Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Welcome in to the Think Deeper podcast. Jack Wilkie here, and I've got something a little different for you this week. This time we recorded, for the first time ever, a live Think Deeper podcast recording, and we got to do it at the Engage Conference at the Brown Street Church of Christ in Waxahatchee, Texas. Joe and Will and I were joined this time by Dr. Brad Harrib, and we had a great time. Unfortunately, this was something that we were a little bit new at and we had some technical difficulties. So the first few minutes of the episode have been cut because the file was corrupted. Thankfully, something leveled out and the rest of it gets a lot better from there. You might hear a little bit of crackling here and there, but overall, the rest of it is pretty good. So we're going to cut you in to the first couple of minutes after that. So I'll give you the introduction here. We spoke about apathy in the church. Apathy among church leadership, apathy among the membership, how apathy is created, how it's addressed with this big problem that so many churches deal with, that so many Christians are frustrated by looking around and wondering, why are there so many apathetic Christians? So that's the topic of this week's episode. And so, without further ado, here is our episode on apathy.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: So we talk a lot about threats from outside the church, Right?
That's a big part of our podcast. The things that we need to be paying attention to, things we need to be worried about.
This is a sneaky one. You know, this is one that can show up every single Sunday, and then we end up pinning on the wrong person. We end up pinning it on. A lot of times the preacher, to your point, preacher ends up getting fired while he's not stirring the congregation.
And what I worry about is that he becomes the scapegoat for a much broader problem of Christians that can't be moved. It's. You know, I deal with this a lot in therapy. Like, I can't force people to change.
And so, yeah, I might be a bad therapist. On the other hand, that doesn't excuse their inability. Correct. I can't make the change for them. And so when we look at leadership, when we look at preachers, they cannot force people to do things. But this is a real problem taking place in, I would say, the majority of churches.
[00:02:09] Speaker C: Sorry, Jack, I'm sure you got some thoughts. I was just going to say, I know that the biblical example that we kind of always jump to with this word apathy is Laodicea In Revelation, Chapter three, the church at Laodicea, the word lukewarm is used to describe them. I don't think there's anything wrong with that label. But the church that sticks out to me is actually. I think it's in Chapter two, the church of Sardis. This just. This dead. It's just a dead church. And that, to me, is far more reminiscent of, you know, when you think of the word apathy. And then we should probably be.
We should probably get this out in front that this is not every congregation. It's not every single congregation that's overrun with. With apathetic Christians. We're talking more as a, you know, as a whole, overall, you know, this is a problem that pops up here and there. But again, just as far as biblical examples go, that church at Sardis that's described in Revelation 2, unfortunately, I do think mirrors a lot of the churches we see today.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: You know, I'm an Old Testament guy, and so I've got to go there. I think of Malachi, where they're just throwing lame sacrifices on the altar and where God is kind of having this back and forth with them, like asking these rhetorical questions and hypotheticals and all that. And he says, would you give your governor this? Like, would you.
And I think it's fair to ask people, would you give your workplace this? Do you give your kids, sports teams, this kind of effort and care and all that? Well, no, of course not. You're just throwing a lame sacrifice on the altar, and that has to be brought before people to think what? Actually, you're the living and holy sacrifice. Romans 12:1 and 2.
What are you putting on your altar?
[00:03:36] Speaker A: Why do you think that is, though? Like, why do you think? Because you're right. They're not apathetic when it comes to sports teams, college teams, whatever it may be. I mean, it's college football season, right? NFL's about to start. People are not apathetic about those things. Why are they apathetic about.
[00:03:47] Speaker C: Just to add to that, even in your career, like, in the workforce, it's kind of common knowledge that if you're not passionate about what you do, if a company's not passionate and there's nothing really effort being like, that company's gonna get left behind, like, they're not gonna be able to compete. And so it's like, we understand it in other areas of life, but maybe not in the church.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: The consumer thing is there's the heaven focused issue. Well, I'm doing enough to get to heaven. I think I'm probably saved, so I've got that covered. And yeah, I could give more, but like, do I have to?
Because there's so many things like that. Well, I donated 50 bucks to, you know, St. Jude or whatever. Yeah, I could probably give him a thousand bucks, but I don't, you know, I got other things to do with that. And it's kind of the same with the church. Well, I'll give them Sunday, but I mean, Sunday night, Wednesday night, I don't know. And so it's, it's that minimum box checking mindset.
[00:04:31] Speaker D: Well, you think about somebody who maybe they are a professional landscaper and they're cutting beautiful lines into yards of all these folks that they have on their roll charging good money and church such as, hey, can you, can you mow our grass? And they're like, like, yeah, yeah. And you look at it and there's no beautiful lines, there's no nothing. And it's like, like just drew 30 minutes at it. Got it, got it. Quick. And when you, when you confront them about it as well, that's the truth.
And the mindset is I can come with the least amount of sacrifices or offerings or whatever because after all, that's just a church.
We've got to change that.
[00:05:16] Speaker B: Okay, that. The bandwidth word though, comes up because you're talking about lawns. I just got a lawnmower. I had a guy mowing it because I didn't.
Yeah, it was a long story. Got a lawnmower. I've started mowing it. I have six kids, two newborns.
It doesn't look very good. It's getting done. Okay. Like the grass.
[00:05:32] Speaker C: Imagine why.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: But as far as the lines, I
[00:05:35] Speaker B: kind of have the lines. But as far as, like the trimming around the edge. Oh, no, no edging. Oh, yeah. No, no, no. And so.
But I can't, I can't give it any. Like, yeah, if Alison and I lived alone and the kids were all out of the house, I'd probably have a good looking lawn. I can't give it that now. I think some people look at that as the church. Like, well, when my kids are grown, when. And there's that trope of like, well, at this season of life, I'll do more for the church when I'm older, when I'm this, that. When I'm less busy. That never happens because of how you are right now.
[00:06:02] Speaker D: They find excuses at every age. I mean, all the way up through retirement, it's like, just let me get the kids raised. Well, the kids get raised and they're gone. And it's like, okay, well then let me have retirement. And then that comes. Then it's I'm tired, let me retire, rest.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: But let me ask this.
It seems to me, I remember, I mean, when we grew up, we did all sorts of stuff. We had time for that. I look at it now, I don't feel like I have time for anything with the kids, like hardly time for anything. I don't know what accounts for that because it seems like we weren't all that big. We just fit it in, we just did it. And nowadays you look at families, they don't just do it. Like there, there's a bazillion one things. But I wonder how much social media plays on this. I wonder how much, you know, Netflix and things along those lines play on this. Where.
But distractions, are we getting busier bandwidth
[00:06:44] Speaker B: thing is a fair question, correct?
[00:06:46] Speaker A: To your point, are we getting busier in life? Is that legitimate? Because again, I remember doing a lot as a kid and, and is that a, like, how do we combat that? Maybe as we think about apathy, just to chase that out for a second, how do we combat the busyness?
[00:06:58] Speaker C: Well, I was going to ask too, and not to just pile another question on, but just to add to kind of this equation here, dad, again, I'll direct it to you. So actually here at the, at the Engage conference last night, I presented some stats about how we are, you know, we've consistently declined in the churches of Christ as far as numbers go.
That does go back, you know, farther than just 10 years. That's going back, you know, even into the 90s, the 1990s. And so I'm curious, kind of again, you get the busyness question.
I don't think that is just the last 10 year issue. I do think, you know, there's an argument to be made that we are far more distracted now than ever before.
