Church, the Purpose, Part 6 of What We Believe, Part 42

Another key reason why we are to instruct in the word is because instruction through God's word guards the church against false teaching by grounding believers in the unchanging truth of scripture.

So again, the reason why we see so many churches giving into false teaching, such as Andy Stanley's church.

Look, Andy Stanley, his false teaching just produces more false teachers.

One, two, three. Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Well, welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, the executive director of Striving Fraternity and the

Christian podcast community of which this podcast is a proud member of the, I think, over 50 highly vetted podcasts.

We only accept maybe 30, 40%. So if you go to christianpodcastcommunity .org, you're gonna find something that you like.

You're probably gonna find more than you can listen to in a week, but that is a good thing, good quality content, including, well, the

Patriot Pastors podcast, which I'm joined again with one of the two pastors that are patriots.

Only two pastors in the world are patriots because they're the Patriot Pastors podcast.

Wade Lentz is with us again for his final week with us to discuss the topic of the church.

Welcome, Wade. It is a joy to be back with you, and I'm looking forward to this podcast.

I can't believe this is our third one already. Yeah, and so we're gonna discuss, continue discussing the topic of the church.

I was listening to the Religious Less Christianity podcast, one of our other podcasts on the

Christian Podcast Community, and they were referencing what to look for in doctrinal statements.

And they were mentioning how on this episode, this series of episodes we've been doing for some time has been helpful for defining, hey, you don't look for some short doctrinal statement.

It should be lengthy. It should be detailed. And we have been going through the doctrinal statement at Striving for Eternity, and this episode is episode 43.

So we've been working our way slowly through all this, and the purpose is to help folks see, not just to teach some theology, which

I hope this is doing, but also to teach what we should see in a doctrinal statement and all that's behind it, because a lot of what you're seeing is the doctrinal statement is gonna be very pithy,

I hope, very concise, but there's a lot of things it's trying to say. Sometimes what it says, it's trying to say, because we say this, it means it's not this, and the other thing.

So we're continuing through it. If you wanna follow along, if you're not driving, that is, well, maybe if you have a self -driving car, but still, no, no.

Even if your car drives itself, keep your eyes on the road, because even if your car drives itself, the other people are still nuts on the road anyway.

Besides, your software's probably gonna go out anyway and not work. So if you're not driving, you can go to strivingforeternity .org,

go to the About section, click on What We Believe. When that opens up, you will see the part that says the church.

Expand that. We're about halfway down that page. We'll be reading along.

And if you wanna catch up on all the previous episodes that you missed, if you're just catching this now, at the bottom of that page is the link to all of the previous episodes, so you can start this series from, well, number one.

But, Wade, if you wouldn't mind reading for us the two paragraphs that we're gonna cover today. Sure.

It says, the purpose of the church is to glorify God by building itself up in the faith, by instruction of the word, by fellowship, by keeping the ordinances, and by advancing and communicating the gospel to the entire world.

The local church is a God -centered, Bible -centered ministry that seeks eternal preparation by the exaltation of God, edification and equipping of believers, and evangelizing of the world, starting with the local community.

The Bible teaches the calling of all saints to the work of service.

And this is something where, as we look at this, Wade, a lot of people are gonna agree with that first sentence.

The purpose of the church is to glorify God, that first part. They will at least give lip service to that statement.

Right. But what we're saying is that in practice, not just in lip service, not just having a doctrinal statement that says, we glorify

God, and then everything we do is about being seeker -sensitive, trying to get people to get basically butts and pews to see how we can be more appealing to the world.

When we're saying the purpose of the church is to glorify God, that works out on a lot of different ways.

I'm gonna get myself in trouble, Wade, and I hope not with you. I mean, smaller churches will do things like this a lot, but because I travel,

I focus, as a ministry, we focus on reaching out to smaller churches. We go to a lot of smaller churches, and during the worship service,

I will see where they'll, okay, we have a birthday, everyone sing happy birthday. Okay, we got an anniversary, sing happy anniversary.

Now, is there anything wrong with that? Not really. But if you're there for the worship of God, like if you did that maybe on a

Wednesday night, or even there, it might have issue, but if you have a fellowship time after service,

I've seen that where they do it at a fellowship time, no issue there, but we're saying the purpose of the church here is for God.

And so my conviction is, well, then it should be all for God, right? We should be doing stuff that is putting

Christ at the center of the service, not people.

Yes. I thought I was the only one that, the first church

I pastored would have the people come up who had birthdays, and they would come up in front of the church, and they would say, oh, looky here,

Miss Edna is turning 75 today. And everybody, like you said, would sing happy birthday.

And this is a small, small country church. And that's the first I ever saw that, and I was shocked.

I'm like, I cannot believe they're doing this. And whoever had a birthday that week would get that same response.

