“Jesus never gives us permission to hold people in contempt,” Kelsey added, “even people who are like straight up explicitly racist.”
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Kelsey shared that the Lord humbled him years ago when he challenged him with the question: “Do you want to be helpful, or do you just want to be heard?”
He said that made him examine what his role as a Christian and a pastor is supposed to be. “I’m not just trying to add to the noise,” said Kelsey. “I want to be a helpful voice. And sometimes that helpful voice is a little tense and it needs to be. But at all times, I think that helpful voice needs to be governed by the character of Christ and the fruit of the Spirit.”
“So I’ve been wrestling through how I’ve been feeling and the dominant feeling has been anger,” Kelsey concluded. “But I’ve been trying to take that anger and submit it to the Holy Spirit so that it can be productive, redemptive anger, and not just out here going in on everybody.”
 held a church family meeting to vote on Mike Kelsey, their current MBC Montgomery County location pastor, to be their new lead pastor alongside David Platt.){kind=link}