Welp, People Got Offended

Welcome to the Holy Note podcast. I am the Holy Note, and with me today is

Pastor Adam Page. Welcome, Adam. Why don't you introduce yourself, and then

I will disclose the occasion for having you on today. My name is

Adam Page. I'm a pastor in Amelia Island, Florida. It's just outside of Jacksonville in Nassau County.

I've been here for 10 years. I graduated from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 14 of 13.

I have a wife, four kids I love very much, and then I have a podcast myself called the We Bear Witness podcast that we do, that we enjoy doing, and we put that out once a week, and so that's about it.

I stay pretty busy that way. Right, and you just celebrated a wedding anniversary, right?

I did, 14 years. You have a special way of helping me celebrate that wedding anniversary.

I did, I did. Well, that's a good segue into the occasion. For which Adam is joining me on the podcast today.

Here's what happened. I saw a tweet by Adam, and I shared it.

I posted it. Especially on Instagram, it seemed to cause quite a stir.

Certainly did seem to stir the pot and generated a lot of discussion, some misunderstanding, and a lot of arguments in the comment section, some of which we want to address, and so this is an opportunity for you,

Adam, just to explain yourself, and to discuss with me, for our viewers, the topic of the church, its structure, its leadership, and its nature, and so this was the tweet that you posted that I shared.

This is what you said. If you and several friends get together to, quote, have church, you didn't.

A church has offices, shepherds, structure, etc. Without a pastoral office, there is no church, period.

Adam, first of all, how dare you? And second of all, did you mean what you said here?

Yes, I 100 % mean what I said. I don't think this is an opportunity for me to double down, saying that it couldn't have been said better, but as we explore the intention behind it, and hopefully what the intended meaning, rather, of the post, hopefully that becomes more clear to people, because that's all

I really wanted to do, was make this very clear, and I don't think it was. It was playing within the

Twitter 40 characters rule. I haven't paid for premium yet, so it's one of those things where you have a post, and it's like, this could have probably been more clear.

I guarantee you 90 % of what I say could be more clear. It's one of the dangers you take by taking on social networks, but no,

I stand completely by it. A church has structure, and structure is a good thing, and structure has been given to the church by God, by God himself, and as we see through the apostolic writings, through Paul the

Apostle, 1st Timothy 3, our story in Acts 2, the conception of the

New Testament Church, ever since Pentecost, there's been a way things should go inside a local body of believers, and I think there's been somewhat understandable reasons as to why there was pushback, because if they interpreted it to mean that I was saying that the church is not a body of believers, then that is not what my intention was.

The church itself is a body of believers. If you mean the global church, it's the body of believers. This was said in a local church context, and the reason

I thought that would be clear is because I said offices, and what

I didn't expect, I really didn't expect this at all, and this probably might be some of my naivety, maybe you don't have this problem, but I did not expect for them to read offices and think

Steve Carell's The Office, like an actual building with offices is needed for there to be a legit church.

I don't believe that. I just want to go on record and say no, I don't think that a legit church has to have offices.

Actual building, metal offices, I think that would be ludicrous. So if you responded that way, thinking that I meant metal offices, you are justified in your response.

That's just not what I meant. So I think that hammered, I guess, a little bit of my initial reactions to these 7 ,000 reactions.

Yeah, so we can all agree that if you had meant literal office space, that it would be a ridiculous take.

It would be noteworthy for sure. It would have been noteworthy, yeah, it would have.

When I read your tweet, you know, for me personally, office space would have never entered my mind until I started seeing those comments.

And so maybe it's a matter of perspective, and you're perhaps certain theological tradition in which certain terms are used in relation to the church and her offices and officers, but clearly many people did indeed misunderstand.

So I'm glad that we're able to bring some clarity here. And like you said, you know, we live in an age where there is a certain challenge that comes with communicating truth today, and that is the challenge of social media.

You know, you mentioned a platform like Twitter where you only have a specific number of characters or words that you're allowed to say, and you have to attempt to communicate truth in the most pithy yet substantial, yet concise, yet truthful kind of way.

And sometimes, sometimes messages can can get a little bit muddy, but that's okay.

We're here to work it out for the edification of the body. So let's talk about the church then.

You are saying in your tweet that what is required is offices and structure, so officers, so leadership, so instituted leadership to shepherd the body of Christ.

Let's talk about this question. What is required for a church to exist, for there to be a biblical church that we can point and say, hey, that is a church.

What are the essential ingredients of a local church? Wonderful question.

