Church Traditions: When to Keep, When to Drop

[00:00:09] Speaker A: Welcome into the Think Deeper podcast presented by Focus Press. We have a very interesting episode today regarding something that Jack has written on, and we're going to expand it from there. And that is of the invitation and traditions in general. So the invitation is a part of traditions, but we want to take a closer look at traditions that we hold in the church. Christ, I would say that we are more tradition focused maybe than some other places, because we're not pushing the envelope all the time. We're not looking to go rogue and to start having women preachers or any of those things that a lot of the people in the culture have gotten into, instruments and such. We hold the line on biblical related issues, but a lot of times we hold the line on tradition related issues as well. And we wanted to parse those out because not all traditions are bad. Some traditions we have for a reason, they're very good, and some of them may be hindering our worship more than we think they are. And that's what we wanted to discuss on today's episode. So, will, any, anything that you want to add before we hand it over to Jack? Because this is Jack's outline. He's put a fantastic outline together and I want him to intro that. But Will, any other thoughts before we hand it to Jack? [00:01:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I would just say that I think there's a ton of value in tradition. There's a ton of value in looking at specifically with the church, specifically with what we believe the Bible teaches that if it's a tradition, it means that it has probably been looked at and examined for, or at least hopefully for generations. And it has stood the test of time. It stood firm, and it's something that is a good thing. I think what we're going to get into with this episode is there's a lot of things that we feel like maybe have not been examined quite as closely because we've just done them for so long. They, they have, quote unquote, withstood the test of time. And so therefore, it's just something that you do and you don't really think twice about it. You don't really examine anymore. Maybe when it first got rolled out there, it was examined and re examined quite a bit. We're not really at that stage anymore with a lot of this. And so I'm very interested to get into this, Jack. I'm excited to see what kind of where you take this as far as an introduction goes, because I do think there's value to. There's value to a lot of tradition. Tradition obviously, to take it outside of the church for just a second. I'm really big on having family traditions. I'm really big on having things that can kind of ground you and things that can bond you with your family specifically, maybe traditions with friends and whatnot. I think those things are great. You have to be careful with it when it, when it's in the church, but there's positive and negative to it. So, Jack, where would you go as far as an introduction as we're talking about this idea of tradition? [00:02:43] Speaker C: Yeah, there are things that, like, wear out their usefulness, but it's really hard to get rid of those things that wore out their usefulness. Um, it kind of the. There's the old illustration about grandma cutting the end off the, the ham because it didn't fit in the pot and just passed on. And, you know, generations later, they're still cutting the end off the ham. Like, why do we do this? Oh, you know, I don't know. Let's just ask your grandma. Well, because the pot wasn't big enough, but now you've got a bigger pot, you don't have to do it anymore. You're just kind of doing it out of habit and didn't really think about it there. It's serving no purpose whatsoever, and so there is that. On the other hand, as you said, there's a lot of value in tradition. In fact, you can say you don't have to have any tradition, but if you got rid of all tradition, if you just walked into church on Sunday morning and every single week, you had to reinvent the wheel, it wouldn't go well, number one. But number two, it would very much throw people off. It would hurt your unity, I think. And this is something to use, something that some people might think is silly, is, uh, just the last two years or so I've seen for Thanksgiving, and this is not a church tradition, but it's an illustration here. Um. Man, turkey's terrible. It's an awful bird. It's a dry bird. We don't eat turkey the rest of the year. Why do I have to eat turkey on Thanksgiving? I'm cooking rib eyes. Eat the turkey. And, like, I genuinely get borderline mad about this. Eat the turkey. You eat the turkey because your mom and dad ate the turkey, because your grandparents ate the turkey, because your great grandparents ate the turkey, because your great great grandpa. That's why you do it. It matters way more than the taste. Yeah. Ribeye is better than turkey. Duh. You do that the other 364 days of the year, I don't care. Eat the turkey. Because you're passing something from them, taking it and passing it to your kids, passing it on. But we live in this individualist society that says, well, I don't like it as much, so I'm going to do what I want. Next thing you know, 20 years later, nobody. The same thing with Black Friday. No, you're really not going to be celebrating thanksgiving in about 20 years if it keeps going this way and you lose the value that thanksgiving brings you. I think we got to be careful not to do that with the church. And so we have a reputation as apple cart upsetters, you know, as people who are just kind of trying to throw everything out and question everything, and you're always criticizing the church. I think tradition is really, really important. I think there's certain things that we need to keep doing. We can't just willy nilly get rid of and throw them out the window. On the other hand, you cannot have that thing that says you end up being a hoarder of sorts. Like, I'm never throwing anything away. Well, things get pretty crowded when you never throw anything away and you end up cutting a lot of ham that doesn't need to be cut. I just mixed, like seven, eight illustrations in one. So somebody else jump in. [00:05:09] Speaker B: I was just going to say, you're right, Jack, that sometimes the reputation, man, you guys just want to question everything. I feel like we've got to stop with the embargo on questioning things. Questioning things does not always mean that we are looking to change something. It just means we are simply asking a question. We're asking, why do we do this? And maybe the answer turns out to be, we do this for a very important reason, biblical reason. Therefore, we're going to keep doing it. Great. Our, our question was answered, but this embargo on asking questions and just questioning everything, that's that. I feel like we have to stop looking at that as a bad thing and instead look at that as something that, you know, you, you don't want to be the person that changes everything just for the sake of changing things. But the, the step, the couple steps before that of, well, let's just ask questions about it. I feel like I've gone on this rant before. This is why a lot of young people struggle with staying faithful. Why they don't really look to older people in the church is because younger people do tend to kind of naturally more question things. And a lot of times the answer that they receive is always, well, you know, kind of they're looked down on for asking the question, and then they turn to other things, other people, other outlets that can answer their question, and we act all surprise. This embargo on questioning things has got to stop. [00:06:24] Speaker A: And this is where tradition actually does fall apart, is you have a lot of people that are willing to give up tradition without knowing why it was there. Were going to get into this with Chesterton Spence and such. So I dont jump ahead too much, but it is that idea of like when I question, why do we do this? And then my mom or dad or grandparent goes, hey, heres why we do it. Okay, thats great. Because we have a lot of kids that never ask why. We have a lot of parents that are more than willing to tell them what to do, but never why to do it. College, they get there and they go, why do you do that? It's like, I don't really know. Right. So the tradition, the roots, the grounding, everything, the foundation is not there. They kind of built a house of cards and it takes very little to knock it down. If they were to question things and go, why is this that way we'd be able to tell them why that matters. Why does the turkey matter? Because it goes back to the, you know, if you go back to the original Thanksgiving, right, was it 1609 or whatever else, and, and you're looking at it and you can trace it through the years, and then technically, I suppose it comes in with, you know, a little bit later and, you know, there's other things that add to that. And then you have partnering a turkey and there's like, value to that tradition that, and I was thinking, jack, you could blend a lot of those. Like you're hoarding turkeys and cutting it in half to fit it in the pan, and you could just fit it all in together. All your illustrations. [00:07:35] Speaker C: No, but I mean, like, all of my separate illustrations were confusing. That gets even worse. [00:07:40] Speaker A: You got me hungry now. Ham and turkey and all this sorts of stuff. But, but I think there is such value in that. And Jack, going back to your point on grounding, we as a nation are rejecting a lot of traditions. And that's why you have kids that are floating and trying to create their own traditions, their own family and now their own gender. Like, hey, tradition matters. Grounding roots matter. Where we come from matters. And the traditions that the Italians pass down and the traditions that the Irish are, the traditions that the African Americans or whatever it is that pass down to their kids, and maybe in specific sectors that matters, you move down to the south, they have traditions we do not have in Colorado. And that's great. That's really cool. And I get to assimilate my family into some of the traditions down here that matter. There is a beauty to those things that we cannot miss. And