Episode 23: Post-Covid Signs of a Healthy Church

The Rural Church Podcast. Two point up. Just a couple of pastors discussing life, ministry, theology, and the gospel from a local church perspective.

Eddie, what's it time for? The Rural Church Podcast. Welcome to The Rural Church Podcast.

I'm your host, Alan Nelson. No. You're gutter made way.

Oh yeah, that's right, that's right, that's right. Welcome to The Rural Church Podcast. I'm Alan Nelson.

My friend and co -labor, Eddie Ragsdale, is not with us, so I found some replacements,

I guess. I'm here with Jacob Robinson, Gunnar Madewell, and Alex Osborne, all members of Second Baptist Church of Perryville.

You want to say hello now? Yes, hello. Alex, you're a returning guest. I am a returning guest.

Last time you were on, you weren't a member of Perryville Second Baptist Church. No, but now that I'm on membership roles, then

I'm on the podcast, right? Essentially, yeah. You're like the third co -host. You just bumped up past Gunnar.

Gunnar, returning guest, you need to say anything introductory? No, I've been on here so many times, they know me.

It's not a competition, Gunnar. And Jacob. Yeah, I'm glad this is my first time on The Rural Church Podcast, and so I'm honored to be here.

He has no hair on his head. I am bald. We're podcasting in a secret location.

Well, we love him anyway. Jacob Robinson's home. Couldn't find it. It's not on the map.

Yeah, there you go. It's not on the map. No way they can get to us now. Take that,

Joe Biden. We're going to talk. Do you have internet here? Yeah, I have internet. We can edit all this out.

One of the few events we do have. All right, Alice is going to start reading us a passage.

Weren't you going to read something? Yeah, I was thinking of reading from Titus 2 because we were talking about maybe talking about marks of a healthy church.

Well, I kind of feel like you've heard of nine marks of a healthy church, but what if we talked about nine

Allen's of a healthy church? That's Mark Dever of Allen Nelson's. Nine quattros of it.

I taught Donald Trump 40 chess. All right. You know what?

Let's get to the Bible. Why don't you read a passage? Well, I was going to read from Titus 2 as it kind of,

I think it's a good passage for just kind of laying out how Christians are to interact with each other in the local body.

But you are to proclaim things consistent with sound teaching. Older men are to be self -controlled, worthy of respect, sensible and sound in faith, love and endurance.

In the same way, older women are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not slaves to excessive drinking.

They are to teach what is good so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands and to love their children.

To be self -controlled, pure workers at home, kind and in submission to their husbands so that God's word will not be slandered.

In the same way, encourage the young men to be self -controlled in everything. Make yourself an example of good works with integrity and dignity in your teaching.

Your message is to be sound beyond reproach so that any opponent will be ashamed because he doesn't have anything bad to say about us.

What we're going to talk about today is what a healthy church looks like in a post -COVID world.

I think I've owned this before from the pulpit, but at our own church, and Alex and Jacob, you guys weren't even there during this time, at our own church, we didn't handle

COVID well. I can't speak for other churches. I can speak for us, though. We shut down too long, and then when we gathered again, we shut down too many ministries, and we never required masks, but we encouraged masks.

Basically, we let the whole thing just linger around too long. I had to own that and repent.

I repented to the church. I may have repented other places publicly.

I'm not sure if I've done it on the podcast or not, but if not, here it is.

We just had to own that because there's lots of excuses we can make, and I think there is a level of saying, look, we didn't know what this was, and it was new, and all that, and I think there's some warrant there, but there's also some ownership that needs to be taken that, look, okay, once we settled down, we saw this for what it was, we let the pressure of Big Eva, if you will, and other...

In Arkansas, we were never forced to do anything by the government. Praise the Lord, grateful for that, but still, you have a little different perspective being from Canada.

Yeah. Canada is very different. A lot of pressure from the government and from churches.

Churches happily going along with it. I remember in the church

I was going to up in Canada, shout out Trinity Bible Chapel. There was even seminary professors going on local news trying to derail our church and slander us because we stayed open in obedience to the

Bible. It's a hard thing. I'll just interject. It's a hard thing to fight your government, but it's even harder when you've got people that are supposed to be your friends.

