Exhorter Podcast
Welcome to the Exhorter Podcast where we aim to stir up love and good works, through bite-sized biblical discussion. This local effort of the Church of Christ located in Clovis California is hosted by Kyle Goodwin, Paul Nerland, Nate Shankels, and Jon Bradford.
Exhorter Podcast
56 - That Sounds Denominational: Focusing More On Authority
Historically we’ve made a strong effort to draw doctrinal distinctions between the Church and denominational churches. But when determining if an activity is right for us or our local church, we sometimes may ask ourselves “Would that make us look like them?”. Let’s unpack this comparison idea a little more and dive into the practice of finding scriptural authority for what we do.
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Welcome to the Exordr podcast, where it is our aim to stir up love and good works through bite-sized Biblical conversation. We thank you for listening in today, john. What's our topic?
Speaker 2:So historically we've made an effort to draw distinctions between the church, our church, our you know local church and other community churches or denominations. This may not be a vocal process that we actually talk about, but we do tend to ask ourselves would that make us look like them? And so I thought we'd let some pack that idea and see if it's valid or see if it limits us in any way. Maybe I introduced that wrong. It's fine by me. What about you guys? Have you ever found yourself saying this or thinking that sounds denominational.
Speaker 3:I think when I was younger like a teenager and first a Christian the congregation where I grew up was very one small and two, very focused on being different than others, and I think that was more the focus than actually, you know, doing what the Bible taught. And so, yeah, I think early on in my Christianity I did have thoughts like that, like, oh well, we probably shouldn't do that because this other church does that and they've got some, some wrong thoughts. Questionable, yeah, questionable practices or yeah, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:So well, yeah, let's start with an example and we're going to like hit really close to home. Let's say VBS or youth forum or lectureship, or let's say group meetings, okay, so there's lots of. I mean all of those things denominations and local community churches do in different ways and they use different language here and there. Maybe you call it different things, but at the end of the day they do similar things. And I have actually heard members you know in conversations and you know out and about that that say, well, that sounds very, you know, community church or that sounds very denominational, and there was kind of a judgment on those things. Obviously that was their perspective, that maybe we shouldn't be doing these things because others do it and it sounds like them, I think, a familiar example, probably, that we all encountered growing up would be like eating in the church building.
Speaker 1:Sure, you know you shouldn't do it. And I remember, like work days, where if you brought food to like do a work day at the church building, like we're doing yard work, you better make sure you eat it outside. And I get the thought process there is. We don't want to give the wrong impression or cross any lines, but I did find myself wondering have we overthought this a little bit? Is it actually wrong? We're not here to eat, we're here to do work and we got to eat and it's raining outside. Why am I going to sit out in the rain or try and sit under a tree when I could just sit inside the building?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think this all comes with a long legacy in history throughout the church of the creeping in of institutionalism and the being on guard for not letting it creep in and being very uncomfortable with that and I certainly respect the concern and I understand the concern behind it Right and I think where my where I thought we'd talk about a little bit today is just this that's a very subjective thought.
Speaker 2:It's a very subjective thought. You can't like write it down and say sounds like denominationalism or sounds like community church to me, because if you're going to get a group of elders or a group of members together in the same room, you're going to have different perspectives about what that looks like, based upon whether or not they're very conservative or they're lean on conservative.
Speaker 2:They'll say one word, just say less conservative, less conservative, so you're going to have a different perspective, and I don't like having questionable guidelines. You know me, I love gray areas. The thesis here that I'm putting out here is that I would lean to looking at every situation separately and according to the authority we might have for it in the scriptures, versus judge things based upon a feeling that it's not. Does it feel like church, christ?
Speaker 1:Sometimes we do things that are basically the same thing, but we're afraid to call it. You talked about our youth form. No, no, no. What would we call our groups? Again, it's not here.
Speaker 3:Encouragement groups. Encouragement groups.
