Struggling with the Church | Theocast

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Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, we are talking about the struggle with the modern church.

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If you've walked in and you feel like it's plastic, it's cold, you feel disconnected, you look around and you feel like an alien.

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We want to talk about that and why we have those struggles. Stay tuned. A simple and easy way for you to help support

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Theocast each month is by shopping at Amazon through the Amazon Smile program. When you make a purchase through Amazon Smile, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to our ministry.

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To learn how to sign up, just go to theocast .org slash give. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ conversations about the

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Christian life from a reformed and I would dare say pastoral perspective. Today, your hosts are

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Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, and I am

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John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Justin, my friend, it is good to be with you this morning.

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We have a lot, including a really good book to give away today. We do have a good book to give away today.

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We like to be generous here at Theocast. Christ has given us his own righteousness, and so the least we can do is give people books.

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Amen. That includes how to know what Christ's righteousness is.

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And liberating books about the Christian life and the church and what those things might look like.

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So today we're excited to give away a book entitled Ordinary by our brother and dare

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I say even a friend of Theocast, Michael Horton. Yeah. Good on her. We need to have him on again. We do. And the subtitle of Dr.

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Horton's book, Ordinary, is Sustainable Faith in a Radical Restless World.

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It's a good book and a lot of good stuff contained therein. So again, we're pumped to give it away today. And as is always the case, we use our handy dandy software app called the

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Wheel of Names. What a name that is, the Wheel of Names. Every time I say it, I'm just like, is this really what it's called?

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And we input all of our members' names in there and out pops the winner.

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It's a lot. It takes a lot to spin that wheel. And we trust the Lord rules and reigns even over something called the

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Wheel of Names. And this week, the winner is Kevin Almeida.

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I've probably just butchered your name. It might be Kevin Almeida. Don't know. Could be either of those.

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Kevin, I trust you're going to know who you are and what I mean to say and you're going We're going to send you an email.

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Pronounce your name correctly. We'll send you an email and give some instructions on how to claim this free book giveaway.

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And then we will also be giving away another copy of Ordinary via social media. So today is Wednesday as this podcast is releasing.

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If you go to any of our social media platforms, that would be Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, you will see instructions about how to enter yourself into the fray for this additional giveaway book.

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And it includes, I think, like sharing the posts and tagging people and all of that stuff.

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The instructions are there for those of you who are social media types. Avail yourselves of that. And you might also win a copy of Ordinary by Michael Horton.

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And we will announce that winner tomorrow, which will be Thursday. If you want to just buy that book because it's the first time you're hearing about it and it is going to be related to our topic today, there'll be a link in our podcast description on our website and in your podcast.

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And if you use that link, then Theocast will receive a portion of that purchase.

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It goes to our ministry. So it's a way to support us and support

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Michael Horton, which we would totally recommend you to do. He writes a lot of good stuff. That's right.

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Well, Justin, today is a conversation that you and I seem to have almost every week.

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We are trying to shepherd people that are coming into our context in our church and help them,

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I would say, find out what does it look like to find not only rest in Christ, but truly rest within the community of Christ, which is the design of God.

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It says Jesus died for the church and Paul dedicated his life for the church.

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And I think the entire New Testament is focused and centered on what does the local New Testament church look like in a fallen, sinful world?

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How does the gospel go forward in our context and in the world? So what happens, though, is the same thing that's happened to Justin and I.

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Justin and I grew up in both very different backgrounds. I'm sure he'll reference it, but his was more of a liberal

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Baptist background. Mine was more of a fundamentalist background. And as we have grown in our theology and as pastors, we have been able to look at history and we are making assessments about the

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Christian life and church that are way off. And you move one percent off of a line and you start walking that line for many years.

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And before you know it, you're miles off the mark. And we are definitely miles off the mark.

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And what I wanted to do today and what Justin wanted to do is help you think through your feelings, your observations, your conclusions, and I would even say comparisons to Scripture and the local context of the church.

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And I know there's a broad range of churches that are out there, but I will say what we're talking about today has impacted almost every single denomination that's out there.

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And why we, one, wanted to recommend this book, but two, more importantly, have a conversation about what happened to the church and why

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I would say most people struggle with the church. And I'm going to make this observation upfront,

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Justin, why most books about the Christian life have nothing to say about the church or what they do have to say about the church is very foreign to something like Ephesians 4.

