On Pastoral, Public Tone with Kevin DeYoung (Pastors Talk, Ep. 245)
Should pastors be careful with their public tone? On this episode of Pastors Talk, Mark Dever, Jonathan Leeman, and Kevin DeYoung start this conversation by talking about a pastoral public tone mistake that was made and how they resolved this issue. They continue by discussing the importance of watching your tone as a pastor when speaking in public. They emphasize the importance of giving as well as accepting correction when a tone error has been made and extending grace to pastors who make errors, encouraging them to learn from their mistakes.
- Making Pastoral, Public Tone Mistakes
- The Importance of Pastoral, Public Tone
- Correcting Pastors Who Fall Short
- Learning from Mistakes in Pastoral, Public Tone
Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Jonathan Leeman:
This is Jonathan Leeman.
Mark Dever:
This is Mark Dever.
Jonathan Leeman:
Welcome to this episode of 9Marks Pastors Talk. 9Marks exists to help pastors build healthy churches. Learn more at 9marks.org.
Mark Dever:
Is this really going to teach them how to build healthy churches, or are we presenting a negative example? Some of both.
Jonathan Leeman:
Go and don’t do likewise. Okay. There it is, the moral of this conversation. Now, we at 9Marks don’t typically go viral. We’re more like the tortoise. We hope that eventually, we’ll…
Mark Dever:
Oh, come on now. The tortoise seems a little speedy compared to us.
Jonathan Leeman:
It might even be that. But several weeks ago, for about two or three days, in our little corner of the world, a few comments that I made at a conference went kind of sort of viral.
Mark Dever:
You can’t hear it, but my head is hanging a bit right now.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, that’s right. And I see it and testify to it. Where were these comments made, Mark?
Mark Dever:
At the 9Marks Conference at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in September of 2022.
Jonathan Leeman:
This means your audience was primarily…
Mark Dever:
There were some Presbyterian and Anglican brethren there. They had to identify themselves when I had people stand up by denomination, but it was 95% Baptist or Baptistic.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, it was a panel. People were asking questions. I was leading the panel. I remember afterward thinking, okay. But without further ado, here are Mark’s comments on our Presbyterian and Anglican Brothers for your benefit.
Mark Dever Speaking at a 9Marks Conference
Mark Dever:
Is that because of Southeastern Seminary?
Akin:
What?
Mark Dever:
Well, so many churches here are practicing church discipline.
Akin:
Well, we emphasize it a lot more strongly than when I was in seminary, that’s for sure. Yeah. Because we see it as an essential mark of the church.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. So in the Reformation, people would talk about the marks of a true church: the right preaching of the Word of God, which essentially means the gospel. And the right administration of the sacraments, which means baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
And by right administration, they mean a couple of things. One, that you don’t understand it to be saving like the Church of Rome taught. And number two, that the right administration of the Lord’s Supper means you’re disciplining. You’re not practicing an undisciplined table, but that only people who are repentant of their sins are allowed to take the Lord’s Supper. And that’s what, you know, the Lutherans, the Anglicans, everybody.
Jonathan Leeman:
Hence the word excommunia, excommunication.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, that’s right.
Akin:
But then Baptists added a regenerate church and a disciplined body.
Mark Dever:
Well, to be clear, when you say Baptists added, that’s what the Eastern Orthodox taught. That’s what the Roman Catholics taught. It was our Paedobaptist friends, no offense, dear friends who are here, who are Paedobaptists, but our Paedobaptist Reformed friends who I would say historically made up this idea of people who are in the church but not in the church as a large category. The Eastern Orthodox never taught that. The Roman Catholics didn’t teach that. Baptists didn’t teach that.
Jonathan Leeman:
But they didn’t teach regenerate. He said regenerate church membership.
Mark Dever:
But that’s what the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics taught.
Jonathan Leeman:
I guess it was a following.
Akin:
But the Anabaptists for sure had that as a core cardinal component of their identity.
Mark Dever:
Yes, as the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholics did. It was the Paedobaptist Protestants who missed that point.
Akin:
But they had a wrong view of how you got regenerate.
Mark Dever:
Well, that’s true. Yeah. Yeah. But I just want to say this idea of a regenerate church, our Presbyterian friends will look at it sometimes like we’re crazy people, and I want to say, excuse me, that’s what the East and Rome always taught.
