Episode 97: Christian Fellowship

Rural Church Podcast 2.0

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Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom

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I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

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You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

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The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

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Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

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Jesus in a local, visible congregation. You know what time it is? Yeah, I know.

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It's about 9 o 'clock. No, no. It's December! It's December.

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Well, it's actually not December, but it's December when people are hearing this. But, yeah, for all practical purposes, this is my month,

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Eddie. Mine, too. I exist 11 months out of the year, and I live one month.

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Yeah, I love December. No, that's a terrible—I'm sorry. I just love December.

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Welcome to the Rural Church Podcast. Happy December. Merry Christmas. Oh, oh, oh.

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I don't know. Maybe that's too far. Yeah, that's a little too far. I'm Allen Nelson, one of the pastors of Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas, with me, my co -host,

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Eddie Ragsdale, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Marshall, Arkansas. Got any snow up there yet?

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No snow yet, but hopefully I'll be watching the first round of the NFR tonight.

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That's right. But currently, right now, it's like 70. We're still in November.

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That's right. We're about a month away from when the folks will be hearing this podcast.

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Global warming, dude. Yeah. You know, we had a really cool week.

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What was it, three weeks ago in October? In October. We had a really nice, cool week, and then it got hot, and now we've had some rain, and I keep thinking one of these cool fronts is going to come through, and we're going to get some good, cold weather, and it's not happening.

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And I don't like to hunt when it's hot, so I'm wanting it to cool off.

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Yeah. Yeah, me too. It will, though. I am confident in that.

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The Lord is kind to us. He knows what we need, and Arkansas is a strange state sometimes.

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Like the other day in Perry County, we had a tornado warning, a flood watch, and a burn ban.

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All in the same, like it was all at the same time, you know? Yeah. Like you can't burn anything, which who would want to be doing that, a tornado warning, and watch out, it may be flooding.

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Like, wait, what? You know? Yeah. So that's a crazy state to live in.

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But that's not what we're talking about today, brother. What we're talking about today, we're going to combine this a little bit, maybe make it a little bit

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Christmassy, if we can. I'm always looking for an opportunity to do that. What we want to talk about in this episode, cultivating fellowship.

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And how do you cultivate fellowship? And there's a little give and take here, because you can't really, you want to create opportunities for fellowship, but you can't really try as hard as you want.

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You can't really program fellowship. So let's work through that together.

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I love the fellowship of our church. But let's start first and foremost with this.

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Why don't you give me a definition of Christian fellowship? Well, I love the definition given by Dr.

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Don Whitney. So Dr. Whitney gives the definition of Christian fellowship as fellowship around God and the things of God.

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So it's not enough for Christians to simply be talking about, you know, what they're doing in their job or how the

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Razorbacks are doing. Those things aren't bad. We're not saying never have those discussions.

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We're not saying those are sinful or wrong. We are saying if that is as deep as your conversations ever go, you're not really enjoying

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Christian fellowship. You're enjoying the same kind of fellowship that any person in the world can have.

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For it to be Christian fellowship, the conversation has to turn to the Lord and the things of the

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Lord. So I'm differentiating between fellowship and Bible study. We're not talking about Bible study.

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We're talking about Christians just talking about what they're learning in maybe their private

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Bible reading, the things that they're praying for, the answers to prayer, maybe discussions of opportunities they've had to share the gospel with people.

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Those would all be instances of Christian fellowship or genuine needs that they're asking for one -on -one prayer or counsel.

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Those would all be instances of Christian fellowship. Speaking of the gospel, speaking of the hope of the gospel, speaking of I've been reading this book.

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So you talk about reading the Bible, but I've been reading this book about Christian truth, like all of these things.

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I'm afraid a lot of what is counted as Christian fellowship is not necessarily fellowship.

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It's just maybe glorified hanging out. So that's what we mean when we talk about fellowship.

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When you have a men's trip or whatever the case may be, it's good.

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Like go canoeing. We went canoeing this year. Oh, you were with us on that trip. And that's good.

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Canoeing is good. I'm not saying it's wrong. But it's not fellowship unless you gather around like we did and talk about the gospel, share the gospel.

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So there's a difference. It's like we're going shooting. Well, you can actually have fellowship in all these things.

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I'm thinking about men's activities right now, beer camp and all that. But you can have fellowship.

