F4F | Interview with Rev. Dr. Matt Richard re: Will the Real Church Please Stand Up?

Fighting for the Faith

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Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseboro. I'm your servant in Jesus Christ, and this is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the

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Word of God. So today, on the day that this episode airs, a new book is being released by Concordia Publishing House, and the name of the book,

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I have it here on my Kindle, is Will a Real Church Please Stand Up? And I have Pastor Matthew Richard, the author of the book, on for an interview, and I have to prepare you ahead of time.

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Pastor Matt Richard wears a uniform. He looks like a failed Roman Catholic priest, but he isn't.

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So don't let appearances shock you. This is going to be an important interview that we do here, talking about what is the church, what does the church meet for, and things like this, and what constitutes a real church as opposed to a church that may actually be false.

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So with all of that, let me introduce you to Pastor Matt Richard. Pastor Matt Richard, good to see you, sir.

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Good to see you, too, my friend. All right, so you're a failed Roman Catholic priest. What's with the uniform, man?

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Don't you understand, you need to wear skinny jeans. That's a uniform, by the way, skinny jeans and whatever the latest thing.

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Why are you wearing this uniform? You're shocking people, sir. You know, I've been a part of the

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Missouri Synod for about 10 years, and before that, I was always the suit and tie. And frankly, I absolutely love it.

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I have like eight of these black shirts. I have all the matching khakis to go with it. And I wake up, and I don't have to figure out what

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I have to wear each day. I just pop this on, put the tab on, and I'm off and running. But, you know, frankly, it's part of the garb,

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I guess you would say, the uniform of the past in the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod. But one of the reasons why I do wear it is just, man, the amount of conversations

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I have. When I go to Walmart, I just love going to Walmart wearing a collar. I either get stern looks of absolute condemnation, you know, glares at me, or I get these wonderful, sweet little smiles.

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And every time I go to Walmart with a collar on, I have conversations about Jesus. And so I find it to be a tremendous advantage to talk about the

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Christian faith, to confess Christ. Right. And I would note that the priest of the Old Testament had a uniform.

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And so historically, even Protestants have had uniforms.

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It's not until recently that things have kind of changed, which kind of begs the question. So having read through your book,

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Will the Real Church Please Stand Up? I mean, you take some very,

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I would say, kind but firm swipes at certain church practices nowadays.

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And I can hear the criticisms already because I've been criticized along these lines myself.

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Matt, is the real reason why you wrote this book is because your church is irrelevant, and you're just jealous because other churches are growing because they've incorporated business models and business practices and marketing and stuff like that into their churches?

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You're just jealous because your church isn't growing, aren't you? You know, that'd be an easy straw,

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Matt, I think. Frankly speaking, I mean, I have a background in business and economics.

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My wife is actually a business teacher and a marketing instructor. In my previous life, if you'll say it that way,

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I was in a church where I was a contemporary praise and worship leader myself. I understand all the methodology of how to do all that.

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And really, when it comes down to it, the book itself and being the pastor that I am, I want to keep the main thing the main thing.

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And the book itself, Will the Real Church Please Stand Up?, is focusing on the main thing, which is the gospel.

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And all these other things can be distractions, as we'll obviously talk about in this book.

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But yeah, when it comes down to it, is it a lack of understanding with the business practices and all that? Nope, not at all.

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Been there, done that, know how to do it, but want to keep the main thing the main thing. And I would just kind of dogpile here.

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I have an MBA from Pepperdine University. I know all about the best business practices and marketing and all this kind of stuff.

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And at Kangsvinger Lutheran Church in Oslo, Minnesota, where I am the pastor, we're just a small country parish that we're not interested in best business practices.

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We're interested in preaching Christ and Him crucified and administering the sacraments according to the gospel.

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But that's a whole other story. So, all right. So, the book itself is a little bit of fiction.

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But, you know, it's almost like you're kind of telling a parable or a story about the Campbells.

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If they were church shopping, is that the right way to say what they're up about, what they're about the business of doing?

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Yeah, yeah, absolutely. They moved to the new town of Midway. Now, excuse me, remind those that are watching and listening that these are fictitious people, as you mentioned.

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So, I went into ChatGTP and I said, what is the most common name of a town in America?

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And they said Midway. There's tons of Midways. So, I chose Midway. I chose generic names. Ben and Jessica are the mom and dad.

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Olivia and Noah are the kids. I mean, these are absolutely as generic as you can get. But the purpose then is for the reader to go along with them as they come to the new town and they visit eight churches.

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Now, seven are going to be false. One's going to be the true church. And you can kind of be like that fly on the wall. As you come into the church, the smells, the sights, what the church invests in, how the people talk, the interactions that they have, they all confess something about the theology of the church or what the church is about.

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And so, we start kind of, again, when you look at the book and you hear these churches, you may think to yourself, well, these are all like tiny little details, but they're actually huge details that reveal something about the church.

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And so, you come in, again, the sight, the sound, the smells, the advertising, the marketing, even down to the seating, the architecture of the church itself, all communicate something about the church.

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Right. And I think what your book is really good at is kind of unpacking or at least revealing the theology behind particular church practices.

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Why do churches do the things that they do? And so, practice always follows theology or doctrine or beliefs.

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And so, there's a core set of assumptions that you seem to be unearthing, at least bringing it to light as you look at these seven not -so -good churches that are false churches.

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And that's a strong word, by the way. And so, you kind of bring their theology to light, which kind of begs a question, if you would.

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You know, when the Church of Christ gathers, what is the purpose of the church gathering?

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I mean, we're instructed in the Scriptures to not forsake the gathering of the saints.

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And that being the case, what's the primary purpose biblically for Christians to gather on a

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Sunday morning for a church service? Yeah, great question, Chris.

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Well, when it comes to the book itself and just even contemplating it, there are two fundamental and very, very simple questions that we need to ask.

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And that is of every church, or not even a church, but any organization. And that is this, what is the unity?

