Episode 18: Anthony Ferguson and the Yellow Card Initiative - World Cup Soccer Evangelism. + Guardian Angels and Do Churches Have Their Own Angels? Maybe!

0:00 Hey, fun show today. We're going to talk about human evangelism, like human messengers, and we're also going to talk about heavenly messengers or angels. Our guest is, I think, a human messenger, Dr. Anthony Ferguson of 11th Street Baptist Church in Upland, California, which is a city of about 80,000 that borders Los Angeles. Dr. Ferguson is one of the founders of the Yellow Card Initiative, bringing the good news to World Cup attendees this summer. Let's listen to a clip. And the point of the sermon was why God doesn't do the impossible. And the first point was because we don't ask him to. And so I listened to this whole sermon about God doing the impossible.

0:40 He said, hey, Anthony, we should make a professionally designed website with a professionally designed video that can hold the traffic of hundreds of thousands of people. We should make a yellow car gospel track and we should hand out 100,000 at the World Cup. Now, 11th Street Baptist is a church of, we average 140. And I looked at this brother and I guess I didn't learn the lesson he wanted me to learn from the sermon, right? Because I said to him, I said, brother, that's so much beyond 11th Street. And this brother looked at his pastor in the face and said, yes, it is.

1:29 Practical advice, soul care, and resources that work together to build up your local fellowship and the broader kingdom of God. Join hosts, Pastor Chris Cole and Dr. Chase Thompson from the Great Commission Association, led by Dr. Mike Stewart, as they explore the frontiers of ministry and aim for the goal of making every church flourish. Hello, everybody, and welcome into episode number 18 of the Every Church Flourishing Podcast, sponsored by the Great Commission Association, which is a group of Bible-minded Baptist churches in California. And we want to hear from you. We want to partner with you if you are in our area. Today's guest, Dr. Anthony Ferguson, actually reached out several months ago from a totally different association down near Los Angeles and was seeking partnership with the GCA and found a great partner with us, and you can too.

2:24 So today we're going to talk with Dr. Ferguson about the Yellow Card Initiative, which is a fantastic approach to evangelism. And Dr. Ferguson and his team have already done most of the work for you. In the episode today, we're going to talk about evangelism with the yellow red soccer cards that have a QR code on them and lead to a website with the gospel. And one strategy that many churches in the West are using to reach people from around the world who are traveling to the United States this summer for the World Cup Soccer Tournament. We've got Dr. Ferguson for the next three episodes, and in addition to evangelism, we're going to talk to him about pastoring, church health, the Old Testament, and the Dead Sea Scrolls because he is a PhD high-level scholar of the Old Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls. I cannot wait.

3:12 He was a fascinating guest, and our interview went almost two hours with him which is why we have three episodes and I was never bored let's jump in It's totally cliche to talk about how excited you are to interview somebody on a podcast or whatever, but I will say I'm especially excited to interview Dr. Anthony Ferguson, not only because of the Yellow Card Initiative, which I think is a really creative, but potentially extremely fruitful approach to evangelism, but also ever since I found out that he was a textual criticism scholar in the realm of the Dead Sea Scrolls. And pretty much every Bible nerd is really fascinated by the Dead Sea Scrolls.

3:58 So as soon as I found that out, I hammered in a couple of Dead Sea Scrolls questions for the end of the interview. So if you're like me and you're interested in something like that, hang on. We're going to get to some pretty wild stuff there. Anthony, we are so glad that you are here with us today. And I'm excited. Years and years ago, back in ancient times when dinosaurs roamed the earth, One of my good seminary classmates pastored the 11th Street Baptist Church in Upland. Which is where you get to serve as the pastor today. So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, about your family and how you came to 11th Street? Yeah, well, first, thanks. Thanks, Chris and Chase for having me on the podcast.

4:38 Happy to be here. Happy to talk about soccer, Jesus and textual criticism. Three things that are really important to me. So what a joy it is for me to talk. But yeah, about myself. I think the first thing I'm a Christian, saved by grace, got saved when I was a kid. My grandpa was really instrumental in that. And I'm really thankful for his testimony in my life and God's sovereignty and kindness to me. I do pastor 11th Street Baptist Church. I've been here for seven years. I'm married to my wife, Kristen Ferguson. We've been married for 17 years. We just celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary and we have the extreme blessing. I have the extreme blessing of being the father to Asher and Lila Ferguson.

5:20 Love them. My son is 10. My daughter is seven. My kids and my wife are just, outside of Christ, the greatest gift I can have. And love spending time with them, love camping with them, fishing with them, hanging out with them. Just really do love my family. Yeah, how did I come to 11th Street? I was finishing up a PhD dissertation and teaching as an adjunct online at Boyce College and Cal Baptist and a little bit at Gateway. And my dissertation was complete. I was just needing to defend it. And I started looking for pastoral positions, preferably near Gateway Seminary in Southern California. Definitely, we were open to going elsewhere. And in God's kindness, he planted me five miles from Gateway Seminary, which is where my wife works. I adjunct there as well.