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And with women's events, you can have fellowship in these things. But the fact that you're having an event doesn't necessarily mean it's fellowship.

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Well, and let me mention something about even you mentioned the float trip.

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So we had some time where we sang a couple of hymns, and you preached the gospel there on the banks of the river.

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And that was great. I would say that's not even necessary for it to be

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Christian fellowship as long as while we're on the float trip, we're talking about God and things of God.

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Right, right. So John Bryan and I, that was the first time I'd met John. But it seems like I remember while we were floating, he and I, we had some discussion about some things in our churches and some things the

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Lord was doing. A brother that we brought with us on the trip, he and I had some discussion about some things in some different churches in the area and the things the

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Lord was doing. I would say that's Christian fellowship. Even while we were doing the activity of floating, we were in our boat, you know, going down the river.

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So I would say that is Christian fellowship. Whereas this last weekend, I was on a trail ride with some guys, and they weren't believers.

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Well, some of them may have been, but we weren't talking about God and the things of God. Well, it wasn't

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Christian fellowship. We weren't talking about God and the things of God. So it's not the activity that makes it be or not be

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Christian fellowship. It is what is at the heart of your connection.

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And it doesn't matter if you're riding a horse or floating the river or shooting guns or just sitting around a table drinking a cup of coffee, whether or not it's

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Christian fellowship depends on what are you really connecting around. And if you're really connecting around God and the things of God, the gospel, then it's

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Christian fellowship. You don't have to be teaching a lesson. You don't have to be preaching the gospel.

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I think that's good, important that you mentioned that. Those are good things. But they're not necessary for Christian fellowship.

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You're going to be talking about something. You're driving on the way to hunting. You're going shopping.

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You're eating. You're going to talk about something. That's right. You're not just sitting there in silence.

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But often our conversation is about, you know, and again, these aren't bad conversation.

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Politics, the Razorbacks, those are usually hard conversations. The deer you killed.

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All that. Those things aren't bad or wrong or sinful to talk about.

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But you're talking about fellowship is intentionally talking about Christ and talking about how the

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Lord is working and what he's doing and what he's done and what you're reading and how

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God's working. What was your family worship like? You know, we could use a thousand different examples, but that is what we mean by Christian fellowship.

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So that's a good section there of defining it. Now let's talk about, well, how do you cultivate?

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Yeah, I think number one, time. People have got to be together.

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You're talking about creating time. I'm saying creating time that is open -ended and that is free enough for Christian fellowship to grow.

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If you just try to say, okay, we're going to have fellowship from six to seven, you know, once a month.

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You can't schedule it like that. You have to have regular times when your people are together long enough that their conversation gets beyond trivial things to the things of God.

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And I'm going to say this. What we've learned in our church is the more of that we have, the quicker our people get into the godly conversations.

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Yeah. The more regularly they have the time together, then the more quickly that they look.

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We're together often enough that we're not spending 30 minutes talking about trivial things.

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We get right into the beneficial conversation. Because it doesn't turn into this situation where you only have seen this person once every three weeks.

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Right. How are your kids doing? You're seeing them all the time. When you're seeing them all the time, some of the things that you may have talked about, you kind of already know.

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Yeah. You know, another thing I want to say, maybe we'll just keep going back and forth with this, but I want to get on the theological aspect of it, and that is it's something that can be cultivated but not created.

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So creating fellowship in the church is the Holy Spirit's work. And some of our listeners, perhaps, and I've been in this situation before, but if you're in a church where, man, you're carrying maybe quite a few people are actually not regenerating.

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I mean, they're showing up to church. We talked about in the last episode, maybe they're serving in the nursery. They're doing things.

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Maybe they're a deacon. Maybe they're on staff. Maybe they're leading music, whatever the case may be. They're not converting.

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That's going to be a problem. Yeah. It's really hard to have Christian fellowship without Christians.

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That's right. By hard, I mean it's impossible. That's right. They're not going to want to talk about God and the things of God.

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Not for very long. That's not going to be an interesting discussion to them. Years ago, when

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I was pastoring my first church, I went to a lady's house. She was fixing to have surgery, and I just asked this kind of naively.

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I didn't expect it to go south, and it did, but I just said, so how's your walk with the

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Lord? She said, my what? I said, your walk with the

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Lord. How are things with you and God? It's fine. It was like, whoa.

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Hey, I was just fostering conversation. How's things been going?