so, Jack, I appreciate that you're starting on a positive note of like, please don't misunderstand us on our podcast. It goes to Will's point. We may ask why, but that doesn't mean we're just trying to get rid of everything. It means we're trying to better understand. And as we go through this outline, we are going to ask why to these things? Why are we doing these things? Is it the best thing we can do for God? Because that's really the ultimate question. And if it is, and if there's a reason for this, and there's a strong traditional reason, great. We're not looking to throw everything out. We just want to know, is it serving God? And is there a reason for this? And so, yeah, I like starting on the positive. Please keep that in mind as we go through these. We're not change agents trying to change the church. We are really just trying to ask, are these traditions helpful? [00:09:10] Speaker C: Yeah. The other thing about that is sometimes when you evaluate and go, what's the positive? What's the. What do we gain by doing this? It might be cohesion, it might be just a shared experience, and that might be enough for some things. If it's doable for everybody, if it's something that everybody enjoys, you don't need to throw it out. Or if most of the people really feel like, hey, this is. This is a good thing for us to do, to, say separate and apart or whatever, like, okay, um. And so we're going to get into some of the good and the bad, uh, very quickly. Yeah. Before we get. [00:09:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I was just going to say there is a obvious difference that I feel like we'd be remiss if we didn't bring up, but hopefully everybody knows, is that we're. There's a difference in tradition versus things that are absolutely bound in scripture. Those things, I still think you can maybe ask questions about it, but at the end of the day, like, those things are scripture maybe a little bit tougher to argue. And it's more like we're of course, we're of course not going to question those things for the sake of, maybe we should change that. Even though scripture clearly teaches it. That's really not what we're going to be addressing in this episode. But more so things that you're not going to see in scripture, things that are maybe tangentially related to things that we see in scripture, but things that are far more up for debate and far more, again, not present in God's word. And so I just wanted to get that out there because again, hopefully that goes without saying, but I. We'd be remiss if we didn't bring that up. We're not looking to take established scriptural things that we know are once again bound by scripture and say, ah, well, do we really know that's what the denominational folks do? That's what community churches do, and that's not really what we're here for. So I just wanted to kind of clarify that as we get started. [00:10:45] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's important to define our terms. And we'll do that with these scriptures. We're going to reference here in a second, because I've seen the progressives do that. Well, you know, I know a lot of us come from this tradition where men do the preaching, but no, that's not a tradition that there's. I can give you book, chapter, verse on that. That's not tradition. Tradition is we've got to put a cloth over the Lord's supper. We've got to break the bread before we pass it out. We've got to, like, there's traditions like that that have split churches and it's like, yeah, that, that's where it becomes a problem that you don't have backing for that scripturally. It is opinion, it's the way it's been done. But there's no, you know, direct biblical route. So, having said that, and, uh, there's a few times the scripture uses tradition as true teaching. Second Thessalonians three six. Paul says, we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from every brother who leads an unruly life and not according to the tradition which you receive from us. Obviously, that's command he's talking about, of the apostolic tradition that comes out elsewhere. One Corinthians eleven two. I praise you, remembered me and everything, and hold firmly to the traditions just as I delivered them to you. So there's some of that where when it says traditions in the scriptures, it's talking doctrine. However, in Jesus's skirmishes with the fair, the scribes and the Pharisees, tradition was used in a much different way. So let's get into that. Does somebody have our other text there? [00:12:05] Speaker B: I do, yeah. Matthew 15. Sorry, Joe, I'll take it. Matthew 15, starting in verse six. I'm going to back up to verse five just because it's the middle of the sentence. But you say, whoever says to his father or mother, whatever profit you might have received from me as a gift to God, then he need not honor his father or mother. Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition. Hypocrites. Well, did Isaiah prophesy about you saying, these people draw near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me, and in vain they worship me. Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. [00:12:39] Speaker C: Really important stuff there, of Jesus. Distinguishing commandments, traditions. The commandments of men are the precepts of men. The doctrines. Uh, because it's about, uh, the. Why do the disciples break the tradition? And they don't wash their hands when they eat bread. And notice, they don't even claim it's a commandment. They're not even claiming, you know, this is scripture, that we have this. It's the traditions of the elders. And that's where Jesus says, yeah, that's. There's not a commandment. We don't have to have to do that. They only broke a tradition. They didn't sin by doing that. Of course, they get into this with the. The Sabbath. And if you understand or if you're familiar with what essentially what Judaism is today is, the Pharisees won out, and the Talmud is all of these intricacies of the Sabbath and how you've got to keep it and all the things you got to do in the loopholes you can get away from and how you can kind of break the SabbAth without technically breaking the Sabbath. And all this stuff and the traditions, I mean, it's just volumes written about all the traditions that have added on to the commandments. And Jesus whole point is, if they're keeping the commandments, they're fine. And so that's really what we're talking about here, is not reversing any commandments, but look, examining traditions to say, do we have to do this? Is it a good thing to do? Is it, you know, washing your hands is generally a good idea, and I bet they probably generally did, but not that time. You know, there's a reason they didn't that time or whatever, and that's okay. And you have to be okay with that. If when you turn. This is almost one of the definitions of phariseeism, is turning a tradition into a commandment. And that's one of the things you do see happen in the church. [00:14:13] Speaker A: It is unfortunate how holiness has been defined by tradition in so many ways that we can so quickly use those two, push those two together like you are less holy if you don't offer the invitation or you're less holy if you don't. Whatever it else. Whatever else it is, we have to check ourselves against Pharisees. And Jack, you talked about this before. The checklist mentality is so easy for us to do. It may not be easy. The checklist may be a mile long and not easy to fill out. But the idea of turning our Christianity into a checklist so as to prove our righteousness, prove our worth and our works and everything else, we can be very drawn to that. And while you're at it, why not just add on even more all of these extra things that we think are going to draw us closer to God, and maybe that's fine. Obviously, we want to see how best we can draw close to God, even if it's not a specific command in scripture, if there's something to. Anyone knows the right thing to do and doesn't do it to sin. Right? So it's kind of the flip side of if I can draw closer to God by avoiding that r rated movie, scripture doesn't talk about anything specifically about it. But I'm, you know, that's something I'm giving to God. Whereas with the traditions, I think it gets passed down as like, you have to do this. Yes, it's a man made thing. You have to do this. And a lot of times, I don't know, it just gets passed down to the generations. That 3rd, 4th generation down. We're kind of looking at it going, well, I guess we just have to. And if you don't, then you are wrong and you are in sin. And I think that's the biggest issue we have here, is being called in sin for questioning something or saying that's not the case. If it's not in scripture, then I'm not in sin for breaking it. You know what I mean? Like, I don't want to be one of those that I guess that you can get into hermeneutics, discussion of permissive and things like that. It's not about that. It's about we are adding to scripture to make ourselves feel holy. This gets passed down to the generations. And if anybody questions that, you are no longer holy, like we added that all the way back, that wasn't intended to be there in the first place. And I think that's very pharisaical and we can rail against the Pharisees and go, they're so bad. We are so prone to doing this, and I hate to say it, but specifically in the Church of Christ, I think we are very prone to being pharisaical in some ways where we don't preach grace very often, and that is a shame. [00:16:25] Speaker C: Hey, folks, you've probably heard us talk about focus plus and the deep end. If you're wondering what that is, focus plus is our subscription service, available through Patreon every week. Members get all kinds of christian content for your walk, including daily devotionals, a sermon of the week, and our understudied teaching series, which Joe and I lead through obscure and less covered books of the Bible like Leviticus and Revelation. We also have the deep end, of course, which is our bonus segment exclusively for think deeper listeners where you can submit your comments on an episode and we will respond and have a bit of a q and a each and every week. That drops every Friday. So if you're interested and want to know more, check that out. Go