Ep 1317 | This Pastor's Phone Call Shook His Progressive Governor | Jeff Schwarzentraub

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In the past year, Colorado has passed some of the most radically pro-trans legislation in

the country, including a law that threatens parents that they will lose custody of their child if they don't go along with their son or daughter so-called gender transition. Colorado has also become a safe haven for abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. And against this very anti-biblical, dark and depraved backdrop is brave church. This is a church in Denver, Colorado that is led by Pastor Jeff, he is here today to talk

about courage and the responsibility of both pastors and Christians in shining light in the darkness and speaking, the truth and love and how we can actually make a difference by seemingly small acts of obedience to God. This is an incredibly edifying and educational conversation that you guys are going to love. So without further ado, here is Pastor Jeff.

Pastor Jeff, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

“Could you tell everyone who may not know who you are and what you do?”

Yeah, my name is Jeff Swords and Trabb, I'm the senior pastor of Brave Church in the Denver Colorado area. Yes, and you all are indeed brave against this backdrop of Denver, which as we were talking about before the camera started rolling, has changed a lot in the past several years. Can you talk about some of the changes you've seen in the city over the past decade or so?

Yes, so originally I'm from Central Illinois, Lived and Dallas for four years, probably similar vibe, there's a cultural Christianity vibe to it. When we moved out to Denver, we realized very quickly that is not the vibe in Denver, which is one of the reasons we wanted to go in. But even since we've been there over the last 15 years, I mean, with the legalization of

marijuana, I mean, people moved to Denver, I say for the three M's from marijuana, for the mountains and for mile high, if they like the Broncos, and so that's really why they come. People do not migrate to Denver for a community. They migrate for hedonism, and so what you see in our culture is a group of people, my wife and I were talking about this morning, we used to say Denver is the happiest group of

lost people on the entire planet, people moved there to be outdoors, to be active, to enjoy what they do, and usually do it by themselves, it's a very hedonistic lifestyle and culture.

“Would you say over the past 15 years that you've been there, the hedonism has increased?”

Oh, absolutely. I mean, when people start going down a road where I'm going to live for me, and it's all about me, there's no, there's no you turn on that road apart from Christ, and so it just keeps spiraling that way. It's crazy how Colorado has turned so deeply, secular, and progressive.

It didn't used to be that way. It was a conservative stronghold for a long time, and then I guess migration from the blue states, maybe even immigration just changed the demographics, changed the politics. And now it kind of helps along with California or again, and Washington lead the charge for progressive radicalism.

We're talking the most radical transgender ideology in the country has been passed legislatively in the state of Colorado. So can you talk about that? Because some people may not know how far gone, and I don't want to use that terminology, but seemingly politically, Colorado is.

Yeah, and I would say this, 2020 changed me huge. I think it did for every pastor, right, because you're doing a case study live. What are we going to do?

Here's what the government is saying, we're going to slow this bread for 14 days.

You've got to wear a mask, you've got to get a vaccine, all these different things. And we were really questioning that from the beginning. And very quickly we opened our doors, and because I was one that just said, I don't want to get to heaven and meet Daniel who talked about being thrown in a lion's dinner. Shadrack, me shacking a bend, I go be throwing enough fire, all the martyrs that have

been martyred for their faith, and then say, hey, what did you deal with?

I couldn't do that. And so we opened our doors, and then we received a lot of threats from the health department, from Christians, from saying you don't love us, you don't care, all those different things. And what we've seen is just this whole progressive ideology move. So there was a house bill 1312 that got passed, it got modified a little bit because

people put up a big fight.

But basically in Colorado what they were trying to do is be able to take your kids, be able

to castrate them or do whatever they want without your permission, and if you don't agree, they don't even have to tell you.

“And so I find myself in a unique position because I think the way I was trained, the way”

I was raised, is I keep the gospel, the gospel, make it about the cross, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus don't get involved in politics. Because I grew up in Peoria, Illinois, which was a melting pot and a test market for everything. I grew up with Democrats, Republicans, but that was in an era of Jimmy Carter Ronald Reagan. So our parents would vote differently, we'd all play football together and eat Thanksgiving

dinner and nobody cared, we didn't talk about it. But it's moved from a right and left issue to a right and wrong issue. And so everything that I feel like I get involved with that's quote unquote political, they're just biblical issues. So the transgender issue, that's a biblical issue, that's not a political issue.

God created two genders male and female, you can't even get out of Genesis chapter 1 and not believe that. So when we've teach the Bible, we teach the Bible. And so if you really want to tick off leftists, just teach Genesis 1. Because leftists are saying, well, we don't know how we got here.

Well, God says, you got here because I'm God and I've always existed.

So there's one God, he says there's two genders male and female and he says there's one race and I created all this in six days. And so when you talk about all the racist, you know, people say everybody's racist these days. But talk about racism being an issue, talk about transgender being an issue, talk about all

these things. Just addressing those in the very first chapter of his word, very authoritatively, for us to be able to say, hey, this is what it is. So I found myself on the state capital, speaking truth, doing things I never thought I would do.

I have no desire to make a political run. I have no desire to get involved. But to stay silent on biblical issues is to be complicit with evil and I just won't do it. Yes.