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Would you say that to me, Eddie, that way? Well, hopefully, she was regenerate, but actually, maybe she wasn't regenerate.

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That's the problem. There has to be this. There's this creating time thing, and I want to go back to that.

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I do think that's important, but there's also this reality of you got to keep giving your people the gospel.

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You've got to show them what the church is. Because a lot of people, and some that are

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Christians, they don't even understand what the church is. It's just this thing. It's an important thing I go to once a week, but I don't really understand it.

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But church is not an event. It's not a I just go to church on Sunday.

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No, I'm part of the church, and the church assembles on Sunday. And so it's a complete mindset, a biblical rearranging of our thoughts and our affections.

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So the Holy Spirit has to bring those affections to our heart, a love for the people of God.

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And then we have to be taught to understand, okay, what is the church?

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So anything you want to say about that? Because I didn't want to go back to the time thing, but I also want to talk about how do you show a pastor?

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I just imagine a pastor listening to this or a church member listening and sort of just thinking, okay, so if I create a couple of spaces for fellowship, this is just automatically, it's just going to happen.

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Well, I just want to talk about the theological side of it, that God creates this.

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So go ahead. Well, I think the writer of Hebrews helps us. Okay. Because this is what the writer of Hebrews says.

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This is Hebrews chapter 10, and he's referring to the Christians in verse 19.

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He says, therefore, brothers, since we have this confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, in verse 23 through 25, and we all know verse 25 because it's the verse about not neglecting to meet together.

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But listen to what he says in this whole three verses.

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He's going to give us three let us statements. First, he says, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

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Our Christian fellowship has to start with a common confession. That's what you were getting at.

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You've got to have Christians. You've got to have believers. You've got to have believers who are like -minded enough that they can have the kinds of fruitful discussions that we're talking about.

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The second let us statement, it says in verse 24, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.

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Like our Christian fellowship, it does have a goal. It has a goal to stir us up to love and good works.

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It's not just mindless conversation.

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It's actually applicable conversation that's supposed to stir our hearts to I want to love my brothers and sisters in the church.

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I want to have a greater love for the lost. I want to have a greater love for the Lord, a love that is expressed in actual good things that we're going to do.

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I'm going to take the things that we're discussing and apply them in my actual life, and we ought to be stirring one another up to that.

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That's what he says. And then the third let us, he says, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near.

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I missed one of the let us's. Earlier in verse 22, he said, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.

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So I kind of messed that up. But my point being, I think this passage gives us a real understanding of how that we're going to cultivate this kind of fellowship.

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It starts with being genuine Christians and confessing the same hope, and then it continues to us actually stirring one another up.

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And in verse 25, the not neglecting to meet together, you've got to be meeting together.

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And we know he's talking about gathering together, but I think it's more than just the main church meeting.

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It means a desire to have real, you know, today people would say doing life together,

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I guess. But it's just the idea of being involved in one another's life, encouraging one another as we see the day drawing near.

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So you're saying fellowship does require at least some sort of food.

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Well, I think, well, actually, yes. I think if we're eating more meals together, it'd be better.

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But no, it doesn't always require. Well, what you just was talking about that we need a lot of lettuce.

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Let us. That's right. There's your dad joke. No, it's a good one. That's good.

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That's good, brother. I think we have a brother at our church, Steve Turnage. He says, you know, he has that phrase of your feet under one another's table, you know, and I think that's whether or not, you know,

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I don't necessarily like the life on life, you know, but I understand, you know, I get it. It's just because it's been misused.

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I don't think people really are using it well, but that is we should be. Our feet should be under one another's table.

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We should be in one another's homes. We should be eating meals together, spending time together.

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This is hard. It's kind of anti -cultural in some ways. We're so busy. We've got so much going on.

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You've got to actually schedule things as a family. You've got to say, hey, in two weeks on Thursday night, we're going to have this family over.

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You've got to do. Now, sometimes things can just come up spontaneous, but you've got to kind of think outside the box, you know, sometimes on those things.

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But I do want to go back to the space aspect of it. And you guys do this too. But one of the things is we try to have a meal every

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Sunday where we could just eat together and enjoy time together.

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So I think I want to be careful of this. Like you can event your church to death.

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Right. And especially so it's easy for us because we don't have all these different ministries, you know, like at least formally a children's ministry or youth ministry.