So I regard the church in two ways. One is the universal church, and the other is the local church.

And so again, one of the things that could have been expressed with more clarity, which I'm thankful for the opportunity to do now, is by church.

This was not a shot at the universal church or a global church, and I think we'll get into a bit more of a geography of certain churches and why that also really applies, but could have been said with more grace and understanding.

Again, I thought the word offices would have localized this for us, but it didn't, and that's okay. But the universal church consists of everyone who has a personal relationship with Christ Jesus, everyone who has been eliminated that Christ is

King, and it's a work of the Holy Spirit, and they belong to him now. They are no longer slaves to sin. They are slaves to Christ.

We see that in 1 Corinthians 12, 13. Whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, we were all given the one spirit to drink.

So that really is the universal global church. To be a part of the church, you have to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

A Holy Spirit work has to happen. That typically happens and always happens, in my opinion, to the gospel when the gospel is preached, and the

Holy Spirit works to the truth of the gospel. The local church, however, is where I think everyone's heads are today.

That's described more in Galatians 1, sort of the first few verses there, where he says to the churches in Galatia, and then from that moment on, talks about localized ministry, and how we are scattered through this province.

There were local churches in the area, and they function in certain ways. He goes back to Acts 2, 42 through 47, when he says they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayer.

Everyone was filled with all many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common.

Obviously, it doesn't mean they had every single preference in common, but they were like -minded, which there's a great article by Keith Foskey from Clear Truth Media about the importance and the good nature of denominations that I highly recommend.

They also, in 45, says they sold property and possessions to give anyone who had needs. So I think there's a missional and evangelism characteristic that has to be attached to the local church, at least in the sense that you are to grow the kingdom attached to the

Great Commission of Matthew 28. And then fellowship, prayer, and discipleship are very much involved in what makes the gathering.

I guess you can always go back and say at the very beginning what constitutes a church is a gathering, and then what we've seen in the epistles, as well as in Acts and the count of the

Acts of the Apostles, is that that gathering was not structureless. That immediately from that gathering, there was a required leadership for the sake of the flock, much like Jesus had used the imagery of a shepherd and sheep.

And people, one of the comments I saw on the post was, you might want to have a word with Jesus and his 12 friends.

Well, Jesus was the priest of his 12 friends. Jesus is a great high priest. People were like, well, the disciples didn't have a pastor.

Jesus is the pastor. They called him teacher. They called him master. So the idea of pastor being overseer or shepherd,

I think this is an opportunity, really, Austin, that they can be kind of ripped out of maybe everything they've ever known church to be and be freed in this structure.

I always like to say pastoral structure, because the Ecclesia or the gathering is the church, and the church has responsibilities to bring glory to God and for their own edification, for their own sanctification, be obedient to the commands of God and to see that work flourished in their communities so that the global kingdom grows.

All of that happens within a structure. And that structure, which is, by the way, why so many people become so adamantly furious on when that structure goes outside the qualifications of Scripture, it's because they know how much is actually at stake in equipping the body and equipping the saints.

So it's not so much a checklist as it is that these things are to be characteristic of God, who has established the church as his bride, and now the bride has shepherding.

The bride has overseeing. The bride has encouragement. And as we'll come to find, I'm sure, with a deeper dive into Matthew 18, even discipline is applied for the holiness and for the pursuit of holiness of the church.

And so structure is not a bad thing. Structures that God give you free you. Structures that God give you are good things.

They don't bind you in a negative sense. In other words, chain to Christ isn't a bad kind of chain.

And I think that's what people were really freaking out about along the post, was they were looking at some kind of man -made construct or legalism attached to it.

They just had a Wednesday night with just their friends and the dinner table and the Spirit was moving and they played a song and they sung and they were like, we just had church.

I'm not against that. I'm not against that nomenclature. If you just want to say we had church, you might mean that the saints gathered and they did things that resembled the church.

And I love that. A lot of churches are moving to small groups. I have no issue with that. No conflict with it.

It's the sense that when they said they don't need a pastor and they don't need a shepherd, that this office is not necessary to make a church.

That's understanding the difference between a global church and or I'm sorry, the church globally and a localized body of believers.

A localized body of believers to be a church has to have the office of pastor. Has to.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Buildings require structure. As you said, there is the language in the

New Testament of the local churches, churches scattered throughout the Providence. In fact,

I think that's the most common tense of the word church as it's used in the

New Testament. It's churches. It's talking about local bodies. Right. Of believers who gather together.

