COVID-19 How Should the Church Respond?

Would that have changed my name? Welcome to THEOLOGY THROUGH We, the Christian podcast community of podcasters, gather to discuss our theological differences with love and charity. This is a ministry called Striving for Eternity.

Introducing the Podcasters and the COVID-19 Topic

All right, well, welcome to another THEOLOGY THROWDOWN. We are here, and, uh, oop, looks like we got a surprise guest popped in. Good. So, we are here again for another monthly episode of THEOLOGY THROWDOWN.

This is where the different podcasters from the Christian podcast community, we get together, we talk about usually theological things, sometimes our differences. We haven't had as much disagreement as we've tried, but we've still done any discussion we try to do with love and charity.

Tonight's topic is one nobody in the world is talking about. Not a single podcast is covering this topic. We're going to cover it for you. That's right, COVID -19. There's no one else covering that topic at all, but we want to talk about this theologically, also with ministry, how view things as far as what churches should be doing and stuff like that.

So, we're going to get started. Now, there was, earlier, before we went live, we realized we have a new podcaster to THEOLOGY THROWDOWN who is in here, and now we have this dilemma because we had never seen James Watkins and E. Franklin at the same time.

We're starting to think maybe they're actually one in the same. And so, James, why don't you introduce yourself and your podcast?

Hi, my name is E. Franklin, and I am the co-host of the Are You Just Watching podcast. No, my name is James Watkins. I am the host of the Five Solas podcast, a reformed theology podcast where we discuss all things from Christian doctrine to Christian living and everything else in between.

All right, we set your name back. Okay.

All right, Eve said she was having some trouble and she was going to come back in, but the real Eve Franklin actually, I guess we showed a picture of James' face with Eve's name, and I guess that got her to want to come in and reveal that that's not really her.

All right, let's see. Daniel, how about you introduce yourself, your podcast?

Okay, well, my name is Daniel Minnick. I am the host of the Truthspresso podcast. It is a podcast devoted to digging deep into topics of theology. We learn a lot about who Jesus Christ is and what he did for us, and also we dig into economics, and that's currently what Truthspresso is going through now, a series on economics.

And, of course, we had an episode about COVID -19 related to economics, but I hope you will join me and check out Truthspresso and have fun learning truth.

Yeah, actually, I liked the stuff you were doing on economics. There was a bunch that I was learning. The way the banking system was, that was just new to me. So, I mean, I learned at one level, but you went in pretty deep.

It was good. We're just getting started.

Next, let's go with Anthony. Hey there. I am Anthony Russo, and I am with GraceAndPeaceRadio .com, formerly ThyKingdom ,com. And let's see, it is a podcast about applying God's word to everyday life. It's just 10, 15, 20 minutes conversations of really just applying God's word to all different things.

The most recent episode was talking about how do we have patience in these uncertain times. And then coming up, we'll be looking at persistence. And then I didn't plan on the alliteration, but we'll also be discussing God's providence.

Those are just some insights into a couple episodes that will be coming up. So, GraceAndPeaceRadio .com.

So, you're working on being a Baptist pastor with the alliteration. Got it.

All right. Colleen. I'm Colleen Sharp, and I'm the host of TheologyGals podcast.

She's also the executive administrator at the Christian Podcast Community and co-host on So You Want to Be a Podcaster. Just figured I'd throw those in there, too. All right. Now, the real Eve Franklin happens to be in here.

So, James is not really Batman like he was pretending to be. So, Eve.

Yes, I popped in to prove that I am Eve Franklin. And I co-host Are You Just Watching? where my co-host and I talk about movies from a Christian worldview. And I believe because movie theaters are closed at the moment, we will be doing some streaming movies over the next couple months.

So, we just see your logo. We were saying we actually haven't seen you really. We just see the icon of you. And the first time James was here and you weren't here. So, we kind of thought it's the first time you missed one.

We're thinking that maybe someone said that maybe James really is Eve Franklin. He might identify as Eve Franklin. Who knows? But we had your co-host on Apologetics Live with James Watkins talking about the same subject because both your co-host, Tim Martin and James Watkins, have tested positive for COVID -19.

And then last but not least is Keith. So, Keith. I think, Keith, have you missed a single throwdown? I think you and Eve have not missed a single one.