to patreon.com and search focus Press or go to focuspress.org plus. [00:17:09] Speaker B: So I want to move us into this next section that Jack's got here. [00:17:12] Speaker C: I want another scripture I didn't put on the outline, while we're kind of covering scripture, was in mark two, I mentioned about the Sabbath, one where Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. That's an important principle for interpreting traditions, is traditions. The, and this wasn't even a tradition, but he was talking about like, look, you guys have made your, you've scheduled your lives around the Sabbath when the Sabbath was done to draw you nearer to God. And so all these things that we do, the traditions probably are put in, in the first place to draw you nearer to God. But if they're not still doing that, you don't have to just do it for the sake of doing it. Let's say, you know, let's say somebody wants to get rid of Sunday night and says we can do, we can draw closer to God a different, better way. Yeah. The Sunday night was not created so you'd be there on Sunday night. It was to draw you closer to God. So I think that's a really important principle from Jesus himself. But go on ahead into this next section. [00:18:03] Speaker B: Yeah. So you've got on here, that's a much needed point there. Principles for preserving and removing the implication there being that there are some traditions, even if they're not scripture, that might be worth preserving. Some things that once again just change for the sake of change is not always a good thing, is, in fact, often not a good thing. And so what are the principles for preserving? But then also, again, there would also be principles for removing certain traditions. Um, and so the first bullet point that Jack's got on our outline here is the generational differences that, um, it is impossible to have this discussion without at least addressing, because you just follow the generational stereotypes here. Typically, younger people are those who are wanting to remove more tradition and kind of move away from tradition. And. And Jackie even spoke to kind of the outside of spiritual, outside of the church side of things, things with the turkey on Thanksgiving and stuff like that, but applying it specifically to the church. Younger people are typically more in that way, whereas the older people, because they've grown up with it, because they've always done it that way, because that's all they've known, because they have been doing it for so long. So, obviously, it has their backing and their support. They're going to be far more in favor of, well, let's preserve this tradition. Let's. Let's preserve what we have, uh, what we've been doing for so long. And so, guys, what thoughts do y'all have on that here? Once again, that's pretty. That's pretty. Pretty stereotypical, but I think it is. It pretty well applies that younger people tend to want to remove and older people tend to want to preserve various traditions. How do we. How do we navigate that? Cause, I mean, just to be very honest here, I am very aware of the fact that I, as a young person, tend to bristle at the just strict adherence. The. In my view, it's more blind adherence. Like, we're just gonna do it. I'm not even gonna think about it, not gonna look at it. I'm gonna, you know, close my ears and basically say, la la la la la la la la. We're just gonna say the tradition. I, as a younger person, bristle at that. I'm also aware enough to know that that same concept that grates on my nerves is the exact same in reverse, probably for a lot of older people, who, as soon as they hear a young person, start to raise their hand and kind of challenge things, that grates on their nerve. And so it's. It very clearly falls along generational lines here. So what. What thoughts do you guys have to add to that and kind of how we navigate that? [00:20:22] Speaker C: Well, Joe, I thought you might have something there. I'm going to say that I feel the same thing. There's very much goes along with our episode last week of conflict resolution confrontation, that you got to bring that into the church if people are going to want different things. And deferring to one another in love is important to. To a degree. We're going to talk in a minute about not letting that become all consuming of just kind of always deference, always letting somebody drive the ship. But, um, yeah, I mean, I think both generations need to have humility, unfortunately. And usually, in most cases, one of the two, if not both, doesn't have the humility. A lot of times, we want our way. James talks about that. [00:21:02] Speaker A: We. [00:21:02] Speaker C: We want our way, and that's why we fight, is we're trying to get our own way, and we want our own way because it's. It's what we've always done, or we don't like what we've always done. We're wanting to change things. And, yeah, I mean, I was in a church that almost split over moving Sunday evening service from 05:00 to 02:00, from evening to afternoon. And it was just that. It was like, look, we almost. Nobody's coming back for 05:00. We've got a lot of people who work out of town or whatever else. They can't make the 05:00. Let's move it to two. And, you know, we. More of them have said they will move it to two or they will be able to make it. They want to make it, but they can't make 05:00. They'll come at two. Again, Sunday night was not created for the man, but man for Sunday or not man for Sunday night, but Sunday night for the man. Let's move it to two. And again, it was more along generational lines. We are not doing that. It has always been at 05:00, we're going to do that. Well, what you're telling those people who want to be there but can't is I don't. I care way more about this than you. And so we have. When issues like that come up, certain people are in the wrong and should be rebuked when it comes to these things. [00:22:06] Speaker B: I've got a question on that very quickly. Joe, I know you've got some thoughts, so I know I asked you one question. I'm gonna ask another one here. And if you want to tackle both or. Or however you want to do it, in instances where it seems like maybe it's close to it could go either way. Um, a lot of people say, you know, something like that. What I have seen, typically, is that the tie you hear that in football of, like, if both. If the defender and the receiver both catch it, the tie goes to the receiver. I feel like typically in these instances, the tie goes to the tradition. And my question is, do you think that's how it should be? Like, if it's really close and, man, there's a lot of value on both sides, let's just kind of stick with the tradition. That's what we like. I don't know. Maybe there's an argument to be made that that is a good thing, that the tie should go to. Tradition. I was curious y'all's thoughts on that because it definitely seems to me like, once again, to use the sports analogy, that when they go to replay review, they say it's got to be. There's got to be overwhelming evidence to overturn it. I see that exact same thing. When it comes, tradition is like, okay, maybe we'll change it. If there's overwhelming evidence to the contrary versus tradition, that tends to get the benefit of the doubt, so to speak. [00:23:13] Speaker C: I think there is some wisdom in that. And the other thing, I'm sticking with the tradition. You're saying, yeah, if there's not going to be like this overwhelmingly clear. I felt in that case, where you've just got people who are like, I want to come, and I can't. Yeah, we move for them. If it was just, well, maybe this will be a bit of a shot in the arm for us if we move it versus. No, it's nothing. Okay. It's really not worth, you know, stirring up this kind of. You don't go looking for conflict. The other thing is, especially when it's generational, if it doesn't make a difference, you're going to have your time to be the older person. You're going to have your time to have more of a say. Defer to your elders, I think is scriptural wisdom on that. The gray headed proverbs talks about and all that. But, Joe, what are your thoughts on that one? [00:23:54] Speaker A: Well, to answer Will's question, I was just going to say change is really difficult to implement with people, especially if you get older folks to change. So if it really is equal footing, it's like 50 50, you know, could go either way. Yeah, I would defer to the tradition because getting everybody to change can be a lot. That creates a lot of headaches. It creates power struggles. It creates a lot of things. So don't. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Now, if there's something that you're looking at, it going. I really do think, as Jack's saying, yeah, we'll look at it a little bit differently. The point I was going to make, old people should be known for their wisdom, right? The gray headed, like, there's a wisdom level that comes with that. The problem I have with this is a lot of times they have no idea why they're doing it. It's just what it is. And it's difficult for young people to respect the older person, though. Yes, we need to, but to respect the older person when the thing that the older person should be providing to this, we provide the vigor and we provide the, hey, this, let's go get it done. Kind of that spirited nature, the young people provide that we should be, you know, underneath this wisdom that is willing to say, hey, here's why we do this and really teaches our ways. Old people aren't doing that. I'm sorry. The elderly are not teaching young people wisdom, and they don't really have wisdom behind a lot of these things. They just did it because their parents and their parents and their parents did it. So it's difficult for a young person who is really motivated and who wants to go out and make a difference, who wants to serve God. And he comes, you know, comes to him and says, we should do this. Nope, we're not going to do it. Like, teach us your wisdom. And the. The honest answer is you don't have any wisdom in this situation, and you and I both realize that. And it's difficult for us to be. For me to respect you because you aren't doing things worthy of respect. You're not pointing me to scripture, so. [00:25:33] Speaker C: I'm not