Episode 19: Using AI For Evangelism and Ministry, The Power of Old Testament Lamentation, Dead Billionaire Soda and World Cup Evangelism with Pastor Anthony Ferguson

0:00 We've got Dr. Anthony Ferguson back with us again on the podcast today. He's a professor and a pastor, an author, and an evangelism pioneer. And we're going to talk about artificial intelligence and its role in evangelism. We're going to talk about the Old Testament book of Amos and pastoring the church through the Old Testament. And we're going to talk about the Yellow Card Initiative, which is this innovative way to share the gospel with people. One thing Dr. Ferguson said that really stood out to me, I want you to hear at the very beginning so you can hear it twice. And I love the word he invented. So God has the power to perfect us. He's chosen not to do it right now for a purpose.

0:40 Namely, as we wrestle with sin, as we seek to overcome sin, as we do this wrestling match of sometimes doing well and failing other times, our dependency on him is growing, right? So God is at work to do something in our toddlerness. 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.

1:25 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 19 of the Every Church Flourishing podcast. We are a ministry of the Great Commission Association in Northern and Central California, And we are always looking for gospel partnerships, whether you are in state, in our area, or out of it. Reach out to us at our website, gcasbc.org. That's gcasbc.org, just like a High Point University in North Carolina professor did this week, who will be a potential upcoming guest on the podcast.

2:07 But today, we have pastor and professor and Everton Blues superfan Anthony Ferguson with us again, and we're talking to him about World Cup evangelism with the Yellow Card Initiative and a few other pretty fascinating things also, including the Great Commission value of artificial intelligence and the importance of preaching about the Old Testament in church and the beauty of the Book of Amos and the Psalms and the Lamentations. We've also got Cal Baptist ministry student and Valley Baptist youth minister J.C. Thompson with us today to review a soda that used to be called Armless Palmer. What is it called now? Will it muster enough Spurgeons to be recommended?

2:51 Well, you'll just have to listen and find out. If you do like the show, please tell a friend about it. That's how podcasts like ours grow by word of mouth. That said, let's jump into our interview now. And we are back with soccer expert, evangelism guy, pastor, and textual criticism, Bible nerd, Dr. Anthony Ferguson. And we have been talking to him about evangelism and the World Cup. We're so excited, Anthony, to have you back with us and to hopefully maybe we'll hear some more about your fandom of Everton. But we really want to hear because we know you're a fan of Jesus.

3:32 You're a fan of having people hear about the hope of Jesus Christ and the gospel, and that's why we've brought you on today. We're so glad to have you back on this episode. I think where we left off in last week's discussion, I wanted to bring out the comment that this is not just something for people who want to share the gospel in English, that But in fact, the Yellow Card Initiative has been designed in many of its elements for people to use and share in many different languages. So what can you tell us, Anthony, about those tools for people who want to share the gospel in Spanish or Dari or other languages?

4:16 We have been able, by God's grace, to translate and quality check our resources in multiple languages. I think we're at 13 languages right now. I mean, I think from a theological perspective, I would just want to impress onto the hearts of anybody listening that we are, by God's grace, through technological innovation, namely the advent of artificial intelligence. And if we were to have tried to produce the Yellow Card Initiative four years ago, it would have been impossible for 11th Street Baptist to produce what we produced in 2026. If it was possible for the IMB to do it, it would have cost them, I would imagine, millions and millions of dollars to do so. But because of not agenic generative AI, I'm sure agenic AI will be able to do a lot in the future for us.

5:02 But we literally are able to take the gospel into as many languages as we want. The sky is the limit. So for example, we have training in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. It's really interesting because one of the people in our videos is from Brazil. And it's really funny because he is speaking English, but then we've dubbed over his voice in a Brazilian voice, but it's not his voice. So that's really funny. But we have training resources in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. But then we've translated the video and the website into 13 languages. I probably will miss a few, but English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Dari, Farsi, Arabic, Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, Pashtun, Arabic.

