Rediscovering the Biblical Purpose of Church Gatherings (Hint: It's Not Worship) with Dr. Tom Wadsworth

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Welcome back to the Ready for Eternity podcast. I'm Eddie Lawrence and I've got a special guest with me today,

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Dr. Tom Wadsworth. Tom, thanks for coming on the program. Hey Eddie, it's so good to talk to you.

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We've already chatted for like 20 minutes or something and I'm looking forward to talking with you about this topic.

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Good. It looks like from my perspective you've become a pretty busy man recently. I've seen you pop up in my

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YouTube feed on a number of other people's YouTube channels and podcasts so it looks like you're in high demand right now.

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That's true and here I'm age 71 I'm not prepared for this but yeah my videos are are approaching half a million views now all of them together.

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I don't know what to do with that but the real the time -consuming part are the comments and emails

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I'm getting which are now I think over 5 ,000 and I I'm a little bit ashamed to admit

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I read them all and I respond to several but I can't respond to all of them but yeah

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I I am busy this topic is a hot topic and I'm really glad we're talking about it.

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Well getting a half a million views on YouTube is no small accomplishment. You know

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I've had a YouTube channel for a time. I'm an amateur at this so I don't get a lot of hits but for someone who can get a half a million views on their videos

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I think something about your topic is resonating with people and in fact it was one of your videos that that caught my attention.

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It was the one titled why the early church did not have worship services. It just popped up in my as one of my suggested videos and it resonated very strongly with me because the conclusion that you reached is one that I have also reached in recent years.

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However the difference being yours is based on a lot more research than mine was.

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So I watched all seven of your videos plus the eighth one that was kind of a compilation of the first seven and then

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I watched several more but I read your dissertation a 300 page dissertation.

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I read the entire thing. It was well as I told you before we started recording it was not like most academic writing.

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It was actually interesting because a lot of academic writing is pretty dull and boring but it was it was really good.

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It was easy to understand and I got a lot out of it but speaking of that research you you have two master's degrees in biblical studies and your recent

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PhD I say recent within the last couple of years you got a PhD in New Testament and your dissertation your doctoral dissertation was focused on first century church assembly.

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So I think this probably qualifies you as an expert on this topic. What was it like doing that kind of research?

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Well it was fun in one way because I stumbled on this like you did but I stumbled on it 40 years ago in 1977.

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47 years ago and the topic just captivated me when

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I stumbled on it in 1st Corinthians 14. I mean I have to blame the Bible for captivating me on this topic and I've been just engrossed with it for the longest time and so that's why

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I went ahead and pursued a PhD on this topic because some of the conclusions that I'd come to were so radically different than what is common in church culture today no matter what your denomination is that I wanted to take these conclusions and throw them up against a doctoral study wall and see what stuck and that's why

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I did what I did and the conclusions stick and that's why I think we need to talk about them.

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And what's your study? Well we keep going to the word worship you know that comes up often because it's part of this conversation but what your study really was was focusing on the purpose of the first century church assembly is that fair to say?

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Yes yes out of 1st

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Corinthians 14 here's the longest chapter in the Bible that deals with the Christian assembly. You would think that somewhere in there or somewhere in the

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New Testament somebody would state that you know you guys go to church to worship

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God don't you? You know that the purpose of going to church is to worship God because you all you got your worship services and you got your houses of worship and your worship pastors you think that the

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New Testament would be using that language? That language is absent from the

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New Testament absent this deafening silence that has to captivate your attention that's what a captivated mind and so based on 1st

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Corinthians 14 which points to the purpose as being edification I find that these two purposes are different and point in different directions in terms of the outcome of a given assembly.

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Is the outcome the building up of the individual Christians and the building up of the body or is it for the worship and service of God?

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I think those are two different things as my research then got deep into worship terminology in the

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New Testament the Greek worship terminology what's going on there as well as getting deep into all the passages that talk about Christian assemblies in the

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New Testament. Yeah so the purpose is the focus there and I conclude with no hesitation whatsoever that the purpose of the

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Christian assembly in the first century was certainly to build up one another to encourage one another to strengthen the church it was focused on one another and not of course

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God has a role in this of course he does of course we're gonna sing to him of course we're gonna pray to him but the

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New Testament does not use worship language at all to refer to what Christians did in their assemblies.

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Well before we jump into this topic of worship language it might be good to explain what you mean by edify or mutual edification because edification may not mean the same thing to everyone or they may not define it the same so how are you using that phrase?

