Ali Stuckey (0:01)

A ministry leader named Josh Bice of G3 Ministries has been caught in a very embarrassing, very online scandal. We will get into this today, but there is very good news in the comedy world. It seems like more and more comedians are asking really good questions about God and about the gospel. We will get into all of that today. But before we do, let me remind you about Share the Arrows October 11, 2025 today, Dallas, Texas. If you're watching this, you see our stacked lineup of speakers. It's going to be amazing. Y' all don't have FOMO. Go to sharethe arrows.com get your tickets today. Share the arrows.com this episode is brought to you by our friends at Good ranchers. Go to good ranchers.com use code Ali at checkout. That's good ranchers.com code Ally. Hey, guys. Welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far. Okay, how good was yesterday's guest? I could have talked to him for hours. I had so many questions, so many personal questions that I, like, I wanted to ask him medically. Like, what do you think about this? What is going on here? I didn't, I, I didn't go there, but, gosh, I could have listened to him talk for hours. So go, go back, listen to or watch yesterday's episode if you haven't already. Okay. We're going to get into the G3 scandal today. And I really, part of me really doesn't want to because it is a very sad story. It's a very embarrassing story for everyone involved. I really like this ministry. G3 stands for gospel, grace, glory, three great things. And I think the ministry has, has been really positive over the years, especially in the fight against the progressive drift. It really stood strong during the crazy events of 2020 when it seemed like a lot of evangelicals were losing their minds. I spoke at G3 conference, I think, in 2020 at, like, a women's breakout. I think it was 2020. Yep, it was. I, I remember. And so I, I, I've known Josh Bice or, you know, just at least on the Internet, and I think I've met him once. I probably met him at G3 a few years ago. I'm pretty sure he was on the podcast in 2019. Other than that, like, I don't have any affiliations or associations with G3 at all. I've just been grateful for the resources they've provided for the teaching that they've platformed. People like Vodi Baucom have been platformed like G3. Steve Lawson, who used to be considered, you know, a solid expositor. And so, yeah, I never saw any issues or expected any sort of scandal to come out of G3, but unfortunately, that's exactly what has happened. Now, it's not the typical scandal where the leader of a church has fallen into some kind of sexual sin. This is a very online scandal. And let me explain exactly what I mean. So Josh Bice, who is the founder and president of G3 Ministries, he's also a pastor at Praise Mill Baptist Church in Georgia. He, he recently resigned after confessing to operating multiple anonymous online accounts used to slander fellow Christian leaders and church elders. I'm talking about solid people, conservative Christians, conservative theologically that we all agree with and I thought that we all supported. His resignation prompted the cancellation of the G3 conference this year. So G3, in case you don't know, it's a Christian organization founded to, quote, equip churches with citizens, sound biblical theology and Reformed doctrine. Their goal is to strengthen the local church by providing resources, conferences and media that promote expository preaching, church centered discipleship, doctrinal fidelity. Sounds great, right? In addition to their annual conference, they publish blogs, a podcast and books. They have platformed people like John McArthur and Paul Washer, as I said, Vodi Baucum. And Josh Bice has, as the leader of G3, he has, he's led his organization, his church to leave the SBC, the Southern Baptist Convention. They did that in 2022, citing a, quote, cultural shift to the left. So again, this is an organization that I would say I probably align with on almost everything. So what went down? What is going on here? G3 released a statement on May 12 claiming that Bice confessed to operating anonymous accounts used to smack talk Christian leaders. This is the statement, quote. In recent weeks, the elders of PNBC uncovered irrefutable evidence that Dr. Bice has for the past three years operated at least four anonymous social media accounts, two anonymous email addresses, and two substack platforms. How does one person have the capacity to do that even if you're not anonymous? I would think it would be really difficult to maintain all of these anonymous identities that you want people to think are separate or their own. Like original, unique people. I just can't even imagine how much energy that would take. These accounts, the statement reads, were used to publicly and anonymously slander numerous Christian leaders, including faithful pastors, some of whom have spoken at the G3 conference. He was like going after his co workers with some of these anonymous accounts. Several PNBC That's Praise Mill Baptist Church elders. So his own elders at the church that he was the pastor of, these actions were not only sinful in nature, but deeply divisive, causing unnecessary suspicion and strife within the body of Christ and particularly within the eldership of PNBC. Neither G3 nor PNBC has released any information about