5:49 So, I mean, and these are a lot of languages. And it's remarkable that when I had each of these checked for quality, very few needed any edits. Now, they might not be like pristine Arabic. Like I have, there's several, there's a handful of people at the church I pastor who are from, from the Middle East. And one guy was like, yeah, you know, like it makes complete sense. Everything you're saying, There's one issue I'm not so sure. So he had his mom listen to it. She was like, oh yeah, that's fine. So it's like AI had very, we had to correct AI seldomly, which it's just insane. And I think, again, this is just another talent God is giving to the churches. He's giving us this talent, this ability to do great commission work in a way that we would never have been able to have done four years ago.

6:35 But in this moment, we can leverage the moment and we really can give a tool now to somebody who knows zero English and they could hear the gospel. So when I was in San Jose, I think it was San Jose, my Uber driver from the airport was from China, from Beijing. And his English was very poor. And we were talking through, I think Gemini was the AI he was using. And we were talking and then I gave him the card and he was able to listen in, I don't know if it's Mandarin or Cantonese, and he was able to listen to the video. And we were able to try to walk through a conversation. And I don't know Chinese culture. Maybe this is typical, but when he left, he gave me a big hug. I don't know if that's typical or not typical in Chinese culture.

7:16 But I think the point is simple, is that like the gospel was shared to this Uber driver from Beijing in San Jose because of AI. I don't know any Mandarin. I don't know any Cantonese. I have the yellow card. Yeah. And he heard the gospel. So what a moment, what an opportunity for us and really excited to see what God does. Because again, this is just all stating, look what God did. You know, it's such an amazing testimony, Anthony, that you've got there. And you're talking about the reversal of Babylon. When you talk about the reversal of Babylon, I always think about Revelations 5 and Revelations seven. Every tribe, every people around the throne claiming the glory of God, saying worthy is the lamb to receive all glory and honor and power and dominion.

8:03 And that's our heartbeat, right? To see every person come to saving faith that we can share the hope of the gospel with and being able to do it in so many different languages. And I so appreciate your heart of talking about AI, not as something to be scared of, while we want to be wary and wise and careful, wise as serpent, innocent as doves, as Jesus has commended to us. I know you're speaking also to one of Pastor Chase's big passions. He loves the idea of using AI in appropriate ways, healthy ways, one of our topics here on Every Church Flourishing. How can we use this next tool to advance the gospel? So thank you for giving us that example.

8:48 And this opportunity to talk about that. So I know that in the process of developing this yellow card, this yellow card right here, and it's got a QR code and it says North America 2026 on it. There's some ramifications of using the wording around the World Cup event itself, but also We wanted to use the yellow card as an opportunity to speak into so many different things, not just the World Cup. But I know that you, while you were beta testing this, you took some beta test yellow cards out to some MLS games and you had some chances to share.

9:31 What would you tell us about those experiences? Me and a couple of friends went two times down to San Diego for the MLS playoffs. We, on one occasion, brought, they were just like paper cards. The next was, I think, cardstock cards. So it wasn't good quality. And it definitely had a big QR code on the card. So the design was very, very different. So I would say it was a less strategic card. So we learned a lot from those beta tests. And I think we implemented what we learned to make the card that we have now in our hands. And so I went down twice, once with my uncle and then once with two friends from the church. And on average, I think a normal person, so if you're in a place where there's thousands of people, you can expect to hand out 80 to 100 cards per hour per person.

10:19 And that's about what we did. We handed out around 300 cards. We had 30 people view the video, roughly. And then three people said they wanted to become Christians. So I took that information and I gave it to a church in San Diego, Grace Church, San Diego, a church that's connected to Gateway Seminary. And I don't know what came of that. But definitely seeds were planted and we can pray to Jesus that those seeds are being watered. So this is people were eating carne asada. They were drinking modelos. they were people were smoking weed partying and here i'm like hey get on your phone look at my qr code so there's definitely a lot of reflections about that but then the second time we went down there we did the parking lot but before that we did the train station so we took the metro from downtown san diego i can't remember the stop into snapdragon stadium and handed out cards on the metro to see how people would receive that if they would receive it better or or less so what reflections did i have so i think the first thing is that okay 10 of the people who got the card viewed the video. I mean, that's not a great statistic.