6:08 And it's been a really big blessing to invest into the Gateway community also. Yeah, we've been here for seven years. It's a church revitalization, and God has been so kind. In Ezekiel 37, can these dry bones live? One of my seminary professors, Kevin Smith, preached a sermon about church revitalization from that passage. Can these dry bones live? Only you know, God. 11th Street, we weren't a dead church. We weren't a skeleton church, but there were definitely some difficult things, some financial things, some theological issues that we needed to work through. And God has just been so kind over the last seven years. And I think we're on the cusp of what I would define as a healthy church.

6:51 And I do think this year, as we establish a deacon ministry and an elder ministry, we'll be there. And it's been a great journey. It's been a difficult journey, but one that I'm really, really thankful for. We're excited because we're actually recording this shortly after we've recorded another episode with the other Dr. Ferguson, and your wife has preceded you in a recording on Every Church Flourishing, and we get the privilege of having both Drs. Ferguson there, and we love your wife and her ministry there. We're grateful for her leadership at Gateway Seminary as well. So you were an Old Testament guy at Southern, so why Old Testament, and how How did you find yourself in ministry?

7:38 Yeah, so I went to a good church growing up, for sure. So many strengths of that church. And I am who I am. And I would say the yellow card exists because of that church's influence in my life. So that church had so many strengths. But one of maybe the drawbacks of that ministry was I didn't understand how to put the Old and New Testament together. I think that's probably common in ministry. It's a very difficult topic. What does David and Goliath have to do with Peter and Paul? What does the conquest have to do with salvation in Christ? What does the near sacrifice of Isaac have to do about my sanctification? And so these questions are difficult. And I got to seminary and I was in a class by Peter Gentry, one of my favorite professors of all time.

8:26 And he just began to unpack the totality of scripture and showing me the unity amid the diversity, by no means flattening out scripture, letting each story of scripture speak in its own individual way, but yet showing me unity and how scripture is pointing to Christ and the gospel. And honestly, I obviously began to know Jesus better. I began to learn more of God's sovereignty, his kindness, his providence, his intentionality. But more than that, I literally began to love God more. And being an Old Testament person, seeing the unity of scripture, I was just loving God. I felt compelled to be more devoted to God. And in my ministry, I don't want somebody to have to come to seminary to get what I just got.

9:11 At that moment, I just dedicated myself, I'm going to do a PhD in Old Testament, because I'm going to know the Old Testament. And then a PhD in the Dead Sea Scrolls, that was really a roundabout way. That wasn't my intention. You know, John Piper has historically and famously made the comment, why are those who are best in Hebrew and Greek one step removed from the pulpit? So very convicted, thought that that's very right. Early on in seminary, I was like, I'm going to learn Hebrew and Greek as best as I can. And so I just did Hebrew and Greek. And in a Septuagint seminar, I was introduced to this concept of the Dead Sea Scrolls and concepts like textual plurality and fluidity.

9:51 These are very technical conversations, but also extremely important in the realms of apologetics and faithfulness. And I didn't have an answer. I was being introduced to ideas. I didn't know how to respond. So I thought, hey, to answer this question, I have to know Hebrew and Greek really well. And it's really important because people are asking the question, Can I even, can I trust the Bible? And I'm going to put these things together and I'm going to do my best to answer the question. So I was in seminary. I wanted to be a pastor. I thought I would do a biblical theology PhD and I did not expect to do a Dead Sea Scrolls PhD. But that's what I did. And yeah, really glad I did.

10:35 That's awesome. It really seems like you've taken a grammatical linguistic sort of approach to apologetics. Which I think is fantastic for a pastor, I kind of take a historical approach to the same topic. Switching to the Yellow Card Initiative itself, doing some research for the podcast, I noticed in August of 2025, you tweeted or exed or whatever we call it now, praying about how our church near LA can reach the nations at the World Cup next summer. Any churches, pastors, seminaries, or other organizations out there with a plan or ideas? Now I'm going to assume that some point after August 19th, the genesis of the yellow card initiative came around.

11:19 So tell us what that is and tell us how it happened. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I don't remember the timeline. So you're a history guy. I'm not a history guy. So I don't remember the historical timeline here. But it started in, let's see, 2024. I think the fall of 2024. Is that right? So 2025 was last year. Yes. I reached out to NAMM and IMB, the CSBC gateway. And I was like, hey, the World Cup's coming up. I love soccer. I am a big Everton fan. I played very competitively, played in college and love soccer. And so I was very aware the World Cup was coming to North America and loving Jesus and wanting to make much of him and my own theological understanding of the Great Commission.