Well, the first one I wasn't part of because it wasn't in the community yet. Since I've been in the community, I haven't missed one yet. Yeah, this is Keith Helpsley of Quest for Truth. We do a weekly podcast.

We talk in a casual, sometimes humorous way about world views. But we're always serious about the gospel. Once a month, we do audio drama, usually. And once a month, we'll do a deep dive, taking one book of the Bible and just going right through it.

And that's kind of what we do in a nutshell. It can be found at life-truths .com.

How Churches Are Meeting During the Pandemic

All right. So, today what we want to do is kind of talk about COVID -19. I know lots of people have been discussing this. Some people discuss it from a theological perspective. One of the things that I had thought would be interesting, because I don't know everyone's perspective here, but there's been lots of debate that I've seen online with whether churches should still be meeting or not.

There's some people that think that just because the government says to shut down, we should still meet in person. Then you have another view, which just says, well, we can meet virtually. And therefore, some churches are trying to find ways to still have services, but to do it online.

And then there's those who are just saying, nope, we're not going to have church whatsoever. Just close. So, I don't know which view anyone here holds. And if anyone has views, I'll just start with what we're doing.

At my church, we kind of have no choice in the sense, we are a church plant and we rent a facility that is owned by the township. And so, they closed the building. So, we physically cannot get there to meet.

And so, some would argue, well, should you go and you meet somewhere else? I've talked about actually just meeting in the park and just keeping six feet. I mean, when you only have 35, 40 people, you could probably do that outside.

So, that was one thing we talked about. But we are meeting virtually. And we're trying to run services as normal as we can. In other words, we're still doing Sunday school. We still have our songs, announcements.

We obviously don't hand out baskets for an offering or anything. But we're kind of trying to keep things as normal as we can. We're starting up a midweek Bible study this week. We're still doing a Good Friday service.

All of it, we're doing virtually. Now, I could just say this, that I was talking to someone in the church today. And we actually think we may keep that going, at least for the midweek Bible study, because we have a lot of people that travel from all over.

They travel distances for work. And it's an interesting way of doing a Bible study. We're thinking about that this may be something we could do long term so people come home and don't have to rush to try to get to a building that we'd have to pay an extra night for anyway to use.

So what are you guys doing for church? And anyone doing anything different than what I just described?

Well, Andrew, my church is kind of in a similar situation that we rent a school. And so the school is closed, of course. And so we have to use Zoom. Well, actually, we use Zoom for basically our adult Sunday school classes.

And then we don't have everything up yet because we're somewhat of a smaller church. But it's a pre-recorded message that's streamed live that we listen to at 1030 on Sunday. And over time, we're hoping to get more things set up than that.

Wednesday evening, the pastor interviews a friend evangelist or missionary and then streams that. So we get to see that. But until we have everything set up for more interaction, it's mostly just streaming pre-recorded things for now.

My church is, we do have a building. We actually have a fairly large campus that has two schools in it, both of which are unable to meet right now because of COVID -19. So our church offices are still open.

Our pastors are still coming in and working. But we are not having services. We did have a YouTube channel already in which we posted our sermons for the shut-ins to watch. And now we're just making that our worship service so that everybody can they're pre-recorded and just aired on Sunday mornings.

And then most of our adult classes are meeting in some virtual form, either Zoom or Skype for Business or Facebook Messenger or whatever they can get everybody else on. And we're also having prayer meetings the same way.

Somebody leads a prayer meeting on Wednesday nights and Sunday nights the same way. So we're getting along pretty well. We already had online giving set up, so we're just pushing more of the church to do that or mail in their tithes so that we can keep the church going because we do have a fairly large building to pay for.

As far as here in South Carolina, it was pretty interesting. We're doing much the same that you all are, real similar to what Eve just mentioned as well. We livestream our services on Sunday morning, and it's really just someone playing the piano and then whichever pastor is preaching.

But it was interesting, yesterday the governor here in his address, we really just went to a stay-at-home sort of order yesterday. But he did mention specifically if churches were going to meet on Sunday to just practice all the same social distancing and whatnot.

In fact, he even said something about not infringing our right to do that. So I thought that was an interesting comment that he made. So we could technically meet if we wanted to, whether it was out in the parking lot or just six, ten feet apart or whatever.

So I thought that was interesting.