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And so, again, what is the unity? What is it that the church itself or the business or the program or the agency, whatever it might be, what is it that they gather around?

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When people come together, what is at the center of the hub? If you think about, like, coming to a bonfire and everybody gathers around a fire.

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I mean, we all sit in a circle around a fire. If you go to a hospital, what does all the events of the hospital, what do they gather around?

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They gather around a patient. And so, the doctors and the nurses and everyone's gathered around a patient. So, that's the fundamental question is, what is the unity of the church?

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What is at the center of the church? But then once you get that question answered, then the next question is, where is the church going?

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What's the purpose? So, when you're at that unity, where are you going? Now, if you look at a hospital, per se, they're gathering around a patient.

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But if the purpose of the doctors and the nurses and everybody that's there is to give the patient a cozy night stay and a good breakfast, we'd say, well, okay, they have the unity, right?

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But they're functioning like a hotel, you know, or a resort. That's not the right purpose.

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And so, again, with the church, what do we gather around? And in that book, we have seven different things that these churches are gathering around.

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And I would say, properly speaking, we gather around Christ and his gifts. I mean, that's the essence of being a church, which is to be

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Christian. Christians are about Christ. So, we gather around Christ. And then to what end? I say here at St.

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Paul's Lutheran Hall, the church's job as a pastor is prepare my parishioners for the grave and the resurrection.

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To see them through, to abide in Christ all the way unto death, to be faithful unto death. And then we lay their body in that sanctified grave and then their souls with Jesus to await the resurrection.

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And so, we just had a funeral here a while back. And a dear old saint named Leona and my associate pastor and I, we both said, man, she finished the course.

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She's abiding with Christ. And we lay her body in the grave to await the resurrection. And so, job well done, you know,

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Leona, job well done, church. You've been faithful unto the very end. And so, it's that simple.

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Gathering around Christ and his gifts unto death and the resurrection. Unto death. So, in many of the big box evangelical megachurches, they talk about the, you know, their goal.

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They exist for the purpose of reaching the unreached, of doing church for the unchurched.

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And they will say phrases like this. Our goal is to get people to cross the finish line of faith.

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And by that, they mean make a decision for Jesus. And so, their emphasis really is getting people in so that they can hear about Jesus and then make a decision to make

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Jesus the Lord of their life or, you know, things like this, right? You are not talking about somebody coming to a profession of faith in Christ as the finish line.

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You're talking about the grave as the finish line. And so, talk to me about why the finish line of faith would not be when somebody makes a public profession of faith in Jesus.

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Well, I mean, that comes to the obvious backdoor problem of many churches. You know, when it comes down to making an altar call or a profession of faith, then what ends up happening is then you get the person in through the door and boom, they're a

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Christian. And then we just, a lot of times, and I don't think it's intentional, but many times churches, then they just move on to the next convert and then they fail to feed.

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And so, you get the sheep, using that sheep pen kind of analogy, you get the sheep, you get them into the sheep pen, but then you forget to, what, tend to the sheep, feed the sheep, take care of their wounds, keep them safe from wolves.

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And I would say that's only half the battle. You know, we think about Jesus, what he says in the Gospel of John, that we're to abide with him, that he is the vine, we're the branches.

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And so, being a branch of Jesus, we're constantly being fed by Jesus, taking care of Jesus.

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And even that goes back to that analogy of the sheep. We have to keep in mind that there's wolves out there looking to devour the sheep.

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And if we're not, pastors, if the pastors are not taking care of the sheep, the sheep can wander, the sheep can get hurt, they can get wounded by a bad theology.

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They are, again, all of us are prone to wander and leave the God that we love. And so, the job of the pastor is to keep them in the sheep pen.

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And so, back to this other analogy on these things, where a lot of times we get people in the church and we go off to bigger and grander things off in the distance.

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No, Jesus says to abide in me and I in you. And so, my goal here at St.

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Paul's is to, for my parishioners, is to basically stay put. You're not lacking anything.

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You have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm in Christ Jesus. You have all of his gifts. You have his word. You have his great word that has been confessed to you, and you are to abide.

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Stay put. Don't move. You're in the ark of the holy Christian church. Think of that Noah's Ark analogy as well.

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And again, so stay put. So, you're in the ark. You're in the sheep pen. You're in the vine. Stay put.

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Don't move. Abide in Christ until the very end. Okay. I think that's a satisfactory answer.

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I like the answer, sir. Okay. So, I think you know this. I've actually had a face -to -face conversation with Rick Warren.

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And back in the day when the purpose -driven life and the purpose -driven church were all the rage and kind of the fad that was running through the church,

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I was an outspoken vocal critic. Long before there were podcasts and video blogs, there were blogs.

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I used to be a blogger. And so, I was very critical of Rick Warren, and Rick Warren invited me to Saddleback Church and paid for my admission to attend a purpose -driven church conference.

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And I got to sit and hear everything about how the purpose -driven church is supposed to work.

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And so, Rick Warren is very vocal, has been very vocal about the fact that back in the day, he wanted his church to be different.

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He believes that traditional churches, you know, the ones that they sing hymns and they have expository preaching that exegetes biblical passages, he sees them as a hindrance to church growth.

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And so, he went out and he did these sociological studies, and he knocked on a lot of doors in Lake Forest and El Toro in Orange County.

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And if he knocked on the door and he'd ask the question, are you a Christian? If the person said yes, he would say, thank you for your time.

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I don't have any further questions. He then would go until he would find houses where there were people who weren't

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Christians. And when they said they weren't a Christian, he would say, why don't you go to church?

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And so, they'd say, well, the sermons are too long. I don't like organ music.

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I don't think it's relevant. The messages don't really, they're not appealing to my life, and they're not very helpful and things like this.

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And so, through the sociological survey that Rick Warren conducted, he knew all the things that he says were keeping nonbelievers from coming to church, and he purposely organized

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Saddleback for the purpose of making it appealing and relevant to unbelievers.

