The Purpose of Church

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Welcome to Theology Throne Room, where we, the

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Christian podcast community of podcasters, gather to discuss our theological differences with love and charity.

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This is a ministry of striving for eternity. Welcome to another edition of The Theology Throne Room.

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This is where all of the different podcasters from the Christian podcast community are welcome to come in together where we can discuss our theological differences.

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Well, there's not always as much differences as we might think. We usually come to a lot of agreement, but we do it in love and charity.

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So, as we usually do, we'll give you a topic, then we're going to go around to introduce everyone who's currently here, let you know about them and their podcast, and then we're going to jump into the topic.

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And today's topic is the purpose of church. And so that's what we're going to be discussing tonight.

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I'm going to start in the order in which people came in. So, Mr. A .M.

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Brewster, if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself and your podcast. I disagree. You're all wrong.

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My position... Oh, I'm sorry. That's later. Okay. You did it in a loving way. Yeah, yeah.

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Sorry. My name is Aaron Brewster. I have two podcasts on the Christian podcast community, the first of which is

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Truth, Love, Parent, which is, as you can imagine, all about parenting. And we have over 500 episodes.

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And the other one is called The Celebration of God, which is about personal discipleship and worship.

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And that one, I think, has over 100 episodes. And those are both podcasts that are part of my ministry,

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Evermind Ministries. And we have an app called the Evermind app. And if you go to evermindministries .com,

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you can download that Evermind app for free and get access to all of our stuff, our podcasts, our online courses, all the things that we do.

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All right. Next in was Rebecca. She's got to unmute herself.

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Hi, I am Rebecca, and I am the host of One Little Candle podcast. And at One Little Candle, we tackle all kinds of subjects, subjects that affect our daily

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Christian lives. And my mission is to help believers, to equip them to be able to be the light that God has called us to be.

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And so during, you know, not only do I have sometimes I have special guests, sometimes it's just me.

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But actually, my latest episode is about He Gets Us because that movement's kind of back in the news again.

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So I did a reboot of that if you want to check that out. But yes, I want to just equip people to be that light.

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And so I provide the listener at the end of the show with some practical guidance and suggestions as to how to, you know, apply our

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Christian principles to their everyday lives. All right. Next in was

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Eve, followed by her co -host, Tim. So I'll let you introduce your podcast,

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Eve, and yourself, and then we'll just hand it over to Tim so people can get used to hearing his voice when he speaks.

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Yes. So I am Eve Franklin and I am one of the co -hosts of Are You Just Watching? in which we talk about movies and other various forms of entertainment from a

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Christian worldview. That doesn't mean that we're just necessarily reviewing a movie, though we do typically touch on what is good and bad in a movie.

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But it's also just applying the Christian worldview to the concepts and themes of the movie.

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And if you're interested in doing that yourself, you can pick up my book, Are You Just Watching?, which is a very short and easy to use workbook to kind of teach you how to apply your

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Christian worldview to your entertainment. And you can find that on Amazon if you are so interested.

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And my co -host is Tim Martin. You have to unmute yourself, though,

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Tim. You are a professional after all. Well, I'm certified.

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I'm certifiable. Can you guys hear me? Yep. OK, good deal. I realized this as you were starting the recording that I didn't do any of my podcast rig setup.

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I was still talking on the speakers and camera mic. My name is

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Tim Martin. I am the Ed McMahon to Eve's Johnny Carson for Are You Just Watching?

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And I am a Christian, a father, a grandfather and a voice engineer for the

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Christian Broadcasting Network. I've been reviewing movies with Eve now for, wow, what is it, eight years?

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And I've been having a great time doing it. I appreciate the invite to join you guys tonight. All right.

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Thanks. And my name is Andrew Rappaport. I'm the host of this podcast, along with a couple of other podcasts

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I do. Andrew Rappaport's Rappaport, which is a weekly show where we go into biblical interpretations and applications for the

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Christian life. And then I also have a live stream on Thursday nights, which we probably are going to be moving to Sunday nights.

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But it is you can go to ApologeticsLive .com. We always put the times, the topics.

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You can watch it from there and you can join and ask any question. As I tell my audience in that show,

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I can answer any question you have about God and the Bible. And if you doubt it, feel free to come on in. Give me your hardest question.

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Just remember, when I say I don't know, that's a perfectly good answer. So with that,

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I'm going to just give a shout out to Garrett Hampton. He is from Schoolhouse Rock podcast.

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He cannot make it tonight. He's if you're a regular listener to this podcast, you know that name.

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He's been on many of them. He was dealing with a little bit of an emergency with his family.

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So he just asked if we could keep his family in prayer. Don't have any more details than that.

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So just want to give the shout out if folks could be praying for the Hampton family. So with that, let's talk about church.

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You know, I think a lot of people, if we think back to what was going on with COVID, when people were having to be at home, having church over Zoom, there's a lot of impacts

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I think it had to church. Why go to church?

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We saw a lot of churches that never recovered, actually. I do think that there were a lot of people who used to go to churches that they knew were bad churches.