The church that we've been going to, they have already been doing a livestream on Sunday mornings of the worship service. So they continue to do that. But they don't really have anything for Sunday school.

So I've been kind of on my own posting a little 20-minute Sunday school lesson that I put on Facebook on my own channel.

I've found that my life group leader, I go to a Baptist church, so it's life group, not Sunday school. But he gets actually a little more long-winded because he doesn't have to be done in time for the service.

So my Sunday school on Sunday morning went two hours instead of one.

On the videos I've been putting out, I'm very careful to keep it to right around 20 minutes because the reality is, because I've been a teacher for a while, if you do a 20-minute outline, it'll fill the whole hour.

You get a whole class and they're discussing things.

Whether Christians May Refuse Physical Gathering

So have you guys had any interaction with folks who believe that it is wrong or even, as one person said, sinful to not assemble together physically?

Yes. I have heard that, but nobody that I know personally has said that.

Because I know that that's been said by someone. Now, here's the thing I find so interesting with it. Now, this is just kind of not a theological issue as much, but in Judaism, in Orthodox Judaism, you cannot go to an online synagogue because you'd have to start a fire.

Like when you turn on a monitor, that is creating a fire, and the sparks that you'd have. So their argument would be you can't turn on a TV, you can't turn on a monitor, you can't turn things like that on.

And so you wouldn't be able to have an online synagogue. I have not seen a single report in the media about synagogues that are still meeting. Also within Islam, you have to actually be at the mosque.

And I have been seeing mosques that are open on Fridays and people are in attendance. And I haven't seen a single media report about that. But I have seen a whole lot of reporting of churches that are not closing.

I even saw a report of a church that before the first week the stay-at-home order was in play, they were open, they got criticism, and then they made an announcement that they were going to close. And the media, even though they changed the policy and they were not going to be having live services anymore, the media still was reporting it.

And then at the end mentioned, oh, by the way, they changed their policy. And the reason I thought that was so interesting is it shows that they just seem to want to point out that churches, as if only churches are the only people that were still meeting.

I mean, the bars were still open. The spring break was still happening in Florida. I do find it interesting that it was the churches that the media focuses on. Have any of you guys seen things like that or know of mosques or synagogues where people are still meeting?

I haven't seen we don't have very many mosques here or synagogues, but the Jehovah's Witnesses nearby, their campus has been pretty empty. And usually there are cars there all the time for different reasons, I guess.

Now, that's really interesting because I didn't think about that. Jehovah's Witnesses have this policy that they basically don't get involved in politics and they typically don't follow rules like that.

Yeah, I guess maybe because it's a health thing. As far as your question about people's opinions on this, I'm kind of of the opinion that it's kind of like anywhere that you have bad weather. I've been at churches that they've canceled it for snowstorms, and part of their reasoning for that is they don't want the older folks to come out and drive or slip and fall and all that.

So it's really kind of a health-related reason, if you will. To me, it's kind of the same thing. I mean, if we have to do this for a month or so, that's kind of the same reasoning. But I don't know. But I have seen some of those more hardline ideas that the government's infringing our rights and all that.

I think if they were saying that permanently or something like that, but I mean, they're shutting down retail stores, so it's not like they're just singling out Christians.

Yeah, I don't think churches are being singled out. And I also think that as Christians we should recognize the fact that the body is not the church and a building, it's the body of believers. And as long as believers can meet together, and we live in a wonderful world now where technology allows us to be separate and together at the same time, just like we are recording here.

I mean, we're all in different states, and we're together recording a single podcast. We represent the body of Christ whenever we are together in whatever form that togetherness is. And I think the church is actually being very strong right now because on Sunday mornings we're seeing tons of all of these church services being shared on Facebook.

That's so much less threatening for a nonbeliever to click on a live sermon on Facebook and watch it there without walking into a church building and feeling really, I don't know, ostracized or like they stand out or, you know, all that kind of concerns that come from somebody experimenting with a new philosophy they've never tried before.

They can do it very easily now. The gospel is going out all over the place like crazy on Sunday mornings. It's just wonderful to see.

Giving, Offerings, and Church Finances Online

Yeah, I know MacArthur, although so many people were watching their live stream, I think it was last week, not this past Sunday, the Sunday before when we were recording, their server actually shut down.

They overloaded the server because so many people were watching. But John MacArthur decided to, during the message, just share the gospel. And Carl Hargrove is associated with our church. And so he was preaching this week.

