CARES Act Pastor ZOOM Meeting
5/5/20
Hosts: Isaac Crockett, Sam Rohrer
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Isaac Crockett:
All right. I think everybody’s coming in now. It’s just so different doing everything digital, Sam nowadays and most of you guys are already used to it with your church stuff. It’s also interesting the excuses that have evolved now, people who were late for church when we had regular church services, they’re the ones that are late to get on for the digital service or those people, “Oh, I’ve got all this extra time right now, but I haven’t had enough time to watch your sermons, pastor.” Those sort of things, so you guys can relate.
Isaac Crockett:
I’m sure there’s a few guys though that have very good why they’re running a little bit late. Here it is Tuesday afternoon is a whole lot different than people with nothing to do on Sunday morning, but all of you who are on on time, thank you very much, and those of you getting on, thank you very much for coming on to this webcast today.
Isaac Crockett:
I’m Isaac Crockett. I am a cohost of Stand in the Gap Television and I help with Stand in the Gap Today, Sam as well, and we’re here to hear from Sam Rohrer. He’s the president of the American Pastors Network. Most of you probably already know Sam, know a lot about him, know his history, but he has served as a minister to the Lord in a lot of different capacities for about 20 years in a political arena in the government and he has a real heart for pastors, all of us.
Isaac Crockett:
And so we’re going to hear from him today a little bit about the issues here, and then we’ll take question and answer. So if you have questions, feel free to enter those, if you go to the bottom of your webinar screen there on the Zoom, hover your mouse around and there should be a spot there that says Q&A. If you click on that Q&A, it should open up a questions part. You can move that into whatever part of the screen you want and you can type your questions there.
Isaac Crockett:
If your questions aren’t answered in the program itself by Sam, we will try to take as many as we can. We’re going to try to keep all of this very brief. And so having said that, I think those are the main things right now to get started. So Sam Rohrer, I’ll turn it over to you at this time.
Sam Rohrer:
Thank you Isaac, and I just want to welcome all of you who are participating with us today. This short emphasis was open to all pastors that are on the APN list and others if you got it, but across the country. We’re sitting here in Pennsylvania right now, at least I am, Isaac just across the border in New York, but he’s still Pennsylvania at heart. That’s where his church was for over 10 years. So this is open to all.
Sam Rohrer:
But I wanted to actually bring this issue forward on the matter of the CARES Act. It’s caused a lot of questions, I think all of you probably watching right now have either already made a determination as a church and church leadership of whether or not you ought to apply for and receive, and spend the money from this national CARES Act or you’ve decided not to.
Sam Rohrer:
And there are a lot of reasons that have been given for… actually I’m going to give some at the hand of this program, five reasons that there were many, some leaders, but this way, some leaders in this country who were strongly advocating for pastors to take the money. I’m not going to share them right now, but I am at the end because it may really surprise you.
Sam Rohrer:
I didn’t agree with it, but many of the many were being encouraged to do so. But because of the nature of the fact that the Bible does not say, “Thou shall not take CARE money,” or the Bible does not say, “Thou shall take CARE money.” There’s no direct command, we’re into an area of principle. And that’s been like a foreign territory for a lot of people to travel.
Sam Rohrer:
We’ve not done that, generally had to do that too often as church leaders particularly as it relates to government. But we’re in a strange time when government is now stepping into the space of the church enticing, in this case, I’m going to say perhaps with CARE money, but stepping into the space of the church, and so we’re in an area of having to say, “All right, how do we handle this area of civil authority that governs our people, not even coming to church as an example or how we worship and all of that?”
Sam Rohrer:
And we’re going to be as a part of a Zoom call tomorrow with Matt Staver, I’ll just mentioned that right now. We’re going to be doing from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM Eastern Time tomorrow, we’ll be talking about regathering the church. And so we’re looking at some legal matters, we’re talking about some theological issues, and some practical things, and we’re going to gear that primarily for Pennsylvania pastors, but if you’re watching, no matter where you are, you can participate as well as I think it’ll be helpful in that regard.
