A "Not Yet Calvinist" Takes Over the Show!

Ecclesiology and the Structure of the New Testament Church

Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist. My name is Matthew Henson and I am not your Calvinist today, but I did bring one with me. Today we're going to be doing a really special episode. It's an idea that I had that Keith and I could do because we've developed such a friendship and a brotherhood together as fellow believers who do differ on some important things, but Keith has had the grace to have me on his show several times, several of my friends as well, and so I've often thought, what does Keith think about this subject?

Because he does such a great job at keeping his cards close to the vest, but what if we were to pry a little bit and say, Keith, what if you were the one being interviewed? Because I can tell there's a lot he has to say and a lot he wants to say, and I wanted to give him a chance to do that and also sit on opposite sides of the interview table for that process.

So Keith, how are you doing today? I'm doing very.

Well, and you're not yet a Calvinist. Not yet. Every time. You're contractually obligated. It.

Just has to happen. Not yet a Calvinist. Jake Corn, who you had on a couple of weeks ago, told me that it's a slow-burning wick, but eventually it'll hit the gunpowder, and that's when we have to put you in the cage, you know, and then after you smolder down a little bit,.

Then you're good. Yes, yes, absolutely. You're the most knowledgeable non-Calvinist friend I have. I appreciate that. Well, I mean, I enjoy talking with you. I enjoy our conversations, especially areas where we may differ some, and I look forward to today.

I think it's going to be.

Fun. I think it will be too. So to the viewer or the listener, today what we're talking about is a big church word called ecclesiology. Now, if you have not heard of that word before, what it means is how does a church organize itself?

How does it do its operations? Who's in charge of things? What kind of elements happen during a church service? What is a church service? Does it differ from, say, a Wednesday night Bible study? Those kinds of things.

And so, Keith has, and I have talked about this before, we've touched on it. We did a podcast about N .T. Wright not too long ago in which the subject of can women be pastors came up, and that required us to define what is a pastor?

What's an elder? What's a, what do these words mean? What does the New Testament have to say about that? So, that's what we're focusing on today. The offices of the New Testament, how they function, and what might that look like in a 2022 church.

Pete Amen. Looking forward to it. Jared. Okay. Good stuff. So, the New Testament, Keith, as I understand it and as I read it, presents us with the foundation of the very first church there in Acts. When the Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost, Peter preaches, it says a bunch of them were saved that day, 3 ,000 I think it is, which if you've ever had a church service where that happened, please let me know.

I want to know exactly what you did there because I'd be all about that. But that happens, and the church is in this state of flux at first. There's not, the apostles are 100 in charge, and we'll have to define what that means in just a minute, but there's this idea of it's just the Holy Spirit is just running this way, running that way, and the church is struggling to keep up and figure out what the next move is and all that.

But come around a couple of chapters into the book of Acts and we start to see just a little bit of structure develop. And I'm thinking specifically of Acts 6, but before we, because that's the formation of the deacons, but before we go there, let me ask you this.

In the first five chapters of Acts, what, how would we contrast our churches today with how they operated then, and how should we be consistent with that? Are there things that they did that we either shouldn't do or no longer can do, and are there things we can learn from them?

Apostolic Authority and the Non-Normative Nature of Acts

Well, there's always things we can learn from them, but I caution people a lot at even later chapters of the book of Acts, assuming that this is normative. I've heard people say, we need to go back to the church in Acts.

Well, the church in Acts is birthing. It's being birthed and I understand the Reformed argument of the Old Testament saints were in the church. So from the perspective of, for that argument, for those who might make that argument, I'll say the New Covenant church is birthed after the resurrection of Christ and then, of course, Pentecost.

And like you said, there's this grand movement where the Holy Spirit is saving thousands of people at a time, and it says their numbers are being added to daily. Yeah, multiplied frequently. Which is amazing.

And yet, this is not going to be the norm. Not as far as numerically, that wouldn't be the norm either. But also, the structure, it seems as, I like what you said about the church trying to keep up, it seems as if there was movement to organize this entity that is now existing in a new way that is not necessarily in line with the synagogue or the Old Covenant structure of priesthood and those things, because there's one high priest who is Christ.

And so, even though our Anglican friends would argue there are priests in the New Covenant, we would say there's elders, pastors, and deacons, but not priests.

Well, I wore my shirt that says Solus Christus on it. That's one of them in there, so there we go.

