Churches Helping Churches In Need-President Trump Sends Funds To Support Samaritan’s Purse And More – Join us today for Good News Friday! Churches are raising money for churches in need, celebrities and Chick-Fil-A are partnering with LA Dream Center to feed kids and more!

Air Date: 05/01/2020

Guest: Jeff Warren

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

 

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. It’s WallBuilders Live, we’re talking about today’s hottest topics on policy and faith and all areas of the culture, always from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. It’s Good News Friday night. Now, typically, we will have a ton of stories for you on Good News Friday, we’re still going to have some today. But we also have a special guest coming up later in the program.

If you want to learn more about WallBuilders Live, you can do that at our website, wallbuilderslive.com. It’ll tell you about all three of us that host the program. My name is Rick Green, I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach. We are led by David Barton. He’s America’s premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders and Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders.

Right there at the website, wallbuilderslive.com, you can also get archives of the program over the last few months, as well as a list of all the stations across the country where the program can be heard. Most importantly, that is the site where you can make that contract. Hey, one-time or monthly contribution to help this program reach more people, we’re bringing truth to the culture and we’re going to help restore America’s constitution and you get to be a part of it. Check it out at wallbuilderslive.com.

Alright, Dave, Tim, time to dive into that good news. We’ve as a special guest later in the program, as a piece of our good news for this week, Pastor Jeff Warren from Park City Baptist Church. But right now, let’s dive into your stacks of good news. I’m sorry, we’re not going to be able to get through as much as we normally do, folks, but we’re going to get through as many stories as we can. David, Tim, let’s get our first piece of good news.

Tim:

Alright, Rick. I’m going to start with a really cool email we got from a lady who she and her mom used to listen to the program together and her mom just recently passed away. And in her mom’s honor, she made a donation to WallBuilders. Because her mom loved WallBuilders, she said that her mom used to get them Christmas presents off the WallBuilders website. She said her dad was National Guard, both her brothers are army, mom supports the troops relentlessly. So, we just obviously, trying to be sensitive, because losing a parent, losing any member of the family is a tough thing. But man, we want to honor your mom too, because what a cool thing, that part of how you all are celebrating the life that she lived was that she loved WallBuilders Live, she loved WallBuilders. And so, making a donation in her honor, is just so cool.

Rick:

That’s awesome.

Tim:

So Marsha, if you’re listening, man, so happy for you and your family that WallBuilders has been a blessing to you guys and praying that the Holy Spirit continues to bring you comfort as you’re navigating now a new season, trusting that your mom is in a much better place, a place that we were all, especially in the midst of this COVID, we’re just ready to be done with this. Heaven would be the most great upgrade ever. But certainly, believing your mom is in a much better place. And anyway, just so cool that somebody in a way to honor their mom would want to make a donation to WallBuilders Live because it bless them and they want to help us be able to bless others. So just a cool thing for Marsha.

Rick:

That’s a cool story. And Marsha, thank you very much for listening and thanks to your mom for raising you in that way and for having that family time. You know, guys, I hear that more often than you would think. And you’ll probably do as well, from people talking about how they listen to the show with their family. So, it’s not just driving along in the car. I mean, I meet teenagers and 20 somethings that say the same thing. Hey, man, I was raised on your radio program. We literally would sit around as a family, listening to it. So that’s a pretty cool measurement, I think of how, you know, God is blessing us to get to be a part of those people’s lives and we’re just thankful to be a part of it. That’s so cool.

David:

Yeah, it is really cool. And boy, it’s great to be a blessing to families and others and, Rick, as you said, for folks to be raised on this stuff, that’s really good. I’m going to jump for a piece of good news to President Trump for a moment. And the fact we talked a couple of weeks ago how that he defended the World Health Organization. We’ve been given them about three 400-500 million a year and it turned out they were just a propaganda arm for the Chinese Communist Party and all the stuff about COVID. They were just repeating whatever China told them and it was wrong medically, it was wrong factually, it was wrong in so many ways.

So, Trump has all this money that was going to them. Well, I had not heard it and so, just recently, where he redirected that money. And he redirected that money in two directions. What they’ve been given monthly, is now he’s helping put it into groups like Samaritan’s Purse, which is Franklin Graham and into the Red Cross, which, you know, that’s two groups they’re doing a lot right here in America. And so that’s really, I think, cool that he did that. It’s also very neat that he didn’t have hesitancy to do it to a faith organization like Samaritan’s Purse.