12:04 I saw these as a perfect blending together of soccer, mission, leveraging soccer for the mission, leveraging the World Cup, spread God's glory to all people. So I would say almost 18 months ago now, I reached out to some of our entities and just started asking questions. Hey, 11th Street wants to do something. What are we doing? And we just want to be on the team. And those were some good conversations. And I was really challenged to grassroots think through something to do. So 2025, I would imagine summer, I started passing out index cards to the people at the church. And I was like, hey, they had already heard me talking about this thing for months. Hey, we got to do something. We got to do something. So we're praying, we're thinking. I start passing out index cards. And I say, hey, for the next couple months, I want you to write down ideas about what we can do to leverage the World Cup to spread the glory of God to all people.

12:54 Through that season, it was probably a three, maybe four-month season of dedicated prayer and just soliciting ideas. We generated now, I think it's eight assignments 11th Street is doing this summer. My plan, Chase, was just, hey, how do I equip 11th Street? How do I equip 11th Street to steward this moment well? In my mind, God is giving the churches of North America talents. Talents if we want to use you know jesus's parable the talents here he's giving us talents namely the world cup and i think he's looking to see what we will do with those talents and i was convicted that we have to steward the talent well and my mind was just 11th street we're going to do stuff and i had a brother in the church who wants to remain anonymous who came to me he bought me lunch came to my office and he said hey i want you to listen to this like 50 minute sermon and we're just going to listen to it.

13:50 And then I'm, I'm going to ask you something. So we sat down and the sermon was all about how God can do the impossible. And it was a sermon. It wasn't super exegetical on, you know, Peter stepping out of the boat. And the point of the sermon was why God doesn't do the impossible. And the first point was because we don't ask him to. And so I listened to this whole sermon about God doing the impossible. He said, Hey, Anthony, we should, make a professionally designed website with a professionally designed video that can hold the traffic of hundreds of thousands of people. We should make a yellow card gospel track and we should hand out a hundred thousand at the World Cup. Now 11th Street Baptist is a church of, we average 140.

14:31 If everybody showed up, we're probably 160 maybe. And I looked at this brother and I guess I didn't learn the lesson he wanted me to learn from the sermon, right? Because I said to him, I said, brother, that's so much beyond 11th Street. And this brother looked at his pastor in the face and said, yes, it is. And so, you know, Chase, at that moment, I have a decision to make. Do I just blow it off or do I at least try? And I did not have faith. I literally thought, well, I at least have to try. I did not expect much. I cannot design websites. I cannot design professionally designed videos. the request he made to me was completely beyond my skill base and way beyond my limitations. I couldn't accomplish it.

15:12 So I just started cold calling people. We're talking the secretary of evangelism at NAMM, like cold calling people like, hey, this is what we want to do. Can you help us? And I finally got to Chris Cole and Michael Stewart at the Great Commission Association. And I told them what we wanted to do. And they said, hey, write me up a proposal. And I was like, you didn't just hang up the phone? And he said, give me a business proposal. So I wrote up a proposal and I sent it back to them. And just a few weeks later, they're coming down with a check for $7,500. Wow. To support this ministry. And I think the Great Commission Association believing in what we were doing was one of the first gifts of God to be like, I'm going to do something at this World Cup. and through the yellow card initiative.

15:59 And God began to build my faith. Around the same time, we had a brother at Gateway Seminary, Caleb Stallings, who said, yes, I could design your website for free. We had a brother who said, yes, I can give you a professional video. He gave us the English version for free. And of course, we're using AI to translate things. He brought people in who can quality control, quality check this stuff. And then I just start cold calling more people, mobilization, churches, what churches want to be involved. I'm cold calling, emailing random people, convention leaders, directors of missions, association leaders. And through that, the Texas Baptists, the Pacific Northwest, and the Missouri Baptists have all gotten on board.

16:40 And our goal is to hand out 100,000 cards in California. I have 5,000 cards right now that are not spoken for, maybe 7,000. But I have several churches that went to trainings, are the SoCal training who haven't responded yet. So I think we're going to be ordering that second batch. And I think hitting that 100,000 card mark is possible just in, just in California. So the Genesis was not flattering for me. It wasn't that I had this vision from on high. It wasn't that I had, you know, this big faith, you know, it wasn't that it was anonymous brother who came to me. He listened to his pastor. He presented an idea.