And yeah, you talk about changing the preeminence of who's supposed to have preeminence, and that's the

Lord Jesus Christ, but yet we've taken our eyes off of him, and we put it on, in this case,

Miss Edna, or whoever is celebrating a birthday. And again, those things are just traditional, and they're not thinking through that.

It's just something they have done for 100 years. You know a surefire way to kill a church?

The words, that's the way we've always done it. That's right, yes.

But even more than that, let me expand it more, and really, if I haven't got people upset with that one, let me really get people upset.

If we're gonna say the purpose of the church is to glorify God, who do we sing about when we have that time of singing on a

Sunday morning? God or me? Now I say that because everyone's gonna say, well, we sing to God.

Yeah, well, look at the lyrics. Look at the lyrics that are being sung, and you know what most of the lyrics are about?

Me. When it's about God, it's about what God did for me. And so it is quite interesting to see, the fact that there's so much of the worship service, which people will say it's about glorifying

God, and we put God in the center, and then look at the practice.

So when we're saying that the purpose of the church is to glorify God, that's what it's about.

Mm -hmm. And so, I know that I was in a church where they wanted, as the pastor, they wanted me to pray for individual people during the pastoral prayer time.

And I said, you know, I get it, it's a good thing to pray for people. We have a Tuesday night prayer meeting for that.

But on Sunday, this is the worship service to God. Yeah, that's good.

I said, so the only one in my conviction, the only one that we highlight and mention is

God. And I ruffled some feathers, but guess what?

They learned something new, and it didn't take long before it was like, oh, we don't do it that way here anymore.

Yeah. Gee, but we don't stop at just the glorifying of God here.

The purpose of the church is to glorify God, and now we have some ways we glorify God. First, by building itself up in the faith.

Again, this is gonna speak against the seeker sensitive and a lot of the others, because what you see with a lot of groups, the way they think they're gonna build the church to glorify

God is, hey, we're gonna have some great programs. We're gonna have some great music.

I mean, there's churches that I know of that pay unsaved people to sing and play music because they just got a really good voice.

Wow. And, or they're very talented. I remember one church that we had a paid organist.

He wasn't saved, and he had been playing the organ there for 25, 30 years.

And the reason he did it was he learned how to play the organ as a child, and there's no place he could play the organ other than the church.

So he would go to church to play. And I remember sitting down with the pastor and going, yeah, like this isn't right.

The guy's not saved, you know, and we're paying him. We don't need an organ.

We got the piano. Hence we did exactly that.

But, you know, it's gotta be for building up the faith, not building up the bank account, building up the number of people.

I mean, Wade, when you go to a conference or meet with other pastors, what's the first question they ask you when you're, it's like, oh, what church are you with?

You mentioned your church. What is the size of your church? That's right. What's the size?

And I told the pastor of my church, I wanna get the square footage for our church.

So when they say, how big's your church? I'm gonna go, you know, 300 square foot.

Just to see the reaction, right? They're talking numbers.

We wanna know how many people are in your church. How important is that, the numbers in the church?

What do you think, Wade? Very important, mediocre importance, low importance. It's honestly, you know, according to scripture, not important, that is not the purpose of the church is to have the largest church.

And that's, we have a church here locally that is just booming, not too far away from us.

But my thoughts are, how well is that pastor being able to build up his sheep in the faith?

You know, it's so large, there's no way that he can shepherd them adequately. And so that is the role of the shepherd.

And that is the purpose of the church, to build up the members, the sheep in the faith.

And that's what Paul stresses in Ephesians chapter four, the scripture verse there. Paul says the church must aim to reach unity in the faith.

And the big key to that is when you break down that verse, Paul really gives us several key elements, how we can do that.

And that is, first of all, the church grows as it strives for doctrinal unity. And that is, the better we understand

God's word, the stronger the bond that we have of faith between believers.

And the problem is, in a lot of churches, they do not know the word. They are biblically illiterate.

And so you cannot have a strong doctrinal unity when the church is not building up in the faith, and there's not gonna be any bond spiritually.

Well, you're hitting on a topic because a lot of people say, well, doctrine divides. Well, yes, it does, truth from error. And so, yes, it divides, but it also unifies.

But if you have a church that doesn't wanna get into doctrine, they don't wanna talk about specifics because it might cause people to leave, they're not really unified.

They're just having a social club and they all gather together. Well, that's not what this is saying to build up in the faith.

We're being really specific here. The purpose of the church is to glorify God, and the first way we do that is that the church needs to be built up in the faith.

So we need to teach doctrine. We need to teach what the faith is. How do we do that? Well, that's the next point, by the instruction of the word.

Now, why include this? Well, maybe in generations ago, it didn't need to be there, but I would say it needs to be there nowadays because so many churches on a

Sunday, what they wanna do is dramas. They wanna have entertainment.