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Yeah well the Greek word there is oikodome which has the word oiko in there and if you know something about Greek the word for house or a building is oiko and oikodome is talking about a building a structure a construction kind of thing and so edification is sometimes also translated as to build up and so the when

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Paul says emphatically in 1st Corinthians 14 26 let all things be done for oikodome for edification for building up of one another he means he wants

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Christians to become more mature stronger more encouraged more grounded in the faith not just growing mentally and intellectually and educationally but growing spiritually as well there's a verse in I think it's

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Hebrews 5 12 where the writer there says to those Christians he says you guys by this time you ought to be teachers so the idea there is that there's this expectation in the first century that you know after you're going to these assemblies on a regular basis you ought to be teachers after well you ought to be raising the level of understanding and spirituality and strength as a teacher so I think that's how

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I would define it and I think that's how the Bible would define edification so what's the difference that you see between what is described in the

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New Testament what their assemblies were like versus how churches today conduct their assemblies yeah great question and I think

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I would focus on the word worship the worship worship terminology floods our vernacular language about when talking about the assembly you order of worship acts of worship the five acts of worship right

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Eddie understand that one yeah yeah okay and of course it

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Eddie and I both have background in the Church of Christ and so one of the hallmark doctrines there is you're not allowed to have instrumental music in worship hmm okay so but with worship language is just throughout we start our worship let's open worship with prayer let's close worship with this and worship languages is just permeates our understanding and our thinking we have this idea that when we get together we are offering this thing to God and this is our weekly obligation to offer this service or this worship to God well the question is is that biblical is that what's going on in the first century and my research indicates now that's too much yes there is this vertical aspect to what they did in their assemblies but clearly the purpose of everything they did was to build up one another and this this building up I think if you put it in simplest terms is that I'm a little bit better of a disciple today because we met together than I was yesterday

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I'm a little stronger spiritually I'm a little more well -grounded what would you say or is it fair to say that the

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New Testament never actually uses the word worship to describe what quick Christians did in the first century when they met together or is that a statement no the short answer is yes and this is what

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I call the worship anomaly this the word anomaly sort of means this strange oddity the worship anomaly is this strange odd fact that the

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New Testament does not use Greek worship terminology in reference to what Christians did in their assembly or why they did their assemblies it's not the purpose of those assemblies nor is it does that identify things that they did yes they sang praises yes they prayed to God yes they took the

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Lord's Supper and communed with God in this sort of vertical way but the purpose of all these things which is clearly mentioned is to build up one another so yeah your statement is actually correct now let me let me just if I don't if you don't mind there's a couple of exceptions actually the one key exception to that rule which some people actually very few people pointed out but in Acts 13 to Eddie Luke is describing what's going on with Paul he's at Antioch there's these five prophets and teachers there and depending on what translation you read there it says after worshipping the

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Lord and fasting they then set apart Barnabas and Saul and they commissioned them on to do their missionary work but mission after their worshipping the

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Lord and fasting that word there is later ghetto which is rarely translated as worship matter of fact of the hundred and sixty -five times that Greek word is used in the

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Septuagint and the New Testament in most translations it's only translated as worship once in that verse but it doesn't mean worship it in fact does not mean worship in the sense that we use that word today it's a it's used in the sense of priestly work

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Luke there is elevating a view of what these five prophets and teachers were doing and say that they were doing this priestly work for God and they were also fasting on this ongoing basis but they weren't getting together in a worship service and worshipping

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God and that's what he's referring to that's not it at all and a study of that word which was a part of my dissertation really makes it clear and indisputable and you're just to clarify

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I don't think you're saying that mutual edification and worship are mutually exclusive it's just that your research has revealed that the main purpose that Christians assembled was for mutual edification and that's not to say that there possibly wasn't some worship happening is am

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I am I understanding that correctly yeah yes you're the last part of your question where you use the word worship the problem we have here in discussing this topic is illustrated by what you just said there when modern

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English -speaking Christians use the term worship they're using that word in a different way than what the

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Bible is using that seven letter W word when it appears there it's usually the translation of like proskuneo or Latruo or later

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Geo or some others but it never means what we mean when we're talking about gathering together and doing stuff for God in a worship service it's it's substantially different so but I've already forgot what your question what but I did

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I was just I was just making the point that I don't think that mutual edification and well worship perhaps the way we're using it today are mutually exclusive yeah right they're not as so the well here's a biblical passage to look at on that first to answer the question yes first century

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Christian assemblies had some vertical aspects of stuff that was done for God or to God like prayer and praise as I said but they also have a lot of horizontal things but Paul points out that everything you do should be done for this horizontal purpose even this horrors even the vertical stuff to God is done to build up one another first Corinthians 1426 for example he says what then brethren when you come together talking about the assembly when you come together each one has a psalm that he'll go on with some of other things let's pause with the psalm thing so these psalms that they would sing even those things are clearly vertically oriented they're done he says let all things be done for edification and just just a few verses back

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I think it's in first Corinthians 14 verse 15 he talks about praying and he says if you pray in a tongue other people are not edified so don't do that make sure it is being translated so that people are edified so even prayer which is offered to God must be done so that other people are edified by it because if if if the goal is simply to worship

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God then certainly you can pray in a tongue because a person's worshiping God what's wrong with that we got to let him do it because worship is the purpose of what we're doing right well no it's not

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Paul says no Paul says edification is why we are here and if people don't understand and are not benefited by the words that are coming out of your mouth you need to keep quiet and you know

