COVID-19 How Should the Church Respond?

Would that have changed my name? Welcome to Theology Throwdown!

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

This is a ministry of striving for eternity. Welcome to another episode of Theology Throwdown!

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 Eve Franklin at the same time.

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

Hi, my name is Eve Franklin and I am the host of the Are You Just Watching podcast.

No, my name is James Watkins. I am the host of the Five Solas podcast, a reform 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. 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're 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. 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 Theology Gals 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, 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. This is

Keith Heltsley 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, I'm just going right through it.

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

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 do 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.

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? 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. We're mailing 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.

So, 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. 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.

But 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. You know, 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 the 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, you know, 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 that 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 non -believer 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. Yeah, I know

MacArthur, although so many people were watching their live stream last,

I think it was last week that they're, not this past Sunday, the Sunday before from 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 we had 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 who, you know, 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. And 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've, at least in my church, we've just mentioned that people can give online. So, you know, anyone have any, 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? 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 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. And 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.

But 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.

And 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.

And 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.

See, because of my travel, I actually just, you know, I never know what

Sunday I would be in church. My donation to my church, I do monthly. And so because of that, what

I do is I tend to just, I 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.

So I do that even without this, just because my travel,

I could be gone for a month or two. But I 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. So it's just easier for me to make it automatic. But, you know, 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, you know, with Colleen being

Presbyterian, I see the views on this. But there's been discussion within my church and within other churches about communion.

So what do we do about communion? Can we, if we're having church, you know, 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. 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.

I'm going to start 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 the, you know, I do think we got into this discussion at our church.

And my view was actually kind of similar with Colleen's is

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 it. How about the water gun would work a little better than for those of you that don't. 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 going to put everyone on Zoom and the pastor's 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 water.

A little less chance of it getting damaged. Yeah. Our pastor for our kids did, we always call it the scoop and pour method.

It wasn't just a little bit of 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?

So obviously there are certain church ordinances and practices that you just can't do unless you do meet.

And so a meeting is very important. I'm all for the virtual method as far as it goes.

But to really call it gathering and having church, you really kind of need to be there together.

I do see benefits in, I think that he was saying, some of the outreach.

The gospel being spread in ways and places it couldn't have gone before. In my last podcast we just posted, we kind of briefly mentioned that, you know, for people who are shut in, elderly, disabled in nursing homes, they cannot access the church meeting that they might not have had before.

Okay, so in the case with when we look at preaching then, because I think in more of the

Reformed 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 would that then fit into the same category?

Or would that then be different in that sense? And we could do that virtually, but not communion.

Well, that video that I mentioned from Liam, he kind of addresses that a little bit. And obviously in Reformed and Presbyterian churches, and I don't know if it's this way in all

Reformed Baptist churches, because I know we've got some Reformed Baptists among us, the corporate worship service is very specific in that we have a call to worship.

There are specific elements. 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 you can't, 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.

Actually, 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 churches can be opened up online for people to attend services. People are questioning. 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, 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. I mentioned this to you guys earlier before we started recording, and I want to get your thoughts on this.

Here in New York, the Samaritan's Purse, a

Christian -based organization, at least claims to be Christian -based, set up tents in a park in New York.

New York is being overrun with hospitals in their hospitals. They are running out of beds, that was the claim.

So the president sent in a medical ship, and the

Samaritan's Purse decided they'd set up tents, put beds in it, and they were calling for volunteers to help out.

And one of the things was they were calling Christian volunteers. Well, in New York, the

LGBTQ groups were very upset with a

Christian organization that was doing this, and they were petitioning to the mayor to make them stop.

Now, just think about this, right? What are these LGBTQ groups doing to help with the

COVID -19 patients? Nothing. But they want to make sure that Christians aren't seen as doing good for the community.

So they wanted it known that these groups don't treat people equally.

Now, there's no evidence of that that I could find. It's just that Christians won't celebrate their sinful lifestyle.

But, you know, we're also not demanding they go to church. I mean, like, this is the thing that I was saying to you guys beforehand.

Like, if we're going to be consistent as they are, if we're going to act the same way, they're saying if we don't celebrate their lifestyle, then we hate them.

Wouldn't it be fair to say if they don't attend church, they must hate us? I mean, but what do you guys think about groups that are trying to use this situation for political means or to try to attack

Christians that are trying to do good in their communities? No thoughts?

I definitely see that there are people who would love to use the opportunity with this kind of situation for kind of a hostile takeover of culture and government.

Was it a former mayor, New York Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who repeated the quote, never let a crisis go to waste.