saying that for the old guy a little bit there. [00:25:36] Speaker A: Sure. [00:25:36] Speaker C: There's a degree to which, and I know some preachers would hate to hear me say this, I probably myself would have hated at a certain point. There is a degree to which we've always done it that way is not a bad. It's the turkey versus the rib eye thing again. Um, and. And if it really is something that they feel has been passed on and. And it's a way, I think you. [00:25:55] Speaker B: Still have to have a why behind it, though. That. That can't be the main why. [00:25:58] Speaker C: Well, it depends on how much of a why there is from the other side. If it's just, well, let's try another thing. [00:26:03] Speaker A: I was going to say if I come, if I'm coming with, like. Like you said, Jay, let's try a new thing. Let's just do, you know, let's try different that's not an answer. If I think it's holier, then that's a difference, right? [00:26:14] Speaker C: And I. Both sides will probably always feel like their side has good reason, whatever it may be, even if they can't articulate it that well. This brings in the Chesterton idea about when you come to a fence, you might say the progressive is going to be like, all right, this thing's old. Let's tear it down. And what you need to say is tell him, I'm not going to let you tear it down. And until you can tell me why it was put up, if you don't see any use for it, then it's not time to tear it down. You need to know why it was put in and if it was put in. So there was one down here about, my grandmother told me about a church splitting over a sheet being put over the Lord's Supper. We always had a sheet over the Lord's Supper. We moved into a new building and they didn't bring the sheet over. And now we got to do it. And it was really that thing, like, we're going to split. And it got down to why did we do it in the first place? Why was this fence built? Essentially? Why did we put a sheet over the Lord's supper? Well, we didn't have air conditioning. We opened the windows, flies came in and got into all the emblems. We've got windows, we've got air conditioning. Now we don't have that problem. We don't have to cover it. But it had become a level of, if we don't do this, we're not pleasing to God. That is ridiculous. But once you know, if you know it's at that ridiculous, you can tear that tradition down a little bit. Now, if I'm the one guy in the church like, get that sheet off of the Lord's supper and everybody else like, no, it's fine, just leave it. Maybe it's time for me to shut up. But if it really is just something where this is the other thing we've got on the outline. Don't let somebody hold you hostage when, if you might have two or three people, like, we're always doing this way. I'm leaving, I'm taking my contribution. If you make it one change whatsoever, you can't, you can't capitulate to that because then you, you will, you know, you are making man live for the Sabbath rather than the other way around kind of thing. I'm sure we've probably all got experiences with that kind of thing. And I was reading, there's a book on eldership that was recommended to me from all kinds. I mean, like, it's one of the, the Church of Christ books on eldership. And in the intro, somebody, or the preface, somebody is praising the author's grasp of leadership and eldership, and he gives the example of man, his church. They decided it'd be better to serve the Lord's supper from the back so they could distribute it better. And some of the members there just really didn't like that. They wanted to be from the front because it had always been from the front, and they didn't feel it was right if it came from the back. So the elders came to a great compromise and had guys come from the front and the back? No, absolutely not. You just let those people, you just told those people they get to run the entire church if they are a squeaky enough wheel that you will capitulate. And so you can't have that. With regard to tradition, too. [00:28:45] Speaker A: We had that at a congregation that we went to. Everybody wanted to move the time for the, for the meal after. Right. The potluck. And this was a weekly occurrence, and they said, not coming to the potluck. I'm. I do my own thing every single week. And their tradition was we needed to have it later. As to Jack's point, and it was one of those, like, I'm sorry, you're the only one that's saying, we need to do it later. We are going to do it right after, because this works better for everybody. And they almost left over it. But that's one of those, like, the one person trying to. And same church. We had pews. We were putting in chairs. This woman threw such a fit about going to the chairs because she wanted pews in the building that we literally left two pews up front, uh, just for her and her son, and, uh, two pews on the other side to kind of balance it out. And so we did not get rid of all of the pews, and it was singly because she got mad that we were going into chairs because it's the way it's always been. We've had pews here all the way back. Like, yeah, but the chairs are better. They're more comfortable, they're more aesthetic. There are a lot of different things. Uh, but we had to capitulate in that way because we didn't want her to leave the congregation because of it. So, yeah, there is a level of, like, I think that's probably more of a common story than we'd like to believe that it is of traditional. This place where I sit, that's a tradition for people. That's my spot. You can't, you know, you can't move me. That's my spot. Like that becomes a tradition for certain people. This is the family spot. Whatever it is, passed down. But, and I think, jet, you're making a very good point on. I want to go back to that because I don't want to be so harsh. I wanted to give the other side as well. [00:30:22] Speaker C: I've got to be the older defender of all folks. [00:30:25] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [00:30:26] Speaker B: Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. I don't want to be too harsh, though. [00:30:30] Speaker C: I don't know. [00:30:31] Speaker A: I think there's reasons why there is. [00:30:33] Speaker C: A level of deference to christians who are lifers who have really put their, their blood, sweat and tears into a church and stuff like that. Of, I mean, we had something like, I've dealt with that before of just kind of like Manda is really gonna. This could go either way. All right. I'm just gonna let this person have this one because they've, they've earned it more than I have. Now, again, you can't do that on everything. You can't let somebody hold the church hostage. But as will saying the tie. [00:30:57] Speaker B: So how do you, how do you distinguish that? I guess that's as I'm just sitting here putting myself in the shoes of the listener here as we talk about something like that, Jack. Of like, well, maybe I'll let him have this one. Does. Would that not apply to somebody who maybe. Can you just leave one pew for me? Is that can, you know, and obviously a lot of it depends on the way that it's presented, but I'm having personally a hard time distinguishing that kind of thing versus, like, this person's being ridiculous. This person is holding the church hostage versus. This is a compromise that we can, we can be willing to make as Jack, again, as you just said, I'm gonna let them have this one. Where's the line there? I do think capitulating constantly to somebody just because of a personal preference is a bad practice in general is not the right way to go about it. [00:31:43] Speaker A: It. [00:31:43] Speaker B: But on something that maybe is of minor importance. If it's. If it's going to keep peace, should that be something that we at least consider as opposed to just kind of bulldozing our way through it? [00:31:52] Speaker C: You said a key word there constantly. And this is to Joe's thing with the pews or whatever, this was a regular occurrence of somebody. No, I want this. I'm putting my foot down. I want the end just every time. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. No, it can't be constantly. If this person is never the squeaky wheel, they're never having a problem. They're like, boy, I really do feel this way about this. I feel this is important. Okay, you give them that one, you know, but if it's. If it's just a trouble member, I mean, that's where leadership needs to be. Pretty hands on. Like, look, we love you. We appreciate your input. Everyone's going a different direction on this one, and we're not sinning by doing this. There's no, like, you can give me your scriptural arguments. There aren't any for having a pew versus chairs. So we're gonna move on, and we're sorry. And if she says, that's it, I'm out of here, and I'm taking my contribution, I'm gonna. I mean, you. You go after her. But if she just keeps putting that foot down, you don't just say, okay, well, you run the church. Come on back. We'll do whatever you want. And so. So I think it is very case by case on, is this person throwing their weight around, or is this a genuine, really plugged in person who never asks for anything but this one they really care about? You know, like, there's a big difference there. I think it's. [00:32:59] Speaker B: Good answer. I like that. I like that. [00:33:01] Speaker A: Tell us, are we ready to get into. Yeah, let's get the individual better before. Yeah, we're not going to get the time. We definitely want to get there. So I added this one just briefly, the setup of the church building with. Because this has been questioned, and I have heard of other churches of Christ and other churches in general, where they're starting to either go to a circular structure rather than everybody facing the front. [00:33:24] Speaker B: With the movie theater, whatever it is. [00:33:27] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Like they're starting to go to a circular format where somebody kind of stands up and they're talking around in a circle. Don't know if this deserves to be on here, but I am curious on the setup of the church building. How does that one hit you when you think about. Because I can. Look, you go to change things. You may get some very upset people. If you were to