So we have this model that is, well, let me back up. We don't have a model. What we have is we have a lot of change over a short amount of time, and we're going to talk about the deacons in a moment, the formulation of the deacons.

So what do we learn? We still see authority. You already mentioned this. We still see the apostles exercising leadership, governance, loving authority within the church. We see care for the people within the body.

We know that's what brought about the issue of the need for the deacons, because there were certain people who felt like they weren't being cared for enough or weren't being cared for in the right way.

And so the function of ministry is happening, but we don't see the structure that we would later see in the epistles of Paul to Timothy and Titus, known as the pastoral epistles. We don't see that structure right away, and that makes sense.

As the Spirit is moving, as the Spirit is leading, as churches are being established, these things are being recognized, and there are still apostles in the world. I do think we live in the post-apostolic age, in the sense that...

My wife and I actually had this conversation at lunch, because she asked me, are there apostles today? The reason why she was talking about that is because recently Kosti Hinn did an interview on the subject of apostles, and he was saying, you know, there's no apostles today.

And I said, well, that's true in the sense of the original twelve, and then Paul, who says he was born out of due season, there's no original apostles today. But depending on how we use that word, uppercase, lowercase, you know, a missionary might be considered one who was sent by the church.

Yeah. Could you define just in a general sense, what does the word apostle mean? One who is sent.

Okay, so it just means sent one. Yeah. And so in that case, I'm not gonna die on the hill if a church wants to call their pastor an apostle sent by, you know, somebody sent by God to lead the church, or if somebody wants to call their missionaries apostles, I'm not gonna die on that hill, I'm not gonna make a big deal.

But I would distinguish between the original apostles that carried the apostolic authority, you know, and the Bible talks about the apostles doing the works of an apostle, having the gift of the apostle.

So there was something unique about that first century apostleship that did go away and gave way to eldership. And it's so interesting that Paul wasn't one of the twelves, and he calls himself an apostle.

Peter was one of the twelves, and he calls himself an elder. That's right, he does, yeah. So there's sort of a unique sort of bypass and exchange there. Peter didn't mind calling himself an elder. And Paul was, of course, affirmed as an apostle.

So it's just we can't say, well, here's what they did in Acts, therefore that's what we need to do. Because there is an evolution there. Ooh, bad word. There's a beginning of formulation and structure, and certainly over that first century, or throughout that first century, there were structures that were put in place by God through the Holy Spirit, through the apostles.

And so that's, is there value there? Yes. But it's not normative. I see. As least as I would say.

Not normative. It's not normative. Now, could you tell us, and the shorthand I use for it is lowercase A Apostle, capital A Apostle, one to refer to a descriptor and one to refer to the office. Yeah, I've said that.

Okay. Yeah. Could you do the same for the word Church? When someone says, okay, the New Testament Church did this or that, and then there's the capital C Church, as I say it, which is, I think C .S. Lewis called it the, all the believers throughout time in history spread like an army with terrible banners or something like that.

It's this huge, I think it was in the screw tape letters, and it was screw tape saying, your person's gone to church, and by this I do not mean this church, which is the capital C Church, which terrifies us, but I mean this small little group that we as demons can tamper with and whatever.

So he made a distinction there. What would you say the distinction is between lowercase C Church and capital C Church, if that's a useful way of differentiating?

Well, in the book, I just did that. There you go, that's right. I do have a book, Biblically Functioning Church, which is right there. There we go. And I wrote that over 10 years ago on the subject of ecclesiology, and I do talk in the church about what's typically referred to as the visible and invisible church, or the universal and local church.

But I do make this point, and this is becoming ever increasingly important to me, is it's rare that you can find a passage in the New Testament where the word church is not referring to a local church.

It's almost always pointing to either the church at Corinth or the church here at the church. Very rare do we see that term used of the... Moreover, you see that of the body of Christ. I see. I would say the capital C Church is the body of Christ all over the world.

When I take communion on Sunday morning, there's people in Afghanistan, there's people in China, there's people all over the world that are taking that same communion at the same time, and we are all sharing in one body, we've all been baptized into one church, and that's the capital C Church.

That is the body of Christ. And so typically when I say church, I'm referring to the local church. Because again, when you go through and you read through Acts, you read through, the church is the church at church at Corinth or the church in Galatia, the churches of Galatia, it's that local church.