But then we have the universal language of the body of Christ. And what's funny is even when the

New Testament uses this universal language regarding, in regards to the church, it uses the language of a building.

And we are stones and our builder is God and we're being built into a spiritual house.

Buildings require structure. Buildings are structures. And so the church is a structure in itself, in a sense.

So I screenshotted some comments on the post because some of them were just too good.

Here's one. It says, consider Acts 2, 42 through 47, which is what you were just doing.

No formal positions or offices, yet the church had begun by definition.

The church means in Greek the gathering of the called out ones. If we have been called out of the world by believing in Christ, we are the church when we gather.

No formal positions or offices in the early church, apparently, in Acts 2, 42.

Except, Adam, whose teaching did they commit themselves to, right?

They didn't sit in a circle and ask everybody in the circle what the text means to you, right?

How does it make you feel? Yeah. Yeah, they committed themselves to the Apostles' teaching.

There is a body of doctrine that they are being taught that they are devoting themselves to. I really like the answer that you gave.

I think all of those are true. My understanding that coming out of the Reformation, the consensus of what constituted a true church, the essential ingredients required for a true church are where the gospel is truly preached, where the sacraments are properly administered, and where church discipline is being faithfully carried out.

Do you agree or disagree with that? Right, we can get into the nomenclature of sacraments another time.

But I think that we just need to remember, too, and I don't know if I even said this clearly, but I want to, that in biblical language

Christ is head over everything in the church. So the idea of the head of the church or a church structure, founder, president,

CEO, that kind of language, that's not the senior pastor. That's Jesus. So Jesus is the head of your church if your church is biblically faithful.

I would have no problem with those definitions. In fact, if you would really like to have one of my posts shared, maybe we can intentionally do this this time, but one time, three or four months ago,

I said along the lines of, can a church be biblically faithful and not practice church discipline? I'll go along to every single church or site campus or however and talk about people who are actually being called into Matthew 18 discipline for, not just for chastisement, not just so the pastor can sort of perform a dictatorship, but so that these people can pursue holiness and understand the point of shepherds is that we bring our sheep together and we protect our sheep, even if it means protecting them from themselves.

And so you have a huge issue in accountability within this structure.

And I would even say that if I really wanted to hit it on the nose, I could have rewritten that post and said, dear

Bible belt or dear, dear American church. And really probably, you know, there would have been a bit more screaming in the direction of,

I really don't like commitment. I don't like accountability and I don't like what's said here, even though this is what the

Bible says that I need. No, I think the observance of the ordinances in remembrance out of obedience to the word is necessary.

And then I would argue too that if you are not under the teaching of the word of God, which is a first Timothy three, one through seven qualification, then you are, you're not part of a local body of believers that is being biblically faithful.

And so you might have a bunch of Christians together because that salvific work comes from the Holy Spirit, but you're not being obedient to be, to exhorting the people of God and to admonishing them and guiding them and being under that administration.

So I think that's an important part. I would also add people who are saying, take a look at Acts two 42 through 47 to keep reading about 12 more chapters to Acts 14, 23 and many places before that.

But this one said most delicately and verse 23 and 14, and when they had appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting, they committed them to the

Lord in whom they had believed. And so this is really, this is really without argument that this office was given to us in succession of Christ and his earthly ministry by, uh, by the new

Testament church, by the apostles, by Jerusalem council. So it's all there. Okay.

Says you Adam, but here's what Iverson JS says. Okay. Uh, this is a prime example of the mindset of modern day

Pharisees. Yeah. You can't have, you can't, you can't have church without a pastor.

They say, uh, second Corinthians three, six, he quotes, uh, not of the letter, but of the spirit, the letter kills, spirit gives life.

Stop trying to control people with your doctrine. You Pharisee.

Um, here's, here's what I notice about what others have labeled the essential ingredients of the true church where the gospel is being preached.

The ordinances are rightly administered. Church discipline is carried out. Um, none of this, none of that can happen without biblical pastors.

None of that can happen without biblical elders. The elder, one of his qualifications is that he is apt to teach the word of God.

Uh, elders are to be administering the ordinances. Uh, elders are to be overseeing church discipline, right?

That's the role of shepherds. All of that is. And so pastors, uh, are necessary and it's not legalistic to say that.

Let me ask you another question, Adam, what, um, are the, so you, you didn't mean office space.

You didn't mean rooms, you didn't mean cubicles or anything like that. You meant offices. You meant the offices of the church. What are they?