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I have heard from a number of pastors over the years and different places they've said something like this that the purpose for us to gather together is to worship

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God and if you don't get something out of that there's something wrong with you and you know the conclusion that I'd ultimately reached was kind of ironic because I I agree with you that I don't think the

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Bible is even saying that to begin with so it could be that if I'm not getting something out of the meeting maybe

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I'm not the problem after all maybe I am but maybe not address that for a minute okay sure you know

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I've mentioned that I've gotten comments and emails from like 5 ,000 people around the planet and one thing

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I did not expect was so many people saying to me yeah Tom I quit going to church 15 years ago but I'm still a solid

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Christian studying constantly and meeting together with other people and leaving church was the best thing

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I ever did oh my I didn't expect that I wasn't promoting that but but the point is a if you're not getting something out of church perhaps you're not the problem here but just like you said

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I think we do need to rethink what we're doing let's align it with biblical principles biblical concepts and not just these manufactured ideas that have that we've inherited actually through years of tradition but let's get back to the first century let's get back to the

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Bible and let's see what it says well let me ask you something that I hope may help us to right the ship and turn in terms of the way that we use this word worship and by the way after a lifetime of using it a certain way it is so automatic to fall back into that usage even though you know better or at least it is for me you found in your dissertation you found that there were five different Greek words that are pretty generically translated as worship in our

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English Bibles and they're mostly if not entirely connected to Old Testament temple rituals and let me

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I've got a year of biblical Greek but despite that I'm going to butcher these pronunciations

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I'm going to just read them off here and then I'm going to ask you to explain briefly if if you can what each one of these is talking about so the first one and and remind you all of these words are typically translated as worship proskuneo

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Latruo Latourgio and then there's the Sebo word group there's different words that are in that word group and then

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Threskia can you tell us a little bit about that in a way that the average person in the pew can get their mind wrapped around these words and why they're not why it's not really appropriate to translate those as worship or at least that's the way we use the word worship

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I'll do it really briefly okay and this is way too brief but for this audience and for what our purposes are here but let's do this quickly proskuneo which is how

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I was taught to pronounce it I know that a lot of people say proskuneo don't get me started on that whole thing but either way is fine

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I had them spelled out phonetically from from a website so I was cheating so pay no attention to the way

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I pronounce them well the way you pronounce them is the way majority of the seminaries is pronouncing it today it's not the way

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I learned it 50 years ago when I first took Greek but anyway proskuneo as my study reveals actually means to prostrate yourself we shut up there and we'll move on to the next word okay la truo means not to worship like it is sometimes translated but it means and it doesn't mean to serve that's also a not a good translation it's better than worship but it's it's still not what it means is to serve with sacrifice it is the word used in reference to the sacrificial process of offering sacrifices word number three la truo this word is the word

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I mentioned there in Acts 13 to it refers it's used a hundred and fifty times in the

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Septuagint you can tell right there what studying all those references you can see clearly what it means it's referring to the work that priests did in the temple they were doing la truo you know processing sacrifices cleaning up the the the holy place replacing the bread of the presence and and all that all that kind of stuff this is priestly work and then this is later get

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Sebo my at its core the Sebo my idea is to revere revere and its various cognate terms kind of build off that idea of reverence and then the fifth term which is only rarely translated as worship is three scale which

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I think should be translated as religious rights or as religion depending on how it's used in context so I could go on for hours on that topic because I did a hugely deep dive into those things for my dissertation but I know it gets complicated and such but let's leave it there unless you want to ask more questions on well you know have what has broken down that all of these have gotten translated generically as worship

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I mean have the lexicons the biblical dictionaries failed us or you know what is it in the translation prop process that have led the translators to render these words in English as they have and that that may not be an answer you have since you haven't translated a

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New Testament but what's your thinking on that a great question and what

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I would really like to be able to do and where the answer to your question comes is I'd have to talk to directly to like the people who put together the

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B dag lexicon Danker I think is the most recent guy to deal with that or or Silva and his

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NID and TTE volumes or any of the other lexicons that are out there like to ask them why guys why did you use that W word to translate this thing and not what it really means

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I think worship is a lazy translation I'd also like to ask the translators of the

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NIV and the NASB and all the others why did you use that word we have five words that you're translating as worship and none of them are synonymous that's clear in the

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Old Testament Septuagint as well as in the New Testament they're not synonymous and yet why do you use the same word to translate all five of them doesn't make sense

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I think we're misleading people now nobody's misleading anybody on purpose it's I think it's the worst thing

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I could say it's a lazy translation that really doesn't work and it's a traditional translation yeah and I have noticed that it seems like that Bible publishers and translators tend to follow tradition they don't want to rock the boat too much

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I think you know there's a YouTube video by a scholar on this translation of worship that I stumbled on about a month ago and he's saying the same things we're saying he said proskuneo which is the most common most frequently used term that's translated as worship he said it doesn't mean worship and he didn't even see my videos he