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They never had an opportunity to go somewhere else. And with their church being closed,

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I know the church that I was at, we used to get a lot of people every week, new people coming in because we were open.

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And I think there were a lot of churches that had that, and some lost a lot of members and some gained a lot of members.

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But a big question that I remember people discussing, as there was the discussion over should you open the church or not, is why should we gather for church?

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Why gather together? And I think that's a good starting point for us because the word, let me just start with the word for church.

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And after you guys talk, I'll give a lengthier explanation of what the church, what I say, what

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I think the church is from my book, What Do We Believe?, where I go through the history of it. But the word church means, it's from a

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Greek, ekklesia, to gather together. So it's kind of in the name of church for us to gather.

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But I want to ask, I'm going to throw this one out to Eve first, is just ask the question of why should we gather?

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I think we should. Yeah, sorry. I was looking up scripture while you were talking. I was like, don't look at me yet,

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I'm looking up scripture. So I think we do it because we were told to.

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I mean, there are several places in the New Testament, and I haven't quite got to one of them yet, but there are several places in the

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New Testament where they tell us in the epistles from the apostles and other places that we should not forsake gathering together and that we are to uphold each other and love each other and do good for each other.

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And all of those things come out of being with each other in person and being the hand of Christ in the brethren's life.

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So we are to be together in order to be the church.

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And that doesn't necessarily mean a building. That doesn't mean a denomination. It doesn't mean anything like that.

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It just means a fellowship of believers working together, pulling together,

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I guess, in the work for the Lord and doing it together and encouraging one another, upholding one another in prayer and all of those things that community is.

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And I think the passage you were thinking of specifically was Hebrews 10, 25. I'll just read that, but I'll start at verse 23, just so we have the context.

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Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

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And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another.

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And all the more as you see the day drawing near. And that's going to bring us to a topic later.

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I'm going to talk about the one another's. But Aaron, what would you say?

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Why should the church gather? I mean, can we just meet over Zoom?

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I mean, we're using technology for us having this podcast. We're kind of meeting over Zoom.

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Is this church? Is this a good way to gather? What are your thoughts?

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Well, no, I think the answer to your question is no. But there is still a caveat.

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I'll hopefully touch on it. I think when most of us, when the average individual thinks church, the big thing that comes to their mind is the preaching and listening to a sermon.

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Now, there are other, quote, unquote, churches out there that they don't think sermon at all in any way, shape, or form. They think play or concert or whatever else.

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But I think that's probably the main thing. You invite somebody who's a stranger to church to come to church with you, and they're imagining that they're going to go and listen to a pastor.

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And that's a big part of it. But I think to a large degree, that has become in our churches one of the only things that is happening.

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And again, not that that's bad that the pastor is getting up there and preaching. I think that's obviously fantastic.

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It's a necessary part of it. But it's only one part. And it's really easy, and you see this in many churches, the pastor is kind of responsible for everything.

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If there's someone to be visited in the hospital, the pastor goes and do it. Back in the day when we used to do door -to -door evangelism, it was expected that the pastor did that, but nobody else did.

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And I think that mindset just kind of made church about what the pastor does. But we see in Ephesians 4 .15

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that God gave us a pastor specifically for one unique purpose, and that is to equip us for the work of the ministry.

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And then the question has to be, well, what is the work of the ministry? And you actually just said that you want to talk about the one another's later, but to oversimplify it, the work of the ministry is the one another's, those 30 -some things that we are supposed to do with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

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And that is very difficult to do over Zoom. All of us meeting together, it's going to be hard for us to truly one another each other to the same degree that we can individually one -on -one.

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And this is where I kind of gave a little bit of a caveat. I mean, yes, Andrew, you and I can one another each other to one degree or another individually as you were meeting on Zoom.

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But no, I don't think that that should be the model of our one another, and that should be the model for our work of the ministry in church, because I think we all know well enough that we're too prone to being superficial as it is, and this dynamic definitely allows for us to be super superficial.

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So let me ask this as a question. I'll toss this one out. We'll give this one to Tim first.

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What does it mean to gather? Because if you think about this,

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Tim, 50 years ago, there probably would have been only one thought of what it means to get together, to gather together.

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If we go even further back, maybe 200 years ago, there would have been one, right? Maybe if we stood 50 years ago, people might say telephone is a way of gathering.

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But I think that now with the technology we have, we can see people's faces now, even though we're not together.

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The idea of getting together kind of in a lot of people's minds is morphing, where they're having more online dialogues and relationships.

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What do you think it means to gather together? So I figure that's sort of a two -part answer.

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The first part is secular. The second part is theological. The secular portion is, you know, we go back to the beginning of the pandemic, and my church, like so many others, had to scramble to create an online or remote presence so that we could continue sending the message out, you know, having the sermon, having the worship.

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But we never, you know, sitting in the living room and singing along with the worship team when they're on the

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TV just is not the same as when you're in a congregation and everybody is singing.