And in case some people think that you're exaggerating when you're saying, oh, Colorado wants to take kids away from their parents, now, this is true.

“And you're referring to, I think, the Kelly Loving Act, correct?”

Yes. That was passed last year. It's supposed to go into a fact in October, 2026. And this is, well, I guess there might be two different ones. So there's one that has to do with pronouns, so-called gender expressions, that requires

you to affirm and respect someone's pronouns if they identify as the opposite sex. And there is another piece of legislation that basically calls it child abuse. If a parent says, you know, I'm not going to go along with this. Correct. My 12-year-old boy says he's a girl.

Well, I'm not going to put him on puberty blockers, chemically castrate him. I'm going to tell him the truth. I'm going to love him. I'm going to help him affirm his masculinity. That is considered child abuse and could possibly put your custody of your own child at

risk in the state of Colorado. That's exactly right. And it's ridiculous, and I find that too many churches are afraid to stand up and say that's wrong. And that's not even a political issue.

That's just a biblical issue. That's just what it means to be a parent.

“That's what it means to love your child.”

That's how God designed them and you're responsible for them. So yeah, I see that gender ideology, I see the radical leftist movement in Colorado. And so people, I mean, having lived in Dallas before for four years, there's a cultural Christianity vibe. I mean, if you go work out at a health club, you can hear people talking, where they

go to church and what they thought about the service.

I've never heard that in Denver a lot of times.

People don't talk like that. And so that's why we like being where we are, just to be a voice from the Lord saying, this is the way I walk in it. Yeah. And you joined other pastors last year in the Denver area to try to push back against this

legislation. I remember you wrote an open letter, right, to the legislature saying, hey, slow your role, think about this, I urge you not to sign on to this, not to pass this pro transgender anti parental rights legislation, right? Absolutely.

Because again, every time I do that, I find myself looking up to the heavens, like, God, why, why me, this is, I'm not, but I have to, I have to, for the sake of the next generation, if you care about our kids, if you care about the family, if you care about church. And what I learned in 2020 is God loves his church, he'll do anything to protect his church. And our job in the church is to honor him and to honor his word and to stay true to what

he wants. And then his job is to protect what we do. We tend to do it the other way around. We try to protect ourselves. We try to, hey, what can I say to keep members here, what do I need to do to protect

the church?

And so I think it's imperative for pastors of churches, whether you're in conservative areas or liberal areas, to preach the word, unapologetically, in such a way where people can hear it.

“And the only thing they can do with the word is they can accept it or reject it, that those”

you're only two options. And so I just find that there's not, you know, people ask me a timer, are other pastors just cowards? I don't know that they're cowards in that they're afraid to stand up. I just don't know that enough pastors trust the authority of God's word enough to say,

this is what I'm called to do and I'm going to stand on this no matter what, because I'm not an authority on the word, the words and authority over me.

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And they will preach God's word, but they will not claim God's authority over every sphere of life. So they might stop short of calling on the civil magistrate to stop legislation that is evil and good hurt kids. Maybe they would preach through Genesis 1, but they would say, okay, that's where my responsibility

ends. I'm not going into the civic realm and saying, don't pass this law. But you said, no, it's not only my responsibility to preach the gospel and preach guys' word, but I also need to use this pulpit and use this platform to call on the governors the legislators to say, no, no, no, this is wrong.

Here's why. I mean, even if you read through your Bible, just a curse for reading, I mean, John the Baptist wasn't beheaded because he was going to the synagogue and teaching about marriage being between one man and one woman. He was standing outside the king's palace telling him he was immoral and wrong.

And that's what cost him his life.

“So I think we've missed the mark on what it is.”

We think teaching the word is just, hey, our job is just to teach Christians. No, our job is to hero the word and a culture that's not willing to hear it. And that's where we have to stand up because I believe this whole heart of Lanna know you neutrally, I knew Charlie, we had him to our church.

One of the things I loved about Charlie was Charlie would say the most important message

in the world is the gospel. But the second is fighting for a culture that will allow the gospel to flourish. Now, to be clear, the gospel will flourish in any environment. The gospel can flourish and totalitarian environments it can. But nobody wants to live in that regime and if Christians don't stand up and live out the

gospel and call people to live the gospel, then we will be in living in a culture that we never ever wanted because the, the leftists. So I'm not talking about people that lean left democratic. I'm talking about people that have an anti-biblical agenda, which is a big part of that party right now going that way.

If you're going that way and nobody's standing in the line saying, no, we're going to hold the line. We're going to do this. Then the whole culture is going to go that way and cultures downstream from politics and politics is downstream from family and families downstream from the church.

And if the church does not hero the word of God clearly to the entire city that it's in, then we have the mess that we're in. And when the cultural mess comes, then people like, well, that's just culture, that's just no, that's from bad preaching of the word of God in your culture. Yeah, we've been using an alliteration for several years on this show, politics matter

because policy matters because people matter. Politics, if a policy, policy affects people, people matter to God and they matter to us. And therefore, the Christian does have a responsibility to involve ourselves in politics because our politics affect our unborn neighbor. They affect it, like in Riley, they affect people who are impacted by all different kinds

of immigration, economic, abortion, gender policies. And if we love our neighbor, then the most loving thing we can do is agree with God.

you mentioned some pastors, they don't fully trust in the authority of scripture, just

to be their guiding light and to say, this is what God's word says. I'm not going to apologize for it because a lot of people think that they're nicer than God, that maybe they can outcompassion God, or they need to kind of let God off the hook because some people think God is so mean for saying there's only two genders.