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I mean, doesn't that sound like a good thing? Matt, don't you think we ought to get rid of all the selfish stuff that we do that's keeping unbelievers from coming to church?

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Don't you think it's selfish of you and I and others to hang on to these traditions that make us irrelevant and are keeping people from hearing the gospel?

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You know, kind of a funny little story. When I started off in ministry, man, this would have been back out, man,

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California, 2004. I served at a church called Victoria Community Church. I was ordained there in Rancho Cucamonga, California.

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Cucamonga, yeah. Yeah, it was right after the time. I think with Saddleback, they had this kind of program where you move around the bases, and I think it was

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Saddleback Sam, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, that's right. We didn't have Saddleback Sam. We had Victoria Vic.

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So, we had Victoria Vic, and we would move people around the bases. Now, okay, so positive construction on this.

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We want to say that, yes, that's really good that Rick Warren and churches of that kind of character are looking out to the unchurched.

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We would say God be praised for that. That's wonderful. However, I would say the fundamental flaw is assuming that the wants of the people are actually what they need.

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And so, you know, I have a lot of wants that I want. If they were to come true, it would not be healthy for me, you know, obviously speaking.

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And so, there's an aspect where you have to look from Scripture and just say, what does Scripture say that we need?

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And what we need and what we want are not always the same thing. And there's another aspect to this, too, that when we look at things such as liturgy, we look at things such as old hymns and things that are ancient that are maybe foreign to the modern year, we sometimes dogpile on the church and we say, man, my goodness, you've got to become more relevant.

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You've got to change your language. You can't do these archaic things. But yet, we don't hold the same standard to sporting events or football.

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You know, I just think to myself, when I took my son to his first football game, the NDSU Bison, I'm up in North Dakota, obviously, well, just actually south of you,

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Chris. And the NDSU Bison, you're probably a UND fan, but won't hold that against you.

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Yeah, sued. We do not root for the Fighting Hawks. That's anathema, but that's a whole other thing.

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So, but like, okay, so let's just say you and I would go to a football game and take somebody else who never experienced it.

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We're going to sit down, like I say, first down. Like I say, what's that? Well, it's a first down. A punt return or field goal, you know, offsides.

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All this terminology, we don't tell the football league to say, you have to adjust all that language for the new people.

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We expect the new people to be catechized or taught to learn it. And we do the same thing with baseball.

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I remember taking my friend from Africa when I was in my doctoral studies, Amos Boulay. He was from Africa.

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I took him to a baseball game. He fell asleep in the second inning, so I think he did pretty well. But he had no idea.

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Why are we standing? Why are we clapping? What is that language? And I had to teach him. And so we do this everywhere else, but when it comes to the church, all of a sudden we dogpile in the church.

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I don't think that's necessarily fair. That's a fair comment that you don't think it's fair.

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And I would note that as a baseball fan. I've been a diehard

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L .A. Dodgers baseball fan since I was a wee lad, and my grandfather taught me to follow the

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Dodgers. I would note that baseball is just chock full of liturgy and tradition.

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I would note that when you go to a baseball game, how do things start?

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You got the first pitch that's done ceremonially, then you have the singing of the national anthem.

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When you get to the seventh inning stretch, you sing, Take Me Out to the Ball Game. And ever since 9 -11, they also sing

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God Bless America. And this is a staple. This doesn't change at all. There is a liturgy to baseball.

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Now, one of the things I tell my catechumens is that every church has a liturgy.

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And so when people think of liturgical worship, they oftentimes will just narrowly focus in on churches that follow the historic liturgy.

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But I would note that in big box megachurches and many churches, all churches, they all have a liturgy.

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A liturgy is kind of like a set order in which they do things. So in the big box megachurches, their liturgy goes something like this.

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The praise band begins everything. Everybody's up on their feet, and then you have three fast songs, two slow songs, and then kind of one medium song.

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And they've kind of woven into it some performative stuff as well. You have to do a cover from a secular band nowadays in a church service.

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And everyone's on their feet, and they'll either raise their hands like this or way up high, and there's kind of an ebb or flow to it.

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And after the worship set, if God is pleased with the sacrifice of praise that people are offering, he'll give people goosebumps.

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Then they have announcements, like a four - to eight -minute -long tithing sermon, followed by passing the buckets, and then you get a 25 - to 35 -minute -long sermon that's really not geared towards exegeting any particular text, but really kind of giving biblical principles to make your life more successful, to have better -behaved children, spice things up between you and the missus in the bedroom.

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Of course, it's obligatory that once a year we talk about what the church's mission and vision are that God has given to that unique congregation.

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Then during the summertime, they're going to preach on popular movies and things like this.

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And so there's even a lectionary that goes with those types of churches. And then after that, you will have maybe from time to time something like an altar call or a time where people are making commitments to do things like tithe or make better decisions in their lives and stuff like this, and then it's over.

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But am I wrong in saying that's a liturgy? No, you're 100 % correct.

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Everyone has a liturgy. Everyone has a pattern in which to do things. In fact, as far as the liturgy goes, even how the pastor dresses and how the pastor walks and talks all communicate something.

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And back to the garb here. I've told my parishioners many times, now I don't know 100 % the history on this, but this is the way that I think of it.

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I wear a black shirt because this confesses what? That I'm a sinner. I'm no different than anyone else.

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I am an absolute sinner. And this right here is going to be purity. It's going to be white. And that's over what?

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My vocal cords. So when this is on, I am called in the stead and by the command of Jesus to what? Preach His word and to confess

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His word. That His words coming out of this sinful pastor, those words are gospel truth.

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And so it's a uniform. Obviously it's a uniform, but it communicates something and it communicates that I'm all about God's word.

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Now even how we walk and how we talk and the music and the tone that we have, all of that communicates something about our theology.

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And there is definitely a liturgy. And I would say, as you have mentioned here, the liturgy of these churches is indeed formed by what they are unified around, their purpose, their theology.

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And so how we act and how we talk in church services, not only in that, but in life in general, does absolutely 100 % flow out of our theology, our doctrine of what we believe, teach, and confess.

