HOW TPUSA FAITH ADDRESSES WOKE PASTORS | TPUSA Faith

Thank you, Rob. That was wonderful. And welcome, everybody, to San Diego. This is really exciting. I have some amazing news. According to our registration, we actually don't even have enough seats for all the pastors that want to attend our training and our conference over the next couple days. So I want to take a moment here to first just thank the TPUSA Faith staff. They worked so hard to put this on. The logistics, and it's not easy. We have a reputation at Turning Point USA to do a lot, and not just on high school or college campuses. We have Turning Point Academy, which I encourage you to learn about on digital social media all across the board. We had a very, very eventful summer. Now, you might be wondering, how on earth did this whole thing come together? So I'll tell you the story. For some of you that have heard it before, you'll hear it again. But I think it's very important. So when I was in fifth grade, I made the most important decision that any person can make. I gave my life to Jesus Christ in fifth grade at Christian Heritage Academy, run by now the head of Turning Point Academy, Dr. Huds Herzberg. And that was the most important decision that I made. And everything as I've grown older really is centered around that. You could call it a turning point, if you will. As I grew up, though, I was told that my faith in Jesus, my love of the Lord, my love of the word, was separate from my political views, because I had a lot of political views growing up. That certainly hasn't changed. So I kept those two things separate. So I started Turning Point USA when I was 18 years old in the suburbs of Chicago, basically to try and embark on a rescue mission for the millennial generation that was supposed to be the most progressive generation in history. Big Obama rallies, you remember, they were supposed to be beyond liberal imagination. I said, we have to try to fix this if we want to still continue to live in a free society. So Turning Point USA started on June 5th of 2012, and now it's on thousands of high school and college campuses across the country. We have more high school chapters than college chapters. It's a machine to be reckoned with. And I had no plans whatsoever, and I mean this, no plans whatsoever, to do anything with the church in the faith space. And it all changed. I had only spoke at two churches before I actually ended up doing this podcast. And all of a sudden, the country started to lock down. And I did a podcast which will go down as the worst prediction in the history of American podcasting. See, unlike Anthony Fauci. When I make a mistake, I own it. This was a very bad prediction. So I look right into the camera. The country's starting to lock down. I said, okay, let me tell you right now, audience, the church, they're not going to lock down. The church will resist tyranny because the church loves liberty. And that was really stupid. All of a sudden, I look around, and pastors that I grew up reading all their devotionals were locking down their church and citing Romans 13 while the strip club was open and the liquor stores were open and the supermarket was open, and they allowed the secular, godless government to call them non essential. So I'm the political guy who's also a Christian. I'm confused. What are you guys doing? And they say, well, we have to stop the spread. I said, does the virus not spread at marijuana dispensaries or liquor stores? And I look around at friends who are more depressed than ever, more suicidal than ever, more drug addicted than ever. And the church took the label as not essential. Now, many of you resisted. And resistance to tyranny is biblical. Resistance to tyranny is biblical. Look no further than the midwives in the book of Exodus that disobeyed Pharaoh. And it says it was pleasing to the Lord in acts. Obviously it says, obey God, not man. But I was told by the intelligentsia of Big Eva that you must submit to all government all the time, no matter what. And if not, you're going to kill your grandmother. Shocking to me. I was legitimately perplexed and confused that the light of the world, in a time where the stakes have never been higher, you allow them to take Easter and Pentecost from you. I get maybe a week. I get maybe two weeks. But then when all of a sudden you start seeing people march in the streets without masks on and they have to shut your church down, I was stunned. But I did find many pastors, many of you in this audience that did resist, and you remained open. And you deserve encouragement and praise for that, because there was a remnant of those of you that resisted. And you were called names. You were attacked. They threw the public health authorities at you. Somewhere here is Mike McClure somewhere where he has been fighting in a legal battle nonstop in the Bay Area for keeping his church open. And hundreds of people gave their lives to the Lord in the midst of lockdowns. And he was the only church in that area that resisted. And they. They tried to put him in jail and millions of dollars of fines. And there's so many stories I could Go through the room and just mention some long. For the rest of my life, I'm gonna have friendships based on what happened in that terrible time. But then the second thing happened. It was bad enough that we were locking down the country. And remember, I'm a political guy. I visit college campuses so you don't have to. And I happen to know a thing or two about Marxism. I've read their books. Doesn't end well. It's from the bed of hell, okay? Literally. Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, Postmodernism, Jacques Derrida, Herbert Marcuse, Michel Foucault. We can go through the whole thing. I'll talk about it, Tom. So then all of a sudden I heard these pastors that were telling me for years, we don't do politics. We don't do politics. We don't do politics. We're keeping our church closed. But by the way, if you're white, you're racist. I thought, well, that's weird. Why are you now bringing in these incredibly dangerous deconstructionist ideas, acting as if they're some sort of expert on race relations? Because you saw a 30 second YouTube video before you took the stage to your empty congregation. What's that all about? That's kind of weird. And then they start marching in BLM parades and all of a sudden, kind of like the state run religion of America when we needed Jesus the most became racial reckoning while the church was also closed. And so then I said, okay, we gotta do something. So I went on a nonstop blitz that honestly hasn't stopped. It just, it's just been one rolling crisis to the other. It hasn't. And I actively sought out many of you. I said, I need to know that there's some pastors that don't agree with this nonsense. And I found many of you. And we started to build friendships from all across the country. And almost every single pastor that I would find, they found me through social media, the podcast, all sorts of unique ways. They'd say, charlie, we're open, no masks, we're not doing the vaccine thing. CRT's on the pit of hell, but I'm like the only church in the area that's doing it. I said, I know a guy down the street. Why don't you know each other? Like, oh, I heard of him, but I don't know. And there's community lack. Because I thought that there were all these amazing organizations that were actively doing what we are doing right now. Gathering you, encouraging you, giving you the equipment to fight legally against Church closures to hear from the best and brightest minds like David barton or Bob McEwen, James Lindsay, to dive into these ideas so you can ask analytical questions. And I was shocked. I said, oh, my goodness. Satan targeted the American church because the church was not ready for this asymmetrical attack. And so I said, look, I need to gather 1100 pastors. Like I need a hole in the head, right? So, no offense, not exactly easy. So. And I said, I'm not a pastor, I'm not a theologian. Right, Rob? To his great credit, he said, charlie, I think that, you know, you're uniquely positioned to do that. I said, well, I'm not a pastor, I'm not a theologian. He said, exactly. I think you're uniquely positioned to do that. And you will see this in the next couple days. We have Five Point Calvinists here and swinging from the chandelier, Pentecostals. I spoke at a church, Five Point Calvinist Reformed Church, where they told me no one has laughed in that church for the last 30. Wow. They're not allowed to, right? Yeah. No, I'm kidding. We love you guys. And look, here's the thing. What do we believe? We'll get to this, but I just want to, while we're on it. We believe Jesus Christ is the king of the world. We believe in inerrancy of scripture and the Nicene Creed. Theological disputes and differences are fun, interesting and important. That's not my calling. My calling and our calling is to strengthen the church, to fight for liberty, which is God's idea, not man's idea. In one of the most consequential times, not just for Western civilization, but for humanity. So we start tpusa Faith. And I said, look, I'm going to need a message from the Lord that this really needs to grow. In one meeting with one donor, underwrote the whole thing for a year and a half. Wow. Okay. That's definitely a message. And we met resistance. People said, oh, Charlie, come on, this is already being done. Same sort of thing that I heard when I launched Turning Point USA 10 years ago. The there's some potential here, a need. I'm hearing from it firsthand. And the Lord has just worked in the most unbelievable way. It's been two years since our launch. This is our third gathering like this with thousands of pastors that have come through our summits and been trained and filled up. We have 2,000 church partnerships, and we'll tell you what that is at tpusa Faith Now. So you might say, well, Charlie, what Is the mission. What does success look like? The number one most immediate mission is we want to excommunicate wokeism from the American church as quickly as possible. And we're going to define what that means. What does that mean? They're coming after biblical inerrancy right now. Deconstructionism, postmodernism. This is exactly what the enemy did in the garden. And his playbook has not changed. Going through seminaries, going through youth pastor circles. My speech tomorrow will be largely on that and kind of warning about what I'm seeing, what I'm doing. And the second kind of goal of TPUSA Faith, which we had a really good conversation with our friends earlier, which may be realistic or not realistic, but all things with God are possible, is honestly, we want to work TPUSA Faith into retirement because we want the church to be so strong, so bold, so courageous that there's not a need to gather pastors around the resources here. By the way, we used to live in that country when Billy Graham, in the 1950s, the church was speaking about cultural and civic issues. It was talking about Marxism. This is a new phenomenon that we've been propagandized to believe. But the church does not talk