Well, that's not the goal of the church because think this through folks, if the goal is to glorify

God, does God need our entertainment? No, who's the entertainment for? Typically, the goats, the unsaved.

Most of the churches today that go by the name of church are nothing more than goat farms.

They're bringing goats in and reproducing more goats, but they're not teaching the faith because they're not instructing in the word, why?

Because that might make people leave and we don't want them to feel uncomfortable. Sure.

So we need to glorify God, not only by building up the faith, but we must preach the word.

Yes. Not preach current events. There was a pastor

I knew of that he got up at the pulpit with a newspaper and he was actually reading current events and trying to make the current events fit the

Bible. And he would do that like week after week. That's not the word.

The newspaper doesn't have the authority of God's word.

It doesn't tell us how to live for faith and practice. So if you have a pastor who's up there and he's just telling stories, that's not instruction of the word.

And it could be good stories, but if he's up there and doing dramas or storytelling, but not teaching the word of God, then he's not glorifying

God. God wants his word preached, that's why he gave it.

Yes. And if the church is doing anything other than that, and I would say they should do it expositionally, verse by verse, but, and for guys like Andy Stanley, who thinks that preaching verse by verse is lazy,

I would agree to say that it is much harder to do expositional topical preaching.

In other words, going to all the, if you're gonna do topical like he likes to do, what you need to do is actually exegete, that means to pull the meaning out of the text with every single one of the verses that you're gonna use.

And so, yeah, that would take a lot more time. So in a sense, I could agree going verse by verse is much easier than doing proper topical messages.

But Andy Stanley doesn't do the hard work of exegeting all the passages. He just comes up with a theme and kind of throws some

Bible out there, like a sower will just toss seed and hopefully it'll land.

Sure. He's not really digging into each of those texts. He's more telling stories and just filtering in a little bit of Bible as he goes.

I would say that's lazy. Sorry, Andy. Well, that is so true.

And let me just say that another key reason why we are to instruct in the word is because instruction through God's word guards the church against false teaching by grounding believers in the unchanging truth of scripture.

So again, the reason why we see so many churches giving into false teaching, such as Andy Stanley's church, look,

Andy Stanley, his false teaching just produces more false teachers, right?

So it is so key that there's no way for a church member to guard themselves against false teachings if they do not know the teachings of the word.

I agree. And the thing is, I want you to notice that the order in which that I have these are important.

We wanna glorify God. The first is by building itself up in faith. In other words, doctrine. And that comes by number two, the instruction of the word.

After those two is number three. And I purposely have it after the other two because the third one is by fellowship.

And that's what so many people wanna focus on. Wait, should the church be fellowshipping?

Absolutely. Should that be all the church does? No. If that's all the church does, what would we call that?

A social club. Social club. Yeah. Right? There's a lot of churches where because they've given up the building of itself in faith by the instruction of the word, they have given up glorifying

God and become nothing more than a social club. And we need to be careful of that.

We need to be careful that we are making sure that what we're doing at church, and remember, the church is not the building.

The church is the people. But when we're having a church service, a worship service, it's for God.

Yes. And so the fellowship's not the main thing. The fellowship is the sweet byproduct.

How sweet? Well, I think a lot of people got a sense of this during COVID.

So many churches were closed during COVID and people couldn't meet and have that fellowship. And one of the things

I talk to so many pastors that when the churches got back together meeting, no one wanted to go home because the church, the real church, not

Joel Steen's and those guys, the real church, missed that fellowship time of the kindred spirit because it's the one time of the week where you're in the world all week working your secular job and now you come and it's like, oh, so refreshing being with the saints.

And we miss that. And so many people wanted to be together in fellowship that they, after COVID, people didn't want to go home.

So many pastors told me their service would end and people would still be there an hour, hour and a half just fellowshipping because it was the true genuine fellowship.

But that is a byproduct of the first two that we mentioned, building the church up by the faith and the instruction of the word.

If you have those two in order, then that fellowship is circling around the word of God.

That's the thing that keeps that fellowship together because a fellowship is basically you have, you're sharing something in common.

So if Wade, you know, if I don't follow sports, but well, some sports,

I follow tennis, right? So if you follow tennis and we both went to a tennis match, we can enjoy that.

We could fellowship together. We have something to share in common. We both maybe like running and we both go for a run or weightlifting or whatever it may be.

We can fellowship in something we have in common, but for the church, that fellowship should be around the faith that we share in the teaching of the word of God.

That is why you can have good churches where you have people that outside of the church, they would never get together.

There's people in every church I've been in that I would never be friends with if it wasn't that we went to the same church.

Mm -hmm, yeah, it is amazing when you think about it. And me as a pastor, as I look out at my congregation, it's amazing to see all the different cultures, all the different backgrounds.