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So that's what we're going to talk about today is the struggle with the modern church, what we see, and hopefully put some words to your own thoughts about your feelings about the local church.

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So, Justin, I kind of just wanted to open it up there and say, let's talk about when we look at the modern church.

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I mean, don't hold back, my friend, what is wrong with this context? And how is it that we have got to this place?

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So let's start with what's wrong. Like when you walk into a modern, broader evangelical church, almost a Nivean denomination, describe it to me.

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Gosh, so many thoughts running around in my head right now, even just want to affirm everything you said and maybe state from the outset that one of the things that I aim to do as a pastor, second only to helping people understand their need for Christ, is to help people understand their need for the church and in one sense to help people understand how those two things go together, how we need

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Christ and we need each other. It's just not a common notion in our current church context, and there are a million reasons why books written today about the

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Christian life don't have the church in them. A lot of reasons for that, but one of the reasons for that is this conversation we're having today because so many people have had terrible experiences in the church.

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They are disenchanted with the church. They feel jaded and burned by the church and have never seen anything legitimate or anything that seems to have any merit in their entire life, in their experience of going to church.

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And so we want to unpack some of that today and have an honest conversation about some of our own experiences and hopefully, as you said, put words to the thoughts that many have had.

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So we'll just maybe ping pong this back and forth a little bit. I, like you said,

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I grew up in a more liberal environment theologically, but the culture of the church that I grew up in was still moralistic.

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And so it was this combination of an aversion to doctrine because all that does is divide and it binds us and it's bad.

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But then the emphasis was always just on you being a good person and doing the right stuff and not doing the bad stuff.

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And it was a very, very confused and difficult situation.

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Right. So I grew up thinking that Jesus was legit and knowing that that he was the real deal.

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And there was something about him that I couldn't walk away from, but everything else about the

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Christian life that I had been presented with and everything that I had ever seen in the church,

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I was like, man, this is whack. And I was incredibly disenchanted with the church as an institution and even

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Christianity as a religion in light of everything that I had seen. So, I mean, I'll just outline a little bit of what

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I saw. And like I said, man, we'll go back and forth here. I think for sure, one of the things that stands out for many people is the fact that the church feels and seems to be very superficial, that there is no real admission of real grievous, heinous, damnable sins.

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Or real struggles. Right. And we may get there in a minute. There's no place for the weak. But people seem to be very hesitant to admit the very dark things that go on in everybody's mind and heart.

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We know they're there, but you don't ever talk about them. You're happy to admit that you struggle with pride or whatever, or maybe that you worry a lot, but you're not really happy to talk about things that are much maybe darker and more sinister that are going on inside of you.

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And there seems to be alongside this, John, a lack of an awareness of sin at the same time.

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And so people seem to think that they're doing a lot better than they are. And so there's all this talk about all the things that we need to be doing and the things that we shouldn't be doing.

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And it's just almost full -blown works righteousness sometimes in terms of the way that it's presented. And you look around and everybody seems happy to listen to that kind of talk.

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And your conclusion is, well, I guess everybody else is crushing it. Because nobody seems disturbed by the fact that we're just being told things that we need to do and things that we need to refrain from doing, as though that's going to earn us righteousness before the

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Lord. And I guess all these people are doing well. But I know I'm not. And so then you're sitting there thinking, man,

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I must be the only unrighteous hypocrite of this whole bunch. And clearly this place isn't for me because apparently these people have it all together.

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They look put together. They're talking. They're saying the right stuff. They seem to understand themselves to just be doing well.

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And every time they pull the lever, it's trip sevens. And I'm just like, well, I'm over here floundering and struggling with my own conscience, and I've blown it countless times this week.

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And if this is Christianity, then either Christianity is a sham or it didn't work for me.

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And so then our conclusion is, I'm going to go elsewhere because the church has nothing for a sinner like me.

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Yeah, it can also become personality driven. So those who have an outgoing, energetic, bubbly personality seem to be the ones that are always the active good

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Christians. And those who would seem to be quiet, introspective, or even melancholy can be the ones who aren't the good

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Christians. And it's a divide. And I will tell you, this is true of not just one denomination.

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We're not even going to pick on a denomination because we're going to explain how this really has influenced a lot.