Sam Rohrer:
But in regards to the CARE money, what prompted me to offer some suggestion here was that I was contacted by a lot of pastors and saying, “What do you think? Sam, you’ve been in office for 20 years. You counseled us as pastors when you’re an office about laws, what about this one?” All right. Part of that’s there. And then it was a week ago, this past Thursday on April 23rd, that some additional regulations came out from the Small Business Association, which is the administrative part that was set up by the law, the CARE Act to write the regulations governing the receipt of the money.
Sam Rohrer:
And it was in the promulgation of some of those regulations that caused a number of people or it should to say, “Wait a minute, what are we doing?” And they gave a window, and this is the reason for wanting to put this in here today, there is a short window of time between now and May the 7th, which is Thursday of this week, that if a church has taken money, and once they hear the guidelines that were offered, if they want to give that money back, they will be held harmless under the law and will be considered as if they had never applied for it or taken the money.
Sam Rohrer:
So there is a timeframe I’m wanting to put out there for you that if you’ve taken money after I’ve walked through a few things, you may decide, I don’t want that money and you can give it back and so forth, and I’m want to put that right up front.
Sam Rohrer:
Let me just walk through a few things here and I’m going to try and do this in about 12 or 15 minutes, and then we can take questions. And as Isaac mentioned at the bottom of your screen, you can put down there where it says Q&A, and then you can put in some questions. Isaac’s going to take them and he’ll consolidate and he’ll pose them to me at the end, so hopefully this will be efficient. We’re not going to waste your time.
Sam Rohrer:
Let’s do this. Josh, if you can put up on the screen first slide I put together. These are just some primary thoughts I would like to walk through. Probably nothing new to you. But I have found that in this timeframe, a lot of these were put to the side, particularly when there were those who were really pushing pastors and churches, “Take the money, take the money, take the money.” A lot of these things were ignored.
Sam Rohrer:
For instance, in reality, there is no such thing as free money. A lot of books said, “Hey, here’s a loan that may turn into a grant. We won’t have to pay it back. It’s free money. Alright, we got to go get it.” But there’s no such thing as free money.
Sam Rohrer:
The second point is that when government gets involved, there are always strings. There are always strings attached.
Sam Rohrer:
Thirdly, what government allocates government regulates, and that ties back into the string idea that whenever there’s a nexus with government, there is always a contractual arrangement that’s set up that will open the pathway for regulations that otherwise would not exist.
Sam Rohrer:
Number four, there are no biblical precedents for pursuing or accepting government aid, and other than an example that some would come up with that King Cyrus gave some money to Nehemiah and Ezra to help them rebuild the wall as government aid. Even that was not the same as this because that was project money, but the government actually said, “We were the fault of tearing down your wall and we’re responsible to pick it up.” A little different, not the same as what we’re talking about here.
Sam Rohrer:
Number five, as a general principle, I’m taking government money, CARE money in this case really does challenge a church’s reliance on God because it asks the question, am I going to the government for help or am I going to God for help?
Sam Rohrer:
And then sixthly, it sets a negative precedent for the future. And what I mean by that is that once a church, or a business, or an individual, however it may be enters into a relationship with government, now something has been done and it sets a precedent that makes anything in the future far more easy to occur. So just remember that as we get into it.
Sam Rohrer:
Let me take you, if I can here, Josh to the next slide. In the law and I found that most congressmen who passed this law, they never read it. And that’s no surprise because I found that never happened when I was in office, most people never read the law. But the piece about the law that was passed, the CARES Act was just one section, was Section 1102.
Sam Rohrer:
I’ve taken out just the two pieces of law so that you can see how strings are attached to every piece of law will have something like this in it. Here’s 1102, and you can see it there, it says, “Guidance, not more than 30 days after the date of enactment of this paragraph, the administrator, that’s the small business association shall provide guidance to lenders under this paragraph on the deferment process described in the paragraph.”
Sam Rohrer:
The lenders would be the banks and only the borrowers would be the churches or businesses. But there was a second one in this law as I read it and you can see what it says there, is called the sense of the Senate. I’m not going to read that, but you can read it. The sense of the Senate, it’ll be the sense of the House, it could be the sense of the Senate, it puts a provision in there that the senators or the House, wherever the bill originated from retain the right to step in and conduct hearings.