And so it's like, you know, they want to use this situation to get the things passed that wouldn't have been able to be passed in a better economy.

And, you know, so it seems like there are people who would love to have a socialist leftist takeover of the economy using the fear of COVID -19.

And of course, I mean, one of the things that socialism doesn't like is private charity.

And of course, you know, historically Christianity has been big on charity.

You know, a lot of the hospitals started with churches. But, you know, like I don't know off the top of my head, but I have heard,

I think it might have been Bernie Sanders who said that, you know, under a democratic socialist system, there would be no private charity.

You know, the government does all the charity. And I think, you know, maybe some of these LGBT people who, you know, their lifestyles are connected to a political ideal of government.

They want the government to handle all the charity. What do you think?

I think that's pretty correct because early in our country's history, churches were the ones who drove charitable actions.

Somehow it got turned around so that government started taking over that.

Sadly, churches kind of let them. But I think that having churches, you know, do charitable things is letting churches do what churches ought to be doing.

Well, I think, you know, look, we're seeing that there's, which drove me nuts is there was a, you know, we had a, this stimulus bill that they were trying to get through.

And there was bipartisan agreement until Nancy Pelosi came in and wanted to try to push in things like abortion, you know, paying for abortions, you know, funding abortion clinics.

You know, what does that have to do with COVID -19? Nothing, but they want to, you know, get that pushed into their agenda.

And I do, so I do see where people, you know, are trying to do that.

I just, I think that that's the sort of stuff that has got to stop.

But then you see AOC had put a, had a graph with all the countries and the number of cases and the

United States is the highest. And her question was, which country doesn't have nationalized healthcare?

Now, I think that's really interesting because here's the thing. When you look at those other countries, they don't have, they have nationalized healthcare and that's the reason they don't have as many tests.

You see, it's capitalism that allowed for us to have as many tests that we have, to have as many ventilators that we have, because all of a sudden you're seeing corporate industries just changing, radically changing into making the masks, the ventilators, the tests available.

Companies are seeing it in their best interest to put a stop to this and they're changing gears.

And you have auto manufacturers manufacturing ventilators because they have equipment that could do that and they're changing.

You don't have that in these other countries. That's why the other countries are coming to us for these supplies now, because capitalism was creating that.

That's the thing I end up seeing different is, you know, I think that in these other countries, they got a whole lot more people that have

COVID -19, but they don't know it because they don't have enough tests and there's not enough testing being done.

Or they know it and aren't telling the truth, but we won't talk about that. Yeah, there's that too.

China. Basically, yeah. I mean, well,

I'm not going to believe the numbers from China and Iran and some of those places. I'm just not.

I also think our death rate per capita is much lower than, so we have a lot of cases that are, when you add the per capita in there, we're actually further down the list.

Yeah, it's lower than Italy and Spain, but not China's reported numbers.

That wouldn't be the case, but reported numbers. No, nobody believes China's numbers. Right. China wants you to.

James Watkins, if you could, because there was something you and I were talking about that we wanted to bring up and now's probably a good time.

With the way that they're counting the COVID positives, how about you talk about that?

Yeah, so whenever I was initially tested, it was on a Monday. And just for kind of circling back to a little bit earlier about the church gathering, on that Sunday, I was feeling well enough to where I would have went to church.

And so I didn't actually get called back until that Friday saying that, hey, you're positive for COVID -19.

So if I would have went to church on that Sunday, if service hadn't been canceled, how many people would I have infected?

Number one, because, I mean, we're Baptists, so of course we hug and we shake hands. That's why gathering at the park wouldn't work, because Baptists have to have to hug.

No, they don't. If they're true Baptists, they do. But no, whenever I was there,

I thought that I was having a misunderstanding of what they were telling me. Initially, they said, okay, there's a chance you won't be tested unless you're deemed high risk or they believe there's a high probability that you have the virus.

So I was like, okay, well, they questioned me, they did some examination. And next thing I know, I had a nurse coming in there completely decked out in anything short of hazmat.

And they did the test. Well, whenever I was speaking to them, they told me, based on your symptoms, the doctor believes that you have

COVID -19. That's why you were tested. Now you're going to be treated as a confirmed case for the state of Ohio.

I thought that I was hearing them wrong. I thought that they were just going to be treating me as if I was a confirmed case erring on the side of caution.

So what they're actually doing is they are counting people as positive cases.

And I posted it yesterday on my social media, because I have a paper, a discharge paper that they gave.

And it says, just quoting it, or you may not have qualified for a test.