11:19 But then 10% of the people who watched the video wanted to become Christians. That's a really great statistic, right? And if that statistic holds, that's 1% of the people who got cards wanted to become Christians. That's amazing. So when we were reflecting on that, we were thinking, okay, how do we increase the amount of people who got a card and then they get to the watch video category? So if you think about this in terms of a funnel, right? 300 people got the card, but then the funnel got very narrow. Only 30 people watched the video and then three people became Christians. Like, what can we do to reduce those bottlenecks to make the funnel wider? So it's not a funnel, but it's like a four inch PVC pipe, right?

11:59 So the water is just flushing through. And so we reflected on that and we said, okay, so the paper card, the cardstock card, I mean, that's trash. You know what I mean? It wasn't super well designed. It's not good quality. They held it up during the game to dissent the referee, to tell the referee what they thought. But then they throw it away in the trash afterwards. So we're like, okay, if we can make this vinyl, if we can make it plastic, and if we could, in a creative way, make it World Cup themed. Now, as you mentioned, there's lots of copyright infringement things here, which prohibited us from using certain language. But I think it's pretty obvious. North America, 2026, most people are going to recognize that in a yellow card. They're going to understand that's FIFA, that's World Cup.

12:39 And so we tried to make it thematic. We made it vinyl. We made it very official. And we gave it a minimalistic design. So it's not being intrusive. Like somebody can actually use this as a prop in the game and it will look like a prop in the game. So our hope in making those changes is that we'll widen the funnel, right? So instead of it being 10% of the people who watched it, because it's something they're gonna keep and hopefully keep as a souvenir, you know, we can hopefully widen that 10% to be 100%. And then if the statistic holds that 10% of the people who watched the video become Christians, I mean, you can just do the math, right? I mean, and of course, God's not mechanical. God's not a genie. This isn't magic. It's not mathematics. This is relational.

13:23 People are going to be different, and God can do whatever he wants. But I think we reflected on those statistics, and that's why we developed the card that we have now. So also, we also thought about, well, where else can we share the gospel besides a venue site? A venue site's important, but what about Uber and Lyft drop-off stations where people are hanging out? What about tourist hotspots? What about places where people are still kind of on their phone, right? When you're tailgating, people aren't on their phone, and that's probably a good thing. But how do we infiltrate areas around venues or into our community where people are still going to watch their phone? So I think it kind of expanded our thoughts about where we should distribute the card. Those were some of our reflection. I think maybe another reflection is that people want the card.

14:07 What I love about this strategy is it's like a value add. You know, I used to be a waiter at Cheesecake Factory for a long time, and sometimes people would get like the million-dollar bills, right? And, you know, maybe people love getting the million-dollar gospel track videos. That's possible. I mean, God can work in a million ways, but the waiters who got that were non-Christians typically didn't like that. So what I love about this is it's a value add. So in soccer culture, people like going to the stadium and holding up a yellow card. And they like it as a prop. Because when the referee makes a bad call, they want to hold up their yellow card and say, hey, referee, give me a yellow card. Or if they want to be really funny, they give him the red card. So when we went and beta tested this, we didn't have the red card.

14:48 Multiple people asked for the red card. People wanted the red card. That's why we did yellow on one side, red on the other. Because when somebody delays the game, somebody kicks the ball, talks back to the referee, they want to hold up the red card and say, get him out of the game, referee. Come on, come on, get him out of there. So people already do this in soccer culture. And so it's a prop, it's a value add. Like when you go up to somebody, some people are like, well, how much does it cost? Like they're genuinely thinking like there's a cost. And we're like, no, this is free today in the game. When the referee makes a call, like, let's hold this up and tell him what he thinks. And then honestly, even with the cardstock and the paper cards that we hand down in San Diego, 80 to 90% of the people wanted the card.

