Dead Men Walking Podcast: The biblical problem with church hopping

Dead Men Walking

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00:14

There it is. You know what's so funny about that tone is that it's coming out of a little baby

00:21

Fender amp that's like the size of a slice of bread.

00:26

Yeah. You know? Looks like a little Big Mac box. If anyone has been to Guitar Center or any guitar store, you can buy these little tiny amps and that's all

00:37

I recorded that thing with. It sounds pretty cool, man. It sounds good. I mean, I don't know. I think when

00:42

I threw it in Audacity, I think I made it worse. I think I need to fix it. I put some low end on it and I think it actually sounded better when you just recorded it raw, but it always sounds good.

00:54

That's so funny. I love it. I love it. Yeah, man. What's up? So we're back. I took a little break.

01:01

I had a family member in the hospital, unfortunately, and by God's grace, he is out and doing really well and we are praising

01:14

God for that. And if anybody knew about it out there, thank you so much for praying and yeah, we love you,

01:22

Pete. We love you. Absolutely. Well, I'm glad to hear that, man. Yeah. We missed you last week.

01:28

Yeah. G3. I don't know. Gosh. Well, G3 and doing the solo episode last week was a little rough because I had no one to laugh at my corny jokes.

01:39

I laughed. No one to keep me on track. In the car as I was listening. Well, it was funny because I had drops here.

01:45

I just kept playing a drop of your voice just so it felt like you were here. Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome.

01:51

But it's good to be back with you, brother. Well, I wasn't at G3 so it would have been like, oh, cool. Right. You know.

01:57

Yeah. Hey, Jason, do you remember? Oh, no. No. I was dealing with family stuff. I wasn't there. Sorry.

02:04

No, it's all good. No, it's cool. But yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, it's officially fall in Michigan. It's getting cold.

02:11

It's getting rainy. Yes, sir. But it's nice and toasty in the studio and we're glad to be back here talking about stuff.

02:17

I think this week we're gonna be talking about church hopping. Yeah. It's kind of an epidemic.

02:23

It is. Or should I say a pandemic? Oh, no, Greg. Easy, man.

02:28

Easy. Oh, sorry. Yeah, we did want to talk about that, but I think we wanted to get into a little newsy news first.

02:35

Yeah, sure. Yeah. Let's do it. News. The news. The news. The news.

02:41

The news. The news. The news. The news. News. We got some news.

02:49

And I will tell you, when I was down there, I forgot to tell you this, Jason, before we get into this. Some guy came up to me at the

02:54

G3 and he goes, are you, because I had the dead man walking shirt on, you know, at G3 conference. And he goes, are you the, you know,

03:00

I go, yeah, yeah, it's me. And he goes, you're the newsy news guy. That's great.

03:06

So now we're known by your riffing. I love it. We're not the theology guys. I know. We're not the doctrine guys. We're not the smart, you know,

03:13

Christian. We do our best. We're the newsy news guys now. We're just showing everyone that anyone can, you know, do this.

03:20

Right. We're plowing the way for all the average Joes. That's so funny.

03:27

No. So anyway, what do we got? Here's the news. All right. So this one's a little bit fun.

03:32

Athlete known as Dutch giant named world's tallest bodybuilder. A Dutch athlete who stands at 7 feet 1 .9

03:40

inches tall was declared the world's tallest professional bodybuilder by Guinness World Records.

03:47

Guinness said Oliver Richters, known as the Dutch giant, was dubbed the world's tallest non -competitive professional bodybuilder after his height was officially recorded in Emnes, Netherlands.

04:01

Man, I had a buddy. Well, I still have a buddy. Sorry, you're still out there, aunt.

04:08

In college, 6 '10". And every time, you know, we were hanging out.

04:14

You can't tell a guy that's 6 '10", when you're 5 '9", a secret, right? Right. You can't be like, yeah.

04:22

He was just so tall, man. But yeah, I mean, 7 '1", that's huge.

04:28

That's almost 7 '2". And he's a bodybuilder? He's a bodybuilder, yeah. I feel like he has a disadvantage, because if he wants to do like a clean press or like, what's the one where you start on the ground?

04:40

The deadlift. Deadlift. Yeah. I feel like he's got to go like twice as far as a guy who's like 5 '3". Seriously, man.

04:45

Yeah. I feel like you should get bonus points for lifting it that far up off the earth. Yeah, yeah.

