Episode 67: Canceling Church

To the Ruled Church podcast.

This is my beloved son, with whom 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? 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.

The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king.

You can't be 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 Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

Snow Day and Midweek Cancellation

It's a snow day, Eddie.

It is.

How much snow did you get in Marshall?

Man, Marshall got like seven and a half inches.

Are you serious?

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

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. We probably had like two and a half inches.

In our neck of the woods,.

But it was enough to shut down school. School was canceled Tuesday, Wednesday, and tomorrow. Thursday, significant enough to cancel that. Welcome to the Rural Church Podcast. That little introduction does have something to do with today's episode.

I'm Allen Nelson, pastor of Providence Baptist Church, one of the pastors of Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas, and with me, Eddie Ragsdale, pastor of First Baptist Church of Marshall, and today, we're gonna talk about canceling church.

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. Our Wednesday night meeting is on tonight, which with a little bit of caveats there, but why don't you talk about, so we'll get to Sundays here in a minute, and I think I have some theological things I wanna say about that, and I'm sure you do too, but why don't let's talk about first, as a pastor, what went into the process, and then who did you talk, because you and I probably talked with different people.

My main discussion was with our other pastor, but walk through your process of dismissing tonight.

I would love to have another pastor to have talked about it with. 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 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. There's no command in scripture for a Wednesday meeting or a Thursday meeting, and so we can choose more easily to cancel those.

As a matter of fact, I would say a church can choose for any reason. A church could choose, could say, hey, this Wednesday is supposed to be gorgeous, and we've all got other plans, and we're not gonna meet this Wednesday, and I would say I don't think that I can biblically reprimand a church for not having a 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 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.

Today's the first day that I've really ventured away from just right there at my house since getting home from our meeting on Sunday. So I just assumed that. Well, then a couple 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 asked if anybody was planning on coming.

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. And with the outroads being bad, you know, Highway 65 is good, but the smaller roads are bad.

And in our situation, we're kind of a regional church. 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.

But a lot of our church folks live pretty far away, and they live in even more rural areas than Marshall is. And so county roads and country roads and places that just aren't cleared yet. 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 Lord's day.

Wisdom, Caution, and the 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. And we just thought, you know, I mean, we don't wanna 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, 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 gonna meet.

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. I don't think a church has to have a midweek meeting. There are reasons why a church may not have one, but boy, if you're only able to gather from Sunday to Sunday as a body, that's, I mean, from my perspective, sad.

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

But so do you have to have any kind of like approval or something like you talk, I mean.

I did talk to the deacon that I was mentioning that's up on the weather. I talked to him, you know, got his opinion on what's gonna happen. Really one of the other issues I didn't mention is our parking lot.

Yeah, that's an issue, yeah.

Our parking lot is pretty slick. 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. 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 and I told him to hold off and hopefully he's gonna get it done in the next day or two because we want it to dry and not be slick for the Lord's day.

So I wish I'd just had him do it. So that was another factor that went into not meeting tonight because we weren't gonna have it where it wouldn't be slick tonight and we didn't want anybody to fall or something like that.

But once again, I did talk to this deacon, but honestly, my folks kind of just leave it up to me.

Yeah, yeah.

That's your decision.

And we canceled kids' classes that way. We didn't want anyone to feel obligated to come tonight and there are some that are just like, look, we're just staying in, we're not getting out. And I know some people, it's funny, our resident Canadian here has given us a hard time because I understand that for some people this is not a big deal 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.

Right.

One of the brothers in our church that was, he just assumed we would have church. He didn't even think anything about it. Well, he's lived for the last many years, couple of decades, he's mostly been in areas like Utah and Wyoming and he's like, I just drive on it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, what are you talking about?

Why Midweek Meetings Are More Optional Than Sundays

Well, let's pick up the pace a little bit because, okay, Wednesday night is one thing. It's not required. I think we should be meeting more regularly as we're able to.

Agreed.

But it's a little easier to dismiss and we've dismissed for other things as well. 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 Lord's day or in some traditions, our tradition here at Providence, the Christian Sabbath.

And some people don't like that term, but I'm going to read to you from our confession, the 1689. It is the law, this is paragraph seven of the 1689, chapter 22. 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.

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

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

Now, we could do a whole episode on that. Maybe we will at some point. I just want to say that it is in our Baptist DNA to treat Sunday as different. Now, there were historically what is known as Seventh-day Baptists.