But again, to direct it back to you, who's been having elders answered this question this way for, I would say 20 years or more, how do you think that plays in when, you know, back in the 90s, as soon we started, that's when we started seeing the decline. And so I would imagine apathy extends all the way back to then.
Why do you think, like, how do we get here, I guess is the best way to ask that question?
[00:07:53] Speaker D: I think part of it is we allowed people to think that Christianity and religion is just something you clock in and clock out on Sunday and a Wednesday night, go back and look in the sermons in the 90s, the 2000s, there was a lot of, of don't forsake the assembly. And it was pounded and pounded and pounded. Meaning you need to be here Sunday, you need to be here Sunday night, you need to be here Wednesday night. And people assumed or wrongly took that, okay, as long as I've done that, I've done my Christianity, I can check that box. Well, guess what? It didn't produce faithful box. And so over time, I think what happened is as long as they were sitting in a pew, then that box got checked, they're good, everything's good.
And there wasn't the passion anymore, there wasn't the hey, how can I serve?
Add that to what something you guys talk about all the time and that is consumerism.
We went from what can I bring? To what do you have to offer me? And that's been a pretty big shift.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: When was that shift like, and why was that shift? When did people stop going from.
I mean, is it the rise of the Internet, is it the rise of social media?
[00:09:03] Speaker B: Say this consumerism, literal consumerism. You think about how much cheap goods and the Chinese market opening up and all that, like that is a shift. People don't talk about that much of how much junk you have in your house and going out to eat and all those things like consumerism has grown and grown and grown in so many ways. Well, why wouldn't it grow religiously? Why wouldn't it be a commodity kind of what he's talking about and all of that. And so another factor I want to throw into this is it doesn't automatically make it better if you're in a different part of the country. But the Bible Belt, you don't have that like us against the world thing. That sometimes is what brings people together. It's, I've got that, but the rest of the week is pretty much the same. Whereas people in, I've known very close knit churches in California, Minnesota, places like
[00:09:45] Speaker C: that, because they don't have anybody else,
[00:09:47] Speaker B: that's what they got. That's their real family they've got to connect with.
If it's just, you know, I just need somewhere to be on Sunday, then yeah, that apathy is going to set in. And not that there's not well connected churches here in the Bible Belt. I mean, what we're seeing here at Brown street this week, there's a lot of great things going on and there's a lot of great churches through the Bible Belt. But I do think it can be easier to slip into the apathy. It's like, oh, church is doing great over there without me. We're good.
[00:10:13] Speaker D: So let me ask. You've been asking me questions. Let me come back to you guys.
Has the church played a role in building an apathetic attitude or environment?
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Yeah, because I think we've over programmed ourselves and I think we've, you know, it's instead of fostering real relationships that I think keep people going. That's why people do what they do is relationships. You know, how do you have people that you look at like a kid soccer. If you were to take your kids to soccer, to football or to whatever sport and you didn't talk to anybody, you didn't get along with anybody, like, how long would you do it? Probably not a ton. But there's a community. I mean, you look at Texas, football is huge. There's a community. And when you're part of it.
Exactly. People want to be a part of something. And I feel like churches gave them every last thing that they could to try to keep them happy other than real relationships. And I think people just found their relationships outside the church in a way that they didn't used to.
[00:11:08] Speaker D: Let me, let me jump in and tell you something I've seen too, in traveling and in the last 10 years.
Parents who are apathetic are now raising young people who basically are mentally checked out.
They are physically in a church building, but they don't sing.
They may or may not take the Lord's supper, just depending on if mom and dad, you know, whatever the feeling is. But you can look at them and tell they're not here, like they're somewhere else.
[00:11:38] Speaker C: Yeah. Just to speak to the young people thing, that one of the very first episodes of the Golly Amen podcast that Joe and I did back in 2023, January 20, we talked about how again, focusing kind of on young men, how it became cool to kind of not try to kind of have the attitude of like, well, I don't care. You know, nonchalance is the word that's used now. But like, you know, I'm not going to try that hard. I'm just, I'm going to not really care too much about any, any one thing. And obviously that's, you know, for young people, more on the minor end, what you're starting to see now is young people who are kind of looking at that, you know, going, that's, that's no longer cool to not care about things. Like it is cool to care about your country, your sports team or whatever. I mean, we've all played sports with guys that you can tell, like, they just, they're not really here. Like, those people are the worst to play with.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:23] Speaker C: Because it's like, I need you to care about this. Right. And so I. I do think just to. From a little bit of a level of encouragement, I. I do think that that is a positive momentum shift because it's coming back to, you know, somebody who doesn't try, somebody who. Who doesn't care. And again, this is different context, but that's no longer looked at in a positive light. It's. That's looked at as, you know, kind of what is wrong with you.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Another challenge for churches is what are you asking people to be involved in? It has to be this. There's this delicate balance between, we're asking you to serve because if there's no service, it's just, hey, show up and
[00:12:57] Speaker C: we'll do stuff for you, which is consuming.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: It's consuming. And it's like, well, if I like it, I'll be there, and if I don't, I won't.
So it's got to be something where they're involved. But on the other hand, if it's just all, you know, they're the pack mule, you're just putting all the burden of the church on them because you've got those people that are like, they're the Bible class teacher, volunteer for 15 years, and they show up and they put on all the poly. They do all the things. You just burn them out. And yes, there's a blessing in serving, but, like, what are. Are they getting community out of it? Are they getting friendship and. And just the. The blessings of that? Or is it just work, work, work? And then for the other people, is it just take, take, take. There has to be a balance where people are feeling like it's, hey, if I go and actually serve, I'll get something out of, like, this is going to bless me and my family.
And sometimes in the small churches, it's all work, work, work, because we just. We need as many hands as possible. The big churches, it's take, take, take is the one they have to fight against.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: We see this in almost. I mean, we've been to tons of congregations. You could speak to this far better than me. It seems like in each congregation, there is one or two people that do almost. In the smaller congregations, do almost everything else. And we're talking 80 members in down, where one family or one man or
[00:14:06] Speaker D: whatever it is, one woman, 80, 20 rule.
[00:14:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And sometimes I think it's like, a 95, 5 rule. And I wonder if that plays into it as well. Like, oh, they got it. You know, kind of to your point, Jack, what you're talking about. Oh, they got it, you know, so and so just always does it. We burn them out. They're not getting the benefits as you're talking about. And I just wonder how that ends up getting fixed if that person goes, I'm not doing it anymore. I mean, from a.
What I would tell people or that I work with is like, hey, the enablers. Like when you're enabling, at some point it stops being helping and starts becoming enabling. But these things have to get done in the church. And that's where I think leadership can step in and go, guys, we're running this kind of the ground, you know, we've got, somebody's got to be able to step up, otherwise this isn't going to get done. But then you have this difficulty of this great work that the church is doing, might drop if this guy isn't doing everything. That to me is one of the biggest struggles of apathy is you start getting upset at brethren because you're not getting the help that you need. You are getting burnt out, whatever it may be.
[00:14:56] Speaker C: Let me ask this, how much in your opinion, we've got some elders in the audience.
How much do you think church leadership can obviously not force labor, but really, really push people on? Hey, again, not going to literally force them. I need you to an example that comes to mind. Obviously very different.