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It's just changed the way the structure and the purpose of the church is supposed to be. But you do, you walk into a context of a church and the conversations are not on a familiar level, like the way you would talk to your brother or sister or your wife.

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They are on a very superficial level. How was your day? How was your week? When there is a small group, the community groups tend to be really just social groups where you talk about social stuff.

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You're not talking about the real, the muck of the Christian life. And the prayer requests are like, well,

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I just feel like I need to pray more or I've been struggling with this or my pride or that or I need a new job.

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And what's really crushing you and what's going on in the depression, that is not allowed.

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And I had a man in my church recently who talked about expressing some serious issues in his life in a men's group.

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And they all looked at him like he was crazy or they'll just say, well, man, you know, you need to read your

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Bible more and you need to pray. And that's it. That's the solution. And so people don't share because if the response to everything is read your

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Bible and pray more, then why should I even tell you I'm struggling? I already know the answer you're going to give me.

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So I'm just not going to say anything. And that way I won't be judged and I won't feel guilty about my own struggles.

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Right. Yeah. What you're describing is a lack of legitimate community. There's a lot of language about community and you might even have groups that bear that name.

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But to your point, there's no real admission of weakness.

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There's no real confession of sin where we are legitimately bearing our souls and talking about what's really going on.

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We all just kind of speak in this very calculated language because, like you said, we have either experienced this in the past or we've seen it happen to other people where they do confess legitimate sin and legitimate struggle and they are shamed, judged or run out of town on a rail.

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And we leave that thinking, well, I'm never going to do that again. Or man, I saw what happened to that person.

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I'm never going to do that because it just did not go well. And in addition to that,

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I think that many of us have been in church context where we look around and we listen to what's being said and just the way the whole thing is presented to us.

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It's like this whole project is about constant improvement. This whole project is about onward and upward and we are always getting better.

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Everything is always exciting. Every Sunday is literally better than the one before. And we look at that and we're like, uh, that's not how my life works.

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We feel like, man, this feels like a lot of hot air and a lot of hype and a lot of sunshine is being pumped at me.

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But this just doesn't feel legitimate. It doesn't feel authentic. And the way that we can end up coming away from that too, aside from it just feeling fake, is because the presentation is one of we're always getting better.

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We're always improving. This triumph, you know, we are conquerors and we are triumphant.

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We are the people who are having victory over sin and struggle and weakness and the like, is we conclude that there is no place for the weak in the church.

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There's no place for the struggler in the church. There's no place, as I said a minute ago, for the miserable sinner.

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And so I think for many people, especially the ones who have more tender consciences, for people who have proclivities and bends in their frame where they struggle with melancholy, depression, anxiety, et cetera, people like that just end up feeling like there is no place for them because they cannot keep up.

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And the tender conscience in the room looks around and assesses what's going on and then looks within and assesses his or her own heart and mind and thinks, well, you know,

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I have never done anything that's legitimate or adequate. I've never loved

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God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. I've never loved my neighbor as myself. I've not done this as I should.

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I've failed to do that as I should. And so all of this improvement stuff and this constantly getting better stuff and this constantly getting victory, it's like, well,

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I'm a failure and I just don't fit here. Yeah, and then,

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I mean, another thought real quick is, you know, talking about a lack of authenticity and a lack of an ability to confess sin.

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I mean, I do think there are a lot of environments where people, not only have they been burned when they've confessed sin, they just received horrible counsel when they have confessed things in their lives.

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And I'm not even talking about like reductionistic, somewhat absurd stuff. It's like, well, you know, read the

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Bible and I'm sure it'll be better next week. Or whatever. I'm talking about like just legitimately like false stuff where they've brought some issue, you know, some deep issue of, you know, a struggle with sexuality or their,

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I don't know. I mean, a marriage is falling apart and the husband and wife go and seek counsel and they're just told ridiculous things by pastors.

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You know, well, this is what's going to fix your marriage. And, you know, they leave, or maybe in particular, one person in the marriage leaves thinking, well, that's the last time

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I'm ever going to trust a pastor after what I just heard. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, there is.

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The trust for the church definitely is not there. We understand that the

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Bible emphasizes the church, the church is good, but what we experience in the church is not what we feel is right.