“And let me nuance this a little bit because I think my message could actually be more persuasive”

than the message of the creator of the universe. And at the end of the day, that is, it's no small thing that's actually self idolatry. That goes all the way back to the garden of like, I want to be like God. I want to be the one to determine good and evil, right? It's 100% pride.

And I find that too. And if we had been doing this podcast maybe 10 years ago or something like this, we were living in a different time. I mean, the culture has shifted so quickly in a direction that, you know, in the way I was

trained, like I said, here's the gospel, the gospel's the death barrel and the resurrection

of Jesus. That's it. But it's not because the gospel changes who I am, it changes my identity and how I'm supposed to live. And if the gospel is just getting people to heaven, we miss out on everything that God's

doing in his word. The gospel changes me, yes, there's nothing I can do, there's no works I can do, all that stuff is true.

“So I believe in Jesus, but believing is not just a cognitive mental ascent, like, okay, I”

believe Jesus died. It's, he's the Lord of my life and if he's the Lord, then he gets to control what I do. And so when I see things that are wrong in a culture, and I don't confront them, or I don't live differently, then I'm being complicit with that cultural norm. And so, you know, we already mentioned Daniel, we mentioned Shadraq, we should, I could

better go. You go through the Bible and every single person, they apostle Paul. I mean, every time they rolled into a culture, they weren't rolling in to see how they could warmly greet everybody and love it. They were rolling in with, there's a whole different way to live.

Jesus Christ is Lord, it worked called to submit to Him, to love each other radically, and what you talked about, we have the message of love wrong, we think love is a feeling. Now love is a decision to preference to others and show them the truth. And so, what you're doing on your show, I appreciate you, I know my wife appreciate you, your voice of clarity in a world of confusion, and so it's an honor to be here talking

to you. Well, thank you. One way, and pastors who are clear from the pulpit make the podcasters job a lot easier. It's much harder to be a pastor than it is to be a podcaster because you are not only talking from a pulpit, but you're shepherding a flock of people that God has entrusted

to you to help steward their souls to heaven, but also to advance God's kingdom on earth. And that's a really big task, and when someone is going to a church, and they're not getting clarity from their pastor. And they're like, okay, I got that message, but I still have no idea what right and wrong is when it comes to these issues, I'm just going to turn on relatable.

I'm happy to help give clarity, but I'm not a pastor. I don't want to be a pastor. I would love to be an auxiliary help to your pastor, but my hope is that every pastor from a pulpit would be so clear that every congregate would then walk away and say, okay, I know exactly what God's words says about abortion or about gender.

Now listen to Ali just for fun. But we've kind of gotten into this mess where a lot of people feel like they have to turn to podcasters because their pastor just won't tell them the truth. That's exactly right. You're preaching for me, because if I could say anything to pastors out there is trust

the word. I know when we launched our church in 2010, and we started with 12 people on lunch Sunday we had 28, and then I bragged that we grew it to 113, and all that stuff, but there were so many times where I was rolling through a text and I would tell Kim my wife, you know, this is going to be a congregational trimmer, you know, people aren't going to like

this.

And inevitably, some of the times it was, but I remember thinking when we first started the

church, I'm like my youth group in Texas was bigger than this church, what am I doing wrong? And I was really encouraged by some of my mentors, it's not about the size of your church. Just keep preaching who you want to disciple and then they will come. And now we're in a place after 15 years of doing this that when people walk into brave,

they know they're going to get the word. I mean, I don't have to apologize for anything. I can preach any text in the Bible and people are hungry for it, and they want it and they're thankful for it and so good.

“And that's why I tell our church all the time.”

There's no other church. I would rather pastor than y'all, because we're building something together and God's doing something. And to your point, we are standing against a culture that is very, very different than us right in the center of Denver.

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You know, you mentioned COVID and I know we've kind of gotten off of that and I kind of want to go back because you said that that really changed how you thought about politics. And in some ways, leadership and the gospel and how you preach things, what I find interesting is that for a lot of people, they look back at COVID and they're like, well, that made me really scared.

That was the era that my fear deepened where my mistrust deepened. And it sounds like for you and your church, you're saying, well, actually, God used that very fearful chaotic time to make us braver and to make us bolder and to make us more clear. Can you talk more about that? The lessons that you learned during COVID.

Yeah, I mean, there's periods of lessons. I think it was a case study and process that we talked about. But as we prayed about it, I was like, we have to open our doors. Like, how can you make disciples if you're not in person? Like, how can you do what we're called to do if we're not going to meet together?

“And the Bible says you should meet together and all the more as you see the day approaching”

and why should I have to listen to somebody saying that strip clubs and marijuana dispensaries

are essential, but my church isn't.

