Rick Green: 0:01
Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. This is WallBuilders. We're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. My name is Rick Green. I'm a former Texas Legislature and America's Constitution Coach, usually here with David and Tim Barton, David's America's Premier Historian and our Founder at WallBuilders. Tim Barton, national Speaker and Pastor and President of WallBuilders. Today I've got a special guest for you, Neil Mammen. We're going to be talking about what is happening with well, with trying to find good churches. Right, I mean everybody. I get this all the time. Everybody seems to be not everybody. Okay, there are a lot of good churches in America, in fact. Liberty Pastors, with Paul Blair and all these other groups, Pastors are getting trained, they're getting equipped, they're doing Salt and Light Council or they're doing Family Research Council's Community Impact Teams or, you know, My Faith Votes, Faith Wins. There's all these great organizations out there equipping churches, firing up pastors. So I shouldn't say everybody, but a lot of people don't have a church like that, they don't have a pastor like that. Their pastor's out there, you know, buying into the whole, all the BLM lies and all of the woke stuff, and they're tired of it and or their pastor just refuses to speak to the issues of the day, actual biblical application of whatever's going on in the culture today. And so today we're going to be talking about a wonderful new tool that's going to help you and help your pastor. It's going to help you find a good church and, if you're in a good church, it's going to help your pastor and your church advertise to the community that it is a great place for people to be able to come to. So be sure to check out our website today, www.WallBuilders.com. Make that one-time or monthly contribution there. But thrilled to have you with us today here on WallBuilders. Neil Mammen with us, author of Jesus, was and Is Involved in Politics. Why Aren't you, why Isn't your Church? And a Fantastic New Tool. I get asked almost every day from somebody somewhere in the country, either one of our Constitution coaches, a listener to the program, whatever it might be. Man, I cannot find a non-woke church in my community. Well, neil has got a great tool that we're going to be telling you about today mychurchfinderorg. Neil. God bless you, man. Great to have you on the program, thank you, thank you, thank you for having me. What an honor, man. I am super excited about this tool because, like I said, I get asked all the time and, of course, we used to have a Black Road Regiment website and a map on there with churches that basically said I want to be on there. But what you guys are doing takes it another step further. You're basically like the George Barna of church finding, because you actually get these churches and pastors to fill out questionnaires and you really identify where they are on biblical issues. So this is super cool and very much needed, and I'm just thrilled to have you on because we've shared the stage a couple of times and seen each other at various events, and I remember walking into an event you were speaking at in Idaho, I don't know a year or two ago, and as you're given the presentation, I'm like who is this guy? I need to know this guy. So, man, I've been wanting to connect with you more and get you on the program. It's just cool to have you, brother.

Neil Mammen: 3:16
Thank you. It's great. We've learned about your ministry through lots of different people that keep telling you oh, you know, you need to go to a picture at the academy, you need to connect to a director, and so it was great to actually meet you in person. So God bless you for what you're doing.

Rick Green: 3:33
I still have your clicker and I'm not giving it back for our listeners and Neil loaned me his remote, I could not find mine. He's like, hey, man, just use mine, you can have it. And it's been a more than a year and I still have it. So thank you, it's working out great. And, by the way, for our listeners, a little bit of your background. You're an engineer, got tons of patents, all that kind of stuff. So you're kind of like our founder, David Barton, who came out of. He was very much like you know, science and math and that sort of stuff, not history, and yet you know God moved him into this arena 30 years ago. So it's kind of interesting similar, similar type story. So, yeah, give us your background, kind of what you do normally, yeah, and how you ended up getting so involved in this.

Neil Mammen: 4:15
Yeah, so I was. I was born in Ghana, in Africa, and I grew up in Jamaica, sudan, yemen, ethiopia, and my parents are from India. My Dad is a professor in physics he's not retired and so I grew up and and Interactive that. I grew up in a Marxist family. Wow, I have some very famous Marxists in our family back in India who were in the leadership of the Marxist movement. And even though my family is Christian and they took heritage back to 51 AD, when Saint Thomas came to India and converted a bunch of pagans, so we did our heritage back and our church is called the Marthau-Marchur, so it's a long heritage, but the generally my dad's generation had bought into the whole Marxist philosophy. You know that's when it was in the 1950s and stuff like that. So when? But my dad? By the time I was about five, my Dad had become a Christian and gone back to the fate of his father, if you will. And Yet I did still have cousins who were Communist and, interesting enough, I had an uncle's. I definitely had count. I still have cousins who are common essentially, but I had two uncles who were actually considered both Christians and communists. Hmm, and it's a different kind of. It's an interesting combination now.