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I he came to his own conclusion and he'd also done some deep research linguistic research into that topic and came up with the same conclusion unfortunately

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I forgot to write down his what is the URL for his video and man if you're watching dude get ahold of me we got to talk well you know this is a challenge for you know the the average

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Christian studying their Bible because we see the word worship in the New Testament and we think we know what that the

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Bible means by that so we're really at a disadvantage you know for those who aren't

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Greeks scholars where it really places us at a disadvantage to be able to get that meaning all on our own let me interject there

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Eddie if you don't mind yeah go ahead the Protestant Reformation of October 31st 1517 you know it's 500 years ago one could say legitimately that the entire

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Protestant Reformation was spawned by the awareness of a mistranslation of one key word and that one key word was metanoia in Greek which means repentance or the or the metanoia oh

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I don't know yeah I think that's right the verb form which means to repent but in the

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Latin Vulgate that was very common in the 1500s that was translated not as to repent but it was translated as to do penance

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Martin Luther spotted this Ulrich Zwingli spotted this

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I think in in Martin Luther's 95 theses this is specifically mentioned early on in those 95 theses

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I'm not sure it might even be the first one but it it's the awareness of this one mistranslation that was so common at that time understanding do penance that you got to do something in order to somehow get forgiveness but repent repent is that is the correct translation and just from that one translation spawned the entire

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Protestant Reformation and all the other theological reformings that took place as a result of that so that's there's a lesson there about the importance of proper translation and I've also come to realize that we are no in no wise guaranteed that all the other words that we see in our

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English Bibles are properly translated because it took me years to figure out this worship anomaly and the meaning of proskuneo and once I finally got there

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I realized that yeah this is what it means and boy have we missed the boat on that and there may be a whole bunch of other words we've missed the boat on well explain to me why you think that these worship activities now use the word loosely why do you think these worship activities that are connected to these five words that you exhaustively studied in your dissertation why were they missing in the first century church gatherings why don't we see those those five words being applied to the the church assembly in the

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New Testament a one -word answer to that question is temple temple all those things were applied to temple activities prostration was be the first thing that Jews did when they came to the temple la trua was something they also did at the temple they offered sacrifices later ghetto was the work of the priests in the temple the the idea of several my revering they would revere certain sacred items in the temple they would also with the three scale referred to religious rites that were performed in the temple in Christianity at least in the one in my

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New Testament Jesus predicted the absolute destruction of the temple he says

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I'm now the temple the temple will be done away with and it certainly was and is all that stuff that went with it go away the new temple now it by the way the significance of the temple is that's where God resided it was the dwelling place of God on earth that phrase is found frequently in the

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Old Testament and the new it's also called the house of God it's the place where he lives but God doesn't live in a building anymore he lives in us and from that simple theological shift everything changes and especially changes with regard to how we what we do when we get together because now

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God resides within all the Christians in that gathering not just one person who's got it more than anybody else and it

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God doesn't dwell in the building he's in us the building is not sacred we are we are the hog you

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I we are the Saints all Christians are Saints this is a clear indisputable biblical teaching from the

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New Testament and so when we appreciate that theological shift then we can begin to appreciate the fact that these buildings that we meet in completely unimportant there's no sacredness to that building the sacredness is within us and the importance for us when we get together is to be building up one another to be better Christians to better to be better representatives of the

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God who now dwells within us than we were last week that's a short an answer to your question

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I think now it's a good answer and and Paul in two different places mentioned us being the temple in two senses one in which that the

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Spirit lives inside us so you know we are the temple individually but then he also applied it collectively

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I believe is it 1st Corinthians 6 or am I getting it mixed up but he applied the when he said you if you if you look in Greek the you is plural so he was he was speaking of the

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Christians collectively that the they were the temple so it's not so much that the temple has gone away it's changed it's no longer a building as you said it's us and it does seem a bit odd that as us as temples as holy space so to speak it would seem a lot that we come in and prostrate ourselves before each other that just doesn't seem proper but you know as I was reading through your dissertation one one kind of a nagging thought that kept coming up it was a question that I was struggling with but it was on this word proskuneo if I'm pronouncing it right that's the word that you said is used most often in the

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Utah in the New Testament that's translated as worship here was my question how how can we be sure that it hadn't taken on a new meaning in the first century in other words could it have become a word that is used to express the attitude and the reverence and all and was not necessarily referring to the physical act of prostration of bowing down of kneeling of stretching out in front of someone who's superior that it is a good question and the answer is we can't be sure because all words even the words there's tumbling out of my mouth right now are always in a state of flux language changes it shifts it evolves and that was true with biblical words that are found in the

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New Testament or the Old Testament they are in a state of semantic flux they can change they can be used differently they may stay the same but they can also change and that also is true with proskuneo however let's let's say it did change then still why did not why did the word proskuneo still never appear in terms of what

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Christians did in their assemblies nor was it ever used in reference to what the purpose of those assemblies was it still isn't used that way so why by the way my study indicates that it it did not change