And he was telling us that he just sent something different with Pastor John. He's an elder at Grace Community Church. And he asked John about it and said that John just said he felt like, hey, so many people, unbelievers are watching.

He wanted to share the gospel message. Well, it turned out that some people contacted the church this past week or last week, I should say, because they had heard the gospel message and wanted to know more about knowing Christ.

So I do agree with you. We had a visitor in our church. We're a small church. And someone contacted the church and asked if they can attend the online service. And so we gave them the link.

We had somebody contact our church that was in the Philippines that said that they were transferring their giving to our church probably for the next month or two because they weren't able, they actually had their home in my area and had gone to our church when they were young.

And they were now on, I don't know whether they were on the mission field or in Philippines for another reason, but they said that because of the strict guidelines that they weren't able to leave their home and the churches there were completely shut in and unable to operate, that they were transferring their giving to our church.

And that was just out of the blue. Yeah. So let's talk about that.

I mean, church giving. Churches still have operating expenses, even though they're not allowed to have people attending so much. We, at least in my church, we've just mentioned that people can give online.

So, you know, anyone disagree with or have different ideas of how to do church giving and as far as with not being able to actually physically be in the building, because I do know there's differences with giving.

I know some churches that don't pass a plate or basket or whatever you want to have. They just, they may have a place for envelopes in the back. I don't know if anyone's church here does that. I know more reformed churches that seem to do that.

And then there's, you know, churches that will pass a plate or an offering basket or something like that around. And then what do we do when we don't have a basket or box for envelopes? You know, what are your thoughts?

I know my, oh, sorry. Sorry, I was going to say, you know, I figured. Since we were all online and everything now, I just started, I just emailed a JPEG of a $20 bill.

There we go. Well, I know there's online giving services. They usually cost some money to enroll in, but they come in really handy for a virtual offering plate. Before all this happened at a business meeting, I had recommended to the small church where we were at that, because they don't have the online technology there.

I just recommend to get a hold of the church treasurer and see about doing a direct deposit.

Yeah, I know my church for years has utilized apps like online services for online giving, and I started to use that fairly recently. I know that at the last business meeting, there was the mention of the fact that there are charges, like they lose a few percent of the amount when people give using the online app, and they were considering how that's a little bit of a net loss for total incomes because of those charges.

I think the online app, especially as the situation has exhibited, the online app allows more people to give, especially people who couldn't make it to a service for one reason or another before the coronavirus hit, that sometimes those people might not bring their checks with them, but if they have a recurring online charge through an online service, then despite the 3 or whatever it is surcharge for the online service, I think churches can actually make more using those services despite paying those charges.

In this situation, I think it definitely shows that if people can use those services, the church can still get money even though we're not able to meet in person.

Well, there's even a PayPal account, which is a lot less of a charge than some of those formal services. All the church would need to do is attach a PayPal account to the church's banking account, and then just have people donate that way.

There's still, of course, PayPal. There's a small expense, but honestly, it's almost nothing compared to some of these other online services. I've talked to churches about doing that before, but they get really squeamish about somebody tapping their bank account.

Whether it's a good thing or not.

Steve, because of my travel, I never know what Sunday I would be in church. My donation to my church, I do monthly. Because of that, what I do is I tend to just have my checks. I have a check that's just mailed right from the bank right to the church so that it could be deposited.

I do that even without this, just because my travel, I could be gone for a month or two. Try not to do that all the time, but I never know when I'm going to be at church, and I'll forget to write a check.

It's just easier for me to make it automatic. One of the things that I have also seen with this is an interesting discussion we could get into, and I think with some of our backgrounds, I'll be curious, probably more with Colleen being Presbyterian, I see the views on this, but there's been discussion within my church and within other churches about communion.

Virtual Communion, the Lord's Table, and Baptism

What do we do about communion? Can we, if we're having church virtually, can you do a virtual communion? Or does that really break down what communion is? Absolutely not.

There was an article that said, well, what says that we shouldn't do virtual communion? Well, it's in the name, communion. What was it, Brian Wolfmuller on our podcast, he wrote a great book called Has American Christianity Failed?

It's a really great book. It talks about kind of how did we get from early Christianity in the United States, where we've got very devoted believers to what we find today, you know, Joel Osteen and stuff.