Rick Green: 5:35
Yeah, I mean that's hard to reconcile, but but I guess it depends on how biblical you are versus being Christian. I wonder if that was the difference.

Neil Mammen: 5:43
Well, the difference is they took God's call for taking care of the poor To an, extended it to the government must take care of the poor, which is the opposite of what God is telling you. The God you know, the Bible, tells you that you know. Look at the story of the good to man. He doesn't say I'll go out and get some IRS agents and go beat up your neighbors and collect taxes to pay you for the rest of the Money that's a great way to describe it. Yes, Because I'll pay you the rest of the money. You don't even need to pay any of it, right? So that's, that was a mistake on that book. Well, you know so anyway. But I grew up. I came to America. I was kind of socialistic. When I came to America I got my master's degree in fall state physics and electrical computer engineering and then Started working in Falcon Valley, started a few companies. But all through this thing I was through the early days. I was kind of socialistic in my friends. So even though I was a Christian and believer, I haven't grown up in a scientific family. I also tied on my faith. I'd have to be provable, so I would you know. So, in other words, I have a ministry called no blind faith. We teach apologetics, and that's because of my upbringing, of my dad. It was a professor in physics, and so the question was never is science come Opposed to faith. No sign, you use signs to shore up your faith, right Is? You have a rational faith, not a blind faith. So I grew up in that and yet I kept losing all these arguments. Politically, you know, I was against guns. I thought they come to take care of people. And I kept losing all these arguments? I said you know, most people say the other Iran. I said you know, I've applied science to my faith. I need to apply to my politics. I Look at reason and facts and of course, by that point you know, once you start doing that you, you end up being pretty conservative.

Rick Green: 7:35
So what you're saying is, if you actually think and use logic, you know there's really only one.

Neil Mammen: 7:42
Yeah, I mean it sounds good. Yeah, we should feed everybody, the government should take money to feed everybody, but then the sad thing is the government feeds itself 85% of that money that you give it and then maybe 15% gets to the poor person. Guess what. It's in the government's interest to keep more people poor people from coming so they get more money, because 85% Off of you know, a trillion dollars is a lot more than 85% of a billion dollars, though they're going to try shooting for that goal, right? So this yep, this lead, led to the fact that I was, I actually became alarmed what was happening in America and I looked around and I said, wow, most Christians I know are just like me. They're pretty socialistic in their viewpoint. And so I started teaching people and talking to people and arguing and I thought look, in India, the, the, the, the Marksworth Felt that the church needs to be involved in politics. As long they were teaching Marksworth policies, right. So they, they had no problem with bringing politics into the church and, as you know, the left does that all the time. So when I came here, I was like, well, why isn't the right doing it? Why are the consumers are doing this? And it just shocked me and since I came from outside America, it never occurred to me that I should never mix politics and religion. It just never. You know, of course, you mix politics and religion. Everybody does, the Muslims do. I grew up in the Middle East, right, so they all. Everything is politics and religion, yeah, and so why aren't we doing it here? And every time I talked to Christians, they either didn't know why or they would say, well, Jesus was never in golden politics, I, and I thought that's interesting. I never thought about whether he was or not, but who was he involved with? Right?

Rick Green: 9:34
Um literally put you on a journey I mean that that led, led you to write the book.

Neil Mammen: 9:39
Exactly. And so the first thing I thought I remember saying, talking to somebody says well, wait a minute, who was the governing board in Judea? I mean, if Jesus wanted to get involved, some yellow, he didn't get involved in Roman politics, was? He wasn't a Roman citizen, all right, so he wouldn't get involved in Rome. Paulic is from what one day. Well, he was a Jewish citizen, okay, so they had politicians, and we know that the Romans were governing Judea, but that didn't mean they ran everything, just like when we were governing Iraq. We didn't run everything. They're their local politics. Just the top level was pilot, right. So who were the people belong? Well, who talked to fire? Well, there was a group called the Sanhedrin and they were the leaders. They were the Jewish legislators, they made the law for Israel and I go. Well, who are the members of the Sanhedrin and who? What did the Jesus ever talk to these people? And Telling our eyes wait a minute. The members of the Sanhedrin are the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and Jesus talked to them. All boy, did he?

Rick Green: 10:38
yeah, a lot to say to them, and it wasn't always just sweet, was it?

Neil Mammen: 10:42
Well, yes, of course he was, he was very, very, he was very, very very, you know, very nice to them and he always treated them right now.