the accounts and blogs. Nor. Okay, I was just reading it like that was part of the statement. That's not part of the statement. But I'm noting to you that neither G3 nor PNBC has released any information about the accounts and blogs, what the accounts and blogs actually were, nor have they presented the evidence that caused them to be suspicious and confront bias in the first place. So G3 somehow found this out. I do have some internal knowledge about how all of this went down and what actually led to the confrontation. But because that information hasn't been made public yet, and I have not been tasked by some of these people to make it public, I'm just going to keep that to myself. If they end up making that public, then we can discuss it more. But they haven't talked about why they decided to have this meeting with Josh Bice, but when the leadership at G3 did, when they called them into a room and said, hey, we think that you've been operating these various Twitter accounts that you've also been interacting with from your Josh Bice account on X to slander some of your elders and to slander some solid Christian brothers, some other Christian teachers, and the substack accounts, Josh Bice reportedly completely denied it. So he had been asked on multiple occasions over the past two years, this is not all just happening right now, whether he had any connection to these anonymous accounts. In each case, he denied any knowledge of them. So for some reason, the people in Josh's life thought, that kind of sounds like Josh. Now, it'd be weird if it was Josh, but it kind of sounds like him. And so people confronted him over the past two years and he lied. And he said, no, this. This is not me. But on Sunday evening, May 4, 2025, after clear and comprehensive evidence emerged linking the accounts directly to him, and we don't know publicly what exactly that is, the elders of PNBC confronted Josh. For some time, he continued to deny his involvement. Only after further evidence was presented in much plead with him to walk in the light, did Josh finally confess to his actions. Oh, my goodness. That is really, really sad. So he thought he was going to be able to operate these accounts, lie about them, cover them up, lie to people's faces about them. And I just am. I am proud of. I'm impressed by the persistence of G3 leadership to get him to bring these things to light. Because it would have been a lot easier for them, especially PR wise, to pretend that this didn't happen, to brush it under the rug, to keep it private, and to just say, dude, we know it's you, but okay, if you're saying it's not you, I guess, like, we just gotta trust you. And they could have moved on. Maybe they could have privately pushed him to resign. He could have given some bogus answer. They certainly would have been able to save face. But they didn't. They did the harder thing. They pushed him to give the honest answer, and then they showed transparency to the public. So since then, Josh has acknowledged, according to the statement, his sin, expressed sorrow and asked for forgiveness. His desire is to personally ask forgiveness of every person he has slandered or lied to. So this reminds me a little bit of the Stephen Lawson situation. You'll remember the statements that were given by his ministries. I think it's One Passion Ministries as well as Trinity Bible Church. It was like he's been confronted. He did confess when presented with the evidence that everyone knows that you're caught in this sin and he's sad about it. Unclear if they're sad that they got caught or if they actually did it. And he wants to repent, or it seems like he wants to repent, but we don't have any evidence so far that he has repented. We don't know if Josh Bice has repented. I still am not sure that we know if Stephen Lawson has repented. Again, we get a lot of, like, vague answers about this, which is really sad. Which means there's a lot of praying to be done about this situation. And if Josh Bice in particular is not truly repentant, and if he's only sad that he got caught and he's embarrassed, that's just not enough. You gotta be. You gotta feel shame over your sin. Absolutely. All right, let me pause and tell you about our first sponsor for the day before we explain the rest of this. That's Adele Natural Cosmetics. You guys know I love Adele. I use their essential facial cleanser every day, their essential moisturizing spray, which can be used for so many things. And it's just so good for my skin. It's truly nourishing. 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So it's not that he committed, you know, a sexual sin or like, you know, with Robert Morris when we talked about that, that he had preyed upon a child, that he had lied about that, cover that up for decades. I would say that's permanently disqualifying. That doesn't mean that you can't repent and be forgiven by God. But I would say that's permanently disqualifying. The leadership of G3 is saying they don't think that he's necessarily permanently disqualified from ministry, but but currently he is disqualified from eldership for his from his senior pastor position at Praise Mill Baptist Church at Praise Mill. He has been placed on indefinite leave. He has also resigned from his position in G3. His resignation was accepted unanimously by the G3 board on May 8. No independent public