And he said, it's not union, it's communion. And while we are gathered here, it is not the same thing. At least I don't view it the same thing as, and at least in the reformed tradition, we actually don't consider it a corporate worship service in the way that we would consider when we gather.

And even though we are Sabbatarians, I really, I didn't speak up earlier, because I didn't think you guys would appreciate me eating my dinner while I was talking. Depends, what were you eating? Very great chicken salad.

My mom made dinner tonight. So let me just say, obviously, as Sabbatarians, because I didn't speak up earlier, and we believe in honoring the Sabbath, corporate worship and whatnot. And this pastor, really great article in the Aquila Report, if people want to look it up.

And he talked about how, you know, the fourth commandment is in view of all 10. And the second table of the law focuses on loving our neighbor. So, of course, we're not meeting, it's biblical, out of love of neighbor.

But one of the things with communion, at least in our church, and I would guess there's maybe, you know, in other churches would have something like this, but it is the elders who admit members to the table, decide who communes and who does not.

If somebody is on church discipline, they might not be served communion. In Reformed churches, it is the elders who pass out communion. And everyone's just kind of on their own. There's, you know, you don't, if you're doing church online, you have visitors, you know, everyone's just kind of doing what they want on their own.

It's really not the same thing. There's a couple of good articles on it. I could pass on to Andrew.

I knew we'd get some disagreement there.

The article about having drones deliver communion to the doorstep.

I actually lean a little bit more towards Presbyterian here than Baptist, because I actually, I agree with Colleen. And I also see this, I don't see people attempting to be baptized virtually either. So, I mean, there's not any water being thrown at the screen.

And for people that hold that baptism is a requirement for salvation, they have a very big problem now because they can't gather to actually perform it.

Well, it's funny because we mentioned Babylon Bee earlier. And for people that don't know, Babylon Bee is a Christian satire site. So, they're satire. But I saw someone that had a, I think it was Babylon Bee where they had virtual baptism or six feet social distancing baptism for Presbyterian.

So, it was like the pastor with a water gun. And the parents are holding the kids like this. But, you know, I do think we got into this discussion at our church. And my view was actually kind of similar with Colleen's.

I just, I don't, the idea of communion, the question that came up is, okay, but what if we all had our own, you know, bread and juice at home, and we all just take it at the same time? And my thought was, but it's not really communion.

You're not, you know, part of communion is the self-examination. But part of communion is we, this is the corporate body of Christ gathered. And we do this together. And I don't, I just don't think virtually that you have that same picture.

I think it changes that.

It didn't really come up at my church because we only do communion once a month. And it fell on the first weekend that our governor asked churches to close. And we did not close that weekend. We went ahead and had service.

It was not well attended. And the deacons who administer the communion actually handed the bread out with gloves on so that nobody was like generally reaching in for the bread. And so they tried to keep it as sanitary as possible.

But we did have communion that Sunday, and that was our last Sunday that we met corporately. And I don't know what we'll do next month when that comes around.

Yeah, I would just say at our church, Reformed Baptist, it was much like Colleen says. You know, it's the idea that we have communion as a church family together. The elders are the ones that pass out the bread and the cup and so on.

So, yeah.

Let me mention real quick if people want to look up. Liam Gallagher has a very short video, I want to say maybe just a few minutes long, the very longest. You can find it on Facebook and Twitter. I think it's on his page.

I think it's on the 10th Presbyterian page, so I can point people there. R. Scott Clark is also, you know, just anyone who's listening and trying to investigate and understand, maybe in more depth than what we're going here, the argument against doing that.

So we've covered ministry as far as giving communion. I think James brings up an excellent point that I didn't think of. Baptism, I haven't seen any of that discussion. But I guess, especially in Baptist circles, that'd be really hard.

But I think it would actually be hard in Presbyterian circles as well, because how are you going to get, unless the pastor's in the house, you know, you still can't do the sprinkling.

I haven't seen any. How about the water gun would work a little better than for those of you that dunk. Yeah. Just open the door, pastor. Although, I mean, but ultimately, you know, baptism in Reformed and Presbyterian churches is a sacrament that happens as part of the Lord's day corporate worship.

So I guess unless they did it, now we're gonna put everyone on zoom and the pastor is going to step up. We're going to open the door and he's going to shoot the water gun at the baby.