But you know, for kids, I've heard anecdotal stories from people before, like maybe they struggle with work ethic. Well, guess what, you make them work, get them out there mowing the grass, get them out there, you know, working on stuff. Over time that work ethic starts to develop, right? You know, younger kids especially, similarly, I wonder how much for some of these apathetic members of churches that we're talking about, if you do get them into those roles where you're serving, you get them involved, you give them some level of buy in almost if that starts to kind of cure the apathy, you know. But again, for the parent, to the kid, the parent can easily, you know, I can tell my 9 year old you're going to come out and do yard work with me. Don't matter if it doesn't matter if you like it or not. Obviously you can't do that with church members. But I'm curious, to what level can church leadership essentially like demand? I, I need you to come through.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: I think this is where Elders have to know their flock. They have to know the people that are drowning and could really use some help, you know, with their kids. Throwing another thing on there is like, that's not going to help. You know, that's only going to further
[00:16:13] Speaker C: alienate with the twins.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: Correct. You're not the guy to go to and get all that stuff done if he knows that. But he may know another family that's got all the bandwidth in the world that's doing nothing. You go lean on them a little bit more and figure out how to help you to extend. Extend bandwidth.
[00:16:24] Speaker D: And to me, you pair them up.
So you've got sister so and so that has taught a cradle role for 20 years.
[00:16:30] Speaker C: Never had a break.
[00:16:31] Speaker D: Yeah, never had a break. And she's tired. Well, if you look over here and you see, you know, you know, a young lady who looks like they're just kind of going through the motions, checking out, may not be really, really invested.
That's the person you grab and you say, I want you to help her.
She really, you know, she's tired, she needs help, blah, blah, blah. And then you let them blossom together, flourish together.
You may light a fire under that, young lady.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: We. The word that comes to mind is expectations. Like, what is it fair for elders to expect of members? And honestly, do they expect anything of members? Like, we expect them to attend at least Sunday morning. Okay. But I think we should expect more. We should expect family worship for families. We should expect involvement in some kind of church thing. We should expect. And what happens if they don't expect. And that's where you get into the conversation of, like, how much is carrot and how much is stick? Like, man the carrot. It would be so great. You got a church family that loves you, and you can really bless people and serve people. Serve and be fulfilled in this way. Yeah. And look, man, everyone who does this is having a good time and they're growing from it and all that. And also, you need to do something like God says, don't be lukewarm. And so we got a problem there. And again, Old Testament, we've been in Nehemiah lately.
The way he inspired the people is frankly inspiring. Right? The guy says, we're gonna build a wall, we're gonna do it fast. We're gonna make this happen.
You're gonna do this, you're gonna do this. And just. And he gives all the credit. There's a whole chapter of him naming people, saying, this guy did this, this guy did that, this guy did the other thing. This guy put the gate up. And he got help from this guy.
And I mean, they just get this wall done an unbelievable amount of time. And he says, because the people had a mind to work, it's like, well, that's part of it. But he's not giving himself the credit. Of course, he's not going. And because of me, it is because of him. It's because he said, here's where we're going. Here's how you can help. You got to have that vision and that enthusiasm that trickles down.
[00:18:22] Speaker A: I think that's the key is vision, you know, Ken. And churches will do a vision statement or something along those lines. Unfortunately, it's very vague for people. Oh, that'd be great. You know, it'd be great. But they don't see themselves as part of that vision. It'd be great if the church does. The church. The church, you know, things along those lines.
But they're not looking at themselves, as I'm integral to this vision taking place. So on this vision front, if you could shrink that down and help them see, this is my role within that vision. This is how you, like, specifically can bring that about. It's kind of like when you, you know, if America comes out with a vision, the average of the 350 million Americans is going to go, cool, tell me when it's done, rather than, hey, I could actually get there. I can affect it. You look back at World War II, though, you had a bazillion guys signing up for the war. You know, after this is 9, 11, right? You think about how many people went to the military, because I can make a difference. I can sign up. They saw a very real need and they went to meet it because the need was presented to them. And they. They saw their place in meeting that need. I don't think we present needs very much, and I don't think we show them where they fit within that need. It's like, oh, the elders got it, the preachers got it, the youth ministers got it. Everybody else has it.
[00:19:31] Speaker B: Hey, guys, I wanted to tell you about A Closer Walk with the Volume one. It's a devotional book written by Joe and me. It is 90 days worth of devotionals that each day gives you a Bible reading, a prayer, a meditation, and a discussion question. Something that you can do quickly. It's something you can share with others, something that will give you three months worth of devotionals to get your year off on the right foot. It's currently available on Amazon, coming soon to the Focus Press store. So go check Out A Closer Walk with Thee, Volume one today.
[00:20:03] Speaker D: All right, all right, so I want to get really, really, really specific. Let's take a guy who's 50, 55 years old, never does anything in the church.
I mean, never leads a prayer, finally maybe passes the tray, but that's it. I mean, he is content to just sit on a few, watch the thing take place before him and go home and go home. Now he's got a child that's watching him not do anything.
How do we engage both of those individuals to where they are more passionate and not just going through the motions? How do we actually involve them?
Let's start with the 50 year old guy who has, maybe he's been coming to a building just like this one all his life, but he's basically walked in, sat down, got up, walked out.
[00:21:02] Speaker C: This is where I'm really glad Jack used the word expectations. This is where it matters so much. Because once again, not to keep going back to our other podcast here, one of the things we talk a lot about with young men is young men like being a part of things that feel very important, things that feel like there's structure to it and things like that.
Well, how do you get something to feel important if you don't have expectations? If it is very much a, hey, just show. I mean, you think about the, the type of jobs where maybe you go and for eight hours a day you're really not doing a whole lot. Like I know there's corporate and office jobs like that sometimes where you're maybe responding to some emails, you're kind of, you know, hopping on meetings, but you're just kind of killing time and it just doesn't, doesn't really feel. Versus the jobs where it's like, hey, you gotta meet these deadlines, you gotta get these things done.
Yeah, it's a lot harder, but you get through the end of the day and you're like, man, I accomplished some things today. And then it feels better. But from an expectation standpoint, to go back to the church example, yeah, if the expectation is hardly anything, which is, hey, show up occasionally as best you can, my opinion is that's always going to produce people like that. That's always going to produce some people, not all people, but that's always going to produce some people who, that's just all they're going to give you. And so that's where, once again, not to put ourselves in the shoes of church leadership, but that's what church leadership is going to have to ask itself is what do we Actually expect.
I worked with young people for two years down in Alabama, and that's what I had to ask myself before I took the job down there is like, what am I going to expect of these young people? You know, you have the trope of Bible classes where you'll ask a question nobody answers. That didn't fly in the Bible classes that I taught. It was, you know, I would call people out and say, you know, what are your thoughts on this? Or as you know, what do you think about this text? Stuff like that. That's a small example. And obviously it's going to be parents for the people that are going to set the expectations. But as far as the church members, once again, just to go back to it, the lower they are or the, the more vague they are or the more unclear they are, is always going to produce somebody.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: Like, tangibly speaking, how would you. If you were church leadership, how would you up. Let's say we have church leaders listen to this, right? And they say, as we do, right. You know, and they say, hey, we want to figure out how do we raise those expectations? Maybe things have been a little lax. Maybe people don't understand expectations, but where would they begin to let the people know, hey, things are going to change?
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Well, let's get. He would talk about getting specific. Let's get even more specific. What are we talking about? Like, what are the things there? Obviously you can do things in the worship service for men that you mentioned, like passing the tray, saying of prayer, teach a Bible class, you know, for adults or the women a lot of times, take the kids classes.
What else? There's visiting people. There's some churches have a cards ministry or calls ministry or whatever.
[00:23:44] Speaker A: Evangelism.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: Yeah,
[00:23:48] Speaker A: family worship.