And so I remember I was on a phone call with our governor about the third time they had one of these clergy calls and my friend who had worked in the governor's office told me how to hit star six or something. I can't remember and get in the queue and I was the third person up and they said, okay, Pastor Jeff from Brave Church and I remember asking this is very early on.

I'm like, hey, Governor, appreciate what you do. I appreciate the fact no matter what you choose people are going to be upset with you. We're praying for you because we're called to do that in the word. I said have a question. I'm kind of curious right now why you've trimmed our churches down to 50 people.

You make us have six fees of space. We have to wear mask as mask. You're thinking about trimming it to 10. And yet I'm going to home depot or lows or a king supers or wherever I go. There's thousands of people walking around unmasks and so I just want to know what to tell our

congregation. So I'll tell him whatever you say and I'm going to hang up and listen to you. And I hung up and he just started ranting for five minutes. I knew he was scared and I knew he didn't have an answer and it was right then I'm listening. I'm like, we're opening our doors.

“And so when we did, you know, I think the first Sunday back we had like 72 people or something”

like that and I was in the front and worship crying with my wife like, I will always keep

our doors open. I'll never shut them again. And then we grew like during that time. So I think pre-COVID about 1800 people post-COVID were close to 5,000 people. We had to get a different building and everything and then our whole congregation changed.

Because the people that came, like I remember a guy that walked into our church. He was with his daughters. He didn't know as the pastor and I could overhear him talking to his daughters. I won't say exactly what he said. But he said something in fact of he was walking around because we would put up signs.

But we didn't enforce anything and so it was the first place he'd been with a large group of people that were Christian where nobody's wearing a mask and everybody's happy. And I remember he said to his daughters, like, I don't care if this pastor stinks. This is our church. Wow.

Yeah. What I learned during 2020, one of the other things was that the church dictates what the church should be doing. We don't take our cues from the government who tells us we need to close. If we need to close, we'll decide that we need to close. You can't tell us we can close.

That's not your role. You're overstepping your bounds, you're overstepping your reach. That's our role. And what I realized is when I'm praying in 2020 with my wife in the kitchen before I go to church in Denver, Colorado.

And I'm praying with her because my kids were younger than saying, hey, if I go to prison today, if I get arrested, just tell the kids, I'm got it. Daddy's going to go share the gospel in a different place. He'll be home later this afternoon. It made me mad that I'm living in America and that happened.

And what makes me frustrated is what people don't realize is if pastors of churches don't stand up and start being bold like that, that is going to happen. And when it happens, it's going to happen because of the cowardice in the pulpit and people that wouldn't stand or people that said, I just don't want to be political.

“I don't want to get involved. It's too much time, you have to be involved.”

If you care for people, if you love people, if you love God, because God is involved with the culture, he wants to see people change. He doesn't just want to get me to heaven. If he wanted to get me to have any take me to heaven, the moment I trusted him, he wants me to be used by him as his mouthpiece, as a life that reflects the glory of God.

And so 2020 was radically changing for me. It's made me stronger. I have a lot more respect for the guys that kept their churches open. Like Jack Hibbs, I didn't know who Jack Hibbs was before 2020 and I'm watching him. I'm like, okay, he's one of us.

I was watching Dr. John MacArthur keeping his church open and there was being stately. They weren't being rude. They weren't being mean. They were just being honest. And I'm like, these guys are my tribe.

You talked about briefly there, like the authority of the government, what they can and can't

do, the responsibility of the government. A lot of people listen to conservative or what I would just call biblical arguments for these issues and the limited role of the state and the authority of the family of the church. And they're thinking, okay, but we have all of these people to care for. And I don't want to vote against the programs, the welfare that helps the homeless, that

help the poor, it just feels more compassionate. Maybe they're even thinking, okay, I might agree with you on the trans stuff, on the abortion stuff. Isn't it compassionate to use all of our tax dollars, the way the democratic party says that we should to help these people in need?

“Is that the role of the government and where does the church come into that conversation?”

Well, some of it's my opinion, and I just, I don't see any government programs that are so fantastic that are helping all these people. I think the church could do a better job if the church could do this. But even when church does benevolence, it can turn into a welfare system too, right? If you don't have some things in place and what tends to happen is taxes increase increase

increase increase with the promise that if you just give us more money, we'll make it better.

And it's never been the case.

It's never been the case in my lifetime. And so even going back to our founding documents in the freedom of speech, you know, people say in the church is, oh, separation of church and state, separate. And you're very familiar with all this. You realize it was a Thomas Jefferson letter to the Dan Barry Baptist telling them, hey,

we will not interfere with what you want to do as a church. That was the separation of church in state. It was to keep the government out of the church and not to keep the church out of the government. So I think we have to have Christians that are living for Jesus in government positions, that

are making policy, that align with the Word of God for the betterment of all the people. So for me to sit here and say every government program is terrible. It always has been, that's not my point. My point is if people take personal responsibility and they look to help people, we would

choose differently than what we're currently doing.

Yeah, there are people listening and watching who may not be Christians or maybe they just have a bad impression of the church. I heard this very popular podcaster, a liberal podcaster the other day said, why evangelicals are a cancer to our country. They're the worst people in the world.