15:28 And I think the statistic will go up even more once they see it's plastic, it's vinyl, it's a souvenir. So, and it's, it's, it's incredibly high quality what you've been able to produce here and soccer fans, everybody has just been amazed at the quality of it. That's been able to be engaged with it. So thank you for doing that reflection, Anthony, and, and doing those beta tests and doing the, the practice runs. And, and again, I just want to commend you brother. I know that you didn't come on the show to in any way be puffed up, but hopefully we want to build you up. And I just want to commend you again for having the humility to go out and practice.

16:09 Because I think so often in my experience as a pastor, as a church leader, one of the reasons believers don't go out and share the gospel is because they're very averse to the idea of being humbled, that they might try something and it may not work very well the first few times. And so as a pastor, you know, when I'm trying to train or coach people on sharing the gospel, I'm like, listen, you know, look at babies, look at toddlers when they're trying to walk. Do you get mad when someone doesn't do a great job walking as a toddler? And the answer is no. No. God's not going to be mad at you when you're out there trying to share your faith for the first few times, and you're likely to stumble around.

16:57 You can't assume that you're going to be really, really great at it the first few times. That's not the way most of us learn. Very few of us are going to be intuitively very good at sharing the gospel personally one-on-one or to a group the first few times that we do it, but we want to grow. And you've modeled that and demonstrated that, even in how you talked about reflecting on how we could improve this. And so when we get that spirit of humility and we're willing to be humbled and we're willing to try things and maybe not be so perfect, but do critical self-evaluation. This is time for me to chase a rabbit trail and just say, if you don't know how you can share your faith and you want to practice some of this, the North American Mission board, believe it or not, has an AI that you can practice sharing your faith with.

17:51 And you could tell it, hey, I want to share my faith with an atheist. And you could set it literally to levels, really easy to medium to hard, or I want to share my faith with a Muslim or a Confucius Buddhist or whatever. And the AI will practice having that gospel conversation with you. And I'm sure Pastor Chase can put that link in our show notes and in the link to this. But that sort of leads me into that next question that I have for you, Pastor Anthony, and that is this. What do you say you say to people who are evangelism shy? How can they become a person that moves from just sort of like, I'm not really good at this. I'm not going to share my faith.

18:37 How can they take that next step into actually not just thinking of evangelism as a good idea for other people, but but something they can do themselves? I think first they need to be motivated because it is scary, right? I mean, and if we really believe that somebody's eternal destiny can be altered by somebody speaking words and then simply believing them, turning, repenting from sin and trusting those words, trusting in Christ, then I think Satan is going to make that the hardest thing to do in the world. So I think how do you stay motivated to do a really difficult thing? I think you need to remember why you're doing it.

19:19 So I would say the first thing, if I were trying to motivate a member of 11th Street is like, yeah, like I'm not excited about sharing the gospel. Like how do I move from like, I know I should do it and I don't want to do it to I know I should do it and I want to do it. I would say the first thing is they probably need to know the biblical foundation and the theological foundations of why we do what we do. So I think I would quickly give them a biblical theology of God's desire to spread his glory to all people. I'd start in Genesis and I'd end right where you did with Revelation 7 and Revelation, you know, this idea of a new earth, Revelation 22, 20 through 22, and I would just walk it through. I would probably also talk about some theological things like God's glory, God's majesty, the concept of being made in God's image and the dignity of that, the fact that God doesn't entrust the proclamation of his glory for salvific reasons to the clouds.

20:09 The clouds proclaim the glory of God according to Romans 2 and 3, but they can't save people. And yet when we proclaim the glory of God, it could save people. And so I think I would want to really hone in on the dignity of what it means to be human. And I would go as far as to say like, you've been saved, you've been created, and you've been saved to proclaim the excellencies. And that's obviously 1 Peter 2 verse 9, where you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation of people for his own possession. That you may proclaim. And of course, Peter's picking up on Exodus 19 there. So I think I'd really, I would spend time educating the person. I think next I would do exactly what you did, Chris. I would talk about, I honestly say the exact same thing you just said, I say, listen, it's okay not to be good at evangelism.