[00:23:49] Speaker B: Because this is one of the things to solve. Apathy is like, okay, what are we actually going to have them do? And we want them to be here more, but what are we going to do with them when they do the Nehemiah thing? What are we handing them and saying, you do this and so what is that whole menu? We just went through a lot of them. If there's any more.
[00:24:03] Speaker C: A lot of the lists you gave Jack was kind of church focused. And I know that's obviously kind of what we're talking about here. Obviously goes without saying. If they're apathetic about Christianity at church, where else are they going to be apathetic about Christianity in their own homes? Joe, you said what I was thinking, which is family worship. I think that's an expectation that can pretty clearly be set by church leadership is, hey, we expect you guys. And that's where resources of, hey, we've got this worship guide. We've got this daily devotional.
We'll give you everything you need from a curriculum standpoint. Our expectation as church leaders, that you will be doing family worship with your children, and we're going to ask you about it and stuff. Like, obviously, you're not going to.
There's only. There's only so far that. That that extends. You can't necessarily, again, force people to do it, but it's setting the expectation very clear. I've heard of congregations that have, you know, daily Bible reading plans. The whole congregation does, and it's kind of very well publicized. Like this is expected of you to do good.
[00:24:57] Speaker D: Do you also hold their hand? So the guy who's never led a prayer, the guy who's never taught a class, the guy who's never given a devotional, do you, as a church leader, identify that person and say, hey, I want to start meeting with you every Tuesday, have coffee together, and let's see if we get you to this point. Because everybody sitting at this table has had that moment years ago when somebody asked you to do something that you've never done before, lead singing, lead a prayer, lead a whatever, and you kind of. Your heart sunk, but they were persistent enough that you went ahead and did it. Now, you guys don't think anything about getting in front of people and talking or doing whatever. So is that a part of bringing them along?
[00:25:41] Speaker A: I think it has to be. I think it has to be. I was talking with a buddy one time. I was trying to remember who this was. I was thinking Baptist. And I remember him saying that when he placed membership, they handed him a maybe you.
[00:25:53] Speaker C: I can't remember. I love this story.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: They handed him a little booklet and said, we expect you to follow this. And in the booklet was things like family worship. You're going to be at Bible class, you're going to be on time, you're going to participate in Bible class, you're going to be taking the stuff we're talking about in Bible class and leading your family throughout the week. They had all these expectations set up in a little booklet. And when he place membership, it was like, you're doing it.
[00:26:11] Speaker B: To be clear, I was not Joe's Baptist buddy.
[00:26:13] Speaker A: Yeah, no, no, you were not.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: I got the handbook from a family member. Yes.
[00:26:18] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Okay. That's. I was trying to figure out who it was. No, it was not you. It was not you.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: My buddy who was Baptist and points.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I evangelized Jack back when I was five.
[00:26:29] Speaker D: Right.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: But yes, I mean, it's that type of thing where you imagine if a
[00:26:35] Speaker C: church of Christ did that, that'd be incredible. I've just not heard of that.
[00:26:37] Speaker A: That'd be incredible. We talked about doing it there for, for a hot minute of, of work to sit down and go, what do we actually expect? Because there's a. What do we believe? You know, you're going to have mdr, you're going to have instruments, you're going to have baptism, obviously salvation. And what do we do? But here's what we do. And that's the missing point in a lot of this is even on our church website. What do we do here? You know, we worship God and okay, well, what else do we do? And so that's to your point of like, what. What can we tangibly expect people to do? I think this is where you want to give people options of like, hey, if you want to be the person that has everybody in their home, you got a great home for hosting.
Use it. If you have a gift with, you know, meeting people. Meet people. We were just talking to one of the elders today who is great at meeting people, and then he shuffles them over to the evangelist who's great at hosting Bible studies with people and engaging on those friends.
Yes. They work together with their spiritual gifts to do something very special. That to me is really exciting. And that's what people can get behind is, look, man, Apollos watered or I planted Apollos water. God gave the increase.
It's that concept of we can work together. You don't have to take it from A to Z. You may take it from A to C, you know, or D, and then other people can come along. And so it feels like you can be part of something bigger than yourself,
[00:27:47] Speaker B: part of the challenges with men. And that's a lot of the fountainhead for this. Because they're bringing their families to church for women, it feels like there's a lot more broad ways that they can be involved with just stuff the women do around the church. Again, they do so much to help bulletin board or teaching a Bible class or the fellowship meals and things like that. They coordinate and a lot of times they're the ones setting up, taking meals to people, the meal train kind of things. Guys, it's, well, can you participate in the worship service?
Maybe you do that once every few months and okay, then what else? And it might be your family leadership thing, but also that was another thing that came up there's the guy that can fix stuff. Okay. That guy is valuable to the church.
[00:28:26] Speaker D: Very valuable.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: And we should not look down on. Well, that's not a spiritual thing. He's not helping save souls by that kind of indirectly.
[00:28:35] Speaker C: That's.
[00:28:35] Speaker D: That's where the leadership has to identify. You know what? That guy right there is awesome at computers. Let's. Let's put him over website, it, whatever. And that guy right there, man, he can fix anything. Let's. Let's basically give him the tools he needs to take care of things or go to Sister so and so's house and help her with her toilet or her shower or whatever.
[00:28:58] Speaker C: I want to go back to, once again, the home versus the church thing, because we're talking a lot about the church, and I guess this is related to church as well. What are Yalls thoughts on expectations of hospitality? You went there right before I was about to. Because we haven't brought that up.
You are. Yeah, we haven't brought that up very much.
[00:29:14] Speaker D: You know, more than anybody else in this room. Your mom does not like to teach.
[00:29:19] Speaker C: Yeah. Publicly, like, classes. Yeah.
[00:29:22] Speaker D: She is a phenomenal teacher.
You get her and one or two people in her kitchen, she can expound all kind of wisdom to, for instance, your wife.
And you're. You're.
[00:29:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
Well, the hospitality thing again, you guys, I brought this up on the podcast before Joe and Jack can speak to just how much hospitality was a part of Yalls lives growing up. Ours as well, once we moved into. To the house that y' all are in now.
How much, once again, just not to go back, keep beating the dead horse. How much can we expect that as far as church leaders to their members of like, not just say, you know, suggestion. Hey, guys, it'd be really good if y' all started having people over in your home. Like, no, this is kind of an expectation because we hit. We talked about relationships earlier and how if the relationship is not there, it is easier for apathy to creep in because, like, man, I don't have any. There's no buy in here. There's no connection with people. And so hospitality is a bit of a forgotten art. It's easier to, you know, go get takeout. It's easier to go out to Mexican or whatever. But, man, the kitchen table, the cup of coffee, you know, across from people.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: Is it fair to expect that this is where elders, I think, can come in is they take the apathetic family, you know, the apathetic man, apathetic woman. They invite them into their home. They give them the vision. Personally, this is what we're trying to do here. This is why we're excited. We're excited to have you at church. We're excited for all these things we're doing and help the person, help plug them in and figure out what are they good at, what are they, you know, what are their reservations. And then, hey, we expect you, you know, if we'd love to have you over some more and you start working on that's what hospitality looks like. And who knows, down the line, maybe they go, yeah, I can do this. This isn't all that difficult. And so they start doing it to go. I think hospitality is one of those things that's kind of down the line. You're not going to get people to open up their homes if they can't open up their Bibles at church. You know, like it is going to come down the line. On the other hand, it's one of the first places I think the mature can start with the immature and get them going. Because going to, you know, calling them out in church, people aren't going to like that all that much of, like, forget these guys, drive down the road. Whereas if I'm, if I have you over and I'm having this really deep conversation, we're kind of exploring and, you know, all sorts of stuff that the church can do, how we can help you, how you can help us, that hits differently. And I think that can be the thing that spurs it on. And it all starts with hospitality. So maybe that's what we expect people to get to in time, but it
[00:31:35] Speaker D: means that you gotta say no to other things.