People are born, we have some that were born in El Salvador and then some born in the

Northern part of our country. But yet there's a bond, there is a closeness.

We have some plumbers, we have some doctors in our church, but yet, like you said, if they were out in the world, they probably wouldn't fellowship, but they have this common bond.

They have this common glue that sticks together and that is that they share the same father.

That's right. They have the same savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is sweet when the body of Christ made up of different members, different backgrounds, comes together and fellowships one with another.

And we don't fellowship just to, it doesn't mean that we just fellowship and eat, right?

We build each other up. Wait, wait, wait, wait, I thought you're a Baptist. Well, I am a

Baptist, I do like to eat. I thought all fellowships require food. And that does make fellowship sweeter,

I will say. But it's not only about the food. It's not about just the potlucks, but it's about getting to know your brother, your sister, that you would not be able to know any other way, but through fellowship.

And it is such a vital part, especially as we live in this world that is so chaotic and it is so, really this world is trying to ostracize people from one another.

There's so much polarization between Democratic parties and Republican parties and all these things.

How good it is to find this unity. You don't find it in Washington, D .C.,

do you? And you certainly don't find it in the media, but you do find it, or you should find it, in your local church.

Because the fellowship should be around the Word of God. Yes. That's what brings us together, or should, in a biblical church.

So that's why this is following the other two. The next one is by keeping the ordinances.

The ordinances, I would say, are going to be baptism and communion. Now, why does that one become important?

I think that it's important to think about this. What defines a church?

And if you get my book, What Do We Believe?, I have a whole chapter of how the word church has morphed and become more and more precise through the ages.

I mean, the term ecclesia, originally, the first usage we see is for voting.

It's a coming together for a purpose, and that purpose originally was to vote. But then in the first century, it became a gathering together for the purpose of the worship of God.

Then it became more specific to the purpose of being the invisible church and the visible church.

And you can read about that in my book, What Do We Believe? Then it became, hey, during the Puritans, there's three things to define the church.

You have to have the preaching of God's Word. You have to have the ordinances. You have to have church discipline.

Ooh, that last one, surprise, surprise, people. We talked about that in the last episode.

So as we look at this, the ordinances, why would that be important to include?

Because this is saying that someone in their home, where they're just having a home church and they don't have ordinances, they're not doing

Lord's Supper, they're not doing baptisms, they don't have elders and deacons. It's really a bunch of people who, because we have the people, especially now, ever since COVID, the people who go, well,

I just Zoom church. I do Zoom church. I watch it on TV. You're not doing church that way.

You're not participating when you're sitting at home, watching it on TV, you are not participating in the ordinances.

And so you're not part of the church. Now, I'm going to give the caveat, because Andrew, what about the people who are in a nursing home and they can't be part church?

Well, I know a lot of those people want to be in the church. In fact, I loved what one church did that I was at, when they had the communion, their deacons, they had enough deacons and enough people that their deacons would go to the nursing home where they had three nursing homes that had members of their church and they would be watching the service online with the deacons.

And when it was time to take communion, the deacons would serve these members who are in the nursing home, communion elements, and they would take it together.

That's good. And I really, I loved that. It was the first time and only time I've seen that done.

But I always thought that's, if you have people that are, that can't be there, that's a really great way to do it.

Yes. And so maybe it's an idea for some of you folks, maybe some pastors are going to go, hey,

I like that. I think we'll try to incorporate that. But that brings the ordinance, the baptism, the

Lord's Supper for everyone. And so that is something that defines a church.

Now, some churches add foot washing. We could get into a whole discussion whether that's an ordinance.

You're way too ticklish for that. But there's other churches that they wouldn't call the baptism and the

Lord's Supper an ordinance. They call it a sacrament. So even in this, what we're doing by the word choices, we're being precise.

So a sacrament is something that's going to add some grace. So you have your

Presbyterians that will say, well, it's a sacrament. By participating in the Lord's Supper, you're gaining grace.

We are saying, at Striving for Eternity at least, but I think that Wade agrees with me, that it's an ordinance as good

Baptists, and we would say it's not adding grace. An ordinance is something we obey, but it is because it's commanded for us to do, but it is just an outward sign of an inward change, or an outward sign of the unity we have as a church, but it's not adding anything to our sanctification.

Right, right. So even in that word choice, you see that when we look at a doctrinal statement, these are, yes, it's like exegeting every word, just like we do with the

Bible. You kind of have to do that with this because every word is trying to be precise. So the purpose of the church is to glorify

God. How? Well, we do it by building the church up in the faith, by instructing the word, by the fellowship, by keeping the ordinances.

The last of them is by advancing and communicating the gospel to the entire world.