They understood that when you were baptized as an infant, you were regenerated. So actually, the crazy people in the room are you guys who are saying there is a church full of unregenerate people. Sorry.
It’s just as a guy in church history, my Paedobaptist friends, I love you, you come and preach in our pulpit, you’re smarter than we are, but I do get tired of being constantly condescended to by them when they’re wrong and they just don’t understand the very things they claim to understand very well at all.
The number of times I have been told we need bishops and presbyteries in case something goes wrong in our churches to make sure that our churches will be orthodox. Really. Really, have you looked at all the Orthodox Episcopal churches around? How about all the Orthodox PCUSA churches around? Have you bothered looking at those?
Meanwhile, the Baptists have no educational standards, but require believer baptism to be a member of their church, we have a church here from the 1770s that’s still preaching the gospel.
If you want to protect the gospel, get rid of infant baptism. And be congregational. Make the whole congregation vote. You’ll keep the gospel.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, Mark, is that what they call throwing red meat? Oh, you were kind of doing that. Yeah. You were sort of playing to your audience.
Mark Dever:
Yes. I was not self-consciously doing that. I was maybe… it’s sad. I was just going with it and I was making some points I meant to make, but I honestly hear maybe the worst of all, I don’t think I thought anything of it.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
And then I didn’t get any comments about it and I… It went out of my mind.
Jonathan Leeman:
And then that’s not quite true.
Mark Dever:
Is that not true?
Jonathan Leeman:
No, you got one.
Mark Dever:
At the time?
Jonathan Leeman:
Mm-hmm.
Mark Dever:
Ooh, was that you? What’d you say?
Jonathan Leeman:
You sure we want to put that up?
Mark Dever:
And what did I say?
Jonathan Leeman:
I think it’s fine.
Mark Dever:
Well, there that is. And my judgment once again. So then nine months go by and I’m on a plane about to go to a 9Marks meeting with you and I get a letter, an email from a dear brother who’s Presbyterian and Kevin DeYoung who…
Jonathan Leeman:
Had you preached at his church?
Mark Dever:
I preached at his church about six weeks after that after I made those comments.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay. And what did the letter say?
Making Pastoral, Public Tone Mistakes
Mark Dever:
He pointed out that there was this video and that it had over 400,000 views or likes or something. And I wish I was not aware of, and that he thought the argument was incorrect and the tone was inappropriate.
And I don’t remember if he had an action point. He was urging me toward in the letter, but I read it and Kevin’s a dear brother, good friend.
I trust his judgment implicitly and I assumed he must be right at least in part. So I quickly went back and looked at the video and wow, I saw what he was talking about. So I called him immediately and asked him to please forgive me for the tone.
Said we were working to have it taken down. We’re calling Alberto to see if he could get it taken down. We had not been the ones who’d at least put it up in this latest thing that went viral.
Yeah, and then we thought, man, maybe we can talk about this later and just try to get some good out of this and just try to think how Christians can disagree in public. Because one of the things Kevin criticized me for in the letter, and this was just sent to me, was for my tone.
And even listening to that now is just painful. I mean, it’s partly fun and some of the stuff I think is true. But yeah, the tone, I respect my friends who are numerous, who believe in infant baptism and non-congregational polity immensely. And while I’m very happy to bring to them my thoughts about polity and baptism, I don’t want to encourage people to be dismissive. And yeah, so I’ve felt bad about the tone and feel bad about the tone listening to it again now.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, to help us with this conversation and just walk through it step by step, which you’ve already begun, Brother, is Kevin DeYoung.
Kevin, thank you for joining us.
Kevin DeYoung:
Gracious of you brothers to invite me here. I hadn’t put the timeline to, of course, I didn’t know anything about this clip until nine months later, but you did come to Christ Covenant and it was a wonderful weekend and wonderful…
Mark Dever:
And I was treated with great respect.
Addressing Pastoral, Public Tone Mistakes
Kevin DeYoung:
Yeah. So, I didn’t know the timing. So thank you for carrying on this conversation. And I’m sure we’re going to get into maybe the content, maybe the tone. I would say, I think I had sent, I was talking to you about it, Jonathan, and you encouraged, you know, you can go ahead and send it to Mark, or I think you maybe had said something like that.
But to Mark’s credit, I know Mark to be the sort of man who would not bristle to receive an email like that from me. Whether he… Yeah, and we can talk about whether he agreed with every jot and tittle of it or in Maine thought, yeah, you’re onto something.
