Episode 67: Canceling Church

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. It's a snow day, Eddie. It is.

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How much snow did you get in Marshall? Man, Marshall got like seven and a half inches.

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Are you serious? At our house, it was quite a bit less than that. I think we probably got three inches.

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But, yeah, he got seven and a half inches. One of my deacons, he's really into weather, and follows it and tracks it and all that.

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But he's kind of our official church weatherman. Actually, he and another guy in our community have a page where they keep up with Searcy County, Van Buren County weather all the time.

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And so I know at his house, he measured like seven and a half inches. And I know that the other day, one of the local television channels said that Marshall had seven and a half inches.

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That's pretty impressive. I don't know where you might be listening to this podcast from, but for Arkansas, that's a lot of snow.

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We probably had like two and a half inches in our neck of the woods. But it was enough to shut down school.

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School was canceled Tuesday, Wednesday, and tomorrow,

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Thursday. Significant enough to cancel that. Welcome to the Rural Church Podcast.

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That little introduction does have something to do with today's episode. I'm Alan Nelson, pastor of Providence Baptist Church, one of the pastors of Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas.

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And with me, Eddie Ragsdale, pastor of First Baptist Church of Marshall. Today, we're going to talk about canceling church.

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Yeah, providential hindrances. What constitutes an actual providential hindrance? So that kind of came up today because Eddie's Wednesday night meeting has been canceled tonight.

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Our Wednesday night meeting is on tonight, with a little bit of caveats there.

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But why don't you talk about... So we'll get to Sundays here in a minute. And I think

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I have some theological things I want to say about that, and I'm sure you do too. But why don't we just talk about first, as a pastor, what went into the process?

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And then, like, who did you talk? Because you and I probably talked with different people. My main discussion was with our other pastor.

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But walk through your process of dismissing tonight. I would love to have another pastor to have talked about it with.

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That would be great. Yeah, actually, what happened with us, as far as tonight is concerned, and I expressed this to you before we started recording, and like you said, we'll talk about the

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Lord's Day in a moment. I do feel like midweek meetings are more optional. Those are something that we are choosing to do as a local church.

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There's no command in Scripture for a Wednesday meeting or a Thursday meeting. And so we can choose more easily to cancel those.

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As a matter of fact, I would say a church can choose for any reason. A church could say, hey, this

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Wednesday is supposed to be gorgeous, and we've all got other plans, and we're not going to meet this

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Wednesday. And I would say I don't think that I can biblically reprimand a church for not having a

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Wednesday meeting, even if a church chose to never have a Wednesday meeting. I don't think that we could say that they were sinning by not having a

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Wednesday meeting. That being the case, I was just kind of figuring that we wouldn't have church just because of the travel issues that we've already been having.

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Today's the first day that we've really, I've really ventured away from, you know, just right there at my house since getting home from our meeting on Sunday.

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So I just assumed that. Well, then a couple of people in our church, it seemed like they thought we were meeting, so we sent out a text to several folks, some of the main ones that come on Wednesday nights, and just ask if anybody was planning on coming.

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Only a couple of families said that they for sure would be here. Kind of everybody else was like, maybe, probably not, you know, kind of thing.

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And with the outroads being bad, you know,

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Highway 65 is good, but the smaller roads are bad. And in our situation, we're kind of a regional church.

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Several people live pretty far away, which I know you guys have got some folks, you guys have got folks that live as far away as Conway, I know from your church.

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But a lot of our church folks live pretty far away, and they live in even more rural areas than Marshall is.

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And so county roads and country roads and places that just aren't cleared yet.

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And so we just thought it'd be best to go ahead and we'll forego tonight's meeting. Hopefully that'll create an even greater hunger to gather on the

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Lord's Day. Yeah, so for us, you know, the schools are canceled. So we decided just in wisdom, really, to just dismiss our van route.

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And we just thought, you know, I mean, we don't want to run into a situation where something were to happen. I think, honestly, most of the roads in town are fine to run our van route on.