I see. That... So that's not to say that the body of Christ doesn't make up the church, but I just, in my own teaching, I've begun to sort of come away from the universal church language to simply say the universal body of Christ or the whole body of Christ.

Because a church, the assembly is what meets together. Right. Eglesia, yeah. And this is... And I'll tell you why too, and I don't want to take too much of a tangent.

No, it's okay. We're talking about ecclesiology, I mean, ekklesia, yeah.

Well, people maybe have heard me say this before, I've said this in lessons on this subject. When I meet somebody, I say, hey, do you go to church? They say, well, I am the church. That's a big common refrain, because what they're saying is, I'm part of the universal church, therefore I don't need to go to church.

I see. And I say, you're not the church, because the word church, ekklesia, it does mean the ones, but actually it means the assembly. Right. It's the assembly of those called, and so you can't assemble by yourself.

And so when somebody says, I am the church, no, you're not. I takes it away, because when you say, I am the church, you're not in assembly all by yourself. No matter how big I am, I'll never be in assembly all by myself.

So that's another reason why I've become more specific with my language. And when I refer to the church, I'm referring to a local church.

I see. Okay. Well, that makes sense. So, last thing on this, and then we'll move into Acts 6, where we start to get a little bit more organization. If someone, and you're talking about Apostle, because this is so important.

When I teach the New Testament, especially we're in 2 Timothy now with my Connect group, and we're about to get to that all-important chapter three, verse 16, about scripture being God-breathed. Yeah.

When the number one question when we're done with that is, if someone picks up some other piece of literature, say this book, say your book that you wrote, and they were to say, okay, what if the author of this said, I am a capital A Apostle?

Why can they not say that, and what grounds would you use for pushing back on that claim? Or anyone throughout church history, say there's a document from 500 AD, and someone says, this has the same authority as the scriptures that we have because it was from an Apostle because they claim to be or something.

What is the category or what is the gate, if you will, that guards the capital A Office of Apostle that you would say, how would you describe that?

The Capital-A Apostle and the Close of the Apostolic Age

That's a good question, and one I guess I haven't thought about, but I'll give you my initial thoughts, and this may develop as I think through this. My initial thoughts, if somebody said that to me, I would say, upon what grounds are they claiming this authority?

Because even the Apostle Paul, who was, of course, called directly by Christ on the road to Damascus. You know where Paul was going on the road to Damascus? Kill Christians? No, he was going to Damascus, where he was going.

It's a joke. It's a bad joke. Oh, thanks. I appreciate that. Yeah. It's a great dad joke. Ask your students, where was Paul going on the road to Damascus?

He was buried in Grant's tomb, right? Yeah, exactly, yeah. Okay. So... Sorry. Wow. Edit that out. That's going away.

Okay, so Paul is on the way to Damascus. Christ appears to him. He sees the risen Christ. One of the things that is an affirmation of an Apostle, I would say, is the commissioning by Christ, and I would say the actual commissioning directly, not just the commissioning of the Church, which has the authority to commission pastors and elders, and we'll talk about that later, but the direct commissioning of Christ.

So Paul has that, but he calls himself something, in 1 Corinthians 15, he identifies himself in a very unique way. He says, I was born out of season, meaning, at least the way I understand it, meaning I am the one unique as opposed to the others.

The others were from the beginning. They walked with, even when they were choosing between Matthias and Justice, and they chose Matthias, they choose him by casting lots, and we know what happened in the upper room, but the idea was, he had to be there from the beginning.

There was a pedigree that was required for this person, and I'm right about that. Matthias, right? Am I right? Yeah, yeah. Am I the name right? I named my son after the other one. Yeah, okay. My son, Justice, is named after the unchosen...

Let's just go right over here to Acts chapter 1, right?

Yeah, and I'm sitting here opining, and I'm thinking, I think it's Matthias and Justice.

To the listener, be like the noble Bereans who, when they had a question, they said, search the scriptures to see if these were so. Yeah, Matthias chosen to replace Judas.

Yeah, so Matthias gets chosen, but he has to be there from the beginning, right? Paul says, I'm not like them. I wasn't there from the beginning. I was born out of season. I wasn't birthed into this apostleship like they were.

And then in the book of Galatians, it tells us that he actually went to Galatia, not necessarily to get their approval, but to assure that his gospel was their gospel, and they were all preaching the same thing.