Rick Green: 10:55
He didn't, he called them very direct with the truth, man.

Neil Mammen: 11:00
You know why? Wash tombs who will save you from hell. In fact, very, very concept. The very first time we hear the gospel in the New Testament is is when Jesus talks to senator Nicodemus, who was a politician and their member of the Sanhedrin. And now we see that Jesus was involved, the Sanhedrin and these politics and his politicians, and all that not. Some people say well, but no, but he didn't talk about politics, he just talked about religious things. And you say no, no, actually, he was way beyond that. Most of the time he says you forgotten justice, mercy and faithfulness. Well, what kind of justice is he talking about? He's not talking about God justice. Why would they be involved in God just since he was talking about their justice? They were not dealing with people justly. And mercy he was not about God's mercy to them, he was talking about their mercy to the poor, or their mercy to the accused, or their mercy in in in their laws. And then the final one was faithfulness. Faithfulness to what? Well, faith, most of God's laws. He said look, you've taken the real intent of the law and you've twisted it. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. You've taken the original intent of God's laws, of God's moral laws, and twisted it into something that you've created and that's wrong. So these are what we call a strict constructionalist, right here, originalist, go to the original intent of the law. And so also you realize, wait, wait. So the law is in this thing, the faithfulness of the law is an important. And Then you go back to the Old Testament. You look at the Old Testament, you realize all the Old Testament laws are Out there. You know they're working up into four groups. So one group is called the moral laws and the moral laws were given by God to protect us. All laws are given good by God, protect with. The moral laws, specifically, were given by God to protect us. They're not there for God to feel safe, they're there for us to be safe.

Rick Green: 12:51
And blessing to us, yeah.

Neil Mammen: 12:53
Yeah. And so now, if we violate God's laws, what will happen here? So if we're, if we create laws that Violate God's moral laws, will our nation prosper? No, well, are. Will there be injustice? Yes, will people be prostituted, persecuted? Yes, you know, and that's basically Taken right out of the 10 commandments, all the laws like that. And then you realize, wait a minute, when people are persecuted, when people are, when there's injustice, is it the rich who suffer, is it the wealthy who suffer? No, it's the poor, it's the unjustly treated that suffer. So if you care about the poor, if you care about the persecuted, you have to care about the law that put them there. Right, and you go through the history of all mankind, in the history of America, you'll see, every time there's been a group of people have been persecuted, genuinely persecuted. I'm not talking about BLM, right, Because we, we we have a response to BLM, a proper response to BLM, but I'm talking about people have been genuinely that the slaves, right, generally persecuted. What was God's laws that freed them to? The Bible said the almond I created equal and it was Christians who freed them, right. So you go through all that. He go, whoa. So so God is interested in politics. Jesus is interested in politics. He does not care about the poor, Jesus does care about the. You know, there's no way you can say he wasn't involved politics. And so that right. And so I immediately I was like, well, I got to call the book Jesus is involved in politics, why aren't you? And then I said, oh wait. And then the more research I did it I realized the real reason we're in trouble is because our churches are not involved in politics. And so that came the next line why aren't you? Why isn't your church? Which is the name of the book? Because if the churches were involved politically we could change America and bring it back to a righteous path.

Rick Green: 14:45
Right man? Hey man, that's it, that's just it. Without that salt and the meat at, the meat is spoiling and if the salt goes, you know, gets back to preserving the meat, it'll bring out the best flavor for everybody. That's the. That's the church doing. It's doing its job. Alright, quick break, new man and our special guests. The website you need to check it out today. My church finderorg, stay with us. You're listening to WallBuilders. Hi Friends, this is Tim Barton of WallBuilders. This is a time when most Americans don't know much about American history or even heroes of the faith, and I know often times for parents we're trying to find good content for our kids to read and if you remember, back to the Bible, to the book of Hebrews, it has the faith Hall of Fame where they outlined the leaders of faith that had gone before them. Well, this is something that, as Americans, we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes, not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity and our faith as well. I want to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our website. One is called the Courageous Leaders Collection, and this collection includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the Wright brothers, and there's a second collection called Heroes of History, and this collection you'll read about people like Benjamin Franklin or Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman, friends the list goes on and on. This is a great Collection for your young person to have and read and it's a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at WallBuilderscom that's www.WallBuilders.com. Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. Neil Manman, our guest. My church finderorg is the website, and and then we were just talking about the, you know, salt and light. The church needs to be salt and light and when you're salt, that it preserves the meat, it it brings out the best flavor in the meat that blesses everybody. Which is really the whole point of my church finder is is people need churches that are, you know, not only being salt and light, but they're equipping the saints in their church to go be salt and light themselves, not only the pastor standing up, but they're courage, the act people in the spring bring brought me to the next time.