Speaker 1:So we thought you already brought up our encouragement groups and I've been put in charge of facilitating the group that consists of college and high school kids. I'm really fighting hard to not let the word youth group slip out. Sure, because I don't want to sound like you know, look what's wrong with the idea of, you know, of a youth group? I mean?
Speaker 2:isn't that what we Sounds like? A whole other topic.
Speaker 1:Sounds pretty useful to me I remember inviting a friend to church on a Wednesday night one time and he's like, oh, it's your youth group. I said no, it's just Bible class, yeah. But the more I thought it, I'm like it's a group of youths and we separate from the rest of the church.
Speaker 3:It's a youth group.
Speaker 1:Maybe we do, maybe they do a little more fun and games than we do, but we're afraid to take that label because it sounds. I don't want to think. We have a youth group.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I remember growing up thinking that that was a sin. Wow, that church has a youth group, like that's.
Speaker 1:Better not hang out with other young Christians and have fun, that's wrong, Like that's wrong.
Speaker 3:So yeah, I can totally see where you're coming from with that Cal.
Speaker 2:And as the curb appeal to those things goes, surface level of that iceberg surface level. The idea of youth being gathered together to engage in activities together and or Bible studies is not a bad thing. It's to what level those were supported financially and organized by the church. And we're all focused on Bible study or activities that we can do at home and outside the church, what's proper and appropriate and authorized for God's money and resources and facilities. And that's why this gets into the pool of respecting the work and the struggle that previous generations have gone through to stave off institutionalism from the church. We respect and we acknowledge that. But to this point I feel like today we just kind of have this moniker that we say if it looks and sounds and smells and acts like that, then it's wrong.
Speaker 2:And I do a lot of activities around here and I try to organize some things, and so this is my own self-check and I kind of wanted to talk about this today because I kind of I go through this motion of thinking is that right for us to do and, if so, what's the appropriate language and the way we talk about it and the way we promote it, because I don't want it to sound like we're doing something that makes people feel like it's not authorized or it's against God's word, and then they would their conscience would be pricked by participating in it. I don't want that. I want full participation in things that are good and authorized by God. But we are talking about, like those examples we just gave.
Speaker 1:We don't want to have a clear example of necessarily doing those things we want to make sure we ask why we're doing these things, and the purpose needs to be to worship, to edify, to build up, to learn about God or really glorify God specifically in doing the work of the church. And I think an important question is you know, on the one hand, I don't want to be afraid of something that's biblical just because someone else does it, some other church does it. It doesn't mean we own the market on truth. Other people can be, you know, they can have parts of it correct too. It doesn't. You know we don't have to have that kind of attitude. But we don't want to go too far to the other extreme. Sometimes do we do something just because we see other groups doing it is trendy right now.
Speaker 2:Right, and I know one of the fears is that we might slip into this perspective that the Bible doesn't say you can't, and that we're using that kind of argument. So we, how do we? How do we struggle against that and make the decision? Is this something we should be doing?
Speaker 1:It reminds me of Israel wanting a king. In 1 Samuel, chapter eight, they said to Samuel look, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations. And Samuel was very displeased with that. And God said to him heed the voice of the people and all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they've rejected me, that I should not reign over them. And God talks about.
Speaker 1:You want a king. Here's what it's going to be like. He will take, he'll take your money. He'll take the food that you grow. He'll take your sons and send them off to fight in his wars. He'll take, he'll take, he'll take. You had it so good with me as your king, but this is what you want, this is what you're going to get. But they just wanted to be like everyone else. They didn't stop to think why would we want this? What would be the benefit of this? But just, everyone else had a king and they needed that physical manifestation of their leadership. They needed that person that they could see for some reason, and they just want to be like everyone else.
Speaker 2:I think along the lines of you're trying to stave off the idea of how the slippery slope that you you know, I think of 1 Corinthians, 10, 23,. All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful but not all things build up. Just because there's not a Bible verse that says you can't do it is not a open invitation to you know, adopt certain things that may be successful and useful in other churches and dominations. I think you do need to have a reason behind them and you do need to make sure that you do have lawful scripture and guidance for why you would do that.
