In this episode, Derek and Cliff sit down with Conley Owens and discuss his book The Dorean Principle: A Biblical Response to the Commercialization of Christianity.
You can get a free copy of Conley’s book here.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome to With All Wisdom, where we are applying biblical truth to everyday life. My name is Derek Brown, and I’m here today with Cliff McManis. We are both pastors and elders at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California, and professors at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary. But we aren’t the only ones in the studio today. We have a special guest with us that we are excited to talk to about the topic of Christian fundraising. But before we get to our guest in today’s topic, I want to encourage you to check out WithAllWisdom.org, where you will find a large and growing collection of written and audio resources across a variety of theological, practical, and cultural topics. We’ve recently added to our Sound (Theology) Bites.
These Sound (Theology) Bites are 10 minutes of good theology on any given topic, and we recently released one Sound (Theology) Bite on distinguishing between temptation and sin, and a follow-up one on overcoming temptation. So we encourage you to check those out at WithAllWisdom.org. Now on to today’s guest and today’s topic.
His name is Conley Owens, and Conley is a pastor at Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church in Sunnyvale, California. He’s a software engineer at Google. He holds an MDiv from Log College and Seminary and is pursuing a doctorate through Forge Theological Seminary. He is a husband and father of seven, with another one on the way. And he’s also an author, which I find amazing amidst all of the things that he is doing, including being a father of seven and almost eight. He has written a book called The Dorean Principle: A Biblical Response to the Commercialization of Christianity. This book is a book about Christian fundraising in general, but it specifically challenges conventional evangelical wisdom on how we should go about fundraising. And personally, I found this book to be really helpful and illuminating personally. And so thank you for writing it, Conley.
Conley: You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.
Derek: Absolutely. And so would you just tell us a little bit about this book? Give our listeners a brief synopsis and then tell us why you were compelled to write this kind of book.
Conley: Sure. So Dorean is the Greek adverb that means freely. Jesus said in Matthew 10:8, freely received, freely give. And then in the very next two verses, he says, the worker’s worthy of his food, which in Luke 10 is the worker’s worthy of his wages. So it’s about how you hold those two things together because if you’re not able to make sense out of it, it sounds like Jesus is saying that ministers shouldn’t receive pay and then right after it that minister should receive pay. Well, he’s not going to contradict himself. So what is he saying? And the answer is that he is forbidding reciprocity of ministry where we exchange the gospel for money or for anything. And he is promoting and encouraging Christians, fellow servants of the Lord, to give to ministers in order to support the work of ministry. So once again, he’s supporting co-labor and forbidding reciprocity. So you see this in the ministry of Paul. You see it in John’s third epistle. You see it at various points in the Old Testament as well. And that’s the basic idea behind this book. The reason why I felt the need to write this is because it’s just everywhere. Christian fundraising is everywhere, and it matters how we represent Christ. He offers the gospel freely, and so we should be offering the gospel freely as well.
Derek: Yeah, that was excellent. Thank you, Conley. And I had mentioned to you earlier, when I first read this book, I was given an advance copy and I got to read it. And just a few days later, I was able to articulate to our young adults the principles in the book, namely how they should think about, specifically in their case and in my case, supporting their pastor. So I’m their pastor, and how should they think about supporting me and how pastors are paid? And I wanted to make it clear, because you’d really crystallize it in my mind, that there should be no reciprocity in this process. It’s not as though I gave them some spiritual instruction and now you give me some payment. It’s, I was given freely, now I freely give to them so that when they give, they are joining me, they’re partnering with me in the ministry, but ultimately they’re giving to God, worshiping Him, and that in turn supports me in the ministry, that they’re joining me in.