Why evangelicals? Why evangelicals specifically. So that's her, you know, racial description. But when I look at evangelicals no matter what their skin color is and really just Christians who go to church, who believe in God's Word, who live out God's Word, they are some of

the most generous and charitable and giving and compassionate people in the country. It actually statistics show that. So can you give us some examples of what your church does in a culture and a city that doesn't really like the message that you're preaching on what you do? How do you, tangibly, love those communities and love those groups rather than just outsourcing

the compassion to the government? Yeah, we do a lot of what we do through what we call cadre.

“These cadre's are small groups on a mission, that's what they are and so it's interesting”

because everybody in a church because of their gifting has a different pole to a different type of thing. So if you're an evangelist from the time you're born, you think everybody needs to go out on 16th Street and share the gospel every weekend. And then other people in church, I don't want to do that.

And then there's other people that have gifts of encouragement, they just want to come around and encourage everybody. So what we try to do is let people unleash what they want to do and be an influence with where they're at. So some of our guys that are entrepreneur business owners, they do it with those guys.

Some of the people that are stay at home, do it with your tribe. I mean, so how we do it is relationally. I mean, that's for sure. But our people have learned that truth is a great commodity in these discussions because I think for a long time where there was a secret movement or hey, I'm just going to come

alongside, we're going to become best friends. And once we build enough trust, then I can share a Christ with you. I feel like those days are over. Maybe it's because of just how God's wired me or maybe it's because we're living in the last days.

“But I think people are hungry to know what is the truth and how do I know it?”

And can I see it lived out in a person's life? So one of the reasons that your podcast is so relatable, you're living out your values. This is not something that you talk about once a week or five times a week. This is something that you're living out with your husband, with your kids, with your family, in your life.

It means something to you. So when people hear you talk, that's what brings power to it. And so instead of coming up with myriads of programs, we don't come up with myriads of programs. We train people to live out their God-given call and their mandate to fulfill the great

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When you use code alley, you'll get $25 off your first order. Go to ventures.com. code alley. How do you encourage those Christians? I'm sure there's a lot of them in Denver that they're working at a public school or they're working at a company that is completely opposed to their values.

Even wants to pressure them to use pronouns. So why about someone who's pronouns that don't correspond with their sex? How do you help your congregants navigate? Truly living out that truth and love dichotomy and such a dark space. That's a challenging one because it's really easy to say truth in kind of a flippant

way. Who cares? If you lose your job, you lose your job. If you lose your job, you don't have income to provide for your wife and for your family. That's a big deal.

But what we always say is you never make the wrong decision by trusting God.

You never make the wrong. God watches everything. He sees everything. It depends on where you believe, who you believe your resource is. So if God is your resource, not your job, that gives you a ton of freedom to live for

God, knowing that God's going to provide for you, God's got your back.

“And so that's how we treat those things.”

And so we tell people, you can't be a born again believer living out the mandates of the gospel and lie. You can't. And so when you talk about the public school teacher, we have public school teachers that go to our church.

We tell them you are a light in a very dark place, and we love you and we stand for you and we pray for you and we're encouraging you. And yeah, we understand it's difficult for you.

You can't stand up on a platform in the lunch room and say, "Thus say at the Lord, we

get them." But if kids ask you questions, we're praying that you would have those answers. And you know, I just thought about this. So I was a youth pastor in a couple different cities. So in Chicago, when I was a youth pastor in the Chicago area, you know, I was with my students.

And they were introducing me to their friends. It was almost like they were giving them a warning like, "Hey, this is my youth pastor." Kind of like, "Be on your best behavior. Don't use bad language. Don't talk about what we did last night."

When I lived in Texas, I would get invited to kids schools. And when I would go in to have lunch with them, they would give me a badge and it was almost like, "This is my youth pastor." Like, "Hey, the governors here. Let's all sit with him."

Yeah.

“I remember when we first moved to Denver and, you know, moved into our neighborhood and was talking”

to my neighbor and asking what you do and asking him and he asked me, "What do you do for a living?" and I said, "Well, I passed her a church. We moved out here to plant a church." And I said, "We just moved here from another planet. The look on his face would have been the same." And he's like a pastor, like, is that like a real job, like you get paid, I mean, that's

Denver. And so there's no, like, cultural, oh, it's in our pastor. Now there is within our church as we built it. But I just think, you know, we're living in a very progressive, leftist state. And the funny thing is, I don't know that we totally are.

I just think a lot of independence and some of the conservatives that you don't vote. I mean, you know this. I give, if evangelical Christians just voted their biblical values, we would have a totally different set of governors, totally different set of people in the house and in the Senate. But so many evangelicals that complain about how bad the world's going don't even vote.

Right. I've talked to people from Colorado who say that. That actually, a lot of their community is just kind of instinctively conservative or at least libertarian. They're really not on board with a lot of the tyranny that we see from leftwing Democrats.

But they're also, as you said, just kind of apathetic, individualistic, hedonistic. They kind of like California, while we have this beautiful state, we take advantage of the resources. And we just kind of like don't want to bother anyone.