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And so you can, in a lot of ways, look at the practice of the church, and this is the point, obviously, of these false churches we see.

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We look at the sights and the smells and the way people talk and what they do, where they invest their money, and you can actually see that and you pull it back and you will find layer upon layer as you get back to the theology at the very center.

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And again, that theology bleeds out into practice. And so I used to hold this idea that doctrine and practice were separate.

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You could do this on doctrine and it didn't affect practice. I've come to absolutely reject that.

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That where you see practice, you will see a doctrine. Now, sometimes you'll see a practice and there's really an unspoken doctrine, but it's a doctrine maybe inherited from a different church or different so forth.

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And so, again, you look at all of these churches in America and you start from the outside, what they're singing, how they're dressing, the architecture of the church, and you pull back those layers and you will definitely find a theology behind it.

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And unfortunately, many people don't go back that far. They don't think that way and they just go along with the practice without being discerning and saying, well, what is driving this practice?

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What is pushing to do this practice? What theology is at work underneath it? And that's really, it's unfortunate that they don't do that.

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And that's maybe the challenge that we can have right now is to think more deeply than just going along with the flow of the practice.

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Right, exactly. Theology and practice, they go hand in hand. What you believe is going to be reflected in what you do.

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I mean, don't faith and works go together as a package? I think they do.

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That being the case, so what you believe is going to impact your practice.

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So, for instance, in some of the mainline denominations, I think of like the

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ELCA, right? They ordain women. They ordain people who are homosexuals.

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And their sermons kind of reflect that theology. But didn't their theology shift first before they started ordaining women and homosexuals?

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Wasn't that a practice that was brought on by the shift in their theology? Yeah, yeah.

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I mean, we look at right now on some of the mainline churches and how absolutely ethically liberal they become, as you mentioned there, with same -sex marriage, ordaining of homosexuals and so forth.

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And there's been an outcry, at least here in North Dakota, there's been an outcry of some of this bad practice.

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A while back there was a sparkle creed that was circulating, which was just awful. Reprehensible.

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I mean, demonic. It was godless, godless trash. And everyone's getting all offended.

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And I had a member of my church just say, you know what? We're offended now. We should have been offended like 20, 30 years ago.

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Because this didn't start just now. It started 20 to 30 years ago. And it started when how they handled and interpreted the

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Bible. And so, I tell my confirmation students all the time, I tell them, I said, there's two ways of handling the

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Bible. Either we read the Bible or the Bible reads us. And in other words, if we read the

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Bible, that means that we take our own intellect, which is basically a fancy term, a magisterial use of reason, which is a big fancy theological word.

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But if we read the Bible, we put our intellect, our mind over top of the Bible and we impose our own rules and standards upon the

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Bible. But when we let the Bible read us, we stand underneath the Bible, that we're captive to the

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Word of God, and the Bible then reads us. It interprets, humanity interprets us. And so, those are two really easy and fundamental ways of understanding the

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Bible. And so, if you attempt, if anybody attempts to read the Bible and we impose our own lenses upon that, then, guess what?

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That Christian faith is going to look a lot like what we want. In fact, I mean, that goes back to the first book

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I wrote on, Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? And surprisingly, we create these false Christs and these

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Jesus that don't exist in the real life, but they only exist in the imagination of our mind. And ironically, these

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Jesuses look a lot like what? Ourselves. Idols that we create and what we want our Jesus to be.

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And so, we, just like an idol, we take that block of wood and we chisel away at Jesus. We chisel away at Him.

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We shape and we form and we manufacture God in our own image, so that we can, what? Use that God, put that God into our debt.

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And we put that God on our chain, on our leash, and we tug Him around and we tell Him what to do for us. And man, it's wretched, it's awful.

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And so, but back to your main point on this, the practices that we see in the ELCA church and mainline churches, that stems back to problems from 20, 30 years ago.

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And so, again, my parishioner is right. He said, you know, we're outraged now. God be praised that people are.

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But tragically, they should have been outraged 20, 25, 30 years ago. Yeah. And I'll be blunt.

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I mean, 20 years ago, I was blogging against a lot of these changes at the time.

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And people just said, you know, Roseberry, you're just too uptight. These changes aren't going to result in the things that you're saying.

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And they did. And you don't have to be a prophet to see what was coming down the road. Okay. So I think

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I'm kind of getting where you're going here. And you'll notice, I really want people to purchase your book and to read it because I find it challenging.

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Now, one of the things I thought about your book that I thought was interesting is that you've written it with study questions at the end of each chapter.

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And then at the back end of the book, you've even got like a leadership, you know, a study guide that gives the answers to the questions to help facilitate conversations.

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Did you really set out for the purpose of creating small group Bible study curriculum from this book of yours?

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Well, that's one aspect that Concordia Publishing I always wanted to see. But with that stated,

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I think that a book is only going to be as good as the conversation that follows. Now, you can obviously sit down and read a book.

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But I guess I'm a firm believer that when we read the Bible, we read it in community. When we study things, we read it and study in community.

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I just got back yesterday. I went on Monday and Tuesday with a couple of my elders and my chairman. We went down to a conference in southeast

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North Dakota. And the conference was good. It was great. I mean, actually not good, it was great. But what was even better is the dialogue that we had in the car for about three, four hours driving back as we're contemplating and going through it.

29:52

And there are aspects of the conversation that I was like, man, I don't really like this because I'm defending my own stance on my own personal biases.

30:02

And I had other of my elders who were saying, well, no, I think you're wrong, Pastor, on this. Think of this, what

30:07

God's Word says on this, this, this. And I was being confronted and shaped by it. And so when it comes to the book here, there's definitely a narrative that you follow along.

30:16

And then there's little text boxes that I placed in the middle of it so you can actually clue the reader into like, okay, they just saw this in the architecture, but what does that mean?

30:27

What are they seeing? And so the Campbells, they don't necessarily understand everything they're experiencing.