Speaker 2:What's the goal of this effort? Is it to exhort and encourage one another? Then, do you have scriptural reference to help that? Do you have guidance along those? Right here we're doing a podcast and this is maybe akin to the old radio shows that they used to do 60 years ago or maybe less. So I mean, it's not like this is completely unique, but this could be difficult for some to think that we have authority to do something like this.
Speaker 1:Well, and if we're not careful, we could end up, I think, about some of the low points in Israel and Judah's history. And in the days of Manasseh he did a lot of evil, and I mean a lot. He tried to make some corrections at the end and accomplish some things. But the high places you know we don't have time to get into exactly what those were, but that was associated with pagan worship. That was a constant problem throughout Judah's history and Manasseh was able to remove the high places, but he was able to remove the altars and the idols. But it says in 2 Chronicles 33, 17,.
Speaker 1:Nevertheless, the people still sacrificed on the high places, but only to Yahweh, their God. So they were worshiping God, but in the way or manner of the Canaanite nations. In the high places God says make your offerings at my temple, that's my house. But they said well, the high places, we like going there, that's what everyone else is doing and that's the caution is, we don't want to think it's all in God's name, but is it how he wants us to worship him? Is it the manner in which he expects us to worship him?
Speaker 2:So maybe the church isn't great at evangelizing, so the church then looks for ways that it can do that. I think then that brings up questionable things, that what does advertising look like?
Speaker 2:Do we think of this as a marketing firm. What would you know? What do other churches do to then and are successful doing? We talked about a funnel, right? And if you make the funnel so small and so restrictive in the beginning, they can't get into the church then to find out what we are all about. And so if you're only marketing or only focusing on reaching out to people who totally already agree and know what a church is or know what you believe, you're going to actually reach fewer people than the perspective, like that a lot of maybe denominations look at, is is how do we, how do we make that funnel larger, right? How do we bring in more people? Now they, I think, can go astray by thinking about how do we keep them here by adding things to our worship and doing things that maybe aren't in accordance to God's word, but at some point we do come up with ideas and try to think about how do we actually reach more people. And we're in the world of technology now we're in the world of media.
Speaker 2:Now we're in the world of internet and Google ads and different things, and so we start thinking about well, how would you get your message out there in a current day and time? And then we start questioning are those lawful? Well, they didn't have them before, so what are we going to question here? And so I think these are good conversations to have right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I mean, it's like I don't know anywhere in the Bible where it says you shall have a sign up that will attract or let people know where you're meeting. Sure, but we do right, so let's apply that logic a little further. Now everybody is online for almost everything, so can we have some online real estate?
Speaker 2:Yeah, can we have Facebook page? We already do. We have a website, right.
Speaker 3:We already do so. Are those things that we're authorized to do? Yeah, and I guess it really does become. Where are you going to draw the line?
Speaker 2:And what you're comfortable with and where comfortability of other people are too like not to offend and not to necessarily. I mean, you're going to get feedback from your members and people. People are going to have feelings about those things and how do you address those right? How do you address those with empathy and concern for their thoughts and feelings? But then where do you make your decisions? And that's kind of like. Where I wanted to center this all down to is not using this turn of phrase or this thought of sounds like and smells like and looks like, because it's so subjective that that's not a good decision making. The decision making should come from.
Speaker 1:Is it?
Speaker 2:scriptural.
Speaker 3:Yeah, is it scriptural? It does level.
Speaker 2:And I think that's kind of where I want to land here is I feel like that's more important. And the thing is is when you go that direction, we're talking. Like you know, when you're a parent, it's so much easier to yell across the house at your kid, so much easier than it is to get up, walk into the room, sit down, get on their level and have a direct conversation with them.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I think we can get lazy and we just say that sounds like them, versus let me study and find out what the Bible really says. That's some hard work to sit there and then look for biblical authority to do something or not to do something, versus just say we've never done that before. What if he's not specific? What if?