“And the truth is, in order to be what politics would call conservative, but in order to”

be publicly biblical, there's just not a lot of social incentive for that. There's not. You could get punished at your job, you could get excluded from your friend group. You could be called a bigot online, you could be accused of the worst things ever. And most people don't have a desire to go against the grain because how does it help

them? You really have to have a deep conviction that, no, no, that's evil. This is right. I'm motivated by something bigger than myself and just what I want in the moment. So that's very insightful that you said earlier, it's not really, you know, these hard and

fast progressive activists, it's a lot of individualistic self-centered people who just

Yeah, we're living in an era of passivity and cowardice.

And that's what it is. And so you know, from your show, you know, from what you do, if you're going to speak the truth, they're going to be all sorts of threats and people that want to come after you hurt you or whatever. And that's what shuts people up.

And so it's fine, Ali, that you want to take that, but I don't want to take that. So I'm just going to keep quiet, we'll let Ali do her show because I agree with her.

“And I think there's a lot of Christians in the background that agree with other Christians”

that are standing out front. But when they take that little step, it could even be from their family, like, oh, you're one of them. Oh, we don't want to talk to you anymore. I mean, all that stuff.

So I, earlier last year, I got to be in the Oval Office and Prayover President Trump.

And the picture went out on a news feed and I'm like, my whole family's going to see this.

So I got to tell my family, what my family's kind of like split down the middle political and knew it was going to cause division. And so, but I said, hey, I was in the White House today. I got to Prayover President Trump and I sent a picture. And immediately, you know, some people, oh, great.

And then there was just silence and then the whole conversation shifted. But it's even like that, I think, for some people. So with family, with friends, like, hey, you know what, I just want to go out to dinner and have fun. I don't want to be known as the person that stands against that or does that.

And it's the same thing we tell young kids, you know, when they're going, hey, you don't need to go out drinking with your friends. You don't need to be a moral. You don't need to just stand firm. We're telling our kids to do that.

Why don't we do that? Yeah.

“And so I think the first time that you're standing firm and people are attacking you for”

some biblical truth, it really hurts. But then you start reading the word and it's like, rejoice and be glad you're awarding heavens great. This is how they treated all the prophets. So if you're going to stand firm, I told people all the time, one plaque that I see nobody

put up in their house is anyone who wants to live a godly life and Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Yeah. And that's the fact. So I think there's a lot of people that are on the sidelines cheering for people

like you, cheering for pastors that preach the truth, cheering for politicians that stand for what's right with biblical values. They just don't want to identify with them because if they do, they're going to get grief too. And they don't want that.

And it's time for all Christians everywhere to stand. Next, sponsor is Alliance of Fitting Freedom. So thankful for ADF and how they fight for our rights, all the way up to the Supreme Court, the rights of women and girls to be able to compete fairly for example. And I've got a little story for you.

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sports. Go to joinADF.com/alley. Center and encouraging note, center a Bible verse to let her know you're supporting her and supporting ADF joinADF.com/alley. I can't remember the specific legislation in Colorado, you might know.

It was a couple years ago.

But there was some initiative that was pro abortion basically allowing abortion through

all nine months. Colorado is a very radically pro abortion state in every stage of development. They want to be the most pro abortion state if we're not already. And but at the same time, there was another initiative that was to protect some species of wolf in Colorado.

And I just thought it was an interesting and very sad and dark juxtaposition that you will protect this endangered species of animal in Colorado. But this human being who can feel pain, this image bearer of God, we can snuff out their life through poison and dismemberment, decapitation through all nine months of pregnancy. Yes, pregnancy.

And you've got people who are at worst supportive of it, but then also just apathetic toward it. 100%.

“Well, you were asking, hey, what do you do in your city?”

Some of our cadre's have been resistance cadre's. So some of our cadre's have gone to abortion clinics instead of in front of them, one actually shut down because of the work that we were doing. One, I know there was a gal that was there. We got to minister to she decided to have her baby and send us a picture.

We paid for her flight back home to Texas because she had flown in from Texas. So there are stories of good things that the Lord is doing, but we tell our people all the time. I mean, we're living in Sodom.

We're right there doing all the same things.

“So how do we as believers love people and stand for truth and call people out?”

Because if we don't, nobody else is. So we had a group of our men, probably two years ago. There was a drag queen story hour at a festival and they went and they just stood up and

basically said, we're for children and they turned her back to the stage and just in protest

and do anything else, didn't say anything. And it made the news that Brave Church is this radical, hateful, all this kind of stuff. A couple of our guys and I'm getting arrested, they were let off once they went to trial. I mean, but it's those kind of things. And there were people that even left our church like, if we're going to be that kind

of person, you know, nobody's going to come to our alpha class anymore. I'm like, what are you talking about? Like if we don't stand for what's true in our culture, all we're doing is sitting over here on the side, petting ourselves in the back. And it reminds me of, you know, when I hear at Metaxas talk and my grandfather, who is Jewish,

who survived the Holocaust, you know, our Christian churches were gathered in Germany, singing hymns while trains were taking people to the concentration camps and they're not saying anything. That's wrong. That's wrong.

We see things in our culture that are flat out wrong and we don't say anything, then we're complicit with evil and we can't be that. Yeah. Totally. What is your encouragement to a pastor who's maybe listening to this?