04:51

Do you know how tall Goliath was? I've heard 6 '9", and I've heard like 15 feet.

04:58

So I have no idea. I grew up believing it was between 9' and 11' somewhere in there. Gotcha. Nine -ish.

05:03

Okay. And I think that's the best translation when we look at how they measured, was about 9'.

05:09

Okay, okay. Yeah. Man, that's huge. And I think, I don't know what the tallest guy was ever, but he's like right under that.

05:14

I think it was 8 '11". 8 '11"? Okay. I used to study the Guinness Book of World Records every - Me too. Me too.

05:20

I loved it. Elementary. My seven -year -old son has three of them, and he just sits there and reads them. And I'm like, oh my gosh.

05:25

Heck yeah. He's got the world record gene in him. That's so great. Wow. But yeah, that's a fun one.

05:32

So 7 '1", and he's lifting. That's kind of crazy. Yeah, man. Good for him. He must be benching 600 pounds or something crazy for reps.

05:41

Yeah. Well, we try to keep it light at least once on Newsy News, because some of the other stuff is kind of depressing or infuriating.

05:47

The one that I came up with was, yeah, we have the

05:53

Attorney General, which was the gentleman who Obama nominated him for Supreme Court right before he was, you know, when he was lame duck at his second term.

06:05

And Biden then nominated him for Attorney General. So he's

06:10

Attorney General. Is it Garrick? I don't know. You can look it up. But anyway, he's the

06:16

Attorney General. He told the FBI, hey, if there's any parents talking about or opposing

06:21

CRT at school board meetings, we want you to invoke the Patriot Act and declare them as domestic terrorists.

06:29

That's a real thing. Right. Yeah. And he's saying, and it all sprang from a parent yelling.

06:36

She raised her voice and was yelling at the school board and the school board said, we feel threatened. We feel like she might do something.

06:41

And all she did was raise her voice. Now, you should always be civil, you know, as believers, be civil, self -control, self -control when you're talking to anyone, let alone, you know, your elected officials.

06:50

But to then go to the FBI and say, hey, we want to declare anyone who's talking about CRT as domestic terrorism.

06:59

It's like, oh, what world are we living in? I know. Yeah. And, you know, it's almost like an abusive relationship.

07:05

You know, you know, like those, those guys that will instigate something with the girlfriend and then, and then blame her and she gets upset and then blame her.

07:14

But why are you so upset? Either role, male or female. Yeah. I mean, that's the kind of relationship we're in right now with the left and with statism is like they do these crazy things.

07:24

And then when you show any emotion towards like, hey, you can't do that to go, why are you acting crazy? Why are you insane?

07:30

Yeah. We need to declare you domestic terrorists. And the tweets on this were just insane too, because it's like,

07:37

I think it was Stuckey. What's her first name? Is it Alice or? Oh, Beth, Ali, Beth, Ali, Beth, Stuckey.

07:45

She had a great tweet and she's like, oh, this totally normal CRT that we have to force down your throat and then call you domestic terrorist if you oppose it.

07:53

It's such a great, it's such a great program, you know, it's so great when you got to tell people that aren't, you know, that are against it, that you're a domestic terrorist.

08:01

If you are calling things that are good, bad and bad, good, right. There you go, man.

08:06

We continue down this, this road of what is going on seriously.

08:13

That's all you can do is kind of shake your head and, and yeah, try to fight as much as you can and try to have conversations as much as you can.

08:19

Right. Yeah. Be vigilant. Yeah. In the word too. Yeah. And in the word. Oh man. But be wise as serpents, right?

08:26

Gentles don't, but wise as serpents. Know what's going on in the United States. Know what their agenda is. And let's preach

08:32

Christ crucified everywhere we go. That's right. Change hearts, not minds. Amen. What else you got? The third and final

08:39

Newsy News is from Reuters .com. This came out on October 5th.

08:44

It's about Facebook operating in the shadows, says whistleblower, lawmaker demand probes.

08:50

So the other day, a whistleblower went in front of the Senate. And the

08:56

US lawmakers pounded Facebook on Tuesday, accusing CEO Mark Zuckerberg of pushing for higher profits while being cavalier about user safety.

09:06

And they demanded regulators investigate whistleblower accusations that the social media company harms children's mental health and Stokes divisions.

09:17

Zuckerberg hours later in a public Facebook post defended the company, saying the accusations were at odds with Facebook's goals.