But when he was there, he did get their, essentially, seal of approval. There was a certain sense in which they gave him their blessing, and there was a unified belief that this guy is an apostle, like us.

So 500 years later, nobody has that ability. Nobody can go to the other apostles and receive that. And I do think that that's why we talk about the apostolic age and ending with John, of course, the last one of the 12 to die.

This age, this time was unique. It was a time of birth. It was a time of new, and it was a time of inscripturation, which is unique. And that's something else. If you look at the time where scripture is primarily being written, you go back to Moses, and he's writing the books of the Torah.

There's all of these things that are happening, and they're being written about as they're happening. He's writing Exodus in the Exodus. That's right, yeah. So we come to the gospels and Acts. They're being written about 30 years later, essentially, but it's in the...

Acts is being written as these things are coming about and after, but these are all within this timeframe. You get 500 years later, there's just not that proximity. And so I would have a really hard time with somebody who said, this guy was an apostle in the 5th century.

Well, there's... By what confirmation? Did Jesus, like there was a pastor here in Jacksonville who said, Jesus visited... I know who you're talking about. And sat on his porch or something. Easter's ago, yeah.

Yeah, it was like, Jesus came and sat on my porch and we had coffee or whatever, I don't know what he said, it was ridiculous. And it's like, there's no confirmation in that. The Apostle Paul was confirmed by the other apostles, he was confirmed by his works, he was confirmed by miracles, he was confirmed by the work...

By Peter.

Yeah, by the work and spirit by Peter. In the text of his letter, yeah.

Yeah, so yeah, because he said that what he writes is scripture, he confirms it is scripture. So we have no way to confirm a man today. And again, I think this is why we have that passage at the end of Revelation, which there's often argument about when John says, don't add anything to this book.

I do believe that that's directly related to Revelation. However...

Revelation as in the divine concept or the book?

No, the book. The book of the Revelation ends with, don't add or take away from this book. So in the context, historically and grammatically, that's related to the book of Revelation. Gotcha. Because we see other similar statements made in other Old Testament books about not adding or taking away from the word of God, right?

So the concept is we should never add or take away from the word of God. But it also bookends the last thing written by an apostle, and it's about the last things that are gonna happen in the world, the end of all things, the consummation.

And so when you come along later and say, hey, I got something to add, what are you adding to? It's already got the end of the story. What could you possibly add to the end?

I think there's a verse in Jude where he refers to the once for all delivered to the saint's faith.

I talked about that when I just preached to Jude recently and that particular phrase, and you actually said it right because in English, we translate it, but it's the once for all delivered to the saint's faith.

And that's the way it is in Greek, and it sounds funny, but that's what he's saying.

So I studied German in college, and so German word order seems so strange to English ears, and it is, but awkward constructions like that are not uncommon because often they're trying to tell you something based upon the order of the words.

It matters. Anyway, that's a topic for another time. No, absolutely. Okay, so someone, if I could, in summary, and you can just say yes or no, a capital. A office-holding apostle is one of the 12, plus Paul, and Matthias and Judas.

And what about the gospel of Judas? No, I'm kidding. We don't need to go there. It's just first century Gnostic nonsense or whatever.

Actually, I think that was fourth century Gnostic. Okay, I'm thinking of Thomas. Thomas and I contend possibly second century. Some argue for first century, but most of those people are liberals who are trying to stick it in to get it into the point.

A little Jesus seminar action there. Exactly. Sorry. It's okay. So capital A apostle, someone who had a commissioning or an encounter with the resurrected Christ, who the church from the very beginning accepted their authority, and what they wrote that we have that God has chosen to give us is, we believe, scripture.

Is that a good summary of a capital A apostle? Yeah, absolutely. And then a lowercase a apostle is just more of a descriptor, and if you wanted to call your pastor an apostle or a missionary or something, that's fine as long as you clear that up.

Yeah, like I said, it wouldn't make it or break it for me if that was the way the church had defined.

The Formation of Deacons in Acts 6

Okay, cool. So then something really important happens in Acts chapter six, though. And so in Acts chapter six, we get the first taste that maybe this sort of, and pardon the term because it's all, of course, God's church in the first five chapters, this sort of Wild West, like the Holy Spirit running all over the place, and I've heard a lot, well, we don't need to put strictures on the Holy Spirit, okay, of course.