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Like we got some things we do sometimes, but we just don't have all these events scheduled all the time. And now there are some things our ladies do and our men do in that sort.

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But it's it. But so we do what I'm trying to argue here is you don't want to schedule people events to death, but it's also okay to schedule events.

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So for us, let me just talk about December. I ever told you I love December. No, I don't think you like it at all.

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It's your least favorite month. So here's some things we're doing in December, you know, besides just our normal kind of meals on Sundays, on Sunday night later in this month, we'll give up a

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Sunday evening service to go to a member's home. And in that member's home, they have a large shop.

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And in that shop, they'll actually be friends and family and other people that'll come unbelievers, but we will gather together and we'll eat our big

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Christmas meal together. And, uh, we'll, we'll probably play a couple of games. We'll sing some songs and we'll share a message, but, but we're just trying to try and take them an intentional time to say,

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Hey, come to this, be part of this. Let's let's have

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Christian fellowship together around the table, even opportunity to share the gospel around the table with, uh, with people.

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So that's, that's one thing that we do. Another thing that we do in December is we do we've done this.

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We've done this basically, I guess, for two years now, evangelistic

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Christmas caroling. And so that kind of, that kind of checks off a few boxes, but we gathered together a handful of us gathered together.

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I actually had pretty good group last year. I'd take a few vehicles in the church van, but we'll, we'll go door to door.

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We'll sing Christmas carols and we'll share the gospel, but, but you can build fellowship around that, you know, because as we're traveling to and from doors, we're talking, we're talking about the gospel together in front of the door where we're having those conversations.

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So, uh, and then on, um, and then one last thing on January that I'm just going to mention for this time of year, but on January 1st, which is a

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Wednesday night. So I'm really, I'm willing to do some creative things sometimes on Sunday night or Wednesday night to an extent you understand.

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So like more so on Wednesday night, like Sunday night, it's still the Lord's day. So you want to think through carefully, you know what we're doing, but, but on that Wednesday night we're having, uh,

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January 1st that Wednesday night, what we call it a fellowship game that we've done it every year.

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Well, not every year, but the last several years. And we'll play games together, but involved in those games together, we'll talk about the things of the

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Lord together. So I'm just talking about, especially this time of year, just cultivating some intentional time of getting together and having, like you said earlier, having the space, the time, the opportunity to actually have

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Christian fellowship. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I got it. We'll go ahead.

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Go ahead. Well, it just, it seems to me like this is a good time of year. I would really encourage, uh, churches.

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It this time of year when the days are shorter is, is actually a good time to cultivate fellowship because a lot of times people can't, you know, in the summertime, man, they got places to be till late because there's ball games and, and there'll be basketball and stuff like that too.

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But I've just found that you can, a lot of times, a lot of these kinds of events that you've said it's easier to get people maybe in December and January than it is in the spring or the summer.

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Well, and if you notice too, about a couple of these events, so by the way, evangelism, Christmas, Carolyn, that's also on a

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Wednesday. So some of these events are not, I don't mind scheduling outside like Saturday, Friday, Thursday, like we do those things too.

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But if you're saying, okay, we have to do Sunday morning. We have to do Sunday night.

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We have to do Wednesday night. Every one of those always and only can be preaching and singing.

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Like we should like Sunday. So for me, Sunday morning is our main gathering and that's non -negotiable.

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We have to do that. I don't care if it's, you know, whatever the case may be, we're doing it.

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Sunday night, a little more flexible than Sunday morning. So like we'll do an evangelistic letter writing where we have finger food potluck and we'll write letters to, we do this during Christmas time, write

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Christmas cards, explicitly sharing the gospel. We have the Christmas fellowship.

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Usually about one time a year on Thanksgiving, Sunday before Thanksgiving, we'll dismiss

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Sunday night service. That's just because we have a big Thanksgiving meal and we, uh, we want everyone to stay into the afternoon and not have to worry about going home and all that kind of stuff.

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Then Wednesday night, I'm even more flexible. Okay. Because Wednesday night is just a thing that is kind of a traditional thing that we've just done.

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And so I do think the majority of Wednesday night should be teaching from the scriptures.

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But like tonight I'm talking about in real time, not podcast times on podcast time.

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It's December, but in real time, this is the first Wednesday of November tonight. We have our annual church bonfire on a

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Wednesday night and we stand around the fire. We sing, we talk roast marshmallow hot dogs.

