Michael Gavlak & Joel Fieri

Michael:
Good morning and welcome to other The Chat Session, everyone. This is my every other week session on Thursday with a Mr. Joel. Fiery. Hello, Joel, how are you doing?

Joel Fieri:
Michael, how you doing? You didn’t have to get all dolled up for me.

Michael:
Oh man. No. I did take a shower. I did run.

Joel Fieri:
You did? Okay.

Michael:
I went on a run this morning. I didn’t shave. In fact my, I was going to shave. My wife goes, “Why are you shaving? They don’t care if you have whiskers on, when you go on camera,” I’m like, “You’re right. They don’t care.” Except I forgot it’s you. I should get all dulled up for you.

Joel Fieri:
You should.

Michael:
Should I wear a bow tie? Are you a bow tie kind of guy?

Joel Fieri:
A bow tie? No, no. I haven’t worn a bow tie since one of the weddings I was in, back in the ruffle shirt days or whatever.

Michael:
Oh. Was it required? Everybody was wearing a bow tie?

Joel Fieri:
Well, yeah. I mean, if you’re in a, if you’re a groomsman back then you had to have a tie.

Michael:
Yeah, you have to look the same.

Joel Fieri:
Yeah. The cummerbund and the bow tie and the-

Michael:
In your penguin suit.

Joel Fieri:
Penguin suit. No, there was a couple of weddings when I was real young, back in the ’70s that had the ruffled shirts. You’re too young. You don’t remember that, but.

Michael:
I watch old movies. I’ve seen that before.

Joel Fieri:
Well, yeah. Well that was me with long hair. You imagine me with long hair in a maroon ruffled tux with a pink ruffled shirt. That was my brother. That was my brother’s wedding.

Michael:
Joel Fiery, long hair, huh?

Joel Fieri:
I could show you. Oh, I got to show you a picture.

Michael:
All right.

Joel Fieri:
Next time.

Michael:
Bring it next time.

Joel Fieri:
Next time I’m going to have Jefferson, I got a picture to blow your mind.

Michael:
All right. I have one too. We’ll do a compare and contrast.

Joel Fieri:
Oh, okay. Okay.

Michael:
Well, okay. I got to remember that. Oh boy. What color hair? What color was your, is your, was your hair?

Joel Fieri:
Well, I guess it was kind of brownish. I don’t know. I was, I think it was blonde as a kid and then, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen my hair, Mike, I don’t really remember.

Michael:
Sorry.

Joel Fieri:
You’re having a bad hair day. I’m having a bad hair life. Okay? That’s just.

Michael:
Well.

Joel Fieri:
Kind of how it goes.

Michael:
Oh man, I’m going to put my hat on. No, I’ll leave it off. I was like, “Oh, I’ll just leave my hat off today.” First thing, I get ribbed for my hair.

Joel Fieri:
Hey, I owe you for start… I think last time you started me with a clip from the View and I-

Michael:
Oh yeah, geez.

Joel Fieri:
I haven’t forgiven for that.

Michael:
Sorry.

Joel Fieri:
It’s always something. It’s either an empty chair that I get to see or I get to see-

Michael:
All right. Oh yeah.

Joel Fieri:
Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg, cackling hens. Jefferson called. Jefferson went running out of the studio when you showed that. Back to his safe space with his puppy videos, whatever.

Michael:
Well, we skipped it this morning. Actually our normal producer has taken a week off. He’s the one that usually preps those. We’re just, we’re going cold. It’s you and I trying to keep everybody interested and we got Tom or we got Bergie, Sweet Home Bergie laughing at us already. You know what? Let me go into the comment section and see what’s going on over there.

Joel Fieri:
Leave your hair alone Michael.

Michael:
Yeah. Tom is laughing. Jacqueline Edwards. Oh, this is a Carrie Jacqueline Edwards says, “Good morning. Shaving his optional these days.” You know, my wife does not want me to have a beard. “Leave your hair alone, Michael.” Okay. All right. I’ll just leave it awful. But I have this desire, because I’m a man. Right? I don’t know if I’m a man’s man. I’m a Hollywood artist. Maybe I’m not a man’s man, but I have this desire someday, hopefully to just go like this. Right? To have a beard where I can just, I can,

Joel Fieri:
It does.