Now, that’s a real different viewpoint from what you have in New York City where that you have Samaritan’s Purse who put up a hospital in Central Park in New York City and help those with COVID New York has been hit the hardest of all the States by far. They’re on the ground doing work. And instead of the city saying, thank you for coming to help us, we’ve been overwhelmed. What the city did, was it sent inspectors out there to stay by Samaritan’s Purse to make sure they didn’t share the gospel of people, because we’re letting you use Central Park, but you can’t do religious stuff here. Oh my gosh, what a hostility attitude they have.

Tim:

Well and yeah, let me jump in real quick and point out that if it was not for their religious ideology, they might not be there in the first place. Right? It’s because they believe that you should do unto others as you want done unto you, that what you do to the least of these, it’s like you do unto him, right, what the Bible teaches, those are Bible verses. That’s what’s compelling and motivating them is, we know the greatest commands. Love God and love people and how we love people is we sacrifice, we serve, we lay down our lives for them. Yeah, that seems really silly. And not surprising, knowing kind of New York atmosphere tone and some of their hostility toward religion.

David:

This is the same Mayor that threatened criminal action against churches that held any kind of surface in New York City during this shutdown stuff.

Tim:

Even though I think this is also the same guy who was going to provide all these hundreds of thousands of meals for the Muslims in Ramadan, so it’s okay to support religions that we think are okay, we just don’t like that Christianity stuff. So yeah, really silly. Although again, as you’re pointing out, the good news is that Trump is recognizing, no, Samaritan’s Purse, they’re doing great work and we should be more interested in measuring the fruits of something rather than just who’s in charge, like maybe what we’ve seen with the WHO, right, the World Health Organization instead of just giving credit because somebody has a label, maybe we should look and see what they are and what they do and measure some fruits and certainly, Samaritan’s Purse has some really good fruit.

Let me throw in one more piece of good news before we go to break. Out in Los Angeles, Los Angeles Dream Center, the cofounder, Matthew Barnett, is he’s been in the news recently, because they’ve been doing so much to help people in need. They’re open seven days a week for almost 12 hours a day serving food to kids who normally would get a lot of their meals at school and since school is shut down because the pandemic, they’re not getting the meals. So, they’re working to get food to kids.

Well, they’ve had some interesting partnerships. They’ve partnered with Chick-fil-A and they’ve been giving out 5,000 chicken sandwiches each week, which it seems like a lot of chicken sandwiches, although there’s obviously a lot of people in Los Angeles County and what the Dream Center is doing, they’re reaching a lot of people.

But they pointed out that some of the partnerships that probably a couple years ago would have been very unlikely now, I’m not a surprise to see these names. Kanye West has reached out and he’s tried to help and work, helping feed and provide meals and do things. Also, Bella Hadid and okay, so the article says celebrities and I don’t even know who Bella Hadid is. And so, there’s probably some kid listening who’s like, oh my gosh, I’m so embarrassed. Tim doesn’t know, because this person is obvious. I have no idea. Right? I have no idea who that is. I barely knew who Kanye West was.

But there are celebrities stepping up and they are helping provide meals, helping financially. And it’s so cool that in the midst of all the craziness, of all the crisis, you are seeing people step up and do some really cool things. And so out in Los Angeles Dream Center, where it seems like more than many other states, California has been really shut down, really a crippled economy, all kinds of issues and problems, you’re seeing Christian leaders and in this case, celebrities who are kind of following in line with the gospel, stepping up and doing really cool things. So just a cool piece of good news in the midst of this crazy time.

Rick:

Well, and there’s some really cool folks stepping up across the nation and giving and helping with local churches that are in trouble right now, these really small churches that the COVID crackdowns have just, I mean, essentially dried up their donations and they’re to the point of maybe not surviving. And you guys remember we had the NFL player Benjamin Watson on about a week ago about this and one of the pastors that’s helping him and part of this process across the country and getting people involved in saving these churches is Jeff Warren. He’s pastor here in Texas, in Dallas at Park City Baptist. And he’s going to be with us when we come back from the break, get a little bit of an update on how many churches they’ve already helped and what folks can do to be a part of this pastor. Jeff Warren, when we return on WallBuilders Live.

BREAK

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Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us today. Pastor Jeff Warren with us from Park City Baptist Church in Dallas. Pastor, thanks for some time today.

Jeff:

Hey, I’m excited to be with you today. Thank you.