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John chapter 4 is the word is the location where I think the biggest discussion begins to take place

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John chapter 4 which uses this phrase the true worshippers shall worship the

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Father in spirit and in truth God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth well that is the proskuneo and so the question there for me was okay what does proskuneo mean in that context well it's being used in a temple context there's no question about that the

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Samaritan woman who's asking Jesus this question that prompts this answer from him in John chapter 4 she's talking about proskuneo at the

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Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim and Jesus is talking about proskuneo at the

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Jews temple in Jerusalem and that's where the discussion goes so it's temple context so if we look up the 264 times the word is found throughout the

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Septuagint and the New Testament and look for every time the word proskuneo is used in a temple context ask the question what does it mean and without going into the details see my dissertation on this and some papers

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I've written in the it's in the temple context where he's still talking about prostration this was this fundamental obligatory act by every

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Jew when they went to the temple they needed to prostrate themselves before God there's a bunch of reasons for that that are all biblically oriented but without going to great detail let's just leave it at that well toward the end of your dissertation when you're starting to summarize all of the points you had been making

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I ran across a paragraph that I felt like was the was the best paragraph in the entire dissertation that helped me to to kind of put this word in its proper context would you mind if I read that paragraph

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I would pay you to do it go ahead okay so here's the paragraph it says a likely reason these five words were not used by Christians in reference to their meetings is the fact that Christians had no temple the once -for -all sacrifice of Jesus along with his predicted destruction of the temple obliterated the ongoing need for sacrifice, altar, ritual, priest, and temple.

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Going to the temple to prostrate or proskuneo before God is now obsolete.

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The very idea of sacred space has been erased. Offering sacrifices in the temple, latreuo, is also obsolete because of Jesus's one sacrifice for sins for all time.

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Literal latreia has been replaced with metaphorical latreia as Christians now present their bodies as a living and holy sacrifice that is lives that are not conformed to this world but are transformed by a renewal of the mind.

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The need for the daily work of priests in the temple, latreuo, has been replaced with the idea that all

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Christians are priests and holy ones who must maintain excellent behavior in society.

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Since God's new dwelling place, temple, is in the Christian body, the idea of revering sacred places, persons, and things, sebumai, has been replaced with the need for an exemplary and pious life.

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In Christ, the very idea of a temple -based religion with its rules and religious rites, thyrskia, has been replaced with the way of Christ, which strives for the simplicity of a broddled tongue and caring for those in need.

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So that really kind of cemented it in my mind, and as I would put this, you have presented a matrix of evidence based on these five words to show that they're interconnected, they're all related to the temple, and as the book of Hebrews tells us over and over, all of that has changed now.

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So these words don't stand alone. They're all interrelated, they're locked together, and that is the paragraph that really put it over for me to lock that in.

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Thank you, Eddie. I mean, it took me a long time to craft that paragraph. I remember it because it was, it did consolidate everything into one single paragraph.

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One reflection on that that may be helpful. There are several people who have responded to my stuff who have said, you know,

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Christianity is not a religion. It's a way of life, and I think that's another way of summarizing that lengthy paragraph that you just read there.

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Christianity is a way of life, and that's why in the first century it was called the way, as opposed to a religion.

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It didn't have all the trappings of rituals and priests and all that stuff.

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It's just a way, and it's a wonderful way. And then their assemblies are also wonderful ways as well, but very organic, very simple, very much directed toward just improving people's lives.

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Yeah. Well, well done on that. Well, well done on the entire dissertation, but especially that paragraph.

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That really helped put it all into perspective, at least for me. Thanks, Eddie. Now, let's shift gears just a little bit.

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You pointed out that after the Apostles, church gatherings slowly started to look more like temple worship again.

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What do you think caused this shift in practice and attitude?

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Yeah. Oh, man, that was another lightbulb moment for me, except it took months to get to.

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So here's the way it is. You can prove that worship language is not used in the

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New Testament to refer to what they did in their assemblies, which raises the question, well, maybe they all understood, of course, that they worshiped

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God when they got together. They just didn't have the opportunity to say it. Well, let's go into the second century, which is a massive volume of Christian literature written then.

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Surely they said it then, that, yeah, we get together for worship services, we open worship with this, we close worship.

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And so I then did a deep dive into second century Christian literature, third century

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Christian literature, and fourth century Christian literature, searching for the term worship.

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And what I found was, I found the breadcrumbs that lead to the point in the fourth century where worship terminology is now fully embedded into the minds of Christians at that time as to what they do when they get together.

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And here's the breadcrumbs, and this is all explained in video number six in my series, which is,

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I think, entitled something like, How the Church Gradually Developed Worship Services.

42:09

Video number six. It's my favorite of the series, by the way, because it was so helpful to me. And it comes to temple terminology,

42:18

Eddie. I began noticing in early Christian literature outside the New Testament, they started to use literal temple terminology to refer to stuff they did in their assemblies that was not being done in the first century.