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But it's just one of those things that doesn't happen very often. So we just as an exercise of caution, but we are we are going to meet.

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And I agree with what you're saying. You know, I would find it very sad if our church didn't have a midweek meeting.

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I don't think a church has to have a midweek meeting. There are reasons why a church may not have one.

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But boy, if you're only able to gather from Sunday to Sunday as a body, that that's from my perspective, sad.

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You know, I'm not I'm not judging a church or whatever. I'm just saying I would I'd want to be around the people more.

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Of course, we're small and our church really loves to be together. You know, and I know that's true with you guys, too.

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But so so so do you have to have any kind of like approval or something like Utah?

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I mean, I did talk to the deacon that I was mentioning. That's that's up on the weather.

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I talked to him, you know, got his opinion on what's going to happen. Really, one of the other issues

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I didn't mention is our parking lot. Yeah, that's an issue. Yeah. Our parking lot is is pretty slick.

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It's actually a lot slicker than the road. And normally we would have had it bladed off and I should have had it bladed off before today.

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We've got a young man who usually does that for us. And he actually asked us the other day if we want it done.

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And I told him to hold off and hopefully he's going to get it done in the next day or two because we want it to dry and not be slick for the

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Lord's Day. So I wish I'd just had him do it. So that was another factor that went in not meeting tonight because we weren't going to have it where it wouldn't be slick tonight.

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And we didn't want anybody to fall or something like that. Yeah. But once again, I did talk to this deacon, but honestly, my folks kind of just leave it up to me.

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Yeah. Yeah. And that's your decision. And we canceled kids classes that way.

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Like we didn't want to feel anyone feel like obligated to come tonight. And there are some that are just like, look, we're we're just staying in.

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We're not getting out. And I know some people. It's funny, our resident Canadian here is giving us a hard time because I understand that for some people, this is not a big deal.

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And it really shouldn't be a big deal. But we're a lot more used to 100 degree days than we are single digit days.

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Right. You know, the brother, one of the brothers in our church that was he just assumed we would have church.

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He didn't even think anything about it. Well, he's lived for the last, you know, many years, couple of decades.

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He's mostly been in areas like Utah and Wyoming. And he's like,

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I just drive on it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know what you're talking about? Well, let's let's let's pick up the pace a little bit, because, you know,

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OK, Wednesday night is one thing. It's not required. I think we should be meeting, you know, more regularly as we're able to agree.

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But it's a little it's a little easier to dismiss. And we've dismissed for other things as well.

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And so it just happens. But when we come to Sunday and you've already mentioned this phrase a few different times, we call that the

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Lord's Day or in some traditions, our tradition here at Providence, the Christian Sabbath.

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And some people don't like that term, but I'm going to read to you from our confession, the 1689.

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It is the law. This is paragraph seven of the 1689 chapter 22.

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It is the law of nature that in general, a portion of time specified by God should be set apart for the worship of God.

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So by his word. In a positive, moral and perpetual commandment that obligates everyone in every way age, he is specifically appointed one day in seven for a

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Sabbath to be kept holy to him. From the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, the appointed day was the last day of the week.

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After the resurrection of Christ, it was changed to the first day of the week, which is called the Lord's Day.

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This day is to be kept to the end of the age as the Christian Sabbath. Since the observance of the last day of the week has been abolished.

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Now we could we could do a whole episode on that. Maybe maybe we will at some point. I just want to say.

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That it is in our Baptist DNA to treat Sunday as different.

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Now, there were historically what is known as Seventh Day Baptists. And from what

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I understand, they were very simple. They weren't like Seventh Day Adventists. They were they were very similar to what we were, except they observed the

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Seventh Day Sabbath, which we we would argue is in error. But I would say that.

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I think it's really more of a new position to consider Sunday as not required for the church together.

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So I'm arguing. So we're going in this conversation. I'm arguing from the perspective that the church is required by God to meet on the

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Lord's Day. Now, there's some liberty there. And maybe how often, how long?