shift to that, what are your thoughts on being willing to change up maybe the setup of the very church building? [00:33:53] Speaker B: So this might be a common theme for me as we kind of go throughout a lot of this stuff. There's some of these that I do feel very strongly about. I guess for me, it is surprising that there are so many people who feel so passionately about. About a lot of this stuff. Like, I guess for me, the setup of the church building is like, I'm good either way. But again, some people can get. Just get so riled up about it. The same thing with pews or chairs. Like, if I had to vote, I'm probably choosing chairs, but if it's pews, that's fine with me. I feel as though. And maybe. Maybe this is the wrong attitude, you guys, correct me if I'm wrong. I feel as though for the most part, we really should be getting our feathers ruffled about more important things than set up of the church building and chairs versus pews and all that. And. And, Joe, I'm not saying that to diminish your question. I'm just saying as we're going down this list, it's like there's. There's legitimate reasons why maybe we should move Sunday night to. From five to two. There's legitimate reasons why maybe we should examine the invitation or examine what exactly are we doing for the Lord's supper. But, man, some of this other window dressing stuff, it's like, I don't personally understand why people care so much. I certainly am not one that does. [00:35:05] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I'm pretty well in agreement with that. Of. That is a weird hill to die on. Yeah. [00:35:11] Speaker A: And I think it's less of I am. Yeah. [00:35:14] Speaker C: Now, it's funny with, with some of these, we're going to say that's a strange hill to die on. And some listeners are like, I'll die on that hill. And I make your case. That's just fine. I mean, like, if you. If there's something you think we. We touch that is not scriptural, it is not tradition or straight scripture, let us know if there's something you're like, no, I think this is a really good idea. I'd love to hear the good idea for it. In church reset, I wrote that the current setup is very consumer producer, so I'm good with, you know, more fanned out more us versus us versus you kind of thing. But I don't think it. Yeah, I don't think I'm really. With what Will said. [00:35:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll just say that not. Not a lot of churches are going to go to this, and I don't want to spend a lot of time on this. I just said it's the last second just because I was thinking it really goes to show. Are you willing to ask questions. Is this. What I would love for people to do is, are we set up? And maybe the answer is yes. Maybe they decide the answer is yes. Like, have we set things up to the best of our ability to help encourage one another? Why are we here? We're here to worship God. We're here to encourage and uplift one another. Is this the best we can do in that? And that's going to be, that's going to set the tone for the rest of these questions. Is this the best we can do? And I really like Jack, the way you set this out. The reason I put this up front is like, this is as you're walking into the building and participating in worship, Jack has gone step by step on this outline of the first thing you run into, all the way to the last thing, maybe that you run into. A few of the on the end are kind of like more general, broad things we've added. But I appreciate that approach. So as you walk into the first one, I think it would hit people wrong if everybody was in a circle and you'd go, that's kind of, that's kind of strange. But if we were thinking along the lines of I appreciate a church that's done that, where they thought, is this the best we can do? That's more of why I brought it up, is I think it sets the tone for the type of questions we want to ask with tradition, is, why is this here? Is there any reason to do it or could it be better? And in some situations I think it could be for those that have chairs that are willing to do it. But I wanted to get into the second one. Jack, I'll tee you off on this one. [00:37:06] Speaker B: You put down, probably rapid firing. [00:37:09] Speaker C: I'll take the one right after this greeting time. Yeah. So if you're not familiar with some churches, take right after the first song or opening prayer or whatever and say, all right, take a minute to, you know, greet the people who've been front and beside you or whatever, shake hands, welcome somebody. And so that for some churches, that has become a tradition. It's been going on long enough. I can't stand it. I don't think being friendly to people needs to be a church program. I think you should be friendly to the people sitting around you, no matter who you are. And once you are starting worship, it's about God. It's not a greeting time. I mean, I'm a no on that one. I am fully good on dropping that one. [00:37:48] Speaker B: I'll move us into. I haven't actually seen that done a ton. So that's, that's very, very interesting. [00:37:52] Speaker C: That might be my intro version. Like, don't make me, you know, I'm happy to say hi to people, but don't force me to. [00:37:58] Speaker B: I've seen the thing where it's like, all right, turn and shake the person's hand beside you or whatever. It's kind of cringey, kind of forced and weird. But the next one we have is announcements. And most congregations do start their worship with some form of announcements. We currently do, and I know we before have proposed the idea of when you are assembling to worship. Maybe a call to worship would be more appropriate than getting up there and, all right, let's read the sick list or we've got this program coming up. We've got this event for everybody. And yeah, this would be one. Again, it's not a hill that I'm going to die on. Once again, I would be more for announcements at the end, and we have not changed that at our congregation. Again, it's not a hill I'm dying on, but I do. I definitely see more benefit on the side of let's make worship about worship. And so let's get our minds started in the right place. I love it when our guy who does announcements at our congregation, Bob, he does a great job. I love it when he start, he gets done with the announcements, then he reads a section of scripture to start worship. I love that. And I think if we could do that to start worship, maybe even stop everybody talking by the song leader, kicking off a song, whatever it is. I think starting your worship with focusing on God, focusing on singing praise, focusing on scripture, whatever, when announcements can literally be done anytime and so why not throw them at the end? That's my kind of my brief thoughts on that. [00:39:22] Speaker C: I wonder if we're like ten or 20 minutes or ten or 20 years away from just being able to make it a Monday morning email. That's true, because I know we're at the point where some people are like, I'm not checking that. I'm not going to read that. And again, respect the elderly. Fair enough. I mean, if they're not going to, like, we need to and make it available for him, but maybe you can do away with it as part of the time together. [00:39:43] Speaker A: And just to say to, I know we got to move on, but like, why would I want to be, this sounds horrible, but why would I want to be thinking about the sick person? Oh, I didn't send that card out and I wonder if they need a meal. And I need. I don't need those thoughts right before I'm about to worship, worship the almighty. I need my mind in the right place. And so when we're announcing the sick and, oh, we got this pot, like next Sunday, what am I going to cook? Nothing that's going to distract. We are here for a specific reason. And at the end makes a lot more sense because it's more actionable of like, go do this. While you're thinking about the sick person, give him a phone call. He is missing today. You know what I mean? [00:40:13] Speaker C: Like, after the closing prayer. [00:40:14] Speaker A: Way more actionable after the closing. [00:40:15] Speaker C: Yeah, start. I've seen it after the sermon and then after the closing prayer. I don't know if there's a best. I really don't like after the sermon or the closing prayer because it's kind of like, all right, we're gup. We're getting out of here. You know, we're, we're kind of charged up from we just worshiped God to. All right, sit still, everybody. Like, I don't know, at the beginning it does. I do feel better about getting him out of the way, so I guess I'm again on that one. So. Caster. [00:40:40] Speaker A: Getting him out of the way. Yeah. [00:40:41] Speaker B: Well, you know, we're just for worshiping God, but you. [00:40:44] Speaker C: Exactly. [00:40:45] Speaker A: You know, Jack's fine with distractions, I guess that's. That's okay. That's okay. [00:40:50] Speaker C: I don't even have a good comeback. [00:40:51] Speaker B: I was gonna say he's. I can literally see the wheels turning. [00:40:54] Speaker A: He's walking. Witty. Come back there. [00:40:58] Speaker C: We're excited to announce that doctor Brad and Melinda Harab's book on parenting is now available for pre order arrows. In the hands of a warrior. Discipling children toward heaven with God's grace is a book drawing on 25 years of parenting experience as Doctor Brad and Melinda Point, christian fathers and mothers back to God's word to take up the crucial responsibility of discipling children towards heaven. Put in a pre order [email protected]. dot. [00:41:24] Speaker B: Move us into. [00:41:24] Speaker A: The next one is. The next one is order, which is going to be usually announcements, two songs, prayer song, lord's supper song, maybe scripture reading, sermon song, prayer or song song. [00:41:38] Speaker C: Prayer congregations is literally the exact same every single week. [00:41:41] Speaker A: I think I just laid out three years. Yes, we are one of them. [00:41:45] Speaker C: I've seen slight variations, but it's like I've been in places where it is literally the exact same thing. [00:41:51] Speaker A: What are your thoughts on this well, you might. Yes. [00:41:54] Speaker B: I don't like it. So I led. I led singing recently for our congregation, and our song