Conley: Right, absolutely. Yeah, one of the analogies that Paul makes in 1 Corinthians 9, and he makes many analogies which all have the same sort of shape, but the primary of those analogies is to the Levitical priesthood. And what happens in the Levitical priesthood is, yes, the ministers, the priests receive their wages, but how do those wages come? Well, they come from the Lord because the Lord is their inheritance. So when the Israelites have some kind of obligation to give to the Levites, they’re not giving to them directly as though the Levites are the source of all the graces that they’re receiving, right? They are making their tithes, their offerings, their sacrifices to the Lord, and then the Lord is offering to His own ministers what He has received. So a lot of people imagine that we give back directly to a minister because we’ve received something from him, but if you impose that onto what Paul gives as an analogy in the Levitical priesthood, well, then you would have people making sacrifices directly to the priests, right? That would be idolatrous, and so that’s not the right way of thinking about it.
Derek: Yeah, that was really helpful. And as you were thinking about this topic and considering it across the whole of evangelicalism, what are some of the most glaring—I’m not asking for specific institutions, but what are some of the most glaring examples that you can think of, that you noticed, of where this is happening, this kind of reciprocity for spiritual instruction?
Conley: Right. Yeah, and that is probably the best way of saying it is instruction. If you think of all the ways that spiritual instruction is given, it’s often given in churches, and really, there’s nothing wrong being done there because the people are, as you described, supporting their pastor, and he’s laboring for the gospel. But then outside of the church, often you have authors writing books and not letting you have access to the contents of those books until you pay them. You have conferences, which you can’t go and hear the gospel presented until you pay them. You have seminaries where you can’t go receive instruction on the gospel until you pay. So all of these areas require reformation if we’re to be in line with the biblical principle.
Derek: Yeah. As you’ve engaged with others on the principles of your book, other evangelicals who perhaps are doing these things unwittingly, what has been some of the response or the pushback that you’ve experienced?
Conley: Right. Well, first of all, yeah, it’s probably worth acknowledging that that was a pretty controversial statement I just made, right? That most of how Christian publishing is done and Christian seminaries and Christian conferences could use serious reformation. That’s a controversial statement. So I’ve been very surprised that most of the feedback I’ve gotten is very positive. A lot of people, even people who have some investment already in such systems, are very open to the idea that there is a need for change. And there has been, of course, some pushback. A lot of it’s just misunderstanding, right? Some people think that I’m saying that pastors should not be paid, which is very clearly not what I’m saying. We’ve talked about pastors getting paid several times already in this discussion. There’s also people who’ve said this ethic is too subjective, that you’re saying, well, how do you know whether someone’s giving out of a desire to give directly back to you or whether they’re doing it out of service to the Lord? Well, that’s not really what I’m saying. I’m saying that as we communicate, we have to communicate the way the Lord has told us to. And as we communicate in fundraising, what are the words and gestures of fundraising that acknowledge that I’m not a free agent who is the source of the gospel, but rather I have been given the gospel freely and your only real obligation is directly back to the Lord who is the source of the gospel. So how do we do due diligence in that? There are other questions because one of the very difficult things here, and this doesn’t invalidate the principle, but it certainly does make application difficult at some level, is what is ministry? At what point can you say that something is ministry? Obviously preaching is ministry, but now let’s say you put a Bible verse on a candle and you sell that, well, now are you violating this principle? Or one I like is, let’s say you sell a birthday card, nothing wrong with that. You put a verse on it, well, you know, that’s not really selling the gospel. The essence of what you’re selling is not the gospel, it’s the card, but now let’s say you put another verse on it and then another verse until you’ve added a few more pages and now you’ve got a whole Bible, right, and you’re selling like some kind of gospel instruction. Yeah, there’s difficult questions about whether or not, when does this ethic come into effect, but once again, I don’t think that that affects the Dorean principle. A good analogy to this is how we think of the regulative principle. For any who aren’t familiar with what that is, we should only be worshiping God as He has instructed us to. There’s these elements of worship that shouldn’t be changed, you know, there should be preaching, there should be singing, there should be praying. Now the various forms that those take can change, right? The Bible doesn’t say how many songs you’re supposed to sing on a Sunday, it doesn’t say whether you’re supposed to sit or stand while the preaching is happening. But at what point does something become an element or a form? And there are people who debate about this, but all agree on the regulative principle. So my hope is that as people read this, if they find issues with my applications, and I’ve been somewhat limited in the way I’ve put this out, because I don’t want anyone to disagree with the principle because they disagree with the applications. So I think that’s probably been the biggest kind of feedback I’ve got is realizing how hard this might be to apply in some edge cases. But once again, I don’t think that invalidates the principle at all.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: Let me jump in there.