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I mean, I'm not by how often. I mean, it should be every Lord's Day.

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It should be every Sunday. But I mean, are you going to meet twice a day, three times a day, one time that day? Are you going to meet at nine o 'clock?

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Are you going to meet at eleven o 'clock? Is your service going to run from nine to one? Is it going to run from ten to eleven thirty?

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You know, of all the things that need to be done in the service, be really hard to have a service under an hour, you know.

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But but anyway, so I'm just kind of trying to give some theological underpinning here that we don't treat

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Sunday and Wednesday the same. We see. And even if we have some differences, some subtle differences there, your guy's statement of faith, you know, the

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Baptist faith, the message to that. Oh, wait, wait. Y 'all do the abstract. Abstract. So the abstract is similar to this, right?

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Yeah. It's still because of the Lord's Day, I think. And I would hope we don't have time today to deal with the distinction in the.

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I wouldn't hold to a Christian Sabbath view, but I would still hold to that the Lord's Day is required of the new the new covenant church meets on the

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Lord's Day. Like I don't think that's an option. Yeah, I don't think I think that we're required to not.

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I would just distinguish a little difference in terms of how we think about the the

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Sabbath commands. But I would still say that I don't think the church gets to just pick and choose if they want to meet on Sunday or not.

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The Lord's Day is the Lord's Day. It belongs to. Not long ago in Arkansas, there was a church.

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I think I can say it now because so I think it's gone by the wayside, but it was called Outdoor Church. And they they met on Tuesdays because the weekends were for hunting.

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Yeah. And I think there's a lot of cowboy churches that have taken those those kinds of liberties, they would say.

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I would and I would say there in many things, there's Christian liberty, but there's not

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Christian liberty in that. There's not any Christian liberty that any more than if I was just going to say, hey, I think I'm gonna take another wife.

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You know, I agree. I agree. There's no liberty in that. You know, so so we're in the same, you know, and maybe one day it'd be good to have an episode, you know, some distinctions between the

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Lord's Day and the Christian Sabbath. I would probably assume that you and I are a lot closer than than than maybe, you know, it even sounds.

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But I think I think our practice, our practice is going to be identical. Yeah. Yeah. I just see the moral law continuing, you know, the

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Ten Commandments. And so I do believe that Jesus has fulfilled the fourth commandment, but I believe he's fulfilled all the commandments.

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And so anyway, I think there is still moral. There is still a moral application of the fourth commandment to the

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Christian. That is more than just resting in Christ, although that's true, but also, you know, observing this day.

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But anyway, the point is. When we cancel on Sunday and there may be legitimate reasons to cancel.

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We have to take this into consideration. And it should be pretty. It should be a serious thing.

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That's right. For the church to make the decision. We're not going to meet on the Lord's Day. Should be pretty serious.

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And let's just we can state this. We're four years out now, 2024.

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I think we all look back. I've heard you talk about feeling the need to repent.

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I feel like when it comes to the situation with covid. A lot of us made decisions based on what we knew at the time.

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But I wouldn't make the same decisions today. I have no certainly would not have let us go as long as we did not meeting, although.

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Compared to a lot of churches, we didn't go nearly as long not meeting. But I think that we ought to have taken we hadn't been challenged in that way.

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Yeah. Yeah. And I have no problem with the church that closed during covid. The problem

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I do have is for churches that closed during covid and now just want everyone to forget about it.

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Right. You know, if you close during covid like for us, we closed for. I think like eight or 10 weeks.

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Like more probably more like 10 weeks from like mid -March until June 1st. So was that all of April, all of May, half of March.

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So that's, you know, roughly 10, 11 weeks. And but that was too long, you know, and we've gone back and I've tried to own that.

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And I think we do we do need to own that. So it's one thing we make a mistake. That's one thing that's like not owning that, you know, needing to repent.

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So but I'll give you a real practical example. We canceled church Sunday night. And the reason is because it was kind of the decision we just made at the at at church a little bit early.