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There is a gestalt that happens when we all worship together and we are among friends.

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You might even call it a mob complex, you know. We're all for a singular purpose, and we're building each other up and sharpening each other's iron.

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And while Aaron was talking, I was actually thinking about James 5, verse 16.

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Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect.

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And that really goes to show how important it is for us not only to gather together to worship and to learn, to study scripture, but to also be intimate with one another.

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We have a men's group at our church, and part of the reason that we do that is because, you know, men in society today, with no apologies to LGBTQ +, face a very different, unique situation from women and from children.

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And when we gather together, we're able to understand each other in a way that we can't when we're among a more diverse subsection.

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So gathering together like that and the intimacy helps to reinforce and build our faith.

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You know, it is interesting that you brought up the James passage, because before, what you read, and I actually, this may be controversial for some, but I'll just explain my view with it, but when you look at verse 13, there's a context that says,

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Is anyone among you suffering? Then he must pray. Is anyone cheerful? He must sing.

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Is anyone among you sick? Now, what a lot of people do is they take this to mean sickness in the context, and the word here could better be explained weak.

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And so I think in the context of suffering, he's saying, are any of you weak? He's talking about prayer, right?

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They must pray. Then he says, if any of you are weak, then he must call the elders of the church and they'll pray over him.

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And it talks about the anointing oil. I think that is for municipal purposes.

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But I think the way I understand this passage is there's times, I don't know, folks, if you have experienced this, where you're just so spiritually beaten up, you're kind of too weak to pray.

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You just don't even know how to pray. And just having another brother or sister just come alongside and pray for you, and all of a sudden that can strengthen you spiritually and help you to be able to pray.

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And that's what I think he's talking about here. But could you do that over Zoom? Maybe, like Tim was saying, maybe, but not really.

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Can I just speak to this real quick? Because I agree with Andrew, I agree with Tim.

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I do not believe that we can have real life -on -life, mature, intimate, robust relationships on Zoom.

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I do 100 % want to make that very clear. However, as a biblical counselor, whose majority of my counseling is virtual, there is a lot that can happen over a medium like this when both parties are dedicated to having that openness and that intimacy.

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I think, though, the key that we're talking about here is the concept of the ecclesia, the church,

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God's local representative body of believers coming together. And that doesn't work in a

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Zoom setting. I mean, for any of us here to really accomplish anything, one person has to be speaking at a time.

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And we can't really break off and have those intimate relationships. But within the church setting, we can all gather in a room, and we can all be involved in individual conversations that can then move, and we can sharpen somebody else in a much more dynamic way that can happen in a

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Zoom setting or in a virtual reality type of a setting. Let me get

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Rebecca's thoughts on this. During COVID, I know that I experienced, because when it first happened, we were in a building that was, we rented a building that was a city -owned building.

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So the township shut it down. We had no choice. We gathered as much as we could, but we would meet and do

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Zoom, like Aaron's saying. And it would be a thing where in Zoom, you can only have one person talking at a time.

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Where at church, you and I could be talking while Aaron is talking to Tim, and you have multiple conversations going on, and they're all around you.

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It's not everyone just sitting listening to one. When we talk about what it means to gather, what do you experience as the differences, gathering online versus gathering in person?

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When you're at church. I think there's a huge difference.

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For me personally, our church was closed for a while during COVID, and so we did the

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Facebook Live or whatever, and we did some Zoom as well. But it's very distracting,

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I think, when you're at home, you're on Zoom or somewhere. I don't know if your mind and your heart are totally there, because you're at home and there's a lot going on around you.

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In all the talking that we've done so far, I keep thinking of 1 Corinthians 12, where it talks about the parts of the body, and that for a church to be able to function properly, the parts of the body need to be present in working together.

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And I don't believe that we're completely present when it is digital, that there's just so much to be said for actually being there.

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Because part of going to church isn't just receiving, it's also giving. We're not just consumers, we're contributors above and beyond, more than anything, really contributors.

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It's interesting that you say that, because I didn't think about that in the context of church, but one of the things

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I do is I help a Fortune 500 company, they have a software symposium for their employees every year, and I help organize that.

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And one of the things I've noticed is that when you get a bunch of people that are just on a call virtually, you always, anytime

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I'm on the calls I hear, someone, you'll have to mention their name to wake them up, because they're not paying attention, they're over here typing something, they're doing some other work, and if you ask the question and then give their name, they go, wait, wait, can you repeat that?

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But what I'll sometimes do is say, okay, everyone's got to be in person. Like I have certain meetings that I know are, like the day of event where we have all the volunteers, they're going to get together and have to make sure things go flawless for an event that has thousands of people watching online and in an auditorium, and you can't have things go wrong.

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So I make that in person. I say, okay, everyone's got to be here. And it's funny, because it's totally different once you do that.

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I used to try to do that virtually, but what you said is just really, I didn't put that connection in the church, and it really is a good point, because when we're together, we're usually not sitting and doing other things.