statement from bias has been published as of now. I'd be really curious to know what he has to say. On May 13, G3 provided an update for the sake of clarity on their original statement that was released Monday, May 12th. Due to the public and egregious nature of the sin, we believe Josh Bice sustained the mission and character of G3 Ministries. After further consideration and godly counsel, we have made the decision to remove all of Josh Bice's content from every platform. So they had originally said that all of Josh's videos, that his articles and everything would be kept up because they were sound, they were still based in the Bible. And I kind of cringed when I originally read that. So I'm happy that they're removing this because the messenger does matter. The message matters more, but the messenger does actually matter. This will take some time to accomplish the removing of all of his content. From our founding G3's purpose has been to educate, encourage, equip local churches with sound biblical theology. And so Josh's content just can't, just can't be used for that anymore. G3 Ministries canceled its 2025 national conference, all workshops scheduled for the year, citing a commitment to avoid, quote, celebrity culture. In the clarifying statement put out on May 13, G3 Ministry stated that while the conference of ministry could continue without Josh's leadership, we chose to cancel this year's event primarily because several of the scheduled speakers had been simply targeted by him through anonymous accounts. So we don't really know what went on behind the scenes. Did those speakers, after they found out that Josh was attacking them, did they say, we're not going to speak at G3 anymore? And that's why G3 had to shut it down? Did they just cancel because it was too difficult without, you know, his leadership, or there was just too much going on? They had to figure out how to, you know, clean up their house, get everything in order, and it just wasn't the year for a conference. I think all of that is very understandable now. When I read the reason of celebrity culture, I think of the other kind of, like, mini scandal that was going on online with G3 that they had this kind of. It was a VIP package that they were selling for the G3 conference that cost a lot of money. I don't even remember how much it cost. Maybe like. I think it was like $5,000 or maybe. Or maybe something like that. And people were saying how awful this is, how terrible it. And I understand, because this is a nonprofit organization, but I'm also someone who has planned multiple events now. And so I have a lot of understanding of what goes into planning events and how much it costs to plan an event, how much you have to pay speakers. You have to pay speakers. You know, you have to pay speakers, and you have to pay for the event center. You have to pay for all of these different accommodations. All of this costs money. And in order to have general admission tickets that are affordable to most of the public, you have to also sell ticket packages that cost more money. And someone who is buying a $5,000 package to G3 or any conference, they are doing that because that is how they want to support that organization. And so the organization is saying, hey, if you want to support us by giving this money, we. We will also give you something of value in return. You will get to, like, eat with the speakers or whatever. I didn't think that was a. I didn't think that was a scandal. I thought all of the people that were kind of criticizing them about that maybe there were things that I didn't understand or information That I didn't know about that. But to me, I'm like, oh, this is people yet again expecting everything to be free and not knowing that things cost money and that some things are expensive in conferences to be able to accommodate those who cannot buy more expensive things. So, anyway, I don't know what G3 thought about all of those criticisms, if that's actually part of why this conference was canceled or if it just had to do with Josh. I'm. I'm not sure. But G3 also said we did not want to put the brothers who were targeted by Josh's anonymous accounts in the difficult position of deciding whether to participate in an event so closely tied to someone who had maligned them. So maybe it was them preemptively just reaching out to those people and saying, you don't even have to be put in this position. I'm sure it was a little bit of both. So let's talk about what these accounts actually were. Now, G3 did not publish which accounts were operated by Josh Bice or which substacks were operated by Josh Bias. I think that would be good information to know. But I also understand why G3 doesn't want to open that can of worms, because then that's just going to cause more division and more hurt feelings when, at the end of the day, does that really matter? But there's been a lot of sleuthing, because Internet users, especially X users, are really good at sleuthing. And I can say, like, I do know that this is true. Like, I do know I have been told that these accounts were operated by Josh. Now, obviously, I haven't talked to Josh directly, but I have talked to people who are very close to this. And I would say that the Internet sleuths have it. It seems like, for the most part, right? So there were two anonymous accounts, one called Big