leader does a great job. He's fantastic with the way he does it. Maybe this is. Somebody would say, man, you're just changing things for the sake of change. I led three songs instead of two. I did three songs, and it was just something very minor. But I do. [00:42:13] Speaker A: I did notice. [00:42:15] Speaker B: Okay, well, Joe, I'm curious. I hate. Sorry, I interrupted you there. I'm curious, mister change agent, why exactly, but why you say that you're not a fan of it. I know for me, it can seem very. Just rote, habitual. Okay, just got to do it. Let's just go get through it. As opposed to there being a little bit more, I don't know, vibrancy, if that's the right word, but more vitality to it, I would say. What are your thoughts on it? [00:42:38] Speaker A: We worshiped a congregation in lone tree that every Sunday was slightly different, but it always. And we'd sing, like, nine songs. [00:42:48] Speaker C: I wouldn't say slightly. You literally had no idea what was coming on a Sunday. [00:42:52] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. That's true. You had no idea. But by slight, I mean, like, different in terms of, you didn't know where everything stood. There was always going to be somewhere around eight, nine songs. You're still going to have every part of worship. But, yeah, I mean, there were times where I literally. We'd have an opening prayer, a song, and I would get up to preach, and then we get down and we'd have another. [00:43:12] Speaker B: How did y'all decide it was it just. [00:43:14] Speaker C: Song leader said we had it. [00:43:15] Speaker A: Yeah, song leader said it. And he. The great thing is he would get ahold of me ahead of time and say, hey, what are you going to preach on? And he. All the songs would go along with the lesson, and he would plan it out accordingly as to, like, okay, this lesson, like, I know it's going to be on this, and then I want to build songs after. So he did a fantastic job with it. I loved it because I had to engage when I was there. It was not like, okay, here we go. Yeah, I got a couple songs, and then I really need to start paying attention. No, you're, like, right into it. I need to know. And I kind of like the off kilter. And so I know why people would be against it. They want to know what's coming, but I think that gives way to rote. As you talk about the isaiah one of, like, you're just honoring me with your lips but your heart is far from me. How many of us are willing to worship week after week, going through the motions, knowing the same songs we sing the same, you know, same ten songs, whatever it is, which, you know, we try to vary it for our congregation, but like a lot of churches do. And then you just get to the end and you realize, I never really checked in on hardly any of that. I don't like that. I liked having it be off kilter, where I had to engage more with the, you know, the. The order of it. What are your guys. [00:44:19] Speaker B: Just a quick. Just a quick counterpoint that somebody might bring up and then. Sorry, Jack, if you want to go for it, but somebody might bring up the decently in an order passage. I was curious what your. What your answer would be to that of, like, let all things. [00:44:29] Speaker A: I would say it was certainly decently. I would say it was certainly decently in an order. It was just a different order than what you might normally have. Like, the. The order doesn't have to be the same every time, and I don't think you get that sense in Corinth that it's the same every time. [00:44:41] Speaker B: The opposite of decently in an order screams like, chaos to me. Yeah. And that's not what you were describing, correct? [00:44:49] Speaker C: Yeah, I go back and forth on that. I. It definitely did keep you on your toes. On the other hand, we talked about tradition. Kind of grounds you a little bit of. You do know, to a degree what's coming. On the other hand, it. I'm on three hands now, man. I'm bad at it. You guys got to stop making me record at night. [00:45:03] Speaker A: On the. On the other foot. [00:45:04] Speaker C: Yeah, on my foot at this point. [00:45:06] Speaker B: Um, no, that's just the old man here. So it's clean to tradition. That's all it is. [00:45:10] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:45:11] Speaker C: Um, it shouldn't be, uh, the exact same thing every single week. I don't think that's great. But on the other hand, man, I got to stop saying that. The changing everything. That's right. I'm very, very coordinated here. Or not. So. Yeah. Song or the order, I mean, that is one of our deepest set traditions, but it is also one that doesn't need a lot of changing, I don't think. And of all the things you might try and tear down, we might have some more. We're going to get to. [00:45:41] Speaker B: So. [00:45:41] Speaker C: Lord supper pressing. Uh, we're going to look at two sides of this one is, uh, typically a pretty short talk. Uh, usually three minutes, maybe five if the guy, uh, gets going some places, they'll get up and read first corinthians eleven, you know, five or six verses in there, or from Matthew or Luke or whatever. Um, we used to just pray and go, yeah, some churches, just a lot of places, I get seven praise and goes, uh, doesn't want to, really. And I don't, I'm not saying doesn't want to, like, he's being lazy. Some people are the, you don't have that many guys and they don't want to speak, whatever that. It just is what it is. Some have advocated a longer lord's supper talk, a ten to 15 minutes talk every week, or a different format of doing it. I'm not even sure what, what that would look like, but thoughts for you guys on that. One of extending, because the main thing about it is the, the complaint is the sermon remains the center and not the Lord's supper. And they think the Lord's supper should be much bigger presence in the worship order. [00:46:36] Speaker B: My biggest complaint with the Lord's supper is that I don't want it to feel rushed. And I think I brought up before that and indicator. One of the things I really enjoyed about what they did is they, they literally call it like, was a position for worship of like, somebody is doing the Lord's supper devotional. And it was, it could be anywhere from five minutes on the lower end to 1012 minutes in some instances, on the, on the other hand, and it did not feel rushed, and I really did appreciate that, that it was not like a. All right, well, we got to make sure he gets up there at the right time. We got to kind of hurry this along. And I have had the privilege of visiting a lot of congregations, and maybe that's just me. That is a feeling I get sometimes of like, man, they're just kind of trying to really get through it and let's say our prayers and, um, you know, separate and apart and all this, and move on. I don't want it to be rushed. I don't think we should set a timer for it of like, okay, it's got to be a minimum of ten minutes, guys. I don't think that's a good idea. But I'm a fan of, I think at the most, putting intention behind it, which to, once again, to our congregation's credit, I think we do. I think we have one guy that's dedicated to take the whole month, so all the Sundays, and he puts some thought into it and goes, and I do like that. So intention and not, not rushing it are kind of my two things that I would want to see. Joe, what about you? [00:47:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I very much would advocate for a longer word, supper talk, shorter sermon, which is funny coming from me. I probably need to take that into consideration. [00:47:57] Speaker B: You do not get to. You do not get to argue for a shorter. [00:48:01] Speaker C: You can't say longer lord supper talk until ten minutes start coming off of your sermon. [00:48:04] Speaker A: So maybe it would help. But, hey, since we do so short, I'm having to make it up on the back end. [00:48:10] Speaker B: No, you're making it up. [00:48:12] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:48:14] Speaker A: Well, thanks, guys. Thanks. [00:48:16] Speaker B: I'm just teasing. [00:48:17] Speaker A: Nobody. Nobody's fallen asleep yet, so we're all good. But I would say this is the reason we're here. And I think this is the focal point of why we gather together as christians, is to make sure the Lord suffer. Like Paul put such an emphasis, because it's not just first corinthians eleven, like right before this. You see, they're taking it without each other, and the rich are taking without the poor and not waiting on each other. And it's like, whoa, whoa, hey. We come together for a. For this purpose, right? We want to get this one right. And so I would advocate for that. And Jack, to your second point here of, should it just be the small piece of cracker and a sip of juice, or should it be more? I am also of the opinion that it should be more. I would love to have a chunk of unleavened bread and have a actual glass of grape juice that you could sip on and that you could think about over the course, because it's like, okay, look, if we don't do this, it's not the end of the world. But, like, if we were really thinking about, we pull everything away from. And we go, what is the best. What. What are we looking for in the Lord's supper? We're really looking to draw our minds closer to Christ, to remember his sacrifice, to remember what it means in our lives, maybe even to confess sin, anything that's separating us from Christ in that moment. And it's to really align ourselves and prepare ourselves for battle for the week. If we viewed it as. As that, how would we. How would you want to go about doing it? And I think you would want to give a long. A longer talk and a much longer time before, hey, we passed it out in the pews, and that was like a minute and 30 and we're back. No, no, I would give a five minutes in between for people to really think and to read scripture and to, like, sit in this for a second while they're sipping their grape juice or while they're eating their bread, and it's just a reminder because do you think that Jesus, when he's instituted Lord's supper, they all passed around one piece of unleavened bread and they, like, that's what. [00:49:58] Speaker B: I was saying when he instituted. Do you think it was a