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If being virtual and digital was enough, then a lot of these big conferences that went digital during COVID would not have gone back to being in person, because the whole issue with conferences is it's extraordinarily expensive to go to them.

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You have to pay for a hotel, and you have to do all of these travel arrangements and food and all this kind of stuff.

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But yet a lot of these big conferences and conventions and stuff went as soon as they could possibly do so, even on the

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West Coast, which stayed locked down longer than anywhere else. They started doing the in -person again, because there is just something different about the networking that you can do when you are in a group of like -minded individuals, and that's what a convention or a conference is.

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In a way, that's what church is as well. It's a conference of like -minded believers who are coming together in order to equip each other to go back out into the world and spread the gospel.

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Church is where we are getting equipped and encouraging and learning so that we can then go out with that information.

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If you think of it in a context like that, it just doesn't work as well digitally.

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I think even the world has figured that out, that you need to be in person for that kind of equipping.

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You know, a big thing that's interesting about the conferences because a big thing with conferences is not so much the teaching that people come for, but the fellowship.

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Aaron and I were just at a conference, the Open Air Theology Conference this past week, and one of the things

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I love about that conference is the way the organizer organizes it, is to have very long breaks in between each speaker so that you have fellowship, and he's added an extra day so that the conference ends at 6 o 'clock every night so everyone can get together for dinner.

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And there's a lot of fellowship built into it so that people aren't missing the talks to fellowship.

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But at a lot of conferences, you know, a lot of the guys are, you know, you go to Shepard's Conference, it's going on this week as we record, and there's going to be a lot of guys that are not inside.

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I've been there enough times, you're going to see everyone outside just talking and fellowshipping. And that's a really good point because that was the one thing that I noticed when we started getting together again after the shutdown was that people missed that in -person fellowship.

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I mean, we had to kick people out of the building when we got back together because no one wanted to leave.

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No one wanted to stop that fellowship because they had missed it.

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And I think a lot of people, and I heard this from a lot of churches and a lot of people, they didn't know how much they appreciated and wanted that fellowship until it was gone, until it was just on Zoom.

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Rebecca, what do you think? Definitely.

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Yeah, the fellowship is huge. And I'm just thinking about baptisms and when people become members and everyone is there, and I'm assuming most churches, this is what our church does after the baptism, and when the service is done or after someone's become a member, we go through the line and we hug them and congratulate them and we welcome them into the church.

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We celebrate with them. And if you're not physically there, you can't do those things.

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You can't really bring in that warm welcome to a new member or someone newly baptized. So, you know,

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I mentioned the one and others. Eve, I'll start with you and then I'll ask Aaron, and I'll see if Tim and Rebecca want to touch on this one.

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But, you know, can we do the one and others? I think there's 31 one and others. We just read a couple of them in the passage,

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Eve, that you referred to in Hebrews 10. Just looking at that passage, we see there the idea of the love, you know, to love one another.

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There was the idea of the encouraging one another. So can we do these one and others that the

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Bible talks about without gathering in person? Like what becomes the difference when we're in person?

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In person, you're actually having physical contact with a need. It's a lot easier when you're, you know, at home and you hear about a brother in jeopardy of some sort to just say, oh,

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I'm going to pray for you, which that's not the bad thing to pray for somebody who is hurting or has a need.

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But James doesn't say that, you know, that that's enough. He says that when you see a brother or sister in need, you're supposed to do something about that need.

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And it's a lot easier for us to just assume that someone else is going to take care of it when we're not there in person with that need.

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And so being in person with the need, I think, helps that one another take place.

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And, you know, I think there's just something about physical contact, being able to give somebody a hug or just take them aside and pray for them with your hand on their shoulder, touching them is something that is more personal than trying to find a moment out of your busy schedule to connect with them from your home or your work or whatever.

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It's just so easy to be away from the moment when you're not in the moment,

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I guess is the point I'm trying to make. It's like when you're at home, you've got other distractions, you've got other things going on.

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But when you're at church, whether it be a building, a home or any kind of fellowship, you're in person with those people.

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And so the distractions are the people that are supposed to be distracting you, not other things going on around you, if that makes any sense.

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And the passage that I was actually thinking of, though, the Hebrews 10 is actually really good. My church has been preaching through Thessalonians and the fifth chapter of 1

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Thessalonians has a lot of stuff about. Let's see if you start in verse 11.

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It says, therefore, encourage one another and build one another up just as you are doing. We ask you brothers to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the

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Lord and admonish you and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work, be at peace among yourselves.

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And we urge you brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.

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And see that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone.

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Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God and Christ Jesus for you.

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And it goes on from there. It took us, I think, probably at least four sermons to get through that short passage.

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So there's a lot of stuff in there that's about doing church together, that fellowship of believers and upholding each other and encouraging each other and respecting those who are over us and all of that.

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I would compare, I'm going to use an analogy from education, something we've all experienced.

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It's not good enough to go to school and have your teacher teach you, just talk at you.