09:25

Yeah. I mean, we know how it is with us as adults.

09:31

You know, we at times, maybe we're on Facebook a bit too much, you know, and what it does for us, even with likes and whatever.

09:41

Yeah. But think about a child getting involved on Facebook without parental supervision, you know?

09:50

Wow. I mean, what if they don't get enough likes, then they'll think they're unloved or, you know, or crazy ads start showing up on their newsfeed and they're not being watched.

10:00

You know, they're not being shown how to navigate through this crazy internet world now.

10:06

I mean, we, we personally aren't allowing Aubrey to be on social media right now.

10:13

She's 12 years old. And I mean, we, we really kind of, you know,

10:18

I mean, I think that there is a time to start introducing them to social media because it's going to be around, it looks like.

10:28

So you definitely want to teach and, you know, show them how to navigate that world.

10:34

But a young eight -year -old having multiple accounts and Facebook allowing it and knowing that parents are allowing that,

10:44

I think that's a little bit different level, you know? Yeah. But anyway. Yeah. There was a

10:50

Senate hearing where they were talking about the fake accounts. Yeah. And they just went, oh, well, yeah, we allow underage kids to make fake accounts.

10:59

There's no way that we can control that. And to the Senate hearing, they were, the CEO or not

11:05

CEO, someone, program director or something of Instagram saying, yeah, there's nothing we can do about it. Sorry.

11:10

And it's like, okay, so you have algorithms that can find a keyword and censor conservatives or Christian thought or anything that you declare hate speech.

11:19

You have algorithms that can shut down a site, you know, within a second if there's anything that's a get, but you can't verify someone's age.

11:29

Because what's happening is they're finding out that there's a lot of sex trafficking going on. There's a lot of predators that are, you know, finding kids under the age of 18 that are on social media.

11:39

You know, Samantha and I, we're with you, Jason, our kids are 12, 10 and eight.

11:44

They don't even know what social media, they know what it is, but they don't have any devices that connect there. If they have a device that's connected, it's in our presence while we're there.

11:52

We know what they're watching, right? The way it should be. Hopefully the way it should be. We take a little harder stance and we go, we're the parents in this, especially if you claim to be a believer.

12:01

Now, there's going to be non -believers, there's going to be people who don't know better and it's our job as Christians to kind of preach the gospel and tell them why we raise our kids a certain way and, you know, things like that.

12:13

But we have a lot of believers that allow their children to go unmonitored on social media, even having a device in their room.

12:21

I don't even want to tempt my kids that way to, you know, after they go to bed or if they're in there playing, oh, let's jump on and look at, they're not even allowed to have those in their possession.

12:29

And some might say that's extreme, but it's my job. It's your job as parents to protect them. You have to. Against that, right?

12:35

Yeah. Because I mean, they're curious minds, you know? And if a child is going to public school, they're being shown a lot more than, you know, if they were at home, possibly.

12:50

I mean, some parents do grab the bull by the horns, if you will, and show and teach, you know, a child about life at certain levels, at certain ages, of course.

13:03

I mean, we got to be tactical about that. Yeah. But yeah, it is in our world and our kids will, at some point, be online and social media will unfortunately, possibly disrupt their life the way it disrupts a lot of lives.

13:23

It's funny. I was just thinking our good friend, Chocolate Knox over at CrossPolitik, he always has his tagline at the end.

13:30

It says, baptize your kids. I think I'm going to steal that and just start saying homeschool your kids. Yeah, right. That's going to be my tagline because the more

13:35

I just look at the way the world's going and I'm not making a judgment against you if you don't, but so many parents think it's the right of the school system to raise their kids.

13:46

Raise your kids, yeah. They're the babysitter. We're going through this right now with vaccine mandates and things like that in our state and county.

13:52

And I just had a long meeting on the county commission about that last night about a resolution I'm introducing, but it's like a lot of parents just go, well,

13:59

I have a right to know what curriculum and I have a right to, and they do, they do have a right. But it's like, we're putting the responsibility of training and raising and teaching our kids back on a public school and not everyone can homeschool.

14:11

I understand that. Right. But if you can make the sacrifice to do that, whether it's financially or with your time, man,

14:17

I would, I would encourage you to look into it and raise your kids rightly. Yeah. Or start a school. Or start a school.

14:22

Like Doug Wilson did. There you go. All right. Was that all the news we had? That's everything. All right.