little sip? Yeah, right. [00:50:01] Speaker C: Like, so you're saying nobody up front is just kind of quiet time for that time? [00:50:07] Speaker A: I've seen it quite a time. And there's also a great brother, Bear Valley, that while that was happening, he actually spoke during that time while it was being passed out to lead everybody's mind. Some people were really against it, but I thought it was helpful of. He had some great thoughts to kind of lead your. And he'd give a little bit of quiet time for you to ponder on these different things was almost prompts. I thought it was really well done. It was different, but it also drew the mind quite a bit. And Bear Valley had so many pews that you had a longer time to focus. We're much shorter and less pews here, so it's very fast, but we need to give more time, in my opinion, to the thinking at that time. We've been prepping the night before. We've been prepping that morning thinking about these things. So it's not like we have to have 30 minutes of quiet time meditation, but a little bit longer would be good, I think. And more than just a small little cracker, I don't think that's doing it justice. [00:50:56] Speaker C: And then also the. The COVID cups I go. I've been to some churches even recently that they're still doing that. I mean, they don't have to pass it out of that. Well, it's not just. It's not just the quality of the stuff, which, thankfully, some of them have gotten a lot better than those first ones, but still, it's not great. But how you don't have guys walking up and down the aisle, which extends the time and so literally be, say the prayer. Amen. Rip the thing, cracker. You know, say the prayer. Amen. Take the sip and you're just done. And so it's. It's all over in like 30 seconds. That is very off feeling what Joe's talking, cutting out part of the worship. We always have, like, a song to get your mind ready. There's so many songs that are applicable. What if we sang two, three, four, you know, on either side of it or something to like, hey, we're really? Entering this portion of the worship, maybe. And you might not have a lot of guys that want to give up, get up and give a ten minute talk, have them read through a whole chapter. You know, the. The crucifixion, whatever it may be. I think you could extend it. I'd be for this. [00:51:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that idea. What y'all are talking about gives it more gravitas, almost gives it more. More weight. Yeah. More meaning than the way that a lot of places currently do it. And, yeah, I love it. We got to keep going. [00:52:09] Speaker C: But one other thing. I've seen some denominational folks do an absolution kind of thing, a corporate confession. Father, we've all sinned. We repent of our sins. We're thankful for Jesus, for the forgiveness, and amen. Our sins are forgiven as we're taking the Lord's supper of, like, we're. You have this assurance, man. We need assurance. I really like that idea. [00:52:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So let's move on into the collection taking place after the Lord's supper. There's that. That phrase that everybody always says, separate and apart from the Lord's supper. And I've seen some places where they will sing a song in between to kind of differentiate, or some places will do the Lord's supper before. Beforehand, the contra. Before the sermon. That is contribution afterwards, and then vice versa. Um, this is one of those that I don't really have a preference on. I'm not going to die on this hill, guys. In any thoughts on this one? I know there are some people that do, but I'm not one of them. [00:53:01] Speaker C: I love the box idea that started up with COVID I was going to. [00:53:04] Speaker A: Say, like the box. [00:53:05] Speaker C: I know some people feel like acts of worship, that is not one of, like. It's. It's separating it from the acts of worship. It's not between the amens. I think there's a degree of tradition to that of, like, you have to give money during the thing. When Paul said, take up a collection so that no collections be made when I come does not mean separate and apart from the Lord's supper. You pass out a plate. Like, we don't know what form it took. As long as you are contributing, collecting, and there's an anonymity to that a little bit. There's a. Or not? Well, I guess not if people see you walk up and put in the box. But still there's a. You do it on your own time. It's also there right up front, so everybody remembers it, you know, whether it's in the lobby or whatever it may be. I do like that. I'm glad some churches stuck with that post, Covid. [00:53:43] Speaker A: I would advocate for that. I like that more. All right, will, any thoughts on that? [00:53:50] Speaker B: No, I would, uh. I would move a song. We've still got the big one. [00:53:54] Speaker A: Are you sure? [00:53:55] Speaker B: No, no, I'm good. I'm sorry. We still got the big one. We got to talk about. We're already at the 55 minutes mark, so. [00:54:00] Speaker A: That's true. Well, a little bit less. We certainly. Traditional sermons. Traditional sermons. We like that. I'm actually advocate. An advocate for, but we'd have to do the rest, of course. I'm going to give a traditional sermon. Sermon until everything else changes. But if we changed it along the Lord Supper, extended the song service, everything else, and I was to get up and give a ten to 15 minutes talk, my job would be a lot easier. But it's not just about ease of job. Like, I love preaching. I preach for a long time. I would advocate a shorter sermon that is more really pushing application, kind of like, let's talk about this after. And how we. And I like how we do that. In our second service where we go over the sermon and ask questions and engage and things like that. We have a short service, and it kind of becomes a Bible class type setting. I like that because the sermon is so forgotten. I say 36 minutes worth of stuff. You may grab a minute worth out of that. And I'm very aware of that. I'm kind of, like, down on the sermon right now just because, like, in my. In my life, because I feel like you can preach until you're blue in the face and you're going to have amen, brother. And then walk out the door and they'll forget it by Tuesday. Like that, to me, seems like a broken system. I think there's ways we could do it better, and I'm the first to say I don't do it great. Uh, I do need to shorten it in a lot of ways. But there are ways we could think about this in a better. [00:55:16] Speaker B: I think I definitely agree with that. I mean, you. The idea of you put all this thought, all this work into a three or four minute stretch, that man, if you're lucky, people are paying attention to one or two minutes. I do think maybe. Maybe this is me just kind of because I'm a preacher and I enjoy preaching. I do think there is a sweet spot of, like 20 to 30 minutes, and if you want to tighten that down, maybe 23 to 28 minutes somewhere in that range that I do really still think that there is value in taking apart a text, drawing things out, making application in a lecture style. I don't think it's the best form. I don't think maybe it's something that we, you know, would not be good every single week, but I do think there is still a level of value to it. And once again, maybe that's just because I enjoy presenting those types of sermons where you are taking apart a text and you are presenting it in a applicable way and, but in more of a lecture style. I agree with you that I don't think it's necessarily the most effective and that there are vast ways to improve it, but those would be kind of the items in the pro side of the column, I would say. And once again, just personal preference there. Jack, what about you? [00:56:23] Speaker C: Yeah, I really, Joe mentioned, I love what we have where you can preach and then have a follow up conversation time. I think that helps a lot and it helps with the sermon preparation of like, I'm going to get into some of this, but I can't go as in depth with certain things as I want in this timeframe. Or, you know, people don't maybe have the attention span to go all the way deep on that. But when I'm teaching them and we're having a discussion on it afterwards, I can get into some heavier stuff or whatever. This is one of those generational things. I think that the shorter attention spans are real. On the one hand, we can't cater all the way down to a tick tock attention span. At some point generationally, we're going to have to bring people back up. But 45 is really hard to ask of people these days. And I remember in preaching school a friend was like, well, man, some of the, some of these guys online, you know, I don't know who it was at the time. Mark Driscoll, Francis Chan, you know, they're, they're going 40, 45 minutes an hour and they've got, you know, millions of YouTube views. Like, yeah, I'm not him and we're not him. There's a reason. [00:57:18] Speaker A: And they're bringing balance beams up on stage. [00:57:20] Speaker C: Well, there's that. But it's also, there's a reason. You know, their name is because these are world class orators. Most churches don't have a world class orator. And so, yeah, I think, you know, I wouldn't change a whole lot of how sermon is done at this point, other than I really do like the additional discussion time after which we do after the closing prayer. For those who aren't familiar, Jack, I'm. [00:57:39] Speaker A: Going to turn around and tee you off on this next one, which is, you get the sermon, you're done. Invitation. This is a. An article you wrote, a fantastic article. Sounds like it's exploding for you, which is great. And you broke this down very well. I want you to get into. I've never been a big fan of the invitation. I don't think will is big fan of the invitation. Um, but there's a lot of people that very. Believe very strongly. It was one of the first things that I got kind of in trouble for here at the congregation is just being taken aside as the, hey, you got down a little too soon. Um, or you went back to your seat a little too soon. From the invitation, we want to leave time for to the very last note, last song, you know, last verse. We want to leave time for people to come to the