17:20 I said, I have to try. And then God just took over. And, you know, Chase, what I love about the yellow card initiative is that nobody in their right mind can say, look what I did. Nobody can say that. I mean, I can't say that. I didn't even have the idea. Like the web designer can't say it. The video producer can't say it. Great Commission Association can't say it. CSBC can't say it. And why I think that's really special is because we all can only say, look what God has done. Yeah. And that makes me just really, I would, we use the word excited a lot. We've used it several times in this podcast so far, but it makes me really excited about what God is going to do. if he brought us this far, what's he going to do at the actual event?

18:02 I'm really excited and I'm looking forward to seeing what God will do. And he's the only one who will get the glory. So that's kind of the background and the genesis of the Elkhart Initiative. I just want to say, brother, first off, thank you for your courageous obedience and your humility. So it takes a lot of humility to tell the story that you just did, to be honest about the genesis of this, because we don't know that story. And I want to thank you for that, because there is so much... Movement in the era in which we are engaging people, where we're moving towards influence as a commodity and my story and what I'm about.

18:45 And one of the things I love about you, and one of the reasons, by the way, that GCA was engaged so early was because you didn't do that. We get a lot of approaches from people who are like, I've got the next best, greatest thing. It was actually your humility and your willingness to say, I've got some crazy idea. I don't even know that God's going to do it. Would you guys like to come and join us in some act of obedience here that I'm doing? And it's that very spirit that was such a powerful invitation. And I think it is a powerful invitation to so many people to say, and it's the willingness to not centralize this around 11th Street or one person's platform that makes it such an engaging invitation to your current partners.

19:36 And we hope maybe even through this podcast to invite other partners into this work. So one question I have is we've sort of been talking about the Yellow Card Initiative like a lot of people might know what it is. And so how would you describe to someone who's never heard of yellow card initiative as it stands today what is it why should we be part of these these yellow cards right here if you're watching this on video these yellow red cards why what is this what how does it work yeah what's the basic idea and how can some churches be a part of it yeah yeah great so the yellow card i would first describe as an infrastructure or a toolbox a set tools which includes three main tools so the first is a a website.

20:24 Now, the website is super, super simple. It does three things. First, it shares the gospel. It shares the gospel via video and via text. So we have two options to share the gospel. As people are navigating through the website, they'll come across both gospel presentations. Second, we offer people an opportunity to respond to us. So we're going to be using NAMS call center. And we also have a form that people can fill out to either become a Christian, learn more about Christianity, learn about a local church, so people to connect with us. And then the third aspect of the site is just a list of participating churches. So we hopefully in the near future, we'll have all the churches who are participating with us. That means churches who are engaged in handing out cards, whether or not it's through personal evangelism, or they have maybe a digital evangelism strategy, whether or not they're going to the sites or trying to get people to come to their campus.

21:14 If they're engaged with us, we'll put their church name on our site. So that's the three components of the site, sharing the gospel, giving people an opportunity and you respond to us, and then having a list of churches for people to check out. The infrastructure also includes a suite of social media accounts. So if you're on social media, we'd love for you to follow us on X, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, I am not super big on social media, so. I probably don't have the right lingua to describe these things. But yeah, you can follow us. I have a guy who's leading those efforts. And then finally, the infrastructure also has the card. So Chris and Chase, you both just held up the card. This is a yellow card gospel track, yellow on one side, that's right, red on the other.

21:57 And super simple. It's vinyl. It's rounded edges. Official size, it's four by three. There's not actually an official size, but that's the general size of the yellow cards. General colors used, yellow and red. yellow card initiative is an infrastructure. The infrastructure includes social media accounts, website, and the actual card. Now, the yellow card initiative is more than just a set of tools. It's a strategy. So when most people hear me or somebody else talk about the yellow card initiative, they think mainly in terms of street evangelism, sharing the gospel with a stranger. And I would say that the Yellow Card Initiative is not just for those who have the gift or the ability or the maturity to share the gospel with a stranger.

22:42 The Yellow Card is for anybody who wants to leverage the World Cup for the sake of the Great Commission. So when we're thinking about the strategy, we think in terms of four cores. So the four cores include personal evangelism, developing a strategy in your church or your ministry where the people under your influence can use the card to share the gospel with their family, friends, and neighbors. So at 11th Street, one of the things we are doing is we set out a couple hundred cards in our foyer. And the goal is that as people are engaging in normal life, when people talk about soccer, they can have something to give to a friend or a family member and be able to naturally get to the gospel.

23:24 So we have personal evangelism. We also have digital evangelism. We're really encouraging churches to develop a digital strategy. So I don't know the statistic. But I'd imagine the average person on social media has a few hundred people in their social media ecosystem. Some people, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. So if I can train the people at 11th Street to go on TikTok or Instagram or do a YouTube short or a Facebook Instagram reel and just say, hey, you've probably seen this yellow card in the World Cup. Yeah, a player breaks the rules. They get a warning. They do it again. Red card, they're out. But what's cool about this yellow card is this isn't just about breaking FIFA's rules, but breaking God's rules.