Shocker! We're supposed to go and share the gospel. So, Wade, is this talking, because I see here a reference to Matthew 28, 19 and Acts 1, 8 and 2, 24.

Does this mean that we go to the world by paying missionaries? Is that how we fulfill that great commission?

So they go, we pay, they go? Is that it? That's what the average Baptist church member would say, but that's not what

Jesus was saying whatsoever. We don't pay our missionaries to take care of the ministry that God has called us to.

And so, yeah, in the church, in the local church, evangelism is not simply just an activity that the church engages in.

It's really the identity of the local church. It's really the mission of the church is that.

And we talked about this before. The goal isn't just conversion, as we're thinking about Matthew 28, verse 19, it's discipleship making.

But the way we evangelize is by, as Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5, by being the light in the world, living out a holy, peculiar life that is set apart from those that are worldly, those who are living in sin, that they see your good works that glorify your father, which is in heaven.

And that gives you an opportunity to share your faith because people are going to ask, they're going to wonder, why do you dress differently?

Why do you talk differently? You don't say cuss words. I worked in the secular field for years.

And it was not very long after I would start at a job and they would say, hey, we noticed you don't say any cuss words and you don't go and party and all of those things.

And I never once told them at the get go that I was a preacher. I wanted them to know firsthand that I was a

Christian and I did not have to wear a name tag saying that I, Wade Lentz, is a

Christian. My life was able to demonstrate the change that was made in my heart by the

Lord Jesus Christ. And building relationships with others is the greatest way the church evangelizes.

And that is where we have gotten away from. And the average church, the average church member does not see themselves as a missionary in that sense.

They believe we're going to regulate that to the pastor. We're going to regulate that to the associate pastor.

That's their job, but it's not my job. And that's a horrible mindset.

And that is an unbiblical mindset. And yet it is probably the most common mindset.

And that's the thing. So, you know, before we get into, so this is, again, the goal of the church, the purpose of church is to glorify

God, and we're laying out a couple ways that the church does that. By building itself up in the faith, by instruction of the word, by fellowship, by keeping ordinances, and by advancing and communicating the gospel around the world.

So if you look at it, this is about God. It starts with the faith

God gives us and His word. Fellowship's important. We need it.

But it's not everything. It doesn't start there. That's the byproduct of the other two.

That reaches out to the keeping of the ordinances, because that brings us back, hey, this is what we share in common.

Now that we have that, we go out to the world. And so that is what we should be doing.

And, you know, sometimes you go into the world and you just need to wake yourself up.

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So let's get back to discussing this next part, which is we say the local church is a

God -centric, now after what we just got done discussing, that should come naturally, right?

God -centric, that's where it starts, Bible -centric ministry.

So we start with God, glorifying God, and how do we do it? Through the Bible. So that's what we should be surrounded by.

We should be surrounded by God and the Bible. And it's not how do we make it more appealing to people or anything like that.

The local church is God -centric, Bible -centric ministry that seeks eternal preparation.

In other words, you and I are going to live for eternity. That's kind of the meaning of the mindset of the ministry name here, striving for eternity.

Our goal is to not to work our way to heaven because we're a ministry to people who are already believers.

We're a discipleship ministry, not an evangelism ministry. I do a lot of evangelism. Those of us who are part of the ministry do a lot of evangelism, but that's not what the purpose of the ministry is.

So we are a discipling ministry. So we want to help people have this eternal mindset to be thinking beyond this life and think about the life to come.

And when we're focused on the life to come, we're going to be wanting to be more

God -centric and Bible -centric. And so I know, Wade, I'm a preacher, so I have to literate, and so we got lots of ease, right?

We seek eternal preparation. How do we do it? By the exaltation of God, edifying and equipping of the saints, and evangelizing the lost.

Lots of ease in there because it's just easier to remember. I like it. Yeah, but really what is the summarization,

I think, of what we're trying to do at Striving for Eternity is this one sentence. We want people to strive for that eternal mindset.

How? First and foremost, by exalting our God and Savior, by lifting

Him up on high, giving Him the honor and the glory that He is rightfully due. So we start with the exaltation of God.

Second, well, once we have a right relationship with God, what's our relationship horizontally with others?

We could break that up into two areas, those that are saints and those that are not. And there's a difference with the saints.

What do we want to do in our relationship with other saints? We want to be edifying.

That's exactly what we see with Christians on social media, right, Wade? Yes, that's right.

I mean, Twitter and Facebook is the most edifying place for Christians to hang out.

If they want to get beat up. Yes. By the way, folks, my tongue is right to cheek there as I say that.

So yeah, I mean, that is what we should be doing. I would love to say that I do it all the time, but I'm on social media and there's times where, yep,

I get caught up in some of the nonsense of social media. But our goal should be to edify one another.