invitation. People are very upset about this one, I would say, or very passionate about. [00:58:20] Speaker B: This one, just to add to it. In a kind of, in the same vein, one of the things I've been rebuked for is not listing the five steps of salvation within the invitation. You know, I've always given an invitation, but I don't feel the need to list the five steps. And so I think those can kind of coincide sometimes of like, not only do you have to have an invitation, but you have to basically, regardless of what your sermon is, give a five minute spiel, evangelism, door knocking spiel about what the steps of salvation are. That's what I push back on the most. I think that's absolutely ridiculous. But Jack, sorry to cut in front of you there. You did spell it out very, very well in your article, and I think got a lot of positive feedback on that. So we don't have a ton of time here, but what are some of the things, some of the reasoning that you had as to why there is a really solid case against the invitation? [00:59:09] Speaker C: Yeah, I appreciate the kind words, guys. It is up on the site. Jack Wilkie co but I'm sure all the listeners have already read the thing four or five times, send it all their. [00:59:17] Speaker B: Oh yeah. And shared it and. [00:59:18] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Posted on Facebook and all that. Uh, no, but some of you actually did. So thank you. Um, but yeah, the, the basic cases, it's not scriptural. Um, people will point to acts two, point to acts eight, things like that. Those were not in worship services. Those were literally evangelistic sermons. This was not the gathering of the saints. It was reaching out to lost people. So, yeah, you should do it then. You should not do it when it's the. The gathering of saints. Uh, historically, this is a very recent, relatively, uh, development. Late 17 hundreds really boomed in the 18 hundreds with revivalism. This guy named Charles Finney, who basically was manipulating people into coming down the aisle and. And then boasting about the numbers that he was, you know, putting up things like that. And so, again, this is not. This is. This is a perfect case in point for our discussion about tradition. Here is the rebukes you guys have gotten. I've gotten them before. Some of the responses I got to the article treats this as, like, you did not preach a true sermon if you did not give an invitation. A, you don't have Bible on it. B, that literally 1700 years of church preaching did not have invitations, did not have come forward as we stand and as we sing, and yet it's been turned into, wow, we did something wrong as a church if this wasn't done. And so that's exactly. [01:00:30] Speaker B: And you can forget the 30 minutes of sermon that you just taught. It doesn't matter because you didn't give the invitation. That's. That's crazy. [01:00:37] Speaker C: I think one of my biggest things is we are struggling so much at evangelism that we have to turn everything to an event into evangelism. We don't trust that. You know what? It's going to be okay if we have this thing for the church. This is for God's people to come together. This is not for the outsiders. The outsiders are welcome. If an outsider walks in, you should certainly go up and shake their hand and say, thanks for coming. Do you know about Jesus? Would you like to study the Bible, whatever it may be? Absolutely. [01:01:01] Speaker A: Do that. [01:01:01] Speaker C: But when we're in the time of worship, it's not for them. And what it does is it takes the Lord's supper, the singing, the sermon, everything that we just did and said. Yeah, yeah. But the real priority here is our. I really don't like this tradition either. Our honored guests, and we're going to focus on them at this pinnacle of everything the worship service has led to. No, they can sit out and watch this one, and they can understand we've got something very special here that they can be a part of, but they're not yet. And so there's, again, scriptural, historical, and to my mind, logical reasons for not doing it. But it's all laid out much longer there on the article, if you want to go check that out. [01:01:38] Speaker A: I think, yeah, I think it's a perfect one to wrap up on because it is one of those we will get into more in the deep end. We still have a few that we not covered. Children's church Sunday night slash Wednesday night gospel meetings. But in any others obviously that the deep thinkers throw our way on focus plus. But yeah, I think this is a good one to end on because it is one that is so steep. This may be the one that is most traditional uh, or that is most pushed back on. I think when we start ask questions about it. Of all of the ones we've covered. [01:02:10] Speaker C: Gospel meetings we're not going to cover it right now. But like it kind of goes hand in hand from the revivalism thing from the, the tent baptisms and stuff like that. Questioning that might uh, might be a little uh, controversial. I don't know. [01:02:24] Speaker B: Sure it's almost viewed as like a 6th act of worship in many instances. But not just the Sunday morning sermon invitation. But there are legitimately people that believe if you have any kind of gathering whatsoever Wednesday night, you know, whatever it is that you, you probably should extend imitation because of well you just never know. And the other thing that just real fast because I don't think, and Jack, I apologize if you brought this up, maybe I'm being redundant but I didn't hear you bring it up, is that I feel like it presents the false idea that hey, if you want to change your life, if you want to make a confession, if you want to kind of have some kind of change, there are three times a week where you can do that. And that's it. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, whenever the invitation song is sung. Other than that, you know, I mean, and some people do say, you know, that the invitation is always open. But regardless of people saying that, it gives the idea that, all right, this is your chance, you got to do it right now. And if not you got to wait until, you know, Sunday night rolls around and then Wednesday night. And I think, just think that's the, that's the wrong idea to present. [01:03:22] Speaker A: And it's the dumbest thing in the world. I'm sorry, but it's the dumbest thing in the world to think that you have somebody who's really struggling in some area and instead of going to a brother or sister, they need to come down and confess it to 300 people. Like maybe they're 300 pairs of eyes staring down their back right where gossip, gossip starts. The gossip train. Did you know? Wow, he did that. No, no. This needs to be between a, you know, a friend, a personal friend, an elder. You're going to the elder to confess something. And if there's a baptism, there's a lot more study that needs to be done. But before I preached a sermon that had nothing to do with baptism, I gave you a spiel that mentioned baptism in two minutes. And now you're ready to go baptized. Either you and Jack makes this point in the article, either you were ready to get baptized before, in which case this isn't going to stop you. If I didn't offer the invitation, you'd come find me after and ask. Or this is an emotional response and I'm not going to baptize you out of emotion. This is the biggest commitment of your life. So yeah, maybe we need to rethink why this would be the case. But I. The idea of bringing the most personal things before everybody in the congregation, to be laid bare and to be gossiped about. There's a reason people don't do it. It is. And we can all act like, oh, that's not what it's there for. Everybody does it. And that sounds horrible to say, but like it is one of those. I didn't know. I had no idea they were struggling. It would have been so much better for them to go to you and go, brother, I'm really strong this or sister, I could really use your prayers. There's so many better ways to do the same exact thing that we're getting from the invitation that in my opinion it's obsolete. And if we took any other tradition from a denominational guide the way we do from Charles Finney going back to 17 hundreds, people would flip, world would implode. And honestly, rightfully so in some ways, like we had no reason to go back and take a denominational thing, bring it forward, think that it's our specific thing and to build a tradition so strong on it, man, I'm not seeing it. So yeah, I think this is a good one to end on. Jack, you wrote a good article again. And fellas, any other things we want to, that you want to say before we wrap up? [01:05:20] Speaker B: As always, I would just very much push for, for what are y'all's thoughts, specifically those who are subscribed to focus plus and get your comments in because this is albeit three young guys coming from, I mean Jack is the, the older, the elder statesman here, but we are still very much coming from a maybe challenging things, a little bit perspective. But again, questioning is the way that I would put it. And I always think that that's a good thing, but other perspectives we'd love to hear maybe other things that we left out of sections of our church life, religious life, or I should say, like Sunday morning, Sunday night type of thing, if you've got any thoughts with that. Yeah, we'd love to hear it. And so, guys, anything else before we wrap up? [01:05:58] Speaker C: Yeah, just when you comment, this was almost like two episodes in one of, like, the place of tradition and then reviewing specific traditions. So it's been a long time. It's been 30 minutes now since we covered the place of tradition. I'd love to hear your thoughts on both sides of this, if there are specific things you want us to cover or views on specific things we did, but also on the broader place of tradition. Do you feel we are too traditional? Do you feel like we're throwing too much out right now? And so that's the stuff I'm really curious about, is that we get both sides of the feedback there, whether in focus plus YouTube, Facebook group, wherever you're picking this up. But, yeah, I mean, this can go on and on. We'll definitely pick up some more on Friday and talk to you guys again with a new one next Monday.