[00:31:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:40] Speaker D: Which right now, in our culture, Satan's got everybody convinced you need to be involved in every ball, every band, practice recitals, every activity that's out there.
And so when you go to make that ask, hey, can you come over for dinner Tuesday night? Oh, we've got this. And we've got this.
[00:31:55] Speaker B: Get you on the calendar four months from now.
[00:31:56] Speaker C: Yeah, right.
[00:31:58] Speaker D: We have to, I think in the church start saying no to worldly stuff and so basically grow.
[00:32:07] Speaker C: So that's what I was going to bring that up earlier when we were talking about, you know, kind of demanding more of people, and you brought up the fact that it feels like we're busier now than ever before.
How does a church balance the over programming? We've got an event four nights a week. We've got 16 different things every single month that does detract from family time, that does make family worship just about Impossible. I know most congregations make it very clear, hey, come to whatever you can. It's not a requirement. But I do think that that's a question I've struggled with before, of how much should church leaders and congregations put stuff out, you know, that is, you know, as far as events or things to attend, while also not keeping families so busy that they never eat dinner together. They never have quality time together. They never. And like you said, dad, the problem with that is, let's say a church takes the. The. Well, we're not going to do too much, let's call it one thing a week. Problem is families fill their other nights with other stuff, like the sports practice and stuff. So I, you know, all of us have, I shouldn't say all of us, us three have young kids.
That's something that we're going to have to learn how to navigate pretty soon.
[00:33:11] Speaker B: Yeah. That takes me back to one of my favorite talking points of rethinking Sunday night would be very wise where people are this busy.
Give people that one and then ask for something else another time.
I see so little done. It's the extra sermon. You have a hard enough time remembering the morning sermon. You had a morning class, you got Wednesday night class, an extra sermon in there. You're getting the kids out. They got to get back to bed for school the next morning, work the next morning.
I think rethinking what we're doing there could open the door. Even if you made Sunday night, and I know some people go to the small groups and things like that, is their way of rethinking that. However you want to repurpose that. I think that's one of the ways you can get the foot in the door. But on the hospitality thing, there's a reason it's a qualification for elders if they don't do it.
I think one of the things we've danced around here is churches start to take on the character of their leaders. In the same way, when you see a kid running around the store just out of control, it's not the kid's fault, it's the parents fault. And when you go into a restaurant and it's dirty, I love that there's the Gordon Ramsay show, but I didn't watch that because he cussed a lot. And they had the Food Network rip off with Robert Irvine and it was restaurant Impossible or something like that. And where he'd go to failing restaurants and try and prop them up. And you always saw it wasn't about the food, it wasn't about the servers. It was a personality test for the manager. And if it failed, it's because of their personal flaws showed up in the restaurant. It's so psychologically fascinating.
The same thing with the church of it takes on the characteristic of the leadership. If they're not hospitable, it's not going to be a church that spends time together. If they're not.
There are churches where the elders are really involved and they're scratching their heads like, why are people not. Well, then that asks another question. What are you showing them? What are you allowing them? Because there's people who are really involved in the church and their kids are running wild like, okay, so you're not holding somebody else to the same standard you hold yourself to or whatever it reveals.
I think that's a good place to look for those kinds of things.
[00:35:08] Speaker D: I'm going to flip the coin for just a minute and ask about passion.
So we talked a little bit about what is the leadership's role.
Let's talk for just a second about the person who comes in and they're just almost zombie like. Like, how do we build passion back into individuals who are just going through the motions?
[00:35:31] Speaker B: I know, I just talked a bunch. I'm going to jump back in with the book recommendation I've given before. But why men hate going to church. Okay. It's a feminized church.
That's why. It's about welcoming and bringing people in. That's great.
What Will was talking about earlier, men get excited about doing great things. The Nehemiah thing, things like that. And when you come to church and it is.
Everything is feminine coded or masculine coded. We kind of know that you think of marketing, when you think of restaurants you go to, things like that, there's one way or the other. Well, churches generally are feminine coded and men are welcome there, but it's not.
[00:36:02] Speaker C: Can you give some. I'm sure you've got some off top of your examples of what you.
[00:36:05] Speaker B: Well, he's kind of. One of the things he talks about is like the decor of a lot of churches. You walk in and it's like it kind of looks like grandma's house. Right? You know, and not that it needs to look like a workshop or whatever, but you know, some of the.
The song, like singing the psalms and things like that that are a little bit more aggressive, you know, like, oh, we're not really doing that. We're doing a lot. Much more relational and that's good. There's a place for that. But as we've talked about on our male, female podcasts.
In a masculine world, there is space for femininity. In a feminine world, there's not space for masculinity. So if dad is dragged to church by mom or church is for her and he's kind of just there, that's where you're gonna. And so really, it is men, the passion thing. If you're gonna get people passionate about church, it's gotta be men going, we're changing the world. We're leading our family and all these people to heaven. We're doing this, you know, like we're. We want to be Nehemiah. Is there room for that in a church?
[00:37:01] Speaker A: It goes back to my point about the military. Something bigger than themselves.
[00:37:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:37:05] Speaker A: People want something that's bigger than themselves, and I think the church has the ultimate ability to do that if we could just couch it as such and help them see that.
[00:37:16] Speaker B: Hey, guys, Jack Wilke here. If you enjoy our work with podcasts like Think Deeper and Godly Young Men and our books, articles, seminars, and want to support the work that we do, the best way to do so is to go to focuspress.org donate that's focuspress.org donate thanks again for listening.
[00:37:38] Speaker D: How. How much does Jesus Christ and what he did for us on the cross play into all of that?
Because to me, you know, part of my passion, I bring passion when I preach. Part of that is just because I know where I was and I know where I am.
It's like, that's exciting to me to think, okay, I used to be there.
I'm here today, I'm fired up about it. I want to tell you about it.
Is. Is that part of the equation as well?
[00:38:11] Speaker C: I mean, I think, obviously, ideally, that is the problem is the passion that you have. You know, you specifically have, you know, growing up not in the church, converting out of being a Methodist, Obviously that's not going to be everybody's story. And so, you know, the question becomes, how do you ignite everybody, you know, each individual's passion? I like what Jack said about, you know, the. The feminized church because just to. Not to keep taking everything back to families, but if you have a. A family within your church where the dad, where the father, the husband is not passionate about something as it relates to. To the church, that's. It's gonna be really hard to have a passionate family. You know, the. The wife and mom might be, you know, more involved or teaching class or whatever, but the kids almost certainly are not going to be. So I think the Solution to a lot of this is figuring out how do we ignite passion in the. The fathers and the dads and the husbands. Well, we know what hasn.
[00:39:06] Speaker D: You know, you look at some of these congregations that have tried to have more entertaining worship.
[00:39:12] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:39:12] Speaker D: You know, you know, and they're artificially trying to pump up things by, you know, cool stage lighting.
[00:39:18] Speaker C: Statistically, that's not working.
[00:39:19] Speaker D: It's not working at all.
That's. That's definitely not going to speak to
[00:39:24] Speaker A: this a bazillion one time. So sorry. But that's why Orthodoxy and Catholicism are on the rise. I don't see them doing smoke shows, you know, or whatever.