Eva Secrets and one called Wiki Preacher, that seem to have been operated by Josh Bice. Now, both accounts have been made private, so any attacks lodged on those accounts are not visible. But a few were screenshotted before the attacks got taken down. And even though I understand G3's position of not wanting to highlight these accounts, maybe, you know, they're citing, wanting to make peace. I also think that transparency is important, and that's why I'm talking about this aspect of it. I think it's important for people to know exactly what we're talking about. How egregious was this? Is it worth all, all of this? So here's an example of a post that supposedly Josh Bicep was putting out under the moniker of Big Eva Secrets. A voice crying in the darkness was how he described this. So he said this was September 2023, the Wilson Askle combo. He's talking about Doug Wilson up in Moscow, Idaho, Tom Askel down in Florida of Founders Ministries trying to leech off the success of G3 by creating controversy and subtweeting all conference. It would be safe to say that Bicer G3 will not engage in similar ways. I wonder why people that this was Josh Bice during the next Founders event or Moscow conference. Lack of class. Okay. And then here is a tweet that he supposedly allegedly sent under the moniker Wiki Preacher or Grant Hawthorne. The Anon army is being fueled by Tom Askel and Founders A little secret from the shadows. Okay, so he has all kinds of posts like this calling out people that I think he would have said in, you know, as Josh Bice, he would have said, these people are my friends, these people are my brothers. I mean we certainly from the outside looking in would be saying they're all reformed, they're all conservative Christians, they're all against progressivism, they're all on the same page, they're partnering together. That's what I would have thought, but. And just like anything else, there was some level of competition. All right, we've got more to say about that. Let me pause and tell you about our next sponsor. First, that's We Heart Nutrition. I'm so grateful for We Heart Nutrition and how it has helped my health so much. I started taking their supplements at the beginning of 2024. Have not stopped, have never switched. I was taking another kind of women's vitamin from another company for years and years before I started with We Heart Nutrition. 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Go to we heartnutrition.com code ally okay, here is another post by them. Why would the Gospel Coalition need to be giving away tickets? They only have 4,000 registered. The last announcement I heard from G3 is that they have 6,6000 plus already and expecting 8,000 tickets this summer. I wonder if that's true, like in person, 8,000 attendees. I mean maybe if you have low prices for the tickets. But again, I've. I don't know everything about events, but I know something about events and I know really popular events and popular people who, you know, they might get 2,000 people at their events. And so I think that there's might be some inflation of numbers here. So it just seems to me like a lot of these accounts and substacks that he was operating, they worked as some kind of like PR for G3 and for Josh Bice. Okay. And here's an interesting thing here you actually see confirmation of who this is. This big Eva Secrets account. He accidentally doxed himself. And the screenshot of that post where he's screenshotting an email to talk about the TGC numbers, it says hi Josh. Hi Josh. Whoops. Whoops. So I mean that's a pretty good confirmation that this is Josh Bice. I don't know the substack accounts, I don't know what he was operating and everything that he was a saying there. And so yeah, I think there are a lot of people that came under fire, including Costi Hen, including Vodi Bauckham. I mean it just seemed like he saw all of these really solid reformed pastors is competition. And there to me I, I read like a level of insecurity there that he really was trying to compensate for something and he did not have the courage, the ability to have clarity from his, you know, own non. Anonymous account. And so he relied on anonymity and cowardice to make these kinds of, to make these kinds of statements, which is really bad. Founders Ministry released a statement calling Josh's activities simple, deceitful, slanderous. They removed all of Josh's content from their own site because again, I think they probably thought that Josh was a partner, G3 was a partner. And so they had platformed a lot of his stuff. His stuff as well. So obviously this is very sad for the people involved in G3. This is very sad For Praise Mill Baptist Church, like that is a sweet, precious church with a lot of solid Christians. And whenever something like this happens, it rocks your faith for a bit. When someone has taught you a lot and has been a mentor to you, either virtually because you've been listening to their sermons, you've been reading their books, or maybe they are your direct pastor, it is really difficult to separate the wisdom that they have imparted to you from the character of the person. And I think that's natural. Again, the messenger actually matters. The character of the person matters. And so when someone whose wisdom has helped you grow in your faith shows that they have a complete disconnect between the head