42:32

And the first word that is used that is literal temple terminology is the word sacrifice.

42:40

It comes up early. The idea is planted relatively early on in the beginning of the second century that the

42:48

Lord's Supper is a sacrifice, our sacrifice for God.

42:55

As odd as that may seem to the Protestant world, it is a very common concept to the

43:01

Catholic and Orthodox world. They view the Lord's Supper as our sacrifice we give to God, and not so much as representing the sacrifice of Jesus for us.

43:15

Big difference. But once they started to use that terminology in the beginning of the second century, that started to develop a whole line of thinking.

43:24

The next step was the table upon which that sacrifice sat was then viewed as an altar.

43:33

Ah, now does your church have an altar? Now where did that come from? Are there altars in first century

43:40

Christian assemblies? Of course not. Well, then the next step that evolved after that, if you're going to have a sacrifice in your meetings, going to offer one to God, and you're going to have it set on an altar, then the person who presides over that process must therefore be a priest.

44:00

And that's when we start to see a heavy use of the word priest in reference to these

44:06

Christian leaders in these assemblies. And they not only start to use the word, they're starting to even consider dressing them differently, using

44:16

Old Testament temple terminology and regulations to refer to what they did.

44:22

And then the final culmination of that process comes in the fourth century, where they start to view the buildings in which this process takes place of sacrifice, altar, priest, then becomes a temple, a holy place, a sacred building, which is again all

44:43

Old Testament temple terminology, temple thinking, that is absent in the

44:50

New Testament. As you mentioned yourself, Eddie, these words are used in a completely different way in the

44:56

New Testament. They are spiritualized. They're viewed differently. They're not viewed literally, but they got to be viewed literally by the fourth century.

45:06

So that's a maybe all too long answer to your question, but realizing that evolution of process, that shift in meaning, helped me understand how we got where we are today, because we have not cleansed our system from that what

45:26

I think is errant thinking. You mentioned earlier that the Protestant Reformation was kind of sparked by a better understanding of what one word really meant.

45:38

What you just described sounds like the opposite. Someone got a little off track, and from that one word, sacrifice.

45:49

A whole practice and tradition was built, and of course this would not have taken place.

45:56

This was a gradual evolution over decades and centuries. It's not something that would have happened in any one person's lifetime, but I find that even today that the typical

46:09

Christian seems to have a, it seems like there's a blurred line between what's

46:16

Old Testament and what's New Testament. Even to this day, there are people who tend to carry forward this idea of priesthood and ritual into the church right out of the book of Leviticus, more or less.

46:31

So that's a difficult separation, I think, for a lot of us to make.

46:38

It is. I want to add there,

46:45

I'm 71, and you know 50 years ago, Eddie, I would have been really critical of those who took that view, that other, using these

46:56

Old Testament concepts. I've come to know many of these people. Almost in America, everybody's got some relative who's a

47:06

Catholic, right? Yeah. My grandmother was, and I love my grandmother.

47:13

One of my best friends today is Catholic. Absolutely wonderful guy.

47:20

Yes, I do think that they are not doing things the way the New Testament did them, but they do believe in Jesus, they believe in the resurrection.

47:33

I would urge them to, whatever they're doing in their assemblies, to do something to be building up one another, and not just to be offering these things to God and going through the sacraments and the rituals.

47:46

Let's be better people next week than we were this week. And that's good advice. Let's get that right.

47:52

That's good advice for those of us in the Protestant churches as well, right? Yeah. Yeah, we need to be more kind to one another.

47:59

I think this is another part of the growth process that assemblies should bring to us.

48:05

More compassion, more patience, more understanding, more love, more forgiveness that we need to have toward one another.

48:18

So I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the Protestant Reformation probably stopped too soon.

48:27

Do you think they should have kept going and attempt to restore the first century way of doing things?

48:35

Yes, I do. I in no way think that they finished everything.

48:41

They got everything cleaned up. They made a great start. The natural process throughout time,

48:47

I think, is to sacralize things and to get it off on a tangent and to allow weeds to start growing in the pure garden of God.

48:59

You know, the weeds are going to grow even in our minds and our thinking about all this stuff. And we just really got to stay vigilant to get back to some clear

49:09

Christian teachings from the first century about what we should be doing and what this is all about.

49:16

One little point of fact that may be of interest. You mentioned how the

49:22

Protestant Reformation built off of that one word, metanoia. But I also noted that in Ulrich Zwingli's 67 theses that he published a few years after Luther, one of those is that the

49:37

Mass is not a sacrifice. He recognized that from that key principle, that reviewing the

49:44

Lord's Supper as a sacrifice, a lot of things start to divert from there. So he understood that this is a problem, but the time and the thinking just hadn't allowed to follow this to its natural conclusion and then to fix things within the

50:01

Church. We all need to be always doing this. It will never stop. The Church is never perfect, ever, never has been, wasn't even in the first century.