[00:39:31] Speaker B: Different kind of smoke.
[00:39:31] Speaker A: Yeah, different kind, exactly. That's right. Little incense coming through. Smells like burnt chocolate.
But yeah, you don't see they take themselves seriously. And when they. All Orthodox and Catholics.
[00:39:44] Speaker C: Okay, okay, yes, yes.
[00:39:46] Speaker A: Orthodox Catholics. And then also, I mean, some are going Anglican as well. But it's that high church mindset. Like, you walk in, it don't look like grandma's house. You also walk in, they're chanting. They're doing Gregorian chants and things like that at times. Like, it's just a different thing. I'm not, obviously, I'm not saying high church is good. I'm saying there's a reason those are growing amongst young men. There's a reason they want something that takes themselves seriously.
There's a reverent feel. It's like, whoa, this does not look like the world. Whereas you walk in, it's like, well, I came from a concert last night, a Coldplay concert last night at 1am or whatever. And then, you know, there's a Coldplay concert basically the next day. It's just Jesus words type of thing. People don't want that. They're not craving that these days. Yes. There may be a bazillion people going to box churches at the end of the day, young kids, I think, are going to be turning from that, looking for the real, real.
[00:40:32] Speaker B: Another thing about the masculine is like, tough love.
You don't get tough love sermons in a lot of places. Like that's dancing around. We have messy lives. No, we have sin.
[00:40:43] Speaker D: Right.
[00:40:43] Speaker B: I mean, like, we're all broken. Yeah. Broken sinner. And so when you say the cross, the cross should stir up that passion, but what do we do with it? And too many times it has given to softness rather than.
And man. I'm reading again, another book recommendation. I'm hoping to interview this guy. Loser theology is I. What, what it's called.
It's I, I show Joe. I don't think I've highlighted a book this much in years because it's just every highlight of the entire book.
[00:41:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:41:08] Speaker B: I mean, like, every page, there's something where it's like, yes. That's what we see is people saying the way of the cross. And what that means is just give up. Let the world trample us. You know, like, don't say anything controversial. Yeah. Don't confront any sins. Don't. Well, that's what masculine church would be is tough truths, you know, like really giving people the business. Not giving people the business, but giving people something like, to live up to and calling them, saying he, hey, let's do more. Some people are going to leave.
Some people left when Jesus did that too.
You factor that in, but you have to do it. And so, yeah, the cross and the resurrection. And this is going to be something I talk about. In one of my lessons this weekend, I saw a quote from a preacher here in Texas. Church of Christ. Preacher said something like, the surprise of revelation is that the lion is actually a lamb.
Like, boy, he's both.
You have to have both.
But it's that kind of thing. Like, well, why would you be passionate about, like, the lion is like, all right, let's go. We can go win the world.
The lamb is great. He's like, all right, my sins are forgiven. It stops right there. It is a private religion.
[00:42:14] Speaker C: Sorry, just real fast, what you just described right there, it's very feminized. The way of the cross, the lamb.
[00:42:21] Speaker A: And again, there's an appeal.
[00:42:23] Speaker B: There's room for that inside of the masculine lion Christianity, as long as you're not excluding it.
[00:42:27] Speaker D: Right.
[00:42:28] Speaker B: But if it's all that, there's not room for that. Room for the lion.
[00:42:30] Speaker C: Right, Right, dad, go ahead.
[00:42:32] Speaker D: So godly sorrow brings about repentance is. Is part of the equation that we have not been hitting people hard enough, well, their sin to actually bring about godly sorrow, repentance and change lives.
[00:42:48] Speaker C: The tough love thing, so especially from the pulpit, obviously, is kind of what we think of, you know, tough love sermons.
I think the church has done a good job of preaching against things that don't that a lot of Christians don't really struggle with.
[00:43:00] Speaker D: Amen. Yeah.
[00:43:01] Speaker C: You know, we will and we should.
[00:43:03] Speaker D: Don't get me wrong, we sound like we're patting ourselves.
[00:43:05] Speaker C: We should loudly preach against the fact I don't ever have to, or homosexuality or the fact that we don't use instruments or, you know, the baptism saves. Like, we do a Great job preaching those things.
[00:43:16] Speaker B: Other ones comes to mind, but I'll say that myself. Yeah.
[00:43:18] Speaker C: I could call those things absolutely matter.
Those aren't really things Christians struggle with. What we don't do a good job teaching is. Or preaching is tough love sermons about things that people are actually dealing with. Homes where not to just go back to think deeper special, but homes where the kids aren't being parented. Their kids are, you know, wearing whatever they want.
[00:43:38] Speaker A: The wife runs the homes where.
[00:43:40] Speaker C: Exactly. Where the wife runs the home. And the dad isn't doing much modesty.
[00:43:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:46] Speaker B: Oh, he's talking about that like. Yeah, it's in the Bible.
[00:43:48] Speaker D: Right.
[00:43:48] Speaker C: But those are the lessons that don't get preached. We'll talk homosexuality. We'll talk all those things again. Instruments like those are safe.
[00:43:54] Speaker D: Right. You know.
[00:43:55] Speaker C: Right. But the tough love of, you know, you know, you got to stop running your home if you're, if you're, if you're a wife.
[00:44:01] Speaker A: Dads.
[00:44:02] Speaker C: What are you doing letting your daughter dress like that?
Why on earth are you allowing your son to, you know, whatever it is that stuff doesn't really get.
[00:44:08] Speaker B: There's one. Sorry, you go ahead. I'm going to change gears.
[00:44:11] Speaker A: Well, how much did sermons do you think actually change people?
[00:44:14] Speaker B: They can. I think they can. Because when you talk about the things that matter. So this is where I was going to go with it is hit you. There's, there's the ivory tower. Like we, the church leaders have to know what the people are dealing with and talk about those things. And the, the, the theological debates, they don't matter that much. You need to get the doctrines right. But as like the things that preachers love to debate and talk about. And we, we have fun with that. We had the episode, you know, who wrote Hebrews, things like that, that does not impact people's lives one bit.
But how to be a good husband, how to be a good wife, what to be like in the workplace. All those things. That's what all. I mean, like the New Testament, the Old Testament, it's full of practical theology. Practical theology steps on toes. And so it's.
[00:44:59] Speaker C: So we shy away from it.
[00:45:00] Speaker B: Yeah. And you think about the prophets. What were they told to call out, the sins the people dealt with, like these specific things. And when Israel was in decline, it was because they weren't addressing certain. They weren't fixing certain sins. Well, we're in decline from apathy.
You got to start where it hurts.
[00:45:17] Speaker A: So I want to go back to the feminine masculine discussion because I think that's it's just so key to all of this. Let's say you have a church that recognizes, okay, it's pretty feminine coded. What is the first step toward changing toward a masculine church? Is it changing something as simple as changing the decorations?
Is it a, you know, singing different songs in the worship service, Changing up the worship service, not in a wrong way, but, you know, in, in the order of worship or taking more time on the Lord's, like, what does that look like to change it from a feminine to a masculine church? Or where would be the place to start?
[00:45:49] Speaker C: Maybe ironically, I do think it's in what we just discussed partially, is the. Not just given vague platitudes and being generic from the pulpit or in Bible classes as well, but being very specific and calling things out, challenging people. Challenge, I think, is a very masculine kind of concept.
And so, you know, I think the decorations matter. I think the, maybe the songs you sing matter. I do think those are small potatoes compared to what are you actually preaching from the pulpit? How much are you challenging young people? Those kind of things.