I just knew he is not un-entreatable, uncorrectable, would not. If he thought he had made a mistake, he would say it and he wouldn’t be a groveler to just, oh, somebody called me on something.
I better just say how sorry I am to make it go away. So I really respect Mark for that. And I was not at all surprised. In fact, I pretty much expected if he was near a phone that after he got it, he would call me.
And we talked about it just briefly. So I want to commend you for that even though, yeah, I took issue with the clip itself. I’m happy to talk about it.
Jonathan Leeman:
Kevin is the pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the author of 47, 49, 63.
Kevin DeYoung:
More books than children.
Mark Dever:
And that’s saying a lot about Kevin by God’s grace.
Jonathan Leeman:
I know it is. Brother, what was it that bothered you when you launched it?
Kevin DeYoung:
What didn’t bother me about the clip? Yes.
Jonathan Leeman:
Somebody sent it to you?
Kevin DeYoung:
Yeah. I was actually out to eat with my family, which is very rare that we’re all out to eat somewhere. I think my mother-in-law was heading home the next day. So we were going out to eat.
Jonathan Leeman:
He once told me that just taking his kids to Chick-fil-A costs like several hundred dollars.
Kevin DeYoung:
Oh, let alone Five Guys. I love Five Guys, but that is not cheap. So I was there and then my phone started blowing up with, of course, from my friends, it was, can you believe what Mark did here? And so I watched, I thought, so I, the arguments, now Mark and I have had some of these arguments and I’ve certainly heard some of them.
And I will say, and I think I did say in the email, I do not doubt that Mark, you have spoken to many condescending Presbyterians. I hope I haven’t been one of them, but I have no doubt that you have had that sort of, if only you had a bishop or a session, or well, you have a session, if only you had a Presbytery and sort of tut-tut, there is a kind of class hierarchy of denominations and Baptists are just above Pentecostals, but below Presbyterians, which are below Anglicans, which are below Anglican, etc. So, I don’t doubt that.
What I found troubling was, I’ll just say two things and we can see what else we want to talk about. One, the assertion at the very end, kind of the sweep, and I even allow that you’re in friendly confines and there’s a bit of a rhetorical flourish, but if you want to keep the gospel, you know, get rid of infant baptism. Well, you and I both know, you have so many heroes who baptized babies and churches now that,
Mark Dever:
You all can’t see this, but I’m just sitting here nodding my head up and down agreeing with Kevin right now.
Kevin DeYoung:
He’s nodding.
And so I thought some of the… You had a flourish there about this church is in the 1770s, as if there aren’t very, very old, much older Anglican churches, Presbyterian, Reformed churches that still have the gospel. So I didn’t think that historical argument carried a lot of weight.
And then, yeah, just at the very end, it really was like you Presbyterians, I do love you, but boy, you’re always just a half step away from losing the gospel. Maybe you do think that, I don’t know. But I think what I said to you in the email was, with all of the condescending Presbyterians that might be out there, I don’t think I’ve heard in sort of a broader conservative, thoughtful evangelicalism.
You know, Kevin DeYoung or Ligon, and maybe those are just picking two nice guys and there’s some jerks out there, but that we would have spoken in this way about Baptists. Like, if you want to preserve the gospel, you better baptize your babies straight away or you’re going to… Look at all the prosperity preachers out there.
Do you think they baptize their babies? They don’t. You think the animists in Africa baptize their babies? No, they don’t. They don’t have presbyteries. They have congregational polity, regenerate church members. So, that wouldn’t be a very compelling argument and so I didn’t agree with yours.
A Guide to Conversations Surrounding Mistakes
Jonathan Leeman:
So to clarify the listener, we’re not so much interested in having a conversation right now about some internet flash in the pan. I mean, these things happen, so who cares? We’re not even finally interested in having a conversation about the merits of the paedobaptism versus credobaptism. So much as we are about the importance of a pastor’s tone in his public speech, as well as the importance of confronting brothers when something comes up. I think that’s what we want to focus on.
Mark Dever:
And how do that and how to talk through something like that.
Jonathan Leeman:
Because I think this was a great model.
So let me ask you, Kevin, are you saying that there’s no place for me to come to you as a Presbyterian and say, hey, listen, I think there’s something wrong with certain Presbyterian convictions. And my reason for that, aside from them not being biblical, is I think it ultimately weakens churches. Can I not have that kind of substantive conversation with you without you being offended?