So you are considered to have COVID -19 based on symptoms alone. So that kind of got me thinking, it's like, okay, so if they're basing it off of symptoms alone, are they also considering those cases as confirmed in the numbers?

And initially, I thought, no, there's no way that they're doing that. So I went on to the

CDC website. And it gives the total amount of cases in the United States, the total amount of deaths.

And it also says data include both confirmed and presumptive positive cases of COVID -19.

So, you know, we live in Ohio now. So I messaged a nurse friend of mine that's in Georgia.

And I was like, what are they doing? I mean, is that true that they are putting people that have not even been tested in these confirmed numbers?

And she told me yes. So I think that we have, I definitely think there's an issue here, because I was diagnosed with it.

So obviously, I don't believe that is a non -existent disease. But I believe that the numbers are inflated for people that have not even been tested.

There's a lot of people that have it that aren't tested. So I'm fairly certain my oldest son had it.

But he got it on, he went in on the 16th of March, right when things were starting to take hold that week.

And they said, you have all of the symptoms.

But according to the state of Colorado, we can only test you if you have traveled outside the country.

So he wasn't tested. But what they are doing a lot, what they did with my son Ian the following week, is they did a conference call with him.

And they said, we aren't going to have you come in unless your symptoms get unbearable.

And so he could have had it, wasn't counted. And there are a lot of people, I've heard lots of stories similar to my son

Ian. So you might think that the numbers are inflated, but I think they're actually less.

Because I think there's lots of people with it that are never tested. And I also think that had your test come back negative, they would have taken you off of those numbers.

Well, it's possible too. And I mean, as far as what the testing goes,

I'm saying that it's possible that they're inflated. But I could also see the flip side of that as well.

Because I asked them when I was there, if my wife starts showing symptoms, should we bring her in to be tested?

And their response to that was no, there's no need. Because if you're positive and she starts showing symptoms, then she's going to be positive.

Now, whether or not that's common practice, I can't say for sure. But you could have families that are consumed with this and you only have one person that's been counted as confirmed.

Right, exactly. Yeah, so I mean, I could see that flip side as well. Now, I'm not sure if they are.

Here's the question that I had as well, is now that I'm in the recovery process, I'm pretty close to not having any symptoms at all.

Am I ever removed from that list?

Or is it just something that just continues to grow? They never remove people who are in recovery?

Well, look it, there was a lady, I forget where, she was tested positive. And then they tested her again, she came back negative.

So she's considered recovered. I think she's in the healthcare industry, so she grabbed two tests.

But then she tested positive again. One of the things I think is around the world is that we have, because of the fact that we have so many more tests and testing going on,

I think that our numbers are going to be higher than the rest of the world. Because the rest of the world may have just as many cases, they're just not doing the testing.

And they're only counting the tests that come back positive. And so I think that each country is doing this differently.

And America decided they were going to try to make as many tests available. And I think the numbers were like 90 % of people tested negative.

So it means there's a lot of people taking the test just because they're nervous. I'm actually more concerned about the death rates than I am the case rates.

Because I've been hearing, and I don't know how true it is, that if you go into the hospital with a heart condition, and you die of a heart attack, and you test positive for COVID -19, then it's counted as a death for COVID -19, not for a heart disease.

And I know that there are complications that make COVID -19 more deadly.

But at the same time, if you died, obviously, of something else, does that necessarily make it a

COVID -19 death? And I think that may artificially inflate the death rates of COVID -19 as well.

They are doing that. And one of the things, I've been looking at this stuff. I'm an engineer by trade.

I like to look at data. One of the things that I've been looking at is the rate.

Because what people are doing is they're taking the number of deaths that are listed.

So for example, as of right now, if we do it, there's 12 ,841 deaths.

But we now broke 400 ,000 cases. Well, if you do that math, that's 3 .2%.

And a lot of people are doing that. They're comparing the death rate today to the cases today.

And that has been steady between 2 .5 % to 3 .5%, which is a lot.

That's where I think they're getting the 1 ,000 to 200 ,000 Americans. But I wonder with that because people that are dying of this are not dying right away.

They're dying within, like the recovery is on average two weeks. I'm not seeing the recovery numbers skyrocketing.

It just seems like you have to go back two weeks and compare that number, the number of cases from two weeks ago to the death rate today.

And that gets you closer to, as of when I tested it this morning or checked it this morning, it was,

I think, around 18%. Now that's come down. That's coming down, which is good.

But we don't have, and one thing that frustrates me is we don't have the algorithms that the government's using to calculate these things.

And that's kind of frustrating because, and this is going to be more of a question for, as Christians in view of government,

I don't like when I can't get access to the data on these things. And we have some data, but we really don't have, they're giving numbers.