14:28

And that was the Newsy News. Oh man. Church hopping. Oh boy.

14:37

What was that? That's an evil laugh right there. Oh, sorry. We're live right now.

14:43

Oh, I thought we weren't recording. No, let's do it. Oh no. Yeah, church hopping. Have we been talking for the past 10 minutes and I didn't know?

14:51

No, that's what we're talking about. That's what we're talking about tonight. Church hopping. It's, it's a epidemic.

14:56

It's a pandemic. Oh, where's your, where's your... It's a pandemic.

15:07

But yeah, it's, it happens a lot, man, in the church and we just want to talk about it a little bit on the old podcast here.

15:15

Yeah. I have come across so many Christians that have left churches for non -biblical reasons.

15:22

It's amazing. Offense. Oh, offense. They don't like the music.

15:28

They don't like that the preacher is talking too much about one subject. Yeah. They don't like the perspective in which he's talking about now upfront, let's just say if there are, if there's deep theological and doctrinal issues within a church that are skewed from the

15:43

Bible. Yeah. Get out of that church. Right. Yeah. Hop that fence. Exactly. Get out. We're, what we're talking about tonight is people who are erroneously or unbiblically leaving churches or going from church to church because there's a deeper underlying issue,

15:56

I think, with that person. Yeah. Read Hebrews for us real quick. Yeah. We were talking about that earlier. Hebrews 10, 24 through 25 says, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

16:18

Yeah. So encourage one another in love. And I would say, well, what is that love? Right. Does that mean just be nice to people?

16:24

Well, no. Encourage one another in the gifts of the spirit, patience, kindness, selflessness, all those things.

16:32

So Hebrews is saying, you know, be self -sacrificial when it comes to loving one another within the body.

16:39

And I feel like if we had a little bit more of that within the body, we wouldn't have so many people hopping, leaving, oh, that guy said something to me

16:49

I don't like. Those people rubbed me the wrong way. I'm out of here. Right. Yeah. And that's something that I think comes with our culture right now.

16:58

I think our culture is a, let's critique everything around us from music to, you know,

17:07

I mean, I mean the game shows or whatever now, I mean like American Idol, people watch that over and over there.

17:14

And, you know, at first, when you first saw the show, I mean, you see 10 good singers and there's one guy sitting there going, nope.

17:24

You know, Simon sitting there just being like, I'm just going to judge this dude. Which he was the most popular.

17:30

You know? Yeah. Yeah. Everyone loved him. Right. Right. Judgmental spirit. Exactly. And that's the thing.

17:36

I mean, like people love to do that about everything now. I mean, you know, you get on Yelp, you see some of these restaurant reviews, you see,

17:47

I don't know, somebody puts out an album and they get two stars and it's like, you listen to the album and you're just like, this is a really good album.

17:56

How could this not have five stars? Takes like 10 months of their life. Yeah, I know. Recorded.

18:01

Three years sometimes. Three years. Oh no. Two stars. Right. But then you bring that stuff, that judgmental spirit, that broken spirit into the church.

18:11

Which there's no place for biblically. Exactly. Exactly. And I mean, you know what? I mean,

18:16

I think we're going to have to just go ahead and read that Matthew 18, 15 through 20.

18:22

Yeah, read it. This is going to be a little bit lengthy, but this is really good. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.

18:35

If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

18:51

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a

19:02

Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

19:13

Again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my

19:21

Father in heaven. So Jesus wasn't talking about prayer. Or Lamborghinis.

19:26

Or Lamborghinis. Yeah. He was talking about church discipline. So Christ himself lays out four steps there.

19:33

First, go to your brother in private. If he rejects it, then go to him with two or three.

19:39

So there's witnesses. Then, if not, then go to him and take it to the church elders. Then if not, you still don't take offense, but you treat him as if a

19:49

Gentile or a tax collector, meaning you put up with him, but you just know where he stands and you don't go into business with him.

19:55

You don't get too close to him. You're not going to confide in him. I mean, that's really what Christ is saying there.

20:01

The Jews looked at tax collectors and Gentiles as someone that they just had to kind of live with. Yeah. That they were part of the world.

20:07

So even in all four of those steps, it doesn't say, get mad, take offense, and never speak to him again. And never, yeah.

20:12

It still says treat him cordially. Just treat him like someone who you know you can't have confidence in. But I thought you're supposed to gossip about him behind their back, right?