And from what I understand, they weren't like Seventh-day Adventists. They were very similar to what we were, except they observed the Seventh-day Sabbath, which we would argue is an error. But I would say that, I think it's really more of a new position to consider Sunday as not required for the church together.

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 Lord's day. Now, there's some liberty there on maybe how often, how long.

I mean, by how often, I mean, it should be every Lord's day. 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?

Are you going to meet at 11 o 'clock? Is your service going to run from nine to one? Is it going to run from 10 to 1130? Of all the things that need to be done in the service, it'd be really hard to have a service under an hour.

But anyway, so I'm just kind of trying to give some theological underpinning here that we don't treat Sunday and Wednesday the same. And even if we have some differences, some subtle differences there, your guy's statement of faith, the Baptist faith's a message to, oh, wait, wait, y 'all do the abstract.

So the abstract is similar to this, right?

Yeah, it still calls it the Lord's day, I think. And I would, we don't have time today to deal with the distinction in the, 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 covenant church meets on the Lord's day.

Like, I don't think that's an option. I don't think, I think that we're required to not, I would just distinguish a little difference in terms of how we think about the 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.

The Lord's day is the Lord's day, it belongs to you.

Not long ago in Arkansas, there was a church, 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 met on Tuesdays because the weekends were for hunting.

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

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

You know?

I agree, I agree. There's no liberty in that.

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

But I think our practice is gonna be identical.

Yeah, yeah. I just see the moral law continuing, you know, the 10 commandments. And so I do believe that Jesus has fulfilled the fourth commandment, but I believe he's fulfilled all the commandments. And so anyway, I think there is still moral, there is still a moral application of the fourth commandment to the Christian that is more than just resting in Christ, although that's true, but also, you know, observing this day.

But anyway, the point is when we cancel on Sunday, and there may be legitimate reasons to cancel, we have to take this into consideration.

And it should be pretty, it should be a serious thing.

COVID, Repentance, and the Weight of Canceling the Lord’s Day

That's right.

For the church to make the decision, we're not gonna meet on the Lord's day, should be pretty serious. And let's just, we can state this, we're four years out now, 2024. I think we all look back, I've heard you talk about feeling the need to repent.

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, 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 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.

Yeah, yeah. And I have no problem with the church that closed during COVID. The problem I do have is for churches that closed during COVID, and now just want everyone to forget about it.

Right.

You know, if you closed during COVID, like for us, we closed for I think like eight or 10 weeks, like probably more like 10 weeks from like mid-March until June 1st. So was that all of April, all of May, half of March.

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. And I think we do need to own that. So it's one thing, if we make a mistake, that's one thing.

There's like not owning that, you know, needing to repent. But I'll give you a real practical example. We canceled church Sunday night. And the reason is because, and it was kind of the decision we just made at church a little bit early, maybe.

Like we didn't make it when stuff was coming down. We made it at church that morning and said, look, this is by all indication, this is the information we have. And the idea is why, okay, so why cancel?

Why not just let everyone use their own judgment? And that is maybe a way you could handle it in some situations, but with this, we just didn't want people to come and then be trapped, and sure enough, we did have, when it's actively falling and the weather is as cold as it was, I think it was probably in the either upper teens or lower 20s Sunday, you're just creating a recipe for disaster.

And I saw, and you and I talked about, like there were churches that were canceling even Sunday morning. Like I would've had a hard time. So here's how I'd handle it. If I really thought that the church was gonna be in danger Sunday morning, I probably would've handled it this way.

I would've said, look, stuff's supposed to come in at 1230. Here's what we're gonna do. We're not doing Sunday school. We're backing up our service. Instead of 1030, we're backing it up to 10 and we're still gonna meet, because I think it's that important.

Yes.

I think that it's not just a good thing for us together, although it is. I think it's a commanded thing. I think God requires his churches to meet. And so for us, again, the policy for us was just me and our other elder, Pastor Jacob, were able to talk.

We were watching it for days ahead and discussing, but we waited till we felt like it was, we didn't wanna make a, you never make a call of winter weather like three days ahead. I mean, so we waited till it was the right time and then we made that decision.

Sunday night was a little bit easier for us because we'd already gathered. Again, I don't think the Bible requires us to meet multiple times on Sunday. I think it is a good habit. I think a morning and evening sacrifice, if you will.

But anyway, so it was a little easier for us to cancel on Sunday evening. But I think churches, especially after COVID, I hope what COVID did to churches is make them realize what a great blessing we have.

The Blessing of Gathering on the Lord’s Day

Right.

On Sundays, together.

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

But then we had a few people that aren't a part of our church who were there. And after church, 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. It was just cold, very cold, but cold. And I couldn't believe it. I didn't even know that. But several churches in our community had canceled church on the Lord's Day when it wasn't a travel issue.

It was just a, it's cold outside issue. And I personally just couldn't fathom it. And, you know, our practice on Lord's Day is we have Sunday school at nine. We have our service at 10. And then after the service, we have a meal.

And a lot of times we'll have a prayer meeting after the meal. It's kind of an extended day, you know, and then that's it. We don't have an evening meeting. Well, what happened this Lord's Day was fewer people stayed.

A lot of people that normally would stay for lunch were like, oh, we're gonna get home. So we for sure get home before the weather. And once again, like, kind of like you said, it's not commanded that you guys have Sunday evening and it's not like, hey, if you don't stay for the meal, then you've missed the whole thing.

You know, they didn't miss the whole thing, it's okay. But kind of, and then even the ones who stayed for the meal kind of left a little quicker. There was only a handful of us still here and the flakes started falling, probably about one o 'clock or 1230, something like that.

Well, when the flakes started falling, the ones of us that were left, we left. That was it. We said, okay, we all have pretty good drives to get home. So we hit the road and that's maybe an argument for why it's better to go to church near your home, but it was worth it.

But you know, this next Sunday, it's gonna be a little different cause the stuff's gonna be on the ground. And my encouragement is gonna be to our church family, look, what doesn't hinder a 20, 30, 40 year old might hinder an 80 year old.

Like they legitimately might look at their steps. They might look at the road they have to drive to get to church and say, I genuinely cannot get to church today. Whereas me and my family are gonna be able to be at church.

And so I think a lot of times what we've done in the past, and I'm saying this has been a flaw. I mean, even at times I would, I wanna say I think I've sinned as a pastor in this, is we've said, well, we're concerned about a certain demographic or population of our church.

And then we've 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 care for yourself and not, but we shouldn't restrict the whole body from meeting for the sake of only a few.

Providence, Regenerate Desire, and the Call to Meet

Yeah.

If you're able to come, come.

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

Right.

You don't. Now God does. God has the freedom to providentially hinder service and he can do that. But you and I really don't have the freedom to cancel church. In fact, you as a Christian, don't even have the freedom to go or not go.

Like when you don't go and you're not providentially hindered, I understand, look, I understand. You're deployed, your kid's sick, whatever the case may be, you're in the hospital. 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. You would have gone fishing. You would have gone to the ball game, but whatever ailment it was, you decided not to go to church.

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. He looks on the heart. You know, we use all that like, whoa, you know.

So it is a requirement. We see the church in America today. And I'm talking about, I'm not talking about liberals. I'm talking about

But that's a reflection of the heart.

Yeah, right.

The person that says

I know, I know.

I've got freedom and so I'm not gonna go to church,.

But that reflects that you don't wanna go to church.

I know, but that's what people say, right?

Yeah, I know, but it's like

And I'm talking about, I'm not talking about the liberals. I'm talking about the conservative evangelical Bible belt. This is how they view church. Now 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.

But there is the story of John Patton in his biography. I think it's John Patton. I hope I'm thinking of the right man, of his father. And his father, I don't know, was several kilometers from church.

I don't know, maybe like eight kilometers or something. And in the course of his life, after he'd become a Christian, he missed church like three times. Twice was due to snow. You're not driving then, he's walking.

Yeah, there was no driving.

Right, and he almost dies. He's trying to walk to church and he has to go back. And there was another time like that. And then another time, so there's two times there. Then another time was there was a cholera outbreak and the sheriff, they literally came to his house because they knew where he was going.

And they said, you cannot go from this village to the other village because of this outbreak. 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, he didn't miss church.

Now I understand we can make that, you can be legalistic in the sense of saying like, a Pharisee never missed church. And not missing church doesn't mean you're, you can not miss church and still miss heaven.

Does that, did that come out okay?

Of course, right.

Yeah, 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. But that's not the disposition of the regenerate's heart.

Right.

Now, as pastors, we do have to think through, we do have to think through all of the sheep, and so the thing is, I guess what I get concerned about is I don't want to create a situation where everybody's trapped for inclement weather.

But more often than not, we are gonna have the policy of look, if you can be safe, this like tonight, although I think tonight's mainly safe, but what we just put out there, look, no one's required to come, we're not having our classes, but we are just gonna meet, we're gonna eat, gonna meet.