What do you mean by that? So the word pastor, if you're asking the question, does the

Bible teach, um, the office of pastor and, and you know what, I looked through several

Bible translations after this, this fun day, which it kind of worked out. Cause my wife had to leave, uh, to go out of town with her granddad and her mom with the kids.

So it wasn't like you ruined my anniversary evening, like a dinner or anything like when you posted it. Cause I was really looking forward to us like having a really special dinner and then me not being able to think about anything else.

But this post, like that just tends to be how these things go. But I wouldn't have, uh,

I wouldn't have held it against you, Austin. It wouldn't have hurt our friendship or anything like that. Um, but the word, the word pastor, as we know, comes from shepherd.

And I think the idea of a flock continues to present itself in this conversation. But as we know, the new

Testament presents two offices that constitute church leadership, elder and deacon.

And I do have something to say about that within larger evangelical circles that I think have helped or have at least contributed to the popular misunderstanding.

And I would, and outrage that we saw with a post like this talking about structure, we've done some things to shoot ourselves in the foot when it comes to this.

Um, you're, you're an elders guy. I know you and you, you are an elders guy, but many people have been a part of a

Southern Baptist church or a Pentecostal church or an evangelical church of any kind, where all of it's resting at the foot of a

CFO and they see a dictatorship and they might think that's what I'm calling for. I would like to remind people that there are a lot of us in the

SBC who are calling for elders. Our church has elders. We are Southern Baptist church with elders. And so this office has specifics.

And part of that is that the, there is a plurality of elders. There's not supposed to be just one main honcho who calls the shots and expects everyone to increase attendance from across a long table.

This is an office holder. And on the second office is that of deacon. And these are called offices for good reason because they are appointed.

Offices are through appointment. And it's who, who appoints these people? Well, if you are a congregationalist, you believe that the church gets together and appoints those who meet these qualifications to serve the church in these offices.

Um, along the Christ centered expository commentary, I've seen it said that elders are described as servant leaders and deacons are described as leading servants.

Paul said to the Ephesian elders, uh, keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the

Holy spirit has made you overseers. So it's actually the Holy spirit through the church that appoints these men for qualification, as well as the

Holy spirit, ideally, hopefully in the will of God in these men saying that we will serve humbly, gently, but powerfully and boldly in these positions for the good of the mission and for good of the church.

So it's riddled throughout Ephesians, Titus, first Timothy, even, uh,

Jesus puts an emphasis on this role. And, um, in John 21, 15 through seven or 15 through 17, when he's talking to Simon Peter and he's giving him this feed, my lambs tend to my sheep.

We have a, um, we have a family equipping ministry philosophy at our church. And so this is largely emphasized that the church is the church.

The church does the work of a church, but that shepherds elders, they are to function as a role over the church to equip the church, to protect the desire of the church, um, and the will of God in the church.

And so they serve in a office function because of appointment, but those are the two offices given to us by the new

Testament church and the new Testament, the writings of Paul, Peter and Jesus. Yeah.

Yeah. You can find the qualifications for pastors and, uh, deacons in first Timothy three, first Timothy three,

Titus one. Let me share some scripture with, with our hearers, because, uh, it seems like, uh, there is a group of people who would identify as Christian who are pushing back against this post, not because of the misunderstandings you've addressed, but, um, for an unbiblical reason for, um, for the reason, uh, they, they see what you write.

Church needs structure, needs leadership, needs offices. Uh, and they just buck against that.

They buck against authority. They buck against, uh, accountability. They buck against the idea that it is required of me as a

Christian to really, to do anything, but especially to gather with the church, uh, weekly at least, right.

To, to be integrated into a local body. Here's, uh, first Thessalonians five 12.

I just want to share a couple of texts that are exhorting the church to not, um, not, not forsake the assembly.

Um, first Thessalonians five 12, but we request of you brethren, that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you and have charge over you in the

Lord and give you instruction. Paul is exhorting the church at Thessalonica to, uh, honor their shepherds, to honor their leaders.

It's clear then that there is structure here, but they have charge over you and they have charge over you.

He says in the Lord, uh, as you said, Christ is the head of the church and every shepherd of a local church is simply an under shepherd of the good shepherd.

Hebrews chapter 13 verse 17 it says this, obey your leaders and submit to them for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account.

Let them do this with joy and not with grief for this would be unprofitable for you.

So there is a clear charge in the New Testament. I think Adam, uh, for Christians not only to be, um, gathered, uh, in, into local bodies, but for them collectively to submit to leadership, to submit to the structure of the institution that is the church.