Rick:

Well, thanks for what you always do there in Dallas with that church. And when you were at McKinney and you’ve had a great impact on the Dallas Fort Worth area in the entire State, we appreciate you. And really this effort, churches helping churches, reaching out all across the nation to help these small churches and communities across the nation hit hard by the COVID crackdowns and just the impact on the community. And it’s really important for us to do this, we could lose a lot of these churches that are the main center of help in these communities.

Jeff:

But yeah, so we’ve discovered that about 50% of pastors across the nation, Barna Group has done a survey that tells us that about 50% are really concerned, they’re seeing financial giving, you know, significantly decrease over this time. We’ve got about 7%, might be upwards to 10% of pastors who are unsure, you know, not confident that they’re going to make it through this thing. So, we’re talking about thousands upon thousands of churches that may not survive this season.

Rick:

7 to 10%, that might not survive. I mean, that’s a significant, significant impact. And this is a time when we need them the most, when their communities need them the most. And I think sometimes, you know, a lot of people don’t realize these small churches, I mean, they have very small budgets and a few thousand dollars can make a huge difference and whether or not they actually stay open.

Jeff:

That’s right. You know, a lot of churches that are in lower income areas, I mean this is what happens. Right? When some kind of crisis hits, our lower income areas are going to get hit first. And what’s happened with the coronavirus is, you know, those who have hourly wages, I mean, some people can do their work from home, some people can do it virtually. But when you do manual labor, when you have certain jobs or you have to be there, this has eliminated, you know, their income, then that, of course, impacts the churches.

Rick:

What is the effort, you know, what exactly will the church relief effort do? I mean, what churches are you all targeting and how are you all helping them?

Jeff:

Yeah, so it’s been incredible what’s happened thus far. We’ve received more than 600 requests from churches who’ve heard about it and you guys, among others, we’re so grateful for you that help get the word out for us. But what we’re going to do is churches that are located in low income areas, who you know declared COVID federal disaster zones where we are going to give $3,000 per church, 150 members or less, those are the most fragile during this time. So, you know, they’re registered nonprofit, they have a written, you know, submitted by an officer of the church, pastor, an elder and desiring funds. So, we need to, you know, our website will get them there at churchrelief.org. We’re looking at Bible focus, you know, evangelical statements of faith, those that are preaching the Bible and we want to be generous and help churches that are in need.

Rick:

And I’m glad you said that too. Because you know, making sure that it is a church that’s a Bible believing church and truly fulfilling the gospel and making disciples out there is what we’re after. And churchrelief.org is the website to go to And Jeff, you know, I had pastor Mike’s case on, we had him on last year and one of the things he said that shocked me, was how often these small churches, when they run into a hiccup financially, are in their life is typically, one family, one guy running the show there and taking care of pretty much everything, that when they run into a hiccup and they close for a while, then most of the time they never open again. And so, as I’ve been thinking about what you guys are doing, I’m thinking man, every little church that we don’t help in this crisis, the likelihood of those 7-10% churches closing and not coming back is huge. I mean, we need to keep them open, right now is when they need our help. Now, is the time to go to churchrelief.org and help out.

Jeff:

Excellent. That’s exactly right. We have a church Planning Center in our own church and working with other partners in city, we’re planting churches, you know, think about those as well. Let’s say you launched the church three months ago and you’re just, you know, up into the right, growing a little bit, you know, you got 30 people, we got 50 people, suddenly this happens, it could end, you know, the great vision of a pastor and a people.

And you know, when you look across the nation really around the world, most churches are smaller churches and you know, you see a little biblical model of small churches not that big churches can’t do that. But they’re the most, you know, fragile at this time. I think it’s also a great time for us. Of course, I’m a white pastor and in affluent, mostly white church and it’s time for us to step up and it’s a great opportunity for us to cross racial lines and boundaries, you know, I say Dallas, we’re kind of a tale of two cities. And so been involved in racial reconciliation, social justice across the board and we’ve seen God move in incredible ways here, even during this time, as we’re bridging the gap. You know, everybody is in this together.

I love what it says in first Corinthians 12:26, Paul says, hey, when one part of the body suffers, we all suffer. So, we got to lead with empathy as believers and those who have been given much, you know, much is required. We’re blessed to be a blessing and so that’s what we’re trying to do. And there’s so many out there that I would just encourage, Rick to jump on and get involved. And particularly, I think white pastors who have an opportunity to bridge the gap with some of our pastors of color and have continued relationships that can be formed out of this.