Michael:
Wrap my hands around it.

Joel Fieri:
It adds a look of sophistication of wisdom.

Michael:
Put that back up. Put that back up. We have somebody saying hello from Missouri. I want to see that.

Joel Fieri:
Yeah. I saw that. 223DMR.

Michael:
223DMR, “One shot one. One kill.” This is some patriot in there, “Hello? Welcome 223DMR. Yeah. Welcome 22… Ask us a question. Anything you want to know, 223DMR and we’ll answer it.

Joel Fieri:
Ask a question and I’ll stroke my beard.

Michael:
Yeah. Yeah. You have some.

Joel Fieri:
That’s right. It’s something us bearded guys have, but you guys, you smoothies don’t.

Michael:
Yeah. Look at Don. “I’m blessed with hair,” but here’s the thing. I-

Joel Fieri:
I’ll make your hair look good, Mike. All you do, is on his head and all of the sudden Mike’s got great hair.

Michael:
All right, hopefully people won’t tune away, because we keep talking about this, but again, I make one more comment before we shift gears here.

Joel Fieri:
Okay.

Michael:
My wife, this is about as far as she’ll let it go. Right? She’ll be like, “Okay. Time to shave.”

Joel Fieri:
Yeah.

Michael:
I’ll sometimes disobey and let it get longer, a little bit longer and thicker and she’ll like-

Joel Fieri:
It’s not a good idea. Not a good idea.

Michael:
“You need to shave that.” Sometimes I’ll dig my heels in and it’ll turn into a beard and I’ll get so much grief that I’ll just cave and just, “All right. All right, shave it.” But I just want to get to a point someday where I can have a nice thick one. She can’t stand having a beard. It gets itchy at times, but I’m not… Yes. It gets uncomfortable sometimes, but I’m saying-

Joel Fieri:
Well, while you’re growing it, yes. While you’re growing it, it’ll drive you crazy. But then you get over it.

Michael:
At a certain point. Right? It’s because the hairs get long and they curl around and they start poking you in the face. It gets itchy. But when they get longer and longer, that stops happening, I guess. Because I’ve never been able to have one that long.

Joel Fieri:
Yeah. I shaved this one time. I went to trim it and someone gave me a trim and it was really sharp. I basically trimmed this part out. I had a reverse Hitler thing going on. I figured out, “Well, I got, now I got to shave it all.”

Michael:
Yeah.

Joel Fieri:
I went downstairs, my wife and my kids absolutely freaked out. They did not know who I was or what, because they’d never seen me without it. They’re just like, “Don’t ever shave that again.” Apparently I don’t…

Michael:
I have an uncle like that, that I’d never seen his face. Then, I don’t know, it was some event that I showed up to and it was like, and it was that same effect. People were like, “No, no, no. Grow it back.”

Joel Fieri:
Hi, Jacqueline. Jacqueline says, “Bald is beautiful and while some rock the look,” so.

Michael:
Yep. Yep.

Joel Fieri:
Hat’s off to you, Jacqueline. My wife agrees with you.

Michael:
Well, I do have a thick head of hair and I mean, my wife’s… What were just going to say?

Joel Fieri:
Might look, you might look in a beard. I think so.

Michael:
All right.

Joel Fieri:
You might have a beard face.

Michael:
Pray for my wife to let me grow it out. I mean, the true miracle would be her saying, “Why don’t you grow a beard?” That would be, be so counter to her character. Okay. Enough of this, nothing.

Joel Fieri:
Okay. Enough of this weird talk.

Michael:
We talk about all kinds of stuff. Joel, I know that one of the things that is dear to your heart is the church being biblical. Right? The church being what God wants it to be. Too many churches these days are, I don’t know, catering to the zeitgeist of the culture or something?

Joel Fieri:
That’s a good way to put it. Yeah.

Michael:
Right.