Derek: Yeah, go ahead.
Cliff: Calling with some questions. Going back, I want to kind of go back to 30,000 feet here on your book. The title of your book is The Dorean Principle, and most folks are probably, if they just heard that, they wouldn’t know what that meant without explanation. Myself, even being a Greek student and a Greek teacher, when I heard the title only verbally, I thought, huh, I wonder what that means. But I think your subtitle is very helpful, A Biblical Response to the Commercialization of Christianity. And that really puts a picture in my mind of what you’re talking about in this book. So it’s not a long book. Just for our readers, just so you know, about 150 pages.
Conley: Yeah, 140.
Cliff: Yeah, you can sit down and read it in a couple of hours. I found it very edifying, very helpful, very practical. And you get very specific in the argument that you’re making, the Dorean Principle. And so this work that you do complements even things that we’ve recently done at our church. Like Derek and I, we did a pretty lengthy podcast on stewardship from a biblical point of view, just generally about money. Then also our three of our elders did a five sermon series about a year ago on what the Bible has to say about finance and those kind of things. So a big picture. Some of these principles intersected with the Dorean Principle. We didn’t use this phrase, the Dorean Principle. So here comes a couple of my questions. First, tell us where you came up with this phrase, the Dorean Principle. And then again, a very specific definition of what that is. What is the Dorean Principle, just for our listeners who might be completely unfamiliar with the Greek language?
Conley: Sure. So just to make a comment on the phrase, the commercialization of Christianity, to throw one verse out there that I think is pretty helpful is 2 Corinthians 2:17 says, for we are not like so many peddlers of God’s Word, but as men of sincerity, we speak in the sight of Christ. And I butchered the last part of that verse, but basically we are not peddlers of God’s Word. And that’s what’s going on right now is there are many who have become, whether they realize it or not, peddlers of the Word of God, and that needs to be dealt with. So the word Dorean, like I mentioned, that word is in Matthew 10:8. That word is also in 2 Corinthians 11. Both Paul and Jesus use it to describe the free, and by free, I don’t mean liberal or outpoured. When I say free, I mean free of charge, the free of charge proclamation of the gospel. So seeing Jesus and Paul both use this word to describe how preaching ought to be done without charge, that just seemed like a good word to hop onto. Paul often talks about his sincerity, like in that one verse I just mentioned, 2 Corinthians 2:17. And so originally, I was calling this sincere ministry, and that felt a little too punchy, like saying that anything else is insincere. But really, that’s what’s going on, is that once you start having ulterior motives like money, you are compromising the sincerity of ministry. So to define what the Dorean principle is, is that, the way I define it in the book is, In the context of gospel proclamation, accepting support as anything other than an act of co-labor compromises the sincerity of ministry. So when you receive an exchange for the gospel, you’re compromising the sincerity of ministry very explicitly because you’re exposing an ulterior motive.
Cliff: Right. For me, as I read the book, what was helpful was I was thinking of the word Dorean, and a basic Greek vocabulary word you learn when you’re taking Greek is dorea, which is gift, and that’s where that word comes from.
Conley: Right, right.
Cliff: And it just so happens that one of my wife’s best friends in college, her name was Doris, which means gift. And so that idea of that which is a gift, that which is free, that which is given without any strings or attachments. And so in a nutshell, are you saying an overriding theme of your book is that, Christians, when do ministry and specifically when we are giving the gospel, presenting the gospel, teaching the good news, that we are supposed to be doing that without, we’re supposed to be doing it freely and not in exchange for any kind of money or remuneration?