20:51 I mean, honestly, that's like a strategy I have in all of my discipleship. I'm talking to a guy who is getting, he's a drunkard. He's addicted, he's smoking weed. You pick the sin and starting to disciple him. He's like, Pastor Anthony, I fell again last night. I'm this, I'm that. I'm like, hey, bro, you're a baby. Yeah, you got it. You're getting an F right now, but you're a baby. So let's try to get a D next time. And then let's try to get a C. And in one sense, it's not okay, but in another sense, it really is okay. Because let's remember that God could perfect us in a moment if he wanted to. 1 John 3, verse 2 tells us he will perfect us one day. When we see him in glory, we will be made like him because we will see him. So God has the power to perfect us. He's chosen not to do it right now for a purpose.

21:32 Namely, as we wrestle with sin, as we seek to overcome sin, as we do this wrestling match of sometimes doing well and failing other times, our dependency on him is growing, right? So God is at work to do something in our toddlerness, in our babiness, in our trying to learn to walk. So I would want that person to understand that in a sense, it is okay, just like you said. And as you cling to Christ amid the struggle, that is doing something in you that's more beautiful than if God would have just perfected you from the beginning. So I think I try to create this spirit of, you know, you're safe to be a baby. Now, third, from the pulpit, I try to create a culture where we celebrate our successes and we also are honest about our failures.

22:16 I will be super honest from the pulpit and I'll say something like, hey, this week I had an opportunity to share the gospel and I did not take it. And I'll tell people that from the pulpit. And so I think if we create an environment where we're only talking about our successes, well then that's not a place for people to grow right if you haven't arrived then this you're not in the club and it's not for you So, we at 11th Street, we talk about it. You know, there are Christians who know what they should do, and they don't do it. So, what is their strategy? They just don't talk about it. And at 11th Street, we talk about it. Hey, we know what we should do. We're not doing it. Well, let's just talk about it. Let's just bring it out. And I think that's a big blessing to the church, right?

22:58 People are safe. So, I have a dear, beloved brother at the church. You know, I talk about evangelism a lot at 11th Street and the mission. And the brother, a recently retired guy, and he said, like, I am never around any non-Christians. So what the brother did, decided he was going to go in his front yard and water his grass with a hose and hope that a non-Christian would walk by. And I'm like, high five. That is amazing. I'm so proud of you. Like a father with their son who would speak his first words. I was so proud of him. And then he signed up to do the Good News Club at the local public school across the street, which is the Varsity Christians. Like I did that for one year and man, I can't do the Good News Club. Oh, it is, I get in a school cafeteria after school and the kids are rowdy and it just brings out the kindergarten Anthony.

23:46 But this brother, he joined that and he's been faithfully going there, sharing the gospel every week during the school year. So, you know, you create an environment where it's okay to be a learner. We're all learners. It's okay to be a grower. But I think you don't move like the goal. Like the goal is for us in the capacity that God entrusts to us evangelism is to be faithful. We don't move the goalpost. It's not like it's okay to move the goalpost, but there's grace. There's lots of grace. We're going to be gracious to each other. And I think those are some things that I have done and would do as somebody who's evangelism shy to, to help move them from, hey, I know I should do it, but I'm not to. I want to do it and I know I need to. Yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, let's get practical.

24:32 Evangelistically speaking, millions of pastors and church leaders listen to this podcast. Real numbers, it's much less than that. But if a pastor or church leader is listening right now and you have with your compelling winsome speech have sparked in them a great desire to participate in the Yellow Card Initiative. And they want some of the cards and they want to train their people. Can you briefly walk us through what that looks like and how that pastor gets in touch with you and what would happen afterwards? It's really simple. You would go to yellowcardinitiative.com and there is a get involved form where you would explain it's multiple choice, right?