Maybe they live in a liberal city, but maybe they don't. And they've realized, okay, I think I maybe missed it. And they just feel that conviction from the Holy Spirit to be more clear what to do. First of all, first of all, I love all pastors. I just do.

And I think what you said is right. I think a majority of pastors really want to do a good job. I think a majority of pastors really love their flock. I think they have to take a lot of grief too. Sometimes it's from their elders and sometimes it's from people in the congregation

“that have been long, standing members or big tithers and givers and that's what pays them.”

And here's what I would say, trust the authority of God's word and don't apologize

for that. Stand firm on the truth, keep preaching. God takes people out of your church, he'll bring three to five new people in for everyone he takes out. That's what he does in at the end of your life.

And I tell a congregation this all the time. I'm not scared of preaching the word as far as what people are going to say about me. I'm very intimidated because I know I give an account for every word I say and I'm much more fearful of the Lord and I think what we've lost in our culture is the fear of the Lord.

And as Christians, we've lost the fear of the Lord. We're like, well, I'm a Christian so I can send and God will forgive me and yes, God will forgive you. But that's not the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is why what I want is sin.

I want to honor him. And so to all the pastors out there, I would say, you know your calling, you know why God called you, open the word of God, preach it, teach your people to pray and watch what he does. Can I ask you, what is the hardest part about being a pastor and dovetail that with a question?

Like, what is the biggest thing that you hope people pray for you and pray for their own pastors? I think the weight of what it means to be a pastor means you're responsible for soul. So if you have, I mean, we've been in every church size. We started at 12 and now we're over 5,000.

So, but you're responsible for each one of those people, regardless of what your role is. And your job is to spiritually nourish them in such a way that they hear the truth. So my wife can tell you every Saturday at her house, it's chaos. I feel the weight before I go into preach. Sunday morning, I preach.

I wake up on Monday morning and I'm defeated, discouraged, whatever. And I've learned over the years to rest in my identity and all that stuff. So I don't feel like quitting every Monday or anything like that. But I think the way people can pray for me is that I will be faith, I ask people this all the time, because people will say stuff like this.

And they mean well, like, hey, we're just praying that you stay humble, you know, I hope you stay humble.

To which I always want to say, I hope you stay humble too.

But I think what they're saying is we've seen pastors fall and we have, I mean, good friends of mine are fallen and I think what they're saying is we don't want to see that.

“So what I tell people all the time, the best way you can pray for me, is to pray that”

my relationship with Jesus stays strong, that I'm spending time with Jesus, that I'm letting him change me and that you can ask me, hey, what are you hearing from God lately? How's God working in your life? So that if I have a close relationship with Jesus, all the other things take care of themselves. Because I think one of the dangers in being a pastor is, well, I'm doing ministry.

I mean, I'm the pastor. And so you can lose Bible study rating, you can lose prayer time, you can lose, because I'm doing ministry. I'm meeting with people. I'm in the most important thing you can do is prayer in the ministry of the word.

So staying close to God and prayer, staying close to God in the word, and letting him continue to change you. So if anybody prays anything for me, it's a pray that Pastor Jeff stays really, really close to Jesus so that Jesus can tell him what he needs to do. Because there's nobody, like, can change just like Jesus, right?

And so I think that's the prayer for all people, honestly, but especially for pastors is pray that they are walk with Jesus is so close that they have the ear of Jesus, they can hear what Jesus is saying through his word and through conversations where they know how to walk in obedience and continue to do that. Totally.

Pastors and all Christians can feel really demoralized, especially living in a particularly

What are some ways, even small ways that you have seen light triumph over darkness through

“your church, through God's word, in the community where you live?”

Yeah. The church begots courage and so I think it was 2021, I think it was 2021, I think it's 2021 that we decided, okay, we're just going to have Easter outside and so we rented a place at the Banda Mayor's Speedway which was in Colorado at the time and we opened our doors at 10,000 people we did the next year at 12,000 people come and we just shared

the gospel.

We've seen hundreds of people come to Christ and what I would say is when we first moved

to Denver and somebody like Chris Tomlin would come to town or some big artist and I would go see a show, I would say Pioria Illinois has more Christians than this, like there's it's just not a thing or faith day at the Rockies, it's just not a thing, I've watched the spiritual temperature of Christians rise over the last 15 years, I've seen more people becoming more sold out to Jesus over the last 15 years and much like Elijah when he was

complaining to the Lord, like I'm the only one, everybody else is bowed and God's like no, there's no, there's 7,000 over here that haven't bowed, there's more than you think and so I think even in Colorado, I have great hope for Colorado, I have great hope, that's why I'm there, if I tell our church all the time don't move to a red state, God called you here, don't go where it's comfortable, stay in the fight and I look and I see it on

all fronts, I think there are people that are feeling called by God to step up, my friend Victor Marx is running for governor in the state of Colorado, is a born-again spirit-filled man that only wants to run to be top-covered for the state, so a lot of these bad policies don't get put in place, I see people rising, I see people standing up, I see light coming through and I see more and more people being unapologetic for the relationship of Christ

not love them, praise God, last sponsor for the day is concerned women for America, did you know that over 80% of young women voted to install a radical Islamic socialist in New York City, Zoran Momsdani, over 80% of women, we got a lot of work to do as you know that's part of why the show exists, that's certainly why concerned women for America exist, it is a coalition that's been around for decades that is helping moms that is helping