They're saying that it's going to peak, at least in my state, next week will be the peak.

It's like, well, how do you come to that conclusion? I'd like to know because I don't believe that we just trust the government because the government is made up of sinful people, right?

And so even the American government, I'm not going to trust them. And so this whole time that this whole thing has started, there's been something that just, it hasn't sat well with me because it's like you look at some of the numbers and there's things that, diseases that seem to cause more, have a higher percentage of death rate.

But then again, they're not as contagious. And so, but early on, it didn't seem as contagious.

And it just seemed like Trump very early on reacted to this. And it was like, what's he reacting to?

And then the whole world was reacting to it. I'm like, early on, the numbers didn't seem to support it. Now, we could go into conspiracy theories.

I'll throw some out that I've heard. Being that I'm a pastor, people end up asking me questions online, which some questions

I just get, it could be frustrating. But these are things I've heard and I want to get your opinions, you guys' opinions.

I've been asked whether this is actually manufactured to create a one -world currency, a one -world government.

Clearly, those were not the Presbyterians, Colleen, clearly. They were not in the category asking those questions,

I'm sure. Probably people read too much left behind. There's people who are looking at this and they're,

I had someone that looked at the viruses. Then they looked at the fact that there was an earthquake in Utah, which was kind of funny because in the

Mormon temple, the Moroni fell off their temple because of the earthquake. But you had an earthquake in Utah and I think it was

Idaho. And people are saying, oh, look, this is the end times. So let me throw this out theologically.

Obviously, we're all going to agree that we're one day closer to the end times. Okay. But does anyone think that all this that we're seeing is this pandemic is proof or evidence of the end times in our time?

Jeff, speaking of end times. Do those people read history? Have they known other times in our history?

I mean, I'm not talking American history. I'm just world history where there's been huge pandemics and natural disasters at the same time.

And anyways, just my two cents. I agree with Colleen on that.

It's like my dad is actually one of those conspiracy theorists who really follows the whole modern day prophecy movement.

And I've learned just not to get in arguments with him because he gets really emotional about it when

I try to prove to him that we can't know the end. I mean, Jesus didn't even know the day nor the hour.

And yes, we have to be cognizant of the signs, but there's nothing happening now that hasn't happened before since the time of Jesus.

You know, I mean, the flu pandemic in 1918 followed by a world war.

We've got all kinds of history that shows that these things have happened before.

So I think it's just reading a little bit too much into the

Bible when you do that. Yeah, I remember when the

Gulf War started, and I used to attend Greg Laurie's church, well -known pastor on Sunday evenings.

We'd go on Sunday evenings partially because it's a very big church, and they would always have some

Christian singer do like an hour concert before the sermon. But I remember when that happened, and it was the most people

I ever saw because people were scared and they thought it was the end times. And of course, back for those that were

Christians like in the 80s, remember those books, you know, 88 Reasons Why Jesus is Coming Back in 1988.

And, you know, there was a lot to talk about. What Left Behind was big and whatnot. Anyways, that I just remember right after that, there was so many people that they had people sitting on the floor in the front on the steps, sitting on the probably a fire hazard, sitting on the floor in the aisles because so many people, you know, thought this must be a sign and they were scared.

Well, you had the book, what was it, I'm trying to remember the title, but it sounded like Oil, the

Middle East, and the End Times, I think was the title. Yes, I remember that. You know, the little -known book, not enough people knew.

So any other things that you guys, what else, you know, with this pandemic? I mean, how should

Christians view this? You know, can

I bring up something maybe a little bit different because you said anything else? One thing I thought was interesting, I did kind of a, just my own little study, is some of you may have seen the articles since we're podcasters here.

Some of you may have seen the articles. There was even an article in a very big newspaper saying that podcasting numbers are down.

And I'm in a fairly large podcasting group, just secular group for women podcasters, and everyone in that group was lamenting, oh, my numbers are so far down.

And of course, one reason numbers are down is because so many people listen to podcasts on their commute. That's their podcasting habit.

But I found that a few Christian podcasts actually had their numbers up. We, Theology Gals, had our biggest month by far in March.

It was 6 ,000 higher than our last biggest month.

I mean, it was a big month for us. And it makes, I think part of the reason that we kept our numbers is because our audience, a lot of our audience is stay -at -home moms.

So their podcasting habits aren't changing at all. But I also think that for us as Christian podcasters that a lot of people are looking for hope.

They're discouraged. They're depressed. And so I think it's even an opportunity for us as Christian podcasters to offer hope for people that are listening to it.