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You actually have to, within the context of the classroom, be putting into practice what you're being taught, asking questions, getting a better understanding, also having an opportunity to fail, but doing the work there in the classroom.

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But if we all went to school and all of the information that we were given was only applicable within the context of a classroom and had no application outside of the classroom, we all would have concluded a long time ago that school was pointless.

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Of course, I say that and I like to joke that the people who study higher math, like the more advanced maths, only do so so that they can teach it to people who want to study advanced math, so they can teach it to people who want to study, you get the idea.

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But anyway, that aside, the church, the pastor is there to equip us for the work of the ministry.

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What we do there in the church is kind of like just, I believe, the beginning stages of the one -anothering, which is funny because, again, this is so often what we like to avoid within church.

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I say that we have this little folder of topics that we're comfortable talking about. And then when we reach the end of that, we kind of just close the folder and move on to somebody else.

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And oftentimes those are very superficial things. How was your week? How were you feeling? Weather, sports, all the stuff that unsaved people would talk about if they were at a gathering together, right?

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Very seldom, sometimes, or I should say often, very seldom are we actually talking about the things that define us as believers within the context of the church.

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But then I believe the church as a whole, I'm being very broad and general. I'm sure, no doubt, you yourself or other people that you know, you'd be like, no, this isn't true of them.

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Yes, obviously there are exceptions, praise God. But I think the church as a whole really stinks when it comes to one -anothering outside of the church.

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So like, yay, we are one -anothering in the church for what, an hour? 35 minutes on a

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Sunday? Maybe again for, you know, 45 minutes if you'd take before and after at a

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Wednesday. You know, is that all? No, we need to be taking that and we need to be

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James chapter five -ing it. We need to be Ephesians chapter four -ing it. We need to be in each other's life on a life -on -life type of way.

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Because honestly, I can't do what Ephesians 4 tells me to do. I cannot really, truly equip you to help you genuinely be built up into the body of Christ.

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To help you to join us together like the joints of the body so that you are growing up in Christ unless I really know you.

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Unless we're doing life together. You can see my failures. I can see your failures. We have that confessing to one another.

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We have that accountability where we're saying, okay, hey man, you know, what you just said to your kids, let's talk about that because that's not biblical or that wasn't done in a

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Christ -honoring way. So, all of that to say, the purpose of the church, I think in many ways, is a starting place for this concept of one -anothering.

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And we, the American church, has done a wonderfully, awfully terrible job of creating a culture that disconnects us throughout the week.

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And I think that is only going to, it's only happening to our detriment. So, let me ask this.

35:22

And I'm going to, as I ask this, we've been really focused on the aspect of the gathering.

35:29

And I said that's part of the name. We'll get into that a bit more. But that's not the only purpose of church.

35:37

So, I want to start with Tim, and then this time we'll go Tim, Rebecca, and then

35:44

Aaron, Eve. I want each of us to discuss this because there's more than just getting together.

35:51

I think we appreciate the getting together a lot more now because of what we experienced with COVID with churches being shut down.

35:59

But what, you know, Tim, what is the purpose of church? What is it?

36:05

What things do we do? What is it that we would expect to see at a church or go to church for?

36:15

So, I think that we've already touched on a significant portion of that.

36:22

But I'd like to point out that there is a civic responsibility in being part of a congregation as well.

36:35

The church is part of the community. And many of the churches that I've attended in the past and many more that I know of, they make it a point to be involved in the community.

36:51

And one of the things that I think that we are lacking in, and this might just be the old, you know, get off my lawn moment, but I think students today are not being taught civic responsibility.

37:06

And by being an active member of a church, you're actually in support of the community too.

37:15

And you are a representative of God in your community, doing the simplest things, raking leaves, helping to carry groceries, you know, any number of things.

37:31

So, it really is, there's not just one reason.

37:38

If I had to say there was one reason, I would say it's because we're commanded to. We're commanded to gather together in his name.

37:48

But there are so many benefits and so many responsibilities. Aaron had mentioned the, you know, church only being one or two hours a week.

38:03

And in the PCA, what we do is we have small groups too. And we get together for a couple hours on, you know,

38:10

Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday night. We do a Bible study and we basically, you know, take prayer requests, prayer requests and praises, and we go to God in prayer.

38:23

And we remind each other that we're a family.

38:31

We are all children of God. And what was that old

38:37

Newsboys song, take me to your leader? You know, we want people from the outside looking in and going,

38:46

I want what that guy has. So it's, the church is a member of the community it's in.

38:56

And by being active in the church, you can be active in your community too. And I always love to point back to, and I may be in the minority here.

39:08

One of my favorite presidents, George W. Bush, he did the faith based and community initiatives, executive order, which

39:17

I don't, I don't know if they still stand. I think they might've been rescinded by now, but it was just a wonderful way to show that, you know, we shouldn't be depending upon the government to meet all our needs.

39:31

We should be depending upon one another to do so. Rebecca, your thoughts.

39:41

You know, one of the things I think that maybe the church has really forgotten is that,

39:49

I mean, it's not really, the church isn't for unbelievers. It's for believers to gather.