Neil Mammen: 16:47
This is a natural thing. It was interesting because it only happened this year. A good friend of our, dran Reese, who runs the salt and light ministry, met up with Roger Ellswick, who is a, who is a. He has seven other dealerships in the Texas, louisiana area. Great guy, yeah, contact a Dran and said hey, I want to do this website. And and ran said well, you need to talk to me else. So Roger called me up and we started on this website and and there was, there's a bunch of things that we noted on the website. One If we're, if people are in a church that is not biblically sound and they're tithing to it, they're enabling the enemy. Oh yeah, so they're woke or something in it. But the second part of it is, if they aren't a church that is biblically sound but it's not involved in In stopping the tide that we're seeing you know the great reset, the George sources, the All the evil, the wokeness and all that then you're still enabling the enemy Indirectly. Yeah, so what we so what Roger said, is we've got to find a way where we identify three major things and so that if you go to my church, find a lot, or you can enter your zip code and you can look for a church in your area that meets these requirements. The first requirement is it has to be biblically sound, but that is the lowest requirement. If you're not biblically sound, you get a. Would not recommend rating. The second requirement is that you're not woke. So you're talking about CRT, you're talking about all these different things that are coming up, you're talking how you know, you're teaching against homosexuality and transgenderism and all these things. So you're preaching the truth of God's word, moral law. So that's true, and if you do that, then you get a, you get a better rating. And then if you do all three things which is, and we think, just as important is that you are politically active. That means your pastor talks about political issues, he teaches sermons on the importance of voting, he talks, he tries to get you out to register the vote, he tries to get people out to be, to go door to door to be activist, then you get the best rating. So the three ratings are, or four rings are one would not recommend you're not biblically sound. C, which is the lowest rating, is your only biblically sound, but you aren't any of the other two. B is you are biblically sound and you're politically active or not woke. Right, and I shouldn't say not woke, but you're culturally aware. We assume you're not woke and because if you're woke then you get a, would not recommend. But we assume that you're a close. You're culturally sound, meaning that you actually teach about what most. But to get the A rating you have to do all three of the biblically sound. You'd be cultured wearing, teach about what most and things like that and number, and you have to be politically active.

Rick Green: 19:43
We've got tons of pastors that listen to the program. Tons of leaders in churches listen to the program, tons of active people in churches across the country. How do they get their church on the website?

Neil Mammen: 19:57
Exactly so. If you're listening to this, go to mychurchfinderorg and you'll. If you're a pastor, there'll be an option to click. It says registered church. If you're not a pastor, but you go to one of these churches, they send my pastor an email option. Click on that and it says enter your pastor's name, enter your pastor's email, and if you don't have your pastor's email, just go to the website and there'll be a contact or something you can punch that in and then what happens is the system will automatically send your pastor an email saying so-and-so is requested that you fill out the information on mychurchfinderorg and then the pastor goes to the website, he clicks on it, he registers and there are 45 questions that we use to identify where your church stands. Now we don't think we'll get too many Bs and Cs right.

Rick Green: 20:45
Because they're not going to fill it out if they know that they're not going to fill it out.

Neil Mammen: 20:48
So it's self-filtering in many ways, right?

Rick Green: 20:51
Right and for the A, you know, in a lot of our, of course, our Biblical Citizenship, modern America class is being taught in thousands of churches across the country. So those churches we really do want them to get added to the website as quick as possible. If a pastor's listening today, or when we send this out to our coaches across the country and they take it to their pastor, what would be just an estimate? If I say to them, you know, because these guys are all busy, so if I say to them hey, man, just 15 minutes, just spend 15 minutes.

Neil Mammen: 21:18
It's about 15 minutes. Is that fair? Is it 30 minutes? I would say it takes a little bit of a do it. No, I think 15 minutes is probably fair. There's 45 questions but you could glance at them and click. I mean it'll take you maybe 10 seconds per question at the most. Yeah, okay, gotcha, you could do the reading and click yeah, reading and click right, and then it just I mean, they're deep questions, but if you're a pastor you know you shouldn't know the question right.

Rick Green: 21:39
For them it should be no brainer Get it get it especially the ones that we want to get on this site.

Neil Mammen: 21:44
Yeah, the ones that we're talking about. They should know. Oh yeah, of course, of course, of course, right.