Conley: Right, exactly. Yeah, Isaiah 55:1 says, Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and he who has no money, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. So this is something you see frequently in the gospel. As just in the Bible as a whole, and, you know, as very convicted Protestants, you know, we’re always preaching about the freeness of God’s grace. But is that freeness of His grace matched by the way that we’re offering religious instruction about that grace? If it’s not, then we’re muddying the message.
Derek: You have examples of this, and the first, kind of the big three, I guess, I would think, unless you could add some more. But the big three for me, it seems, in terms of parachurch ministries, would be Christian publishing, conferences, and then seminaries or places of higher education, probably specifically seminary, but I guess you could group in there maybe Bible colleges or Christian liberal arts colleges. And I understand that it gets, like you said, it gets a little more complex as you delve into the areas of application. But do you have anything that you might just say to kind of begin the conversation? What are some things you would say about how the Reformation can begin? What are some models that you might propose for, say, like Christian publishing or conferences that, you know, conferences have expenses they got to deal with, or publishing requires materials, and seminaries requires the hiring of professors, things like that. So again, I’m not asking for a comprehensive, because that’s not what your book was about, but just kind of get the conversation started.
Conley: Yeah, there’s a lot of things that come to mind, especially depending on which kind of institution you’re thinking about. We were just talking earlier about how seminaries are actually pretty close to the model this book is describing. You know, seminaries, a lot of the tuition comes from scholarships. It comes from people freely giving because they want to support that religious education. And in addition to that, usually students are sent by churches who are paying for this. So you already have churches funding these seminaries, but they’re doing it in a reciprocal way. It would take not that much change so that they were doing it regularly in a way that was not tied to what they were receiving from it, but instead what they wanted to see happen in the church at large. So that’s just one thing that comes to mind. Another thing that comes to mind is you’ve seen some innovations and fundraising just in general, even outside the church, where things are pre-funded, right? There’s these crowdfunding programs like Kickstarter or Patreon. There’s all kinds of tooling now to make sure that something is funded ahead of time by people who want to see it happen, as opposed to someone making it, hoping that someone will want it and then selling it to that person. So there have been a lot of innovations lately that I think the church could observe and take advantage of to address some of these problems.
Derek: Yeah, that’s helpful. And again, I think you’re right. The principles are sound and then there just takes a lot of rigorous, careful thinking about how to apply them. In your case, I noticed as I go to look for your book, it is given free of charge.
Conley: It is, yes.
Derek: I can get an e-book free of charge. And that was great. I mean, that actually moved me. We have our own With All Wisdom publications and that we were already in this process, but your book kind of prompted me like we need to do this to make, we have now, I think, I don’t know if it’s all of our books, we’re pretty close. We have PDFs available of all the books that we have so that you can receive them. You can take them off the website without charge. And so I appreciate not only you practicing what you preach very immediately, but then prompting me to take care of that in our own case.
Conley: So that’s awesome. Yeah, when I tell people about these ideas and then I tell them that I have a book that they can get access to, they always think that I’m being a hypocrite and here I’m about ready to make the sale. No, no, the book really is freely available. In fact, the publisher even covers shipping. So if you go to the website and order the book, they’ll even cover shipping.
Derek: Wow, that’s excellent. Cliff, did you have any other questions you wanted to follow up on?
Cliff: Yeah, I think we do need a reformation in this area. The commercialization of Christianity. Here’s an example here in Northern California. I happened to have a Sunday off. It was a few years ago because since I’m a pastor, I’m usually most busy on Sundays. And I had, so I thought I’d go visit another church and I did. And it was a well-known church, relatively large church here in Northern California. I guess you could call it a mini mega church if you want. Well-known, famous pastor. And the pastor preaches a sermon. Pretty much what he’s done, at the end of the sermon, he’s kind of advertising his sermon that you can get a copy of my sermon today in the foyer as you’re leaving, I think for a small fee of $9.99 plus taxes.