24:08 And we made a video all about what God thinks of you when you break God's rules. And I bet you'll be surprised to learn what he thinks. Please check the video out in the description below. Like if I can train the 150 people at 11th Street, 160 people to do that on their digital platforms, we've just 1,000, 10,000 X our influence, right? Our ability to spread the glory of God. So when we're thinking about the yellow card, it's a strategy that's personal evangelism, digital evangelism. But then third, we're really encouraging churches to creatively think through a category that we're calling church evangelism, community evangelism. That means how can we leverage the moment so that people in our own community come to you?

24:53 So some of the things we're doing at 11th Street is we're doing a fantasy league. So we're like generating 10 questions and each question has a score. And we're going to have a bunch of people in our league. We're really inviting our church members to invite their non-Christian friends to join the league. And then the people, top three people at the end of the Fantasy League get prizes. We're going to do a FIFA video game tournament. We're specifically targeting our young men and trying to get them to come out and invite their friends to play out the World Cup bracket in EA Sports 2026. So video games for Jesus. Video games. This is awesome. Right. Yeah. Soccer for Jesus. Again, we love soccer. You know, some churches are kind of like, you know, tailoring their VBSs this year to have a soccer emphasis.

25:36 We're going to do that at 11th Street in that we're going to do a watch party. Our Spanish and Korean churches are going to partner together to broadcast the Mexico-Korea game, South Korea game. And it's on the same day as our VBS. So as kids come to VBS, we're going to have street tacos and, you know, Korean appetizers, churros probably, good stuff. And we're going to encourage families to stick around, parents, and we're going to use the yellow card to share the gospel with them. You know, another idea is we're going to do a big final watch party where Sunday. July 19th at noon, we're inviting the entire community to come onto our campus to watch the World Cup, to play soccer, to eat good food and to hear the gospel.

26:17 So, you know, there's a number of other things we're doing and a number of other things other churches are doing, but we are encouraging churches to think through a strategy about how they can leverage the moment to draw people to them. But then the fourth thing is we're really encouraging people to go into their commute. So this might mean going to local apartment complexes with Costco pizza, knocking on doors. Hey, we're outside playing soccer. We got some dinner. Would you like some dinner? We're the local church. If they say, yeah, you station two people at that door and one person goes back, gets the order. Well, when they're at the door, they're sharing the gospel with the yellow card. This is an idea that I got from a company in Oklahoma. I don't remember the name of the company, but they sell these grill attachments that are pretty cool.

27:01 But we're kind of altering the idea a little bit to be Costco pizzas, a little more cost effective, I think. But that's an idea. Or, you know, even going to venue sites, Uber and Lyft drop-off stations, tourist hotspots. LA has like eight fan zones. So we're going to be sending out teams to those fan zones. There's a church one block away from SoFi Stadium in Englewood. They connected with me. And our hope is to send out teams to them to share the gospel on the streets around SoFi. So we're encouraging churches to also think through that street evangelism component. So what is the yellow card? That was the original question. Yellow card is an infrastructure. It's a set of tools to help us leverage the moment for the sake of God's glory. But it's also a strategy, helping churches think through how they can strategically position themselves in this big plan, right, to spread God's glory.

27:48 So that's what it is. It's an infrastructure and a strategy. Fantastic. Okay, so we're driving down the road. We're talking about the Yellow Card Initiative and evangelism. I'm going to slam us off of a side road for just a few seconds and then right back onto the interstate in just a minute. But I got to ask, because we're talking around it, you're obviously a football soccer guy. You played in college. I'm just curious how in the world you got to be a blues fan. Are you a Liverpool guy? How did this relationship between you and Everton start? Well, yeah, I'm a big Everton fan. So if you don't like soccer, that would be a great team to start following. If you want a team with heart and legacy. But if you want a team with a winning record. We're not doing bad this year.

28:34 No, I said no. No, not bad at all. We have a brand new stadium, a brand new owner from Texas, the great state of Texas. Great coach. We have a homecoming for David Moyes. Oh, I'm so happy he's back. Yes, so I'm a big Everton fan. So how did I become an Everton fan? Well my last name is ferguson and when i was a kid they had a striker named duncan ferguson, and they also you know manchester united at the time had a coach named sir alex ferguson but i couldn't like them because everybody liked the red doubles and so i couldn't like them i'm not a bandwagoner at all i'm the kind of loyal and true guy right so i chose everton and i've been a fan actually that year they made it to the champions league like qualification round they didn't qualify in 2004 for the Champions League, but been the fan ever since.