Rick Green: 21:47
Yeah, and you guys just launched this. I mean, this is brand new. So pastors out there that want to attract active members of their church and people that want to have an impact in the culture what a great tool for them to get on this. And we're going to be I mean not only you guys, but us and others we're going to be promoting this like crazy. So if you're a pastor sitting out there, you got to be saying I better get on this website, or I mean people will find my church.

Neil Mammen: 22:12
Let me give you another good reason to fill it out. I mean, so, once we started this, we're like, well, let's find out how many people actually church for churches every month, and we found out that some there's something like 1.7 million churches for churches every month online. Wow, wow, just in the United States, 1.7. Now think about that, though. That 1.7 doesn't represent 1.7 million people. That's just one in that family. That really represents probably like 5 million. Yeah, yeah, that's just the Dad or the mom usually a mom, probably and most of the churches are done Sunday morning, by the way, like at 9 am. Right, I was like I need to, we need a church. We had a big fight yesterday. We need to go to a church. So let's find a church, right, right?

Rick Green: 22:54
Right.

Neil Mammen: 22:56
They punch it in, or they're moving, or they're going to a new state, or they're visiting right. Whatever you'll find, they want to find a church. So there's 5 million people looking for your church. And here's what the exciting thing is the liberal churches are dying right From. In the last 20 years, liberal churches have lost 50% of their audience. The conservative churches have grown by 75%. Some of the more conservative churches have grown by 175%, and the churches that took a stand during COVID have exploded, like the church I was attending in San Jose Pastor Mike McClure church, calvary Chapel, san Jose. We went literally from 250 people to almost 3,000 people in eight months over COVID during COVID, because we refused to shut down. Wow. So churches are exploding. And here's the other exciting thing If you look at the rate of growth of conservative churches, we are going faster than the population in the United States is growing. Interesting man. So there are good reasons to be on this website, because there are people who are coming to Christ and looking for churches, right, amen.

Rick Green: 23:56
Amen. They're hungry. You know this is definitely a. The harvest is plentiful, the workers are few and people are hungry. They're looking and they can't find you. Pastors, I'm just telling you, they can't find you. They call us all the time, looking for you, and Neil and Roger and Drann have created a tool here that will really, I think, be very effective and show you they're very effective in strengthening our churches and meeting the need for these folks. And, of course, neil, as you're saying, I mean there's a lot of people that either they just got saved or they just know they need to be in a church. Right, they know they're looking. And then there's a ton that are looking to change because they're tired of the woke stuff out of the pulpit yeah, there is a woke church.

Neil Mammen: 24:34
The pastors just came out and, you know, supported Hamas. They're like I'm out of here. Oh, my goodness, it's crazy man.

Rick Green: 24:41
I'm telling you, it is that crazy. It is absolutely met. I hate to end this because this is so good, neil, we got to get you back. We'd love to do more with you. I really encourage people to get your book, to go to MyChurchFinderorg and get your church registered. Last thing before we where do they? What's the best place? Where do you like to send people for the book? I know you can get it to Amazon and book stores.

Neil Mammen: 25:01
Yes, so it's Amazon, but the easiest places go to MyChurchFinderorg and look at resources and under resources you'll see a link for the book and a link to the video that talks about the background and everything. And my recommendation is, if you can get the word out there, then start a small group with the book and stuff like that, because people need to be educated. There's a lot of things that people don't understand about America, which is amazing, and I found out as an immigrant, because I had to study to become a US citizen and it just opened up a world that most of my American friends had no idea existed. I was like did you know this about the Constitution? They're like, no Like. Let me give you one quick one the Constitution. People talk about constitutional rights all the time, but the Constitution doesn't give you any rights. There are no constitutional rights. You've never had constitutional rights. Listen to the list of negative rights and tell the government what it cannot do to violate your rights. So where do your rights come from? You only have God given rights, and the book explains why. Only God can give you rights.

Rick Green: 26:04
Amen, so good. I also see, as you were saying, that I was clicking through to the books. You see you got my friend Frank Turek's book on there as well, which is Lady Morale. So two great ones there, neil man. God bless you, man. Y'all keep up the great work and let's get you back again soon, right, looking forward to it. Mychurchfinderorg folks, mychurchfinderorg, don't just go to the website, send it out to your friends and family. I'm telling you, you've got people in your life that are looking for this and will end up being a great tool and be a great tool for your church. I'm going to send it to your pastor. Thanks for listening today, folks. You've been listening to WallBuilders.