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We'll have a, someone sharing a devotion, but I'm just saying it's okay to to sometimes use your nights for the purpose.

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I'm not just saying, I'm not saying a bank, like for cultivating Christian fellowship, be strategic about that.

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It's okay to do things on other nights too, but I'm just saying, I'm, I'm okay with the argument that our families are busy.

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Right. You do have to make a decision, but it's okay sometimes to build in, in the times that people are used to already getting together to build in fellowship.

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Again, I'm not talking about like, Oh, we're canceling church so we can just do whatever.

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No, no, no. You're talking about intentionally focusing on building, cultivating godly,

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Christ -centered fellowship. Right. Yeah, that's, that's correct. And so I'll give an example.

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And this, this is an example where you and I are a whole different view because our, our church, we don't hold a

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Christian Sabbath view. So we wouldn't see Sunday as a Christian Sabbath in any sense, but we would see the

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Lord's day as the apostolic tradition in the new Testament. So I would,

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I would agree with what you said. We, we wouldn't, we wouldn't change our main meeting.

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We're going to meet for the, uh, for singing and for reading the scriptures and for teaching, uh, authoritative teaching from God's word and sharing and eating the

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Lord's supper every Lord's day that that's going to happen. But we don't have a

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Sunday evening service. We do have a home meeting that we do on Sunday evenings, but that's flexible because of our view of the

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Lord's day. So a couple of weeks ago, was it two weeks? Maybe it was last

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Sunday. No, it was two Sundays ago. Yeah. We, we had everybody over to our home on Sunday evening.

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Normally we do kind of what you just said, a bonfire. Well, we didn't do that because of the burn ban, but, uh, but we had everybody over, you know, we done a hayride, we cooked some food, lots of good

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Christian discussion was happening and we got to cultivate that time. Um, and it wasn't taking away from, it wasn't, it was not making people's regular life any more busy, but it was expanding our normal Lord's day

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Christian fellowship actually even longer because, um, everybody was over.

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So I think, I think we can do all kinds of things to expand our fellowship.

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And I think it does begin with whether you see the Lord Sunday as a Christian Sabbath or a

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Lord's day. I think if you're not first, uh, cultivating

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Christian fellowship on the Lord's day, it's going to be hard to be cultivating

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Christian fellowship beyond the Lord's day. It starts with cultivating it on the Lord's day. So I know you guys do, uh, meals and homes on the, on the

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Lord's day or, or sometimes. Yeah. Oh, and sometimes it's church. We normally do meals at church on the

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Lord's day and sometimes at homes. So, but, um, but in either case, uh,

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I think for us, what we found is that beginning with the

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Lord's day as a priority of, we want there to be Christian fellowship on the

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Lord's day. Like that's, that needs to happen. That's non -negotiable. And I would even say non -negotiable part of the fellowship, but just be clear, part of the fellowship is happening in the service, you know?

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Yes. Yeah. And as you're singing to you, like, so that's happening. And I would, I would just make a quick argument there.

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Like if the, if that's not happening, then you shouldn't look for fellowship happening anywhere else.

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Right. Agreed. Agreed. So, so, so we're both, I mean, we're just making arguments so people listen to us can understand, like you're not, you can't cultivate something that's not happening in your main gathering.

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Right. Yeah. Your main gathering. That's that's correct. Yeah. As a matter of fact, you know, I've, I've mentioned before that, you know, we have a time, we, we have a time when everyone in the congregation, even in our main gathering is welcome to share praise reports or prayer requests or evangelistic opportunities they've had that week or people, you know, that maybe they've shared the gospel with, and then they want us to pray for that's, we make that available because I want that to spur and stir up even more conversations, uh, godly conversations.

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So all of that should be in the Lord's day. And I think the more of that we have on the

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Lord's day, the more that's going to organically bring about Christian fellowship in our congregation throughout the rest of the week.

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Yeah. So a high view of the church, a, a, a constant revisiting of the gospel, a high view of the scriptures, like preaching and teaching regularly on these things.

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Like that's, that's the spiritual side that's necessary.

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That's going to create. And here's the thing. Like I genuinely love the people in my church. Like that's who

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I want to hang out with. What's funny is some of us have way different tastes. You know, we've got guys that are big into movies or comic book movies or Lord of the rings or, you know, and I'm into sports and, you know, it was just different.