Kevin DeYoung:
I hope I wouldn’t be offended by that. I hope I wouldn’t be offended by you or Mark or another Baptist making that argument strongly, whether it’s in the presence of Presbyterians or not. So maybe put it this way, not so much what was affirmed from your Baptist perspective.
I think I understand that, that have the congregational vote is going to be in your mind, not infallible, but a good protection against heresies and other theological deviations.
I think you’ve said before, you know, Baptists might go crazy. They might be a little bonkers, but they’re less likely to go liberal. So, I don’t fault you or find offense in that at all. I think it was then felt to me like the back of the hand to the Presbyterians, which I didn’t think was historically true and I didn’t think was in keeping with, you are together for the gospel.
And I know there’s always good-natured ribbing on that and substantive disagreement on that, but it felt out of, it felt in character. Cause I know you Mark to be playful and you poke and that’s a great…
Mark Dever:
Bombastic.
Kevin DeYoung:
You know, always confident, sometimes right.
Mark Dever:
There we go. My dear wife, quoted forever.
Kevin DeYoung:
But you’re, you’re very lovable about it. And you know, you’re a big bear that pokes people and then you get poked back and you laugh and, ha-ha, you know, you’re like Winnie the Pooh, uh, just louder and more bombastic. So, but this felt, this felt, it had a little, it had more of a, it was, was…
Jonathan Leeman:
It was dismissive too.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. And so Kevin, to be clear from my side, I felt no animus in my soul when I was saying that, but the words that you said to me in your letter, which are very similar to the words you said now just in person here, I thought were accurate in the description and I was ashamed.
And I, you know, I asked you then and I would ask the hearers now who heard that on Twitter to forgive me for my dismissive tone because I think I don’t represent well what I think you and I and Jonathan all want to represent in the gospel of Jesus Christ in that tone.
And I’m indebted to you for respecting me enough, to write me directly about that and put it down very clearly, no mincing of words. That just makes me love you more and appreciate you more.
Kevin DeYoung:
Well, that’s very kind. And like I said, there aren’t that many people that I feel like I could do that and I would have just complete trust, whether you agreed or not, that you would receive it. You would know that I love you. You would receive it as a brother.
And I very much hope I would do the same if you needed to do that. And certainly I’ve had to be corrected. I mean, anyone who does a lot of things that end up online. I mean, if we’ve not ever been corrected, then either we have people really guarding it well, or we just haven’t, we just haven’t been confronted with it.
Mark Dever:
I appreciate your humility. I have heard you a lot in person and some in recording, and I have not heard you in any way that I would want to bring the criticism to you that you brought to me in that letter. So I, and I don’t think I would be slow to bring it to you.
Kevin DeYoung:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
I don’t think I So I think you probably have succeeded whatever errors you may have in not having that error. And I think I failed in that. And I think I am, hopefully I learn from this when I’m next rhetorically tempted into such a pot of irresistible rhetorical honey.
Kevin DeYoung:
As Winnie the Pooh.
Mark Dever:
Exactly. I’ll be able to push it away and not indulge myself.
Kevin DeYoung:
Why don’t you both? I’m sorry, I’m asking the questions. Did you guys get feedback from people that was really positive? I’m just curious, did people say like,
Mark Dever:
I don’t know the answer to that.
Kevin DeYoung:
Go get them. That was, I loved it, Mark. You put them in your place or that was amazing. You owned the Presby’s.
Mark Dever:
But even if I did, Kevin, that’s, I wouldn’t, I don’t want to incite that with that way.
Kevin DeYoung:
I agree.
Mark Dever:
Just those arguments. I’m super happy to win over every Presbyterian or confirm every Baptist listening, but I agree with you. Like when I said tired of, oh, that sounds like a whiny 14-year-old, you know, tired of, I’m annoyed, I just, I’m bored. Oh, I hate that kind of entitled tone. I just, yeah, I hated the way it sounded there.
Jonathan Leeman:
I’d like to ask each of you to enunciate certain principles based on what the other guy did well that you would commend for anybody listening. So Mark, what did Kevin do well in the manner in which he approached you? Kevin, what did Mark do well in both making himself intreatable in the first place and in his response?
Correcting Pastors Who Fall Short
Mark Dever:
Okay. This is, this is easy. Number one, Kevin acted pretty quickly when he saw something that he thought was not helpful, not good, not reflecting well on me or the gospel.