25:19 How you want to be involved and how you want me to contact you. And I get notified of those forms. I check them every couple of days, maybe once a week. And I'll then respond via text or email, whatever you request. And I'll set up a phone call, a Zoom conversation. And so that would be the next steps. And then if you wanted to purchase cards or receive cards, either of those options would be appropriate. You would just connect with me through the text and phone and we'd either get those snail mailed to you or we can have the printer send them to you. Or if you're close to me in Southern California, close to Chris. Close in Dallas to our person in Dallas, close to Kansas City, to who we have in Kansas City, close to Vancouver, British Columbia, or close to Seattle, and hopefully Virginia too.

26:05 Hopefully, we can pray about that. If you're close to one of those epicenters, I guess, then you can just meet up with those leaders to get cards. And here at Great Commission Association, we just want you to know, if you are part of our church family and you haven't gotten the card yet, or you need to get some more, you can contact our team, and we're happy to get you those cards and make sure that you've got all the resources that you need for that. We're excited about this. I think we've already given out, Pastor Anthony, I think at this moment we'd have to check, but I believe we've already given out to our churches for distribution somewhere over, closing on 5,000 cards. We've had to order more cards to be shipped to us from the printer.

26:48 So we're excited about it. We've got churches that are pretty much on board. We don't have a ton of time left. So we do kind of want to talk to you about the... Insight, unique gifts that you have. And we know that recently, in your own pulpit, you've been preaching through the book of Amos. So you're an Old Testament scholar, you're preaching through the book of Amos. So what are some of the most powerful insights that maybe you've gained from that book or that you would like to share? And by the way, why should pastors also preach through Old Testament books? That's a great question. So yes, we should preach through Old Testament books.

27:31 I guess in short, I would say God didn't accidentally preserve the Old Testament for us. If God wanted there to be a fifth or a sixth gospel, he could have done that. If he wanted a 14th and 15th and 16th epistle of Paul, he could have done that. We know that there are other letters that Paul sent to Corinth and we don't have them. If God in his sovereignty wanted us to have more New Testament, he would have given it to us. God has preserved in his sovereignty and providence of all things, an Old Testament made up of prophets, wisdom literature, poetry, writing, a variety of genres, including law or instruction. And he's done this on purpose. And I think one of the biggest deficiencies in the American church is that we don't focus on the Old Testament.

28:14 So if you want to know God's authoritative word on how to lament, you can't go to the New Testament. You have to go to the Old Testament. It's called the how to suffer when you don't deserve the suffering, again, you have to turn to the Old Testament for the books of like Habakkuk and Obadiah and Job. If you want to hear of the hymnbook of God's people and God's people singing laments and praise mixed together and how God's people move from lament to praise, again, you have to turn to the Old Testament. So, I mean, I think the Old Testament is really, really helpful. Maybe one of the reasons why the American church doesn't lament dwells because we don't know Lamentations here.

28:56 I preached Lamentations a couple of years ago. So yes, I believe we should preach the Old Testament because God has preserved it on purpose. Also, that's what the apostles did. You can read 2 Peter, and Peter is already recognizing Paul's writings as canonical scripture according to Peter in 2 Peter chapter three. And yet what we see in the early churches, they're still preaching the Old Testament. Biblically speaking, the biblical authors are preaching, teaching, exegeting the Old Testament. So yes, we should. Now, Amos, what are some of the insights that I've received from Amos? I mean, probably the two biggest is that Amos is a New York Times bestseller. Like if Amos was a modern author, he would be New York Times bestselling for sure.

29:38 Have you ever heard your wife say to you, it's not just what you say is important, but how you say it? Yes. So Amos is perfect at that. So Amos will say something. And the way he says it matches exactly what he says. So if I say to somebody, I love you so much, like my tone doesn't match my words, right? Amos doesn't do that. When the content is fatherly and God is lamenting over his people's idolatry, the cadence gets chaotic. But when the context is set in a courtroom setting, it becomes very rhythmic. And the idea is like, the idea in that section is that God is like giving the counts against Israel. And it's not from a fatherly perspective, it's from an orderly.