20:21

And write messages on Facebook. Snarky Facebook messages. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That have nothing.

20:27

Like, yeah. You know? But everybody's just like, why did they even say, are they talking about someone right now?

20:34

Like, but yeah. So I think this would really curb church hopping too because so many people take offense by what their brother says and they don't go through those four steps.

20:45

Right. Yeah. And there are things that, you know, you will disagree on.

20:52

I mean, yeah, we are reformed guys on this podcast for sure.

20:58

Oh, yeah. Wait. Was I not supposed to say that? It's supposed to be a secret. Got you guys.

21:04

The listeners haven't figured that out yet. Oh, man. We're busted. Two -star review.

21:10

Uh -oh. Shadowbanned. Yeah, yeah. We love being shadowbanned.

21:16

Bring it on. But look, like, we can have a very great debate or just not talk about theology with our

21:27

Arminian brothers, right? Yeah. And love them just the same. Okay. They're wrong, but I mean, but look, man, when it comes to church hopping,

21:38

I mean, like, you can't walk in and just start judging everything that's going on.

21:44

The color of the carpet, the, oh my gosh, they haven't painted the walls in a little while. This is, it's all just distracting.

21:51

Style of the worship music. Yeah, yeah. Style of the music. You know, and it's like, this is all just a distraction from why you were truly there to worship

22:00

Christ, to hear the gospel proclaimed and realize that you're a sinner in need of a savior.

22:11

Okay. Well, I think that's part of the culture too, is like, you know, how I feel and it's like, well, that person or that pastor or that leader, that small group leader made me feel a certain way.

22:22

Yeah. I don't like it. I'm out. Yeah. And it's like the very last step that Christ gave us in that scripture that you just read still wasn't leave.

22:32

Right. It was still treat, treat them cordially, like still interact with them. So biblically, if someone offends you or, or does you wrong or is doing something unbiblical towards you or your family, or even in the church, it says, go to them in private, then go to them with two or three.

22:48

So there's witnesses then go to them and take it, take it before the church elders and the pastor, then even then, if they don't admit or ask forgiveness or whatever it is, don't take offense, but treat them cordially and just understand who they are in their spirit.

23:04

Right. So that's one is if, if we understood that for those four steps, there'd be a lot less offense being taken up in church and a lot less church hopping like I'm out of here.

23:15

I think that most people church hop because they're going to church for the wrong reason in the first place.

23:23

What's the number one reason when you hear someone talk about going from church to church to church?

23:28

Well, I just felt the Lord took me out of there because he just wasn't really meeting my needs or fulfilling my spirit or all these other things.

23:34

And it's like, dude, church isn't about you. Right. That's the number two. Church is not about you. Yeah. It's about worshiping

23:41

God. It's about bringing glory to him. And the Lord might have you in a church that makes you feel really uncomfortable.

23:47

And once again, we're not talking about a theologically wayward church. Right. We're not talking about a doctrinally restrictive or liberal, right?

23:55

Like just crazy oneness Pentecostal or kenosis or God really wasn't

24:00

God or going against Orthodox Christianity. We're talking about a church that you're looking at and you're saying, well, it's not meeting some of my personal tastes, not meeting some of my personal needs.

24:17

And it's like, man, that's wrong. So you don't like the style of worship. So you don't like what the pastor's wearing or maybe he's not, you know, his style isn't your style or you don't like the way he talks or the order of service or the way they take communion or something like that.

24:35

It's like, man, if you're in a body of believers, those are all secondary issues. I can't stress enough.

24:41

We're talking about secondary issues here, right, Jason? We're not just talking. We're not saying like, oh, well, my.

24:47

There's a female pastor. Female pastor. There's some like, you know, some unbiblical issue going on there.

24:52

Then yes. Then please leave that church and find a Bible believing church. My point is, is

24:57

I see too many people in a church that leave because it's not fulfilling something they want when in fact we're there to bring glory to God and to worship

25:07

God, Christ the King and do that every single week in that kind of heart sense.

25:15

And man, if we just read Matthew and read Hebrew and even read,

25:20

I think it's what's the other one we have there is Philippians 2, 1 through 3. So read that out.

25:26

Yeah. So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

25:48

Do nothing from rivalry or conceit. Oh, yeah.

25:54

Can I say that one more time? Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility, count others.

26:02

Count others more significant than yourselves. Wow. And I mean, yeah, those two areas right there, rivalry or conceit.