29:23 There's been some good years. There's been some tough years. But I'm very optimistic about the future. They have some good players. They have a great, great coach. And I'm a big fan. But yeah, how did I become a fan? Duncan Ferguson. That's how it goes. Do you despise Liverpool FC? Oh, well, that's a hard question. Because they actually have several Christians on their team. Oh, that makes it tough. So, you know, they have a striker from Holland. Probably not going to say his name properly. Gokpo. their goalie from Brazil, Alisson. Firmino is a historical Liverpool fan. He's actually a pastor in Brazil now. So I used to hate Liverpool. And then I realized, I don't know if Everton has any believers.

30:05 But Liverpool does. So no, I would not say I hate Liverpool anymore. I'm actually kind of fond of some of their players. No, I believe, I recall the other Dr. Ferguson, and your wife has a nickname for your team. We don't say that. We don't talk about Bruno. We don't talk about Bruno. We don't talk about Neverton. Is that it? Yes, my wife calls them Neverton. Oh. Because in her mind, they never win. Now, in her defense, there was a couple years that were very dark for Everton. They never got relegated. Praise Jesus, I'm praising you, Jesus, for that. Thank you, Jesus.

30:47 But it's not appropriate anymore. They are not. So my nickname for them is Louverton because I Louve them. I love that. Louverton. Yes, I was in Neverton. Okay, well, hey, Jordan Pickford, at least, is Roman Catholic. So maybe on the way to believing the gospel, Lord willing. Yeah, I mean, Jordan Pickford is amazing. He is, I think, the best goalie in the world. I might be a little biased, but he's great. Seamus Coleman, he is an amazing coach. player. They have a new striker from Senegal named Njai. He's really good. I grew up in Alabama, as I already mentioned. I asked you about the rivals because if you're in Alabama, it's civil war between Alabama and Auburn.

31:31 I call it football hate because everybody down there claims to be a Christian. It's not real hate, it's football hate. Okay, back on the interstate. So if somebody missed the training for how to utilize the yellow cards, where would you point them to if you're going to send out a few hundred, a church's request a few hundred? In fact, my church just signed up this week to request some cards. Where would you point people to get training now that the in-person seminars are over? We have probably two options. The first option is on our YouTube page. So if you go to Yellow Card Initiative on our YouTube page, we'd love to have you subscribe to the page. But we have training.

32:15 I think there's 13 videos that take people from interested in World Cup Evangelism to being equipped to do World Cup Evangelism. And so we start with biblical foundations, then we move on to the theological foundations, and then we have a 10-step process of getting equipped. What does that mean? And then with the use of AI and a dear friend who has a company called Sermon Shots, he was able to translate for us the English videos into Spanish and Portuguese. So those are available for Spanish-speaking churches and Portuguese-speaking churches. So that would be probably the easiest way. Those are abbreviated videos. I think the videos are three minutes, five minutes, or maybe one or two, that's seven minutes.

32:55 But they're really digestible on a commute home from the bay, from LA, from the port, from down here. If you have a long commute, you could probably digest the entire playlist in one sitting. Second, I'm teaching an evangelism course at Gateway Seminary this summer. And the course is basic evangelism. You can get a two-unit course. And I think there might be some more scholarship opportunities. So if there's anybody watching this who wants to take a seminary class for a reduced price or free, you can reach out to Gateway Seminary's registration office. And so that class is going to be a Friday and a Saturday. I think it's June 12th and 13th.

33:35 A couple hours of training on campus. And then we're actually going to be doing field trips, excursion trips down into LA to utilize the yellow card. So you can do that. And the big part of the class is doing the evangelism. And then the students then will duplicate what we did as a class in their own church context two times. So if you miss the in-person training and you want to get trained you want to be involved either A go to YouTube check out the abbreviated training or B take a seminary class I think those are probably the two, two best ways to get trained at this point. Okay, awesome. So what we'll do is on our website, everychurchflourishing.com, we will have links to the YouTube channel and the other training.

34:16 And if you just want to look it up on your own, it is at yellowcardinitiative on YouTube. I have gone through the training videos and looked at them. They are very well made, easy to follow, and worth checking out. And on next week's episode, we are going to talk more about the Yellow Card Initiative. And we're going to kind of find out some of the experiences Dr. Ferguson has had sharing the gospel, using the Yellow Card, and what he would say to people who are naturally kind of evangelism shy, very hesitant to approach a stranger. So next week, we're going to talk more practicalities on being equipped for evangelism, and we'll see you then.

34:58 All right. I love that interview and Dr. Ferguson's zeal for evangelism. Remember to reach out yourself to yellowcardinitiative.com. That's yellowcardinitiative.com to get your church set up with some excellent soccer-related evangelism tools. They really are high quality and striking and a good conversation piece and a fantastic way to share the good news. So let's talk a little bit about angels, well, or not. Today, during our preaching time at Valley Baptist Church, I referred to Jesus' letters to the seven churches in Revelation chapter 2 and Revelation chapter 3, which is a most fascinating portion of Scripture.