Sam Rohrer:
Now, in the case of this one, Senator Marco Rubio, as an example, has stepped in and begun hearings on the way some of this money has been distributed, but I will submit that even next year, even if the Senate was not in control of the Republicans, the Democrats in the Senate can still step in under the provisions of this bill and pursue investigations on things.
Sam Rohrer:
Every bill has something like that, so this is the origination of how strings will occur and occurs in the CARE Act. Okay. Third slide, if we can have that. Put it up there, Josh. There we go.
Sam Rohrer:
All right. Now, the Small Business Administration was the one that was given authority by Congress to administrate the CARE Act as it would go to small business, and then I’ll stamp [inaudible 00:14:39] churches. The Small Business Association on April 23rd came out with some of their early guidelines, that’s what they were called.
Sam Rohrer:
What I have here it’s just a paragraph from a law firm, and a lot of law firms did this. They looked at it and they said, “Ah, We got some issues here.” And they sent this out to a number of people basically telling them, and you’ll see in the bottom line there, it says, “While the interim rule of final rules and official guidance have answered some questions, many were left unanswered due to ambiguities or inconsistencies in the CARES Act itself.”
Sam Rohrer:
And I’ll guarantee you it was a very ambiguous, “And the interim rules” it says, they talked about stepping into the spot. Now go to the next slide here if we can, Josh. And this is a part that came from the Small Business Administration since the law firm had put out here, but this came in a lot of different forms from different people.
Sam Rohrer:
Civil penalties, that civil penalties for violation of the act may include treble or triple damages, and you can see what’s there, statutory penalties, over $22,000 for false claim. The government may also pursue final criminal penalties including jail time under the False Claims Act.
Sam Rohrer:
Now the point here is that the advice to churches and recipient businesses, if you’ve made the application as a church, you had to certify that in fact these funds were necessary for your continuance. That’s what the application called for. The guidance from the Small Business Administration, and as you see from the law firm raising the question was, you better make sure that you can certify that this money was necessary, meaning would your church go out of business if you didn’t get this money?
Sam Rohrer:
Well, who can say that? But the point of it here is if you can’t say that, then you are open for a possible charge of civil fraud and all of these criminal activities. This is the guidance, these are strings that come with this quote, unquote “free money.” And you see the problem?
Sam Rohrer:
Now, not only addition to this, you not only have to certify, but you do have to open up because as a part of this is a potential audit. The Small Business Administration can come back in and audit your church or a business. And what’s that audit, you will have to provide information that frankly you may not have provided to anybody so far.
Sam Rohrer:
That’s confidential type of a thing because they don’t say what they will be auditing. So this was the warning. This warning that came from law firms also came from banks who were lending the money. My own church as an example, we got ahold of this and we actually got an alert from the bank that was dealing with the church basically saying the same thing, raising the questions.
Sam Rohrer:
And this is where the potential really happens. Can you imagine a church being wrapped up with a potential fraud charge? What a testimony before the community. Having a church charged with fraud, meaning lying to the government as to need, you could see where I’m going, not a good thing.
Sam Rohrer:
Let’s go to the next slide if we could, Josh. Here I want to focus on one aspect where I think you may say, “Well, okay, we can avoid a fraud charge if we just don’t take the money.” And I’m saying that is correct. That’s basically what they’re saying. So if you’ve taken money and you have a question with you and your leadership being able to certify that you would go out of business, had you not taken this money, which is really high standard, you may really strongly consider giving it back.
Sam Rohrer:
If you do, you can do that by May 7th, I think through May 7th and be held harmless. If you go through the process, then you maybe suspect other things. Now, here’s a point that no one has talked anything about, and even good attorneys, and even attorneys, friends of mine who I know who are in the space of defending religious freedom have not mentioned this part, but this is really key and I’d like you to think about this, would be good.