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in that endeavor, go to concernedwomen.org/alley if you donate $20 or more, you'll get a copy of their booklet on socialism, what it is, and its dangers, concernedwomen.org/alley I got to meet your daughter when I was in Denver just a few weeks ago speaking to your

church which was such an amazing day, they love having it, yes, well I love to be in there,

and you give some encouragement to parents who are like you know what, I love my kids but I'm looking at this future generation and I'm worried, worried about the state of our country, I'm worried about their spiritual state, what would you tell those parents? Yeah, my wife and I talk about this all the time, we were marriage experts before we got married and we were a parent experts before we had kids, what we've learned is that prayer

is primary for both, and I don't just throw that out there and say, "Oh, just pray," I mean, pray intentionally for each child, pray intentionally for their guests, and then speak words of life over them, because it's pretty easy to, you know, someone that looks at all the problems and calls out all the problems, anybody can call out the problems. But to look and say, "But God created you and the midst of all that you're going to make a

difference in this world. We believe in you, we love you, we believe just is doing something in you." And so as your kids learn to hear the voice of the Lord and as they hear you encouraging them and praying for them and loving them, we just trust that God's going to do the work. So any good things that have come out of our kids, we love all three of our kids. We think God's doing great things in them. It's really not us. I'm not going to write a parenting

book on here's the five steps to have a great kid, because I don't even know what those are, other than be present, love them, encourage them, pray for them, believe God's best for them, and tell them there are difference maker. There'd be salt and light in a world. So when you see

“these evils and when you see these things, hey, that's why God created you because you're going”

to make a difference. And darkness doesn't overcome light, light always, overcome darkness.

What good things do you see in Gen Z and even, I think it's Gen Alpha after that, that give you hope that, okay, God's doing something. Yes, so I started off as a youth pastor and here

having anointing with high school students. And so what I'm seeing with students is they have a passion

“and they're very missional. I don't see kids growing up saying, "What's my job going to be”

and how much money am I going to make and all this stuff?" They tend to be asking the question, "How can my life make a difference?" And I love that. And what we're seeing in Gen Z, you're seeing more young people go back to church, especially young men, going back to church, wanting to be part

of, you know, a life-giving church that preaches the word where truth is known. So I see incredible

hope. I mean, we're seeing glimpses of revival. We're seeing stories of, you know, even colleges, like a year ago, the whole Ohio State Buckeye team was like having revivals on the campus. And I was able to do, I did chapel for the New England Patriots two weeks ago, which is why I've been done for was blaming me for the loss, but got to meet a couple of those guys that had been part of that team. I mean, there's a genuine love for the Lord in that generation and I'm seeing it change.

And so I want to be a part of that too. We talk about passing the baton all the time. I'm 55 now.

It's like I'm not getting any younger. So the more we can raise up that generation, because there's

a lot of leaders that want to make a difference. And the questions that they're asking are the right questions. So we have a lot of young guys in our church. They want to go on. They want to want to be pastors. They want to be evangelists. They want to go do the work of the Lord. And they're doing it right now. And they're celebrating what guys doing. So I'm super excited about the next year. Yeah, that's so exciting. Can you give us just one last bit of encouragement or whatever final

message you want to give mostly women and moms who are listening to this? We do have a wide array of people. But women and moms especially, they feel very anxious right now for a lot of different reasons. They might need some shepherding of their hearts right now and just a little bit of edification from a pastor. Absolutely. Well, I love moms and young women. I love my wife. And I've

“watched all that she's done over the years to love kids. And I think moms just have a different”

relationship with their kids than dads do. They just do. And my encouragement would be it's easy. I think it's easy for women to listen to all the noise that's out there. And it's pretty easy to get a lot of news really quickly. And then, you know, ruminate, just on how bad, look at how bad this is. Look at how bad this is. It wasn't like this 20 years ago. It wasn't like this when I

was a kid. Wow, it's going from bad to worse. Here's what I would say. Jesus Christ is still

Lord overall. He's still on the throne. Spend more time seeking his face because what I find is even when I start ruminating on those things and saying, oh my goodness, look at us. This is so bad. We can't turn back. When I spend time with the foot of Jesus, I hear him say, I'm still in control. This is nothing. Nothing's spinning. I'm not nervous. I'm not biting my fingernails. You don't need to be nervous either. Just be my voicepiece and guess what? I'm coming back

to make this right. Until I do, I'll empower you to make a difference. So keep making a difference. So moms, wives, you're making a huge difference in the life and community of your kids and your husband and if you're working outside the home, that's great. So continue just to trust the goodness of the Lord and the land of the living. Amen. And if someone's in the Denver area and they're like, hey, I'm looking for a church where can they find more information? Yeah, go to brave.org.

“Very easy to remember. That's our website. Maybe you want to wait two weeks so that you can see”

the updated website. Yeah. But at the end of the day, yeah, go there. We'd love to have you visit if you're on the Denver area. Awesome. Pastor Jeff. Thank you so much. Hey, thanks for having me. It's been great. [BLANK_AUDIO]