39:57

Amen. To be equipped, to go out into the world with the gospel. And of course with amongst, or with all the equipping does come the encouragement and the accountability and all those things, but it really is, it's for believers.

40:12

And we've lost that in catering to the unsaved, you know, that's where we get our secret sensitive churches and things like that.

40:20

But it's for believers. And I'd say mostly to, like I said, equip us to go out into the world with the gospel.

40:33

Aaron, Eve, either you want to comment on that? I would actually very like to congratulate

40:40

Rebecca on bringing that up because I think originally this topic, when I put it on our topic list came out of a discussion that Tim and I had on one of our episodes.

40:51

And I kind of went on a bit of a rant about how our, our churches in the

40:58

West put a little bit too much emphasis on, on what we look like, you know, to people who are coming into the church on a

41:08

Sunday morning or whatever. And, and, you know, I was like, you know, churches for the believers, it's for the body and we're, we're not supposed to be inviting the world into our church to get saved.

41:22

We're supposed to be going out to the world to take them the gospel. And too much of our churches here in, in our

41:30

Western culture are all about feeding milk to the, the people in the pews

41:37

Sunday after Sunday, after Sunday, and never getting into the meat that is, is what grows and matures

41:43

Christians because we're too busy catering to the people who are coming into the church on a

41:49

Sunday morning. And we're not supposed to be inviting the world into our church to get saved.

41:58

We're supposed to be going out to the world to take them the gospel. is what grows and matures Christians because we're too busy catering to the people who are coming into the church on a

42:16

Sunday morning. And too much of our churches here in the Western culture are all about And the question that I asked originally is what is church church is not the gospel to the lost world churches where.

42:23

Christians come in order to be equipped and refreshed so that they can go out into the world and spread the gospel.

42:30

And the Western churches completely lost the going out part. and that is extremely sad because that's where people are going to see us living out our faith and want to know

42:46

Christ through that. Tim, this is your co -hosting, and you heard the rant on your show before.

42:57

You got to unmute though, Tim. There we go.

43:05

It wasn't taking. First I want to say, Eve, rant? Never. Yeah, I was going, like,

43:12

I don't remember the rant. I remember discussing it, but I wouldn't put that up to the level of rant.

43:19

I don't remember if I talked about this. I think I did when we were talking about it in our podcast, but one of the funny ways that this is illustrated is my sister, who is a

43:34

Lutheran minister in Minnesota, was visiting our church, and as a

43:39

PCA church, we preach the word. We preach through scripture, and I want to say we were doing

43:48

Ezekiel. Ezekiel's the prophet who laid down for 40 days in the middle in the town square, right?

43:59

Is that the right one? So we were preaching that that day, and Pastor Jeff got to the part about men eating their sons and cannibalism and stuff like that, and my sister texted a friend of hers in the middle of the service, finding it funny that we would preach that, and I asked her after the service, why is that funny?

44:30

And she said, well, what's an unbeliever going to think? And that was exactly our point.

44:37

The sermon isn't for unbelievers. We're not getting people into the door with our sermons.

44:45

We're sending people out the door with our sermons. So that just continues to amuse me that there are churches out there who would be so careful as to what they preach of the

45:08

Bible to avoid offending people.

45:15

Yeah. Rebecca, you have any thoughts on this? No, just like we were saying,

45:22

I guess my thought is it's sad, as Eve said, because in the

45:28

Western churches, we have completely, I think, forgotten that purpose, you know, just using worldly means to gain worldly, to lure worldly people with worldly thinking into the doors, and then there's this vicious cycle of using worldly means, again, to keep them in, you know, in the pews, to keep them satisfied.

45:52

So I, you know, I think the Church needs to somehow get out of that cycle.

45:59

Yeah, and I think when we look at historically, and I want to get into discussing this, what the word

46:08

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46:15

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47:57

So, I want to give a short historical lesson, if I could, in what is church, and I'm taking this from my book,

48:08

What Do We Believe?, and so what I did in that book was kind of walk through how, through the centuries, the idea of what church is became more and more precise and more and more specific as things of culture kind of attacked to the church and it had to redefine itself or to better define itself, more like, but the word ekklesia in the

48:36

Greek is actually was first used in Ephesus for voting. That was its first purpose, and by the first century, it was used as the idea of a summons for a legislative body or assembly or a people on behalf of the community, but after the first century, after with Christ, the idea of church started becoming more specific, and what we see in the early first centuries was it wasn't just a gathering together, but it was a gathering together for the purpose of worship, the worship of God.

49:16

During the Middle Ages, there became this division as discussing church, and they started to be a little bit more specific, and they would refer to the church as the invisible or universal church and the visible or local church, and what they meant by that is that the universal invisible church, the church you can't see, is made up only of believers everywhere, but you had this local body of believers that would gather, and they would be made up of believers and unbelievers, and there was discussion over when we say church, what do we mean?