Conley: Oh, wow.
Cliff: It was 10 bucks a pop.
Conley: That’s incredible.
Cliff: Yeah. And I was like, whoa. So that was, this was mainline evangelical conservative Christianity with the popular personality who’s on the radio. And that was not long ago. So this is exactly what we’re talking about. That is selling the Word of God for money and for profit.
Conley: Absolutely. Yeah. And putting a price on something is stating something about the value. And to put any finite price on the gospel is to value it far lower than what it’s worth. I was reading Augustine recently and he was saying something very much along these lines is that the gospel is of infinite value. And so to place any kind of price on it is to value it far lower than what it is actually worth.
Cliff: That’s excellent.
Derek: Now, there are some ministries, I think I can think of at least one. I think of Desiring God. So if I go on their website, I can get any audio resource, written resource, and even any of John Piper’s books free of charge. I can get a PDF or ebook. I can get a PDF of any book. I can get any sermons. And that’s all free to me as a Christian. So there are ministries that are doing—in fact, I think he was almost kind of a trailblazer in this.
Conley: He was, yes.
Derek: I was going to say I saw other ministries kind of follow suit. Other strong sound ministries that were charging for their sermons, you know, it was a small fee, but they’re still charging. And then eventually now they’re all free. MP3 is on the website and things like that. So that was always, I think, a wonderful example to me of John Piper who was very early on. I mean, he just said that right away when Desiring God was starting to take off, that he was not going to take royalties and he was going to actually funnel all of that. And not only that, I mean, again, we could—that’s part of the issue is taking royalties. But in his case, he was saying he was not going to charge for any of these resources.
Cliff: Right. I—there’s another John who has done the same thing for decades. That’s John MacArthur at Grace to You. Same thing. You’re going to go on the Grace to You website and you can get all the sermons, audio, video, and a lot of the written material for free. And so I was trained at a Master’s Seminary some 30 years ago and at the Master’s College. Went to Grace Community Church 30 years ago. And that was—John MacArthur was my pastor, and that was always a principle that he abided by. And he said it to us, especially those going in the ministry, he said, man, never put a price tag on the gospel. And he would give examples of how he pretty much decided whether he was going to go preach somewhere as a guest. It wasn’t based on the fee they were going to give him. It was—was it God’s will for him to be there? God would take care of the finances and he would never charge a fee. And I remember he agreed to preach at UCLA and do a three-week Friday night series. And he drove down there three different times. He never asked for a fee. They said they would give him a royalty or whatever, but he didn’t care. But it was primarily preaching the gospel to unbelievers, college students. And he went there all three times, preached his heart out, and he said a couple weeks later, you’ve got to check for three bucks. Three dollars for coming three times. He said it was absolutely worth it, the grace of God, just to be able to preach to those unbelievers.
Conley: Yeah, like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9, you know, I have a reward, which is essentially, as he says elsewhere, when he talks about boasting, you know, boasting in the Lord, the Lord working through him in that stewardship he has of the gospel.
Cliff: So, Conley, are you saying pastors should not get paid?
Conley: They should absolutely get paid. If I were—if I had anything I could do about it, pastors would probably make double what they do. But yeah, it should all be—
Cliff: Amen, keep going, man.
Conley: It should all be by co-laborers, just not customers.
Cliff: Explain, define, reciprocity, sorry, versus co-labor, because those are the two you put in contrast to one another. We can get paid by co-labor, but not through reciprocity. And some folks might be like, well, what are you talking about?
Conley: Yeah, right. So the definitions I give in the book are, ministerial reciprocity is support, material or otherwise, given to a minister out of a sense of direct obligation for his ministry of the gospel. And the ministerial co-labor is support, material or otherwise, given by a man to a minister out of a sense of obligation to God to honor or aid in the proclamation of the gospel. So do I recognize this person as being the source of the gospel and I’m giving money back to him in exchange for the gospel, or do I realize that the gospel has originated from the Lord and out of service to the Lord, he has called me to support his workers. So those are, that’s what it comes down to.