All of our podcasts are on Spotify. They're on iTunes. They're on, you know, every podcasting app.

And someone looking for hope, maybe searching something that comes up, you know, in their search on CastBox or Overcast or Spotify could run into one of our podcasts because they're just searching for hope.

And so I think it's an opportunity for us. I want to carry that a step further because not only is an opportunity as Christian podcasters to get hope into people's homes through our podcast, but as Christians to be spreading the light wherever we are virtually.

We may be stuck at home, but we can be an outreach to our neighbors and to our friends on social media.

We can reach out to people when we see needs. If we are in a position where maybe we still have our jobs when other people are laid off or in some situation like that where we have what others need, we need to be looking for the opportunities to help others so that they can see the light of Christ shining through us and giving them hope in a dark time so that we can spread the gospel through that.

You know, that's a really good point, Eva. I joined our town community groups, which are definitely places for entertainment.

You know, like the big pig that was in one of my neighbor's front yard. There's a pig in my front yard because we have ranches and stuff.

There's always fun stuff in there and they fight about silly stuff. But one of the things that's been impressive, and this is an example of something that Christians could do, is there's a young couple in our town that posted in our community group.

You know, if there's any older people or people that have a hard time getting out, my husband and I are off work and we'd love to grocery shop or run errands for anyone that needs it.

But we can do things like, some of us, I can't do that because I'm high risk, but even things like that can become gospel opportunities or, you know, anything that maybe one of our neighbors might need.

So there is an app, I'm just trying to look it up now, but there was in my town, it's called

Nextdoor. So Nextdoor is designed to be a social media, but local for your neighbors.

Yeah, we all have that, I think, for our neighborhoods. Yeah, and so you could sign up with that.

What I had Nextdoor, what I saw was someone that put in there and said, you know, they were a

Christian couple that basically said anyone who is elderly or high risk, basically they would go grocery shopping for them.

And they go out and I guess what they were, from what I talked with them, what they were doing was they were going, buying the food, coming back, and they would basically drop off groceries with gospel tracks.

And that was their, you know, they were probably getting the gospel to people that they would never meet.

And those people are willing to say, okay, we don't want to leave the house because we're high risk. We'll let you go out and get our groceries.

And in cases where people, you know, they said that some people couldn't afford it, like they would go buy the groceries and then the people would pay them back if they can.

You know, it's kind of interesting the way they chose to do it, but they, you know, some people are willing to pay to share the gospel.

You know, so, but even if not, even if the people just, you know, give them money up front and, you know, or something like that, it was a neat way of getting the gospel to people, you know.

I love that. That's really great. I think there has to be a realization as well from Christians, because this is, if anything, it's going to cost churches to re -evaluate, you know, the technology aspect of it.

So, I mean, I think you're going to see a lot more churches streaming every

Sunday, even whenever we're able to gather again. But I think it's important to point out that this is not something that is destroying the church, but this is a means by which

God can still, you know, grow the church and still build the church. And, you know, he's doing that by, you know, the faithful ministers actually proclaiming the gospel, which is something that we should be doing in this time as well.

But this is a fantastic time for the church. I mean, because every single sermon that is preached every single week, there should be a call to repentance and faith alone in Christ, which means a celebration for Christians, you know, for people that are placing their faith in Christ.

So, I mean, I think that needs to be a lesson of encouragement to other believers that, you know, the church isn't being destroyed right now.

If anything, it's crushing our idols and it's, you know, building the church even further.

Well, it should. I mean, you know, I think this is an opportunity. Look, there's so many people that even

Christians who are looking at this with desperation. You know,

I've talked to one person who was just devastated because his, you know, all his retirement plans are up in smoke, basically.

And they're really not. It just may take more time. But it's like, what's more important?

I think that in one sense, this may be a time for not just Christians, but everyone to have some of these things stripped away.

I think that after this, people are going to live radically different. I mean, I think that individual homes are going to start.

I think you'll see people starting to focus on families more because the time that they had, they had to rely on family.

I think that you're really going to see a lot of people start saving money instead of spending frivolously. But I also see a lot of sin that's going on.

Colleen and I were talking about this earlier this week. You know, alcohol consumption is up 55%.

And pornography, I actually got the statistic. I forget it was 23 or 28 % that pornography is up.

And Pornhub was offering their services for free. Yeah, so we talk about the fact that there was a music video that the rap artist decided they would release the video on a porn site.

And the reason this rapper said he was doing that was because with Hollywood being closed, this was the best way, this is where everyone's going.

So I see alcohol is up. The pornography is up. I mean, Hollywood's complaining because they're losing money and the porn industry is not.