Sam Rohrer:
In the standpoint of the act, the law, the definition and the designation of church as a business is problematic. Nowhere in the law is the word church mentioned. It doesn’t appear. So you say, “Well, how does the church then get involved as even a potential recipient of CARE Act?” Well, it’s because churches or dropped in to the classification of a nonprofit organization, which you can see right there from the law, 1102(a)7, nonprofit means an organization described in this section as 501(c)(3) revenue under revenue code.
Sam Rohrer:
If you are a church that accepted years ago the designation of 501(c)(3), then you are in fact referred to and viewed by the government first of all, as a nonprofit organization, a business under this law purchase are grouped in as businesses, not churches. The section below, the second definition talks about ambition to any small business concern, nonprofit organization, that’s where churches are included.
Sam Rohrer:
So churches are a part of the potential money because they are a 501(c)(3). So if you are a church listening or watching me right now and you are a freestanding church, a free church, put it in that perspective. A church that did not take 501(c)(3) status, which churches don’t have to have 501(c)(3) status.
Sam Rohrer:
But if you did not take a 501(c)(3) status, you can’t even apply for this because you’re not a business, you’re a church. Okay? Then just hold it there, Josh. Just hold it there for now. Let me spend just a couple of moments here on this point. I want to plant a thought if I could pastors and church leaders, and that’s in regard to the whole concept of 501(c)(3).
Sam Rohrer:
Years ago when the IRS, and the Treasury Department, and Congress came up with the concept of nonprofits and for profits, they came up with the concept of nonprofits 501(c). There are actually 501(c)(1), (2), (4), (5), (6), (7), all the way up to (23). So there’s 501(c) up to (23), different categories. Some are political, some are other things.
Sam Rohrer:
501(c)(3) are nonprofits. Years ago, those in the legal profession and political profession came to churches and they said, “We got a deal for you. This will help you, help because your donors, they put it. We have called tithers, give to the church. This will allow them to take tax deductions,” which frankly they still can because churches are under the IRS right now in the code. Churches are historically tax exempt under the constitution and under the IRS.
Sam Rohrer:
They don’t need 501(c)(3), but they came with the idea, “501(c)(3) status will give you a lot of advantages.” Well, one of the advantages I can think of, and I’m saying that pejoratively, was that if you all understand the phrase Johnson Amendment, remember the president when he ran the 2016, he discovered that a lot of pastors were not preaching boldly from the pulpit, and they said, “Well, we can’t because we’re limited by the Johnson Amendment.”
Sam Rohrer:
And the president said, “What’s this Johnson Amendment thing? I don’t even know what this thing is.” And he checked into it and he said, “Well, we’re going to stop that.” Well, he tried to, but the Johnson Amendment is still in effect. He’s just ordered the IRS not to enforce any of it, but the Johnson Amendment was used as a threat to keep you and other pastors in the pulpit from preaching on matters of culture and issues, lest the fear was you would be violating the law because pulpits they say can’t speak politically.
Sam Rohrer:
Well, the reason that they weren’t supposed to speak politically was not because of their churches, but because there were 501(c)(3). So when churches took a 501(c)(3) years ago, they actually made a nexus and agreement with government and the Johnson Amendment and the threat was a part of the strings. And I’m going to try and conclude here so we can go to questions.
Sam Rohrer:
My not only my fear, I know this for a fact, if a church under law makes application for government money under the CARES Act, takes the money, the money’s given, all that process, they sign the agreement, they effectively make a contract with government, the church has to admit to government that they are a business, that they are on therefore, as a business, they are willing to play ball on Caesar’s field. That makes sense?
Sam Rohrer:
Businesses, nonprofits, profits, corporations, partnerships sole proprietorships, any of those designations put together are by definition of the law creations of the state. The state government has a right to create business designations, that’s what they are. 501(c)(3) is one of them.
Sam Rohrer:
So 501(c)(3)s are a creation of the state. So when a church says, “I am a 501(c)(3),” the church really has said to government, “I am willing to fall under your umbrella for whatever benefits may be and therefore I am willing to play ball on your field.” But what government gives government can regulate.
Sam Rohrer:
This money, any government nexus authorizes the government for them any ways to think they have a legal right to regulate. And as perhaps on this basis that I’m saying taking of CARE money is so dangerous because not only these first points I put up, there’s nothing free, where there’s money, there’s always strings, this is how the strings occur.