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Maybe like we didn't make it when stuff was coming down. We made it at church that morning. By all indication, this is the information we have.

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And the idea is why. OK, so why cancel? Why not just let everyone use their own judgment?

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And that's that is maybe. A way you could handle it in some situations, but with this, you shouldn't want people to come and then be trapped, you know, and and and sure enough, we did have, you know, when it's actively falling in the in the weather is as cold as it was.

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I think it's probably in the either upper teens or lower 20s Sunday. You're just you're just creating a recipe, you know, for disaster.

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And I saw and you and I talked about like there were churches that were canceling even

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Sunday morning. Like I would have had like I had a hard time. So here's how to handle if I really thought that the church was going to be in danger

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Sunday morning. I probably would have handled it this way. I would say, look, stuff's supposed to come in at 1230.

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Here's what we're going to do. We're not doing Sunday school. We're backing up our service instead of 1030.

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We're backing it up to 10 and we're still going to meet, you know, because I think it's that important.

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Yes, I think that it's not just a good thing for us together, although it is.

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I think it's a commanded thing. I think God requires his churches to meet.

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And so, you know, for us, again, the policy for us was just me and our other elder,

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Pastor Jacob, were able to talk. We were watching it for days ahead, you know, and discussing and we but we waited till, you know, we felt like it was we didn't want to make it.

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You never make a call of winter weather like three days ahead. I mean, so we waited till it was the right time.

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And then we made that decision. Sunday night was a little bit easier for us because we'd already are already gathered.

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Again, I don't think the Bible requires us to meet multiple times on Sunday. I think it is a good habit.

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I think a morning and evening sacrifice, if you will. But but but anyway, so it was a little easier for us to cancel on Sunday evening.

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But I think churches, especially after COVID, I hope what COVID did to churches is make them realize what a great blessing we have on Sundays together.

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Well, I tell you, Sunday, it was interesting because we had a few people not there.

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Few people were not there because of sickness, not because of the weather. And there were I'm sure there were some people not there because of the weather.

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But then we had a few people that aren't a part of our church who were there. And after church,

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I was speaking with a brother and he said, well, you know, a lot of churches in town didn't have church today and not a flake had fallen.

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Yeah, just cold, very cold, but cold. And I couldn't believe it. I didn't even know that.

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But several churches in our community had canceled church on the Lord's Day when it wasn't a travel issue.

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It was just a it's cold outside issue. And I, I personally just couldn't fathom it. And, you know, our practice on Lord's Day is we have

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Sunday school at nine. We have our service at 10. And then after the service, we have a meal.

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And a lot of times we have a prayer meeting after the meal. It's kind of an extended day, you know, and then and then that's it.

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We don't have an evening meeting. Well, what happened this Lord's Day was fewer people stayed.

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A lot of people that normally would stay for lunch were like, oh, we're going to get home. So we for sure get home before the weather.

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And once again, like kind of like you said that I don't it's not commanded that you guys have

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Sunday evening. And it's not like, hey, if you don't stay for the meal, then you've you've missed the whole thing.

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You know, they didn't miss the whole thing is OK, but kind of. And then even the ones who stayed for the meal kind of left a little quicker.

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There was only a handful of us still here in this. The flake started falling probably about one o 'clock.

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Yeah. And or 1230, something like that. Well, when the flakes started falling, the ones of us that were left, we left.

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I mean, that was it. We said, OK, we all have pretty good drives to get home. So we hit the road.

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And that's maybe an argument for why it's better to go to church near your home. But yeah, but it was it was worth it.

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But, you know, this next Sunday, it's going to be a little different because the stuff's going to be on the ground. And my encouragement is going to be to our church family.

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Look, what doesn't hinder a 20, 30, 40 year old might hinder an 80 year old.

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Like they they they legitimately might look at their steps. They might look at the road they have to drive to get to church and say,

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I genuinely cannot get to church today. Whereas me and my family are going to be able to be at church.

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And so I think a lot of times what we've done in the past and I'm saying this is a this has been a flaw.