about what's happening in the new cycle. It's a feel good, nice centric Christianity. By the way, nice does not appear anywhere in the Bible and it means ignorant in the original Latin. But that's probably a side effect. Why is the country falling apart? A lot of reasons, but honestly, I blame us Christians first. We gotta hone it. Christians founded this country 55 out of 56 of the signers of the Declaration of Independence revival leading church attending Christians, most pastors and most churches you being excluded. And maybe you're part of this category and I'm glad you're here because maybe the Holy Spirit is here to challenge you have remained silent on some of the most critical cultural issues of our time. And so what we believe at TPUSA Faith, as I've mentioned, Jesus is king, Nicene creed, biblical inerrancy. But also that we are commanded as Christians to care about the public square, that we are commanded to care about our fellow neighbor. And I'm gonna go through three very simple biblical reasons verses that kind of center why we do what we do. But you know, I kind of talk for a living and so I kind of run my mouth sometimes and I every so often a wokie pastor will reach out. By the way, if you're here as a wokie pastor, I'm super glad you're here. I mean that non sarcastically, and I hope you'll stop being that. So I had a conversation. They said, quote, they said, charlie, God does not care about America. God doesn't care about government, doesn't care about politics. All that God cares about is spreading the gospel. Now let's pretend that's true, which it isn't, but let's pretend that's true for a second. The most important thing is winning souls for Jesus Christ. I believe the second most important thing is making sure you do the first thing you're not caring about. Politics gets the church labeled as non essential. What could have been a harvest type crusade in the lockdowns turned into a dystopian nightmare of a culture further from Jesus, not closer to Jesus. That's what happens when you don't care about politics. Or what about parental rights in this state? They're passing bills where they can kidnap your kid. But I mean we can get into the abortion stuff, which is so obvious in scripture. Not that hard to see that the Bible commands a strong relationship between a mother and a child, father and child. Honor your mother and father so that you may live long in the land in which you are in the only one of the ten commandments that involves a promise in your nation. And yet the church is silenced. It's definite on so many of these issues. So I'm told. Charlie doesn't speak to it in the scriptures, does not matter because Jesus kingdom is the next world and it doesn't really matter what happens here. I'll allow you guys to sort out the theology of that. Obviously I find that to be preposterous, but I don't believe they believe it. I think they're using it as an excuse because if that was true, then why would they help the poor? If that was true, why would they have a marriage ministry? If that was true, why would they try to help people that are hungry? No, no, they use it as an excuse because politics is scary. For some people politics just means business of the city is what it means, what happens around you. And it comes down to some very fundamental questions. What is a human being? The church believes that a human being is made in the image of God. Genesis 126 and 127. The progressive secular leviathan that runs our country believes a human being is an accident of millions of years of Darwinian evolution. That right there is a political argument. If a human being is made in the image of God, well then they have natural rights. They have a soul worthy of protection from the moment of conception to the moment of death, that changes the whole ball game. That means you just can't eliminate that human being. That means they have a right to speech, a right to property, a right to movement. These are political questions. The bad guys believe a human being is. It's an accident. And who's to say if you just eliminate it in the womb, that's not a big deal? Then we get further and further into these conversations, and I find that there's almost two different churches in America that are happening right now. So when I talk to some people that don't speak out on these issues, they say, boy, attendance is really hard. We've had a really tough couple of years now. Maybe some of you feel that way or you've experienced that, but the large majority of you, as I talk to you, you're having parking problems at your churches. The more you speak out on these issues, why? It's because the congregants, the people, your flock that you are shepherding, they're begging for you to have them make sense of what's happening in the news cycle, to use the Bible as the lens of which we view all things. What do we think about transgenderism? What do we think about abortion? What do we think about? And the excuse that is parroted more than ever is we don't do politics. When I hear that, you know what I hear is we don't stand for righteousness. That's what that means. It is coded language for an obedient church, for a secular government. But you're here for a reason, because you probably already largely agree with everything what I'm saying. And you're going to be challenged in the next couple days. I encourage you to take notes, record whatever you want to record. Got nothing to hide here. We're bringing in the best experts imaginable, but we are going to challenge you. Can you do more? Can you