30:32

The reader will understand more as they look at the text boxes. And then when you get to the very end, then those questions are for self -contemplation, for conversation.

30:41

And then those answers in the back are to kind of help guide them as they're studying it. So, the book itself,

30:48

I would say that it should not replace divine service, church services on Sunday.

30:54

But it would be a good study for like, let's just say a Bible study on Sunday morning with the pastor or even a group of people throughout the week maybe having coffee and pull out the book and read it and just have conversation.

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And that's to help guide that conversation so ultimately we, you know, are not pulled astray as we study and contemplate the subject.

31:15

Okay. So, one of the churches that you describe as a false church is a church that,

31:22

I mean, they've got like a basketball court. They have all these activities taking place during the middle of the week.

31:29

I know churches like this. That, you know, there isn't a day that goes by that something is happening there at the church, whether it be a small group

31:39

Bible studies, teaching English as a second language to people who need to learn the

31:44

English language. They have soup kitchens and basketballs and it's like the church, there's so many activities that to kind of the untrained eye, people would say, well, that's a positive thing.

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And they would say, listen, I don't want to go to your stupid confessional

32:08

Lutheran church because your coffee is terrible and the pastor's boring and the hymns are dry and crusty.

32:16

I mean, how on earth can you say that this church that has all these activities is somehow missing the point because,

32:25

I mean, you guys can't even compete against that. I mean, I bet you don't even have a basketball court at St.

32:32

Paul's, you know, and you probably don't even have like community basketball teams and stuff like this too.

32:38

I mean, where's your softball team? Did you guys win the playoffs this year from your church and stuff like that?

32:46

So I'm kind of painting the picture of it like what you're putting into play there, but you compared it to monasticism.

32:55

And I had never made that connection before until you made it and it's in one of those little call -out boxes in that chapter.

33:04

How on earth is a church that has all of these activities going on during the week, how on earth would that be monastic?

33:14

Yeah, yeah. It's kind of fascinating to think about. Modern -day monasteries, they really are.

33:20

They are functioning that way. Okay, so a couple things we have to unpack on this. First and foremost is we have to understand that a good work done inside the four walls of the church is no better than a good work done at home or a good work done in the workforce.

33:34

And so changing a diaper at home in the midst of a home at 3 .30

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in the morning as you've just stumbled into your baby's room and that diaper is messy, changing that messy diaper at 3 .30

33:46

in the morning is just as godly as doing a mission event inside of a church.

33:52

They're both equally good works, and so we have to clarify that. And so part of this has stemmed from what

33:57

I've seen over the years where certain parishioners will have this belief that a good work has to be done inside the church or underneath the bed of the church in order to be a sanctified good work and that God doesn't see the good works that are done at 2 .30

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in the morning changing a diaper. And we have to demolish that, and that is a monastic era that has happened throughout centuries.

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And so we have to clarify that first and foremost. And the second thing is this, is that there's this doctrine called the doctrine of vocation, and that doctrine of vocation is that we as Christians, we function in three spheres, and this goes back to what the

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Lutheran church has in the small catechism, the table of duties it's called. And so we as people, we function within the realm of the church, we function in the realm of the government, the state, and we function in the realm of the family.

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Now all three of those things need to be kept separate. The church needs to be kept separate from the state, and the state separate from the family.

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The family functions to give mercy and care and nurture, shoes, house, food.

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The state functions to provide wrath against evil, and so it's supposed to swing a sword and catch bad guys and swing the sword of wrath against evil.

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And then the church is to deliver the goodness of the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ and the word and sacraments and so forth.

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And so we have those three spheres. Now the Christian will bounce between all three of those all the time.

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But what can happen is this, is the Christian can run to the church and then hide out in the church and believe that only the good works and things that are happening within the church are sanctified and good to the neglect of their vocational duties in the state as well as the family.

35:46

I remember I've had situations where I've seen parishioners where they're at every single church event, and I'm not speaking of St.

35:53

Paul's here, but in the past where they're at every single church event, but yet their neighbor across the street is in need, or they have maybe a son or daughter who has a baby that needs to be watched.

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But nope, we have a church event, and that doesn't count, and that is so incredibly detrimental.

36:11

It's a fundamental flaw in how we understand good works, that they happen not only in the church, obviously, but outside the church in our vocations as we function in the state, in the family, as citizens, as dads, as moms, as employees, as sons, as daughters, firefighters.

36:27

I mean, the whole works, those are good works just as much as in the church. So when somebody, their entire life is wrapped up, we're talking every day of the week with something at church, it sounds like you're legitimately arguing that what that is doing is taking them out of their vocation in their community and making it so that the good works that they could be doing for neighbor, they're nowhere near neighbor anymore.

37:00

Well, okay, and there's a direct connection. In my humble opinion, the churches that go the monastic way where they provide activities seven days a week and then everybody is always coming to the church, it's pulling them out of their families, pulling them out of the state, into the church.

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Then the reason why they're so focused on doing outreach is because the people are not in the community.

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Here at St. Paul's, when we get done on Sunday, I raise my hand and I do a benediction, may the

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Lord bless and keep you, so forth. Essentially, what I'm doing is we're done here. Now, get out of here. I'll see you later this week and I'll see you next

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Sunday. Go out in your vocations and they go out. We have 200 people that just go out into the community and they're serving their neighbor.

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They're interacting with people, rubbing shoulders with them, and many of them are confessing Christ. Many are doing works of love just because they're

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Christians and that's who they are. Then as a result, we've had, I would not say an explosive, like immediate growth, but we've had substantial growth over the last six years at St.

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Paul's, and that's happening as the church are just saying, hey, come to church with me. Come hear about Jesus.

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Come receive the forgiveness of sins and hear about the goodness of Christ and to be taught the word. You can sit next to me, and that's happening as people are in the community interacting, rubbing shoulders with people and bringing them in.

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So evangelism, I would argue evangelism happens, properly speaking, as we're in our vocations, simply functioning.