So we should be not just edifying in our conversation, but we should be trying to equip one another.

What is that referring to? Well, that's going to refer to the fact that as we talked last week, we are to be discipling.

We should be discipling one another. How do we do that? Well, that's where this comes in. The way we do discipling is the equipping of one another.

And I got news for every believer. There is something where God, when you got saved,

God has gifted you such that there are things you could do for the church that no one else will do.

God put you in your church with your gifting to serve your church. How?

Well, that way that you serve your church is going to be building up the church.

That's the goal of it. So we will do that with believers.

We edify, we equip. Well, what's the other group that we mentioned horizontally?

And that is unbelievers. So the relationship we should have with unbelievers is an evangelizing one.

Yeah. Not one where Wade, as we hear with the friendship evangelism, well, we're going to just build a friendship over going to sporting events and talking sports and watching sports on TV and we'll just hang out and maybe play some sports and not share the gospel till we really know you well.

Then your goal is not really evangelism, your goal is hanging out. It's no different like we said with the church when you're just fellowshipping, it's a social club.

You're not having an evangelical relationship. It doesn't mean you have to share the gospel every single time you get together with someone.

Right. But it does mean that that has to be the purpose, the goal that you have.

Yes. And so when we're with unbelievers, we want to be working.

It's fine to build that relationship. I have unsaved neighbors by me that we happen to have the same car and because of that we started talking and building up a relationship.

Now we end up talking a lot about politics. Why? Because he is a leftist big time and I'm not.

The first time we talked, he was like, you know, well, those MAGA Republicans. I was like, oh, you mean like me? He's like, oh, but we get along and talk.

But the goal is I'm constantly peppering things in in my conversation about what

Christ did for me. And so we're planning when my bride and I can get enough time to breathe with our busy schedule, but we're planning to invite them over for dinner and hang out so we have a more lengthy time.

Why? Because when we have them in our house and we've provided the meal, sharing the gospel is a lot easier than when we're walking, because that's how we met them.

We would walk after dinner to our neighborhood walk and we would see them. And so that's how we got to meet them.

Well, it's not enough for me just to, you know, know this guy and hang out.

We want to share the gospel. And so we try to create an environment where it is easier for us to be able to share the gospel.

Those are the type of relationships we have. And you see, that captures all of life, doesn't it? It captures our relationship to God.

We exalt Him. It captures our relationship within the church. We edify and equip, and it captures the way we should deal with the lost we evangelize.

So it's really, I think this is a, if I was to try to be as concise as possible as the

Christian life, this would be it. And when we want to put it into the context of the church,

I would say the local church is God -centered, Bible -centered ministry that seeks eternal preparation by the exaltation of God, edifying and equipping of the saints, and evangelizing the lost.

Okay, but we didn't end there. Anything you want to say on that, Wade? No, I mean, you said it just great.

I will add this. You talked about inviting your neighbors over, and that's something that our elders here at our church have been talking about, how important that is to build a relationship with those who are lost and not a

Christian. I had a seminary professor ask the class one time, he said, how many of y 'all have any lost friends, and no one raised their hand.

And he said, that is sad. You should have lost friends.

You should have them over to your home. You should cook them a steak. You need to build a relationship with them.

And that's how, yes, we evangelize. It's not the only way, like you said earlier, but it is a great way.

Paul reasoned with those in the synagogue. When you're reasoning, you're having a conversation one with another.

And I think we've lost that. And another thing I'll say, again, this applies to the average church member.

That, again, ministry is not just reserved for pastors or elders or the quote unquote professionals within the church.

No, their role, the pastor's role, the shepherd's role is to equip you to do this work of evangelizing.

Oh, I pray that in these days that we're living in, that we get back to that.

I pray that for our church here in small town Arkansas, we get back to the average church member, the lay person being a soul winner.

You know, it's amazing that if you work a secular job, when I would work a secular job,

I used to make it a practice to take people out to lunch. Why?

Because when I'm buying lunch, I can talk about anything I want, right? What I would do is

I would go to different people and say, hey, you want to grab lunch? I'll buy, you know, and they're like, really?

Yeah, I just, there's, you know, just get to know one another. I got things, you know, things in my life are really important to me.

I wouldn't mind sharing with you. Okay. Because they're getting a free lunch, but they already know

I want to share something with them, and I get to share the gospel, and people are more receptive. Same thing with inviting someone to my house, they're more receptive.

Why? Because you just, you're doing something for them. Yes. You're caring for them, and they see that.

So that becomes an important thing, but you know what, Wade? We didn't quite finish that sentence, did we?

Because talking about the context of the church, we're saying the local church, right? We mentioned that we exalt

God, and we edify, equip the saints, and we evangelize the lost, but where does it say we start that?

In the local community. Oh, not overseas? It's not? Not, yeah.