Cliff: So I give out of co-labor means I’m giving directly to God.
Conley: Right.
Cliff: Or for how he is using this pastor faithfully in the ministry.
Conley: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, if you read the book, there’s a lot of illustrations that look like either lines or triangles, and the lines are someone giving directly to another man as though he were the source of the gospel, or triangle where one is giving to God and then God is supplying his workers. You know, in the context of Matthew 10 and Luke 10, when you have the worker being worthy of his wages, who is the employer of the worker? It’s not the people to who he is being sent. Instead, in the context of both of those passages, Jesus has just said that we should pray for God to send workers out into the harvest, to send his laborers there. So it is God who is the employer of the laborers. When it’s talking about wages, those wages are to come from the Lord. And if we bypass that, we miss much of what’s being stated in that context.
Derek: Yeah, that’s really helpful. I know when I, going back to when I had first read the book and then a few days later, talked to our Yo-Pros about reciprocity versus co-labor, you could see the lights going on and how helpful it was for people to think that way now, worshiping the Lord, joining with the pastor in his ministry rather than praying in this reciprocity type fashion. So it’s a really helpful principle.
Conley: Yeah, and there’s something really joyful about that too, to come alongside minister and co-labor. You know, if you think that, oh, this is just what I do and what I’m obligated to do because he did this thing for me, it’s not that joyous. But yeah, if you realize that, no, you’re coming alongside this man, you see a lot of the things that Paul said about his ministry, a lot of the persecutions he endured, describing shipwrecked, beaten, etc. He also listed he had to work with his hands, right? And he has several lists where he’s listing all these things, right? And he always listed he had to work with his hands. When we forego the fruit of our labor to give to a minister, we’re essentially bearing some of that burden, enduring some of what Paul endures. We are coming side by side with ministers. We’re not doing something less. We’re doing something equal, even though it may be of a different quality or different substance. So there’s something very equalizing about this as we all really are working together. There’s just something, like I said, so joyful about that. You know, when I purchase teaching from someone, I don’t feel an obligation to hold them accountable for what they’re saying. I don’t feel an obligation to pray for them. I don’t feel any joy that I’ve invested in something. But when I give to someone freely out of a desire to support that ministry, I do feel an obligation to hold them accountable. I do feel an obligation to pray for them. And I do feel the joy that comes with investing in the kingdom of God.
Derek: Yeah. That’s excellent. Now, I wanted to ask you about Micah 3:11 that figures into your principle and the way you’re thinking through these things in your book. Would you comment on Micah 3:11?
Conley: Sure. So yeah, at the very end of the book, I quote Micah 3.11. And I don’t really explain it because I feel like it speaks for itself. But there are some things that I think are worth highlighting. So Micah 3:11 says, Its heads give judgment for a bribe. Its priests teach for a price. Its prophets practice divination for money. Yet they lean on the Lord and say, Is not the Lord in the midst of us? No disaster shall come upon us. So in short here, you have a description of the leaders of Jerusalem. Charging for the things that the Lord has commanded them to do freely. And they think that they’re in the right. They think that they’re fine and they’re leaning on the Lord. But in truth, the Lord is not pleased with what is going on. In truth, they’re not leaning upon that rock. Now, it’s interesting to see these three groups and to consider what they are. First, you have its heads give judgment for a bribe. Who gives judgment, right? Its judges or princes. So when it’s talking about heads, it’s talking about rulers, princes, or you might even think of the king as being one of these heads. Its priests teach for a price. Its prophets practice divination for money. Its talking about prophet, priest, and king, right? These are the three offices of Christ. These are the three offices that existed in Old Testament Israel. And as we are representatives of Christ being a part of a royal priesthood, speaking as a prophet, you know, giving the words of God to the people who otherwise would have no access to his word. As we do that, we are representatives of Christ under him, who is the only true prophet, priest, and king. And as such, we need to be representing him rightly, giving the gospel as he would give it, which is without money and without price.