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There's feeling is a dangerous word to say, but it's within your soul. You feel this dry, this cold distance, and yet you're yearning for this warm, compassionate connection to Christ in his body.

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When I was when I was first married, I started to sell this insurance and we would go to these conferences.

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And so we're at this conference in Texas and, you know, these people are making all this money and they're really talking to us about how we can make money.

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And, you know, I'm trying to just get through college and I'm just trying to sell this insurance on the side so I can make money.

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And man, they are hyping it up and it's like bumping music and we're jumping and we're clapping.

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And, you know, it's everything is high, high, high energy and a ton of emotion. And so you go walking out of there at the end of that conference and there's one conclusion that is on your mind.

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Like everyone around me is successful. Everyone around me is doing it. If I want to do it, it's up to me.

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And I walk out of there going, all right, if I try harder and I be better and I work longer, I can be like that.

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And that is what church feels like. It is high energy. It's pumping. And the pastor basically tells you all of these amazing stories.

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And at the end you go, all right, if I try harder this week, I can be like that. Yeah. Like it ultimately, at the end of the day, depends upon me.

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And that can be presented in a number of ways. It can be in this quasi prosperity way, but it also can be in this way where we're told that we need to be more disciplined and our lives will go better and we won't sin as much and all those things.

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And it's kind of like a smack on the backside and go out there and don't disappoint God, you know. And we leave ultimately discouraged because, again, we think, well, this clearly depends upon me, at least in some measure, and my life isn't going that well and I'm still struggling.

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So I must be messing this up and God is displeased with me. And so, yeah, we leave exhausted and not encouraged.

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A couple of other observations just really quickly from me. These are not related at all. So I'm going to do the best that I can here.

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Another thing that I think is hard for people is that whenever they have raised concerns in the church, those concerns have been met with pride, defensiveness, and condescension rather than humility, patience, grace, and charity.

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And that's sad, right? Because I know you and I, John, have had this conversation offline many times about how we will fail in this because we're sinners too, but one of our chief aims as pastors in our respective churches is to meet the concerns of our people and even critiques that are raised.

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Or when somebody comes to us and they've been hurt by us or whatever it is, to aim to meet that with humility and charity and grace and patience rather than being proud and defensive.

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And I think pride is only fueled, that flame of pride is only fanned and there's gas poured on that fire by a lot of the pietistic culture that exists in the church that tells you, you will be doing better if you are disciplined and if you apply yourself in these particular ways.

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And people think that their discipline and their devotion and their dedication is what has gotten them to where they are.

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And I don't want to impugn people's motivations, but I think they end up looking down upon others who are not doing as well as they are and are just unable to hear from people that may raise legitimate concerns before them.

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The last thing I want to say, Holmes, before we move forward in terms of struggles with the church, is this.

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When we go to services, it seems that the entire thing, or at least most of it, is aimed at the non -believer to try to bring the non -believer in.

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And what that means is that the gospel in particular, the way of salvation,

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Christ for you, that is almost exclusively preached to the non -Christian.

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And in order to get them to make that decision to trust in Christ, but then when it comes to the

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Christian life and the day -to -day and the week -to -week, once I am in, really all

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I'm getting is a bunch of instruction on how to live better, how to improve, five steps to this, here are things that you need to flee from, here are ways to be disciplined, and I end up being exhausted by that because I'm not actually given

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Jesus in the service. I am maybe at best in a situation where Jesus is assumed, like, yeah, we all believe the gospel, but we're going to talk about how you should live today.

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And so our experience of church is not one of rest, it's not one of being reminded that Christ is our righteousness, it's not one of being comforted in the

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Lord Jesus Christ and thereby being motivated to live out of love and joy and gratitude. It's really a culture that's driven by guilt and shame and fear and dread and judgment for the believer, and Christ is really only held out to somebody who has not yet believed.

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And then it's almost like nobody would ever say it this way. I mean, Stephen Furtick did recently. But a lot of people go to churches where it's kind of like, yeah, if you're a

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Christian, this church isn't for you. If you're a Christian, this church is for the non -believer, man. Like if you're in, we got nothing for you here.

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And it's like, in some ways, we might almost do people a service if we were just as honest as Stephen Furtick is in saying that this church elevation doesn't exist for the

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Christian. You know, this church just exists to bring people in because in many churches, that's how they function anyway.