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I mean, even at times I would I want to say I think I've sinned as a pastor. And this is we've said, well, we're concerned about a certain demographic or population of our church.

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And then we just hindered everybody by cancel. Yeah. Where we should say, look, if you fall into this demographic, this population, this set of providential hindrances, please, you know, care for yourself and not.

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But we shouldn't restrict the whole body for meeting for the sake of only a few.

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Yeah, you're able to come come. That's right. So so a few things. One, that's why I started with a theological like you don't have the freedom to cancel service.

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Right. You don't. Now, God does. God has the freedom to providentially hinder service and he can do that.

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But you and I really don't have the freedom to cancel church. In fact, you as a

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Christian don't even have the freedom to go or not go. Like when you don't go and you're not providentially hindered.

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I understand. Look, I understand. You're deployed. Your kid's sick. Yeah, you you whatever the case may be, you're in the hospital.

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Great. I get it. But you understand what I'm saying. Right. You get up and you would have gone to church or I'm sorry, you would have gone to work.

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You would have gone fishing. You would have gone to the ballgame. But whatever ailment it was, you decided not to go to church.

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And then you justify yourself because you say, well, you know, I've got that freedom. God doesn't care. God doesn't look on the outside.

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He looks on the heart. You know, we we use all that like, whoa, you know. So it is a requirement.

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We see. The church in America today and I'm talking about I'm not talking about liberals.

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I'm talking about that's a reflection of the heart. Right. The person that says, I know, I know the freedom.

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And so I'm not going to go to church. But that reflects that you don't want to. I know that's but that's what people say.

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Right. I don't know. But it's like and I'm talking about I'm not talking about the liberals.

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I'm talking about the conservative evangelical Bible belt. This is how they view church.

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And I was looking this up and I can't find it. So someone else can look it up and maybe let me know about it.

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But there is. The story of John Patton in his.

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Biography, I think it's John Patton, I hope I hope I'm thinking of the right man of his father. And his father,

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I don't know, was several kilometers from church. I don't know, maybe maybe like eight kilometers or something.

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And in the course of his life, after he'd become a Christian, he missed church like three times.

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Twice was due to snow. He walked and he right. You're not driving, then he's walking.

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Yeah, there was no driving. Right. And he and he and he gets he almost dies. He's trying to walk to church.

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He has to go back. And there was another time like that. And then another time. So there's two times there.

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Then another time was there was a cholera outbreak. And the and the sheriff, they literally came to his house because they knew where he was going.

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And they said, you cannot go from this village to the other village because of this outbreak.

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And so whatever the course of his life was, I don't know, let's say 30 years or something, 40 years, maybe longer than that.

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He he didn't miss church. Now, I understand we can make that. You can be legalistic in the sense of saying like a

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Pharisee never met church and not missing church doesn't mean you're you. You can not miss church and still miss heaven.

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Is that did that come out OK? Right. Yeah. But but the idea is we are ready and willing, it seems to me, at the drop of a hat to find reasons not to go to church.

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But that's not that's not the. Disposition of the regenerates heart.

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Right now, as pastors, we do have to think through we do have to think through all the sheep, you know, and so the thing is,

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I guess what I get concerned about is I don't want to create a situation where everybody's trapped, you know, for inclement weather, you know, but but more often than not, we are going to have the policy of, look, if you can be safe, this like tonight, although I think tonight's mainly mainly safe.

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But what we just put out there, look, no one's required to come. We're not having our classes, but we are just going to meet.

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We're going to eat, going to meet. If you can come safely, we hope to see you. And if you can't, we understand.

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And if you can't, if God has providentially entered you, you've got a fever. You you you you can't physically get out of the house.

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You shouldn't have any guilt or shame there. You feel freedom. I seek the Lord. Lord, you've providentially entered me.

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Why? Search the scriptures, pray, seek to to to follow him even in these times that we we don't understand.

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But if if you can go, you should go. We shouldn't be looking for excuses not to go.