30:21 God's judgment is orderly, right? So the cadence and the way the accents in Hebrew are laid out, it completely matches what he is saying. Now that's kind of nerdy. The chiastic structures in Amos are marvelous. So chiasm is this really sophisticated form of parallelism where to put it simply, you might say a point, I love Lila, I love Asher. I love my kids, I love Asher, I love Lila. So the whole thing parallels one of each other. So A, B, C, and then you have B again, and then you have A again. So Amos does this all the time. And he does it in creative ways where he'll interrupt a point to get to the center. And it's just, it's so beautiful.

31:03 Now, from a theological standpoint, I would say the integration of covenant loyalty to God and humane treatment of one another is tied together. and you can't untie it. So you think about the Ten Commandments. The first four are about how we love God. The next six are about how we love one another. And Peter Gentry says we can summarize Our relationship to God is we're called to be loyal to God, faithfully loving God and loyalty, and then we're called to treat other people in truly human ways. So we see those two ideas wedded together in the Ten Commandments. We also see them in 1 John, where John says, how can you say you love God and hate man who's been made in his image, right? It doesn't make sense. The book of Judges does the same thing.

31:45 Amos does this as well, so that in his chiastic structures, these things are bound together, right? So I would emphasize just this idea of loving God and ethics are tied together. You know, when I started the sermon series, I told the church, hey, we're going to preach through it. I'm going to preach through Amos. And I'm preaching through Amos because I want us to formulate a biblical view of justice. So justice is a very hot button topic right now. And there's problems in the conversation. And in my mind, some of the problems are if we approach it from a modern perspective, we introduce modern vocabulary. Ask modern questions, and then we use the Bible, and I'm saying that specifically, we use the Bible, how does that feel, to come up with answers to our modern worldview.

32:31 And so I think that's a major problem. So what I told the church is, hey, like, we need to understand justice because there's injustice everywhere, but we're going to let the Bible answer the questions. We're going to let the Bible give us the vocabulary, and we're going to let the Bible unravel how we should think about this concept. We're going to do it the Bible's way, not our way. So as we've investigated justice according to God, not according to us, like I think we have seen this full orbed idea of what it means to treat people in truly human ways that has been extremely challenging and really beautiful for the church. I mean, there's so much more, but that's probably sufficient. Yeah, that's awesome. I want to just echo what you said, especially in the beginning about lamentation, the book of Psalms.

33:15 We recently had dear friends lose their daughter and just having the book of Lamentations and the book of the Psalms to process through that and understand that these emotions of anger, questions, all of this is very biblical and not weird and not something that we should bury, but even things we can express to God. I think it's such an antidote for Stoicism or pretend Stoicism that we have these Psalms that shows us, hey, these things that you want to express to God, these lamentations that you have are not only completely legitimate and normal, they're biblical, holy, and God-honoring.

34:05 Without the Old Testament, there would be a massive hole in the way New Testament Christians process their emotions, cry out to God, and journey through the deepest bowels of grief. This is a good place to cut away from the interview with Dr. Ferguson today, but good news, we are nerding out next week, and Dr. Ferguson will be back one more time for a great discussion on Bible manuscripts and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and I think you will enjoy and learn a lot from it no matter whether you are an academic or not. Well, thinking about the desert Qumran community and all of those dusty caves and blowing sands is making me thirsty.

34:47 Let me go wrangle up my son so that we can review today's soda, which is Liquid Death's Dead Billionaire. And I guess that is a weird name for a soda to be reviewed on a Christian podcast, but I don't pick them. I just drink them. Well, actually, I pick them too. My bad. Hey, JC. I've got my liquid death right here. I got mine too. Yeah. All right, before we drink, three quick facts on liquid death. Number one, the dead billionaire drink we're drinking today by liquid death was originally called Armless Palmer because it is a blend of tea and lemonade.