Yeah, absolutely. No, I think what you said was great. I think pulling those passages was really important because people can forget the context by which those are said, which is everything we're pointing to today.

Um, I go in graciously with some of the responses, man, because there is a dismissal of all of this church polity and structure for the good of the believers.

Like I think there's a, you're forgetting that this is all for the spiritual growth of believers.

And so I think you nailed it when you said that in general, the context here is the culture that is dismissing commitment and accountability, uh, vulnerability, intimacy.

What we are seeing being popularized comes with almost an inferred lacking of accountability, attending some place where you will not be missed, noticed, seen, or spoken to.

Um, I don't blame this all on COVID, but I think a lot of things got enhanced for that, a streaming mentality of discipleship, a self -serving mentality of discipleship.

When we know that biblically there can be no spiritual growth without confrontation, whether that confrontation is of the

Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit utilizing the fellowship to do that. Um, I've heard from several people that they don't look at church membership any different than a

Costco membership, forgetting really just the point of, of why God has called the gathering together in part.

It is to worship, man. It is to fellowship. It's to break bread. It's to eat together, to get to know each other, to not walk alone together because it's hard alone.

But man, we do not need to be dismissing that spiritual edification, spiritual discipline along the lines of church discipline as well comes because of the designation of these offices.

This is God's plan for the body of believers. And so to, to listen to all of that, to see all of that, it's not just a shout of legalism because I don't believe a lot of these people would even know that they were verging on antinomianism when they say these things like an absolute abuse of God's grace and a dismissal of structure because of, you know, 80s, 90s spirit crushing manmade construct legalism, where some deacon told them to take their hat off before they walked in.

And now they hate the idea of the offices of pastor. Like there are those connections made and we can't escape them.

But the millennials and younger have this sort of onward struggle with commitment and membership, which leads to a disdain for the pastoral office.

They have bought into the lie that less structure means more spirit and biblically that's just not true.

It's not true. So a lot of people reacting to you who either are or have been a part of the house church movement or are, or have been involved in church planting.

Um, and so one major confusion was, you know, well, what about house churches?

You can have church in the house and of course you can, and you can still have structure and leadership and officers in a house church.

Everything, every essential ingredient, um, can exist in any sort of gathering place outside.

It's pretty wonderful that way, isn't it? Yeah. In a church. Yeah, it is. It is. Um, so what, let me ask you this though, in regards to that, is it possible for a church to exist, um, without a, without one pastor?

Um, because a lot of times what happens with, uh, posts like this is that we get a lot of, uh, what about isms, right?

Uh, that kind of argument. What about the church that, you know, their pastor died and, and they go for some, you know, arbitrary length of time without a pastor.

Do they cease to be a church at that point? And of course, I think the, the actual example that was posted was like six years without a pastor.

There are probably some other issues going on if a church doesn't accept a pastor for six years.

Um, but if we were to shorten that length of time asking you, um, is it still a church?

Yeah, that's a great question. So the first thing, a senior pastor, let's just use the nomenclature.

I'm not even comfortable with, but let's just say, cause this is, this is the majority and we're stupid to think this is not the majority.

Let's just say there's a senior pastor who's known who's the face of the church. He runs the place, got it. And he has deacons that are kind of acting as an elder council.

Now they're not elders. They have not been ordained as elders, which is, by the way, the equivalent of pastor or overseer.

It's like a pastoral ordination. In fact, we call our elders pastors casually around here. Our church refers to them as that.

Um, but let's say they have deacons who are running in the place of an elders, which is not something I recommend, but definitely common.

Uh, then the pastor leaves, dies. One guy leaves, dies. They are technically without the office of a pastor.

And let's say they just, let's say they're small enough to where they don't have a lot of associate pastors and there's not someone to be a pastor on staff.

Cause you're talking about the dismissal, the seeming apparent dismissal of the office. Well, the first thing that, to go back in time, the first thing that pastors should do is create more pastors around them.

There should be a plurality of elders to avoid the problem by which you're mentioning. But let's say they didn't do that.

Let's say no one is worried or thought about succession at all. And they're doing it the

Southern Baptist way since the 1950s in Charles Finney, where they serve until some stranger comes in as very similar to them in these mannerisms.

And then they start serving. And they have a pastoral search committee made up of the deacons, right? And we've, we've been through all of these things.

We know how, how it goes. Well, the deacons rise up and there's still a form of office and leadership. The deacons are the ones who take the podium and the pulpit.