26:13

I can play the guitar better than that guy. I can sing better than that guy. I can bring the word better than that guy.

26:20

I can say hello to people at the front door better than anybody. I'm wearing better clothes.

26:28

I could love that person into the right spirit. I could, you know, it's like all these things, right?

26:34

Like rivalry or conceit as well is also I might have this theology degree and you don't understand that verse the way

26:47

I do. Yeah. Guess what? All of us has been through cage stage. If you're a

26:53

Calvinist, you have been through it, and if you remember, it's like the worst place to be because you're just like kind of going after people with verses, you know, and just biblical, different biblical talk or whatever.

27:10

I would say too really quick in cage stage, there are two types of cage stage, I think. I think there's one that it does come from a good place.

27:16

Like I want people to know, and you just, everything reverts back to that. You're in that like new phase where you're like, oh my gosh, this has been opened up to me.

27:24

God is something so awesome in his grace and mercy and works and faith and all these things come together so right.

27:31

And you're like, I want everyone to hear about it. So it's like, and I went through this to where it was like, hey, so man, it's pretty sunny today.

27:38

I'll tell you about the sun. The sun of God. It's like everything went back to that for a while, which is good, but it's also like, you know, do it in the right way.

27:48

But then there's also a cage stage where people stay in it and they marinate in it. And you can see this outside of reformed theology too, where it's like,

27:55

I'm up here on this pedestal. I know these things and I'm being condescending and talking down to people. Condescending because somebody told me that I was supposed to be a pastor, a teacher, you know, an evangelist.

28:07

And what's that word towards the end there that starts with an H? Do everything in all humbleness. In humility.

28:12

Humility. Count others more significant than yourselves. I mean, isn't that something that we're...

28:19

I think it gets twisted, right? I think that there is an area where it can be like, you're just being sinfully too humble.

28:31

Okay. Right? Sure. Yeah. Like there's a side to that that's like, okay, dude, like, you know, chill out with that.

28:39

You know, like we get it, you know. False humbleness. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that like...

28:46

I mean, the Pharisees did that. Lord, I just thank you. I'm not like this. I'm so humble. I'm not like this. Yeah. Yeah. I fast.

28:52

I pray. I do all these things. I do all these things. Yeah. And that's really all God wants to hear is, forgive me.

28:59

I'm a sinner. Right? And I mean, like to repent and believe, I mean, the humility in that,

29:07

I mean, that should overflow into everything in our lives, really. So here's my question.

29:12

How can you hop from church to church to church, seeking new experiences and seeking new friendships and new fellowship, if you do what

29:24

Philippians says right there, and it says, treat every other person as more important than yourself? How can you do both of those at the same time?

29:32

You can't. And how can you even go deeper into your faith without doing it alongside a brother or a sister that is pursuing this with you in more than just a year or in more than just six weeks that you showed up at that church?

29:51

How can your family really, you know, I think that there's something to that when you're in a church for a good amount of time, you know, and you're making friends, you're, you know, you're iron sharpening iron,

30:05

I mean, your families, you know, yeah, all of it. Forging relationships. Exactly. You're discipling.

30:11

Yeah. Yeah. If there is not something that you're digging deeper in your

30:17

Christian walk, I mean, that is a problem as well. Because you're staying, you know, and again, you could be in the word on your own, but there is a serious mandate in the

30:32

Bible in Hebrews 10, 24 and 25 that says we should meet together.

30:37

We should meet together for encouragement, you know, I mean, encouragement and uplifting of one another.

30:45

Just to love one another in discipleship. Discipleship. I mean, this is... For works. There's all kinds of biblical reasons.

30:51

All kinds of biblical reasons to meet together and not say, we're not meeting until 2022 because the government told me, you know.

30:58

Right. The almighty Caesar told us not to. Yeah. I think that brings up another good point though, too, is like, you know, you always hear like the...

31:08

This is going to be a weird analogy. Let's see if I can... Do it. Let's see if I can bring it home. So you always hear like in the mixed family or the single mom and she's out there and she has a kid and she's bringing a man around and dating and then, you know, they break up and the destruction it can do to the child, right?

31:24

Because like you bring this person into their lives and then you rip them away from them if it doesn't work out.

31:30

Sometimes that happens to kids over and over and over their whole life. They've got a new father, a new mother in their life.