Sam Rohrer:
The strings occur into the regulations and they occur because if this has happened, the church is actually signing that we admit that in agree with the fact that we are a creation of the state, and as far as we are a 501(c)(3), which is the creation of the state, we are asking for your money and therefore we are putting ourselves in harm’s way with your regulations.
Sam Rohrer:
That is really the bottom line. That’s why my recommendation is don’t go near it, don’t get wrapped up in it because to do so is to form a nexus that actually is a legitimate law nexus that wouldn’t exist otherwise had the church not stepped into the jurisdiction of civil government. I’m going to stop right there.
Sam Rohrer:
Isaac. Do we have any questions that you may want to pose that people have oppressed foot forward at this point?
Isaac Crockett:
Yes. Yeah, there are some questions here. Actually, while I go to those questions, a little bit of an aside, and Josh, maybe you can help us with this. Some of the folks are wondering if you can put up there in the chat box or actually the question and answer box, would we be able to put the Zoom link that was sent out for tomorrow’s meeting?
Isaac Crockett:
A lot of people are interested in joining that as well as maybe in just a moment, Sam, you might be able to explain some of that. And Josh, I don’t know how much of this is possible, if you might be able to throw up the graphic on the screen, not throw up, but put the graphic on the screen there for tomorrow’s webcast as well.
Isaac Crockett:
The time and a little information there about Matt Staver with Liberty Counsel. Some of you have seen him on Fox News today and yesterday with all that’s going on over in Kansas city, Missouri and in his role with that.
Isaac Crockett:
Sam, when you talk about this free money from the government, which is always interesting; in your experience working in the government, is this pretty normal that they pass something like the CARES Act and then they start to clarify it going down the road, more clarification comes out? Because it seems weird they would pass this but they didn’t really explain it fully.
Sam Rohrer:
Isaac, that is exactly where it always happens. And that’s why when those who are in office, when I was in office, I told people, I said, “That wasn’t a part of the law.” We blame it on the bureaucrats. The bureaucracy are the ones who write the regulations. Every law will have a piece in it like I showed on the screen, somebody has always designated as the entity to enforce, oh, not to enforce but to carry out the law. That’ll be some form of guts.
Sam Rohrer:
That may be the department of education, that may be the agriculture department. This case it was the Small Business Administration. But some bureaucracy will always write regulations. They’re the ones that most often produce the problems because very, very seldom in a law does a law ever state, “And we will come after you and prosecute you, pastor if you take this money.”
Sam Rohrer:
They don’t say that because if they put it that blatantly in the law, the law wouldn’t be passed. So they write it ambiguously as often happens, and then clarification comes from the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is most often where the trouble occurs, that’s then when the lawyers have to get involved and it has to go down the road and go before the court, and then the court decide, but that could take years and thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars of defense money.
Sam Rohrer:
Long answer to your question, but yes, that’s normal, that’s how troubles happen.
Isaac Crockett:
Okay. a couple more technical questions coming in here. Some are wondering if this session right now is being recorded, if it will be possibly made available at another date, and I can’t remember what had been decided on that, Sam.
Sam Rohrer:
I believe that we were going to do so. I’m going to say that it was, I think Josh is working behind the scenes was going to do that. It was our intent, let’s assume that it was okay.
Isaac Crockett:
All right. Let me just make another announcement and again, a reminder that if you want to ask questions right here on this format, I’m getting some texts and different things too, you could go down to the Q&A. We’re going to just have a few minutes here left. We’re wrapping it up, but to the Q&A icon at the bottom of the screen. And so some of you are doing it that way. That’s great.
Isaac Crockett:
And then we will be sending out an email to follow up with this, and I’m wondering Sam, if in that email there might be the link for tomorrow morning’s meeting that you referenced. Again, some folks are wanting that information as well. Oh, I think Josh is about to share some information on that.
Sam Rohrer:
Yeah, maybe Josh will [crosstalk 00:31:54]-
Isaac Crockett:
There we go.