Rick:

Well, and you point out on the website. I mean, the need is most acute, I’m just going to read straight from it. The need is most acute in low income urban areas, which are hit worse by the crisis for two reasons, because of what you said earlier. They are the ones most likely to have that hourly job that is gone right now, is nonexistent and it hits these churches at a high percentage. And without this help, if that church is gone, then that community is going to be not served with the gospel that needs it so desperately.

And you know, I’ve heard people, Jeff say, you know, the stimulus bill is crazy. You know, that $1,200 is not going to make a difference for me or whatever. Well, what a great opportunity to take part of that $1,200 or however much you got on your check, if you didn’t need that to survive during this time, what a great opportunity to give to an effort that’s going to help a lot of families and that is sponsor one of these churches. Some people could actually do a full church. You could sponsor $3,000 and that would cover an entire effort here for one of these churches, maybe you only get $50, but maybe we can all do some part of it.

Jeff:

That’s right, man. Rick, that’s great. We’ve done the same challenging people to give their stimulus check, because they can survive. You know, again, if we’re informed and we have empathy and spirit-led generosity, I think that we can say hey, you know what, I’m going to survive this thing. I mean, my family’s going to be okay, we’re going to take a bump here. But a bump, you know, in my income or something is nothing compared to losing everything, you know, that you had or the vision you have for people making a difference in the community. So, man, you’re spot on there.

Rick:

Good stuff. Well, Pastor Jeff, thank you, man. Thank you for what you all are doing. Thanks to the to the whole team that put this together. The website is so easy to use, folks. You go in there, you could click on churchrelief.org. Go to churchrelief.org, donate buttons right there in the top right. It’ll take you two minutes. And whether it’s $50 or $3,000 to sponsor an entire church, we sure could use your help here and it’s going to make a big difference, not just during this crisis. I mean, Jeff, we’re talking about, this could impact the community for generations. What a great way to sow good seeds.

Jeff:

That’s right. No question. You know, I’ve been involved here in Dallas a lot with just a lot of racial reconciliation, you know, social justice across the board and you hit on something there. This is the opportunity for pastors to reach out to other pastors and develop friendships, even if it’s virtual now, you know. Some of the best friends that have, pastors of color, they say, man, how did you get to know these guys? How come you all are such good friends? I say, well, we went to lunch, you know, we made a phone call. I mean, come on, we can do this. And it’s what the body of Christ is called to do. So, let’s jump in.

Rick:

Love it. Churchrelief.org is the website. You can go there right now and make that happen. Pastor Jeff, appreciate you, brother. Thanks. for coming on today, we’ll do it again soon. Jeff Warren for Park city’s Baptist Church, thank you, brother.

Jeff:

Thank you, Rick, great to be with you today.

Rick:

Stay with us, folks. We’ll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

BREAK

Hey friends, this Rick Green from WallBuilders Live and I have had so many requests about, what in the world could we be studying at home right now you know I got the kids at home, they’re normally in school? Or if you homeschool, you’re looking for additional material. One-Room Schoolhouse. It is a great new series WallBuilders is putting out where you literally get a tour of the WallBuilders library as Tim Barton and Jonathan Ritchie bring history to life. There’s a couple of resources on this.

You go to YouTube and search for WallBuilders and look for a One-Room Schoolhouse. You can go to our Facebook page and get it right there on Facebook as we do it live each Monday and sometimes additional days from there. And then you can also just go to wallbuilders.com, scroll down to the bottom and we’ll be posting the videos as they come out. This is such a great way to learn and a great way for you to share with others. Gather the family around, watch the One-Room Schoolhouse and learn some great history. It’ll be vitally important to restoring our nation and bringing back these principles that made America great in the first place. Check it out [email protected]

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders live. It’s Good News Friday today, a special thanks to Pastor Jeff Warren for joining us on this Good News. David, Tim, sounds like a lot of churches are being helped. Obviously, I want to encourage folks to go to the website today and make a donation as well, save one of those churches and you’re talking about impacting generations to come.

David:

Yeah. Pastor Jeff talked about how that few weeks ago we helped raising funds. We were one of the first groups to help get on with them and say, hey, guys, you need to give. Good news is that in that first week, they raised $250,000 to help small churches. We’re talking about small churches and if 7-10% close, you’re talking about between 25,000 and 35,000 churches that will not reopen If you look at 7-10%, that’s 25,000 to 35,000 churches and as Pastor  Jeff was talking about, you might have a church of 30, that says, oh, we can grow to 50, great vision.