[00:46:19] Speaker D: I'm going to throw an unpopular takeout here. And that is, and it's interesting because our elders actually kind of do this.
I say get the elders in front of the congregation every week in some form or fashion to where they know that's my leader and they're not hiding from us. They're right out there. They're. They're talking about things that need to be talked about.
And maybe sometimes it's just giving you updates on people who are sick, not sick, but. But it may be also occasionally talking about something that needs to be discussed. But because they're up there all the time and in front of you, you get that sense of, we've got a male leader who is truly. And it's not. Not really Sister so and so over here, it's these guys. These guys are actually leading this flock.
[00:47:11] Speaker C: Good.
[00:47:12] Speaker A: Let me also throw this in there because we're talking about, you know, kind of bringing the hammer down in certain ways.
When does church discipline become a part of the apathy discussion? Because I feel like that is one key piece of, if you want to be a masculine church, discipline comes with it. That's.
[00:47:27] Speaker B: That's part of it. It does. And that's where you set the expectations. You don't go in and discipline for somebody for something they didn't know they were supposed to do.
[00:47:34] Speaker A: Right.
[00:47:34] Speaker B: You say, hey, we expect you guys to do this, and if you don't, we're going to come talk to you about it. We're going to check on these things.
[00:47:40] Speaker D: You wait till two years when they've
[00:47:42] Speaker A: already been associated themselves for 100 weeks.
[00:47:47] Speaker B: Yeah, but I mean, like, you follow up and if you say, hey, we expect you guys to be reading the Bible with your family, just go and say that. Did you read? And how's that going?
[00:47:55] Speaker C: How's that going?
[00:47:56] Speaker D: Right?
[00:47:56] Speaker B: You know, it's not okay. What do you need to make that happen? Like, you just follow up with those kinds of things. I think think goes a long way.
[00:48:01] Speaker A: It's friction, I think, is really the word. Like, there's got to be some level of friction there from the preaching, from the, you know, correcting people when they are stepping out of line, from calling people to a higher standard, and then being willing to hold the line. Because when we don't practice church discipline, which is really tough to do in the 21st century, they leave in a huff. They go to the church five minutes away. You know, that's just what happens. Either way, though, when we are not cultivating that, we may do all of those things, but if there's not the discipline structure on the back end, a la First Corinthians 5, then what is it all for? It's kind of like the dad who gives endless threats to the kids, but the spanking is never coming, you know, like the. The discipline is never on the back end. Like it was three, two, you know, and you see that and the kids go, yeah, whatever, you know, yeah, they. They talk to me, whatever.
[00:48:45] Speaker C: But talks a big game. That's correct.
[00:48:46] Speaker A: But I'm still going to show up every Sunday and do the exact same thing. I think if you want the teeth that really comes with masculine churches, there has to. We have to get back to the concept of, look, man, your consumer Christianity means you're not a Christian. He spits you out of his mouth is what I'm seeing. Like, you know, you get spewed, you get vomited out of his mouth when you are not providing something to the body.
And to me, that's one of the hardest steps to take, but that's also one of the most necessary steps to take to make this matter to people.
[00:49:12] Speaker B: I know we've done it a bunch before. Will throw out your definition of culture
[00:49:16] Speaker C: again, for sure, it's not original to me, but culture is the intersection of what is expected and what is allowed.
[00:49:23] Speaker B: That's what we're talking about.
I mean, it's what you're allowing people to get away with and what you expect of them. And, and another phrase I think I've used before, and I have no idea where I got it, but somebody said it was the value. The measure of any organization is the kind of man it produces.
[00:49:39] Speaker C: Yeah, that's fantastic.
[00:49:40] Speaker B: I mean, that says a lot about the kind of things we're talking about. And so apathy is going to be. And not that we don't need to confront female apathy, but I think they're going to fall in line. If you've got men, even if they're not married, the elders of the church expecting things out of them, the husbands, the fathers, whatever, like, like. But if you have apathetic men, that's going to be the problem.
[00:49:58] Speaker A: And statistically that shines through. What is the statistic. And I think it may be off, maybe may have been a little inflated, but the 93% I think of when dads show up to church, something along those lines.
[00:50:07] Speaker B: I know.
[00:50:07] Speaker A: I was going to say, I know those stats are somewhat dubious. I do think it's in the right direction.
[00:50:12] Speaker B: Well, you look at like the, the crime stats for fatherlessness, Correct?
[00:50:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:50:15] Speaker B: Everybody spiritually, it's about the same thing, you know.
[00:50:17] Speaker A: Right.
[00:50:18] Speaker B: So that's about the 50 minute mark, Brad, if you want to make a closing statement. I wanted to throw it out to the room for questions if they like.
[00:50:23] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. I was just going to point out to everybody that's if you've noticed, we haven't brought in programs at all in this whole discussion.
And I think for 15, 20 years, the church thought, well, the way we fix this is we add more programs.
I don't think programs are the fix. I think it's almost the opposite of programs. We get back into the home, we get back into real worship. We get back into the word.
And that's going to.
[00:50:50] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I totally agree. I would just real fast, I would say a program is. It can help later on. I don't think it's going to. To start the fire, you know, for, for people. I don't think it's going to, you know, end apathy, you know, just by starting there.
[00:51:02] Speaker B: That's like the restaurant show I was talking about. A new menu item is great. If the restaurant, if all the other problems are there, it's not going to solve it.
[00:51:07] Speaker C: So, yeah, that's great.
[00:51:09] Speaker B: All right, so thank you guys all for coming. Any questions from the room? Catching us on the podcast? The question is to what degree can we cooperate and collaborate with denominational groups and other religions against some of the evil, the threats in the world today, like Islam and things like that, that
[00:51:26] Speaker A: I think we're going to start seeing a lot more of that in the future because, no, we're not going to fellowship with them in terms of, you know, I'm not going to show up on a Sunday morning to Baptist. But if we show up to the abortion clinic together, well, you think about
[00:51:40] Speaker B: how much the Catholics have done for that either. You just have to take your hat off to them.
[00:51:43] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, they've saved countless lives based off of them showing up and doing it. So if we show up at the same abortion clinic, we are. We are aligning ourselves on those topics.
Are we going to align ourselves spiritually and, like, oh, well, the baptism doesn't matter anymore? Like, no. But on the other hand, as we think about Islam, we think about some of the things that are coming, we're going to have to learn to work together with them in certain ways to say, whoa, not in our community. So we have, of all places, Dixon, Tennessee has, like, some weird undergrowth thriving, but it's somewhat thriving of lgbtq. They get their own Pride Parade. Dixon, Tennessee. It's like, what in the world?
I think it's perfectly fine for the Baptist, Presbyterians, Church of Christ, everybody and their dog to get together and go, no, we're done with this. We're not doing this. And all of the churches combined, they go to the mayor, they go to everybody that they can and say, if the Pride Parade does this, we're pulling out our businesses that's working together. That's church collaboration, quote, unquote, with people that maybe we don't align with completely, but we're aligning around something that's very real, that's going to affect all our churches. Like, we don't put up with LGBTQ because they're taking the kids from the Presbyterian Church, kids from church, Christ Church.
That is, in my opinion, how we're going to see it in the future is us aligning around topics, even if not necessarily worship and threats.
[00:52:57] Speaker C: Aligning ourselves.
[00:52:58] Speaker A: Correct. Around those certain threats that are different.
[00:52:59] Speaker C: Doctrinal disagreements. Yeah, I think it's well said.