38:31

Now, not to belabor the point, but I was in a small town called Surrey. I call it

38:37

Archery in Surrey, and I've done some substitute teaching there. And we've had, I don't know, about three to four families from Surrey join our church here.

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Why? Through me coaching archery and substitute teaching and talking to them at ball games, just being a citizen of Surrey and this area and just being a neighbor, and then talking to them about Christ without my collar on, you know?

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And that happens through those vocations. Okay. So, you know,

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Jesus says, go. As you are going, make disciples. So you're arguing then that, you know, get out of the church, man.

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Just get out. Get, get, get. But, Matt, the world's a dangerous place.

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I mean, there's like people who are woke and have really bad philosophies, and they vote for the wrong people, and they listen to the wrong music and stuff.

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And if I'm hobnobbing with them and stuff like that, you know, then

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I can't, you know, I don't feel safe, you know? And so that's going to impact my

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Christianity. You're telling me to go and hang out with these people. Are you nuts? Well, you know,

39:49

Christ says to what? That we're in the world, but we're not of it. And that's in the Gospel of John very clearly.

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And so, you know, the fact of the matter is, at least I'll speak for St. Paul's here, that when we leave on Sunday, we go in the name of Jesus with the gifts that we've been given, equipped by God's word.

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And I expect this whole week that we're all going to get beat up and bruised by life, not only the sin that's been done against us by the world, not only the flaming arrows from the devil that hit us, but also our own failings.

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And so then when we come back here at St. Paul's next Sunday, we do an opening song, an opening hymn, just because people are late sometimes.

40:27

And then the first thing we do is we confess our sins. We stand shoulder to shoulder and we say, we've mucked it up this week.

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We have failed in thought, word, and deed. And I stand at the head of the church as the head of the sinners of this church.

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And I confess my sins that I have messed up as a pastor, as a husband, as a dad, as a citizen, as a son.

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I have failed in the government as far as speeding. All these things. It's just a mess all week long.

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And then I get to hear with my flock the forgiveness of sins of Jesus, to be strengthened in his word.

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And then we have a communion every Sunday where we all kneel shoulder to shoulder as a bunch of poor, miserable sinners who don't deserve anything except hell and condemnation.

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Yet God gives himself to us in this holy supper, which strengthens our faith and our love for each other.

41:16

And then guess what? Then they're kicked out. You go to your vocations to suffer, to change diapers, to do the eight to five grind, to serve your boss with joy to the best of your abilities, to serve your neighbor when their tree falls down, to go help clean it up, to follow the speed limits, and to serve on jury duty, all these things.

41:38

And guess what? You're going to get beat up. Now, here's the neat thing. When people are beat up in the middle of the week here at St. Paul's, what

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I encourage them to do is call me. And then we can meet here at the church. We can have prayer together. I can confess

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Jesus to you. I can come to your house. I can take you out to lunch. And so if you have a really bad week, then that's what the pastor's for.

41:56

For in the middle of the week to get you to the next Sunday to receive. And then we have, you know, midweek services too as well.

42:02

And so, again, back to that idea of a modern monastery, if we bring people in and we keep them insulated in the church all seven days of the week, then it makes sense why you have to have such an emphasis on evangelism because you have to figure out a way to get them outside of that monastic context into the world.

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But when you properly understand the doctrinal vocation, the people as Christians are going to be interacting in all sorts of different aspects.

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I mean, just think about this. On an average week, for the person who's listening here, think about the hundreds of encounters that you have, whether it's at the grocery store, at the school, with your neighbors, you know, hundreds of interactions that you have, naturally speaking.

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And to go as a Christian, not with uncertainty, but with confidence that Christ bled and died for me, that I'm forgiven of my sins, that the

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God of the universe holds me in His hand, and that He's going to sustain me to the very end, to go with that confidence that Christ is for me, and that I have brothers and sisters in the church that sit and stand side by side with me, to go in that confidence into this deep, dark world, it's tough, but, you know, by God's grace, we walk faithfully, and then when we're beat up, we go back to the source of strength, which is

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Jesus in the ark of His holy church, to come back and abide. Okay, all right.

43:24

So, there are seven bad churches, or false churches, in your book. One good one, and if you use the consumeristic approach to church shopping, there's no way on earth that you would possibly think that the true church that you describe is actually a true church.

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I mean, what a complete mess. I mean, their coffee is bitter. They have hymns.

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The pastor reads his sermons from a manuscript. He's as boring as all get out, and how on earth can you possibly argue that that's the true church, because they don't even have good coffee, and we know that we have a book in the

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Bible about that called Hebrews. Sorry, pastor jokes are terrible.

44:19

But to get the idea here, so how did you come up with this idea that the true church is this true church when it's so miserably weak and doesn't have any business savvy at all, and the reality is that people would look at this and go, how can that possibly be the true church?

44:43

I mean, there's nothing flashy about it at all. Yeah, you know, in the book, the seven false churches that we cover, the goal was not to take seven churches and just shred them.

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The goal was to highlight seven churches and to stress what they were doing well, and so for the best of my ability, we had seven churches, and we highlighted the great things they were doing.

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So the Campbells, when they left each church, they're like, man, that was really cool. That church is doing great, but there was something missing.

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So every church they left, there was just something missing, and then in contrast, the very last church they went to, which was a manual church, they came there, and that church was doing everything wrong.

45:20

Again, the coffee was bitter. They weren't on Google Maps. They're all in the middle of the country. The hymnals were torn.

45:26

In fact, I had this, and this is based off a true story. I had an accompanist once at a church. I kid you not, when it came time for playing, it would be like this old hymn called

45:35

Holy, Holy, Holy, and it would be played like this. It would go, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.

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And there's all these pauses. I'm like, what on earth is going on with these pauses? I came to realize that she would look at that, through her bifocals, look at the music, and then she'd look down, and she'd play with her head down, and then she'd pause, and she'd look up and read it.

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So I incorporated this into the book as well, that the music is out of tune, the hymnals are torn, and that for all intents and purposes, this church is an absolute, complete failure.