31:37

And it's devastating. I kind of feel like church hopping can be the same way, especially if you have a family, like you bring your family into a church for fellowship, they meet other kids, you're meeting other people, you're starting to forge these relationships, you go, oh, nope,

31:52

I don't like something about it. I'm out of here. Yeah. Most of the time it's for selfish reasons, right? I mean, that is kind of what it's like.

31:59

It's like you're ripping that fellowship away from other people, from your children, from yourself, your spouse.

32:04

And it really is self -serving upfront, but in the deep part of that, in the deep end of it, it's hurt.

32:11

It's hurtful and it's not good. And it's just crazy to me that we don't do, and this is another point, do a little research.

32:21

If you're looking for a church or you want to enter into a church, do your research, see what their doctrinal statement is, see what they believe theologically, find out and talk and sit down with the pastor and say, where do you stand on the children's ministry and what is your outreach like?

32:39

And what do you believe theologically? And all these different things can usually be answered with either a meeting, going to a website.

32:46

Obviously, if there's things happening between members that are offending you, that's something different.

32:52

But we just said in Matthew, the four steps you take if that happens. So we got that covered biblically. You don't get to cut ties and just jump out.

33:00

It says you're supposed to work through it. But I mean, from theologically and doctrinally and all those things, do your research and know where you're going to church.

33:09

Don't just jump into something because I think it's kind of like that analogy with the single mother and bring it in the stepdad.

33:15

It's like you do that over and over. There's no way for you to bond with your brothers and sisters, to have true fellowship, to have accountability, to have discipleship, all those things if you're just jumping from one church to another for self -serving reasons.

33:29

How can someone pull you aside if they don't know you and they heard about something in your life?

33:38

And how can they just pull you aside and just say, hey, what are you doing?

33:44

What's up with that sin in your life, right? If you're not digging in, I mean.

33:49

And I think the reason why we don't dig in a lot of times too is because church has become a concert and an entertainment venue instead of the gathering of the believers, communal.

33:58

We have an episode coming out or, hold on, we'll cut that because we don't want to hold on 19 minutes.

34:07

Yeah, 19. Yeah, right around 50. It was like, I don't know, somewhere around there. But we've talked to people before on the podcast that have talked about home churches and house churches and how the early church was a small group of people and they were all very communal.

34:23

Yeah. They knew each other. They knew their businesses. They knew where they lived. They broke bread together. Like every day.

34:28

Like every meal. And even I think, I mean, honestly, Jason, I've been longing for this. I'm like,

34:34

I would love to attend a church to where communion wasn't like a sippy cup of juice and a little wafer.

34:40

And a cracker. Why not? And I'm not talking about like, oh, we have to bust out a whole thing of wine and eat real bread.

34:46

I'm saying like communion, shouldn't it be like a meal? Yeah. Shouldn't we have like a communion meal? Could you imagine if your church was only max 50 people?

34:54

Let's say it's a house church or home church. Let's say it's max 50, more like 25 or 30. You could literally have a space where your communion was a full day of eating and feasting with the brothers and sisters of Christ in remembrance of what

35:07

Christ did for us on the cross. Tell me how powerful that would be. A great Sabbath. A great

35:12

Sabbath instead of two and a half minutes of think about what Jesus did for you. Sip this, chew that.

35:18

Okay. And let's move on. You're good to go. Later. And I'm not, and look, I'm not dogging that. I'm not saying you can't do communion that way.

35:25

I'm just saying, I think it's like a shallow way for me. And this is the way I've been thinking the last year.

35:31

Right? So like my thoughts on this are evolving and changing too. Probably just doing this podcast and talking to men of God who are like, no man, like communion is important.

35:43

It's a sacrament. You know what I mean? It's, it's something that shouldn't just be done in a couple minutes. It's communal.

35:49

It's true. And if we were more communal, I think we wouldn't church hop as much. Right, right. Instead of it being an event or a venue.

35:56

Yeah. And, and I mean, and again, it's, it goes back to the, the critical spirit, the you know, critiquing and judging and, you know maybe you live in a smaller community or whatever and so -and -so goes to your church and, you know, you, you possibly never even talked to the person and you're just like, oh,

36:19

I've just heard things about them. And if they go there, then I don't want to go. Well, it's like, what? Like what?

36:24

What? Right. Oh, I mean, who knows? They might be the ones that, that spur you along into greater things.