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It was just like completely different taste in terms of the world. It was like, I want to hang out with these guys.

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I want to talk to them. I share the same biblical worldview with them. I want to,

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I want to, I want to know about how things are going with their, with their family worship and with their evangelistic opportunities and what

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God's showing them and all these things. And, and honestly, even this episode is an encouragement to me to, to be intentional.

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Sometimes it's hard because sometimes because of our sinful flesh, we'll navigate to this or that discussion or drift,

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I should say to this or that discussion is like, no, we should, we should be intentional. Ask questions, encourage one another in the

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Lord. You know, you mentioned that these are the people I want to be with. I meet with some other guys on Wednesday mornings.

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So you and I, we record this on Wednesday mornings and I meet with some guys a couple hours before we record this podcast usually.

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And one of the brothers has to leave about an hour before we record the podcast.

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So the other brother every week, I mean, I'm basically having to kick him out the door so that we can record this podcast because these days and last week we didn't record.

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So our listeners don't know that, but we didn't record last week. He stayed till 9

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AM. He was here for three hours and we just, we had some great

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Christian fellowship, just discussing things in the church and things in our families. It was, it was amazing.

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And it was funny because this morning with the, when the other brother who always has to leave left, he said, man,

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I can't stay as long as I normally do this morning. Well, he did. He said, I can't, but he did.

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So, and the only reason I mentioned that is nobody's forcing.

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It's not like, oh man, you got to clock in. You can't leave till no, we just want to be together.

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We love the Lord. We love one another. We want to be together. We find it.

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We find the same thing on the Lord's day. We find the same thing on Wednesday nights. You know, we, we just, there is,

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I heard some guys saying this on a podcast a month or so ago. There, there can be in Christian in the church, a ministry of lingering where we, we just want to, we want to be together.

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And I think that fellowship can happen in that time of lingering where we're just not rushing away from the meeting.

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So the last thing I wanted to talk about, and hopefully it's been a helpful episode.

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We've talked about theological practical, but, but the last thing I want to talk about really is like, okay, what's this doing?

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So what is, if you, if you miss out on this, this is not happening in your church, then you're missing this.

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So what is biblical Christian fellowship doing to a body?

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Well, I'm going to say a couple of things and let you throw in here too, but it's knitting our hearts together.

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It's growing us more and more in love with one another with, with the body, with the church.

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You know, a few years ago we talked, we, you know, we would talk about the church or whatever. And it'd been hard for me to say,

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I'm going to love the church. Like I love the church so much more in a few years, it would have been hard for me to say that, you know, just,

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I thought I already did love the church, but it's like, well, I love it even more, you know?

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And another thing it's doing is it's sanctifying us in grace. It's growing us. It's challenging us.

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It's not this competition, but when I hear of so -and -so and, and what the Lord's doing in his life, like, oh man,

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I need to be more given to prayer. I need to be more serious in my family worship. I need to be more evangelistic.

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It's a, it's a, it's an occur. The challenge is an encouragement. I need lifted up.

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Hey brother, you're going to make it. You're going to do it. It's okay. I need the encouragement. So it's, it's, it's sanctifying me.

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It's growing me more in love with my church. It's growing me more in love with Christ and his kingdom.

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It's emboldening me. I go out into the world and it's like, Hey, I'm not alone. I got my church family, you know?

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And I was kind of in a little bit of a social media dust up recently and won't have to get into that.

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But like, people were like, you're going to lose your influence. And I'm like, in my mind,

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I'm like, I pastor a small group of people outside the great metropolis of toad suck,

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Arkansas. That's who I care about. I does, you know, do

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I want to be involved in other things? Sure. What I love to speak into people's lives here or there or speak at a conference or, or, or write a book or, or write a blog and yeah, of course.

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So yeah, that's great. I'm just telling you, dude, what I, but my priority, my influence.

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I just love, I love Providence Baptist church. And so, uh, those are some things that fellowship is doing.

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And if you, and if you're not, if your church is not having Christian fellowship, then you're missing a means of grace.

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And you're missing the sanctifying blessing. Anything else like that?

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Like along that, like what is fellowship doing? Yeah. So this is going to echo a little bit of what you've said, but you know, the scripture tells us that we ought to grieve with those who grieve and rejoice with those who rejoice.