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And the Christians are sitting there starving and are sitting there discouraged and dry because they're not being given

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Jesus, who is their life. And apart from him, they can do nothing. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called

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Faith vs. Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

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Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org

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slash primer. Well, the question then becomes, how did we get here?

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We're going to talk about what we think the biblical church looks like as part of what this podcast is about, thinking things from a

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Reformed perspective. And we will get there eventually, but we want to talk about how we got here.

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Sometimes it's helpful to understand and deconstruct and pull back the structure of a church or the structure of anything and ask, why was it built this way?

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And I would say the modern church is a patchwork of multi -theology that is not centered on a biblical theology.

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And so I think we're going to start with revivalism. We're definitely going to talk about the emergent church and even the influence, the massive influence of the purpose -driven church by Rick Warren.

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So something we reference a lot, but I think it's important for you to understand. Justin, let's talk about revivalism a little bit.

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It's a response to cold orthodoxy. You think that the church has lost its way.

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It's only concerned. They call it the frozen chosen, and the church is dying.

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And so you have men who want to revive, which is revivalism, revive the church, get them back excited.

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And so it is not based upon theology. It is not based upon doctrine, definitely not based upon the history of the church.

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And you have men who are coming in and they are going to preach passionate, fiery sermons to get people to repent.

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And from revivalism, you have all kinds of new things introduced into the church, which is event -based theology, meaning that revivalism wasn't happening inside churches.

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It was happening inside tent meetings. These were entertainment. It was happening outside the local gathering on the

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Lord's day. That's right. They would go from town to town. It's kind of where Billy Graham really got his wings is this idea of these massive events coming from town to town.

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And you have to understand during revivalism, there was no entertainment. There was no radio. There's no TV. So when you have someone publicly coming and speaking and it's in the center of town and you can hear it, you're going to be drawn into that.

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And this is where you start hearing about the anxious bench and the famous sawdust trail, if you don't know what that means.

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Yeah, I think concerns with revivalism are several. I mean, you've mentioned some of them. One is the relocation of really the ministry of the word.

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It's removed from the corporate gathering on the Lord's day and it's taken outside of the regular assembly and in a field or a tent meeting or something like that is where that occurs.

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There is a huge emphasis on conversion, making a decision for Christ. Not that that's a bad thing to desire, but there is perhaps an off -centered emphasis in any means necessary to get those professions of faith and to see conversion happen.

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That's what we want to do. And then in addition to that, there's a huge emphasis on moral transformation because there's always a concern with lax and apathetic living and lawlessness that is a piece of revivalism.

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And so as you look back through the history of the church, the first and second great awakening are both revivalistic movements.

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Now, the first one was better than the second in terms of the theology that was being preached. George Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards are preaching better doctrine in terms of even the gospel and how people are saved than many in the second great awakening were.

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Charles Finney and others. I mean, that's where the new methods and all kinds of things were introduced into the church.

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Like you mentioned, the anxious bench and the altar call and all of these kinds of things came about in the early to middle part of the 1800s as a result of that movement.

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So it was worse than the first great awakening for sure theologically, but the whole project we would say, and this sounds scandalous to say, the whole project of revivalism in our minds, from our perspective, and this is again, thinking about scripture and thinking about the history of the church and the like, the whole project was skewed and off where what we would be contending for is the

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Lord brings revival. He's the one who does that. And he's going to do it through the means that he has given us, and he's going to do it through the ordinary means of grace that are a piece of the corporate reality of the gathered church on the

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Lord's day. When we gather for the preaching of the word, the administration of the sacraments for prayer and for song, and we trust him to do his work there rather than kind of using these other more extraordinary measures to bring about what we say is a work of God.

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Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it was performance -based theology. They were going after moral transformation.

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They were preaching against all kinds of things, gambling. They were preaching against drinking.

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Yeah. Alcoholism. Right. And so they were trying to shut down bars. They're trying to shut down pool houses. And you know, there's a massive movement.

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You have men like Charles Finney, who basically said, I could convince pretty much an entire room to come to be converted to Christ.

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Just give me enough time. He was a great salesmanship and a lawyer. He was a fiery preacher, but his theology is so terrible that he would say that every time a

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Christian sins, he or she needs to be reconverted. I mean, this is how you preach fire and brimstone messages.