Number two, I assume he got counsel from maybe one or two or maybe some others about what to do, which let me just be clear. I don’t view that as gossip at all. You know, I trust people who love me. Well, you speak to as many people you want in order to help me. So I think that’s a good thing. I don’t think that’s gossip.
Number three, he wrote to me directly. It was not an overly long letter. It was clear. He wasn’t hiding his concerns.
Number four, he was very gracious when I called him and apologized. I knew from my relationship with Kevin already that he would be happy for me to grow in this area so that he was not hoping as a kind of competitor preacher or denomination that I would somehow sink myself and show this is the iniquity of the Baptists. but that he wants people to be one to Jesus Christ. He wants me to have a winsome witness for that.
And he values my reputation, my witness as much or more than I do. And he’s speaking to me in that way. And I was confident of all that in calling him and both the letter, which was correcting me and the reception, my phone call, which I gave a few minutes afterwards, both had that same obvious quality to it.
Jonathan Leeman:
Kevin, on your side?
Receiving Correction with Humility
Kevin DeYoung:
Yeah, thank you for that. Yeah, also easy to say, and I would go one step back, and I think Mark would agree with this, just our relationship that we’ve had for many, many years is certainly part of that.
And that I had seen, I’ve seen Mark in many personal and public instances to know what sort of man he is that gave me confidence that I was not walking into, I was not putting myself in a trap. I was not liable to get an aggressive, angry response that would only make things worse.
So that shouldn’t go without saying because we probably all can think of people and hopefully we’re not those people that we think, yeah, this is something, somebody should say something and this is going to explode and we just step away. So that, that I knew how I thought Mark would receive it and he did.
Second, he got in touch with me right away and he called, not that, you know, an email could have been okay to say thank you, I appreciate this, I receive it. But given the circumstances, a five minute probably wasn’t much more than that phone call, I think, was even more effective just to hear his voice and hear my voice. He wasn’t defensive, he wasn’t angry, he thanked me for it.
And then third, he took the step and he said, I’m gonna talk to whoever I need to talk to. And we didn’t post the clip, but if there’s any way that we can get the clip down, we’ll do that. I don’t want that example going out there. So that was commendable and takes humility. It’s one thing to sort of out there and I will, you know, to you privately, I’m sorry, but it was kind of a fun moment and it’s, you know, Mark wanted to make amends to it.
And then following up with this conversation, which again, I don’t think was necessary, but I do think it’s helpful and it’s good for us as brothers to have these kind of conversations. And so infrequently, I think that people, especially of some stature, notoriety would in a public, but not a groveling, like, I’m just a public, hey, I made a mistake. I’m sorry. How can we learn from it?
Jonathan Leeman:
Mark said to us over email, probably not you, but in-house staff, he wanted to do this conversation. You said this a moment ago, Mark, for it to be a good public vehicle for you to apologize for your wrongful dismissiveness in your tone towards dearly loved brothers.
Just our arguments. My own purpose, slightly differently than Mark was to say, hey, I think this is a great example to commend for others to learn from because you’re right. We don’t see much of these kind of meaningful reactions.
One brief comment on that second point you made, Kevin, getting on the phone. I find the younger generation is so slow.
The Importance of Tone
Mark Dever:
Yeah, that may be because I’m in my sixties. Would you do that, Kevin? Would you get on the phone in that kind of situation or just an email?
Kevin DeYoung:
Yeah, I think so. No, I emailed it because I know. I can be succinct and I can be clear and I can say exactly what I mean to say.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, it was a superb letter in that sense.
Kevin DeYoung:
Yes, I think a follow-up. Yeah, you can just hear a tone and you’re certainly right. I don’t think the younger you get, and so I’m probably less likely to do it than you are. And then even younger than me it gets even less likely. It would have been a text or it would have been, Hey bro, what’s up with this?
Mark Dever:
Or we good?
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, it’s funny. My kid, my kid, my teenagers are just inclined to text on various things. I’m like, I just call them and that to them, it almost seems offensive to call people like an imposition on people to call them. There is a generational thing.
Mark Dever:
I had a friend recently who was about to meet with some Roman Catholic, no, an evangelical who he thought was taking a kind of Roman Catholic position on something that he was going to warn them about. And the way he put it to me in the text was I’m a bust them.
Jonathan Leeman:
Last thing I want to think about here briefly.