Joel Fieri:
Yeah.

Michael:
I mean, there are, there are secret friendly churches that, I mean, if a seeker friendly church, I guess there argument is, “We don’t want to get too deep into the nuts and bolts of this Christianity thing, because it might turn people off. We just want to bring more people in. Let’s just talk to them where they’re at.” I don’t know. Is that biblical?

Joel Fieri:
Well, I went to a church for years that was very much an advocate of that and they have a good point in that it’s kind of what Jesus did. I mean, Jesus came and walked among and did spectacular miracles, so he could draw all kinds of people to hear his message. In a lot of ways, he kind of put on a show, I guess if you want to, if you want to look at it that way, I guess that’s a lens you could look at it through.

Michael:
Absolutely.

Joel Fieri:
But, again it’s where do you, where does the show stop and the discipleship start?

Michael:
Mm-hmm.

Joel Fieri:
That’s, I think that’s the thing where a lot of secret friendly type churches have kind of dropped the ball or missed the boat, is that they, you get so caught up in the show, you got so caught up in being attractional, is what they would call it, that you forget. Like I said, you forget to be biblical. You forget to ground people in the faith and really disciple them and hang on to truth, because truth is not attractional in our society.

Joel Fieri:
Where do you draw the line at some point to draw people in, to get them to want to come, but with a show or with a community service, whatever you do to try and bring them in? At what point are you willing to push them? You know, send them running by hearing the truth? Because not everyone that you attract, not everyone that Jesus attracted was end up being one of his followers. He had a very select few of his followers. Where do you draw that line and how do you draw it?

Michael:
Well, case in point…

Joel Fieri:
Yeah.

Michael:
You go ahead.

Joel Fieri:
With church dynamics being what it is, once you draw this big crowd of people, budgets and all, people’s jobs, it all depends on you keeping them there. Well, once you can’t speak the truth to them, you can’t call them sinners. You can’t make them aware that their sinners in the hands of an angry God and they need to repent and turn their life around. That’s not attractional, that’s repellent. Right?

Michael:
Well, how that-

Joel Fieri:
How do you… There’s that tension.

Michael:
They become enslaved to a cultural paradigm, it seems. Right? “Well, we bring the people in and they give money and we hire people and we have to keep this paradigm going.” Where do we…

Joel Fieri:
Numbers, numbers, numbers.

Michael:
Right?

Joel Fieri:
Yeah.

Michael:
What did we do to bring the people in and focused on numbers? Which you can argue, “Well, we’re supposed to reach,” et cetera, et cetera. But case in point of Jesus, here’s one that I just, whenever I come across this, in the New Testament, in the gospels, it’s like, “Whoa, what is he doing here?” He goes, “Eat my flesh and drink my blood.” What does it say right after that? Many left. This was a hard saying and many took off. It’s like, “Whoa, what are you talking about?”

Joel Fieri:
Yeah.

Michael:
“That’s crazy talk, Jesus.” People are like, “What?”

Joel Fieri:
That’s a great point. Yeah.

Michael:
Yeah. Right. He’s not catering, but he-

Joel Fieri:
Well, and the rich young ruler too.

Michael:
Mm-hmm.

Joel Fieri:
What must I do to follow you? All you have, follow me.

Michael:
Give away everything.

Joel Fieri:
Yeah. I just wanted to show, I didn’t really want. You want me to change my life and follow you? No, no, I can’t do that. Yeah.

Michael:
The truth is, okay… Jacqueline Edwards, remember, I don’t know if you know this, but Jacqueline’s in Germany. Right? We have an inter, this is our, one of our international friends here. “The truth is conviction. We need church to offer us truth. Are you changed because of a sermon?” The cultural paradigm that JP Morlin, you know who that is? By any chance?

Joel Fieri:
You’ve thrown out that name before. I’ve vaguely, yeah.

Michael:
He’s a Talbot, he’s a Biola… You know, Biola University has a seminary on its campus called Talbot Theological Seminary.

Joel Fieri:
Talbot, yeah.