[00:53:02] Speaker D: Can I read a little bit of a controversial piece of scripture to answer part of your question? So, Mark, chapter nine, starting in verse 38, John answered him, saying, teacher, we saw someone who does not follow us casting out demons in your name.
And we forbade him because he does not follow us. Jesus said, do not forbid him, for no one who works a miracle in my name can soon afterwards speak evil of me. For he who is not against us, is on our side, or whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in my name because you belong to Christ, assuredly I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.
I think part of that is kind of touching on what you were asking, and that is okay. There are some folks out here who I might not identify with who are also upholding the name of Christ or doing things, having similar beliefs.
I'm not going to join hands of fellowship with them and say they're doing everything right because I think they've got some things, some doctrinal issues and in fact, I really would like the time to sit down and study with them.
But I'm also not going to stop, stop what's going on because at the end of the day, we're both trying to elevate the name of Christ and glorify God.
That that helped a little bit.
[00:54:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Great question, though.
[00:54:21] Speaker C: That's a really good question.
[00:54:22] Speaker B: Follow up.
How do you do that?
So he says he doesn't. Fair enough. Follow up is he doesn't see a lot of that happening. How can we do it better?
[00:54:43] Speaker C: I think just to start off, and obviously this, ministers and church leaders are going to be in the best position to do this. Really start trying to form relationships with the church leaders of other congregations of denominations, taking them, say, hey, let's go out to coffee or whatever it is. Obviously that's hopefully going to serve another purpose, which is set up a Bible study, evangelize, whatever it is.
But it's really difficult to do everything you're describing, which is, or everything we're describing as well, which is, you know, join hands on the, to oppose the
[00:55:13] Speaker A: pride parade or whatever it is.
[00:55:14] Speaker C: If you've never talked to the guy or if you've never, you don't have any kind of connection with him. And so again, to me, that it serves several different purposes and that hopefully a Bible study will come out of it or whatever it is. But at the very least, starting that relationship is going to make that easier.
[00:55:29] Speaker D: I, I would say say too. You know, in the past there've been a lot of folks who say, well, if you, if you go to that breakfast with them and chat with them, then you're, you're in sin because you're kind of fellowshipping with them and condoning what they teach and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And to me, that's really easy to say, but. But those are the same people who have surrounded themselves their entire lives with nothing but New Testament Christians. And because of that they've never converted one soul.
What happens if, if you are able to reach that? You know, let's say you start a relationship, whether it's at an abortion clinic or, you know, anti LGBT parades, whatever, you start a relationship with that person and in doing so you're able to discuss some, some doctrinal issues. Over time, you convert that guy, you just, you just hopefully gained an entire congregation, which is amazing. I mean, to me that's, that's like my, my goals of life, that's in my top three. Like I want somebody to invite me and me just get the whole congregation, just come on, let's go. And I tell people, I'll go anywhere as long as you let me te truth.
I think it's healthy to have relationships outside of the church that you can use to teach and to reach out to people.
Because at the end of the day, if we really think they're lost, we need to hear or they need to hear from us.
[00:56:52] Speaker A: Well, we know this takes place because there was a guy that we know that went to a Baptist church, preached truth, preached the gospel and was blacklisted and was, had a ton of members of the church. Christ say that he was basically hellbound for it if he didn't repent because he went to a Baptist church on a Sunday morning. He said, I went there, I preached the gospel, I preached baptism, you know, for remission of sins. And they pretty much wanted to cast him out of church for it.
Here's this is a think deeper special.
The older generation will never go for it, or very few of the older generation will go for it. That's why that's very difficult. That will change with the younger generation because we're going to be a lot more pragmatic about it. We can't live, I'm sorry to say, weird. We don't live in the ideal world when we're watching 10 year olds get mutilated, you know, so they can become a different gender. We live in the real world, which is we're going to have to work together with somebody else. We're too small to think that we are going to have a huge impact on the world without us potentially locking arms with somebody as we go. Say, man, we got to do something about that. So that's the other thing that's going to get the Church of Christ out of kind of the bubble that we're in, in my opinion, is it is going to be a younger generation thing that's going to take it and that's, I'm not trying to be mean to the older folks, but those are the ones that came to the, you know, the guy that went to the Baptist church, trying to get him kicked out of church. It was not younger folks doing that. It was the older.
[00:58:08] Speaker B: Well, there's one other thing we haven't talked about here.
Getting involved in the issues is taboo in a lot of parts of the churches of Christ. We don't do that stuff. That's. That's not social issues, the political, the cultural, you know, and that's.
That's not healthy. And so I think one of the reasons why we haven't had much of that, like, much of the collaboration is they're out there doing it and we're not. And not all of them, because there's a lot of them that have the same view of, ah, let's just preach the gospel. It's like, that is part of the gospel, you know, they're the rule of Christ. And so we've got to do a better job of putting ourselves out there. And when you do, you find allies, you find people that are doing those things.
[00:58:46] Speaker C: Yeah, great question.
[00:58:49] Speaker B: Very good question.
[00:58:50] Speaker A: Any other questions or comments?
[00:58:54] Speaker B: So to briefly recap that he said, talking about the programs and people's passions, that there are people who. That is their. Their way of serving the church and getting excited about the church. And he brings up an example of a woman with a card ministry and how many people have been reached by that. And to that I would say, amen. One of the things on apathy is make room for people to have those opportunities. Like, if somebody comes and says, I want to do this, man. Unless it, like, really undermines something the church is doing. But if you're so, like, tunnel vision, like, well, no, no, we're going to do things this way. No, let's work with passionate people. Like, that is one of the greatest blessings.
[00:59:28] Speaker C: You don't want to stifle that.
[00:59:30] Speaker D: Paul, I'm going to challenge you and encourage you to take that program, go to your younger people, say, junior high, high school, junior high, have them do the exact same thing through texting or through chat room discord, whatever, because that's how they're communicating.
And so now have your young people communicating with members of the congregation here every single week. Send them a text, you know, chat on whatever discord, whatever social sites they're on, and get the young people excited and fired up as well.
There you go.
[01:00:15] Speaker C: That's cool.
[01:00:16] Speaker B: Love it.
[01:00:17] Speaker C: Excellent.
[01:00:24] Speaker D: They'll jump on it
[01:00:27] Speaker C: to me where the programs can be very helpful. Is they do add structure, and I do think structure can. Can really help, you know, kind of bring people forward in that way.
[01:00:35] Speaker A: Sure.
[01:00:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:00:36] Speaker B: Well, great stuff. Thank you guys all for attending. Thanks to the Brown street elders and the church here for hosting us a for the whole weekend. The Engage conference would be for a special first ever. I mean, we're almost 250 episodes in. This is our first live record. So you guys are part of history. Thanks for coming out, but that's all we've got for this one.
[01:00:56] Speaker D: Well, and thank them for their vision. As far as the. The conference itself is. Is. Is really looking forward and trying to equip families, trying to equip folks. And, you know, the. The theme this week is turning the world upside down.
It's. It's exactly what we're talking about. You know, you got apathy in the church. How do we. How do we combat that? Let's turn the world upside down. Let's get people fired up. And so I appreciate them allowing us to have a part of that 100.
[01:01:25] Speaker B: All right, we're going to wrap right there.
Did you have anything? All right, we're wrap right there and we will talk to you guys on the next one.
Hey, guys, Jack Wilke here. If you enjoy our work with podcasts like Think Deeper and Godly Young Men and our books, articles, seminars, and want to see support the work that we do, the best way to do so is to go to focuspress.org donate that's focuspress.org donate thanks again for listening.