36:33

I mean, on a side note too, I just think like how hard that must be for a pastor that's really trying to be a biblical pastor.

36:40

If they have a thousand plus people, heck even 250, let's say. Yeah. Okay. And megachurches have tens of thousands sometimes.

36:49

Some of those popular churches, even like the John MacArthur's that have 2000, 3000 people. Right. He's not a megachurch per se, but he's the large church.

36:57

Right. How do you have, I mean, you've got to have a whole team of people to be able to be rightly ministering to those sheep.

37:05

Like at some point, I mean, did shepherds back in the day be like, oh, look at, I've got 10 ,000 sheep and it's just me and a team of five people that are watching them or did you have so many sheep for so many shepherds?

37:18

Because they knew that like wolves could sneak in, the sheep get sick, the sheep fall off the cliff.

37:23

Like you can only have a ratio of so many people to a leader. And I know churches, large churches have like a team of people, elders and things like that.

37:33

But it's almost like when you look at government, like when you get so large, stuff starts falling through the cracks.

37:39

Yeah. Right. If you've got a 40 person elder board. Yeah. Well, who's keeping track of the 40 elders?

37:44

Right. What if two of those guys are in some deep, weird sin? Right. Like, and then they're what, holding other people accountable.

37:50

I just feel like smaller and more limited in role is better for both government and church.

37:57

It's true. And we see it right here in a, where was it? What did we just read? Where it's saying, take two or three with you.

38:03

Yeah. Christ didn't say, hey, you could take them a book, take them in front of 5 ,000 people and vote it out. Right. He's like private.

38:08

Then private and two or three people. Yeah. Two or three was enough. Yeah. So like, And then take it to the church.

38:14

I don't know, man. I just, yeah. And then take it to the church. Yeah. I just feel like church hopping has become so prevalent just because it's not a communal experience anymore and it's more of an experience or an entertainment venue.

38:26

Entertainment and they, you know, they usually find something that doesn't speak to them.

38:35

This is not the way that I want to live my life. I don't, you know, and it's like, if, if,

38:40

I mean, let's just, let's just be honest about seeker, seeker friendly churches. I mean, seeker friendly churches are, they aren't really, they aren't really going towards they

38:54

I'm really trying to watch my words here, but really seeker, seeker friendly churches are not what we are called to be doing.

39:05

And we should be, we should be preaching the word of God rightly and not trying to water it down weekly just so someone will come in the door and you know, and I, I think that there are definitely spaces for us to go into the community and, and preach and just meet with those people where they're at, wherever they are and, and share the gospel.

39:37

And you know, but, but when it comes to church, I really truly believe that it is for the believers and that we need to have sermons that are full of milk and meat.

39:54

And we should definitely be speaking truth in every single sermon without hesitation of who's in the room and how it's going to affect them.

40:07

I think the milk meat argument to the ratio is up to the pastor understanding who's in his fold.

40:14

Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. If you have a group of mature Christians believers that sermons different than if you're ministering to, you know, newer

40:25

Christians or baby Christians, as they used to call them in the eighties and nineties. So I think even that falls on the pastor a little bit too.

40:31

There's no one or, you know, one or two ratios that are right. I think it depends on the congregation.

40:37

But yeah, church hopping. So do we have anything else on this or should we wrap it up? Yeah, I think we're good, man. Yeah. Yeah.

40:43

So guys, takeaways from this, I would say is one, don't be offended and let offense take you away from a church.

40:51

We saw in Matthew what Christ says to do if you're offended or if someone has wronged you, right. Two, we're to do everything in love and to treat others as more important than us.

41:01

And it's very hard for me to see a church hopper be able to do that. And then also just hop from church to church and go, oh, well,

41:08

I like this. I don't like that. I like this. Three, church is not about you. Yeah. It's not about me.

41:13

It's not about you, Jason. Nope. What is it about? It is about worshiping Christ. It's about bringing all glory to him.

41:19

And if we put that in the forefront of our mind, then I think everything else kind of falls to the wayside.

41:24

And then lastly, we're not talking about bad theology or bad doctrine. If you have a church that is not preaching biblical theology and adhering to biblical doctrine, get out of that church.

41:36

Go find a biblical church. Yeah. All right, guys. Thanks for listening. And as always,

41:42

God bless. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at DeadMenWalkingPodcast for full video podcast episodes and clips, or email us at deadmenwalkingpodcast at gmail .com.