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It's not hard. I mean, if you're dealing with people who are legitimately converted, if you're dealing with regenerate people who are aware of their sin, it is not hard to convince them they're sinners.

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But then when you tell them that every time you sin, you basically are now unsaved again, and what you need to do is come forward to the front.

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I mean, I think people were hearing this. It's like, okay, well, this is where a lot of this mess of not only coming forward for the altar call to profess faith, but this whole rededication of life and all this stuff, this is where it comes from.

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Right. Absolutely. So you have a deemphasizing doctrine, creeds, and confession.

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These men were not trying to promote a theology based on church history that had been faithfully handed down to them.

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They were emphasizing, which we were, you know, the heart of it behind it. I'm thankful they're emphasizing evangelism and preaching the gospel.

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But just because someone has good intentions doesn't mean their actions and the way they fulfilled it is correct.

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And I think a lot of the assessment of the men who were doing revivalistic preaching, they were assessing the local churches and what happened to the kind of the dead orthodoxy.

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And a lot of that, Justin, I would say, they too lost their way. And this is part of being a sinner, and this is why there's so much warning in the

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New Testament about who should be elders and who should be teachers and Paul's warning against those who are shepherding.

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But the response had such a ripple effect. I mean, the wave of this has influenced church history hugely.

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Millions and millions of churches and Christians around the world have been influenced by this revivalistic movement.

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So we're going to move forward a little bit. Revivalism starts to take shift and change where you're starting to see a deemphasizing of doctrine.

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Even theological schools are dying because men are not seeing the necessity of being well -trained in church history and in the languages and in doctrine.

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And all of a sudden, men who are performing well and know how to articulate themselves well or are high energy,

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I would even say good salesmen, you start to see the shift. And where the shift, I think, in the 90s explodes is in the emergent church, which for a while it was really hard to even pin down what does the emergent church even mean?

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Yeah, it's kind of a big tent. Right. But Rob Bell is really big in this. You have Mark Driscoll coming out of it.

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But understanding this is the emergent church was dealing basically with postmodernism and what they are trying to fight against and what they are really pushing back against is resonating with people in the early 90s, in the 2000s, where you had cold, hard facts, and that was cold and distant from our culture.

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They wanted something that was more warm and inviting. Subjectivity versus objectivity or spirituality over religion.

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I can remember that. I don't want a religion. I want a relationship. And it's images versus word or outward versus inward, feeling versus truth.

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I mean, you can kind of go on, but this is what the emergent church really drew in, this younger crowd, and it changed the atonement.

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They created these massive communities, these people who were excited. Churches exploded.

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But as Justin had said, the entire experience came more about how do we draw in a bigger crowd and how do we draw it in and be relevant to the culture?

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And it became all about relevancy. It did not become about faithfulness to the word of God, allowing the word of God to convict people of sin, leading to the hope of Christ in the gospel.

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It became more about how do we help people have an experience of God? And the experience became the primary driver of what church looked like.

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One other piece of this, in terms of how did we get here, I'm going to use a few words and define them.

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The current church context and the things that we're describing today are in part a result of triumphalism, and that, again, is a way to describe this onward and upward, always improving dynamic.

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The current church context is a result of pietism, which is a hyper focus on how we are doing, on our affections for God, on our disciplines, our obedience, and our performance.

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So it's this very inward, very introspective posture that has certainly characterized the church.

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So you combine that with a triumphalistic perspective of you're always needing to get better, and then you're hyper introspective and always assessing you and your affections and your disciplines and your obedience.

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That's a big piece of how we've gotten to where we are. And then, in addition to that, all of this, the triumphalistic stuff and the pietistic stuff, is a part of a larger theology of glory.

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Again, it's that we're strong, we're getting better, we're getting victory, and all of that, versus what has historically been understood as a theology of the cross that says that we are, in fact, weak still.

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Yes, Christ is strong, but we are not. We are weak, we are needy, and that is where the grace and mercy of Christ is made manifest and obvious as He meets us in our need and our weakness.

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And that right now, not only will we be weak, we will suffer, but there is a glory that awaits us.

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That kind of theology has just gone by the wayside in most churches today, which is what has resulted in something that we were describing earlier, where there's just no place for the struggler, there's no place for the weak, there's no place, dare we say it, even for the sinner.