49:53

Remember, this is in a time when Roman Catholic church kind of dominated, and if you didn't agree with them, they killed you, so that was one way to censor things, and so there was discussion of what is the church.

50:07

Is it just those people that get together on a Sunday for the purpose of worship?

50:14

Well, that's what they started to realize is that there's different ways of referring to church, so they refer to it as that invisible church that's body of believers everywhere in the world compared to the believers and unbelievers that would locally gather.

50:31

That's the visible church, and then during the Reformation, they started to see issues, and they wanted to be more specific, and during the

50:39

Reformation, many of the Reformers and Puritans defined the church with three things that the church had to do, so they would say that if a church didn't do these three things, it wasn't a church.

50:52

The first two you'll expect, the third will surprise you. The first one that they would say the definition of a church is one that proclaims the

51:01

Word of God, so there's going to be preaching. The other is the practice of ordinances.

51:07

That's the baptism and communion, so in other words, if you have a group gathering in your house and they're not doing the ordinances, then it's not church.

51:19

You could have a Bible study, but you're not doing church because you don't have those, but the third one is they felt the purity of church was so important, they said that if a church wasn't practicing church discipline, it wasn't a church, and so we end up seeing that the idea of church just morphed and became more and more specific.

51:44

Now, I would argue, and this is where some here may disagree, but I would say that the word continued to morph and to be more precise, that in the beginning of the 1900s, late 1800s, there started to be a more specific separation of what is the church and what is the nation of Israel, so there was a distinction starting to be the discontinuity being seen between Israel and the church, and that would be what we view as a more either dispensational view, or if you understand the term of progressive covenantalism or new covenant theology, but that would be different than those that would hold covenant theology, but the idea is that we see that this word keeps changing, and I think the reason why is because we see that they're defining what church does, what church is, and so I think that the church, as you guys were saying, it's more than just gathering together.

52:43

There's the preaching of the Word of God. It's going to be a place where there is the ordinances that are practiced.

52:50

It's going to be a place where there's overseers and deacons or overseers and servants that are established, something

52:59

I don't think is done in people that gather in homes. You don't see them establishing elders that would oversee and deacons or servants that would serve, and so that would be an aspect.

53:14

Church discipline, the fact that you're going to do all those one another's. The church is a place where God gives us spiritual gifts to serve the church.

53:25

I forget which one of you brought up. Rebecca, I think it was you that first Corinthians 12. What is that about?

53:31

The purpose of the church is not so we could get spiritual gifts for ourselves. It actually says that it's the exact opposite.

53:40

It's the place where we are given spiritual gifts to serve the body of believers, and so I think when we say what church is, when we look at all that,

53:53

I'm really glad that Rebecca, Eve, you guys talked about this, is it's not for the unbelievers, but for the believers, and this is a big change, and I think that the reason the church is so weak and anemic in our culture is because it's lost its way, because people are trying to build a big church that is to satisfy and please people who are unbelievers, and we no longer have churches that are the hospitals for the weary believer.

54:26

We have goat farms that produce false converts that are going to hell, but they got a smile on their face while they go, and so I don't know if anyone wants to follow up on that or react to that.

54:40

I'd like to follow up on that because I'm really glad you said that. I was realizing before that I think all of us took a very similar tact.

54:49

We really quickly wanted to get to and start identifying those areas that the church, what we should be, but that the modern

54:57

American church is failing to be. I think we all in a way kind of hit on that, but if someone's listening to the show, and you have no idea what the church is, and you decide to listen, and you've made it this far,

55:08

I'm glad that Andrew said it, and we would all agree that first and foremost, it's about worshiping

55:15

God. Yes, you can worship God individually, but we see all throughout the scriptures that God wants

55:21

His people to also worship Him corporately, and so like I said earlier, that's going to involve preaching.

55:28

That's a huge part of it where we're learning about the Lord so we can glorify Him better, think more accurately about Him.

55:34

We're singing. We're not just singing to edify each other. That's definitely part of it. We're definitely not singing to just be entertained.

55:41

We are singing to corporately be praising God and thanking

55:47

Him for who He is. I was going to say this with the singing, and I was going to say this when Tim said it. The one thing with the singing, I think most people in my church preferred when we were on Zoom for the singing part, just so that they didn't have to hear me.

56:02

That might have been a blessing for my church. The corporate prayer is obviously a big part of it that we see all throughout church history and all throughout the scriptures, that being a necessary part.

56:14

So that idea of corporately coming together to worship God, and that needs to frame our one -anothering as well.

56:20

I think one of the reasons that we don't one another the way we should is the fact that we don't truly understand who

56:26

God is and His expectations for us. Since we're going to church with a consumer mindset, we go there.

56:33

We enjoy the pieces that we like. We think it's okay because we're doing these good things, and then we go home.

56:40

But when we're intentionally and consciously premeditatedly going there to say, okay, Lord, I want to make certain that everything

56:47

I do is pleasing You, then yeah, that's going to affect the way that we interact with each other as well.