Then you have, you know, like where Colleen is at, where in Colorado, you know, you have marijuana places were deemed, you know, as essential.

And that's on the rise. So, you know, I think that you're going to see when we come out of this, two competing worldviews that are going to come out.

We're going to see a very sinful lifestyle. People have been sitting home. They're not going to work, drinking, playing video games, watching porn.

They're doing those things and they're going to come out. I think that you're going to see some cases where people are going to come out.

I think, you know, number of rapes are going to be up. I think some of that lifestyle that they're stuck in for a month, month and a half or more is going to be worse.

But I also think this is an opportunity for Christians to say, look, there's a lot of people that weren't doing that route and they're asking questions.

They realize how, you know, the whole world could be affected by something we can't even see.

And I think there's going to be people asking questions. And I think Christians have to be ready to when we can get out, we need to start answering questions.

We need to start going to these parks. I mean, right now there's people in parks everywhere. They just won't take gospel tracks right now.

Dr. Sebastian and I were talking about that. It's just people won't take tracks. You know,

I go to the parks and, you know, everyone wants to keep a distance, but it used to be you can hand out a gospel track. No one will take anything from people anymore.

You can still airdrop tracks to people though. Well, I was going to say we need creative ideas once we get free or once we're allowed out.

So why don't you explain what you do, James, and I'll just preface this with this.

Picture the scene. We've got a bunch of evangelists on a boardwalk. We're all out there. You've got people doing open -air preaching, people handing out tracks, people having one -on -one conversations.

And Frank Mullis, James, you'd be very happy. Frank Mullis just sat on a bench not talking to anyone doing this.

Why don't you explain what you do? Yeah, so we design gospel tracks.

And, you know, obviously we have physical tracks. But, I mean, in times like this, I mean, I have the templates on my phone.

So if I'm in a crowded location, like right now we're talking about, like at a park or in the event that we have to go out in public, like to a

Sam's Club or a Costco, I mean, people constantly have their cell phones up.

So I have the template to gospel tracks and, well, the back portion of it.

Obviously I don't send them the front design. But if people have their phones up with iPhone, you can airdrop a picture to them.

And so I have been known to airdrop pictures of the back of the gospel track.

And people will sit there and read the gospel presentation.

And, I mean, it's a no -touch approach. You know, obviously you're not going to get as many out as you would if you're physically handing tracks out.

But, you know, I mean, it's another method that you can use to get the gospel out. Now, do they get your phone number when you do that?

No, they don't get your phone number. It pops up however you have your phone named. It will say

James' iPhone or whoever is airdropping you.

So you're saying we should rename our phone name, go into the about, rename it to, like, Eternal Message.

Yeah, I have mine named as FBI. I mean, you can get creative with it.

You can have your Eternal Message. You can have We Are Watching or something.

Yeah, I had Airdrop Ninja as mine. So I would just airdrop random things to people.

I was airdropping the gospel tracks. And people can either accept it or decline it. It tells you on your phone if they accept it or decline it.

But, I mean, that's another way. I mean, if people want a template and they want to do something like that, all they have to do is email me, the5spodcasts .icloud

.com. I'll send a template over to you. And, I mean, it can just be a method that you use.

See, now that's a creative idea. It doesn't involve touching. Actually, it doesn't even involve talking. I mean, the person doesn't even know who did it.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and people will kind of look around trying to see.

And you can just be like Frank Mullis and just keep your head down. They'll never suspect you. Yeah, just keep your head on a bench.

So for, you know, someone who is very antisocial like yourself, you know.

Amen. It works well. I mean, what other creative ideas can we have to share the gospel when we're allowed to start gathering again?

Anyone have ideas? Well, this isn't a sharing the gospel, but more a loving the saints sort of thing.

I know in our group, I think this week especially, we've got so many girls having a really rough time.

You know, people that struggle with depression, some of them are starting to face that just from being home.

If you can imagine a young mom with three young children, you know, and maybe lives in an apartment, so there's no yard for the kids to go out and run around.

And their estate has a stay -at -home order, and it's rough. And, you know, some people, like for me,

I'm a homebody. You know, I love to travel, but I love to travel in my motor home where I bring my home with me.

But I just, so for me, I'm like, yeah, I get to stay home. And every day it's like, oh, no, one day closer to when

I have to leave the house again. But for people that are extroverts, I think, you know,

I'm an introvert, but I think especially for people that are extroverts having a really hard time. And so one of the things we did in Theology Gals, and it's something that I've encouraged the other gals to do, is we did a

Zoom meeting, and it went on for over three hours.