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I don't know. Maybe I'm just rambling. Makes sense. Well, yes, it makes sense. And let me share a story about when this really came home to me as a pastor.

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It was not pastoring Marshall. So this was a church I pastored previously.

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We canceled church one Sunday, and this kind of goes back to the idea of deferring to the people who were concerned about elderly people or whatever.

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And so we canceled church. It really had snowed a lot. It had came a very large snow, the kind of snow that in our area we would call a crippling snow.

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However, a family in our church, they had a really great heel for sledding, and they put out to everybody, texted everybody.

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Hey, we're going to sled. We're going to eat chili. We're going to do all this stuff. This was the Lord's Day. And we canceled church that day because we said it'd be too hard for everybody to get there.

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And then that same day, as a matter of fact, the very same hours that we would have been at church, we're sledding down this hill, and we were all standing around in their living room and kitchen eating chili.

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And I got to counting, and there were something like 45 people. Almost all of them, people that would have been at our church.

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Wow. And almost all of us had to drive by the church to get to this family's home.

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And I went, why did we not have church again? We couldn't get out.

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Now, supposedly we were concerned for the elderly folks that would have tried to come to church. But we should have just told them, hey, you guys really don't need to try to come, but the rest of us are going to meet.

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And I look back on that, and I say, I wish I had just preached right then in the living room. It was what I should have done.

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Yeah. But I can remember being struck by, why did we not have church today?

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And that has lingered with me. That has probably been 15 years ago. Yeah. And it has lingered with me ever since.

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Just thinking, the reason we didn't have church that day is because we didn't love it enough.

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If we'd wanted to, we would have. Yeah. Hey, Edwards, you do what you most want.

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That's right. And there's a way around the elderly situation, and that is go pick them up.

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That's right. Help them. Yeah. We just have such a paltry view of church. As long as the

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Lord gives me and hold me accountable to this, Ed, but I hope to live my life in such a way that I preach and teach that Christ is worthy of healthy churches.

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That's right. I want the people of God to understand the beauty and the purpose and the necessity of the church.

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And there may be situations, there may be a situation, some sort of national catastrophe, some sort of, you know,

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I'm going to have to start, the virus is going to have to do something way more than COVID, you know, cancel church again.

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But there may be a situation, you know, some sort of plague or something like that.

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But we should never take the canceling of meeting lightly.

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And I'll say this, if your church meets on Wednesday, even then you shouldn't take it lightly. No, we would rather meet tonight.

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That's right. But it's, you know, to me, like you said earlier, it is a little bit easier. There's an old joke.

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I hesitate even to tell, I guess I will. And that is, there were two deacons out fishing on a

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Sunday morning. And one deacon said to the other man, I feel kind of guilty, we should be at church.

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And the other deacon said, oh, I couldn't have went. My wife was sick. But the reason it's funny, and you could use that for whatever, doesn't have to be deacons or whatever, you use it.

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Because it's true. Yeah. These are the kind of things that we bring up to not go.

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Again, when it's to regenerate heart, I want to go. Hebrews 10 .25. I don't want to neglect meeting together.

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I love to stir up one another to love and good works. And I love to be edified.

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I love to see my brothers and sisters in the faith. I love to know how they're doing and be encouraged by them and encourage them.

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Anyway, I cut you off. You're about to say something. Well, no, I completely agree.

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And here's the thing. The first thought a person ought to have, if you are listening to this and you are regularly not wanting to go to church, not wanting to gather on the

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Lord's Day, the first thought you ought to have is not, I need a better theological understanding of God's command or of the

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Lord's Day principle or however we want to. We'll talk about that on another podcast. But your first thought ought to be, why do

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I not desire to gather with my church on the Lord's Day? Because honestly, we're not trying to guilt anybody.

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I'm trying to say, why do you not love gathering with? I just can't imagine not wanting to gather with the

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Lord's people on the Lord's Day. Now, anybody can have a day where they feel bad, where there's a problem.