It'd be easier to sprinkle a little bit of water on a phone than it would to immerse it in the, in the water. A little less chance of it getting damaged.

Yeah. But our pastor for our kids did, we always call it the scoop and pour method. It wasn't just a little bit of a scoop and pour, but it was a little bit of a scoop and pour. And you can see the pictures of my kids getting baptized.

Like what is going on here? As all this water comes down.

The Church, the Gospel, and the Regulative Principle in Online Worship

Yeah. So obviously there are. Certain church ordinances and practices that. You just can't do this. You do meet. So. A meeting is very important. I'm all for the. The virtual method. As far as it goes.

Yeah. But to really call it. Gathering and having church. Really. You really kind of need to be there together. I do see benefits. And I think that he was saying some of the outreach. The gospel being a spread in ways and places that couldn't have gone before.

Last. Podcast. Yeah. I don't know if we just posted. We kind of briefly mentioned that, you know, for people who are shut in elderly, disabled. And nursing homes. They. To not access the church meeting.

They might not have had before. Okay. So. In the case with.

I would just ask. In the case with. When we, we look at. Preaching then, because I think in more of the reform churches, Presbyterian churches. Wouldn't it be an issue within those, as far as the preaching being part of.

Something that's again, part of corporate worship. And with that. Would that then fit into the same category or can. Would that then be different in that sense? And we, we could do that virtually, but not.

You know, not communion.

Well, that video that I mentioned from Liam, he kind of addresses that a little bit and obviously in reform to Presbyterian churches. And. All churches. And I don't know if it's this way in all reform Baptist churches, because I know we've got some reformed Baptist among us.

The corporate worship service is, is very specific in that we have a call to worship. There are specific elements. We. We adhere to the regulative principle of worship, meaning that we only worship God in the ways that he has commanded.

We don't just worship however we want to. And we do, at least in the Reformed and Presbyterian traditions, we do see this as different. We do see it as what's going on right now as different. It's not a worship service in the same way that when we gather it is.

And I'll let some other people respond. Our church opens with a call to worship. It.

Closes with a benediction. I say church, but I don't think the online sermon service is the church. But nevertheless, but we have those elements of the typical worship service, just watching it stream online, even though there's really only like four or five people in the building.

But as far as your question about preaching, I don't know any reason that I would say that that's somehow different than preaching in front of a group of people in front of you. I mean, it's kind of like street preaching.

You can't just preach behind a pulpit or with people in front of you. In fact, I think it was J. Edwin Orr, when he was being discipled as an evangelist, they had like a meeting house. And the one mentor preacher started to preach when there was actually nobody in the room.

And then at the end of the message, when he got to a point of giving grace and offering an invitation for someone, a lady had walked in off the street and she got saved. So you don't have to just be at a church full of people to.

Officially call it preaching, I guess. But how do we have altar calls?

Well, let's just start with that question. Should we have altar calls?

I'm being a little bit facetious to this group, but you know, but...

I don't know if all of us would hold to the same position. Does anyone here.

In their church have like weekly altar calls? We usually have a time at the end of our service where people can come forward and pray or talk to the pastor about salvation or whatever. But he has, at the end of his sermons that have been online, he said, obviously, we're not going to have a time of decisions or prayer or whatever.

You can do that in the privacy of your own homes. And then he just ends the sermon. But it is something we do in my church, usually,.

But it's not part of our online. So here's an interesting thing. This is a little bit different. This gets more into where I see things going, concerns that I have with the culture with this, because I think that this whole COVID -19 is a great opportunity for Christians to find creative ways to share the gospel online, to be reaching out to people.

We already said it's, churches can be opened up online for people to attend services. People are questioning. I mean, I do think it's been great seeing families actually getting together without some of the distractions that they have.

I mean, they can't go out to eat. They're eating together. Now for some that's driving them batty, but I think it's good for us to get back to strong families. In that sense, I see a lot of good that could come out of this.

I've been praying for this to bring about a revival. And I think that that's where we as a church should be seeking that we shouldn't be worried about the economy and our retirement and our different things that we see going on that could get us very worried with health and things like that.

I think that this is a time for maybe one last time that God is waking up the world to give them a wake-up call and we need to be ready and willing and active to share the gospel. But I also see a culture that is pushing back very hardly on Christians.