and the heart, that's tough. That's tough. And I think that sometimes we can be harsh when people deconstruct or when they fall away from their faith because they have endured some kind of scandal or they have endured genuine church hurt. And while sometimes I do think that is used as an excuse for people to deconstruct and they just don't believe what the Bible says and they use past church hurt to justify their rebellion, I think that we do have to have understanding when people have questions and when people are worried about the truth. Because really, at the end of the day, this hurts the reputation of the church. And if anything you say or do puts the. Puts the veracity of the gospel or the reliability of the gospel at risk in people's minds, then that's something to be ashamed of. Now, obviously, the gates of hell will never prevail against God's church. And we know that God is going to seek and save the lost. We know that he is going to work all things together for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. We know Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We know job 42, 2, that nothing can thwart God's plan. We know that God is refining his church, is cleansing his church maybe is shattering some of Christian celebrity culture to a degree. Maybe he is showing us, hey, you can't rely on man. You can't rely on the best expositors and the best theologians because they are sinful, fallible people. You can only rely on me, the only infallible source. And so there's some of that going on. And we can't see everything that God is doing, because when God is doing one thing, when it seems like he's doing one thing, he's actually doing a million things. And so we need to be praying for Praise Mill Baptist church, praying for G3 again. I think that they made really hard and good decisions in trying to be as transparent and honest as possible. Pray for our friend Virgil Walker as well. Virgil has been on this show. He shot, he helped with share the arrows last year. Like he is just absolutely a pillar when it comes to pro life work. And his heart for the unborn is so soft and he was doing really good things at G. And as you can imagine, I've talked to Virgil a little bit. He's heartbroken over this. So please be praying for his family, his wife, his children, the church there, and be praying for Josh. He needs to be brought to repentance. I know that there are some people in his circles and maybe he's still thinking this himself. I don't know that this is really not that big of a deal that we're making a mountain out of a molehill. People, you know, have a non accounts all the time. No, you lied. You lied. You were in perpetual and persistent sin when you lied and you covered up and you made divisions when you didn't have to. And so that's the issue here. It's not just the anonymous accounts, it's what the anonymous accounts were actually saying. It's that he covered it up. And we know that the Bible warns against those who are intentionally creating divisions, not just by telling the truth, because the truth can absolutely divide. That's its nature. But by saying things that are untrue, saying things that are meant to cause dissension. Here's Titus 3:10 as for a person who stirs up division after warning him once and then twice, have nothing to do with him, nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful, he is self condemned, I.e. titus 3, 10, 11 and verse 9. Actually it's applicable. But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless, and the person that engages in that and pushes that, especially anonymously, is not only condemned, but cowardly. And so pray for Josh that he would have real repentance and that we would be able to see the fruit of that repentance. Okay, now let's move into some happy things. Because sometimes it just seems like the church is falling apart because we have leader after leader that betrays us. But we have to remember God's eternal plan of redemption is always going off without a hitch, that there's nothing that we can do, nothing that happens that ever surprises him, never takes him aback, never throws him off. He's never coming in just to clean up the mess. Like he is always sovereign over all of it. And even as all of this craziness is happening on the human level, he is doing something in the hearts of people. And I see see indication after indication of this. I don't know how often you guys listen to these comedian led podcasts, whether it's Joe Rogan or Andrew Schultz or Theo Vaughn. But if you can get past some of the profanity, there are some really interesting and profound conversations that are happening on some of these episodes. So Andrew Schultz, he, he leads the flagrant podcast. I've actually never listened to it. I've just seen clips here and there. Andrew Schultz, I think kind of like in the anti woke world. I don't know if I would call him conservative, but I loved that he had Wes Huff on the show. We've had Wes Huff on the show after he was on Joe Rogan's podcast to talk about theology and apologetics, the historical evidence for the existence of Jesus. And he went on the Andrew Schultz podcast who seems to be asking questions about Christianity and wanting to to know like what is actually true. So let me play you a couple clips from that episode because I just loved the back and forth. Here's thought 3.