Michael:
He’s one of the professors there. He’s one of the 50 most influential philosophers, not just Christian philosophers, but philosophers period alive today. One of the things he has done in his life, and one of the books of his that I read, he talks about how we in America or in Western society, our church structure, the structure of churches has conformed to this celebrity culture. Right? The celebrity culture, where a person goes to a church these days. Right? You go to a church and that person standing up there is the minister. Right? That’s the minister of the gospel. People go in and they identify, whatever that minister is doing is what I’m doing. Right? He’s the person that of my church that does the Christian thing and reaches people.

Michael:
You tend to get into this idol worship of a, my favorite pastor or my favorite evangelist or my, et cetera, my favorite singer or Christian singer. That, and people’s framework is they don’t understand that’s just a guy and that we are the ministers. Right? Each individual is called to be a minister in what JP’s did at one point in his career, is he was a pastor of a church, except he was, they were kind of deconstructing the current paradigm and they had three pastors.

Michael:
What they would do, is they would rotate four months on eight months off. In the eight months that they were not in the pulpit, that time they were dedicated to researching and prepping those four months of sermons. They spent eight months to prep four months of sermons and rotate. Then that way you get, you get real food. Right?

Joel Fieri:
Yeah.

Michael:
You get real meat out of the scriptures from that pastor.

Joel Fieri:
Where was the church? Where was the church? Where was it?

Michael:
I don’t know the name of it. He mentioned it in one of his books. It was like-

Joel Fieri:
L.A. somewhere?

Michael:
I don’t think it, I don’t know if it, I don’t know the name of it. Sorry, I can’t help.

Joel Fieri:
Well, I’ll have to research that. That would be a great, that’d be a great podcast to dig into.

Michael:
He said, “That’s more the early church paradigm.” Right? Your bishops and elders, right, they were just people among them that were chosen. They had, you know the body of Christ, everybody has different giftings and some people that’s their gift to kind of exposit the word of God and pull it out.

Joel Fieri:
Right.

Michael:
Those are the people, the early church had elders. The elders were the people that were leading the church. It wasn’t some pastor, this thing pastor.

Joel Fieri:
Right.

Michael:
Is a, it’s kind of a modern thing.

Joel Fieri:
What’s funny. That goes a lot of things in the early church were set up that way. I recently read a book. It was not a Christian book. It’s called Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet. It talks about the, basically the story of a cathedral being built in England and like the 1200 or something like that. Again, it’s a very secular book. It’s not recommended reading if you’re at all sensitive, but and he doesn’t try and be spiritual, anyways. But one thing he did, you could tell, the guy did a lot of research on how the early… Then this is not even the early church. This would be like the medieval church. But when they built those cathedrals, everything, the way you built a church back then was a theological statement.

Michael:
Right.

Joel Fieri:
The way it was constructed, the shape of it was a cross. Then, and one of the things he said was that the choir, you couldn’t see the choir when the choir was singing. They were, and I’ve seen this. If you go to Europe and you go to these big cathedrals, the choir loft is like to the side, you can’t see them. All you can do is hear and where the priest, he doesn’t get up right in front, he’s up and off to the side. The whole thing is, this is not man you are hearing from. When the choir sings, you can’t see them. They can’t put on a show and you can’t be wanting a show. You can’t… We want to see how that, I don’t know. The preacher is kind of far away, but you hear the word of God. The whole idea they constructed it so it wouldn’t be a show. It wouldn’t be about the people up front. It wouldn’t be a stage driven thing.

Joel Fieri:
It would be just be, that way the word of God and the hymns and songs that they were singing were kind of stood by themselves as ministering to the congregation, which I thought was really interesting. I had never heard that before, but when you… Because, and that explained to me, because I remember seeing these going to Europe and seeing these cathedrals, I’m like, why is it set up like this?

Michael:
Mm-hmm.

Joel Fieri:
He explained it. I thought, “Oh, okay. That’s…” But that’s a theological statement. It’s not about who’s up front. It’s not about the pastor. It’s not about the choir. It’s not about the band. Now we have bands. Right? You tell me that they’re not up there performing and there’s not, and everyone up there is a qualified minister. No. We have high school kids leading us now. What, what? You know. Yeah.