Yeah. It was worse that churches were coming after us rather than... You expect a secular government to lean towards tyranny because that's our sinful nature, right?

But when you see people you thought were your brothers and sisters in Christ and maybe aren't and just have lost their blinded to where they're at come after you, it's a whole different thing.

Real quick, I want you guys to just thought about this. I want you all to turn to Isaiah 9. I didn't mention this pre -podcast, but turn to Isaiah 9 real quick.

I was reading this the other day. Unscripted. Unscripted. I was reading this the other day and I had this thought,

Isaiah 9, verse 13. I think it goes along with what we're talking about or I hope it does.

I'm going to make a connection here. Isaiah 9, verse 13. Isaiah says, the people did not turn to him who struck them nor inquire of the

Lord of hosts. Now, obviously this is talking about God's work in Israel and the things that God did to get their attention and the response of the people was they didn't turn to the

Lord. Instead of turning to the Lord, they continued on business as usual.

They didn't inquire of Yahweh, the Lord of hosts. I think

I was reading that the other day and the thought just struck me. When it comes to COVID, a lot of churches now that are past, even churches that are touting, hey, we need to gather and all that, they're not taking ownership of what they did in the past.

It's like they're not seeing this as a, whatever you think of COVID, I think it's, for me anyway, it is beyond doubt that it's in the providence of God as at least a measure of a wake -up call to the slothfulness of churches in the

Western world. We've allowed so much to take the place of who

God is in our churches. Our ecclesiology is terrible. Our evangelistic methods are terrible.

Our worship's terrible. And so whatever you think of COVID, at the very least, I think we need to see it as a providential wake -up call.

And yet... It exposed how spineless many churches are and how weak many churches are, right?

And the response is not turning to God or inquiring of the Lord of hosts. Jacob, go ahead.

Well, I think to our point about post -COVID churches, it did expose very unbiblical ecclesiology that was going on that was rampant that I don't think as many people had seen that, as many people had really understood how bad of shape most churches were in as far as biblically speaking.

Yeah. It kind of exposed that. Yeah. But see, that's kind of my point. It exposed that.

But it was already there. It was already there. It was already there, but it's like we're ignoring it. So it's like you go to the doctor, he has some sort of underlying health condition.

The doctor says, hey, okay, this is what's going on. And then you just leave. And you're like, yeah, whatever. And that's the thing that I'm seeing in a lot of churches.

Look, I'm not talking about the crazy churches that before COVID we were like, obviously crazy.

Some of you wouldn't even count a church. I'm talking about the so -called conservative evangelicals.

You've got a lot of reformed churches, like that tout doctrine and good theology. And yet, when it came to practice, whether that was resisting the government or just risking catching a virus, that they waffled.

Yeah. They waffled? Yeah. Gunner's always thinking about that. Waffles, maple syrup.

And not in this case. Let's talk a little bit about what you guys think that a healthy church ought to look like now in a post -COVID.

You read from Titus 2. Do you get any royalties from Lifeway for reading from the

CSB? It's Holman that publishes this, but no. So...

The one verse that really stuck out to me, I think, from that passage I read earlier was that last verse in verse 8.

Your message is to be sound beyond reproach so that any opponent will be ashamed. So it implies that there will be opponents to churches that teach sound doctrine, that practice the things taught in this passage.

But I think the point is that what his prescription is for that is to stay true to the

Word of God. Amen. And I think that's... And like we were saying before, people are happy that things are getting back to normal and churches are gathering, which is great, but it still hasn't been repentance or a cure to this thing that was exposed that many churches are not prepared, are weak.

Yeah, and I want to touch on something. I think to go along with that, and I want Jacob to speak to this. But Jacob, you preached at our church on the 18th.

I haven't gotten to listen to the whole message, but one segment that I listened to we're talking about the need for elders. Not only...

You had a segment in there. Not only to talk about elders preaching sound doctrine, but a responsibility of elders to do something else.