Sam Rohrer:
… on the screen here. There we go. Okay. Thank you, Josh. Tomorrow morning from 10:00 AM to 11:00, we’re going to hold a pretty close to an hour. Were entitling this one, Regathering the Church and the intent here is to provide guidelines. We’re going to provide some theological guidelines. Matt Staver who leads Liberty Counsel, which many of you would recognize Matt’s name probably. He’ll be with us.
Sam Rohrer:
He’s going to give us some guidelines for about 15 minutes. We’ll take about 10 minutes of Q&A, similar like we’re doing today. I’m going to have a spokesperson. Kyle, and I don’t have his last name in front of me, I apologize, from Brotherhood Mutual Church Insurers and some of you listening may be insured by them.
Sam Rohrer:
He’ll be with us to give us some guidelines again from an insurer perspective of when you choose to regather as a church from an insurance perspective, what do you need to keep in mind? Matt’s going to tell us the constitutional issue, why we need to be getting back to church. I will and some others will share some things that are happening here in Pennsylvania.
Sam Rohrer:
I know there was a group of about 20 churches in the Southwest part of Pennsylvania that are going to be regathering on May the 17th. And they have worked through a list of a number of things that they’re doing, and we’ll have a one of their spokespeople, Dr. Gary Dull who was one of my cohost on Stand in the Gap Today program and the executive director of the Pennsylvania Pastors Network.
Sam Rohrer:
He will share as a spokesperson for that group what they are doing. I think that will be very, very helpful. And our goal tomorrow is just to provide a forum where you can hear from other pastors and hear pretty much this guideline of what ought to be. And again, I’ll be sharing a little bit from my perspective as how I think pastors in the pulpit ought to be relating and interrelating with the authority of civil government. That’s a big issue.
Sam Rohrer:
We’ll talk about that tomorrow and I’m going to tell you as a pastor, I think you ought to be thinking much more boldly perhaps than maybe what you are, but we’ll lay out some of those guidelines out tomorrow. Isaac.
Isaac Crockett:
Okay. If you go to papastors.net, you can find the information and the link there. papastors.net. If you’re on the Pennsylvania pastors email list, you’ll get an email of it. So if you’re not on that, maybe you’re not even in Pennsylvania, but you’d like to see this, you could always go to papastors.net and get that information.
Isaac Crockett:
A real quick question here, Sam. Very important one, I think. What about churches who have applied for this and they want to give it back? Maybe some churches, the money came in real quickly. They may have just inquiring about it, came through. And what about in this particular case, one person is asking about a church that actually was approved and they applied… I’m sorry. They’re in the middle of the process.
Isaac Crockett:
They’re trying to get approved right now and they’re thinking about maybe they could stop it or cancel it. How do they go about stopping before it goes any further? And if it does go all the way to church even getting the money, you said about giving the money back. How does one go about those things?
Sam Rohrer:
Every church when they make application, and if you’re already in that process, you’ve had to go to a bank, the lender. And you had to go through a process for that, fill out paperwork which you’ve already done. That process can be stopped just by telling your bank you’re not going to do anything. You know what? You don’t want to go on to pursue the process.
Sam Rohrer:
If the money is approved for you, suppose you’ve made the application, you’re notified by the bank that yes, in fact the money has been approved. You do have to go back and do some additional signings. At that point, you just don’t do it if that is your decision. Now, my point here is not to be telling you as pastor in church, this is what you gotta do. Understand that.
Sam Rohrer:
I’m giving you some advice on the principles that are involved and I’m saying, if you go down the road, which you can because there are people being told to do this, then all I’m saying is, do understand before the law you are walking onto Caesar’s field, and with the guidelines that came back, the threshold to prove necessary, which is the technical word that is necessary is a pretty high standard.
Sam Rohrer:
And if you fail to prove that, then you do open yourself up for audits and those criminal penalties, that is a fact under the law. Again, I’m putting that out there for that reason for you, but you can seize that. I would say that I do know of a church that actually received hundreds of thousands of dollars approved, put it into their bank account. All of this came out and they reconsidered and said, “We do have savings on hand. We really can’t honestly say that we can do this from an integrity perspective.”