Oh, I thought, I really thought the Great Commission was in Africa. Yeah, and I think that mindset is one of the reasons why

America is lost now, as a whole. Our churches have had this mindset, well, we've got to send missionaries to India and Africa, and yes, we do, but we've done it at the price, at the cost of bypassing our local community.

Correct. And we have just totally forgot our

Jerusalem, as Jesus said in Acts 1 -8. Start there, and then work your way out through the different regions.

But it seems as if somewhere along the 20th century, we've only focused on the outward boundaries of that Great Commission, and we have neglected our home.

And now it seems that we have lost our home over to paganism, because we did a horrible job of training up church members to learn how to evangelize biblically.

And the thing that we have to notice is, starting with the local church means you and I.

Not our pastor, right? It's our community. And this is just, this is our responsibility, folks.

It's not our responsibility to pass off to others. And so, that's why we say it starts in a local church.

You know, when you were speaking, Wade, it made me think of the Book of Acts, because when you look at the Book of Acts, the way that the

Book of Acts lays it out, you see that he's saying it starts in Jerusalem, but where's further out from Jerusalem is

Judea, what's further out from there, and that's how it goes. It starts in Jerusalem and works its way out to the farthest regions of the area.

Well, that's how we should be doing it. Our focus should start at home and then go out to worldwide missions, but worldwide missions is not the start of it.

It should be an outward circle, starting with you and I, folks. Every one of us, even if we're not a pastor, yep, we should be doing the purpose of the church, serving the church in that way.

So, why don't we get to this last sentence. We'll read that just after this break.

Would you like to get a speaker to come to your church? Maybe you say, well, our church is really small. Well, Striving for Eternity will come regardless of the size.

We will come to your church and do a weekend seminar on maybe how to interpret the Bible or how to evangelize, apologetics, so many other things.

We can come and have speakers that will go to your church and help disciple your people and leave some materials behind so that they're trained up to serve your local church.

If you're interested in having one of our speakers, you could go to strivingforeternity .org and you could see our different speakers that we have.

Just go and click on the About Us. You'll see our speakers, the different topics we can cover, and then from there, you can book a speaker.

So, consider having Striving for Eternity come to your church and provide a weekend seminar to help your people grow in the faith.

So, as we come back, we have one more sentence left here, but it goes along with everything we've been saying,

Wade, is that the Bible teaches that the calling of all saints is for the fellowship of the – is that what it said?

Oh, I'm sorry. I must have read that wrong. The Bible teaches the calling of all saints to the work of service.

Wait, is that saying – maybe I read that wrong. Shouldn't that be saying the Bible teaches the calling of the pastors?

It's for the work of service? Surely that all does not mean all saints, right?

That's right. All must mean all the pastors, right?

All the paid staff. Yes, yes. It can't possibly mean me as little old me, right?

Yeah, that's the mindset today, for sure. And it is.

The fact is that when we think about it, most people think that, well, it's the pastor who does the work.

I pay him. Wade, what does your church pay you to do all week?

The church pays me to pastor the church, to shepherd the flock of God, and in that,

I, as the book of Acts, chapter 6, that they give themselves to the study of the word and to prayer.

And we know, as you dive deeply into this, that Ephesians chapter 4, verse 12 talks about that part of my pastoral position in ministry is to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

That means that we are to train. We are to instruct. And that takes discipline, right?

If any Olympian is going to strive to make the

Olympics, then he has got to equip himself. He's got to work. He's got to discipline himself.

And sadly, a lot of church members are just not interested in that. They are adapted to this easy believism, where faith has come easy, and the

Christian life has got to also be easy. And it's a sad thing.

But yeah, the pastoral's role is to equip the saints, but there has to be an inward working of the church member who wants their life to be disciplined by the shepherd instructing them to do the work of the ministry.

And they're just not, in today's American church, sadly, many members who are even interested in allowing the equipping part of it.

Have you noticed that? Yes. Yeah, I mean, this is the problem.

Not enough people think that it's their job to be part of the work of the church.

And I think part of it is, for so many, they are so busy doing things.

Our culture, at least in America, is something where it is between, well,

I've got to work, I've got to take care of the family, we've got baseball, we've got this sporting event for the kids, we've got music lessons, whatever it is.

Everyone's going, going, going, going. And I know a bunch of pastors. What they do is they go, well, the church is so busy, we don't get people that can serve.

So, you know, they take on the responsibility. And when they take it on, people go, oh, pastor does that.

Yeah. And they don't step up. Folks, if your pastor is doing everything in the church, it's because you're not doing it.

That's why. Yeah. You know, it's not his job to do everything, but someone's got to do the work.

And a lot of times it falls on the pastor, sometimes the pastor's wife, because they've got to get it done. The pastor's got to get it done, especially if you're in a small church.