50:11

Ask Paul and the Corinthians. It wasn't perfect, but we can do a whole lot better than what we're doing.

50:18

So if I were just the average churchgoer and I've listened to the two of us talking up to this point,

50:26

I'm probably going to be asking myself, what does it matter? What difference does it make to me, the average churchgoing

50:34

Christian? Why is this important? Yeah, one word answer is growth, maturity, development.

50:50

It goes to edification. It's possible for somebody to go to church for 50 years every week with the purpose of worshiping

51:00

God and still be the same scoundrel he was 50 years earlier. But I think if you go to church, go to that assembly every week with the stated purpose of building up one another and that everybody else knows that, everybody else is doing that, that we end up different people at the end of that line.

51:26

You'll end up a different person even after a year of doing that. After 50 years,

51:31

I would hope that we would be developing people who are wise, who are looked up to, who outsiders look to our people and say, wow, those

51:44

Christians have got something. Their holy lives, they're inspiring to be around.

51:53

And if our assemblies were working on this, I think we would get there.

51:58

And I think that's why Paul was saying all that so emphatically in 1 Corinthians chapter 14.

52:04

So what do you think are some ways that our modern church gatherings, the way we conduct our services, which is, services is another word which doesn't quite fit what the

52:16

New Testament says, but how do our modern church practices hold us back from building one another up like the

52:25

Bible says that we're supposed to be doing? Yeah, in video number seven of my series, it's called,

52:32

What Do We Do Now? After we realize all this stuff, what are we going to do? Well, I've got nine suggestions there,

52:39

I think, of what we should do. And maybe the one that I keep pointing to that I think is more powerful than maybe the rest is break big groups into small groups.

52:52

Now, if you want to have an assembly that's got 10 ,000 people in it, I understand that you're not going to be able to have everybody talking to each other all the time and that thing because you'd never get anything done.

53:02

But you've got to break this group. You've got to break this group into small groups somehow. And I know a lot of churches try to do this.

53:08

They try to get these small little home groups going on, whether it's a Sunday night or a Thursday night or something.

53:14

And this is crucial to the development of Christian growth and Christian relationships, relationship building.

53:26

People covet stronger relationships. They want to have deep friends within the church.

53:34

And it's in these small groups where that happens. It's also in small groups where edification takes place.

53:41

We have to remember, this is an important image to remember in your mind if you're going to talk about the assembly, and that is remember that they met in homes in the first century.

53:52

This is clearly mentioned frequently in the New Testament. Not that it was the only holy place you could meet.

53:59

It was just the way they met. And I'm not saying if you meet in a building, you're going to hell.

54:05

I'm not saying that. There's just nothing important about the building. But in a home, you're relaxed.

54:14

You're not trying to be phony because of all the sacred stuff hanging around you. The stained glass and the man of God with the flowing robes and stuff.

54:22

You got to act special in front of him, you know. But you're in somebody's house. You're sitting on a couch.

54:28

There's food. It's just us. And it's just a handful of us. More people are going to contribute to the discussion.

54:35

More people are going to engage with the topic, whatever that topic is, and they're going to necessarily grow through that discussion and that close -knit experience.

54:48

And so break big groups into small groups and focus on edification, and then it'll get done.

54:57

There's several other ideas I had there, but that's one I think that's worth pointing out and focusing on.

55:04

Yeah, it's really hard for mutual edification to take place when you're sitting in a large room, everyone facing forward.

55:12

And that's not to say that mutual edification cannot take place in our church buildings.

55:18

But what you just described, small groups meeting in homes or small groups meeting in classrooms in a church building.

55:26

But one way or another, regardless of the location, breaking those people, breaking those large groups down into small groups where people feel relaxed and are able to maybe be vulnerable sometimes and to get help in time of need.

55:43

Let me piggyback on that for a second, Eddie. I'm getting tons of emails and comments from home church people around the planet, and they sing the praises of this house -church arrangement to me.

55:59

I just want to make it clear, I'm not in a house -church situation. I have had that kind of experience, but not very frequently in my life.

56:07

Most of my small group, one -anothering, edification -type meetings have been in a church classroom somewhere.

56:17

But the magic is not a church, it's not a classroom. The magic is the small group, no matter what the walls are like around you.

56:26

Ignore the walls, focus on the people, and we'll get somewhere. Well, I have had, I won't name names, but I have had people

56:34

I know personally who told me that if circumstances were such that they could only choose to go to their

56:41

Bible class at church or to go to the worship service at church, that they would choose the

56:49

Bible class. Yeah, I'm hearing that tons, lots and lots of people saying the same thing, and a lot of people just leaving that worship service entirely in favor of the small group gathering.

57:04

I'm not promoting that, but I'm saying I get it. Now, what kind of pushback or disagreements have you encountered when sharing your research, and have you responded to those?

57:21

When people see that title, Eddie, why the early church didn't have worship services,

57:28

I've gotten so many people who have made comments on that blasting away at me. I just had one just about three days ago.