Sam Rohrer:
But now this whole thing raises the issue of the risk, they’re giving it back. So there is that procedure in place for that to be done. That makes sense? Hopefully that makes sense to you.
Sam Rohrer:
Isaac, Can’t hear you.
Isaac Crockett:
There we go. Sam, thank you. That’s great information there. Very practical, helpful. You’ve given us the broad field of it as well as zoomed in on some certain regulations. It’s 3:35 right now and we want to keep this brief. I just want to say in closing here is we want to thank all of you for being a part of this and we would also like to just hear any feedback from you.
Isaac Crockett:
We’re going to be trying to send out an email to everyone. You’re welcome to get feedback to us through that. We welcome you to go to americanpastorsnetwork.net or even email us at info@americanpastors.net. Yeah, americanpastors.net, info@americanpastors.net. But we’d love to hear feedback from you whether this was helpful, this format, the timing of it.
Isaac Crockett:
And there are many other topics coming up that we’d be willing to do something like this if that is something that would help you. Sam, do you have any final words before we close in prayer?
Sam Rohrer:
Just one final word, Isaac. Pastors who are listening to me right now, I guess I would counsel if that would make sense, from all that we are involved in here to Pastors Network and involved with those in law and all of that kind of thing as we work through this, I would really say that view, this interaction with the CARE act.
Sam Rohrer:
It’s not a unique circumstance. It may be, well, a first circumstance of its type, but it’s not going to be the last. And I think as you look around and you see everything that’s unfolding with this COVID policy, even the regathering of church is going to bring us into contact with civil authority in a way we’ve never dealt with as a church.
Sam Rohrer:
If you’re looking at what’s being said about this effort to try and test everybody in the country to see whether or not they’re infected, well, just think about that, mandatory testing. What’s the Bible say about that? What are we going to do about that constitutionally in a matter of freedom?
Sam Rohrer:
Or what Bill Gates is saying and some of these others are saying, it’s going to have to have a vaccination or maybe a tattooed implant in your arm that’s invisible, but it’s your immunity paper proof that you are not a hazard to society. It’ll be the limitation of whether or not you travel or not.
Sam Rohrer:
And of course if you think with me, sounds an awful lot like end days type things, you’re right. So I’m suggesting these times that we’re walking through just like this are very teachable moments. Don’t view it as unique, but a first of a series, and I think it’s in this space that we have been talking internally with our other pastors and our staff here at the American Pastors Network may be well equipped to help provide instruction and help on these thorny issues that crossover into government, the constitution, and the church, and our families in a way that perhaps our entire generation have not had to look at before.
Sam Rohrer:
So if that’s of an interest to you, give us a note, let us know that yeah, you want to be notified of things coming up in the future because we’re perceiving that that is a great need. As I talk with pastors, I’m perceiving it as well. Isaac, I’ll just let it go at that, but I think these are days of, we need incredible wisdom.
Isaac Crockett:
Again, Sam, thank you so much for this helpful webinar, webcast. And for those who maybe you have more questions or a specific questions you want follow up, feel free to go to our website. And also feel free to contact us, info@americanpastors.net. And thank you so much for your time. Thanks for joining this. Let’s close in prayer.
Isaac Crockett:
Our gracious heavenly Father, we thank you for the wisdom that we have through the word of God that it applies to all that we do. And in these situations where we don’t always have specific detailed information about these modern situations, we can still take the context of what we’ve had and we can walk carefully circumspectly, not foolishly, but as wise to redeem the days in which you have given us, to redeem this time, to redeem each day as an opportunity to seek first your kingdom and to preach the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, which brings hope into every situation.
Isaac Crockett:
I thank you for all of these men listening and for the congregations that they pastor and shepherd. Just pray now that your Spirit would work in a special way to guide us with your peace as well as your knowledge during these difficult times and these different opportunities that come our way, that we would make good decisions for your kingdom and for glory. It’s in the precious name of Jesus Christ we pray. We thank you Father. We love you. Amen.
Isaac Crockett: Well, Sam, thanks so much for this helpful information and for all of you listening and watching today. Thank you very much for being with us.
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