But the apostles in chapter six of the book of Acts were confronted with a problem, and they chose, and it was their apostolic right to do so, to establish something in the start of the sixth chapter of Acts.

What was that, and what was the problem they were facing?

Well, there is, I believe that this is the proto-diaconate. Okay. Some people say this was the commissioning of the first deacons. Yes, but I don't think that that is, I don't think that that's how they define themselves.

I think they define themselves as taking the weight of ministry responsibility off of the apostles so that they would not be kept from the word and prayer. This is what they say. And I've often said this, I say, pastors are not, what you got?

Sorry, it's just a sheet that has Acts chapter six and then first Timothy, because we'll get into that. Yeah, absolutely.

Just to have handy. So they say, we don't want to be kept from the word of prayer, and that doesn't mean that we're more important or too important to, I've said before, I am not too important to clean a toilet or to change a light bulb.

And as a small church pastor, I've done all of those things. I imagine you have. But the most important thing that I do is study to prepare the sermon that is going to feed the flock and to pray for the people.

And so my most important duties are not counseling or meeting people or any of these things. My most important duty is preaching and teaching the word and prayer. And so anything that would take away from that becomes a distraction from the most important thing.

And so this is where the apostles saw themselves. They saw themselves dealing with what could essentially have been the first church split. We've all seen church splits. You're right. Where the Hellenistic, which is the Greek speaking Jewish people, were having issues with the Hebrew speaking Jewish people.

And there was a feeling like there was a division and some make a big deal about social justice and racism. Yeah, I've heard that before. There was just a disagreement about who was getting treated fairly in regard to the distribution of food, which tells us something about what they had to face then.

Because most of us in churches are not distributing food to our members. Some are. I mean, I preach at a church every Thursday that is a recovery ministry called Set Free, and they do. I mean, they got to feed those guys three times a day because those guys live there.

And so they have to deal with things that you and I in our church probably don't have to deal with because we have people that come to church and then they go home and they eat lunch at home and they all have food.

Yep. Unless we're potlucking.

Yeah, exactly. But the church was having to deal with people who had been displaced, who had been put out of their homes, they had been lost jobs, all for the sake of Christ. And so they're ministering to a unique portion of the body in regard to historically.

And so in the midst of this, they say, okay, we need to choose some guys to take this job and do it well. And so they say, choose from among you these men, which is interesting in and of itself is they don't go about choosing.

They say, choose from among yourselves. And I there's a model there, which we may talk about later, but basically allowing the church to recognize within itself gifted men and then commissioning them to a task.

And so the reason why I say this protodiaconate, because we don't see anything in this text about qualifications other than, and you have it here, so I might as well read it, it says, pick out from among yourselves, this is verse three, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty.

So he's telling them to pick out seven men. He's saying they need to have good reputation, be full of the spirit. Well, that's two qualifications. Later, when Paul is writing about the office of deacon, the qualifications are expanded.

They're not necessarily changed because everything that Paul says is of good repute and is full of the spirit. So what we see is more specifics later. Therefore, I would say this is a protodiaconate, which gives way to the more full-orbed office of the deaconate, which we see in Paul's letter.

Okay. Would you say the apostles here are acting as a proto-eldership over a church? Indeed.

Okay, you think that that parallel holds? Yes. The only real distinction, I would say, is because we do see little a apostles, like Barnabas is called apostle, and even the brother of Jesus, James, who wrote the epistle of James, is not one of the original 12.

So they're called apostles, but I don't think with the same as the capital A. I don't see them as being on the same level as Paul or Peter. So when you see that, I think that there is a transitional point.

That's why I said Peter will later call himself an elder. Paul never calls himself an elder, though, which is interesting. He always calls an apostle, which has actually come up in conversation within my own conversation with other people about eldership, about was Paul really an elder?

Because Paul, we would see maybe as a church planter, an evangelist, an apostle, but was he an elder? Did he function as an elder in the same way as maybe Peter did in his own church? Or perhaps Timothy.

Yeah. And when you look at the qualifications, like Paul is not married, he talks about being married and things like that, at least that we know of. So these are questions that come up. Was Paul functioning in that role?

Or was he more of a, you know, because we know he planted churches, we know he was an evangelist, and so does that, again, sort of further widen that distinction? Yeah. But would we say the apostles are functioning as proto-elders?

Yes. Okay.