So talk about that for just a moment. Okay, so in Titus 1 with the scripture that I used and also talked a lot in that sermon about the text that Alex read, but there was two things that I brought up in Titus.

The first one was that the sermon was in relation to the biblical home and the church's role in the biblical home that you cannot separate the home.

If you're a Christian home, it cannot be separated from the church. And so one of the things was that we need qualified men that are called by God and confirmed by the church as biblical elders.

And we find that here in Titus. And so I can read just a little bit of that.

And if I'm not going in the direction that you intended, let me know. Oh, we will. And so in Titus 1 beginning verse 5, it says,

This is why I left you in Crete, that you might put what remained in order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you.

If anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination.

For an overseer as God's steward must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick -tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, but hospitable, a lover of good, self -controlled, upright, holy and disciplined.

We would say amen to all that. But beginning of verse 9, he must hold firm. He must hold firm to the trustworthy word is taught so that he might be able.

And this is really, I think, two things that directly involved, enough of the other things that are directly involved in the home that should be a part of every local church to give instruction and sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.

For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party.

They must be silenced since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach.

And so I think these men that are, like I said before, called by God and confirmed by the local church, they play a huge role in our children's lives.

I think I have a 16 -year -old son all the way down to a 4 -year -old about to have a newborn.

My children, they don't need trendy men that try to dress like teenagers or try to be cool or hip.

They need godly men. Votie Bauckham calls them godly, manly elders that will not only they're not just there to instruct and teach other adults.

They're there to teach kids and instruct our children. And so that's such an important part of,

I mean, we could go on about the importance of elders, but that's one that I don't think we talk enough about is the importance for our children to have these men.

That's important in any age. Yeah. But specifically, you know, as we think about the post -COVID church now, how much more do we need godly men with backbones, humble men, men who are willing to stand?

So I think that's a good word. Yeah. I want to transition just briefly.

Let's kind of get Gunnar involved in the conversation. And Gunnar, we don't want to get into specifics, but you've been a member of our church over five years now.

You've seen the pre -COVID, the post -COVID. Talk a little bit about what you've seen, just in general terms, nothing specific, and the trajectory that you feel like we're on and maybe things that we're doing well, things that we can grow in.

Well, like so pre -COVID, I think we,

I think as a church and everyone can kind of agree, we kind of were just going through the motions in our worship and our services and how we did things.

COVID, I think, made us really realize that our worship mattered and we ought to be thinking about these things that the

Bible brings out. And then, so we went through COVID, we shut down, and I think some members of our church were saying, no, we need to stay open.

And I think what we did was we looked at some members in our church and we said, well, we kind of let the culture dictate how we're supposed to handle our church services.

We were wrong. Some things happened in our church, some people ended up leaving, and then we really changed our whole church, honestly.

I mean, the worship has changed, the value of doing what the

Bible says more accurately. We've done a lot of things different, but I think for the better.

COVID really shook our church, and I think there's a lot of things that happened that maybe we thought were not good, but the

Lord used them for good, and I think our church is better for it. But the unity in our church is better after COVID.

The worship in our church is better. The dedication to the Bible in our church is better.

I think pretty much everything in our church is better after post -COVID. Well, actually,

I'm very impressed about how general and vague that you were. I was kind of nervous about softballing you that question, but very good job.

Just some things not ready to speak too specific on yet, but the point is we had to take some ownership,

I had to take some ownership, and we also had some folks that we were right theologically, but we had to put that into practice.

COVID was one of the initial wake -up calls on that.

I remember one time I had COVID in 2021, and I recovered, and there was a person who...

And there's a little bit of tension there because I didn't get vaccinated, but a person said that I couldn't come back to preach.

It didn't think it was a good idea for me to come back and preach because I'd had COVID, and I'd got out of quarantine or whatever on a

Thursday, but then I was going to preach that Sunday. It was just a strain there, and that really...

I actually emailed some people then. I was really burdened. I was hurt. I was broken. I'm like, we just don't understand the church rightly, and so God continued to work through that.

He worked through some stuff that I went through personally with the SBC, with the mission trip to Mexico this summer, and all that to really bring me to a point of like, hey, we've got to take it seriously as a church.