Derek: That’s excellent and a strong challenge to evangelicals to really consider how we raise funds in light of what Scripture teaches. And it really is, I think, it’s a freeing principle when you embrace it, quite honestly. I loved teaching and I love to think about it as a pastor. I freely give, I freely teach, I freely disciple, I freely instruct. I don’t, and knowing that God will provide for me through his people. And it’s just a very, it’s just a very freeing principle when you embrace it, at least from my side, and I’ve seen it on the other side with the way people are encouraged when they understand this principle of co-labor.
Conley: It really is. Yeah, and something worth considering there. We’ve used the word reformation a lot. The original Protestant Reformation, you know, in the 1500s, it was started over the same issue. You know, it was started over the sale of salvation, right, the sale of indulgences. And yes, a lot of amazing things came from that, but this was the core of it. And I think that we could see the same kind of fruit come from rethinking how we’re doing this. And I think it could be, like you said, wonderfully freeing.
Cliff: And to implement in our culture today, Conley, the Dorean principle, getting back to a biblical worldview on our money and how we invest in the Gospel, where in our culture do you think this needs to start the Reformation?
Conley: Well, it certainly needs to start with people thinking about what the Bible has to say about it. It needs to start with the Word of God. For so long, really, I would pin this to the past 300 years primarily. People have been following the model of the world when it comes to publishing, right? The church has just followed along this model of, you know, receiving royalties in a way that is really about an ulterior motive other than getting the Gospel forward. So, it starts with not just assuming that what the world is doing is something that the church can be doing, but rather thinking about what the Word of God says. And then with the people, with pastors, and then with the more prominent ministry leaders who are over larger institutions just rethinking these things. So, from the bottom up, you know, the people holding the higher men accountable for these things and the higher men also considering Scripture.
Derek: Yeah. That’s excellent. Well, Conley, we want to thank you very much for joining us. I’ve enjoyed our conversation. It’s been very edifying. I hope that your book continues to find wide readership and as it deserves and that there would be a reformation beginning with the people of God in the church and then fanning out to parachurch ministries. So, we are very encouraged. Cliff, do you have any last words to Conley?
Cliff: I do. I want to thank you too, Conley. Having recently read the book, I thumbed through it when Derek first gave it to me a while ago, then I reread the whole thing very carefully. I would just encourage any church leader out there, particularly heads of churches, pastors, elders, those who oversee missions, anything like that, to take the time and to get this book, The Dorean Principle, by Conley Owens, and to take your time going through. Maybe your elder team reading this together or have everybody that’s an elder pastor at the church and on staff read the book because really what it does and what Derek and I are all about in our podcast with all the topics that we address, it’s about developing fully a well-balanced and comprehensive biblical worldview in every area of life because the Bible is sufficient and covers every area in our life. And finances and money are a part of every person’s life and every Christian’s life in a very practical and daily way. We have to make decisions about money every single day. And I think this is a great tool, a great resource to be challenged with to help fully inform your worldview, not just on money and finance, but in a very specific area of how we invest in ministry that is rooted in the gospel. So thanks for writing that. And I appreciated the introduction of the book where I think it was in your foreword where the gentleman mentioned that he had never really read, he wasn’t aware of any way a book like this in terms of how comprehensive it is on this issue. And you were able to, you know, put that all together. So thanks for doing it.
Conley: Yeah, you’re welcome. Absolutely. It was a joy to do so.
Derek: Excellent. And we want to thank Conley for joining us. We want to thank our listeners for tuning in to today’s episode. Again, we would encourage you to check out Conley’s book,The Dorean Principle: A Biblical Response to the Commercialization of Christianity, and that is through First Love Publications. And like we mentioned earlier, you can find a copy of that free of charge online. And then we would also encourage you to check out WithAllWisdom.org, where you’ll find our resources there as well. And until next time, keep seeking the Lord in His Word.