I would have no issue with that. Okay. And for the listener, if you want to check in and see what one of the first things the deacons did, I would invite you to read Acts chapter 7, which was Stephen preaching the gospel from the Old Testament.

One of the very first things he did was starting all the way back at Abraham. Yeah. And he's preaching to the Sanhedrin who would have known this story, and then at the very end, he puts the finger right at them and says, and you crucified this guy, and then they stoned him for it.

And you know what's so interesting to me is something I noticed here. It says Paul was there, Saul, excuse me, at the time, Saul, was there giving approval or, you know, it was, people were laying their cloaks at his feet or something like that.

There's some phrase like that. The same Paul who either martyred or at least was present and approving of the martyrdom of Stephen is the same one who wrote us the pastoral epistles that lays out what a deacon is supposed to be.

I find it so interesting that he watched the very first deacon go down under a hail of stones, and so, and then obviously, post his experience on the road to Damascus, he now knows this is what a deacon is supposed to be.

Yeah, I find that so interesting how the Holy Spirit weaved that. Okay, so in a modern church, so we've covered apostles and what that word might mean. In a modern church in 2022, what, does it, okay, let's start with this.

Does a church have to have deacons? And if they do, what do they do in today's church?

The Deaconate, Plural Eldership, and Practical Church Care

This is an area that I think there could be some disagreement, but I would say that a church rightly constituted would have at least two elders and at least one deacon. But that is not to say that a church plant would automatically have to have that right away.

I see, okay. So here's my argument. The concept of the presbyteros, the elders, the episkopos, overseers, is, and that's one office, the office of sometimes translated bishop, sometimes translated pastor or elder.

It's always in the plural when Paul is addressing them in churches, and when he says he's raising them up in churches, it's always in the plural. So I have a really difficult time with a church that is single pastor-led.

I'm not saying it's necessarily sinful, because I understand there are things that happen, but I don't think it's wise. I see. I think you end up, in the churches that I have seen, oftentimes you end up with a little Protestant pope who has no one who is going to call him.

Now, they'll call him out on the color of the carpet, but nobody's going to call him out on his doctrine of the Trinity. Yeah, I understand. And so you get guys who are, they start going off into la-la land theologically, and there's no one else in the church.

And I've actually heard this, not with my own ears, but I've heard this through another individual, that he was friends with a pastor, and the pastor said, I'm the one who went to seminary. These people really don't know what I know.

Who are they to question me? I know, I know. Exactly. It makes you just want to just... I'm itchy now. Yeah, yeah. And when you get that, you got a guy who is in serious danger. He's got some problems.

Yeah. If there's no one who can say to him, how'd you come to that conclusion? That's a question that we ask around here sometimes. You just said something, and I'm not sure I agree. How did you come to that conclusion?

And I think that's a legitimately kind way of saying, what you talking about, Willis? Because that's really what you're thinking. What you talking about? How did you get.

There? Yeah, let's exegete that together.

Yeah. Whereas in some churches where there is only one pastor, one elder, there is seemingly no one to be the... And he's the arbiter of what's right and what's wrong, and there's no one to call him to account.

So I think a plurality of elders is necessary, and plurality just means two or more, at least one person that can come to you and act in that sense as your equal. And then you have, on the other hand, the need for a deacon.

I think this is more needed than anybody realizes. Okay. Our church functions right now, our membership, around 100, and we function with three elders and four deacons. And each one of the deacons is assigned a list of people in the church, and they are expected, and they know that they are expected, to be in contact with their list for as long as they have that list.

And the list will change.

Okay. And your church does formalized membership roles? Yes. Okay.

Well, that's a whole other topic. It is, yeah. Because we do have formal membership, but our formal membership is, we are commonly purging the role. Because we don't believe in having an unrealistic role.

If we had a role that had everybody who's ever joined this church, it'd be 300 names.

No, our church goes back to the 60s, it would be thousands. And it's not, I mean, we're 150 on a Sunday, plus kids' men, so maybe 200 souls on the campus.

Exactly. So we are very... In fact, that's part of the deacons and what they do. They help us keep up with who is active in the body. And if we begin to see someone who is being inactive, they're the first line of defense.

They're the first phone call. Hey, haven't seen you in church in two weeks. What's up? You've been out of town. Are you sick? And if we know that beforehand, we'd have already contacted them. We'd know they were sick or know whatever.