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But here's the key. If you think about how the Lord God, what

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He chooses, we hear this in Scripture, He chooses the weak to shame the wise. He chooses, in the

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Old Testament, He chooses what? A slave nation through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

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This nation of Israel, this absolute slave nation in Egypt to bring forth the Messiah.

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Then when Jesus arrives on the scene, when He arrives on the scene to choose

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His disciples, He doesn't go down to the synagogues and the places of prestige, He doesn't go to the

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Roman Empire and say, hey, give me your top three guys and go over to the synagogues, I need nine more. He goes to the dumpy fisher dogs, right?

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He goes and gets a bunch of fishermen, you know? And then to boot, He gets a tax collector. I mean, the rejects of life.

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And in fact, even look at Jesus' incarnation. It wasn't Rome, it wasn't even Jerusalem, it was this dumpy town called

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Bethlehem. And so everything that Jesus does is He chooses the weak to shame the wise, and the fact of the matter is that really when it comes down to it, the only thing that's needed is

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Christ and His gifts, this gospel self. In fact, when He tells the disciples to go out, He says, don't bring all a bunch of your fancy gear and your backpacks and a bunch of magic tricks,

47:18

I'm exaggerating obviously, just go by yourself and bring that word. And if they hear the word,

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God be praised. If they don't, dust it off and go to the next one. And so we see this consistently over and over and over.

47:32

And then what does Paul say? Paul says of what's of first importance, it's the gospel.

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And then Paul says in the book of Romans that it's the gospel that is the dynamite, the power of God, it's the simple gospel.

47:45

And so what is happening in this book with this last chapter is that this church, again, does everything wrong.

47:53

I mean, everything is completely wrong, but in the midst of all the failings of that church, all the failings of the pastor, all the failings according to the world's standards, they hear about Jesus and the forgiveness of sins and they don't hear that in all the other churches.

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And that is why I'm making such the bold assertion that you can have a church, like a manual church that has 50 members where the gospel is present, and you can have a church like the

48:17

Quest that was the first chapter in this book that has 2000 members. And that church that has 50 members, in fact, let's just change it.

48:25

We have a church that has 10 members, let's just say. And that church that has 10 members with the gospel is 10 times larger than a church of 5000 that has no gospel.

48:35

And so it's not about the flashiness, it's about what the church is gathering around.

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Is the church gathering around Jesus? Is the church gathering around the gifts of Jesus? Are they abiding with Christ unto death?

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And if they're not, then I will double down and firmly say it's a false church. It's not a church at all.

48:53

A church without the gospel is just a collection of people. It's just a gathering of, it's no different than a rotary club, right?

49:00

It's no different than the Moose Lodge, you know? And so again, it has to be Jesus and his gifts.

49:07

And so I will many times say that my two hero churches here in North Dakota, one is called

49:12

Willow Creek Church, it's down the road. They have 25 members. And I kid you not, no running water.

49:18

But they have the nicest outhouse at their church in all of North Dakota. And if a person were to go there, it's out in the middle of the prairie, no running water.

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And you come in and what you will witness, and I captured this church, Willow City, and I kind of captured that flavor and put that in the last chapter.

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And there's another church called Barney down the Southeast North Dakota, same thing. That church in Barney, it outlasted the bar.

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It outlasted the post office and the school. It's the last thing standing in that church.

49:48

Those are my hero churches. And it doesn't matter the size of the church. It doesn't matter on the flashness.

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But if you go there, you hear about your sin. You go there and you hear about Jesus who conquered sin.

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You hear about a Jesus who defeated death, destroyed the power of the devil, and that Jesus who will resurrect that body on the last day and will establish that new heaven and earth for you and for me and for everyone who hears it as a sheer gift.

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And if you're not hearing that, it's not a church. If you're not hearing that, then why do what we do?

50:22

I've said this at St. Paul's. I've said this at St. Paul's. I'm like, if we're not going to be about the gospel, let's just close the church and stop wasting our time.

50:30

If we're just showing up just to make a name for ourself or try to get a budget or give money to a district or a synod,

50:38

I've got better things I can do. But if we hear about the gospel of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of his sins,

50:44

God be praised. And then guess what? If the color of the carpet doesn't match, who cares? If the roof is leaking, who cares?

50:52

If we don't meet budget, guess what? We'll be just fine. Christ will sustain us. It doesn't matter.

50:58

And if we're not doing our programs as good as the church down the street, God be praised if they are and the gospel's there.

51:05

But you know what? It doesn't matter. We're here for the gospel, and Lord willing, they are too. And if they are, God be praised if they're doing well as a church.

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But if they're doing well and there's no gospel, then God have mercy on them. Indeed, God have mercy on them. Let me ask you a question that is not directly addressed in the book, but I think that there's something to this, is that in America, we are catechized to chase after the latest, the greatest, the flashiest, the newest, and all this kind of stuff.

51:38

And this training goes all the way back to our childhoods with the commercials that we watch on television, with the anticipation that we have for every new season of our favorite show that comes out, and all this kind of stuff, because everybody wants to talk about the new thing, right?

51:58

How has that catechism in our culture undermined the true mission of the church and misled people to not be able to see the treasure of the gospel where it is in churches where Christ is placarded?

52:17

The word is preached, law and gospel are rightly divided, and Christ and Him crucified for our sins is placarded

52:24

Sunday after Sunday. How does the Western civilization television culture catechism work against that and keep people blind to what they should be looking for in a church?

52:37

Great question, Chris. And this also can kind of apply to the Industrial Revolution, right?

52:42

We get this industrial line where we start off with a widget, and then we move it down the line, and we add to it.

52:50

We add some wheels to it, and then we add a couple more, some glass to it, and then the engine. And at the very end, we spit out a car, and we arrive.

52:59

And so the goal then is if you're on that production line, then you're incomplete, you're lacking. And so then what keeps us going down that production line is to arrive at that very end.