57:36

A guy just brutalized me, laid me waste, and then

57:43

I replied to him kindly online. I said, listen, I think you misunderstood everything I'm saying.

57:49

Did you listen to the video? And to his credit, he came back and said,

57:55

I apologize. I admit it, I didn't watch a single second of your video.

58:01

I just reacted to the title, and I wasn't paying attention to what you were saying at all, so forgive me.

58:07

And of course I do, but that's just a common reaction. So the common negative reaction has just been based on a reaction to that title.

58:16

Because the word worship has become so sacred to our experiences, there are so many pastors who have been preaching on this for a long time, on worship, that anybody who suggests that that's not the case is obviously a heretic or a false teacher.

58:38

When I reached my own conclusion about this several years ago, I shared that conclusion with a good friend of mine, and of course he hadn't had the benefit of having thought about it as long as I had.

58:51

But his first reaction was, well, when you say that we're not supposed to meet to worship

58:58

God and it's mutual edification, then it's all about me, and it's all about us, and it's not about God.

59:07

And I'm sure there was probably a better answer I could give, but my immediate answer was, well, but if mutual edification is the reason

59:16

God wanted us to meet, then we are putting God first, all right? We're doing exactly what he wanted.

59:22

Have you heard anything like that? Oh baby, and you expressed it perfectly there.

59:29

I've sat in the church a long time with a preacher who would often say, it's all about God, because if it's all about me, it ain't about much.

59:40

But what if God says, now wait a minute. When it comes to you guys getting together, it is all about you.

59:48

It's all about your growth, you facing up to your own problems, you helping your brothers and sisters out to help them get better.

59:55

It is all about you, and that's what God says. So if you want to really respect what

01:00:01

God says about what we do in our assemblies, let's listen to this edification message, which is listed as a command by Paul frequently in 1

01:00:11

Corinthians 14, and he's talking about when you come together. So that's how

01:00:19

I've answered that it's all about God, it can't be about me. God says it is about you.

01:00:26

And if it is about us, then we are, my argument would be, we are putting

01:00:32

God first because we're obeying him. Yeah, good point. Agreed.

01:00:37

So if you could give one piece of advice to a pastor or a church leadership team who's rethinking how they're doing their typical church services, what would you want them to consider?

01:00:55

Yeah, small groups. Even if you have a church of 50, still be thinking small groups.

01:01:05

But another crucial element in affecting edification is allowing more people to speak.

01:01:13

If you're just letting the one guy talk every week, I don't think people are going to get much out of that. People don't grow, don't really assimilate the information in a sermon until they're able to start spitting it out and talking about it, reflecting on it, questioning it, ask questions about it, disagreeing with it even.

01:01:36

But if they can have that kind of exchange, then they're going to remember it and they're going to grow from the process.

01:01:45

I bet, I don't know when we're going to post this podcast, but this is

01:01:50

Wednesday for you and I, I bet most people can't remember what the sermon was about three days ago on Sunday.

01:01:56

I know I can't. It just comes in one ear, we'll sit there and we'll nod and we'll shake the pastor's hand on the way out.

01:02:03

Good sermon, even though I don't remember what it was. By the time they get into their car in the parking lot, it's already gone.

01:02:11

But if they have a chance to sit down and talk about it, get that done somehow.

01:02:19

When I first stumbled on this topic back in the 70s, one thing

01:02:24

I did was we added an additional hour, two hour meeting, which we called sort of a talkback session, where we sat in a group.

01:02:38

It was a small church and then we talked about the sermon. I had some discussion questions that I tossed out to people and have them reflect on it and we'd get into it that way and I think that was one practical way that we could inject more edification into the process than what we had in our normal worship service.

01:03:02

Tom, what else have we left out that you'd like to add? So what have I left out that I'd like to add?

01:03:09

I think I might leave people with this message. One thing that so many comments say to me is, and we got to get back to the

01:03:20

Bible way of doing things, and I agree that that's true, but one thing that people commonly will say is or imply that if people aren't doing it this way, they're somehow all going to hell, that we cannot associate with a church that is not doing things the

01:03:38

Bible way. Well, you know, even if no matter what your church is doing, however you're figuring out to do this, it's still going to be a little bit off.

01:03:48

Just be focused on the purpose of our gathering, which is edification.

01:03:54

If we get that right, I think we're on the right path and at the same time, let's stop condemning everybody else for the way they do it and assuming that we're the only ones who are doing it right.

01:04:06

Stop that. Tom, how can people find out more? You've got your videos. What else do you recommend?

01:04:14

Yeah, go to my YouTube channel, Tom Wadsworth at YouTube, and you'll see my stuff there and you can sample some of the other things going on.

01:04:22

I am working on a book. It's not out yet, but once that becomes available, I'll get the word out.

01:04:29

Well, do let me know because I'll help spread the word, and I want to copy myself. I appreciate it,

01:04:35

Eddie. Okay. Tom, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. I hope that a lot of people who are listening to this are going to get a lot out of it.