Michael:
Joel, what are you saying here? We shouldn’t… Okay. I don’t want to denigrate, like what’s going on now, young people coming in and there are ways to worship God. There’s multiple ways to worship God.

Joel Fieri:
Well, yeah, but it’s also a theological statement that we’re making.

Michael:
Yeah. Yeah.

Joel Fieri:
It really is. Yeah.

Michael:
Yeah, we’re lazy, is that one of the theological statements?

Joel Fieri:
Well, or we’re. I don’t know. We’re wanting to be cool with the cool kids. We, I don’t know, but I have, yeah, I don’t mean to denigrate anybody, but I do have some serious concerns about the way we worship today.

Michael:
Yeah.

Joel Fieri:
I really do. I think it is very much, we are very conscious of who’s up front and what the show is all about, versus and that’s a theological statement versus in the old days when they were like, “Hey, we don’t want anybody front to be the focus. We want the word of God. We want these songs, that minister to be the focus.” You tell me, I don’t… You know?

Michael:
No. I’m with you. I’m in agreement, but so I maybe lagging here a little bit, but there’s, if you go to the hymnals versus your modern book of songs. Right? You know, your contemporary churches, there’s a lot of new music that people are writing all the time. A lot of it’s repetition, and there’s absolutely, you can be caught up in the spirit and experience the sensory feeling that sensation of God’s grace and presence, especially when you’re with a group of people and hearing voices together. That’s what we’re designed for. Right?

Michael:
The Old Testament as well, talks about you lift up your voices and that’s the presence of God indwells the singing. You can have a sensory experience of God’s presence unlike anywhere else. But if you go to old hymns, you’ve got a lot of the deep theology in the lyrics. Right?

Joel Fieri:
Sure. Yeah.

Michael:
You’ve just got deep, deep theology in the lyrics. Today you’ve got, “Praise Jesus. Right? Praise Jesus.

Joel Fieri:
Right.

Michael:
Over and over and over and over and over saying the same things.

Speaker 4:
Right.

Michael:
I’m not saying there isn’t a place for that, but I be growing in our knowledge and understanding of God rather than just saying, I love Jesus.

Joel Fieri:
Right. One of the things that I talk about a lot is what we call, I mean, what we name things is another theological statement. I suppose, but I would agree with that on praise. See, when I was being disciplined and growing in praise, that was called praise. Praise, and worship.

Michael:
Mm-hmm.

Joel Fieri:
Now it’s just become worship. Our entire definition of worship is now singing.

Michael:
Right.

Joel Fieri:
That’s not a biblical definition of worship.

Michael:
It’s not.

Joel Fieri:
It’s part of it, but we’ve made it the whole. That’s one of my [crosstalk 00:20:18].

Michael:
There’s a worship time. Then, there’s the word, and then there’s this and that it, that’s not biblical.

Joel Fieri:
Yeah. I’m like, no.

Michael:
Yeah.

Joel Fieri:
Your spiritual service of worship is presenting your whole body to Christ in obedience. That’s that something goes a lot deeper than just singing. Yeah. Mention they hymns, sorry. A while back, I think it was for mother’s day or maybe it was Easter, but the church we’re going to now, it has a praise band up there. See, I said a praise band, but every once in a while, they’ll mix in an old hymn.

Joel Fieri:
I remember my wife and my daughter who both sing like angels. I mean, and all of a sudden they broke out, “How Great Thou Art.” I sat there between my wife and my daughter listening to these two angels sing, “How Great Thou Art,” and I broke down and I am not a crier. I do not. I’m not one of these people, I’m tearing up now just thinking about it.

Michael:
I am. I’m a crier.

Joel Fieri:
Okay. Well, I’m tearing up just thinking about it. It was the most beautiful ministering thing I’ve heard. I didn’t see them. I just heard them. Along with the rest of the congregation, but I got the special treat of, these two angelic voices and just last week they sang, It Is Well With My Soul, which is my all time favorite Christian song. If you know the story of that…

Michael:
Oh yes.