If you can come safely, we hope to see you. And if you can't, we understand. And if you can't, if God has providentially entered you, you've got a fever, you can't physically get out of the house, you shouldn't have any guilt or shame there, you feel freedom.

I seek the Lord, Lord, you've providentially entered me,.

Why?

Search the scriptures, pray, seek to follow Him even in these times that we don't understand. But if you can go, you should go, we shouldn't be looking for excuses not to go. I don't know, maybe I'm just rambling, makes sense.

A Pastoral Story About Canceling Too Quickly

Well, yes, it makes sense. And let me share a story about when this really came home to me as a pastor. It was not pastoring Marshall. So this was a church I pastored previously. 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.

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. However, a family in our church, they had a really great heel for sledding.

And they put out to everybody, texted everybody, hey, we're gonna sled, we're gonna eat chili, we're gonna 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.

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.

And I got to counting, and there were something like 45 people. Almost all of them, people that would have been at our church. And almost all of us had to drive by the church to get to this family's home.

And I went, why did we not have church again?

We couldn't get out. 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 gonna meet.

And I look back on that and I say, I wish I'd have just preached right then in the living room.

Is what I should have done.

But I can remember being struck by, why did we not have church today? And that has lingered with me. That has probably been 15 years ago. And it has lingered with me ever since, just thinking the reason we didn't have church that day is because we didn't love it enough.

If we'd wanted to, we would have.

Yeah, you, hey, Edwards, you do what you most want. And there's a way around the elderly situation and that is go pick them up.

That's right, help them, right, yeah, yeah.

We just have such a paltry view of church. As long as the 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.

That's right.

I want the people of God to understand the beauty and the purpose and the necessity of the church. And there may be situations, there may be a situation, some sort of national catastrophe, some sort of, I'm gonna have to start, the virus is gonna have to do something way more than COVID to cancel church again.

But there may be a situation, some sort of plague or something like that, but we should never take the canceling of meeting lightly. And I'll say this, if your church meets on Wednesday, even then you shouldn't take it lightly.

No, no, we would rather meet tonight.

That's right, but it's, to me, like you said earlier, it is a little bit easier. There's that old joke, I hesitate even to tell, I guess I will, and that is there were two deacons out fishing on a Sunday morning.

And one deacon said to the other, man, I feel kind of guilty, we should be at church. 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 because it's true.

These are the kind of things that we bring up to not go. When it, again, when it's to regenerate heart, I want to go, Hebrews 10, 25. I don't wanna neglect meeting together. I love to stir up one another to love and good works.

And I love to be edified. 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. Anyway, I cut you off, you're about to say something.

Well, no, I completely agree. 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 the church, not wanting to gather on the 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 Lord's day principle or however we wanna, we'll talk about that on another podcast.

But your first thought ought to be, why do I not desire to gather with my church on the Lord's day? Because honestly, we're not trying to guilt anybody. I'm trying to say, why do you not love gathering with, I just can't imagine not wanting to gather with the Lord's people on the Lord's day.

Now, anybody can have a day where they feel bad, where there's a problem. I mean, 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 Lord's people on the Lord's day, there is something probably spiritually that you ought to be concerned about in your soul.

And you ought to be wanting to see what is the problem that is causing me to not want to be with God's people on the Lord's day.

And not only that, but I would even add, there's a difference to showing up and checking off a box. Right. The people who come in a few minutes late and then leave.

Leave as big as they can.

And I go, hey, you know, so this is more than just, I showed up. 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 wanna go to school.

And 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. But boy, when there's an excuse, we feel this great sense of relief. We don't have to go.

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

That's right.

You don't have a heart that's been made new that seeks now to conform to God's ways. You're in a very serious condition. And, you know, the church is given to us by God for many reasons. But one of those reasons is so that we can discern whether such a heart like that is in us.

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. That's, I'm paraphrasing from Hebrews 3.

Right, well, and I even wanna say, I mentioned at the beginning, and I'm thankful because there was a time when I don't think churches I've been a part of in the past that I would have thought this way.

But I mentioned at the beginning, we're not meeting tonight, but I really think for our people that this is gonna cause them to have an even greater hunger for the Lord's day because they wanna meet together.

Amen.

Because we love one another and we have a heart to meet together. 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, 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 Lord's day, just because of the fact that you had to go a few more days without maybe seeing each other.