You Screwed Up. Now What? | Aggressive Life with Brian Tome

Do you want to watch it? - I have not watched it. It might be painful for me, but yeah, let's watch it and then talk about it. - It might be painful, but it'll be good to see it and then we can react to it. - If it's painful, that's not good to see it. But it's all healing, I guess. - It'll be helpful to see it 'cause I can probably tell you a lot what's going on in my mind when I said this and that and all that stuff. - Okay. - Well, here we go. - Let's just watch it. (applause) - Thank you, but please don't, thank you, but thank you, please don't, not thank you, but just not appropriate for what I'm gonna say right now. So let me first say, I am sorry for the complication that I brought to you all in this church. And to be clear, it was me, it was me. This has created tension and confusion and all of that, all of that is on me. My humor has been out of bounds at times as has my intensity with some staff members at times. With my humor, as you all know, I like to walk right up the edge, and when you're right at the edge, you fall off sometimes. And I've fallen off the edge. The inappropriate use of a riding crop

is just the most obvious example. And I wanna, again, I wanna express my sincerest apologies and regrets to the community member who I offended. Apart from that incident, there's jokes that I've told that have been inappropriate or at least inappropriate in the setting in which they were told. This is, I believe, what the Bible referred to as, it's course-gesting. Apart from those things, I've had outbursts that are unbecoming of a godly leader, or unbecoming especially, this hurts me, of a spiritual father to some of his spiritual children. And I really regret that, and that hurts. That hurts me as I've hurt some others. So I am asking that you forgive me. I'm asking that you would extend grace to me, and I'm sorry, I'm really sorry. I also ask that you extend the board an unbelievable amount of grace and compassion and understanding. This has been a horrible, horrible six weeks for them, and again, they didn't do anything to bring that upon themselves. It was me. It was me entirely. It's not of their doing. It's entirely of my doing. They've been thrust into a bad situation and have done their best to be honorable

and do what's best for the church, instead of maybe what's best for me or my feelings. One of the things that I've learned about revivals and awakenings, which as you know, that is the thing that I'm most excited about, is that people will say, well, confession of sin is what precedes revivals and awakenings. That's actually not true. Confession of sin and repentance is not what precedes an awakening and revival. Confession of sin and repentance is what happens inside of an awakening and revival. And the reason is because when you come to encounter God, you come to encounter Jesus in a fresh and exhilarating way, it's two things simultaneously happens. One, you are struck by how you fall short and you are struck by your own sinfulness. And two, you are struck by how good he is. You are struck by how loving his and his overwhelming grace and repenting and asking forgiveness is normal and you feel safe doing it because you're so close to his presence. This has been the most painful six weeks of my life. And it's been one of the most beautiful six weeks of my life because I've encountered God in ways I haven't before. First time I preach at some point here, I'll probably tell you about at least one of those, but I have experienced him very, very dearly

and I will never regret that. So I'll be doing some adequate repentance and restoration here over the months ahead and doing some other things. I'm going to come back, I'm going to come back, not as the old BT, though God's made me who he is, but I'm gonna come back different because God's doing a different thing in me. Richard Rohr, the old Catholic priest, says of suffering. He says, once you've suffered, the old paths don't work anymore. Anybody here who's suffered, you know what I'm talking about. Things just are a bit different for us. Romans five, three to five, we've all looked at character and character produces hope. The next verse is this, "And hope does not lead us to shame because God has poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has given us." That's what the beautiful relationship with Jesus is. No shame, love poured out in us and the Holy Spirit is pushing us forward. So that's all I have for you today. I'm sorry again for all of the chaos. I'm sorry. I'm thankful for your steadfastness and your faithfulness and your friendliness. And I love you all very much. Yeah. How was that watching that? I haven't watched that at "Uncomfortable Good." I watched this. Okay. Glad I said that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was fine. We talk about repentance a lot. It's a really churchy word that a lot of people might not have a real understanding of. So like, what is that? You're like, I'm going on this repentance restoration journey. Like, what does that mean for you in like regular people terms? Repentance means a change of mind. It means a turn. You're going one direction and you turn and go the other direction, saying sorry is part of it, but it has to be accomplished with, you know, you're intending to do some things different in your life. I've never been afraid of repentance. Some people say repentance is hard. The people who say repentance is hard don't repent. It's like, you think weightlifting is hard just because you never lift weights. Right. You know, repentance is actually, for me, it's very natural because I follow a God who offers a lot of grace for forgiveness and I've had to repent a lot, you know. It's one of the, there's about, I haven't cataloged them all. Maybe we'll get into some of them, but there's, there's a good number of profound moments when I heard from God over the last six months and this was one of the earliest ones, is when God said to me, you're, you were, you're in a public group patent and do what others are not willing to do. In my position, there's people who have been in my position and have had something of a scandalous nature happen. Mine was, mine was bad or penitent for it. And it's also not of a biblically disqualifying nature.

There's things in the Bible that are biblically disqualifying for someone to be a leader, at least for a long season in ministry, like, if you get divorced, have an adult's affair, like, okay, I'm not saying you can never have a job and paid ministry again, but that's, that's a game-ender for a season of, of you just getting your, your head right. And people I know who have had either biblically disqualifying sin take place or just embarrassing sin happen take place, I'm always going to just repent, just repent like one of my heroes in the faith who was very impactful to me, I'm, I'm not going to mention his name just because I'm extra sensitive to whatever pain he's gone through because now I know what that's like. I'll just second guess what to place them without sharing his name again, but I just remember screaming one day at the computer screen as I was reading the latest article about this, just thinking, just repent, just you've led us in so many things, you've led me in so many things. How to use the arts in church, how to, how to be a leader, how to do, I mean, so many things, just lead in repentance. And as I was reflecting on that, I heard God say to me, yeah, you're the guy, you're the guy, me. Oh my God, that's, that's, can I be the guy who does like men's ministry, can I be that guy? Can I, can I be the guy that does like camping? Can I, can I be the guy that, that, that, that could just kind of grows a church and stays with it for beyond three decades into, can I be like, all kinds of things I'd like to be the guy for like this one, this, this might get to be the guy for, I don't know if I'll get to be the guy for other things or not, but like, but he said, yeah, yeah, this, this is your job. You're, you're, you're going to do it what, what other brothers of yours have not been