There's some leadership acting and that is not just some congregant randomly walking up and some guy looking around the room at the lights and going, well,

I guess I'll talk today. So here's the plan, what we're happening. No, it's, it's been appointed. It's been established. Even in the smallest of churches, there's a guy people's eyes are drawn to to go, he'll, he'll probably take things.

That's how we recognize leadership in any culture and any concept, even in our employment. Someone has the qualifications necessary to step in until you have a pastor ordained or appointed by the people who then become either your non vocational, bi -vocational or full -time vocational pastor, depending on what cultural context you're in.

So, so no, I think it's kind of weird to say that there's, you're without a pastor. You might be without an official pastor if you have no one trained and you're not dealing with a plurality of elders, which by the way is biblical.

But if you, so again, the Bible saves our butts again by giving us exactly what we should be doing.

So now we're off away in our own way and going, we're creating our whataboutisms out of our mistakes.

Like, well, so what about, what if there's only one pastor in the whole place and he dies?

Are we not a pastor now? Well, you, what you're, you were wrong in not having a bunch of pastors.

Like you were wrong. So, yeah. So because you were wrong and not having a bunch of pastors around who could be a part of that leadership, if something happens to a guy, then yeah, temporarily no, you are not revoked being a church because you have someone in place there to serve as leadership until eventually you appoint someone else to serve at that office.

So, so some of those arguments, I think even enhance the importance that they even recognize and feel that they are without a pastoral office at that time.

So it's like, okay, good. So you are acknowledging that there is a pastoral office. That's, that's important.

Given that thread, I was looking around going, okay, so there's, there's reason to us. Okay, good.

Good to hear. Yeah. So on the necessity of the pastoral office,

I think Sam Waldron has written something very helpful in relation to church planting. Cause I, you know,

I was even involved at one point in house church kind of, kind of stuff.

And what I realized as someone who was personally involved in branches of that movement is that everyone wants to plant a church and nobody knows what the church is.

Right. And and so we end up multiplying small groups rather than churches and there is a huge difference.

So Sam Waldron on, on the offices, he says at the earliest stage of church planting, you should seek the assistance of any of an existing eldership of a local church.

This is a suggestion. This should probably take the form of a written letter signed by the prospective members of the church to be planted.

This eldership can begin the process of church planting by conducting worship, preaching and recruiting preachers from other churches to help you.

When the decision is made to form a local church, they can interview prospective members and constitute the new church.

So what Sam is saying here is that step one of church planting is defining the eldership and getting, getting the structure in place.

Establishing the office of leadership that's going to be equipping the church. That's not dictating over them, but equipping them to be who they can be with accountability and leadership.

Yeah. It's suicide not to do that. And I think it's an important note too, for our hearers who were concerned is when they hear words like or phrases like church discipline, they think of it only in the negative, but church discipline is positive as well.

Obviously we discipline sin, which is what we'll get to here momentarily in Matthew 18.

But discipline is, it's not for the purpose of excommunication. It's not for the purpose of condemnation.

It's for the purpose of restoration. Discipline is restorative. And that's the goal of a shepherd, of an elder who is not lording his charge over the sheep.

It is restorative discipline. That's the goal. The shepherds are for the sheep, right?

Exactly. A hundred percent. Yeah. So let me ask you then, I guess this is related. We may have already answered it indirectly, but again, a common, a common comment to you was what about the persecuted church?

What about the underground church in China? Again, how dare you?

What about the church overseas, like the global church? Well, one, a lot of underground churches have pastors.

A lot of them, we get reports from them. So a lot of people have pastors who are meeting in homes.

And I want to also go back even Austin to what you said about home church and say, for two years, me and my family met in our home with seven other families before we could really find a church in the area we were living, that we agreed with and thought would be beneficial to join.

So my dad was an elder in a previous church. We had attended ordination as an elder made him the pastor of our home church.

So we have, we have a situation where he was the pastor of our church at home for two years before we joined a bigger body of believers in a building.

And so I've lived out outside of being in a persecuted or more propensity towards serious suffering churches, which we speak on a lot in the global church where they're privately and secretly meeting at homes out of, uh, for sake of their lives.

And some people are going, well, I guess you're discounting. This is probably the harshest accusation I took. I would,

I would have slept fine over everything else, but you're discounting these, these churches. You're basically saying they don't, they're not real churches.

They're not having church if they don't have a real elder. Well, one if they don't have a pastor, that's an assumption.