35:28 And as most of you know, regular blends of tea and lemonade are named Arnold Palmer after the famous golfer. but the estate of Arnold Palmer sued Liquid Death and they had to cancel it. Number two trivia fact, there are almost a thousand billionaires in the United States of America, 989. 62% of those billionaires live in four states, New York, Texas, Florida, and California. JC, how many billionaires are from our hometown of Alabama? I'm gonna have to say we've got at least 17 that would be awesome we have one billion Are we talking about alabama or birmingham i'm talking about the whole state of alabama oh my one billionaire and he's an auburn football supporter which is kind of sad that's pretty rough and like we are finally speaking of billionaires liquid death itself is now as of 2024 worth 1.4 billion dollars and we are going to taste it today to see if it is a billion dollar drink are you ready jc let's crack it open Here we go.

36:44 All right. Huh. I don't smell much. Well, you've already drank it, huh? I better catch up. Man. Okay. Huh. 20 calories, which is really good. No artificial sweeteners. It's sweetened with agave. It's not soda-y. It's much more tea and lemonade forward. I'm kind of getting a little bit of mixed opinions on this one. It partially, this might just be me, but it kind of is tasting like a blueberry medicine, but at the same time, it's really refreshing. And so it's good, but it's just unlocking like an interesting memory for me. Okay. Blueberry medicine. I'm not getting that. I'm getting a slightly watered down Arnold Palmer.

37:32 Yeah. Here's the thing. It's only got 20 calories and it doesn't have artificial sweeteners. So liquid death is a substitute for sparkling water, essentially. It's not zero calorie, but it's low calorie. And a lot of people are avoiding artificial sweeteners. So in terms of what it is, it's really tasty. I would rather have a full calorie Arnold Palmer with tea and lemonade. It's one of my favorite drinks. But this has got a good mouthfeel. As you say, it's refreshing. It's just a watered down version. For what it is, I'm going to give it four Spurgeons out of five. What do you think, JC?

38:13 You know, my takes might be a little bit off, but I really like the slogan, murder your thirst. And so I'm going to have to say it gets a 3.6. You know, it's not bad. It's really good. I just, just reminding of that blueberry medicine is just rough for me, but it's great. It's refreshing. 3.6 out of JC, 4.0 out of me. It does have a good looking can. So if you're watching on the video, make it a nice can. Okay, thanks for joining us. More reviews next week. Now that I'm refreshed with that agave, natural tea, and B vitamins, I think it's time to go for a run.

38:54 Or maybe a walk. Or a hike. Or a bowl of Cocoa Krispies. But before we head out, let me share a couple of tidbits of news from the Great Commission Association and remind you how to get some yellow cards of your own to equip your church for evangelism. There's a couple of ways. Number one, you can go visit the Yellow Card Initiative website, which is yellowcardinitiative.com. I know initiative is kind of a tricky word, I-N-I-T-I-A-T-I-V-E, yellowcardinitiative.com. Or you can email our association, the Great Commission Association of Southern Baptist Churches in California, At missionadvance, all word, missionadvance at gcasbc.org.

39:47 And then you're going to want to head over to YouTube to get trained in how to use those cards at Yellow Card Initiative. Again, all one word, at Yellow Card Initiative on YouTube. One other thing I need to tell you about our current executive director of missions, Dr. Mike Stewart is the second longest Executive Director of Missions in the entire United States. He has faithfully led our association for nearly three decades, and he is preparing to step into retirement in the coming year. And our association is prayerfully seeking the next Executive Director of Missions to build on his legacy and help lead the GCA family of churches into a fruitful future of ministry.

40:35 You can find out more about that role by either visiting gcasbc.org, or you can come to our webpage, everychurchflourishing.com, and the show notes for this episode, episode 19, And in those show notes, you will find a link to the vanderbloemann.com website and a link to our description that tells you all about what we're looking for. Please check that out. And that's all for now. Good day to you. Thanks for listening and Godspeed.