, you don't score. So this, that's what I mean with talk about God's, uh, preserving work. It, it doesn't always get notoriety, but folks, if you're gifted at it, uh, whether in your vocations of being a good family, whether you're in your vocation of being a job, a lawyer, an entrepreneur, you have the ability to keep government where it belongs so that the church can be freely proclaim the good news of the gospel. That's godly work too. So how does it feel to be now part of the offensive line team?

Well, it's exciting and there's, like you saying, there's a whole aspect of this that comes with fear and intrepidation because this is to some degree uncharted territory for a lot of us, for you and me who've been, uh, in the evangelistic side of things. But now it's important. But I like your analogy. It's, it's resonates with me. And if you watch any kind of football on tv, which I know there's people that don't,

You're a Kansas State guy, right?

Well, you know,

A Kansas City. So

Yeah. You know, that's, that resonates with us. And so there, I'm

A lion

Fan fans,

You know, I'm a lions guy to the day I die, which means I know Grace my friend. Yes, I know. Anyway, back to you.

But have you noticed, you know, whether it's, uh, college football or, or, um, it's the pros. You see those line men, they're actually calling plays on the line also. They're pointing out this certain defenses and the way they're lined up. And so the opportunity for the network is really to give voice again for that men and women and young men and young women who are learning and growing in those vocations and the gifts and the skills, uh, maybe they feel inferior to, you know, preaching and teaching and evangelizing. And we always talk about how challenging that was. And yet this is an opportunity to lift them up and the vocations and the skills and the knowledge that they have and to be those protectors, to be those folks that are, are, uh, protecting their pastors and church workers and teachers and the church as, as well as men and women who were serving in, uh, the work of governing forces. So Right. What a great opportunity this is and we'll see where the good Lord leads. You reminded me when you talked about the first Lutheran hour speaker, cuz I'm just reading through his book now on Walter A. Meyer. Right. Fascinating, fascinating read. It was book a Long Ways, but to see him actually pointing out and fighting the very things that we're doing today.

Well, and, and people need to understand too, the national religious broadcasters, he helped actually create that. Uh, and again, the whole goal was to keep the message of the gospel free and, and, and unfettered and uncoerced. And I think that's what people don't understand. The real challenge today is, I call 'em secular puritans or secular pies. There's a, there's a, a group of people that really believe the state is the answer to everything. And they're not liberal, they're not conservative, they're status. And they don't, they think the church is a nefarious actor and it needs to be squashed. And we just need to put that in its proper place. Why? So people of all swaths can hear of the good news of the gospel. And I think that's what this, uh, Reformation weekend is all about. Mm-hmm. , when it's all said and done, like you talked about I Luther, when it was all said and done, uh, the only thing that made Luther Luther was the message. Yes. And, uh, the magistrates helped preserve that message so Luther could keep preaching and teaching and it literally transformed the whole culture of Western Europe, especially Germany at the time. Um, what, what are your final thoughts? Uh, uh, just give us some thoughts of the Reformation Weekend and what that really does mean or should mean to us.

You know, the Reformation Week in itself as you listen, uh, as you're in church, as you're hearing messages, is the gift and the power of Jesus Christ. Right. Right. Sins assuaged guilt and shame. Put a sunder in the gift and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. What greater liberality is there than that? And now to think that it at is actually empowered and gifted, you know, this other freedom and the temporal work that we have here. Um, and it really begins to right side this. Uh, and that's the blessing, uh, on for us at, at lcr l and as men and women who are, uh, in this gift of life that Christ has given us for this time. But we're here to serve neighbor. And that neighbor is actually in the midst of our culture, uh, for the sake of Christ today.

Those are great words and it is a great weekend. And you know, folks, uh, kind of bringing it back even to our left hand kingdom work, our blocking work, you know, the founding fathers did a, an incredible thing. They took this whole Caesar um, you know, church state thing and they flipped it on its ear. They put the, they put the citizen on top and they put the state on the bottom and then they even made it a tripartite state so that no one even there could, could a mass power. And why did they do that? Cuz they really believed that if you were motivated by your faith, by grace, by relationship to God, if you were directed by that, if you were disciplined by that, if you were actually challenged by that, there could be no better place to live in the world than to have a bunch of people like that.

And so, you know, when you look at, uh, our, even our founding documents and how they understood liberty, that's what they understood it as. It was meant to be the virtuous pursuit of happiness for those that really mattered in your life. And you were accountable to that. And the government should be a help mate. A good, uh, what's, what's the word? Word I use referee so that we all play the game fairly, you know, that kind of thing. Or at least we keep the bad actors from, from overtaking the game. And after that they were willing to risk it all on that notion. Well, where does that notion come from? I think the reformation and because that's where you talk about a freedom that is bigger than government, a freedom that comes from God and a freedom that actually makes your life worth living. And so Mark, I feel like our work together is we're gonna be defending the church's Right.

To actually proclaim both his law and his gospel without coercion and, and in, you know, to be servants for others in the, in the public realm. And we're gonna protect that. Right. Um, but church, we still gotta be the church. There's no other way, uh, to do the work. Right. Amen to that. Well, listen, thank you. Welcome aboard, and we're really glad to have you on the team. Hey, I thank you very much. Looking forward to digging in with you. Thanks for tuning in today. To get to know our L C LDC work better, check out our website at L C R L freedom.org contain, there are resources to empower your public square dynamic discipleship. Till next time, God bless you always. I'm Greg Seltz. Have a great week.

You've been listening to Liberty Action Alert with Greg Seltz, executive director of the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty in Washington dc. This program has been brought to you by the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty.