Online Church: Is Online-Church the Ecclesiastical Equivalent of Transgender-Male?

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Christ Alone, Sin, and Judgment

The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, and any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed, and they will perish. God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended, and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come, in that final day, their house will stand.

Why the Podcast Is Called Bible Bash

Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the work of ministry. We're your hosts, Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett. Today we seek to answer the age-old question, Is online church the ecclesiastical equivalent of transgender male?

But, before we answer the question, since this is our first episode, it might be helpful, Tim, for you to explain the purpose of the podcast.

So, the name we chose for the podcast is Bible Bashed Podcast. And the reason why we chose that kind of name is because when you're living in a society that is really filled with a lot of nominal Christians, there is, like, the moment that you try to bring the Bible to bear on a particular situation, if you say, hey, but what about this verse that says this?

One of the things that you're going to realize is there's any number of names that the society we live in will have for you as that kind of person. I mean, you'll be called a Pharisee, you'll be called a legalist, you'll be called a hypocrite, and, oh, you think you're so spiritual, and, you know, quit.

And one of the things that's kind of a funny way that will be attributed to you is that, essentially, you'll be told that you're trying to Bible Bash people. So, if you have that, you'll develop a reputation to be that kind of person who is always trying to Bible Bash people.

And what's funny about that phrase is, if you look up the term Bible Basher in the Cambridge Dictionary, it says this, it says, someone who tries in a forceful or enthusiastic way to persuade other people to believe in the Christian religion and the Bible.

And, I mean, it's just a hilarious definition because, I mean, that essentially is Jonathan Edwards, sinners in the hands of an angry God. He's someone who's trying in a forceful or enthusiastic way to persuade other people to believe in the Christian religion and the Bible.

That's John the Baptist, you know, you bearded vipers who warned you to flee from where you're to come. That's Jesus, right? The time is near the kingdom. God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel.

I mean, that's faithful Christian Christianity one-on-one. And so one of the things that we're trying to do is just basically say, hey, we're going to be unashamed and we're going to enthusiastically and forcefully try to persuade you to actually believe what the Bible says and obey it.

And we're going to do so without apology. And we know that you have a word for people like that. And we're happy if that's what we are, if we're Bible Bashers by trying to just get you to obey the Bible, then so be it.

And so that's what we're thinking with the title. It's just an ironic way of saying, well, if that's what the word means, meaning the word is determined by usage, then sure, whatever.

Okay, well, hopefully that's a helpful answer for anyone listening who might have been kind of on the fence about the approach of this podcast. I'm sure there will still be certain people who are very upset, honestly, no matter what we do or what we say.

What Online Church Means and Why It Became Popular

So now as we turn our attention to the actual question, is online church the ecclesiastical equivalent of transgender male? I think it might be helpful just to kind of talk about, start off with saying, what is online church?

What are we talking about when we're using that term online church? If you could kind of explain that for us a little bit, Tim.

Sure, so I think for many years you've had a movement towards the idea of online church. And online church is just the idea that instead of Christians coming together on the Lord's Day and gathering at a particular place or a particular building or something along those lines, you can just watch a live stream of a church service on Zoom recently or just on a church website or something like that.

And the idea behind the project is that since Christians are personally, in some sense, the dwelling place of God, and the time is coming and now is where Christ's followers will not worship Him in Jerusalem, but will worship Him in spirit and truth.

And Father's looking to draw such believers to Himself. These ideas are being presented in such a way that there really isn't anything sacred about the in-person gathering of the saints at a particular place, etc.

So you have the idea of online church being an idea that basically you can just watch a church service online and basically get your check marked for Lord's Day attendance in some metaphorical sense in that way.

It seems to be something that is of unique relevance to us right now considering all that has happened with this COVID stuff that has been going on. So I think it's a discussion that really has gained steam since the pandemic or whatever you want to call that.

It's been a discussion that really has come to the forefront. And one of the things that I think has been pretty disturbing about the discussion itself is the fact that you're talking about an idea that the vast majority of churches like faithful biblical churches have rejected for years.

There's been plenty of people trying to push this idea for years and years and years. And then one of the things that's been kind of disturbing to watch is that even faithful churches seem to be immediately, okay, the government tells us to shut down and we can't meet for in-person worship and the liquor stores and everything else can stay open but we can't and we all follow suit.

And then there's some churches that I think said, well, okay, let's just make the best of a bad situation and stream some kind of online singing and Bible study together via Zoom format or something like that.

But I think one of the things that's been disturbing to watch is that so many people seem to all of a sudden not have any biblical arguments in their arsenal to distinguish that from what the church has done for 2 ,000 years.

And so it seemed that there's plenty of churches out there that are governed by pragmatism and they really have functionally zero ecclesiology. And so when the government tells us to shut down, I think it's been somewhat shocking to me to see how many churches that I thought were faithful just seem to accept the idea of online church in a way that they never would have before but now all of a sudden due to pressure it seems like they have no tools in their toolkit in order to critique that in any way.

Yeah, it really seems like within the last year or two years, I mean, it feels like this kind of came in some ways out of just nowhere where obviously churches were streaming their services and I'm sure there were plenty of people who did view those streamed services as quote-unquote attendance to the actual church.

But then it really seems like in the last two years, especially with the COVID stuff going on, that everyone, whole churches really started encouraging this kind of practice as almost the primary way to worship.

Do you agree with that?

Well, yeah, I mean, it's kind of like a fast food restaurant phenomenon to where post-COVID it seems like customer service is dead and fast food restaurants seem to have it. I hate to draw a parallel at this point.

But look, I mean, customer service is dead, but then I think many fast food restaurants realize that, hey, why open up when it just costs more money and there's all the overhead that's associated with an in-person staff.

It's like we can just do this drive-through thing because everyone's so afraid and terrified. And we can actually increase our profits by just having a minimal drive-through crew that's operational and we don't have to worry about cleaning a dining room and do all this stuff.

And it seems that there's many churches that have just—. The truth is I think they're pragmatic to the core, and that's what governed them anyways. And they're making a similar kind of calculation as it relates to this.

And it's like they've never thought through the issue before. And I think that's what's been somewhat surprising to me, even though I probably shouldn't be surprised, but it's been a little bit—. I shouldn't be surprised because we've been doing nonsense like this with multi-site churches and everything else.

We've been toying around with bad ecclesiology for years and seeker-sensitive churches and everything else. But then it seems that right when there was societal pressure put on the corporate in-person gathering of a church, many churches just seemed to roll over and cave and actually probably think, oh man, this is a better business model as far as that goes.

Careful, Tim. You're going to upset the multi-site church people. We're just going for the online people right now. Well, okay. You said something about— this is just something that a lot of people really haven't thought through critically before.

The Church as an Assembly, Not a Virtual Product

So talking about that a little bit, when it comes to attending online church and whether you should or whether you shouldn't, this is really a moral decision that's being made, a moral question that's being raised by a lot of people.

So in light of that, obviously as Christians, we look to the Bible to inform us of what is right and what is wrong. So what exactly does the Bible have to say about whether a person should attend church, quote-unquote, online as opposed to in person?

I mean, obviously the Bible doesn't say anything about— there's no command that says, thou shalt not watch Facebook Live on Sunday morning, right? So what does the Bible say that could be helpful for us in answering this kind of moral question?

Yeah, well, I think the way that you frame that does get at the nature of our question, as far as the question being that is online church the ecclesiastical equivalent of transgender male? When you say attend online churches, immediately one of the things you realize is that you're doing something funny with language, right?

And so you're using words in ways that are very unconventional. And not only are you using words in unconventional ways, you're using words in ways that, I mean, no one throughout church history would ever recognize.

And so part of the thing is that we believe in a book that's a time-bound document. And so the Bible has relevance for today, but then whatever practice that we come up with that we're trying to establish from the Scripture, it needs to have some sort of precedence in the Bible, either through precept, or example, or command, or whatever else, right?

And so I think the thing is this is a new idea that has come about, and it's a new idea that's come about in many ways. I think the people who have been pushing this kind of idea for years, they really haven't had a robust ecclesiology when it comes to it anyways.

But then now it's just something we've latched on to out of some sort of desperation as far as that goes. And so biblically you have to ask, what does the Bible actually command us to do, right? And so the author of Hebrews 10 .25 tells us essentially that we are not to forsake the assembly of the saints as is the habit of some.

But encourage one another as you see the day drawing near. This idea of not forsake the assembly of the saints, the thing is if you want to understand what the church is in terms of its essence, what is the church?

Part of the answer to this online church kind of phenomenon is to go back to just Church 101, and what is the church? What is it, right? Well, the word for church that you're going to find in the Bible is the word ecclesia.

Now, ecclesia is the word for church, and that's the word where we get ecclesiology, which is the study of a church. Even the book of Ecclesiastes comes from that word, or ecclesiastical matters, which are matters that are pertaining to the church or clergy or anything else.

And so this word ecclesia is the word in Greek that we translate into English as church. And so if you want to know what that word means, well, one of the things to realize is that in the New Testament, so this word ecclesia, 94 .3 of the time, by my own calculation, ecclesia is being...

I looked them all up. But 94 .3 of the time it's translated as church. 1 .9 of the time it's translated as congregation. And then it's translated as assembly 3 .8 of the time. So those are just rough figures, but that'll give you some idea.

But if you want to know what the word means, it's really... You can look it up in any kind of good Greek dictionary like the BDAG or something like that or Greek lexicon, and you're going to find that they're going to translate it as assembly.

And the reason why they're doing that, it's not mysterious why they're doing that. Why are they translating it as assembly? Why is that the primary meaning of the word? Well, I mean, look. You just read through the Old Testament, right?

And there's... If you want to get an idea of what these words mean, I know this is somewhat technical, but I'm just trying to tell you where this comes about. But you read through the Old Testament. There's a Greek version of the Old Testament called the Septuagint or the LXX.

And you can look up ecclesia in the Old Testament. And you can look it up in every single case. And one of the things you're going to realize is that ecclesia is always a translation of the Hebrew word kahal.

And the Hebrew word kahal is a word that's translated into English as either assembly or congregation. I mean, the word ecclesia means assembly. That's what it means, okay? So that's what it means. And so if you understand what the church actually is, the church is an assembly of people, okay?

So what is assembly? What is an assembly? I mean, what does that mean? Well, an assembly is a thing that we... I think it's a very easily definable concept. It's a group of people gathered together, usually for a particular purpose, whether religious, political, educational, or social.

It's a group of people gathered together. That's what it is. So if you're going to have an assembly, you have people gathered together, right? So you have a word that's basically like a spatial, temporal word.

In order to have an assembly, you need to have a group of people come together in a particular place at a particular time. That's what it means. And that's the word that God chose to use to describe what the church actually is.

And if you think about what that means, what that means is that Christians are the church when we gather together on the Lord's Day in His name and in His presence. You understand what I'm saying? We're not the church.

We've had, I think, years and years of pretty poor ecclesiology where we tell people, you know, go out and be the church. It's like, well, you can't go out and be an assembly, can you? Like, that doesn't make any sense, okay?

Like, we are the church when we gather together, right? And so when Hebrews 10 .25 tells us not to forsake the assembly, assembling together, that's the word episonogage, which basically means assembly.

We're the assembly, right? So basically, just to give you a biblical case, first, I mean, church means assembly. That's what it means. It means assembly. And then, you know, this is like stated in so many ways in the Bible.

I mean, there's language of coming together, right? So 1 Corinthians 11 .18, it says, For in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and I believe it in part.

Think about that phrase, like, when you come together as a church. What does it mean to be the church? It means to come together as a church. When do we do that? We do that on the Lord's Day, right? Matthew 18 .20, and there's a lot you can say about this passage, and people have, you know, corrupted the meaning of this passage to basically talk about, you know, the church, you know, whenever three individual Christians are gathered together, you know, in the context of some sort of home Bible study or something else, that God is there, and so you don't need to come to some sort of corporate gathering or anything like that.

But, like, the whole idea there is that that's said in the context of church discipline, and where, you know, two or three are gathered as witnesses. Every fact will be confirmed on the basis of two or three witnesses.

When two or three are gathered, my name, the Bible says, There I am among you. You know, the church, like, is described as a gathering of people, an assembly of people who come together on a particular time, at a particular place, right?

So just think about every intro in the Bible, right? Every intro in the New Testament. The church of God, where? In their own homes. You know, Skyping each other. That would be a little bit anachronistic.

Facebook Live. No, but, I mean, the church of God at Corinth, right? The church of God. So the assembly of God, like, if you think about church in the way that the word means, the assembly of God at Corinth.

That means a certain thing, right? And so, like, the church, you have all this come-together language. The church, when it's gathered, is described as the temple of God, right? So, 1 Timothy 3 .15, If I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and the buttress of truth, right?

And the house, like the church, when it gathers together, is a picture of the temple of God, right? And so, and I think, you know, when you think about the way that this word is actually used, I mean, I could just go on and on and on about, like, all the ways in which the Bible describes the church, and I think this is what's just so troubling about it.

It's just like, hey, like, those arguing for online church, like, have you ever read the Bible before? That's what you wonder. Like, you know that this is like a bunch of, like the New Testament is a bunch of letters written to churches, and you don't even know what a church is, right?

It's a gathering of people. But then, I mean, like, the whole idea of the church is basically, it's like the whole metaphors of the church, they're picking up on all the imagery of the Old Testament and the Old Covenant, right?

So, like, just think about this, okay? So Adam and Eve are walking and talking with God in the cool of the day, right? And then when they sin, they're cast out of Eden, away from the presence of the Lord, right?

Cast out of Eden. So where was God's presence? His presence was found in the garden, right? And then if you just do a simple, like, get a Bible search program and look up presence of God, and one of the things you're going to find is after Cain sins, what happens?

He's cast out of God's presence, right? And he's forced to be a wanderer. I mean, theologically, what does that teach you? It teaches you that sin separates us from God's presence, right? All right, well, Jonah, what does he do when he's in rebellion against God?

It says he basically went away from the presence of the Lord, right? And so instead of going where God calls him to do, it says he went away from the presence of the Lord. This whole presence of the Lord language, like, sin separates us from God's presence.

But where is God's presence found in the Old Covenant? In the Tent of Meeting, right? I mean, it's found in the Tent of Meeting. It's found in the temple. And so, like, the whole idea of God's presence is God's people.

Basically, God is said to dwell uniquely in the Tent of Meeting and in the temple and in the tabernacle. And then all this language is picked up in the New Testament to where now no longer is God uniquely in Jerusalem, right?

So why does Daniel pray facing Jerusalem? Because that's where God was. That's where his presence was. His presence was in the temple. Now, obviously, God's omnipresent. And, you know, David knew that.

He says, you know, where can I go to hide myself from your presence? Behold, if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. So it doesn't say anything about the omnipresence of God. But, like, the issue is just to say that God's presence was uniquely there in the temple.

And then all of a sudden, the church, when it gathers on the Lord's Day, they now become the new temple of the living God. And so, you know, that's just a few, I think, biblical reasons to understand the church as a particular thing.

Now, when you talk about the idea of, like, online church or something along those lines, then what you're doing is you're fundamentally toying with this notion of assembly and basically redefining it to basically just to communicate semantically the exact opposite of what the word actually means, if that makes sense.

Darrell Bock Mm-hmm.

Man, Tim, you're going Greek on them on the first episode.

Tim Cynova. Well, it is what it is.

Yeah, no. Okay, so obviously there's a biblical precedent for why, you know, this should be a pretty clear—this should be a pretty easy moral question to answer. Should we do online church as our primary, you know, means of attendance or not?

But what—and I think you've explained that pretty well, New and Old Testament, why it should be clear that we shouldn't use online churches as a substitute for gathering together in person. But then—and I think you kind of addressed this a little bit already, but then could you go into a little more detail in terms of, you know, I'm sure there are people out there who are familiar with some of these verses that you're mentioning, that you're bringing up, but then for whatever reason they still are convinced that it's totally fine, given the circumstances of everything that's been going on throughout this year and especially last year, that still justify, hey, no, you can stay at home and that's just as good.

God's still honored and you turning on your computer or pulling up your phone or turning on your TV and watching church and singing by yourself in your pajamas. So what is the explanation that these kinds of people are giving in spite of the verses that it seems like are really clear and hard to argue with?

Why Pragmatism, Individualism, and Ecclesiological Drift Feed Online Church

Yeah, no, I don't think that every problem is an intellectual problem as far as that goes. And so I don't think that—look, the job I'm working at right now, I was talking to a guy and I basically told him I was a pastor and everything else.

And he basically, just as I was doing work for him, he gave me his testimony or whatever. And he said, I used to be one of those Christians who every Lord's Day, essentially, I would go out fishing or hunting or everything else.

I didn't see the need to go to church. And the way that people typically justify that kind of thing is just the standard tropes. God didn't come to give us a religion but came to give us a relationship.

And there's kind of low Protestant errors along those lines that are basically just anti-authority, anti-any kind of rules or regulations that functionally are just governed by kind of an antinomianism that hate any notion of commands or any requirements that God has given us.

And anything that feels formal or anything that feels religious seems like Catholic or something like that. And so if I'm a Christian, the kind of thinking goes, I become the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of me and the priesthood of all believers and all that kind of stuff.

They may not communicate those ideas but those ideas are coming together in a uniquely kind of anti-authoritarian, anti-religious kind of way to end up to where I could worship to them becomes all about where they feel close to God or something like that.

And so you have like an anti-authoritarian thing that's happening. You have I think a vast biblical ignorance that's added to that anti-authoritarian sentiment. And then you add to that kind of individualism and a kind of antinomianism and all that.

You put it all together in a pot and you get this idea that and then you get like worship is all about me, like a man-centered kind of thing. You put all that in a pot and you end up with the kind of guy who thinks that they can feel God's presence and worship God just as well while they're hunting or something like that, right?

Because the creation declares the glory of God and all that. And these kind of people have existed for a long time. And part of it is I think the fault of many churches who seem to totally undermine a biblical ecclesiology almost at every single point, right?

And so I think there's been these people for many years, many, many years. And then I think you've had many what's the right term? You have like the seeker-sensitive movement come along and basically treat individual Christians as consumers and everything else in order to figure out what you're going to teach and figure out how you're going to what kind of programs you're going to use and everything else.

You poll the audience and figure out what the people want. And we have thousands of churches here and a church for every type of person. You have a cowboy church. You have a church for homeless strippers or whatever else you have.

I don't know if I want to be in that church.

Well, I'm somewhat I wish that I was almost any kind of church like that you can come up with is some kind of monstrosity like that. You can probably do an internet search and find it. I mean it's that bad at this point.

But the thing is Didn't you say that there was a church that was totally like it was for video gamers or something like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a church. Like it's just for people who play video games.

Well, that's where like it's almost beyond parody at this point, right? And so with that kind of thing, it's all just the customer's right and whatever the people want and everything else. And so it's all person first.

And so I think you put all that all those kind of things together and then you don't have like a generation of strong Bible readers anymore. We spend far too much time doing other things and just opening a Bible and reading it.

And so there's I think the American church is just characterized by vast biblical ignorance at almost every single conceivable point. And so church for many people is just that thing that we did and we never had a real rationale or reason why we're doing it as far as that goes anyways, right?

And so you have all those things that have produced the kind of person who just like they pray the prayer one time. They walk an aisle or whatever. And then they ask Jesus into their heart and then basically at that point, once saved, always saved.

And God makes no moral demands upon them anymore and they can just go live like the world, the flesh and the devil. And they don't understand anything the Bible says about what it even means to be a Christian, right?

And how precarious a position you place yourself in when the Bible says they went out from us because they were not of us. But they left that it might be shown that they are not of us. And so you don't have a generation of people who understands that God's plan for this age is to build a church.

He says to Peter, you are Peter and on this rock I'll build a church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. That's what he's doing in the world. He's building a church. He's building an assembly of people.