The average church size in America is only 70 people. So, you’re taking out a lot of communities, a lot of direct point of contact for a lot of people with faith, it’s really important. So again, given to this group, there’s still churches that are going to need help. We’re not out of this yet, pandemic still goes on. There’s still shelter orders in a lot of states. So, if you can take the funds and help, that’d be great, stimulus check or whatever else would be terrific.

Tim:

And obviously, in the midst of this too, one of the things we’ve encouraged is that even if you can’t go to your church, it doesn’t mean we should stop tithing. And so certainly, from a biblical perspective, we look and say tithe is 10% of what we make and that’s right, so we can talk about the gross of the net. But what you make before even the government takes their money out, we want to honor God with what God has given us. And just because we’re not in a place we can go to church, maybe to put something in the offering bucket or whatever the case is, you know, box in the back of the room, however you tithe at your church, maybe it’s online, and so it hasn’t slowed you down at all, we want to make sure that we continue to faithfully give to our home church, even in the midst of the shutdown and that’s one of the reasons that some of the churches are having troubles, because since they’re not meeting people haven’t been giving and tithing as much. And we want to make sure that we are faithful in our tithe in the midst of what’s going on. 

But dad, as you’re pointing out, it’s a great thing that if we have some money beyond our tithe, right, our finances are secure, our family is taken care of, we want to help kind of ensure that some of these other churches have opportunity. That’s a great thing to give to.

David:

I’ve got another piece of good news here to close this out, Rick, and it deals with the lawsuit that came out of the first US Circuit Court of Appeals. It deals with an immigrant who came to America and coming to America, going through all the immigration, learning that you have to do and then taking the test. When you take the test, when you pass, when you’re sworn in as a citizen, you take the oath and part of the oath is, ‘So help me God’.

Well, this particular immigrant from France, was an atheist and she said, by the very nature of this oath saying, ‘So help me God’ asserts that God really exists.  and I don’t believe that. Yeah, exactly. And I don’t believe that.

So, she filed suit, went through the courts, it came all the way to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. And the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld keeping God in the naturalization oath. And part of the reason that upheld it was it pointed back to a case that we won last June, the Bladensburg military Memorial case, where the court said, look, our position up to now for the last 30 years has been that you’re going to have to prove to us that our religious activity is actually constitutional, we’re going to assume it’s not unless you can prove otherwise. And in that case, in June, they said, we’re reversing that. If something has been there for a while that’s religious, we’re going to assume that it is Constitution unless you can show us that it isn’t.

Tim:

Meaning if there’s historical precedent and this has been going on for decades or even for centuries, then we’re going to assume this has been constitutional or would have been challenged overturned before and this has not been overturned before. So, the assumption is this must be constitutional.

David:

And so, the court actually cited that Supreme Court precedent to show that this has been going on for a long time and we’re not going to stop it. Now, that’s a new breath of fresh air from the Supreme Court that’s working its way down through a number of the lower courts and we saw it in this naturalization case.

Rick:

Well, friends, that’s all the time we have for good news today. There is more good news at the website right now, wallbuilderslive.com, Just click on the archive section there and you can go back to previous Friday programs where we share a ton of good news for you and we’ll of course have more for you next week as well.

While you’re there, wallbuilderslive.com, can I encourage you and ask you to consider making a contribution to the program. If you enjoy these programs and you learn from them and you share them with your friends and family, then you recognize the need for truth in our culture right now, the need for perspective, that constitutional, biblical historical perspective that we provide here on WallBuilders Live. And you might also know that those donations help us train pastors and young leaders and legislators and all the other things we do at WallBuilders. So, please consider doing that at one-time or monthly contribution. It’d be such a blessing to us and the focus. So listen to this program and it makes it possible, again for us to spread that truth to as many people as possible.

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Last thing I want to encourage you to consider as we start next week, on Monday, we’re going to be starting our crash course schooling from home. Millions of folks have been thrust into this, some of you have been homeschooling your whole life, well, not your whole life, but your kids’ whole life. So many of you are experienced with this and some of you are not. Either way, this program is for you. We’re going to get together live every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon throughout May and now is the time to sign up. You need to sign up this weekend, we got limited slots available. You can do all of that at patriotacademy.com. Patriotacademy.com and you can be part of our crash course on history and government.

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We appreciate you listening today to WallBuilders Live.