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I mean, you know, we all have bad days and a bad day can happen on the Lord's Day. I don't mean, but I'm saying if you are regularly not desiring to gather with the

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Lord, with the Lord's people on the Lord's Day, there is something probably spiritually that you ought to be concerned about in your soul.

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Yeah, it could be serious. What is the problem that is causing me to not want to be with God's people on the

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Lord's Day? And not only that, but I would even add, there's a difference just showing up and checking off a box.

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Right. The people who come in a few minutes late and then leave. You know, so this is more than just I showed up.

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I mean, some people just power through this, like taking your kids to public school. Well, we're going because we're supposed to. But as soon as there's a snow day or something, we're excited about it or whatever, because we don't want to.

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We don't want to go to school. It's glad when we don't have to. It's like if we see the church that way. We're going because it's our duty.

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Boy, when there's an excuse, we feel this great sense of relief because we don't have to go.

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That's an indicator of something very spiritually wrong. And it could be, actually, that you're not converted.

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That's right. You don't have a heart that's been made new, that seeks now to conform to God's ways.

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You're in a very serious condition. And, you know, the church is given to us by God for many reasons.

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But one of those reasons is so that we can discern whether such a heart like that is in us.

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Exhort one another every day as long as it's called a day that you see that you don't have an unbelieving heart within you.

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That's I'm paraphrasing from Hebrews 3. Right. Well, and I even want to say I mentioned at the beginning, and I'm thankful because there was a time when

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I don't think churches I've been a part of in the past that I would have thought this way.

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But I mentioned at the beginning, we're not meeting tonight. But I really think for our people that this is going to cause them to have an even greater hunger for the

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Lord's Day because they want to meet together. Amen. Because we love one another and we have a heart to meet together.

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I know you guys at Providence, you have a heart to meet together. If you did need to miss tonight, had you guys not been able to meet at all tonight, your desire, you,

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Alex, Gunnar, Jacob, you brothers, your families, the other brothers and sisters there at the church, you guys would have had an even greater longing to get together on the

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Lord's Day just because of the fact that you had to go a few more days without maybe seeing each other. And so I really think if the healthier our churches get, the more, not the more easily we will miss.

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Actually, it's just the opposite. The more we're going to feel, oh, man, I hate that we missed, not because I feel guilty, but because I desire.

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It's what I want. I most want to be with the Lord's people. You know, I'm going to say something here

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I probably shouldn't say. And people from my church do listen, so whatever.

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You know, as pastors, we get people giving us reasons why they're not going to be there. Hey, pastor,

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I'm not going to be there for whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can I tell you one that I just I don't understand it. And I hear this one so often and I do not get it.

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People will say, well, we're not going to be there. We've got company. And I'm like, Pringle, what are you talking about?

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Yeah, we got family here. We're not going to make it. I'm like, why would you not bring them? Why would you not bring them to the church with you?

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Yeah, that one makes no sense to me. If I had company, I'd be like, it's the Lord's Day.

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I guess you could stay here. But why wouldn't you go with us? We're going to church.

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Yeah, that's right. And it should be. Yeah, I heard one time. So you said

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I heard a pastor one time say he doesn't like to go to church. He didn't go to church on Sunday nights at the church.

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I know, I know. It's mind blowing. But yeah, right. I know. But anyway, he said it was time with his family, you know, and I'm like, wait, why don't you like spending time with your family at church?

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Yeah. Anyway, we're dragging on here. The point is, we should count

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Sundays as special. They are a set apart day for us to worship together with God's people.

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And we shouldn't take it as a light thing. So I don't know if we answered the question that we're trying to start, but we got to hang out together on a snowy

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Wednesday via Zoom. So praise God for technology. Feel free to reach out to us.

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Let us know some topics you'd like us to discuss. You can reach me at Quatro Nelson at Gmail.

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That's C -U -A -T -R -O -N -E -L -S -O -N at gmail .com and Eddie at Eddie Ragsdale 17 at gmail .com.

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All right. Well, thank you guys for listening. Take us out 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 hoemos, the masterpiece of God.