53:08

It's the same thing following the rainbow to the pot of gold or the carrot on the stick. And we have this mentality where we're always rushing to get to some sort of end.

53:19

And what can happen in the church, we can communicate, whether it's arriving at our justification, the forgiveness of sins, or some sort of spiritual bliss, some spiritual utopia.

53:30

We can string people along a line that's either, what, upward or outward.

53:35

And the problem is we're moving away from something. Now, I would argue that in a true church, that it isn't a line.

53:44

It's a circle. It's coming back, always coming back. And so my concern as a pastor is, quite frankly, my concern, at least with my parish here, and I know other faithful pastors as well, my concern is not that we are incomplete, that we've got to go get something.

54:02

Now, this may sound arrogant, but it's true. When we have Christ, we have, as Paul says, we have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm.

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And so we are not lacking anything. We have his word. We have his sacraments.

54:15

And they're talking about the old hymns. We have hymns that are 1 ,300 years old that they've been singing around the world for 1 ,300 years that Christians have abided by and sung.

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They're just full of rich theology, richness that can bless us.

54:32

They bless the saints of the past, and they bless us right now today. And so it's not about us going to try and get something as if we're lacking.

54:42

My concern is for the church is that we're prone to wander and prone to leave the God that we love.

54:47

We're like that prodigal son. So that story of the prodigal son, he was in the father's house.

54:53

The father loved him. He had a place in the house. And he what? Gave him the inheritance. He gets the inheritance.

54:58

He leaves. He goes to a foreign land. He squanders it. And he absolutely, absolutely makes amends to things.

55:05

And then when he comes back, I mean, this is the best part of the story. When the prodigal son comes back, the father sees him.

55:10

He runs out to him. And he runs out to him, and the son is like, you know, Father, I've sinned against you. I've done all these things.

55:16

And the father is just basically like, shut up. My son is alive. He embraces him, gets the filth of the son all over him.

55:22

He kisses him. He puts a cloak over him to cover his filth and his wretchedness. And he says, kill the fattened calf.

55:29

My son is home. And so that is the church for us to what?

55:34

Continually return back to Christ and his gifts that are found in the true church. And so for me, when

55:41

I have members in the church that have been gone for, like, let's just say three months, six months, when I see them, it's not like, where the heck have you been?

55:48

You know, we're on a journey. We're down here. And now I've got to put it in reverse and come back and get you and bring you up to speed.

55:56

No, it's your home. You're back where you belong. God be praised. You're a sheep back in the sheep pen.

56:02

It's so good to have you. Indeed. Matt Richard, the name of the book is, hang on a second here.

56:11

It's Will a Real Church Please Stand Up? And we're going to put a link so that you can click the link and get a copy for yourself.

56:24

And it's available today. So the

56:29

Issues, Etc. interview you did, it's not even available yet. It's their book of the month.

56:35

It's not even available in the month of September. So it's available today. And so we'll put a link down so that you can get it.

56:42

And I think you'll find it provocative, theologically sound, and challenging all at the same time, challenging some of your assumptions regarding what it is that makes a true church as opposed to a false church.

56:57

Matt Richard, thank you for coming on Fighting for the Faith, and thank you for this book. I think it'll go really well right next to my

57:05

Will a Real Jesus Please Stand Up. So is this going to be the stand -up trilogy?

57:11

Or are you just a stand -up pastor? What's going on here? Yeah, right. Well, first of all, thanks,

57:17

Chris. I really appreciate being able to share about it. Yeah, no, as far as a third book,

57:22

I've had a couple of people say you should do Will a Real Pastor Please Stand Up. And if CPH is so gracious to publish it,

57:29

I think that'd be kind of fun. How to do it, I have to give some thought on it. But, man,

57:34

I think that'd be a lot of fun, three false pastors or five false pastors, something like that.

57:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you need any help on the research for the vision casting leader, I'm your guy. Yeah, yeah.

57:47

But, yeah, so see, I'm not a prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet. I can just see how the patterns work.

57:54

It's going to be known as the Matt Richard stand -up trilogy. Maybe I might get a movie deal out of it, huh?

58:00

Right? The trilogy? Yeah. No. No, you won't. All right.

58:06

Thank you for your time, Matt. And Lord, continue to bless you in your ongoing ministry. Let me just add one thing, by the way.

58:13

So you pointed to the white, and it's over your throat. The collar that I wear,

58:19

I purposely have the white being able to be visible around the entirety of it because there's another symbol regarding that, and that is that the pastors are legitimately the servants of the congregation.

58:33

And so the one that I wear invokes the idea that it's a slave shackle.

58:39

This reminds everybody to keep me in my place. I'm there to serve, not to rule and reign. But anyway, that's my contribution to your lore and the symbols that you brought up.

58:51

But, again, thank you for coming on Fighting for the Faith. Again, the book Will the Real Church Please Stand Up?

58:57

And we'll have a link down below that you can get a copy of it, and I think that you will find it helpful. So if you found this interview helpful and the content of this book provocative, there's a link down below that you can use to share this video with your friends and people that you know on social media.

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And so until next time, may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and his vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.

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Amen. So nice to see that you've made it to the end. Before you inevitably click on another video to continue binging our glorious content, you should know about some of our other offerings.

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First off, some of you may know that our pirate captain is also the pastor of Kongsvinger Lutheran Church out in Oslo, Minnesota.

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The editor, that I totally don't have locked in my basement, produces audio and video versions of Kongsvinger sermons and Sunday schools weekly.

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So go check out Kongsvingerchurch .org to see all of our offerings. Now, to address some of the frequently asked questions we get in the comments.

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One, the Bible and video editing software we use are named and linked in the description down below.

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Two, if you wish to donate to us directly so that we can keep the lights on, go check out www .piratechristian

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.com and hit the crew tab. We don't promise miraculous healings or a double increase in your finances, but what we do promise is more quality discernment from our studio into your ear holes.

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And three, how do you tie up with boxing gloves? Okay, who's the wiseacre who put this in here?