You’ve alluded several times, Kevin, to the long relationship you had with Mark and your, somebody used the word trust, which is to say your ability to have this confronting conversation depended upon trust and relationship. Is it fair to say you would not have done the same thing were there not a relationship? What instruction can you guys give us when we don’t have these kinds of relationships with people?
Mark Dever:
That’s a good question.
Kevin DeYoung:
That’s very good because I don’t think it’s… It’s not black or white. I think as a younger man, more idealistic, maybe I would have just said, you just, you know, that’s up to them. They need to be mature enough to handle it. Just you make sure you do it in the right way and let it fly. There’s something commendable about that.
But I think, you know, now my mid forties, well, there is some wisdom to know how will this land? Is this of significant consequence? So I think, do you have a relationship? Clearly, if it’s a… I know that was at Southeastern, right?
So if Danny Akin had said [that], I’ve met Danny, I don’t know Danny well, I would never have thought, I would have had to ask somebody for his email, and even if I had it, I wouldn’t have done that.
Not that I think Danny couldn’t have received it, but I don’t have a relationship with him that he would think, okay, Kevin, but why are you correcting me? So if it was someone within, say, an institutional network or within a friendship or with something that the person would not be surprised that I would have a voice in their life.
Mark Dever:
Part of the dynamic here is that when Kevin writes me like that, that shows respect to me because clearly Kevin is assuming that I will hear what he’s saying. He’s assuming I will not mock it. I will not take it out of context. I will not be resentful toward it or else he wouldn’t send it. Right.
So the whole way Kevin is approaching me though, it’s very direct. it shows a kind of affection and esteem and respect even in doing that. And I picked up on that and very much appreciated it and honestly feel like I deserved it less for the way I had publicly spoken.
And so to still be treated in that way was I think somewhat an act of grace on Kevin’s part. Not that I’m retreating from my theological conclusions and Kevin understands that, but from the way I spoke of those who disagree with me on that, I cannot think of an Anglican or Presbyterian friend in public, who has spoken as dismissively as that about my understanding of baptism or the effects of not having presbyterianism or Episcopalian structure, though they may think that, they may say that some of it privately among their friends, perhaps in humor.
No, I can’t think of a good parallel situation and I think that means I greatly deserve the loving rebuke I got from Kevin.
Learning From Mistakes in Pastoral, Public Tone
Jonathan Leeman:
Four quick takeaways. Number one, this conversation isn’t the right tool for all such occasions if there’s not a relationship there.
Mark Dever:
I think that’s true.
Jonathan Leeman:
Number two, make yourself entreatable. Number three, be willing to entreat when occasion requires. Number four, build the kinds of relationships with brothers in which you can be entreated or able to entreat. I think some guys, many guys may just lack those relationships and you’re living in a dangerous and impoverished state in so far as that’s the case.
Jonathan Leeman:
A fifth one that’s probably implied in those other four is start private in your communication if you can. I know, you know, if I had tweeted out something, Mark, at Mark Dever, I don’t think these are great arguments.
I mean, I don’t think that would have been wrong or Mark would have been offended, but how much more profitable and to do it this way. Now, when you say public things, you open yourself up to public comment.
Mark Dever:
Appropriately.
Kevin DeYoung:
Appropriately. And I do think there’s a lot of folks as in easy to think, you know where we’re going to hash this out is on Twitter. Not a good instinct.
Mark Dever:
The artist formerly known as Twitter.
Kevin DeYoung:
Yes, X. Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
And that becomes an excuse sometimes for the flesh and may not be the actually best way to persuade the person you’re trying to persuade, you know, rather than the private entreaty, which gives them a chance to not feel like they have to perform.
Mark Dever:
No, and I appreciate the fact that Kevin is self-consciously equipping me to be more winsome in order to liberate Presbyterian and Anglican friends from misunderstandings of polity and baptism that will bless them. Thank you, Kevin.
Kevin DeYoung:
Winsomely said, my brother, Pooh.
Mark Dever:
Every once in a while, I’m able to pull it off.
Kevin DeYoung:
That’s a rumbly and nice umbly.
Mark Dever:
I think Kevin and I are enough similar in that that he could hear that, know what I mean.
Jonathan Leeman:
And with that, brothers, thank you for the conversation.
Mark Dever:
Kevin, I’m sincerely in your debt, brother. Thank you.
Kevin DeYoung:
Well, thank you.
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