Speaker 3:God's not specific. What if the Bible's not specific?
Speaker 2:Well, that's my thing. You just go through principle or go through the purpose of things. I mean it takes work.
Speaker 1:I think one principle that really helps in a lot of these questions about we're afraid to do things, and sometimes we end up not doing enough because we're afraid it will be too denominational in appearance Again acknowledging the concerns being valid about the slippery slope and things like that but we also leave a lot undone. Yeah, we don't. That's something when you talk to Gen Z and millennials and kind of the younger half of society today. Why are so many Christians leaving their faith or their church? It's because they see a lack of action, and so is the answer then that, as a church, we should have a food drive here. Well, that looks denominational and it is iffy from a biblical standpoint.
Speaker 2:Right, Well, I know members who go out and they take food and water and stuff to homeless people. We don't have an effort there organized in the church building though.
Speaker 1:Then yeah, and that's where we need to do a better job. If it doesn't have to be something organized by the church and this is where, if we're concerned about appearing denominational then let's stop acting like a denomination and let's just start acting like Christians. If I want to go do something and organize something, I can call everyone in the church directory and say, hey, we're going to go do this.
Speaker 3:Come with us.
Speaker 1:I'm making a big food donation to this food bank on this date. Bring food to my house by this time and I'll store it up and I'll deliver it. Or in Utah we used to go often and go to volunteer at a food place, a soup kitchen, and that was something that one of our elders just felt compelled that, and he would send out text to everybody and say we're all going on this date. Please let me know if you want to come along. It's not a work of the church, it's just Christians being Christians and you know there's principles like that. You talk about principles First. Timothy, chapter five, I think, is a great principle when it talks about widows. If she's under the age of 60 and she's got family that can support her, it pulses don't burden the church, doesn't have to be something you know. If she's over 60 and has no family, then the church, by all means she should be supported, her needs should be met. But he says there are some situations where you just don't got to burden the church.
Speaker 1:One of my favorite teachers I ever had when I was in middle school her name was Sue and she was just a great teacher and I remember going through the book of Exodus and I forget which museum in Portland, but it was the traveling, I think it was. King Tut was making his rounds around the United States and there was an Egypt exhibit for a short time at this museum in downtown Portland. We didn't need a church bus, it wasn't a youth group event. But Miss Sue had a Volkswagen bus and said hey, sunday after Bible class she talked to all the parents I'm just going to take all the kids to this Egypt exhibit and bring them back Sunday night for church. It wasn't something that they needed to burden the church with. It wasn't an act of the church, it was just or a youth group event.
Speaker 3:It was just Christians being Christians.
Speaker 1:But yeah, so it kind of was. But it's just, if we're so concerned about looking like a denomination, let's just stop acting like a denomination altogether.
Speaker 3:And expecting the leadership to say go do this, go do that, go do this, go do that. And be Christians and take responsibility for ourselves and say you know what it is good to give to others? It is good to go help at a soup kitchen or something. So I'm going to organize me and several other members to go do that.
Speaker 2:I've heard that exact explanation being of why people think it's really important to be open to your homes and be hospitable. We don't need a fellowship hall. We have homes. We can invite people over into our homes and we can do that. That's another example of when people look at internally to their own resources and abilities and step up and do the work we don't need to necessarily put it on leadership or the church to decide whether or not it's authorized to do.
Speaker 1:When I lived in Utah, I was always kind of jealous that every time I'd visit a Mormon church building for like a funeral, or I didn't go often.
Speaker 1:but I noticed that every one of their buildings there has a basketball court and I was like, yeah, lucky. But growing up my dad rented an elementary school gym and told all the guys at church Monday nights, just bring two bucks. And I'm sure my dad lost money on it every week not much, but I'm sure he paid a little bit out of his own pocket for it. But we didn't need a basketball court at our church and we have Monday night basketball every week.