host a biblical citizenship class, which we're partnering with Rick Green and Patriot Academia? Can you. Can you do a cultural engagement center that the great Jack Hibbs does at Calvary Chapel, Geno Hill? A couple things as we close here, three things I want to talk about, because to the person who's not persuaded, because, yes, there are 1100 pastors from across the country, but you are still in the vast minority of pastors in America. I was asked by a pastor recently. They said, charlie, when do you think God is going to work a miracle in America? When do you think that's going to happen? I said, well, did you thank him publicly? At your church when he did. And he said, well, which one are you talking about? And I said, can you name one? And he couldn't off the top of his head. I said, okay, let me tell you a story. I've been in this space for 11 years. I'm unapologetically pro life. I spend a lot of time with pro life leaders. Five years ago, almost to the day, five years ago, I was in a private meeting with some of the top pro life leaders and donors. And the discussion that was ensuing was that Roe vs. Wade will never be repealed. And it's a mistake to even talk about it because it misleads our followers that we cannot set an unrealistic standard of repealing Roe versus Wade. And the consensus upon the pro life leaders is like, it's really so impossible. As one pro life leader said, charlie, it would take the Red Sea parting for Roe vs. Wade to be repealed. I'll never forget that conversation. And in a way that only God can say, someone who's lived a very colorful life became president and put three people on the Supreme Court and all of a sudden Roe vs Wade is repealed, it's overturned, and a monumental miracle, a generational miracle. And I asked the pastor, did you mention that from your pulpit? Did you say thank you said, oh no, no, no. I have a board member who doesn't like us talking about abortion. It's too controversial. So we don't do politics at our church. So you only thank him for the miracles that your board members like. Got it. You know that 95% of American pastors or churches did not mention the repeal of Roe versus Wade at all. So God works a miracle and 95% of churches and pastors say so. Three basic reasons. Number one, Jeremiah 29:7 demand the welfare of the nation that you are in because your welfare is tied to your nation's welfare. We are called and catch the Lord speaking in Jeremiah 29. 7. We are commanded to care about our nation. Passivity about your nation is unbiblical. Silence in the face of evil is evil itself. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer would say. We're talking about fundamental all out, taxpayer funded regime and oligarch supported war on God's design. This is no longer a question of what political jersey you wear. This is the current administration that says that men can give birth. Yes, I know. Those of you that are laughing is the only way you can cope with something as insane. The center for Disease Control now says that you can take lactating drugs if you are a man and chest Feed a child. That is the center for Disease Control. That is not some fringe, weird blogger at the University of California, Berkeley. If the church is not going to correct that error with truth, don't expect the secular world to do that. And finally, my challenge for you is Jesus said to create disciples of all nations, not converts of all nations. We have to go deep. And if you are experiencing congregants that might be leaving your church or questioning, I encourage you. Got to get them deeper. You see, the healthiest churches, we deal with the TPSA faith. They believe that Jesus is the king of everything in their life. Not just one little thing, not just the king of the music they listen to, but everything from political to the news they consume to how they raise their kids. And the Bible speaks to all of these things. The founding Fathers believed that. And we're the recipients of this incredible nation because of their heroism, their courage and their bravery. Discipleship of all nations. I believe firmly after doing this only a couple years and traveling the country, that we're being put through a test. And if we could play a small role at TPUSA faith, praise God. We're doing this out of obedience, out of love of the Lord, for His Word, love of the country. And I know this to be true. If we can multiply our impact and get the church to stand, this country can turn around in a moment. But isn't it. Isn't it a. Isn't it an interesting circumstance that it has to be the church now? The church founded America and we will see whether or not the church continues to stand for America. Now, some of you might say, but Charlie, I believe Jesus is coming next Thursday. Why haven't you mentioned your eschatology yet? We got all sorts of different eschatologies here. But let me just address that. If you believe Jesus is coming next Thursday, what do you want to be caught doing when Jesus returns? Run into the hills and hoping things get better or contesting for righteousness and truth and occupying till he comes? I am so blessed by many of you. I want to say thank you for praying for me personally and for our family. We're under attack all the time. Not to feel sorry for me. It's just the fact. So thank you, guys. Thank you for supporting this organization. And I believe that we are in a spiritual war, invisible war around us. And we're here to get the church to start fighting that war and winning. God bless you guys. See you tomorrow. Thank you.