35:45 The way those letters began is a bit clothed in mystery and a little bit of controversy. Was Jesus writing to heavenly angels or to human pastors or elders? Let's read. Revelation 1.20. Says, The mystery of the seven stars you saw in my right hand and of the seven golden lampstands is this. The seven stars are the angels or messengers of the seven churches and the seven lampstands are the seven churches. So the big question, is Jesus dictating those seven letters in the book of Revelation to the supernatural heavenly angels of the churches or to the human messengers, the pastors, the bishops, the elders, the overseers, the leaders of the churches?

36:38 Now, after this passage, Jesus is going to dictate a letter to each one of those seven churches, and all of the letters begin somewhat like the first letter, which is to the church at Ephesus. For instance, it says, Revelation 2.1, Jesus talking right to the angel of the church in Ephesus. Thus says the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand and who walks among the seven golden lampstands. So is John writing to an angel? Or a human messenger? Does every church have its own angel and did Jesus write letters to the angels of the church in Revelation?

37:21 Does the church I go to, the church you go to, have an angel assigned by God to that church? It's a really great and interesting question to grapple with. I'm not sure we're going to solve it today, but I think we will be able to see that the preponderance of biblical evidence points to one conclusion. But on this issue, there are heavy hitters in the realms of preaching, Teaching, theology on both sides of this question. For instance, one of my heroes, Charles Spurgeon, preached on this passage in a message called The Star and the Sword. And he said, quote, when John looked at Christ's right hand, he tells us then in it he saw seven stars.

38:05 These are generally understood to be the ministers of the seven churches of Asia. We are told in the 20th verse that the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches. And I don't know who the angels of the churches can be unless they are the messengers of the churches, those ministers, human ministers of whom Paul wrote. John MacArthur takes a very similar view, stating the seven stars are the seven ministers of the churches, so the author here identifies himself, the Lord, As the one who possesses the fullness of the Spirit and who possesses as well the ministers, the pastors, the leaders of the church.

38:49 The author is the one who gives the Holy Spirit to the church and sovereignly leads through pastors who are faithful. Simon And Kistemaker's commentary on the book of Revelation very confidently agrees. The word angel, says Dr. Kistemaker, basically means messenger. The messengers of these seven churches in the province of Asia are human beings. Because John addresses the letters to them, angels from heaven do not lead or govern earthly churches. John F. Walvoord out of Dallas Theological Seminary agrees with all of the others so far. He says the word angel, Greek word angelos, means messenger.

39:33 It is used in the New Testament of both human and angelic messengers. In view of the fact that these messengers were meant to be read by the churches, it is more probable that the messengers were human. Well, in order to convincingly answer this question, we need to know something about the Greek word for angel, which is angelos, a G-G-E-L-O-S in regular English alphabet terms. Interestingly, this word can mean angel as in the heavenly being or it can mean messenger. Angels definitely serve in a messenger capacity, but there are a few times in scripture where Angelos seems to refer to a human rather than heavenly messenger.

40:19 For instance, Luke 7.24, after John's messengers left, he began to speak to the crowds about John or James 2.25. In the same way, wasn't Rahab the prostitute also justified by works in receiving the messengers and sending them out by a different route? Or Matthew 11 10. This is the one about whom it is written. See, I am sending my messenger, my angelos ahead of you. He will prepare your way before you. All three of those verses translate the Greek word angelos as messenger. And it's very clear they're talking about a human messenger. Of further interest, the word angel does not indicate alignment or allegiance with God.

41:05 And what I mean by that can be demonstrated easily from a couple of passages of scripture. Revelation 12, 7, war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon and the dragon and his angelos, or angels, also fought. Matthew 25, 41, Thus we see that there are evil angels, angelos, that serve Satan. Now, that doesn't quite answer our question. It actually complicates it a little bit, But I think right out of the gate, we can eliminate one possibility.

41:47 It is certain that Jesus is not saying to John to send a letter to the church's angel of Satan. But is he saying to send a letter to the church's angel or to the church's human messenger, pastor, bishop, overseer, whatever, perhaps in a metaphorical sense, referring to, like I said, a human pastor or leader of the church. Many well-regarded and excellent biblical scholars make a compelling case that Jesus, through John, is actually sending messages to the heavenly angels of the church. For instance, Robert Mounts, who is like a biblical Greek guru, says, It seems best to understand the angel of the church as a heavenly being who serves as the heavenly counterpart to the earthly congregation.