56:54

Tim, how about you? One of the things

57:00

I wanted to comment on was we're taking a very westernized view of the church in our discussion, which makes sense because we're all in the western civilization.

57:14

But we all remember that God is sovereign and that there are lots of countries out there where you simply cannot get to a corporate worship.

57:33

You might depend on a house church. China comes to mind where attending church can get you in pretty deep trouble with the state.

57:46

If you're not able to attend an official church service with the sacraments and all the bells and whistles of the western church, remember that you're still where God intends you to be, and don't feel bad about it, but continue working towards what

58:14

God calls of us, and have faith that He knows what

58:24

He's doing. You mentioned the Chinese church, house churches, and they do usually set up pastors, deacons.

58:30

They do function as a church, just in a home. I'll also say it amazes me.

58:38

I'm going to head back to the Philippines in a few weeks, and it amazes me to hear the stories of people, the different modes of transportation people have to do.

58:48

I remember talking to someone. The person to get to church has to take a boat and a bus, and it takes them three hours to get to church one way, and they do this every week, and the interesting thing is their church is not an hour.

59:07

They go all day because everyone is traveling quite a bit to get to them, and so it does change that.

59:15

Eve or Rebecca, any last thoughts that you have that you would like to add? I reiterate, it isn't a building.

59:22

I think that's one of the things that Tim just raised, that there are churches around the world who don't have buildings, that they come together.

59:35

I don't remember what the first reference is. This is where one or two is gathered in my name.

59:41

There I will be, so it's not even the amount of people. You don't have to have 500 in your congregation or 50 in your congregation.

59:50

You just have to have a handful of stalwart believers who gather together in the name of the

59:57

Lord and who worship, and worship is not music. I think that we've dealt with that, and one of our worship can be music, but worship is all of the things that we do together in the name of Christ.

01:00:10

Serving one another is worship. Listening to the Bible preached over us is worship, and prayer is worship.

01:00:18

In the Western church, we've relegated worship to when we're all congregationally singing, and that's not what worship is.

01:00:26

You worship God when you pray to him, and so I think that with our twisted understanding of what church is in the

01:00:36

West, we've lost track of it's not a building. It's a body of believers who all function together to further the gospel of Christ into an unbelieving world, and that's where we equip each other in church, and then we go out to the world, and I think that that is our biggest takeaway, is that we are a body, the body of Christ doing

01:01:00

God's work, and the body comes together to be equipped, but then the body goes out and serves.

01:01:08

And I'll just say you referenced Matthew 18, you know, 15 and following there, where the two or three are gathered in that context, though, is church discipline.

01:01:19

So, you know, people will use that first, those passages, say, oh, well, you know, look, it's

01:01:24

Wednesday night prayer meeting, and no one's here, and they'll use that as an encouragement, but that's actually being used in the context of church discipline.

01:01:35

Christ said, you know, he'll always be with us. In fact, one of the questions

01:01:40

I usually ask people is, I'll go to Matthew 28, 19, and 20, where Jesus says, and though I will be with you always, and I'll ask how many believers need to be somewhere for Christ to be present, and they'll say one, and I go, no, actually zero, because God's omnipresent.

01:01:55

He's everywhere present, so whether there's no believers there, God's still there. But the idea is, and actually in the first century, they took the idea from the synagogues to have 10 men is what defined a synagogue, and in the early century, that's what defined a church, but you don't need to have 10 men.

01:02:15

You don't have to, you know, if you have a small group that gathers, that does what a church should do, you know.

01:02:23

So, Rebecca, do you have any last comments you want to make? Yeah, as Tim said, you know, church looks different in different cultures, and in this nation, it may very well look different in the future for us, too.

01:02:38

We may be doing more home church, I don't know, but just when Aaron was talking about the singing, it was just a couple weeks ago,

01:02:46

I was teaching preschool, and so we were down the hall, and I could hear the singing in the sanctuary.

01:02:54

I could just hear the congregation singing, and it really struck me for the first time. I don't know, I really noticed it just from that perspective, you know, not being part of it, but hearing it in the other part of the building.

01:03:06

It was pretty amazing, actually. It really touched me just thinking about how that's

01:03:11

God's people there singing praises to Him, you know, coming together in one voice and doing so.

01:03:19

And that's not something that, if you're not gathering together, that's not something you're going to experience.

01:03:26

Yeah. You know, I think a good way to close out this show, Tim, would be a quote that you put into our chat here.

01:03:35

I think that would be a very fitting closing to this show. Sure. We were talking about church history, and it reminded me of this quote from Martin Luther, God doesn't need your good works, but your neighbor does.

01:03:55

And it really drives home the fact that, you know, the purpose of church is to prepare believers, to equip believers to preach and represent the gospel in our daily lives and to fulfill the

01:04:13

Great Commission. Yeah. Well, thank you. So, folks, that's another wrap on this show.

01:04:20

We hope that this was encouraging to you. I hope that you got a lot out of it, and that if you did, please share it with others.

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Let others know about this so they can enjoy more Theology Throwdowns as we have them here.