A lot of underground churches do, but let's say underground churches who are meeting in secret or semi -secret to study the

Bible, to teach the Bible. Obviously that's still happening. Someone's teaching it. Someone's learning it enough to read it and take the lead.

There might not be an official appointment that's occurred in that place yet, but I can guarantee you the majority are working towards an official appointment within that body of believers if they're reading the same

Bible. So I'm not going to rob them of being considered a church, because they're not yet where they need to be biblically and faithfully in terms of their leadership because there are all of these other cultural reasons for that.

That doesn't change the truth of the statement that's been cast out over biblical churches in a fallen world.

It doesn't change anything about it. It's just a whataboutism that specifically refers to Sudan and honestly is probably being said because someone in the middle of Georgia doesn't want to attend a local body of believers out of fear of commitment and accountability.

So let's be honest. There's reason why it was immediately thrown thousands of miles away.

And again, historically and statistically, they have appointed elders because this is like what we've just argued, biblical and biblically faithful to do and something they desire.

It's not easy and it comes with a fair share of suffering and it's different, but the truth still stands of what that church looks like.

And so if they're saying, well, they're not having church, I would put them in the same category as someone who was looking for a pastor that we just went over, that they are in a season and probably specifically so for good reason that no, they don't lose their churchhood, but that doesn't change the truth they know to be true if they're reading the same text and the truth they're hopefully moving towards if they're reading the same text.

But again, I was trying to fit all that into 40 characters. So I'm not coming down on, you know, clandestine formal organizations or names.

I think membership in the global churches, suffering areas, areas of persecution are usually limited even in their membership, but almost always from the testimonies

I've heard, there was one person rising among them who grasped the word the most tightly and started teaching it to which at that point

I'm saying if they're fitting qualifications and teaching the word, appoint them and have a pastor over eight people.

And so, so again, I don't think it takes away from the biblical truth, but I think you, I think that part does lead to the most conversation you can have over an issue like this.

What does it look like in the hundreds of other countries that are going through it? And I think that goes back to my original thing of saying a lot of that could have been avoided had

I just said dear Bible belt, you know, where we know we're not being persecuted for gathering yet.

Well, you know what brother, even if you had said dear Bible belt, there still would have been some pushback.

I am certain. It's inescapable on social media where everyone, uh, well not everyone,

I mean not speaking absolutes, uh, but a lot of people, a lot of people like to hear everything you're not saying.

Yeah. So it happens. Yeah. Let's hit it. Then the most frequently commented objection to your post,

Adam, Matthew 1820. Now I've screenshotted some other comments here, so let's take a look.

Excellent. All right. Crawl Daddy 21 says for where two or three are gathered in my name, there

I am among them. Stop trying to be God. This is why people turn away from organized religion.

It's got 148 likes, right? Uh, drawn to him says laughing, crying face, hard disagree.

He disagrees with you. What an absolutely ignorant statement. Whatever happened to where two or more gathered in my name,

I guess one of them has to be a pastor. So Adam, Matthew 1820,

I think it's, you know, it's, it's a up there with, uh, uh, uh,

Colossians four 13, right? I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, uh, in terms of texts that are taken out of context to support unbiblical ideas.

What's your initial response to Matthew 1820? So it's just not what that passage means.

I mean, immediately, again, uh, I'm not, I'm not trying to be God. I have God's word and I'm trying to be faithful to God's word.

So I think when people don't like what some people say about God's word, they, they accuse the person delivering that word as trying to be

God. But in actuality, we're not approaching the word of God with a red editing pen that would scream self idolatry and sort of self small

God isms. So that, that's not what we're trying to do. Uh, Matthew 18 in context, and I think this is a very important phrase in context, 15 through 17 is literally all about how to deal with sin in the church.

Here's the biggest piece of irony pie for the whole day and the whole conversation is that I post something on church structure and in great passionate rebuttal as well as claims of ignorance towards the posting party, people fire back with a passage that probably gives you one of the most controversial church structure depictions in all of the

New Testament. They are pro church. Everyone who posted Matthew 18, whether they knew it or not was pro church structure, pro pastor, pro deacon, pro accountability, pro commitment, because Matthew 18, 15 through 17 is all about how to deal with sin in the church and what you've, and I have referred to commonly as church discipline for the, um, the commitment, the, if someone's gone away because of sin and they rejoin, that's always our praise is that through church discipline, through their recognition of this sin and the dealing with this sin and equipping them to beat and handle a lot of what this sin is bringing into their life and the consequences, they can rejoin the body of the believers and make the body believers stronger.