And we had a lot of women, and then some of them had to go, and it got smaller and smaller. I think we ended with about seven of us for that last hour.

But the women said, oh, I didn't know how much I needed this. I just really needed some, just a time of fellowship.

But reach out to some of your friends or maybe people at church, and whether it's a phone call or maybe a group of you do a

Zoom meeting. And I know some of you, you know, they're doing it for Bible studies. But a couple women or men, you know, how are you doing?

Are you holding up? Especially think of people that may be struggling, health struggles.

I don't know. I think finding ways to share the gospel, but also finding ways to encourage our brothers and sisters.

The other thing is a lot of people are so stressed right now. They're dealing with anxiety. We have so many people that have lost their jobs.

My son Jonathan works three jobs, and he lost his two major ones. My son

Ian, who works for United Airlines, will probably be laid off. My husband's not in danger of being laid off, thankfully.

But people are really worried about finances right now. So I don't know.

I think we also need to find ways to check in on our brothers and sisters and encourage them.

Because some people aren't going to tell you when they're struggling. So if you kind of have an idea that some people are having a hard time, reach out and encourage them.

My church has, we started doing a movie night, Friday nights. And so we just play a 45 -minute movie, and then we, you know, like we did the

Calvinist movie. We did half of it one time, half of it the next week, and then afterwards we'd have a discussion.

And everyone's really enjoyed that, because it's just good to see each other's face even if it's through Zoom. And so now we're starting, this week we're going to start up a midweek

Bible study so we can all just, so, you know, a couple times a week we're all getting together and talking and seeing one another.

We've found it's not the same as fellowship in a church. Our church is a smaller church. We're a church plant, so we're 35, 40 people.

But when you really come down to families, you're talking like, we're just like 20 families, roughly.

And so we get into a Zoom meeting, and, you know, there's some people that are quiet and some that are talking.

But we try to have the fellowship time that you'd have after church as well. And so we started doing some of these

Bible studies that we're trying to just foster, like you're saying, just foster the discussion. How's everyone doing?

We have some people whose family are affected by the virus. You know, different things are still going on in people's lives.

So it's, you know, it's an opportunity to talk about those things. How else can we be ministering to within the church, outside the church during this time, and ideas for what we could do afterwards?

I know I haven't said anything in a while, but I think what I do like, and I mentioned this on an episode of True Espresso, embracing chrononomics.

What I do like is that, basically, homeschooling is forced to get a little more respect because everyone's forced to be at home.

And now those who thought homeschoolers were a bunch of weirdos or Puritans or something like that, now they're going to be kind of begging homeschooling

Christians for advice and wondering, how do you do that? And, you know, my wife homeschools her four kids.

And so I think one of the things that homeschoolers could do is to give homeschooling tips and advice to other

Christians, you know, in the church, or even to outsiders. And then there could be ways to direct homeschooling tips over to the gospel and why, you know, you could have hope in God in such difficult situations, and how, you know, homeschooling can even be beneficial.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of people homeschooling for the first time. Again, that goes back to families are going to, you know, hopefully being strengthened by this.

Can I say that Christians need to not do things that are ungracious? One of the things that,

I homeschooled for 16 years, so let me preface by saying that, but I don't believe homeschooling is for everyone.

But one of the things that my homeschool, my kids are grown. I mean, my oldest is 17, and I'm not homeschooling him.

Anyways, I mean, my youngest, I said oldest, my youngest is 17, finishing up a senior year at a charter school that's connected to our local college.

But one of the things that I've seen is some Christians post things like, oh, now everyone else is going to know, now everyone else has to spend time with their kids, implying that everyone who sends their kids to school just doesn't want to spend time with their kids, and just that sort of thing.

And some of the girls in my group, Christian homeschooling moms said, this is not gracious.

It's not a good way to be a witness to non -Christians. There was a lot of memes.

They've slowed down, thankfully. A lot of memes kind of making fun of the people who are forced to homeschool now.

And I thought, that's not a good witness. And maybe just a good reminder that even our interactions on social media are either going to be a light for Christ or they may turn someone off to Christianity.

The term being a good neighbor comes to mind as I listen to all you guys bring up these ideas.

And that can go a long way. Sharing the gospel. All right.

So it sounds like we may be winding down a bit, which is fine if we wind down early.

Anything else that you guys want to discuss with this pandemic, with how the church should respond to it?

You know, we had R. Scott Clark on about covenant theology, I don't know, three weeks ago maybe.

And we were talking about covenant theology, but we took some time at the end to talk about this.