Joel Fieri:
You know why.

Michael:
Oh my gosh.

Joel Fieri:
Isn’t that something?

Michael:
Oh my. I’m going to cry right now.

Joel Fieri:
I know, really.

Michael:
Because no, tell us the story that the guy who wrote that.

Joel Fieri:
Yeah, the guy who wrote that song, he lost his, all his children in a… His wife and his children were on a passage back in the 1800s, 1700s, whenever it was, when sailing across the Atlantic or whatever it was, was a real, real hazard. The ship went down and all his children, his wife survived, but all his children went down. He lost all his children. That’s like, he says, “When peace like a river attendeth my soul, or when sorrows like sea bellows roll.” I just, what a word picture.

Michael:
Wow.

Joel Fieri:
You just don’t get that. Sorry, Mike, I didn’t mean…

Michael:
I was going to say stop, but don’t. Don’t stop.

Joel Fieri:
I know, but I, yeah. Then, so he just said, no, God, thou has taught me to say it is, whether good or bad you haven’t promised me good in this life all… God causes a it to rain on the righteous, in the unrighteous. But he just said, “Whatever my lot, you’ve taught me to say, it is well with my soul.” What a statement of faith. What a deep, deep statement of faith from someone who, you can’t argue with that guy, you just lost all your children. Yet you have that much faith in God to say it is well.

Michael:
Midnight Magnolia, let me read this. “We have hymnals at home and sing the hymns together. If we didn’t, our children would never have heard or learned any.” Right?

Joel Fieri:
There you go.

Michael:
Midnight Magnolia, welcome.

Joel Fieri:
Good for you. Good for you. Yes.

Michael:
Yeah. It’s like, you can learn theology by reading or singing hymns. I’m glad I go to a church, the church I’m actually an elder at a Presbyterian church. I mean, I’ve been a part of multiple different denominations in the past.

Joel Fieri:
Oh, wow.

Michael:
This is the first time I’ve been at a Presbyterian church and it incorporates liturgy. It’s actually the first time I really conceptualize what you’re saying, that worship, it’s not the singing. I always, I went to, lots of churches. Let’s, going to have a worship time and then we’re going to have the word. It’s like, no, the whole service is the worship.

Joel Fieri:
Right.

Michael:
Every part of it, the confession.

Joel Fieri:
Right.

Michael:
Then the certain, the repeat after me and there’s certain parts, when you read some of the creeds, et cetera, it’s all, the structure ties us to our history. Right? That’s actually something before we’re done I wanted to get to the history, our history as Christians is like, not only is it a rich history, but it’s an essential, important history. This is what God has been doing for 2000 years.

Michael:
If we just look at today’s church and don’t pay attention what’s been going on, we’re robbing ourselves of what God wants us to understand. When you were talking about that song, It Is Well With My Soul, since I heard the story of the author, every time I hear that song, it makes me cry now. Right?

Joel Fieri:
Right.

Michael:
I loved the song before I knew that story, but now it’s so much deeper.

Joel Fieri:
Yeah.

Michael:
I know this author, I know his spirit. Yeah.

Joel Fieri:
Well, Cindy.

Michael:
What did she say?

Joel Fieri:
No. Cindy was saying that he lost all his assets in the Chicago fire just before that. So, yeah. I didn’t know that part of the story. That makes it even, you know.

Michael:
Right? This is a guy who…

Joel Fieri:
I don’t have that kind of faith. My jacuzzi is broken and I’m all upset about it. Okay? I wonder, “Well, God why me?” You know?

Michael:
Well, I always say careful when you ask God for more faith, you know, what’s going to happen.

Joel Fieri:
No, but back then, it’s just, there was just a different, my wife was reading a poetry book this morning, and I said, “Well, who wrote it?” She told me this story of this woman back in the 1800s, who just, I’m just like there’s a different-

Michael:
Thank you for that, Cindy, just acknowledging Cindy.