42:39 They are the heavenly representatives of the church. Thomas Schreiner, one of our top Baptist theologians, offers evidence for the use of the heavenly angel here, and he says, are the angels heavenly beings or human messengers? The word angelos can refer to human messengers, and some have argued that the reference is to the pastors or bishops of the churches. But the word angelos occurs over 60 times in Revelation, and in every single other instance, it refers to a heavenly being. It is highly likely then, says Dr. Schreiner, that heavenly angels are intended here as well.

43:21 That's a pretty solid argument for math. G.K. Beale argues the same way, the angels of the seven churches are best understood as heavenly beings. It is unlikely that angels refers to human messengers since everywhere else in Revelation, the word refers to heavenly beings. Also, D.A. Carson, one of the church's best scholars overall, writes, who are the seven angels? What are the seven angels? And, He says the short answer is I'm not sure, but I have a longer answer. The two most common interpretations are these. The angel of each church is, on the one hand, senior pastor, elder, bishop.

44:02 After all, the word angel is simply the word angelos in Greek, which means messenger. But Carson continues, in some sense, pastor teachers in the church are God's messengers, I suppose. The problem with that interpretation is there is no passage in the New Testament that refers to pastors or elders or bishops as angels. Moreover, in apocalyptic literature like the book of Revelation, angels are common. They're all over the place. In other words, you're looking at things from the point of view from heaven. It's not surprising a few angels crop up. That's why you have angels appearing in Daniel from chapter 6 on.

44:46 You're looking at things from heaven's perspective, so if some of heaven's denizens show up, it's not surprising. In the context of apocalyptic literature, it is highly unlikely that that angels refers to pastors. What then are these angels? There are seven of them, one to correspond to each church. What I suspect, says Carson, is you have is some kind of analog to Daniel. Do you remember how in the book of Daniel, you have angels corresponding to the various countries? Clearly, it is impossible to construct out of the few things the Bible says about angels as a whole angelology, a whole hierarchy of angels, but you can say a few things here.

45:34 While some view angel as a human messenger, the most straightforward reading of heavenly messengers seems congruent with other biblical depictions of stars symbolizing celestial beings. And I'll tell you, I hate to disagree with my guy Spurgeon, but mostly I concur with Schreiner, Carson, Beale, etc., but with kind of a both-and twist. The preponderance of the grammatical evidence, Which I think is very strong here, seems to favor angel in the heavenly being sense because the word angelos is used 186 times in the Bible.

46:16 179, so a lot, of those times seems to be clearly referring to a heavenly being, And only seven of those times does it appear that Angelos is referring to a human messenger. Those are pretty strong odds. Further evidence in that direction, we can see that John never uses Angelos to refer to anything But a heavenly being in either the Gospel of John, the Epistles of John, or the Book of Revelation. Now, does that prove that every church has an angel? I don't suppose it does, but it does certainly seem to point in that direction as a possibility. Now, two qualifiers. Number one, each of these letters of Jesus to the church in a certain location is written to the church of a city.

47:03 That's very important. I myself don't live in a huge city in Salinas, California, population a little over 160,000, but it is big enough that we have dozens and dozens of churches. Does each of those churches have its own angel, or is there an angel of the church in Salinas? That is, all of the body of Christ that lives in this city. I don't know the answer to this question. God knows, but I certainly don't. Now, qualifier number two, it could be that churches in the first century had angels and they don't now. I suspect that things have largely stayed the same as it was in the first century, but since this is observational theology rather than reading things in the Bible that are clearly stated, then we just don't know for sure.

47:53 Now, one more tidbit, and this is my theory about the whole thing. I actually believe, but I can't prove it, obviously, that Jesus here used an ambiguous, that means it can mean two different things, term quite intentionally. Why would he do that? Because we know that these letters were actually sent and received by human messengers. How do we know this? Because we actually have a copy of the letters to this day, because they circulated around the churches of the time. Thus, I think it is likely that Jesus essentially sent these letters both to human envoys and to angelic ones. And thus, I think that Jesus at least wrote to heavenly messengers.

48:37 May be human one too, and that indicates, if I'm right, and of course Carson, Beale, etc. Are correct, that churches do have some sort of angel assigned to them. Do humans have guardian angels? Well, we can't answer that question convincingly from Scripture either, but I will say, again, And there is a possibility based on Matthew 18, 10 and not many other verses. But Jesus says in Matthew 18, 10, see to it that you don't despise one of these little ones because I tell you that in heaven, their angels, possessive, their angels continually view the face of my father in heaven.

49:23 Okay, well, let's get our heads out of the clouds for now. check out the website, everychurchflourishing.com. There will be more of Dr. Anthony Ferguson next week, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. That would be so nice of you. Good day to you, and Godspeed.