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Certainly not the miserable sinner, as Augustine would have called us. Augustine was lambasted for propagating what many called a miserable sinner version of Christianity.

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And it's like, well, I mean, if we're going to be lumped in with him, I guess guilty is charged to say that, yeah, we are miserable sinners and Christ is our only hope, but that's not what's been heralded to many of us in our church experience, and it's left many of us jaded and disenchanted and feeling like the church just clearly is not for us.

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That's right. To Justin's point, he just introduced you, if you're new to Theocasta, two really important subjects that we cover a lot in our description in our podcast.

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There'll be links to a podcast for both of those. We did one on the theology of the cross, theology of glory and triumphalism.

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One of the things I do want to mention and the impact of it, I grew up about an hour away from this church.

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So the Saddleback, Rick Warren, he wrote a book in the mid nineties called The Purpose Driven Church, which is based off The Purpose Driven Life.

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And I don't know if people understand the influence and impact of that book, but that book is listed in the top 100

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Christian books that have changed the century, and really in many ways, people understand the church in general shifted because of what he wrote.

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And if you read the book about what is the purpose of the church, this is the thing that we are battling today in more ways than I've ever seen.

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Justin and I, we used to shake our heads constantly when we're thinking about all of the purpose of what is the purpose of the church.

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And you can think about it as social justice or it's race or it's dealing with gender equality.

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I mean, there's so much that is driven. And so when you think about what did Jesus hand us as our primary focus, what drives us, our purpose, and you look at the history of what the church has been driving from revivalism to the emerging church to the purpose driven church, you are not handed what we are going to argue is what the

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Reformed tradition has been holding to and what we think is the accurate explanation of Scripture, which is where we're going to go now, of the explanation of this is what the purpose of the church is and the design of the church and what church should feel.

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And this is what you should experience in a church. So in short, the church is about Jesus and the people who need him.

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And so the church obviously is centered around, built upon Jesus Christ and what he has done for us.

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He's the cornerstone, right? He's the stone off of which every other stone is oriented in terms of the building of the household of God.

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And he is the one who bears the weight, right? Like he is the one who has accomplished everything that we need. And so we begin with Christ.

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We emphasize what he has done for us that we receive by faith. This work of Christ stands outside of us.

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It's extra nos, right? And we're always looking to him for our righteousness and for our forgiveness and our absolution.

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We are absolved of guilt because of what Jesus has done. So we herald that message. And alongside that, we say, not only do we need

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Christ, it's very clear in the New Testament that we need each other. And the way that Christ has instituted the church and designed the church is one, it's a design where we together, as we have all been united to Christ and then are united to each other thereby, we live life together with our various gifts and we together build one another up in love unto maturity in Christ.

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And that's going to happen in a corporate setting, not when we're by ourselves.

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That's going to happen when we're with the saints, not when we're alone. And we will grow together or not at all.

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That's very obvious in the letters of the New Testament. And so part of this conversation,

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John, I'm not quite sure where you want to go first, but one of the things that we emphasize regularly is the gathered church.

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Because we need to understand that the New Testament epistles are all written to congregations or they are written to pastors with the congregation in view, a la 1st, 2nd

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Timothy and Titus, right? And thereby the exhortations in the New Testament, I mean, practically all of them are corporate in nature.

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The use in the New Testament are plural and the exhortations are to people, groups of Christians who are living life together.

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And we sadly often just kind of rip those from their context and assume that they're all individual exhortations, but they're not.

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So the church gathered is a reality that the New Testament upholds all the time. And so the exhortations about the word of God or about the sacraments or about prayer or singing or any of that are to take place within the context of the gathered body when we're assembled.

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And that's what the Reformed have always historically referred to as the ordinary means of grace. So the way that we're grown in the faith primarily is by gathering with each other and then partaking of these means of the word and the

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Lord's table, baptism, prayer and the like. And God uses that over the course of a lifetime to do things that we could never have imagined that he would do in our lives.

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Right. I want to mention several verses that I think are not emphasized. You're not going to hear a lot of sermons on these.

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These are not verses people memorize, but these are what I would call verses that the

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New Testament writers used to structure what life looks like after conversion.