Speaker 3:So Bubba Bird, who is connected directly with Clovis High.
Speaker 2:School. You better be listening.
Speaker 3:Are you listening? Please get us a key to the gym. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2:But you know exactly, and I think that that's that may be kind of curtail a lot of these questionable things, but also, like, when we are talking about some things that we do decide to do in the in, with our building and with our efforts, well, obviously the elders are going to make those decisions.
Speaker 1:But I think one of the most dangerous ways though this enters into the church and into our thinking is when it comes to doctrines, particularly about salvation. I start talking about grace too much. Inevitably there's going to be someone that has to say and remind you but don't forget about baptism. We're saved by. You got to be baptized, and I'm not going to disagree with that. We're not saved apart from your own obedience, and obedience is required. That I mean. Read Ephesians, chapter 2, and he says very plainly you are dead in your sins. What can a dead person do? Nothing, ephesians 2 and verse 8, for by grace you have been saved through faith. And I don't know, I can't imagine. I'm the only one that grew up in the church and felt like, as I've grown older, that I just don't think we've given grace its proper due when we talk about salvation, and it's because we're afraid of sounding like a faith only. Yeah, baptism is something and it just sounds too baptism. So we gotta make sure baptism 1st Peter 321, baptism now saves you. Don't forget that one.
Speaker 3:It's the. You know they're over here and we want to distance ourselves from them because we know they're wrong about X, and so we go all the way to the other end of the spectrum, which isn't necessarily the best thing to do, because salvation is more than just baptism, and it's also more than just faith right, there's some other things involved with it. So let's meet in the middle, where it really is, where it's faith, where it's grace, where it's baptism, where it's repentance, where it's confession.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and acknowledging we need to be different and we need to let our light shine. We are in Matthew 5, that city set up on a hill. We won't be hidden. We need to show that we are not like every other denomination or every other church in the world, but we need to not be too focused on what we're not and focused on what we are and we know what we are. We know what we preach, and the focus is from the scriptures, not necessarily from just not wanting to be like something else. You can't, just you can't be what we should be by comparison to others, and it's just a silly way to make decisions.
Speaker 3:Well, should we do this? Well, they do it, so we shouldn't. Well, do they not do this? Yeah, they don't do that, so we can do that. That's just a silly way to make decisions. It's like yeah.
Speaker 2:But I'm not bringing this up because I'm trying to add some more liberty or validate doing things that other congregations do. I just don't like that argument.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not yet I just don't like the thinking Not yet, not yet, Not yet. You're not. But this is your Trojan horse, this is my Trojan horse.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I just I don't really like having that kind of context and focus, and so I think that that's maybe the point. Leaving here is, I think it's really important for us to have scriptural authority and or at least seek it and find it and let the elders make decisions that are good for us and the congregation, and not be so worried all the time about what it might look like to someone outside. As long as we are putting God in the Bible first, I think we'll be good.
Speaker 3:Thanks for bringing up a good topic, maybe one that's not top of mind for people, but definitely something that is good to think about and I think we can all say, oh yeah, that thought has crossed my mind, or I've heard someone say that. So appreciate you bringing this up, john, and for those of you listening, if you find value in found value in this episode, please like, subscribe, share it with your friends and, yeah, let's, we look forward to seeing you on the podcast again, hearing you again. We look forward to you hearing us more in the future. You should listen.
Speaker 2:Keep listening.
Speaker 1:Please, you know it was really. It was really cool about going to that Egypt exhibit was it was right after the mummy with Brendan Fraser came out. So I was all jazzed up about mummies in Egypt and I bought a little wooden scarab, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I was going to come alive at night and cut those babies. Oh yeah, that was so creepy, that was such a good.
Speaker 1:that was such a good that they had. That was good Indiana Jones movie.