And when we gather together in his name on the Lord's Day, we are his building project in a very unique sense. We are what he's doing in the world in the primary sense, I guess, plan for this age. And so anyway, so all those things get put into a pot and I think it's you end up with just almost no understanding of ecclesiology, period, right?

Okay. Now that's pre-COVID though, okay? And so then the COVID stuff happens and then I think you have a different dynamic that's going on, okay? And so meaning I mean like basically there is the type of person who like basically spent who wants to claim to be a Christian but then, you know, goes to Alabama football games like with their season pass and passes and, you know, misses every single church gathering during football season or hunting season or whatever.

Like there's that kind of person. There's the kind of person who shows up to church on Easter and Christmas and, you know, try to be a good person and all that. There's been that kind of person for a long time but now all of a sudden with the COVID stuff, then now that kind of person has the moral high ground to essentially forsake the assembly of the saints out of like concerns about safety and everything else.

And so for them, I think this whole thing has been kind of revealing and quite frankly, I don't think many people who are actually claiming to do this online church thing are actually when it comes down to it sitting there and watching the service and singing along anyways, you know.

But it is a very easy way to kind of excuse their functional apostasy and everything else. Then I think you have like the then you have all the churches like I think the leaders. Like that's happening at the congregation level but I think you have plenty of leaders who really have not thought very deeply about what it means to stand in opposition to a culture which is hostile to the things of God.

I mean it's kind of funny. I mean going to seminary, this is a question that, you know, just is relevant as a side note. But I mean it's one of those things that you I can't tell you how many times it was brought up in the context of seminary classrooms and everything else where individuals say, you know, all right.

Like the Bible says, you know, be subject to the governing authorities and everything else. What are times where we would disobey the government? I can't think of a time where it's like, well, if the government says we can't go to church or if the government says we can't evangelize, then you don't need to listen to them, right?

But then like immediately COVID happens or whatever that is and then all of a sudden it's just like, well, I guess it's unsafe to go to church for the next year or whatever. And it's like, hey, I thought this was one of those situations that we've been told for years was one of the times where we disobeyed the government.

And yet, you know, when push comes to shove and you're now actually in that situation, it's going to actually require courage. You know, it's much easier just to keep the people happy and not have to have a faith that costs you anything and go to the you know, and then basically just butcher your ecclesiology beyond recognition.

That's the point.

When Temporary Suspension Is Different from Redefining Church

Yeah. So there's basically two different ways we can kind of take this conversation. I guess the way we'll go is first just starting off. So since you were talking about the COVID nonsense that's been going on for the last year and a half or no, two years now, I guess.

So in light of that, in light of the COVID thing, you know, do you think there's any kind of precedent for saying, hey, you know what, at this point, like we can't keep meeting in person? Is there you know, we talked about the Bible has a very clear has very clear commands about saying, no, you need to actually gather in person.

Do not forsake the assembly of the saints.

Right, right. Like those are very clear verses. So does that mean like there's no room to ever say, hey, you know, we can't meet in person, you know, for this reason? Yeah.

So what do you think? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, what I thought was happening was something along these lines. So I mean if you just imagine that, you know, you're the Bible talks about like the destruction of Jerusalem, right?

And so in the destruction of Jerusalem, Jesus says pray that your flight is not on, you know, a Sabbath essentially, right? Or pray that, you know, it's not when you're pregnant and everything else or on a Sabbath or whatever else.

And like the issue is like if the Romans are coming to destroy you, Jesus tells them he tells them to flee to the mountains, right? So flee to the mountains. So if like you're about to die, like you run away, right?

And then he says pray that your flight is not on, you know, winter or Sabbath or whatever else, right? So like the thing is like I think we all understand that like God can you know, if God is sending judgment upon a people or something like that or if there's a plague coming, whatever.

Let's just, you know, pretend that it's a real plague for the sake of argument or whatever else. But in cases like that, you're being chased by an enemy army, what do you do? I mean you run, right? You flee.

You flee, okay? I mean like if you're living in, you know, Europe or whatever and the Black Plague comes and half the population of Europe is like dead from the Black Plague, I think, you know, well, you might want to stay inside and see what happens.