Joel Fieri:
Yeah, thank you Cindy. But there’s just a different breed of people there. Faith was so much a different thing, I guess, because of that.

Michael:
Well, I want to share briefly at the end here, a story that when you were talking about that book you read about the reason these structures are designed the way they are, as theological statements, I had an experienced three summers ago when I went here, I went to the foot of Mount Ararat, actually.

Joel Fieri:
Oh, really?. Wow.

Michael:
Mount Ararat’s like right around here and the foot of Mount Ararat that’s in Turkey, modern day Turkey, but one mile from Mount Ararat is the border with Armenia. There’s a monastery right there. You go to this monastery. It is, I think the oldest church building in existence, I think it’s like from 400 A.D., maybe 500 A.D. But on the property of this monastery is this deep hole, this deep pit. I won’t tell the whole story now, but the origin story of Armenia as a Christian nation

Michael:
Armenia has existed, it’s been a nation for thousands, thousands of years, couple thousand years, B.C., but in 301 A.D., they converted to Christianity in mass, because of something that happened in this pit. Guy was thrown into that pit. He came out and committed, performed a miracle for the king. The king said, “Let’s worship your God, Jesus.” Then they built a monastery right there. I went on this research trip over there, because of what I’m working on. I went on this research trip and it, and we were in Armenia for six days. Other people had scheduled our itinerary and it turns out we were going to this monastery and it just happened to be a Sunday. It wasn’t planned. It was like, “Let’s put this, this,” it happened to be a Sunday. We showed up at this monastery as the worship service was happening.

Michael:
I walk into, I bring cameras. I had my cameraman has this high tech red camera and I had my phone camera. I got a two camera shoot of disservice. We’re in this building that’s been standing for hundreds and hundreds over a thousand years. I’m standing in this building in a service that’s been going on every Sunday for over a millennium. I’m like, couldn’t it, wasn’t planned.

Joel Fieri:
Wow.

Michael:
You know, the day we showed up, wasn’t planned to be there on a Sunday. We show up during the service. I walk in there and my eyes are streaming with tears. You can go to my YouTube channel, Tales of Truth. If you go to Tales of Truth and you go into the video section and you go all the way back to the beginning, to the first videos I was posting, you’ll see footage of it.

Michael:
I have footage on the channel of this worship service. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe. I was like, I was connecting to a past of thousands of years. It was liturgical. It was obviously it was an Armenian, but the voices echoing through this amazing structure and knowing the Armenian apostolic denomination is what we refer to it as, it’s an ancient denomination, but all they do, 95% of their services, is just reading scripture. Right?

Michael:
It’s not a pastor of they’re exposing blah, blah, blah. It’s like they’re reading scripture and regarding it as sacred, I couldn’t believe that I was in that place. To me, it was like, “Oh, okay, God did this for me.” Right.

Joel Fieri:
Right.

Michael:
God did this for me and for anybody who was following my project, it was like getting connected to my roots. I couldn’t believe it.

Joel Fieri:
Wow.

Michael:
Go to Tales of Truth. Yeah. I am on a mission here to help people, Christians, and non-Christian alike understand what God is doing in the world. I’m grateful for you, Joel and you’re coming on here every other week. You are edifying to me as a brother. I’m grateful. Thank you.

Joel Fieri:
Thank you. I said, fine to me to be here too, like I said, what you guys are doing, you got such a good dedicated team there, and you’re a visionary, you’re a leader, you’re leading your team. Like I said, you’re, this is part of your spiritual service of worship, is by…

Michael:
Absolutely.

Joel Fieri:
Yeah, is by committing what you do in obedience and getting the word out.

Michael:
To quote a famous theologian, “We’re on a mission from God.”

Joel Fieri:
Yeah. That’s right.

Michael:
What was that, the Blues brothers?

Joel Fieri:
Blues brothers.

Michael:
We’re on a mission from God.

Joel Fieri:
Love you, Joel.

Michael:
You too, Michael.

Joel Fieri:
See you next time.

Michael:
All right. Bye, everybody.

Joel Fieri:
Bye, everybody.