Um, and, and the passage emphasizes that it says, if your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault just between the two of you.

If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.

This is as structural as a courtroom. And if they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church.

And if they refuse to listen, even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

So imagine preaching on that and meaning it, and then just sitting back and bathing like a jacuzzi in the accusations of legalist and Pharisee.

And he goes on in 19 through 20 to give this final assurance. Again, truly, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, if it will be done for them by my father in heaven, this is all in reference by the way, not to the new car you want, but Matthew 15, 18, 15 through 17.

And it says for where two or three gather in my name, there I am with them. It's all the it's in the ending statement to church discipline handled biblically in the local body of believers.

So it has to do with church discipline, not this, this is going to be the church.

And I want to make sure, again, we know the difference between the body of believers known as the church and a localized church with offices that is structured how

God intends it to be structured. Huge, huge understanding, uh, there that, that is needed to get that, that passage correct.

Yeah, I think, I think that's a great answer, brother. I think that's a great, uh, brief break. You can tell

I've been holding on to that one. That was, well and because you saw the comments, like that was where they kept saying where two and more gathered, where two and more gathered.

I got, you got that on your Facebook one. You got that on Instagram one. I was getting replies of that. And it's like, guys, this is again, the post isn't again, not saying that God's not present in terms of the

Holy spirit. I'm a believer in the Holy spirit. I know what you mean. God's present. This was a conversation of localized church structure and the necessity of doing it so that things like Matthew 18 can occur for the bodily edification of the church.

So it's all related. And even then that was the best part. The irony of giving me church structure to fight your belief in church structure.

It was, it was nice. If not for all the ignorant exclamations, it would have been, it would have been nice night reading to go to sleep too.

But yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's all about structure there. I mean, even when he says tell it to the church, well he's not talking about the church universal there.

He's talking about a, a local body's talking about a group of people you can point at and identify as the church.

And if a church can be identified, then it must have structure. That's right.

So here's what I think, Adam, here's my theory. I think that Matthew was the first gospel written.

Okay. I'm going to put it out there. Okay. Okay. Yeah. It was, uh, it's been a controversial take for like 150 years.

Uh, but for that, uh, that's a, that is an interesting take. I didn't know you believe that. Okay. All right.

Um, so I think Paul had Matthew. I think Paul was familiar with Matthew and I think first Corinthians five, four is

Paul's application of Matt, uh, of, of Matthew 18, 20. That's what

I think. What do you think about that? I'm just trying to support your exegesis here. Yeah, yeah, no,

I think that's a great, if it, look, as long as it supports the faith biblically faithful exegesis of the passage, why not, man?

Amen. All right. Well, I'm glad we're agreed on that. So I love that you put, you put, uh, you put it in terms,

Jesus's words here in Matthew 18 in terms of a final assurance in verses 19 through 20.

And I think that's what it's, it's meant to be. It is not this vague promise that if two Christians get together,

Christ is present, but if one of them leaves, he's not as present anymore. Uh, it is a promise that even for the smallest of churches, the smallest of biblical churches, even where two or three are gathered, uh, the power of Christ's presence is promised for the comfort of that local body.

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Which is how you survive church discipline. It's also what convicts the person who was under it or the family who was under it.

It's this idea that the Holy Spirit's drawing you to the body of believers. The Ecclesia is a beautiful, wonderful thing, man. And I really do.

I know we say a lot of stuff tongue in cheek and having some fun with it because how can you read username crawl daddy and not just love what's happening?

But I think in terms, there's a passion that you and I have for the local body of believers because we know what it is capable of all over this world, uh, to do, which is bring glory to God and strengthen families in Christ.

And the best part is man, it's not of our invention. It's been given to us by God and there's a right way to do it.

Again, this is not saying every denomination needs to look exactly the same and there aren't important differences that need to be discussed, but there is a structure.

The polity matters in your church. And so I would urge people listening to lean in on a discussion and study of church polity, to lean in on organization, to know that that doesn't rob you of the spirit, but actually helps create good spiritual boundaries, disciplined boundaries to make sure we remain faithful to the word.

And that's, that should be every pastor's heart, man. It's just that more and more people are faithful to the word of God and act it out. Amen. Amen.

Amen, brother. Well, thank you for coming on. Thank you for talking with me. Thanks for having me. Thank you for, for bringing some clarity to this discussion.

Uh, I am the Holy note and I am thankful to have been joined by Adam page today on the Holy note podcast.