And one of the things that he said, and I think this was helpful, and maybe even just a good discussion to have before we wrap up here, is he said that we as Christians need to have a little bit more respect and grace for one another if we have different views about some things.

Because there have been Christians that say, you know, we absolutely should absolutely meet, and some that say we absolutely should not.

Now, when we interviewed him, this was several weeks ago. Things were very different several weeks ago.

There was like one or two states with stay -at -home orders at that point. But I think

I always quote this. I can't remember his name. I apologize.

But an article I read on apologetics, and this apologist was talking about Christian apologists disagreeing about something in Christian apologetics.

I can't even remember really what it was. But within that article, he said, how do we look to the world when we treat one another like this?

And I think that's a good reminder. I think of that with social media so much when you see

Christians out in the open for the world to see, treat each other so horribly because they disagree.

And so it's a good reminder, even if we disagree about some of the things that we've talked about here, that we remember that we're all part of the same church, that we're brothers and sisters, and to disagree with respect and grace, not ignore our differences, but disagree with respect and grace because we're to be the light of the world.

I agree. Anyone have anything else they want to share? Yeah, I could pop in,

I guess. I know I've mentioned economics of things, and so I do have very strong opinions about economics, and I'm a very strong critic of the government.

And basically, I think it's like everything the government does is wrong, especially in this situation.

But as Colleen said, as Christians, we should be able to have our opinions and express them with love and charity.

So I'm not going to do an R .C. Sproul and say, what's wrong with you people?

I'll give my opinion, but I'll definitely do it in charity and just try to get people to think certain ways, like think, okay, our trust is not in government saviors sending us stimulus checks and protecting us from ourselves.

Our trust should be in God. And we can even, as Christians, with our testimony, even as the

Apostle Paul did, submit to the authorities, even if we strongly disagree with them.

And so it's like I'm not going to be a rebel and go outside and start yelling about the way

I think about government. I'm going to stay at home, practice social distancing, which

I think is a good thing to do. But I could be a good citizen and a light for Jesus Christ, even when

I disagree with people's views or what the government's doing. And I'll say, it goes back to a little bit earlier whenever we were discussing the numbers of the cases.

I think there's definitely a flaw in the way that these cases are being counted.

Now, let me clarify. I do think that nationally that we have a lot more cases than are going to be confirmed.

Obviously, they're not going to test absolutely everyone. Instances such as my wife, she wouldn't be tested if she come up sick.

But the cases that they are reporting as confirmed, I do believe that there is some good amount of error in those numbers, especially if they're not testing people, but they're considering them confirmed based on symptom alone.

Because some of the symptoms are very similar to flu, similar to bronchitis.

So I mean, it could be a misdiagnosis and they're confirming that. So I think that is a reason for concern.

On the other hand, I see this as something that is going to hopefully improve our witness, improve our family worship.

Hopefully, like Andrew's been saying, this is going to make us get a lot more creative in how we evangelize to others.

Really, the conversation right now shouldn't be, well, we're being pushed to the point where we can't do anything.

I think the conversation needs to be how can we further the gospel in light of the current situation.

I agree. Well, I hope this is helpful for folks.

I hope that just give you guys some creative ideas. Maybe you could come up with ideas.

Contact us. Let us know your thoughts. You can find us, all of us, at thechristianpodcastcommunity .org.

That's where all of our podcasts live and you can find them all there, but check all of them out.

The ones that we've already, we've mentioned a couple of them throughout the evening. I hope that in light of everything going on in life right now, as stressful for some as it may be, may this be helpful to you, encouraging to you, give you, as I think

Colleen said, hope. We will get through this. As Christians, we will get through this knowing that God is in control.

None of this caught God off guard. It's not like he didn't know this wasn't, like, oops,

I didn't realize that was going to happen. No, God knew that this was going to happen. He's in control of all of it.

He's providentially working this in the lives of the people in every life. He knows what he's doing.

That's the advantage as Christians that we have is we can know that God is good. God is omniscient.

He knows what he's doing. He's omnipotent. He's in control, powerful enough to do anything he wants.

He's sovereign. If we focus on the attributes of God, boy, can that put our mindset right.

I hope that that's what you're doing. I hope that you'd be thinking about who God is during these times.

One of the things I had said to some folks is that this is a time that as Christians we get more into scripture.

We get more into looking what scripture says, that we're learning, we're studying, maybe more than we ever have because now is a time where God may be trying to work in our lives.

May that be the closing message. Until next Throwdown next month, I just hope that this is an encouragement to you and we'll see you next time on the next

Theology Throwdown. Theology Throwdown.