Like Gunnar said, that sadly did push some people away, but I think that now more than ever, we have to take the church seriously.

If Alex wasn't on here, I'd say in America, but it's true in Canada too. It's true in Mexico. It's true in the whole

Western world. Well, I'll say that I think what COVID has done is made us as a church realize that no matter what, we're going to meet, and we're going to meet together as a body no matter what.

We're never going to close our doors because like Psalm 96 says, we're to glorify

God. The glory due his name, right? So does that mean close our doors?

Does that mean when something happens that people are kind of nervous about, we just say we're not going to have worship?

No, we're going to praise the Lord. We're going to glorify him, and we're going to obey him no matter what.

There's people meeting without air. There's people meeting like with water on the floors.

There's people meeting that don't have a building in secret. And so why would we not meet just because people got the flu?

That's right. Some people are risking death from governments like in China and Nigeria and stuff going to church just because we might get the flu.

And people have died from COVID. Don't want to minimize that. The amount we're risking here is a lot less than some of our brothers and sisters throughout the world, and Christ is worthy of that.

Above all, our desire must be in the church above all to please who?

Not the government, not the culture, not even fellow church members. Our desire as a local church above all, it must be to please the head, which is

Christ. And well, I was just going to say it's sad that so many, you know, we were having lunch today, and we're talking about a church that we wouldn't even define as a church.

And there's a lot of wickedness happening there. It's very sad to see that through the

COVID era as it is, and we're still in it. I mean, it's post -COVID, but still, I understand it. We're never going to be through it.

I understand it's always going to be around, whatever. But it's really sad to see that it's not been the wake -up call that it ought to be.

It shouldn't have been. That it should be, yeah. Alex, I interrupted you. Well, I was just going to say, I think Jacob hit the nail on the head that it's not just even a church problem.

I think it's a man problem that we don't have enough manly men in leadership as elders in the church.

People think sometimes pastors should be pushovers and geldings, but I think that's been a huge problem, and in the home as well.

Men need to take responsibility and step up and lead their family to worship

Christ, and it's the same in the church. If a pastor is going to let the government treat

Christ's bride like that, would they let the government treat their own bride like that?

Well, think two years ago. I'm just thinking about what our church has done, practically what our church has done post -COVID.

We have, as a church, gone out and open air preached.

That was not pre -COVID. We have done confession and catechism.

That was not pre -COVID. Catechism it was. Catechism, but we haven't done the confession and stuff. We have just,

I think more so, yes, of course, we thought about the worship, but what are the words that we're seeing?

What do they mean? Let's talk about the theology of them, and so I think we have gotten way more serious.

What are we doing in our missions? All this is weighed into,

I guess one thing I want to stress in this is if you're listening to this, and if COVID has not been a wake -up call to your church, and maybe you were doing everything right, praise

God. I think of a church just down the road from us, Grace Bible Church in Conway, Jeff Johnson, one of the elders, and praise

God for what that church was doing right, and it's still doing right, and God has blessed it. Your church may have been doing right during COVID, and you just need to assess and give glory to God, but a lot of churches probably need to assess and say, okay, what are some areas that we need to improve and take seriously?

I'm tired of playing the games, right, and so many of us, it's so easy to get in that rut, especially when you look around, and all the churches are doing it with you.

It's easy to get passive instead of actively seeking a healthy church. That's right. And hand -shake this out.

People closed for COVID, okay, and now people are closing for Christmas. What's up with that?

What's going on with that? They were doing that. You need to repent if you do that. Yeah, ecclesiology is where we need to have a great wake -up call, and again,

I'm talking about guys like us. Oh, yeah. I'm talking about the so -called conservative evangelical.

Even reformed. Even reformed. We have to have a better ecclesiology. Almond millenials, you know.

What? Almond what? Millenials? Almond menthols? Non -dispies is what

I meant to say. Well, I think that's pretty good. I think it's been a pretty good episode.

I appreciate you guys coming on. You got any concluding thoughts you might give?

What are we doing, like 24 minutes? You got any concluding thoughts? Sully the implorent. Sully the implorant.