So, if you see your pastor doing a whole lot of things, maybe you need to pick things up.

You know, I'm traveling this weekend to Indiana, and my pastor texted me this morning going, hey, you know, you need a ride to the airport.

And I was like, no, we got, there's a friend of the ministry who, he usually gives us a ride when we have to go to the airport.

And my pastor asked, and I was like, hmm, I called my bride and said, look, I don't know if it's, you know, maybe he just wants to hang out.

He wants to have some time. He's got something he wants to talk about, because I've done that when I was pastoring. Hey, I'll give you a ride to the airport,

I'll do something for you so we have some time to talk. I said, but, you know, if it's just, hey, do we need a ride?

We got a ride. And so, I called him up and I said, hey, you know, do you have something you need to talk about, or is it just you want to get, he's like, no,

I just figured you'd need a ride. I said, well, we got the ride covered, and I'd love to spend time with you. But, I mean, my flight's super early in the morning, and I come back kind of late at night.

I know what your schedule's like. I said, I don't want to take time away from your sleep or other things you should be doing for me, right?

And he thanked me, and so we're going to stick with our original plan. But what is that? Folks, that's what you should all be doing, just like I'm doing, is showing preference to your pastor.

Think through what his day is like. Because I was joking with my pastor. I said, yeah, I know what it's like when

I got a call from someone in my church on a Friday, you know, just before lunch.

He's like, pastor, can you come pick me up at the airport? I was like, did something happen? Did you have a ride, and you missed it?

He goes, no, I just figured you were just hanging out in the office all day with nothing to do. Yeah, I didn't pick him up.

I was like, you know, but Sunday, we're going to talk about what my week looks like. And so people just don't appreciate what it is.

I mean, I was joking with my pastor. I said, you know, and he's had this too, probably, because he chuckled when

I said it. But I'd have people that would just, they'd come in, and they'd come into my office and bring a cup of coffee.

And hey, thanks for the cup of coffee. But they brought the cup of coffee because they were going to kick their feet up on my desk and hang out and talk for the next two hours.

Yes. I still got a sermon to finish, you know. Sunday's coming. Sunday's coming, and they're just like, hey,

I figure I'll hang out with pastor, because he's got nothing else to do. Right. No, I got a ton of things to do.

See, when, especially as a small church, you know who made the coffee?

Me. I wasn't with my wife getting my kids ready for church, because I had to be at church to set the coffee up, make sure the heat was on, make sure things were set up and cleaned, and why?

Because others weren't doing it. And so don't let your pastor do too much.

His job is to prepare for the Sunday preaching. That's what you're paying him for.

You're not paying him to make the coffee. Anyone can do that. So get someone else to do that.

Maybe I should get off that preaching box. I wonder why there's so many pastors who get burnt out. Yeah. Especially if they're a bi -vocational pastor, pastoring a small country church, and the church still expects the pastor to do everything.

So, you know, to work 40 hours at his secular job, but then go visit the sick.

Those are in the hospital, preach the funerals, and like you say, even prepare the coffee for Sunday morning.

I worked as a bi -vocational pastor for years, and yeah, there were times where I just flat burned myself out.

And it's because of this very thing that we're talking about. I was not equipping other church members to do the work of service.

And that's on me, you know, as a pastor, thinking, yeah, I'm the pastor.

I need to do it. Nobody else is going to do it. But I neglected a very key part of pastoring a church, and that is equipping the saints.

Because that's what our job is to do as pastors.

And this is what, for folks, as we read through this, I hope that you're encouraged to encourage your pastor.

And maybe we have an episode where I did a whole episode, played like 40 different people encouraging, different ways to encourage their pastors.

So maybe you could go and check that out. So folks, just real quick, just want to let you know, if you found this helpful, if you want to share it with others, that would be a help.

Just got in, I only know these stats because there's a tool that sends me an email once a week to let me know where the podcasts rate on the charts.

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We don't want to give you, this is the last week you get to introduce your podcast. Don't worry, folks, because his co -host will be on with me coming up soon.

But let folks know where they can find more about you and your podcast. Yeah, our podcast is called the

Patriot Pastors Podcast, and it's myself along with a good friend of mine,

Harold Smith. And Andrew, he is the great podcaster, okay? I'm just a color analyst, but he's the talker of the two.

And he's very good, very wise pastor. But we have a podcast that just we talk about all sorts of things from government things to politics.

We also talk a lot about theology and the local church has two small local church pastors dealing with sometimes big problems, right?

And so we have a great time and we're thankful. This is our fourth year. This September is our fourth year of having the

Patriot Pastors Podcast, and we're glad to be partners with you in striving together the podcast

Christian community there. Yeah, and we're glad to have you. It's a great addition to the