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Like when you are adopted into the family, what does family life look like in the house of God? I can tell you what family life looks like in the house of Moffat.

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And we have ways in which we function and we gather and how we care for each other. My family, we don't live independent of each other.

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It's not like we pass each other in the hall and say, how's your day going? That's not how we work in the Moffat house. And in God's house, he's very clear in what he wants.

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And this is why I feel so I'm not angry at the modern church. I'm not mad at the church.

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What I want to say is my heart is broken because what God has given us, we've seen to abandon.

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And so many people are drowning in their own despair. And they're so lonely and they're so exhausted by sin.

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So listen to some of these instructions that God gives the writers of the New Testament to help us understand.

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And I'll leave Ephesians for the end, Justin, because I know that you and I are going to probably want to bounce off of that. We're probably going to have to even leave

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Ephesians 4 for the members podcast because we're running out of time here. But listen to these. We'll just start with even

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James. When James says, confess your sins to one another, that is not something the local church.

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I mention this every Sunday from my pulpit. I say, listen, we want to take the word of God serious. And James says to confess our sins to one another.

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Why wouldn't we do that? Because what's the fastest way to create equality within a group of humans?

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Have everybody admit that they have all failed. That's immediate equality. I don't care what gender you are.

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I don't care what race you are. I don't care what income you have. If you're an equal end of God's grace.

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And how do we know that? Because we confess our failures. But here's another thing. We do not see dependence on the local church.

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We see dependence on our efforts and ourselves. But listen how the writer of Hebrews says this. For instance, he says, obey your leaders and submit to them for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will give an account to them.

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Sorry, to this with joy and not with groaning. For that would be of no advantage to you. Justin, we don't hear this explained, preached and really put out there as a protection and a place of rest saying, hey, listen, rightly trained elders and selected elders are there for your benefit.

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No, we're staying in the book of Hebrews because I know we're going to save Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 10, 19 and following.

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I'm not going to read all of it. But the writer says that because of Christ and the access we have to God and the confidence that we have before God because of what

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Jesus has done, he says, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

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That text, those few verses are just dripping with corporate language. Let us consider how we can stir one another up to love and good works.

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Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope because God's faithful, all those things, and then let's not neglect to meet together.

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Let's assemble, right? Justin Perdue to that point earlier in chapter three, verse 13, but exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

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No, amen. There are so many other passages that we could go to. We're running a little bit short on time.

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The last comment that I might want to make, or that I do want to make, that was an absurd way to say it, before we move over to the members portion of the podcast, is that as we, in the context of the church, in the context of legitimate community, as the gospel is preached and heralded faithfully week after week after week after week, and we all understand who

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Christ is for us and what he did for us, what that produces, this is to your point about the confession of sin, it produces a culture in the church where honesty is the order of the day, and where we are confessing our failures and our shortcomings, and it's actually safe to talk about the things that are really going on in our minds and hearts because nobody's going to be shocked.

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We have a robust enough understanding of sin that we understand that we all do things and think things and desire things that are evil, and we understand that our own performance is not where our standing before the

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Lord lies, so we can encourage each other in the faithfulness of God to us in Christ, and so the gospel creates this kind of authentic community where these things are taking place.

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I think that's what all of us are starving for, and I know that by the Lord's grace,

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John, that's what you and I, along with our other elders in our churches and our people, we together are aiming to see those kinds of things happen at grace reformed church and at covenant

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Baptist church, and we pray that they will and will continue to. Well, I have a lot more to say.

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We're running out of time. 45 minutes, we've hit it, so let's go ahead and move over to our members podcast, which will be changing very soon.

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Stay tuned for that. We have a whole new ministry coming out, which will allow you to take this conversation that Justin and I just had and gather with other listeners and discuss all of your questions and encourage one another locally and online, so stay tuned for Semper Reformanda.

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It's coming your way. We're excited to launch that and a new app with it. I know, but I'll throw that out there.

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Here it comes. It's throwing all kinds of stuff. Yeah, but we do need to have a further conversation on what does it look like?

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What does the local church look like? And so we're going to need to do that. If you want to know more about that, you can go to theocast .org, and you can learn more about, one, how to support

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Theocast, but two, join in on this conversation that we're having about continuing the Reformation, helping the church go back to its roots, focusing in on Christ and each other, and we'll see you over there.