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And that sounds like a platitude if you don't have real relationship, but if you have real relationship, like people you really love and care about, then it's not a platitude.

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It's a, oh yeah. When they come in telling us about some great blessing the

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Lord has given them in their life, I can rejoice with them. When they come in telling us about some tragic hardship that's coming to the end of their life,

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I will grieve with them with genuine tears. What this fellowship is cultivating is the kind of genuine love and relationship that, like you said, knits our hearts together, causes us, as the

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Hebrew writer said, to stir one another up to love and good works. Amen. It brings about the real life of the body of Christ.

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If Christ is the head of the church, and he is, and we really are one body, then we've got to be connected.

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And the sinew that connects us is this love and Christian fellowship.

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That really is the bonds that God uses to draw us together. Yeah, so don't miss this.

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In some ways, this is underrated. We've got to have strong preaching. Amen. And I'd even start there.

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I'm putting preaching as a priority over fellowship because I believe strong, healthy, biblical preaching, that's number one, no doubt, because everything else is going to flow from that.

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So we think about preaching, and we want to make sure our worship is right and our membership is right, and all these things.

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And I'm even willing to say there's priority there, and all these things are good, but don't relegate fellowship to something meaningless or unimportant.

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It absolutely is a vital aspect of the Christian life. It's necessary.

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If you don't have this in your church, then you don't have a healthy church. And so it's important for you to consider and think through and pray about and seek opportunities to cultivate what you got.

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Anything else? Yeah, well, and not meaning to disagree, but I wouldn't even want to float that dichotomy.

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I think all the things that are necessary, singing, teaching, fellowship,

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I would say all of it is equally important because it's all what the

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Lord has given to His church. It's all a part of it.

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I don't even want people to hear me saying, if this part is really good, then it's okay if this part's not.

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No, no. The goal is to have this rich, biblical, godly church life.

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Yeah. So none of our churches are perfect, but I want the teaching, I want the singing,

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I want the reading of Scripture, I want the praying, I want our fellowshipping over God and the things of God, our eating the

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Lord's Supper as this genuine love feast. I think all of that is what the

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Bible's teaching is. You got to have it. You got to have it. I agree.

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So one analogy I would say is, like, which arm do you want, your right arm or your left arm?

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Yeah, you got to have them both. I want both. Yeah, that's right. But there's still priority. Okay, I want my right arm is more important in a sense.

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Because you're right -handed. Yeah, because I'm right -handed. But here's what I'm trying to say. I'm thinking of a pastor, and I was just thinking about where I've been in the past.

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And you've got so much on your plate. And it feels like a shotgun approach to focus on everything.

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So you're a new pastor or you're in an unhealthy church. I'm just saying in your priorities,

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I'm saying, first and foremost, fix your Sunday mornings. I'm saying, number one, like, what can

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I do tomorrow? Or let's say this coming Sunday, what can I do? Well, you need to make sure that you have a robust pulpit presence, that you're preaching the

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Word of God rightly, and that the worship is being conducted rightly.

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And I'm arguing that I think flowing out of that is going to be rich fellowship eventually.

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But what I'm saying is you can't just say, I've got all these things to focus on, and we're going to give up preaching, and I'm going to focus on fellowship, or whatever.

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Well, no, there is kind of an order in my mind of priority. But I am also agreeing with you.

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I don't want one arm. I need both. And that's what I'm trying to say. You don't have a healthy church without fellowship.

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Well, we've got a strong pulpit. So what? If you don't have fellowship, you're not a healthy church.

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So I'm just thinking about those guys and positions I've been in before, too. It's like you've got so many things.

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There's kind of an order here. There's a plan, an order. Go through it rightly without neglecting fellowship.

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Yeah, can't neglect fellowship. Right. Yeah. Okay, brother. Happy December.

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Have we talked about this December? I don't think we've mentioned that yet. You got your tree up?

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Yeah, I hope so. I can say I actually have my tree up. So in real time, not podcast time.

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By the time the podcast comes out, it's been up a month. It's been up almost a month. So go out and sing jingle bells or something today.

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Hey, give someone a gospel track and tell them about Christ. It's Christmas. God became man to seek and save his own, to save his people from their sins.

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It's the most wonderful time of year, Eddie. You should be happy. I am happy. We'll see you guys next week.

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If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

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God's doing. This is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poemos, the masterpiece of God.